The gale was followed by several days of true tropical weather: light airs before which our stem slided so softly as to leave the water unwrinkled; then pauses of utter stagnation with the horizon[207] slowly waving in the roasting atmosphere as if it were some huge snake winding round and round the sea and our mastheads wriggling up into the brassy blue like the points of rotating corkscrews.

I rose one morning early, loathing the narrow frizzling confinement of my cabin, where the heat of the upper deck dwelt in the atmosphere with a sort of tingling, and where the wall, thick as the scantling was and cooled besides outside by the wash of the brine, felt to the hand warm as a glass newly rinsed in hot water. I went on deck and found myself in a cloudless day. The sun was a few degrees above the horizon, and his wake flowed in a river of dazzling glory to the inverted image of the yacht reflected with mirror-like perfection in the clear, pale-blue profound over which she was imperceptibly stealing, fanned by a draught so tender that it scarcely lifted the airy space of topgallant-sail whose foot arched like a curve of new moon from one topsail yard-arm to the other.

I had noticed the dim grey outline of what was apparently a huge shark off our quarter on the previous night, and went to the rail to see if the beast was still in sight; and I was overhanging the bulwark, sniffing with delight the fresh salt smell that floated up from alongside, scarce warmed as yet by the early sun, and viewing with admiration the lovely representation of the yacht’s form in the water, with my own face looking up at me too, as though I lay a drowned man down there, when Finn suddenly called out: ‘A humpish looking craft, your honour; and I’m a lobster if I don’t think by the stink in the air that her cargo’s phosphate manure!’

I sprang erect, and on turning was greatly astonished to observe a barque of some four or five hundred tons approaching us just off the weather bow, and almost within hail. I instantly crossed the deck to get a better view of her. She was a round-bowed vessel, deep in the water, with a dirty white band broken by painted ports going the length of her, and she rolled as clumsily upon the light swell as if she were full of water. She had apparently lost her foretopgallant-mast, and the head of the topmast showed heavy with its crosstrees over the tall hoist of single topsail. A group of men stood on the forecastle viewing us, and now and again a head was thrust over the quarterdeck rail. But she was approaching us almost bow on, and her bulwarks being high, there was little to be seen of her decks.

‘Very queer smell,’ said I, tasting a sort of faint acid in the atmosphere, mingled with an odour of an earthy, mouldering kind, as though a current of air that had crept through some churchyard vault had stolen down upon us.

‘Bones or bird-dung, sir; perhaps both. I recognise the smell; there’s nicer perfumes a-going.’

‘Has she signalled you?’

‘Ay, sir; that she wanted to speak, and then she hauled her colours[208] down when she saw my answering pennant. She’s been in sight since hard upon midnight. Crimp made her out agin the stars, and how we’ve stole together, blessed if I know, for all the air that’s blowed since the middle watch wouldn’t have weight enough to slant a butterfly off its course.’

‘What do they want, I wonder?’ said I; ‘rather a novelty for us to be spoken, Finn, seeing that it has always been the other way about. Bless me! how hot it is! Pleasant to be a passenger aboard yonder craft under that sun there, if the aroma she breathes is warrant of the character of her cargo.’

A few minutes passed; the barque then shifting her helm slowly drew out, giving us a view of her length. As she did so she hauled up her main course and braced aback her fore-yards. This looked like business; for, had her intention been to hail us merely in passing, our joint rate of progress was so exceedingly slow as to render any man?uvring, such as heaving to, unnecessary. Finn and I were looking at her, waiting for the yacht to be hailed, when Crimp, who had been in the waist superintending the washing down of the decks—for he was in charge, though the captain had come up at once on hearing that there was a vessel close to us; sour old Crimp, I say, whom I had observed staring with a peculiar earnestness at the barque, came aft and said: ‘Ain’t this smell old bones?’

‘Foul enough for ’un,’ answered Finn.

‘Dummed,’ cried Crimp, gazing intently with his cross eyes whilst his mat of beard worked slowly to the action of his jaw upon a quid as though there were something behind it that wanted to get out, ‘if I don’t believe that there craft’s the “’Liza Robbins.”’

‘Well, and what then?’ demanded Finn.

‘Why, if so, my brother’s her skipper.’

Finn levelled his glass. He took a long look at the figure of a man who was standing on the barque’s quarter, and who was manifestly pausing until the vessel should have closed a little more yet to hail us.

‘Is your brother like you, Jacob?’ he asked, bringing his eye from the telescope.

‘Ay, werry image, only that his wision’s straight. We’re twins.’

‘Then there ye are to the life!’ cried Finn, bursting into a laugh and pointing to the barque’s quarterdeck.

Crimp rested the glass on the rail and put his sour face to it. ‘Yes,’ he exclaimed, ‘that’s ’Arry, sure enough,’ and without another word he returned to the waist and went on coolly directing the scrubbing and swabbing of the men.

‘Mr. Monson,’ said Finn, who had taken the glass from Crimp, and extending it to me as he spoke, ‘just take a view of them figures on the fo’k’sle, sir, will ’ee? There’s three of ’em standing alone close against the cathead. They ain’t blue-jackets, are they?’

[209]

But at that instant we were hailed, and I forgot Finn’s request in listening to what was said.

‘Schooner ahoy!’

‘Hallo!’ answered Finn.

‘What schooner is that and where are you bound?’ cried the man on the barque’s quarter-deck in a voice whose sulky rasping note so exactly resembled Jacob Crimp’s when he exerted his lungs, that I observed some of our sailors staring with astonishment, as though they imagined Muffin had gone to work again.

‘The “Bride” of Southampton on a cruise,’ responded Finn, adding in an aside to me: ‘no use in singing out about the Cape of Good Hope, sir.’

There was a brief pause, then Finn bawled: ‘What ship are you?’

‘The “’Liza Robbins,”’ was the answer, ‘of and for Liverpool from Hitchaboo with a cargo of gewhany.’

‘Thought so,’ exclaimed Finn to me with a snuffle; ‘d’ye smell it now, sir? How they can get men to sign for a woyage with such a cargo beats my going a fishing.’

‘Schooner ahoy!’ now came from the barque again.

‘Hallo?’

‘I’ve got a lady and gent here,’ roared the figure through his hands which he held funnelwise to his mouth, ‘as want to get aboard summat smelling a bit sweeter nor this. They was wrecked in a yacht like yourn, and I came across ’em in a open boat five days ago. Will’ee take ’em?’

‘What was the name of the yacht, can you tell me?’ cried Finn.

The man turned his head, evidently interrogating another, probably his mate, who stood a little behind him; then bringing his hands to his mouth afresh, he roared out ‘The “Shark”!’

Finn slowly brought his long face to bear upon mine; his figure moving with it as though the whole of him were a piece of mechanism warranted to perform that motion but no more. ‘Gracious thunder!’ he exclaimed under his breath and then his jaw fell. I heard the confused humming of the men’s voices forward, a swift flow of excited talk subdued into a sort of buzzing by their habits of shipboard discipline. I felt that I was as pale in the face as if I had received some violent shock.

‘The “Shark”!’ I cried in a breathless way; ‘the lady and gentleman then aboard that vessel must be the Colonel and Lady Monson. The yacht probably met with the gale that swept over us and foundered in it;’ then pulling myself together with an effort, for amazement seemed to have sent all my wits adrift for a moment, I exclaimed, ‘Hail the barque at once, Finn; say that you will be happy to receive the lady and gentleman. Ask the captain to come aboard, or, stay—where is Crimp? Let old Jacob invite his brother. We must act with extreme wariness. My God, what an astounding confrontment!’

[210]

‘Mr. Crimp,’ roared Finn, on a sudden exploding, as it were, out of his state of petrifaction. Jacob came aft. ‘Jump on that there rail, Mr. Crimp, and tell your brother who ye are and ask him aboard.’

The sour little man climbed on to the bulwarks, and in a voice that was the completest imaginable echo of that in which the fellow aboard the barque had hailed us, he shouted ‘’Arry ahoy!’

The other stood a while staring, dropping his head first on one side, then on the other, in the manner of one who discredits his sight and seeks to obtain a clearer view by dodging about for a true focus.

‘Why, Jacob,’ he presently sang out, ‘is that you, brother?’

‘Ay, come aboard, will ye, ’Arry?’ answered Crimp, with which he dropped off the rail and trudged sourly to the gangway without the least visible expression of surprise or pleasure or emotion of any kind.

Meanwhile I had taken notice of strong manifestations of excitement amongst the little group on the forecastle of the barque—I mean the small knot of men to whom Finn had called my attention. The vessels lay so near together that postures and gestures were easily distinguishable. There could be no doubt now that the fellows had formed a portion of a yacht’s crew. Their dress betokened it; they gazed with much probing and thrusting of their heads and elbowing of one another at our men, who lined the forward bulwarks—most of our sailors having turned up—as though seeking for familiar faces. I eagerly looked for signs of the colonel and his companion, but it was still very early; they were doubtless in their cabins, and the crying out of voices from vessel to vessel was so recent that even if the couple had been disturbed by the noise they would not yet have had time to dress themselves and make their appearance on deck.

‘Will you go and report to Sir Wilfrid, sir?’ said Finn.

‘At once,’ I answered. ‘Let old Jacob’s brother have the full story, the whole truth, should he arrive before I return. His sympathies must be enlisted on Sir Wilfrid’s side, or there may happen a most worrisome difficulty if the Colonel refuses to leave that barque and should make some splendid offer to the skipper to retain him and her ladyship.’

‘I’ll talk with Jacob whilst his brother’s a-coming, sir,’ said Finn.

I stepped below with a beating heart. I was exceedingly agitated, could scarce bring my mind to accept the reality of what had happened, and I dreaded moreover the effect of the news upon my cousin. The ‘Shark’ foundered!—the couple we were in chase of picked up out of an open boat!—this great, blank, lidless eye of ocean, whose infinite distances I had pointed into over and over again to Miss Laura, yielding up the pair that we were in chase of in an encounter bewildering as a surprise and miraculous for its unexpectedness!—why I confess I breathed in gasps as I thought[211] of it all, making my way, absolutely trembling in my shoes, to Wilfrid’s berth. I knocked and was told to enter. He had nearly finished dressing, and looked up from a boot that he was buttoning with a cold, bitter, triumphant smile at me.

‘I know,’ he exclaimed in a voice infinitely more composed than I could have exerted;............