Chapter C: (dated From Adelaide.) (3)

I kept watching the gig pull slowly toward the brig in the distance, and the cutter making ready on our quarter, till the men were in, with Jacobs amongst them; where they sat waiting in no small glee for the mate and his party, who came up a few minutes after: and I was just beginning to hope that Violet Hyde had taken my advice, when she and another young lady came out of the round-house, dressed for the trip, and the captain gallantly handed them in. "My compliments to the French skipper, Mr Finch," said the captain, laughing, "and if he an't better engaged, happy to see him to dinner at two bells[11] in the dog-watch, we'll make it!" "Ay, ay, sir," said Finch. "Now then!-all ready?" "Smythe's coming yet," said a "writer." "We can't wait any longer for him," replied the mate; "ease away the falls, handsomely, on deck!" "Stop," said I, "I'll go, then!" "Too late, young gentleman," answered the mate, sharply, "you'll cant us gunnel up, sir!--lower away, there!" However, I caught hold of a rope and let myself down the side, time enough to jump lightly into her stern-sheets the moment they touched the water. The officer stared at me as he took the yokelines to steer, but he said nothing, and the boat shoved off; while Miss Hyde's blue eyes only opened out, as it were, for an instant, at seeing me drop in so unceremoniously; and her companion laughed. "I shouldn't have supposed you so nimble, Mr Collins!" said the writer, looking at me through his eye-glass. "Oh," said I, "Ford and I have practised climbing a good deal lately." "Ha! ha!" said the civilian, "shouldn't be surprised, now, if your friend were to take the navigation out of Mr Finch's hands, some day!" "Bless me, yes, sir!" said Finch, with a guffaw, as he sat handling the lines carelessly, and smiling to the ladies, with his cap over one ear; "to be sure--ha! ha! ha!--it's certain, Mr Beveridge! Wouldn't you take the helm here, sir?" to me. "Oh, thank you, no, sir!" replied I, modestly, "I'm not quite so far _yet_--but we've got a loan of Hamilton Moore and Falconer's Dictionary from the midshipmen, and mean to--" "No doubt you'll teach us a trick or two yet!" said Finch, with a sneer. "Now, for instance," said I coolly, "aloft yonder, you've got the _throat halliards_ jammed in the block with a gasket, and the mizen-topsail cluelines rove wrong-side of it, which Hamilton Moore distinctly--" "Hang the lubber that did it, so they are!" exclaimed the mate, looking through the spy-glass we had with us. "Now you've your _jibs_ hauled down, sir," continued I, "and if a squall came on abeam, no doubt they'd wish to shorten sail from _aft_, and keep her away--however, she would broach-to at once, as Hamilton Moore shows must--" "You and Hamilton Moore be ----; no fear of a squall just now, at any rate, ladies," said he. "Stretch out, men--let's head upon Mr Ford and his gig, yet!" Terribly hot it was close to the water, and so stifling that you scarce could breathe, while the long glassy swell was far higher than one thought it from the ship's deck; however, we had an awning hoisted, and it refreshed one a little both to hear the water and feel it below again, as the cutter went sliding and rippling over it to long slow strokes of the oars; her crew being all man-o'-war's-men, that knew how to pull together and take it easy. The young ladies kept gazing rather anxiously at the big old Seringapatam, as she rose and dropped heavily on the calm, amused though they were at first by a sight of their late home turning "gable" on to us, with her three masts in one, and a white straw hat or two watching us from her taffrail; whereas, ahead, they only now and then caught a glimpse of the brig's upper canvass, over a hot, hazy, sullen-looking sweep of water as deep-blue as indigo--with six hairy brown breasts bending before them to the oars, and as many pair of queer, rollicking, fishy sort of eyes fixed steadily on their bonnets, in a shame-faced, down-hill kind of way, like fellows that couldn't help it. In fact, I noticed a curious grin now and then on every one of the men's faces, and a look to each other, when they caught sight of myself, sitting behind the mate as he paid off his high-flying speeches; Jacobs, again, regarding me all the while out of the whites of his eyes, as it were, in a wooden, unknowing fashion, fit to have made a cat laugh--seeing he never missed his mark for one moment, and drew back his head at every pull with the air of a drunk man keeping sight of his waistcoat buttons. By the time we were half-way, the swell began to get considerable, and the mate stepped up abaft to look for the gig. "Can't see the boat yet," said he; "give way there, my lads--stretch out and bend your backs! there's the brig!" "Hal-lo!" exclaimed he again, "she's clued up royals and to'gallants'ls! By heavens! there go her tops'ls down too! Going to bend new sails, though, I daresay, for it looks clear enough there." "The ship's run up a flag aft, sir," said Jacobs. "The--so she has," said Finch, turning round; "recall signal! What's wrong? Sorry _we_ can't dine aboard the French vessel this time, ladies!" said he--"extremely _so_--and the griffins there after all, too. I hope you won't be disappointed in any great measure, Miss Hyde--but if _you_ wished it now, Miss, I'd even _keep_ on, and--" The young lady coloured a little at this, and turned to her companion just as I remembered her doing from the dragoon in the ball-room. "Do you not think, Miss Wyndham," said she, "_we_ ought not to wish any officer of the ship should get reproved, perhaps, on _our_ account?" "Oh dear no," said Miss Wyndham; "indeed, Mr Finch, you had better go back, if the captain orders you." "Hold on there with your larboard oars, you lubbers!" sang out Finch, biting his lip, and round we went pulling for the Indiaman again; but by this time the swell was becoming so heavy as to make it hard work, and it was soon rarely we could see her at all; for nothing gets up so fast as a swell, sometimes, near the Line; neither one way nor the other, but right up and down, without a breath of wind, in huge smooth hills of water, darker than lead, not a speck of foam, and the sky hot and clear. 'Twas almost as if a weight had been lifted from off the long heaving calm, and the whole round of it were going up dark into the sky, in one weltering jumble, the more strange that it was quiet: sweep up it took the boat, and the bright wet oar-blades spread feathering out for another stroke to steady her, let alone making way; though that was nothing to the look of the Indiaman when we got near. She was rolling her big black hull round in it as helpless as a cask; now one side, then the other, dipping gunwale to in the round swell that came heaping up level with her very rail, and went sheeting out bright through the bulwarks again the masts jumping, clamps and boom-irons creaking on the yards, and every sail on her shaking, as her lower yardarms took it by turns to aim at the water--you heard all the noise of it, the plunge of her flat broadside, the plash from her scuppers, the jolts of her rudder, and voices on board; and wet you may swear she _was_ from stem to stern. "Comfortable!" thought I; "we've come home too soon of a washing-day, and may wait at the door, I fear!" "Oh dear," exclaimed the three griffins, "how are we to get in!" and the young ladies looked pale at the sight. The mate steered for her larboard quarter without saying a word, but I saw he lost coolness and got nervous--not at all the man for a hard pinch: seemingly, he meant to dash alongside and hook on. "If you do, sir," said I, "you'll be smashed to staves;" and all at once the ship appeared almost over our heads, while the boat took a send in. I looked to Jacobs and the men, and they gave one long stroke off, that seemed next heave to put a quarter of a mile between us. "D----d close shave that," said the bowman. "Begs pardon, sir," said Jacobs, touching his hat, with his eyes still fixed past the mate, upon me; "hasn't we better keep steadying off, sir, till such time as the swell--" "Hold your jaw, sirrah," growled Finch, as he looked ahead still more flurried; "there's a _squall_ coming yonder, gentlemen, and if we don't get quick aboard, we may lose the ship in it! Pull round, d'ye hear there." Sure enough, when we lifted, there was the French brig clear out against a sulky patch of dark-gray sky, growing in as it were far off behind the uneven swell, till _it_ began to pale; the Indiaman's topsails gave a loud flap out, too, one after the other, and fell to the mast again. Suddenly I caught the glance of Violet Hyde's eyes watching me seriously as I sat overhauling the Indiaman for a notion of what to do, and I fancied the charming girl had somehow got nearer to me during the last minute or two, whether she knew it or not: at any rate the thought of protecting such a creature made all my blood tingle. "Never fear, ma'am," said I, in a half whisper; when Finch's eye met mine, and he threw me a malicious look, sufficient to show what a devil the fellow would be if ever he had occasion; however, he gave the sign for the men to stretch out again, and high time it was, as the Indiaman's maintopsail made another loud clap like a musket-shot. Still he was holding right for her _quarter_--the roll the ship had on her was fearful, and it was perfect madness to try it; but few merchant mates have chanced to be boating in a Line swell, I daresay: when just as we came head on for her starboard counter, I took the boat's tiller a sudden shove with my foot, as if by accident, that sent us sheering in close under her _stern_. The bowman prized his boat-hook into the rudder-chains, where the big hull swung round us on both sides like an immense wheel round its barrel, every stern-window with a face watching us--though one stroke of the loose rudder would have stove us to bits, and the swell was each moment like to make the men let go, as it hove us up almost near enough to have caught a hand from the lower-deck. "For godsake steady your wheel," said I; "hard a-port!" while the mate was singing out for a line. "Now, up you go," said I to Jacobs in the hubbub, "look sharp, and send us down a whip and basket from the boom-end, as we did once in the Pandora, you know!" Up the rope went Jacobs like a cat, hand over hand; and five minutes after, down came the "basket" over our heads into the boat, made out of a studding-sail and three capstan-bars, like a big grocer's scale dangling from the spanker-boom. The mate proposed to go up first with Miss Hyde, but she hung back in favour of her companion; so away aloft went Miss Wyndham and he, swinging across the Indiaman's stern as she rolled again, with a gantline to steady them in--Finch holding on to the whip by one hand, and the other round the young lady, while my blood crept at the thought how it might have been Lota herself! As soon as it came down again, she looked for a moment from me to Jacobs, when Captain Williamson himself shouted over the taffrail, "Sharp, sharp there! the squall's coming down! she'll be up in the wind! let's get the helm free!" and directly after I found myself swinging twenty feet over the water with Violet Hyde, as the ship heeled to a puff that filled the spanker, and rose again on a huge swell, gathering steerage way, while every bolt of canvass in her flapped in again at once like thunder. I felt her shudder and cling to me--there was one half minute we swung fairly clear of the stern, they stopped hoisting,--and I almost thought I'd have wished that same half minute half a day; but a minute after she was in the Judge's arms on the poop; the men had contrived to get the cadets on board, too, and the boat was dragging astern, with the line veered out, and her crew still in it baling her out.

I fixed my eyes at once, breathless as we of the boat-party were, on the weather-signs and the other vessel, which everybody on the poop was looking at, as soon as we were safe, and our friends in the gig had to be thought of. The short top-swell was beginning to soften in long regular seas, with just air enough aloft to give our light sails a purchase on it, and put an end to the infernal clatter; but the vapour had gathered quicker than you could well fancy behind the brig in the distance, so that she looked already a couple of miles nearer, rising up two or three times on as many huge swells that shone like blue glass, while she steadied herself like a tightrope dancer on the top of them, by a studding-sail set high from each side. On the far horizon beyond her, you'd have thought there was a deep black ditch sunk along under the thickening blue haze, as it stretched out past her to both hands, till actually the solid breast of it seemed to shove the brig bodily forward over the oily-like water, every spar and rope distinct; then the fog lifted below as if the teeth of a saw came spitting through it, and we saw her bearing down toward us--cloud, water, and all, as it were--with a white heap of foam at her bows. "Brace up sharp, Mr Finch!" said the old skipper hastily, "and stand over to meet her. Confound this! we _must_ have these people out of that brig in a trice! we shall soon have a touch of the Horse Latitudes, or my name's not Richard Williamson--ay, and bid good-bye to 'em, too, I think!"

For a quarter of an hour or so, accordingly, we kept forging slowly ahead, while the brig continued to near us. No one spoke, almost--you heard the lazy swash of the water round our fore-chains, and the stillness aboard had a gloomy enough effect, as one noticed the top of the haze creep up into round vapoury heads upon the sky, and felt it darkening aloft besides. We were scarce three quarters of a mile apart, and could see her sharp black bows drip over the bright sheathing, as she rolled easily on the swell, when the Indiaman suddenly lost way again, sheered head round, and slap went all her sails from the royals down, as if she had fired a broadside. Almost the next moment, a long, low growl ran muttering and rumbling far away round the horizon, from the clouds and back to them again, as if they had been some huge monster or other on the watch, with its broad grim muzzle shooting quietly over us as it lay; the brig dipped her gilt figurehead abeam of us, and then showed her long red streak; the swell sinking fast, and the whole sea, far and wide coming out from the sky as dark and round as the mahogany drum-head of the capstan.

"Bless me, Small," said the Captain, "but I hope they've not knocked a hole in my gig--ay, there _they_ are, I think, looking over the brig's quarter; but don't seem to have a boat to swim! Get the cutter hauled alongside, Mr Stebbing," continued he to the fourth mate, "and go aboard for them at once--confounded bothering, this! Mind get my gig safe, sir, if you please--can you _parley-voo_, though, Mr Stebbing?" "Not a word, sir," said the young mate, a gentlemanly, rather soft fellow, whom the other three all used to snub. "Bless me, can't we muster a bit o' French amongst us?" said the skipper; "catch a _monshoor_ that knows a word of English like any other man--'specially if they've a chance of keeping my gig!" "Well, sir," said I, "I'll be happy to go with the officer, as I can speak French well enough!" "Thank ye, young gentleman, thank ye," said he, "you'll do it as well as any man, I'm sure--only look sharp, if you please, and bring my gig with you!" So down the side we bundled into the cutter, and pulled straight for the brig, which had just hoisted French colours, not old "three-patches," of course, but the new Restoration flag.

I overhauled her well as we got near, and a beautiful long schooner-model she was, with sharp bows, and a fine easy-run hull from stem to stern, but dreadfully dirty and spoilt with top-bulwarks, as if they meant to make her look as clumsy as possible; while the brig-rig of her aloft, with the ropes hanging in bights and hitches, gave her the look of a hedge-parson on a race-horse: at the same time, I counted six closed ports of a side, in her red streak, the exact breadth and colour of itself. Full of men, with a long gun, and schooner-rigged, she could have sailed round the Indiaman in a light breeze, and mauled her to any extent.

They hove us a line out of the gangway at once, the mate got up her side as she rolled gently over, and I followed him: the scene that met our eyes as soon as we reached her deck, however, struck me a good deal on various accounts. We couldn't at first see where Mr Rollock and his party might be, for the shadow of a thick awning after the glare of the water, and the people near the brig's gangway--but I saw two or three dark-faced, very French-like individuals, in broad-brimmed straw hats and white trousers, seemingly passengers; while about twenty Kroomen and Negroes, and as many seamen with unshaven chins, ear-rings, and striped frocks, were in knots before the longboat, turned keel up amidships, careless enough, to all appearance, about us. One of the passengers leant against the mainmast, with his arms folded over his broad chest, and his legs crossed, looking curiously at us as we came up; his dark eyes half closed, the shadow of his hat down to his black mustache, and his shirt-collar open, showing a scar on his hairy breast; one man, whom I marked for the brig's surgeon, beside him; and another waiting for us near the bulwarks--a leathery-faced little fellow, with twinkling black eyes, and a sort of cocked hat fore-and-aft on his cropped head. "_Moi_, Monsieur," said he, slapping his hand on his breast as the mate looked about him, "oui, je suis capitaine, monsieur." "Good-day, sir;" said Stebbing, "we've just come aboard for our passengers--and the gig--sir, if you please." "Certainement, monsieur," said the French skipper, bowing and taking a paper from his pocket, which he handed to the mate, "I comprind, sare--monsieur le capitaine d' la fregatte Anglaise, il nous demande nos--vat you call,--_peppares_--voilà! I have 'ad le honneur, messieurs, to be already sarch by vun off vos _crusoes_--pour des _esclaves_! vous imaginez _cela_, messieurs!" and here the worthy Frenchman cast up his hands and gave a grin which seemed meant for innocent horror. "_Slaifs! chez_ le brigantin Louis Bourbon, Capitaine Jean Duprez? _Non!_" said he, talking away like a windmill, "de Marseilles à l'Isle de France, avec les vins choisis----" "You mistake, monsieur," said I, in French; "the ship is an Indiaman, and we have only come for our _friends_, who are enjoying your wine, I daresay, but we must----" "Comment?" said he, staring, "_what_, monsieur? have de gotness to----" Here the mustached passenger suddenly raised himself off the mast, and made one stride between us to the bulwarks, where he looked straight out at the Indiaman, his arms still folded, then from us to the French master. He was a noble-looking man, with an eye I never saw the like of in any one else, 'twas so clear, bold, and prompt,--it actually went _into_ you like a sword, and I couldn't help fancying him in the thick of a battle, with thousands of men and miles of smoke. "Duprez," said he, quickly, "je vous le dis encore--debarquez ces miserables!--nous _combattrons_!" "Then, mon ami," said the surgeon, in a low, cool, determined tone, stepping up and laying a hand on his shoulder, "aussi, _nous couperons les ailes de l'Aigle_, seulement!--Hush, mon ami, restrain this unfortunate madness of yours!--c'est bien malapropos, à present!" and he whispered something additional, on which the passenger fell back and leant against the main-mast as before. "Ah!" said the French master, shaking his head, and giving his forehead a tap, "le pauvre homme-la! He has had a coup-de-soleil, messieurs, or rather of the _moon_, you perceive, from sleeping in its rays! _Ma foi!_" exclaimed he, on my explaining the matter, "c'est pos-_sible_?--we _did_ suppose your boat intended to visit us, when evidently deterred by the excessive undulation!--My friends, resign yourselves to a misfort--" "Great heavens! Mr Stebbing," said I, "the boat is _lost_!" "By George! what _will_ the captain say, then!" replied he; however, as soon as I told him the sad truth, poor Stebbing, being a good-hearted fellow, actually put his hands to his face and sobbed. All this time the brig's crew were gabbling and kicking up a confounded noise about something they were at with the spare spars, and in throwing tarpaulins over the hatches; for it was fearfully dark, and going to rain heavy; the slight swell shone and slid up betwixt the two vessels like oil, and the clouds to south-westward had gathered up to a steep black bank, with round coppery heads, like smoke over a town on fire. "Will you go down, messieurs," said the Frenchman, politely, "and taste my _vin de_--" "No, sir," said I, "we must make haste off, or else--besides, by the way, we couldn't, for you've got all your hatches battened down!" "Diable, so they are!" exclaimed he, "_par honneur_, gentlemen, I regret the occasion of--ha!" Just before, a glaring brassy sort of touch had seemed to come across the face of the immense cloud; and though every thing, far and wide, was as still as death, save the creaking of the two ships' yards, it made you think of the last trumpet's mouth! But at this moment a dazzling flash leaped zig-zag out of it, running along from one cloud to another, while the huge dark mass, as it were, tore right up, changing and turning its inside out like dust--you saw the sea far away under it, heaving from glassy blue into unnatural-like brown--when crash broke the thunder over our very heads, as if something had fallen out of heaven, then a long bounding roar. The mad French passenger stood up, walked to the bulwarks, and looked out with his hand over his eyes for the next; while the young mate and I tumbled down the brig's side without further to do, and pulled fast for the ship, where we hardly got aboard before there was another wild flash, another tremendous clap, and the rain fell in one clash, more like stone than water, on sea and decks. For half-an-hour we were rolling and soaking in the midst of it, the lightning hissing through the rain, and showing it glitter; while every five minutes came a burst of thunder and then a rattle fit to split one's ears. At length, just as the rain began to slacken, you could see it lift bodily, the standing sheets of it drove right against our canvass and through the awnings,--when we made out the French brig with her jib, topsails, and boom-mainsail full, leaning over as she clove through it before the wind. The squall burst into our wet topsails as loud as the thunder, with a flash almost like the lightning itself, taking us broad abeam; the ship groaned and shook for a minute ere gathering way and falling off, and when she rose and began to go plunging through the black surges, no brig was to be seen: every man on deck let his breath out almost in a cry, scarce feeling as yet but it was equal to losing sight for ever of our late shipmates, or the least hope of them. The passengers, ladies and all, crowded in the companion-hatch in absolute terror, every face aghast, without thinking of the rain and spray: now and then the sulky crest of a bigger wave would be caught sight of beyond the bulwarks, as the sea rose with its green back curling over into white; and you'd have said the shudder ran down into the cabin, at thought of seeing one or other of the lost boat's crew come weltering up from the mist and vanish again. I knew it was of no use, but held on in the weather mizen-rigging, and looked out to westward, against a wild break of light which the setting sun made through the troughs of the sea; once and again I could fancy I saw the boat lift keel up, far off betwixt me and the fierce glimmer. "Oh, do you see them? _do_ you not see it yet!" was passed up to me over and over, from one sharp-pitched voice to another; but all I could answer was to shake my head. At last, one by one, they went below; and after what had happened, I must say I could easily fancy what a chill, dreary-like, awful notion of the sea must have come for the first time on a landsman, not to speak of delicate young girls fresh from home: at sight of the drenched quarterdeck leaning bare down to leeward, the sleet and spray battering bleak against the round-house doors, where I had seen Miss Hyde led sobbing in, with her wet hair about her face; then the ship driving off from where she had lost them, with her three strong lower-masts aslant into the gale, ghastly white and dripping--her soaked sheets of canvass blown gray and stiff into the rigging, and it strained taut as iron; while you saw little of her higher than the tops, as the scud and the dark together closed aloft. Poor Miss Fortescue's mother was in fits below in her berth--the two watches were on the yards aloft, where no eye could see them, struggling hard to furl and reef; so altogether it was a gloomy enough moment. I stayed awhile on deck, wrapped in a peacoat, keeping my feet and hanging on, and thinking how right down in earnest matters _could_ turn of a sudden. I wasn't remarkably thoughtful in these days, I daresay, but there did I keep, straining my eyes into the mist to see I couldn't tell what, and repeating over and over again to myself these few words out of the prayer-book, "In the midst of life we are in death," though scarce knowing what I said.

However, the Indiaman's officers and crew had work enough in managing her at present: after a sunset more like the putting out of him than anything else, with a flaring snuff and a dingy sort of smoke that followed, the wind grew from sou'west into a regular long gale, that drove the tops of the heavy seas into the deadlights astern, rising aft out of the dark like so many capes, with the snow drifting off them over the poop. At midnight, it blew great guns, with a witness; the ship, under storm staysails and close-reefed maintopsail, going twelve knots or more, when, as both the captain and mate reckoned, we were near St Helena on our present course, and to haul on a wind was as much as her spars were worth: her helm was put hard down and we lay to for morning, the ship drifting off bodily to leeward with the water. The night was quite dark, the rain coming in sudden spits out of the wind; you only heard the wet gale sob and hiss through the bare rigging into her storm-canvass, when the look-out men ahead sung out, "Land--land close to starboard!" "Bless me, sir," said the mate to the captain, "it's the Rock --well that we _did_--" "Hard up! hard up with the helm!" yelled the men again, "it's a _ship_!" I ran to the weather main-chains and saw a broad black mass, as it were, rising high abeam, and seeming to come out from the black of the night, with a gleam or two in it which they had taken for lights ashore in the island. The Seringapatam's wheel was put up already, but she hung in the gale, doubtful whether to fall off or not; and the moment she _did_ sink into the trough, we should have had a sea over her broadside fit to wash away men, boats, and all--let alone the other ship bearing down at twelve knots. "Show the _head_ of the _fore-topmast-staysail_!" shouted I with all my strength to the forecastle, and up it went slapping its hanks to the blast--the Indiaman sprang round heeling to her ports on the next sea, main-topsail before the wind, and the staysail down again. Next minute, a large ship, with the foam washing over her cat-heads, and her martingale gear dripping under the huge white bowsprit, came lifting close past us--as black as shadows aloft, save the glimmer of her main-tack to the lanterns aboard--and knot after knot of dim faces above her bulwarks shot by, till you saw her captain standing high in the mizen-chains, with a speaking trumpet. He roared out something or other through it, and the skipper sung out under both his hands, "Ay, ay, sir!" in answer; but it turned out after that nobody knew what it was, unless it might be as I thought, "_Where_ are you going?" The minute following, we saw her quarter-lanterns like two will-o'-the-wisps beyond a wave, and she was gone--a big frigate running under half her canvass, strong though the gale blew.

"Why, Mr Finch," said Captain Williamson, as soon as we had time to draw breath, "who was _that_, bid show the fo'topmast-stays'l--'twan't _you_?" "No," said the mate, "I'd like to know who had the hanged impudence to give orders here without--" "Well now, Finch," continued the old skipper, "I'm not sure but that was our only chance at the moment, sir; and if 'twas one of the men, why I'd pass it over, or even give him an extra glass of grog in a quiet way!" No one could say who it was, however; and, for my part, the sight of the frigate made me still more cautious than before of letting out what Westwood and I were: in fact, I couldn't help feeling rather uneasy, and I was glad to hear the superstitious old sailmaker whispering about how he feared there was no luck to be looked for, when "drowned men and _ghostesses_ began to work the ship!" The first streak of dawn was hardly seen, when a sail could be made out in it, far on our lee bow, which the officers supposed to be the frigate; Westwood and I, however, were of opinion it was the French brig, although by sunrise we lost sight of her again. Every one in the cuddy talked of our unfortunate friends, and their melancholy fate; even Ford and Winterton were missed, while old Mr Rollock had been the life of the passengers. But there was naturally still more felt for the poor girl Fortescue; it made all of us gloomy for a day or two; though the fresh breeze, and the Indiaman's fast motion, after our wearisome spell of a calm, did a great deal to bring things round again. Westwood was greatly taken up with my account of the brig and her people, both of us agreeing there was somewhat suspicious about her, though I thought she was probably neither more nor less than a slaver, and he had a notion she was after something deeper: what that might be, 'twas hard to conceive, as they didn't appear like pirates. One thing, however, we _did_ conclude from the matter, that the brig couldn't have been at all inclined for visitors; and, in fact, there was little doubt but she _would_ actually refuse letting the boat aboard, if they reached her; so in all likelihood our unhappy friends had been swamped on that very account just as the squall came on. When this idea got about the ship, of course you may suppose neither passengers nor crew to have felt particularly amiable towards the French vessel; and if we had met her again, with any good occasion for it, all hands were much inclined to give her a right-down thrashing, if not to make prize of her as a bad character.

"Well, Tom," said I to Westwood one day, "I wish these good folks mayn't be disappointed, but I do suspect this blessed mate of ours will turn out to have run us into some fine mess or other with his navigation! Did you notice how _blue_ the sky looked this morning, over to eastward, compared with what it did just now where the sun _set_?" "No," said Westwood, "not particularly; but what of that?" "Why, in the Iris," replied I, "we used always to reckon that a sign, hereabouts, of our being near the _land_! Just you see, now, to-morrow morning, if the dawn hasn't a hazy yellow look in it before the breeze fails; in which case, 'tis the African coast to a certainty! Pity these 'Hyson Mundungo' men, as Jack calls them, shouldn't have their eyes about 'em as well as on the log-slate! I daresay, now," continued I, laughing, "you heard the first mate bothering lately about the great variation of the compass here? Well, what do you suppose was the reason of it--but that sly devil of a kitmagar shoving in his block for grinding curry, under the feet of the binnacle, every time he was done using it! I saw him get a kick one morning from the man at the wheel, who chanced to look down and notice him. Good solid iron it is, though painted and polished like marble, and the circumcised rascal unluckily considered the whole binnacle as a sort of second Mecca for security!" "Hang the fellow!" said Westwood, "but I don't see much to laugh at, Ned. Why, if you're right, we shall all be soaked and fried into African fever before reaching the Cape, and we've had misfortunes enough already! Only think of an exquisite creature like Miss----" "Oh," interrupted I, fancying Master Tom began lately to show sufficient admiration for her, "betwixt an old humdrum, and a conceited fool like that, what could you expect? All I say is, my dear parson, stand by for a pinch when it comes."

On going down to tea in the cuddy, we found the party full of spirits, and for the first time there was no mention of their lost fellow-passengers, except amongst a knot of cadets and writers rather elevated by the Madeira after dinner, who were gathered round the reverend Mr Knowles, pretending to talk regretfully of his Yankee friend, Mr Daniel Snout. "Yes, gentlemen," said the missionary, who was a worthy, simple-hearted person, "in spite of some uncouthness--and perhaps limited views, the result of defective education--he was an excellent man, I think!" "Oh certainly, certainly!" said a writer, looking to his friends, "and the one thing needful you spoke of just now, sir, I daresay he had it always in his eye, now?" "Mixed, I fear," replied the missionary, "with some element of worldly feeling--for in America they _are_ apt to make even the soul, as well as religious association, matter of commerce--but Mr Snout, I have reason to be assured, had the true welfare of India at heart--we had much interesting conversation on the subject." "Ah!" said the sharp civilians, "he was fond of getting information, was poor Daniel! Was that why he asked you so many questions about the Hindoo gods, Mr Knowles?" "He already possessed much general knowledge of their strange mythology, himself," answered the missionary, "and I confess I was surprised at it--especially, as he confessed to me, that that gorgeous country, with its many boundless capabilities, should have occupied his thoughts more and more from boyhood, amidst the secular activity of modern life--even as it occurred unto myself!" Here the worthy man took off his large spectacles, gave them a wipe, and put them on again, while he finished his tea. "Before this deplorable dispensation," continued he again, "he was on the point of revealing to me a great scheme at once for the enlightenment, I believe, of that benighted land, and for more lucrative support to those engaged in it. I fear, gentlemen, it was enthusiasm--but I have grounds for thinking that our departed friend has left in this vessel many packages of volumes translated into several dialects of the great Hindu tongue--not omitting, I am convinced, the best of books." "Where!" exclaimed several of the cadets, rather astonished, "_well!_ poor Snout can't have been such a bad fellow, after all!" "All hum!" said the writer, doubtfully, "depend upon it. I should like, now, to have a peep at Jonathan's bales!" "I myself have thought, also," said the missionary, "it would gratify me to look into his apartment--and were it permitted to use one or two of the volumes, I should cheerfully on our arrival in Bom----" "Come along!" said the cadets,--"let's have a look!--shouldn't wonder to see Daniel beside his lion yet, within! or hear 'guess I aint.'" "My young friends," said the missionary, as we all went along the lighted passage, "such levity is unseemly;" and indeed the look of the state-room door, fastened outside as the steward had left it before the gale came on, made the brisk cadets keep quiet till the lashing on it was unfastened--'twas so like breaking in upon a ghost. However, as it chanced, Mr Snout's goods had got loose during her late roll, and heaped down to leeward against the door--so, whenever they turned the handle, a whole bundle of packages came tumbling out of the dark as it burst open, with a shower of small affairs like so many stones after them. "What's all this!" exclaimed the cadets, stooping to look at the articles by the lamp-light, strewed as they were over the deck. The reverend gentleman stooped too, stood straight, wiped his spectacles and fixed them on his nose, then stooped again; at length one long exclamation of surprise broke out of his mouth. They were nothing but little ugly images, done in earthenware, painted and gilt, and exactly the same: the writer dived into a canvass package, and there was a lot of a different kind, somewhat larger and uglier. Every one made free with a bale for himself, shouting out his discoveries to the rest. "I say Smythe, this is Vishnu, it's marked on the corner!" D----n it, Ramsay, here's Brahma!" "Ha! ha! ha! if _I_ havn't got Seeva!" "I say, what's this though?" screamed a young lad, hauling at the biggest bale of all, while the missionary stood stock upright, a perfect picture of bewilderment--"_Lo!_" being all he could say. "What can '_Lingams_' be, eh?" went on the young griffin, reading the mark outside--"'_Lingams_--extra fine gilt, Staffordshire--70 Rs. per doz.--D. S. to Bombay,'--what may _Lingams_ be?" and he pulled out a sample, meant for an improvement on the shapeless black stones reckoned so sacred by Hindoo ladies that love their lords, as I knew from seeing them one morning near Madras, bringing gifts and bowing to the Lingam, at a pretty little white temple under an old banian-tree. For my part, I had lighted on a gross or so of gentlemen and ladies with three heads and five arms, packed nicely through each other in, cotton, but inside the state-room. At this last prize, however, the poor missionary could stand it no longer; "Oh! oh!" groaned he, clapping his hand to his head, and walking slowly off to his berth; while, as the truth gleamed on the cadets and us, we sat down on the deck amidst the spoil, and roared with laughter like to go into fits, at the unfortunate Yankee's scheme for converting India."[12] "Well--hang me!" said a writer, as soon as he could speak, "but this _is_ a streak beyond the Society for Diffusing Useful Knowledge!" "Every man his own priest,--ha! ha! ha!" shouted another. "I say, Smythe," sung out a cadet, "just fancy--ha! ha! 'D. Snout and Co'--ho! ho! ho! you know it's too rich to enjoy by ourselves. '_My_thullogy store,' Bombay, near the cathedral!" "Cheap Bramahs, wholesale and retail--eh? families supplied!" "By George! he's a genius lost!" said Smythe, "but the parson needn't have broken with him for that,--I shouldn't wonder, now, if they had joined partnership, but Daniel might have thought of mining all their heads with gunpowder and percussion springs, so that the missionary could have gone round afterwards and blown up heathenism by a touch!" The noise of all this soon brought along the rest of the gentlemen, and few could help laughing. When the thing got wind on deck, however, neither the old skipper nor the men seemed to like it much: what with the notion of the ship's being taken, as it were, by a thousand or two of ugly little imps and Pagan idols, besides bringing up a drowned man's concerns, and 'yawhawing,' as they said, into his very door,--it was thought the best thing to have them all chucked over board next morning.

'Twas a beautifully fine night, clear aloft, and the moon rising large on our larboard bow, out of a delicate pale sort of haze, as the ship headed south'ard with the breeze; for I marked the haze particularly, as well as the colour of the sky that lay high over it like a deep-blue hollow going away down beyond, and filling up with the light. There was no living below for heat, and the showers of cockroaches that went whirring at the lamps, and marching with their infernal feelers out, straight up your legs; so, fore and aft, the decks were astir with us all. Talk of moonlight on land! but even in the tropics you have to see it pouring right down, as it was then, the whole sky full of it aloft as the moon drew farther up; till it came raining, as it were, in a single sheet from one bend of the horizon to another: the water scarce rippling to the breeze, only heaving in long low swells, that you heard just wash her bends; one track brighter than the rest, shining and glancing like a looking-glass drawn out, for a mile or so across our quarter, and the ship's shadow under her other bow. You saw the men far forward in her head, and clustered in a heap on the bow-sprit-heel, enjoying it mightily, and looking out or straight aloft as if to polish their mahogany faces, and get their bushy whiskers silvered; while the awnings being off the poop, the planks in it came out like so much ivory from the shade of the spanker, which sent down a perfect gush of light on, every one moving past. For the air, again, as all the passengers said, it was balmy; though for my part--perhaps it might be a fancy of mine--but now and then I thought it sniffed a little too much _that_ way, to be altogether pleasant in the circumstances.

Of course, no sooner had I caught sight of Sir Charles Hyde than I looked for his daughter, and at last saw some one talking to a young lady seated near the after-gratings, with her head turned round seaward, whom it didn't require much guessing for me to name. Not having seen her at all since the affair of the boats, I strolled aft, when I was rather surprised to find that her companion was Tom Westwood, and they seemed in the thick of an interesting discourse. The instant I got near, however, they broke it off; the young lady turned her head--and never, I'd swear, was woman's face seen fairer than I thought hers at that moment--when the bright moonlight that had seemed trying to steal round her loose bonnet and peep in, fell straight down at once from her forehead to her chin, appearing, as it were, to dance in under her long eyelashes to meet her eyes; while one mass of her brown hair hung bright in it, and white against the shadow round her cheek, that drew the charming line of her nose and lip as clear as the horizon on the sky! The very moment, in fact, that a bitter thought flashed into my mind--for to my fancy she looked vexed at seeing me, and a colour seemed mounting up to her cheek, even through the fairy sort of glimmer on it. _Could_ Tom Westwood have been acting no more than the clerical near such a creature? and if a fellow like him took it in his head, what chance had _I_? The next minute, accordingly, she rose off her seat, gave me a slight bow in answer to mine, and walked direct to the gallery stair, where she disappeared.

"We were talking of that unlucky adventure the other day," said Westwood, glancing at me, but rather taken aback, as I thought. "Ay?" said I, carelessly. "Yes," continued he; "Miss Hyde had no idea you and I were particularly acquainted, and seems to think me a respectable clergyman; but I must tell you, Ned, she has rather a suspicious opinion of yourself!" "Oh, indeed!" said I, sullenly. "Fact, Ned," said he; "she even remembers having seen you before, somewhere or other--I hope, my dear fellow, it wasn't on the stage?" "Ha! ha! how amusing!" I said, with the best laugh I could get up. "At any rate, Collins," he went on, "she sees through your feigned way of carrying on, and knows you're neither griffin nor land-lubber, but a sailor; for I fancy this is not the first time the young lady has met with the cloth! What do you suppose she asked me now, quite seriously?" "Oh, I couldn't guess, of course," replied I, almost with a sneer; "pray don't--" "Why, she inquired what could be the design of one concealing his profession so carefully; and actually appearing to be on a secret understanding with some of the sailors! Directly after, she asked whether that brig mightn't really have been a pirate, and taken off the poor general, Miss Fortescue, and the rest?" "Ah," said I, coldly, "and if I might venture to ask, what did you--" "Oh, of course," replied Westwood, laughing, "I could only hide my amusement, and profess doubts, you know, Ned!" "Deuced good joke, Mr Westwood," thought I to myself, "but at least you can't weather on _me_ quite so innocently, my fine fellow! I didn't _think_ it of him, after all! By heaven, I did _not_!" "By the bye, Collins," exclaimed Westwood in a little, as he kept his eye astern, "there's something away yonder on our lee-quarter that I've been watching for these last ten minutes--what do you think it may be? Look! just in the tail of the moonshine yonder!" What it might be, I cared little enough at the time; but I did give a glance, and saw a little black dot, as it were, rising and falling with the long run of the water, apparently making way before the breeze. "Only a bit of wood, I daresay," remarked I; "but whatever it is, at any rate the drift will take it far to leeward of us, so you needn't mind." Here we heard a steward come up and say to the first officer, who was waiting with the rest to take a lunar observation, that Captain Williamson had turned in unwell, but he wanted to hear when they found the longitude: accordingly, they got their altitude, and went on making, the calculations on deck. "Well, steward," said the mate, after a little humming and hawing, "go down and tell the captain, in the meantime, about _five east_; but I think it's a good deal over the mark--say I'll be down myself directly."

"A deuced sight _below_ the mark, rather!" said I, walking aft again, where Westwood kept still looking out for the black dot. "You'll see it nearer, now, Ned," said he; "more like a negro's head, or his hand, than a bit of wood--eh?" "Curious!" I said; "it lies well up for our beam, still--_'spite_ of the breeze. Must be a shark's back-fin, I think, making for convoy." In ten minutes longer, the light swell in the distance gave it a lift up fair into the moonshine; it gleamed for a moment, and then seemed to roll across into the blue glimmer of the sea. "By Jove, Collins," said Westwood, gazing eagerly at it, "'tis more like a bottle, to _my_ sight!" We walked back and forward, looking each time over the taffrail, till at length the affair in question could be seen dipping and creeping ahead in the smooth shining wash of the surface, just like to go bobbing across our bows and be missed to windward. "Crossing our hause I _do_ declare!-- Hanged if _that_ ain't fore-reaching on us, with a witness!" exclaimed the two of us together: "and a _bottle_ it _is!_" said Westwood. I slipped down the poop-stair, and along to the forecastle, where I told Jacobs; when two or three of the men went out on the martingale-stays, with the bight of a line and a couple of blocks in it, ready to throw round this said floating oddity, and haul it alongside as it surged past. Shortly after we had it safe in our hands; a square-built old Dutchman it was, tight corked, with a red rag round the neck, and crusted over with salt--almost like one of Vanderdecken's messages home, coming up as it did from the wide glittering sea, of a tropical moonlight night, nine weeks or so after leaving land. The men who had got it seemed afraid of their prize, so Westwood and I had no difficulty in smuggling it away below to our berth, where we both sat down on a locker and looked at one another. "What poor devil hove this overboard, I wonder, now," said he; "I daresay it may have knocked about, God knows how long, since _his_ affair was settled." "Why, for that matter, Westwood," replied I, "I fancy it's much more important to find there's a strong easterly current hereabouts just now!"[13] Here Westwood got a cork-screw, and pulled out the cork with a true parson-like gravity: as we had expected, there was a paper tacked to it, crumpled up and scrawled over in what we could only suppose was _blood_.

"'No. 20,'" read he,--"what does that mean?" "The twentieth bottle launched, perhaps," said I, and he went on--"'For Godsake, if you find this, keep to the south-west--we are going that way, we think--we've fallen amongst regular Thugs, I fear--just from the folly of these three--(they're looking over my shoulder, though)--we are not ill-treated yet, but kept below and watched--yours in haste--' What this signature is I can't say for the life of me, Ned; no date either!" "Did the fellow think he was writing by post, I wonder," said I, trying to make it out. "By the powers! Westwood, though," and I jumped up, "that bottle _might_ have come from the Pacific, 'tis true--but what if it were old Rollock after all! _Thugs_, did you say? Why, I shouldn't wonder if the jolly old planter were on the hooks still. _That_ rascally brig!" And accordingly, on trying the scrawl at the end, over and over, we both agreed it was nothing but T. ROLLOCK!

MORAL AND SOCIAL CONDITION OF WALES.[14]