Chapter VI (6)

“‘Accordingly, I was out of the stage and bang into his garden, where he sat smoking his pipe, with his back toward the walk, before he had the least notion of what had turned up.

“‘Hillo! old ship! What cheer?’ said I, and round he swung to my hail, dropping his merschaum and staring at me in the summer-twilight, as I stood rigged out in a full suit of blue, swinging my cynet-hat, until I could stand it no longer, but just broke out into my old laugh, which brought his daughter tripping out from the back-porch, when, of course, the recognition took place. After the old man was over the heat of his surprise, and I took time to notice that Ellen had grown, in proportion, quite as much as myself, and how beautiful she was—and that she had been the first to divine that I had gone to sea—my heart beat quickly again with a feeling strange as sweet, and somehow I was not so much shocked as I might have been, when her father, taking off his spectacles and sobering his face, informed me that my uncle had died a year before. To be sure, I had never known a parent’s care, and Colonel Catherton, living as he did, almost alone with his books, was a man rather to be feared than loved by a child. Besides, I cannot remember ever to have had strong feelings for a human being before I became aware of my attachment to Ellen. I rather loved to lie behind some hill which shut out all but the sky from view, and dream of the sea—or to sit under the lee of the woods in a gale, with a book of voyages in my hand, intent upon scenes of battle and wreck, with the last year’s leaves under my feet, and the wild roar in my ears.

“‘It was in the whole stock, and, in fact, I have heard that my father and two of my uncles, at different times, had all been lost at sea. However, the colonel, who had been a great merchant in his time, had left some property—not so much though as was supposed from his style of living—and as I was his only heir, they persuaded me from taking another cruise until the estate was settled. This, of course, only left me leisure to fall all the deeper in love—the rock, Mr. Miller, on which, it seems, the gentlest as well as the roughest of us must split. Many were the consultations I had with old Blount, and strongly he urged me to settle at home as a professional man, never dreaming—old proser as he was—that the thing was too deeply grained in, ever to be coaxed out, even by Ellen’s eyes. The upshot of it was that I remained at home for two years longer, until the property was sold, doing nothing but reading nautical works and growing more and more enamored of Ellen. There was a soul in that girl’s voice like the sound of the surf as it breaks upon some enchanted shore, off which it might be, you lay waiting for day to dawn—a spell in her dark eyes more like the ideal dreams of old, than the influence of woman over man in these degenerate days. If ever mortal had fair excuse for anchoring his faith on the sandheads of—but, excuse me, Mr. Miller, they are all of a piece, as you may have discovered before this—some one says to be rated only by their different capacities for mischief.

‘Helen laid thousands on the shelf,
Dido only burned herself:
As Helen’s beauty was the rarer,
Her claim to mischief was the fairer—
A rule in courts that firm hath stood
Before and ever since the flood.’’

“As he ran on in this wild way, eating his heart, as it were, in sheer desperation of feeling, something in my look, as I felt my soul struggling to rise against the mendacious wretch, sent him from his vile sneers and accursed Hudibrastic lines, back to his narrative. Garbled and imperfect as that was, I was mad to hear it to the end; for while bitterly rueing the ruin which my own folly had wrought, I could not help burning to know by what damnable arts or eloquence she had ever been persuaded to yield her hand to _him_.

“His eyes sunk before mine and he moved restlessly on his seat as a sound, so like to a sigh that it made me start, came apparently from the door of the closed state-room; it might have been the Circassian—or the rats in their ramblings—and drinking off a brimmer of grog, he resumed in a different tone.

“‘At the end of the time I spoke of, the old man fell sick, and somehow his friends had dropped off, so that I spent most of my time almost alone with him. At last he consented that we should be married at his bedside. He had been growing weaker day by day, and I was the more anxious for the match, as his house was close to a place of fashionable resort, and Ellen had, somehow or other, become acquainted with some of the young blades from the city. There was some talk about her and one of them, while I was absent on a tour to the great lakes, that had like to have set me mad on my return. However, the youngster—who was, by all accounts, to the full as deeply in love and as fiery as myself, besides being, at least, my equal in fortune and connexions—had got himself involved in a quarrel with an acquaintance about this same report, which, in the end, sent one man to his grave and the other out of the country. As the duel made a great noise in the city, I determined to marry Ellen privately, and to remove from the village altogether as soon as her father died.

“‘Well,’ continued he, in a husky tone, ‘the thing was done, and when we rose from our knees, after the prayer, the old man was dead. We had no idea that he was so near his end, and I leave you to imagine, Mr. Miller, the horror of my bridal-night.

“‘However, when this was over, and we were alone together in the world, Ellen seemed to cling the closer to me, and it was not long, as you may suppose, before we left —— behind. I directed my course to Boston where I had made arrangements to enter into business with an old shipmate, a son of one of the firm in whose employ I had sailed on my first voyage. In the course of a few weeks I found myself comfortably settled at last, with most of my funds invested in the purchase of a ship and a brig, engaged in a trade to the Spanish Main. I commanded the ship myself, and for several years things went well—when by the villainy of my partner, suddenly as a whirlwind strips a ship, the house went by the board. After this I commanded vessels on the African and Brazil coasts, until the last ship was sold to a whaling house at New Bedford. I had agreed to deliver her into her new owners’ hands, and, as my wife’s health was rather unsettled at the time, I took her with me for the sake of the jaunt. It was then that I received offers from the man who had purchased the ship, which first directed my attention to this particular service. It was true that I knew nothing of the business, and had a sailor’s prejudice against it; but the man treated us with such considerate kindness, and made me offers so tempting to a broken man, pointing out how easily the difficulties might be obviated in time, and enlarging on the importance of having good navigators in the Indian seas, that, in an evil hour, I consented to take charge of my old ship.

“‘I removed from the hotel to a house in the upper part of the town, and after making the necessary arrangements for a protracted absence, and three weeks from the time I went into the Wisemans’ employ, I found myself at sea. The first voyage—and it was a short one, not exceeding a twelvemonth—put me up to the business, and investing all I had cleared in the ship, after a stay of six weeks on shore, leaving my wife to mingle in the best society which the place could afford, I put again to sea. It was on the homeward bound passage, in a full ship, after an absence of little more than fifteen months, that within a degree or two of the line I spoke a clean ship, with letters on board from my wife and the owners. Before I could board her, however, we were separated by a sudden squall, and night coming on lost sight of her altogether. We did not see her again, and it was when giving way to some natural vexation at the accident that I received the first intimation from Mr. Jinney, my mate, of the secret intimacy which had long existed between Ellen and the younger Wiseman. The man’s tale was a straight one, corroborated by several circumstances too trivial for notice at the moment of their occurrence, yet of sufficient importance, when taken together in connection with his story, to darken the past and cast an ominous shadow over the time to come.

“‘Though I had thought to strike her dead at first sight, with the stretch of sea between us, yet old ocean, wiser than a thousand graybeards, played the soother again, even in this great sorrow—the faster it bore me toward her, as the ship heeled to the trades—the wilder the gale I encountered off the very shores where she breathed, the more it seemed to uplift its voice against the tempest of fury which must have inevitably involved me in the ruin it brought down. It was well done,’ he exclaimed fiercely, ‘here’s to thee, old theme of the poets—broad pathway for spirits like mine to sweep! Neither the frailty of woman nor the malice of man’—here his voice grew too hoarse for utterance, and drinking off the liquor like water, he dashed the glass to the deck, walking the cabin with hasty strides, like a tiger chafing in his cage—while I, with a curse on my lips for what, as God is my judge, in spite of the man’s emotion, I believed to be a lie, sat chained to my seat, as by some predestined spell.

“Although my faith in the innocence of Ellen was as strong as in the angels of heaven, still he plainly believed all he avouched of her guilt; and still, as I clung to the one redeeming thought that nothing on earth could have tempted a spirit like hers astray, still something would whisper that she might have changed toward _him_, or have been made the victim of some infernal conspiracy, with woman’s malice, perhaps, at the bottom of the scheme. Strange stories in the history of the Cathertons, before they came over from England—which I had heard years before—flashed across my mind, and I felt sure—I knew, it must have been the circumstances growing out of my unfortunate duel—which, no doubt, he had twisted to the furtherance of his own purposes, which had induced her to marry him when her heart was elsewhere.

“I had little time to think of this at the moment, as you may suppose; for the sight I had seen that night, and the story of the second mate’s, with the frightful thought of what she must have endured to the end, was enough to craze my brain, until Catherton, breaking out into a laugh more like a fiend’s than a man’s, and halting directly in front of me, said—‘You look wild, Mr. Miller—perhaps you, too, have trusted woman. I tell you,’ he hissed through his teeth, as I arose and leaned against the mast, as it were, from pure weariness—staring at him in a blank way, while the blood seemed congealing to ice in my veins, ‘I tell you she was false—false as the whole sex—false as the hollowest heart of them all—though the oaths I had sworn, and the plans of revenge we had laid, kept me still.’

“‘No! no!’ reiterated he, laughing again in his horrid way, ‘by that time I had learned something of endurance; and, as I had no children—for I was spared that misery—it was not worth my while to thrust my neck in a halter for the sake of a profligate woman. Ha! ha! I thought better of it—it was a sweeter and safer revenge to have her here in the ship, while she knew that I was cruising the seas to beggar her paramour—for, fool-like, his money went at the gaming-table faster than it came, and I had persuaded him, in conjunction with the mate, to invest his all in the purchase of this ship—to see her, amid the healthful breezes of ocean, dying a death to which the direst of Eastern tortures are mercy—’

“‘Devil!’ I broke out at last, striking him full in the face with one hand, as I snatched a cutlass from the rack with the other, sending the iron scabbard, in my fury, straight across the cabin against the door of a state-room; he reeled a pace or two, laying his hands upon a half-pike at the mast. ‘Fool!’ I exclaimed, seeing that he still hesitated, ‘come on—I am S——!’

“He shortened the pike and darted at my face on the instant, but catching the thrust on the edge of my blade, I threw the point up into the deck-beam; that instant had been his last, for his defenseless head was within fair sweep of my sword, when from that very state-room, the door of which had been forced open by the flying scabbard, the same figure which I had seen before that night, again appeared, gliding now swiftly and noiselessly between.

“The cutlass fell with a clank on the deck, and I stood with outstretched arm, my soul riveted to my gaze, striving in vain to speak, while Catherton staggered back against the mast, covering his eyes with his hands. In the rigid and ghastly lineaments of death I saw, as my heart stood still, the likeness of Ellen; the frozen eyes seemed to hush my very breath; the thin, clay-like lips moved, and, like sigh from a coffin-lid, the whispered words met my ears, ‘Not thus—not thus!’

“‘What—what art thou?’ I gasped out—when old Charley’s voice sounded on deck; a sort of scuffle appeared to get up in the companion-way, and Halil Ben Hamet and his attendant, both sprinkled with blood and covered with soil-stains from sandal to turban, suddenly appeared on the scene.

“I stared from the apparition to the chief, and when I looked again, the place where it had stood was vacant.

“‘All is lost, my friend,’ said Halil; ‘they are hard on my track, and I have come hither to die with Zuma.’

“At these words the captain recovered himself, and stepping from behind the mast, waved me on deck.

“By a sort of instinct I felt compelled to obey him, as it seemed, for a space longer; and making mechanically for’ard, I roused out the anchor-watch, who, as usual, were caulking it in the galley, and not a soul else on deck, though the heat was so great, that I wondered how it was possible for a living thing to sleep. After this I again went aft to the binnacle, glancing at the watch to see if the last bell had been struck, and looking over the side, wondering if the boat in which the chief had come off, had gone adrift. I then walked to the waist again, where, hardly knowing what I was doing, I stood looking up into the dark blue where the stars were burning, until, as I gazed, a feeling of the utter vanity of earthly hopes came over me, as I thought that these same stars which had shone so calmly on men’s deeds for thousands of years, would shine the same on my grave. It seemed to me, then, that not only the feelings involved in the fate of Ellen, but all the experience of the past, all the changes of time and clime, faded away into nothingness before those twinkling, far-away lights; and a something of peace which I had never known before, swiftly as the thought seemed to travel through space to the winking planets, slid into my soul on the slant of the star-beams. Then my ear caught the splurge of the tide—a faint air from the sea fanned my cheeks—and a low growl of thunder came rumbling up into the cove. I remember, too, to have noticed lights moving on shore, while a stir arose on the beach close to the landing, but in the mood I was in at the time, I paid little attention to this.

“The Tartar lay moored stem and stern just within the entrance of the strait, midway between the island and the main, shut out by the rocks on the larboard hand from the walled town and the castles which kept the restless Arabs in awe. One or two of the little round towers, said to have been built at their gloomy and apparently inaccessible altitudes, by the old Portugese, might be seen looming thrice its real size above the hot outline of the topmost crags, over which the moon was rising, casting a strong yet dubious light on Muscat Island, which, with the bats wheeling continually about it—the patches of sand in its narrow gulleys, and the rough stones standing out of them, with here and there a stunted cypress, reminded me strangely enough of a Turkish grave-yard, and did not greatly tend to remove the impression, now uppermost in my mind, that something you’d give the world to avoid was soon going to take place. I looked intently at the Arab frigate, while the moonlight stole upon her rigging, creeping slowly down the _taut_ sticks and back-stays to the spar-deck, where twenty red-caps and turbans were visible over the side, showing that her quarter-watch at least were wide awake, when, my thoughts wandering again, I fancied some desperate, wild-eyed wretch—such as I had often seen creeping about the slave-market and the narrow lanes of the bazaar—stealing, step by step, to her magazine, blowing the slow match in his fingers, and staring by its lurid glow at the hammocks which he passed, until I actually caught myself grasping a shroud, and watching for the upward shoot of her masts, in the broad red glare and the shock that was to follow. Then I recalled the image of Ellen as she once was, and the unsated fury burned again in my breast, fed by my belief in her innocence; then came her spirit gliding across my bewildered mind, ghastly as I had seen in the cabin; then the thought of what Catherton could be doing, until I was no longer capable of thinking at all, but just walked on the forecastle again, for the mere purpose of diverting my mind from the horrid tangle it was in. It was some relief to enter into a conversation with one of the watch—a strong, heavy-headed fellow, as green as a parade-ground—about his home among the hills of the Hudson, and the old story of the trouble which sent him to sea, which, no doubt, I listened to intently at the time, although I never afterward could remember a syllable, except something about a certain Sukey Fairlamb, who turned out to be a jilt, and one Jonas Weatherby, who took the wind out of his (the Tartar-man’s) sails. I also recollect his remarking how much hotter it had got within the past ten minutes, and looking aloft, I saw the light scud flying across the stars, though the flutter of air on deck had already died away. A noisome steam was rising out of the forecastle-scuttle enough to choke one, while a dog which we had on board lay on the fore-hatches, panting for breath, without so much as looking at the bucket of water, which some one had placed within a foot of his nose. All at once I heard the sound of oars, followed by a hubbub of voices—and a large boat, filled with men, appeared in sight, pulling from the landing toward the ship. As I started aft I saw the captain disappearing down one hatchway, as the carpenter and the cooper came up another, and as soon as the boat came alongside, I hailed. Receiving no answer, I hailed again in Arabic, when a voice answered in the same tongue, ‘Be silent, we are coming on board in the sultan’s name.’ I ordered the carpenter to make fast the warp which they threw, when the first person that appeared over the side, I knew at once to be a little French renegade, the captain of Syed’s guards; the next was the accursed eunuch himself; and if the one glance which I had of his face by moonlight had not been enough, the sight of the two Zanzibar mutes who followed him—the stealthy, cat-like looks of their eyes fore and aft the deck, and the rush of the soldiers behind, would have convinced me at once that Halil Ben Hamet’s time was come.

“‘Have de goodness, Monsieur Capitaine Miller,’ said the renegade, who knew me well, ‘to make de muster of de sailors on de forecastle, by de sultan’s orders, sare.’

“As it was useless to refuse, I ordered the two men of the anchor-watch to call the people for’ard, while the cooper and his crony roused out the boat-steerers in the steerage, the noise having already awakened the mates, who were sleeping in the house under the poop. The whalemen seemed bewildered enough, as they tumbled up the scuttle, and gathered for’ard of the windlass, although I noticed that they collected the handspikes in a heap—some of old Charley’s party, headed by the wild man-of-war’s man, showing signs of a determination to clear the decks. This, within half a pistol shot of the frigate’s batteries would have been sheer madness; accordingly I spoke to one or two of the men by name, ordering them to keep quiet, when two sepoys came for’ard, with drawn sabres in their hands, and ordered me into the cabin. Armed sentries were posted at all the hatchways, and naked cimiters glanced round the eunuch and the captain of the guard, seated at the table in the long cabin, where Catherton stood leaning leisurely against the bulkhead, cool and collected, with his arms folded across his breast, the imminence of the danger having apparently restored his presence of mind.

“‘This is my mate,’ said he, to the Frenchman, as I entered; ‘you may examine him, if you see fit.’

“Hadji Hamet turned his turbaned head, recognizing me by a doubtful smile, while the French renegade, bowing to the deck, asked me, in his broken English, if I had commanded the watch that night.

“‘No, monsieur,’ I answered, rather sullenly, ‘it is not customary—in _Christian_ ships, at least—for the chief officer of a ship to head an anchor-watch.’

“‘_Certainement non_, sare,’ he replied, with something of the ineffable polish of his nation, ‘we know dat—have de goodness, monsieur, to show me de visitors in de ship—de runavays, if you please, Monsieur Miller.’

“I felt the eunuch’s devouring eyes creeping, in their slow, malevolent way, from the deck up to my face, as I answered.

“‘That is easy enough, monsieur—provided any such be in the ship. You cannot suppose us such fools as to receive deserters in a full ship, with plenty of idlers already on board. If the men are in the Tartar, they must have been concealed by the people for’ard, and I advise you to look in the fore-peak.’

“He interpreted what I said to the eunuch; Hadji then made some remark in an under tone, and the renegade, shrugging his shoulders, addressed me again.

“‘Monsieur Capitaine Miller,’ said he, decidedly, yet still with as much suavity as before, ‘you will confer de grand obligation to make de plain answer, sare, vidout de bagatelle. _C’est bien malapropos à present_,’ muttered he, taking snuff out of a gold box, and glancing aside at the two mutes, as they stood near Hadji’s seat, their small, serpent eyes never off of his face for a moment, and their jetty, tattooed arms folded across their naked breasts. Before I could devise an answer, groping in the dark as I was, upon gaping ground, two Arabs pushed into the throng, leading the mulatto by the collar. The fellow was terribly frightened, and looked round as if for some one to address, when his eyes lighting on the captain of the Tartar, he seemed to turn dumb as a mute at once. However, the fatal moment was not to be staved off longer, for Hadji, with a look of devilish cunning, drew a small golden whistle from the folds of his _juma_, and blew it till the cabin rang again; I started to hear a sort of scratching, struggling noise in the after-cabin, and the next moment some sort of an animal, between a rat and squirrel, ran through the crowd, cowering at the eunuch’s sandaled feet. A smile of triumphant malice played upon Hadji’s face, and the Frenchman, snatching up his sword, rushed through the group to the cabin-door. At that instant the thick gloom, which had been setting bodily down on deck for the last ten minutes, was rent by an awful glare of lightning, and, as the parted air collapsed, with a crash which made the ship tremble to her keel, I saw the Arab chief, standing, pistol in hand, at the door; the renegade reeled back against one of his men, while the redder flash of the pistol again illumined the cabin, and bounding like a tiger in its leap, cimiter in hand, Halel sprang over the table at the eunuch. The lamp was extinguished in the fray, and had it been the chief’s intention to escape on deck, perhaps he might have done so in the confusion which followed; for the lightning glared incessantly through the stern-ports, while the thunder, reverberated by the rocks, crashed over our heads in one continuous peal, till you’d’ve thought the hoary granite was piling over you. The first rush of the swell in the cove broke over the ship, deluging her fore-and-aft, as it heaped up in the strait in one tremendous surge, which tore the frigate from her anchor, and dashed her high against the rocks. The lighter craft fared no better, being swept from their moorings like drift wood; however, while the horrible work was going on below, the second mate had let go a second anchor, while the stern-hawser parted like pack-thread, and showing the head of the foretopmast-staysail, while some of them aft managed to get the spanker-gaff partly hoisted, and others jammed the helm hard down, the ship brought up with a surge which shook her in every timber; and, as you drew another breath in the melee below, where one man was contending with fifty, you heard the hurricane roaring over her mast-heads, like the rush of Milton’s legions to the field.

“I was thrust hither and thither, splashing in the water, nearly knee-deep on the deck, amid the clash of steel and the shrinking back of the Arabs, until a blade whizzed past my ear, falling with a dull ring on the head of some unhappy wretch, whose hot blood spouted in my face. Half blinded, I stumbled over a prostrate body, clearing my eyes as I brought up against my own berth, when another flash showed every object distinctly, and I saw the two mutes throw themselves before the eunuch upon Halil; then followed a deadly struggle from the mast through the cabins to the transom, during which Hadji’s shrill voice screamed to the executioners to use dagger or bowstring—then a heavy fall and a gasp—woman’s fearful shriek—and again you heard over all, the defying roar of the tempest.

“Torches, which had been extinguished by the wind on deck, were now relighted in the cabin, revealing a sight which was terrible to look upon. Three dead bodies lay on the deck, or across the table, besides that of the Arab chief, who had been thrice stabbed, and afterward strangled. Scarlet caps, cleft turbans, and pieces of rent apparel were washing about, with the fragments of the swinging lamp; while the table and the cabin partitions were reeking with gore.

“The Frenchman was dead as a door-nail when they raised him up, which was some comfort, though the three blacks had escaped without a scratch, except one of the mutes, whose hands were gashed with a dagger. The soldiers now closed the doors between the cabins, having first dropped the dead-lights, and after the eunuch came out, the bodies were removed out of sight in the sail-room, all except that of the chief, which was laid on the table, a dreadful sight, after the fever of the thing was past, since you could not keep from looking at the blackened face, with the eyes staring out of it, as if he were ready to start up again—the frown being still on the brow, though the orbs were glazed, and the arm hung nervelessly down.

“I shall never forget the feeling of satisfaction which arose within me—when some one threw the folds of a turban over the face—as I thought that every blow he struck had been home; only if he had cloven the eunuch’s hard head to the jaw, I had been almost happy, in a sort of religious submission to fate, as if all who loved too well on earth, must pay the penalty in some shape or other, at last.

“It appeared that the cabins had been twice searched before I was brought down, but Catherton had hidden the fugitives under a false bulkhead, so artfully contrived, that had not Hadji and the guard been so hard on Ben Hamet’s track after the attempt to assassinate the sultan had failed, they might have escaped detection. The little animal, which had revealed their presence, after all, was a pet of Zuma’s, a flying lemur from one of the Indian archipelago: woman-like, she had brought it away in her dress, and by the knowledge which black Hadji had of its habits, it was thus made instrumental in betraying the pair.

“Neither Catherton nor the steward were to be found below, after the murderous fracas was over. I had no particular desire to remain myself, as you may suppose, and no opposition being offered to the movement, accordingly I went on deck.

“The wind was now at its height, having blown every thing moveable off the poop into the seat which was breaking in awful rollers at the bottom of the cove, the squall having come from the north-west. The ship, with two anchors down under the lee of Muscat Island, rode safely enough after the first danger was over; but the Arab frigate was lying broadside on to the rocks, grinding to pieces, with nothing standing but her lower masts. She could plainly be seen, not only by the flashes, but by a strong phosphorescent gleam which pervaded the atmosphere, reflected, perhaps, from the sea, each gigantic surge sparkling with living fire, heaped up in the smothering foam of its crests, as it rolled down on the wreck. I could even see the brine pouring from her lower deck-ports, as she lifted bodily against the rocks, and fancied I could hear the despairing cries of her crew, as one by one, her heavy guns, torn from their tackles, were hurled across the decks.

“I had little time, however, to dwell on the sight, terrible as it was, for the carpenter and man-of-war’s man came driving the length of the deck before the blast, when old Charley shouted in my ear that the steward was taken with the cramp in the forecastle, and thinking he was going to die, wished to see me. Accordingly, I struggled for’ard, with a foreboding that the horrors of the night were not yet over. A knot of our men were standing in the waist, and I passed the Arabs crouching under the booby-hatches and the fife-rails, from the fury of the wind, which howled fore-and-aft the deck. I was about to descend into the forecastle, when Captain Catherton, with his Indian boat-steerer and three of the mates, came up on the other side. He waved me aft, shouting, at the full pitch of his strong voice, to the mates behind him, who held on to the windlass, and looked from him to me without moving a finger. However, the boat-steerer lifted a handspike, and his superior—who was now grown desperate, having received an inkling of my errand from the Indian—presented a pistol at my head, and pulled the trigger. It flashed in the pan; and before he could level another I closed with him, pitching him back into the scuppers, where old Charley and Frank lashed him to a spar, hands and feet. One word to the mates about his plan of running away with the ship, and I sprung down in the forecastle, where the mulatto lay on his back, raving for them to keep the captain back, while two of the men were rubbing his writhing body with whale-oil and hartshorn.

“The second mate and most of the starboard watch were standing around, looking on helplessly enough, though the moment the steward’s eye caught mine he ceased to struggle, moaning and mumbling, like a dog, till I got my ear close to his mouth, when he muttered something about searching the run under the after-cabin, where the powder was kept. The violence of the spasms interrupted him, and although there was an urgent meaning in his wild eye, and he pointed repeatedly aft, in his agony, I was awfully at a loss what to make of it, until, looking up, I encountered old Charley’s curious glance, and the ghost flitted, as it were, across the maze in a moment. The second mate must have seen the same thing himself, for without a word on either side, our eyes met in one startling flash of intelligence, and he followed me close, as snatching up a heaver, I drove along the deck, knocking the Arabs to the right and left, tumbling down the narrow stairs from the poop in my haste, with two-thirds of the ship’s company at my back—mates, boat-steerers, forecastle-men, and all—though the most of them tramped down the companion-way into the for’ard cabin, where we heard them battering at the doors and cursing the Arabs; the carpenter and myself ripped up the table and the scuttle under it. Parker stood by with a torch; I jumped down, lowering the light, and you may guess gentlemen, what I saw; for it seems,” said the master’s mate, passing his rough hand to his brow, “that long years, spent in trying to drown the sight, has hardly given me nerve to tell.

“It was Ellen, herself,” continued he, after a pause, “lying, motionless, on a heap of old bunting; but whether life had gone, or no, it was impossible for me to answer, as I took her up—staggering under my burthen, light enough, God knows, as it was. The second mate caught her from me, and I stumbled, helpless as a child, about the mouth of that horrid hole, hardly noting its secrets, until the men burst into the cabin, and I heard old Charley say she was dead.

“‘Where is Mr. Miller?’ said Frank, with an oath.

“‘Here,’ I answered, leaping out among them, every vein in my body running with liquid fire—the one thought of revenge on her murderers raging in my heart, and upon my tongue. However, the mates—aroused from their stupor at last—threw themselves upon me, as I glared round for a weapon. A wild uproar began to rise among the men, crowding upon each other to catch a look at her face, hanging over the second mate’s shoulder, with a look of mute appeal, as he told me afterward, on the wasted features set in death, by the red torch-light.

“In the midst of this, Hadji summoned his soldiers from deck: I saw his malignant purpose, and my calmness came back, as I made up my mind that, at all hazards, he should not approach the corpse. Breaking from those who held me, I burst through the throng, and pointing to the half-pikes leveled against his party, ordered him, in Arabic, to clear the cabin of his scum. He laid his hand on the hilt of his _krungar_, scowling like a fiend of darkness upon me from a crowd of his men; but the menacing look of the mass in front of him—all of whom had armed themselves—not to speak of the tone of my own voice, admonished him, devil as he was, to think better of it.

“‘That’s the sort, mates,’ said the carpenter; ‘if they don’t top their booms at a minute’s warning, we’ll spit the heathens to the beams, and then hang Jonas to the yard-arm.’

“‘Silence, there!’ said I. ‘One minute more,’ looking at the eunuch, and grasping the weapon which some one had thrust into my hand, ‘and it will be too late.’

“He felt that he was overmatched, and turning slowly round, still keeping his baleful glance fixed on my face, ordered his followers on deck, retiring last himself, just as I caught Frank’s pike traveling in his rear to freshen his way.

“As soon as the cabins were cleared of the Arabs, I took the second mate a little aside from the rest.

“‘Now, Mr. Parker,’ said I, ‘you will take charge of the Tartar. All I ask is, that you will not give up the female that Hadji Hamet has confined in that state-room, to the tender mercies of the sultan, if you can possibly avoid it—and a cast home for myself, if you can get an offing for this ship, and I am allowed to leave Muscat in her. I will pay my passage in Persian rupees, or if you prefer it, in Spanish dollars. One thing more,’ said I, seeing that he was about to interrupt me, ‘I know something of the country: if you would save yourself a mint of trouble with the sultan’s divan, you will put Catherton at once in double-irons, and keep him secure, at least, until you are clear of the land.’

“‘Sir,’ said he, ‘I, for one, am content to obey your orders till the v’yage is up. What say you, my lads, is Captain Catherton fit to be trusted with the ship, after what has happened?’

“‘No, no!’ was the universal answer, mingled with execrations and oaths of vengeance.

“‘Who, then, shall take charge?’ asked the second mate.

“‘Mister Miller,’ they answered, with one voice, ‘for he only can take the Tartar off this coast.’

“‘Well, my lads,’ said I, wonderfully moved, I confess, seeing that I had something to live for yet, although, a moment before, I had thought that my hold on life was slackened for ever, ‘if you will have it so, I’ll do my best. I tell you fairly that the captain confessed to me last night, in this cabin, that he intended to sell ship and cargo, on the passage home, in return for some private wrong which, he said, one of the owners had done him—though,’ said I, solemnly, ‘as surely as God’s eye beheld this accursed deed, yon pale clay was as innocent as the angels of heaven of aught like crime toward him.’

“‘We know it, captain—we knew it all along!’ they answered, even those whom I had considered the most hardened, shedding tears, while curses and vows of vengeance were freely vented around.

“‘She was too good for the bloody-minded villain,’ said the carpenter; ‘and, so help me, if there is nobody else—’

“It was time to stop this, as we had quite enough of blood for that night, so I checked old Charley in his oath, and called back the Indian boat-steerer, who, at first, had seemed disposed to side with the captain, but who was now stealing up the companion-way, in an empty-handed, errandless way, though I saw the thing in his eye, and the gleam of a knife in the sleeve of his shirt.

“‘My lads,’ said I, ‘we will leave him to the law. He shall not escape, I promise you. Mr. Parker, you will have Captain Catherton put in double-irons, and placed in the steerage for the present.’

“‘Ay, ay, sir,’ he answered, and accordingly the villain was well secured, with one of the trustiest men in the ship standing sentry over him.

“After this, the cabin was cleared of all but a strong guard, armed to the teeth, and I went on deck, leaving Zuma, who had recovered from her swoon of terror, kneeling in silence by the body of the chief. I had resolved to save her as soon as I could see any possible way, though I knew that her life and my own, perhaps, depended upon our getting under weigh, as soon as the weather would permit.

“The fury of the squall was over. One of the mates told me that it had been raining a perfect deluge a few moments before I came up, and, in fact, though it was slackening off, the decks were all afloat, and I could even see by the great flashes of waste lightning which still illumined the passage, the spherical shape of the rain-drops, as they fell. I mention this, gentlemen, to show how deeply the most trivial incident in that terrible night was impressed upon my mind, never to be forgotten while memory lives with me.

“The wind soon freshened again, blowing fiercely in gusts over the rugged top of Muscat Island, but gradually sunk as the atmosphere cleared; the stars showing themselves, here and there, in patches of clear sky, before the day dawned. Then, as the sun rose behind the lofty rocks to the east, the wind failed altogether, and it seemed fast growing as hot as before, while a vague notion got into my head, looking at the Arab soldiers on the poop, that the events of the past night, terrible as they seemed, were now but the ghosts of things that had been.

“A sort of calm, too, prevailed in the ship, as the heavy swells began to subside in the cove. The cook was in his galley, attending to his usual duties, the blue smoke rising from the funnel, straight as a pine tree, half-way to the top. The people hung in knots about the forecastle, apparently waiting for eight bells to summon them to breakfast, while the mates stood together on the larboard gangway, with a glass among them, examining the shore and the wreck of the Arab frigate, now firmly wedged in between two precipitous rocks.

“The black dog of a eunuch, secure, as it seemed, in the shadow of his master, walked the poop with as proud a stride as if his foot was already on our necks—not a muscle of his grim, relentless face moving beneath his showy turban, flecked, as it was, with blood, while, as I met his deadly, sinister glance every time he turned, I fancied to myself—as, indeed, I had done on former occasions—what a hell of secrets must lie hidden, from all but God’s eye, in the black pit of his soul. The pagan wretch was said to delight in shedding human blood, and in every variety of torture, having been cognizant of many acts of atrocious cruelty in the time of the old Imaum. His only qualities were a brutish devotion to the sultan, and a species of slow, long-breathed cunning, of which report said Syed Ben Seeyd had often availed himself in penetrating the secret designs of his enemies.

“However, when I thought of Catherton’s villainy, it could not be denied, that black or white, Christian or heathen, human nature devoid of a regulating principle, was essentially the same, differing only in the modifications of climes; and, singular as it may seem to you, several passages of the New Testament illustrative of the same idea occurred to me at the time, and I could not help feeling that it was utterly impossible for me, even if I had been differently brought up, to deny for a moment—thinking of the wisdom of the parables—that it was truly God who had spoken on earth with the lips of man: reflecting that the thirst for vengeance for a supposed wrong had made Catherton even more wicked than Hadji himself, who would probably, under any circumstances, have disdained such a dastardly scheme of revenge as the former had partially broached, thinking to have bribed me to join him, in the situation I was in at the time, partly by offers of pecuniary advantage, and partly by his tale, which had so puzzled me at first, little dreaming that he was the man who had married Ellen. I was almost confident now that the whole diabolical story of her guilt had been one of the mate’s own planning—he, I mean, who had gone to his account—and horrible as the thing seemed, I had no doubt _now_ Parker’s notion was correct, and that the captain either in fear, remorse, or hate, or from some curious commingling of the three, had sacrificed the entire boat’s crew to get rid of his accomplice. How the body of Ellen, dreadfully emaciated as it was, came to be found in the run after the second mate’s account of her loss, was yet a mystery to me, unless Catherton, with the assistance of the steward, had palmed that story on the crew, while he secretly held her confined in the hold to starve by slow degrees. However, as I had no wish that the matter should be cleared up in the sultan’s divan, after my recent promise to the crew, I aroused myself to make the attempt to get the ship to sea.

“The cove of Muscat is less than a mile in depth from its entrance at Fisher’s Rock, but how to get out of it into the current, with no wind, against the heavy swell, was the puzzle. The two forts were to be counted as nothing when the ship was once under weigh, as they merely commanded the passage, and the risk we ran from the one on the western shore was not to be thought of, if we had a chance, when it fell calm enough, to tow the ship out into the currant setting from the Persian Gulf. The land-wind was almost certain not to blow before sunset, and the Arabs were sure to board the ship from the shore before that time, although not a single craft or boat of any kind was to be seen afloat, as I swept the harbor with my glass, and I had not the least doubt but the Soliman Shah, the corvette which had anchored off Fisher’s Rock the day before, had been driven from her anchors with the frigate.

“Another hour passed, as I anxiously watched for the swell to go down, when we saw them making preparations to get off two _balitas_, lying aground on a spit of sand nearly in front of the palace. As I turned to look at some persons who had appeared on the divan, a large and airy veranda, overlooking the sea, the second mate exclaimed that one of the Arabs was making signals to the shore with his turban. In the desperate case we were in, it was neck or nothing; so, as I really began to have some hopes of getting to sea in the want of crafts to board us, I instantly ordered two guns to be run in and pointed aft; the carpenter clapped a bag of musket-balls in the muzzle of each, and while Parker and the man-of-war’s man stood by with matches lit, I hailed the Arabs in their language, giving Hadji notice, that at the smallest sign of a repetition of the act I would sweep the poop. This seemed to appal them. A few moments after, while part of the people were taking their breakfast on deck, word was brought me that the steward was easier and wished to see me again.