Away, away over the wide waters; farewell, a long, a last farewell to the civilized world! Coldstream’s parting with Lawrence is over; both felt that they should never look on each other’s face on this side the grave, but that they should meet on the other side. The breeze fills out the swelling sails; the vessel bounds over the waves. The smell of the sea, the glitter on the waters, the sense of having only the blue sky above, exercised a sensible influence on both the Coldstreams. A slight tinge of colour came to Oscar’s pale, thin cheeks, and Io’s dark eyes brightened with something like pleasure. “It is nice to be again on the free billows,” she said; and she mentally added, “These so-called black waters are wondrously blue.”
There were other convicts on board besides Coldstream, but with most of them no communication could be held, such a diversity of tongues is found in the vast extent of India. There were, however, one Burmese man, and a woman who was a Bengali. Some knowledge of the language of the latter Io had picked up during her weary stay in Calcutta.
The Burmese looked with curiosity on the fair, youthful lady, bound, like himself, to the Andaman Islands. Oscar heard the man muttering to himself, “I wonder what bad thing she has done? She doesn’t look like one of our sort.”
“The lady has done nothing bad,” said Coldstream; “she only goes into exile because she will not desert her husband.”
“My boy’s mother is not like that,” observed the Burmese with a gloomy smile; “she would never go across the black waters for me, though it was through her that I got into all this trouble.”
“What did you do?” asked Oscar, who saw that the manly-looking fellow seemed inclined for conversation.
“A rascally Mussulman pulled off the veil of my boy’s mother. I was not going to stand that, so I stuck my knife into him. But he did not die,” added the Burmese.
“Are you not glad that he did not die?” asked Oscar.
“Not I,” was the fierce reply. “I would as soon be hanged as sent across the black waters. If the thing came over again, I’d do just the same as I did.”
Io, in the meantime, had gone up to the Bengali woman, who, in her soiled sari, was crouching on the deck in an attitude of hopeless dejection.
Io made the most of her little stock of Bengali; her gentle, winning manner went further than her words. She at length made the convict look up, and, after a considerable time, drew from her something like the following tale:—
“The children’s father5 did not love me. He wanted a boy, and only girls came—one, two, three, four girls! The last was very little; I could carry her in my hand—like that. I could give her no nourishment; baby was thin—you could cou............