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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ghost Ship, by John C. Hutcheson

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Title: The Ghost Ship
       A Mystery of the Sea

Author: John C. Hutcheson

Illustrator: Henry Austin

Release Date: April 15, 2007 [EBook #21087]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




The Ghost Ship

by John Conran Hutcheson
________________________________________________________________
This book intentionally veers in and out of the supernatural, as the
title implies.  The officers get more and more bewildered as they
work out their position, and yet again encounter the same vessel
going in an impossible direction.

Having warned you of this, I must say that it is a well-written book
about life aboard an ocean-going steamer at about the end of the
nineteenth century.

You will find it worth listening to, or reading, and I recommend it.
N.H.
________________________________________________________________
THE GHOST SHIP

BY JOHN CONRAN HUTCHESON



CHAPTER ONE.

THE STAR OF THE NORTH.

The sun sank below the horizon that evening in a blaze of ruby and gold.

It flooded the whole ocean to the westward, right up to the very zenith,
with a wealth of opalescent light that transformed sea and sky alike
into a living glory, so grand and glorious was the glowing harmony of
kaleidoscopic colouring which lit up the arc of heaven and the wide
waste of water beneath, stretching out and afar beyond ken.  Aye, and a
colouring, too, that changed its hue each instant with marvellous
rapidity, tint alternating with tint, and tone melting into tone in
endless succession and variety!

Throughout the day the weather had looked more than threatening.  From
an early hour of the morning the wind had been constantly veering and
shifting, showing a strong inclination to back; and now the sea was
getting up and the white horses of Neptune had already begun to gambol
over the crests of the swelling billows, which heaved up and down as
they rolled onward with a heavy moaning sound, like one long, deep-drawn
sigh!

It looked as if the old monarch below, angered by the teasing of the
frolicsome zephyrs, was gradually working himself up into a passion,
which would vent itself, most probably, ere long in a much more telling
fashion than by this melancholy moan, so different to the sea-god's
usual voice of thunder!

Yes, it looked threatening enough in all conscience!

A brisk breeze had been blowing from the nor'-east before breakfast, but
this had subsequently shifted to the nor'ard at noon, veering back
again, first to the nor'-east and then to due east in the afternoon.
The wind freshened as the hours wore on, being now accompanied towards
sunset by frequent sharp gusts, a sign betokening plainly enough to a
seaman's eye that something stiffer was brewing up for us by-and-by.

Glancing over the side, I noticed that our brave vessel, the _Star of
the North_, was becoming very uneasy.

She was running under her jib and foresail, with fore-topsail and fore-
topgallantsail, being only square rigged forwards, like most ocean
steamers; but, in order to save coals and ease the engines, the skipper
had set the fore and main trysails with gaff-topsails and staysails as
well, piling on every rag he could spread.

With this press of canvas topping her unaccustomed hull, the poor old
barquey heeled over more and more as the violent gusts caught her
broadside-on at intervals, rolling, too, a bit on the wind fetching
round aft; while, her stern lifting as some bigger roller than usual
passed under her keel, the screw would whiz round aimlessly in mid air,
from missing its grip of the water, "racing," as sailors say in their
lingo, with a harsh grating jar that set my teeth on edge, and seemed to
vibrate through my very spinal marrow as I stood for a moment on the
line of deck immediately over the revolving shaft.

At the same time also that the afterpart of the vessel rose up on the
breast of one billowy mountain, her forefoot in turn would come down
with a resonant "thwack" into the valley intervening between this roller
and the next, the buoyant old barquey dipping her bows under and giving
the star-crowned maiden with golden ringlets, that did duty for her
figurehead, an impromptu shower bath as she parted the indignant waves
with her glistening black hull, sending them off on either hand with a
contemptuous "swish" on their trying in mad desperation to leap on
board, first to port and then to starboard, as the ship listed in her
roll.

It was, however, but a vain task for these mad myrmidons of Neptune to
attempt, strive as recklessly as they might in their wrath, for the good
ship spurned them with her forefoot and the star-crowned maiden bowed
mockingly to them from her perch above the bobstay, laughing in her glee
as she rode over them triumphantly and sailed along onward; and so the
baffled roysterers were forced to fall back discomforted from their rash
onslaught, swirling away in circling eddies aft, where, anon, the cruel
propeller tossed and tore them anew with its pitiless blades--ever
whirling round with painful iteration to the music of their monotonous
refrain, "Thump-thump, Thump-thump," and ever churning up the already
seething sea into a mass of boiling, brawling, bubbling foam that spread
out astern of us in a broad shimmering wake in the shape of a lady's
fan, stretching backward on our track as far as the eye could see and
flashing out sparks of fire as it glittered away into the dim distance,
like an ever-widening belt of diamonds fringed with pearls.

The SS _Star of the North_ was a large schooner-rigged cargo steamer,
strongly built of iron in watertight compartments, and of nearly two
thousand horsepower, but working up, under pressure, of nearly half as
much again on a pinch, having been originally intended for the passenger
trade.

She belonged to one of the great ocean lines that run between Liverpool
and New York, and was now on her last outward trip for the year and
rapidly nearing her western goal--the Fastnet light--and, according to
our reckoning when we took the sun at noon, in latitude 42 deg. 35 minutes
North, and longitude 50 deg. 10 minutes West, that is, just below the banks
of Newfoundland, our course to our American port having been a little
more southerly than usual for the season.  This was in consequence of
Captain Applegarth, our skipper, wishing, as I said before, to take
advantage of the varying winds of the northern ocean as much as
possible, so as to economise his steam-power and limit our consumption
of fuel; for freights "across the herring-pond," as the Yankees call it,
are at a very low ebb nowadays, and it is naturally a serious
consideration with shipowners how to make a profit out of the carrying
trade without landing themselves in the bankruptcy court.  So, they have
to cut down their working expenses to the lowest point practicable with
efficiency, where "full speed" all the way is not a vital necessity--as
in the case of the mail steamers and first-class passenger ships of
enormous steam-power and corresponding speed, which, of course, run up a
heavy coal bill, for they always "carry on" all they can to and fro
across the Atlantic, accomplishing the passage now between Queenstown
and Sandy Hook, veritable greyhounds of the ocean that they are, within
the six days, all told, from land to land.  Aye, and even this "record"
promises to be beaten in the near future.

Prior to our leaving Liverpool on this voyage, the very day before we
sailed, in fact, greatly to my surprise and satisfaction, as may be
imagined, I was made fourth officer, the owners having unexpectedly
promoted me from the position of "apprentice," which I had filled up to
our last run home without any thought of so speedy a "rise."  Of course
I had to thank my old friend Captain Applegarth for my good fortune,
though why the skipper thus spoke up for me I'm sure I cannot say, for I
was very young to hold such a subordinate post, having only just turned
my seventeenth year, besides being boyish enough in all conscience, and
beardless, too, at that!  But, be that as it may, fourth officer I was
at the time of which I write.

I recollect the evening well enough.

It was on the seventh of November, the anniversary of my birthday, a
circumstance which would alone suffice to imprint the date on my memory
were I at all disposed to forget it.  But that is not very likely.

No, I can assure you.

It would be impossible for me to do that, as you will readily believe
when you come to know my story; for, on this eventful evening there
happened something which, somehow or other, thenceforth, whether owing
to what visionary folk term "Destiny," or from its arising through some
curious conjuncture of things beyond the limits of mere chance, appeared
to exercise a mysterious influence on my life, affecting the whole tenor
and course of my subsequent career.

I had better tell you, however, what occurred, and then you will be able
to judge for yourself.



CHAPTER TWO.

"SAIL HO!"

Away forward, I remember, the ship's bell under the break of the
forecastle, or "fo'c's'le," as it is pronounced in nautical fashion, was
just striking "two bells" in the first day watch.

In other words, more suited to a landsman's comprehension, it was five
o'clock in the afternoon when I came on deck from my spell of leisure
below, to relieve Mr Spokeshave, the third officer, then on duty, and
the sight I caught of the heavens, across the gangway, was so beautiful
that I paused a moment or two to look at the sunset before going up on
the bridge, where Mr Spokeshave, I had no doubt, was anxiously awaiting
me and, equally certainly, grumbling at my detaining him from his "tea!"

This gentleman, however, was not too particular as to time in relieving
others when off watch, and I did not concern myself at all about Master
"Conky," as all of us called him aboard, on account of a very prominent,
and, so to speak, striking feature of his countenance.

Otherwise, he was an insignificant-looking little chap, as thin as
threadpaper and barely five feet high; but he was always swelling
himself out, and trying to look a bigger personage than he was, with the
exception that is, of his nose, which was thoroughly Napoleonic in size
and contour.  Altogether, what with the airs he gave himself and his
selfish disposition and nasty cantankerous temper, Master Spokeshave was
not a general favourite on board, although we did not quarrel openly
with the little beggar or call him by his nickname when he was present,
albeit he was very hard to bear with sometimes!

Well, not thinking of him or his tea or that it was time for me to go on
watch, but awed by the majesty of God's handiwork in the wonderful
colouring, of the afterglow, which no mortal artist could have painted,
no, none but He who limns the rainbow, I stood there so long by the
gangway, gazing at the glorious panorama outspread before me, that I
declare I clean forgot Spokeshave's very existence, all-important though
he considered himself, and I was only recalled to myself by the voice of
Mr Fosset, our first officer, who had approached without my seeing him,
speaking close beside me.

Ah, he was a very different sort of fellow to little Spokeshave, being a
nice, jolly, good-natured chap, chubby and brown-bearded, and liked by
every one from the skipper down to the cabin boy.  He was a bit
obstinate, though, was Mr Fosset; and "as pigheaded as a Scotch
barber," as Captain Applegarth would say sometimes when he was arguing
with him, for the first mate would always stick to his own opinion, no
matter if he were right or wrong, nothing said on the other side ever
convincing him to the contrary and making him change his mind.

He had caught sight of me now leaning against the bulwarks and looking
over the side amidships, just abaft the engine-room hatch, as he passed
along the gangway towards the bridge which he was about to mount to have
a look at the standard compass and see what course the helmsman was
steering, on his way from the poop, where I had noticed him talking with
the skipper as I came up the booby-hatch from below.  "Hullo, Haldane!"
he cried, shouting almost in my ear, and giving me a playful dig in the
ribs at the same time; this nearly knocked all the breath out of my
body.  "Is that you, my boy?"

"Aye, aye, sir," I replied, hesitating, for I was startled, alike by his
rather too demonstrative greeting as well as his unexpected approach.
"I--I--mean, yes, sir."

Mr Fosset laughed; a jolly, catching laugh it was--that of a man who
had just dined comfortably and enjoyed his dinner, and did not have,
apparently, a care in the world.  "Why, what's the matter with you,
youngster?" said he in his chaffing way.  "Been having a caulk on the
sly and dreaming of home, I bet?"

"No, sir," I answered gravely; "I've not been to sleep."

"But you look quite dazed, my boy."

I made no reply to this observation, and Mr Fosset then dropped his
bantering manner.

"Tell me," said he kindly, "is there anything wrong with you below?  Has
that cross-grained little shrimp, Spokeshave, hang him! been bullying
you again, like he did the other day?"

"Oh no, sir; he's on the bridge now, and I ought to have relieved him
before this," I replied, only thinking of poor "Conky" and his tea then
for the first time.  "I wasn't even dreaming of him; I'm sure I beg his
pardon!"

"Well, you were dreaming of some one perhaps `nearer and dearer' than
Spokeshave," rejoined Mr Fosset, with another genial laugh.  "You were
quite in a brown study when I gave you that dig in the ribs.  What's the
matter, my boy?"

"I was looking at that, sir," said I simply, in response to his
question, pointing upwards to the glory in the heavens.  "Isn't it
grand?  Isn't it glorious?"

This was a poser; for the first mate, though good-natured and good-
humoured enough, and probably a thinking man, too, in his way, was too
matter-of-fact a person to indulge in "dreamy sentimentalities," as he
would have styled my deeper thoughts!  A sunset to him was only a
sunset, saving in so far as it served to denote any change of weather,
which aspect his seaman's eye readily took note of without any pointing
out on my part; so he rather chilled my enthusiasm by his reply now to
me.

"Oh, yes, it's very fine and all that, youngster," he observed in an
off-hand manner that grated on my feelings, making me wish I had not
spoken so gushingly.  "I think that sky shows signs of a blow before the
night is over, which will give you something better to do than star-
gazing!"

"I can't very well do that now, sir," said I slily, with a grin at
catching him tripping.  "Why, the stars aren't out yet."

"That may be, Master Impudence," replied Mr Fosset, all genial again
and laughing too; "but they'll soon be popping out overhead."

"But, sir, it is quite light still," I persisted.  "See, it is as bright
as day all round, just as at noontide!"

"Aye, but it'll be precious dark soon!  It grows dusk in less than a
jiffey after the sun dips in these latitudes at this time o' year," said
he.  "Hullo!  I say, though, that reminds me, Haldane--"

"Of what, sir?"  I asked as he stopped abruptly at this point.
"Anything I can do for you, Mr Fosset?"

"No, my boy, nothing," he replied reflectively, and looking for the
moment to be in as deep a brown study as he accused me of being just
now.  "Stop, though, I tell you what you can do.  Run forwards and see
what that lazy lubber of a lamp-trimmer is about.  He's always half an
hour or so behind time, and seems to get later every day.  Wake him up
and make him hoist our masthead lantern and fix the side lights in
position, for it'll soon be dark, I bet 'ee, in spite of all that flare-
up aloft over there, and we're now getting in the track of the homeward-
bounders crossing the Banks, and have to keep a sharp look-out and let
'em know where we are, to avoid any chance of collision."

"Aye, aye, sir," I cried, making my way along the gangway by the side of
the deckhouse towards the fo'c's'le, which was still lit up by the
afterglow as if on fire.  "I'll see to it all right, and get our steam
lights rigged up at once, sir."

So saying, in another minute or so, scrambling over a lot of empty coal
sacks and other loose gear that littered the deck, besides getting
tripped up by the tackle of the ash hoist, which I did not see in time
from the glare of the sky coming right in my eyes, I gained the lee side
of the cook's galley at the forward end of the deckhouse.  Here, as I
conjectured, I found old Greazer, our lamp-trimmer.  This worthy, who
was quite a character in his way, was a superannuated fireman belonging
to the line, whom age and long years of toil had unfitted for the
rougher and more arduous duties of his vocation in the stoke-hold, and
who now, instead of trimming coals in the furnaces below, trimmed wicks
and attended to the lamps about the ship, on deck and elsewhere.  He
managed, I may add, to make his face so dirty in the carrying out of the
lighter duties, to which he was now called, probably in fond
recollection of his byegone grimy task in the engine-room, that his
somewhat personal cognomen was very appropriate, his countenance being
oily and smutty to a degree!

He was a very lazy old chap, however; and, in lieu of attending to his
work, was generally to be found confabulating with our mulatto cook,
Accra Prout, as I discovered him now, more bent on worming out an extra
lot of grog from the chef of the galley in exchange for a lump of "hard"
tobacco, than thinking of masthead lanterns or the ship's side lights,
green and red.

"What are you about, lamp-trimmer?"  I called out sharply on catching
sight of him palavering there with the mulatto, the artful beggar
furtively slipping the tin pannikin out of which he had been drinking
into the bosom of his jumper.  "Here's two bells struck and no lights
up!"

"Two bells, sir?"

"Aye, two bells," I repeated, taking no notice of his affected air of
surprise.  "There's the ship's bell right over your head where you
stand, and you must have heard it strike not five minutes ago."

"Lor', Master Dick, may I die a foul death ashore if I ever heard a
stroke," he replied as innocently as you please.  "Howsomdever, the
lamps is all right, sir.  I ain't 'ave forgot 'em."

"That's all right, then, Greazer," I said, not being too hard on him,
and excusing the sly wink he gave to Prout as he told his barefaced
banger about not hearing the bell, in memory of his past services.
"Come along now and rig them up smart, or you'll have Mr Fosset after
you."

Making him hoist our masthead light on the foremast, twenty feet above
the deck, according to the usual Board of Trade regulations for steamers
under way at sea, I then marched him before me along the deck and saw
him place our side lights in their proper position, the green one to
starboard and the red on our port hand.

Old Greazer then mounted the bridge-ladder, in advance of me, with the
binnacle lamp in his hand to put that in its place, and, as I followed
slowly in his slow footsteps, for the ex-fireman was not now quick of
movement, an accident in the stoke-hold having crippled him years ago, I
half-turned round as I ascended the laddering to have a look again at
the horizon to leeward over our port quarters, when I fancied, when
advancing a foot with the lamp-trimmer, I had seen something to the
southward.

In another instant my fancy became a certainty.

Yes, there, in the distance, sailing at an angle to our course, right
before the wind, was a large full-rigged ship.  Everything, though, was
not right with her, as I noted the moment I made her out, with her white
canvas all crimson from a last expiring gleam of the afterglow; for I
could see that her sails were tattered and torn, with the ragged ends
blowing out loose from the boltropes in the most untidy fashion,
unkempt, uncared for!

Besides, she was flying a signal of distress, patent to every sailor
that has ever crossed the seas.

Her flag was hoisted half-mast high from the peak halliards.  Half-mast
high!

I did not wait, nor did I want, to see anything further.  No, that was
enough for me; and, springing on to the bridge with a bound that nearly
knocked poor old Greazer down on his marrowbones as he stopped to put
the lantern into the binnacle, I shouted out in a ringing voice that
echoed fore and aft, startling everybody aboard, even myself, "Sail ho!
A ship in distress!  Sail ho!"



CHAPTER THREE.

DID I DREAM IT?

"Where away, Haldane?" cried Mr Fosset, the first to notice my shout,
catching up a telescope that lay handy on the top of the wheel-house of
the bridge; and, in his hurry, eagerly scanning every portion of the
horizon but the right one.  "I don't see her!"

"There she is, sir, away to the right!" said I, equally flurried,
pointing over the lee rail in the direction where I had observed the
ship only a second before as I mounted the bridge-ladder, although I
could not actually make her out distinctly at the moment now, on account
of the smoke from our funnels, which, just then, came belching forth in
a thick, black cloud that streamed away to leeward, athwart our
starboard beam, obscuring the outlook.

"There away, sir; out there!"

"Well, I can't see anything!" ejaculated Mr Fosset impatiently, rising
to his feet after stooping down to the level of the bridge cloth, trying
to get a sight of the strange vessel as best he could under the cloud of
smoke, which was now trailing out along the horizon, blown far away to
leeward by the strong wind across our beam.  "I'm sure I can't see
anything over there, youngster; you must have dreamt it!"

"Yes, when you were lolling about in the waist below there, just now,"
put in my friend, Master Spokeshave, who had been pretending to look-out
from his end of the bridge because he thought he ought to do so as Mr
Fosset was there, although he really couldn't possibly see anything aft
from that position on the port side, on account of the wheel-house and
funnel, which were of course abaft the bridge, blocking the view.  The
cantankerous little beggar sniffed his beak of a nose in the air as if
trying to look down on me, though he was half a head shorter, and spoke
in that nasty sneering way of his that always made me mad.  He did enjoy
growling at any one when he had the chance; and so he went on snarling
now, like a cat behind an area railing at a dog which couldn't get at it
to stop its venomous spitting.  "I saw you, my joker, star-gazing down
there, instead of coming up here to relieve me at the proper time!  I
believe you only sang out about the ship to cover your laziness and take
a rise out of us!"

"I did nothing of the sort, Mr Spokeshave," I answered indignantly, for
the little beast sniggered away and grinned at Mr Fosset as if he had
said something uncommonly smart at my expense.  I saw, however, where
the shoe pinched.  He was angry at my having kept him waiting for his
tea, and hence his spiteful allusion to my being late coming on watch;
so I was just going to give him a sharp rejoinder, referring to his love
for his little stomach, a weak point with him and a common joke with us
all below at meal-times, when, ere I could get a word out of the
scathing rebuke I intended for him, the smoke trail suddenly lifted a
bit to leeward and leaving the horizon clear, I caught sight again of
the ship I had seen over the rail.  This, of course, at once changed the
current of my thoughts; and so, without troubling my head any further
about "Conky," I sang out as eagerly as before to the first mate, all
the more anxious now to prove that I had been right in the first
instance, "There she is, Mr Fosset, there she is!"

"Where on earth are you squinting now, boy?" said he, a bit huffy at not
making her out and apparently inclined to Spokeshave's opinion that I
had not really seen her at all.  "Where away?"

"There, sir, away to leeward," cried I, almost jumping over the bridge
rail in my excitement.  "She's nearly abreast of our mizzen chains and
not a mile off.  She seems coming up on the port tack, sir!"

For, strangely enough, although we were going ten knots good by the aid
of the wind that had worked round more abeam, so that all our fore and
aft sail drew, while the ship, which, when I saw her before, seemed to
be running with the nor'-easter and sailing at a tangent to our course
so that she ought really to have increased her distance from us, now, on
the contrary, appeared ever so much nearer, as if she had either altered
her helm or drifted closer by the aid of some ocean current in the
interim; albeit, barely five minutes at the best, if that, had only
elapsed since I first sighted her.

But, stranger still, Mr Fosset could not see her, when there she was as
plain as the sun setting in the west awhile ago--at least to my eyes;
and, as she approached nearer yet in some unaccountable way, for her
bows were pointed from us and the wind, of course, was blowing in the
opposite direction, she being on our lee, I declare I could distinctly
see a female figure, like that of a young girl with long hair, on the
deck aft; and beside her I also noticed a large black dog, jumping up
and down!

"I'm sure I can't see any ship, youngster," said Mr Fosset at the
moment.  Even while he was actually speaking, I observed the sailing
vessel to yaw in her course, her ragged canvas flattening against the
masts as if she were coming about, although from the way her head veered
about, she did not seem to be under any control.  "There's nothing in
sight, Haldane, I tell you.  What you perhaps thought was a ship is that
big black cloud rising to the southward.  It looks like one of those
nasty sea fogs working up, and we'll have to keep a precious sharp look-
out to-night, I know."

"There's no ship there," echoed my friend "Conky," tapping his forehead
in a very offensive way to intimate that I had "a screw loose in the
upper storey," as the saying goes, grinning the while as I could see
very well in the dim light and poking his long nose up in the air in
supreme contempt.  "The boy is either mad, or drunk, or dreaming, as you
say, sir.  It is all a cock and a bull yarn about his sighting a vessel,
and he only wants to brave it out.  There's no ship there!"

"Can you see anything, Atkins?" asked Mr Fosset of the man steering.
"There away to leeward, I mean."

"No, sir," answered the sailor; "not a speck, sir."

"Do you see anything, lamp-trimmer?"

"No; can't say I does, sir," replied old Greazer, after a long squint
over our lee in the direction pointed out, "Not a sight of a sail, nor a
light, nor nothink!"

It was curious.

For, at that very moment, when the first mate and Spokeshave and the
helmsman and lamp-trimmer, standing on the bridge beside me, one and all
said they could see nothing, I declare to you I saw not only the ship
and the figures on her deck, but I noticed that the girl on the poop
waved a scarf or handkerchief, as if imploring our assistance; and, at
the same time, the dog near her bounded up against the bulwarks, and I
can solemnly assert from the evidence of my ears that I heard the animal
distinctly bark, giving out that joyous sort of bark with which a well-
dispositioned dog invariably greets a friend of his master or mistress.

I could not make it out at all.

It was most mysterious.

"Look, look, Mr Fosset!"  I cried excitedly.  "There she is now!  There
she is, coming up on our lee quarter!  Why, you must be all blind!  I
can not only see the ship distinctly, but also right down on to her
deck!"

"Nonsense, boy; you'd better go below!" said the first mate brusquely,
while Spokeshave sniggered and whispered something to the lamp-trimmer
and man at the wheel that made them both laugh out right.  "There's
something wrong with you to-night, Haldane, for you seem quite off your
chump, so you'd better go below and sleep it off.  There's no ship near
us, I tell you!  What you imagined to be a sailing vessel is that dark
cloud there, coming up from the leeward, which is fast shutting out the
horizon from view.  It's a sea fog, such as are frequently met with
hereabouts below the Banks, as we are now!"

It was true enough about the cloud, or mist, or fog, or whatever it was;
for, as Mr Fosset spoke, the darkness closed in around us like a wall
and the ship that I swear I had seen the moment before vanished, sky and
sea and everything else disappearing also at the same instant, leaving
us, as it were, isolated in space, the veil of vapour being
impenetrable!



CHAPTER FOUR.

A CONFLICT OF AUTHORITY.

Just then Captain Applegarth appeared on the scene.

He had gone down by the companion-way into the saloon below, after Mr
Fosset had left the poop, to look at the barometer in his cabin, and now
came along the upper deck and on to the bridge amidships, startling us
with his sudden presence.

The skipper had a sharp eye, which was so trained by observation in all
sorts of weather that he could see in the dark, like a cat, almost as
well as he could by daylight.

Looking round and scanning our faces as well as he could in the
prevailing gloom, he soon perceived that something was wrong.

"Huh!" he exclaimed.  "What's the row about?"

"There's no row, sir," explained the first mate in an off-hand tone of
bravado, which he tried to give a jocular ring to, but could not very
successfully.  "This youngster Haldane here swears he saw a full-rigged
ship on our lee quarter awhile ago, flying a signal of distress; but
neither Mr Spokeshave, who was on the watch, nor myself, could make her
out where Haldane said he saw her."

"Indeed?"

"No, sir," continued Mr Fosset; "nor could the helmsman or old Greazer
here, who came up with the binnacle lamp at the time.  Not one of us
could see this wonderful ship of Haldane's, though it was pretty clear
all round then, and we all looked in the direction to which he pointed."

"That's strange," said Captain Applegarth, "very strange."

"Quite so, sir, just what we all think, sir," chimed in Master
Spokeshave, putting in his oar.  "Not a soul here on the bridge, sir,
observed anything of any ship of any sort, leastways one flying a signal
of distress, such as Dick Haldane said he saw."

"Humph!" ejaculated the skipper, as if turning the matter over in his
mind for the moment; and then addressing me point blank he asked me
outright, "Do you really believe you saw this ship, Haldane?"

"Yes, sir," I answered as directly as he had questioned me; "I'll swear
I did."

"No, I don't want you to do that; I'll take your word for it without any
swearing, Haldane," said the skipper to this, speaking to me quietly and
as kindly as if he had been my father.  "But listen to me, my boy.  I do
not doubt your good faith for a moment, mind that.  Still, are you sure
that what you believe you saw might not have been some optical illusion
proceeding from the effects of the afterglow at sunset?  It was very
bright and vivid, you know, and the reflection of a passing cloud above
the horizon or its shadow just before the sun dipped might have caused
that very appearance which you took to be a ship under sail.  I have
myself been often mistaken in the same way under similar atmospheric
surroundings and that is why I put it to you like this, to learn whether
you are quite certain you might not be mistaken?"

"Quite so," shoved in Spokeshave again in his parrot fashion; "quite so,
sir."

"I didn't ask your opinion," growled the skipper, shutting him up in a
twinkling; and then, turning to me again, he looked at me inquiringly.
"Well, Haldane, have you thought it out?"

"Yes, captain, I have," I replied firmly, though respectfully, the ill-
timed interference of the objectionable Mr Spokeshave having made me as
obstinate as Mr Fosset.  "It was no optical illusion or imagination on
my part, sir, or anything of that sort, I assure you, sir.  I am telling
you the truth, sir, and no lie.  I saw that ship, sir, to leeward of us
just now as clearly as I can see you at this moment; aye, clearer, sir!"

"Then that settles the matter.  I've never had occasion to doubt your
word before during the years you've sailed with me, my boy, and I am not
going to doubt it now."

So saying, Captain Applegarth, putting his arm on my shoulder, faced
round towards the first mate and Spokeshave, as if challenging them both
to question my veracity after this testimony on his part in my favour.

"This ship, you say, Haldane," then continued the skipper, proceeding to
interrogate me as to the facts of the case, now that my credulity had
been established, in his sharp, sailor-like way, "was flying a signal of
distress, eh?"

"Yes, sir," I answered with zest, all animation and excitement again at
his encouragement.  "She had her flag, the French tricolour, I think,
sir, hoisted half-mast at her peak; and she appeared, sir, a good deal
battered about, as if she had been in bad weather and had made the worst
of it.  Besides, cappen--"

I hesitated.

"Besides what, my boy?" he asked, on my pausing here, almost afraid to
mention the sight I had noticed on the deck of the ill-fated ship in the
presence of two such sceptical listeners as Mr Fosset and my more
immediate superior, the third officer, Spokeshave.  "You need not be
afraid of saying anything you like before me.  _I'm_ captain of this
ship."

"Well, sir," said I, speaking out, "just before that mass of clouds or
fog bank came down on the wind, shutting out the ship from view, she
yawed a bit off her course, and I saw somebody on her deck aft."

"What!" cried the skipper, interrupting me.  "Was she so close as that?"

"Yes, sir," said I.  "She did not seem to be a hundred yards away at the
moment, if that."

"And you saw somebody on the deck?"

"Yes, cap'en," I answered; "a woman."

He again interrupted me, all agog at the news.

"A woman?"

"Yes, sir," said I.  "A woman, or rather, perhaps a girl, for she had a
lot of long hair streaming over her shoulders, all flying about in the
wind."

"What was she doing?"

"She appeared to be waving a white handkerchief or something like that,
as if to attract our attention--asking us to help her, like."

The skipper drew himself up to his full height on my telling this and
turned round on Mr Fosset, his face blazing with passion.

"A ship in distress, a woman on board imploring our aid," he exclaimed
in keen, cold, cutting tones that pierced one like a knife, "and you
passed her by without rendering any assistance,--a foreigner too, of
all.  We Englishmen, who pride ourselves on our humanity above all other
nations.  What will they think of us?"

"I tell you, sir, we could not see any ship at all!" retorted the first
mate hotly, in reply to this reproach, which he felt as keenly as it was
uttered.  "And if we couldn't see the ship, how could we know there was
a woman or anybody aboard?"

"Quite so," echoed Spokeshave, emphasising Mr Fosset's logical argument
in his own defence.  "That's exactly what I say, sir."

"I would not have had it happen for worlds.  We flying the old Union
jack, too, that boasts of never passing either friend or foe when in
danger and asking aid."

He spoke still more bitterly, as if he had not heard their excuses.

"But hang it, cap'en," cried Mr Fosset, "I tell you--"

Captain Applegarth waved him aside.

"Where did you last sight the ship, Haldane?" he said, turning round
abruptly to me.  "How was she heading?"

"She bore about two points off our port quarter," I replied as
laconically.  "I think, sir, she was running before the wind like
ourselves, though steering a little more to the southwards."

The skipper looked at the standard compass in front of the wheel-house
on the bridge, and then addressed the helmsman.

"How are we steering now, quartermaster?  The same course as I set at
noon, eh?"

"Aye, aye, sir," replied Atkins, who still stood by the steam steering
gear singlehanded.  If it had been the ordinary wheel, unaided by steam-
power, it would have required four men to move the rudder and keep the
vessel steady in such a sea as was now running.  "We've kept her pretty
straight, sir, since eight bells on the same course, west by south, sir,
half south."

"Very good, quartermaster.  Haldane, are you there?"

"Yes, sir," said I, stepping up to him again, having moved away into the
shadow under the lee of the wheel-house whilst he was speaking to
Atkins.  "Here I am, sir."

"Was that vessel dropping us when we passed her, or were we going ahead
of her?"

"She was running before the wind, sir, at a tangent to our course, and
more to the southwards, moving through the water quicker than we were,
until she luffed up just before that mist or fog bank shut her out from
view.  But--"

"Well?"

"I think, sir," I continued, "that was done merely to speak us; and if
she bore away again, as she was probably forced to do, being at the
mercy of the gale, she must be scudding even more to the southwards,
almost due south, I should fancy, as the wind has backed again more to
the nor'ard since this."

"I fancy the same, my boy.  I see you have a sailor's eye and have got
your wits about you.  Quartermaster?"

"Aye, aye, sir?"

"Let her off a point or two gradually until you bring her head about
sou'-sou'-west, and keep her so."

"Aye, aye, sir," responded Atkins, easing her off as required.  "Sou'-
sou'-west it shall be, sir, in a minute."

"That will bring us across her, I think," said the skipper to me.  "But
we must go a little faster if we want to overtake her.  What are we
doing now, eh?"

"I don't quite know, sir," I answered to this question.  "I was only
just coming up on the bridge to relieve Mr Spokeshave when I sighted
the ship and have not had time to look at the indicator.  I should
think, though, we're going eight or nine knots."

This didn't satisfy the skipper, so he turned to the first mate, who had
remained moodily aloof with Spokeshave at the end of the bridge.

"Mr Fosset," he sang out abruptly, "what are the engines doing?"

"About thirty revolutions, sir; half speed, as nearly as possible."

"How much are we going altogether?"

"Ten knots, with our sails," replied the other.  "The wind is
freshening, too."

"So I see," said Captain Applegarth laconically.

"And it'll freshen still more by-and-bye if I'm not mistaken!"

"Yes, it looks as if we're going to have a bit of a blow.  The scud is
flying all over us now that we are running before the wind.  I really
think we ought to ease down, sir, for the screw races fearfully as she
dips and I'm afraid of the shaft."

"I'm responsible for that, Mr Fosset," answered the skipper as, moving
the handle of the gong on the bridge communicating with the engine-room,
he directed those in charge below to put on full speed ahead.  "I never
yet abandoned a ship in distress, and I'm not going to do so now.  We're
on the right course to overhaul her, now, I think, eh, Haldane?"

"Yes, sir," I replied.  "I hope, though, we won't pass her in the fog,
sir, or run into her, perhaps."

"No fear of that, my boy: The fog is lifting now and the night will soon
be as clear as a bell, for the wind is driving all the mists away.
Besides, we'll take precautions against any accident happening.  Mr
Fosset?"

"Aye, aye, sir?"

"Put a couple of lookouts on the fo'c's'le."

"Aye, aye, sir."

"Perhaps, too, we'd better send up a rocket to let 'em know we're about.
Mr Spokeshave?  Mr Spokeshave?"

No answer came this time, however, from my friend, Master "Conky,"
though he had been ready enough just now with his aggravating "quite
so."

"I think, sir," said I, "Mr Spokeshave has gone below to his tea."

"Very likely," replied the skipper drily; "he's precious fond of his
breadbasket, that young gentleman.  I don't think he'll ever starve
where there's any grub knocking about.  Fancy a fellow, calling himself
a man, thinking of his belly at such a moment!  Go, Haldane, and call
him up again and tell him I want him."

I started to obey Captain Applegarth's order, but I had hardly got three
steps down the ladder when Spokeshave saved me further trouble by coming
up on the bridge again of his own accord, without waiting to be
summoned.

The skipper, therefore, gave him instructions to let off, every quarter
of an hour, a couple of signal rockets and burn a blue light or two over
our port and starboard quarter alternately as we proceeded towards the
object of our quest.

"All right, sir; quite so!" said "Conky," as well as he could
articulate, his mouth being full of something he had hurriedly snatched
from the steward's pantry when he had gone below, and brought up with
him to eat on deck, knowing that the skipper would be sure to sing out
for him if he remained long away at so critical a juncture.  "All right,
sir; quite so!"

The skipper laughed as he went down again to get the rockets and blue
lights which were kept in a spare cabin aft for safety.

"He's a rum chap, that little beggar," he observed to Mr Fosset, who
had been forward to set the look-out men on the forecastle and had
returned to the bridge.  "I think if you told him he was the laziest
loafer that ever ate lobscouse, he couldn't help saying `Quite so!'"

"You're about right, sir.  I think, though, he can't help it; he's got
so used to the phrase," replied the other, joining in the skipper's
laugh.  "But, hullo, here comes old Stokes, panting and puffing along
the gangway.  I hope nothing's wrong in the engine-room."

"I hope not," said the skipper.  "We want to go all we can just now, to
overhaul that ship Haldane saw."

"_If_ he saw it," muttered the first officer, under his breath and
glowering at me.  "A pack of sheer nonsense, I call it, this going out
of our course on a wild-goose chase and tearing away full speed on a
wild night like this, in a howling sea, with a gale, too, astern; and
all because an ass of a youngster fancies he saw the _Flying Dutchman_!"

I daresay the captain heard him, but the appearance just then of Mr
Stokes, our chief engineer, who had now reached the bridge, panting and
puffing at every step, as Mr Fosset had said, he being corpulent of
habit and short-winded, stopped any further controversy on the point as
to whether I had seen, or had not seen, the mysterious ship.

"Cap'en, Cap'en Applegarth!" cried out the chief engineer asthmatically
as soon as he got within hail, speaking in a tearful voice and almost
crying in his excitement.  "Are you there, sir?"

"Aye, here I am, Mr Stokes, as large as life, though not quite so big a
man as you," answered the skipper jocularly.

"I am here on the bridge, quite at your service."

Mr Stokes, however, was in no jocular mood.

"Cap'en Applegarth," said he solemnly, "did you really mean to ring us
on full speed ahead?"

"I did," replied the skipper promptly.  "What of that?"

"What of that?" repeated the old engineer, dumbfounded by this return
shot.  "Why, sir, the engines can't stand it.  That is all, if you must
have it!"

"Can't stand what?"

"They can't stand all this driving and racing, with the propeller blades
half out of water every second revolution of the shaft.  No engines
could stand it, with such a heavy sea on and the ship rolling and
pitching all the time like a merry-go-round at Barnet Fair.  The
governor is no good; and, though Grummet or Links have their grip on the
throttle valve all the while to check the steam, and I've every stoker
and oiler on duty, the bearings are getting that heated that I'm afraid
of the shaft breaking at any moment.  Full speed, sir?  Why, we can't do
it, sir, we can't do it!"

"Nonsense, Stokes," said the skipper good-humouredly.  "You must do it,
old fellow."

"But, I tell you, Cap'en Applegarth, the engines can't stand it without
breaking down, and then where will you be, I'd like to know?"

"I'll risk that."

"No, cap'en," snorted the old chief, doggedly.  "I'm responsible to the
owners for the engines, and if anything happened to the machinery they'd
blame me.  I can't do it."

The skipper flew up to white heat at this.

"But, Mr Stokes, recollect I am responsible for the ship, engines and
all, sir.  The greater includes the less, and, as captain of this ship,
I intend to have my orders carried out by every man-jack on board.  Do
you hear that?"

"Yes, sir, I hear," replied Mr Stokes grumblingly as he backed towards
the bridge-ladder.  "But, sir--"

The skipper would not give him time to get out another word.

"You heard what I said," he roared out in a voice that made the old
chief jump down half a dozen steps at once.  "I ordered you to go full
speed ahead and I mean to go full speed ahead whether the boilers burst,
or the propeller races, or the screw shaft carries away; for I won't
abandon a ship in distress for all the engineers and half-hearted
mollicoddles in the world!"

"A ship in distress?" gasped old Mr Stokes from the bottom rung of the
ladder.  "I didn't hear about that before."

"Well, you hear it now," snapped out the skipper viciously, storming up
and down the bridge in a state of great wrath.  "But whether it's a ship
in distress or not, I'll have you to know, Mr Stokes, once for all that
if I order full speed or half speed or any speed, I intend my orders to
be obeyed; and if you don't like it you can lump it.  I'm captain of
this ship!"



CHAPTER FIVE.

THE GALE FRESHENS.

Presently a cloud of thick black smoke again pouring forth from the
funnels showed that Mr Stokes had set the engine-room staff vigorously
to work to carry out the skipper's orders; while the vibration of the
upper deck below our feet afforded proof, were such needed, that the
machinery was being driven to its utmost capacity, the regular throbbing
motion caused by the revolving shaft being distinctly perceptible above
the rolling of the vessel and the jar of the opposing waves against her
bow plates when she pitched more deeply than usual and met the sea full
butt-end on.

The surface fog, or mist, which had lately obscured the view, rising
from the water immediately after the last gleams of the sunset had
disappeared from the western sky, had now cleared away, giving place to
the pale spectral light of night, an occasional star twinkling here and
there in the dark vault overhead, like a sign-post in the immensity of
space, making the wild billowy waste, through which we tore with all the
power of wind and steam, seem all the wilder from contrast.

We had carried on like this for about an hour, steering steadily to the
southwards, without catching sight again of the strange ship, though
Spokeshave and I had continued to let off signal rockets and burn blue
lights at intervals, the gale increasing in force each instant, and the
waves growing bigger and bigger, so that they rose over the topsail as
we raced along, when, all at once, a great green sea broke amidships,
coming aboard of us just abaft of the engine-room hatchway, flooding all
the waist on either side of the deckhouse and rolling down below in a
regular cataract of tumid water, sweeping everything before it.

"That's pretty lively," exclaimed Captain Applegarth, clutching hold of
the rail to preserve his balance as he turned to the quartermaster at
the wheel.  "Steady there, my man!  Keep her full and by!"

"Aye, aye, sir," answered Atkins.  "But she do yaw so, when she buries
her bows.  She's got too much sail on her, sir."

"I know that," said the skipper.  "But I'm going to carry on as long as
I can, all the same, my man."

Even as he spoke, however, a second sea followed the first, nearly
washing us all off the bridge, and smashing the glass of the skylight
over the engine-room, besides doing other damage.

By Captain Applegarth's directions, a piece of heavy tarpaulin was
lashed over the broken skylight, securing the ends to ringbolts in the
deck; but hardly had the covering been made fast ere we could see the
chief engineer picking his way towards us, struggling through the water
that still lay a foot deep in the waist and looking as pale as death.

"Hullo, Mr Stokes," cried the skipper, when the old chief with great
difficulty had gained the vantage of the bridge-ladder.  "What's the
matter now, old fellow?"

He was too much exhausted at first to reply.

"What's the matter?" he echoed ironically when able at last to speak.
"Oh, nothing at all worth mentioning; nothing at all.  I told you how it
would be, sir, if you insisted on going ahead full speed in such weather
as we're having!  Why, Cap'en Applegarth, the stoke-hold's full of water
and the bilgepump's choked, that's all; and the fires, I expect, will be
drowned out in another minute or two.  That's what's the matter, sir,
believe me or not!"

With that the poor old chap, who was quite overcome with the exertions
he had gone through and his pent-up emotion, broke down utterly,
bursting into a regular boohoo.

"Dear me, Mr Stokes; Mr Stokes, don't give way like that," said the
skipper soothingly, patting him on the back to calm him down, being a
very good-hearted man at bottom, in spite of his strict discipline and
insistence on being "captain of his own ship," as he termed it.  "Don't
give way like that, old friend!  Things will come all right by-and-bye."

"O-o-h, will they?" snivelled the old chap, refusing to be comforted,
like a veritable Rachel mourning for her children.  "We may possibly get
rid of the water below, but the crosshead bearings are working loose,
and I'd like to know who's going to give me a new gudgeon pin?"

"Hang your gudgeon pin!" cried the skipper irascibly, not perhaps for
the moment attaching the importance it demanded to this small but
essential part of the engines, uniting the connecting rod of the crank
shaft with the piston which he thus irreverently anathematised; and
then, struck by the comic aspect of the situation, with the waves
breaking over us and the elements in mad turmoil around us, while the
fat old chief was blubbering there like a boy about his gudgeon pin as
if bewailing some toy that had been taken from him, that he burst out
with a roar of laughter, which was so contagious that, in spite of the
gloomy outlook and our perilous surroundings, Mr Fosset and all of us
on the bridge joined in, even the quartermaster not being able to
prevent a grin from stealing over his crusty weatherbeaten face, though
the man at the wheel on board ship, when on duty, is technically
supposed to be incapable of expressing any emotion beyond such as may be
connected with the compass card and the coursing of the ship.  "Wha--
wha--what's the matter with that now, old chap?  One would think it was
a whale and not a gudgeon, you make such a fuss about it."

Of course the captain's joke set us all off cackling again; Mr
Spokeshave's "he-he-he" sounding out, high in the treble, above the
general cachination.

This exasperated Mr Stokes, making the old fellow quite furious.

"This is no laughing matter, Cap'en Applegarth," said he with great
dignity, standing up as erectly as he could and puffing his corpulent
figure out to such an extent that I thought he would burst.  "I'll have
ye to know that, sir.  Nor did I come on deck, sir, at the peril of my
life almost, to be made a jeer block of, though I'm only the chief
engineer of the ship and you're the ca'p'en."

He spoke with so stately an air that I confess I felt sorry I had given
away to any merriment at his expense, while the others grew serious in a
moment; and as for Atkins, his whilom grinning face seemed now to be
carved out of some species of wood of a particularly hard and fibrous
nature.

"Now, don't get angry, Stokes, old fellow," cried the skipper shoving
out his fist and gripping that of the chief in the very nick of time,
for the vessel gave a lurch just then and, still "standing on his
dignity," as the poor old chap was, without holding on to anything, he
would have been precipitated over the rail to the deck below, but for
the skipper's friendly aid.  "Don't be angry with me, old chum.  I'm
sorry I laughed; but you and I have been shipmates too long together for
us to fall out now.  Why, what the devil has got over you, Stokes?
You've never been so huffy since I first sailed with you, and I should
have thought you one of the last in the world to take offence at a
little bit of harmless chaff."

"Well, well, Cap'en Applegarth, let it bide, let it bide," replied the
old chief, coming round at once, his rage calming down as quickly as it
had risen.  "I don't mind your laughing at me if you have a mind too.  I
daresay it all seemed very funny to you, my being anxious about my
engines, but I'm hanged if I can see the fun myself."

"But it was funny, Stokes; deuced funny, I tell you, `ho-ho-ho!'"
rejoined the skipper, bursting out into a regular roar again at the
recollection of the scene, his jolly laugh causing even the cause of it
to smile against his will.  "However, there's an end of it, gudgeon pin
and all.  Now, about that stoke-hold of yours.  It's flooded, you say?"

"Aye; there's eighteen inches of water there now, right up to the
footplates," said the engineer with a grave air.  "The bilge-pumps won't
act, and all my staff of stokers are so busy keeping up the steam that I
can't spare a man to see to clearing out the suctions, though if the
water rises any higher, it will soon be up to the furnace bars and put
out the fires."

"Humph, that's serious," answered the skipper meditatively.  "I'll see
what I can do to help you.  I say, Fosset?"

"Aye, aye, sir!  Want me?"

"Yes," replied the skipper.  "Mr Stokes is shorthanded below and says
the bilge-pumps are choked.  Can you spare him a man or two to help
clear the suctions?  I daresay there's a lot of stray dunnage washing
about under the stoke-hold plates.  You might go down and bear a hand
yourself, as I won't leave the bridge."

"Certainly, sir; I'll go at once with Mr Stokes and take some of the
starboard watch with me.  It's close on seven bells and they'd soon have
to turn out, anyway, to relieve the men now on deck."

"That'll do very well, Fosset," said the skipper, and, raising his
voice, he shouted over the rail forwards--

"Bosun, call the watch!"

Bill Masters, who had been waiting handy on the deck amidships,
immediately below the bridge, expecting some such order with the need,
as he thought, of the skipper reducing sail, at once stuck his shrill
boatswain's pipe to his lips and gave the customary call: Whee-ee-oo-
oo--whee-ee-ee.

"Starboard watch, ahoy!"

The men came tumbling out of the fo'c's'le at the sound of the whistle
and the old seadog's stentorian hail; whereupon the first mate,
selecting six of the lot to accompany him, he followed Mr Stokes
towards the engine-room hatchway.

Before disappearing below, however, the engineer made a last appeal to
the skipper.

"I say, cap'en," he sang out, stopping half-way as he toddled aft,
somewhat disconsolately in spite of the assistance given him, "now won't
you ease down, sir, just to oblige me?  The engines won't stand it, sir;
and it's my duty to tell you so, sir."

"All right, Stokes; you've told me, and may consider that you've done
your duty in doing so," replied the skipper, grimly laconic.  "But I'm
not going to ease down till seven bells, my hearty, unless we run across
Dick Haldane's ship before, when we'll go as slow as you like and bear
up again on our course to the westwards."

"Very good, sir," answered the old chief as he lifted his podgy legs
over the coaming of the hatchway, prior to burying himself in the
cimmerian darkness of the opening, wherein Mr Fosset and his men had
already vanished.

"I'll make things all snug below, sir, and bank the fires as soon as you
give the signal."

With that, he, too, was lost to sight.

The skipper, I could see, was not very easy in his mind when left alone;
for he paced jerkily to and fro between the wheel-house and the weather
end of the bridge as well as he was able, the vessel being very
unsteady, rolling about among the big rollers like a huge grampus and
pitching almost bows under water sometimes, though the old barquey was
buoyant enough, notwithstanding the lot of deadweight she carried in her
bowels, rising up after each plunge as frisky as a cork, when she would
shake herself with a movement that made her tremble all over, as if to
get rid of the loose spray and spindrift that hung on to her shining
black head, and which the wind swept before it like flecks of snow into
the rigging, spattering and spattering against the almost red-hot
funnels up which the steam blast was rushing mingled with the flare of
the funnels below.

After continuing his restless walk for a minute or two, the skipper
stopped by the binnacle, looking at the compass card, which moved about
as restlessly as the old barquey and himself, oscillating in every
direction.

"We ought to have come up with her by now, Haldane," he said, addressing
me, as I stood with Spokeshave on the other side of the wheel-house.
"Don't you think so from the course she was going when you sighted her?"

"Yes, sir," I answered, "if she hasn't gone down!"

"I hope not, my boy," said he; "but I'm very much afraid she has, or
else we've passed ahead of her."

"That's not likely, sir," I replied.  "She looked as if crossing our
track when I last saw her; and, though we were going slower then, we
must be gaining on her now, I should think."

"We ought to be," said he.  "We must be going seventeen knots at the
least with wind and steam."

"Aye, aye, sir, all that," corroborated old Masters, the boatswain, who
had come up on the bridge unnoticed.  "Beg pardon, sir, but we can't
carry on much longer with all that sail forrad.  The fore-topmast is a-
complainin' like anythink, I can tell ye, sir.  Chirvell, the carpenter,
and me's examinin' it and we thinks it's got sprung at the cap, sir."

"If that's the case, my man," said Captain Applegarth to this, "we'd
better take in sail at once.  It's a pity, too, with such a fine wind.
I was just going to spare the engines and ease down for a bit, trusting
to our sails alone, but if there's any risk of the spars going, as you
say, wrong, we must reduce our canvas instead."

"There's no help for it, sir," returned the boatswain quickly.  "Either
one or t'other must go!  Shall I pass the word, sir, to take in sail?"

"Aye, take in the rags!"

"Fo'c's'le, ahoy there!" yelled Masters instantly, taking advantage of
the long-desired permission.  "All hands take in sail!"

We had hauled the trysails and other fore and aft canvas, which was
comparatively useless to a steamer when running before the wind at the
time we had altered course towards the south, in quest of the ship in
distress, the _Star of the North_ speeding along with only her fore-
topsail and fore-topgallantsail set in addition to her fore-topmast
staysail and mizzen staysail and jib.

The gale, however, had increased so much, the wind freshening as it
shifted more and more to the north that this sail was too much for her,
the canvas bellying out, and the upper spars "buckling" as the vessel
laboured in the heavy sea, the stays taut as fiddle-strings and
everything at the utmost tension.

The skipper perceived this now, when almost too late.

"Let go your topgallant bowline, and lee sheet and halliards," he roared
out, holding on with both hands to the rail and bending over the bridge
cloth as he shouted to the men forward who had tumbled out of the
forecastle on the boatswain's warning hail.  "Stand by your clewlines
and by your boat lines!"

The men sprang to the ropes with a will, but ere they had begun to cast
them off from the cleats an ominous sound was heard from aloft, and,
splitting from clew to earring, our poor topgallantsail blew clean out
of the boltropes with a loud crack as if a gun had been fired off, the
fragments floating away ahead of us, borne on the wings of the wind like
a huge kite, until it disappeared in the dark _chiaraoscura_ of the
distant horizon, where heaven and sea met amid the shadows of night.

Just then a most wonderful thing happened to startle us further!

While all of us gazed at the wreck aloft, expecting the topsail to
follow suit before it could be pulled, though the hands were racing up
rigging for the purpose, the halliards having been at once let go and
the yard lowered, a strange light over the topsail made us look aft,
when we saw a huge ball of fire pass slowly across the zenith from the
east to the west, illuminating not only the northern arc of the sky, but
the surface of the water also, immediately beneath its path, and making
the faces of the men in the rigging and indeed any object on board,
stand out in relief, shining with that corpse-like glare or reflection
produced by the electric light, the effect being weird and unearthly in
the extreme!

At the same instant one of the lookouts in the bows who had still
remained at his post and had probably been awakened from a quiet "caulk"
by the awful portent, suddenly shouted out in a ringing voice, that
thrilled through every heart on board--

"Sail ho!"

Captain Applegarth and the rest of us on the bridge faced round again at
once.

"Where away, where away, my man?" cried the skipper excitedly.  "Where
away?"

"Right ahead of us, sir," replied the man in an equally eager tone.
"And not half a cable's length away!"

"My God!" exclaimed old Masters, the boatswain, whose grey hair seemed
to stand on end with terror as we all now looked in the new direction
indicated and saw a queer ghost-like craft gliding along mysteriously in
the same direction as ourselves, and so close alongside that I could
have chucked a biscuit aboard her without any difficulty.  "That there
be no mortal vessel that ever sailed the seas.  Mark my words, Cap'en
Applegarth, that there craft be either _The Flying Dutchman_, as I've
often heard tell on, but never seen meself, or a ghost-ship; and--Lord
help us--we be all doomed men!"



CHAPTER SIX.

A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS.

"Nonsense, man!" cried Captain Applegarth.  "Don't make such an ass of
yourself!  _Flying Dutchman_ indeed!  Why, that cock and bull yarn was
exploded years ago, and I didn't think there was a sailor afloat in the
present day ass enough to believe in this story!"

"I may be a hass, sir; I know I am sometimes," retorted old Masters,
evidently aggrieved by the skipper speaking to him like this before the
men.  "But, sir, seein' is believin'.  There's this ship an' there's
that there craft a-sailin' alongside in the teeth o' the gale.  Hass or
no hass, I sees that, captain!"

"Hang it all, man, can't you see that it is only the mirage or
reflection of our own vessel, produced by the light of the meteor
throwing her shadow on to the mass of cloud leeward?  Look, there are
our two old sticks and the funnels between, with the smoke rushing out
of them!  Aye, and there, too, you can see this very bridge here we're
standing on, and all of us, as large as life.  Why, bo'sun, you can see
your own ugly mug reflected now opposite us, just as it would be in a
looking glass.  Look, man!"

"Aye, I sees, sir, plain enuff, though I'm a hass," said Masters at
length.  "But it ain't nat'rel, sir, anyhow; an' I misdoubts sich skeary
things.  I ain't been to sea forty years for nothin', Captain
Applegarth, an' I fears sich a sight as that betokens some danger ahead
as 'ill happen to us some time or other this voyage.  Even started on a
Friday, sir, as you knows on, sir!"

"Rubbish!" cried the skipper, angry at his obstinacy.  "See, the mirage
has disappeared now that the meteor light has become dispersed.  Look
smart there, aloft, and furl that topsail!  It's just seven bells and
I'm going to ease down the engines and bear up on our course again.  Up
with you, men, and lay out on the yard!"

The hands who had stopped half-way up the fore-rigging, spell-bound at
the sight of the mirage, now bestirred themselves, shaking off their
superstitious fears; old Masters, in the presence of something to be
done, also working, and soon the sail was furled, the bunt stowed, and
the gaskets passed.

"It's no use our keeping on any longer after that ship of yours,
Haldane," observed the skipper, turning to me when the men had all come
in from the topsail yard and scrambled down on deck again after making
everything snug aloft.  "If she were still afloat we must have
overhauled her before this.  I really think, youngster, she must have
been only a sort of will-o'-the-wisp, like that we saw just now--an
optical illusion, as I told you at the time, recollect, caused by some
cross light from the afterglow of the sunset thrown upon the white mist
which we noticed subsequently rising off the water.  Eh, my boy?"

"Ah, no, captain," I replied earnestly.  "The ship I saw presented a
very different appearance to that reflection of ours!  _She_ was full-
rigged, I told you, sir, and though her canvas was torn and she looked a
bit knocked about in the matter of her tophamper, she was as unlike our
old _Star of the North_ as a sailing vessel is unlike a steamer!"

"She might have been a derelict."

"I saw a girl on her deck aft, sir, with a dog beside her, as distinctly
as I see you, sir, now!"

"Well, well, be that as it may, my lad, though I'm very sorry for the
poor young thing, if she is still in the land of the living, I can't
carry on like this for ever!  If she were anywhere in sight it would be
quite another matter; but, as it is, not knowing whether we're on her
right track or not, we might scud on to the Equator without running
across her again.  No, no; it wouldn't be fair to the owners or to
ourselves, indeed, to risk the ship as well as the lives of all on board
by continuing any longer on such a wild-goose chase."

"Very good, sir," said I, on his pausing here, as if waiting for me to
say something.  "We've tried our best to come up with her, at any rate."

"We have that, and I daresay a good many would call us foolhardy for
carrying on as we've done so long.  However, I'm going to abandon the
chase now and bear up again on our proper course, my boy, and the devil
of a job that will be, I know, in the teeth of this gale!"

So saying, the skipper, grasping the handle of the engine-room
telegraph, which led up through a tube at the end of the bridge,
signalled to those in charge below to slow down to half speed.

"Down with the helm, quartermaster!" he cried to the man at the wheel,
and, at the same moment holding up his hand to attract the attention of
old Masters, who had returned to his station on the fo'c's'le, greatly
exercised in his mind by what had recently occurred, he sang out in a
voice of thunder that reached the knightheads and made the boatswain
skip: "Haul in your jib sheet and flatten those staysails sharp!  I want
to bring her round to the wind handsomely, to prevent taking in another
of those green seas aboard when we get broadside-on.  Look smart,
bo'sun, and keep your eye on her.  Keep your eye on her, d'you hear?
It's ticklish work, you know.  Look-out sharp or she'll broach to!"

Far as the eye could reach, the storm-tossed surface of the deep was
white with foam, white as a snowfield, and boiling with rage and fury.

The bank of blue-black cloud that had rested along the horizon to
leeward had now melted away in some mysterious fashion or other, and the
sky became as clear as a bell, only some wind-driven scrap of semi-
transparent white vapour sweeping occasionally across the face of the
pale, sickly-looking moon that looked down on the weird scene in a sort
of menacing way; while, in lieu of the two or three odd sentinels that
had previously peeped out from the firmament, all the galaxies of heaven
were, at this moment, in their myriads above, spangling the empyrean
from zenith to pole.

But the gale!

While running before the wind, the wind, although it had ballooned our
sails out to bursting point, brushing us along at a wild, mad-cap rate,
and buffeting the boisterous billows on either hand, scooping them up
from the depths of the ocean and piling them in immense waves of angry
water that rolled after us, striving to overwhelm us, we could hardly,
even while taking advantage of it, appreciate its awful and tremendous
force.

On coming about, however, and facing it, the case was vastly different,
the wind increasing tenfold in its intensity.

Where it had sung through the rigging it now shrieked and howled, as if
the air were peopled with demons, while the waves, lashed into fury,
dashed against our bows like battering rams, rising almost to the level
of our masthead where their towering crests met overhead.

Round came the old barquey's head slowly, and more slowly still as she
staggered against the heavy sea, until, all at once, she stopped in
stays, unable apparently, though struggling all she could, to face her
remorseless foe.

"Luff up, quartermaster!" roared the skipper to the top of his voice and
dancing up and down the bridge in his excitement.  "Luff, you beggar,
luff!"

"I can't, sir," yelled the man in desperation--a fresh hand who had come
on duty to relieve Atkins at six bells.  "The steam steering gear has
broken-down, sir, and I can't make her move."

"By Jingo, that's a bad job," cried the skipper, but he was not long at
a nonplus.  "Run aft, Haldane, and you too, Spokeshave.  Loosen the bunt
of the mizzen-trysail and haul at the clew.  That'll bring her up to the
wind fast enough, if the sail only stands it!"

To hear was to obey, and both Spokeshave and I scuttled down the bridge-
ladder as quickly as we could and away along the waist of the ship aft,
the urgency of our errand hastening our movements if we had needed any
spur beyond the skipper's sharp, imperative mandate.

But, speedily as we had hurried, on mounting the poop-ladder and rushing
towards the bitts at the foot of the mizzenmast to cast off the bunt-
lines and clewlines of the trysail we found we had been already
forestalled by an earlier arrival on the scene of action.

This was Mr O'Neil, the second officer, whom I had left below asleep in
his cabin when I came up at two bells from the saloon, he having been on
duty all the afternoon and his services not being required again until
night, when he would have to go on the bridge to take the first watch
from eight to midnight.

Feeling the bucketing-about we were having in the trough of the sea when
we came about, and probably awakened by the change of motion, just as a
miller is supposed to be instantaneously roused by his mill stopping,
though he may be able to sleep through all the noise of its grinding
when at work, Garry O'Neil had at once shoved himself into his boots and
monkey jacket and rushed up on the poop through the companion and booby-
hatch that led up directly on deck from the saloon.

Arrived here, he had evidently noted the vessel's insecurity, and,
seamanlike, had hit upon the very same way out of the difficulty that
had suggested itself to the skipper, having, ere we reached his side,
cast off the ropes confining the folds of the trysail and trying
singlehanded to haul out the clew.

"Begorrah, me bhoys, ye've come in the very nick o' time!" he exclaimed
on seeing us.  "Here, Spoke, me darlint, hang on to the end of this
sheet and you, Dick, step on to the tail of it, whilst I take a turn of
the slack round that bollard!  Faith, it's blo'in' like the dievle, and
we'll have our work cut out for us, me bhoys, to git a purchase on it
anyhow.  Now, all together, yo-heave-ho!  Pull baker, pull dievle!"

With that, bending our backs to it, we all hauled away at the sheet,
succeeding by a great endeavour in stretching the clew of the sail to
the end of the boom, which we then secured amidships as best we could,
though the spar and sail combined jerked to such an extent that it
seemed as if the mizzenmast would be wrenched out of the ship each
instant, the heavy fold of the canvas that hung loosely under the jaws
of the gaff shaking and banging about with a noise like thunder.

Even the small amount of canvas exposed to the wind, however, was
sufficient to supply the additional leverage required aft; and the
engines working at half speed, with the headsails flattened, the ship's
bows were presently brought up to the wind, when we lay-to under easy
steam.

"Well done, my lads!" sang out the skipper from the bridge, when the
ship's head was round and the peril of her broaching-to in the heavy
seaway been fortunately averted; the wind was blowing aft, of course,
and bringing his voice to us as if he stood by, and shouting in our very
ears, "Now look sharp and come here under the bridge; I want you to cast
off the lashings of the big wheel amidships and see that the yolk lines
run clear.  We shall have to manhandle the helm and steer from below, as
the steam gear up here in the wheel-house is hopelessly jammed and will
take a month of Sundays to get right!"

"Aye, aye, sir," we made answer, under his nose, having been scurrying
forwards while he was speaking, the Irish mate adding in his native
vernacular, "Begorrah, we'll rig up the whole, sir, in the twinkling of
a bedpost, sure!"

"Hullo!" exclaimed the skipper, "is that you, O'Neil?"

"Faith, all that's lift of me, sir!"

"How's that?--I was just going to send down to your cabin to rouse you
out."

"Begorrah, its moighty little rousin' I want, sor!  The ould barquey's
that lively that she'd wake a man who'd been d'id for a wake, sure!
I've been so rowled about in me burth and banged agin' the bulkheads
that my bones fell loike jelly and I'm blue-mouldy all over.  But what
d'ye want, cap'en?  Sure, I'm helping the youngster with this whale
here."

"By jingo!" cried the skipper, "you're the right man in the right
place!"

"Faith, that's what the gaolor s'id to the burghlor, sor, when he fixed
him up noicely on the treadmill!"

The skipper laughed.

"Well, you fix up your job all right, and you'll be as good as your
friend the gaoler," he said.  "When we have the helm all alaunto again,
we can bear up on our course and jog along comfortably.  I think we are
lucky to have got off so lightly, considering the wind and sea, with
this steering gear breaking down at such an awkward moment!"

"Ah, we ain't seed the worse on it yet, and you'd better not holler till
ye're out o' the wood!" muttered old Masters under his breath, in reply
to this expression of opinion of the skipper, the boatswain having come
to our assistance with all the hands he could muster, so as to get the
wheel below the bridge in working order as soon as possible.  "I knowed
that this ghost-ship meant sumkin' and we ain't come to the end o' the
log yet!"

Almost as he uttered the words, Mr Fosset came up the engine-room
hatchway and made his way hurriedly towards us.

"By jingo, Fosset, here you are at last!" exclaimed the skipper on
seeing him.  "I thought you were never coming up again, finding it so
jolly warm and comfortable below!  Are things all right there now, and
are the bilge-pumps working?"

Captain Applegarth spoke jocosely enough, everything being pretty easy
on deck and the ship breasting the gale like a duck, but Mr Fosset's
face, I noticed, looked grave and he answered the other in a more
serious fashion than his general wont, his mouth working nervously in
the pale moonlight that lent him a more pallid air as the words dropped
from his lips, making his countenance, indeed, almost like that of a
corpse.

"But what, man!" exclaimed the skipper impatiently, interrupting his
slow speech before Mr Fosset could get any further.  "Anything wrong,
eh?"

"Yes, sir, I'm sorry to say something is very wrong, I fear--very wrong
below," replied the other sadly.  "There has been a sad accident in the
stoke-hole!"

Old Masters, whose ears had been wide open to the conversation, here
nudged me with his elbow as I stood beside him, and at the same time
giving forth a grunt of deep and heartfelt significance.

"I knowed summet 'ud happen," he whispered in a sepulchral voice that
sounded all the more gruesome from the attendant circumstances, the
shrieking wind tearing through the riggings, the melancholy wash of the
waves alongside, the moaning and groaning of the poor old barquey's
timbers as if she were in grievous pain, while at that very moment the
bell under the break of the fo'c's'le struck eight bells slowly, as if
tolling for a passing soul.  "_You_ seed the ghost-ship, Mr Haldane,
the same as me, for _I_ saw it, that I did!"



CHAPTER SEVEN.

DISASTER ON DISASTER.

"Accident in the stoke-hold!" repeated the skipper, who of course did
not overhear the old boatswain's aside to me.  "Accident in the stoke-
hold!" again repeated the skipper; "anybody hurt?"

"Yes, sir," replied the first mate in the same grave tone of voice.
"Mr Stokes and two of the firemen."

"Seriously?"

"Not all, sir," said the other, glancing round as if looking for some
one specially.  "The chief engineer has one of his arms broken and a few
scratches, but the firemen are both injured, and one so badly hurt that
I fear he won't get over it, for his ribs have been crushed in and his
lower extremities seem paralysed!"

"Good heavens!" exclaimed the skipper.  "How did the accident happen?"

"They were searching under the stoke-hold plates to get out some cotton
waste that had got entangled about the rosebox of the suctions, which,
as we found out, prevented the bilge-pumps from acting, when, all in a
moment, just when all the stray dunnage had been cleared out, the ship
gave a lurch and the plates buckled up, catching the lot of them, Mr
Stokes and all, in a sort of rat trap.  Mr Stokes tumbled forwards on
his face in the water and was nearly drowned before Stoddart and I could
pull him out, the poor old chap was so heavy to lift, and he nearly
squashed Blanchard, the stoker, by falling on top of him as we were
trying to raise him up, cutting his head open besides, against the fire
bars.  Poor Jackson, however, the other fireman, was gripped tight
between two of the plates and it was all we could do to release him,
Stoddart having to use a jack-saw to force the edges of the plates
back."

"My God! horrible, horrible!" ejaculated the skipper, terribly upset and
concerned.  "Poor fellows; Jackson, too, was the best hand Stokes had
below!"

"Aye, sir, and as good a mechanic, too, I've heard them say, as any of
the engineers," agreed Mr Fosset, with equal feeling.  "But, sir, I'm
losing time talking like this!  I only came up for assistance for the
poor fellows and the others who are wounded.  Where's Garry O'Neil?"

"Why, he was here under the bridge a moment ago," cried the skipper
eagerly.  "Hullo, O'Neil?  Pass the word up, men, for Mr O'Neil.  He's
wanted at once!  Sharp, look alive!"

Our second officer, it should be explained, was not only a sailor but a
surgeon as well.  He had run away to sea as a boy, and, after working
his way up before the mast until he had acquired sufficient seamanship
to obtain a mate's certificate, he had, at his mother's entreaty, she
having a holy horror of salt water, abandoned his native element and
studied for the medical profession at Trinity College, Dublin.  Here,
after four years' practice in walking the hospitals, he graduated with
full honours, much to his mother's delight.  The old lady, however,
dying some little time after, he, feeling no longer bound by any tie at
home, and having indeed sacrificed his own wishes for her sake,
incontinently gave up his newly-fledged dignity of "Doctor" Garry
O'Neil, returning to his old love and embracing once more a sea-faring
life, which he has stuck to ever since.  He had sailed with us in the
_Star of the North_ now for over a twelvemonth, in the first instance as
third officer and for the last two voyages as second mate, the fact of
his being a qualified surgeon standing him in good stead and making him
even a more important personage on board than his position warranted,
cargo steamers not being in the habit of carrying a medical man like
passenger ships, and sailorly qualities and surgical skill
interchangeable characteristics!

Hitherto we had been fortunate enough to have no necessity for availing
ourselves of his professional services, but now they came in handy
enough in good sooth.

"Mr O'Neil?" sang out the men on the lower deck, passing on his name in
obedience to the skipper's orders from hand to hand, till the hail
reached the after hatchway, down which Spokeshave roared with all the
power of his lungs, being anxious on his own account to be heard and so
released from his watch so that he could go below.  "Mr O'Neil?" he
again yelled out.

Spokeshave must have shouted down the Irishman's throat, for the next
instant he poked his head up the hatchway.

"Here I am, bedad!" he exclaimed, shoving past Master "Conky," to whom
he had a strong dislike, though "Garry," as we all called him, was
friendly with every one with whom he was brought in contact, and was,
himself, a great favourite with all the hands on board.  Now, as he made
his way towards the bridge, where some of the men were still singing out
his name, he cried out, "Who wants me, sure?  Now, don't ye be all
spaking at once; one at a time, me darlints, as we all came into the
wurrld!"

"Why, where did you get to, man?" said the skipper, somewhat crossly.
"We've been hunting all over the ship for you!"

"Sure, I wint down into the stowage to say if the yolklines and chains
for the wheel were all clear, and to disconnect the shtame stayrin'
gear," replied our friend Garry.  "But you'll find it all right now,
with the helm amidships, and you can steer her wheriver you like; only
you'll want four hands at least to hauld the spokes steady if she breaks
off, as I fear she will, in this say!"

"That's all right," cried the skipper, appeased at once, for he
evidently thought that Garry had gone back to his cabin and left us in
the lurch.  "But I've bad news, and sorry to say, O'Neil, we want your
services as a doctor now.  There's been a bad accident in the stoke-hold
and some of the poor fellows are sadly hurt."

"Indade, now!" ejaculated the other, all attention.  "What's the matter?
Any one scalded by the shtame, sure?"

"No, not that," said Mr Fosset, taking up the tale.  "Mr Stokes has
had his arm broken and another poor fellow been almost crushed to death.
He's now insensible, or was when I came on deck so you'd better take
some stimulant as well as splints with you."

"Faith, I understand all right and will follow your advice in a brace of
shakes," replied the second mate, as he rushed off towards the saloon.
"You'd better go on ahead, Fosset, and say I'm coming!"

With these parting words both he and the first officer disappeared from
view, the latter hastening back to the engine-room, while the captain
slowly mounted the bridge-ladder again and resumed his post there by the
binnacle, after placing four of the best hands at the wheel amidships
with old Masters, the boatswain, in charge.

"Ah, what d'ye think o' that now?" observed the latter to me, as I stood
there awaiting my orders from the skipper, or to hear anything he might
have to say to me.  "I said as how summut was sure to happen.  That
there ship--the ghost-ship--didn't come athwart our hawser for nothink,
I knowed!"

Just then there was a call up the voicepipe communicating between the
wheel-house on the bridge and the engine-room.

The skipper bent his ear to the pipe, listening to what those below had
to say, and then came to the top of the ladder.

"Below there!" he sang out.  "Is Mr Spokeshave anywhere about?"

"No, sir," I answered.  "He went off duty at eight bells."

"The devil he did, and me in such a plight, too, with that awful
accident below!" cried Captain Applegarth angrily.  "I suppose he's
thinking of his belly again, the gourmandising little beast!  He isn't
half a sailor or worth a purser's parings!  I'll make him pay for his
skulking presently, by Jingo!  However, I can't waste the time now to
send after him, and you'll do as well, Haldane--better, indeed, I
think!"

"All right, sir," said I, eager for action.  "I'm ready to do anything."

"That's a willing lad," cried the skipper.  "Now run down into Garry
O'Neil's cabin and get some lint bandages he says he forgot to take with
him in his hurry, leaving them on the top of his bunk by the doorway;
and tell Weston, the steward, to have a couple of spare bunks ready for
the injured men--in one of the state rooms aft will be best."

"All right, sir," said I, adding, as he seemed to hesitate, "anything
else, sir?"

"Yes, my boy; take down a loose hammock with you, and some lashings, so
as to make a sort of net with which to lift and carry poor Jackson.
He's the only chap badly hurt and unable to shift for himself, so O'Neil
says.  Look sharp, Haldane, there's no time to lose; the poor fellow's
in a very ticklish state and they want to get him up on deck in order to
examine his injuries better than they can below in the stoke-hold!"

"Aye, aye, sir!"  I answered, darting aft immediately, to avoid further
debation, towards the saloon door under the poop.  "I'm _off_, sir, at
once!"

Here I soon got what the Irishman had asked for out of his cabin, and,
giving Weston his order about the state room, unslinging the while my
own hammock from its hooks and rolling it up, blankets and all, in a
roll, I kicked it before me as I made my way down the engine-room
hatchway as quickly as I could.

The machinery, I noticed when passing through the flat to the stoke-
hold, which was, of course, on a still lower level, was working away
pretty easily, the piston in the cylinder moving steadily up and down,
and the eccentric, which always appeared to me as a sort of bandy-legged
giant, executing its extraordinary double-shuffle in a more graceful
fashion than when we were going at full speed, as it performed its
allotted task of curvetting the up-and-down motion of the piston into a
circular one, thus making the shaft revolve; while Grummet, the third
engineer, who was still watching the throttle valve, hand on lever, had
a far easier job than previously, when we were running with full power
before wind and sea, and rolling and pitching at every angle every
minute.

But even in the fleeting glance I had passing by, the screw still went
round in a dangerous way when the stern of the vessel lifted, as some
big wave passed under her keel, in spite of all Grummet's precautions in
turning off steam and I could not help wondering how long the engines
would stand the strain, which was all the more perilous from being
intermittent.

On reaching my destination below, however, all thought of the machinery
and any possible damage to the ship was instantly banished from my mind
by the sight that met my gaze.

In the narrow stoke-hold, lit up by the ruddy glare of the furnace
fires, the light from which enabled me to see the brackish bilge water
washing about beneath the hole in the flooring and gurgling up through
the broken portplates there, I saw that a group of half-naked firemen,
and others, were bending over a pile of empty coal sacks heaped up
against the further bulkhead, dividing the occupied apartments from the
main hold, as far away as possible from the blazing fires, on which one
of the stokers on duty pitched occasionally a shovelful of fuel, or
smoothed the surface of the glowing embers with a long-toothed rake.

I couldn't distinguish at first any one in particular, the backs of all
being towards me as I came down the slippery steel ladder, carrying the
hammock, for I had taken the precaution of hoisting it on my shoulders
on leaving the engine-flat above, in order to prevent its getting wet,
while the noise of the machinery overhead and the roar of the furnaces,
coupled with the washing of the water, prevented my hearing any distant
sound.

Presently however, I recognised Garry O'Neil's voice above the general
din.

"Clear off, ye murthorin' divvles!" he cried, waving his arms above the
heads of the crowd of onlookers, as I could now see.  "The poor chap
wants air, and ye're stayling the viry br'ith out of his nosshrils!
Away wid ye all, ye spalpeens! or by the powers, it's a-pizening the
howl batch of ye I'll be doin' the next toime ye comes to me for pill or
powdher!"

The men clustering round him spread out, moving nearer to me; and they
laughed at his comical threat--which sounded all the more humorous from
the Irishman's racy brogue, which became all the more prominent when
Garry was at all excited.  God knows, though, their merriment, untimely
as it might have sounded to outside ears, betrayed no want of sympathy
with their comrade.  They laughed, as sailors will do sometimes, holding
their lives in their hands, as is the practice of those who have to
brave the manifold dangers of the deep below and aloft on shipboard,
even when standing on the brink of eternity.

As they moved away, the fierce light from one of the open furnace doors
was beating on their bare bodies and making them look, indeed, the very
devils to whom the Irishman had jocularly likened them; the latter
looked up quickly, saw me, and beckoned me to approach nearer.

"Arrah, come along, man, with those bandages!" he said.  "Sure ye moight
have made 'em in the toime since I called up to the skipper.  Where are
they now, me darlint?"

I produced the roll of lint at once from the pocket of my monkey jacket.

"Hullo!" said he as he took and deftly proceeded to unroll the bundle of
bandages, "what's that you've got on your shoulders--a rick?"

"A hammock, sir," I replied.  "Cap'en Applegarth told me to bring one
down for lifting the poor chap who's so hurt, and so I took my own,
which had blankets already in it, thinking it would be warmer for him,
sir."

"Begorrah, the skipper's got his head screwed on straight, and you the
same, too, Haldane," said he approvingly, with a sagacious nod as he
bent over the pile of sacks in the corner.  "Come and see the poor
fellow, me bhoy.  There doesn't seem much loife lift in him, sure, hay?"

There certainly did not; to me he looked already dead.

Stretched out on the pile of dirty sacking, in a half-sitting, half-
reclining position, lay the recumbent figure, or rather form, of the
unfortunate fireman Jackson, his face as ghastly as that of a corpse,
while his rigid limbs and the absence of all appearance of respiration
tended to confirm the belief that the spark of life had fled.

Stoddart, the second engineer, was kneeling beside the poor fellow,
rubbing his hands and holding every now and then to his nose what seemed
to me a bottle of ammonia or some very pungent restorative, the powerful
fumes of which overcame the foetid atmosphere of the stoke-hold, Mr
Stokes, looking almost as pale as the unconscious man, assisting with
his unwounded arm, with which he lifted Jackson's head, his broken one
being already set in splints by our doctor-mate.

Blanchard, the other sufferer from the accident, was sitting down on a
bench near by, evidently recovering from the shock he had experienced,
which really was not so serious as at first anticipated, a rather stiff
glass of brandy and water which Garry had given him, having pretty soon
brought him to himself.

All our attention, therefore, concentrated on Jackson, who, as yet, made
no sign of amendment, in spite of every remedy tried by O'Neil.

"By George!" exclaimed Mr Stokes, a few minutes later when we all began
to despair of ever bringing him back to life again.  "I'm sure I felt
his head move then!"

"Aye, sir," corroborated Stoddart, pressing his hand gently on Jackson's
chest, to feel his heart, where a slight convulsive movement became
perceptible, at first feeble and uncertain enough, as you may suppose,
but then more and more sustained and regular, as if the lungs were
getting to work again.  "Look alive! he's beginning to breathe again--
and--yes--his heart beats, I declare, quite plain!"

"Hurray!" shouted Garry O'Neil, hastily putting to his patient's lips a
medicine glass, into which he dropped something out of a small vial,
filling up the glass with water.  "I've got something here shtrang
enough, begorrah, to make a dead man spake!"

The effect of the drug, whatever it was, seemed magical.  In an instant
the previously motionless figure moved about uneasily, the pulsation of
his chest grew more rapid and pronounced, and then, stretching out his
clenched hands with a jerk, as if he were suddenly galvanised into life,
thereby displaying the magnificent proportions of his torso, he being
stripped to the waist, Jackson opened his eyes, drawing a deep breath
the while, a breath something between a sob and a sigh!

"Where--where am I?" he said, looking round with a sort of far-away,
dreamy stare, but meeting Mr Stokes' sympathetic gaze, he at once
seemed to recover his consciousness.  "Ah, I know, sir.  I found out
what was the matter with the suction before that plate buckled and
gripped me.  I have cleared the rose box, too, sir, and you can connect
the bilge-pumps again as soon as you like, sir."

Of course all this took him some time to get out.

"All right, my man," answered the old chief, greatly overcome at the
fact of the old sailor, wounded to the death, thinking of his duty in
the first moment of his recovery.  "Never mind that, man!  How do you
feel now, my poor fellow--better, I trust?"

"Why, just a little pain here, sir," said Jackson, pressing his hand to
his right side.  "I'm thankful, though, my legs escaped, sir.  I've no
pain there."

Garry O'Neil looked grave and shook his head at this, and looking too as
he cast down his eyes over the lower part of the unfortunate man's body,
I saw that the cruel edges of the iron plates had torn away part of his
canvas overalls from the thigh to the knee of one leg, peeling off with
the covering, the flesh from the bone; while the foot of the other--boot
and all--was crushed into a shapeless bloody mass horrible to behold,
the sight making one feel sick.

"It's a bad sign his having no fayling there, Haldane," whispered the
Irishman to me very low, so that Jackson could not hear.  "It's jost
what I thought, sure.  God may help him, but I can't.  He'll niver
recover, do what we moight for him, niver in this worruld.  The poor
misfortunate fellow has his spoine injured, and he can't live forty-
eight hours, if as long as that, sure!"

He did not tell him this, however; nor did he lead any of the others to
understand, either, that Jackson's case was hopeless!

On the contrary, when he spoke aloud, as he did immediately afterwards,
he seemed in the best of spirits, as if everything was going on as well
as possible, though I noticed a tear in his eye and a quiver in his
voice that touched me to the heart, making me turn away my head.

"Now you mustn't talk now, old fellow, for we want you to husband all
your strength to get up the hatchway to a foine cabin of yer own on the
upper deck, where we're goin' to nurse ye, me darlint, till ye're all
roight, sure!" he said cheerfully.  "Here, now, just dhrink another drop
of the craythur, me bhoy, to kape yer spirits up, and you, Master
Haldane, jist hand over that hammock ye've got storved away on ye
shulder, so that we can fix up Jackson comfortable like for his trip to
the upper reggins!"

So saying, the good-hearted Irishman busied himself, with the help of
Stoddart, who was equally gentle in handling the poor fellow, getting
him ready for removal; and when he had been carefully placed in the
hammock and covered with the blanket, the two of them, both being strong
and powerful men, they lifted their burden with the utmost tenderness
and carried him upward to the main deck, where he was put into a berth
in one of the state rooms that the steward had prepared, and every
attention paid him.

Mr Fosset and I helped up Blanchard, the other fireman, he, luckily,
not requiring to be carried; and we then went down for Mr Stokes, who
had refused to leave the stoke-hold until his men had been attended to.

Propping up the stout old chap behind so that he could not slip back
down the slippery steel ladder, as he only had the one arm now to hold
on by, the three of us reached the level of the engine-room all right,
the chief, resting here a moment to give a look round and a word to
Grummet, who of course was still in charge, telling him to slow down
still further and use all his spare steam for clearing the bilge, as the
sluice valves had been opened to prevent the fires being flooded out,
and the pumps were in good working order again.

Grummet promised to attend carefully to these directions, and a host of
others I cannot now recollect, poor Mr Stokes being as fussy and
fidgetty as he was fat, and in the habit of unintentionally worrying his
subordinates a good deal in this way, and the three of us again started
on our way upwards, the old chief leading, as before, and Mr Fosset and
I bringing up the rear very slowly, so as to prevent accident, when all
at once there was a fearful crash that echoed through my brain, followed
by a violent concussion of the air which nearly threw us all down the
engine-room ladder, though Mr Fosset and I were both hanging on to it
like grim death and supporting the whole weight of Mr Stokes between
us.

At the same instant, too, the crank shaft stopped revolving, all motion
of the machinery ceased, and the hatchway, with all the space around us,
was filled by a dense cloud of hot steam!



CHAPTER EIGHT.

ANCHORED.

Nor was this the worst, for hardly had we begun to draw breath again in
the stifling vapour-bath-like atmosphere surrounding us, ere we could
utter a cry, indeed, or exchange a word of speech with reference to what
had just occurred, there arose a sudden and violent oscillation of the
vessel, which pitched and rolled, and then heeled over suddenly to port,
while an avalanche of water came thundering down the hatchway on top of
our heads.

"Good Lord, we're lost!" gulped out Mr Stokes as we all floundered
together on the grating forming the floor of the engine-room, where
fortunately the flood had washed us, instead of hustling us down the
stoke-hold below, where all three of us would most inevitably have been
killed by the fall.  "A boiler's burst and the ship broached-to!"

"Not quite so bad as that, sir," sang out the voice of Grummet in the
distance, the thick vapour lending it a far-away sound.  "The vessel is
recovering herself again, and the cylinder cover's blown off, sir--
that's all!"

"_All_, indeed!" exclaimed the old chief in a despairing tone as he
staggered to his feet, enabling Mr Fosset and myself to rise up too--an
impossibility before, as he was right on top of us, and had served us
out worse than the water had done.  "Quite enough damage for me, and all
of us, I think!"

"How's your arm, Mr Stokes?" asked Mr Fosset as the atmosphere cleared
a little and the engine-room lights glimmered through the misty darkness
that now enveloped the place.  "I hope it hasn't been hurt by your
tumble?"

"Oh, damn my arm!" cried the other impatiently, evidently more anxious
about the machinery than his arm.  "Have you shut off the steam?"

"Yes, sir," replied his subordinate calmly.  "I closed all the stop
valves up here the moment I knew what had happened; and the men below in
the stoke-hold have cut off the supply from the main pipe, while Mr
Links has gone into the screw well to disconnect the propeller."

"Very good, Grummet.  So they be all right down below?"

"All right, sir."

"Thank God for that!  How about the fires?"

"Drowned out, sir, all but the one under the fire boiler on the
starboard side."

"You'd better look after that, to keep the bilge-pumps going, or else
it'll be all drowned out, with this lot of water coming down the
hatchway every time the ship rolls!  I do hope the skipper will lie-to
and keep her head to sea until we can get the engines going again,
though I'm afraid that'll be a long job!"

Before Grummet could reply to this, Stoddart, the second officer, or
rather engineer, came scrambling down from the saloon, where he had been
assisting Garry O'Neil in making poor Jackson comfortable, the escape of
the steam having evidently told its own tale to an expert like himself.

Although a younger man than Mr Stokes, his brains were considerably
sharper and he was a better mechanic in every way; so now, when, after
examining the damage done to the cylinder, he made light of the
accident, instead of groaning over it like the old chief.  Mr Fosset, I
could see, and with him myself also, who shared his belief, saw that the
injury was not irreparable and that it might certainly have been worse.

"Of course it can't be done in a day!"  Stoddart said; "still it can be
patched up."

"That's all very well," interposed Mr Stokes, holding to his despondent
view of the situation.  "But I'd like to know how you're going to get
that cracked cover off the cylinder with the vessel rolling like this!"

"Oh, I'll manage that easy enough," said the energetic fellow in his
confident way.  "I've done worse jobs than that in a heavy sea.  Why,
I'll lash myself to the cylinder if it comes to the worse and unscrew
the cover nut by nut, shifting my berth round till I have it off.  Then
if Grummet will see to getting the portable forge ready, and some old
sheet iron or boiler plates for working and making into a patch, and if
Links will turn out some new bolts and screws with the lathe, we'll have
everything in working order before we know where we are!"

"Bravo, my hearty!" cried Mr Fosset, lending Stoddart a hand to lash
himself to the cylinder, while Grummet held a screw-wrench and other
tools up to him.  "You ought to be a sailor, you're so smart!"

"I prefer my own billet," retorted the other with an air of conscious
power.  "I am an engineer!"

Mr Fosset laughed.

"All right!" said he good-humouredly.  "Every one to his trade!"

"Humph!" groaned Mr Stokes, who was leaning against the bulkhead,
"looking very white about the gills," as Grummet whispered to me.  The
steam gradually dispersing and the lights burning more brightly, enabled
us to see his face better.  "I suppose there's nothing I can do?"

"No, nothing, sir," answered Stoddart, busy at the moment with the first
nut of the cylinder cover.  "You can very safely leave matters to
Grummet and me!  And Mr O'Neil told me as I left the maindeck that you
ought to go to your cabin and lie down, so as to rest your arm, or it
might mortify, he says, when he would not answer for the consequences,
you understand, sir?"

"Ah, that settles the matter; I won't give our amateur sawbones a chance
of lopping it off, as I daresay he'd like!" said poor Mr Stokes, with a
feeble attempt at a joke.  "Yes, I'd better go to my cabin, for I see
I'm not wanted here; and, to tell the truth, I've an aching all over me,
and feel rather tired and faint."

"Then off you go to the doctor at once," cried Mr Fosset, catching hold
of him by his uninjured arm and leading him towards the hatchway again,
the ship being pretty steady for the moment.

"You and I, too, Haldane, ought to be on deck helping the skipper and
the rest, instead of stopping here, hindering these smart fellows at
their work.  Come along with me, my lad!"

Leaving Mr Stokes at the door of the saloon in charge of Weston, the
steward, the first mate and I proceeded along the waist to the bridge,
where we found Captain Applegarth pacing up and down in his customary
jerky, impatient way, like the Polar bear in the Zoological Gardens, as
I always thought.

"Well," he said to Mr Fosset, bringing himself up short in front of the
rail on our approach, "how are matters getting on below--badly, I'm
afraid?"

The first mate explained.  Spokeshave, who was at the other end of the
bridge, coming up to listen, as usual, to the conversation.

"That's good news, indeed!" said the skipper on hearing how Stoddart had
set to work to repair the damage.  "I thought the engines were
completely broken-down.  If it weren't for poor Jackson, who, O'Neil
told me just now, was in a bad way, I think we'd got out of the scrape
pretty well, for the old barquey is comfortable enough now, and, though
there's a heavy sea running and it is still blowing stiff from the
north'ard and the west'ard, the sky is clearer than it was, and I fancy
we've seen the worst of the gale, eh?"

"I'm sure I hope so, sir," replied Mr Fosset, not committing himself to
any definite expression of opinion in the matter.  "It has given us a
rare good doing all round while it was about it, at an rate!"

"Aye, it has that," said the skipper.  "The old barquey, though, has
come through it better than any one would have supposed, with all that
deadweight amidships, considering that she broached-to awhile ago and
got caught in the trough of the sea the very moment the machinery below
gave out.  By George, Fosset, we had a narrow squeak then, I can tell
you!"

"I can quite believe that, sir," said the other, looking round about and
aloft, sailor-like, as he spoke.  "For my part I feared the worst, I'm
sure.  However, all's well that ends well, and the old barquey looks
first rate, as you say, sir, in spite of all she's gone through.  She
rides like a cork."

She certainly was a capital seaboat and lay-to now as easily as if she
were at anchor in the Mersey, though the wind was whistling through the
rigging and the ocean far and wide white with foam, bowing and scraping
to the big waves that rolled in after her like an old dowager duchess in
a ball room, curtseying to her partner.

During the long time the first mate and I had been down below in the
stoke-hold, the skipper had lowered the upper yards and housed her top-
masts, getting her also under snugger canvas, the fore and mizzen
topsails being set "scandalised," as we call it aboard ship, that is,
with the heads of the sails hauled up, and their sheets flattened taut
as boards, so as to expose as little surface as possible to the wind,
only just sufficient to keep the vessel with her head to sea, like a
stag at bay.

Opportunity had also been taken, I noticed, to secure the broken engine-
room skylight in a more substantial way than formerly, and so prevent
any more green seas from flooding the hold, the opening having been
planked over by the carpenter, and heavy bars of railroad iron, which
formed part of our cargo, laid across, instead of the tarpaulin that was
deemed good enough before and had given way when Mr Stokes--poor man--
and the first mate and myself got washed down the hatchway by a wave
that came over the side, crumpling the flimsy covering as if it were
tissue paper.

Altogether, the outlook was more reassuring than when I had gone below;
for although a fierce northerly gale was howling over the deep, making
it heave and fret and lashing it up into wild mountainous billows, the
heaven overhead was clear of all cloud, and the complaisant moon, which
was at the full, but shining with a pale, peaceful light, while numerous
stars were twinkling everywhere in the endless expanse of the firmament
above, gazing down serenely at the riot of the elements below.

It was now close on midnight and Garry O'Neil came on deck to take the
middle watch, it being his turn of duty.

"Well, doctor," said the skipper, anxious to hear something about the
invalids, "how're your patients?"

"Both going on capitally; Jackson sleeping quietly, sir, though he can't
last out long, poor fellow!"

"And Mr Stokes?"

"Faith, he's drivin' his pigs to market in foine stoil; you should only
hear him, cap'en!" answered the Irishman, looking out to windward.
"Begorrah, ain't it blowin', though, sir!  Sure, as we used to say at
ould Trinity, _de gustibus non est disputandum_, which means, Mister
Spokeshave, as yo're cockin' up your nose to hear what I'm after sayin',
it's moighty gusty, an' there's no denyin' it!"

The skipper laughed, as he generally did at Garry's nonsensical, queer
sayings.

"By George, O'Neil!  I must go down and have a glass of grog to wash the
taste of that awful pun out of my mouth!" he cried, turning to leave the
bridge for the first time since he had come up there at sunset.  "You
can call me if anything happens or should it come to blow worse, but I
shall be up and down all night to see how you're getting on."

"Och! the divvle dout ye!" muttered the Irishman in his quizzing way, as
the skipper went down the ladder, giving a word to the boatswain and man
at the wheel below as he passed them on his way up.  "Ye niver give a
chap the cridit of keeping a watch to himself!"

Soon after this I, too, left the deck and turned in, Garry O'Neil
telling me he did not want me on the bridge and that I had better sleep
while I could, a permission I readily availed myself of, tired out with
all I had gone through and the various exciting episodes of the evening.

There was no change in the weather the following morning, the wind even
blowing with greater force and the sea such as I had never seen it
before, and such a sea as I hope never to experience again; so, in order
that the ship might ride the more easily and those below in the engine-
room better able to go on with the repair of the cylinder than they
could with the old barquey pitching her bows under and then kicking up
her heels sky high, varying her performances by rolling side to side
violently, like a pendulum gone mad, the skipper had all our spare spars
lashed together, and attaching a stout steel wire hawser to them,
launched the lot overboard through a hole in the bulwarks, where one of
the waves had made a convenient clean sweep, veering the hawser ahead
with this "jetsam" to serve as a floating anchor for us, and moor the
ship.

By this means we all had a more comfortable time of it, the old barquey
no longer shipping water in any considerable quantity and there being
less work below in the way of clearing it, all of the bilge-pumps,
fortunately for us all, Stoddart and the engine-room staff were able to
keep going; otherwise we must have foundered long since!

The gale continued without abatement all that day and the next, the
second since our mishap, when, late in the afternoon the wind began to
go down, veering from the north-west to the north, and so on, back to
the eastern quadrant.

Soon after this, just before it got dark, an English man-of-war hove in
sight, and, seeing our disabled condition, signalled to ask whether we
required any assistance.

Through the clumsiness of Mr Spokeshave, who had charge of our signal
department and showed his cleverness by hoisting the very numbers of the
flags giving the skipper's reply, that, though our engines were
temporarily broken-down, they were fast being repaired, the captain of
the man-of-war could not understand him; and so, fearing the worst,
ranged up under our stern to see what help he could render, in what he
evidently considered, from Spokeshave's "hoist," to be a pressing
emergency.

"Ship ahoy!" he shouted through a speaking trumpet from his quarter-deck
aft, which was on a level with our bridge, the vessel, a splendid
cruiser of the first-class, towering over the comparatively puny
dimensions of the poor, broken-down _Star of the North_.  "Shall I send
a boat aboard with assistance?"

"No, thank you very much," replied our skipper, taking off his cap and
returning the greeting of the naval officer.  "We've got over the worst
of it now, sir, and will be soon under weigh again, as the weather is
breaking."

"Glad to hear it," returned the other, who could read our name astern as
she lay athwart us.  "Where are you bound to?"

"New York, sir," sang out the skipper.  "Twelve days out from England.
We've been disabled forty-eight hours."

"Hope your engines will soon be in working order," sang out the handsome
officer from the deck of the man-of-war, giving some other order at the
same minute, for I heard the shrill sound of a boatswain's pipe and the
rattle of feet along her deck.  "Please report us when you reach your
destination."

"What name, sir?"

"Her Majesty's ship _Aurora_, on passage from Bermuda to Halifax."

With that he waved his hand, and her white ensign, whose blood-red cross
of Saint George stood out in bold relief, dipped in parting salute to
our vessel, which reciprocated the compliment as the man-of-war bore
away on her course to the northward, a group of officers rollicking
round their captain on her deck aft and gazing at us as she moved off
rapidly under a full pressure of steam, evidently admiring our skipper's
wonderful sea anchor.

As the noble ship glided away through the still tempestuous sea against
a strong headwind, a thing of beauty and of might--such a contrast to us
lying there, almost at the mercy of the seas--I could not help thinking
of the wondrous power of mind over matter displayed in our grand ocean
steamers, and what a responsibility rests upon their engineers!

How little do the thousands of passengers who yearly go to and fro
across the Atlantic know, or, indeed, care to know, that their comfort
and the rate at which they travel through the water--they who talk so
glibly of making the passage in such and such a time, be the sea smooth
or rough, and the wind fine or contrary--that all this depends on the
unceasing vigilance of the officers in charge of the vessel, in which
they voyage!

Do they even think, I wondered, that while they are sleeping, eating,
enjoying themselves and doing what they please on board, even grumbling
at some little petty defect or shortcoming which they think might be
prevented, the engineers below, in an atmosphere in which _they_ could
not breathe, are incessantly watching the movements of the machinery and
oiling each part at almost every instant of time, moving this slide and
that, adjusting a valve here and tightening a nut there, ever cooling
the bearings and raking at the furnaces and putting on fresh coal, this
being done every hour of the day and night through the passage from land
to land?  Have any of them realised the fact that these same engineers
and their able assistants, the firemen and oilmen and trimmers, the
whole stoke-hold staff, so to speak, run a greater risk of their lives,
in the event of an accident happening, than any one else in the ship,
as, should a boiler or cylinder burst they may be scalded to death
before the noise of the explosion could reach those above?  Or again,
should the vessel strike on a rock, the compartment below in which
perforce they are compelled to work deep down in the vessel's bowels
will fill, from the very weight of the engines, quicker than any other
part of the ship, most probably, when those confined below must
necessarily be liable to be drowned, like rats in a hole, without the
chances of escape possessed by the passengers and hands on board.

"No, I don't suppose any one even thinks of such things," said I to
myself as I left the bridge and went towards the saloon to ask how poor
Jackson was, uttering my thoughts unconsciously aloud as I reflected,
and now that I considered their responsibility, thought how much poor
old Mr Stokes, with his broken arm, and Stoddart and the others must
have on their minds!  "Hullo, who is that?"

It was Weston, the steward, who spoke.

"I wish you'd come and look at Jackson, sir," he said.  "The poor chap
wore all right when Mr O'Neil comed down jist now, and a sleepin' still
as when you seed him awhile ago.  But all of a suddink he starts up as
he hears you a comin' down the companion-way, sir, and is jabbering away
like anythink!"

"Oh, but," I exclaimed, "why did you leave him?"

"I wor afeard he'd jump overboard, or try to do somethink awful!"

"Nonsense! the very thing you are there for to prevent," said I, going
into the cabin, where I saw the poor fellow trying to get out of the
cot.  Turning angrily to Weston I repeated again, "You shouldn't have
left him for one moment in this state!"

"But, sir, I wanted to hail Mr O'Neil or somebody; I thought I oughter
'ave summun by to 'elp me, in case he becomed desperate-like, and I
couldn't make no one hear on deck, and that's why I comed when I knowed
you was a-passing along, sir."

This was unanswerable logic, though Weston always had an answer for
anything and everything.

Poor Jackson, though, did not look as if he would be "desperate" again
in any shape or form.

That he was delirious I could see at a glance, for his eyes, great wild
eyes, were wide open, staring at vacancy, fixed on the bulkhead that
divided the cabin from the captain's, which was just beyond; and he was
very much excited, sitting up in the cot and, gesticulating violently
with both his hands, and waving his arms about as he repeated some
unintelligible gibberish over and over again, that I could not make out.

Presently he looked at me very straight as if he recognised me, and
afterwards spoke a little more coherently.

"Ah, yes, sir, I recollect now," he said at last.  "You're Mr Haldane,
I know; but--where's the little girl and the--the--dog?"

"Why, Jackson, old man," I said, speaking soothingly to him, "what's the
matter with you?  There's no girl or dog, you know, here.  Don't you
know where you are, my poor fellow?"

He got quite savage at this.  There's no reason in delirium!

"Of course I know where I am," he screamed out, making a grab at Weston,
as he writhed in torture from the internal and violent inflammation
which must have set up.  "I'm in--hell.  I--can--feel--I--am--I am--
burning--all over--inside me--here.  And you?  Oh, yes--I know you!"

This paroxysm left him again after a moment, and he lay back on his
pillows, only to sit up the next minute again, however.

He now pointed his finger in the direction of the sea through the
porthole, gazing earnestly as if he saw something there.

"The ship has come for me again--as--it did t'other night--you know--you
know?" he said in agonised whispers.  "There--there,--can't you see it
now? sailing--along--as--Mister--Haldane--said,--there with a--a--
signal--of--distress--flying--the--flag--half-mast high!  Why,--there it
is,--now, as plain as--plain--can be; and, see--see they're--lowering--
a--boat,--look,--for me,--to take me aboard.  Lend us a hand,--mate.  I
wants to halloo--to 'em and I--feels so bad--and--I can't, I can't--move
myself.  Hi,--there!--Ship ahoy!  Wait--a--minute--can't you?  Ship
ahoy!--I'm--coming--I'm--comi-ing.  I'm--"

Then, raising his eyes to heaven, and drawing a long deep breath,
something between a sob and a sigh, a breath that was his last, poor
Jackson fell back on the pile of pillows behind him, stone dead!



CHAPTER NINE.

WE SIGHT THE STRANGE CRAFT AGAIN.

"That's number one!" said old Masters, the boatswain, meeting me at the
door of the saloon as I came out on deck, Weston having already told him
the sad news.  "Master Stokes'll foller next, and then you or hi, Master
Haldane, for we be all doomed men, I know, arter seein' that there
ghost-ship!"

I made no reply to the superstitious old seaman's ominous prediction,
but as I made my way forward to the bridge, to inform Captain Applegarth
and the others of what had happened, I could not help thinking how
strange it was that poor Jackson should have recalled, at the very
moment the spirit was quitting his crippled body, the fact of my
sighting the ship in distress, and the account I had given the skipper
of what I had seen on board that mysterious craft!

Mr Fosset, or some of the hands who accompanied him, must have taken
down the yarn to the stoke-hold, only just before the unfortunate man
met with his terrible accident, though I had no doubt that he must have
seen the man-of-war through the port hole of the cabin, which was right
opposite his bunk, as she brought up under our stern to speak to us
earlier in the afternoon, and the sight of _HMS Aurora_ had, somehow or
other, amid the wanderings of his unconscious brain, got mixed up with
the remembrance of what he had previously heard concerning the vessel I
had seen at sunset the two days prior.

It was now getting dark, the evening closing in quickly, and, what with
the dying man's queer talk and the boatswain harping on the same theme
immediately afterwards, I confess I felt far from comfortable, my nerves
being in a state of constant tension from the painful scene in the cabin
that I had just witnessed, while the gloomy shades of the night that
were fast enwrapping us, the dull roar of the ever-breaking sea and the
groaning of the ship as she rolled, like a living creature in pain, all
worked on my overtried fancy and made me almost afraid of my own shadow
as I slipped and stumbled along the sloppy deck, my mind being in a
complete whirl till I reached my goal--the bridge.

"What's the matther, me bhoy?" asked Garry O'Neil, who was speaking to
the skipper, the two examining a chart in the wheel-house, the light
from the doorway of which fell on my face.  "Faith, ye look quite
skeared, Haldane, jist as if ye'd sane a ghoast, sure!"

I mentioned what had happened, however, and he at once dropped his
chaffing manner, looking as grave as a judge.

"Begorrah, it's moighty sorry I am to hear that, now!" said he in a more
serious tone.  "Sure, and he was a foine, h'ilthy man entirely, barrin'
that accident, bad cess to it!  He moight have lived till a hundred, an'
then aunly died of auld age; for he'd the constitution of an illiphent.
Faith, I never saw such a chist and thorax on a chap in me loife
before!"

"Poor fellow!" observed the skipper.  "He seems to have gone off awfully
sudden at the last.  I thought you said he was getting on well when you
went down to see him awhile ago?"

"Bedad, I did that, sir; father's no denyin' it," answered the Irishman,
off-hand.  "But I niver s'id he'd git over it, cap'en.  I tuld ye from
the first he couldn't reciver, for he was paralysed, poor craytur', from
the waist downwards, and had a lot of internal injury besides.  It was
aunly bekase he was sich a shtrang man that he's lasted so long, sir.
Any one else would have died directly outright afther the accident, for
he was pretty well smashed to pieces!"

"Strange!" muttered Captain Applegarth, who, although hasty of temper
sometimes, was a man of deep feeling.  "Sunday night again and that man
dead!  Only a week ago, this very evening, he came up to me here as I
was standing by the binnacle to ask about some carpenter's stores that
were wanted in the engine-room.  He and I then got talking, I recollect,
it being Sunday, I suppose, of religious matters.  He imagined himself--
poor chap--a `materialist,' as they call themselves, but his arguments
on the point were very weak.  He argued that there was no hereafter, no
future state; the heaven and hell spoken of in Scripture, he suggested,
being the happiness or punishment we meet with below here, while living,
in accordance with our own lives."

"Faith!" said Garry O'Neil, who was not a deep thinker, not troubling
himself much about anything beyond the present.  "That's a puzzling
question; but I, for one, wouldn't care to be of that way of thinkin',
sure, sir."

"That question however, poor Jackson has solved, long ere this!"

As Captain Applegarth uttered these words, solemnly enough, the
fireman's ravings, when in the agonies of death, came back to me, and I
thought that, if confident in his materialism when in health and
strength, his creed had not altogether eased his mind at the last, when
I saw him raise his eyes, for a few minutes, to heaven in prayer.

That night the gale, which had moderated considerably during the
afternoon, assailed us again with renewed vigour, as if old Boreas had
put a fresh hand to the bellows, as sailor folk say.

It began in the middle watch, when the wind suddenly veered to the
southwards, and it came on to blow great guns, causing the skipper the
utmost uneasiness, as he feared we would break away from our spar
anchor, when, disabled as we were, a steamer in a storm without the use
of the engines being no better off than a baby in arms deprived of its
nurse, it seemed almost impossible to prevent the vessel from broaching-
to, in which case she would more than likely founder with all hands.

Consequently, not a soul turned in the livelong night, the port and
starboard watches both remaining on duty, with Captain Applegarth and
Mr Fosset on the bridge, while Garry O'Neil relieved the boatswain, who
now had eight men under him in charge of the wheel, where the utmost
caution and the greatest vigilance were necessary to keep the old
barquey's head to the sea.  I had fearfully hard work, too, for the big
waves ever and anon leapt up over her bows, burying the fo'c's'le in
clouds of spray and spent water that came pouring down into the waist
and rushing aft, flooding the whole deck almost up to the gunwhales
taking everything movable overboard, the boats being lifted off the
chocks amidships even and swept away, and the cook's galley in the
forward part of the deckhouse got badly damaged.

This was in the height of the storm, just before daybreak, about two
bells in the morning watch, or five o'clock AM.

Our poor old barquey then rolled so much that the skipper thought the
wire hawser attached to the spars had parted and that we were at the
very mercy of the tempest.  So certain, indeed, was he, that he yelled
out for all hands to make sail, with the idea of trying one last
desperate venture and beard the winds with our puny canvas.

Fortunately, however, there was no need for us to essay this futile
expedient, breaking the force of the billows as they reared up in their
colossal grandeur to annihilate us and keeping us steadily facing their
attack; and presently, shortly after six bells, when we really
experienced pretty nearly the worst of it, there was a muttered growl of
thunder, accompanied by a lightning flash that illuminated the whole of
the heavens from pole to pole, and then rain came down in a deluge, the
wind dropping, as suddenly, with a wild, weird shrill shriek of
disappointed rage that wailed and whistled through the rigging, and then
quietly died away.

Of course the sea did not quiet down all at once, old Neptune not being
easily pacified after being stirred up to so great an extent, and the
waves ran high most of the day, while the sky was overcast and the ocean
of a dull leaden colour; but towards evening it cleared up and, the
water being a bit calmer, the captain thought it a fitting time to bury
poor Jackson.

All the hands were mustered on deck, the engineers and stokers stopping
their busy repairing work below, which they had kept at night and day
without intermission ever since our breakdown, and coming up with the
rest of the crew to pay the last tribute of respect to their departed
comrade, even Mr Stokes, though he was still in a very weak state of
health and had his head and broken arm bandaged up, insisting on being
present, Garry O'Neil and Stoddart supporting him between them for the
purpose.

Then the body of the unfortunate fireman, enclosed in a hammock covered
by the ship's ensign and having a pig of ballast tied to the feet to
ensure its submersion, was brought up from the cabin where he had died,
and placed on a plank by the gangway where the waves had washed away our
bulwarks, leaving a wide open space.

Captain Applegarth read over the remains the beautiful prayers of the
Church Service appointed for the burial of those who die at sea, all of
us standing bareheaded around.

A faint gleam of light from the setting sun, away on our port bow, shone
through a mist of cloud that obscured the horizon to windward; and, as
this disappeared, the skipper came to the end of the viaticum, when, at
a signal from the boatswain, the plank was tipped and poor Jackson's
body was committed to the deep with a sigh of regret at his untimely
end, and the devout hope that though his earthly voyage had been cut
short, he might yet reach that haven where there are no accidents nor
shipwrecks, and where seas swallow not up, or stormy winds blow!

Some little while after this a slight breeze sprang up from the
southward and westward, bringing a cool feeling with it, and I shivered
as I stood on the bridge looking out over the dark waste of waters,
feeling rather melancholy, if the truth be told.

"That's a bad sign, Master Haldane," said old Masters close to my ear,
making me jump, for I did not know he was there.  "They say that when a
ship chap shivers like that there, it be meaning that somebody or summit
be a-walking over his grave!"

"Stave that, bo'sun!"  I cried impatiently.  "You're a regular old
Jonah, and enough to give a fellow the creeps!"

"Ah, you may try to laugh it off, Mister Haldane," he retorted in his
lugubrious way.  "But, as I says to ye last night, says I, when that
poor chap kicked the bucket as we've just been a-burying on, we ain't
seen the end on it yet.  I misdoubts the weather, too, sir.  There's a
great bank of cloud now rising up to win'ard, and I fancies I heard jist
now the sound o' thunder ag'in."

"Thunder?"  I exclaimed.  "Nonsense!"

"No, Mister Haldane, it ain't no nonsense," said the old fellow
solemnly.  "You ain't known me to croak afore without re'sin, and I
tells ye I don't likes the look o' things to-night.  There's summit a-
brewin' up over there, or I'm a Dutchman!"

"What's that, bo'sun?" cried the skipper, coming up on the bridge at the
moment to look for the chart of the North Atlantic, which he had left in
the wheel-house the night before, and overheard the old growler's
remark.  "Got the _Flying Dutchman_ on the brain again?"

"No, sir, I weren't talking o' that," replied Masters.  "I was a-saying
to Master Haldane that it were precious misty and thick to win'ard and I
feared thunder over there."

"Thunder! thunder your grandmother!" cried the skipper testily.  "I've
pretty sharp ears, bo'sun, and I have heard none to-night.  Have you,
Haldane?"

"N-n-o, sir, not thunder," I answered, listening attentively for a
moment.  "Stay, sir, though.  I do hear something now, but the sound
seems more like firing in the distance."

"What, guns?"

"No sir, more like rifle shots, or the discharge of a revolver firing
quickly at intervals."

Captain Applegarth thereupon listened attentively, too, in his turn,
while Masters went out to the end of the bridge and peered out over the
side to windward with rapt gaze.

"By George, yes, you're right, boy!" cried the skipper the next moment.
"I can hear the shots quite plainly, I do believe.  Hullo, there!  What
the deuce is going on over there, I wonder?"

There was reason for exclamation.

At that instant the dark mass of cloud on the horizon, towards which we
were all looking, was rent by a flash, and we could see, standing
against the black background in vivid relief, the masts and spars of a
large full-rigged ship.

She was evidently burning a "flare-up" to attract attention, and, ere
the light waned, I noticed that her yards were all a cock-bill and her
sails and rigging torn and disordered; while, stranger still, she had
her flag astern hoisted half-mast high--the French tricolour, too!

Both the boatswain and I, simultaneously, involuntarily, uttered a cry
of dismay.

The vessel in sight was the very identical ship I had seen three nights
before, flying the same signal of distress; and here she was now,
sailing, as then, four points off our weather bows and eight before the
wind, which was, as I've already said, blowing a light breeze from the
southward and westward.

What new calamity did this second appearance of the "ghost-ship," as the
old boatswain called her, portend to all of us?

Aye, what, indeed!

Time alone could tell.



CHAPTER TEN.

MYSTIFICATION.

Old Masters turned his face towards me as the fleeting vision became
swallowed up in the darkness that now obscured the sky to the westwards,
and I saw that he looked horror-struck, staring into space spell-bound.

As for me, I cannot express what I felt, because I am unable to describe
it fully.

"There, there!"  I exclaimed, clutching Captain Applegarth's arm in
nervous horror.  "There she is again!"

But the skipper, although startled by the sudden appearance of the
mysterious vessel in the first instance, as his ejaculation on catching
sight of her showed, evidently did not regard her in the same light as
the boatswain and myself.

"Why, Haldane, what's the matter with you, my lad?" he said in a joking
way, "You seem all of a tremble; and, by George, you grip tight!"

"I beg your pardon, sir, I'm sure," I stammered out, trying to pull
myself together as I released his arm.  "But--but--did you--did you--see
her, sir?"

"See that ship just now?  Yes, of course I did.  I suppose she sighted
us lying here like a log and wanted us to report her or something,
though why they lit that flare-up over her stern I am sure I can't
imagine.  They couldn't expect us to read her name at that distance.
She must have been close on five miles off!"

"But, sir," I cried out quickly.  "She's the same!"

"The same what, Haldane?"

"Why, the ship in distress, sir, that I sighted at sunset on Friday
night just before our breakdown."

Captain Applegarth whistled through his teeth.

"My good lad," he said incredulously, "that's simply impossible!"

"Well, sir, you may not believe me," I urged, rather nettled that he
should put me down in this way, "but I declare to you she is the
identical vessel I saw that evening, as I told you at the time, and of
which we went in chase till the gale stopped us and our machinery gave
out!  I cannot doubt the evidence of my own eyes, sir."

"My dear boy," replied the skipper, in kinder tones than I expected to
this outburst, for he was a hot-tempered man generally, and disliked
anything like argument from his officers when he had once said his say,
being of the opinion that his word should be last.  "Just reflect a
moment and let your own natural good sense decide the point.  How can it
be likely that the vessel you asserted you saw on Friday night, hundreds
of miles away from here, should come across us now under precisely
similar circumstances, considering all that has happened since?"

"She's the same ship, sir, nevertheless," I maintained stubbornly,
though I was a bit puzzled on my own account, mind, by his putting the
case so strongly.  "The vessel I saw on Friday night was a full-rigged
ship, with her sails knocked about and had her ensign hoisted half-mast
high at the peak, and this one seemed the same in every particular.  I
did not notice all that when she burnt the flare-up just now.  The light
only lasted an instant."

"There is something in that, certainly, Haldane," answered the skipper,
wavering a little, I thought, in his ideas.  "Still, when one is
inclined to believe in a thing, the imagination is often a great aid in
turning a wish into a certainty."

"Besides, sir," I continued, wishing to clench my argument, "if we were
driven out of our course by the gale, she might have been similarly
affected, and the winds and currents might have brought us together
again."

"That's possible, but not probable," he rejoined.  "I've known two
bottles of the same weight dropped overboard from the same ship at the
same hour, and--"

"Well, sir?"

"One was found landed on the Lofoden Isles, off the coast of Norway: the
other came ashore at Sandy Point, in the Straits of Magellan!"

He laughed when he said this, apparently thinking he had utterly settled
the matter, but I checkmated him with his own theory.

"The very uncertainty of the action of the currents of the Atlantic
which you instance, sir," I said, "shows that what you think impossible
might be very possible, and the strange, weird vessel that I saw three
nights ago might have come within sight of us again."

"That's one for you, Haldane," acknowledged the skipper very good-
naturedly, for he was a fair man when anything was laid clearly before
him.  "But, recollect, no one saw this ship distinctly but yourself.  I
couldn't say of my own knowledge what rig she was, and I certainly
didn't see any flag or sign of distress.  I only saw something that
looked like a ship burning a flare-up in the distance--that's all."

"Beg pardon, sir," whispered old Masters, stepping up and touching his
cap ere he addressed the skipper, "but I seed the ghost-ship, too, sir,
the same as Master Haldane, sir."

The skipper wheeled round and stared at him.

"Ghost-ship, man!  What do you mean?"

"I means that there ghost-ship that hove in sight jist now and which
have passed us afore, sir.  She be sent as a warning to us, I knows, and
as a Christian man, Cap'en Applegarth, I takes it as sich!"

The old seaman spoke so earnestly that the skipper, although he had hard
work to keep himself in, answered him without ridiculing his
extraordinary delusion, as he held it to be.

"I am a Christian man, too, I hope, bo'sun," he said.  "I believe in a
divine power above, and put my trust in a merciful providence; but I
can't believe in any of your queer supernatural visitations, whether as
warnings or what not!"

"Not if you seed the same blessed thing three times?"

"No; not if I saw it a hundred times!" he roared out impatiently.

"Ah, seein' is believin', I says," whined old Masters, not a whit shaken
on the point, in spite of the skipper's scepticism.  "Master Haldane
seed it, and I seed it, and poor Jackson seed it."

"Indeed?" cried the skipper.  "I did not know he had been on deck before
the accident."

"It wore arter that, sir, that he seed the ghost-ship," said the old
boatswain in reply to the implied question.  "It were jist afore he
died."

"Just before he died!" repeated Captain Applegarth indignantly, as if he
thought he was being made a fool of.  "Why, man, the poor fellow was out
of his mind then, and besides, never stirred out of his cabin!"

"Ah, but he had the warnin' jist the same, for Weston, it was, told me
as how Jackson seed the ship and cried out when he lay there a-dyin'.
Bulkheads can't keep sperrits out, sir."

"Nor in, either, as I know to my cost," returned the skipper drily.
"Your friend Weston is pretty familiar with them, if they come in his
way, I fancy!  Stuff and nonsense, bo'sun; how can you believe such
rubbish?  The other night you imagined the reflection of our own vessel,
when that meteor came by, to be a ghost-ship, as you call it in your
absurd folly; and to-night, when that craft to win'rd passed and lit a
flare-up, hanged if you aren't at it again with your ghost-ship!  By
George, it makes me sick, Masters, to think that a grown man and a good
seaman like yourself should be such a confounded ass!"

"Hass or no hass, there she wer'," said the old fellow doggedly.  "But
here comes Mr Fosset, sir.  He were on the poop aft when that vessel
passed as I speaks on.  Ax him what he thinks of her and if she weren't
the same full-rigged ship as Master Haldane and all of us seed?"

"I will," replied Captain Applegarth promptly; and on the first mate
approaching nearer, he hailed him.  "I say, Fosset, what did you think
of that ship just now?"

The other's answer, however, bewildered the skipper more than Masters
and I had done previously.

"Ship!" said the first mate.  "What ship?"

"That vessel that lit the flare-up awhile ago."

"I didn't see any flare-up!" replied Mr Fosset, "and certainly no ship
has passed us to my knowledge since I've been on deck."

"By George, I don't know who or what to believe," exclaimed Captain
Applegarth, looking from the one to the other of us.  "You've set my
very brains wool-gathering between you, with your `vessels in distress'
and `ghost-ships'; I'm hanged if I won't go down to the engine-room and
have a little practical common sense knocked into me, as well as see how
they're getting on with the repairs to the machinery!"

So saying, the skipper went below, and, as there was nothing particular
for me to do on deck, I followed his example.  Instead of proceeding
down to the engine-room, however, I only went as far as my bunk and
turned in, wondering what the morrow would bring forth.  I was haunted,
though, by strange dreams all through the night, continually waking up
and then getting to sleep again in snatches, only to wake up again
immediately after I had dropped off.



CHAPTER ELEVEN.

IN THE GULF STREAM.

"It's a dead calm, sir!"  I heard Mr Fosset sing out next morning
outside the door of the skipper's state room, which opened out of the
saloon, close to my berth, when he went to call him at four bells, in
obedience to orders given overnight.  "The gale has completely blown
itself out, and there's only a little cat's-paw of a breeze from the
south'ard."

"Humph!" yawned the skipper from within.  "That's a good job, Fosset.  I
think we've had enough wind to last us for a blue moon!"

"So say I, sir," agreed the other with much heartiness.  "I wouldn't
like to go through the same experiences again, by Jingo!"

"Nor I," came from the other, evidently about to turn out from his bunk.
"I'll be on deck in five minutes or so, Fosset."

The first mate, however, would not take this for a dismissal, having
apparently further important information to give and which he at once
proceeded to disclose.

"Do you know, sir, I think we're in the Gulf Stream," he said in an
impressive tone.  "There's a lot of the weed knocking about round the
ship."

"Gulf-weed?" exclaimed the skipper's voice again from the cabin,
sounding a bit muffled as if he were in the act of pulling his shirt
over his head.  "Are you certain?"

"Aye," affirmed the other.  "There's not the slightest doubt about it.
It's as plain as a pike staff, sir."

"The deuce it is!" said the skipper in a louder key, showing that my
surmise had been correct as to the progress of his toilet, and that his
head was now unloosed from its bag-like envelope.  "By George, I can't
make it out at all!"

"There's no getting over the fact, sir," persisted the first mate.
"We're quite surrounded by the weed.  I saw it well the first streak of
light at two bells, on suddenly looking over the side, sir.  There's Mr
O'Neil up on the bridge now, and he has noticed it too!"

The skipper, to judge from the voice that came from his cabin and the
way he was banging his boots and other things about, was as much
mystified by Mr Fosset's unexpected announcement as he had been the
previous evening by the sight he and I and the boatswain had seen.

He was also angry, I know, so I thought it good for me to turn out
likewise from my bunk as speedily as possible, it not being advisable
under the circumstances to be "caught napping."

"By George, I can't understand it!" repeated Captain Applegarth crossly.
"If we're in the Gulf Stream, all I can say is, we must have drifted a
wonderful distance in the last two or three days.  Why, man, the current
is seldom perceptible above the fortieth parallel!"

"I know that, sir," replied the first mate; "but if you recollect, sir,
from the lunar observation Mr O'Neil took on the night of the
breakdown, we were then as far south as 41 deg. 30 minutes, and we've been
drifting south-east by east ever since."

"Well, Fosset, I'm hanged if I know where we are, after the bucketting-
about we've had since last Friday!" said the skipper, who now came into
the saloon, where I, already dressed, was hurriedly having a cup of
cocoa and bite of biscuit Weston had just brought me in from the pantry.
"I feel half inclined to believe now in the old superstition about it
being an unlucky day, though I always used to laugh at the notion!"

"There are plenty aboard who believe queerer things than that!" said Mr
Fosset drily, with a meaning glance in my direction, eyeing my cocoa as
if he rather fancied a cup himself.  "I say, Haldane, that cocoa smells
good!"

"It's not half bad, sir," I replied grinning.  "Perhaps you would like
some too, sir.  Weston's got a lot more inside here, hot, just fetched
from the galley!"

"I don't mind if I do have a cup," said he.  "Will you join me, cap'en?"

"No, thanks; I'm too worried.  I'll wait till breakfast," said the
skipper, turning to go up on deck by the companion-way and hitching his
cap off the hook by his cabin door.  "You won't be long, I hope, eh?"

"I'll follow you up in a jiffey, sir, as soon as I have swallowed a
toothful of this warm stuff to keep out the cold.  Hi, steward?"

"Aye, aye, sir?" answered Weston, promptly putting his head out of his
pantry, where he had been listening.  "Cup of cocoa, sir?--yezzir."

"I say, Fosset," said the captain, who had lingered near awhile, as if
in deep thought, as he stood with one foot on the lower step of the
companion as if he were trying to recollect something, "I say, we must
make some points to-day on the chart, you know!"

"Yes, sir.  I don't think there'll be any difficulty about that.  Do
you?"

"No; the sun ought to be pretty clear at noon with a morning like this--
clear enough, at all events, for us to find out the latitude and
longitude."

"Just what I said to Spokeshave, sir, before I came down to call you
awhile ago."

"Quite so."

"Aye, `quite so,' sir."

Whereupon both sniggered at the skipper's apt mimicry of Master Conky's
pet phrase, which Captain Applegarth pronounced in the little beggar's
exact tone of voice, so like indeed being the imitation that I nearly
choked myself while swallowing the balance of my cocoa, as I hastily
drained my cup and rose to follow the skipper up the companion-ladder to
the deck.

As Mr Fosset had said, there was a dead calm on the bosom of the deep,
for the slight swell that remained after the gale on the previous
evening, even up to the time of my going down below, had quite
disappeared, the surface of the water being as smooth as glass as far as
the horizon line and all aflash now with the rosy hue of sunrise to the
eastward.  The sky still preserved, however, the pale neutral tints of
night in the west, and up to the zenith, where it merged into a faint
and beautiful seagreen that lost itself imperceptibly in the warm
colouring of the orient, which each moment became more and more intense
in hue, heralding the approach of morn.

At last, up jumped the glorious orb of day, proudly, from his ocean bed,
came with one bound as it were, a veritable globe of liquid fire,
flooding the vast distant heaven and sea with a wealth of light and
radiance that seemed to give life to everything around.

"There, Haldane," said Captain Applegarth, pointing over the taffrail at
a lot of straggling masses of quasi-looking stringy stuff that came
floating on top of the water close by the ship, resembling vegetable
refuse discarded from Neptune's kitchen garden.  "That's the gulf-weed
Mr Fosset was just speaking about to me."

"Indeed, sir, I can't say much for its appearance.  It looks more like a
parcel of cauliflowers run to seed than anything else, sir!"

"Yes, that's not a bad simile of yours, my lad," he replied, moving
nearer to the side and sending his keen sailorly glance alow and aloft,
examining our old barquey to see how she fared after the storm.  "If I
can remember rightly, I think one of our best naturalists has given a
similar description of it.  Yes, that's the gulf-weed, or sargassum, or
_fucus natans_, as the big guns variously call it in their Latin lingo.
A rum sort of tackle, isn't it?"

"Yes, it does look funny, queer stuff, sir," said I, for I had never had
the opportunity of noticing it before, all my voyages hitherto backwards
and forwards across the Atlantic having been outside the limits of the
uncanny looking gulf-weed.  "Does it grow in the sea, sir?  It looks so
fresh and green."

"Well, that depends how you take it, my lad," returned the skipper
rather absently, his attention being fixed on something forward, about
which he evidently could not quite make up his mind, as there was a
slight puzzled expression on his face.  "You see, it is all through
those long-winded chaps, who won't be content with what the Creator
gives them, but must put a cause and reason for everything beyond God's
own will and pleasure, and who lay down arbitrary rules of their own for
the guidance of Dame Nature, though, between you and I and the binnacle,
Haldane, the old lady got on well enough for a good many scores of
years--I'd be sorry to say how many--without their precious help!  Now
these gentlemen, who know everything, will have it that the gulf-weed
grows deep down at the bottom of the sea and that only the branches and
tendrils, or leaves, so to speak, float on the top and are visible to
us."

"How strange, sir," said I.  "Just like an aquarium plant.  It is
strange!"

"It would be, if true, for they would have to possess uncommonly long
stems, as, in the Sagossa Sea, in the centre of the Gulf Stream, where
the weed is most plentiful and to be seen at its freshest and most
luxuriant growth, the recorded depth of the water is over four miles!"

"That is not likely, then," I observed in reply to this--"I mean, sir,
the fact of its growing up from the bottom of the sea."

"Certainly not, my boy.  Another wise man, of the same kidney as the
long-winded chap of the theory I've just explained, says that the gulf-
weed in its natural and original state grows on the rocky islets and
promontories of the Florida coast and that it is torn thence by the
action of the great Atlantic current that bears it many miles from its
home; though, strangely enough, I have never seen any gulf-weed growing
on rocks in the Gulf of Florida or in any of the adjacent seas, nor has
any one else to my knowledge!"

"Then you do not believe it grows to anything at all, do you, sir?"

"No, I don't.  My opinion is that it is a surface plant of old Neptune's
rearing and that the warm water of the Gulf Stream breeds it and
nourishes it, for at certain times it seems partly withered, and this
could not be due to accident.  The weed, I believe, is a sailor, like
you and I, my lad, and lives and has its being on the sea, no matter
what your longshore naturalists, who don't know much about it from
personal observation, may say to the contrary.  Hullo! though, my boy,
look forrad there!  Where has our spar anchor gone?  I thought I noticed
something and could not make out at first what it was.  Look, youngster,
and see whether you can see it!"

I was equally puzzled for the moment, for although our good ship rested
as peacefully on the bosom of the deep as if she were moored, the
raftlike bundle of spars, to which she had been made fast the night
before, was now no longer to be seen bobbing up ahead, athwart our
hawser as then.

Where could our wonderful floating anchor have gone?

The next moment, however, I saw what had happened, the mystery being
easily explained by the calm.

"They've floated alongside, sir," I said.  "I can see them under the
counter on the port side, sir."

"Yes, of course, there they are, exemplifying the attraction of
gravitation or some other long-winded theory of your scientific
gentlemen," replied the skipper, who seemed to have got science on the
brain this morning, being violently antagonistic to it, somehow or
other.  "Ah, Fosset, see, our anchor's come home without weighing.  I
think you'd better have the spars hauled on board and rig up the sticks
again, now that they've served our time in another way--aye, and served
it well, too."

"Aye, aye, sir," said the first mate, who had come up after us on the
poop, looking, I couldn't help noticing, all the better for the good and
early breakfast he had just finished.  "I thought of getting them in
just now, but waited to call you first."

"Well, you needn't wait any longer, Fosset," rejoined the skipper.
"Pass the word for the bo'sun forrad."

"Yes, yes, sir.  Quartermaster, call Masters!"

"Bo'sun, pipe all hands to hoist spars aboard!"  These orders were
roared out by Mr Fosset in rapid succession, and then in equally rapid
sequences came the boatswain's whistle and hail to the men down the
hatchway just along the deck.

All had a rare time of it, and an amount of "yoho-hoes-hoing" went round
that it would have done anybody's heart good to hear; the first mate was
bellowing out his orders and old Masters seeing to their proper
execution by the busy hands and active feet, the skipper meanwhile
standing on the poop, superintending matters with his keen eye, and woe
to the lubber who bungled at a hitch or left a rope's end loose or brace
slack!



CHAPTER TWELVE.

BOAT AHOY!

By the time the sun was near the meridian our top-masts were up and the
upper yards swayed aloft and crossed, making the old barquey all ataunto
again and pretty nearly her old self, our broken bulwarks and smashed
skylight betraying the only damage done by the storm, on deck, at all
events.

"I `calculate,' Fosset, as our Yankee friends would say, we may now cry
spell O!" observed the skipper, who was highly pleased with the progress
made in refitting the ship.  "Tell the bo'sun to pipe the hands to
dinner, and you and I had better go up on the bridge and see what we can
do in the way of determining our position on the chart.  That gulf-weed
must have lost its bearings, I'm sure.  It seems impossible to me that
we could have drifted so far to the south as to bring us in the Stream!"

"An observation will soon settle the point, sir," replied the first
mate, passing the word to Masters to knock off work.  "Run down,
Haldane, and get my sextant for me, there's a good chap!  I left it on
the cabin table, all ready.  You'll find it there!"

"Belay, there!" sang out the skipper, as I started off towards the
companion-way.  "You may as well bring mine, too, while you're about it.
Two heads are better than one, eh, Fosset?"

"Yes, sir, perhaps so," rejoined the other, before I got out of earshot.
"It seems, though, as if we're going to have three on the job; for here
comes Mr O'Neil with his sextant under his arm, evidently bent on the
same errand!"

I soon was back with the instruments for the other two, and presently
all three were at work taking the sun's altitude and measuring off the
angle made by the luminary with the horizon.

A short delay ensued from our clocks being fast on account of our having
drifted to the eastward, of where they had last been set.

Then all at once Mr Fosset sang out.

"It's just noon, sir, now.  The sun's crossing the meridian!"

"All right, make it so," replied the skipper.  "Bos'un, strike eight
bells."

"Aye, aye, sir," came back from old Masters away forward, and then
followed the melodious chime of the ship's bell that hung immediately
under the beak of the fo'c's'le.  "Ting-ting, ting-ting, ting-ting,
ting-ting."

"Now," going into the wheel-house, "let us look at the chronometer and
see what Greenwich time says, and then tot up our reckonings!"

The two others followed him into the little room on the bridge, sitting
down to a table in which the track chart of the ship's course lay, and
all were busy for some few moments calculating and working out our
latitude and longitude.

I was standing by the doorway after bringing up the correct time of the
chronometers, which the skipper kept locked up in his own cabin to
prevent their being meddled with, and I could see he looked puzzled,
adding up and subtracting his figures over and over again, as if he
thought he must have made some error, though he found that he invariably
came to the same result.

"Well, Fosset," he cried at length, unable to restrain himself any
longer.  "What do you make it?"

"39 deg. 20 minutes north latitude sir, and 47 deg. 15 minutes west longitude."

"Faith, an' I make it the same, sir," also put in Garry O'Neil, the
twain having worked out the reckoning long before the poor skipper.
"Both of us agree to the virry minnit, sure, lavin' out the sicconds,
sir!"

"By George!" exclaimed the skipper.  "It's even worse than I thought."

"How, sir?" asked Mr Fosset with a smile on his face, no doubt
chuckling to himself at being cleverer and wiser than Captain
Applegarth, who would not believe we were in the Gulf Stream.  "Don't
you think us right, sir?"

"Oh, yes, Fosset; I agree with you myself.  The _reckoning_ is right
enough, but father's the devil to pay!"

The skipper couldn't sacrifice the joke, though he was terribly put out.

"See here," he continued, "jabbing," with great noise and force the
compasses with which he was measuring off our position, into the chart,
as if that was in fault, while Fosset and O'Neil laughed.  "Look where
we are!  I shouldn't have thought it possible for us to have been driven
so far south, right into the Gulf Stream, as we are, for the current
generally runs to the nor'-east'ards below the Banks."

"The stream has done it, though, sure enough," said Mr Fosset; "that
and the gale, for the one has drifted us to the coast and the other
pressed us down southwards; and between the two we're just fetched where
we are, sir!"

"Well," replied the skipper, shrugging his shoulders, "you were right,
Fosset, and I was wrong this morning.  Let me see, though, how we have
fetched here, if we can trace our course so far, from when we last took
the sun."

"Sure, an' that was Friday, that baste of a day!" interposed Garry
O'Neil, pointing to a place on the chart.  "I worked at the rickonin'
and I put it down meself, marking it with a red pencil."

"Yes; here it is, 42 deg. 35 minutes north latitude, and longitude 50 deg. 10
minutes west," said the skipper.  "I worked it out also, on my own hook,
and you and I tallied, if you recollect?"

"Of course we did, the divvil doubt it, sir," answered the second mate
in his usual Irish fashion.  "Thin, sor, we ran for five hours from that
p'int on a west by south course, going between ten and twelve knots;
for, though I didn't say it meself, Mister Fosset tould me the wind was
freshinin' all the toime, so that we must have travelled about sixty
miles, more or less."

"So that brings us to this blue mark here?"

"Yes, sor, to 42 deg. 28 minutes north, and 51 deg. 12 minutes west."

"Then we sailed right before the wind, due south?"

"Sure, an' we did that same afther Mister Haldane's will-o'-the-wisp for
three hours, bedad!"

"Oh, Mr O'Neil," I pleaded, "please leave me out of it.  I'm sure I've
seen and heard enough of the ship already!"

"Be aisy, me darlint!  It's only me fun, sure; and I mean ye no harrum,"
said he in his jocular way.  "Arrah how can I lave ye out of the story
when ye're the howl h'id and tail of it, sure, and without ye there'd be
none to tile.  Yes, cap'en, dear, sure, an' as I was a-saying when
Haldane broke in upon me yarn, thray hours on this southerly course
brought us here right where ye see me little finger, now!"

"About 51 deg. 5 minutes west longitude and 41 deg. 40 minutes north latitude.
How did you get this, eh?"

"Faith, sor, the ould moon looked so moighty plisint that night that I
took a lunar or two, jist to divart mesilf with, when Spokeshave wint
below and there was nobody lift to poke fun at, sure!"

"A very useful sort of amusement," said the skipper drily.  "And I see,
too, you've put in the distance we've run, by dead reckoning, as about
another fifty miles or so?"

"Yes, sor.  The bo'sun hove the log ivery half hour till the engines
stopped, an' he made out we were going sixteen knots an' more, bedad, so
he s'id, whin we were running before the wind with full shtame on."

"That was very likely, O'Neil," replied the skipper, "but, after that,
we altered course again, you know!"

"In course we did, sor, an' you'll say it marked roight down there on
that line!  We thin sailed west, a quarter south by compass, close-
hauled on the starboard track, for two hours longer after you altered
course ag'in an' bore up to the west'ard, keeping on till the ingines
bhroke down, bad cess to 'em!"

"When was that?" asked the skipper slowly.  "I was so worried and
flurried at the moment that I forgot to take the time."

"Four bells in the first watch, sor," replied the Irishman quickly.  "It
was after we'd brought up poor Jackson from below, as Stoddart, the
engineer, faith, was a sittin' near, jist before me, attindin' on the
poor chap in the cabin, whin the rush of shtame came flyin' up the
hatchway, faith, an' the sekrew stopped.  We both of us looked at the
saloon clock on the instant, sure, an' saw the toime, sor."

"That is the last mark on the chart, then?" said the old skipper
meaningly, pencil and compass in hand, and still bending over the tell-
tale track map spread out on the wheel-house table.  "Since that, nobody
knows how we've drifted!"

"Faith, no one, sor," returned Garry O'Neil, thinking the question was
addressed to him.  "Only, perhaps, the Pope, God bless him, or the
Imporor of Chainy!"

All laughed at this, Captain Applegarth now losing his preoccupied air
as if there were nothing to be gained, he thought, by dwelling any
longer on the past.

It was wonderful, though, how we _had_ drifted in the short interval,
comparatively, that had elapsed since we became disabled!

As Mr Fosset had been the first to find out in the morning the Gulf
Stream--that great river that runs a course of some two thousand miles
in the middle of the ocean, keeping itself perfectly distinct from the
surrounding water through which it flows, from its inception as a
current in the Caribbean Sea to its final disposal in the North
Atlantic--had first carried us in an easterly direction after we had
broken-down so utterly; while the strong nor'-westerly gale, aided
probably by the Arctic current, running due south from the Polar regions
and which disputes the right of way with the Gulf Stream some little
distance to the southwards of the great Banks of Newfoundland, had
pressed upon the helpless hull of the _Star of the North_, bearing her
away whither they pleased.

So, unable to resist either the winds or the waves, these combined
forces had driven her off her course at an oblique angle, thus
converting the nor'-easterly, or easterly drift proper, of the Gulf
Stream into a true sou'-westerly one, taking us from latitude 41 deg. 30
minutes north and longitude 51 deg. 40 minutes west, where we were on the
previous Friday night, when we were forced to lie-to, to our present
position on the chart.

To put the case more concisely, the _Star of the North_ had been carried
for the distance of _four degrees and a half_ exactly of longitude
backward on her outward track to New York and some _two degrees_ or
thereabouts to the southwards, placing us as nearly as possible in the
position the skipper had already indicated, a direction of some five
hundred miles more or less from our proper course and about midway
between Bermuda and the Azores, or Western Islands.

While Captain Applegarth was explaining this, as much for my benefit and
instruction, I believe, as anything, a thought occurred to me.

"Are we not now, sir, in the track of all the homeward-bound ships
sailing on the great circle from the West Indies and South American
ports?"

The skipper looked at me steadily, "smelling a rat" at once.

"I suppose, Haldane," he said somewhat sternly, "you want to get me back
to that infernal ship again?  Not if I know it, my lad.  As you told Mr
O'Neil just now, we've all had enough and to spare of that vessel and
the wild-goose chase she has led us from first to last.  I won't hear
another word about her, by Jingo!"

Just then old Masters, who had gone up in the foretop to set something
right which had struck his sailor eye as not being altogether as it
should be aboard the _Star of the North_, raised his arm to attract the
attention of those on deck below him.

"Hullo, there, bo'sun!" called out the skipper, seeing him, for he
seldom kept his glasses away from the rigging of the ship and things
aloft.  "What's the row, eh?"

"I sees summit to win'ard, sir."

"By George!" exclaimed the skipper in a tone that made every one laugh
who heard, all but Masters; the coincidence was so comical after what
Captain Applegarth had said only a minute before.  "Not another `ghost-
ship,' I hope!"

"No, sir," growled the boatswain rather savagely.  "It bean't no ghost-
ship this time, though _she_ ain't far off, I knows, to my thinkin'!"

He added the last words as if speaking to himself, but I heard him, and
his remark stopped my mirth instanter.

"What is it, bo'sun, that you _do_ see, then?" cried the skipper
impatiently; "that is, if you see anything at all beyond some vision of
your own imagination!"

"I ain't dreaming," hailed back old Masters, not quite catching what he
said.  "I sees summit as plain as possible out to win'ard.  Aye, it be
a-driftin' down athawt our hawser, too, cap'en.  Why, hullo!  I'm
blessed.  Boat ahoy!"



CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

IN THE NICK OF TIME.

"A boat!" exclaimed Captain Applegarth, his jesting manner changing
instantly to one of earnest attention.  "Where away?"

"On our starboard beam, sir," sang out Masters from the foretop.  "About
two points off, I fancies, sir."

"I can't see her," said the skipper, looking in the direction the
boatswain had indicated.  "I thought she was close-to from your hailing
her."

"She's further away now than I thought, sir!" shouted old Masters in
reply to this, after having another squirm over the topsail yard.  "I'm
blessed, though, if I ain't lost her, with the ship's head bobbing all
round the compass.  No; there she be ag'in, sir.  No--yes--yes.  There
she is, about a mile or so off, sir, I'm thinkin'."

"By George, Masters, you think too much, I think!" the skipper retorted
angrily.  "You don't seem to know what you're saying, and I believe
you've gone off your chump since you saw that `ghost-ship,' as you
called it!  Go aloft, Haldane, and see what you can make of this blessed
boat he says he sighted!"

I was already in the weather shrouds before the skipper gave me this
order, and in another minute I was on the top beside the boatswain, who
pointed out silently to me a little black speck in the distance
apparently dancing about amid the waves, which were beginning to curl
before an approaching breeze that was evidently springing up from the
westwards.  Fortunately, I had a pair of binoculars in my jacket pocket,
and I immediately levelled the glasses at the object in view.

"Well, Haldane!" at last sang out the skipper impatiently from the end
of the bridge, where he still stood, looking up at me with his chin
cocked in the air.  "What do you make it out to be, eh, my lad?"

"It's a boat sure enough, sir," I shouted down to him, without taking my
eyes off it.  "She's a long way off, though, sir, and I think she's
drifting further away, too."

"The deuce!" exclaimed Captain Applegarth.  "Can you see any one in the
boat?"

"No--no--not distinctly, sir," I replied after another searching look.
"Stay; I do--I do think there's a figure at one end! and, yes--yes--I'm
sure I noticed something that appeared like a movement, but it might
have been caused by the rocking of the sea."

"But don't you see anybody, or can't you make anything else out?"

"Only the boat, sir, and that a breeze seems coming up from the
westward.  I see a white line on the water along the horizon.  That's
all I can see, sir!"

"Well, that's not much use to us," he growled below, beginning his
customary "quarter-deck walk" up and down the bridge.  "I wish some one
would come up from the engine-room to say they had repaired the cylinder
and that we could go ahead again!"

Almost as soon as he spoke thus I noticed Mr Stokes, who I thought was
lying down in his cabin, coming towards the forepart of the ship where
we were, from the direction of the engine-room hatchway.

"Hullo, Stokes," said the skipper, catching sight of him at once with
his eagle eye that seemed to take in everything that went on, whether
his back was turned or not.  "I thought you were on the sick list still,
and ill.  You oughtn't to be bustling about so soon after your accident,
my dear fellow!"

"No, but I feel better!" replied the old chief, who, although he was
still pale and shaky, had a more cheerful look on his face than the day
before, when he appeared decidedly ill.  "I've been down below and I'm
glad to say Stoddart and the other artificers, who I must say have
worked well without me, you will be glad to know, have got the cylinder
cover on again.  They've made a splendid job of it!"

"Stoddart himself is a splendid fellow," said the skipper
enthusiastically.  "Aye, and the rest of your staff, too, my dear
Stokes.  By George, you've brought us good news!"

"But that isn't all, cap'en," cried the old fellow, beaming over with a
broad smile of quiet enjoyment at the surprise the skipper showed.
"They say below that they'll be able to start the engines as soon as
there's a full head of steam on!  Now what do you think of that, sir?
Isn't that good news?"

The skipper looked ready to embrace our fat chief, and I believe only
refrained from giving this expression of his joy by the sight of poor
Mr Stokes' bandaged arm, which was still in a sling.

He contented himself, therefore, with patting him tenderly on the back
and walking round him admiringly, like a cat purring round a saucer of
cream.

"By George!" he cried.  "I feel as pleased as if my grandmother had left
me five thousand pounds!"

"I wish she had," laughed the old chief.  "I would ask to go shares!"

"And so you should, my boy; so you should," repeated the skipper with
much heartiness, and as if he really meant it.  "How soon do you think
we shall be able to start, eh?"

"Very soon, I think, sir.  The after-boiler fires were lit early this
morning and they've been getting up steam ever since."

"That's good!" cried the skipper, stopping in his excited walk up and
down the bridge, which he had again resumed, being unable to keep still,
when he looked up, caught sight of me and hailed me.

"I say, Haldane?"

"Aye, aye, sir?"  I sang out from the top, where I had remained with the
boatswain on the look-out, and hearing likewise all that transpired
beneath.  "What do you want, sir?"

"I hope you're keeping your eye on that boat, my lad.  If she is there
we may be able to overhaul her yet, if you don't lose sight of her!"

"No fear of that, sir," I shouted back, pointing with my finger in the
distance.  "There she is, still to win'ard, pretty nearly flush with the
water."

"Then she really is there all right, my lad.  Keep your eye on her."

The funnels had been emitting smoke for some time without our having
paid much attention to the fact, the fires of the fore-boilers having
been kept in and banked ever since our breakdown, in order to work the
pumps and capstan gear when required; but now steam, I noticed, came out
as well as smoke, and I could hear it plainly roaring up the waste pipe,
besides making a fearful row.

Presently another sound greeted my ears and made me jump.

It was that of the electric bell in the wheel-house, giving warning that
those below in the emporium wished to make some communication.

Mr Stokes went to the voice-tube that led down thither from the bridge.

"What's the matter?" he roared into the mouthpiece so loud that I heard
every word he uttered, although a-top of the mast.  "Anything wrong?"

I couldn't of course catch the reply that came up the pipe; and it
certainly was not a satisfactory one, for Mr Stokes turned round at
once to the skipper, who immediately stopped his quarter-deck walk to
hear what the chief had to say.

"They've corrected the propeller, sir," he exclaimed with a chuckle that
made his fat form shake all over; "and Stoddart says he's only waiting
for your signal to close the stop valves and let the steam into the
cylinder."

"By George, he shan't wait a minute longer!" cried Captain Applegarth,
moving the engine-room telegraph.  "Go ahead, my hearties, as soon as
you please!  Hullo, there, forrad, I want a hand here at the wheel.  I
suppose the steam steering gear is all right again now?"

"Oh, yes, sir," replied Mr Stokes to this.  "Grummet fixed that up on
Sunday afternoon, he told me.  I am sure it was done.  I remember he was
doing it when that man-of-war came alongside and spoke you."

"Strange I didn't see him at the job; he must have been pretty smart
over it!" replied the skipper.  "But I'm very glad it is done, though."

In answer to the skipper's signal a sudden blast of steam rushed up the
funnel abaft the wheel-house, and I could feel the ship tremble as the
shaft began to revolve and the propeller blades splashed the water
astern with the familiar "thump-thump, thump-thump."

All hands joined in a hearty cheer, to which Masters and I in the top
lent what aid our lungs could give.

"Steady amidship, there," sang out the skipper as the old barquey forged
ahead once more.  "Steady, my man."

"Aye, aye, sir," answered the foremost hand, Parrell, who had come from
the fo'c's'le to take the first "trick" at the steering wheel on the
bridge.  "Steady it is."

"How does the boat bear now, Haldane?"

"Two points off our starboard bow, sir," I replied to this hail of the
skipper.  "She's about three miles off, I think, sir."

"All right," he shouted back to me.  "Port your helm, there!"

"Aye, aye, sir," repeated Parrell.  "Port, sir, it is."

"We're rising her fast now, sir," I called out after a short interval.
"There's a man in the boat; yes, a man, sir.  I can see him quite
plainly now, and I'm sure I'm not mistaken!"

"Are you quite sure, my lad?"

"Quite sure, sir.  And he's alive, too, I'm certain.  Yes, sir; he moved
then distinctly.  I could see him plainly.  Why, the boat is so near now
that you ought to see it from the deck."

"And so I can, by Jingo, Haldane!" replied the captain, peering out
ahead himself with a telescope from the end of the bridge.  "I fancy I
can see a second figure, and it looks like another man, too, lying down
in the bows of the boat, as well as the figure at the stern, who seems
to me to be holding up an oar or something!"

"Yes, there is, sir," I called out, stopping on my way down the rigging
to have another look.  After a pause I exclaimed, "I can see both of
them, and with my naked eye.  I can see them now!"

"Well, then, you'd better come down from aloft.  Tell your friend, the
boatswain, to come down as well.  He'll be wanted at the fo'c's'le when
we presently come up to the boat, as I trust we shall!"

"Lucky Masters saw the boat, sir," said I when I reached the deck and up
to the skipper's side again.  "But even more fortunate it is for the
poor fellows that our engines are working again, sir, for otherwise we
could not have been able to get up to the boat and save them."

"It isn't luck, my boy," observed Mr Stokes, whom the death of poor
Jackson and his own narrow escape from a like fate had led to think of
other matters besides those connected with his mundane profession.
"It's Providence!"



CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

AN APPEAL FOR AID.

"Aye, that's the better way of looking at it," chimed in the skipper,
raising his arm at the same time from his station at the end of the
bridge, where he was conning the ship.  He then called out sharply, to
enforce the signal.

"Luff up, you lubber, luff!"

"Luff it is, sir," rejoined the helmsman, rapidly turning round the
spokes of the little steam steering wheel.  "It's hard over now, sir."

"Steady there," next sang out the captain.  "Steady, my man!"

"Aye, aye, sir," repeated the parrot-like Tom Parrell, bringing the helm
amidships again.  "Steady it is!"

"By George, we're nearing the boat fast!" cried the skipper after
another short pause, during which we had been going ahead full speed,
with a quick "thump-thump, thump-thump" of the propeller and the water
foaming past our bows.  "Starboard, Parrell!  Starboard a bit now!"

"Aye, aye, sir," came again the helmsman's answering cry from the wheel-
house.  "Starboard it is, sir!"

"Keep her so.  A trifle more off.  Steady!"

"Steady it is, sir!"

"Now down with it, Parrell!" sang out the skipper, bringing his hand
instanter on the handle of the engine-room gong, which he sounded twice,
directing those in charge below to reduce speed, while he hailed old
Masters on the fo'c's'le.  "Hi, bo'sun!  Look-out there forrad with your
rope's end to heave to the poor fellows!  We're just coming alongside
the boat."

"Aye, aye, sir!" replied Masters promptly, keeping one eye on the
skipper on the bridge and the other directed to the little craft we were
approaching, and now close to our port bow.  "We're all ready forrad,
sir.  Mind you don't run her down, sir.  She's nearly under our
forefoot."

"All right, bo'sun," returned the skipper.  "Port, Parrell!"

"Port it is, sir," repeated Tom Parrell.  "Two points off."

"Steady, man, steady," continued the skipper, holding his hand up again.
"Boat ahoy!  Stand by.  We're going to throw you a rope!"

At the same instant Captain Applegarth sounded the engine-room gong
again, bringing the _Star of the North_ to a dead stop as we steamed up
to the boat slanting-wise, the steamer having just sufficient way on her
when the screw shaft ceased revolving, to glide gently up to the very
spot where the little floating waif was gently bobbing up and down on
the wave right ahead of us, and barely half a dozen yards away,
drifting, at the will of the wind, without any guidance from its
occupants, who seemingly were unaware of our approach.

"Boat ahoy!" shouted the skipper once more, raising his voice to a
louder key.  "Look-out, there!"

The men in the bows of the boat still remained in the same attitude, as
if unconscious or dead; but the other in the stern-sheets appeared to
hear the skipper's hail, for he half-turned his head and uttered a
feeble sort of noise and made a feeble motion with one of his hands.

"Now's your time, bo'sun!" cried Captain Applegarth.  "Heave that line,
sharp!"

"Aye, aye, sir," roared out Masters in his gruff tones.  "Stand by,
below there!"

With that the coil of half-inch rope which he held looped on his arm
made a circling whirl through the air, the end falling right across the
gunwales of the boat, close to the after thwart, where sat the second of
the castaways, who eagerly stretched out his hand to clutch at it.

But, unfortunately, he failed to grasp it, and the exertion evidently
being too much for him, for he tumbled forward on his face at the bottom
of the boat, while the rope slipped over the side into the water, coming
back home to us alongside the old barquey on the next send of the sea,
the heavy roll of our ship when she brought up broadside-on, as well as
the weight of the line saturated with water, fetching it in to us all
the sooner.

"Poor fellows; they can't help themselves!" cried the skipper, who had
watched the boatswain's throw and its unsatisfactory result with the
deepest interest.  "Bear a hand there, some one forrad, and have another
try to reach them.  The boat's drifting past, and we'll have to go
astern to board her in another minute, if you don't look sharp!"

Having climbed into the fore-rigging, however, so as to have a good look
at the boat and its occupants as we neared them, I was quite as quick as
the skipper to notice what had happened, having, indeed, foreseen the
contingency before it occurred.

So, ere Masters or any of the other men could stir a hand, having made
up my mind what to do, I had seized hold of part of the slack of the
line that remained inboard and, plunging into the sea, swam towards the
boat.

A couple of strokes, combined with the forward impetus of my leap
overboard, took me up to the little craft, and in a jiffey I had grasped
the gunwale aft and clambered within her, securing the end of the line I
had round one of the thwarts at once, amid the ringing cheers of the
skipper and my shipmates in the old barquey, who proceeded to haul us up
alongside without further delay, tugging away at the tar rope I had
hitched on, yo-heave-hoing and hurrahing in one and the same breath
right lustily!

So smart were they, so instantaneous had been the action of the moment
during the episode, that we were close in to the ship's side and under
her conning, immediately below the port end of the bridge, where the
skipper stood leaning over the rail and surveying operations, before I
had time actually to look round so as to have a nearer view of the
unfortunate men whom we had so providentially rescued.

When I did though, one glance was enough.

I was horror stricken at the sight that met my eyes.

The man whom I had observed when we were yet some distance off to be
lying huddled up in the bows motionless, as if dying or already dead, I
now saw had received a horrible wound on the top of his head that had
very nearly smashed in the skull, besides almost severing one of his
ears which was hanging from the cheek bone, attached by a mere scrap of
skin, the bottom boards of the boat near him being stained with blood
that had flowed from the cut, and his hair likewise matted together with
gore.  Oh, it was horrible to see!  He was not dead, however, as I had
thought, but only in a state of stupor, breathing heavily and making a
strange stertorous sound as if snoring.

His fellow-sufferer aft, who did not appear to have suffered so much as
his comrade, had seemingly swooned from exhaustion or exposure; as, on
my putting my arm round him and lifting up his bent head, the man opened
his eyes and murmured something faintly in some foreign lingo--Spanish,
I think it was; at any rate a language I did not understand.

But I was unable to notice anything beyond these details, which I
grasped in that one hurried glance; for as I was in the act of raising
up the poor chap in the stern-sheets, the skipper hailed me from the
bridge above.

"Below there!" he sang out.  "How are the poor fellows?  Are they alive,
Haldane?"

"They are in a bad way, sir," I replied.  "They've got the life left in
them and that's all, I'm afraid!"

"Neither dead, then?"

"No, sir."

"Bravo! `whilst there's life there's hope,'" cried the skipper in a
cheery tone.  "Are they quite helpless, do you think, Haldane--I mean
quite unable to climb up the side?"

"Quite unable, sir," I answered.  "One's unconscious, and I don't think
the other could move an inch if he tried!"

"Then we must haul 'em up," said Captain Applegarth, turning to Masters,
who had popped his head over the bulwarks and was now looking down into
the boat, like the rest of the hands on board.  "I say, bo'sun, can't
you rig up a chair or something that we can lower down for the poor
fellows?"

"Aye, aye, sir," responded old Masters, drawing in his head from the
bulwarks and disappearing from my view as I looked upwards from the
stern-sheets, where I was still holding up the slowly-recovering man.
"I'll rig up a whip from the foreyard and we can let down a hammock for
'em, tricing up one at a time."

"Stay, cap'en," cried Mr Fosset as the boatswain went bustling off, I
suppose, though of course from my position I could not see him, to carry
out this plan of his.  "The davits here amidship are all right, as well
as the tackle of our cutter that had got washed away in the gale.
Wouldn't it be easier to let down the falls, sir, and run up the boat
all standing with the poor fellows in her as they are?"

"By George, the very thing, Fosset!" exclaimed the skipper, accepting
the suggestion with alacrity.  "It will save the poor fellows a lot of
jolting, and be all the easier for us, as you say.  Besides, the little
craft will come in handy for us, as we're rather short of boats just
now!"

"Short of boats, sir!" repeated the first mate ironically as he set to
work at once, with the help of a couple of the hands who jumped to his
side to assist him the moment he spoke, casting off the lashings of the
davits so as to rig them outwards, letting go at the same time the hooks
of the fall blocks and overhauling the running gear.  "Why, sir, we
haven't even the dinghy left intact after that clean sweep we had from
the wave that pooped us!"

"Oh, aye, I know that well enough," said the skipper drily.  "But, look
alive now, Fosset, with that tackle, and don't be a month of Sundays
over the job!  Send down two of the cutter's crew to overrun the falls
and drop down into the boat.  They can help Haldane in holding up that
poor chap astern and also bear a hand in hoisting up."

"All right, sir; we're just ready," shouted back the first mate as he
gave the word to let go.  "Lower away there with the slack of those
falls.  Easy, my man, gently does it!"

In another instant down came the fall blocks, with one of the hands
hanging on to each, the men alighting "gingerly" on the thwarts of the
boat in the bow and stern of the little craft, which became immersed
almost up to the gunwales with the additional weight.

This was only for a moment, for the next minute Mr Fosset gave the
signal to "hoist away," the falls having been hooked on beneath the
thwarts in a jiffey, and up we all went in mid air, "between the devil
and the deep sea," as we say afloat sometimes!

"Bravo!" cried the skipper when we reached the level of the gangway and
were all able to step out on to the deck.  "That's very handsomely done,
my lads!  Now let us see about lifting the poor fellows out.  That chap
there in the bows seems in a very bad way!  You'd better carry him into
the cuddy at once and let Mr O'Neil look after him."

"Indade, I will, sor," said our doctor-mate, who was standing near by
with a spirit flask in one hand and a medicine glass in the other, ready
to give immediate succour to the rescued men.  "Carry the poor beggar
along an' I'll be afther ye in a minnit; for this other misfortunate
gossoon here looks as if he wouldn't be the worst for a dhrop of good
brandy, an' faith, I'll say to him fourst, avic!"

So saying the Irishman poured some of the contents of the spirit flask
into the glass, which he held to the lips of the man.  Mr Fosset and I
were supporting him in our arms against the side of the boat, whence we
had just removed him.

The poor fellow's strength returned to him almost as soon as he had
sipped a drop or two of the brandy, and, starting away from the first
mate and myself, as if no longer needing our aid, he stood erect on the
deck.

"_Mil gracias, amigos_," he said, with a polite inclination of his head,
in apology like for shaking himself free from us.  "_Estoy major_!"

Captain Applegarth stepped up to him.

"I am sorry I can't speak Spanish, sir, though I understand you to say
you're better.  We're Englishmen all on board this ship, sir, and I'm
glad we've been able to pick you up."

The eyes of the man glistened and a pleased expression stole over his
face.

"What!  You are English! he exclaimed excitedly.  But--but I'm an
American!  Only I've been so long in Venezuela amongst Spaniards that I
sometimes forget my own language."

Our skipper was equally delighted.

"By George!" he said.  "I was sure you were no blessed foreigner, in
spite of your lingo, sir!  Welcome on board _the Star of the North_."

The stranger looked round and his manner changed at once, and he pointed
towards our funnels anxiously and their escaping steam.

"A steam vessel, eh!"

"Yes, sir," said the skipper.  "I command her, sir.  Cap'en Applegarth,
at your service!"

"The deuce!  I was forgetting.  We passed you last night, I remember
now! and you're the captain?"

"Aye!" replied the skipper, not quite making out what the other was
driving at.  "I'm captain of this ship!"

"Merciful Heavens!" cried the rescued man, falling on his knees on the
deck and bursting into a passion of sobs.  "Thanks be to God!  Yes,
thanks be to God!  You will save her, captain.  You will save her?"

The skipper thought the evident suffering he had gone through had turned
his brain.

"Save who?" he asked, adding in a kinder tone: "Of course, we'll do
anything and everything we can for you, but I must know my bearings
first, my friend."

The man was on his feet at once.

"I am not mad, captain, as you appear to think.  I can see from your
manner you think so," he said.  "I want you to save my Elsie, my only
child, my little daughter, whom those villains, those black devils, are
carrying off!"

"Your only child, your daughter--black devils," echoed Captain
Applegarth, astonished at the poor man's speech and at his wild and
agonised look.  "What do you mean, sir?"

"Heavens!  We're losing time while those scoundrels are getting away
with the ship!" exclaimed the other frantically and walking to and fro
in a most excited state.  "Fire up the engines, pile on the coals and
steam like the devil! and go in chase of her, my good captain, you will?
For Heaven's sake, captain, for the love of God, start at once in chase
of her!"

"In chase of whom?" asked Captain Applegarth, still believing him to be
out of his mind.  "In chase of whom?"

The man uttered a heart-rending cry, in which anger, grief and piteous
appeal were alike blended.

"In chase of a band of black miscreants who have committed murder and
piracy on the high seas!" he ejaculated in broken accents.  "The blood
of a number of white men massacred by treacherous negroes calls for
vengeance, the safety of a young girl and the lives of your brother
sailors still on board the ship calls to you for help and rescue!  Great
Heaven!  Will you stand idly by and not render the aid you can?  Think,
captain, a little girl like your own daughter--my Elsie, my little one!
Yes, and white men, your brothers, and sailors, too, like yourselves, at
the mercy of a gang of black ruffians!  Sir, will you help them or not?"



CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

WE START IN CHASE OF THE SHIP.

The effect of this appeal was electrical, not only on the skipper, but
on all of us standing by.

"Great heavens, man!" cried the captain, staring at the other in wild
astonishment.  "What do you mean?  I cannot understand you, sir.  Your
ship, you say--"

"My words are plain enough, captain," said the stranger, interrupting
the skipper.  "Our ship, the _Saint Pierre_, is in the possession of a
gang of Haytian negroes who rose on us while we were on the high seas
and murdered most of the officers and the crew.  They then threw poor
Captain Alphonse, who commanded her, overboard, after they had half
killed him, and the rest of the unfortunate sailors and passengers,
amongst them my little daughter, are now at the mercy of the black
devils!"

"My God!" exclaimed the skipper, confounded by this lucid statement.
"And you, sir?"

"I am an American!" said the other with a proud air, drawing himself up
to his full height of six feet and more, and with his eyes flashing,
while a red flush mounted to his cheeks, which had formerly been deadly
pale.  "I'm a white man, captain, and it's not likely I would stand by
and see people of my own colour butchered!  Of course, sir, I went to
the poor captain's assistance, but then the murderers served me almost
as badly as they did him, chucking me overboard after him."

"I beg your pardon, sir, I'm sure, for appearing to doubt your story,"
cried the skipper, stretching forward his hand, which the other eagerly
grasped.  "The fact is, sir, I thought at first your sufferings had set
your head wrong; but now I need hardly say I believe thoroughly every
word you've told us, and you may rely on my aid and that of every man
aboard here to help you and yours.  There's my hand on it, sir, and my
word you'll find as good as my bond, so sure as my name is Jack
Applegarth!"

"And mine, captain, is Vereker, Colonel Vereker, at your service,"
returned the other, reciprocating the skipper's cordiality as he looked
him straight in the face, holding his hand the while in a firm grip.  He
let go the skipper's fist, however, the next moment and a puzzled
expression came into his eyes as he glanced round occasionally,
apparently in search of some one or other.  "Heavens!  Where's my
unfortunate comrade who was in the boat with me--poor Captain Alphonse?
Alas, I had forgotten him!"

"We have not forgotten him, though, colonel," said the skipper smiling.
"He has been carried below to the saloon on the maindeck, where my
second mate, Mr O'Neil, who is a qualified surgeon, is now attending to
his injuries.  He has been terribly mauled, poor fellow; we could see
that!"

"Aye, terribly!" repeated the other with a shudder, as if the
recollection of all he and his fellow-sufferers had gone through
suddenly came back to him at the moment.  "But, great Heavens! captain,
we're losing time and that accursed ship with those scoundrels and our
remaining comrades, and with my darling child on board, is speeding away
while we're talking here.  You will, will you not, Senor Applegarth, go
in pursuit of her, my friend?"

"By George I will, colonel; I will at once--immediately--if you'll tell
me her bearings," cried the skipper excitedly.  "When was it this
terrible affair happened?  When did you leave the ship, and where?"

"The revolt of the blacks, or mutiny, I should call it, captain, broke
out four days ago, on last Friday, indeed, sir," said the American
promptly in his deep musical voice, and whose foreign accent obliterated
all trace of the unmelodious Yankee twang.  "But we kept the rascals at
bay until last night, soon after sundown, when they made an ugly rush
and overpowered us.  Captain Alphonse had just sighted your vessel in
the distance and was burning a blue light over the stern to attract your
attention, so as to get assistance at the time this happened."

"Was yours a large, full-rigged ship?"

"Yes, sir, the _Saint Pierre_ is of good size and had all her sails
set," replied the other to the skipper's question.  "We were running
before the wind with our helm lashed amidship, as it had been since the
previous Friday, for we were all too busy defending our lives to think
of attending to the ship."

"Steering about nor'-east, I suppose?"

"Confound it, captain!" said the colonel impatiently.  "We were
drifting, I tell you, sir, at the mercy of the elements, and heaven only
knows how we were going!  Fortunately, the weather was pretty fair, save
the very day the mutiny broke out, when it blew heavily and our canvas
got split to pieces as there was no one to go aloft and take it in.
Otherwise we must have gone to the bottom!"

"By George!" exclaimed the skipper, turning round to old Masters and
myself, who were still standing by with the hands who had come aft to
haul up the boat.  "Then my bo'sun here, and this young officer were
right when they declared they saw a large full-rigged ship to the
westward of us, though I only noticed the light of your flare-up.  You
were too far off for me to make you out."

"_Ojala_!" ejaculated the American, reverting again to the familiar
Spanish tongue in his emotion.  "Would to God, captain, you _had_ seen
us!"

"It would have been useless if I had, my friend," said the skipper
soothingly.  "We couldn't move to come to your assistance if every soul
on board had seen you and known your peril, sir; for our engines were
broken-down and we were not able to get up steam again until late this
afternoon, when we ran down to pick you up!"

"But, sir," hastily whispered the colonel, suppressing a sob of emotion,
"you can and will steam now?"

"Why ask?" replied the skipper.  "The moment we know where to go in
search of your ship, that very moment we'll start and try to overhaul
her.  You say you quitted her last night?"

"Quitted her?  We were _thrown_ overboard, sir, by the black devils!"

Captain Applegarth in reply said calmly, "Yes, yes, of course,"
accepting the correction and trying by his manner to soothe the
infuriated man.  "But what time was that?"

"I can't say the exact hour," replied the American, whose vexed tone
showed that the captain's methodical mode of setting to work did not
quite harmonise with the excited state of his feelings.  "I think,
however, it must have been nearly seven o'clock, as well, sir, as I can
remember."

Then I chimed in.  "Ah!"  I exclaimed quickly, "that was just the _very
time_ that Masters and I heard the shooting in the distance to win'ard,
and it was six bells in the second dog watch!"

"So it were, Master Haldane; so it were," agreed the old boatswain,
looking from me to the skipper and then at Colonel Vereker.  "Well, I'm
blowed! and I'm glad, then, for that there ghost-ship wor a rael ship
arter all said and done.  Now who was right, I'd like to know?"

"Of course it was a real ship, you old dotard!" said the skipper gruffly
and looking angrily at him.  "Of course it was," he added, while our new
acquaintance looked at us, unable, naturally, to understand the mystical
allusion; but Captain Applegarth soon turned his roving thoughts into
another direction by asking him a second question.  "How long did you
keep in sight of your vessel after leaving her, colonel, do you think?"

"She was in full view of us at sunrise this morning," replied the
American.  "The boat in which we were adrift kept near her all night as
there was very little wind, if any.  A slight breeze sprang up shortly
after the sun rose and she then steadily increased her distance from us
as the day wore on, finally disappearing from my gaze about noon, and
taking with her my little darling, my pet, my Elsie."

The poor fellow broke down again at this point throwing up his hands
passionately and burying his face in them, his whole frame convulsed
with sobs, though not a man present thought his emotion a thing to be
ashamed of, all of us being deeply interested in his narrative, and as
anxious as himself for the skipper to start off in pursuit of the black
mutineers and pirates.

We were not long kept in suspense, the colonel's last words and violent
burst of emotion apparently touching our "old man's" feelings deeply,
and hastening his decision.

"Cheer up, sir, cheer up," said he to the other, whose shoulders still
shook with his deep hysterical sobs.  "And we'll find your little girl
yet for you all right, and restore her to you, and we'll settle matters
too, with those scoundrels, I promise.  Now tell me how far off do you
think the ship must have drifted from us by now, Mr Fosset."

"Between twenty and thirty miles, sir," replied the first mate.  "She
was lighter than us, and of course she had the advantage of what wind
there has been, though, thank goodness, that has been little enough!"

"Away to the nor'-east, I suppose?"

"Aye, aye, sir," said Mr Fosset.  "The breeze, what there was, has been
from the sou'-east and the current trends in the same direction."

"Then if we steer east-nor'-east we ought to pick her up soon?"

"Not a doubt of it, sir.  We have four good hours of daylight left yet!"

"Precisely my opinion," cried the skipper.  "Mr Stokes, will the
engines stand full speed now, do you think?"

"Oh, yes, sir," replied the old chief, who with the rest of us was all
agog to be after the strange ship again, now that he had heard the
colonel's explanation of her true character, "if you'll send some one
below to tell Stoddart what you want.  I would go myself, but I'm rather
shaky in getting down the hatchway as yet.  I twisted my arm just now
when I went down."

"That's all right.  Stoddart, I am sure, will excuse you," said the
skipper kindly, and turning to me he added: "You, Haldane, run down and
tell Stoddart we want all the steam we can get.  He won't spare the
engines, I know, when he knows the circumstances of the case, and you
will explain matters!"

So saying, the skipper started off forwards in the direction of the
bridge, while I dived down the engine-room hatchway, reaching the
machinery-flat just as the "old man" sounded the gong to put on full
speed ahead, the telegraph working quick as if he were in a great hurry!

Ere I could tell my story Stoddart sent an answering blast up the steam
pipe to let the skipper know his signal was being attended to; and then,
pulling back the lever of the throttle valve, the piston began to go up
and down, the cylinder oscillated from side to side and the crank shaft
revolved at first slowly, but presently faster and faster until we were
now going to the utmost of our pace.

All this while I was yarning away, though I had to shout to the top of
my voice in order to overcome the noise of the machinery, as I described
all that had occurred.

I did not speak to unheeding ears.

"By Jove, Haldane!" cried Stoddart, who was a man of action if ever
there was one.  "The cylinder is all right again and will bear any
pressure now, and I tell you what it is, the old barquey shall steam
along in pursuit of those demons faster than she ever went in her life
since she was launched and engined!"

"I am with you there, old fellow," said Grummet, our third engineer,
hastening towards the stoke-hold.  "I'll go down and see the firemen and
stir them up and put some more oilers to work in the screw well, to
lubricate the shaft so as to prevent the bearings from overheating."

"That's your sort, my hearty," said Stoddart.  "So you can return on
deck, Haldane, and tell the skipper and Mr Stokes that everything shall
be done down here by us to overhaul your `ghost-ship.'"

He laughed as he uttered this little piece of chaff at my expense, the
story being now the common property of everybody on board, and I
laughed, too, as I ran up the hatchway with my clothes nearly dry again,
even drying in the short space of time I had been in the hot atmosphere
below, although, goodness knows, they had been wet enough when I had
gone down, having had no time or opportunity to shift them after my dip
overboard when taking the line to the drifting boat.

On reaching the main deck I met Spokeshave.

He was coming out from the saloon, and from his puffy face and corpulent
appearance generally, he looked as if he had been making a haul on the
steward's pantry, although he had not long had his dinner and it was a
good way off tea time.

"Hullo!" he cried out on seeing me.  "I say, that chap O'Neil is having
a fine go of it playing at doctoring.  He has got a lot of ugly long
knives and saws laid out on the cuddy table and I think he's going to
cut off the chap's leg!"

"Which chap do you mean?"  I asked; "not the colonel?"

"Aye," said he.  "The chap with the moustache and long hair, like
Hamlet, you know!"

"My good chap," said I, "you seem to know a good deal about other chaps,
or think you do, but I never heard before of Hamlet having a moustache
like a life-guardsman!  Irving doesn't wear one when he takes the part,
if I recollect right, my joker.  You think yourself mighty knowing!"

"Quite so," replied Master Spokeshave, using his favourite phrase as
usual.  "But you don't call Irving Shakespeare, Haldane, do ye?"

"I don't know anything of the matter, old boy.  I am not so well
informed as you are concerning the dramatic world, Spokeshave.  I know
you're a regular authority or `toffer,' if you like, on the subject.
Don't you think, however, you're a bit hard on poor Irving, who, I've no
doubt, would take a word of advice from you if you spoke kindly to him
and without that cruel sarcasm which you're apt to use?"

The little beggar actually sniggered over this, being of the opinion
that I was paying a just tribute to his histrionic acumen and judgement
in things theatrical, on which he prided himself on account of his
having appeared once behind the footlights in a theatre in Liverpool, as
a "super," I believe, and in a part where he had nothing to say!

"Quite so, Haldane; quite so," chuckled Spokeshave, as pleased as Punch
at the imaginary compliment.  "_I do_ believe I could teach Irving a
thing or two if I had the mind to!"

"Yes, you donkey, if you _had_ the mind to," said I witheringly, by
giving an emphasis he did not mean to his own words.  "`Very like a
whale,' as our old friend Polonius says in the play, the real _Hamlet_,
I mean, my boy, not your version of it.  `Very like a whale,' indeed!"

"I'm sure, Mr Haldane," he answered loftily, cocking his long nose in
the air with a supercilious sniff, "I don't know what ye mean."

"And I've no time to waste telling you now," returned I.

At that moment we emerged on the open deck from under the back of the
poop, where we had been losing our time and talking nonsense; and,
looking towards the bridge forward, I saw Colonel Vereker, the very
person about whom we had been speaking, standing by the side of the
skipper.

"O, Lor', Spokeshave, what a crammer!"  I cried.  "You said not a moment
ago that Garry O'Neil was about to cut off the colonel's leg, while
there he is standing there, all right!"

"I didn't say he had cut it off yet," he retorted; "I said he was going
to cut it off.  O'Neil told me so himself."

"Then," said I, "instead of cutting off the poor colonel's leg, he was
only `pulling your leg,' my joker!"

The cross-grained little beggar, however, did not seem to quite
understand the term I employed thus in joke, though it was used at sea
to express the fact of "taking a rise" out of any one, and a common
enough saying.

"I'm not the only fellow who tells crammers," he grimly muttered.  "How
about that yarn of yours of the blessed `ghost-ship' you saw the other
night, I'd like to know.  I believe, too, that the colonel, as you call
him, is only an impostor and that the skipper is going on just such a
wild-goose chase after this ship of his, which he says was captured by
pirates, as he did that Friday hunting your _Flying Dutchman_! wasting
our time with your idiotic story.  Pirates and niggers, indeed!  Why,
this chap, I'll bet, is a nigger himself, and more of a pirate than any
one we'll come across if we steam from here to the North Pole.  Put that
in your pipe and smoke it, Dick Haldane; you and your confounded `ghost-
ship' together!  Such utter humbug and nonsense, and thinking you take
people in with such yarns in these days!"



CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

FULL SPEED AHEAD.

I was so indignant at what the spiteful little brute said that I
incontinently turned on my heel and left him without another word, going
forwards towards the bridge to give the skipper Stoddart's message.

Here, the sight of Colonel Vereker's grand figure--one that would be
remarkable anywhere, towering above the rail and almost herculean in its
massive proportions, coupled with the sad look in his noble face, and
which reminded me somehow or other of one of the pictures of the old
Cavaliers of the Stuart days, made me resent the more the baseless
imputation of his being an imposter.

The idea of such a thing being possible could only have occurred to an
ignoble mind like that of Spokeshave; for one single glance at the
distinguished-looking gentleman's speaking countenance, with its finely-
chiselled features and lofty open brow, would have satisfied any
unprejudiced person that his was a nature incompatible with deceit and
meanness, even in the most remote degree.

"Well, young Haldane!" exclaimed old Mr Stokes, whom I found with
Captain Applegarth and the colonel when I reached the wheel-house.

"What do those smart chaps of mine down below say, hey, my boy?"

His face beamed as he spoke and he looked as if he would have liked to
have rubbed his hands together in his old way when he felt particularly
jolly, but unfortunately his crippled arm, which was still in a sling,
prevented that!

"Oh, that's all right, sir," I replied in an equally cheery tone, the
old chief's genial address making me forget at once my anger at
Spokeshave's contemptible nonsense.  "Mr Stoddart directed me to tell
the cap'en that he may go on ahead as usual, as he likes, for everything
has been made taut and secure below and there need be no fear of another
mishap.  He says he intends driving the engines as they were never
driven before, and he has put every fireman and oiler in the stoke-hold
on the job."

"Bravo!" cried the skipper, sounding the gong again and yelling down the
voice-tube that led below like one possessed.  "Fire up, below there,
and let her rip!"

"Dear, dear," panted Mr Stokes, whose fears for his engines, which he
regarded with the affection which a young mother might bestow on her
first baby, began to overcome his interest in the chase after the black
pirates.  "I hope you and Stoddart, between you, won't be rash, cap'en.
I hope--I do hope you won't!"

"Nonsense, Stokes, you old croker; just you shut up!" said the skipper.
"Keep her steady, east-nor'-east, helmsman!  Now, my dear colonel, at
last we really are after those infernal rascals in earnest; and, sir,
between you and me and the binnacle, we'll be up to them before long
before nightfall, I'll wager!"

"I hope to heaven we will, Senor Applegarth," replied the other sadly,
but eagerly.  "But, alas! the ocean is wide, and we may miss the ship.
I cannot bear to think of it!"

"Oh, but we won't miss her!" said the skipper confidently, and he was
the last man to give up hope.  "Take my davy for that, sir.  She must be
within a radius of from twenty to thirty miles of our present bearings
on the chart, somewhere here away to the eastwards, sir; and if we make
a long leg to leeward and then bear up to the north'ard and west'ard
again, we'll overhaul her--I'm sure of it--yes, sure of it, in no time.
Look, colonel, look how we're going now.  By George, ain't that a bow
wave for you, sir, and just see our wake astern!"

The old barquey was certainly steaming ahead at a great rate, the sea
coming up before her in a high ridge that nearly topped the fo'c's'le,
and welling under her counter on either hand in undulating furrows that
spread out beneath her stern in the form of a broad arrow, widening
their distance apart as she moved onward, while the space between was
frosted as if with silver by the white foam churned up by the ever-
whirling propeller blades, beating the water with their rhythmical
iteration, thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump!

There was no "racing" of the screw now, for Neptune was in one of his
quiet moods and there were no big rollers to surmount, or deep wave
valleys to descend into; consequently the old barquey had no excuse for
giving way to any gambolling propensities in the water of pitching and
tossing, steaming away on an even keel and using every inch of power of
her engines, with not an ounce to waste in the way of mis-spent force!

And so on we went, tearing through the water, a blue sky overhead
unflecked by a single cloud, a blue sea around that sparkled in sunshine
and reflected harmonies of azure and gold, save where the bright fresh
western breeze rippled its surface with laughing wavelets that chuckled
as they splashed the spray into each other's faces, or where we passed a
stray scrap of gulf-weed with its long yellow filaments spread out like
fingers vainly clutching at the wavelets, as if imploring them to be
still, or where again the dense black smoke from our funnels made a
canopy in the sky athwart our track, obscuring the shimmering surface of
the deep with a grim path of shadow that checked the mirth of the
lisping young wavelets and even awed the sunshine when it came in closer
contact anon, as the wind waved it this way and that at its will.

"Hi, bo'sun!" shouted out the skipper presently, after carrying on like
this for a goodish spell, the deck working beneath our feet and the
_Star of the North_ seeming to be flying through water and air alike by
a series of leaps and bounds, quivering down to her very kelson with the
sustained motion and the ever-driving impulse of her masterful engines
spurring her onward.  "How is she going now, eh?"

Old Masters was away aft on the poop hauling in the patent log, which
had been hove over the side on our beginning the run, and the next
minute, as soon as he was able to look at the index of the instrument,
he answered the skipper's question.

"Sixteen knots, sir!" he sang out, and then we could hear the old sea
dog add his customary comment, whether of approval or discontent, "Well,
I'm blowed!"

"By George, colonel!" cried Captain Applegarth to our melancholy-looking
guest at his side.  "We're going sixteen knots, sir; just think of that!
I didn't believe the dear old barquey had it in her!"

"It is a good, wonderful speed, captain," replied the other, who, I
noticed, was looking even more exhausted now than when we removed him
from the boat.  "Remember, though, sir, the _Saint Pierre_ is sailing on
all this time before the wind, as she was this morning, and must be
miles ahead of us!"

"Aye, I know she's going; or at least, I suppose so, and I've made every
allowance for that in my calculation of her whereabouts," returned our
skipper, in nowise daunted by the colonel's argument.  "But if she had
every rag set that she could carry, she couldn't go more than three or
four knots at the most, in this light breeze; and for every foot she
covers we're going five!"

"That is true," said the American, with a very weary and absent look on
his face.  "But--but I'm afraid we may be too late after all!  I--I'm--
God protect--my--my--"

"The fact is, my dear sir," cried the skipper abruptly, interrupting him
as the other hesitated in his speech, turning a deadly white and
clutching at the bridge rail in front of him, as if to save himself from
falling or fainting.  "You're completely worn out and your nerves
shaken!  Why, you can't have had much, if any, sleep the last three or
four days--not since that rumpus broke out aboard your ship, eh?"

"Heavens!" ejaculated the other.  "I don't think I have closed my eyes,
senor, since Friday, excepting when I was drifting in the boat, part of
which time I must have been senseless; for though I recollect seeing
your vessel, and trying to signal her by holding up a piece of the
bottom planking of the boat, as we hadn't oar or sail in her, I have no
remembrance of seeing your vessel steaming up to help us, or of this
brave young gentleman here jumping into the water and swimming to our
assistance, as you tell me, captain, that he gallantly did.  Believe me,
sir, I shall never forget you, and I shall be ever and eternally
grateful to you for that noble act of yours!"

He half-turned and bowed to me politely as he said this, but I was too
much confused, by his exaggerated estimate of what I had done to say
anything at the moment in reply.  And, after all, it was only a very
simple thing to do, to swim with a line to a boat; any other fellow
could have done the same, and would have done it under the same
circumstances.

The skipper, however, spoke for me.

"Come, come, sir," he said.  "Haldane only did his duty, like the brave
lad he is; and I'm sure you only make him uncomfortable by your thanks.
I want you, colonel, to go below and have a little rest and some
refreshment.  Besides, I promised Mr O'Neil to send you down to have
your wounded leg dressed and seen to, more than half an hour ago, when
he came up on deck after attending to that other poor chap, and yet here
you are still, talking and exciting yourself.  How is your leg now,
colonel?  Easier?"

"Confound it!  No, no!" replied the other, with a writhe of torture as
he changed his position so as to relieve the strain on the wounded limb,
which I had quite forgotten about, the brave follow having stoically
repressed all indication of pain while urging on the pursuit of the
black mutineers.  "It's hurting me like the devil!  But, sir, I cannot
rest or leave the deck till we come up to that accursed ship and save my
poor child, my little darling--if we be not too late, too late!"

"This is nonsense, sir," said the skipper bluntly, and rather angrily, I
thought, and he continued:

"The ship, we know, must be a goodish bit ahead of us still, and we
can't possibly overhaul her for an hour or more at the earliest.  So
come, cheer up, and come along with me and have your leg attended to at
once.  I insist, colonel; come."

"But," persisted Colonel Vereker, evidently trying to make out the time
in arguing, and loth to leave the scene of action, though apparently
ready to drop now from sheer pain and exhaustion combined, "Who will--
who will--"

"My first officer here, Mr Fosset, will remain on the bridge during our
absence below," interposed Captain Applegarth, anticipating his last,
unuttered objection.  "He's quite competent to take charge, and I'm sure
will let us know the moment the ship comes in sight, if she appears
before we return on deck."

"Aye, that I will, sir," cried out Mr Fosset.  "I'll keep a sharp look-
out, and I'll hail you, sir, sharp enough, as soon as she heaves in
sight on the horizon."

"There!" exclaimed the skipper in an exultant tone, taking hold of the
colonel's reluctant arm and placing it within his own, so as to lead him
away and to give him the benefit of his support down the bridge-ladder.
"Won't that satisfy you now, sir, and you see you'll lose nothing by
going below for a spell?  Come, come, my good friend, have the leg seen
to and eat something, for you must require it.  Why, colonel, unless you
keep up your strength and spur yourself up a bit, you won't be able to
tackle those black scoundrels when we get up to the ship and catch them,
and it comes to a fight, as I expect it will.  So come along, my hearty;
rouse yourself and come!"

This concluding remark of the old skipper affected more than all his
previous persuasion, the colonel at once allowing himself to be helped
down the laddering without further demur, and so along the gangway on
the upper deck, towards the lower entrance to the saloon under the beak
of the poop, I lending the aid of my shoulder for the crippled man to
lean on as he limped painfully onward, having to pause at almost every
step, his wounded leg dragging now so much, now that excitement no
longer sustained his flagging frame; the skipper gave aid too, his arm
propping him up on the other side.



CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

DOCTOR AND PATIENT.

"Faith, it's moighty glad I am, sor, to say you at last!" cried Garry
O'Neil, starting up from his seat at the cuddy table, on our ultimately
reaching the saloon, where the Irish mate was having a rather late lunch
with Mr Stokes, who had preceded us below.  "I was jist comin' after ye
ag'in, colonel, whin I had snatched a bit mouthful to kape the divvil
out of me stomach, sure.  I want to inspict that game leg o' yours, sor,
now that I've sittled your poor f'ind's h'id.  Begorrah, colonel,
somebody gave him a tidy rap on the skull whin they were about it!"

"It was done with a hand-spike," explained the other, groaning with pain
as we assisted him to a seat at the further end of the table, where the
skipper's armchair was drawn out for him to fix him up more comfortably.
"One of those treacherous niggers came behind his back and dealt him a
terrific blow that landed on the side of his head partly, nearly cutting
his ear off!"

"Aye, I saw that, sor, of course," put in Garry, pouring out some brandy
into a tumbler which he proceeded to fill up with water--"_aqua pura_,"
he called it.  "I've shtrapped it on ag'in now, and it looks as nate as
ninepins.  But jist dhrink this, colonel, dear.  It'll warrm the cockles
of your heart, sure, an' put frish loife into you!"

The American took a sip first at the glass proffered him, and then
drained off the contents with a deep sigh of satisfaction.

"Ah!" he exclaimed, "I feel a little better.  But how is poor Captain
Alphonse now?"

"Bedad, he's gitting on illegantly," replied Garry, sniffing at a soup
plate containing some steaming compound which Weston, the steward, had
just brought in, and directing that worthy to place it in front of our
poor invalid guest.  "There was a nasty paice of bone sphlinter sticking
in the crayture's brainpan; but, first, I trepanned him an' raymoved the
impiddimint, an' the poor chap's now slayping as swately as a babby,
slayping in the cap'en's cot over yonder!  But come, colonel, I want ye
to take some of this pay soup here afore I set to work carving ye about.
Begorrah, it's foine stuff, an'll set ye up a bit to roights!"

"Thank you a thousand times," returned he, taking a mouthful or two of
the soup which Weston had placed before him, eating very sparingly at
first like one who had been deprived of food for some time.  "I'm not
afraid of your handling me, sir.  I have undergone too many operations
for that!"

"Faith, colonel," cried the Irishman, laughing in his usual good-
tempered racy manner, "you'd best spake well of the craft or I'll be
afther payin' you out, sure, alannah, whin I get your leg in me grip!
Jist you stow some more o' that illigint soup inside your belt, sor,
before I start on the job, an' while ye're aitin' I'll tell you how I
once sarved out an old woman whom I was called in to docther, whin I was
at ould Trinity, larnin' the profession, in faith!"

"That's right, O'Neil," said the skipper, seeing his motive in trying to
set our sad guest at his ease and to try and distract his thoughts from
the awful anxiety and grief, under which he was labouring.  "Have I
heard the yarn before, eh?"

"Faith, not that I know of, cap'en," returned the doctor _pro tem_ in
his free and easy manner.  "Begorrah, the joke's too much ag'inst
meself, sor, for me to be afther tillin' the story too often!"

"Never mind that; it will make it all the more interesting to us," said
the skipper with a knowing wink to Mr Stokes, both of them knowing
Garry's old stories only too well, but at such a time as this they would
have listened to anything if it would only serve to distract the poor
colonel's thoughts for a few minutes, and they chuckled in recollection
of the many jokes against himself that Garry had perpetrated.  "Fire
away with your yarn."

"Bedad, then, here goes," began O'Neil with a grin.  "Ye must know,
colonel, if you will have it, that I was only a `sucking sawbones,' so
to spake, at the toime.  Faith, I was a medical studint in my first
year, having barely mastered the bones."

"The bones!" interrupted the skipper.  "What the deuce do you mean,
man?"

"Sure, the inthroductory study of anatomy, sor," explained Garry rather
grandiloquently, going on with his yarn.  "Well, one foine day whin I
an' another fellow who'd kept the same terms as mesilf were walking the
hospital, wonderin' whin we'd be able to pass the college, sure the hall
porter comes into the ward we were in an' axes if we knew where
Professor Lancett, the house surgeon, was to be found, as he was wanted
at once.

"`Faix,' says Terence Mahony, my chum, the other medical studint who was
with me.  `He's gone to say the Lord Lieutenant, who's been struck down
with the maysles, an' the divvle only knows whin he'll get back from the
castle, sure!  What's the matter, O'Dowd?  Who wants ould Lancett at
this outlandish toime of day?'

"The hall porter took Mahony's chaff, faith, in all sober sayriousness.
`It's moighty sorry I am,' says he; `Master Lancett's gone to the
castle, though proud I am for ould Trinity's sake, sayin' as how the
Lord Lieutenant has for to send to us, sure, bekase them murtheren'
'sassa docthers that he brought from over the say with him from Inkland
ain't a patch on our chaps!  But, faix, sor, a poor woman as the
professor knows is took moighty bad in her inside, some of her
neighbours says, an' wants help at onst!'

"`Who is it, O'Dowd?'  I asks.  `Do you know where she lives?'

"`Mistress Flannagan's her name,' says the porter.  `She's Mistress
Lancett's ould la'ndress, sor; a cantankerous ould woman, too, an' wid
the divvle of a temper!  She lives jist out of Dame Strate, sure, in
Abbey Lane.  Any one'll till ye the place, sure!'

"`What say you to goin' to say the poor crayture?' says I to Terence
Mahony.  `We'll lave word where we're gone, an' I'm sure Mr Lancett
will be plaised to hear we're looking afther the ould lady!'

"`Begorrah, that he will, sor,' agreed O'Dowd, the porter.  `It's
moighty kind of you two young gintlemen going for to say her, an' I'll
make a p'int of lettin' the docther know whin he comes back from the
Lord Liftinnint!'

"`All right, O'Dowd,' says I.  `Mind you till the professor, an' he can
thin follow us up on his return to the college--that is, if he loikes!'

"With that off the two of us wint on our errind of mercy, though it was
lucky I lift that message with O'Dowd, as ye'll larn prisintly!

"It didn't take us long to find the house where the sick woman was, for
as we turned into the strate, a dirty ould hag, smoking a short pipe,
came up to us with a smirk on her ugly phiz.

"`God save Ireland!' says she, addressing Terence.  `Be yez the docther
jintlemen from the hospital, avic?'

"`Faix, we're that,' says my companion; `the pair of us!'

"`Thin come along,' says she.  `Mistress Flannagan is dyin' to say you,
sure.  The soight of yez is good for sore eyes!'

"`Begorrah!' says Terence, `I wouldn't have come at all at all if she
hadn't been dyin', the poor crayture!  Where is she?'

"`In the corner there,' returns the old hag, removing her dirty little
black dhudeen of a pipe for a minnit from between her teeth, in order to
spake the bether.  `She's a-sottin' in that cheir there, as she hav'
been since the mornin', widout sayin' a worrd to mortial saol afther she
tould us to sind for the docther.  May the divvle fly away with me, but
Peggy Flannagan can be obstinate in foith, whin she likes!'

"Terence Mahony and I then poked our noses into the corner of the room,
the old hag stirrin' the turf fire on the hearth to give us a bit of
loight; an' then we saw the ould crayture, who looked as broad as she
was long, sittin' in a big armchere, an' starin' at us with large, open
eyes.  But though she was breythin' hard loike a grampus, she didn't
spake nothin'!

"`What's the mather, my good woman?' says Mahony, going up to her an'
spaking kindly to the poor crayture.  `Let me feel your pulse.'

"He caught hold of her hand, which hung down the side of the chere and
fumbled at the wrist for some toime, the ould woman starin' an' sayin'
nothin' at all at all!

"`Faith, Garry O'Neil, I can't foind any pulse on her at all at all.
She must be di'd, worse luck!'

"`Och, you omahdaun; can't ye say her eyes open?' says I.  `Git out o'
the way an' let me thry!'

"Begorrah, though, I couldn't fale any pulse at all aythar.

"`She's in a faint, I think,' says Terence, pretendin' for to know all
about it.  `We had jist sich a case in hospital t'other day.  It's oine
of suspended animation.'

"`Blatheration, Terence,' I cried at hearing this.  `You'll be a case of
suspended animation yoursilf by-and-bye.'

"`Faith, how's that?' says he.  `What do you mean?'

"`Why, whin you're hung, me bhoy! for your ignorance of your profession.
Sure, one can say with half an eye the poor crayture is sufferin' from
lumbago or peritonitas on the craynium, faith!'

"As we were arguin' the p'int, the ould hag who had introduced us
brought our discussion to an end jist as Terence made up his mind that
the case was cholera or elephantiasis or something else equally
ridiculous!

"`Bad cess to the obstinate cantankerous ould crayture,' cried she,
catching the poor sick woman by the scruff of the neck an' shakin' her
violently backwards an' forrads, afther which she banged the poor thing
violently on the sate of the chere.  `Will ye now spake to their
honours, or will ye not?  Won't ye now?  She be that stubborn!' said
she, turnin' to us; `did ye ivver see anythin' loike it afore?'

"Mahony then tould her to put out her tongue, but the divvle a bit of
her tongue saw we!  Nor would she say a worrd as to her ailment, to give
us a clue, though I believe on me oath, colonel, we mintioned ivery
complaint known in the Pharmacopaia, Terence even axin' civilly if she
had chilblames in the throat, for it was the depth of winter at the
toime, to prevent her talkin'!

"But our coaxin' was all in vain, loike the ould hag's shaking!

"Faith, not a worrd moved our patient.  She was that in all conscience,
sure.

"`Begorrah, I'll sind a bucket of could wather over her an' say if
that'll tach her manners!' said the ould hag, who tould us her own name
was Biddy Flynne, on our giving her an odd sixthpence for a dhrop of
drink.  `It's a shame to bring yez honours out for nothin'!'

"She was jist going to do what she had threatened, sure enough whin,
providentially, in walked the professor from the college.

"He'd been listenin' outside the door, I believe, all the toime Terence
an' mesilf were talkin' an' arguin' about the ould dame's complaint,
puzzlin' our brains to find out what was the mather with her, for the
baste of a man had a broad grin on his face, loike that you say on a
mealy petaty whin the jacket pales off of it, whin he toorned round to
us afther examinin' poor Mistress Flannagan, now all a heap on her
chere.

"`Faith, I must complimint you, jintlemin, on the profound skill an'
knowledge you have shown in your profession,' says he.  `I don't think I
ivver heard a more ignorant or illeterate diagnosis of a case since I've
been professor at Trinity College!'

"He was a moighty polite man was Professor Lancett.  Terence an' I both
agrayed on his sayin' this, an' thought our fortunes were made an' we'd
git our diplomas at once, without any examination, sure!

"But his nixt remark purty soon took the consate out of both of us.

"`It's lucky for you two dunder-headed ignoramases!' he went on to say
in a nasty sneerin' way the baste had with him whin he was angry and was
any way put out.  `Preshous lucky for you, Misther Terence Mahony, an'
you, too, Garry O'Neil, that I chanced to come afther you, thinkin' ye'd
be up to some mischief, or else ye'd have put your foot in it with a
vengeance an' murthered between you this poor, harmless ould woman lying
here.  I am ashamed and disgusted with you!'

"He thin prosayded to till what the poor crayture was sufferin' from,
an' what d'ye think her complaint was, colonel?  Jist give a guess, now,
jist to oblige me, sure."

"Great Scot!" cried the American, smiling at O'Neil's naive manner and
the happy and roguish expression on his face, our guest's appearance
having been much improved, by the food of which he had partaken as well
as the stimulant, which had put some little colour into his pale cheeks.
"I'm sure I can't guess.  But what was it, sir, for you have excited my
curiosity?"



CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

A BLACK BUSINESS.

"Be jabers, sor!" exclaimed the Irishman in his very broadest brogue and
with a comical grin on his face that certainly must have eclipsed that
of which he complained in the professor of his college who had caught
him and his fellow-student trespassing on his medical preserves.  "To
till the truth an' shame the divvle, colonel, the poor ould crayture,
whose complaint we couldn't underconstumble at all at all, sure, was
sufferin' from a fit of apoplexy--a thing aisy enough to recognise by
any docther of experience, though, faith, it moight have been Grake to
us!"

We were all very much amused and had a good laugh at this naive
confession, even Colonel Vereker sharing in the general mirth, in spite
of his profound melancholy and the pain he felt from his wounded leg,
which made him wince every now and again, I noticed, during the
narration of the story Garry O'Neil had thus told, with the utmost good
humour, it must be confessed, at his own expense, as, indeed, he had
made us understand beforehand that it would be.

"By George!" cried the skipper, after having his laugh out, "you'll be
the death of me some day with your queer yarns, if you can't manage to
do for me with your professional skill, or by the aid of your drugs and
lotions, poisons, most of 'em, and all your murderous-looking
instruments, besides!"

"No fear of that, cap'en; you're too tough a customer," rejoined the
doctor with a knowing look in the direction of Mr Stokes, who had made
himself purple in the face and was panting and puffing on his seat,
trying to recover his breath.  "Faith, though, sor, talkin' of medical
skill, the sooner I say afther that leg of our fri'nd here, the better,
I'm thinkin'."

"With the best of wills," assented the colonel, who had finished his
luncheon by this time and certainly presented a much improved appearance
to that he had worn when entering the saloon.  "I am quite at your
service, doctor, and promise to be as quiet as that first patient of
yours of whom you've just told us!"

"Belay that, colonel; none o' your chaff about the ould leddy, if you
love me, sure!" growled Garry, pretending to be indignant as he knelt
down on the cabin floor and slit up the leg of the colonel's trousers so
as to inspect the wound.  His nonsensical, quizzing manner changed
instantly, however, on seeing the serious state of the injured limb, and
he ejaculated in a subdued tone of voice, "Holy Moses!"

"Why, sir," said the patient quietly, "what's the matter now?"

"Ah, an' ye are axin' what's the mather?" cried Garry in a still more
astonished tone.  "Faith, it's wantin' to know I am how the divvle
you've iver been able to move about at all, at all, colonel, with that
thing there.  Look at it now, an' till me what ye think of it yoursilf,
me darlint.  May the saints presairve us, but did any one iver say such
a leg?"

It was, in truth, a fearful-looking object, being swollen to the most
abnormal proportions from the ankle joint to the thigh, while the skin
was of a dark hue, save where some extravasated blood clustered about a
small punctured orifice just above the knee.

Colonel Vereker laughed and shrugged his shoulders.

"The fortune of war," he explained.  "One of those brutes shot me where
that mark is, but I think the bullet travelled all round my thigh and
lodged somewhere in the groin, I fancy, for I feel a lump there."

"Sure, I wonder you can fale anythin'!" cried Garry, who was probing for
the missile all the time.  "A man that can walk about, faith, loike an
opera dancer, with a blue-mouldy leg loike that, can't have much faling
at all, at all, I'm thinkin'!"

"Ah!" groaned his patient at last, on his touching the obnoxious bullet
near the spot the colonel had indicated.  "Whew! that hurts at any rate,
doctor!"

"Just be aisy a minnit, me darlint," said the other soothingly,
exchanging his probe for a pair of forceps and proceeding deftly to
extract the leaden messenger.  "An' if ye can't be aisy, faith, try an'
be as aisy as ye can!"

In another second he had it out with a triumphant and gleeful shout.

"Ah!" ejaculated the colonel, the excessive pain causing him to clench
his teeth with an audible snap.

"Faith, you may say `ah' now as much as you please," said Garry, as he
held out the villainous-looking bullet gripped in his forceps.  "For
there's the baste that did you all the damage, an' we'll soon pull you
up, alannah, with that ugly paice of mischief out of the way, sure!"

"Oh! dear me!" the poor colonel exclaimed as the doctor went on dressing
the wound and afterwards set-to to bandage the whole leg, swathing it
round like a mummy with lint, and then saturating it with some liniment
to allay the swelling.  "Would to God all the mischief could be as
easily made good!  Oh, my little Elsie, my darling little girl!"

"Cheer up, colonel, cheer up," whispered the skipper, coming in from the
state room on the starboard side of the saloon, whither he had gone to
hunt up some special cigars while Garry O'Neil was accomplishing his
surgical operation.  "We're going ahead as fast as steam and a good ship
can carry us, and we'll rescue your child, I'll wager, before nightfall.
Have a smoke now, my friend; and while you're trying one of the
Havanah's, which never paid duty and are none the worse for that, you
can tell us how it all happened from the beginning to the end.  I should
like to hear the account of your voyage right through, colonel, and how
those blacks came to board you."

"Certainly!" said Colonel Vereker, leaning back in his easy chair when
Garry O'Neil had made an end of bandaging his leg, and accepting one of
the choice cigars the skipper offered him.  "I will tell you willingly,
captain, and you, gentlemen, turning round and bowing to us, the sad
story of our thrice ill-fated voyage."

"Thrice ill-fated?" repeated Mr Stokes inquiringly, the chief being
rather argumentative by nature and possessing what he called a strictly
logical turn of mind.  "But how's that, sir?"

The colonel had his answer quite ready.

"I said `thrice ill-fated' advisedly, sir," he replied, removing his
cigar from his lips to emit a cloud of perfumed smoke, and then
restoring the fragrant roll of tobacco to the mouth again.  "In the
first place, sir, from my having been unlucky enough ever to start upon
the voyage at all.  Secondly, from the fact of a calm delaying us when
passing between Puerto Rico and San Domingo, thereby enabling those
treacherous negro scoundrels to see our ship in time to put out for us
from the shore; and thirdly, because Captain Alphonse would not take my
advice and use strong measures when the mutiny originally broke out,
which might have prevented the terrible events that afterwards occurred!
But, sir, if you will allow me, I shall get along better by telling you
what happened, just in my own way!"

"Certainly, sir," immediately replied Mr Stokes, profuse in his
apologies.  "Pray pardon my interruption!"

The colonel bowed in token of his forgiveness and then resumed his yarn.

"Our ship, the _Saint Pierre_, of Marseilles, Jacques Alphonse master
and part owner, sailed from La Guayra on October 25, barely a fortnight
ago!" said he.  "In addition to her captain, of course, she carried two
mates and a crew of twenty-five hands all told, and she was bound for
Liverpool, with a general cargo of cocoa, coffee and hides, besides a
mixed assortment of indigo, orris root, sarsaparilla and other raw drugs
for the English market."

"Were you and your little daughter the only passengers?"

"No, Senor Applegarth," replied the other.  "There were also on board
Monsieur and Madame Boisson, from Caracas, returning home to Europe
after a lengthened residence in the Venezuelan capital, where they had
carried on a large millinery business, supplying the dusky _senoritas_
of the hybrid Spanish and native republic with the latest Parisian
modes; Don Miguel, the proprietor of an extensive estancia in the
interior; and little Mr Johnson, a Britisher, of not much account in
your country, I guess, not a gentleman--at all events, in my humble
opinion.  He was travelling for some mercantile house in London
connected with the manufactory of chocolates or sweets, or something of
that sort.  I cannot say I cared much for the lot, as they were not
people of my class, so I did not allow my Elsie, my darling, my pet, to
associate with them more than could be helped, save with Madame Boisson,
who was a kind, good-natured sort of woman, though decidedly vulgar.  Oh
dear me!  It was a thousand pities we ever started on that disastrous
voyage.  It was unlucky from the very first!"

"Faith!" interposed Garry O'Neil.  "But how was that, sor?"

"We were too late in reaching La Guayra in the first instance," replied
Colonel Vereker.  "I had planned, my friend, to take the French steamer
for Brest, but on arriving at the port I found she had already left, and
while deliberating about what I should do under the circumstances--for
there would not be another mail boat for a fortnight at least--I met
Captain Alphonse.  He was an old friend of mine, a friend of long
standing, so, on his telling me that his vessel was going to sail on the
following day, and would probably convey me to Brest, where he said he
would have to report himself prior to proceeding to Liverpool with his
cargo, quite as soon as I should arrive if I waited for the next
steamer, I made up my mind to accompany him."

"But, colonel," suggested Captain Applegarth, "you might have gone
direct to England by one of the West India mail steamers which touch at
La Guayra on their route homeward from Colon."

"I know that, my friend," said the other.  "I could have caught one of
them the following week.  This would not have suited my purpose,
however, sir.  I wished to proceed direct to Brest, for I could get
easily on to Paris, where I intended placing my little Elsie at school
in the convent of L'enfant Jesu, at Neuilly, under the guardianship of
some good nuns, by whom her poor mother was educated and brought up.  It
was a promise, my friend, to the dead."

"I see, colonel," rejoined the skipper apologetically, lighting his
cigar again, having allowed it to go out while listening to the other;
"I see, sir.  Go on; I'm all attention."

"Well, then," continued the colonel, "these preliminaries being all
arranged, Elsie and I went aboard the _Saint Pierre_, a full-rigged
sailing ship of some eight hundred tons, the morning of the twenty-
eighth of last month; and on the evening of the same day, as I have
already told you, we made sail and quitted the anchorage where the ship
had been loading--abreast of San Miguel, a port that guards the
roadstead to the eastward, where it is open to the sea."

"Aye, I know La Guayra well, colonel," put in the skipper at this point,
showing that he was following every detail.  "I was in the Royal Mail
Line when I was a nipper, before joining my present company."

"I recollect the night we sailed," resumed the other, paying no
attention to Captain Applegarth's remark, but speaking with his eyes
fixed, as if in a dream and seeing mentally before him the scenes he
described.  "The moon was shining brightly when we got under way,
lighting up the Trinchera bastion and making the mountains in the
background seem higher than they were, from the deep shadows they cast
over the town lying below.  This latter lay embosomed amid a mass of
tall cocoanut trees and gorgeous palms, with other tropical foliage, and
had a shining beach of white sand immediately in its front, stretching
round the curling bay, on which the surf broke in the moonlight, with a
phosphorescent glow and a hollow sound as if beating over a grave.
Heavens!  It was the grave of all my dearest hopes and plans, for that,
sir, was one of the few last peaceful nights I have of late known, and
very probably ever shall know again!"

"Faith, don't say that now, sir," cried out Garry at this.  "You'll have
a peaceful one to-night, sure, or I'm no prophet.  Begorrah, though, I
niver was, so far as that goes!"

The skipper grinned at this sympathetic interpolation, and the colonel's
sombre face lighted up a bit as he turned his pathetic eyes on the
speaker, as if wishing to share his hopefulness.

"Ah, doctor, you do not know what grief and anguish are like!" he said
mournfully.  "But to go on with my story.  I may tell you that, had our
voyage progressed like our start, I should have nothing to deplore, for,
the land breeze filling our sails, we bore away buoyantly from the
Venezuelan coast, the ship shaping a course north by west towards the
Mona passage, as the channel way is called, from a rock in its centre,
lying between Hayti and Puerto Rico.  This route is held to be the best,
I believe, for passing out into the open Atlantic from the labyrinthine
groups of islands and innumerable islets that gem the blue waters of the
Caribbean Sea.  It is a course, too, which by its directness and the
northerly current and westerly wind there to be met, saves a lot of
useless tacking about and beating to windward, as you, no doubt,
captain, very well know."

The skipper nodded his head.

"You're quite a sailor, colonel," he said approvingly.  "Where did you
manage to pick up your knowledge of navigation and sea-faring matters,
if I may ask the question, sir?"

"In the many voyages I have made during a somewhat adventurous life,"
replied the other.  "I have invariably kept my ears and eyes open,
captain.  There are many things thus to be learnt, I have found out from
experience, which, although seemingly unimportant in themselves,
frequently turn out afterwards to be of very great use to us, sometimes,
indeed, almost unexpectedly so!"

"Aye, aye, colonel.  My opinion, sir, right down to the ground," said
the skipper, looking towards me.  "Just you put that in your pipe, Dick
Haldane, and smoke it!"

"Yes, young sir," added Colonel Vereker, emphasising this piece of
advice.  "That rule of life has stood me in good stead on more than one
occasion, both on land and on shipboard.  Had I not learnt something of
the ways of your sailors, for instance, I might not have thought of
lashing the _Saint Pierre's_ helm amidships on the breaking out of the
mutiny, and so prevented all our going to the bottom subsequently, when
it came on to blow; for all of us were then fighting for our lives and
no one had time to attend to the ship, save in the way of letting go
what ropes were handiest."

"Aye, that may be well enough, colonel," observed the skipper in his dry
fashion.  "But your argument cuts both ways.  If your helm hadn't been
lashed down, remember, the ship would have been yawing about and
drifting in this direction and that, and we should probably have come
across her long ago, like that boat from which we picked you up, instead
of her bearing away right before the wind and our having to go in chase
of her, sir, as we are now doing."

"It is true!  I did not think of that!" returned the colonel
impulsively, half-starting from his seat in his excitement.  "We must be
near her now, captain, though, surely.  We must find them, and I must
see my little girl again!"

"Kape aisy, me darlint; kape aisy," here interposed Garry O'Neil, before
Captain Applegarth could answer the question.  "Sure, Mr Fosset
promised to give us the worrd whin she hove in sight, an' you're only
distarbin' yoursilf for nothing, colonel!  More's the pity, too,
mabruchal, whin your leg is progressin' so illigantly an' the swillin'
goin' down as swately as possible.  Now kape aisy, if only to oblige me.
Faith, colonel, me profissional reputation's at shtake!"

The Irishman, all the time he was talking, was carefully attending to
the injured limb, loosening a bandage here, tightening another there,
and keeping the lint dressing moist the while with a lotion which he
applied gently to the surface by means of a sponge.  So, impressed alike
by his tender solicitude thus practically shown on his behalf as much as
by his opportune admonition, the colonel was forced to remain quiet.

"I wish he'd be quick about it!" he muttered to himself.  "Well, doctor,
as you will not let me move, I suppose you will let me go on with my
tale; that is, if it interests you!"

"Aye, aye; I want to hear everything," said the skipper.  "And fire
away, colonel; there's plenty of time for you to reel off your yarn
before we overhaul the chase."

"All right,--then, I will proceed," replied the other.  "All went well
with us on the voyage until the afternoon of the third day after sailing
from La Guayra, when, unfortunately, the weather changed and the
westerly wind, which had favoured us so far, suddenly failed us after
wafting us through the Mona Passage, and we became becalmed off Cap San
Engano, to the northward of Hayti."

"Hayti!" exclaimed old Mr Stokes, waking up from a short nap he had
been having on the sly, and pretending to be keenly alive to the
conversation.  "That's the famous black republic, ain't it?"

"Famous black pandemonium, you mean!" retorted the colonel fiercely, his
eyes flashing at once with fire.  "Excuse me, sir, but I have seen so
much of these negro brutes, who ape the airs of civilisation and yet
after a century of freedom are more uncivilised in their habits and mode
of life than the African slaves, their forefathers whom Toussaint-
L'Overture, as he styled himself, their leader, freed from the yoke of
their French masters a hundred years ago, that I feel the glorious name
`republic' to be dishonoured when associated with such vile wretches,
wretches a thousand times worse than the Fantees of the West Coast, from
whom they originally sprang!"

"My dear sir," said Mr Stokes, aghast at the tempest he had raised by
his innocent remark, "you surprise me!"

"Heavens! you would be surprised, sir, if you knew these Haytians as I
know them to be," continued the colonel, his indignation still
struggling for the mastery--"a race of devil worshippers and cannibals,
who confound liberty with license, and have added all the vices of
civilisation to the inherent savagery of their innate animal nature.
Ah, sir, I should like to tell you a great deal more, but have not the
time now.  I am afraid I am forgetting myself.  Where was I?"

"Becalmed off Cape San Engano," promptly replied the skipper, sailor
fashion--"at least, so you said, colonel; but I fancy you must have had
a little rougher weather in that latitude than you mentioned at first!"

"We had," said Colonel Vereker meaningly.  "Towards nightfall we drifted
with the current more inshore, Captain Alphonse not dropping our anchor,
as we expected the land breeze would spring up at sunset.  This did not
come for an hour later, however, for already darkness had begun to
surround us and we could see the fireflies illuminating the brush beyond
the beach.  But this wasn't all observed, sir.  Just as our sails filled
again and the ship slowly drew out into the offing, we heard the splash
of oars in the water astern.  It was a boat coming after us, propelled
by a dozen oars at least, pulling as hard as those handling them knew
how, a shot or two from the shore and the sound of musket balls ripping
the water explaining, in some way, the reason for their anxiety to get
beyond the range of the firing, on which account they sought the shelter
of the _Saint Pierre_, of course--at least, so we thought!

"`Who goes there?' shouted out Captain Alphonse, who was standing alone
with me, close to the taffrail.  `Poor devils! there is probably another
insurrection at Port au Prince, and President Salomon up or down again.
He is always one or the other every year or so, and these poor fellows
may be flying to save their miserable necks.  Who goes there?  Who goes
there?'  But, whether wanting all their energy for their oars or for
some other reason known to themselves, those in the boat made no reply
to our hail, and the next moment, ere the ship gathered way sufficient
to gain on them, they were alongside, their long unwieldy craft grating
against the ship's timbers beneath her counter.

"`Look-out there, forrads!' cried Captain Alphonse, seeing the boat
making apparently for our bows, but before a hand could be raised to
prevent them, without asking permission in any way or offering the
slightest apology or excuse in advance for their conduct, a number of
negroes jumped out of her and began climbing aboard the _Saint Pierre_.

"Heavens! gentlemen, clad in little beyond Nature's own covering, as the
majority of the intruders were, and looking in the dim light as black as
the ace of spades, they seemed like so many demons, come to take
possession of our unfortunate ship--as indeed they were.  Oh dear me!"



CHAPTER NINETEEN.

THE "MARQUIS DE POMME-ROSE."

"A pretty kettle of fish that!" exclaimed the skipper, pitching the
butt-end of his cigar through one of the stern ports as he got up from
his seat and began to pace up and down the saloon in his usual quarter-
deck fashion.  "You must have been mad, colonel, to let them come aboard
so quietly and in such a manner, too!"

"Stay, you have not heard all," said the other.  "As the black rascals
tumbled over the side, one of them called out something in the French
tongue.  This, sir, at once disarmed Captain Alphonse, who had prevented
me from teaching them good manners, which I otherwise should have done,
for I had my six-shooter ready, with the barrels all loaded, being
always prepared for any such little unpleasantness by my experiences in
Venezuela, where a man often carries his life in his own hands!

"But Captain Alphonse would not let me fire, though, by heavens!  I
would have accounted for half a dozen of them, I know, before they had
advanced beyond the precincts of the ship!

"`No, no, be quiet!' cried he, knocking my arm up to prevent my taking
aim at the leader of the gang, whom I had spotted dead in the eye.
`These are my countrymen!'

"It was no use my talking after that, sir.  The sound of the French
tongue, which these blacks of Hayti speak with a better accent than the
gamins of Paris, gained over Captain Alphonse; while Madame Boisson
declared the whole episode truly charming, her fat husband, who was
entirely under her thumb, shrugging his shoulders and giving them both
encouragement and a welcome.

"These charming compatriots of theirs, therefore, being allowed to take
us by storm without let or hindrance, now advanced aft, when their
ringleader, a plausible scoundrel who described himself as the `Marquis
de Pomme-Rose,' or some other similar shoddy title belonging to the
black peerage of Hayti, to which I did not give heed at the time, beyond
in my own mind thinking it ridiculous and that it was probably a name
made up for the occasion, this man came up to Captain Alphonse with a
smile on his black face and told a wonderful story which he had
calculated would excite our pity while allaying our fears.

"There had been another revolution at Port au Prince, he said, as
Captain Alphonse had surmised.  A band of patriots, of whom he, the
speaker, had the honour to be the chief, had attempted to depose the
reigning despot Salomon from his post of president, but that that astute
gentleman got wind of the conspiracy in time, and as he had a very
efficacious mode of quickly dealing with those opposed to him in
political matters, the nigger marquis and his fellow-plotters thought it
best to seek refuge in flight.

"Salomon, of course, at once despatched his myrmidons after them, but
having a few hours' start of the pursuers the runaway revolutionists
contrived to clear off from Port au Prince, concealing themselves in the
mountain fastnesses at the eastern end of the island.

"Here, while in hiding, they saw the _Saint Pierre_ rounding Cape San
Engano.  Subsequently observing that she was becalmed, they waited for
nightfall, when they stole a boat that lay on the shore and pulled out
towards our ship, just avoiding capture in the nick of time; the
regiment of black soldiers Salomon had sent after them having hit upon
their trail and being so close up behind that they were able to open
fire on them ere the boat got into deep water, two of the fugitive
patriots being struck by the bullets that came whistling in their rear.

"The `marquis' was of the belief that we were bound for Cuba, so he
declared at all events at the moment, and he asked Captain Alphonse with
the utmost indifference to give him and his companions a passage
thither, assuring him that he would be handsomely rewarded for so doing
by some of their friends belonging to the Haytian revolutionary party,
who had established their headquarters at Havana.

"In reply to this request Captain Alphonse declared he was `desolated,'
but that, unfortunately, the _Saint Pierre_ was bound for Europe and not
to the greater Antilles; but, strange to say, for I was watching him
keenly the while, our friend the `marquis' did not appear either
surprised or dismayed at his supposition as to our destination turning
out to be so erroneous, as he would have been, so I thought, had he been
speaking the truth in his original narrative, and acting in good faith
towards us!

"From that moment, sir, something in my mind seemed to warn me against
the black villain, though I had been previously rather prepossessed in
his favour by his manner and bearing, in spite of a strong antipathy to
republicans of his complexion!"

"Ah, colonel," whispered the skipper.  "I suppose it comes from living
amongst them too much, but I see you don't like negroes."

"No; you mistake my meaning greatly if you think that, Senor Applegarth.
Black, white or yellow, the colour makes no difference to me, providing
the individual I may have to deal with be a man in the true sense of the
word!  In the old days, before our war, I had a good deal to do with
niggers, for my father and his father before him owned a large
plantation in Louisiana, and long before President Lincoln issued his
proclamation of emancipation every hand on our estate was a free man;
so, you see, sir, I do not advocate slavery at all events.  But between
slavery and unbridled liberty there is, Senor Applegarth, a wide margin;
and though I do not look upon a nigger in the abstract as either a brute
beast or a human chattel, still I do not consider him quite fit to
govern himself, nor do I regard him in the light of my brother, sir, nor
even as my equal in any way!"

The skipper laughed.

"`What's bred in the bone,' colonel--you know the rest!" said he.  "Your
old experience in the Southern States prejudices you against the race."

"Pardon me," rejoined Colonel Vereker warmly, "I don't dislike them at
all.  On the contrary, I have found some negroes more faithful than any
white man of my acquaintance, being true to the death; and I know that
if I came across, to-morrow, any of the old hands on our Louisianian
plantation whom my father made free, I should be as glad to see them as
they would be to meet me.  But, sir, at the same time, allowing all
this, I cannot admit the negro to be on an equality with the white
races.  They are inferior, I am certain, alike in intelligence,
disposition and nature, and I hold him as little qualified for self-
government on the European system as a child is fit to be entrusted with
a case of razors for playthings.  Hayti is an illustration of this,
sir!"

"All right, my dear sir," said the skipper good-humouredly, glad to see
the colonel taken out of himself and forgetting his grief about his
little daughter for the moment in the discussion.  "Carry on; we're
listening to you!"

His enthusiasm, however, did not last very long.

"Heavens!  Senor Applegarth, and you, too, gentlemen," he went on in a
changed tone.  "I have cause to love those Haytian scoundrels well, I
tell you!  Well, sirs, to proceed with my story, the terrible end of
which I have nearly reached, this dog of a black rascal, the so-called
marquis, seemed quite content, much to my surprise, when Captain
Alphonse told him we were not bound for Cuba, but for Liverpool.

"It was all the same to him, he said, and as they were going the longer
voyage, perhaps Captain Alphonse would allow him and his companions to
work out their passage by assisting the crew in the navigation of the
ship.

"Captain Alphonse was delighted at this, for we had only half a dozen
good seamen on board, the rest of the hands being a lot of half-bred
mulattoes and niggers--some of the scourings of South America whom he
had picked up at La Guayra, most of whom knew how to handle a cutlass
better than a rope--so the proposed addition to the strength of our
ship's company was a very acceptable one, particularly as the `Marquis'
pointed out two of his companions as being expert sailors and qualified
pilots and navigators."

"Ha!  You kept your eye on those gentry, colonel, I bet you did?"

"Yes, sir.  They were the first I spotted when the row began; but I'm
anticipating matters."

"The divvle a bit, sor," interposed Garry O'Neil.  "Let me jist change
the dressin' of your leg, an' ye can polish off the rist of the rascals
as soon as ye plaize."

"A thousand thanks," returned the other, shifting his position to allow
his leg to be attended to.  "They did not disclose their purpose,
though, or `show their hand,' as they say at the game of monte, all at
once; for, moved by their voluntary offer to help work the ship, Captain
Alphonse promised the `marquis,' who when making this offer had urged a
request to that effect, calculating on the captain's generosity to put
in and leave the lot at Bermuda, should they make a fair passage up to
the parallel of that island, but in the event of their being delayed by
foul winds or the voyage appearing as if it must be a long one, the
Haytians must be contented to cross the ocean.

"The bargain was struck at once, this proviso being accepted with
alacrity as it just suited their purpose, and never saw I men work as
those Haytians worked in the way of tumbling up at all hours and pulling
and hauling, shaking out reefs and setting fresh sail, the next day or
two when the weather was contrary, and we had to tack about a good deal
to windward in getting out into the open Atlantic.

"Heavens!  How they exerted themselves; so much so that I quite shared
Captain Alphonse's admiration for them, but, unlike him, I watched them,
and I noticed that they and the coloured men of our crew who had been
picked up at La Guayra seemed on a more friendly footing than was
altogether warranted by the short time they had been on board.  Captain
Alphonse and the other passengers, however, would not see this.

"But, sir, I had an old negro servant on board with me, who had followed
my fortunes from the States to Venezuela after the war, Louisiana then
being no longer a fit place for a white man to live in.  Poor old Cato;
he was the most faithful soul the Almighty ever put breath into!

"Him I acquainted with my suspicions, and sent amongst the blacks, to
gather what information he could of their designs, for I was confident,
sirs, they had not boarded us for nothing, and were hatching some deep
plot with a view, very probably, of getting possession of our ship in
order the better to further the interests of the revolutionary party, to
which they belonged, that was opposed to Salomon, the president in
power.

"Whatever their object might be, however, I distrusted them in every
way, believing them, indeed, actuated by other motives than such as
might be prompted by their political aspirations, my suspicions being
confirmed by the looks and bearing of the gang, who seemed capable of
any atrocity, judging them by their villainous faces and generally hang-
dog appearance, besides which they were continually whispering together
amongst themselves, and consorting and confabbing with the mulattoes and
other coloured men belonging to the crew.

"In addition to that, Senor Applegarth, and you too, gentlemen, I
noticed that our friend `the marquis,' although he gave himself great
airs, on account of the aristocratic blood and descent to which he lay
claim, pretending to think himself much superior in position to both
Captain Alphonse and myself, and regarding poor Cato, my servant, as
mere dirt under his feet, albeit the faithful negro was of a like colour
to himself--did not esteem it beneath his high dignity to associate with
the scum of the forecastle and bandy ribald obscenities, when he
believed himself unobserved, with his fellow scoundrels.

"Aye, I watched my gentleman carefully, and so, too, did my poor
faithful Cato!"



CHAPTER TWENTY.

THE SEVENTH OF NOVEMBER.

"My faithful negro, however," continued the colonel, pausing at this
point to puff out another cloud of smoke from his fragrant
cigar,--"well, he was unable to learn anything of the Haytians, though
he tried to make friends of them, for they always stopped their talk
amongst themselves on his approach, and would only reply to his
overtures in monosyllables expressive of distrust, accompanied by
contemptuous gestures that angered poor Cato greatly, for, as he
considered that he belonged to me, he felt the insult to be directed not
only at himself but at the whole family.

"`Golly, massa!' he said to me after a couple or so of attempts that
proved fruitless to ingratiate himself into the confidence of the gang,
`you just wait; I catch dem black raskils nappin' by-an'-bye, you see,
massa.  You see, "speshly dat tarn markiss!"'

"He managed this sooner than he thought, and pretty smartly too, for the
very next day he caught the noble scoundrel, who was his particular
aversion, walking off with a pair of pistols from Captain Alphonse's
cabin.  On Cato coming up and stopping him in the very act, the
`marquis' put down the pistols quickly, saying in his off-hand manner
that he was merely examining the locks, remarking how well they were
made.  `But,' said Cato, `guess he no bamboozle dis chile!'

"The following day, sirs, was the seventh of November, last Friday, that
awful, that terrible day!

"Cato, who had been away forward early in the morning to see about our
breakfast, came back aft with a terrified face.

"`Yay, massa,' said he, `guess dose tam niggars up to sumfin'!  I'se
hear um say dey smell de lan' an' de time was 'rive to settle de white
trash, dat what dey say, an' take ship.  One ob de tam raskel see me
come out of gully, an' say cut um tongue out if I'se tell youse, massa!'

"Of course on hearing this I put Captain Alphonse immediately on his
guard, and we locked up all the spare arms and ammunition until we
should require the same, excepting our own revolvers and three other
pistols, which we served out to the two mates and the boatswain, all of
whom were good men and brave Frenchmen.  Monsieur Boisson, when he was
asked if he would have one, shrugged his shoulders and said he was a
simple passenger, he did not understand fighting--it was not his affair;
while little Mr Johnson said he was an Englishman and preferred using
his fists.  Don Miguel had a pistol of his own.

"Jingo!  The emergency we dreaded came soon enough, sir; indeed, sooner
than we expected, and it was fortunate we had been forewarned!

"It was just after the noontide hour, I recollect that well, for Captain
Alphonse had just taken the altitude of the sun to ascertain our
position, when, as he came up from his cabin where he had gone to
consult his chronometers and work out `the reckoning,' as you sailors
call it, that that black devil the `marquis' mounted the poop with a
simpering and fawning air.

"`Ah well, captain,' said he, with a very polite bow, `where do you make
us out to be, monsieur?  Near the Bermudas yet?'

"`My word, yes,' replied Captain Alphonse.  `We are some ten leagues or
so the westward of the islands, but we're bearing up now, as you see, to
reach them.'

"`And what time, monsieur,' said the `marquis,' speaking louder so that
some of the other niggers who were on the deck below could hear what he
said.  `Do you think it will be possible for us to land?  My companions
and myself, monsieur, as you can well imagine, are most anxious to get
ashore as soon as possible, so that we may procure a ship to take us on
to Havana.'

"`But, yes, your anxiety is natural enough,' responded poor Captain
Alphonse, suspecting nothing from this.  `I hope to approach near enough
to Port Saint George to put you ashore some time in the afternoon.'

"`_Ohe_, below there!' cried out the Haytian in reply to this,
addressing his companions in the waist, who, I noticed, were gradually
edging themselves more and more aft.  `Do you hear that, my brave boys?
We are going to land at last.  Get the boat ready!'

"This was evidently a signal, for he shouted out the last words in a
still higher key than that in which he had been speaking.

"`You need not hurry, my friend!' said the captain, surprised at this
order and smiling at the Haytian's impulsiveness, as he thought it.
`There will be plenty of time for lowering the boat when we come in
sight of land.'

"`I think differently, monsieur,' rejoined the other, scowling and
assuming an arrogant tone for the first time.  `I say the time is
_Now_!'

"This he yelled out at the top of his voice.

"Instantly the gang of blacks made a rush at the poop on both sides at
once, and Captain Alphonse clutched at his revolver, which he had in his
pocket, but was unable to get it out in time.

"Mine, however, was in my hand and ready cocked."

"Houly Moses!" ejaculated Garry O'Neil, his Irish blood making him all
attention now at the mere mention of fighting.  "I hope ye let 'em have
it hot, sor!

"Guess I did!" replied Colonel Vereker grimly, dropping unconsciously
into his native vernacular, which up to now he had almost seemed to have
forgotten from his long residence amongst a Spanish-speaking race.  "You
may bet your bottom dollar on that, sir!  I aimed at that scoundrel the
`marquis,' but he jumped backward in his fright and his foot catching in
one of the ringbolts, he tumbled right over the poop-rail on to the deck
below; the shot I had intended for him dropping the black pilot, his
constant companion, and who was invariably behind him.  _He_ dropped
down as dead as a herring!

"Don Miguel, who luckily had just come up from the saloon, being handy
with his revolver from the rough times he had experienced, like myself,
in Venezuela, settled another darkie; while little Johnson, the
Englishman, caught up a long hand-spike, bigger than himself, and with
it knocked down two of the Haytians to his own cheek.

"Madame Boisson, meanwhile, was screaming for her husband, her brave
Hercules, to come to the rescue; but the `brave Hercules' had locked
himself in his cabin, as my little Elsie told me afterwards; for
fortunately the poor child was not feeling well and I had desired her to
remain below during the hot noontide heat of the sun; and, she also
said, she could hear him crying and sobbing and calling down
imprecations on everybody, including `my wife' and himself for both
being in such a position, Madame Boisson hammering at the door all the
time, and, after finding he would not reopen to her appeal for help,
apostrophising him as a coward! a pig!

"During this time we were pretty busy on deck, the second mate,
Basseterre, and another French seaman, who was with him in the crossjack
yard, having come down from aloft to our assistance.  Captain Alphonse
got his revolver out, when he and Don Miguel and I giving them a volley
altogether, and the others supporting us with what weapons they had, we
rushed the rascals off the poop quicker than they came up, the lot
returning to the forecastle along with the `marquis,' who, I was very
glad to see, had cut his face considerably by his tumble.

"Captain Alphonse thereupon, seeing the coast clear, sang out for Housi,
his second officer, and the boatswain, who he thought were away forward,
to come up aft and join us, so that we might all be together, but
instead of these men, Cato, my own black servant ran up the poop-ladder
and told us in much trepidation that Monsieur Housi, with the boatswain
Rigault and one of the French sailors, were imprisoned in the forepeak,
while the two white sailors and the steward were hard and fast in the
main hold, whither they had descended to get some provisions, the
mutineers slipping on the hatchway cover over them, on the `marquis,'
that devil, giving the signal!"

"Ah, my poor fellows!" cried Captain Alphonse.  "That, then, means there
are only ourselves left.  Good heavens!  What shall we do?"

"Why, hoist a signal of distress," I suggested at once.  "We are near
Bermuda, on the cruising ground of the English men-of-war; and as these
scoundrels have no friends or assistance, I daresay we'll be able to
hold out here until some vessel bears up to our aid!"

"`Good, my friend,' replied Captain Alphonse, who with Basseterre, the
second mate, and Don Miguel, remained to keep guard with their
revolvers, both seated on top of the skylight hatchway, which commanded
the approaches to the poop by way of the ladders, while I, with the last
of the white sailors, ran aft.  Then I called out, `Hoist the French
flag!'

"I knew that the locker with the flags was in the wheel-house, close to
the taffrail, and there being no one to interfere with us, the negro who
had been attending the helm having bolted the moment I pulled out my
revolver at the first alarm, the traitor flying to join the other
mutineers, my sailor and I soon ferretted out an old ensign, the
Tricolour; when, binding it on to the signal halliards, we hoisted it
about half-way up the peak of our spanker, whence it could best be seen
by a passing ship."

"Did you know what that signal meant, colonel?" said Captain Applegarth
in an inquiring tone, "that you had a death aboard, eh?"

"Si, senor.  Oh yes, of course," repeated the colonel, correcting
himself almost as soon as he spoke for his lapse again into the Spanish
tongue.  "There were half a dozen dead Haytians there, whom, by the way,
Captain Alphonse and I presently pitched over the side!  But, beyond
that, sir, I believe all sailors regard a flag hoisted in that way,
`half-mast high,' as it is termed, to be a signal of distress!

"Without doubt, sir," answered the skipper.  "I was only testing your
nautical experience, that's all!"

"I am glad then, I did not make a blunder about it, as I thought I had
done from your question," returned Colonel Vereker, quite seriously, not
noticing that the skipper was only poking fun at him in his way and did
not mean anything beyond a bit of chaff.  "Well, sir, after hoisting the
flag the French sailor and I seized the opportunity to lash the helm
amidships so as to keep the _Saint Pierre_ on her course, for we could
not spare him to do the steering, and Captain Alphonse and Don Miguel,
with the plucky little Englishman and myself, had all our work to do
watching the mutineers with our revolvers!

"After a time, as the rascals kept pretty quiet in their part of the
ship, and as my poor little daughter Elsie had been a long time now shut
up below, I thought she might come up on the poop to get a breath of
fresh air while it was still light; there being no fear of the blacks
assailing us again so long as they knew we could see to shoot straight
and had our weapons handy!

"So I sent Cato down to fetch her on deck, and she came up the next
moment, all full of curiosity and alarm, as you may imagine, the little
one wanting to know what had occurred; for the reports of my revolver
and the subsequent stillness had occasioned her great fright, Madame
Boisson and her husband, the `brave Hercules,' being but poor
comforters.

"All at once, while I was explaining to her about the flag, telling her
that we had hoisted it in order to summon any passing ship to our
assistance, she suddenly went to the side and looked over the bulwarks
towards the north.

"The next moment she gave vent to a cry of joy.

"`Oh, my father,' she suddenly exclaimed.  `You have only just hoisted
the flag in time.  There's a big steamer!  Look, look! there it is, and
coming up to help us!'

"`Where? where?  Where is it?  I cannot see it.  Nonsense, Elsie; you
are dreaming, my child!'  I said, looking out eagerly to where she
pointed, but could see nothing.  `There's no ship there, little one!'
and I felt angry at the false alarm.

"`But, my father, you are wrong,' still insisted the child, as positive
as you please.  `I can see the vessel there in the distance quite
plainly.  See how the black smoke comes puffing out of the chimneys.'

"I laughed at this.

"`Little darling,' said I, `there was no ship, and there are no
"chimneys" on board ships at sea.  Sailors call them funnels, my dearest
one.'

"She pretended to pout on my thus catching her tripping in her talk.

"`Well, my father,' said she, with a shrug of her shoulders, as is her
habit sometimes, `I may be wrong about the chimneys, but I am not wrong
about seeing a ship.  Why, my father, there she is now, coming closer
and closer, and quite near; so near that I can see--yes, I can see--I am
quite sure--a big boy there.  Look, look, father, dear!  There he is in
front of the smoke.  He has quite a pleasant face.'

"Elsie turned in my direction as she spoke, and, though I was still
gazing all the while, I could see nothing, and I was vexed, very vexed
with my little girl for her persistency in the matter.

"`Why, it has gone--quite disappeared!' she cried out the instant after,
on rushing to the side and looking over.  `What does it mean?  Why did
she not come and help if she saw the flag?'

"`You have dreamt it, little one,' I replied shortly, as I had done
before.  `It's a freak of the imagination, and you fancied it, you funny
little woman.'

"But it was a curious incident, though, sir, was it not, at such a time,
with our hearts all full of expectancy and hope?"

Captain Applegarth was greatly excited by the narrative, and so, it may
readily be believed, was I.

He asked abruptly, "When did this happen?  Tell me, colonel, at once.
It is strange--very so!"

The other looked up with surprise, while Mr Stokes stared at him with
wonder, and the Irishman opened his big blue eyes wide to the full.

"I have already told you, sir," replied Colonel Vereker very quickly.
"As I told you before, it was the seventh of November--last Friday."

"Yes; but I mean what time of the day, sir?"

"Oh, I should think about five o'clock in the afternoon.  Perhaps a
little later, as the sun was going down, I recollect, at the time."

I could not restrain my astonishment at this.

"It must be the very ship I saw!"  I thought to myself.

"Is the young lady slight in figure, and has she long golden-coloured
hair hanging loose about her head, sir?"  I eagerly asked, almost
breathless in my excitement.  "And, tell me too, did she have a large
black Newfoundland or retriever dog by her side that same evening, sir?"

Colonel Vereker seemed even more astonished by this question of mine
than I had been by his reply to Captain Applegarth the moment before.

"My brave young sir," said he, using this somewhat grandiloquent form of
addressing me, I suppose, in remembrance of the slight service I had
done him by swimming with the line to the drifting boat when we picked
up him and his companion.  "My little Elsie is tall and slight for her
age, and her hair is assuredly of a golden hue, ah, yes! like liquid
sunshine; though, how you, my good young gentleman, who, to my
knowledge, can _never_ have seen her face to face in this life, can know
the colour of her hair or what she is like, I must confess that passes
my comprehension!"

"But the dog, sir?"

"That is stranger still," remarked Colonel Vereker.  "I had forgotten to
mention that I brought with me on board the _Saint Pierre_ from my old
home at Caracas a splendid Russian wolf-hound, as faithful a creature as
my poor negro servant Cato.  His name is Ivan, and he is now, I
sincerely hope and trust, guarding my little darling girl, as I would
have done if I had remained with her, for not a living soul would dare
to touch her with him there.  Ivan would tear them limb from limb first.
He is a large greyish-black dog, with a rough shaggy coat, and in reply
to your enquiry, I must tell you he _was_ on the poop of the ship, by
the side of my child, at the very time that she declared she saw that
steamer, which I, myself, could not see anywhere!"

For the moment I was unable to speak.  I was so overcome at this
unexpected confirmation of the sight I had seen on that eventful Friday
night, though I had afterwards been inclined to disbelieve the evidence
of my own senses, as everybody else had done, even the skipper at last
joining in with the opinion of Mr Fosset and all the rest, save the
boatswain, old Masters.  Yes, yes; every one them imagined that I had
dreamt of "the ghost-ship" as they called my vision, and that I had not
seen it at all!

But this statement from the colonel absolutely staggered the skipper,
and he looked from me to the American and back again at me in the most
bewildering manner possible; the old chief, Mr Stokes, and Garry O'Neil
staring at the pair of us with equal amazement.

"By George, the girl and the dog, the girl and the dog.  Why, it's the
very same ship, as you say, Haldane; it must be so, and, by George, my
boy, you were right after all!  By George, you were!" at length
exclaimed the skipper in a voice, the genuineness of whose astonishment
could not be doubted.  "Colonel Vereker, I would not have credited this
had any one told it me and sworn to the truth of it on oath, but the
proof is so strong that I cannot possibly disbelieve it, sir, though it
is to my mind a downright impossibility according to every argument of
common sense.  It is certainly the most wonderful thing that has ever
happened to me, and the most wonderful thing that I have ever heard of
since I have been at sea!"

"Heavens!" cried the other.  "But why?  You surprise me, sir."

"Aye, colonel," rejoined the skipper.  "But I am going to surprise you
more.  Now don't laugh at me, and don't think me an idiot and gone off
my head, sir, when I tell you that this lad, Dick Haldane, here, whether
by reason of some mirage or other I cannot tell, for it's beyond my
understanding altogether, distinctly saw your ship with her signal of
distress, and says he saw your little daughter with the dog by her side,
aboard her, last Friday night at sunset.  More than that, sir, he
described to me at the time, exactly as you have done now, colonel,
everything he saw, even to the very hue of the young girl's hair and the
colour and texture of the dog's coat!  It is altogether marvellous and,
indeed, incredible!"

"Well, but--" said Colonel Vereker slowly, and pausing between every
word as if trying to comprehend it all.  "Why, how is that, sir?"

"Your ship, colonel, must have been more than five hundred miles away
from ours at the time--that is all!"



CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.

BUTCHERED.

"Dios!" exclaimed Colonel Vereker.  "Are you--certain of this, sir?"

Captain Applegarth shrugged his shoulders.

"Ask Mr Stokes here and your doctor there, Mr O'Neil, whether they did
not hear Haldane's yarn about your ship five days ago, sir, before we
ever clapped eyes on you," said he in a slightly aggrieved tone, as if
he thought his word was being doubted.  "Why, colonel, this poor lad was
becoming the butt for everybody's chaff on board on account of it!"

"Gracious!" cried the other.  "This is indeed really wonderful!"

"Aye, colonel, and more than that!  But for the lad seeing this mirage,
or whatever else it was, and telling me about it, we would not have gone
off our course in search of you to render what assistance we could--
yours being the `ship in distress' Haldane reported having sighted to
the southward.  This divergence from our track, sir, took us into the
very teeth of the gale which we encountered later on, that same evening,
and conduced to our breaking down."

"Faith," put in Garry O'Neil, "that's thrue for sure, sor!"

"This breakdown of ours, colonel, led to our drifting to the southward
into the trail of the Gulf Stream," continued the skipper, following up
the strange sequence of events as they occurred, one by one.  "Your
ship--the real ship, I mean--was drifting north and east meanwhile,
carried along by the same current, and then it came about that, although
apparently going in opposite directions and acted on by different
causes, our tracks _crossed each other on the chart last night_--at
least, that is my opinion."

"I see, I see," cried Colonel Vereker quickly, interrupting him, and in
a state of great excitement.  "Thank God!  But for that you would never
have sighted our drifting boat and picked up myself and poor Captain
Alphonse!  Thank God, Senor Haldane saw us in that mysterious way.  It
seems to have been an interposition of heaven to warn you of our peril
and bring you to our aid!"

"Just so, colonel; that's what I think myself now," said the skipper
impressively, taking off his cap and looking upward with a grave
reflective air.  "Aye, and I thank God, too, for putting us in the way
of helping you, with all my heart, sir!"

"Ah!" observed old Mr Stokes, who had remained silent the while.  "The
ways of Providence are as wonderful as they are mysterious!"

There was a pause after this in our conversation which no one seemed
anxious to break till Garry O'Neil spoke.

"Faith, sor, you haven't tould us yit how ye come by this wound in your
leg, an' about that poor chap in yander," he said to the colonel,
nodding his head in the direction of Captain Applegarth's inner state
cabin, where the French captain was lying in his cot.  "Sure, we're
dyin' to hear the end of your scrimmage with those black divvles!"

Colonel Vereker heaved a sigh.

"Well, I ought not to doubt that the good God is watching over my
little, darling daughter after what I have just learnt, my friends,"
said he in a more hopeful tone than his depressed manner indicated,
looking round at us with his large, melancholy, dark eyes.  "I ought not
to despair!"

"Certainly not, sir; I dare say we'll soon overhaul the ship now, for
we're more than an hour and a half in chase of her at full speed,"
remarked the skipper, recovering himself from his fit of abstraction and
looking at his watch to see the time.  "Go on, colonel; go on, please,
and tell us the end of your story."

"There is little more for you to hear, sir," replied the other, settling
himself back in his seat again, after Mr O'Neil had once more dressed
the wound in his leg.  "Before it was dark that terrible night I sent
Elsie below, while Captain Alphonse with myself stayed up on the poop
for the first watch, each of us with a loaded revolver, besides having a
box of cartridges handy on the skylight near by, should we want to
replenish our ammunition.  But the Haytians, sir, had evidently had
enough of us for that evening, making no further attempts to attack us
as the hours wore on.

"They were as watchful as ourselves, though, for as Cato, anon, trying
to creep forwards so as to release the French sailors confined under the
main hatchway, had a narrow escape of his life, a heavy spar being
suddenly let down by the run almost on top of his head when he ventured
out on the exposed deck.  This was at midnight, when the second mate,
Basseterre, and Don Miguel, with the French sailor Duval, relieved
Captain Alphonse and me, taking the middle watch.

"Next morning, however, soon after Captain Alphonse and I, with the
little Englishman, had resumed charge of the poop and the others were
resting--alas, my friends, without my knowledge or sanction, poor Cato
made another attempt to reach the hatchway, which, unfortunately
resulted in his death!

"Hearing Ivan growl and my little daughter cry out as if something had
frightened her, I had gone down to the cabin shortly after daylight to
see what was the matter, cautioning Captain Alphonse, who hardly needed
my caution, not to leave his post for a moment, and not thinking of
Cato, who had disappeared from the top of the companion-way and had gone
below to Elsie--heard her cry, I thought, and gone to her even before
myself.

"He was not in the cabin, however; nor did I find anything much the
matter with my child, who had evidently unconsciously cried out in some
dream she had, Ivan, of course, gushing in sympathy and waking her up.
So, telling Elsie to compose herself and go off to sleep again, as
everything was going on all right and there was nothing to be alarmed
about, beyond the snoring of Monsieur and Madame Boisson at the further
end of the cabin, I, feeling greatly relieved, returned on deck.

"I looked round for Cato at once, naturally, for our forces were not so
strong that one would not be missed, especially such a one as he!

"But my faithful negro was nowhere in sight!  Captain Alphonse said,
too, he had not seen him during my absence below, nor indeed, for some
time prior to my going down to the cabin.

"I then searched the wheel-house aft without discovering him.

"`Cato!'  I called out, `where are you?  Come here immediately!'

"My poor servant did not answer, but that black fiend, the pseudo
`marquis' advanced from the forepart of the deck, sheltering himself,
you may be sure, from my aim in the rear of the windlass bitts, which
were in a line between us.

"`You will have to call louder,' he cried with a mocking laugh like that
of a hyena, and full of devilish glee.  `I assure you, much louder, my
friend, before that spy slave of yours will ever be able to answer you
again!'

"Heavens!  I feared the worst then.  Poor Cato!  They had caught him
reconnoitring.

"`What have you done with him, you son of Satan?'  I yelled out, full of
rage and anger, and with a terrible foreboding.  `If you have hurt a
hair of his head I will make you pay dearly for it, I can tell you, you
fiend!'

"The malicious, murdering wretch only replied to my threat with another
mocking laugh, which his companions echoed, as if enjoying a joke, while
I noticed them dragging at a shapeless mass from the forecastle
forwards.

"`Kick the carrion aft!'  I heard the inhuman brute say to his
followers.  `Let the "white trash" see the dog's carcass!  He will then
believe what I have said, Name of God! and know what is in store for
himself!'

"My God!  Senor Applegarth and you, gentlemen, I can hardly tell you
what followed.  It is all too horrible.

"The sight of what I saw will haunt me to my grave!

"For the shapeless mass I had observed slowly raised itself up from the
deck, and I saw that it was my poor Cato.  The savages had hacked the
unfortunate man to pieces with their knives!

"He recognised me, poor creature, and appeared to try to speak, but only
made an inarticulate noise between a sob and a groan that rings in my
ears now, while the blood gushed from his mouth as he fell forwards,
facing me, dead, huddled up in a heap again upon the deck!

"Those devils incarnate, besides mutilating his limbs, had, would you
believe it, cut out his tongue as they had before threatened, for
warning us of their treachery!"

"God in heaven!" exclaimed Captain Applegarth, stopping in his quick
walk up and down the saloon and bringing his fist down on the table with
a bang that made the glasses in the swinging tray above jump and rattle,
two of them indeed falling over and smashing into fragments on the
floor.  "The infernal demons!  Can such things be?  It is dreadful!"

All of us were equally horror stricken and indignant at the colonel's
terrible recital, even old Mr Stokes waking up and stretching out his
hand to the skipper, as if pledging himself to what he wished to urge
before he spoke.

"Horrible, horrible, sir!" he panted out, his anger taking away his
breath and affecting his voice.  "But we'll avenge the poor fellow and
kill the rascals when we come up with them, won't we, sir?  There's my
hand on it, anyway!"

I did not and could not say anything; no, I couldn't; but you can pretty
well imagine the oath I mentally registered.

Not so Garry O'Neil, though.

The Irishman's face flamed with rage and anger.  "Kill them, sor!" cried
he, springing to his feet from the chair in which he had been seated
alongside the colonel, whose injured limb he had been carefully
attending to again all the while, his reddish beard and moustache
bristling, and his steel-blue eyes flashing out veritable sparks, it
seemed of fire.  "Faith, killin's too good for 'em, sure, the haythen
miscreants!  I'd boil 'em alive, sor, or roast 'em in the stoke-hold,
begorrah, if I had me own way with 'em.  I would, sor, so hilp me Moses,
if all the howly saints, whose names be praised, an' the blessed ould
Pope, too, prayed me to spare 'em.  Och, the murtherin' bastes, the
daymans, the divvles!"

He was almost beside himself in his rage and passionate invective.  So
much so, indeed, that Mr Stokes, despite his own hearty sympathy with
the like cause, looked at the infuriated Irishman in great trepidation,
for his face was flushed, and his hair seemed actually to stand on end,
while his words tumbled out of his mouth pell-mell, jostling each other
in their eagerness to find utterance.

The chief really fancied, I believe, that he had suddenly gone mad, as
he literally fumed with fury.

After a few moments, however, Garry cooled down a bit, restraining
himself by a violent effort, and he turned to his whilom patient with an
apologetic air.

"Faith, sor, I fancied I had that divvle, your fri'nd, the markiss,
sure, be the throat," said he, with a feeble attempt at a grin and
biting his lips to keep in his feelings while he dropped his arms, which
he had been whirling round his head like a maniac only just before.  "By
the powers, wouldn't I throttle the baste swately, if I had hould of him
once in these two hands of mine!"

Colonel Vereker stretched out both his impulsively, and gripped those of
Garry O'Neil.

"Heavens!" he cried, with tears in his eyes.  "You are a white man, sir.
I can't say more than that, and I am proud to know you!"

"Och, niver moind that, colonel," said the Irishman, putting aside the
compliment, the highest the colonel thought he could give.  "Till us
what you did, sure, afther the poor maimed crayture was murthered by
that Haytian divvle.  Faith, I loathe the baste.  I hate him like pizen,
though I haven't sane him yit, more's the pity; but it'll be a bad job
for him when I do clap my peepers on him!"

"I could not do much," said the other, proceeding with his account of
the struggle with the mutineers on board the _Saint Pierre_, "but
Captain Alphonse and myself emptied our revolvers at the scoundrels and
floored three of them before they retreated back into the forecastle;
but the `marquis,' the greatest scoundrel of the whole lot, escaped scot
free, though I fired four shots at him point blank as he dodged behind
the mainmast and windlass bits, keeping well under cover, and mocking my
efforts to get a straight aim.  The villain, I think, bears a charmed
life!"

"Niver you fear, sor," put in Garry, in answer to this remark.  "His
father, ould Nick, is keepin' him for somethin' warm whin I git hould of
him.  Faith, sor, you can bet your boots on that, sure!"

Colonel Vereker smiled sadly at the impulsive Irishman's remark.  He
could see that he had moved every fibre of his feeling heart and warm
nature and that he was following every incident of his terrible story of
atrocities and sufferings with an all-engrossing interest.

"I rushed to the poop-ladder to make for the mocking brute, intending to
grip him by the neck, as you have suggested, sir," said he, "when, by
heavens, I would have choked the life out of his vile carcass!

"But Captain Alphonse prevented me.

"`My God! dear friend,' he cried, catching hold of me round the body in
his powerful arms, so that I could not move a step.  `Remember the
little one, your little daughter, who would have no one to protect her
should these rabble kill you.  Besides, my friend, the good Cato is dead
now, and the useless sacrifice of your life, of both our lives probably,
if you go forwards, and perhaps too the life of the little one, who
cannot even help herself, will never bring back the breath to the brave
lad's body!  No, no, colonel, I promise you,' said he, at the same time
kissing the tips of his fingers and elevating his shoulders, in his
French fashion, `We will do something better than that.  Only wait; be
patient.  We will avenge him, you will see, but I pray you do nothing
rash, for the sake of the little one.'"



CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.

ALL ADRIFT.

"Aye, colonel," sang out the skipper, as if in response to these words
of the French captain, "to avenge him; that's what all of us here have
sworn to do, I know, for I can answer for them as if I were speaking for
myself.  Yes, and so we will, too.  We'll avenge him--the poor fellow
whom they butchered.  We will, by George!"

"Begorrah!" exclaimed Garry O'Neil.  "You can count on me for one on
that job, as I tould ye before, and I don't care how soon we begin it,
cap'en!"

"And me too," put in old Mr Stokes, again becoming very enthusiastic.
"The whole lot must be punished, sir, when we catch them!"

"I thought so," said the skipper, looking round at us and then turning
to the colonel with a proud air.  "You see, sir, we're all unanimous;
for I can answer for this lad Haldane, here, though the poor chap's too
bashful to speak for himself!"

"I know what the gallant youth can do already," said the other, looking
at me kindly as I held up my head like the rest, but with a very red
face.  "Thank you, gentlemen all, for your promises.  Well, then, on my
friend Captain Alphonse putting the matter in the way he did, to make an
end of my story, I held back, and all that day--it was last Saturday--we
remained on the defensive, we five holding the after part of the ship,
and the Haytians and mutineers of our crew the forecastle.  All of us,
though, kept on the watch; they looking out for land, we for help in
response to our signal flag half-mast high.

"But neither party saw what they looked out and longed for; no corner of
land on the horizon gratified the desire of their eyes, no ship hove in
sight to bless ours with the promise of relief!

"The next morning, Sunday, it came on to blow, and our vessel was taken
aback and nearly foundered.  Fortunately, though, the mutineers not
interfering, most of them being seasick forwards, Captain Alphonse and
Basseterre started down into the waist to cast off all the sheets and
halliards they could reach, letting everything fly; whereupon we drove
before the wind and so escaped any mishap from this source, at all
events!

"Probably on account of their prostration from the effects of sea-
sickness, our enemies did not molest us in any way throughout the day;
but towards the morning my little Elsie came up the companion-way in a
state of great terror, saying she heard a sort of scratching in the hold
below, and that Ivan, her dog, was growling as if he smelt somebody
trying to get in, though we could not hear the dog on deck from the
noise of the wind and sea, and a lot of loose ropes and swinging spars
which were making a terrible row aloft.

"I went down at once with her, and without even taking the trouble to
listen I could clearly distinguish the sound of tapping beneath the
cabin deck, despite the confused jabbering of Monsieur Boisson, and the
shrill tones of his wife.

"I knelt down then and put my ear to the planking, Monsieur Boisson
watching me with his bottle-brush sort of hair standing straight up on
end with fright, and Madame, who I thought had more courage than he,
though such, evidently, I now saw was not the case--well, she was
rolling on one of the saloon settees in a fit of hysterics, screaming
and yelling at the top of her voice.

"`Who's there?'  I called out in French.  `Are you one of those
Haytians, or a friend and one of us?  Answer!  I will know who it is
when you speak!'

"`I am a friend!' came back instantly in Spanish.  `Let me out, sir; I
am nearly stifled down here.  The three of us who were locked in the
main hatch have worked through the cargo and broken the after bulkhead,
making our way here, but we can't get out of this, for the trap is
fastened down, sir!'

"It was Pedro Gomez, the steward, who had gone down into the hold with
two of the white sailors just before the outbreak of the mutiny to
obtain some salt pork and other food for the use of the very scoundrels
who had imprisoned them, and who, probably, believed they had all three
died by this time, like poor Cato, only through suffocation, instead of
being murdered as he was!

"Needless to say, I immediately drew back the bolts of the hatchway
cover leading down into the after-hold, which was just under the
flooring of little Elsie's cabin, and released the three, overjoyed not
only at finding alive those whom we had thought dead, but doubly so at
having such a welcome addition to our small force of five--I couldn't
rely upon that coward Boisson--opposed as we were to the thirty, whom
the enemy still mustered, after deducting those we shot.

"Why, with this adventitious aid, we could now attack the cursed
wretches in their stronghold, instead of our merely remaining on the
defensive, waiting for them to assail us, as we had been forced to do
all along!

"I thought it best, however, not to let the Haytian scoundrels know of
this increase to our strength until the morrow, believing that if we
waited till daylight we might be able to take them more completely then
by surprise and ensure a victory; for in the dark we might get mixed up
and, firing at random, hit our friends as well as our foes.  So I went
up above and spoke to Captain Alphonse, who agreed with me about it, and
we planned a pleasant little fete for the morning.

"This broke auspiciously enough, the sun rising on a tolerably calm sea,
while the strong wind of the previous evening had graduated down to a
gentle breeze from the south-west.

"But hardly had we made all our arrangements as to the distribution of
arms and settling our form of attack, when our plans were upset by the
villainous `marquis' advancing aft with a pistol in his hand, supported
by another of the scoundrels, a negro like himself from Port au Prince,
and black as a coal, but a regular giant in size, and who likewise held
a revolver.

"Heavens!  They had previously been without firearms, wherein lay our
superiority in spite of numbers; but these weapons now put us almost on
level terms, notwithstanding the reinforcement we had received.

"`Where could they have got 'em, sir?' said little Mr Johnson to me, he
and Captain Alphonse and myself being in counsel together at the time,
it being the watch below of Don Miguel and Basseterre and the sailor
Duval, all three of whom were asleep in the wheel-house, recruiting for
their night duty.  `They didn't have no firearms yesterday, colonel,
I'll swear.  Do you think they've murdered the mate and bo'sun forrads,
and robbed 'em?'

"As a similar idea flashed through my mind, that devil, the `marquis,'
answered the little Englishman's question as I, too, had feared!

"`Oh! my friend,' he called out, as I covered him with my revolver from
my rampart behind the poop-rail on the top of the ladder, where a roll
of tarpaulin served us for shelter.  `Don't be too handy with your
pistol.  We have got firearms too, now.  Stop a minute.  I have got
something to say to you.'

"`You had better make haste with your speech, then,' said I.  `My finger
is itching to pull the trigger, and you know, to your cost, I'm a dead
shot!'

"`You will not do much good by killing me,' he retorted with that
mocking hyena laugh of his, which always exasperated me so much.  `I
want to tell you that we know you have got three more men with you now
than you had yesterday, for we searched the hold this morning and found
the nest empty and the birds flown.  But recollect, my friend, we can
get to you aft through the cargo, in the same way as those white-livered
wretches have done!'

"`Bah!  I'm not afraid of your threats, you black devil,' I replied,
although my heart went down to my boots at the thought of my darling
child being caught unawares and being left to the mercy of such demons.
`We have scuttled the after part of the ship, and at the least noise
being heard in the hold we will let in the water and drown you all like
rats in a hole, and see how you like that!'

"This idea, which occurred to me on the spur of the instant, evidently
impressed the scoundrel, for I could see a change come over his ugly
face.

"`Let us make a compromise,' he suggested after a pause, during which he
whispered to his companion, the giant negro, both keeping much behind
the mainmast.  `You can take that boat you have there at the stern, the
lot of you, if you like, and leave us the ship.'

"`My word, that's a very good proposal, marquis,' said Captain Alphonse,
coming to my side.  `You won't interfere with us, I suppose, if we go
away and give you absolute power to do what you please with the _Saint
Pierre_, eh?'

"`Assuredly not, my friend; we promise that,' eagerly replied the
scoundrel, deceived by the manner of my poor friend.  `You can take
anything you like of your personal effects too; you and the other
whites.'

"`Ah, but my friend, you are too good!' said Captain Alphonse, firing
quickly as he spoke at the `marquis,' who had incautiously exposed
himself, thinking we had been gulled by his proposal and were ready to
fall into the trap he had cunningly prepared for us.  `Take that, you
pig, for my answer!'

"His revolver gave out a sharp crack, and simultaneously with the
report, the other's pistol fell from his hand, the scoundrel's elbow
being shattered by the shot.

"Ere I could send a shot in the same direction to finish him off, the
big negro, who had accompanied him to the front, instantly dragged back
the `marquis,' howling with rage and pain, behind the shelter of the
mainmast; and then, picking up his revolver for him, the two of them
blazed amongst us pretty securely from that retreat, without, however,
doing any damage to our side.  A bullet of mine, though, flattened the
big negro's nose a little more than Nature had already done for him, and
which did not improve his beauty, as you can well believe.

"We kept on popping away at them whenever we saw we had a shot, the
whole of this day; well, that was only yesterday, but appears ages ago
to me, sirs!  We kept on firing without materially diminishing their
strength, but they only replied feebly to our fire, with an occasional
shot fired at intervals, making up by their shouting and demoniacal
yells for their failure to harm us more effectively.

"From this we became convinced that they were obliged to husband their
ammunition, having no more cartridges beyond those still remaining in
the chambers of the revolvers they were using, which had been loaded
when served out to Monsieur Henri and the boatswain, to whom the weapons
originally belonged.  There was, likewise, little doubt but that the
mutineers had robbed those poor fellows, after murdering them like poor
Cato, in the forecastle, as the little Englishman had surmised.

"Towards sunset, later on in the afternoon--last night that was--Senor
Applegarth, remember, we sighted your vessel in the distance.

"Heavens!  She looked to us in our desperate strait as an angel of mercy
might appear to the spirits of the damned in hell; and, at once, the
thought of abandoning our accursed ship, which that fiend of a black
`marquis' unwillingly suggested, rapidly matured itself into a resolve.

"But our intentions in carrying out this determination were very
different to his, for we believed that, with your help, we should the
sooner be able to overcome the rascally gang, and re-conquer the vessel
we might be compelled, ere long, to surrender, all of us now being
pretty well worn out with the struggle!

"`This is grand! this is magnificent!' cried Captain Alphonse, when I
unfolded this scheme to him; for, sirs, I may say with pardonable pride,
it was my plan entirely.  `It is good tactique to beat the retreat
sometimes in war.  They retreat that they may the more easily advance!'

"Don Miguel was also of a like opinion, and so was the little
Englishman, Mr Johnson, whose snobbishness had by this time been
completely put in the shade by his manly pluck and straightforwardness;
while, as for Basseterre, the mate, and the French sailors, they
implicitly believed all that Captain Alphonse approved of must
infallibly be right!

"Our first idea was to attract your attention without letting the
Haytians see what we were up to, as, to the best of our belief, they had
no inkling of your proximity; so we were puzzling our brains how to let
you learn our need in some quiet way, when little Mr Johnson suggested
our burning a devil, composed of wet gunpowder piled up in the form of a
cone.  This was accordingly done, and the `devil,' when lit, placed on
the top of the wheel-house, all the rest of those around discharging
their revolvers in rapid succession at the rascals on the forecastle to
take off their attention while the firework fizzed and flared up.

"This signal, however, sirs, did not appear to be observed by your
vessel."

"It was, though," interposed the skipper.  "We thought you were burning
a blue light to let us read your name astern, but you were too far off
for that!"

"Ah! we did not know that, and the failure discouraged us," replied the
colonel.  "Still, whether we were observed or not, we noticed your
steamer was lying-to, and we made up our minds to try and reach her if
possible, should we be able to get out of the _Saint Pierre_ before
those rascally blacks got wind of our scheme and tried to prevent our
leaving.

"So we set about our preparations forthwith.

"The four French sailors were ordered to prepare the boat which hung
from the stern davits and to get it ready for lowering, it being now
dark enough to conceal their movements, while Captain Alphonse and
Basseterre kept guard over the approach to the poop on our side, and Don
Miguel and the Englishman defended the other ladder leading up from the
lower deck.

"Leaving these at their respective stations, I went down into the
saloon, accompanied by Pedro Gomez, the steward, to procure some tinned
meats and biscuits, with some barricoes of water and other things to
provision the boat, intending also to warn Monsieur and Madame Boisson
of our contemplated departure; not forgetting also, you may be sure, to
make every arrangement for the safety of my child, who, with the dog,
her constant companion, had remained below with the ex-milliner and her
husband, though these two had retired to their cabin, whence I could not
get them to stir, either by threat of being left behind or any entreaty.
No, they were both as obstinate as mules in their cowardice and foolish
fears!

"Madame declared they had been `betrayed,' and asserted they could `die
but once'; while monsieur, `le brave Hercule,' on his part, said he
`washed his hands of all responsibility.'  It was not his affair, he
considered himself perfectly satisfied, and gave me to understand he
would not interfere on either side, except, I expect, the victorious
one!

"Finding all remonstrances in vain, I was just going to force them away
against their will, when suddenly there came a loud shout from the deck
above, and the hasty tramp of feet overhead, which was at once responded
to by Madame Boisson with a shriek at the top of her voice, while
monsieur cursed everybody in a whining voice.

"Telling Elsie to stop where she was until I returned for her, I rushed
up the companion-way, followed by Pedro Gomez, only to find everything
all but lost!

"The French sailors, it seems, so Mr Johnson told me afterwards in a
few hurried words of explanation, had `got into a fog' over the falls of
the boat they had been sent to lower, and seeing the clumsy way they
were setting to work at the job, both Basseterre and Captain Alphonse
thoughtlessly left their post to show the men the proper way to do the
task ordered.  Alas! though, in a second, while the whole lot of them
all had their backs turned to the Haytians, these demons, grasping the
opportunity in a moment, rushed up on the poop by the port-ladder way,
now unguarded!

"Captain Alphonse, hearing the noise of their approach, faced about,
fronting his foes like a tiger at bay, and drew his revolver from his
belt.

"But, sir, he was too late!

"Ere he could put up his hand to guard himself, for I could see it all
in an instant, as I emerged from the companion-hatchway, the giant
negro, who had abandoned his pistol for a hand-spike, brought down this
fearful weapon with a tremendous thwack on the side of my poor friend's
head with the result you have seen."

"Aye, faith," said Garry O'Neil.  "It must have been a terrible blow,
sure, sor!"

"It was," replied the colonel grimly.  "It knocked him down like a
bullock, and then, before I could interfere, the big brute took up
Captain Alphonse, all bleeding and senseless as he was, but still
breathing, and chucked him into the sea.

"That was the negro's last act, however; for, as he broke into a huge
guffaw of triumph over the ghastly deed, I fired my revolver, the barrel
of which I shoved almost into his mouth and blew his brains out!"

"Hooray!" exclaimed the impulsive Garry O'Neil on hearing this.  "Faith,
I ounly wish, colonel, I had been there with ye.  Begorrah, I'd have
made 'em hop at it, sure, I bet, sor!

"After that," continued the narrator, we had some stiff work for five
minutes or so, but by keeping the skylight between us, the continuous
fire of our four revolvers at such short range proved too much for them,
and we succeeded in driving the blacks off the poop.  The whole lot of
them retreated back to the forecastle, leaving five of their number dead
about the decks, besides half a dozen or so of the others badly wounded;
all of us, fortunately, escaping with only a few slight bruises from
blows from the Haytian's clubs and hand-spikes--the only weapons they
used.

"All save poor Captain Alphonse, that is; for it was only when the coast
was clear of the scoundrels and the poop safe again that I had time to
think of him.

"Pedro Gomez, remaining with Basseterre and one of the sailors, to guard
the port-ladder way with their six-shooters loaded and levelled in
front, commanding all approach aft, in the same way as the mate and poor
Captain Alphonse had done in the first instance, I went off with all
haste to the stern gallery to see what had become of my unfortunate
friend, taking the other three sailors with me, for though taking part
in the general scrimmage when the blacks invaded the poop so
unexpectedly, Don Miguel and Johnson had stuck valiantly to their post
by the starboard rail, and so I had no fear of another surprise on now
proceeding aft.

"It was still light enough to distinguish objects near, and as I looked
over the side, what was my astonishment to see his body yet afloat, not
far from the ship.  Aye, sir, there he was; and, stranger still, as my
eye caught sight of him, the poor fellow, unconsciously, no doubt,
raised one hand out of the dark water with a quick, convulsive action,
just as though he were beckoning to me and imploring me to save him!

"On noticing this--a fact, of course, which showed plainly enough that he
was still alive--without thinking of what I was doing, I jumped on a
projecting bollard and dived from the deck of the ship into the sea.

"I soon rose to the surface, when, swimming up to the almost lifeless
body in a few strokes, I caught hold of a portion of the poor fellow's
clothing and commenced turning it towards the stern of the vessel just
underneath the davits, whence the boat we had been preparing for our
flight was suspended all ready for lowering, and with the French sailors
standing by above.

"`Look sharp!'  I sang out to them from the water.  `Look sharp, there!
Lower away!'

"In their haste and flurry, however, the men mistook my order, and
thinking I had said `cut away,' instead of `lower away,' one of the
fools, who held a cutlass he had caught up to defend himself with when
those infernal niggers rushed at us, the confounded idiot made a
sweeping cut at the falls from which the boat hung, severing them at one
blow!

"Down came the little craft at once with a splash, almost on the top of
me; and though she managed to ship some water through her sudden
immersion, she quickly righted herself on an even keel, right side up."

"By George, I'd have keel-hauled 'em wrong side down!" cried the
skipper, out of all patience at hearing of this piece of gross
stupidity.  "The damned awkward lubbers!"

"Yes, sir; French sailors are not like English ones, nor do they
resemble our American shellbacks, who do know a thing or two!" replied
the colonel.  "Well, gentlemen, to make an end of my story, I may tell
you that I had some difficulty in lifting the body of poor Captain
Alphonse into the boat when I had clutched hold of the gunwale; but
after a time I succeeded in getting him into the bows, rolling him over
the side anyhow.

"Then I tried to get in myself by the stern, and had just flung one of
my legs over when that villain the black `marquis,' catching sight of me
from the forecastle, ahead of which the boat somehow or other had
drifted by this time, fired at me with probably the last cartridge he
had left in his pistol, and which the devil no doubt had reserved for
me."

"Be jabers!" exclaimed Garry O'Neil, unable to keep silent any longer.
"The baste!  An', sure, that's how you came by that wound in the groin,
faith?"

"Yes, sir, doctor.  The shot struck me when I was all of a heap, and
where it went heaven only knows, till you probed the wound and extracted
the bullet.

"I must have tumbled into the boat while in a state of insensibility,
like poor Captain Alphonse, for I do not recollect anything that
occurred immediately after I felt the sting of the shot as I was hit,
and when I came to myself again I was horrified to find I was far away
from the ship, which I could only dimly discern in the distance.

"But this did not daunt me at first, for I thought I should be able to
row alongside again and get taken aboard through one of the stern ports;
but, will you believe it, when I came to search the boat for the oars,
which Basseterre had expressly told those clumsy sailors in my hearing
to be sure to put into the boat the very first thing of all, can you
credit it? lo and behold, not a scull nor oar was in her; not a stick of
any sort or kind whatever!"

"The lubbers!" said Captain Applegarth, indignant again as he paced
backwards and forwards impatiently, casting an occasional hurried glance
at the "tell-tale" suspended from the deck above the saloon table, the
shifting dial of which showed we were now changing course to the
westward.  "The damned lubbers; the damn--"

The colonel here broke in with-- "This discovery, I think, broke my
heart," cried he, heaving a heavy sigh.  "It took the last flickering
gleam of hope away from me, and I sank back again to the bottom of the
boat, appalled and terrified in my mind by the reflections and thoughts,
of what might happen to my darling child and those others whom I had
left on board the _Saint Pierre_, deprived at one fell blow of both
Captain Alphonse and myself.

"When daylight dawned after a night that seemed a century long, so full
of pain and awful thought it was to me, I saw the _Saint Pierre_ low
down on the horizon, to the westward of where I and my poor friend,
Captain Alphonse, were drifting on the desert sea.  The sight of the
ship again, even in the distance, and the warmth of the sun's bright
beams, which made the stagnant blood circulate in my veins once more,
gave me hope and renewed courage, for I recollected and thought that
after all, there were eight white men still left on board the ill-fated
vessel to keep possession of her and defend my little one--eight good
men and true, not counting that dastardly coward Boisson, who was
skulking below!

"But, sir, the wind and tide wafted the _Saint Pierre_ away beyond my
vision; and--and--sirs, the--the end of it all you all know better than
I can tell you!"

"Aye," put in the skipper, "we saw your boat adrift--at least, old
Masters did--I'll give him the credit for that.  Then we picked you up,
and here you are!"

Hardly had the skipper uttered these words, completing the colonel's
story, when Mr Fosset suddenly poked his head through the skylight over
the after end of the saloon, the hatch of which opened out on the deck
of the poop above.

Nor was the first mate merely satisfied with the abrupt intrusion of his
figurehead into our midst, for he rattled the glass of the skylight in
no very gentle fashion at the same time, the better, I suppose, to
attract our attention, though we were all staring open-mouthed at him
already, all startled by his unexpected appearance on the scene.

But he rattled the glass all the same as he looked down upon us, none
the less; aye, all the more, rattled it with a will, frightening us all!

"Hi!  Cap'en, Cap'en Applegarth!" he sang out at the very top of his
voice, as excited as you please.  "That ship's in sight! the ship's in
sight, at last, sir.  She's hull down to leeward about seven miles off!
But we're overhauling her fast now, sir, hand over hand!"



CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.

WITHIN HAIL.

"By George! is that so?" ejaculated the skipper, starting off with a mad
clutch at his cap, which he had thrown off on to a locker close by in
the heat of his excitement during the colonel's yarn.  "I'll be on the
bridge in a jiffey!  Thank God for that news!"

"Hooray!" shouted Garry O'Neil, as we all immediately jumped from our
seats on hearing this joyful intelligence, long though it had been in
coming, even the poor colonel, sliding his bandaged leg off its
supporting chair and standing on his feet, prepared to follow the
skipper on deck without a moment's delay.  "Be the powers!  I knew we'd
overhaul them divvles before sundown!  Faith, an' I tould ye so,
colonel; I tould ye so, you know I did!"

But just then an unexpected interruption arrested us as we all moved
towards the companion-way to regain the deck above.

"Look here, colonel," cried a voice from the skipper's state room aft,
where the commander of the _Saint Pierre_ was supposed to be reposing in
an almost insensible condition.  "Get out of here! you are not worth
being angry with."

"Begorrah, it's your poor fri'nd in there!" said Garry O'Neil to the
colonel.  "What's the poor crayture parleyvooing about, instid of
slaypin' loike a Christian whin he's got the chance?  Sure, I'll have to
stop his jaundering there, or he'll niver git betther!"

"Stay a moment; he's beginning again, poor fellow," remarked the
colonel, holding up his hand.

"Listen!"

"You villains! take that!" called out the Frenchman in a louder key and
in a tone of anger, as if battling with the blacks on board the _Saint
Pierre_ over again; and then, after a pause we heard a piteous cry.  "My
God! they are going to shoot me!  Look!  Look!  To the rescue, colonel,
quickly, quickly, to the rescue."

"Bedad, he's in a bad way entoirely!" said Garry, as he and the colonel,
with myself at their heels, entered the after cabin, where we saw
Captain Alphonse sitting up in the skipper's cot, and gesticulating
frantically.  "What can he be after sayin' now, sor?"

"He is going over the boat scene on the poop of our unfortunate vessel,
when the Haytian blacks, as I told you, made at him and the other sailor
before I rushed up from below, too late to save him, poor fellow!"
explained the colonel.  "He's calling out for help, as I suppose he did
then, though I didn't hear him!"

"It sounds moighty queer, anyhow," continued the Irishman.  "Whisht!
There, he's at it again!  What does that extraordinary lingo mean now?
I can't make h'id nor tale of it, sor!"

"Hoist the flag immediately!  Close furl the main topsail!" exclaimed
the poor wounded man in short jerky sentences, as he sat up there in the
swinging cot, with his hands tearing at the bandage that was bound round
his head, looking as if he had just risen from the dead, and reminding
me of a picture I once saw depicting the raising of Lazarus.  His eyes
were rolling, too, in wild delirium, and after gazing at us fixedly for
a second or two without a sign of recognition on his pallid face, he
fell back prostrate again on the mattress, crying out in a pitiful wail,
"Alas, for the ship!  Too late, too late, too late."

"Heavens!" said the colonel, turning to Garry.  "Can't you do anything
for him?"

"I'll put somethin' coolin' on the dressin', an' that'll make the poor
chap's h'id aisier," replied the other, suiting the action to the word.
"Ice, sure, 'ud be betther; but, faith, there isn't a morsel aboard!"

Whatever he did apply, however, had a quieting influence, and presently,
after tossing from side to side convulsively, Captain Alphonse closed
his great staring eyes and began to snore stertorously.

"Heaven be praised!" cried Colonel Vereker.  "He's sleeping again, now!"

"Faith, an' a good job, too, for him, poor crayture," said Garry.  "He's
in a bad way, I till you, sor! an' he'd betther die aisy whin he's about
it, sure, than kickin' up a row that won't help him."

"What!" returned the colonel.  "Do you think he's going to die?"

"Begorrah, all the docthers in the worrld wouldn't save him!"

"My poor friend, my poor friend!" cried the colonel.  "I will stay with
him then, to the end, so as to soothe his last moments!"

There was evidently a struggle going on in Colonel Vereker's mind
between his desire to do his duty, as he thought, to the dying man, and
his natural anxiety to be on deck participating in all the excitement of
the chase after the runaway ship and the coming fight with the Haytians,
when the black rascals would be called to a final account for all the
misery and bloodshed they had caused.

Garry O'Neil saw this, and pooh-poohed the idea of the colonel remaining
below.

"Faith, there ain't the laste bit of good, sor, in yer stoppin' down
here at all, at all," said he in his brisk, energetic way.  "The poor
chap won't be afther stirrin' ag'in for the next two hours or more; an'
if he does, bedad, he won't ricognise ye, or any one ilse for that
matther!"

"But, sir doctor--"

"Houly Moses!  I till you, colonel, there ain't no use in your stoppin'
another minnit!" impatiently cried the good-natured Irishman,
interrupting his half-hearted expostulator.  "Jist you clear out of this
at once, an' go on deck an' say the foightin' with those murtherin'
bleyguards.  I'll moind my paychant now till that old thaife Weston's
finished all the schraps lift in the plates an' bottles from lunch; an'
thin, faith, he shall take charge of him an' I'll come up too, to say
the foon.  Now, be off wid ye, colonel, dear; you'll say the poor chap
ag'in afther the rumpus is over.  Dick Haldane, me darlint, hind the
colonel the loan of yer arrum, alannah.  There, now off ye both go.
Away wid ye!"

So saying, he fairly pushed us out of the cabin; and, the colonel
limping by my side and using my shoulder as a crutch, as he had
previously done, we both went up the companion-ladder, and gained the
poop.

The scene here presented a striking contrast to that we had just left,
the fresh air, bright sun, and sparkling sea all speaking of life and
movement, in exchange for the stuffy atmosphere of the darkened saloon
and its association of illness and approaching death.

A stiff breeze was blowing now from the southward, and running, as we
were, to the northward, right before it, the skipper had ordered all our
square sails forward to be set so as to take every advantage of the
wind, in addition to our steam-power, the old barquey prancing away full
speed ahead, with her topsails and fore canvas bellied out to their
utmost extent, their leech lifting occasionally with a flicker as she
outran the breeze and the clew-gallant blocks rattling as the sheets
slackened and grew taut again, while the wind hummed through the canvas
aloft like a thousand bees buzzing about the rigging.

The black smoke, too, was rushing up the funnel and whirling in the air
overhead, uncertain which direction to take, from the speed of the
vessel inclining it to trail away aft, while the stiff southerly breeze
blew it forwards; so we carried it all along with us, hung up above our
dog vane like an awning as we careered onwards, raising a deep furrow of
swelling water on either side as we cut through the dancing sunlit
waves, and leaving a long white wake astern that shone through the blue,
far away behind in the distance, to where sea and sky melted into one,
far away on the horizon line.

Old Masters, the boatswain, was on the poop when the colonel and I came
up from below, in the very act of hauling in the patent log to ascertain
our speed.

"Well," said I, as he looked at the index of the ungainly thing, which
is something of a cross between a shark hook and a miniature screw
propeller.  "What's she doing, bo'sun?"

"Doing?  Wot she's a-doing on, sir?" he replied, repeating my own words
and mouthing them over with much gusto.  "Why, sir, she's going sixteen
knots still, and the bloomin' old grampus has been keeping it up since
four bells.  She carries the wind with her, too; for jist as we bore up
north awhile ago, astern the chase, I'm blessed if the breeze didn't
shift round likewise to the south'ard, keepin' astern of us as before!"

"Where is the chase?"  I asked, not being able to see forwards on
account of the swelling foresail and other intervening objects.  "I
suppose she's right ahead, eh?"

"No, sir.  Jist come here alongside o' me at the taffrail," said he.
"Now foller my finger, sir.  Look, there she is, two points off our
starboard bow.  She was hull down jist now, but we're rising her fast,
sir.  See, there she be right under the foreyard there!"

I looked in the direction he indicated, and could very faintly in the
distance see something white like a sail, almost out of sight on the
ocean ahead.

"But, Masters," said I, having no glass with me to bring her nearer, and
seeing she was too far off for me to distinguish her with the naked eye,
"are you certain she's the same craft?"

"As sartin, Master Haldane," he answered solemnly, "aye, as sartin as
that when we goes aboard her, as go aboard her we must, we shall both be
a-goin' to our death!  That's the `ghost-ship,' Master Haldane, as you
and I've seed three times afore.  May I die this minute if she ain't!"

"Die! don't talk such nonsense, Masters."

"It ain't no nonsense, Master Haldane," he retorted, and looking the
picture of misery and unhappiness.  "That there ship means no good to
you nor me, nor to none of them as seed her afore, I knows.  It's her,
sure enuff.  No mortal ship could sail on like that continually since
Friday, right afore the wind, and still allers be a-crossin' our hawser,
though her canvas be tore to ribbings and never a man aboard, as we've
seed.  It ain't nat'ral, nohow.  Aye, she be the `ghost-ship' and no
mistake,--and God help us all!"

I noticed at the moment a telescope lying on the top of the saloon
skylight, which Mr Fosset must have left behind him in his haste, when
he came from the bridge to hail the skipper and then hurried back to his
post; so, quickly catching up the glass, I scanned the distant sail,
which grew more perceptible every minute.

Yes, there was no doubt about it.

She was a full-rigged ship running before the wind, but going a bit
every now and then off her course as if under no proper guidance or
management, while all her sails were torn and hanging anyhow, and her
spars and rigging apparently at sixes and sevens, as though she had been
terribly mauled by the weather.

"For Heaven's sake, tell me!" cried the colonel, who had approached me
unobserved while I was looking through the telescope.  "Tell me, is she
there?  Can you see her?"

"Yes, sir," said I.  "I can see her, and it's the same ship I saw the
other night.  It is the _Saint Pierre_!"

"Ha!" he exclaimed, his black eyes flashing into a passion that made him
forget his lameness, as he strode to the side of the vessel, where,
resting one hand on the rail, he shook the other menacingly at the ill-
fated craft, now with her hull well above the horizon.  "Ah, you black
devils, we'll settle you at last!"

Meanwhile, the skipper, who had gone up to join Mr Fosset on the bridge
after leaving us below so suddenly, was making his way aft again; and on
the colonel turning round from the rail he found him at his back,
looking over his shoulder at the ship we were approaching.

The skipper was all agog with excitement.

"By George!" he exclaimed.  "We're closing on her fast now, colonel!"

"How soon, Senor Applegarth, do you think we'll be before we're
alongside her?"

"In about half an hour at the outside, sir, unless something gives way.
We would have been up to her before if she had been lying-to; but she's
going ahead too, like ourselves, and not making bad way either,
considering the state she's in aloft, and her yawing this way and that.
It is wonderful how she keeps on!"

"Oh dear! oh dear! she's possessed, as your companion here said just now
to the young Senor Haldane."

"Oh, you mustn't mind what the bo'sun says," observed the skipper.
"He's chock full of the old superstitions of the sea, and makes
mountains out of molehills."

"The deuce! he's not far wrong about the _Saint Pierre_, though, for if
ever a ship had the devil aboard, I'm sure she has, in the shape of that
villainous black `marquis'!"

"Then the sooner the better for us to see about `Scotching' your de'il,"
cried the skipper with a laugh that meant business, I knew.  "I'm now
going to call the hands aft and prepare for the fight, and they shall
have it hot, I can tell you," said he.

"Have you got arms enough for them, sir?  Those rascals will make a
stubborn resistance, and there's a big lot of them still left in the
ship, remember!"

The skipper laughed outright at this.

"Lord bless you, colonel!" said he, "the steamers of our line are fitted
out in their way very like men-of-war; and I have enough rifles and
cutlasses in the arm chest below to rig out more than twice the number
of the crew we carry, besides revolvers for all the officers.  This,
however, will be short and sharp work, as we're going to run your black
devils by the beard; so I shall only serve out cutlasses."

"But you'll spare me a revolver, Senor Applegarth?  I left mine, as you
are aware, behind me," said he with a smile, "and I should like to have
another shot or two at my friend, the `marquis'!"

"Aye, aye, colonel, you shall have one, and a good one too, and so shall
all those who know how to use a pistol properly; but, for close hand-to-
hand fighting, I prefer cold steel myself."

Colonel Vereker joined in the skipper's grim chuckle, which suited his
mood well.

"Yes, sir, that's true," he rejoined; "but a revolver isn't to be
sneezed at, all the same!"

"No colonel, your leg'll bear witness to that," said the skipper as he
turned to me.  "Run down quickly, Haldane, to the arm chest in my state
room--here are the keys--and pick out a dozen or so cutlasses and
boarding-pikes, with a revolver apiece for all on the quarter-deck, and
half a dozen rounds of ammunition.  You can get Weston to help you to
bring the lot up here.  Look smart; I want to serve them out at once, as
we're now coming up with the chase, and there's no time to lose."

Down I scuttled into the saloon with the skipper's bunch of keys; and,
calling the steward to help me, went into the after cabin, where Garry
O'Neil still remained, wetting the bandage round the head of the French
captain, and doing it too with greater delicacy of touch than the most
experienced and flippant of hospital nurses.

Garry was delighted when I told him what I came about.

"Houly Moses!" he ejaculated; "why that's the virry job for me, sure.
Here, Weston, you ugly thaife of a son of a gun, come here!  There's
going to be some rare foightin' on deck prisintly; an' as I know ye
don't loike to be afther spoilin' that beautiful mug o' yours, you jist
sit down there, alannah, an' moind this poor chap here till I come below
ag'in, whilst I help Musther Haldane, too, with thim murtherin' arms
that give one a could chill, faith, to look at, bad cess to 'em."

He gave me a sly wink as he said this, which was unperceived by Weston,
who accepted the proposed change of duty with an alacrity that showed he
had no stomach for warfare procedure, and Garry and I very speedily took
up a bundle of weapons each on to the poop, laying them down close
beside the skipper, who stood against the rail.

"Ah, doctor," said the colonel, who was sitting down near by on the
skylight hatchway, resting himself before the battle should begin, on
seeing Garry come up the companion, "how's my poor friend now?"

"Faith, he's still unconshus," replied he, handing him a big revolver
with a cartridge belt attached; "ah, sure, I 'spect he'll remain so,
too, colonel, till you've had toime to polish off the rest of thim
schoindrels we're afther.  Indade, it's going off loike that the poor
crayture will be, I'm afeard, whin it comes to the ind.  I don't think
he'll ayther spake or move ag'in in this loife."

But Garry was mistaken in this diagnosis of his, as events turned out;
but, ere he could say another word, just then as the colonel was going
to make a reply to him, the skipper hammered on the deck with a marling-
spike to attract attention and give a hail at the very top of his voice
that made us all jump, it was so loud and unexpected.

"Ahoy there, forrad!" he shouted in stentorian tones that rang fore and
aft like a trumpet.  "Bo'sun, send the hands aft."

"Say, cap'en," sang out Mr Fosset from the bridge, "shall I call up the
fellows down below in the stoke-hold, sir?"

"Aye.  Ring the engine-room gong.  I want every man-jack on deck that
Mr Stokes can spare; tell him so."

While old Masters was sounding his boatswain's pipe and while busy feet
were tramping aft, the men were beginning to cluster in the waist
immediately below the back of the poop.  And here Captain Applegarth
stood stern and erect like an old lion, his cap off and his wavy grey
hair fluffed out over his head by the wind.  While this was happening we
could hear the distant sound of the engine-room bell, and then there
came a hail from Mr Fosset.

"Mr Stokes is sending up every one from below, sir," yelled out the
first mate.  "He says he can manage by himself now that we're nearly up
to the chase, with the help of a couple of the other firemen; and the
engineers and stokers, the whole lot of them in a batch, have
volunteered to come on deck and join the boarding party."

"That's your sort, my hearty," cried the skipper enthusiastically,
looking down at the sea of excited faces below gazing up expectantly at
his, awaiting the stirring words they knew to be coming, all having got
wind of the approaching fray.  "Now, men, I have summoned the lot of you
aft because--well, because I've got something to say to you."

"Bully for you, old man," exclaimed one of the men, amidst a grand roar,
while I could distinguish, distinctly above the other voices of the
crew, Accra Prout, the mulatto cook's laugh as he called out
approvingly, "Golly, dat so, sonny!"

"Heavens!" ejaculated Colonel Vereker, seemingly, like myself, to
recognise the voice at once, "who's that?" said he sharply.

Accra Prout, who stood a head taller than any other of the men clustered
round him, caught sight of the colonel as the latter cast his eyes
downwards, rising from his seat and coming to the side of the skipper;
and the mulatto's eyes grew as large as saucers, while his eyeballs
rolled in delight and his wide mouth extended itself from ear to ear.

"Bress de Lor'!" he cried out, with all a darkey's emphatic enthusiasm,
breaking into a huge guffaw that was almost hysterical--"bress de Lor'!
it's de massa; it's Mass' Vereker from de plantation, for surh!"

"Yes, it's me, myself, sure enough, Prout; and I'm right glad to see
you," said the colonel, equally delighted.  "There, Senor Applegarth,
didn't I tell you any of my old Louisianian hands would like to see me
again, in spite of what I said about those infernal niggers who seized
our ship?"

"Aye, you did, colonel, you did," replied the skipper, waving his hand
in the air; "but never mind that now--I'm going to speak to the crew."

"Now, me bhoys, altogether," cried Garry O'Neil, looking over the top of
the booby-hatch over the companion-way, "three cheers for the cap'en,
horray!"

"Horray!" roared the lot below with a kindred enthusiasm, "Horray!
Horray!"

"We're almost within hail now of the chase, sir," sang out Mr Fosset
from the bridge when the echo of the last deafening cheer had died away;
"I'm going to slow down, so that we can sheer up alongside."

"That's just what I was waiting for," said the skipper in answer to
this.  "Now, men, you see that ship ahead of us?"

"Aye," called out the foremost hand, who had before spoken--the usual
leader, and the wit of the fo'c's'le--"the ghost-ship, cap'en."

"Well, ghost-ship, devil-ship, or whatever she may be, my lads, we're
going to board her and rescue a young lady, a child in age, the daughter
of my friend, Colonel Vereker here, and a lot of white men like
yourselves, who are now at the mercy of a gang of black demons who have
murdered the rest of the passengers and crew and taken possession of the
vessel.  Are you going to stand by me, lads?"

His answer was another deafening cheer, heartier and louder even than
the first.

"Ah, I thought I could reckon on your help," cried the skipper in a tone
of proud satisfaction, glancing round at the colonel.  "I have got your
tools handy for you, too, my lads; and if you will come up to the poop
in single file by the port-ladder, going down again by the starboard
gangway, each shall be supplied in turn.  Mr O'Neil, please serve out
the cutlasses and boarding-pikes.  Now, my men, way aloft there!  Single
file, and no crushing, mind, and we'll get the job done all the
quicker!"

Ere he had finished speaking the arming of the men had already begun,
and within a very few minutes the cutlasses and long boarding-pikes had
all been distributed, every man having some weapon.

"Now, bo'sun, pipe the men to their stations," sang out the skipper, who
appeared to have already matured his plan of action.  "Starboard watch
forrad, port watch aft, and all the stokers and firemen amidships, under
the bridge.  Have a couple of hands, too, in the forechains, with a
hawser and grapnel, ready to make fast to the ship when we come
alongside her."

"Aye, aye, sir," hailed back Masters.  "Starboard watch ahoy!  Away
forrads with you along o' me!"

Our engines had already slackened speed; and, the helm being put down,
we came up to the wind, to leeward of the ship and not a half cable's
length away from her, broadside-on.

"Stand by there, forrad," shouted the skipper.  "Ship ahoy there!
Surrender, or we'll run you aboard."

A wild savage yell came back in reply from a number of half-naked
negroes who were mustered on the after part of the vessel, as well as on
the forecastle, not a single white man being visible, while her
Tricolour flag--so conspicuous before, and which I fancied having seen
but half an hour or so previously when looking at her through the
telescope--was now no longer to be seen.

Could our worst fears have been realised?

Another savage yell almost confirmed the thought.  "Heavens!" exclaimed
Colonel Vereker, rendered almost frantic with grief and excitement, and
noticing the appalling evidences of the Haytians' triumph, while we
stared aghast at each other.  "My poor darling child, and those brave
fellows I left behind, where are they all; where are they?  For God's
sake find them!  Alas! alas! those black devils have murdered them all."



CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR.

A FREE FIGHT.

But hardly had the colonel given vent to his despairing exclamation,
expressive alike of his own dismay and ours also, when the bitter
feeling of disappointment at being too late, that had for the moment
weighed down upon us, crushing our enthusiasm, was suddenly banished and
the hearts of all filled with renewed hope and fierce determination.

We were not too late after all!

No.

For as we gazed in blank surprise at the howling mob of Haytians, who
appeared to have gained complete possession of the _Saint Pierre_, and
were dancing about and gesticulating in their wild, devilish fashion,
calling out to us with wild derisive cries, as if mocking at our efforts
to save those whom they had already butchered, a bright flame of fire
flashed out from the skylight hatch of the doomed ship, followed by the
sharp crack of a revolver; and at the same instant one of the half-naked
devils massed on the poop leaped into the air and then fell on his face
flat on the deck, uttering a yell of agony as he writhed his limbs in
the throes of death.

An exulting cheer broke from all of us in the _Star of the North_ on
seeing this, every man gripping his weapon tightly, and setting his
teeth hard, ready for action, as the two vessels sidled up nearer and
nearer.

Then if word were wanted to spur us on, the skipper gave that word with
a vengeance!

"By George! my lads, we're in time yet to save the child and our other
white comrades!" he cried out loudly, at the same time jumping into the
mizzen rigging, where he hung on the shrouds with one hand, while in the
other he held a cutlass which he had hastily clutched up, whirling it
round his lionlike old grey head.  "See, men, they've retreated to the
cabin below, where they're fighting for their lives to the last.  Tumble
up, my lads, and save them, like the British sailors that you are!
Boarders, away!"

As he said this, Mr Fosset, who was still on the bridge conning the old
barquey, having at once ported our helm, on the skipper holding up his
cutlass, taking this for a signal, we came broadside-on, slap against
the hull of the other ship with a jolt that shook her down to her very
kelson, rolling a lot of the darkies, who were grouped aft, off their
legs like so many ninepins.  At the same moment, before the two craft
had time to glide apart, both having way upon them, old Masters forward,
and Parrell, the quartermaster, who was stationed in the waist of our
vessel, just under the break of the poop, hooked on grapnels, with
hawsers attached, to the weather rigging of the _Saint Pierre_; and ere
the skipper's rallying cry and our answering cheer had died away,
drowned by the voice of our escaping steam rushing up the funnels on the
engines coming to a stop, now that their duty for the nonce was done,
there we were moored hard and fast together, alongside the whilom
dreaded "ghost-ship!"

Then with another wild hurrah that made the ringbolts in the deck
jingle, and swamped the sound of the rushing steam and everything, the
men, closing up behind the skipper, who led us so gallantly over the
side, far in advance, brave-hearted old sea dog that he was, bounded
across the intervening bulwarks, and were the next instant engaged in
all the maddening excitement of a hand-to-hand tussle with the black
villains, pistol shot, sword cut and pike thrust coming in turn into
play, amid a babel of hoarse shouts of rage and cheers and savage
yells--mingled with the swish of blows from capstan bars, the loud
reports of revolvers fired off at close range and the heavy thud of
falling bodies as they tumbled headlong on the deck ever and anon,
accompanied by some cry of agony or groan of pain too deep for
utterance.

Aye, it was a discord of devilry that must have appeared a veritable
pandemonium to the spirits of the air, were any such looking down on the
wrathful, sanguinary scene from the clear blue heavens above, all
radiant now with a golden glow that came from the west, where the
declining sun was just beginning to sink below the horizon!

"Fuaghaballah, may the divvle take the hindmost!" cried Garry O'Neil,
leaping after the skipper on to the poop of the _Saint Pierre_, a
revolver in his right fist and a cutlass in his left, laying about him
with a will amongst the mass of infuriated negroes who tried to resist
his rush, clutching at his legs and arms in vain, for he seemed
bewitched.  "Come on wid ye, me darlints, an' let us make mincemate of
'em, faith!"

I followed in his wake, but a crowd of our men, some of whom had served
in the navy and were accustomed to the work, pushed me on one side,
going into the thick of the fight themselves, and all was such a jumble
of confusion that I hardly knew where I was until "a pretty tidy tap on
the top of my head," as Garry would have said, brought back my
recollection in a very effective manner, when I found myself right in
front of an extremely ugly-looking negro, whose appearance was not
improved by a slice having been taken off the side of his face, and from
which blood was streaming down all over his black body, and that
destitute of clothing.

I noticed that this gentleman had a long piece of wood like a boat
stretcher in his hands, with which he had evidently given me the gentle
reminder I have mentioned, being brought to this conclusion by the fact
that the rascal had it raised ready to deal another blow.

Putting up my arm instinctively to ward off the impending stroke that I
saw coming, I cocked and levelled my revolver at him in an instant.

Before I could fire, however, some one behind me shoved me aside again,
and crash came a heavy capstan bar down upon the negro's skull, which I
heard crack like a walnut shell as he dropped dead on his face.

"Golly, Mass' Hald'n," exclaimed Accra Prout, our stalwart mulatto cook,
whose sinuous arm had thus incontinently settled the dispute between my
sable opponent and myself.  "I'se guess dis chile gib dat black debble
goss, noh ow!"

But ere I could say a word to him for his timely aid, Accra Prout had
bounded onward in front, and I then saw he was following Colonel
Vereker, who had managed somehow or other, in spite of his lameness, to
gain the deck of his old ship along with the rest of us.

Crack, crack, crack, went his revolver with venomous iteration from the
other side of the vessel, where he was standing by the bulwarks, close
to the hatchway of the companion-ladder leading to the cabin below,
which he was apparently endeavouring to reach, while a crowd of Haytians
barred his further progress towards those imprisoned in the cabin, whom
they thus prevented his releasing, a fresh foe starting up for every one
he disposed of, and a rough and terrible fight going on all round him
all the time.

"'Top a minnit, Mass' V'reker!" shouted Accra Prout, darting into the
middle of the throng, clearing a pathway for himself with the capstan
bar.  "I'se here; I'se come help you soon!"

"A thousand devils!" hissed a tall black near by--a man with a large,
crinkly, ink-black moustache, and certainly with the most satanic visage
I had ever beheld before.  "A thousand devils!" repeated he, giving him
a thrust with a large knife that pierced poor Accra's arm, and making
him drop the capstan bar.  "Take care of yourself--beast!"

A cry from the colonel told me who this was.

"Ah, villain, villain!" he sang out, looking him full in the face and
grinding his teeth and trying with all his might, but vainly, to get at
him through the press of struggling figures by whom he was surrounded.
"I've been looking for you, _Marquis des Coupgorges_!"

The black scoundrel gave out a shrill laugh like that of a hyena, as
Colonel Vereker had described it to us when telling his yarn.

"Pardon me, sir, I am here," he yelled out mockingly.  "I am here.  I do
not run away like your white trash!  Why don't you come and fight me?
Bah!  I spit on you, my fine plantation colonel.  When I get at you I
will serve you just as I did your sly slave the other day, whom you sent
to betray us, though you, yourself, were too great a coward to come
amongst us, yes, to come amongst us yourself.  Aha! colonel."

He said this in plain English, which language he spoke as fluently as he
did French, the native language of Hayti, uttering his abusive threats
loud enough for us to hear every syllable; but though I aimed at him
while he was speaking twice point blank, and my revolver spoke out quite
as loudly as he, while the colonel likewise shot at him and the skipper
made a slash in his direction with his cutlass, the miscreant escaped
all our attacks without a single wound, dodging away from us amongst his
dusky compatriots, who were now pretty thickly mixed up with our men in
a fierce _melee_, at the further end of the poop, overlooking the waist
below.

In the midst of this awful scrimmage there came a wild rush aft of all
the remaining blacks who had been engaged with some of the hands
amidships, pursued by our second boarding party, led by Mr Fosset and
Stoddart, who had made their way over the bows and cleared the
fo'c's'le, fighting onward step by step along the upper deck; and hemmed
in fast thus, between two fires, the black desperadoes made a last
stand, refusing to surrender, or throw down their arms in spite of all
promises of quarter on our part.

All of them could see for themselves how completely overmatched they
were, and must have known the utter uselessness of attempting any
further resistance to us; but the mutineers of the negro portion of the
_Saint Pierre's_ crew, who were now in the majority, feared to give in
owing to the fact of their believing they would be ultimately hanged if
taken alive after the atrocities they had committed; so being of the
opinion they were bound to be killed in any case, they determined
apparently, if die they must, they would die fighting.

Whatever might be their motive or conviction, I will give them the
credit of being plucky, and must say that they fought bravely, though
with a ferocity that was more than savage, to the bitter end, their last
rally on the break of the poop being the fiercest episode of the fray,
several hand-to-hand combats going on at one and the same time with hand
pikes and capstan bars whirling about over the heads of those engaged,
where cutlass cuts were met with knife-thrusts from the formidable long-
bladed weapons the negroes carried in their hands only to sheathe them
in the bodies of their white antagonists.

My brain got dizzy as I watched the mad turmoil and my blood was at
fever heat, taking part in the fight too, you may be sure, whenever I
saw an opening, and dealing a blow here or parrying one there, as chance
arose, with the best of them, young though I was, and totally
inexperienced in such matters!

It was coming near to the finish, being too warm work to continue much
longer, and I think all of us had had pretty well enough of it, when,
looking round for Colonel Vereker, whom I suddenly missed from among the
combatants, I saw him struggling with one of the blacks in a regular
rough and tumble tussle on the deck.

The two were rolling about close to the after skylight from whence we
had observed the flash of the pistol shot as we approached the ship, and
which the colonel had been trying to get near to ever since he boarded
her, but had been prevented from reaching by one obstacle or another
until now, when this negro clutched hold of him and forced him back
again.

He and the Haytian were tightly locked in a deadly embrace, the negro
gripping him with both arms round the body, and the colonel endeavouring
to release his revolver hand, the two rolling over and over on the deck
towards the rail forward.

"Ha!" muttered the colonel, who was hard pressed, through his set teeth.
"Only let me get free."

Strangely enough, the glass of the skylight above the spot where the
pair were struggling was instantly shattered from within, as if in
response to his muttered cry; and with a loud bark that could have been
heard a mile off, a big dog burst forth from the opening, making
straight for the colonel and his relentless foe.

Then there came a startled yell from the negro, who, releasing his late
antagonist, staggered to his feet.

"Holy name of--" he screamed out in wild affright, but he had not time
to reach the concluding word of his sentence--the name of his patron
saint, no doubt--"the devil!"

For before he could get so far, giving a fierce growl, the dog at once
sprang up at him, his fangs meeting in the Haytian's throat, whereupon
the latter, toppling backwards over the poop-rail, fell into the waist
below, with the dog hanging on to him; and I noticed presently that both
were dead, the brave animal who had come so opportunely to the rescue of
the colonel, his master, being stabbed to the heart by a knife which the
negro still held in his lifeless hand, while his own neck had been torn
to pieces by the dog whom death could not force to relinquish his grip!

Immediately running up to the colonel, who was feebly trying to rise,
his wrestle with the black having crippled his wounded leg and arm, I
helped him to his feet as quickly as I could, while others clustered
round to shelter us.

"Poor Ivan, true as steel in death as in life!" he faintly muttered,
glancing from the break of the poop on the two bodies huddled together
below, the blood of the faithful dog flowing with that of his ruthless
foe into a crimson pool that was gradually extending its borders from
the middle of the deck to the lee scuppers.  "He has defended my little
Elsie, I am sure, to the last, likewise, even as he defended me.  I hope
and trust my child is still safe in the cabin.  Help me aft, my lad, to
see; quick, quick!"

Of course I assisted him as well as I could under the circumstances, but
as he limped along towards the companion-hatchway, the leader of the
desperadoes, that villainous "marquis," who I thought had met with his
just deserts long since, not having seen him for some little time among
the other fighters, most unexpectedly jumped from the rigging in front
of the colonel and aimed a vindictive blow at him with a marline-spike.

This must have settled the colonel if it had fallen on his uncovered
head.  Fortunately though, dropping quickly the colonel's arm, I fended
off the blow with the revolver I held in my hand, while at the same time
I gave the scoundrel a drive in the face that must have astonished his
black lordship a good deal, for my clenched fist met him square on the
mouth and shook his teeth, making them rattle, as well as disarranging
the twist of his crinkly moustache!

He came at me with a snarl like an angry tiger, and then, hugging me
tight, with his hideous black face thrust close against mine, and his
muscular arms pressed tightly around my ribs, he squeezed every ounce of
breath out of my body.

I thought my last hour had come.

But help came to my aid from a most unlooked-for quarter.

"Ah! you blackguard," cried a voice that sounded dimly in my ears, my
head at the time seeming to be whirling round like the arms of a
windmill from the sense of suffocation and the rush of blood to the
brain.  "Coward! miscreant! you are here again."

Breathless though I was, I was so surprised, and indeed frightened at
the voice and accent of the speaker, which I immediately recognised,
that I at once came to myself and opened wide my half-closed eyes.

Good heavens!  Shall I ever forget the sight?  Yes; it was Captain
Alphonse, whom I had last seen only half an hour or so previously in the
skipper's cot on board the _Star of the North_, when Garry O'Neil said
he would probably never wake to consciousness again in this life, or
move out of the skipper's state room!

Here he was though, all the same, looking like an apparition from the
dead, wild, ghastly, awful, but quite sufficiently in his senses to
recognise his terrible enemy, the pseudo "marquis."

It is a scene I shall never forget, as I remarked before.

Like poor Ivan, and with equal ferocity, the Frenchman sprang at the
ugly villain's throat, the whole lot of us tumbling headlong on the deck
together, which caused the wretch to release me in order to protect
himself from Captain Alphonse, who, kneeling on the top of him, hammered
him against the bulwarks as though trying to beat the life out of him.

Making a last desperate effort, the Haytian "marquis" gripped his
antagonist round the waist as he previously gripped me, dragging him
down beside him again; and then, as the two came with all their might
against the side of the ship where the port flap was loose, the whole of
the planking gave way, and poor Captain Alphonse, with that scoundrel
the black "marquis," crashed through the splintering wood together,
falling with a heavy splash overboard into the sea beneath, going to the
bottom locked in each other's arms--a terrible ending to the terrible
episode of this, their last meeting.

For the minute the colonel seemed overwhelmed with grief at this awful
and sudden termination of poor Captain Alphonse's life, and we would all
sooner have seen him die unconsciously if not quietly, in his bed; but
such are the ways of Providence, and we cannot control them!

But this day certainly witnessed a series of surprises, so it seemed to
me, the most wonderful things happening every moment.

Colonel Vereker had dragged himself as well as he could, up to where I
lay on the deck, after being set free from the bearlike hug of the
negro, helping me up on my legs in the same Good Samaritan way in the
which I had saved him shortly before; and we were both looking over the
side, talking excitedly of the dreadful catastrophe that had just
happened, and wondering whether the poor captain's body would rise to
the surface again, when all of a sudden, something bright crossing the
deck caught my eye like a flash of light, and I heard the sound of light
and hurried footsteps.

Wheeling round hastily I was amazed at the beautiful object that met my
gaze, for I saw standing there, only a pace or two off, a lovely young
girl, with a profusion of long silky hair of a bright golden hue, that
streamed in a tangled mass over her shoulders, and reaching down almost
to her feet.

"My father, my dear father!" she exclaimed in broken and ecstatic tones,
her voice sounding to me like the soft cooing of a dove, as she flew and
nestled herself into the outstretched arms of the colonel, who had also
turned round at her approach, some sympathetic feeling having warned him
of her coming, telling him who it was even before he saw her.

"Oh, my father! my father!  At last, at last!"

And then, unable to control herself longer, she burst into a passion of
tears and sobs.

Colonel Vereker, on his part, was equally overcome.

"God be thanked!" cried he, raising his face to heaven, clasping her at
the same time fondly to his heart and kissing her trembling lips again
and again.  "My darling one, my own little daughter, whom I thought I
had lost for ever, but whom the good God has preserved to be the delight
of my eyes again, my little one, my precious!"

For a few minutes I too had a lump in my throat, but turned aside, and
then, not wishing to appear to be observing them, I left them alone and
went off to another part of the ship.



CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE.

HORS DE COMBAT.

A grand hurrah just then burst forth from the deck below us, where the
skipper and most of the men were massed, telling as plainly as
triumphant cheer could tell, that the fight was ended, and that victory
had crowned our arms with success.  I rushed back to tell the colonel.

On hearing my footsteps, however, little Elsie turned round and caught
sight of me.

"Oh, my father!" said she, untwining herself from the colonel's embrace,
though she still nestled up close to him, as she stared at me shyly,
with a puzzled look on her mignonne face.  "Why, who is this young sir,
my father?  I seem to know him, and yet I do not remember having ever
seen him before!"

"Look at him again, darling one," said her father, petting her
caressingly, while another hearty cheer went up from the hands in the
waist.  "He is Senor Dick Haldane, a gallant young gentleman whom you
must thank, my little daughter, for having saved my life."

At this the graceful young girl advanced a step or two towards me, and
catching hold of my hand, before I could prevent her, kissed it, greatly
to my confusion; as albeit it was an act expressive amongst the Spanish,
with whom she had been brought up, of deferential courtesy and
gratitude, but it made me blush up to my eyes and feel hot all over.

"A thousand thanks, sir," she began; but as she raised her eyes to my
face in thus giving utterance to her thanks for having, as the colonel
had told her, saved her father's life, a flood of recollection seemed to
come upon her, and she exclaimed:

"Ah, I remember now!  My father, yes, he is like the gentleman whom I
saw on the deck of the steamer that awful night when the negroes rose up
against us--last Friday, was it not?  But it seems so long ago to me!
You, you naughty papa, would not believe that your little girl had seen
anything at all, not even a ship, but that I only fancied it in my
foolishness.  However, there is the same steamer that I saw (pointing
with her finger to the _Star of the North_), and here is the same, for I
am sure he is the same, the very same young officer.  Am I not right?"
And looking up at her father, she exclaimed, "Your little girl told the
truth after all."

"And you, young lady," said I, smiling at her recognition of me, strange
coincidence as it was, corroborating my own experience of the same
eventful night, "yes; you are the same little girl I saw on board the
`ghost-ship,' as all the men here called your vessel, not believing,
likewise, my story that I had seen her or you either.  Yes, I would have
known you anywhere.  You are the girl whom I saw with the dog!"

The next moment I could have bitten my tongue out, though, for my
thoughtlessness in alluding to the poor dog; for at the bare mention of
him Elsie's face, which had a sort of absent, wandering look about it
still, at once lighted up, and she glanced round in all directions.

"Ah, I declare I had quite forgotten Ivan in the joy and happiness of
seeing you again, my father," she exclaimed excitedly.  "Where is he,
the brave fellow?  Ivan, Ivan, you dear old dog.  Come here; come here,
sir, directly!"

She looked round again, with a half smile playing about the corners of
her pretty rosebud of a mouth and a joyous light in her eyes, expecting
her faithful friend and companion would come bounding up to her side;
but she now waited and watched and listened in vain, there being no
response to her summons either by bark or bound or wag of poor Ivan's
bushy tail.

Nor would there be any more, for his ringing bark was hushed, his body
and tail alike stiff and cold, while his noble heart which only throbbed
with affection for those whom he loved when living, had stopped beating
for aye.

"My dear child, poor Ivan is dead!" said Colonel Vereker tenderly after
a short pause, drawing the young girl up to him so that she might not
see the gruesome sight on the deck below.  "The brave dog sacrificed his
life for mine, and but for his help, little one, I should not now be by
your side."

This account of the poor animal's heroic end, however, did not comfort
little Elsie, who gave a startled glance at her father's face; where,
seeing something there that made her comprehend her loss, she buried her
golden head on his breast, sobbing as though her heart would break.

"Poor, poor, dear Ivan; he never left me once, never, my father, since
you--you went out of the cabin that last night and told him to watch
me!" she exclaimed presently, in halting accents between her convulsive
sobs, neither the colonel or myself dry-eyed as we listened to her tale,
you may be sure.  "But--but all at once, after all the noise and that
dreadful firing that seems now to go through my ears, I--I heard your
voice quite distinctly on the deck; and so, too, did poor Ivan, for I
saw him instantly put up his ears, while he whined and looked
beseechingly at us."

"Well, after that, my child," said the colonel, on her stopping for the
moment, overcome with emotion, "what happened next?"

"He made a dash at the cabin table and jumped up on it, and then the
poor fellow growled savagely at some one outside.  Then--then before I
could hold him back he made a most desperate spring and sprung right up
through the glass roof on the top of the sky--skylight, and he must have
cut himself very very much.  Poor, poor doggie!  And now you say my poor
Ivan is dead, and that I shall never see the dear good faithful creature
again.  Oh, my father!"

At this point the young girl again broke down.

Nor were her tears a mere passing tribute of grief.  For, though dead,
Ivan is not forgotten, like some people, the remembrance of whom is as
evanescent as the scent of the flowers that hypocritical mourners may
ostentatiously scatter upon their graves; his little mistress, little no
longer, preserving his memory yet green in her heart of hearts, close to
which she wears always a small locket containing likenesses of her
father and mother, together with a miniature of Ivan--her father's
preserver--with a tiny lock added from the brave dog's curly black coat.

Some ultra-sanctimonious persons may feel inclined to cavil with this
association on Elsie's part of "immortal beings," as they would style
her parents, and the recollection she cherishes of a "dead brute,"
because, forsooth, they hold that her four-footed favourite had no soul;
but were these gentry to broach the subject before her, being a somewhat
outspoken young lady from her foreign bringing up, which puts her beyond
the pale of boarding-school punctiliousness, she would probably urge
that she estimated poor Ivan's sagacious instinct combined with his
courage and noble self-sacrifice, at a far higher level than the paltry
apology for a soul that passes current for the genuine article with
matter-of-fact religionists of the stamp of her questioner.

But Elsie was "little Elsie" still, at the time of which I am speaking,
and too young, perhaps, for such thoughts to occur to her mind, which at
the moment was too full of her loss.

The cheering that had followed the last tussle of our men with the black
mutineers had now ceased, and all these things happening, you must
understand, much more rapidly than I can talk or attempt to chronicle
them, the skipper, with Mr Fosset and Garry O'Neil, came hurriedly up
on the poop.

Both expressed their unbounded delight at seeing the child was safe and
in the care of her father.

Sure, an' what's the little colleen cryin' for? eagerly inquired Garry,
his smoke-begrimed face, which bore ample evidence of the desperate
struggle in which he had been so gallantly engaged, wearing a look of
deep commiseration as he gazed from her father to me, and then again at
her.  "Faith, I hope she's not been hurt or frightened?"

"No, thank God!" replied the colonel huskily.  "Grieving for her poor
dog Ivan, who--"

"Och yes, I saw the noble baste," interrupted Garry in his quick,
enthusiastic way.  "Begorrah, colonel, he fought betther than any two-
legged Christian amongst us, an' I can't say more than that for him,
sure, paice to his name!"

Before he could say anything further, and you know he was a rare one to
talk when once he commenced, the skipper advanced again, holding out his
hand to the colonel exclaiming-- "Yes, thank God you are all right and
that your little child is safe, and escaped any harm from those
scoundrels, except her nerves probably being much shaken, but that she
will soon recover at her age--and I told you she should be restored to
you, you know.  By George!  Though, we've paid them out at last for
demon's work aboard here!"

"The devils!" ejaculated Colonel Vereker savagely, his mood changing as
he recollected all he had seen and suffered at their hands.  "Have you
killed them all?"

"All but half a dozen of the rascals, whom we had a rare hunt after
through the hold and fo'c's'le before we could collar them.  They are
fast bound now, though, lashed head and feet to the mainmast bitts; and
it will puzzle them to wriggle themselves loose from old Masters' double
hitches, I know.  Besides which, two of our men are guarding there, with
boarding-pikes in their hands and orders to run 'em through the gizzard
if they offer to stir."

"Faith," observed Garry O'Neil reflectively, "It was as purty a bit of
foighting as I ivver took a hand in, whilst it lasted!"

"But let us go and see what has become of all those chaps below--all
those you mentioned as belonging to the French crew, whom you left on
board with your daughter," went on the skipper.  "We saw the flash of a
pistol, you remember, when we came up alongside, and somebody must have
prevented those villains from getting into the cabin, or else--"

He stopped here and looked meaningly at Elsie.

"Heavens!" exclaimed the colonel, attempting to rise, but falling back
on the hen-coop along the side of the bulwarks he had been using for a
temporary seat, he seemed so utterly exhausted.  "Ah, those brave
fellows, I was almost forgetting them; but I can't move, Senor
Applegarth, or I should have gone down before this to see what had
become of my old comrades; but I'm helpless, as you see."

Elsie now lifted her head, looked up and turned towards the skipper.

"They are all wounded," said she, clasping her hands together and with a
look of fright on her face.  "Two of the men--the French sailors, I
mean--and the English gentleman."

"That's the little Britisher I told you about, who was so plucky,"
explained the colonel--"Mr Johnson."

"Well, my father," continued the young girl, "these three rushed down
the stairs into the cabin, shortly before the steamer thumped against
the side of our ship, when I thought we were all going down to the
bottom of the sea."

"Yes, my child," said the colonel encouragingly, "go on and tell us what
happened next."

"The English gentleman spoke to me and said that the terrible negroes
had conquered them all on deck, but that he and the two Frenchmen had
escaped from them in time, and were going to barricade the doorway
leading down from above to prevent the black men from coming below and
murdering us all.

"He told me, though, did the kind English gentleman, that I must not be
frightened and all would come right in the end, for that they had seen a
very large steamer approaching, coming quite close to us, and that they
would be able, he thought, to hold out until we were all rescued.  They
then piled up heaps and heaps of things against the door at the foot of
the stairs where the sailors remained; then the Englishman stood on the
table, under the skylight, to keep the negroes from getting through
there.  It was the Englishman who fired at them through the glass, for
he was the only one who had a pistol, and he made a hole and then
through that we heard all the shrieks and the noise of the pistols; and
your voice, my father, Ivan heard, and then he jumped up through the
hole, making a much bigger one, and ran to your rescue, my dear, dear
father."

"But what has become of Monsieur Boisson, and Madame all this time;
where were they?" asked the colonel, on Elsie thus concluding the
account of what had occurred under her immediate notice, a little sob
escaping her involuntarily at the mention of her poor dog's name, and at
the recollection of what she had just witnessed.  "Did they do anything,
my dear child to help themselves, or you?"

"No, my father," she replied, apparently surprised at the question.
"They are still in the big cabin at the end of the saloon where you left
them when you went away, and, I'm afraid they are very ill indeed, for
all the time the firing was going on overhead Madame was screeching and
screaming, and I am sure I heard Monsieur groaning a good deal.  He was
doing so again just now, before I found my way upstairs to you, to find
you, and to see what had happened, everything had become so suddenly
still after all the noise, and--and--those--awful horrible yells of the
negroes--oh!  I--I--can hear them still!"

She turned quite pale when uttering the last words, words spoken with
visible effort, shuddering all over and hiding her face again on her
father's shoulder.

"Faith, sor, don't ask her any more questions," cried Garry, "but we'd
betther be sayin' afther those poor fellows ourselves, an' at once,
too!"

"Do quickly, sir doctor," said the colonel, "and I only wish I could
come with you! but--"

"Now jist you shtop where ye are, me friend," rejoined Garry, putting
out his hand to prevent his stirring from his seat.  "Sure the cap'en
an' me, with Dick Haldane here, will be enough to look afther 'em all."

With this he made for the companion-way and descended the "stairs," as
Elsie, ignorant of nautical nomenclature, called the ladder, the skipper
following close behind him.

On getting to the bottom we found the panels of the door smashed in,
though of hard oak, strengthened with cross battens of the same stout
wood, which showed to what fierce assault it had been subjected, the
furniture piled up against it from within having duly prevented the
negroes from finally forcing an entrance, as well, no doubt, as our
appearance on the scene.

This barricade had, however, been now partly removed, probably to allow
of little Elsie's exit, and, quickly pitching the remaining obstacles
aside, the three of us managed to squeeze ourselves inside the cabin,
which was in such a state of confusion, with the long table overturned
to serve as a breastwork for the gallant defenders and the settees and
lockers turned away from the deck, as well as the glass of the skylight
all smashed, that it looked like a veritable "Hurrah's vest" as we
sailors say.

On a pile of cushions belonging to the lounge aft--the only piece of
furniture that was left intact in the place, I believe--lay the brave
men who had stubbornly held the ship to the last against the mutineers.

All were covered with blood and blackened by powder and so utterly worn
out from fatigue in battling throughout the night and day that had
almost elapsed since the colonel had left them, besides being crippled
by the injuries they had received in the fray, that they hardly moved on
our entrance, though one--a little chap whom I judged to be the
Englishman spoken of by the colonel and Elsie--brightened up as we bent
over him, a look of satisfaction and content stealing over his drawn and
haggard face, as we cauld see from the rays of the setting sun streaming
down through the broken skylight, exposing the utter desolation around.

He was the first to speak.

"I'm afeard you've come too late for us, sirs," said he slowly, with a
deep groan of pain.  "Those damned niggers have done for me, one of them
giving me a dig of his knife in the ribs--did it through the doorway
just now, when the fight were nearly over.  You might do summat, though,
for my companions here, who stood up to the darkies like Britons, in
spite of them being only Frenchmen, though that ain't their fault.  But
how's the little girl?  I hope she's all right.  Tell her father, if
he's alive--and I feel almost sure I heard his voice awhile ago up on
deck--tell him that I kept my word, sirs, and fought for her to the
last.  I think I'm dying now, and--I--must--leave--off.  But listen
while I've a little breath, for I want to say something.  My name is
Robert Johnson, and my old mother, God bless her, lives at Camberwell,
near London.  You'll find all my papers in my pocket and a letter with
the address, and if any of you chances to be going back to England as I
were, worse luck, you'd be doing a favour by seein' her and letting her
know why I didn't turn up home this Christmas as I promised her.  I know
you will.  I'm going now, I'm so tired.  Good-night to you all--good-
night--good--"

As he said this he gradually fell back on the cushion he was resting
against, and his eyes closed.

Captain Applegarth and I both thought him dead.

Not so, however, Garry O'Neil.

"Sure, he's ounly fainted," exclaimed the Irishman; "run, Dick, me bhoy,
an' say if there's sich a thing as a stooard's pantry knockin' about
anywheres in those latituodes, wid a dhrop of water convanient.  That
an' a taste of this _aqua vitae_ here, which, the saints be praised, I
took the precawshin to put in me pocket afore we shtarted on this
blissid and excoitin' skermoish, this will very soon fetch back a little
loife into the plucky little beggar ag'in!"

I had no difficulty in finding the steward's pantry and a breaker of
water, with a tin dipper attached, speedily carrying some back and, by
our joint ministrations, and with it bathing his face and hands and
pouring some between his lips, little Mr Johnson at last opened his
eyes and began to breathe.

After a time and a certain amount of patience he opened his eyes wider,
and became conscious, and later on was induced to swallow down a mixture
out of his own special bottle that Garry carried, and we were at last
delighted to see quite a broad grin spread over his round good-natured
and somewhat comical face.

"By Jingo, sir!" said he, after a pause and rather long silence, and
after he had drained off the last drop of the elixir, with a sigh of
gratitude that evidently came from his heart, "you've saved my life this
time, and no mistake.  I never thought I should taste a drop of good
brandy again in this world."



CHAPTER TWENTY SIX.

WE PART COMPANY.

While Garry O'Neil and I were attending to the two French sailors who,
though they had been a good bit knocked about in the course of the
protracted struggle, were not seemingly very seriously hurt, suffering
more, indeed, from want of proper food and rest than from the slight
wounds they had received, we heard loud cries and a sort of dull moaning
that appeared to proceed from the after part of the saloon.

Going thither at once, Captain Applegarth knocked with his knuckles on
the panel of the closed door of one of the larger state rooms, running
athwart the ship from whence the sounds proceeded.

"Hullo, within there!" he shouted, "what's the matter?  What's the row?
Come out!"

A shrill scream was the only response to his inquiries.

"What's the matter?" repeated the skipper, speaking in a gentler tone.
"You have nothing to fear.  We're all friends here!"

The cries and confused noises continued, however, and the skipper
thereupon resumed his knocking, this time more forcibly, and with his
fists aided by a kick from his heavy boot against the lower part of the
still closed door.

At this imperative summons the shrieking ceased, and we heard a feeble
voice within, calling out in French-- "Mercy! for the love of God!" we
could distinguish amidst a plentitude of sobs and violent groans in a
deeper key.  "Ah! brave Haytians!  Have pity, and spare our lives!"

"Hang it all, you cowards, we're _not_ those cursed Haytians, and I wish
you could have been left to their mercy!  It is only what you deserve!"
roared the skipper, infuriated and out of all patience at the
Frenchwoman's mistake and her appealing in such terms to the murderous
scoundrels, of whom we had made so summary an end.  "We're Englishmen;
we're your friends, I tell you, true-hearted British sailors, who have
come to rescue you, so open the door!"

But Madame Boisson, who, of course, was his interlocutrice behind the
door, remained obdurate.

"Ah! the false English," she cried, "down with the pigs!"

At this the skipper laughed grimly, and all standing near him were much
amused.

"She's a good specimen of her race," cried the captain.  "They always
abuse other nations and cry out that they are betrayed when ill luck
comes to them, instead of trying to help themselves, as we perfidious
Englishmen do."

Finding it impossible to persuade her, though, to open the door of the
cabin, which was bolted and barred within, the skipper sang out to me to
go on deck and ask Elsie Vereker to come down and try what she could do,
thinking that the obstinate prisoner would doubtless recognise the
girl's voice and so, through her means, be made more amenable to reason.

No sooner said than done.

Up I went and down the companion-way.  I returned anon accompanied not
only by Miss Elsie, but by the colonel as well, Garry O'Neil, who
hurried up the ladder after me with that intent, insisting on his coming
below so that he could the better attend to his wounded leg, which had
broken out again and needed fresh dressing, and after some little
difficulty Garry got him down in safety.

Thanks to Elsie's pleadings, Madame Boisson at length capitulated,
promising to come out of her retreat as soon as she had had time, "to
make her toilet."

"By George!" exclaimed the skipper, overhearing this and turning with an
ironical grin to the colonel, who had his leg upon a chair, and Garry
bustling about him, busy with bandages, "she's a true Frenchwoman, as I
said at the first.  Fancy, after being imprisoned there in that stuffy
cabin for four and twenty hours and imagining herself and husband might
be murdered every minute by a lot of pirate scoundrels, thinking of
nothing but titifying herself, instead of thanking God for their escape
and rushing out at the very first opportunity, eager to be free.
Strange creatures!"

"Heavens!" exclaimed the colonel, smiling at the other's outburst.  "It
is true, but they're all alike, and I've seen a good many of them, my
friend."

Presently out sailed Madame Boisson, who I noticed was a middle-aged and
well-preserved woman, attired in an elaborate dressing gown with a
profusion of bows and ribbons fluttering about it, and with a good deal
of pearl powder or some other cosmetic of that sort on her face, and her
cheeks tinted here and there with--well, colour.

Despite her screams and hysterics, however, there was no trace of a tear
in her twinkling black eyes, although her fat little husband, who ambled
meekly in her train, betrayed signs of great emotion, his red face all
swollen from crying, and otherwise looking like a whipped cur.

Madame made a most gracious salute to us all, and, glancing at me with a
spice of coquetry, to which she was evidently not unaccustomed, was
pleased to observe, that I was "_un beau garcon_."

In returning the skipper's polite bow she happened to notice the poor
wounded sailors lying on the cushions by the companion, and the blood
all sprinkled about--a sight at which she turned up her nose, declaring
very volubly that the place was like a "pigsty," unfit for any lady to
enter, and expressing her surprise at those "common seamen" being
attended to and allowed to remain in the saloon, she having always
understood that that apartment was only for "the use of the first-class
passengers."

The skipper, who understood her well enough, as I did too, having learnt
the language at a French school near Rouen, was very angry at her
remarks.

"Those men," said he in his best Parisian, "are your own countrymen, all
that are left of those who died to preserve the lives of you and your
husband there, who ought to be ashamed of himself for skulking below
while they were fighting on deck."

Monsieur looked foolish, but said nothing in reply to this.  Madame
sniffed, and flashed her glittering black eyes, as if she could
annihilate him at a glance.

"My brave Hercules!" she cried indignantly, "be easy.  You have been out
in the Bois and have established your reputation as a hero and have no
need to notice the insulting remarks of this Englishman.  But for you,"
she added, turning angrily to the colonel, "this would not have
happened."

"I?  Good Heavens!" exclaimed Colonel Vereker, greatly astonished at her
turning on him thus.  "Why, it was I who did all in my power to prevent
Captain Alphonse from allowing those cursed blacks on board the ship in
the first instance, but you and Monsieur Boisson, both of you, persuaded
him to the contrary."

"My God! dear Hercules, see how we are calumniated," said the irate
Frenchwoman, rather illogically, turning to her miserable atom of a
husband, who gesticulated and shrugged his shoulders in response, and
looking over the skipper and Colonel Vereker as if neither existed, she
went on to remark to Elsie, who, however, did not appear to relish very
much her conversation or endearments, that, "some persons whom she would
not condescend to name, were, of monsters, the most infamous and
ungrateful--men, indeed, of the gutter--but that she, the little one,
was an angel."

Here the skipper put an end to the interview.  He had evidently seen and
had enough of the Boissons, husband and wife, and, ascending the
companion-ladder at the same time as Garry and myself, I heard him
muttering to himself as he went along and just caught the following
words: "To think--brave men--lose--valuable--save such--theirs--too
dreadful.  She frivolous--he--a--damned coward!" laying a rather strong
emphasis on the last words.

We afterwards went down again, Garry and I, and managed between us to
bring up little Mr Johnson, the brave fellow having picked up
wonderfully after the attention we had given him, and the knife-thrust
he had received from the negro was found to have only grazed his ribs,
and he was anxious for fresh air, after his long imprisonment below, and
to see and judge for himself how things were looking on deck after our
scrimmage.

Here the light was waning and there was a good deal to be done.

"I think, Fosset," said the skipper to our worthy first mate, who had
been ordering matters forward while the former had come aft, "we had
better muster the hands first so as to know who's missing.  I'm afraid
several of our poor fellows have lost the number of their mess in the
fight."

"Aye, sir, they have," replied Mr Fosset.  "Poor Stoddart's gone, for
one!"

"Poor fellow, I am sorry," exclaimed the captain with much feeling.  "We
couldn't have lost a better man, for he was about the best we had on
board, poor fellow--a good engineer, a good mess-mate, and good at
everything he handled, besides being the finest fellow that ever wore
shoe leather.  How did it happen?"

"He was knifed by one of those black devils, sir, as he led the boarders
forrad!"

"Poor Stoddart!  I am sorry to lose you!  Well, there's no use crying
over spilt milk, and all my words will never bring him back again.  Mr
O'Neil, just muster the men in the waist and let us know the worst at
once!"

"Faith, ye're roight, sor; we'd betther count noses an' have the job
over," returned Garry, _sotto voce_, singing out in a louder key to the
survivors of the fray, who were grouped in the waist about the mainmast,
where the remaining Haytians who had not been killed outright were tied
up feet to the wrists, as the skipper had told Colonel Vereker when he
came up.  "Now all you _Star of the Norths_ that are still alive, come
over here to starboard; the chaps that are d'id, sure, can shtop where
they are!"

The hands laughed at this Hibernian way of putting the matter to them,
and answered their names readily on Garry proceeding to read out the
muster roll from a paper he had drawn out of his pocket--all, that is,
save those that had fallen, eight in number, including poor Stoddart,
our energetic second engineer, and one of his firemen who had
volunteered to swell the boarding party, as well as six of our best
sailors amongst the foremast hands.

Of the rest of the crew four were badly hurt and a few slightly wounded.
Spokeshave was one of these latter, having, unfortunately, the end of
his nose--that prominent feature of his--cut clean off by a slash from a
cutlass; but the majority, we were glad to find, mostly escaped
unscathed.

Seeing old Masters all right, I thought of his morbid forebodings before
we came up with the ship, and determined to take a rise out of him.

"I'm awfully sorry about the old bo'sun," I said with a wink to Garry,
right behind his back.  "He wasn't a bad seaman, but an awful old
grumbler, and so superstitious that he funked his own shadow and daren't
walk up a hatchway in the dark.  Poor old chap, though, it's a pity he's
dead; I shall miss him if only from not hearing his continued growling
over things that _might_ happen."

"Well I'm blessed!" cried old Masters, completely flabbergasted at this
exordium of mine; "I never thought, Mister Haldane, to hear you speak
ag'in me like that.  I allays believed you was a friend, that I did."

I pretended not to see him, and so too did Garry O'Neil, "tumbling to my
game," as the saying goes, while I went on with my chaff.

"How did he die?"  I asked.  "Was he killed at the first rush?"

"Faith, I can't say corrictly," replied Garry in a very melancholy tone
of voice.  "I'm afeard care carried him off, somehow or other, as it
killed the cat, for he war the most disconsolate, doleful, down-hearted
chap I ivver saw piping the hands to dinner.  An' so he's d'id!  Poor
old bo'sun! we'll nivver see his loike ag'in."

"Lord bless you!" cried old Masters angrily, stepping up nearer and
confronting us, "I'm not dead at all, I tell you--I tell you I'm not--
I'm blessed if I am.  Can't you see me here alive and hearty afore you?
Look at me."

"Ah, it's his ghost!"  I said, with an affected and tremulous start.
"He told me, poor fellow, he felt himself doomed, and nothing could save
him; and I suppose his spirit wants to prove to me he wasn't a liar, as
I always thought he was, the old sinner!"

This was too much for Garry, and he couldn't hold in any longer, and
both of us roared at Masters, who looked scared; and, though angry and
highly incensed with us at first, was only too glad at its being but a
joke, and not a fact that he was dead, to bear us any ill-feeling long.

We were horrified when we were told later on, while we were committing
to the deep the corpses of those slain--negroes and white men
impartially sharing the same grave beneath the placid sea, at rest like
themselves, the breeze having died away again soon after sunset--that
Etienne Brago and Francois Terne, the two wounded sailors we had left
below with the Boissons, and little Mr Johnson and the colonel and
Elsie of course, that _these_ were the only ones left of the thirty odd
souls on board the _Saint Pierre_ when she sailed from La Guayra a
fortnight before!

After all the bodies had been buried in their watery tomb, not
forgetting that of poor Ivan, who we all thought merited an honoured
place by the side of his biped brethren of valour--well, after all this
had been done the skipper had the pumps rigged and the decks sluiced
down to wash away all traces of the fray.

A council of war was then held between us all on the poop, the skipper
of course presiding, and the colonel coming up from the cabin to take
part in the proceedings, as well as old Mr Stokes from our ship, where
he had remained attending singlehanded to the duties of the engine-room,
denying himself, as Garry O'Neil remarked, "all the foin of the
foighting!"

This conclave had been called for the purpose of deciding what was to be
done with the _Saint Pierre_ and the captured black pirates, from whom
we had salvaged her, and without much deliberation it was pretty soon
decided, on the colonel's suggestion, to send the ship to her destined
port, Liverpool, taking the negroes in her, so that they could be tried
before a proper court in England for the offence they had committed.
"It's of no use your fetching them up to New York," said the colonel,
"for though I'm an American myself and am proud of my nationality, I
must confess those Yanks of the north mix up dollars and justice in a
way that puzzles folk that are not accustomed to their way of holding
the scales."

The skipper was of the same opinion as Colonel Vereker; so, the matter
having been settled, a navigating party was selected to work the _Saint
Pierre_ across the Atlantic, with Garry O'Neil as chief officer.  The
skipper was unable to spare Mr Fosset, and Garry was all the more fit
in every way for the part, as he would be able to look after the wounded
French sailors, who would naturally go in the ship as they were the
principal witnesses against the blacks on the charges that would be
brought against them of "piracy on the high seas."

It was dark when all these details were finally arranged, and all of
them went back aboard on our vessel for rest and refreshment, the
colonel and his daughter, of course, accompanying us.

Madame and Monsieur Boisson, however, could not be made to leave the
ship, saying they would not do so--Madame, that is, said it, and the
_brave Hercule_, following her lead as usual, "would not leave," said
she repeatedly, "until they once more touched _terra firma_," and not
wishing they should be starved for their obstinacy, the skipper ordered
Weston to look after the happy pair and provide them with food at the
same time as he did the wounded and prisoners.

The two vessels remained for the night, still lashed alongside for
better security, all hands being too tired out besides to be able to do
anything further beyond "turning in" and getting as much rest and sleep
as they could after the fatigue and excitement of the day.

Next morning at sunrise Garry O'Neil went back to his ship with his crew
of eight men--all the skipper was able to spare him--and by breakfast
time they had made her all atauto, bending new sails, which they found
below in the forepeak, in place of the tattered rags that hung from some
of the yards, and otherwise making good defects, preparing the vessel
for her passage home.

We were all sorry to part with Garry even for the short period that
would elapse before he would rejoin the old barquey, for he was the life
of all us aboard; but the same regret was not felt for Master Spokeshave
when we saw him go over the side to accompany the Irishman, the skipper
having so decreed, as his assistant navigator, the damage to his nose
not necessarily affecting his "taking the sun," though it might
interfere with the little beggar's altitudes of another character.

By eight bells all the details necessary under the circumstances were
satisfactorily arranged, including the transfer of the effects belonging
to the colonel and Miss Elsie, these two preferring to voyage with us,
unlike their whilom passengers, the Boissons, who remained in their old
quarters, going with "Captain Garry," as we all dubbed our mess-mate on
his promotion to a separate command; and half an hour or so later a
splendid breeze just then springing up from the westwards and flecking
the still blue water with buoyant life, the two ships parted company
amid a round of enthusiastic cheers that only grew faint as the distance
widened them apart, the _Saint Pierre_ sailing off right before the
wind, with everything set below, and aloft, across the ocean on her
course for Saint George's Channel, while we braced our yards sharp up
and bore away full speed ahead in the opposite direction, bound for New
York, which port we safely reached without further mishap four days
later.



CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN.

I GO TO VENEZUELA.

"You'd better stick to us," said the skipper to Colonel Vereker, who
talked of taking the next Cunard steamer, which was advertised to leave
on the morrow, as the _Star of the North_ was being berthed in our
company's dock on the East River.  "I'm only going to stop here long
enough to discharge our cargo and ship a fresh one; which is all ready
and waiting for us; and then, sir, we'll `make tracks,' as our friends
the Yankees say, right away over the `herring-pond' to Liverpool as fast
as steam and sail can carry the old barquey.  Better stick to us,
colonel, and see the voyage out."

"All right, Senor Applegarth," replied the colonel, who could not drop
his Spanish phraseology all at once, though otherwise gradually
returning to his and our own native tongue and becoming less of a
foreigner in every way, "I will return with you."

Both were as good as their word, he and little Elsie coming home with
us, and the skipper making the passage from Sandy Hook to the Mersey in
eight days from land to land, the fastest run we had ever yet achieved
across the Atlantic, whether outward or homeward-bound.

But, quick as we were, the _Saint Pierre_ managed to reach Liverpool
before we did, the pilot who boarded us off the Skerries bringing the
news that she had gone up the river a tide ahead of us.

This piece of intelligence was confirmed beyond question by Garry O'Neil
coming off in the company's tug that sheered alongside as we dropped
anchor in the stream later on, midway between the Prince's landing-stage
and the Birkenhead shore, the manager of our line being anxious to
compliment the skipper on his successful rescue of the French ship, the
percentage on whose valuable cargo for bringing her safely to port, and
thus saving all loss to the underwriters, would more than repay any
damage done for the detention of our vessel when engaged on the errand
of mercy and justice that took her off her course.

In addition likewise to the thanks of the company and the underwriters,
the skipper was also presented with a handsome gold chronometer watch by
the committee of Lloyds, besides participating in the amount awarded by
the charterers of the _Saint Pierre_ for the salvage of the ship, though
in this latter apportionment it was only fair to mention that we all
shared, officers and crew alike, I for my part coming into the sudden
possession of such a tidy little sum of ready money that I felt myself a
comparative millionaire.

When talking with Garry, whom it is almost needless to say all hands
were glad to see again, the men cheering him lustily as he crossed the
gangway from the tug, he told us that though otherwise they had had a
fairly pleasant voyage after parting company with us off the Azores, the
Boissons gave him a good deal of trouble.

Madame, he said, worried his life out by "making eyes" at him when he
went below at meal-times, while on deck he was never safe for a moment
from her embarrassing attentions unless, in desperation, as he was often
forced to do, he went aloft to get out of her way.

"Faith, an' sure, that warn't the worst of it nayther," complained Garry
in his humorous way.  "Though the vain, silly ould crayture bate
Banagher for flirtin'--an', indade, bates ivviry other of her sex, God
bless 'em, that I've ivver clapt eyes on yet--that quare little Frenchy
chap, her husband, he, the little sparrow, must neades git jallous, an'
makes out it's all my fault, an', belave me, a nice toime I had o' it
altogether.  At last I said to him, afther havin' been more than usual
exasperated by him, `If you want to foight me, begorrah, ye can begin as
soon as you loike,' at the same toime showin' him me fists."

"_Ah, non, non, mon Dieu, non_, note yat vay!" sez he, joompin' away
from me whin he caught soight o' me fists.  "I was mean ze duel and ze
rapiere."

"Not me, faith," sez I.  "If it's duellin' ye want you'll have to go to
another shop, Monsieur Parleyvoo, for it ain't in my line.  Allow me to
till ye too, Monsieur Boisson, that if ye dare to hint at sich a thing
ag'in whilst I'm in command of this ship, the ounly satisfaction ye'll
ivver have out of me in the rap-here way will be a rap on the h'id wid
this shtick of moine here, you recollict, joist to thry the stringth of
y'r craynium, begorrah!  Faith, that sittled the matther, the little
beggar turnin' as pale as a codfish and goin' below at onst, lookin'
very dejecthed an' crestfallin.  He nivver s'id another word afther that
to me as long as he remained aboard, nor did Madame trouble me very much
more wid her attenshions.  On the contrary, bedad, from the day this
happened till yestherday, whin she wor set ashore at the landing-stage
yonder, she'd look moighty saur at me if we chanced to mate on deck--
aye, faith, as saur as a babby that's been weaned on butthermilk."

"Why," inquired the skipper, when we had both a good laugh at Garry and
his account of the Boisson episode, "have they left, then, the ship for
good?"

"Faith, yis, sor, bag an' baggage, the blissid pair of 'em, an' moighty
pleased I wor to say the backs of 'em!"

"But how about the trial of those black devils, those pirates, then;
won't they be required as witnesses against the murderers?"

"No, sor," replied Garry.  "The polis officers that came aboard whin we
got into dock sid they didn't want monsieur nor madame neither, as they
didn't know a ha'porth of the jambolle, worse luck, they bein' below all
the toime.  The magistrates think the two French sailors, who're goin'
on foine by the same token, and the colonel, all of whom were on deck
an' saw everything that went on, would be sufficient witnisses aga'n the
Haytian scoundrels."

"Oh!" said the skipper, "have these men been brought up before the
magistrates?"

"Aye, yestherday afthernoon, sor, an' they've been raymanded, whativer
that may mane--it ought to have been rayprimanded, I'm thinkin', an' a
cat-o'-nine-tails, if they had their desarts--till next Tuesday!  The
magisthrates belayvin' the ould _Star of the North_ wid you, cap'en, wid
the colonel aboard, to give ividence ag'st the mutineers, that they
wouldn't be in from New York afore then, not knowin' what the ould
barquey could do in the way of stayming as you an' I do, sor, an' that
she'd arrive, faith, to-day!"

All happened as Garry O'Neil informed us, the Haytians and mutineer
blacks of the _Saint Pierre's_ crew being brought up again before the
magistrates the week following our arrival home, when, after hearing the
additional evidence against them given by Colonel Vereker and the
skipper, the six black and mahogany-coloured rascals were committed for
trial at the next assizes, which we were told would not be held for
another month, on the charge of "piracy and murder on the high seas."

The colonel took advantage of the interval that would necessarily have
to elapse before his presence would again be required in court to escort
Miss Elsie to Paris, and place her under the care of the sisters at the
convent at Neuilly, where, I think I told you before, he said her mother
had been brought up and educated; while the skipper and others of us
belonging to the _Star of the North_, being compelled to remain within
handy reach of the authorities, in case our presence at the trial might
be required, the opportunity was seized to lay the old barquey up in dry
dock and give her a thorough overhaul within and without, though the
engines, as proved by our rapid passage here, were none the worse for
our breakdown in mid-Atlantic, thanks to the skill and exertions of poor
Stoddart and the rest of old Mr Stokes' staff.

Most of us in this way got a short holiday while awaiting the assizes,
which I spent with my mother and sister, taking home with me the money I
had been awarded as my share of the _Saint Pierre's_ salvage, which had
made me fancy myself a temporary Croesus.

Alas, though, the sum, large though it was for a young fellow to find
unexpectedly in his pocket, went but a very short step in satisfying the
rapacious wolf I found at my mother's door when I reached the little
cottage, where she lived with my sister Janet, in one of the suburbs of
Liverpool.

A bubble company, whose directors had all been selected for their
religious bias rather than their business qualifications, burst at one
fell coup, almost in the very hour of my return home, dissipating into
thin air, as the Latin poet has it, all the savings of a lifetime which
my mother had invested in the swindle--the provision left behind by my
father, when he died, for her use, and the subsequent benefit of my
sister and myself.  The devout rogue who had "managed" the concern to
his own worldly interest and that of his fellow religionists, carried on
the same, so they said, in a pious and eminently "Christian way," no
doubt, respected alike in the eyes of God and men, according to the
loudly-voiced tenets of the particular sect, to which he and his co-
directors mostly belonged; but he managed, all the same, to carry off to
a remote and friendly land outside the pale of international law, and
where dividends need no longer be paid to clamorous creditors, a
considerable amount of portable property of a valuable nature, amongst
which, probably, was our inheritance, my mother's capital!

Under these circumstances it behoved me to consider how I could best aid
my poor mother and sister, then left suddenly destitute through no fault
of their own.

Fortunately, I had the means ready at hand.

In our constant association on board the _Star of the North_ after his
rescue from the drifting boat, in which he greatly exaggerated the help
I was able to render him, Colonel Vereker was kind enough to notice me
much more than my subordinate position on board would have seemed to
warrant; and in a conversation we had together during the voyage home
from New York, after asking me what my prospects were, he made me an
offer to accompany him back to Venezuela on his return, promising me,
should I accept, a good salary to start with, and a fair chance of
ultimately making my fortune.

Loving the sea and my profession, however, with all a sailor's love,
besides being attached to my old ship and her officers, I felt no
inclination then to give up what I had learnt to look upon as my
legitimate calling, and turn landsman; so, although I had the highest
admiration for the colonel, coupled with more than a liking for his
young daughter, between whom and myself there seemed such a mysterious
sympathy on the evening of my sighting the _Saint Pierre_, when the
captain declared we were some hundreds of miles apart, I reluctantly
and, so it seemed to me, ungraciously, declined his proposal, telling
him I preferred "sticking" to the skipper and the old barquey!

But the colonel very kindly would not take my refusal at first as final;
and, when setting out for Paris to take Elsie to her convent school, she
taking leave of me with many tears and assurances that under any
circumstances she would always remain _mio amiquito_ (my little friend)
pledging herself, too, to be, if allowed at the school, a constant
correspondent if I would write to her sometimes to let her know where I
was.  Well, the kind, good-hearted man, taking, as he said, a deep
interest in my welfare for Elsie's sake as well as for my own, assured
me that he would keep his generous offer open until the period arrived
for his ultimate departure for South America, on the termination of the
trial of the Haytian pirates and their mutineer accomplices.

So, recollecting all this, in my hour of need, I naturally turned to the
colonel and told him of my trouble on his return to Liverpool for the
assizes, at which, by the way, the black scoundrels and their allies
were sentenced to five years' penal servitude, the judge regretting his
inability to impose a heavier punishment from the fact of proof being
wanted of the active participation of the prisoners in the atrociously
cruel murder of Cato and the other diabolical work perpetrated on board
the ill-fated ship.

We were all glad when this matter, with the examination and sickening
details that it entailed, was finally settled, and we were at liberty to
go where we liked.

Colonel Vereker more than justified my confidence in him.

"Heavens! my boy, you must and shall be as my son," he said, wringing my
hand in a grip that I knew would be faithful unto death.  "Come with me
and I will make a man of you, and a rich one, too, Dick Haldane!"

"But how shall I manage about my mother and sister, sir?" said I
hesitatingly.  "How shall I manage about them during my absence?"

"You can make over your salary to them, for you will not want anything
while at Caracas, as you will live with me as my private secretary," he
replied, with another hearty shake of my hand.  "The money shall be paid
to your mother regularly by my agent here, so that you need have no
fears on that score as to her support.  But I do not want you to decide
such an important change in your life without proper consideration, and
the advice of your friends, my boy.  Go and consult Senor Applegarth,
who I know is an old friend of yours as well as being your captain; and
then, if he and your other friends advise your acceptance of my offer,
and your mother and sister are willing to part with you--why then, Dick,
you may consider the matter settled, and you, some day, will be very
thankful you accepted my offer."

The skipper did not hesitate for one moment in giving his opinion,
though, like most of my mess-mates, he was good enough to say how sorry
he would be to part with me, and how he would miss me.

"Go by all means, my lad," said he.  "By George! it's a chance that
doesn't come twice in a fellow's lifetime, and you may consider your
fortune as good as made!"

Mr Fosset and Garry O'Neil were equally enthusiastic.

"Faith, now, sor!" observed the latter, with a comical air of assured
deference at my future dignified position, as he imagined it would be,
"I hope ye'll remember ye'r humble ould fri'nd Garry whim ye're
Prisidint of the Venezuelan Raypublic, mid a lot of yaller divvles for
lackeys, an' so many dollars that ye won't know what to do wid 'em.
Begorrah, it's wishin' I am, I stood in ye'r shoes, alannah, an' I
wouldn't care for to call the Pope me ouncle, God bless him!"

Spokeshave, though, sneered at my success in gaining so good a friend as
the colonel; but owing to the accident to the top of his nose, which
being still bandaged, or rather court-plastered up, and not tending to
add to his beauty, he was not able to turn it up and sniff in his former
irritating way that always exasperated me so much.

As for old Masters, his face became the picture of woe when I informed
him I was leaving the ship and the company's service.

"You mark my words, Master Haldane," said he in his most sepulchral
manner, "many a one afore you has throwed up the sea, and what good has
it done 'em?  No good!  Them that goes to sea oughter stick to the sea,
that's what I says; and if they throws it up, though I hopes you won't,
they allus live to repent it.  I be truly sorry you be goin', and ah,
Master Haldane, I sed as how summet 'ud come of our seein' that there
blessed ghost-ship!"

"And so something _has_ happened, bo'sun, and a precious lot too, my
hearty!" said I, jokingly, as I stood on the gangway preparatory to
going over the side.  "But never mind that now, old shipmate!  Good-bye
to you, men, and thank you all for your kindness to me from the time I
first sailed with you as a youngster."

I really believe I could see a tear in the old bo'sun's eye as he wished
me farewell with the rest of them, the crew manning the rigging to give
me a hearty cheer and "send off" that could be heard across the Mersey.

Thus it was that I took leave of the old barquey, and, my mother's
consent having been obtained before I finally settled with the colonel,
no further arrangements had to be perfected beyond obtaining and
preparing my kit, and a hasty run to the cottage to pay a last visit to
my old mother and sister Janet, and wish them farewell for a few years,
when I looked forward to returning to England and finding them both well
and happy, and in more comfortable and prosperous circumstances.

That same afternoon Colonel Vereker and I started off by train from
Liverpool for Southampton, at which latter port we embarked in the
outward bound West India mail steamer, sailing for Colon, _en route_ to
Venezuela.



CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT.

DURING SEVEN YEARS.

We reached La Guayra, and from thence Caracas, safely enough, in spite
of the country just then passing through the acute stage of one of its
periodical revolutions that had supervened on the top of an earthquake;
which convulsions of nature and society are characteristic features of
Venezuela, like as the chief products of its fertile soil are cocoa and
"patriots," the latter being almost as great an article of export as the
former, especially after a political crisis, and consisting of all sorts
and conditions of men who, whether born subjects or alien intriguers,
are all desirous of serving their natural or adopted mother country for
a consideration!

Colonel Vereker was largely interested in an extensive gold mine in the
interior, where he put me as his overseer.

This was not an unwise measure for his own sake, apart from any motive
he had in advancing my welfare--his real reason for appointing me to the
post; for, with the exception of the captain of the mine, a Frenchman,
the majority of those employed were half-caste Spaniards and Portuguese,
all of whom studied their several individual pockets rather than the
interest of their employer, while the main body of workers were peons
and mezites, bastard mulattoes, with a large intermixture of negro
blood, who valued their own lives as little as they did the lives of
those, with whom they had to deal.

I had plenty of work to do here, looking after all these scoundrels,
having to keep my eyes open as much as possible in order to prevent
wholesale robbery as far as I could, although it was utterly impossible
to prevent petty pilfering of the ore on its way from the mine to Puerto
Cabello, its general port for transhipment to Europe, to swell the
treasure chest of the exiled.

However, by adopting the old Latin maxim, _Suaviter in modo, fortiter in
re_, treating all without hauteur, which some of the insolent half-caste
Spanish creoles affected, and yet keeping my revolver ready, with "my
powder dry," so as to be prepared for any emergency, I managed to get
along very well with the mixed lot I was set over, winning golden
opinions from every one but a few of the worst characters.

It sounds as if I were boasting, but this is something for a young
Englishman to be able to say in a country which, though it is the
veritable El Dorado of poor Drake's dreams, and has possibly a future of
wealth and prosperity before it when it comes under the rule of the
Anglo-Saxon race--whether of ourselves, or of our cousins in Yankee land
it does not much matter, for we are all of the same race and
enterprising spirit--can be better described in respect of its present
condition by a shorter and far more expressive word.

Amongst my other duties I had charge of all the colonel's voluminous
correspondence, he having a mortal hatred to all letter writing in any
shape or form, and in addition to my good patron's business
communications, was entrusted with the task of despatching a lengthy
epistle every other mail--they went fortnightly from La Guayra to
France--informing Miss Elsie of our doings, the colonel himself adding
the briefest of postscripts to his _pequina nina_, as he invariably
termed her and always enclosing some remembrance for his little
daughter, to show that his love exceeded any epistolary proof of the
same, as well as a more substantial token of a handsome cheque for her
maintenance and education, forwarded to the care of the mother superior
of the convent.

Of all my manifold duties this was the pleasantest I had to perform,
being as grateful as water poured on the parched soil of my exile
amongst an alien people, antagonistic to me in everything, and with whom
I had to shape a steady course, and preserve a "stiff weather helm," as
sailors say, to avoid open rupture and assassination, the Venezuelese
"sticking at nothing," especially when that "nothing" happened to be one
whom, for some sufficient reason to their minds, they deemed an enemy
and they chanced to be behind his back--and as I told you before, I
steered clear of many enemies, but I could never learn to trust them as
a people.

Yes, my happiest hours at San Felipe were spent in writing to little
Elsie, who answered my own letters, as well as those I despatched on
behalf of the colonel, with unvarying punctuality, holding to the
promise she spontaneously gave in England when we parted on her going to
school, at which time she had no idea of my ever accompanying her father
to South America.

Similarly, the saddest task that could have been laid on my shoulders
fell to my lot five years later, when the mysterious attraction by which
I had been drawn towards her as a boy had grown into the most absorbing
affection--a love that filled my heart.

And I had to write and tell her--I, who would cheerfully have laid down
my life to save her a pang--to tell her of her dear father's death.

This occurred just as poor Colonel Vereker had arranged for my returning
with him to the capital of the State, where another revolution--the
sixth, I believe, since I had been in the country--had broken out, with
the object, as the object of all these explosions of the mob invariably
was, to depose the reigning party in power, and put the leaders of "the
popular movement" for the time being, in the power of the deposed
authorities.

The colonel, who had a good deal staked on the issue of the struggle,
took up arms on the side of the cause he esteemed just--that to which
the most respectable of the inhabitants to a man adhered--as he had
taken up arms before for the party of law and order, amongst whom he was
looked up to, not only as a skilled soldier and tactician, but a
stalwart partisan, his very name being a tower of strength.

Alas! though, no opportunity was afforded him now to display his valour
on the battlefield and lead his hosts to victory; for while we were _en
route_ for Caracas, a dastardly hound of a creole, whose blood was a
mixture of the beast elements--part Spaniard, part Portuguese, part
negro--well, this treacherous brute assassinated Colonel Vereker in the
most cowardly fashion.

I was by and saw it all.

The vile murderer came up to my poor friend as we were resting in a
_posada_ on the road from San Felipe; and, while engaging him in an
apparently friendly conversation respecting the political points of the
rising, he suddenly stabbed the dear old man in the back with a long
stiletto which he had hidden up his wide shirt sleeves.

Fortunately, I was there, and I had time to send a bullet through his
brain from my revolver before the wretch could stir a yard from the
spot; but this could not save my noble-hearted, kind, generous
protector, a man who had been more than a father to me, and for whom I
had the utmost affection and respect.  No; the death of the scoundrel
could not save him, for the wound the cowardly scoundrel had inflicted
was mortal.

My dear friend and companion only survived long enough to confide his
daughter to my care and give me his blessing ere he died, drawing his
last breath in my arms, a smile on his face and dauntless to the end, as
he pressed my hand and uttered the usual parting phrase he had learnt
from his Spanish associates--"_Hasta la manana_--Good-bye till to-
morrow!"

It was a long to-morrow, indeed!

After seeing the last tribute of respect paid to the colonel's remains,
the gallant fellow being buried close to the _posada_ where he had met
with his untimely end, and a cross which I carved myself placed above
his lonely grave, sheltered by a noble palm that stood erect, as he had
done when living, a monument of nature's handiwork, I resumed my journey
to Caracas, in order to carry out my lost friend's last directions.

The _alcalde_, who acted as the colonel's agent and was largely in his
confidence, being an acquaintance of many years' standing, produced a
copy of Colonel Vereker's will for my inspection, assuring me that this
had been drawn up during his last visit to the State capital, while all
his affairs were in the most perfect order, "the poor gentleman," as the
_alcalde_ expressed it, "being under the opinion that he would not have
long to live," a presentiment of death I have often found many people to
have had.

Generous and thoughtful for others to the end, he had not forgotten me
in this his last testament, showing that the regard he had already
displayed for my welfare was no mere temporary fancy!

On the contrary, much to my astonishment, he had bequeathed to me quite
half his fortune--all his share, indeed, in the Gondifera mine--while
all his realised property, which was invested in good English and
American securities, out of the reach of the grasping hand of the
hungerful Venezuelan patriots--all this he left to his daughter Elsie.

From a codicil, too, appended to the document, more in the form of a
sacred charge than a legal instrument, "reading between the lines," I
could perceive that the large-hearted man had fathomed the secret desire
of my heart, though secret it evidently was not to him, loving Elsie as
he did, albeit in a different fashion; for after enjoining upon me to
regard his little daughter's interests even as he had studied mine, he
added that, should fate bring us together in the future, as had happened
so strangely in the past, his dearest wish would be gratified, for he
had already learnt to care for me and to look upon me as his son!

Of course nothing of this was mentioned when writing to tell Elsie of
the awful event and dreadful calamity that had befallen her, although
later on, before I was able to return to England, when her education was
completed and the good nuns wrote to me, as her father's executor, to
say the time had arrived for taking her away from the convent unless she
wished to change her religion and join the sisterhood, to both of which
courses I was, of course, bitterly opposed, and, as you may imagine, was
delighted when Elsie herself requested to be allowed to leave.

I must, however, have accidentally have shown my feelings towards her
and have "let the cat out of the bag" in the letter I sent home to my
mother, in answer to the last communication from Neuilly, asking her to
take charge of my darling Elsie until I came home to win and claim her.

I imagined this from something that leaked out afterwards, and from the
somewhat altered tone of Elsie's letters to me from the date of her
leaving France to live with my mother; for, though affectionate enough,
they had a certain little air of constraint about them, and though she
spoke of various objects of interest to both of us, and of different
persons whom she and I knew, and places she went to, she never by any
chance ever mentioned herself, never after the letters she sent me
containing the passionate outpouring of her inmost heart on receiving
the news of her father's death, albeit all this she would feel perfectly
certain was to me a sacred confidence.

Slight as the change was in her subsequent correspondence, I noticed it
and it worried me, and determined me to have the matter cleared up as
soon as I possibly could.

Meanwhile, however, I had to fulfil the colonel's last trust, and as I
knew what his intentions had been in regard to the crisis in Venezuelan
affairs at the time when an assassin's hand prevented him from acting
the part he intended to play in the existing revolution, I thought I
should be only carrying out his wishes in putting myself in his place,
as far as it lay in my power to do so.

So, soon after coming to Caracas and settling the details of the
colonel's last depositions, making my own will in my turn in case of
accidents, though in what way is best known to myself, I went to the
headquarters of the Government troops and joined the army of General
Gomez.

Under this able leader I fought in several engagements that were fierce
and sanguinary as all such fratricidal contests are, and ever have been
in the annals of civil war, at San Sebastien, Carapana, Tarasca, and
elsewhere, our guerilla struggle extending over the whole extensive
country in almost every direction, where there was a town to sack or
property to plunder, until at last the insurgent "patriots" were
conquered and peace restored.

All this took a long time; and then, having had enough and to spare of
fighting and bloodshed, and tired of mining too, I disposed of my
interest in the Gondifera mine, and at last sailed for Europe, bidding a
long adieu to Venezuela and everything belonging to it, my journey home
being hastened by a somewhat tenderer letter than usual from Elsie, who
had read a paragraph in the papers about my having been wounded at the
battle of San Sebastien, though, of course, I had not mentioned anything
about the affair to her or my mother, as it was a mere flea bite and of
no consequence, and I feared to have alarmed them needlessly had I said
anything about it in my letters to them at home.



CHAPTER TWENTY NINE.

HOME AT LAST!

Fellows who knock about the world sailoring and so on, cannot help
coming to the conclusion that its compass is narrower than stay-at-home
folk might be inclined to believe, for you can hardly stir a step
without knocking across some one whom you previously imagined to have
been miles and miles away, separated, perhaps, by an ocean from
yourself.

I had scarcely stepped into the train from Southampton, bound
Londonwards, _en route_ for Liverpool, having only landed from the mail
steamer that brought me direct all the way from Colon that very morning,
when whom should I see looking at me from the opposite corner of the
railway carriage but a big, bushy-haired, brown-bearded man whom I did
not know from Adam.

"Faith," exclaimed this gentleman, after a moment's scrutiny, a broad
grin lighting up his face and his eyes twinkling with a comical
expression that would alone have made me recognise him, had I not heard
his delightful, to me at any rate, Irish brogue, "ye're ayther Dick
Haldane or the divvle!" stretching out both hands to grasp mine.

I was as pleased to see him, as may readily be believed, as the genial
Irishman was to see me, I was sure, even without his telling me so.

"Well," said I, after we had pretty nigh wrung each other's hands off in
friendly greeting, "and how are you all getting on aboard the dear old
barquey?  I want to hear about everybody."

"Begorrah, Dick, give me toime to recover me bre'th, me bhoy, an' thin
I'll till ye ivverythin'," and then he continued in a bashful sort of
way, unlike his usual off-hand manner, "I've lift the say for good, an'
sit up for a docther ashore on me own hook, faith."

"Why!"  I exclaimed in great surprise, "how's that?"

"Bedad, you'd betther axe y'r sister."

"What! my sister Janet?"

"Faith, yis; the very same little darlint of a colleen.  Dick, ye
spalpeen, jist lit me shake y'r fist agin, lad.  I'm the happiest man in
the wurrld!"

"Whee-e-e-e-eew," I whistled through my teeth.  "This is indeed a
surprise!"

Then it all came out, Garry telling a long yarn about his calling at my
mother's house to ask about me some few months back, and meeting there
Elsie, whom he had no difficulty in identifying, he said, as "the little
girl of the ghost-ship," though she had grown a bit taller and was more
good-looking than he remembered her at the time he saw her on board the
_Saint Pierre_.  But, good-looking as she was, he did not think her to
be compared to my sister Janet, with whom he had evidently fallen in
love at first sight and very deeply so, too!

On his subsequently declaring his passion, impetuous as usual, after a
very short acquaintance, my mother insisted as a first step to
entertaining his suit that he should leave the sea, as he had another
profession by which he was quite capable of supporting a wife as well as
himself, if he so pleased.

"Faith, and I wint an' bought a practis' at onst, havin' a snig little
sum stowed away in the bank," continued Garry, "the savin's of me pay
for the last five year an' more, besides that money we all got for
salvagin' the French ship, sure, of which I nivver spint a ha'poth.  But
aven thin, Dick, ould chap, yer dear ould mother wern't satisfied, bless
her ould heart.  She sid that yer sisther an' mesilf wu'ld have to wait
to git marri'd till you came home, ye spalpeen; an' not thin aven, if so
be as how ye'd turn nasty an' disagreyable, an' refuse yer consint.
Faith, ye won't now, will ye? or, bedad, I'll be afther breakin' ivvrey
bone in y'r body, avic, an' thin have to plasther ye up ag'in."

To avoid such a terrible contingency I there and then gave my hearty
consent to the arrangement he and Janet, with my mother's concurrence,
had thus planned without my knowledge; although, really, if I had been
inclined to grumble at not being informed previously of what now so
unexpectedly transpired, I had only time and distance to blame, not the
parties concerned, for the engagement was of so recent a date that the
news of it, though on the way through the post, had not reached
Venezuela when I left.

After I had answered a lot of Garry O'Neil's questions concerning myself
and the time I had passed in South America, speaking, too, of poor
Colonel Vereker, whose death he had learnt from my mother, I began
again, asking in my turn all about my old shipmates, and, of course, his
own also.

"Faith, the skipper is foine and flourishin'," he informed me, "an' the
ould barquey as good an' as sound as ivver she was.  Do you ricollict
ould Stokes?"

"Of course I do," I said.  "Is he still chief?"

"No, no; he retired a year ago or more on a pinsion which the company
gave him for his long service; an' little Grummet--ye rimimber him?--
well, he's promoted, sure, to ould Stokes' billet.  The ould chap,
though, is alive an' hearty, an' as asthamataky as ivver!"

"What's become of Mr Fosset?"

"Och, be jabbers! he's a big man now.  He's a skipper on his own hook,
jist loike Cap'en Applegarth.  He's got the ould _Fairi Quane_, the
sicond best boat but one to the line.  D'ye ricollict that ould thaife
of a bo'sun we had on the _Star of the North_?"

"Why, you must mean poor old Masters!  I should think I did."

"That same, alannah.  He wasn't a bad sort of chap, an' a good sayman,
ivvry inch of him, though I used for to call him an ould thaife just
`for fun an' fancy'--as the old song says--well, he's lift the ould
barquey an' gone with Cap'en Fosset in the _Fairi Quane_.  But ye
haven't axed me onst afther yer ould fri'nd Spokeshave!  Sure, now, ye
haven't forgot little `Conky,' faith!"

"No, indeed," said I, amused at his query and the funny wink that
accompanied it.  "What has become of that spiteful little beggar?"

"Begorrah, ye'll laugh an' be amused, but he's marri'd to a wife as big
as one of thim grannydeers we onst took in the ould barquey to Bermuda,
d'ye rimimber?  Faith, she's saix feet hoigh, an' broad in the b'ame in
proporshi'n.  They make a purty couple, bedad! an' they do say she kapes
him in order.  Do ye rickolict what an argufyin' chap Spokeshave was
aboard?"

"I should think I did, indeed," replied I.  "I think he was the most
cantankerous little beast I ever came across in my life, either afloat
or ashore!"

"Faith, ye wouldn't say that same now, Dick," rejoined Garry with much
earnestness.  "The poor little beggar's as make as a cat, for he daren't
call his sowl his own!"

I asked after some of the other men belonging to my old ship, including
Accra Prout, whom the colonel wished to accompany us to Venezuela, the
mulatto refusing on the plea that, though he should always love his "old
massa," he could not go with him for one insurmountable reason.

"Guess I'd hav' 'sociate wid dem tam black raskels daan thaar, massa,
an' dis chile no like dat nohow.  I'se nebbah 'sparrage my famerly by
'sociatin' wid niggahs, massa, nebbah.  De Prouts 'long good old
plantation stock, an' raise in Lousianner!"

This supercilious autocrat, it must be borne in mind, all the time being
more than half a negro himself, though, for that matter, his heart was
better and his disposition braver than many a white man who would have
despised his coloured skin.

Some of the other hands about whom I inquired had left the old barquey
and shipped aboard other vessels, so Garry told me; but at this I was
not much surprised, sailors as a rule being fond of change and very
unconservative in their habits.

With suchlike conversation my old mess-mate and I beguiled our long
railway journey to Liverpool, which we reached the same evening, but
before we had quite exhausted our respective questions and answers
respecting everybody we had ever met or known during the time he and I
had been to sea together.

My meeting with my dear mother and sister after so long an absence
abroad can be well imagined, and so too my first interview with Elsie,
whom I should hardly have known again, for how can I describe her beauty
and grace, and though I had been prepared in some measure from accounts
my mother had sent me, still they exceeded my expectations.

It would be impossible if I tried to picture her for "a month of
Sundays," as Captain Applegarth used to say on board the old barquey
when he thought a fellow spent too much time over a job.

So to make a long story short and to avoid all further explanation, it
need only be added that one fine day last summer, when the trees were
all green and leafy, and the flowers abloom, and happy birds filling the
air with song, Elsie and I were married.

Garry O'Neil joined his lot with that of my sister at the same time, the
two brides being given away respectively by the skipper, who managed to
run the _Star of the North_ home in time for the wedding, and old Mr
Stokes, the chief engineer of the old barquey, who had only to cross the
road, instead of the Atlantic, to get to our house, as he lived near to
us now--he also was present.  Captain Applegarth, who was a very old
friend of my mother's and a kind one too, likewise, lived in a good
substantial house surrounded by a lovely garden in our pretty,
picturesque, old village.

To all whom it may concern, it may, in conclusion, be mentioned that
this double-barrelled affair took place in the quaint, old-fashioned,
non-ritualistic, semi-Gothic, and many-galleried old village church, of
which so few remain now in England, situated close to our cottage, and
where our widowed mother had, in our childhood, taught us to lisp our
first prayers to heaven, our dead father resting in the ivy-grown and
flower-adorned graveyard adjoining.  The nuptial knot was tied by Parson
Goldwire, as everybody called him in the neighbourhood, assisted by
Matthew Jacon, the equally elderly parish clerk, without whose joint
ministration on the occasion neither Janet nor myself would have
believed the marriage ceremony had been properly solemnised, both my
sister and myself standing in much awe of the learned divine and his
inseparable "double," and holding to the creed that the austere pair
represented the very quintessence of orthodoxy.



CHAPTER THIRTY.

A PRESENTMENT OF THE PAST.

After Elsie and I got "spliced," to use the old familiar language of my
boyhood, the expressive _argot_ of the sea, for which I shall always
retain a passionate love, only second to that I bear towards my dear
wife, we set off for the Continent, having determined to spend the happy
period of our honeymoon abroad, like the fine folk of the fashionable
world with whom, though, there is little in common between us, their
ways otherwise not being our ways, nor their thoughts, ambitions, hopes
or desires in any respect akin to ours.

First we went up the Seine to Rouen, where I had passed a couple of
years of my school life, studying French and teaching the young scions
of the Gallic race, with whom I was associated for the time the
exigencies of football, as we play the game in Lancashire, varied by an
occasional illustrative exhibition explanatory of the merits of _la boxe
Anglaise_.

Time passed swiftly with so sweet and sympathetic a companion; our
tastes were similar, both taking the greatest delight in ancient
buildings and lovely scenery; the weather, too, was charming, and
altogether we were as happy as two mortals can be on this earth.

Elsie and I saw all that was to be seen in the old city we first
visited, which, in addition to its architectural beauties, should have a
special charm for all Englishmen from the fact of the dauntless Richard
Coeur de Lion having such an affection for the town that he bequeathed
it his lion heart, and then we journeyed on through _la belle
Normandie_, loitering here and there at those historic spots, woven into
the life of our country, spots where artists of all nations love to
linger.

We stayed anon at slow, sedate Caen, as still as the stone for which it
is celebrated, and that furnished the building material of Winchester
Cathedral; Bayeux, boastful of its antique tapestry; and Dol and Saint
Servan, and away beyond, Sainte Michel, so like and yet unlike the like-
named Saint Michael's Mount of Cornwall, in our own sea-girt isle that
it might have been chipped out of the same block by its grand
handycraftsman to serve as a replica; until, entering brighter
Bretaigne, in the sunny south of France, where the landmarks of the past
seem to stand out in bolder relief, we visited Nantes and other places
of interest, and jogging on thence through Angouleme and Poictiers,
halting a day at Poictiers to fight our Plantagenet battles o'er again,
we finally ended our pilgrimage at Bordeaux.

At this wonderfully picturesque port, whose semi-ancient, quaintly
modern aspect strangely attracted us both, we anchored awhile, remaining
many weeks in excess of the customary limit of the traditional
honeymoon, ours being an indefinite one and only to be completed we
trust, when Elsie and I cease to breathe.

Late in the autumn, when the leaves had begun to turn russet and brown,
and the air of a morning assumed a crisper and more bracing tone,
telling us plainly as these signs tell that summer had fled for good and
aye, and winter was coming by-and-by, we bade adieu to dear old
Bordeaux, and taking a steamer there bound for the Thames, having had
enough of railways and land travel, we started to voyage home by sea, my
native element.

On the evening of the second day that had elapsed since losing sight of
Pointe de Graves at the mouth of the Garonne, towards sunset, we had
weathered Ushant and were shaping a course up Channel, north east, so as
to clear the dangerous Casquettes rocks of Guernsey, when I noticed a
large ship, close-hauled on the starboard tack, steaming inwards for the
French coast, as if heading for Brest, her nearest port.

At that moment the tired sun, which previously appeared to linger above
the horizon, uncertain whether to go or to stay, dipped suddenly as we
were looking at him, a pale, yellow radiance succeeding the dazzling
beams that had well-nigh blinded us, shining straight in our eyes, while
the afterglow, mounting rapidly into the western sky, became more and
more vivid each moment, two purple islands of cloud which floated across
this refulgent background having the lower edges dyed of a rich crimson
that seemed to set the sea on fire and tipped the spars and sails of the
passing ship with flame.

She was flying the French Tricolor, and as our steamer went by, saluting
her with a couple of blasts from her steam whistle in friendly greeting,
the stranger vessel as a return, in accordance with the time-honoured
rule of nautical etiquette always observed on such occasions, dipped her
ensign.

This action, coupled with the similarity of the scene and its
surroundings, the ship in the distance with her flag half on the hoist,
the sunset glow, and the fact of my being on board a steamer then as
now, brought back to my mind at once the incidents of that memorable
evening of the past, more than seven years ago now, the _vraisemblance_
between the two being simply astounding!

"Elsie, dearest Elsie!"  I cried with a start, as the strange
coincidence of the presentment struck me, the date being even identical.
"Do you remember what day of the month this is, _querida mia_?"

"Why, of course, Dick, I do," she answered, nestling up to my side as if
for protection, for we were sitting in a warm corner by the taffrail,
just abaft the wheel-house, and screened from the observation of the
rest of the passengers who were walking up and down the deck as usual
after dinner.  "Why, Dick, dear, it's the seventh of November, your
birthday, you know; surely you have not already forgotten the little
present I gave you this morning, my likeness in a locket for your watch
chain, a miniature done by that clever artist at Orleans, and you told
me you would always wear it for my sake.  Dick, my husband, where is
your memory?"

"No, my little one, I have not forgotten it," said I, kissing her,
thinking she was going to cry at what she thought was forgetfulness on
my part.  "Here it is next my heart, like yourself," said I laughingly.
"But, Elsie, _alma mia_, I was thinking of another anniversary, and a
Friday evening too, to make it all the more wonderful!  Don't you
recollect now?"

"Oh Dick, my dear husband," she whispered, seizing my arm and gazing out
over the taffrail at the ship, all ablaze now from the reflection of the
sky, and nearly hull down to leeward.  "I see, I see.  What a strange
coincidence.  It is really wonderful!"

"It is, my darling," said I.  "But it was more extraordinary still that
you should have seen me that memorable evening, now more than seven
years ago, and when I too saw the _Saint Pierre_ with you on her deck,
and more wonderful still, when the captain and some of the crew even to
_this_ day insist we were actually several hundreds of miles apart!"

"Ah, but you are near me now, though, thank God!" she cried, looking up
into my face with the most charming expression of delight, causing me to
be foolish in bestowing another little kiss on her upturned face.  "I
don't know how it was, but whether the ships were as far apart as the
captain and the others say, or whether they were not, I did see your
ship and you on her, as I told my dear, dear father at the time, and he
himself did not believe it.  Dick, dear, it must have been the gift of
`second sight,' as the Scotch people call it.  There was a nun at the
convent who had it, and could tell, so she said, when anything was about
to happen to any of her family, though she couldn't predict events
concerning persons who were not `blood relations,' as she termed them.
Don't be frightened, Dick, but I do think that I must really possess the
same faculty!"

"Well, if that is the case, sweetheart," said I, "there must be some
psychological affinity between us, and we are both endowed with the same
weird gift, although the possession of the same has never been brought
to the knowledge of us except on that one memorable occasion.  That
cannot be otherwise explained; but the fact of the two ships meeting
afterwards may very readily be accounted for under the circumstances.
The winds and currents of the ocean drifted them together, like as they
did us, dear.  Don't you think so?"

She did not answer for a moment, and, as our steamer speeded on her way,
the glow in the sky gradually faded and darkness crept over the face of
the sea, the flashing light of Ushant whirling its luminous arms round
in rapid rotation, like some spectral windmill, away in the distance
over our lee, where the French ship had long since disappeared.

Presently my Elsie, who had been looking down into the now gloomy depths
alongside, musing over the bitter-sweet memories of the past, lifted her
eyes to mine, glancing heavenwards.

"No, Dick, my dearest," said she, speaking at last, a certain hesitation
and catch in her throat and a tear in the broken intonation of her
voice, "Dick, I've been thinking and--and--it was a power greater than
that of the winds and seas that brought us together.  It was God!"

THE END.






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