*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 50372 ***

  THE
  TRAGEDY OF IDA NOBLE

  _A NOVEL_

  BY
  W. CLARK RUSSELL

  [Illustration]

  NEW YORK
  D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
  1892

  COPYRIGHT, 1891,
  BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.

  _All rights reserved._




CONTENTS.


  CHAPTER                                 PAGE

     I. A YANKEE RUSE                        5

    II. THE PEOPLE OF LA CASANDRA           33

   III. DON CHRISTOVAL'S STORY              59

    IV. A MIDNIGHT THEFT                    90

     V. MADAME                             123

    VI. A TRAGEDY                          154

   VII. DON LAZARILLO LEAVES US            185

  VIII. IDA NOBLE                          219

    IX. CAPTAIN NOBLE                      249




THE TRAGEDY OF IDA NOBLE.




CHAPTER I.

A YANKEE RUSE.


On Monday, August 8th, 1838, the large bark Ocean Ranger, of which I
was second mate, was in latitude 38° 40' N., and longitude 11° W. The
hour was four o'clock in the afternoon. I had come on deck to relieve
the chief officer, who had had charge of the ship since twelve. It was
a very heavy day--a sullen sky of gray vapor seeming to overhang our
mastheads within pistol-shot of the trucks. From time to time there had
stolen from the far reaches of the ocean a note as of the groaning of a
tempest, but there had been no lightning; the wind hung a steady breeze
out of the east, and the ship, with slanting masts and rounded breasts
of canvas, showing with a glare of snow against the dark ground of the
sky, pushed quietly through the water that floated in a light swell to
the yellow line of her sheathing.

Some time before I arrived on deck a vessel had been descried on the
port bow, and now at this hour of four she had risen to the tacks of
her courses, and her sails shone so radiantly in the dusky distance
that at the first glance I knew her to be an American. The captain
of my ship, a man named Hoste, was pacing the deck near the wheel; I
trudged the planks a little way forward of him, stepping athwart-ships,
or from side to side. The men, who were getting their supper, passed
in and out of the galley, carrying hook-pots of steaming tea. It was
an hour of liberty with them, the first of what is called the "dog
watches." The gloom of the sky seemed to heighten the quietude that
was upon the ship. The sailors talked low, and their laughter was
sudden and short. All was silent aloft, the sails stirless to the
gushing of the long salt breath of the east wind into the wide spaces
of cloths, and nothing sounded over the side save the dim crackling
and soft seething noises of waters broken under the bow, and sobbing
and simmering past, with now and again a glad note like the fall of a
fountain.

The captain picked up a telescope that lay upon the skylight, and
crossing the deck took a view of the approaching ship; then approached
me.

"She is an American," he said.

"Yes, sir."

"How do you know she is an American?"

"By the light of the cotton in her canvas."

"Ay, and there are more signs than that. She has put her helm over as
though she would speak us."

By five o'clock she was about a mile to a mile and a quarter distant on
our weather bow, at which hour she had backed her maintop-sail and lay
stationary upon the sea, rolling lightly and very stately on the swell,
the beautiful flag of her nation--the stars and stripes--floating
inverted from her peak as a signal of distress. Both Captain Hoste and
I had searched her with a telescope, but we could see no other signs of
life aboard her than three figures--one of which stood at the wheel--on
her short length of poop, and a single head as of a sailor viewing us
over the bulwark-rail forward.

We shortened sail as we slowly drew down, and when within speaking
distance Captain Hoste hailed her.

The answer was--"For God's sake send a boat!" Yet she had good boats of
her own, and it puzzled me, then, that she should request us to send,
seeing that there must be hands enough to enable her to back the yards
on the main.

Captain Hoste cried out, "But what is wrong with you?"

One of the figures on the poop or raised deck tossed his hands in a
gesture of agitation and distress, and in piteous, nasal Yankee accents
repeated, "For God's sake send a boat!"

Captain Hoste gazed for a while, as though hesitating. He then said to
me, "Mr. Portlack, there may be trouble aboard that ship, not to be
guessed at by merely looking at her and singing out. Take a couple of
hands in the jolly boat and ascertain what is wanted," and so saying he
bawled a command to the sailors forward to lay the maintop-sail of the
Ocean Ranger to the mast, while I called to others to lay aft and lower
away the jolly boat that was suspended at irons called davits, a little
distance past the mizzen-rigging.

By this time a darker shade had entered the gloom of the sky, due
partly to the sinking of the hidden sun, and partly to the thickening
of the atmosphere as for rain. The sea, that ran in folds of leaden
hue, was merely wrinkled and crisped by the wind, and I had no
difficulty in making head against the streaming foam-lined ripples and
in laying the little boat alongside the American.

She was a tall, black ship with an almost straight stem and of a
clipper keenness of bow. Her stemhead and quarters were rich with gilt
devices; her towering skysail poles, the white trucks of which gleamed
like silver, seemed to pierce the dusky surface of vapor above them. I
sprang into the mizzen channel and stepped from the rail on to the poop.

Saving the man at the wheel there was but one person on deck; I sent a
look forward but the ship was deserted. _This_, I instantly thought to
myself, will be a case of mutiny. There has been brutality, or, which
is nearly as bad as brutality, bad food, and the men have refused duty
and gone below.

The person who received me was an American skipper of a type that
travel had rendered familiar. His dress was remarkable for nothing but
an immense felt, sugar-loaf-shaped hat--a Fifth of November hat. He had
a hard, yellow face with a slight cast in one eye, and his long beard
was trimmed to the aspect of a goat's. I did not observe in him any
marks of the agitation and distress which had echoed in his melancholy
return yell to us of "For God's sake send a boat!" He eyed me coolly
and critically, running his eyes over me from top to toe as though I
were a man soliciting work, and as though he were considering whether
to engage me or not. He then said, "Good afternoon!"

"Pray," said I, "what is wrong with you that you asked us to send a
boat?"

"Step below," said he, moving to the little companion hatch that
conducted to the cabin.

"I am in a hurry," said I, with a glance round the sea; "it darkens
quickly and I wish to return to my ship. Pray let me hear your wants."

"This way, if you please," he answered, putting his foot upon the
ladder.

There was no help for it: I must follow him or return to my ship
without being able to satisfy the questions which Captain Hoste would
put to me. As I stepped to the hatch it began to rain, but without
increase of wind; away to windward in the east the sea was already
shrouded with drizzle, and already to leeward the Ocean Ranger loomed
with something of indistinctness in the thickening atmosphere, her
white sails showing in the gathering dusk as she rolled like spaces of
pale light flung and eclipsed, flung and eclipsed again. The helmsman
at the wheel of the Yankee stared hard at me as I approached the
hatch. On entering the cabin, I found the captain with an air of bustle
in the act of placing a bottle and glasses upon the table.

"Sit you down, sit you down," he called to me. "Here is such a drop of
rum as I know some folks in your country would think cheap at a dollar
a glass."

"This is no time to drink," said I, "thanking you all the same, nor is
rum a liquor I am accustomed to swallow at this hour. Pray tell me what
is wrong with you."

"Wal," said he, "if you won't drink my health, then I just reckon
there's nothen for me to do but to drink yourn."

He poured out about a gill of neat rum which, first smelling it,
with a noisy smack of his lips he tossed down. I looked at my watch,
meaning to give him three minutes and then be off, let his distress be
what it might. The cabin was so gloomy that our faces to each other
could scarcely be more than a glimmer. The evening shadow, darker yet
with rain and with the wet of the rain upon the glass, lay upon the
little skylight over the table; the windows overlooking the main deck
were narrow apertures, and there was nothing of the ship to be seen
through them; yet, even as the Yankee put down his glass, fetching a
deep breath as he did so, I seemed to hear a sound as of men softly
treading, accompanied by a voice apparently giving orders in subdued
tones, and by the noise of rigging carelessly dropped or hastily flung
down.

"What ship is yourn?" said the captain.

"The Ocean Ranger," I replied. "But you are trifling with me, I think.
I am not here to answer that sort of questions. What do you want?"

"Wal," he answered, "I'll tell you what I want, mister. I'm short of
men, and men," he added, with a touch of brutal energy in his tone, "I
must have, or, durn me, if the Ephriam Z. Jackson is going to fetch
New York this side of Christmas Day. I reckon," he continued, with an
indiscribable nasal drawl, "that your captain will be willing to loan
me two or three smart hands."

"I reckon," I replied, with some heat, "that he will be willing to do
nothing of the sort, if for no other reason than because it's already a
tight fit with us in the matter of labor. If _that_ is your want--very
sorry, I'm sure, that we should be unable to serve you," and I made a
step toward the companion ladder.

"Stop, mister," he cried, "how might _you_ be rated aboard your ship?"

"Second mate," I replied, pausing and looking round at the man.

"Wal," said he, coolly, "I don't mind telling you that my second mate's
little better than a sojer"--by which he meant "soldier"--"and if so
be as you are willing to stop just here, I'll break him and send him
forrards, where he'll be of some use, and you shall take his place."

My astonishment held me silent for some moments. "Thank you," said I,
"my captain is waiting for me to return," and with a stride I gained
the companion steps.

"Stop, mister!" he shouted. "Men I must have, and at sea when the
pi-rate necessity boards a craft politeness has to skip. You can stop
if you like; but if you go you goes alone. I tell you I must have men.
Two men ye've brought, and they're going to stop, I calculate. _In_
fact, we've filled on the Ephriam Z. Jackson, and she's _ong rout_
again, mister. If _you_ go--"

I stayed to hear no more, and in a bound gained the deck. Sure enough
they had swung the topsail yard, and the ship, slowly gathering way,
was breaking the wrinkles of the sea which underran her into a little
froth under her bows! Five or six sailors were moving about the decks.
I rushed to the side to look for my boat; she lay where I had left
her, straining at the line, and wobbling and splashing angrily as she
was towed; but there was nobody in her. My two men were not to be
seen. I shouted their names, my heart beating with alarm and temper,
but either they were detained by force below, or, influenced by the
seaman's proverbial reckless love of change, they had been swiftly and
easily coaxed by a handsome offer of dollars and of rum into skulking
out of sight until I should have left the ship. My own vessel lay a
mere smudge in the rain away down upon the lee quarter, yet she was not
so indistinct but that I was able to make out she had not yet filled on
her topsail. I could imagine Captain Hoste bewildered by the action of
the Yankee, not yet visited by a suspicion of the fellow's atrocious
duplicity, and waiting a while to see what he intended to do.

I had followed the sea for many years, and my profession had taught
me speed in forming resolutions. Had the weather been clear, even
though the time were an hour or two later than it was, I should have
continued to demand my men from this perfidious Yankee. I should have
tried him with threats--have made some sort of a stand, at all events,
and taken my chance of what was to follow. But if I was to regain my
ship every instant was precious. It was darkening into night even as
I paused for a few moments, half wild with anger and the hurry of my
thoughts. My men were hidden; and my suspicions, indeed my conviction,
assured me that I might shout for them till I was hoarse to no purpose.
Then, again, the American vessel was now at every beat of the pulse
widening the distance between her and the Ocean Ranger. It was certain
that my first business must be to regain my own vessel while yet
a little daylight lived, and leave the rest to Captain Hoste; and
without further reflection, and without pausing to look if the American
captain had followed me out of the cabin, I dropped into the mizzen
channels and thence into the jolly-boat that was towing close under,
and cast adrift the line that held the boat to the ship's side. The
little fabric dropped astern tumbling and sputtering into the wide race
of wake of the ship that drove away from me into the dimness of the
rain-laden atmosphere in a large pale cloud, which darkened on a sudden
in a heavier fall of wet that in a minute or two was hissing all about
me.

I threw an oar over the boat's stern, and, getting her head round for
my ship, fell to sculling her with might and main. There was now a
little more wind, and the rain drove with a sharper slant, but the
small ridges of the sea ran softly with the boat, melting with scarce
more than a light summer play of froth on either hand of me, as I stood
erect sculling at my hardest. The heavier rush of rain had, however, by
this time touched the Ocean Ranger, and she now showed as vaguely as a
phantom down in the wet dusk. I could barely discern the dim spaces of
her canvas, mere dashes of faint pallor upon the gloom, with the black
streak of her hull coming and going as my boat rose and sank upon the
swell.

I had not been sculling more than three or four minutes when I
perceived that Captain Hoste had gathered way upon his ship. She was,
in fact, forging ahead fast and rounding away into the west in pursuit
of the American, leaving my boat in consequence astern of her out upon
her starboard quarter. It was very evident that the boat was not to be
seen from the Ocean Ranger--that Captain Hoste imagined me still on
board the American, and that, observing the Yankee to be sailing away,
he concluded it was about time to follow him--though this was a pursuit
I had little doubt Hoste would speedily abandon, for it was not hard to
guess that the Ephraim Z. Jackson would outsail the Ocean Ranger by
two feet to one.

The consternation that seized me was so excessive that my hands grasped
the oar motionlessly, as though my arms had been withered. I could do
no more than stand gaping over my shoulder at the receding ships. As to
shouting--why, already my vessel had put a long mile and a half between
her and my boat; and though I could not tell amid the haze of the rain
and the shadow of the evening what canvas she was carrying, I might
gather that Captain Hoste was pressing her, by the heel of her tall dim
outline, and by the occasional glance of the froth of her wake in the
thickness under her counter.

I threw my oar inboards and sat down to collect my mind and think. My
consternation, as I have said, was almost paralyzing. The suddenness of
the desperate and dreadful situation in which I found myself benumbed
my faculties for a while. I was without food; I was without drink; I
was also without mast, sail, or compass, in a little open boat in the
heart of a wide surface of sea, the night at hand--a night of storm, as
I might fear when I cast my eyes up at the wet, near, scowling face of
the sky and then looked round at the fast-darkening sea, narrowed to
a small horizon by the gloomy walls of rain, in the western quarter of
which the American had already vanished, while my own ship, as I stood
straining my gaze at the pale blotch she made, slowly melted out like
one's breath upon a looking-glass. Yet, heavy as my heart was with the
horror of my position, I do not remember that I was then sensible of
despair in any degree. When my wits in some measure returned, I thought
to myself, rascal as the Yankee captain has proved himself, he surely
will not be such a villain as to leave me to perish out here. He will
know, by the Ocean Ranger pursuing him, that Captain Hoste has not
seen my boat. Then he will shorten sail to enable the Ocean Ranger to
approach, and hail Captain Hoste to tell him that I am adrift somewhere
astern; so that at any hour I may expect to see the loom of my ship
close at hand in search of me, within earshot, with a dozen pairs of
eyes on the look-out and a dozen pairs of ears straining for my first
cry.

That my drift might be as inconsiderable as possible, I lashed the two
oars of the boat together, made them fast to the painter, threw them
overboard and rode to them. But when this was done it was dark, I
may say pitch dark; the rain fell heavily and continuously, and the
wind sang through it in a sort of shrill wailing such as I had never
before taken notice of in the wind at sea, and this noise put a new and
distinct horror into my situation because of my loneliness. The froth
of the streaming ripples broke bare and ghastly, and the run of the
waters against the boat's sides filled the atmosphere with notes as of
drowning sobbing. The cold of the night was made piercing by the wet
of it and the quarter whence the wind blew. I was soaked to the skin,
and sat hugging my shuddering body, forever staring around into the
blind obscurity, and forever seeing nothing more than the mocking and
fleeting flash of the near run of froth.

The breeze held steady, but something of weight came into the heave of
the little ridges, and from time to time the chop of the boat's bows as
she chucked into a hollow, meeting the next bit of a sea before she had
time to fairly rise to it; from time to time, I say, some handfuls of
spray would come slinging out of the darkness forward into my face, but
nothing more than that happened during those hours of midnight gloom.
Though never knowing what the next ten minutes might bring forth, I
had made up my mind that I was to be drowned, or if not drowned then
that I was doomed to some dreadful ending of insanity which should
be brought about by hunger, by thirst, by that awful form of mental
anguish which is called despair, and that if I were spared to see the
sun rise I should never see him set again.

But the night passed--the night passed, and I remember thanking God
that it was an August night, which signified, comparatively speaking,
short hours of darkness. It passed, and the breaking dawn found me
crouching and hugging myself as I had been crouching and hugging myself
during the black time that was now ending, staring in my loneliness,
and with a heart that felt broken, over the low gunwale of the boat at
the rim of the sea which slowly stole out all round me in a line of
ink against the ashen slant of the sky. It had ceased to rain, but the
morning broke sullen and gloomy; the heavens of the complexion they had
worn when the night had darkened upon them; the wind no stronger than
before, yet singing past my ears with a harsh salt shrillness that had
something squall-like in the keen-edged tone of it each time the head
of a swell threw me up to the full sweep.

I stood up, weak and trembling, and searched the ocean, but there was
nothing to be seen. Again and again I explored the horizon with eyes
rendered dim by my long vigil and by the smarting of the salt which
lay in a white crust about the eyelids and in the hollows, but there
was nothing more to behold than the gray ocean, freckled with foam,
throbbing desolately in the cold gray light to its confines narrowed by
the low seat from which I gazed.

I had now no hope whatever of being searched for and picked up by
my own ship. I did not doubt that she had pursued the Yankee, who
had outsailed her and been lost sight of by her in the darkness, and
that Captain Hoste, understanding the villainous trick that had been
played upon him, but assuming that I, as well as the two men, had been
detained by the American, had long ago shifted his course and proceeded
on his voyage. I looked at my watch, but I had forgotten to wind it
overnight, and it had stopped. By and by I reckoned the hour to be
between eight and nine. There was no sun to tell the time by. Not until
then was I sensible of hunger and thirst. Now on a sudden I felt the
need of eating and drinking, and the mere circumstance of there being
nothing to eat and drink--and more particularly to _drink_--fired my
imagination, which at once converted thirst into a consuming pain, and
I put my lips to my wet sleeve and sucked; but the moisture was bitter,
bitter with salt, and I flung myself down into the bottom of the boat
with a cry to God that, if I was to perish, my agony might come quickly
and end quickly.

I believe I lay in a sort of stupor for some hour or more; then
noticing a slight brightening in the heavens directly overhead, as
though due to the thinning of the body of vapor just there, I staggered
on to my feet, and no sooner was my head above the boat's gunwale than
I spied a vessel steering directly for me, as I was immediately able
to perceive. How far distant she was I could not have said, but my
sailor's eye instantly witnessed the course she was pursuing by the
aspect of her canvas, that was of a brilliant whiteness, so that at
first I imagined her to be the American in search of me, until, after
viewing her for some time steadfastly, I perceived that she was a
large topsail schooner, apparently a yacht, heeling from the wind, and
sliding nimbly through the water, as one might tell by the rapidity
with which the whole fabric of her enlarged.

The sight gave me back all my strength. I sprang into the bows, dragged
the oars inboard, and to one of them attached my coat, which I went to
work to flourish, making the wet serge garment rattle like the fly of a
flag as I swept it round and round high above my head. Within half an
hour she was close to me, with her square canvas aback to deaden her
way, the heads of a number of people dotting the line of her rail--a
shapely and graceful vessel indeed, with a band of yellow metal along
her waterline, dully glowing over the white edge of froth, as though
some light of western sunshine slept upon her, her canvas gleaming like
satin, a spark or two in her glossy length where her cabin port-holes
were, and the brassy gleam of some gilt effigy under her bowsprit,
from which curved to the masthead the lustrous pinions of her jibs and
staysail.

A red-headed man wearing a cap with a naval peak stood abaft the main
rigging in company with others, and as the beautiful little vessel came
softly swaying and floating down over the heave of the swell to my
boat, he cried out, "Can you catch hold of the end of a line?"

"Ay, ay," I answered, in a weak voice, lifting my hand.

"Then look out!" he bawled.

A seaman grasping a coil of rope sprang on top of the bulwarks and
sent the fakes of the line spinning to me. I caught the end with a
trembling grasp and took a turn round a thwart, but not till then
could I have imagined how weak I was, for even as I held the rope my
knees yielded and I sank into the bottom of the boat in a posture of
supplication, half swooning. The next moment the little fabric had
swung in alongside the schooner; I was grasped by some sailors and
lifted on board.

"Let the boat go adrift, she's of no use to us," the red-headed man
cried out.

Another standing near him exclaimed with a strong foreign accent, but
in good English, "Stop! what name is written in her?"

Some one answered, "The Ocean Ranger, London."

"Let that be noted, and then let her go," said the voice with the
foreign accent.

In this brief while I stood, scarcely seeing though I could hear,
supported by the muscular grip of a couple of the seamen who had
dragged me over the side.

"Bring a chair," exclaimed the red-headed man.

"No," cried the other with a foreign accent, "let him be taken into the
cabin and fed. Do not you see that he perishes of hunger and of thirst
and of cold?"

On this I was gently compelled into motion by the two seamen, who
conveyed me to an after hatch and thence down into a little interior
that glittered with mirrors, and that was luminous and fragrant besides
with flowers. I was still so much dazed as hardly to be fully conscious
of what I was doing. Sudden joy is as confounding as sudden grief,
and the delight of this deliverance from my horrible situation was
as disastrous to my wits (weakened by the fearful night I had passed
through) as had been the shock to them when I found myself adrift in
the boat on the previous evening. The two seamen quitted the cabin,
leaving me seated at the table, but their place was immediately taken
by the red-headed man, by the gentleman with the foreign accent,
and a minute later by a third person, a short, square, hook-nosed,
black-browed, inky-bearded fellow. They viewed me for a while in
silence; one of them then called "Tom," and a negro boy stepped through
a door at the foremost end of the cabin.

"Bring brandy and water; also some cold meat and white biscuit. Bring
the brandy first."

Who spoke I did not know. A tumbler of grog was placed in my hand, but
my arm trembled so violently that I was unable to raise the glass to
my lips. Some one thereupon grasped my wrist and enabled me to drink,
which I did greedily, muttering, as I recollect, a broken "Thank God!
thank you, gentlemen," as I put the glass quivering upon the table.

"How long have you been in this plight?" inquired the red-headed man
in a voice whose harshness and coarseness, half demented as I was, I
remember noticing.

"Ask him no questions yet," exclaimed one of the others. "Let him have
meat, dry clothes, and sleep, and he will rally. Ay! he will rally, for
he has a lively look."

The effect of the brandy was magical. It clarified my sight as though
some friendly hand had swept a cobweb from each eyeball. It filled my
body with strong pulses, and enabled me to hold my head erect. But by
this time the negro boy had reappeared with a plate of cold boiled beef
and a dish of biscuit, and I fell to--eating with the animal-like rage
of starvation. I devoured every scrap that was set before me, and then
with a steady hand raised and drained a second glass of grog that had
been mixed by the man with the foreign accent. And now I felt able to
converse.

"Gentlemen," said I, making a staggering effort to bow to them, "I
thank you from the bottom of my heart for rescuing me from a horrible
death. I thank you gentlemen for this bitterly-needed refreshment."

"You are soaked to the skin," said the man with the foreign accent.
"You will tell us your story when you are dry and comfortable. Captain
Dopping, you can lend this poor man some dry linen and clothes?"

"Ay!" responded the other, in his coarse determined voice. "Are ye able
to stand?"

"I think so," I replied.

I rose, but observing that I faltered, he came round to where I was
swaying, grasped me by the arm and led me to a little cabin alongside
the door through which the negro boy had emerged. In this cabin were
two shallow bunks or sleeping-shelves, one on top of the other. The
room was lighted by a circular port-hole, and by what is called a
bull's-eye--a piece of thick glass let into the deck overhead. My
companion rummaged a locker, and tossing a number of garments into the
lower bunk, bade me take my pick and shift myself and then turn in,
and, saying this in a harsh, fierce way, he withdrew.

I removed my wet clothes, and grateful beyond all expression was the
comfort of warm dry apparel to my skin, that for more than twelve
hours had been soaked with rain and steeped in brine. I then stretched
my length in the lower sleeping-shelf, and, after putting up a prayer
of gratitude for my deliverance, closed my eyes and in a few minutes
fell asleep.

I slept until about three o'clock in the afternoon. On waking I found
the interior bright with sunshine. I lay for a little, thinking and
taking a view of the cabin. My faculties, refreshed by sleep, were
sharp in me. I could remember clearly and realize keenly. The disaster
which had befallen me was a great professional blow. It had deprived me
of my ship, and robbed me of an appointment I had been forced to wait
some tedious months to obtain. With the ship had gone all my clothes,
all my effects, everything, in short, I possessed in the wide world,
saving a few pounds which I had left in a bank at home. The Ocean
Hanger was bound on a voyage that would keep her away from England for
two years and a half, perhaps three years; so that for, let me say,
three years all that I owned in the world, saving my few pounds, would
be as utterly lost to me as though it had gone to the bottom.

While I thus lay musing, the door of the berth opened, and the
red-headed man--Captain Dopping--entered. Having my eyes clear in my
head now, I immediately observed that he was a freckled, red-haired,
staring man, with big protruding moist blue eyes and scarlet whiskers;
all of his front teeth but two or three were gone, and the gaps in his
gums gave his face, when he parted his lips, the grin of a skull.

I got out of the bunk when he entered.

"How do you feel now?" said he, eying me in a hard, deliberate,
unwinking way.

"Refreshed and recovered," said I.

He ran his gaze over my figure to observe what garments belonging to
him I had arrayed myself in, then said, "What is your name?"

"James Portlack."

"What are you?"

"What _was_ I, you must ask," said I, with a melancholy shake of the
head. "Second mate of the bark Ocean Ranger," and I told him briefly of
the abominable trick which the Yankee captain had played off on Captain
Hoste, and which had resulted in leaving me adrift in the desperate and
dying condition I had been rescued from.

"A cute dodge, truly," said he, without any exhibition of astonishment
or dislike, nay, with a hint in his air of having found something to
relish in the American's device. "It is what a Welshman would call
'clebber.' This is a yarn to tickle Don Christoval."

"Who is Don Christoval?" said I.

"He is Don Christoval del Padron."

"The owner of this schooner?"

He gave a hard smile, but returned no answer.

"What is the name of this vessel?" I asked.

"La Casandra."

"Where are you from?"

"Cadiz."

"To what port?" said I, with anxiety.

He gave another hard smile, and then, eying me all over afresh,
exclaimed, "Come along on deck. Don Christoval and Don Lazarillo will
be wanting to see you, now you're awake."

I asked him to lend me a cap, not knowing what had become of mine, and
followed him through the small brilliant cabin into which I had been
conducted by the two seamen. I had a quick eye, and took note of many
things in a moment or two. The cabin was peculiarly furnished, that is,
for a sea-going interior. It gleamed with hanging mirrors; the sides
were embellished with pictures, such as might hang upon the walls of
a room ashore; there were little sofas and arm-chairs, of a kind you
might see in a drawing-room, but not in the cabin of a vessel, whether
a pleasure-craft or not. In short, it was evident that a portion of the
furniture of a house had been employed for fitting out this interior.
But where the vessel herself showed, I mean the ceiling or upper deck,
the sides, the planks left visible by the carpet--_there_ all was
plain and even rough, by which signs I might know that La Casandra was
not a yacht, despite the shining of the mirrors and the gilt of the
picture-frames, the rich carpet under foot, the crimson velvet sofas
and chairs.

I followed Captain Dopping up the narrow companion-steps, and gained
the deck. The rain was gone, the gloomy sky had rolled away down the
western sea-line, and the afternoon sun shone gloriously in a sky of
blue piebald with stately sailing masses of swollen cream-colored
vapor, which studded the blue surface of the sea with island-like
spaces of violet shadow. A pleasant breeze was blowing, and it was
warm with the sunshine. The schooner was under all the canvas it was
possible to spread upon her, and how fast she was sailing I might
know by the white line of her wake. I had no eyes at the instant for
anything but the horizon, the whole girdle of which I rapidly scanned
with some wild silly notion in me of catching a sight of the cloths of
the Ocean Ranger, that in searching for me might have been navigated
some leagues to the north.




CHAPTER II.

THE PEOPLE OF LA CASANDRA.


The two foreigners, as I might suppose them to be--the two gentlemen
who had talked to me and viewed me in the cabin before I went to the
captain's berth--these men were pacing the sand-colored planks of
the quarter-deck arm in arm, cigars in their mouths, as I emerged;
but, on seeing me, they came to a halt. One was a truly noble-looking
fellow, rising a full inch taller than six feet, and of a magnificently
proportioned shape. This was the man who had addressed me in good
English, but with a foreign accent. He was, besides, an exceedingly
handsome person, his complexion very dark, his eyes of the dead
blackness of the Indian's, but soft and glowing; he wore a large
heavy mustache, black as ink, and curling to his ears; his teeth were
strong, large, and of an ivory whiteness. Plain sailor-man as I was,
used to the commonplace character and countenance of the mariner, I
was without any art in the deciphering of the mind by gazing at the
lineaments of the human face. To me this person offered himself as a
noble, handsome man, of imposing presence, of a beauty even stately;
but when I think of him now in the light of that larger knowledge of
human nature which years have taught me, when I recall his face, I say,
I am conscious of having missed something in the expression of it which
must have helped me to a tolerably accurate perception of the _real_
character of this schooner's errand, when the "motive" of her voyage
was explained to me.

His companion was a short man, a true Spaniard in his looks; his
large hooked nose, his searching, restless, brilliant black eyes, his
mustaches and short black beard might well have qualified him to sit
for a picture of Cervantes, according to such prints of that great
author as I have seen. They were both well dressed--too well dressed,
indeed. They wore overcoats richly furred, velvet coats beneath,
splendid waistcoats, and so forth. The fingers of the shorter man
sparkled with precious stones. There was a stout gold chain round
his neck, and a costly brooch in his cravat. They both fastened a
penetrating gaze upon me for some moments, and exchanged a few
sentences in Spanish before addressing me.

"The gentleman's name is Portlack--Mr. Portlack, Don Christoval," said
Captain Dopping: "he was second mate of a bark named the Ocean Ranger.
He was hocussed, as the Pikeys (gypsies) say, by an American captain.
He'll tell you the story, sir."

"How do you feel?" said Don Christoval.

"Perfectly recovered, I thank you," said I.

"I am glad. We were not too soon. I believe that another twenty-four
hours of your desperate situation must have killed you," said this
tall Don, delivering his words slowly, and looking very stately, and
speaking in English so correctly that I wondered at his foreign accent.

"Vot ees secon' mate?" inquired the shorter man, pronouncing the words
with difficulty.

"Why, you might call it second lieutenant, Don Lazarillo," replied
Captain Dopping.

"It is a position of trust; it is a position of distinction on board
ship?" exclaimed Don Christoval.

"Oh yes," said Captain Dopping.

"Do you know navigation?" asked the tall Don.

"I hold a master's certificate," I replied, smiling.

"Explain," said Don Lazarillo sharply, as though his mind were under
some constant strain of unhealthy anxiety.

"I do not speak a word of Spanish," said I, turning to Captain Dopping.

"No need for it," said he, in his harsh accents. "A master's
certificate, Don Christoval, enables the holder of it to take charge of
a ship, and in order to take charge of a ship a man is supposed to know
everything that concerns the profession of the sea."

"Explain," cried Don Lazarillo with impatience.

His tall companion translated; on which the other, nodding vehemently,
stroked his mustaches while he again surveyed me from head to foot,
letting his eyes, full of fire, settle with the most searching look
that can be imagined upon my face. I caught Don Christoval exchanging a
glance with Captain Dopping. There was a brief pause while the tall Don
lighted his cigar. He then said, with a smile:

"You have lost your ship, sir?"

"I have, I am sorry to say."

"What will you do, sir?"

"It is for you to dispose of me. I should be glad to make myself
useful to you until you transfer me or land me."

"But then--but then?"

"Then I must endeavor to obtain another berth," said I.

"Explain," cried Don Lazarillo.

Don Christoval spoke to him in Spanish.

"You are a gentleman by birth?" said the tall Don.

"My father was a clergyman," I answered.

"Yes, sir, that is very good. Your speech tells me you are genteel. To
speak English well you must be genteel. Education will enable you to
speak English grammatically, but it will not help you to pronounce it
properly. For example, a man vulgarly born, who is educated too, will
omit his h's, and he will neglect his g's. He will say nothin', and he
will say 'ouse instead of house. Yes, I know it--I know it," said he,
smiling. "Well, you shall tell me now all about your adventure."

This I did. He occasionally stopped me while he interpreted to his
companion, who listened to him with eager attention, while he would
also strain his ears with his eyes sternly fixed upon my face when I
spoke. When I had made an end, Don Christoval drew Captain Dopping to
him by a backward motion of his head, and, after addressing him in
low tones, he took Don Lazarillo's arm, and the pair of them fell to
patrolling the deck.

"We shall sling a hammock for you under the main hatch," said Captain
Dopping, walking up to me. "Sorry we can't accommodate you aft. There's
scarce room for a rat in my corner, let alone two men."

"Any part of the schooner will serve to sling a hammock in for me,"
said I.

"You will take your meals with me in the cabin," said he. "I eat when
the two gentlemen have done."

"Where does your mate live?" said I.

"I have no mate," he answered. "We were in a hurry, and could not find
a man."

He eyed me somewhat oddly as he spoke, as though to mark the effect of
his words.

"But is there no one to help you to keep a look-out?"

"Ay! a seaman," he answered, carelessly. "But now that you're aboard we
will be able to relieve him from that duty."

"Whatever you put me to," said I, "you will find me as willing at it as
gratitude can make a man."

He roughly nodded, and asked me what part of England I came from. I
answered that I was born near Guildford.

"I hail from Deal," said he. "Do you know Deal?"

"Well," I answered; and spoke of some people whom I had visited there;
gave him the names of the streets, and of a number of boatmen I had
conversed with during my stay at the salt and shingly place. This
softened him. It was marvelous to observe how the magic of memory, the
tenderness of recollected association humanized the coarse, harsh,
bold, and staring looks of this scarlet-haired man.

"But," said I, "you have not yet told me where this schooner is bound
to."

"You will hear all about it," he answered, with his usual air returning
to him.

I was not a little astonished by this answer. Had the schooner sailed
on some piratic expedition? Was there some colossal undertaking of
smuggling in contemplation? But though piracy, to be sure, still
flourished, it was hardly to be thought of in relation with those
northern seas toward which the schooner was heading; while as for
smuggling, if the four seamen whom I counted at work about the vessel's
deck comprised--with the fifth man, who was at her helm--the whole of
the crew, there was nothing in any theory of a contraband adventure to
solve the problem submitted by Captain Dopping's reticence.

He left me abruptly, and walked forward and addressed one of the men,
apparently speaking of the job the fellow was upon. I listened for
that note of bullying, for that tone of habitual brutal temper, which
I should have expected to hear in him when he accosted the seamen,
and was surprised to find that he spoke as a comrade rather than as a
captain; with something even of careless familiarity in his manner as
he addressed the man.

I had now an opportunity for the first time since I came on deck to
inspect the schooner. It was easy to see that she had never been
built as a yacht; her appearance, indeed, suggested that in her day
she had been employed as a slaver. She was old, but very powerfully
constructed, and seemingly still as fine a sea-boat as was at that time
to be encountered on the ocean. Her bulwarks were high and immensely
thick; the fore-part of her had a rise, or "spring" as it is called,
which gave a look of domination and defiance to her round bows which
at the forefoot narrowed into a stem of knife-like sharpness. She was
very loftily rigged and expanded an enormous breadth of mainsail.
I had never before seen so long a gaff, and the boom when amidships
forked far out over the stern. Her decks were very clean but grayish
with brine and years of hard usage. I noticed that she carried a small
boat hanging in davits on the starboard side, and a large boat abaft
the little caboose or kitchen that stood like a sentry-box forward.
This boat, indeed, resembled a man-of-war's cutter--such a long and
heavy fabric as one would certainly not think of looking for on board a
craft of the size of La Casandra. It was my sailor's eye that carried
my mind to this detail. No man but a sailor, and perhaps a suspicious
sailor as I then was, standing as I did upon the deck of a vessel whose
destination was still a secret to me, would have noticed that boat.

The five of a crew were all of them Englishmen, strong, hearty fellows.
I inspected them curiously, but could find nothing in them that did
not suggest the plain, average, honest merchant sailor. They were well
clothed for men of their class, habited in the jackets, round hats
and wide trousers of the Jacks of my period, and I took notice that
though their captain stood near them they worked as though without
sense of his presence, occasionally calling a remark one to another,
and laughing, but not noisily, as if what discipline there was on
board the schooner existed largely in the crew's choice of behavior.
These and other points I remarked, but nothing that I saw helped me
to any sort of conclusion as to the destination of the little ship or
the motive of the cruise. All that I could collect was that here was a
schooner bearing a Spanish name and owned or hired by one or both of
those Spaniards, who continued to pace the quarter-deck arm-in-arm, but
manned, so far as I could see, by a company of five Englishmen and a
negro lad, and commanded by an English skipper.

I walked a little way forward, the better to observe the vessel's
rig at the fore, and on my approaching the galley, a fellow put his
head out of it--making a sixth man now visible. He kept his head
out to stare at me. Many ugly men have I met in my time, but never
so hideous a creature as that. His nationality I could not imagine,
though it was not long before I learned that he was a Spaniard. His
coal-black hair fell in a shower of greasy snake-like ringlets upon his
back and shoulders. One eye was whitened by a cataract or some large
pearly blotch, and the other seemed to me to possess as malevolent an
expression as could possibly deform a pupil unnaturally large, and
still further disfigured by a very net-work of blood-red lines. His
nose appeared to have been leveled flat with his face at the bridge by
a blow, leaving the lower portion of it standing straight out in the
shape of the thick end of a small broken carrot. His lips of leather,
his complexion of chocolate, his three or four yellow fangs, his mat
of close cropped whiskers, coarse as horse-hair, his apparel of blue
shirt open at the neck and revealing a little gilt or gold crucifix, a
pair of tarry leather trousers, carpet slippers, and the remains of an
old Scotch cap that lay rather than sat upon his hair; all these points
combined in producing one of the most extraordinary figures that had
ever crossed my path--a path, I may say, that in my time had carried
me into many wild scenes, and to the contemplation of many strange
surprising sights.

While this prodigy of ugliness and I were staring at each other, the
captain came across the deck to me.

"What do you think of this schooner?" he said.

"She is a very good schooner. She is old--perhaps thirty years old. I
believe she has carried slaves in her time."

"I _know_ it," he replied, with a strong nod, to which his furiously
red hair seemed to impart a character of hot temper.

"I have seen," said I, "handsomer men than yonder beauty who is staring
at me from the galley door."

"Ay. He is good enough to shut up in a box and to carry about as a
show. He is cook and steward. His name is Juan de Mariana. He cooks
well, and is or has been a domestic in Don Lazarillo's establishment."

"How many go to your crew?" said I, questioning him with an air of
indifference now that I found he was disposed to be communicative.

"Eight."

"The number includes you and the cook and the nigger lad?"

He nodded, and looked at me suddenly, as though about to deliver
something on the top of his mind, then checked himself, and pulling out
his watch, exclaimed: "I understand you are willing to serve as mate of
this vessel."

"I am willing to do anything. Do not I owe my life to you all?"

"Well," said he, "that may be settled now. It is Don Christoval's wish.
As to pay, him and me will go into that matter with you by and by."

I opened my eyes at the sound of the word _pay_, but made no remark. It
was a grateful sound, as you will suppose, to a man who had as good as
lost everything save what he stood up in, and who, when he got ashore,
might find it very hard to obtain another berth. The two Spanish
gentlemen had left the deck. Captain Dopping said: "Step aft with me,"
and we walked as far as the cabin skylight, where facing about the
captain called out, "Trapp, South, Butler, Scott, lay aft, my lads. I
have a word to say to you." He then turned to the fellow who stood at
the helm and exclaimed, "Tubb, you'll be listening."

The seamen quitted their several employments and came to the
quarter-deck. The Spanish cook stepped out of the galley to hearken,
and a moment later the ebony face of the negro showed in the square of
the forecastle hatch. The sailors looked as though they pretty well
guessed what was coming.

"Lads," said Captain Dopping, placing his hand upon my arm, "this here
is Mr. James Portlack. He was second mate of the bark, Ocean Ranger, a
ship I know."

"And I know her, too," said one of the men.

"Mr. Portlack," continued Captain Dopping, "holds a master's
certificate, which is more than I do, and he tops me by that. But I'm
your captain, and your captain I remain. Mr. Portlack consents to act
as the mate of the Casandra. Is this agreeable to you, lads?"

"Ay, ay; agreeable enough," was the general answer.

"Well, then, Butler, you're displaced, d'ye see? No call for you to
relieve me any longer."

"And a good job too," said the man, a heavy, sturdy, powerfully built
fellow with small, honest, glittering blue eyes, and immense bushy
whiskers; "there was nothin' said about my taking charge of the deck in
the agreement."

"Well, you're out of it," exclaimed Captain Dopping, "and the ship's
company's stronger by a hand, which is as it should be. D'ye hear me,
cook?"

"Yash, yash, I hear all right, capitan," answered the swarthy creature
from the door of his galley, contorting his countenance into the aspect
of a horrid face beheld by one in a high fever, in his struggle to
articulate in English.

"That'll do, my lads," said the captain.

The men leisurely rounded and went forward again. There was nothing
unusual in this proceeding. It was customary, it may still be
customary at sea, to invite the decision of the crew before electing
a man to fill a vacant post as first or second mate. All that I found
singular lay in the behavior of the men. There was something in their
bearing I find it impossible to convey--a suggestion of resolution
struggling with reluctance, or it might be that they gave me the
impression of fellows who had entered upon an undertaking without
wholly understanding its nature or without fully believing in the
sincerity of its promoters. But be their manner what it might, its
effect upon me was to greatly sharpen my curiosity as to the object of
this schooner's voyage from Cadiz to the north as she was now heading.

I said to Captain Dopping, "I will take charge at once if you wish to
go below."

"Very well," said he, "I will relieve you at four bells, and that will
give you the first watch to stand," by which he meant the watch from
eight o'clock till midnight.

"But I do not know your destination," said I. "How is the schooner to
be steered?"

"As she goes," said he with a significant nod, angry with the scarlet
flash of hair and whisker which accompanied it.

"Right," said I, and fell to pacing the deck, while he disappeared down
the companion-way.

Athirst as I was for information, I was determined that my curiosity
should not be suspected. Be the errand of this little ship what it
might, I was always my own master, able to say "No" to any proposals I
should object to, though taking care to give due effect by willingness
in all honest directions to the gratitude excited in me by my
deliverance. I would find the fellow at the helm watching me with an
expression on his weather-darkened face that was the same as saying
he was willing to tell all he knew, but I took no notice of him,
contenting myself with merely observing the vessel's course and seeing
that she was kept to it. The voices of the two Spaniards and Captain
Dopping rose through the little skylight, one of which lay open. They
spoke in English, and occasionally I heard my name pronounced with now
and then a sharp hissing "Explain" from Don Lazarillo, but I did not
catch, nor did I endeavor to catch, any syllables of a kind to furnish
me with a sense of their discourse.

All this afternoon the weather continued rich, glowing, summer-like.
One seemed to taste the aromas of the land in the eastern gushing of
the blue and sparkling breeze. The three white spires of a tall ship
glided like stars along the western rim, but though we were in the
great ocean high-way nothing else showed during the remainder of the
hours of light. Beyond a little feeling of stiffness and of aching in
my joints I was sensible of no bad results of my night-long bitter
and perilous exposure in the jolly-boat of the Ocean Ranger. I had,
indeed, been too long seasoned by the sea to suffer grievously from an
experience of this sort. Night after night off the black and howling
Horn, off the stormy headland of Agulhas, amid mountainous seas, in
frosty hurricanes whose biting breath was sharpened yet by hills and
islands of ice glancing dimly through the snow-thickened darkness, I
had kept the deck, I had helped to stow the canvas aloft, I had toiled
at the pumps, waist-high in water, my hair crackling with ice, my hands
without feeling. No! I was too seasoned to suffer severely from the
after-effects of exposure in an open boat throughout an August night in
the Portuguese parallels.

At five o'clock, when I glanced through the skylight, I spied the negro
lad named Tom laying the cloth in the little cabin. Occasionally a
whiff of cooking, strong with onions or garlic, would come blowing aft
in some back-draught out of the canvas. I judged that the crew were
well fed by observing one of them step out of the galley and enter the
forecastle, bearing a smoking round of boiled beef and a quantity of
potatoes in their skins; then by seeing another follow him with pots
of coffee or tea, two or three loaves of bread, and other articles of
food which I could not distinguish. Fare so substantial and bountiful
seemed to my fancy a very unusual entertainment for a forecastle tea or
"supper," as the last meal at sea is commonly called.

I found myself watching everything that passed before me with growing
curiosity. The hideous cook Mariana, followed by the negro boy
bearing dishes, came aft with the cabin dinner, and presently, when
I peeped again through the skylight as I trudged the deck in the
pendulum walk of the look-out at sea, I perceived the two Spaniards
at table. The several dyes of wines in decanters blended with the
brilliance of silver--or of what resembled silver--and other decorative
details of flowers and fruit, and the square of the skylight framed
a picturesquely festal scene. It was possible to peep without being
observed. The Spaniards talked incessantly; their speech rose in a
melodious hum; for to pronounce Spanish is, to my ear, to utter music.
But the majestic dialect was as Greek to me. Don Lazarillo gesticulated
with vehemence, and I never glanced at the skylight without observing
him in the act of draining his glass. Don Christoval was less
demonstrative. He was slow and stately in his movements, and when he
flourished his arm or clasped his hands, or leaned back in his chair to
revolve the point of his mustache with long, large, but most shapely
fingers, he made one think of some fine actor in an opera scene.

It was six o'clock by the time they had dined, and at this hour the
seamen taking the privilege of the "dog watch"--but, indeed, it was
all privilege from morning to night in that schooner--were pacing the
deck forward, four of them, every man smoking his pipe--the fifth man
being at the tiller. I might now make sure that there went but five
seamen to this ship's company. The ugly cook leaned in the door of his
galley puffing at a cigarette. The sun was low, his light crimson; his
fan-shaped wake streamed in scarlet glory under him to the very shadow
of the schooner, and the little fabric, slightly leaning from the soft
and pleasant breeze, floated through the rose-colored atmosphere, her
sails of the tincture of delicate cloth of gold, her bright masts
veined with fire, her shrouds as she gently rolled catching the western
light until they burned out upon the eye as though of polished brass.

The two Spaniards arrived on deck, each with an immensely long cigar
in his mouth. Don Christoval addressed me pleasantly in his excellent
English. He asked me with an air of grand courtesy if I now felt
perfectly well, inquired the speed of the schooner, my opinion of
her, my experiences of the Bay of Biscay in this month of August, and
inquired if I was acquainted with the coast of England, and especially
with that part comprised between St. Bees Head and Morecambe Bay. His
friend eagerly listened, keeping his fiery eyes fastened upon my face,
and whenever I had occasion to say more than "yes" or "no," he would
call upon Don Christoval to interpret.

Shortly after the tall Don had ceased his questions--and I found no
expression in his handsome face and in the steady gaze of his glowing
impassioned eyes to hint to me whether my replies satisfied him or
not--Captain Dopping came up out of the cabin.

"Now, Mr. Portlack," said he, in his harsh, intemperate voice, yet
intending nothing but civility, as I could judge, "get you to your
supper, sir; eat hearty, and you can make as free with the liquor as
your common sense thinks prudent."

I was hungry, having tasted no food since the meal of beef and
biscuit which had been set before me when I was first brought on
board; nevertheless I entered the cabin and took my place with some
diffidence. I felt a sort of embarrassment in eating alone and helping
myself--perhaps because of the shore-going appearance of the interior;
it was like making free in a gentleman's dining-room, the host being
absent. Tom, the nigger boy, waited upon me. He gave me a dish of
excellent soup, and I fared sumptuously on spiced beef, some sort of
dried fish that was excellent eating, potatoes, beans, fruit, and
the like. The fruit was fresh enough to make me understand that the
vessel was but recently from port. There were several kinds of wines in
decanters upon the table; but two glasses of sherry sufficed me, though
two such glasses of sherry I had never before drank. It might be that
I was no judge, but to my palate the flavor of that amber-colored wine
was exquisite.

The negro boy stood near waiting and watching me intently in the
intervals of his business. Had the skylight been closed I should have
put some questions to him, but the regular passage of the shadows of
the two Spaniards upon the glass of the skylight as they walked the
deck, warned me to be very wary. The change, not indeed from an open
boat, but from the decks and the cabin of the Ocean Ranger to this
interior, with its pictures, mirrors, its handsomely equipped and most
hospitable table, was great indeed, and as I looked about me I found
it difficult to realize the experience I was passing through. I could
now tell by the weight of the fork and spoon which I handled that the
plate which glittered upon the white damask cloth was solid silver.
There could be no doubt whatever that the furniture of a drawing-room
or of a boudoir had gone to the equipment of this cabin. Nothing seemed
to fit, nothing had that air of oceanic _fixity_ which you look for
in sea-going decorations. But a quality of tawdriness stole into the
general appearance through contrast of the gilt, the looking glasses,
the pictures, the velvet, with the plain, worn sides of the vessel, the
rude cabin beams, and the gray and even grimy ceiling or upper deck. I
asked the negro boy if he spoke English.

"Yes, massa," said he, "I speak English, nuffin else, tank de Lord."

"Were you shipped at Cadiz?"

"Yes sah."

"I suppose they found you cruising about on the look-out for a job."

He showed his teeth and smiled broadly and blandly, in silence
upturning his dusky eyes to the skylight. It was no business of mine to
question him, but I thought it as likely as not that he had run from
some American vessel, for it was hard to imagine that a lad who was
undoubtedly a Yankee negro, and who I might fully believe was without a
word of Spanish, would be idling in Cadiz.

I was about to go on deck when the boy said to me, "Do yah know where
yaw've to sleep?"

"In the 'tween decks I understood," said I.

"I'll show yah, massa, I'll show yah. Dis is de road to your bedroom,
sah," and, somewhat to my surprise, he went to a little door at the
foremost end of the cabin, opened it, and conducted me into a part of
the schooner that was almost immediately under the main-hatch. The
main-hatch was a very wide square, and the cover of it was formed
of three pieces, one portion of which was lifted so that light and
air penetrated; the sun was still above the horizon, and I could see
plainly. A hammock had been swung in a corner on the starboard side;
it was to be my bed, and there was no other article of furniture; but
then I was a sailor, very well able to dispense with all conveniences,
requiring nothing but a bucket of fresh brine to supply the absence of
a wash-stand. There was a quantity of rope, some bolts of canvas, and
other matters of that kind stowed away down here. The space, however,
was no more than a good sized cabin, owing to the after bulk-head
coming well forward and the forecastle bulk-head standing well aft.

Having taken a brief survey of my quarters, heaving as I did so a
melancholy sigh of regret over the new sea-chest, the quantity of
wearing apparel, the nautical instruments, books and old home memorials
which the Ocean Ranger had sailed away with, and which it was as likely
as not I should never hear of again, I re-entered the cabin and mounted
the short flight of companion steps. Captain Dopping was walking with
the two Spaniards. I went a little way forward to leeward, and leaned
upon the rail, looking at the sea. The breeze was soft and pleasant,
warm with the long day of sunshine, and the schooner was sliding in
buoyant launchings over the round brows of the wide heave of the swell
which in the far dim east swayed in folds of soft deep violet to the
tender magical coloring of the shadow of the coming night that had
paused in the heavens there. Four of the seamen were sitting in the
schooner's head, watching with amused hairy countenances the face of
the cook Mariana, who grotesquely gesticulated and contorted his form
in his efforts to address them in English. On a sudden Captain Dopping
crossed the deck, holding a handsome cigar case filled.

"Don Christoval wants to know if you smoke?" said he.

I took a cigar and lighted it at the stump which Captain Dopping was
smoking, and perceiving that Don Christoval observed me, I raised
my hat, and made him a low bow, which he returned with the majesty
of a grandee. The captain resumed his place at the side of the two
Spaniards, and I smoked my cigar alone, with wonder fast increasing
upon me as I looked at the cigar, and then reflected upon the
entertainment I was fresh from, and recollected how Captain Dopping
had pronounced the word _pay_. What did it all mean? What mystery was
signified, what proposals presently to come were indicated by this
handsome, this hospitable reception of a distressed seaman--a mere
second mate as I was or had been, rendered destitute by disaster--one
of a crowd of obscure persons without pretensions of any kind or sort?
Surely, had I been a nobleman, a man in the highest degree important
and influential, this treatment could scarcely have been more liberal
and considerate.

I had nearly smoked out the exceedingly fine cigar when Captain
Dopping, in his rasping voice, cried out to one of the men--I believe
it was to the man George South--to step aft and take charge of the deck
for a bit. I turned my head, and found that the two Spaniards had gone
below. Captain Dopping beckoned to me, but the gesture was not wanting
in respect. He was but a Deal longshore man, though superior to the
ordinary run of those fellows, and was impressed or, at all events,
influenced by my holding a master's certificate and, let me say it
without vanity, for it is a thing to concern me but little after all
these years, by my speech, manners, and appearance.

"You are wanted in the cabin," said he, and he led the way below.




CHAPTER III.

DON CHRISTOVAL'S STORY.


Don Christoval and Don Lazarillo were seated at the table drinking
coffee; the atmosphere was charged with the delicate aroma of the
berry, blended with the perfume of choice Cuba tobacco. The hour was
somewhere about seven. The sunset made the little space of heaven that
showed through the skylight resemble a square of gilt. Spite, however,
of there being some half-hour of twilight left, the two polished and
gleaming silver cabin-lamps were burning.

"Pray sit," said Don Christoval. "I want to talk to you on an affair of
business."

I took a chair. Captain Dopping seated himself opposite me. Don
Lazarillo watched me with a fiery gaze of excitement and expectation.

"I will tell you plainly and at once, Mr. Portlack," said Don
Christoval, fastening his fine, burning, liquid eyes upon my face,
"what the object of our expedition is. In a word, it is this: I am
going to England to recover my wife, who has been feloniously stolen
from me."

He paused to observe the effect of his words. I could only look
blankly, for there was really nothing to be _thought_ so far, and
therefore nothing to be said.

"You will have suspected that our excursion was a singular one," said
he smiling, with a note of sweetness threading his voice.

"I confess, sir," said I, "that I supposed this schooner to be on an
errand which might be something a little out of the way."

"What does he say?" said Don Lazarillo in Spanish. Don Christoval
patiently translated and then resumed, addressing me now with an
air of melancholy and in tones curiously plaintive. "It is fit that
my story should be told to you, because I shall desire your willing
assistance. That story is well known to my friend, Captain Dopping,
who did not engage the crew until he had made them acquainted with
the object of this expedition. Captain Noble was in your Royal Navy,
but he no longer serves. My mother, who I may tell you was an English
woman, was distantly related to Captain Noble on his mother's side.
I met the captain and his daughter Ida in Paris, and," said he, with
a graceful flourish of his hand, "I fell in love with the young lady.
Captain Noble's wife is a woman of distinction. She is Lady Ida Noble,
and her father is an earl. She did not favor my addresses, nay," said
he, with his face darkening--and I observed that the countenance of
Don Lazarillo, who was eying him steadfastly, darkened too in manifest
sympathy with his friend's mood--"she was rude; she was repellent; she
was insulting. She had high desires for her child, higher," he cried,
smiting his breast, and rearing his form, and looking at his friend,
"than Don Christoval del Padron." He gesticulated again. "Enough!--the
lady, passionately adoring me, consented to elope. I had followed them
to Madrid, and from Madrid my charming girl and I fled to London,
where we were secretly married. The father tracked us. We were man
and wife ere he discovered us. But, two days before we had arranged
to leave England for Cuba, where I have an estate, I returned to the
hotel where I had left my wife, and found her gone. I made inquiries,
and gathered from the description given to me by the people of the
hotel that Captain Noble and his son had called, had had an interview
with my wife, and that she had driven away with them in the carriage
in which they had arrived. I easily guessed," he continued, speaking
plaintively, without the least temper, with an expression of melancholy
that wonderfully heightened the beauty of his face, "that she had been
made the victim of some cruel stratagem. I knew she would write to me
when the chance was permitted her, and week after week I lingered at
the hotel, believing she would address me there or return to me there.

"A month passed, and then I received a letter. She informed me that her
father and brother had called and implored her to accompany them to her
mother, who lay in a dying state at a hotel in Bond Street. She loved
her mother, and her tender heart was half broken by this afflicting
intelligence. Naturally, she made haste to accompany her father and
brother; but it was a base lie, Mr. Portlack, an inhuman stratagem!
They conveyed her, not to her mother, but, valgamedios! to Captain
Noble's estate in Cumberland. There she has remained; there she still
is; but her deliverance is at hand, and she awaits me."

"A regular mean and cruel business, don't you think, Mr. Portlack?"
cried Captain Dopping, dragging at his scarlet whiskers.

"Does 'ee understand?" exclaimed Don Lazarillo.

"Perfectly," I answered. "It would be strange if I could not understand
your pure English, sir," addressing Don Christoval.

"What we want to know is----" began Captain Dopping.

"Patience," interrupted Don Christoval, elevating his hand. "It is
probable," he continued, turning to me, "that we may have to employ
force. I hope not, but we are prepared," he added, with a flash in his
eyes. "The lady is my wife: you will allow that I have a right to her?"

"Undoubtedly," said I.

"The marriage was in all senses lawful. I can produce the necessary
documentary evidence. I can produce my dear one's letter in which she
communicates to me the perfidious conduct of her father. You will own
that I have a greater right to my wife than her father has to his
daughter."

"You will own that?" rasped out Captain Dopping. "The law sets the
husband first. He's afore all hands."

"That is so; that need not be reasoned," said I.

"Will you," said Don Christoval, "agree to assist me in obtaining
possession of my wife?"

Don Lazarillo appeared to understand this question. He eyed me sternly
and with inexpressible eagerness.

"Sir," said I, "you have saved my life and you have been very good to
me. I should wish to be of service to you, though for no other reason
than to prove my gratitude. But, sir, it would enable me to answer you,
to learn the steps that are to be taken to recover the lady."

"That is easily done," exclaimed Don Christoval, with a sweep of his
hand that made a single diamond upon his finger stream in an arc of
white fire under the lamps. "Captain Noble's house is called Trafalgar
Lodge. It is a house that stands amid grounds. It is situated on the
coast of Cumberland, to the south of St. Bees Head. A walk to it from
the shore occupies less than half an hour, so close is it to the sea.
The cliffs are high, but there is a little bay that has a margin of
sand which even at high water gives plenty of foothold for landing from
a boat. Into this bay between the cliffs comes sloping a--I forget the
name in English."

"A gap, Don Christoval?" said Captain Dopping.

"That is it--that is it. You walk up this gap into the country and then
the house is not far off. There is a little town about four miles
distant inland--it is what you would call the nearest post-town to
Trafalgar Lodge. It is a silent range of cliff--there are no guards
of the coast. I have inquired, and there are no guards of the coast
along that cliff. Well, when we arrive we keep what Captain Dopping
calls a wide offing until the darkness of the night comes. We shall
be guided by the weather: if it is fine we act, if it is stormy we
keep at sea and wait. But suppose it fine. Good! We launch the boat.
Myself, my friend here, Don Lazarillo de Tonnes, Captain Dopping, and
five seamen enter her and we land. The rest is our affair. There must
not be miscarriage; this voyage is costly." He glanced as he spoke at
Don Lazarillo. "And we must go ashore in such force as to assure myself
of getting possession of my wife, let Captain Noble and his son and
his men servants and any gentlemen guests who may be sleeping in his
house--let them, I say, oppose us as they will. But"--he held up his
forefinger with a smile that made his teeth glance like light under his
heavy black mustache--"what meantime is to become of this schooner? Do
you see? The men we have we must take ashore, saving Mariana and Tom."

"The long and short of it is, Mr. Portlack," here broke in Captain
Dopping, with a note of impatience hardening yet his harsh utterance,
"there wasn't time to ship more hands in Cadiz. Don Christoval had
received news that if he wanted to get possession of his lady he must
bear a hand, for she stands to be carried abroad by her father, and
that 'ud signify a constant shifting of places. We wanted more men, and
Don Christoval would have no sailors but Englishmen. I scraped together
the best I could collect in a hurry, but our company was too few by one
or two for this here job. There's a house to be surrounded, d'ye see;
there's a chance of one or more of us being hurt in the melhee that's
likely as not to happen, and then again a man must be left in charge of
the boat."

Don Christoval listened with patience, watching me; Don Lazarillo, in
a fiery whisper, asked his friend to translate. This was done, and a
short pause ensued.

"What you wish me to do," said I, "is to take charge of the schooner
while you and the crew are ashore?"

"That is it," cried Don Christoval.

"With me you leave Mariana and the negro boy?"

"So."

"A slender ship's company if it should come on to blow on a sudden,"
said I, smiling.

"We shall leave the vessel snug," said Captain Dopping, "and we don't
reckon upon being more than three hours gone. Besides, we shall be
guided by the looks of the weather. It's still summer time, ain't it?"

"You see, Mr. Portlack," said Don Christoval, leaning back in his
chair and infusing a peculiar note of sweetness into his voice, "you
are a navigator and my friend Captain Dopping is a navigator. It would
be rash for both navigators to go ashore. Suppose an accident should
befall Captain Dopping--how should we reach Cuba: nay, how should we
reach a near safe port? There is no navigation among us saving what you
and he have."

"I understand, sir. I also gather that when you have regained the lady
you proceed forthwith to the island of Cuba?"

"To my estate there," he answered.

"You'll be able to see your way through this job?" exclaimed Captain
Dopping. "The law's at the back of us. A man has a right to his own.
There's no lawyer a-going to gainsay that, you know. If you steal my
watch and refuse to hand it over, there's no law to hinder me from
coaxing you into my view of the business with a loaded pistol."

"Explain, in the name of the Virgin," hissed Don Lazarillo, in Spanish,
for these words I could understand, and such was his excitement and
impatience that the rings upon his trembling hands danced in flashes
like rippling water under a light.

Don Christoval interpreted, on which the other bestowed several
approving nods upon Captain Dopping.

"But I have not yet spoken," said Don Christoval, "of any reward for
your services. I here offer you fifty guineas, which shall be paid to
you on our arrival in Cuba."

"Do you assent, Señor, do you assent?" whipped out Don Lazarillo, who
now and again would catch the meaning of what was said.

The offer was a tempting one. It was made to a man rendered bankrupt
by disaster. The money would go far to supply my loss; then again, my
immediate business when I reached a port, no matter where it might be
situated, must be to find a berth, and here was one prepared for me,
easily and comfortably to be filled by me. Moreover, I was but a young
man, and there were such elements of wild and startling romance in
this Spaniard's proposal as could not fail to eloquently appeal to my
love of adventure and to my delight in everything new and stirring.
It was not for me to too curiously inquire into the sincerity of Don
Christoval's story. Captain Dopping believed it; the five seamen
believed it; and what was there for me to ground suspicion upon?

I paused but a minute and then said, "I accept, sir."

"Good!" cried Don Christoval, with enthusiasm.

He went to a locker, and took from it a small, richly-inlaid box or
desk, which he placed upon the table; then on a sheet of gilt-edged
paper, in the corner of which was stamped or embossed in colors a
nosegay of flowers, with a legend in Latin upon a scroll beneath it, he
wrote as follows:

  "_La Casandra, at Sea,_

  "_August 9, 1838._

 "_I, Don Christoval del Padron, hereby undertake to pay to Mr. James
 Portlack, acting as first mate of this schooner, the sum of fifty-two
 pounds ten shillings sterling on the vessel's arrival at Cuba._"

He affixed his signature, and the document was further signed by Don
Lazarillo and Captain Dopping as witnesses.

"This is the form of my agreement with Captain Dopping and with the
sailors," said Don Christoval, handing me the paper. "I trust it
satisfies you;" and he gave me one of his noble grandee bows.

"Oh, yes, sir, and I am obliged to you for it. I suppose the crew will
be discharged on the vessel's arrival at Cuba?"

"Ay!" exclaimed Captain Dopping.

"I have but one more question to ask. Is your Cuban port fixed upon?"

"Matanzas will not be far off," replied Don Christoval.

Matanzas I knew to be near Havana; and at Havana, whose harbor in those
days was populous with ships, I felt I should have no difficulty in
obtaining a berth and so making my way home.

I rose, bowed, and went on deck.

The sun was gone; the night had fallen; it was hard upon eight o'clock.
The wind had slightly freshened, and the schooner was slipping nimbly
but quietly over the dark surface of the waters. There was a slip of
young moon in the south-west, by which sign I might know that, if we
made good progress, there would be moonlight for the wild midnight
adventure we were embarked on. There was a growling murmur of sailors'
voices forward in the gloom; aft, sliding up and down against the
brilliant dust of stars over the stern, was the lonely shadow of the
helmsman gripping the tiller; the seaman who had been commissioned to
keep a look-out trudged in the gangway. My watch on deck would come
round at eight o'clock, that is to say, in a few minutes. I leaned
against the rail to think, but my reverie was almost immediately broken
in upon by Captain Dopping. He approached me close, and peered to make
sure of me, and said:

"Well, now you are one of us, what think ye of the job?"

"I have not yet had time to think," said I.

"It is good pay," said he, "and no risk to you either. You're on the
right side of the door anyway. There's bound to be a scrimmage. The
house is an old, strong building, there are gates to pass, and we must
look to be fired upon."

"That you must expect," said I. "But you are numerous enough--seven
powerful men, not counting the eighth, whom you leave to tend the boat.
You will go ashore armed, of course?"

"Of course."

"You do not doubt that it is a genuine business?" said I.

"No, no," he answered in his file-like tones; "it's genuine enough.
What d'ye suspect?"

"Why, do you see, an errand of this sort, Captain Dopping," said I,
hushing my voice, "might signify anything else than the recovery of a
Spanish gentleman's wife."

"So it might," he answered; "but in our case it don't happen to. You'll
be satisfied when you see the lady brought aboard."

"Who is Don Lazarillo?" said I.

"A bosom-friend of Don Christoval's. I look to him more than to the
other for my money. Plenty he has; ye may guess that by his hands."

"But my agreement is with Don Christoval."

"He'll pay ye--he'll pay ye."

"How did you meet him?"

"I heard that he was making inquiries for a master to take charge of
this schooner. I was piloting a Spaniard to the Thames when she was run
into, and they sent for me to Cadiz; and I had finished my business,
and was thinking of getting home again, when this job fell in my way."

Pulling out his watch, he stepped so as to bring the dial plate into
the sheen round about the skylight, then calling out that it was eight
bells, and that the course of the vessel was the course to be steered,
he vanished.

The Spaniards arrived on deck to smoke, and they walked up and down,
constantly talking very earnestly in Spanish. But they never offered
to accost me until they went below, at about half-past nine, when they
both wished me good night, after Don Christoval had addressed a few
words to me about the weather and the time we were likely to occupy
in our run to the Cumberland coast. But though they went below, they
did not go to bed. The negro boy placed fruit, wine, and biscuit upon
the table, and the two Dons went to cards, each of them smoking a long
cigar. There was something dream-like to me in the sight of them, along
with the fancies begotten by the strange situation I now found myself
in. It was like taking a peep into a camera obscura to glance through
the skylight at the picture which it framed. Don Christoval looked a
noble, handsome creature indeed, in the irradiation of the soft oil
flames of the sparkling silver lamps. His smiles played like a light
upon his face, so white were his teeth, so luminous the glow of his
dark eyes at every festal sally of his own or his friend. Was his tale
to be doubted? Surely he was a sort of man to inspire a most romantic
passion in a woman; and, given that passion, all that he had related
was perfectly credible and consistent.

Likely as not, Don Lazarillo was finding the money for this adventure.
Captain Dopping had said so, and, indeed, one had only to think of the
schooner's equipment, and to peer down into that gleaming interior,
to guess that the cost of this amazing quest must heavily tax even a
very long purse. Don Christoval had talked of his estate in Cuba; he
might be a poor man, nevertheless; his poverty, indeed, might have
proved one of the objections which Captain Noble and his wife had found
unconquerable, though their daughter had thought otherwise. It was
quite conceivable then that Don Lazarillo, being an intimate friend of
Don Christoval, should be helping him by his purse, his sympathy, and
his association.

But speculations of this sort were not very profitable. I had myself to
consider, and it reconciled me, I must own, to the adventure to reflect
that the part I was expected to play in it was a passive one. The law
of England in those times was not what it now is. Men were hanged for
offenses which are now visited by short periods of imprisonment. If I
was being betrayed into a felonious confederacy, I might hope to be
safe in the plea of ignorance, and in the excuse of having taken no
active share in what might happen. Another consideration: suppose I
had declined Don Christoval's proposal, how should I have been served?
I could not imagine they would speak a passing ship to transfer me to
her. They were in a hurry, and not likely, therefore, to delay the run
to the Cumberland coast by entering a port to set me ashore. So I must
have remained on board in any case, and being on board, assuming the
act they were intent on an illegal one, I should have been as much or
as little incriminated as I now might be by agreeing to serve as mate
in the vessel.

For eight days, dating from the morning of my rescue, nothing of
sufficient interest happened to demand that this story should stand
still while I tell it. We had extraordinarily fine weather; never once
did the breeze head us so as to divert the schooner by as much as half
a point from her course. Twice it blew fresh enough to single reef our
canvas for us, but the breeze was a fair wind; it filled the sky with
flying shapes of white vapor, but it left the sun shining brilliantly
in the clear blue hollows between, and on these occasions it was that
La Casandra showed her sailing qualities; for during thirteen hours
the log regularly returned her speed as at something over twelve and
a half knots in the hour. She heaped the foam to her stemhead, and
flashed it in dazzling clouds from her bows, and the race of it spread
away astern like the boiling yeast from the beat of the wheels of
a paddle-steamer, with a sparkling hill of sea steadfast on either
quarter, and over those fixed curves of brine the froth swept like lace
endlessly unrolling.

I punctually took sights every day with Captain Dopping, and every day,
therefore, knew the exact position of the schooner at noon. The point
of coast we were making for lay a few miles to the south of St. Bees
Head. I reckoned that we should be off it by about the 18th. As the
days passed, indeed I may say as the hours passed, the Spaniards grew
visibly more anxious. Their laughter was infrequent, their conversation
earnest and often agitated, as I might reasonably suppose by the tones
of their voices and by their demeanor; they came and went restlessly,
one or the other of them often appearing on deck in the night watches,
and they never sat long at table.

But their behavior was perfectly consistent, entirely natural, such as
was to have been expected in men who had embarked on a wild romantic
adventure, heavily laden with possibilities of tragedy. They had
very little to say to me, nor were their conversations with Captain
Dopping as frequent as before. They kept much together, walking arm
in arm, Don Christoval grave to austerity, Don Lazarillo energetic in
gesticulation, often pausing to withdraw his arm to smite his hands
with vicious emphasis of what he might be saying, and all their talk,
as I might imagine, was wholly about the probable issue of this attempt
to obtain possession of Señora del Padron.

I had many opportunities of speaking to the seamen. I warily questioned
them, and one or two appeared convinced that the object of this
expedition was as had been represented to them, while the others owned
that though they did not doubt Don Christoval's story, it might not be
exactly as he had put it, either.

"But what does it signify?" a man named Scott said to me in one
middle-watch while I conversed with him as he stood at the helm. "If
when we gets ashore and we find out that the job's different from what
we've been made to believe it, why, sir, here stands one," said he,
thumping his breast, "who'll find it easy enough to say 'No' if he
means 'No.' There's no blazing furriner in all Europe, let alone a
Spaniard, as is good enough for an Englishman to get into a mess for.
This here Don says he wants his wife, and I suppose his money's as
good as any other man's. Well, we're willing for to help him to get
his wife, and as his tarms are handsome we're quite agreeable to a bit
of a shindy when it comes to our marching up to the house and asking
that the gent's lawful wife should be restored to him. But if it ain't
that," said he, squirting a mouthful of tobacco juice over the stern,
"if it's to be something that we haven't agreed for, some job as might
end in a prison hulk and a free passage to Australia, here stands one,"
he repeated, striking himself afresh, "as'll find it easy to say 'No,'
if so be as 'No' is the meaning that's in his mind."

This, as I collected from the short chats I held with others of the
men, fairly represented the sentiments of the schooner's forecastle on
the subject of our expedition.

We had hauled on a course a trifle more westerly than was necessary to
secure ourselves a wide offing, and then, somewhere about one o'clock
on the afternoon of the 18th, we shifted our helm and headed the yacht
east-north-east. All hands were on deck on the look-out for the land,
the pale blue loom of which might now at any moment be visible on the
sea-line. The wind was about south, the day clear, hot and tranquil;
there was a terrace of swollen white vapor down in the west, with a
look of thunder in the knitted texture of the brows of the stuff, but
the mercury in the barometer stood high, and I could find nothing to
disquiet me in the appearance of the English heavens, tessellated here
and there with spaces of high-poised, delicate cloud that gleamed with
divers hues like the pearly inside of a mussel-shell.

Lunch had been served on deck to the two Spaniards. I noticed a
change in Don Christoval; his face had hardened, there was an air of
sneering temper in his rare smile that reduced it to little more than
a mirthless grin, and often a vindictive look in his eyes as he would
stand staring ahead at the sea, swaying his noble figure to the heave
of the deck. His manner, indeed, suggested itself as that of one who
seeks for courage in temper, for resolution in the evocation of hot
thoughts. Don Lazarillo was pale as though oppressed with nausea. He
constantly raised his hat to press a large silk pocket-handkerchief to
his brow. When I glanced at him I'd wonder whether, when the hour came,
he would be among those who entered the boat.

A small brig, a collier, with dingy ill-fitting canvas, her yards
braced sharp up, passed under our stern near enough to hail us, but
we took no notice of the old fellow who stood flourishing his hand
upon the rail; whereupon to mark his disgust he flung his tall,
weather-worn hat down on to the deck, and shook his fist at us with a
shout whose meaning did not catch my ear, though a laugh arose among
the men forward. The cook Mariana showed himself very agitated. He was
constantly in and out of his galley, running into the schooner's head
to stare, then darting back afresh to his pots and pans, one moment
popping his hideous face out from the door to starboard, then thrusting
it through the door to port, making one think of those little toy
monsters which spring out of a box when you free the lid.

At four o'clock the land was in sight. The giant St. Bees Head dimly
shaded the sea-line in the north-east, and thence the shore stretched
in a blue film to the south, dying out in the azure atmosphere. Don
Christoval leaned over the rail viewing the land with a face darkened
by an immovable frown, the scowling air of which gave a malevolent
expression to his eyes. He stood rooted--motionless--his hand with a
paper cigar between his fingers, half raised to his mouth, as though
the whole form of him had been withered by a blast of lightning.

"How close do you mean to sail, Capitan?" cried Don Lazarillo,
sputtering out his words brokenly, with such an accent as could not
possibly be imitated in print. "We shall be seen!" he exclaimed, with
his face working with agitation.

"No fear of our being seen at this distance, Don Lazarillo," answered
Captain Dopping. "A four mile offing is all we want till nightfall, and
that there land is three times that distance off."

Don Lazarillo asked Don Christoval to explain, but the tall Spaniard
continued to stand as though in a trance.

An hour passed, all remained quiet aboard the schooner. The light wind
fanned the clipper keel of the craft forward, and by the expiration
of the hour the land was hard, firm, and defined, but with no feature
of spur, chasm, or ravine visible as yet to the naked eye. Sail was
shortened to the extent of the topsail being furled, a jib hauled down,
and the gaff-topsail taken in.

"Best see, while there's plenty of time and daylight," said Captain
Dopping to me, "that the boat's all ready for launching," and then
addressing Don Christoval, he exclaimed, "Shall we get the arms-chest
up, sir, and the weapons served out? It may come on a dark night," he
added, sending a look at the terrace of cloud in the west, "and it
won't do to mess about with lanterns."

"Do whatever you think proper," whipped out Don Christoval in accents
fierce with excitement, though by his stern, hard, and frowning face it
would have been impossible to guess his agitation.

I superintended the clearing away of the boat, and saw that everything
was in readiness for launching her. This was to be done smack
fashion--that is to say, by running her through the gangway over the
side. Meanwhile a couple of seamen brought up a large square black box.
Captain Dopping opened it, and disclosed a number of cutlasses and
heavy pistols of the old-fashioned type. He called to the seamen and
handed them each a pistol and a cutlass. I watched their faces as they
received them. They all of them handled the weapons as objects strange
to their grasp, with awkward grins running over their countenances as
they poised the firearms in their brawny fists or drew the cutlasses to
examine their blades.

"I hope," said the man Andrew Trapp, "that it ain't going to come to
our using these here tools?"

"The lady's to be got possession of," said Captain Dopping, "without
spilling blood if it can be managed; but to be got, anyhow."

"That's right enough," said the sailor named South, "but all the same,"
said he, leveling the pistol he held, "if so be as I am to fire this
here consarn, I choose that it shouldn't be at a fellow countryman."

"Mind dat pistole," cried Don Lazarillo, recoiling a step.

"I take it," said the seaman named William Scott, gazing earnestly at
the cutlass in his hand, "that these weapons are meant more to what
they calls overawe the people in the house we're to surround than to be
used agin 'em."

"We may have to exert force," said Don Christoval, who stood near
listening; "if our lives are threatened we must be in a position to
protect ourselves. Is not this as you would wish, men?"

There was a general murmur of assent.

"I claim my right--no more!" the tall Spaniard cried, with an
impassioned gesture of his arm; "you will help me to assert my right? I
trust no blood may be shed--if blood is shed it will not be our fault."

"That puts it correctly, I _think_, lads?" exclaimed Captain Dopping,
in his harshest voice and with his most thrusting manner.

The sailors holding their weapons went forward. Were they to be trusted
at a pinch, I wondered? Assuredly they were not to be trusted in any
sense if the business they were about to enter upon should prove in
the smallest degree different from the object of the expedition as
represented by Don Christoval.

We continued to stand in for the land under small canvas, which,
however, there was no further occasion to reduce, for as the sun sank
the wind fined down, and at seven o'clock the breeze had scarce weight
enough to hold our sails steady. The sun was astern of us, and his
light streamed full upon the coast, which glowed red as copper in that
atmosphere upon the dark blue of the water brimming to its base and
against the violet of the eastern sky. When the little collier brig
which had spoken us sank her topmost cloths past the rim of the ocean,
the sea line ran flawless from St. Bees Head right away round to the
point where the land melted out. It was hard to credit that we were in
home waters, so deserted was that wide surface. The schooner might,
indeed, have been softly rippling through the heart of some Pacific
solitude.

With the aid of a powerful telescope, handed to me by Don Christoval,
I could distinctly make out the bay where the boat was to go ashore,
and the dark scar of gap or ravine vanishing in the land beyond. I had
never before been off this coast, and ran the glass along the line of
it, but I could see no houses, no habitation of any sort; it was sheer
rugged cliff, whose character of forbidding desolation was not to be
softened by the rich and beautiful light that at this hour clothed it.
I asked Captain Dopping if he was acquainted with this coast, and he
answered that many years before he had made a trip to Whitehaven, which
lay round the corner to the north of St. Bees Head. That was all he
knew of the Cumberland shore. Occasionally Don Lazarillo would descend
into the cabin, and twice on glancing through the skylight I detected
him in the act of pouring out with a trembling hand a full bumper of
sherry, which he seemed to swallow furtively, but looking round instead
of _up_, possibly forgetting the deck window through which I peeped.
These draughts began to tell upon him; his face grew flushed, his fiery
eyes moist, and his gait changed into a defiant strut when he moved
restlessly about his friend, talking with extraordinary vehemence and
a frequent snap of his fingers. Don Christoval, on the other hand,
exhibited a new phase of mood. There was less of gloom in his face,
more of animation. He smoked his cigar collectedly, with now and again
a smile, and sometimes a laugh at what his flushed-faced, restless,
gesticulating companion said. I took it that the English blood in
his veins kept his nerves steady without obliging him to imitate Don
Lazarillo's quest after courage in the contents of a decanter of wine.

I remember the sunset that night as one of sullen and thunderous
magnificence. The luminary, like a huge red rayless target, sank into
the coast of cloud over the stern, setting fire to the round and tufted
shoulders of the long, compacted mass, but darkening the base of it
into an ugly livid hue. Long beams of light, like the spokes of some
titanic wheel of flame, projected in burning lines till their red and
storm-colored extremities were over our mastheads; and as they slowly
fainted, the coast ahead of us darkened, the blue of the sky beyond
it deepened into liquid dusk with a single rose-colored star faintly
trembling in the heavens almost directly above the bay that was our
destination, as though it were some freshly kindled beacon to advise us
how to head through the approaching gloom.

We continued slowly to stand in. The stem of the schooner scarcely
broke the quiet water, and I reckoned that unless more wind came we
should not have arrived at a point where we were to come to a stand
much before midnight. The moon rose somewhere about half-past eight.
She soared in a swollen mass of crimson out of the inky dye of the
land, but swiftly changed into clear silver. Astern of us there
was a constant play of red lightning, with an occasional moan of
thunder slipping over the dark soft folds of the small swell. The two
Spaniards, Captain Dopping, and myself stood near the helm.

"The moon," said Don Christoval, "shines full upon our white canvas,
and reveals us."

"But first of all," said Captain Dopping, "who's keeping a look-out
yonder? And next, supposing there to be eyes on the watch, who's to
guess our business? Wouldn't any man who may already have twigged us
through a glass reckon us a gentleman's pleasure-yacht from the Isle of
Man, say, sauntering inward in view of this quiet night with a chance
of a calm atop of it? But if you like, Don Christoval--though it's not
what I should recommend--we'll stand in a mile or two farther, then
douse every stitch, and ride to a short scope. The soundings'll be
about twenty fathom."

"That will look suspicious," said Don Christoval. "I do not like the
idea. I do not advocate anchoring. See the time that will be lost in
heaving up the anchor."

"What ees it dat Capitan Dopping say?" inquired Don Lazarillo.

His friend explained; on which Don Lazarillo cried out shrilly, "No,
no, no," and addressed Don Christoval in Spanish with incredible
vehemence of delivery and gesticulation, his friend meanwhile uttering
the single word "Si!" in a soothing note over and over again.

"But if this breeze takes off, Captain Dopping," said I, when I could
get an opportunity to speak, "you'll either have to bring up or take
your chance of the schooner drifting far enough to make the pull from
the shore to her a long one."

Captain Dopping stared round the sea, whistling.

"How far off is the land?" said Don Christoval.

"Call it six mile," answered the captain.

"It would be too far to row," said Don Christoval. "We must creep
farther in."

"At what hour, sir," I asked, "do you wish to land?"

"It must be past midnight," answered the Spaniard, "when the house is
hushed, and when, should firearms be used, there will be no one awake
in the country around to hear the reports."

"And how long is the job going to take us, I wonder?" said Captain
Dopping, cutting off a piece of black tobacco with a big clasp knife,
whose blade glittered in the moonlight, and burying the morsel in his
cheek.

"An hour--easily in an hour," answered Don Christoval, speaking rapidly
and breathing swiftly. "Mark now how I piece out the time: three
quarters of an hour to row ashore, half an hour to march to the house,
that makes an hour and a quarter; an hour in executing our errand, that
makes two hours and a quarter; and then another hour and a quarter to
regain the schooner, that makes three hours and a half in all. Call the
time four o'clock when we sail away, by five we shall be out of sight
of land."




CHAPTER IV.

A MIDNIGHT THEFT.


It fell a stark calm at ten o'clock, and then I believed that there
could be nothing for it but to bring up--that is, to let go the anchor;
but half an hour later the moonlight upon the water--for by this time
the moon had floated southward--was tarnished by a little air of wind
from the south and west; it breathed, wet with dew, like a sigh into
the schooner's canvas, then softly freshened into a small summer
night-wind. The mass of clouds in the west had vanished; all was clear
heaven from the sea line there to the looming shadow of the land over
our bow; the moon rode high, small and piercingly clear; the canvas
shone like ice in the light; stars of diamond-like brilliance sparkled
in the moisture along the rail; and every man's shadow lay at his feet
upon the pearl-colored planks, as though drawn in Indian ink there. The
hush of expectation lay upon the little vessel as she crept along with
a noise of rippling water refreshingly rising from alongside. Captain
Dopping held his watch to the moon.

"Wants but twenty minutes to midnight," said he; "we're close enough
in. Down helm," and he began to sing out orders in a voice whose
harshness sounded startlingly upon the ear amid the exquisite serenity
of that moonlit night.

The men ran about, still further reducing sail. So clear was the
night, it was possible even at a distance to read the expressions
upon their faces. There was no Preventive Force or Coastguard Service
then as now. The English coast was indeed watched at certain parts
of it where smuggling was notoriously carried on, and the people who
kept a look-out were styled blockaders; but the northern reaches,
more particularly where the coast was rugged and high, and where
the facility for "running" goods, as it was called, was small, were
unsentineled. The smuggler needed the accommodating creek, the
comfortably shoaling foreshore, secret hiding places, and, above all, a
handy local machinery for the prompt distribution of his commodities.
All this was to be found in the English Channel, more particularly in
that stretch of it which lies between the North and South Forelands;
but it was not to be met with up here, on this lonely iron-bound
Cumberland coast. In our time, even in these times, when smuggling
is a decaying, an almost extinct business, the pallid apparition of
such a schooner as La Casandra hovering doubtfully at midnight off any
point of the English shore would infallibly in a very short time win
the regard and invite the visit of a boat full of brawny coastguards,
armed, as our men were about to arm themselves, with pistols and with
cutlasses.

"Get the boat launched, my lads," called out Captain Dopping.

The gangway was unshipped, the muscular fists of the seamen gripped
her gunwales, and she was run with a note of thunder overboard, stern
foremost, smiting the water a blow that lashed it white, then lying
quietly in the shadow of the schooner. The two Spaniards descended
into the cabin, Don Lazarillo talking noisily as he trod upon his
companion's heels. I stood looking on while Captain Dopping and the
seamen girded the cutlasses to their hips and thrust pistols into their
pockets or breasts.

"You will keep a bright look-out for us, Mr. Portlack," said the
captain. "Hold the schooner as stationary as possible. There's nothing
going to hurt her to-night," said he, with a look round, "and there'll
be no tide to speak of for another two hours. You will then wear and
keep her with her head to the nor'ard."

"Ay, ay, sir. But suppose, while you're ashore, a boat should come off
and speak us?"

"Not likely, not likely," he rasped out.

"But suppose it, Captain Dopping. I accept no responsibility. What am I
to say, and what am I to do?"

"Don't Don Christoval and his friend mean to come?" he answered,
walking to the skylight and looking down.

Either he could not invent any instructions, or he considered a visit
from a shore boat as a thing too improbable to merit consideration.

The two Spaniards came on deck. I had never supposed that Don Lazarillo
would have had courage to enter the boat until I observed that he had
armed himself with a long saber, the extremity of whose steel scabbard
was visible at the skirts of the Spanish cloak he had drawn over his
shoulders. Don Christoval was similarly swathed, but how armed I am
unable to say, as no weapon was to be seen upon him.

"All's ready for the start, gentlemen," exclaimed Captain Dopping.

"Right!" exclaimed Don Christoval in a firm, deep voice, "let the men
enter the boat."

The sailors dropped into her one by one, and sat silent and grim and
dark in the gloom of the schooner's side, waiting.

"Where is Mariana?" cried Don Christoval.

The ugly cook's voice answered from somewhere forward, and he
approached. Don Christoval addressed him in Spanish impressively, and
as it seemed to my ear menacingly, emphasizing his words with frequent
gestures. Mariana responded humbly with many shakes of the head, as
though in deprecation of what had been said to him. Don Christoval then
turned to me and extended his hand.

"Mr. Portlack, I rely upon your vigilance and seamanship. We hope not
to be long absent."

He relinquished my hand, I raised my cap, and without another word, he,
Don Lazarillo and Captain Dopping stepped over the side.

"Shove off," the captain exclaimed, and in a few moments the boat was
gliding shoreward to the noise of the rhythmic grind of her five long
oars betwixt the thole-pins, with eddies of dim phosphorescence under
each lifted blade.

I watched her until her small shape, blending with the shadow thrown by
the high land upon the water, was lost to sight, and then stepped aft
to the helm, at which stood the negro boy Tom, who had been ordered to
the tiller by me when the steersman had relinquished it to enter the
boat. I mechanically eyed the illuminated disk of compass card, while
my thoughts accompanied the armed expedition that was making for the
shore. I figured the arrival of the boat at the margin of white sand
that curved with the bay; in fancy I saw the people get out of her,
leaving one behind to watch, and marching in a little dark company up
the gap, a faint noise of the clank of side-arms attending them. In
imagination I marked them cautiously approach the house--but what sort
of house was it? Walls I had heard it had, and gates, and these must
be forced or scaled. But what of Madame del Padron, the Ida of Don
Christoval's heart, if not of his hearth? Was she lying awake yonder,
expecting her husband? Impossible! for no date could certainly have
been fixed for the arrival of the schooner off the coast. But of course
she would be awaiting him with impassioned anxiety at all hours of the
night--nights that were gone, and to-night that was going: and he would
have told her that he meant to regain her with the aid of an armed crew
of seamen. Yet, though forewarned, should a struggle happen, she would
listen with terror to the sound of firearms, to explosions, which might
signify the death of her husband, or the fall of one or more of her
own people, only a little less dear to her than her husband. What was
her age? Was she dark or fair? Beautiful I could not but imagine the
heroine, or, rather, the object, of such an adventure as this must be.

Then from musings of this sort my mind rambled into reflections of
the odd and perilous fortune that had brought me into this business.
How had fared the two sailors whom the murderous rogue of a Yankee
skipper had pilfered from me? Into what-parallels had the Ocean Ranger
penetrated by this time, and what man of her crew had been selected to
fill my place? I looked at the negro boy, whose eyes in the moonlight
resembled a brace of new silver coins set in a block of indigo.

"What's your other name?" said I.

"Tom, sah."

"Ay, but what besides Tom?"

"Tom ober and ober again, massa, as often as yah like."

"How old are you?"

He grinned widely as he answered, "Nebber was told, sah."

"Are you a Roman Catholic?" said I, talking sheerly for the want
of something to do, and imagining he might have been chosen by Don
Christoval because of his religion.

He shook his head, still broadly grinning, but meaning that he did not
understand.

"Have you any religion?"

"Yes, sah."

"What is it?"

"I believe dat when I die I shall be seen no mo'."

"Where do you go when you die?"

"I know, sah," he answered, with a low throaty laugh.

"Where?" said I.

"Dis child," said he, touching his body, "goes dar," and he pointed
down; "dat child," he continued, indicating his shadow that stretched
sharply defined upon the planks, "goes up dar," and he pointed upward.

"Who taught you that?" said I.

"Is it true, massa?"

"Mind your helm," said I, "and I'll talk to you another time."

I went to the side and peered. The atmosphere in the south-west was
brimful of moonshine, and the sea line mingled with the sky in the
delicate haze of sheen till you could not tell heaven from water.
Nothing broke the stillness but the voice of the wind-brushed ripples,
unless it were the chafe of a rope on high or the gull-like cry of the
sheave of a block stirred by a sudden strain. The shadowy figure of
Mariana, the cook, restlessly paced the deck forward. He seemed to be
keeping a sharp look-out, as I was. A flock of wild fowl passed high
overhead; their cries as they swept, invisible, over our trucks made a
strange, solemn, plaintive noise in the midnight silence that was upon
the sea. Sometimes I believed I could hear the small remote thunder
of surf echoing out of the line of land which, now that the moon was
shining upon it, stood in a long pale spectral range.

I was thirsty and stepped below for a tumbler of seltzer and claret. I
took a cigar from a box which stood upon the table, dimmed the cabin
lamps, and returned on deck. Expectation, the constant obligation of
keeping a penetrating look-out, made the time heavy. The moon floated
into the western quarter, and slowly the orb lost its brilliance and
took its rusty hue of setting, though it was still high above the
horizon. Nothing in the shape of a sail was visible the wide sea round;
I was able to sink my sight to the confines of the water, but never
could see the dimmest apparition of a ship.

Some time before three o'clock I wore the schooner, and waiting until
she regained the point at which the boat had left her, I brought her
head to the wind and held her so with her canvas trembling to the
breeze. It was shortly after I had done this that my eye was taken by a
faint redness ashore. The rim of the cliff turned black against the dim
crimson light. It might have passed as the first of the lunar dawn--as
though another moon were rising beyond the land to replace the orb that
was sinking in the west. Mariana came out of the bows and called out to
me with his incommunicable accent:

"Señor, do you see?" and he pointed to the light.

"Yes," said I, "that looks like a fire ashore. Whether the house has
been fired by design or mischance, our people will have to bear a hand;
for should there be any sort of country-side thereabouts it'll be
swiftly up and wide awake and running and shouting to _that_ signal."

He grunted, evidently without understanding a word of what I had said,
and went forward again.

I had just glanced at the cabin clock and observed that it exactly
wanted five minutes to four when my ears were caught by the sound of
oars working in their pins. A moment later we were hailed in a voice
thin with distance. I answered with a "Halloa!" at the top of my lungs.
Presently the boat shaped itself out of the gloom that lay heavy upon
the waters to the eastward. The gathering strength of the grinding
noise was warrant that the men strained hard at their oars. The boat
came shearing and hissing alongside as though her stem were of red-hot
steel; the oars were flung in and a boat-hook arrested the fabric's
progress.

I stood at the side in the open space of the schooner's gangway. My eye
was instantly caught by the figure of a woman supported in the arms of
Don Christoval. One sees a thing quickly, and in the breathless pause
between the arrival of the boat and what next happened I had time to
note that the woman rested perfectly motionless as though dead, that
her head was uncovered, and that her left arm lay like a stroke or dash
of white paint in the gloom with a scintillation of gems in the dim
gleam of some gold ornaments upon her wrist. Indeed, imperfect as my
view was of her, I might yet know that she was in ball attire!

Three or four seamen came bounding out of the boat; the voice of Don
Christoval exclaimed:

"Is that you, Mr. Portlack?"

"It is, sir."

"Captain Dopping," he cried, "has been shot dead. We were forced to
leave him behind. The command of the schooner devolves upon you. This
lady is in a heavy swoon, and must be lifted over the side. Let it be
done instantly, pray; there is no time to lose."

I was greatly startled and shocked to hear of Captain Dopping having
been shot dead and left behind, but the general agitation of the
moment, the obligation of hurry, the wild impatience of the Spaniard,
that hissed feverishly through his words, gave me no time to think of
anything but what we had in hand. Don Christoval, muscular and big
as he was, was unable, no doubt through exhaustion, to rise with the
burden he supported. Don Lazarillo, addressing him in Spanish, sprang
on board the schooner. I ordered a couple of seamen to assist Don
Christoval, and the lady was lifted over the side and received by Don
Lazarillo and Mariana, who straightway bore her below. I believed her
to be dead. She never stirred, or uttered the least sound.

"Are all returned, saving the captain?" I called out.

"All returned, sir," answered the gruff voice of one of the seamen.

"Anybody wounded?"

"Nobody hurt, saving the captain, who was shot dead," responded the
same voice.

Don Christoval, with a stagger in his gait, stepped out of the boat on
to the deck, calling to me to give him my hand, lest he should fall
backward.

"Be quick, and sail away, Mr. Portlack," said he, hoarsely. "A wing of
the house caught fire, but through no fault of ours--no! It was owing
to the carelessness of some terrified servant within. Only one shot
was fired; it was meant for me, and slew Captain Dopping, who was at
my side. That fire was a terrible signal--it may still be burning: I
do not know; all seemed in darkness when we gained the gap, but they
rang a danger bell, a fearful summons that seemed to echo for miles
and miles. Did you hear it here?" he cried, almost gasping with the
rapidity of his utterance.

"No, sir."

"Mounted messengers will have been flying from place to place long
ago," he continued; "they will send to Whitehaven, where, I heard
our sailors say, there may be lying a Revenue cutter, or some more
formidable ship of the State yet, to pursue us; therefore, for our
lives' sake, Mr. Portlack, get the boat in and start at once."

He paused an instant to clasp his hands with an air of impassioned,
theatrical appeal to me, then went below walking like a drunken man.

The bows of the boat were hastily hoisted into the gangway by means
of a tackle called a burton. All hands of us then grasped the fabric,
and dragged her bodily to her place on the deck. I could collect, by
the motions of the men, that they were frightfully fatigued, but they
worked with a will, as for their lives, indeed; well knowing--better
knowing than I probably--what must be the fate of all hands of us if
we were to be captured red-handed thus, with the house still on fire
ashore for all we could tell--though I could now see no signs of the
glow I had before observed--and with the dead body of the captain to
fearfully testify to the audacious nature of this expedition.

Every stitch of sail the schooner carried was, cloth by cloth,
expanded. Within ten minutes of the boat's return she was in her place
on deck, the little topgallant-sail was being sheeted home, and La
Casandra, under full breasts of canvas, was sliding out into the gloom
south and west. Clouds had collected in the west; and if the moon still
hung over the sea, she could not show her face. Our course brought the
weak damp wind a little forward of the beam. This was the schooner's
best point of sailing, and she slided through it with a nimbleness that
I hoped would put her out of sight of land before daybreak.

While the men, with weary motions, were coiling away the running gear
which littered the deck, Mariana came up out of the cabin with a bottle
of brandy. He told me that Don Christoval wished the sailors to drink.
I said--

"Take it forward and serve it out; but see that no man gets more than a
dram. If you muddle their brains, you will be putting us in the way of
being hanged."

That he partly understood me I knew, by the energetic assent he howled
out in his own tongue. I carefully swept the sea line, and then took a
look through the cabin skylight. I had intended no more than a glance,
but my gaze was arrested, as though fascinated by the spectacle it
surveyed. Some one had turned up the lamps, and their flames burned
brightly. Don Christoval sat at the table, supporting his head by
resting his jaw upon his clinched fists. Don Lazarillo occupied a
chair close to him; a tumbler, half full, was before him; he held an
unlighted cigar, and his eyes were fixed upon the object at which his
friend was staring.

_This_ was no more nor less than the figure of a girl of about
two-and-twenty, resting at full length upon a velvet couch. The remains
of what might have been a wreath of flowers were in her hair. A portion
of her hair, that was of a dark red, and that glowed like gold, as
though it had been plentifully dusted with gilt powder, was detached,
and lay in a long thick tress upon her shoulder. They had unclasped a
rich opera cloak, and her attire was revealed. Her ball-dress of white
satin, looped here and there with pink roses, was cut low, and exposed
her throat and shoulders; but there were some ugly scratches on the
flesh near her left shoulder. She wore very handsome jewelry: diamond
earrings, a rope of pearls with a cross of diamonds that sparkled
against the dark yellow of the tresses which had fallen. Her arms of
faultless mold were bare to the short sleeves; her hands were gloved;
I believed I could witness traces of blood upon the white kid; and her
wrists were circled with bracelets.

But to describe all this is really to describe nothing: for how am I to
convey to you the disorder of apparel that suggested a struggle which
you must have thought deadly in its consequences, when you looked at
her motionless shape, her closed eyes, her bloodless face, and the
lifeless pose of her arms?

I stood gazing. Presently Don Christoval, extending a trembling hand,
poured himself out half a tumbler of brandy--brandy I might suppose it
was, by observing that he filled up the glass with water. He drained
the tumbler, and suddenly looked up and saw me. He instantly rose and
came on deck. He was without his hat. He seated himself on the corner
of the skylight, where he commanded a view of the interior of the
cabin, and called down some words in Spanish to Don Lazarillo, who
nodded violently, but without removing his eyes from the girl.

"Does the schooner make good way?" said Don Christoval.

"Yes," I answered; "her speed is about five miles an hour."

"At dawn shall we be out of sight of the coast?"

"It will not be long before daybreak," said I, "and at dawn the coast
may be in sight of us, but I do not suppose we shall be in sight of it."

He stood up to look around the sea.

"It is sad," he exclaimed, "that Captain Dopping should have been shot."

"It is shocking," said I.

"You have sole control of the schooner now, Captain Portlack, for my
captain I make you," said he. "And the money that I had agreed to pay
to Captain Dopping shall be yours, in addition to the fifty guineas as
arranged."

I gave him a bow and said, "Thank you." My eyes were fixed upon the
motionless girl below; he was able to observe the direction of my gaze
by the sheen of the lamp-light, that rose like a haze through the glass
and the lifted lid of the skylight.

"How cruel! how cruel!" said he, in a deep yet musical voice, that
was not the less thrilling because of a certain indefinable flavor
of theatricalism; "how cruel, that I should be obliged to claim what
is mine by force, which I find barbarous when I look there," said
he, pointing to the figure of his wife, "and when I recall Captain
Dopping's cry as he fell lifeless at my side."

"Is your lady dead?" said I.

"No, no, I think not; indeed, I am sure not. She is sunk in a trance
or stupor. If she were bled, she would revive; but there is no man on
board who has the skill to bleed her."

"She looks to have been very roughly handled."

"What you see," he cried, "is the work of her inhuman father and
brother. Captain Noble, his son, and my wife had returned from a ball.
We found the gate open, the carriage at the door: they had only just
alighted, indeed, and the carriage was in the act of driving away;
but the hall-door was closed. We knocked, and Captain Noble put his
head out of a window and asked who was there. I told him that it was
I, Don Christoval del Padron; that I had arrived to take possession
of my wife, whom he had forcibly divorced from me and was keeping a
prisoner--that is, never leaving her out of his own sight or the sight
of others of his family. He disappeared, and then returned to the
window. I did not know he was armed. He shouted insultingly to us to
be off. "Give me my wife!" I cried. "I desire no struggle, no uproar.
Give her to me, to whom she belongs, and we will withdraw peacefully."
He fired, and Captain Dopping fell and died with a groan. On this we
stormed the door; we put a pistol to the keyhole and blew away the
lock. Strangely enough, the door was not bolted. No doubt, in the
alarm our sudden appearance had caused, this had been overlooked, or
possibly Captain Noble supposed that some one had shot the bolts. We
entered; but what follows others may be better able to tell than I.
All was confusion and cries. They had hidden my wife. We entered five
rooms before we found her. This search was mine and Don Lazarillo's.
The seamen guarded the door, and stood cutlass in hand over Captain
Noble and his son. I found my wife locked in a room. When I turned the
key and she beheld me she rushed to my arms with a cry of delight. I
enveloped her in her opera cloak and conducted her downstairs, but on
Captain Noble and his son beholding us they dashed themselves against
the seamen, rushed upon us, and then it was that my wife suffered in
her apparel and upon her neck, as you see. She fainted, she instantly
became insensible. In the stupor that she now lies in we carried her to
the boat. As we left the house I saw the red light of fire in a wing on
the left, but it was not our doing; they can not charge that to me."

This extraordinary story he told in such broken-winded English as
I have attempted to convey it in. While I listened, I had found it
difficult to reconcile his statement that his wife had been imprisoned
by her father with the circumstance of her having accompanied him and
her brother to a ball. Then, again, while I listened, from time to
time, looking at the figure of the girl as he spoke, I wondered, as I
had before wondered again and again, in thinking over the object of
this expedition, why, if the lady, as he had represented, had been all
anxiety to rejoin her husband, should Don Christoval have considered
it necessary to carry an armed force ashore with him? That she had not
been a prisoner, in the sense of being confined to a room, or to a
suite of rooms, was made manifest by the ball attire in which she lay
as one dead upon the cabin sofa. Her liberty in a certain degree she
must have enjoyed. Could she not, at some preconcerted signal, have
stolen from the house secretly, and darkly joined her husband, and
secretly and darkly sailed away with him, saving all this tremendous
obligation of midnight landing and of armed seamen, with its tragic
result of fire and a slain man, not to mention the condition of the
wife, who, if not now actually dead, might be a corpse before the sun
rose?

There might have been a pause of five or six seconds while I thus
mused, during which I seemed to feel rather than see that his dark
and burning eyes were scrutinizing me by aid of the cabin light that
touched my face.

"The lady lies startlingly motionless, shockingly lifeless, Don
Christoval," said I.

"But her pulse beats--her pulse beats."

"Shall you persist in sailing to Cuba, sir?"

"Certainly; we are now proceeding to Cuba," he exclaimed, and he half
rose from the corner of the skylight as though with a mind to step to
the compass.

"Cuba is a long way off," said I.

"What of that?" he cried, instantly, and with heat.

"Seeing the condition of that lady," said I, "I could not be sure but
that you would wish to visit some near port to obtain medical help,
and----"

"What?" he demanded, bending his head forward to observe me.

"Why!" said I, with embarrassment, because I was about to say something
that might sound like impertinence in the ear of the Spaniard, "madame,
your wife, Don Christoval, will not be expected by you to make a voyage
to the island of Cuba in a ball-dress."

"I have provided for that," he exclaimed, haughtily. "I have minded my
business, Captain Portlack, and if you will mind yours all will be
well." He immediately added in a softened voice, as though regretting
any display of temper, "Yes, we must proceed to Cuba. If Cuba is erased
from my programme, my arrangements will be rendered worthless. Besides,
we have to-night done that which must oblige us, for every man's sake,
to put as many leagues of water between ourselves and yonder country
as this schooner can measure in a month. The Atlantic Ocean is not too
wide for us after what has happened in the darkness this morning."

Just then the cook or steward Mariana came under the skylight and
upturned his mask of a face. He addressed Don Christoval in Spanish.
The other answered and was about quitting me, but stopped and said:
"Let me see, Captain Portlack, I believe you sleep under the main
hatch?"

I said yes, that was so.

"Well, we shall not wish to disturb you. Don Lazarillo surrenders his
cabin to my wife, and he takes that which Captain Dopping occupied.
But any conveniences you may require, pray ask for, and you shall
have them. I will take care that all the nautical instruments, the
chronometer, the charts, and such furniture are conveyed to you."

He then went below. It was not proper that I should linger at the
skylight as though I were a spy. I paced the deck, looking eastward for
the first faint green of the dawn; yet my walk carried me so close to
the skylight, and the length of deck I traversed was so short besides,
that it was easy to see what was going on below without pausing or
appearing to look. Still, what I saw was no more than this: that Don
Christoval, his friend, and Mariana assembled at the side of the
unconscious girl, where they appeared to hold a consultation; that
when I passed the skylight in another turn, I observed them posturing
themselves as though to lift her; and that when I once more passed the
skylight in the third turn, the interior was empty--the lady had been
conveyed to her berth.

Day broke a little later. The land showed dim against the dawn; and the
distance we had made good during the hour of darkness had carried us,
as I had foreseen, far out of eye-shot of any point of the range of
cliffs. There was a small vessel standing to the north, abeam of us,
and the sails of another, hull down, were shining upon the blue edge of
the sea right ahead, as prismatically to the early piercing radiance
of the now risen sun as a leaning shaft of crystal. I leveled a glass
at her and found that she was pursuing the course we were steering.
There was nothing in sight where the shadow of the land was; but even
if I had supposed we should be pursued, I was very sure we should
not be caught. There was nothing, I might swear, flying the crimson
cross, capable of holding her own with La Casandra. As to our being
intercepted--life moved sluggishly in those days. Steamers there were
indeed, but they were few, and none to be promptly prepared for sea to
a swift summons. The electric telegraph did not exist. I can not say
there were no railways; but I am certain that pursuit would have been
long rendered hopeless before intelligence of what had taken place
could be communicated to a port where the machinery necessary for an
ocean chase was to be found and put in motion.

But, then, were we likely to be pursued? Who would be able to guess at
our destination?

I paced the deck, depressed, anxious, full of misgiving. I heartily
wished myself out of this business; yet I now stood so committed to
it that I was at a loss to know how to act. The violent death of
Captain Dopping was a shock to me. It sharply edged my realization of
the significance of this midnight adventure. And now that the tragic
business was ended there was something I found unintelligible in it,
something which pleaded to my instincts, stirring and troubling them.
Four seamen sat to leeward of the little galley; they seemed to be
dozing; their whiskered faces were bowed over their folded arms; a
fifth man was at the tiller. I peered through the skylight and saw Don
Lazarillo asleep in a chair. The man at the helm was William Scott; he
had been there while Don Christoval talked to me, and I guessed that
he had overheard every syllable of the Spaniard's narrative of the
adventures of the party ashore. I stepped up to him and said:

"This has been a strange business."

"It has, sir."

"I am now in command here, as I suppose you know?"

"I didn't know, sir; but you're the one to take command, surely, now
the captain's dead and gone."

"Yes, but it is a command I do not desire. I shall want a mate, some
man to stand watch and watch with me. Did you hear Don Christoval tell
me just now what happened ashore?"

"Yes, sir. His yarn was pretty near the truth; not quite, though."

"Where," said I, "was he mistaken?"

"The lady was insensible when him and the other Spanish gent brought
her downstairs. It's true that her father and the young gentleman,
her brother, bust from us when they see her being carried through the
hall, but it is not true that she got them scratches upon her shoulder
_then_. She was bleeding when the two Spaniards came along down the
stairs with her. I took notice of them marks, and so did Tubb and
Butler."

"Did her father, Captain Noble, say anything during the time you were
guarding him--while you, or whoever else it was, stood watch over him?"

"Ay, a deal more than my memory carries, sir. Yet it was nothing but
calling names--nothing in the way of explaining matters. It was '_The
infernal villain!--The brutal wretch!--Who are these scoundrels?--Are
you pirates, you ruffians?--You speak English; you are English; will
you help these two Spaniards, English as I reckon you to be, to kidnap
an Englishwoman from her father's home in England?_' But if that had
been all! Butler, he flourished his cutlass and threatened to give
the old gent a tap over the head if he didn't belay his jaw. Pirates
we _wasn't_! We was ashore helping a gentleman to his rights. Captain
Dopping told us that the law was on our side, and there's ne'er a
pirate as can say _that_ of his calling."

I continued to pace the deck a while musing on this man's version of
the adventure. The morning opened wide and brilliant as the sun soared.
Soon after daybreak the breeze freshened, and the waters were now
streaming and arching into little heads of foam as they ran with it.
Mariana came out of the cabin and was trudging forward when I called to
him:

"How is the lady?"

Instead of responding he shrugged his shoulders till the lobes of his
long yellow ears rested upon them, proceeded to the galley and lighted
the fire. I went a little way forward and called to the seamen, who at
daybreak had risen from their squatting postures and now hung together
talking in low voices. They approached me. There were four of them,
Trapp, South, Butler, and Tubb; Scott still grasped the tiller till he
should be relieved at four bells--that is to say, at six o'clock.

"Men," said I, "Don Christoval has asked me to take charge of this
schooner. You may have heard him say so when he came aboard this
morning."

"I heard him, sir," said Andrew Trapp.

"I shall want a mate," said I. "Butler, you filled that post under
Captain Dopping. Will you take it afresh?"

"If I must, I must, sir," he answered gloomily. "No extra pay goes to
the job, I suppose?"

"I can not tell you. Scott says that the lady's father behaved like a
madman, and that you threatened him with your cutlass."

"That's true," answered Butler. "He called us pirates, and swore he'd
have us hanged as pirates. I never was tarmed a pirate afore, and I
lost my temper, but I did him no hurt."

"It's a job," exclaimed Tubb, "which I, for one, am sorry I ever
meddled with. Yonder," cried he, pointing to the dim haze of land,
"lies Captain Dopping, shot through the head. Had any man said it was
a-going to come to _that_, I should have told the Don that _I_ wasn't
one of the sailors he was looking out for."

"That's a bad part of it," said I, "perhaps the worst part. But another
very bad part is the condition of the lady. She looked to me, as she
lay in the cabin, as if she had been very roughly handled."

The ugly cook put his head out of the galley and stared at us. I
called to him, in an angry voice, to bear a hand and get the men's
breakfast, adding that they had been up all night and wanted the meal.
"There's to be no loafing, no skulking, now, d'ye understand. We're too
few as it is, and you're just one of those rusty pieces of old iron
which want working up, Yankee fashion; so turn to, d'ye hear?" and I
confirmed my meaning by a menacing inclination of the head. The ugly
rogue vanished, but I could hear him muttering a number of Spanish
oaths to himself.

"You were speaking of the lady, sir," said Butler.

"She looks," said I, "to have been rascally used. Her dress is vilely
torn, as though in a struggle. Her shoulder is badly scratched, and why
should she have fainted dead away, and why should she remain insensible
for hours--insensible still, for all I know? For joy at seeing her
husband?"

"She was carried down the stairs unconscious by the two Spaniards,"
said Tubb, "her clothes was tore then, and her flesh was scratched."

"Did the Spaniards mount the stairs alone?"

"Alone, sir," answered Butler. "Scott and me stood over the lady's
father and his son; and South and Tubb guarded the door."

"Who remained in charge of the boat?"

"Me," said the man named Trapp.

"The name of the lady's father," said I, "is Captain Noble. Did he say
nothing more to the point than to abuse you as pirates?"

"Nothing noticeable," answered Butler; "his wits seemed to be drove out
of him by his rage."

"I heard him ask," said South, "how we, as English sailors, could help
a scoundrel Spaniard to steal an English lady away from her father's
house in England."

"Did he say _steal_?" said I.

"Force was the word he used--force an Englishwoman away. I didn't hear
the word steal, George," said Butler.

"Is it a fine house?" said I.

"A regular gentleman's castle, sir," answered Butler. "We found the
gates open; there was a carriage with a coachman and footman at the
door; it was just a-driving off as we marched in."

"What became of that carriage?"

"I see the coachman pull up," answered South, "when he was near the
gates. I kept my eye on the vehicle, for there were two men on the box
of it. When the lock was blowed away, the coachman flogged his horses,
and the whole concern disappeared. I expect they drove off to give the
alarm, but where to, blowed if I know, for there looked to be no houses
for miles around."

"What happened next?" said I.

But what the men now told me substantially corresponded with Don
Christoval's story: saving that they were all agreed that the lady was
insensible and in the disordered and torn condition in which she had
been brought aboard when carried downstairs by the two Spaniards.

"Well," said I, "the schooner's decks must go without a scrubbing this
morning. Hurry up that cook and get your breakfast. Butler, you'll
relieve me at eight bells. I must find out how the lady is doing. If
she's to die--and as she lay in the cabin she looked as if she were
dying--Don Christoval will surely not want us to sail him to Cuba."

"But where else?" said Butler, nervously and suspiciously.

"To a French port, if you like--to any place that is near. I wish to
get out of this ship."

"So do I," said Butler, looking at his mates, "but we want our money,
Mr. Portlack, and we want to be landed in some part of the world where
we aren't going to be nabbed for this 'ere job. Let it be Cuba, if
_you_ please, sir. 'Tain't too far off--no, by a blooming long chalk,
'tain't too far off."

"Get your breakfast and relieve me at eight," said I, and I walked aft.




CHAPTER V.

MADAME.


Don Christoval remained out of sight below. I assumed that he was
attending to his wife. His friend continued asleep in an arm-chair near
the table under the skylight; his head was fallen back, his mouth was
wide open, and his deep and powerful snore was audible at the distance
of the helm. By and by the negro boy Tom rose through the companion
hatch.

"Where is Don Christoval?" said I.

"In dah missus' cabin, sah," he answered.

"Has consciousness returned to her?"

He scratched his head and answered that he did not understand me.

"Have you heard the lady speaking--have you heard her voice?"

"Not speak, but sing, massa."

"Sing?" cried I, looking at him.

"Ay, massa, like dis:" he sang a few notes. "Her song is all de same
as a nuss-gal making him noisy pickaninny go for to sleep."

He went to the galley and presently returned with a tray full of
breakfast things. Don Lazarillo was awakened by the negro lad laying
the cloth for breakfast. I was at the skylight at the moment and my
eye was upon the Spaniard. He started to his feet, delivered himself
of a loud yawn, looked blankly around him with the stupid air of the
newly awakened; the motions of his body were then arrested as though
he had been paralyzed; he listened, intently gazing aft, continued
to listen while you might count twenty, the expression of his face
slowly changing from astonishment to terror. He then made a stride and
disappeared out of the small range of view I commanded. I strained my
ear but caught nothing unusual. He has heard the Señora del Padron
singing, thought I.

The negro boy went again to the galley and once more returned with a
second tray of dishes for the table. I was hungry and sleepy. Rest I
might easily obtain by summoning Butler aft to keep a look-out, but I
had no notion of turning in until I had breakfasted. I supposed that I
should be expected to eat as heretofore, when Captain Dopping was alive
in the vessel--that is to say, after the Spaniards had left the table;
and I was wondering when Don Christoval meant to put in an appearance;
at that moment he came on deck.

His face was colorless; I may say it was ghastly with what I must term
its pallor of swarthiness. The peculiar hue seemed to enlarge his eyes.
He stood curling his mustaches a moment looking around him, and then
approached me with a shallow and unquiet smile.

"All goes well with the schooner, I hope, Captain Portlack?" said he.

"Yes, sir."

"How does the weather promise?"

"The day may keep fine, but I look for wind presently."

"I am going to ask you," said he, with a harsher Spanish or foreign
intonation in his accent than I had ever before noticed in his
speech, "to be so good, Señor Portlack," he raised his hat and held
it a little above his head, "to waive your custom of taking your
meals in the cabin," he put his hat on. "I deplore the necessity.
You will not regard it, if you please, as a violation of the laws of
hospitality--laws by which we are eminently governed in our country.
Neither will you suppose that your estimable society is not prized and
your professional help and attainments greatly valued by Don Lazarillo
de Tormes and myself. But--" He abruptly ceased, giving me nothing more
to interpret than a truly royal sweep of his arm.

"You wish me to eat in my own quarters, Don Christoval? I shall be
happy to do so; but I presume I am to be waited upon?"

"Most undoubtedly," he burst out. "I entreat that you will speak every
wish that may occur to you. Your apartment shall be furnished from the
cabin: there shall be a table and all conveniences. Tom will see to you
as he sees to us. I thank you for your ready assent;" and he gave me a
stately bow, raising his hat again.

I returned his salute in the handsomest way I could manage, and
inquired after his wife.

"Oh, she will do, she will do," he answered. "Patience! the shock was
great and sudden; she expected me indeed, but there was nothing in
expectation to soften the agitation excited by my sudden appearance.
Add to this the inhuman behavior of her father and brother, their
outrageous violent language, their grasping her," he continued,
advancing his arms and opening and clinching his fingers as he acted
the part, "in the hope of tearing her from me. But patience, Captain
Portlack." Then without another word he returned to the cabin.

At eight o'clock Butler came to the quarter-deck. I gave him the
course, told him I should turn in for a couple of hours after
breakfast, and bade him call me should the wind shift ahead, for we
were in St. George's Channel, with the Irish coast on one side and the
English coast on the other, and in case of our having to _ratch_, as it
is called, La Casandra would need better piloting than Butler was equal
to. I was about to quit him when he said:

"Beg pardon, Mr. Portlack, what might the Don have been a-saying just
now?" Then observing my change of expression, he quickly added, "The
question's asked quite humbly, sir. The long and short of it is, we men
don't feel comfortable. We want to make sartin that there's to be no
putting in to any new port, and least of all to an English port."

I feigned not to understand him.

"So long as you receive the money that is agreed upon between you and
Don Christoval it can not signify what port we put into."

"Oh, but it do, then!" cried he, turning red in the face. "What! Why,
only consider!" he continued, raising his voice for the edification
of his mates who stood listening forward. "Put into an English port
and see what 'ud happen! Put into any civilized port and see what 'ud
happen! I know them Customs covies. What 'ud they find? A lady in
evening attire: us without any sort of yarn capable of satisfying the
suspicions we're bound to raise. Why, all hands of us 'ud be detained
for investigation, and then!"

"You may ease your mind," said I, coldly. "Don Christoval was merely
talking to me about my breakfast," and going to the main hatch I
dropped through it into my quarters.

Here I found the furniture that had belonged to Captain Dopping's
cabin; there were also a little table, a velvet arm-chair from the
cabin, and a rug such as would be stretched before a fire-place
lying upon the deck. My quarters, thus equipped, looked hospitable
enough. Indeed, it was to my taste to live thus apart. It rendered me
independent; I could do as I pleased, light my pipe, turn in or turn
out, eat and drink, and come and go with a bachelor-liberty that I
should not have been able to enjoy had I dwelt as Captain Dopping had
in the cabin. The one objection to my quarters lay in the gloom of
them. In fine weather there was plenty of light to be obtained through
the open hatch; but in stormy times the hatch must be closed, and then
I should have to live by lamp-light.

A few minutes after I had descended, the door that communicated with
the cabin opened, and the negro lad entered with my breakfast. He put
the tray on the table, and stood as though expecting me to question him.

"Is the lady still singing?" said I.

"No, sah, ebery ting quiet now."

"That will do," said I, and he went on deck through the main hatch.

I made a hearty meal and smoked a pipe of tobacco--Captain Dopping
had laid in a liberal stock of pipes and tobacco. I then pulled off
my boots and coat, sprang into my hammock, and in five minutes was as
sound asleep as the dead. Butler wakened me by putting his head into
the hatch and shouting. I went on deck, and found my prediction to Don
Christoval of a fine day disproved. The weather had thickened, the
sky was a wide spread of shadow, under which a quantity of yellow,
wing-like shapes of scud were flying with a velocity that might have
made you suppose it was blowing a gale of wind. The wind was damp,
but there was no rain. Blowing it was, but not yet hard, and Butler
had given no other orders than to roll up the topgallant-sail. The
breeze was on the quarter, about north-north-west. Had we been working
up against it we should have found it a strong wind; as it was, the
schooner was swirling before it with every cloth set, saving the little
sail I have mentioned. A strong swell chased her, and to each hurl of
the regular, giant undulation the vessel flashed along, burying her
bows in foam with the next launching swoop in a manner to remind you of
the flight of a flying-fish from one glittering blue slope of brine to
another.

The vessel that had been ahead of us at daybreak was now on the bow
close to--a box-shaped concern with painted ports; she plunged heavily,
and seemed to stagger again under her heights of canvas, like an old
woman whose balance is threatened by the umbrella she holds up. Such
a sputtering as she made I had never before beheld. All about her was
white water as she washed through it; it was as though a water-spout
were foaming under her. Yet she held her own stoutly; and, two hours
after I had been on deck, she was still in sight in the haze astern.

I could make no use of Captain Dopping's sextant in such weather as
this. Don Lazarillo was walking the deck alone, swathed to the heels
in a cloak, and a large, flapping felt hat, drawn down to his eyebrows.
He looked at me askew as I stepped his way to glance at the binnacle.
Often had I met his fiery glance scanning me, but never so searchingly
as now. He kept his eyes upon me as I stood at the compass watching the
behavior of the little ship as she swept to the heads of the swell.
When I moved forward, he advanced with a forced, deep grin which so
contracted his visage that it looked no more than a mat of hair with a
hooked nose thrust through it. He saluted me, and I bowed low, as was
my custom with these gentlemen, and the following exchange of sentences
took place, partly by signs, partly by shouts; but the substance of
our meaning is all that I will venture to give. It would be impossible
for the pen to convey his broken English, and as I have not a word
of Spanish, I dare not attempt to write the sentences with which he
intermingled his English.

"It is a very dark day."

"It is," I answered.

"It blows heavily."

"No, Don Lazarillo," said I.

"I thank the Virgin I am not seasick. Yet, the sight of those
mountains," said he, pointing over the side with a yellow, jeweled
hand, "makes me sensible that my stomach is of the most delicate."

"By this time you should have grown accustomed to the motion of a ship."

"Yes, it is so. Might not this dark day prove fatal to us?" Here he
struck his fists together to denote a collision between vessels.

I shook my head and touched my eyes and pointed to the men forward,
touching my eyes again that he might gather it was the custom of
English sailors in thick weather to keep a look-out.

"How long to Cuba?" he asked.

I shrugged my shoulders. "Is Don Christoval still resolved to go to
Cuba?" said I.

"Yes," he cried in Spanish, in the most passionate way that can be
imagined, while an expression of dark suspicion entered his eyes. "You
know the way to Cuba?"

"Oh yes," I answered smiling.

He nodded wildly as though he would say, "See that you carry us there,
that's all!"

"How is madame?" said I, pointing to the skylight.

"Better--better," he replied, with a little scowl, and then giving me a
bow he took a turn or two and went below.

The wind freshened gradually during the afternoon, and when I left the
deck at four o'clock the schooner was under greatly reduced canvas,
driving along at eleven or twelve miles an hour, her decks dark with
damp, fountains of spray blowing ahead of her off the high archings of
foam upturned by the irresistible thrust of her stem, a shrill, dreary
noise of wind in her rigging, and the fellow at the helm and the figure
on the look-out forward gleaming in oil-skins and sea-helmets.

All through the night it continued to blow, and it blew all through the
three following days and nights. At long intervals one or the other of
the Spaniards appeared on deck, but for no other purpose than to take
a hurried look round. Some small theory of navigation, though utterly
insufficient for practical purposes, they must have had; for, happening
on one occasion during this boisterous time to look through the
skylight glass, I perceived them bending over a chart. Don Christoval,
with his forefinger upon it, seemed to trace a course, while he glanced
up in the direction where there hung, screwed to the upper deck, what
is known at sea as a "tell-tale compass," that is, a compass whose
face is inverted, usually fixed over the captain's chair, so that, as
he sits at table, he may perceive at a glance whether the helmsman
is holding the vessel to her course. I stood watching, careless as to
whether the Spaniards perceived me or not. The skylight was closed,
and their voices were inaudible. Don Christoval seemed to explain; Don
Lazarillo measured: there was much nodding and gesticulation, and they
frequently looked from the chart to the "tell-tale compass." Presently
Don Christoval rolled up the chart, and the pair of them withdrew out
of reach of my sight.

I took notice that when Mariana was not employed at cooking in the
galley, he was aft below in the cabin. I could not imagine what sort
of work the two Dons could find to put the ugly, greasy rogue to in
that part of the schooner. I now never entered the cabin, and could do
no more than conjecture what passed in it. Regularly at meal-times, if
I happened to be on deck, I would peep through the skylight window,
expecting to find madame at table; and if it happened that I was off
duty when meals were served in the cabin, I would tell Butler to cast
a look through the glass and report to me if he saw anything of the
lady. But my curiosity was punctually disappointed: the lady remained
invisible.

It happened that, on the evening of the third day of this spell of
dirty weather, I went below to get some supper. It was seven o'clock,
and the evening dark as midnight with the driving thickness in the wind
and the black surface of cloud that was stretched across the sky. As I
dropped through the hatch, pulling the piece of cover over it to keep
the wet out of my quarters, I observed a glare in the interior, which
I very well knew could not proceed from the lamp that swung under a
beam near my hammock. In fact that lamp was unlighted. Looking past
the bulk-head to which the steps by which I descended were nailed, I
found that the door which communicated with the cabin stood open. The
wind, though abaft the beam, gave a decided "list" or inclination to
the rushing fabric, and her rolls to windward, owing to the swell being
almost astern, were too inconsiderable to cause the door to swing to.

The cabin was steeped in light; the lamps were large for the
interior, and burned brilliantly, and their luster was duplicated
and reduplicated by the mirrors which hung against the side. Don
Christoval lay at full length upon a sofa; his hand, drooping to the
floor, holding between its fingers an extinguished cigar, showed that
he was asleep. Don Lazarillo was either on deck or in his berth. The
dinner-cloth was upon the table, but cleared of its furniture, though
on a large swing-tray between the lamps were one or two decanters
of wine, a plate of fruit, biscuits, and the like. But that which
instantly arrested my eye was the figure of Mariana seated on a chair
at the after extremity of the cabin, where stood two berths. He
bestrode his chair as a man strides a horse, bowing his hideous face
to the back of it. His posture assured me that he was acting the part
of sentinel. I stood viewing him. I could see no signs of the lady's
presence, in the shape, I mean, of apparel, of any detail of female
attire. I searched with my eyes swiftly, but narrowly, and encountered
nothing to indicate the existence of a woman on board. What did I
expect to see? I know not, unless it were something a lady might use,
and leave on a chair or a table--a smelling-bottle, a glove; but this
does not matter. I wished to discover if madame had left her berth, and
I found no hint to inform me that she had done so.

But what signified the presence of that ugly, I may say that loathsome,
sentry stationed at what I might make sure was the door of the berth
she occupied? By the aid of the light flowing in from the cabin, I
sought and found the materials for lighting my own lamp. I then
quietly closed the bulk-head door.

A little later the hatch was lifted, and the negro boy descended with
my supper--a repast consisting of cold meat, biscuit and fruit, and
half a bottle of wine.

"Where is the cook?" said I.

"In de cabin, massa."

"He appears to live in the cabin. What is he doing there now, d'ye
know?"

"Watching, sah."

"Watching what?"

"Dah lady."

"Oh!" said I, "watching the lady, hey? Is she in her room?"

"No, sah; outside de door ob it. Dey has to watch her," said he,
showing his teeth.

"Why, do you know?"

"I heered the tall Don say at breakfiss-time dat she was gone for mad."

After a pause I said, "When did you hear him say this?"

"Yesterday morning, sah."

"To whom did he say it?"

"To Mariana, massa. T'odder gentleman was sleeping."

I recollected that I had watched Don Lazarillo awaken from his sleep on
the previous morning, and that I had observed the expression of terror
his face had taken when, as I might _now_ know, he learned for the
first time, by hearing madame singing, that she had lost her mind.

"Why did you not, before this evening, tell me that the lady was gone
for mad, as you call it?"

"Massa nebber asked dah question."

"Have you seen her?"

"No, sah, and I dun wan' to. Her laugh make my blood creep. It's wuss
dan her singing, sah. Now and agin she laugh, but now she sings no mo'."

"How is she watched at night, do you know?"

He twisted his hand to indicate the turning of a key in its lock, by
which I gathered that madame by night was locked up in her cabin.

"Is she watched?"

"Mariana him sometime sleep and sometime sit at her door. When him
sleep, den Don Christoval keep watch. When Don Christoval sleep den
t'odder gent keep watch. Dey makes tree watches ob it, sah."

I asked him how he knew this. He answered in his negro speech that he
had found it out by looking and listening.

"But what are you to find out by listening?" said I. "You don't
understand Spanish, and those three men among themselves talk in no
other language."

"Mariana, him say to me in de galley, 'Tom,' him say, 'you look to de
sailors' pudden. De massa wan' me to keep watch in de cabin.' I say,
'Why you no sleep now in the fok'sle?' and he say he hab business in de
cabin."

Here the boy ceased; the poor fellow conveyed his meaning with
difficulty, yet I could see his face working with the intelligence of
an explanation which lay in his brain, but which his tongue wanted
English to impart. That he knew the lady was watched by the three
Spaniards in the manner described by him--that is to say, in three
watches, by night at all events, if not by day--was certain.

He left me. I ate my supper, lighted a pipe, and sat musing. What
had driven the lady mad? One could not put it down to any ill-usage
she had met with aboard the schooner, because I might certainly know
from the information of the negro boy that she had awakened mad from
the death-like swoon or stupor she was plunged in when conveyed from
the boat into the cabin. Had her joy on finding herself with her
husband again--the husband of her adoration--proved too much for her
mind? Had the sudden shock of his apparition--of the apparition of Don
Christoval and his six armed associates--been rendered too enormous
for her poor brains, through the fearful significance it gathered from
the slaying of Captain Dopping by her father, and by her father's
and brother's last rush and struggle to wrest her from the hands of
the two Spaniards? But then the sailors were all agreed that she was
already insensible when this final rush and struggle took place, that
she was borne downstairs and carried out of the house bleeding and
unconscious as she was when I beheld her lying in the cabin. A haunting
suspicion grew darker, stronger, harder within me.

       *       *       *       *       *

I was again on deck at midnight; the weather had somewhat moderated,
but a strong sea was running, through which the schooner, under small
canvas, crushed her way in thunder, whitening the water around her till
the black atmosphere of the night about her decks was charged with the
ghastly twilight of the beaten and boiling foam. But before my watch
expired the deep shadow on high was broken up. A few stars sparkled,
the seas ran with less weight, and the diminished breeze enabled me to
make sail upon the schooner.

The cabin skylight was closed, and owing to the moisture upon the glass
it was impossible to see into the interior. Throughout the night the
lamps were kept dimly burning, and ardently as I might peer, thirsty
with curiosity, I never could distinguish the movement of a shadow to
indicate that those who occupied the cabin were stirring in it.

At four o'clock I went to my hammock, and at half-past seven was on
deck again. It was a fine clear morning; large white clouds were
rolling over the dark blue sky, and the sea, swept by the fresh wind
that hummed sweet and warm over the quarter, ran in delicate lines of
foam, which writhed and twisted in confused splendor in the glorious
wake of the sun; while westward, the surface of the deep resembled a
spacious field lustrous with fantastic shapes of frost. Butler had
heaped canvas on the schooner, and she was sliding nobly through the
water. The men had washed the decks down, and hung about waiting
for their breakfast. From time to time Mariana's head showed in the
galley-door. So far, aboard of us, there had been no discipline to
speak of. The men, indeed, acknowledged me as captain, and sprang to
my commands; but outside such absolutely essential duties as that of
making and shortening sail and washing down the decks of a morning,
nothing was done. The fellows would hang about smoking and yarning,
always ready indeed for a call, but nothing more. Nor, indeed, was
it for me to keep them employed. I could not accept this adventure
seriously--could not regard the command I had been asked to take as
imposing any further obligation upon me than that of navigating the
schooner to a part of the coast of Cuba adjacent to Matanzas, and again
and again I would ask myself, Will it ever come to Cuba? Will it ever
come to half-way to Cuba? There was an element of unreality in the
voyage we were now supposed to be pursuing that submitted it as a mere
holiday jaunt to my fancy--a purposeless cruise, rendering needless and
aimless the customary shipboard routine of the sea.

While I stood looking along the deck, Don Christoval arrived. He was
haggard and blanched, as though risen from a bed of sickness. The
fire of his fine eyes was quenched, and his gaze was extraordinarily
melancholy and spiritless. He saluted me gravely, but stood for some
time as though lost in thought, meanwhile taking a slow view of the
whole compass of the sea, as though in search of some object he
expected to behold upon the horizon. I believed he would return to the
cabin without addressing me; but I was mistaken.

"Good morning, Captain Portlack."

"Good morning, sir."

"The bad weather is passed, I hope. The schooner is sailing very fast.
It rejoices me to reflect that every hour diminishes, by something, the
tedious miles we have to traverse."

He paused, eying me steadfastly, with the air of a man soliciting
sympathy. He then beckoned to me with one of his grand gestures and
went a little way forward, out of the hearing of the fellow who stood
at the tiller.

"Captain Portlack," said he, "I am in great grief."

"I am sorry to hear it," said I, looking at him.

"My poor wife is mad."

"Mad!" I echoed, in an accent of concern and astonishment, not
choosing, by appearing aware of the fact, that he should suspect I had
been spying upon him or making inquiries.

"Mad," he repeated, in a low, hoarse voice. "When she recovered from
her swoon she did not know me. She began to sing, she laughed--Mother
of God, a diabolic laugh! She is now speechless, never lifting her
eyes, never changing her countenance, and she sits thus:" he clasped
his hands before him, bent his head, fixed his eyes upon the deck, and
thus dramatically represented her condition for at least a minute.

I sought in vain in his voice, in his face, in his air, for some hint,
some color, some expression of such grief of affection, of such emotion
of sorrow, as the love he had spoken of as existing between them would
naturally cause one to look for; instead, I seemed to find nothing but
alarm, uncertainty, irritability, subdued by fear.

"We must hope," said I, "that she will speedily recover her mind."

"Will you descend into the cabin and see her?" said he, shortly, as
though he had talked this invitation over and settled it.

I was slightly startled, and answered, "What good can I do, Don
Christoval?"

"You are her countryman," said he; "your accent, that is far purer than
mine when I discourse in your tongue, may excite her attention. Nor,
perhaps, may it be wholly with her as I fear."

"You do not wish to imply that she is shamming?"

He gesticulated with a fury that I could not but think pretended.

"No, no, poor girl! Shamming indeed! God defend me from conveying such
an idea. But will you descend, Captain Portlack, and see her?"

"I owe the preservation of my life to you," said I, "and it is my
sincere desire to be of use to you in any honest direction. But how
shall I serve you by visiting madame, your wife?"

Spiritless as his eyes were, the glance he shot at me as I pronounced
these words was as piercing as I had found his gaze when he inspected
me on my first being taken aboard his schooner. He slightly frowned,
wrenched at, rather than twirled his immense mustaches, beat softly
with his foot in manifest effort to control himself, then said abruptly:

"Will you descend, Captain Portlack?"

"With pleasure," said I, and I followed him below, leaving Butler,
whose watch would not expire till eight o'clock, in charge of the
vessel.

Don Lazarillo was seated at the cabin table. I see him now supporting
his head on his elbow, his bearded chin buried in the palm of his hand,
and his finger-ends at his teeth as though he were gnawing upon his
nails. He was the most perfect figure of nervous perplexity that could
be imagined. He looked at me swiftly, but sternly and devouringly,
too, and addressed his friend in Spanish.

"Pardon me," I exclaimed, before Don Christoval could reply, "You know,
gentlemen, I do not understand your tongue. This is a strange and sad
affair. It will reassure me if you converse in the only speech I am
acquainted with."

Don Lazarillo shrugged his shoulders.

"My friend was merely expressing satisfaction at your visit," said Don
Christoval, loftily, yet without hauteur.

He turned to the door of the berth on the port or left-hand side of
the schooner, hesitated as though conquering an instant's irresolution
of mind, then turned the handle, motioning with his head that I should
enter.

The berth was a small one. It was comfortably, almost handsomely,
furnished after the style of the cabin in which the Spaniards lived;
but I had no eyes just then for the equipment of the box of a place.
The morning sun shone full upon the port-hole, and the little room
was hardly less brilliant with luster than the cabin from which I
had stepped. In a low, crimson velvet arm-chair was seated the lady
I had been invited to visit. She sat in the posture that had been
theatrically represented to me by Don Christoval. Her hands were
locked upon her knees, as though she had been suddenly arrested in the
act of rocking herself in a fit of wild grief; her head was bowed,
and her eyes were rooted to the deck. I stood surveying her for some
moments, but she never stirred; she did not appear to breathe. I did
not witness the least movement of her eyes, whose lids were fixed as
though, indeed, she were a figure of wax. She was dressed, or wrapped
rather, in a ruby-colored dressing-gown belonging, as I might suppose
by the gay style of it, to one of the Spaniards. The collar of this
gown came to her throat. I was unable to see whether she was still
appareled in ball attire. Handsome diamond drops hung motionless in
her ears, and her hands, from which the gloves had been removed,
sparkled with rings. There were three or four rings upon the third
finger of her left hand, but I did not observe that one of them was a
wedding ring. Her hair, that was of a dark red and very abundant, was
in great disorder, but the remains of the wreath, which I had noticed
on her when she lay upon the sofa, had been removed. The posture of
her head left something of her face undisclosed; what I saw of it did
not impress me as beautiful. Her eyebrows were lighter than her hair,
almost sandy; her cheeks and brow were colorless as marble; yet her
profile as I now witnessed it was not without delicacy, and I might
suppose that when all was well with her she would show as a pretty
woman. She looked the age Don Christoval had mentioned--twenty-two. Her
stature I could not imagine, and the dressing-gown concealed her figure.

Don Lazarillo approached in a tiptoe walk and stood in the doorway
staring at her.

"My dear one," said Don Christoval, faintly smiling and infusing into
his accents a note of sweetness I had heard on more than one occasion
in his voice, "I have brought Captain Portlack to see you. He is the
captain of this schooner. He is your countryman--a true Englishman.
Raise your eyes, my dear one, that you may see him," and thus speaking,
with grace inexpressible, he bent his fine form over her and pressed
his lips to her forehead.

Less of life could not have appeared in a statue.

"Speak to her," said Don Christoval, turning to me.

Behind us Don Lazarillo ejaculated in Spanish.

"How shall I address her?" said I, looking at the tall Spaniard.

He started, sent a glance of lightning rapidity at his friend,
reflected a moment, and then said, "Accost her as Miss Noble. By that
name she may remember herself. Ay, señor, call her Ida Noble."

I bit my lip, and, planting myself by a step in front of the lady, bent
my knee till my face was on a level with hers.

"Look at me, madame," said I. "I know you as Ida Noble. Look at me. I
am your countryman and your _friend_."

I pronounced the word "friend" with the utmost emphasis I could
communicate to it. She raised her eyes without altering the posture of
her head. They were of a soft brown, and the richer for the contrast of
her hair. I never could have imagined such eyes under eyebrows of so
pale a yellow as hers. She looked at me during a few beats of the pulse
steadfastly, and then smiled, but there was no meaning in her smile or
in her regard. A moment after she bent her eyes down again, and began
to sing; but the air was without music; the words which left her lips
half articulated were without sense.

"Valgame Dios!" cried Don Lazarillo.

She ceased to sing and set her lips again, and continued to gaze at the
deck without any signs of life, as before. I rose to my stature, and,
after watching her a while, said to Don Christoval, "I can do no good."

"You made her smile, Captain Portlack," said he, in a soft whisper.

I shook my head, stepped to the door, and passed into the cabin. The
others followed, Don Christoval closing the door behind him.

"I believe, with patience," said he, "that you could bring her mind
back to her."

"I am no doctor, gentlemen," said I. "I know nothing about the
treatment of the insane."

"What do 'ee say?" exclaimed Don Lazarillo.

"What a calamity to befall me!" cried Don Christoval, clasping his
hands and upturning his face with a look of wretchedness that certainly
was not counterfeited.

"Does she eat and drink?" said I.

"A little, just a little," he answered. "I put food in a plate on her
knee and leave her, and when I return a little is gone."

"Should she show no signs of mending, shall you persevere in this
voyage to Cuba, sir?"

"Certainly," he replied passionately, with a gesture like a blow.

I paused to hear if he had more to say. Finding him silent, I bowed
and went on deck. Butler stood at the rail abreast of the skylight.
Though his face habitually carried a sulky look, owing to the sour
expression into which the extremities of his mouth were curved, his was
a face to assure one on the whole that its owner was a good average
honest English sailor. I am not of those who believe that the character
is to be read in the face: but my own experience is, that I was never
yet deceived by a man to whom I had taken a liking because of his face.
Yet I admit that many honest souls, many excellent hearts, go through
the world with repellent countenances. Hence the unwisdom of judging by
the face.

I stepped up to Butler, and looking him in the eyes I exclaimed,
"Butler, I believe we have been cheated into the commission of a
gallows act by the lies of those two Spaniards down below in the cabin."

His intelligence was sluggish, and he looked at me with a gaze slow of
perception.

"I have just seen the lady," said I.

"Ha! and how is she a-doing, sir?"

"She is mad--undoubtedly driven mad by the outrage that has been
perpetrated upon her and hers."

"Tom was saying she was off her head, and why, 'cause he heard her
sing and laugh. Singing and laughing ain't no sign of madness. I asked
Mariana the question plain, and he says 'No' to it--'No,' in the
hearing of us all; but now you've seen her, sir, and she _is_ mad?"

"She is utterly mad. Mad as from a broken heart. She sits like a
figure-head, without a stir."

I paused. "She is no more Don Christoval's wife than I am," said I.

"Are you sure of that?" he cried, sharply.

"I have been almost sure of it for some time--I am quite sure of it
now."

He looked as alarmed as a man with strong bushy whiskers and a skin
veneered with mahogany by the weather could well appear. "How have ye
made sure, Mr. Portlack?"

"She has no wedding ring."

He chewed upon this and then said: "But a wedding ring ben't no
infallible sign of marriage, is it, sir? I've heered my mother say that
she once lost her wedding ring and was always going to buy another, but
didn't, and for years she went without a wedding ring, though father
was alive most of the time, and a perticlar man, too."

"If the lady below were a married woman she would wear a wedding ring,"
said I.

"Ay," said he, with a knowing look entering his eyes, "but suppose the
father had obliged the lady to take her wedding ring off? What more
natural, seeing how he was all agin the marriage?"

To this I could return no other answer than a shake of the head. He
eyed me with a small air of triumph.

"If there's nothing more to make ye doubt, Mr. Portlack," said he,
"than the want of a wedding ring on the lady's finger, I'm for allowing
that the Don's yarn's true."

As I had nothing more than suspicion to oppose to his desire to believe
in the story, I contented myself with saying: "You will find that I
am right, nevertheless. I shall go and get some breakfast, and will
relieve you in ten or twelve minutes."

I walked to the main-hatch, but he followed me. "Supposing it as you
say, sir," he inquired, "what 'ud be the consequences of the job to us
men?"

"Transportation for life."

He muttered something under his breath and then said, "And supposing
the lady to be his lawful wife, sir?"

"I am no lawyer," I answered, and dropped through the hatch.




CHAPTER VI.

A TRAGEDY.


I was prepared to find that Butler had carried my words forward. I
returned to the deck after breakfast, and the man trudged to the
forecastle, and not long afterward I observed the four seamen, the
fifth being at the helm, engaged in earnest conversation. They talked,
pipe in mouth, their hands deep buried in their capacious breeches
pockets, and sometimes they talked with their backs upon one another,
and sometimes they would pace the deck, passing one another, but always
talking, and frequently they directed their eyes aft, insomuch that I
expected every minute that the whole group would approach me and oblige
me to share in the discussion.

My manner and my words when I had visited madame below had been
altogether too pronounced for so shrewd an intelligence as that of Don
Christoval to miss the true meaning of. In short, I had as good as
said that I did not consider the lady to be his wife; that she had been
abducted--ferociously and inhumanly stolen from her father's home, and
that we Englishmen who formed his crew had been betrayed into an act
of criminal villiany by his rascally lies. All this I was conscious
I had as good as said, because, meaning it, I had looked it, and, in
a sentence, I had suggested it. I therefore concluded that the two
Spaniards would talk this matter of my suspicions over, decide upon
some prompt course of action, and come to me on deck--but what to do
and what to say? Would Don Christoval _admit_ the adventure to be one
of abduction, pleading the necessity of representing himself as married
that he might obtain the assistance of English seamen, since it was
clear that he would not ship Spanish sailors for the expedition; or
would he approach me with threats, defying me to disprove his statement
that the lady below was his wife, and giving me to understand that if I
did not mind my own business----.

My mind was rambling in speculations of this kind when I heard the
sound of a guitar and a voice singing. The skylight lay open; I heard
it as distinctly as though I were in the cabin. Don Lazarillo sat
smoking at the table, keeping time with his fingers, the rings upon
them sparkling as he tapped. It was not he who was playing the guitar
and singing; therefore it was Don Christoval. The sounds came from the
after-part of the interior, and I had no doubt whatever that madame's
door was open, and that Don Christoval was touching the strings and
lifting up his voice with some quite superstitious or quite rational
hope of exorcising the demon of madness out of the girl by the
bewitching music he was making.

Bewitching it was. I listened, wholly fascinated by it. His voice
was a clear, sweet, most thrilling and lovely tenor, soft and yet
penetrating, and controlled, so far as I could possibly judge, by the
most exquisite art. Whether he had ever before produced his guitar I
can not say; certainly this was the first time I had heard the sound
of it. He sang several airs; one of them so haunted me that I remember
long afterward humming it over to a friend of mine who was a very good
musician in his way, and he instantly pronounced it a composition of
Mozart, giving it an Italian name which I have forgotten. I should
never have supposed that music possessed the magic claimed for it
until I heard that sweet, thrilling tenor voice, threaded by the tones
of the delicately-touched guitar. The songs in succession wrought
a fairy atmosphere for the senses. The schooner melted out--the
ocean vanished. I was transported to a land sweet with the aroma of
the orange grove, romantic with Moorish palaces, melodious with the
laughter of dancers and the merry rattle of the castanets.

Bless me, thought I, as I paced the deck afresh when the singing was
ended, a man need not go to sea to visit distant countries when he may
travel farther than sail or steam can convey him by sitting at home and
listening to a tenor voice accompanied by a guitar.

Half an hour later the two Spaniards made their appearance. I had
marked the hideous cook steal to the companion-way, and judged that he
was keeping watch. The two Dons, with lighted cigars in their mouths,
walked the deck arm-in-arm. Don Christoval seemed to notice that the
men forward were observing him with unusual attention. I assumed this
because I perceived that he suddenly put on an air of carelessness, of
ease, even of gayety, such as certainly was not visible in him when he
first showed himself. This air I further remarked was swiftly copied by
his companion, but on _him_ it sat with a horrible awkwardness. He had
neither the figure, the beauty, nor the skill to act as his friend did.

Would Don Christoval challenge me for my suspicions? If so, I should be
honest with him; tell him in unmistakable English what my conviction
was; inform him that I would no longer share in the dastardly crime
into which he had betrayed his sailors; and insist that I should be
transshipped to the first vessel that passed, or that I should be
suffered to carry the schooner close enough to a coast, the nearest at
hand, to enable me to get ashore. It was likely enough that my full
mind showed in my face. A few times I caught him eyeing me askance,
but, beyond calling out some commonplace to me about the weather, the
progress of the schooner, and so forth, he said nothing.

It was, however, clear to me that, let his thoughts be what they would,
he could say nothing. I was the only navigator aboard the vessel; he
was entirely at my mercy, therefore; he would rightly fear that any
menaces, any bullying, any tall-talk, must only result in causing me to
sullenly throw up my command; in which case the schooner would be but a
little less helpless than were she reduced to the condition of a sheer
hulk by a gale of wind.

At noon I took an observation. Butler came aft to relieve me, and I
went to my quarters to work out my sights. When I had worked out my
sights and found out the position of the schooner on the chart, I
lighted a pipe and sat down to reflect. I was now so perfectly sure
that the unhappy young lady in the cabin had been kidnapped that my
thoughts were never for an instant influenced by the consideration that
there _might_ be a probability of the Spaniard's story proving true.
Everything pointed to this expedition as an adventure of abduction.
The sailors affirmed that the girl was bleeding and insensible when
carried through the hall past the room in which two of them with drawn
cutlasses were guarding her father and brother. This, then, signified
that she had been forcibly seized, and the state of her apparel and
the scratches upon her shoulder proved that there had been a struggle.
Would she have struggled had Don Christoval been her husband, to whom
she was yearning to be reunited?

My blood felt hot in my veins when I thought upon this outrage; when I
reflected how I had been made a party to this deed of villainy; how I,
as an Englishman, had been courted by a cunning, clever lie to abet the
stealing of a countrywoman of my own from her father's home in England
by a brace, as I might take them, of unprincipled Spanish adventurers.

Now, while I thus sat musing over my position, and considering what
course to shape to carry me clear of the dangerous association into
which misadventure had brought me, I was startled by a cry in the
adjacent cabin--a cry sharp, abrupt, terrible: affecting the ear as a
lightning flash affects the eye. The pipe I was about to raise to my
lips was arrested midway. I believe I am no coward, yet I must own that
that cry, that penetrating cry, seemed to thicken my blood, seemed to
stop the pulsation of my heart.

But the pause with me was brief. I dashed down my pipe, sprang to the
bulk-head door and flung it open. And now what a picture did I see! The
tall, commanding figure of Don Christoval was in the act of sinking
to the deck; his hand was upon the table, but the fingers were slowly
slipping from the edge of it, and, even as I looked, the man without
a sound fell at his length and lay motionless. In the doorway of the
port or left-hand berth stood the lady whom I have heretofore styled
Madame, but whom I will henceforth call Ida Noble. She grasped a knife
in her hand--a long carving knife it seemed to me, and I remember
noticing a red gleam in it as the vessel rolled, slipping the sunshine
out of a mirror toward where the girl was. She stood erect, with her
eyes fixed upon the body of the Spaniard; she was as stirless as he;
the figures of them both at that instant might have passed as a brace
of posture-makers representing a tragedy in one of those drawing-room
performances called _tableaux vivants_. Behind a chair on the starboard
side of the table crouched the figure of Mariana. He squatted, and
his attitude was exactly that of a monkey. His face was green; his
wide-open eyes disclosed twice the usual surface of eyeball; his
features were convulsed with terror, and never yet was there an artist
whose imagination could have reached to the height of that fellow's
hideousness, as he crouched, stabbed also, as I then believed, though
this was not so.

A mad woman grasping a long knife is a formidable object; much more
formidable is she when that knife is stained with blood, and when the
person she has slain is still in view, lying a corpse a little distance
away from her. On my showing myself, Mariana cried out, but whether
in Spanish or English I knew not. What was I to do? What would you do
were you suddenly confronted by a mad woman armed with a long knife? I
looked up at the skylight and saw the horror-stricken countenance of
Don Lazarillo peering down; but even as my eye went in a glance to
the Spaniard's livid face, one of the sailors, and then another of the
sailors, came to his side. Count twenty, and the time you will occupy
in doing so will comprise the period from the moment of my opening the
door to look out down to this instant.

Next moment the girl threw the knife on the deck with a gesture of
abhorrence, courtesied with irony to the body of Don Christoval, and
closed the door of the berth upon herself. Then there was a rush. We
could all find our courage now. Mariana sprang from behind his chair,
overturning it; Don Lazarillo, followed by the two sailors, came in a
few bounds through the companion-hatch. I stepped to the side of Don
Christoval's body, and stood looking upon him. Stone dead I knew him
to be. In Calcutta during a cholera outbreak, and on board an emigrant
ship visited with fever, I had many a time stood beside the dying and
the dead, and the spectacle of death was very familiar to me.

"Lock her door!" shrieked Don Lazarillo.

One of the seamen picked up the knife and viewed it at arm's length. I
carefully turned the body over.

"Ay, there it is," said I, pointing to a cut slightly stained with
blood in the Spaniard's waistcoat. The wound was in the left ribs,
and one had but to glance at the knife to cease to wonder that the man
should have dropped dead.

"Lock the door!" again shrieked Don Lazarillo in his broken English,
looking from the body of his friend to the door, and from the door
to the body of his friend, and recoiling, and shrinking and hugging
himself, and so munching his lips that one watched to see froth upon
them--doing all this as he looked.

Mariana repeatedly crossed himself, uttering all sorts of Spanish
ejaculations in a voice like the subdued low of a calf.

"Is he dead, sir?" asked one of the sailors.

"He can never be more dead," said I, stooping to look into the face of
the body. "They drove her mad, and this is how she requites them. A
cruel, bloody business, my lads. Fling that knife overboard."

The fellow launched it javelin-fashion through an open port-hole. Don
Lazarillo began to scream out in Spanish. His meaning might have some
reference to securing the lady; I do not know.

"Silence!" I roared. "Do you want to be the next victim?" and in my
wrath I made an infuriate gesture as of stabbing; on which, with one
wild look at me, he fled up the companion steps and remained above,
viewing us through the skylight.

Butler and another seaman, both very pale, and fetching their breath
quickly, entered the cabin and looked at the body.

"Here's a murdering job to happen!" said Scott.

"Who's done this?" cried Butler, who had been somewhere forward when
Don Christoval's wild death-shriek had sounded.

Mariana, with a paralytic gesture, pointed to Miss Noble's berth.

"Who's done it?" repeated Butler, in a voice strong and hoarse with
horror.

"The girl whom these Spaniards have driven mad," said I. I turned to
Mariana. "Did you see Don Christoval stabbed?"

"Ah, Dios! yes," he answered; and in language which is to be as little
conveyed as his voice, or the expressions which chased his face, which
at every instant gave a new character to his ugliness, he contrived to
make us understand this: that Don Christoval had entered the lady's
room, where he, Mariana, heard him address her soothingly; that the
door was suddenly flung open, and that, at the same moment, even as the
Spaniard stood on the threshold, the girl buried the knife in his side.

"How did she come by the knife?" cried Butler.

Mariana, trembling violently, with his eyes fixed upon the door of
Miss Noble's berth, as though at every moment he expected to behold it
thrown open, made us understand that the negro boy, some time during
the morning, had left a basket of the cabin cutlery upon the table,
and that the girl must have looked out and possessed herself of a
knife at some moment when the two Spaniards were on deck, and when
he--Mariana--had quitted his post of sentry to enter Don Christoval's
berth. This was conjecture on the fellow's part, but beyond doubt it
was accurate.

Don Lazarillo continued to gaze at us through the skylight with an
expression as of a horrible sneer upon his face. I again stooped
over the form of Don Christoval, felt his pulse, and examined his
half-closed, fast-glazing eyes, then bade a couple of the seamen pick
the body up and convey it to the cabin the Spaniard had occupied. While
this was doing, I grasped the handle of the door of Miss Noble's room.

"Mind!" shrieked Don Lazarillo from above. Mariana ran on deck. I felt
the idleness of announcing myself by knocking. More knives than one it
was possible she might have concealed; I therefore at first held the
door but a little way open and looked in.

The girl was standing beside the bunk or sleeping-shelf; her elbows
were upon the edge of it, her cheeks in her hands, and she stood
motionlessly gazing, as I might suppose, through the port-hole. She was
robed as in the morning; that is to say, in a crimson dressing-gown,
which, in that era of short skirts, clothed her to her heels. She was
but a little above the average stature of woman, though she had looked
far taller than she really was when she stood in the doorway grasping
the knife, with her eyes upon the dead Spaniard.

Finding her unarmed, I entered, carefully sweeping the room as I did so
with my eyes for any signs of a knife or other weapon. The four seamen
stood in the doorway, and she did not turn her head. I approached her,
keeping a distance of some two or three feet between us, and prepared,
poor lady! for any act of violence. Still she continued to stare
through the port-hole.

"Miss Noble," said I, "you smiled at me this morning. Look at me now.
You will remember me as your friend."

She turned her head slowly; not more mechanical could have been that
extraordinary movement had clock-work produced it. When her soft brown
eyes--in which assuredly I witnessed nothing of that sparkle or fire of
madness which is said to burn in the vision of the insane--were upon
me, she frowned and bit her under lip, exposing her small white front
teeth. I believed from her expression that she was struggling with
her memory. She then suddenly turned fully round, as though sensible
of being watched from the door, and the sailors, to the wild look she
gave them, stirred and fell back with uneasy shuffling motions of their
feet. She stared at them for a while, and afterward at me, preserving
her frown, and holding her lip under her teeth; she was deadly white,
but spite of her frown, which you would have thought must give an
expression of disdain or anger or contempt to her brow, her face was
meaningless. She eyed me fixedly for some moments, then, with the
former slow motion of her head, resumed her first posture. I stepped to
the door.

"What is to be done?" said I.

"It's a cruel business. The Spaniard's been rightly sarved out,"
exclaimed one of the sailors.

"What is to be done?" I repeated; for here, to be sure, was a
condition of ocean life that had never before been encountered by my
experience.

The men gazed at the girl in silence. I mused, and presently said,
"One of you keep this door; the rest of us must turn to and search the
cabin, to make sure there is nothing in it with which she can hurt
herself."

There were four of us, and there being little to examine, we had soon
satisfied ourselves that there was no weapon anywhere hidden. She took
not the least notice of us; but when I explored her sleeping-berth,
upon whose edge, as I have told you, her elbows reposed, she fell
back a step or two, and then, going to the arm-chair, seated herself,
clasping her knees and rooting her eyes to the deck.

"Will she have a knife about her?" said Butler, in a hoarse whisper.

I thoroughly considered this, and, after a narrow scrutiny of her,
decided that she had not concealed a knife upon her, and I was the
more willing to believe so because I had not the heart--I will not say
the courage--to search her. It shocked me to think of offering any
violence to the poor girl, and violence I knew it must come to--she
would resist, a struggle would increase her madness--if I laid my
hands upon her. But I was certain she had not concealed a knife. The
dressing-gown she wore was without a pocket. The sleeves were loose,
and while she stood at the bunk I had noticed that her arms, whose
wrists were still clasped by bracelets, were bare, whence I concluded
that the dressing-gown concealed the ball attire she had been brought
aboard in. So I decided that she had not secreted a weapon, because,
recollecting her attire as she lay upon the sofa in the cabin after she
had been brought to the schooner, I could not conceive that it offered
any points for the concealment of a knife.

I closed the door upon her, and we stood outside consulting. Our
debate determined us to this: that while she continued in this passive
condition she was to be left as she was; that for the present the five
seamen would take it turn and turn about to watch that she did not quit
her room; that she was to be fed as heretofore, that is to say, food
and wine were to be placed before her, of which she would partake if
she chose, for no man could compel her to eat. Then, no longer choosing
that the helmsman should remain alone on deck--for Don Lazarillo,
Mariana, and the negro boy counted for nothing--I went to the companion
steps and was followed by Butler and two others.

Don Lazarillo and Mariana stood a little way forward of the skylight.
They conversed, and their gestures expressed unbounded horror and
dismay. On our appearing, they fell silent and watched us. Some
distance beyond them was the figure of the negro boy. There was nothing
in sight. The white canvas soared round and brilliant, and the rigging
was vocal with the gushing of the blue breeze. Astern of us ran an
arrowy wake of foam, and off the weather bow rose a steady sound of
seething, like to the noise made by the boiling foot of a cataract
heard afar.

I took up a position near the tiller, that was in the grasp of the
seaman Tubb, and the sailors stood near me.

"What's happened below?" said Tubb.

"The tall Spaniard's been stabbed dead by the mad lady," answered South.

Tubb delivered himself of a long whistle, following it on by an
agitated swing of the tiller that hove the schooner to the wind two
points before he could recover her.

"And now what is to be done?" said I. "You see the pass we've been
brought into. Two men dead of the adventure, and the rest of us guilty
of a deed that must earn us transportation for life should the law get
hold of us. What's to be done, I say? Is this voyage to Cuba to be
prosecuted? Our duty is--and let me tell you our policy is--to make all
the restitution that is possible, and that we can alone do by conveying
the poor lady home."

"I ain't going home," cried Butler in a voice of obstinacy, smiting his
thigh.

Don Lazarillo and Mariana crept, or sneaked rather, by a pace nearer to
us and stood listening.

"And _I_ ain't going home," said Tubb, fetching the head of the tiller
a whack. "You talk of transportation for life, Mr. Portlack; d'ye want
it to happen, sir?"

"No," I answered; "but I wish to do what is right, and to make it as
right as right can be by doing it quickly. The lady must be restored to
her friends."

"No offense, Mr. Portlack," said Scott, "but we aren't to forget that
you're on the right side of the hedge. You wasn't in the melhee; we
was. Your going home can't sinnify; ourn means lagging for all hands."

The two Spaniards sneaked a little closer.

"I wish to suggest nothing likely to imperil you," said I. "Though
I was never willingly of you--you don't want me to tell you how it
happens that I'm here; yet being of you, you'll find me with you,
content to share in all that may befall you. As to my being on the
right side of the hedge," cried I, rounding upon Scott, "that's but a
notion of yours. The lawyers may think very much otherwise. But I say
this, that since these two Spaniards have decoyed our heads into a
noose, the only way to avoid being strangled is to whip our heads out
again; and d'ye ask how that's to be done? My answer is, Do what is
right. Act so that you'll be able to say, should you come to be charged
as helpers in this crime of abduction: We believed the lady to be the
Spaniard's wife; we were told that a man had a right to his own, and
we were willing to help him to his own, but the moment we found we had
been deceived we turned to like honest men, to make all the amends in
our power by restoring the poor lady to her friends. _That_ is what's
in my head, and it is the advice I give you, and wish you to act upon
for my sake and for yours."

South looked thoughtfully at Butler; but Butler, with an angry
countenance, vengefully smiting his thigh again with his clinched
fist, cried out, "There's to be no going home with me. There's to be
no taking the chance of the law with me. There's to be no risking
even a week o' jail with me. Ye may call it Cuba, or ye may call it
Madagascar, but let no man speak of the United Kingdom. I've got my
liberty, and I'm for keeping of it. 'Sides," he whipped out, "who's
going to pay me my money, now the Spaniard as hired us is dead and
gone?"

The eyes of the men at this were at once bent upon Don Lazarillo.

"Sooner than go home I'd start away in that there boat," said Scott,
pointing to the cutter on the main deck, "and take my chance of making
the land or being picked up. I once had a fortnight of quod for
refusing to sail after joining. That was enough for me. No more, thank
ye." He stepped to the rail and violently expectorated.

"Who's going to pay us?" said Trapp. "If t'others are of my mind,
there'll be no leaving this schooner till we've received every farden
of our money. We've earnt it, by----!" he added, hitting the tiller
head another thump.

"Mr. Portlack," said Butler, gazing at me gloomily and mutinously, "you
still talk as if you was cocksure that the lady wasn't the tall gent's
wife."

I paused while I gazed at him, then, with vehement strides, walked up
to Don Lazarillo.

"You and your dead friend," I cried, staring into the shrinking and
working face of the man, "have cheated me and the men here by your lies
into the commission of a crime. You know," I thundered, determined
to terrorize him into a confession of the truth, "that the poor lady
below, whom you have driven mad, was not Don Christoval's wife. Dare to
tell me she was, you villain, and I'll fling you overboard!"

"What ees it you say?" he cried, with his swarthy face of the color of
pepper with fear.

"_You_ understand me!" I shouted, addressing Mariana. "You have been in
the secret, too, from the beginning. Own it, you dog, own it, or I'll
throttle you."

I raised my hand; the ugly creature delivered a singular cry and
dropped on his knees.

"Señor Portlack," he whined, "spare my life, for the blessed Virgin's
sake, and if I do not tell you the truth may Satan catch my soul
now and carry it away to eternal torment. The señorita was not the
cavalier's wife. The caballero's story was true in all but that part.
She was the lady of his love, but not his wife. If I'm not speaking the
truth, may my soul be tormented for ever and ever." Saying which he
crossed himself and stood up.

The obligation of feigning wrath alone preserved me from bursting into
a laugh at the sight of his hideous face convulsed with fear.

"Explain to Don Lazarillo," cried I, sternly, "what you have told me."

He did so. Don Lazarillo watched him with sparkling eyes and ashen
cheek, and on his ceasing made as if he would strike him.

"Will you deny that Mariana speaks the truth?" I exclaimed.

The Spaniard shot at me a look of mingled malice, hate, and fright,
then, with a shrug of the shoulders that convulsed his figure, he
turned his back, and, with clasped hands, stood viewing the ocean over
the rail.

"Now, men," said I, addressing Butler and the others, "you have heard
the truth for yourselves, and you may read it also in that Spanish
gentleman's behavior. Isn't it abominable that we Englishmen, or let
me say that _you_ Englishmen, should have been tricked by the lies of
a brace of foreigners into helping them to steal a poor young lady of
your own country from her father's home? For what purpose was this
done? There was little enough love in it, I'll swear. She is no doubt
an heiress, and the Don that lies dead below hoped, by stealing her,
to steal her fortune also; and you may take it that yonder gentleman,"
I continued, pointing at Don Lazarillo, "entered upon this inhuman
undertaking as a speculation. That's my notion, and if he understands
what I'm saying, he knows that I've hit the truth. He was to share in
the plunder, on condition of his finding money enough to equip this
expedition."

My eyes rested upon Mariana as I spoke; the ugly rascal, to whom
my words seemed perfectly intelligible, let his head sink, in an
affirmative gesture. The wretch, in fact, was horribly frightened,
feared for his life, in short, and by the looks of him I might not only
know that he was willing to tell all, but to tell more than all, to
appease my wrath, which I must own was largely simulated.

Butler stepped up to Don Lazarillo, whose back was still upon us, and
touched the man's elbow with his forefinger.

"Here," said he, "what about my money?"

Don Lazarillo appeared deaf, and continued to stare over the rail.
Butler thrust at his elbow again with his long forefinger.

"I am asking," he said, "about my money. Who's a-going to pay me?"

The other seamen now drew close to the Spaniard, who stood as though
deaf. Mariana rapidly and hoarsely uttered a sentence or two in
Spanish, probably a translation of Butler's words. Don Lazarillo then
whipped round; his eyes glowed like live coals, but his ashy pallor was
more defined than before. On finding himself confronted by the three
sailors, he placed himself in the posture of a man at bay with a sword
in his hand, only, happily, he was without a sword.

"What do you want?" he cried.

"Who's a-going to pay us?" shouted Butler, unnecessarily exerting his
lungs, as the custom is with us English when we address foreigners,
whose incapacity to understand seems to suggest deafness to our insular
minds.

Don Lazarillo, looking toward me, exclaimed, "I speak about dat wiz ze
Capitan Portlack."

"Ay," cried Scott, "but if you can talk to him, you can talk to us.
It's we that's consarned. It's us as wants to know who's a-going to
pay us. You've brought us into a blooming mess with your lies, and the
five of us men, as Captain Dopping shipped at Cadiz, stands for to be
transported if so be as our law catches hold of us, and all along of
you and him as lays below. If you can talk to Mr. Portlack, you can
talk to us."

"What you weesh me say?" cried the miserable Spaniard, extending his
arms, and casting a look of entreaty at me.

"Who's a-going to pay us men?" vociferated Butler, striking the palm of
his left hand with a leg-of-mutton fist. The men stood so close to Don
Lazarillo that he was forced to dodge his head here and there to catch
a sight of Mariana, to whom he cried out something in his native tongue.

"Señor Portlack," said the cook, in a cringing attitude, "Don Lazarillo
beg me say he will speak wid you. I will translate."

"Let it be so, men," I exclaimed; "you'll do no good by shouting
questions to a man who doesn't understand you."

They drew away sulkily. Don Lazarillo pulled off his hat to pass a
large colored silk handkerchief over his forehead. He then stepped up
to me. The cook posted himself close to him, and the sailors, with whom
now was the negro boy, took up a station within easy earshot. Mariana
translating, the dialogue took this form:--

"The men wish to know who is to pay them their wages?"

"Don Christoval is now dead," answered the Spaniard. "This adventure
therefore terminates!"

"How?--terminates?" I cried. "We are still upon the high seas. We have
still the young lady with us to restore to those from whom you and your
friend stole her. No, no, this adventure has not yet terminated!"

"What do you mean to do?" he asked.

"That is no answer to my question. Who will pay those men for the work
they have done, the risks they have run, and have yet to run?"

He put his hand to his brow, and, after a pause, said, "I must think."

The sailors fell a-shouting exclamations. The chorus was swelled by the
voices of the man at the helm, and by the fellow below, who had got
upon the cabin table, and stood with his head in the open skylight,
listening.

"Silence!" I cried; "how am I to transact your business if you
interrupt me? The men," I continued, addressing the Spaniard, "look
to you for payment. They will not lose sight of you until you pay
them. Have you money with you, or the equivalent of money?" I added,
fixing my eyes upon his rings and brooch; "for _I_ must be paid, Don
Lazarillo, and _they_ must be paid."

"I will answer. I will be honorable. I will give my word; and the
word of a Spanish gentlemen is gold." A growl proceeded from the
seamen. "But first, as a matter of courtesy, to help my mind in its
blindness--for the death of my friend has caused my brains to spin
round in my head--I entreat you, señor, to tell me what are your
intentions?"

"To restore the young lady to her friends."

"What!" he cried, shouting the words with a face of horror to Mariana;
"you will proceed to England?"

I responded with a vehement nod.

"Then vot sall become of me?" he exclaimed in English.

I shrugged my shoulders. He folded his arms tightly upon his breast,
and, with bowed head, fell to measuring a few feet of the deck. We all
watched him in silence while he thus walked. Suddenly he stopped, and,
turning upon Mariana, addressed him volubly and with amazing energy,
making a very windmill of his arms. I knew that he was saying a great
deal more than Mariana could translate, more, indeed, to judge from the
expression that entered the cook's face, than the repulsive-looking
creature would choose to translate. Nevertheless, I waited in patience,
making a single gesture of command to the sailors to be still.

Mariana then spoke; the substance of his speech was this: Don Lazarillo
asked for a few hours. He desired to look over the effects of his dead
friend; he desired time to mature a proposal which he hoped to make
to me. This was substantially all that Mariana translated. Yet, owing
to his slow delivery and to his broken-winded English, the matter he
delivered appeared to contain much more than was in it. I had no doubt,
however, that Don Lazarillo in his speech had acquainted the fellow
with some half-formed scheme in his mind, as good for Mariana perhaps
as for himself.

I told the cook to inform the Don that we would give him until six
o'clock that evening, and that if he was not ready with his proposals
by that hour, I should shift the schooner's helm for England, where,
on my arrival, it would be my duty to deliver him and Mariana into the
hands of justice. The cook, in translating this, was almost as ashen in
color as the other.

Don Lazarillo descended into the cabin. Butler came up to me.

"You're merely frightening the man, I hope, sir," said he, "with this
here talk of sailing to England?"

"Let's settle with him first," I answered, "and then I'll call a
council of the crew. Meanwhile it is senseless to keep the schooner
under all this canvas. Let us shorten sail and lay her with her head to
the east until we hear what Don Lazarillo has to say for himself."

He looked doubtfully round the sea, then consented. So we reduced the
schooner down to what is termed a scandalized mainsail and a jib,
and all that afternoon she lay under that canvas, blowing along very
quietly eastward.

Some time about four o'clock I went below and asked Trapp, who was
still on watch in the cabin, if all had been quiet in the lady's cabin.

"Ne'er so much noise as a mouse would have made, sir," said he.

I lightly tapped on the young lady's door, and without waiting for
a response, which I knew I should not obtain, I turned the handle
and looked in. The girl was seated in her chair, but her head lay
back upon the cushioned round of it. Her eyes were sealed, and her
lips apart. I looked at her, scarcely knowing whether she was alive
or dead; but presently observing that her bosom rose and fell, I
went to her side, put my ear to her mouth, and heard her breathing
regularly and peacefully. I stood a while looking at her, my heart
full of pity. I peered closely at her fingers: her rings were rich and
beautiful--diamonds and rubies of great value; but I might make sure
now there was no wedding-ring buried among the three or four which
armored the finger the ring would have been on. One little foot showed,
and I perceived that she was shod with white satin. There was something
to shock me in the ironic contrast created by the sight of that satin
shoe--the contrast between the grim and tragic reality that was now
hers and the festal vision of the ball-room, with its swimming figures,
the bright music of the dance, the gleam of fans, the scent of flowers.

I was happy to discover that she was able to sleep. It seemed to my
plain mind a good sign, for I had often been told that sleeplessness
was one of the horrible conditions of insanity; that not to be able
to sleep drove men mad; and that when they were mad still they were
sleepless. Strange as it will seem, I could not, I did not, associate
any horror of assassination with that restful figure. I had seen her
standing at the door, and had marked the red gleam upon the knife she
held; I had seen the tall and handsome Spaniard in the act of falling,
then tumbling his whole length and expiring. Yet I could gaze at this
poor girl without the least emotion of aversion, without the least
sense of that sort of horrid unaccountable fascination with which
red-handed crime constrains the gaze of the spectator.

This was not, I think, because I knew she was mad, and, being mad,
irresponsible, and, being irresponsible, virtually guiltless. No; it
was because of a singular atmosphere of purity and sweetness about
her as she now lay sleeping. Beautiful she was not. Indeed, she was
not even what might be called pretty; but now that she slept the
demon within her slept also. What was native in her showed in her
countenance. You witnessed it in this slumber of madness as you would
have beheld it in her waking hours of sanity. I stood viewing her and I
thought to myself she is a refined lady, pure, gentle, and good.




CHAPTER VII.

DON LAZARILLO LEAVES US.


I went out, closing the door behind me, and called to Butler through
the skylight to send the negro boy to me. The lad arrived, and I bade
him prepare a tray of refreshments for Miss Noble.

"How does the poor lady do, sir?" said Trapp, who sat in a chair
looking on while I got upon the table and called.

"She is sound asleep," said I. "So much the better. You can go forward
and get your supper. I'll keep a look-out here for the present."

He went away, and presently the boy Tom arrived with the tray, on which
he had heaped some cold ham, fruit, jelly from a bottle, and so forth.
I poured some wine into a tumbler, and softly entering the lady's berth
placed the tray beside her on the deck, where, should the schooner
begin to frisk, it would slide without capsizing. I supposed that all
this while Don Lazarillo was in his own cabin gnawing, as his trick
was, upon his finger-ends while he reflected upon the proposals he was
presently to submit. My thoughts went from him to his dead friend, and
I stepped to the berth where the body lay to look at it.

On opening the door I beheld Don Lazarillo on his knees at the side
of the bunk in which reposed the body of Don Christoval. His hands
were clasped, his eyes were upturned, and, though his accents were
inaudible outside the door, he prayed with so much fervor as to be for
some moments insensible of my presence. Then bringing his flashing eyes
from the upper deck he directed them at me, made the sign of the cross
upon his breast, rose to his feet, made the sign of the cross upon the
face of the dead body, on whose breast he had laid a crucifix, and then
looked at me.

I went to the side of the bunk and stood for a few moments gazing at
the pale, still, serene, most handsome face of the dead.

"When ees he to bury?" said Don Lazarillo.

"To-night," said I.

"He is Catolique," he exclaimed.

"We shall have to cast him into the sea without ceremony, I fear," said
I, "unless you will say some prayers over him."

He seemed to understand me, for he nodded eagerly, and then, as if to
an afterthought, made me a very low, humble bow of thanks. Pointing to
my fingers, then to the chain of my watch, and then to the body of the
Spaniard, I said, "Will you see to his property?"

He pulled open a drawer and motioned me to observe some objects wrapped
in a silk pocket-handkerchief. On this I looked again at the body,
and now saw that the one or two rings and other jewelry which Don
Christoval had worn were removed. I walked out of the berth, leaving
Don Lazarillo to proceed with his prayers, earnestly hoping, however,
that he would be ready with his proposals by six o'clock, and that they
would be practicable and consistent with my own wishes; because if he
made no sign I should be at a loss, since it was certain that the crew
would not suffer me to execute my threat to carry him to England while
they remained on board; and how to deal with _them_ was a problem I
should not very well be able to solve until I had dealt with _him_.

I told Tom to procure me a cup of chocolate from Mariana. I then took
a cigar from a locker in which were many boxes of cigars, and, seating
myself in an arm-chair, smoked and ruminated on the tragic incidents
of the day. Shortly before six I peeped into Miss Noble's room. She
still slept soundly, exactly in the posture in which I had left her.
This I did not think wonderful, since, for all I knew, she might not
have slept a wink while she had been aboard the schooner, and nature,
utterly exhausted, had claimed at last the heavy arrears owing to her.
I listened: her breathing was perfectly placid; her bosom rose and
fell gently and regularly. I touched her hand and found it warm. The
refreshments were upon the deck untouched, as I had placed them.

As I closed the door upon the sleeping girl, Don Lazarillo emerged from
the cabin in which his friend's remains lay. There was a scowl upon
his face that darkened his cheeks like a deeper dye of complexion. I
watched him out of the corners of my eyes, saying to myself, "This man
is a Spaniard; I have used strong words to him; he would think nothing
of serving me as Miss Noble served his friend." He drew a paper cigar
from a pocket case, lighted it, and sat down, pointing to the little
clock in the skylight as he did so, as though he would say, "You see I
am punctual." And, in truth, it was exactly six o'clock.

He broke the silence by making me understand that he wished for
Mariana. The sailors were assembled at the skylight gazing down
impatiently, and I bade one of them tell the cook to lay aft, and for
Butler and two others to join us below.

"But come quietly," said I, "and make no noise when you're here,
for Miss Noble is asleep. One of you must remain on deck to keep a
look-out."

This fell to George South, and Andrew Trapp was at the helm. Butler,
Scott, and Tubb came below, and they were hastily followed by Mariana.
The conversation (as translated by the cook, though it is needless,
perhaps, to say that my version is somewhat more intelligible than the
original as it appeared in Mariana's speech) proceeded thus:

"Well, Don Lazarillo," said I, "you have had plenty of time to
consider. What now do you wish to say?"

"La Casandra is my property," he replied; "she is owned by me, and I
placed her at the disposal of Don Christoval del Padron. You talk of
carrying her to England. I do not wish that she should go to England."

"It is my business to restore the young lady to her friends," said I;
"and since this schooner carried her off from them, most assuredly she
will have to carry her back to them."

"But what is to become of my schooner when you have her in England?"

"I do not know, and I do not care," said I. "Stop! I will tell you
this: I shall hand her over to the shipping authorities at the port at
which we arrive. I will name you as her owner. You can claim her, if
you will, but I shall be compelled to tell the story of this adventure,
and to explain the part you took in it."

"What's all this got to do with paying of us?" growled Butler.

Don Lazarillo sat scowling at me.

"You are quite at liberty," I continued, "to remain on board your
own schooner; but in that case you return with us to England, where
certainly my immediate duty will be to inform against you."

He snarled a malediction.

"What about our money? Ask him that," cried Scott to Mariana.

"I will send you and the lady," said Don Lazarillo, "to the first
passing ship that is proceeding to England, and these sailors will
continue the voyage with me to Cuba."

"Who's going to navigate the vessel?" said Tubb.

"A passing ship will help us to a lieutenant," answered Don Lazarillo.

"Where's the passing ship to come from?" sneered Butler. "Who's a-going
to wait for her? And d'ye think us men 'ud be content to mess about in
this blooming schooner, may be for weeks, not knowing where we are and
not knowing how to head? Ask the gent who's a-going to pay us, cook?
That's what we're assembled for to hear."

"Besides," said I, "I should not dream of transferring Miss Noble to
another vessel in her present condition."

I spied Don Lazarillo and Mariana exchanging a look. Indeed, I already
more than suspected that these proposals of the Spaniards so far were
no more than a "try on," to use a cant term; that he held another
card in his hand ready to play should he be forced to do so, but
that, meanwhile, his business was to make the best terms he could for
himself. This conjecture was confirmed by the next speech of his that
Mariana translated:

"Then what remains but for me to be transshipped to a passing
vessel--Mariana and me?"

"That is reasonable. That shall be done," said I. "It is what I myself
should have proposed."

"_Contento!_" said Don Lazarillo, and was silent.

"What about our money?" said Butler.

The Spaniard looked round him on Mariana rendering this, then said, "I
will give drafts upon my bank at Madrid."

Butler, who was clearly the sea lawyer of this little community,
fastening his eyes upon the rings on Don Lazarillo's fingers, shook his
head with a contemptuous snort of laughter. "No, no," cried he, "I know
what drafts be. A draft's a check, and a check's a bit of paper as may
be made not worth the ink it's wrote upon with by the party withdrawing
of his money from the bank. No, no," he continued, shaking his head
somewhat savagely at Don Lazarillo, "we want money, not paper, and if
ye can't pay us in money, then ye've got to settle with us in what is
next best to it." And here he looked significantly at the Don's rings
again.

"You may tell Don Lazarillo," said I to Mariana, "that we shall not
be satisfied with his drafts, nor with anything short of the cash he
may have about him; and what he may lack in cash he must make good in
jewelry, of which he and his dead friend have plenty between them."

When this was interpreted, an expression like a spasm passed over
Don Lazarillo's face. He reflected, then, with a passionate gesture,
whipped out a pocket-book, from which he abstracted a handsome gold
pencil-case, and all very passionately, with knitted brows and
muttering lips, he entered certain figures, then shrieked rather than
pronounced the amount to the cook, naming it in Spanish currency.
Mariana nodded. Don Lazarillo now addressed him with excitement,
then, springing to his feet, he entered Don Christoval's room, from
which, in a few minutes, he returned bearing with him a bag of yellow
leather, and the silk pocket-handkerchief which, as he had given me to
understand, contained his deceased friend's jewelry. He opened the bag
with trembling fingers, and then, with glowing eyes, he capsized the
contents on to the table. This consisted of English sovereigns--two or
three hundred, I should have imagined.

"Count," shrieked the Spaniard, "and divide."

I counted, and made the sum exactly a hundred and fifty pounds.

"Divide," yelled Don Lazarillo, and he added some terms in Spanish
which Mariana did not think proper to interpret. The cook's eyes
gleamed like the blade of a new poniard as he looked at the money. I
told thirty pounds for each man; for this, it seems, was the wages
agreed upon for the run. Don Lazarillo then thrust the little parcel of
jewelry which had belonged to his friend across to me.

"Dat veel pay you, I hope, Capitan Portlack," he exclaimed, hooking
his thumbs in the arms of his waistcoat, and leaning back with an
assumption of haughtiness and contempt, which fitted him as ill as the
clothes of Don Christoval would.

I opened the handkerchief, and found a handsome gold watch and chain
and a very fine diamond ring. I gave Don Lazarillo a nod, and without
speech put these articles into my pockets. The value of this jewelry
to purchase it would probably have amounted to three or four times the
sum I was to receive; but then I estimated the things at their selling
price, which probably might not reach to fifty guineas, so that in
pocketing them I was taking no more than was my due.

"You are now all satisfied, I hope," exclaimed Don Lazarillo, through
Mariana. Yes, we were all satisfied. "And you put Mariana and me and my
effects on board the first passing ship that will receive us?"

"Yes," said I.

"But suppose that she is sailing to Australia or to India?"

"I shall not be able to help that," said I. "You may stay in this
schooner if you please, but Miss Noble must be conveyed home."

He rose from his seat frowning, viciously bit off the end of a cigar,
lighted it, and went on deck, followed by the cook.

"Well, your minds are easy now, I hope, my lads?" said I, rising.

"We're obliged to ye, Mr. Portlack," answered Butler. "You've managed
first-rate for us. And now, d'ye know, sir, while I've been sitting at
this table an idea's come into my head."

"What is that idea?"

"It consarns our leaving the schooner, sir."

"Let me hear it."

"There's that big boat amidships," said he. "We shipped at Cadiz, and
it was known at Cadiz that this here Casandra sailed from that port on
such and such a day. Now my idea is: suppose you run in for the Spanish
land until you've got Cadiz within, say, half-a-day's sail. Us men will
then launch the cutter and start away for the port, you giving us its
bearings. We must turn to and invent a yarn and represent this schooner
as having foundered, the rest of the people who got away in the small
boat being lost sight of by us. There are plenty of vessels at Cadiz,
and they're always in want of hands. We can ship as smartly as we
choose, get away, and then there'll be an end."

I reflected, and said, "I think your scheme excellent, and Cadiz,
though still somewhat south, is, in my opinion, as good as any other
port. Only, when you are gone and the two Spaniards transshipped, I
shall be alone in this schooner."

"There'll be Tom, sir," said Tubb.

I smiled.

"If you're to return to England, Mr. Portlack," said Butler,
pronouncing his words with great emphasis, "in this here schooner, and
we're to leave you, which must be, for ne'er a man of us must dream of
going home for a long spell to come arter such a job as this, then what
I say is, there's no help for it. Alone ye'll have to be until such
times as a passing vessel 'ull loan ye a man or two to help you home."

"Your scheme requires reflection," said I. "Give me time to think over
it. And now, since you're below, you may as well turn to and get that
body yonder ready for the last toss. We'll drop it over the side at
eight bells."

I walked to Miss Noble's cabin and looked in. She was still asleep,
preserving absolutely her former posture. I beckoned to Butler, who was
at that instant stepping from Don Christoval's berth. He approached,
and I said, "See there," pointing to the lady. "She has been sleeping
like that pretty nearly ever since we left the berth after searching
it."

"Is she sleeping?" said he.

"Yes," said I, "but there is something unnatural in such slumber as
this. She has not stirred a finger for some hours."

"She seems breathing all right, and appears comfortable enough, sir,"
said he, after silently surveying her.

"She does not look comfortable. I wish to see her in her bunk. Let us
gently lift her into it. If she wakens she may prove to have her mind.
Observe her face; there is no madness in that placid expression."

We were both strong men, and, bending over her we grasped, swiftly
raised, and laid her at her length in the bunk. She never moved. It was
indeed like lifting a statue; just as we placed her so did she continue
to lie, breathing quietly with an expression upon her lips that was
almost a smile.

"Well," hoarsely whispered Butler, "blowed if I could ha' believed in
such a thing had I been told it. She may be a-dying."

"I hope not," said I; "one would wish to right the enormous wrong that
has been done her before she dies."

We stood in the doorway a few minutes looking at her, talking in
whispers of the assassination of the Spaniard, and of other matters
growing out of that tragic subject, such as the part that Don Lazarillo
was playing in this extraordinary enterprise, the probability of the
girl having lost her reason for life, and so forth, during which the
young lady lay as motionless as though she rested in her coffin. Butler
then left the cabin to obtain materials for stitching up the body in,
and I went on deck.

We buried the remains of Don Christoval at eight bells that evening,
that is, at eight o'clock. It was a fine moonless evening, with so much
star-light in the heavens that the twilight seemed to still dwell in
the atmosphere when the afterglow had long ago died out. There was a
pleasant breeze, and a sullen, steady sweep of swell, over which the
schooner, almost denuded of her canvas--for our plans were not yet
formed--rode with the regularity of the tick of a clock.

Ever since sunset Don Lazarillo had hung about in the waist, conversing
with Mariana in Spanish in subdued accents, yet with an energy that
again and again ran a hiss through his utterance. The body, with a
couple of cannon shot attached to its feet, was handed on deck by three
of the men; it was then placed upon a piece of the main-hatch cover,
and hoisted to the lee-rail, the foot of the cover resting on the rail,
while the head was supported by Butler and South. The two Spaniards,
who had fallen dumb when the body was brought on deck, repeatedly
crossed themselves, holding their hats in their hands, while the men
were manoeuvring at the sides with Don Christoval's remains.

"Are you ready?" said I.

"All ready, sir," answered Butler.

"Pull off your caps, lads," said I, and, bareheaded, I stepped up
to Don Lazarillo and begged him to recite the prayers he desired to
pronounce over his friend's ashes.

He responded with a bow, which, for the moment, affected me by its
mixture of courtesy and grief, and then, with Mariana stalking at his
heels, approached the body. They went down upon their knees, and Don
Lazarillo prayed loudly, the cook occasionally striking in with an
ejaculation. I gazed with respect, and even reverence, at this strange
picture. No matter what a man's faith may be, no matter what his color
may be, no matter how wild and grotesque the accents in which he
vents himself, never can I behold him praying to the Being in whom
he believes, yea, even though he be a John Chinaman prostrate to the
flat of his forehead upon the floor of his joss-house, without being
strangely moved and melted into feelings and sensations in which one
should seem to find but little affinity with the rough life of the
ocean. The Spaniard's prayers were not mine, his religion was not mine;
but what signifies _that_, thought I, as I stood listening and gazing;
every man sets his watch in the dark, and it is but reasonable that
every man should think his own time right.

The night wind, damp with dew, hummed in the rigging; the dark water
broke from the gentle thrust of the stem in sobs, while Don Lazarillo
prayed, and while Mariana ejaculated. As my eye went to the pale
glimmering shape of the canvas I heard again the sounds of the sweet
tenor voice as it had quietly rung through the open skylight that
morning. I heard again the harp-like notes of the delicately-fingered
guitar. I beheld again those visions which that clear, melodious voice
had evoked, those summer aromatic scenes which Don Christoval's songs
had painted upon the vision of my mind. The Spaniards rose from their
knees. Don Lazarillo made the sign of the cross upon the body, then
pronounced some word in Spanish, with a sob in his tone.

"Let it go, men," said I.

They tilted the hatch, and the pale shape flashed over the side.

"Is Butler forward there?" I called out as I was pacing the
quarter-deck half an hour later.

"Here he is, sir," responded Butler's voice.

"Step aft," said I. He arrived. "Butler, I've been thinking over your
scheme. For the last half-hour I've been thinking of nothing else.
If you men go away in the boat, will the negro boy Tom be willing to
remain with me?"

"Yes, sir."

"How do you know."

"I put the question to him and he said he would be willing."

"Then," I exclaimed, "I consent. I agree with you that, if you are
to leave me, I must be alone until I can get help. I might indeed
transship you, feign to the master of the vessel we should speak that
you were mutineers--a character you would all have to support--and
ask him to give me two or three men in exchange for my five. That I
might do; but the business would consist of a lie, and I hate lies.
We should have to act a part: the five of you would have to invent a
yarn, and carefully stick to it, while you were aboard the vessel that
received you.... No! your plan is the most straightforward, and the
least troublesome. The risk is mine, and a heavy risk it is--to be left
in a big vessel with one hand only, and that hand a boy, and a mad lady
below, who will require watching, and who may attempt our lives when
she awakes. But I see no other way out of the difficulty."

"Nor I, sir," he answered. "We don't like the notion of leaving ye
alone; but then, you insist upon carrying this here schooner to
England, and to England we don't mean to go," said he, slapping his leg.

"Say no more. We'll hold that matter settled. Only, before you leave,
the two Spaniards must have left; otherwise they'll be cutting Tom's
and my throat, taking their chance, as I shall have to take my chance,
of being fallen in with and succored. The Don doesn't like the notion
of losing his schooner; but lose her he must, for he'll never dare to
lay claim to her."

"I should think not!" said he. "Well, sir, then I'll tell my mates it's
settled. What about leaving the vessel under this small canvas?"

"Oh," I answered, "sail can now be made, and I'll shape a course for
Cadiz. As we approach the land, we stand to fall in with some trader,
who'll put the two Spaniards ashore on their native soil."

I was in charge of the deck, and it was for me, therefore, to give
the necessary orders for sail to be made. The sailors sprang about
with marvelous agility. The influence of the money they had received
operated far more strongly in them than the influence of the funeral
they had witnessed, and I believe that nothing had restrained them
from singing, dancing, making a night of it, in short--for the
fellows were never without plenty of a cheap sort of claret that had
been economically laid in for their consumption--nothing, I say, had
hindered them from celebrating their payment of thirty pounds a man by
a forecastle carousal, but the feeling that some trifling respect was
due to the memory of the dead and to the affliction of Don Lazarillo.
Sail was heaped upon the schooner. Her twin spires floated through the
liquid dusk that was radiant with large trembling stars, and a sheen
melted off the edges of the canvas into the gloom, as though the whole
fabric were some tall island of ice.

Don Lazarillo sat under the skylight; he lay back in his chair with
his legs crossed, his hands clasped upon his waistcoat, and a long
cigar forking out of his mouth. His eyes of fire were fixed upon one of
the cabin lamps, and I saw them gleaming, through the clouds of smoke
he expelled, like the lanterns of a light-ship on a thick night. His
countenance wore an expression of desperate dejection. Some distance
away from him sat the man South, whose turn it was to watch beside
Miss Noble's cabin door. This duty I conceived might, for the next two
hours, at all events, be intrusted to the negro boy. He was somewhere
forward. I called to him, and he came along to me out of the gloom; his
black face so blending with the obscurity that the white jacket and
canvas breeches he wore made him resemble a body without a head.

"You are satisfied to remain with me, Tom," said I, "when the sailors
leave me?"

"Yes, massa."

"You are a good boy, and a plucky boy. We shall not be long without
help, I expect. I will take care that you are rewarded." The expanse
of his teeth by a sudden grin was like a streak of dim light upon the
darkness. "Go below into the cabin," said I, "and relieve South. Let
him go forward. You know what you have to watch?"

"Dah lady's door, sah."

He descended, and up came South, who was immediately followed by Don
Lazarillo. The Spaniard, temporarily blinded by the brilliance he
had emerged from, stood in the companion-way staring around; then
perceiving me, he crossed the deck and with great haste and agitation
addressed me in Spanish.

"No compreny, no compreny, Don Lazarillo!" I exclaimed, and sang out
for Mariana to be sent aft. The fellow promptly arrived, and upon him
the Don instantly discharged a whole torrent of words.

"What is wrong?" said I.

The cook answered that Don Lazarillo wished Miss Noble's cabin to be
watched by a seaman. Tom was a boy. Should Miss Noble dash out of her
cabin armed with a knife, what would Tom be able to do?

"Tell Don Lazarillo," said I, "that Miss Noble is slumbering in what
seems to be a trance."

The Don violently shook his head. His friend had been assassinated: he
himself might be the next victim. By the bones of St. Thomas, was he
to be stuck in the back like a pig, or to have his head half severed
from his body in his sleep? He would ask Captain Portlack to do him
a great favor--to exchange quarters with him. He, Don Lazarillo, with
Señor Portlack's courteous permission, would sleep under the main hatch
during the remainder of his stay on board La Casandra.

I promptly assented, and that the unhappy Spaniard should meanwhile
enjoy some little ease of mind, I called to South and bade him resume
his look-out in the cabin. I now hoped to be able to get the truth
about this wild and tragic expedition out of Don Lazarillo, and, with
as much tact as I was master of, sought through Mariana to direct the
conversation that way. But I was disappointed. Don Lazarillo returned
evasive answers, and then, suddenly complaining of the cold, made
me a bow and withdrew to the cabin with Mariana, who, I presently
ascertained, immediately went to work to prepare my quarters for the
reception of the Don.

After ten o'clock I saw no more of the Spaniard. I had heard some sound
of hammering, but knew not what it signified until South, coming up out
of the cabin after having been relieved by one of the seamen, informed
me that it had been caused by Mariana nailing up the bulk-head door
that led to the sleeping quarters I had occupied. "The Don don't mean
that the lady shall get at him, sir," said the man, with a short laugh.

I stepped into the cabin to mix myself a glass of grog, dim the lamps,
and take a look round.

"Has all been still within?" said I to William Scott, who was to be
sentry down here till midnight.

He replied that he had not heard a sound. On this I opened the door of
the lady's room, and bade Scott hold it open that I might see by the
sheen of the cabin lamps. There lay the girl as she had been lying for
hours, always breathing with the same regularity, her posture exactly
the same. I viewed her attentively, but could not detect that she had
moved her head or a limb by as much as the breadth of a finger-nail.

I marveled much as I returned on deck. Was this sleep the forerunner of
death? Was life ebbing away as she thus rested? If not, then how long
would this slumber last? Yet, thought I, it is best as it is; better
that her senses should be thus locked up, than that with eyes brilliant
with madness she should be ceaselessly pacing the floor of her room, or
with insane cunning watching for an opportunity to steal forth.

I slept during my watch below--that is, from twelve to four--in the
cabin that had been Don Lazarillo's, and Captain Dopping's before him,
to which new quarters I found that Mariana had brought the charts,
chronometer, nautical instruments, and so forth. I slept soundly.
Butler aroused me: all had been well. The breeze had freshened, he
said; at three o'clock a large line-of-battle ship had passed within
musket-shot; saving this, there was nothing to report. I looked in upon
the girl on my way to the deck and found her, as I was now expecting to
find her, in a deep and death-like sleep.

When the dawn broke I anxiously scanned the sea line in search of a
ship. Every hour of sailing of this sort was sweeping us closer into
the Spanish coast; and as I had no intention whatever of relinquishing
my five seamen until I had got rid of the two Spaniards, my present
keen anxiety was to heave something into view that would receive them
and carry them off. The rising sun flashed a bright and joyous morning
into the wide scene of heaven and ocean. The horizon lay clear as the
rim of a lens; a sweep of delicate blue to either hand of the glorious
wake of the soaring luminary, with the sky sloping down to it in a dim
azure, richly mottled in the west with clouds; but there was nothing
to be seen. On this I resolved to shorten sail and to head somewhat
more to the southward, where we stood a chance of falling in with the
sort of craft we desired to signal. All hands were on deck. I briefly
explained my motive, and canvas was forthwith reduced, diminishing the
speed of the schooner to within about four miles an hour.

While the men were busy with the ropes, Don Lazarillo's dark and
bearded face rose through the main hatch. His eyes swept the
horizon, as mine had, and then they settled upon me with a frown of
disappointment. His complexion was unwholesome, as from a long night of
sleeplessness and anxiety, not to mention the several passions which
would contend within him when he reflected on the death of his friend,
the complete and tragic failure of the expedition, the prospective
loss of his schooner, and the certain loss of the money--doubtless a
large sum--with which I was quite sure he had aided Don Christoval
in the execution of his scheme to run away with an English heiress.
He gave me a sullen bow, pointed with a shrug to the bare ocean,
addressed Mariana, whose eyes watched him from the galley-door, and
descended into the cabin; but as I happened to be standing close to the
companion-way, I was able to observe that he paused, before entering
the interior, to make sure that somebody was watching Miss Noble's
berth.

He had finished his breakfast by the time I was ready for mine, and
as I took my seat he got up and went on deck in silence, casting a
single savage glance at the door of the lady's cabin as he walked to
the companion-steps. I looked in upon her when I had breakfasted; there
was no change in her attitude: her trance, if trance it were, was as
profound as ever it had been.

However, as it turned out, Don Lazarillo was not to pass another
night aboard La Casandra. And, indeed, seeing what waters we were
now navigating, it would have been extraordinary, a thing beyond all
average sea-faring experience, had hour after hour rolled by without
bringing us a sight of a sail. I was eating some dinner, at half-past
one o'clock, in the cabin, when Butler put his head into the skylight
and called down:

"Mr. Portlack, there's a small vessel standing almost direct for us out
of the south'ard and west'ard--bound in, apparently, for the Portugal
coast. Shall we signal her?"

"Ay, certainly," cried I. "Heave the schooner to, and run the ensign
aloft. I'll be with you presently."

In about ten minutes' time I finished my dinner, swallowed a bumper
of the noble Burgundy which had been stowed aft for the consumption
of the Spaniards, lighted one of the fine Havana cigars, of which
there was a locker half full, and, exchanging a sentence with Trapp,
whose turn it was to keep watch on Miss Noble, went on deck. Not above
three miles distant, and heading, as it seemed, directly for us, was a
square-rigged vessel, a little brig, as she subsequently proved. Her
canvas glanced like satin in the sun as she rolled. She was coming
leisurely along under all plain sail. There was a color blowing at her
main royalmast head, where alone it would have been visible to us, and
on seeing it through a glass I made it out to be the Portuguese ensign.

Don Lazarillo was on deck, swathed in his long Spanish cloak, and
wearing on his head a large Andalusian hat. He looked like a bandit in
an opera. Mariana, whose head was adorned by a long blue cap, shaped
like the night-caps men used to sleep in when I was a boy, watched the
approaching craft from his favorite skulking-hole, the caboose door.

"She veel do, I hope!" cried Don Lazarillo, on catching sight of me,
motioning toward the brig with a theatrical gesture.

"I hope so, indeed," said I, earnestly. "But," cried I, happening to
direct my eyes at our gaff end, where flew not the English but the
Spanish colors, "what have you got hoisted there, Butler?"

"The only ensign aboard, sir," he answered.

"Upon my word! Yet I might have supposed so. La Casandra is a Spaniard,
to all intents and purposes. So much the better," I added, as I sent
another glance at the flag we were flying. "The Portuguese may be more
willing to oblige the people of that flag's nationality than those
whose rag is the red, white, and blue."

The schooner had been hove to, thrown head to wind, her square canvas
being furled, and nothing was to be heard but the slopping sound of
waters alongside and the straining noises of the fabric as she leaned
to the swell, while silently and eagerly we kept our eyes fastened upon
the coming Portuguese brig. She drew close to windward, put her helm
down, backed her maintop-sail yard, and lay within hailing distance--a
prettier model than ever I should have thought to see flying _her_
colors, clean in rig, and her canvas fitting her well. The white
water raced fountain-like from her bows as she courtesied, ripples of
light ran like thrills through her black, wet sides, and there was
a frequent leap of white fire from the brass and glass along her
quarter-deck.

A tall, gaunt man, whose features were just distinguishable, got upon
the rail, and, holding on by a back-stay, pulled off his red cap and
hailed us in Portuguese. Don Lazarillo looked round to observe if
anybody meant to answer him; then exclaiming, "I understand; I speak
his language," he shouted an answer--but an answer that seemed a
fathom long; in fact, there was room in Don Lazarillo's response to
the Portuguese skipper's hail for the whole story of our adventure.
Mariana came and stood alongside the Don. Many cries were exchanged;
the gestures were frequent and often frantic. Presently the Portuguese
skipper dropped on to his deck, and Don Lazarillo bade Mariana inform
me that the man meant to come aboard. In a few minutes the Portuguese
brig lowered a boat; her gaunt skipper entered it, accompanied by a
couple of men, and pulled the little craft alongside of us.

I had never beheld so strange a figure as that Portuguese skipper.
His face was little more than that of a skull, the flesh of which
resembled the skin of an old drum where it is darkened by the beating
of the sticks; it lay in ridges, as though badly pasted on, and
these ridges looked to have become iron-hard through exposure to the
weather. His eyes were large, intensely black, and horribly deep sunk,
and glowed with what might well have been the fire of fever. Don
Lazarillo pronounced some words, haughtily motioning to me; on which
the Portuguese skipper gave me such a bow as a skeleton would make,
and I pulled off my hat. Then the Spaniard addressed Mariana, who,
accosting me in his extraordinary English, said that Don Lazarillo
desired to know if it should be left to him to conduct this business
of their quitting the schooner. I answered, "Certainly." I had no wish
to interfere at all; nor could I be of the slightest use to them, not
knowing a syllable of their tongues. On this Don Lazarillo took the
Portuguese skipper into the cabin, and with them went the cook.

After a few moments I heard the sound of a cork drawn; this was
followed by much animated conversation; but I did not choose to show
myself at the skylight under which they were seated, and their accents
reached my ear faintly. I said to Butler, with a smile:

"I hope the Don isn't conspiring with the Portugal man to seize the
schooner."

"Lord bless ye, Mr. Portlack," he answered with a grin. "How many of
the likes of them chaps in the boat over the side down there would be
needed for such a job as that?"

And a grimy, wretched brace of men they were; yellow as mustard, and
dark for want of soap, clad in costumes of rags, the lower extremities
of which were kept together by being thrust into half-Wellington boots,
bronzed with brine.

"Where are you from?" I shouted.

They were squatting in the bottom of the boat like monkeys, and their
manner of looking upward was exactly that of monkeys--swift, their
gleaming eyes restless, and a queer puckering of their leather lips
that seemed a grin. They understood me, and one answered, "Bahia."

"Where are you bound to?"

"Lisbon."

I tried them with one or two more questions, but to no purpose. After
the lapse of some twenty minutes Mariana came out of the cabin, and
said that Don Lazarillo begged I would be so good as to send two seamen
below to convey his effects into the boat.

"Certainly," I answered, and ordered a couple of men to attend upon
the Spaniard. Guessing that the Don's effects would be comparatively
trifling, I could not imagine why he required the services of two men
in addition to the cook's help; until, after a little, first one sailor
made his appearance with his arms full of boxes of cigars, then the
second sailor arrived with a case of wine, then Mariana came on deck
with bags and valises belonging to the two Dons. These articles were
handed into the boat, and the seamen and the cook returned for more.
It was clearly Don Lazarillo's intention to carry off as much as the
Portuguese boat would hold, and by and by she was lying alongside deep
with wine, cigars, a chest, as I supposed, of the silver plate, and a
variety of other portable articles.

Don Lazarillo then came up with the Portuguese captain. They went
to the side and looked over at the boat, and the Portuguese captain
hailed the men in her, and some unintelligible talk followed. The boat
was then drawn under the gangway by the two fellows, and without a
syllable, but with one deadly glance of malice at me, Don Lazarillo
entered her. Mariana, throwing a bundle into her, followed. The
Portuguese skipper then sprang, and the boat shoved off.

Fortunately for her inmates, the surface of the sea flashed and
feathered in ripples only, for the spite or avarice of the Spaniard
had so loaded the boat that it needed but a very little weight in the
movement of the water to swamp and founder her out of hand.

When her two oars had impelled her a pistol-shot distant from us, Don
Lazarillo stood up and proceeded to harangue me in Spanish, with both
arms raised and both fists clinched. He rapidly worked himself into a
white heat of passion; his voice rose into a penetrating shriek. That
he was heaping upon my head every malediction which the language of
his country, rich in grotesquely injurious terms, could supply him
with, I did not doubt. I picked up a telescope and looked at his face
through it, which cool, provoking act so heightened the madness of
his wrath that he fell to swaying and toppling about after the manner
of a man delirious with drink; whereupon the Portuguese captain, who
had sat stolidly looking up at him, to save his own and the lives of
the others--for the boat dangerously swayed to the Don's ecstatic
gestures--struck him behind in the bend of his legs with the sharp of
his hand, and Don Lazarillo vanished in a twinkling in the bottom of
the boat. A roar of laughter went up from our men.

"Trim sail, lads, and then heap it on her," I called out; and, even
as the boat lay alongside the brig, with the people in her handing up
Don Lazarillo's little cargo, the Casandra, yielding to the impulse of
her broad and lofty cloths, was ripping through it to the southward
and eastward, the brine spitting at her stem, and the shapely little
Portuguese brig veering astern into a Lilliputian toy, her white canvas
resembling a hovering butterfly in the confused, misty, and broken
fires of the sun's reflection upon the ocean in the south-west.




CHAPTER VIII.

IDA NOBLE.


"Our turn next, sir," exclaimed Butler, coming away from the rail,
where he had been standing for a minute looking at the brig under his
hand.

"Yes. I shall be sorry to lose you," said I; "but what must be, must
be, and you've made up your minds."

"Ay, sir. It is right and proper, indeed, that you should carry the
poor lady home; and gladly would we help ye if we durst. But after
what's happened----" He violently shook his head. "How far d'ye reckon
the coast of Cadiz to be distant, sir?"

"Call it four days at this rate of sailing," said I. Then, looking at
him, I continued: "I wish you men would change your minds, and let me
set you ashore north of Ushant."

I was proceeding to explain my reason, but he arrested me by an
emphatic, "No, sir. Let it be Cadiz, if you please. The further away
the better. All us men have friends at Cadiz, and there are other
reasons for our deciding upon that port."

I went below to see what Don Lazarillo had left behind him. The negro
lad sat in a chair keeping that watch in the cabin which we continued
to maintain spite of the girl's wonderful death-like sleep. It would
have been easy, indeed, to have padlocked or in other ways secured the
door; but then, if the door had been thus secured, our vigilance would
certainly have been relaxed: in which case there was the chance of the
cabin being empty at the moment when her consciousness returned, and,
consequently, nobody at hand to arrest any dangerous behavior in her.

I found that Don Lazarillo had emptied the locker of its cigars. The
negro boy told me that the Spaniard had also carried away the wine
which had lain stowed in the lazarette. But there was nothing to
grieve me in this news; there were pipes and tobacco on board, and a
plentiful stock of cheap wine for the use of the sailors. I entered
Don Christoval's cabin and found nothing but the bedding left. The
clothes of the dead man had been packed and conveyed to the brig. There
was a chest of drawers, and in a corner stood a small table with
drawers; these I ransacked, with a faint fancy or hope of meeting with
some forgotten letter, some diary or document which Don Lazarillo had
neglected to take, and which might throw some fresh light upon this
extraordinary expedition. But every drawer was empty.

I was standing lost in thought, with my eyes fixed upon the vacant bunk
or sleeping-shelf, musing upon the incidents of the past few days, and
wondering into what sort of issue my hand was to shape this adventure,
when I was startled by an extraordinary cry, scarcely less alarming in
its way than the death-scream that had been uttered by Don Christoval.
It was such a cry as a wounded savage might deliver. Before I could
reach the door of the berth the negro boy rushed in.

"Oh, massa," he panted, "dah lady's looking out."

My impression was that he had been stabbed. "Are you hurt?" I
exclaimed, grasping him by the arm.

"No, sah!"

"Who shrieked just now?"

"I did, sah."

I cuffed him over his woolly head to clear him out of my road, and
stepped into the cabin. Miss Noble, with the handle of the cabin door
in her grasp, stood looking out with an expression upon her face of
such utter bewilderment that but for her costume and my knowing she
was the sole occupant of her room, I should not have recognized her. A
person watching the motions of a gliding apparition, _knowing_ it to be
a ghost, beckoning, stalking, compelling, might very well be supposed
to stare as that girl did. Her eyes slowly rolled over the interior,
as though the organ of vision, stupefied by bewilderment, was scarcely
capable of effort. She was deadly pale, yet, spite of the withering
influence of her astonishment upon her features, I seemed to find an
expression of intelligence in them that most certainly was not to be
witnessed before. She breathed swiftly. One side of her hair was now
entirely unfastened, and the heavy mass of the dark red tresses lay
upon her shoulder and upon her bosom. I instantly looked at her idle
hand; it held nothing.

I surveyed her a little, wondering whether she would speak; whether
reason had been restored to her; whether there might not happen at any
beat of the pulse a sudden horrible transformation in her, a new and
blacker exhibition of insanity. Her dark eyes came to mine; there was
an expression of terror in them. She pressed her hand to her forehead,
and looked down as though she would sharpen her sight by averting it
for a moment from the object at which she gazed, then looked at me
again, pleadingly, eagerly, and fearfully.

"Do not you know where you are, Miss Noble?" said I, in the most
careless, matter-of-fact manner I could put on.

"I am trying to think," she answered.

"Pray give me your hand," said I.

She extended it as a child might. I led her to an arm-chair and
gently obliged her to sit. A decanter half-full of sherry stood in
the swing-tray. I poured a little of the wine into a glass, and
presented it to her; she took it and drank. Her behavior and looks were
absolutely rational, clouded as they were by a bewilderment which her
eyes appeared to express as hopeless. She had been fasting for many
hours, and I was sure I could not do better than make her take food.
I beckoned to Tom, who stood staring at the lady from the other end
of the cabin. He approached, though he kept the table between him and
Miss Noble. Her bewilderment visibly deepened as her eyes rested on his
black face. I directed him to obtain the most delicate refreshments
which the cabin larder of the schooner yielded, and to bear a hand.

"You have been long asleep," said I, gently. "You were unconscious when
you were brought aboard this vessel--for you know _now_ that you are at
sea--and you must not wonder that you are bewildered on waking to find
yourself in this strange scene."

"Where am I?" she asked, in a voice that was but a little above a
whisper, so breathless was she with continued surprise.

"You are on board a schooner called La Casandra. I am acting as her
captain. We are now making haste to return to England, to restore you
to your home."

"England--home?" she muttered, looking at me, then around her, then
down at the dressing-gown she was robed in, then pulling a sleeve of
the gown a little way up the arm and gazing at the bracelets upon her
wrists. "Why am I here?" she exclaimed, drawing a breath that sounded
like a sob.

"Will you not wait till you have eaten a trifle? Nothing has passed
your lips for very many hours. As strength returns, your memory will
brighten, and I know I shall make you happy by the assurance I am able
to give you."

"Why am I here?" she repeated.

I considered it wise to humor her: but to humor her I must tell the
truth.

"You are here," said I, "because two Spaniards--one of them named
Don Christoval del Padron, and the other styled Don Lazarillo de
Tormes--went ashore near your father's estate, on the coast of
Cumberland, accompanied by a crew of armed sailors, and forcibly stole
you away from your home, carrying you in a state of insensibility to a
boat."

She interrupted me at this point by crying out, "Yes, yes, now I
remember, now I remember." She clasped her hands and half rose,
repeating, "Yes, yes, now I remember," staring past me wildly as she
spoke, as though she addressed some one at the other end of the cabin;
then burying her face in her hands she sat in silence, rocking herself
in the throes of a conflict with memory.

I stood looking on, waiting for nature to have her way with her. The
seamen, having got wind of her awakening, had collected at the skylight
and were looking down; but fearing that the sight of them might terrify
her, I dispersed the group of dark and hairy faces with an angry
gesture. Tom arrived with a tray of refreshments. I dispatched him on
deck to inform Butler and the others that the lady had returned to
consciousness; that her reason had awakened with her, and that she was
now as sane as any of us, but that they were to keep quiet and to hold
their heads out of view.

Presently the girl looked up; she was weeping, but so silently that I
did not know she was crying until I saw her face.

"It has all come back to me," she exclaimed in a broken voice, and
shuddering violently. "Did you tell me you were taking me home?"

"Yes, Miss Noble, you are going home."

"Will it be long before we arrive home?"

"Not very long."

"And what has happened to me since I have been here?" said she, looking
again down at the rich crimson dressing-gown she was habited in.

"You have been in a sort of stupor," I answered, "but you have awakened
strong and well; or let me say, in a very little while you will be
strong and well. But you must eat, if you please, and while you eat you
shall ask any questions you like, and I will answer you."

I put the plate beside her, and noticed with gladness that she eyed it
somewhat wistfully. Indeed, if anybody were ever nearly starved, she
was; though medical men to whom I have stated her case have since told
me that persons visited with these extraordinary fits of slumber can
live for days, and even for weeks, without food.

Tom had been careful not to put a knife on the tray; but there was
a fork, and with it I placed a thin slice of ham between two white
biscuits and presented this sea-sandwich to her, and she began to eat.
She ate the whole of it, and then I made her another and gave her
a little more sherry, and now I could observe how excellently this
refreshment served her as medicine; for every moment seemed to diminish
something of her bewilderment, while intelligence brightened in her
eyes, and a very faint bloom from the improved action of her heart
sifted into her complexion.

Suddenly, with a start, and with a wild and terrified look around the
cabin, she asked me where the two Spaniards were. The idea of them,
borne on the current of the thoughts and fancies flowing through
her brain, had, as I might judge, but that instant entered her
consciousness. Now it was not to be supposed that I could tell her she
had with her own hand slain one of those Spaniards; and no purpose,
therefore, could be served by informing her that one of them was dead.

"They have left the vessel," I answered.

"Will they return?" she cried.

"No, indeed; I will take care of that. You need not fear that they will
trouble you any more."

Her countenance relaxed its expression of terror, and her eyes met mine
with a soft and touching look of gratitude in them. She then sighed
deeply, and pressed her hand to her forehead.

"Pray, Miss Noble, tell me how you feel?" said I.

"My head swims," she answered. "The motion of this vessel affects me."

Now that might well have been so, strange as it may seem. She would
suffer from sea-sickness neither in her trance nor in her madness; but
now that both were passed, now that her real nature was re-established
in her, she must needs begin to suffer as she would have suffered from
this same sea-sickness at the beginning of the voyage had she been
brought on board in her senses. It seemed to me a most wholesome,
reassuring sign, though I would not say so, for I desired to preserve
her from all suspicion of the hideous state she had passed through.

"Suppose," said I, "that you lie down and endeavor to obtain some
sleep. What you have awakened from was stupor, and there can be no
refreshment in stupor. A few hours of wholesome, natural rest are sure
to work wonders."

She rose in silence, but with consent in her eyes. Observing that her
movements were unsteady, I gently held her arm and directed her steps
to her berth. She got into her bunk, and I paused to inquire if there
was anything I could do for her.

"Nothing," she answered in a low voice. "I am grateful for your
kindness. Everything has come back to me. Oh, yes, I now remember that
dreadful night--that dreadful night! But you are not deceiving me?"

"In what?"

"You tell me that Don Christoval and his friend are not in this vessel."

"Rest your poor heart, Madame. I swear to you as an English seaman that
they are out of this vessel, and that you will never be troubled by
them again."

"Where are they?" she asked.

"We will talk about them by and by."

She closed her eyes, and I stood beside her a few minutes, then went
out, calling to Tom to come and keep watch, with a threat to rope's-end
him if he shrieked again should the lady suddenly show herself, for
that she was now as sane as he or I was.

I went on deck heartily rejoiced by this restoration of the poor lady's
mind. It cleared me of a heavy load of anxiety. Now I could contemplate
taking charge of the schooner with only Tom to help me until I could
procure further assistance: this I could think of without half the
misgiving which before worked in me when my mind went to it. On my
showing myself, Butler, who was in charge, immediately approached me.

"I see the poor lady's woke up at last, sir."

"Yes," said I.

"And Tom says she has her intellect sound again."

"It is true, and thank God for it," said I.

"Strange, Mr. Portlack," said he, after biting for a moment or two
meditatively on the piece of tobacco in his cheek, "that the poor lady
should come to just at the time that there Spaniard goes off, as one
might say. There's a tarm to fit the likes of such a traverse, but I
forgets it."

"A coincidence," said I.

"Well, that'll do, I dessay, though there's another word a-running in
my head. And how do the lady relish the notion of having stuck the big
Spaniard?"

"Now listen to me, Butler," said I, "and repeat what I am about to
tell to your mates in the most powerful voice you can command, and in
the strongest words you can employ. Under no circumstances whatever,
on no consideration whatever, must the lady be given to know that she
committed that act. Tell her of it, and in all probability you will
drive her mad for good and all."

"There's no fear of any of us ever a-telling her of it," he replied,
with a sort of sulky astonishment working in his face at the energy
with which I had addressed him; "but she'll have to hear of it some of
these days, won't she, sir?"

"Not from us," said I, "and therefore what is going to happen some of
these days will be no business of ours."

"That's true enough," said he.

"There is another point that may be worth our consideration. Briefly,
the lady has now her senses; she has a clear eye, and may very likely
prove to have a keen memory. I will take care that your names are
not known to her; and should she ever come on deck while you remain
on board, I would advise you and your mates to show as little of
yourselves as the navigation of the ship will suffer."

He looked thoughtful, and fell to stroking his chin. "Yes, by thunder!
Mr. Portlack, you're right," he exclaimed. "If she gets to hear our
names, and is able to describe us, why! Tell ye what it is, sir: the
sooner we five men are off, the better; and until we've cleared out, I
hope you won't encourage her to come on deck too often."

Having tasted no food for some hours, I went below, and dispatched
Tom to procure me some supper. While he waited upon me the following
conversation took place between us:

"You must never at any time, or on any occasion, say, either aboard
this schooner or ashore, that the lady in the cabin yonder killed the
Spaniard."

"No, sah."

"If you do, you and I, who are to convey this lady home, will be
charged as accomplices in the awful crime of bloody murder."

"I'll be berry car'fu', sir."

"A single hint from you might lead to you and me being hanged by the
neck until we are dead. On the other hand, if you keep silent, I will
take care that you are rewarded; and if you have had enough of the sea,
I dare say the friends of the lady will find you some comfortable berth
ashore."

The lad's black face was somewhat complicated by expression. There
was mingled fright and delight in his wide grin and the stare of his
large, bland, dusky African eyes.

"Mind!" said I.

And here let me own that my desire that the murder of the Spaniard
should be kept a profound secret was largely--indeed almost wholly--a
selfish one. For, first, I never doubted that, if the girl came to
hear of what she had done, the thought of it working in a brain still
weak with recent craziness would render her incurably mad, and so
immeasurably increase my present anxieties and the trouble I should
be put to to carry her home. Next, I wished the dreadful deed kept
secret, since this singular expedition having caused me trouble and
grief enough already upon the high seas, I was by no means anxious that
darker worries should grow out of it on my arrival on shore.

I saw nothing of the lady that evening, nor, indeed, throughout the
night. Two or three times I knocked upon her door to inquire if she
needed anything, and once only she answered. Her reply satisfied me
that her mind was hers again; that, in short, there had been no relapse
since I had left her. However, to provide against all risk, I arranged
that the seamen should keep a look-out in the cabin as heretofore.

I had charge of the deck from four till eight. It blew continually a
fine breeze of wind, and hour after hour the schooner swept through
it as though driven by powerful engines. I guessed, if the vessel
maintained her present rate of sailing, that the men would be enabled
to leave me before forty-eight hours had passed. Daybreak showed us
several ships on the sea line. They were all of them small vessels, and
standing, with the exception of one, to the north. The man Scott, who
was at the helm, said that it was a pity his mates could not see their
way to transshipping themselves aboard a craft, instead of making for
Cadiz in the cutter.

"Why don't you stop with me?" said I.

"No, no!" he exclaimed.

"But listen. Could not we three--you, me, and the negro boy--carry the
schooner into Penzance, say, where you might go ashore at once, take
the coach for London, and vanish much more entirely than ever you will
by going to Cadiz?"

"No, sir, no; there's to be no going home with me. I should be a fool
to trust myself in England. I'm too respectable a man to live in any
country where I'm 'wanted.'"

"Well, then," said I, "Butler's scheme of the cutter and of Cadiz
is the practicable one, and you must adopt it. You talk of my
transshipping you. What story am I to tell the captain whom I ask to
receive you? You don't look like mutineers, and not one of you is
clever enough to act such a part as would enable me to spin my yarn
without exciting suspicion. Now, suspicion is the last thing we wish to
excite."

"True, sir," said Scott.

It was about a quarter before eight when the negro boy, who had been
preparing the table for my breakfast, came on deck to tell me that the
lady was in the cabin. I looked through the skylight and beheld her
sitting in an arm-chair. She saw me, and bowed with a slight smile.
I lifted the lid of the skylight that I might converse with her, and
called down, "Good morning, Miss Noble. I hope you are feeling very
much better?"

"I am very much better, thank you," she answered, in a voice soft
indeed, but whose tone and firmness were ample warrant of returning
strength.

"I hope to join you shortly. My watch on deck expires in a few minutes.
It is a fine bright morning and there is a noble sailing breeze, and
the schooner is going through the water like a witch."

"I should like to go on deck," she said, "but I have no covering for my
head."

I recommended her to wait till after breakfast, when we would go
to work to see what the schooner could yield her in the shape of
head-gear; and shortly afterward, on Butler arriving to relieve me, I
joined her. She had dressed her hair, and this and the effect of the
comfortable night she had passed had made another being of her. With
her recovery, or, at all events, with her improvement, had reappeared
what I might suppose her habitual nature. Her countenance expressed
decision of character; her gaze was gentle but steadfast; and in the
set of her lips there was such a suggestion of self-control as even my
untutored sea-faring eye could not miss. I now took notice, too, of her
well-bred air. In the hurry and agitation of the preceding day I had
missed this quality, or she may have failed to express it. But now, on
my entering the cabin, and on her rising and extending her hand, I was
instantly sensible of the presence of the high-born lady.

Almost in the first words she pronounced she asked me for my name. I
gave it to her, and with mingled dignity and sweetness she thanked me
for my sympathy and attention. Our discourse was chiefly about her
health, the sort of night she had passed, and the like, while Tom
was putting the breakfast upon the table. We then seated ourselves.
She ate with appetite, but was so reserved at first that I thought
to myself, "Now, Madame, I suppose you intend I shall thoroughly
understand you are a lady of high degree, between whom and a second
mate in the merchant service there stretches a social interval wide
as the Atlantic Ocean; and though I had hoped you would tell me your
story and help me to a clear understanding of Don Christoval and his
expedition, you mean to disappoint me through your new resolution to
assert your dignity."

But never was I more mistaken in a lady's character. I could see her
glancing from time to time at the negro boy, who lost no opportunity
of staring at her in return, as though he expected to see her at
any moment snatch up a knife. I believed I could read her thoughts,
and told the boy to go on deck and stop there till I called him.
She trifled for a bit with her rings; then, with a little show of
nervousness, though her accents did not falter, she said to me:

"Mr. Portlack, from the moment of my fainting on that dreadful night,
down to my awaking yesterday, I seem to remember nothing. I say I
_seem_, and yet I am haunted by a sort of horrid memory--how shall I
express it? It is the shadow of a recollection, and that recollection
again is, as it were," pressing her brow as though struggling to
deeply realize her thought, "no more than the memory of the shadow of
something horrible. Am I meaningless to you?"

"No."

She viewed me anxiously and searchingly, and said, "Have I been mad?"

"You were insensible when you were brought aboard, and you awoke from
your extraordinary stupor for the first time yesterday."

"Mr. Portlack, tell me, have I been out of my mind?"

Hating a lie as I do, I was yet resolved that she should not know the
truth, and I said "No" with so much emphasis that her face instantly
cleared. She smiled, and clasped her hands. "Ah!" she exclaimed,
breathing deep as though she sighed, "in so long and dreadful a slumber
I must have dreamed many fearful dreams."

I wished to disengage her mind from this subject, and I was also
desirous that she should understand, without further loss of time, how
it happened that I made one of the kidnaping gang.

"With your permission," said I, "I will tell you my story, which, I
believe, you will think a strange one even in the experiences of a
sea-faring person."

She watched me with attention, and I proceeded to relate my adventures,
beginning with the Ocean Ranger, and then going on to the American
ship, to my distressful and perilous situation in the open boat, and
then to this schooner La Casandra falling in with me; thus I steadily
worked my way right through my own yarn, omitting nothing save the
incident of the death of Don Christoval. That she was a young lady of
much strength of character I might now be sure of by her manner of
listening to me. I was graphic enough, particularly in my description
of our arrival off the coast of Cumberland; nevertheless, she attended
to me with composure, with firm lips and steady regard. No exclamation
escaped her. Once or twice she sighed, and once she colored, as though
from some sudden passion of resentment swiftly controlled.

"And now, Miss Noble," said I, "I hope I have made you understand how
it happens that I am here?"

"Perfectly," she answered, "and I am glad that you _are_ here, Mr.
Portlack. But you have not told me what has become of Don Christoval
and his friend."

There was nothing for it--I must tell another falsehood; but Heaven
would forgive me, for I meant well. So I answered that I had informed
them, on learning that she was not Madame del Padron, that it was my
intention to carry her home, and that on my arrival my first business
would be to inform against them for having abducted her; whereupon they
had prayed to be transshipped to a passing vessel; to which, after
reflection, I consented, and the two scoundrels were transferred to a
little Portuguese brig on the preceding day.

She sank into thought. After a while she lifted up her head and gazed
slowly and with curiosity round her at the pictures, the mirrors, and
the other furniture in the cabin. Her eyes next went to her bracelets,
and they then met mine. I waited for her to speak.

"How long is it now, Mr. Portlack, since I was stolen from my father's
house?"

"This is the sixth day of your absence."

"What will my father and mother think? They can not have been able to
_do_ anything. That will be the hardest part to my father. They will
have no idea into what part of the world I was to be carried. Will they
even know that this vessel was lying off the coast to receive me?"

"Oh, yes," said I, "they will know that. Some one is certain to have
followed the sailors and the Spaniards as they marched with you to the
boat."

"Would there be any papers, any letters, do you think," said she, "on
the body of the man who you said was killed, from which my father might
learn that this vessel's destination was Cuba?"

"I do not know. Most probably not."

"What a wanton act of wickedness! What unnecessary, barbarous cruelty!"
she exclaimed. "Had I been driven mad, it would not have been strange.
We had just arrived from a ball, when my father cried out that there
was a crowd of men outside. He told me to run upstairs. I can not
imagine that he suspected the errand on which they had come. I believed
that the men had arrived to plunder the house: it is situated on a
lonely part of the coast. I went into a room, and almost at that moment
I heard the report of a gun. The house is an old-fashioned building,
the walls very thick. I was so far away from the hall that no sound
reached me, but in a short time I heard foot-steps, and the noise of
doors violently opened, and the voices of men exclaiming in Spanish.
The door of my room was tried; I had turned the key, but the lock was
an old one. The two Spaniards put their shoulders against the door,
and it flew open; then I recollect a few moments of struggling and
shrieking, and nothing more."

"Did you never fear that Don Christoval would one day or night attempt
to carry you off?"

"Never," she responded, with a note of vehemence disturbing her calm
tones, and I saw a flash in her brown eyes.

"He evidently kept himself acquainted with your movements."

"Yes," she answered; "in another week we were going abroad. We should
have been starting about now, or to-morrow."

"He told me that. Who was the spy he employed, I wonder?"

She reflected, and answered: "No member of our household, I am sure.
What sort of person is Don Lazarillo de Tormes?"

I described him, and perceived by her way of listening that she had
never seen him, and indeed had never heard of him.

"You may take it, Miss Noble," said I, "that whoever Don Lazarillo may
have been, he found the money for this adventure."

"That must have been so," she answered; "Don Christoval is poor."

"Had he any property in Cuba?"

"I believe not," she answered.

"Forgive me for being inquisitive. Was--I mean, is the man in any way
related to you?"

"He is. He is a distant connection on my father's side. His father
was a Spaniard, and, I have always understood, of noble blood. Don
Christoval was in England, and called upon us when we were in London.
We afterward met him in Paris. My father disliked him, and it came to
his forbidding him from holding any communication with us. He then
challenged my brother to a duel, and, unknown to my father and mother,
my brother attended with a friend, a lieutenant in the Royal Navy; but
Don Christoval did not appear. That is entirely all that I can tell you
about the man, Mr. Portlack."

"I felt," said I, "that he was lying when he spoke of you as his wife.
But how was it possible to make sure of the truth, one way or the
other? He put his story so persuasively, his voice was so sweet, he
was so very handsome, that any one believing in his tale could not but
have pitied him, even to the degree of feeling willing to help him to
recover what he called his own."

She slightly colored, and said, "He only wanted my money."

Here I might have complimented her, but I was an off-hand sailor,
without any talent for drawing-room civilities.

I need not dwell at length upon what passed between Miss Noble and me
on this our first opportunity for enjoying a long chat. It was natural
that we should again and again travel over the same ground. Though
she did not repeat her question whether she had been out of her mind,
I noticed, in her references to her state of catalepsy or stupor, a
haunting uneasiness, as though the shadow of some black dream lay
upon her in tormenting shapelessness and illusiveness. I can fancy
that it resembled one of those ideas which visit most of us in our
life-time--the idea that we have felt, suffered, or done something in
another sphere of being.

She was clearly a lady of strong constitution. She showed no traces of
the condition she had been in for nearly a week. One would have thought
to see her haggard, bloodless, famine-pinched, with pale lips and
unlighted eyes; but, making due allowance for the costume of crimson
dressing-gown and for the absence of divers finishing details of
toilet, I could not conceive that she, at any time in her life, could
have looked much better than she now did. May be her profound sleep
had cleansed her countenance of the dreadful marks which the talons
of the fiend Madness commonly grave upon the human face. Be this as it
may, her health seemed excellent as I sat conversing with her at that
breakfast-table; her calm voice had the true music of good breeding;
her remarks exhibited no common order of perception and good sense,
and to my mind--though it is said that sailors are easy to please--she
needed no other face than her own, with its soft brown eyes, and purely
feminine lineaments, and dark red hair, massive, abundant, and glowing,
to be as fascinating a lady as a man could hope to meet with in English
or any other society.

I had, in the course of our conversation, told her very honestly what
the sailors intended to do. I added that they were right in endeavoring
to escape from the consequences of a wrong into the perpetration of
which they had been basely betrayed by the lies of Don Christoval and
his friend. I had then explained that I should be left alone in the
schooner with the negro boy, but that I had not the least doubt of
promptly obtaining all the help I needed to carry the vessel safely and
comfortably home. This made her ask how long it might take us to reach
home.

"Eight or ten days," I answered.

"What, meanwhile, am I to do for clothes?" said she; and, with
something of unconsciousness in her manner, as though her fingers were
governed by a thought in her head, she opened her dressing-gown and
revealed herself in ball attire.

Though she had been thus appareled for a week there seemed to be
nothing soiled, nothing faded, in this aspect of her. It was the
suddenness of the revelation, I dare say, that gave to her form the
brilliance I found in it. Then, there was also the contrast of the
rich crimson dressing-gown to heighten this instant splendor of attire
and the incomparable whiteness of her neck and shoulders, though these
were still defaced by several long, ugly black scratches. She buttoned
the dressing-gown to her throat again, and said, with a smile full of
self-possession, but sweetened by a little expression of sadness:

"This is not the kind of dress that one would wear at sea, Mr.
Portlack."

"It is very beautiful," said I in my simple way.

"The skirt is badly torn," she exclaimed. "Those wretches must have
treated me very roughly, even after I had fainted."

"You certainly will require warmer clothing than that ball-dress," said
I. "Stay! an idea occurs to me. Was it Don Christoval--yes, I believe
it was Don Christoval, who informed me--who implied rather--that he had
made some provisions for you in the matter of dress." I shouted through
the skylight for Tom. The boy arrived. "Go and ask Mr. Butler," said I,
"if he can tell me in what part of the vessel Captain Dopping stowed
the wearing apparel which was taken on board by Don Christoval for the
use of this lady."

The boy went on deck. Presently Butler's head showed in the skylight.
There was a shawl round his throat, that covered his mouth to the
height of his nostrils, and he wore a sou'-wester, the forward thatch
of which he had turned down, while the ear-lappets hid his cheeks. It
was clear he did not intend that Miss Noble should see more of his face
than might serve him to breathe with.

"Beg pardon, sir," he said in a muffled hurricane note, talking through
his shawl. "Here's this here Tom come with some message from you,
and I don't know what he means." I explained. "Ho! yes," said he; "I
understand now. There's a chest of garments, I believe, stowed away
down in the lazareet."

In less than twenty minutes the negro lad and I had explored the
lazarette, discovered the chest, lugged it into Miss Noble's cabin,
and there left it open. All that it contained I could not tell you,
but when I next saw Miss Noble she was wearing a green dress of some
light, good material, the waist of which was secured by a band, and on
her head was a plain straw hat of a sort to prove very serviceable to a
lady at sea.




CHAPTER IX.

CAPTAIN NOBLE.


Now, until we had closed the Spanish coast, that is to say, during the
following four days, nothing happened of such moment as deserves your
attention. The men kept themselves as much as possible out of sight of
Miss Noble, and every fellow whose turn it was to stand at the helm
invariably arrived so concealed about the face that I would often
find it difficult to give him his right name. The sailors' dread of
being observed by Miss Noble grew speedily into a real inconvenience;
it came, indeed, very near to hindering me, in the daytime when the
lady was on deck, from navigating the schooner; and to end it I took
occasion, when we sat below at some meal or other, to tell her of what
the men were afraid; with the result, that until the fellows left us
her visits to the deck were very few, and chiefly in the dusk.

It was four days from the date of the transshipment of Don Lazarillo
and the cook that by my computation we arrived within ten leagues of
the coast of Spain, the port of Cadiz bearing about east-by-south. It
was a sunny morning, with a pleasant breeze. We hove the schooner to,
for I did not think proper to approach the land nearer than thirty
miles. Here and there was a gleam of white canvas upon the horizon;
and I thought to myself, reflecting in the interests of the men, their
departure must not be witnessed, nor must anything be near enough to
fall in with them and to have the schooner in sight also; therefore I
hove La Casandra to at a distance of about ten leagues from the port of
Cadiz, nothing being visible but one or two sail, hull down.

Everything was in readiness. You will believe that the boat, owing
to the men's anxiety to get away, had been long before this morning
provisioned and equipped. She was launched through the gangway just as
she had been launched off the Cumberland coast on that silent, tragic
night; then, while she lay alongside, the seamen, in obedience to my
command, went to work to reduce sail upon the schooner, so that there
would be little left for me and Tom to do should it come on to blow
before we could procure help. While this was doing Miss Noble remained
in the cabin. Everything being ready, Butler stepped up to me with his
hand extended. I grasped and shook it.

"Good-by, sir, and we all hope, I'm sure, that you'll have a safe and
happy run home."

"Good-by, Butler--good-by, my lads. You have behaved very well. I thank
you for the willingness with which you have done your work under me.
See that the yarn you have in your heads you all stick to, so that
you'll be able to speak as with one tongue when you get ashore."

"Trust us, sir," said Scott.

"I hope the lady thoroughly understands," said Trapp, "how it happened
that we five Englishmen was led into a job which ne'er a man of us
would have touched, no, not for five times the money received, had the
true meaning of it been explained?"

"She does. And now you had better be off."

They entered the boat, stepped the mast, and I gave Butler the course
to steer by the little box compass that had been placed in the
stern-sheets. They then hoisted the sail, and as the boat slid away
from the shadow of the schooner's side, they all stood up and loudly
cheered me. I halloed a cheer back to them with a flourish of my cap,
then stepped aft, and, putting the helm over, brought the schooner
with her head to west-north-west.

"Come and lay hold of the tiller, Tom." The negro boy arrived. "Miss
Noble," said I, putting my head into the companion-way, "the men have
left the schooner."

She at once came on deck, and stood looking in silence at the cutter as
she swept swiftly eastward under the white square of her lug.

"We are lonely indeed, now," she presently exclaimed, bringing her eyes
from the boat to cast them round the horizon.

"Yes," said I, "but we are going home," and I pointed to the compass.

But she was right, for all that. Lonely the schooner looked with her
deserted decks and small canvas, and lonely I felt, not so much at the
beginning as later on, when the rolling hours brought the night along,
without heaving anything into view that we could turn to account. Miss
Noble earnestly wished to help; she assured me she could steer; she
was sprung, she said, from a naval stock, and she told me that salt
water had run in the veins of several generations on her father's
side, and that she was to be trusted at the helm. And, indeed, I found
that she steered perfectly well; she held the yacht's head steady to
her course; and as half the art of steering lies in that, the most
experienced man could not have done more.

Her taking the helm enabled the boy to cook for us, and it gave me an
opportunity to obtain sights, to attend to the sails, and the like.
Yet, when day broke next morning, I well remember heartily praying that
I should not have to pass, single-handed, such another night as we had
managed to scrape through. I was on deck all night long. I obliged Miss
Noble to go below and take some rest, and Tom slept at my feet while
I grasped the tiller, ready to relieve me when I was exhausted with
standing. Happily it was a fine night; a warm wind blew out of the
west, and the stars shone purely with a few shadows of clouds sailing
down the eastern slope.

It was shortly after eight o'clock, while I stood near the tiller
drinking a cup of chocolate which Tom had brought me out of the galley,
where he had lighted a fire, that, happening to look astern, I spied
a sail. Nothing else was in sight, and I had but to look once to know
that she was overtaking us. This, indeed, must have been practicable
to the clumsiest wagon afloat; for the canvas the schooner was under,
merry as was the breeze that whipped the sea into snow and fire under
the risen sun, was scarcely sufficient to drive her along at four miles
in the hour.

When I had drunk my chocolate I bade Tom prepare some breakfast for
Miss Noble, who was, or had been, resting on a sofa in the cabin. When
the girl had finished her meal she came on deck. And now the overtaking
vessel had risen to her hull, and in the telescope which I pointed at
her was proving herself a large ship, with a black and white band and
a red gleam of copper under the checkered side as she leaned from the
breeze.

"I wish she may not be an English frigate," said I to Miss Noble.

"Why?" she asked.

"Because," said I, "she is sure to prove too inquisitive to be
convenient. She'll be sending a lieutenant on board; he will see you;
he will ask questions; he will demand the schooner's papers; he will
not be satisfied, and will return to his ship for instructions; and we
want to get home comfortably, Miss Noble."

"I understand you," she answered. "But an English frigate! What
security, what safety is there in the very sound of the words!"

I waited a little while, and then, again leveling the glass at the
vessel, I clearly perceived that she was not an English frigate, but a
large merchantman, resembling a man-of-war in many details, saving
the row of grinning artillery, the white line of hammocks, the heavy
tops, and a peculiar cut of canvas that could never be mistaken by a
nautical eye in those days of tacks and sheets. Apparently she was
a troop ship out of the Mediterranean; there were many red spots of
uniform upon her forecastle past the yawn and curves of the white and
swelling jibs. And, indeed, she had need to be a hired transport, for
nothing of her rig would have any business in the Mediterranean and
nothing homeward bound from the Indies or the Australias was likely
to be met with so far to the eastward as was the longitude of the
waters we were in. I hoisted the Spanish ensign, and left it flying at
half-mast.

"Now, Miss Noble," said I, "what story shall I tell those people,
should they heave to and send a boat, as I hope and believe they will?"

She gazed at me inquiringly.

"If I give them the whole truth," said I, "it will run like wildfire
throughout the ship. The vessel will probably arrive before we do;
there are crowds of people on board to talk; the news of the outrage
done you and yours will be circulated, printed; it will become
everybody's gossip. Now, would Captain Noble wish this? Would my lady,
your mother, desire this?"

"No, they would not," she answered, after a pause. "You are kind and
wise to ask the question. The thought did not occur to me when I wished
that yonder vessel might prove an English frigate."

"Then I must invent a story," said I.

"But did not you say," she asked, "that when we arrived at an English
port you would be obliged to hand the schooner over to the authorities
of the port, to whom you would relate the truth, as it would be
impossible and most unwise to attempt to deceive them? Those were your
words, Mr. Portlack."

"Yes, I remember; those were my words. Well, Miss Noble?"

"Well," said she, "don't you see that, since you must tell the truth
when you arrive in England, this wretched story will have to be made
public in any case?"

"No," said I, "there is a difference. Yonder is a ship full of soldiers
and sailors, and others--gossips all, no doubt. To give them the
truth--and to give it to the captain or the mate is to give it to
them all--is tantamount to publishing your story throughout England,
whether you will or not; but to communicate with the receiver of wrecks
is another matter. There is official reserve to depend upon. Your
father, too, will not be wanting in influence. To me, Miss Noble, it is
all one. I desire to be influenced by your wishes."

"My wish certainly is," said she in her calm, emphatic way of speaking,
"that as little as possible of what has befallen me should be known."

"Then," said I, "I will ask you to step into the cabin and keep in your
own berth out of sight until the visit I hope to receive is ended."

She went below forthwith.

Half an hour later the large full-rigged hired transport Talavera had
ranged alongside La Casandra, easily within earshot. She was crowded
with troops; numbers of military officers in undress uniform surveyed
us from the poop. A tall man in a frock coat and a cap with a naval
peak stood upon a hen-coop, and hailed to know what was the matter.

"My men have deserted," I cried back; "there are but this negro boy
and myself to carry the schooner to an English port. Can you lend me a
couple of hands?"

"I will send a boat," he exclaimed, very easily perceiving that it was
impossible for me to board him.

A boat in charge of a mottled-faced, jolly-looking, round-shouldered
man, about thirty years of age, swept alongside, and the jolly-looking
man came on board.

"Are you the master?" said he.

"Yes," said I.

"Short of men, hey?" said he. "So I should suppose, if _he's_ your
crew," bursting into a laugh as he indicated the negro boy with a
motion of his chin. "How come you to be at sea with no more crew than
one little nigger?"

"My crew," said I, "were composed of five English sailors. They were
shipped at Cadiz. Yesterday they took the boat, and sailed away to the
coast of Spain in her, saying _they_ weren't going to England. Can you
lend me a couple of hands?"

"What's the name of this craft?" said he, looking up at the Spanish
ensign.

"La Casandra."

"From Cadiz, d'ye say?--to where?"

"To Penzance," said I, naming the first port that entered my head.

"Who's the owner?"

"Don Lazarillo de Tormes."

He asked several further questions of a like sort, and seemed perfectly
satisfied with my answers. I invited him to step below and drink a
glass of wine, but he declined, saying that his ship was in too great a
hurry to get home to allow him to stop and take a friendly glass on the
road.

He had not long returned to the Talavera when the boat, in charge of a
midshipman, came alongside the schooner again, and a couple of young
sailors, each with a sailor's bag upon his shoulder, climbed over the
side. The midshipman, looking up, called out to me: "They're a couple
of Dutchmen, but the captain guesses they'll serve your turn." I told
him to give my hearty thanks to the captain for his kindness. He then
went back to his ship, which immediately swung her yards, and in a
little while a wide space of water separated the two vessels.

"Dutchman" is a generic word employed by sailors to designate Germans,
Swedes, Danes, and others of the northern nationalities. These two
Dutchmen proved to be, the one a young Swede, who spoke English very
imperfectly, and the other a young Dane, whose knowledge of English was
almost wholly restricted to the names of ropes and sails; both of them
smart, respectful young fellows, without curiosity, accepting their
sudden change of life with the proverbial indifference of the sailor.

I had intended, for the convenience of Miss Noble, to carry the
schooner to Whitehaven; but before we gained the parallel of Land's
End it came on to blow heavily from the north and west--so heavily,
and with such an ugly, menacing look of continuance in the wide, dark,
greenish scowl of the sky, that I thought proper to shift my helm
for the English Channel. _There_ we encountered terrible weather.
I hoped to make some near port, but, owing to the thickness and to
the gale that had veered due west, I could do nothing but keep the
schooner running until we were off the South Foreland. The weather then
moderating, I steered for Ramsgate harbor, and the schooner was safely
moored alongside the wall of the East Pier in six days to the hour from
the date of our receiving the two seamen from the Talavera.

You will suppose that Miss Noble long before this had written a
letter--nay, had written four letters--to her father ready for
instantly posting on her arrival anywhere. It seems that he had four
addresses--his house in Cumberland, his house in town, and two clubs,
one in London and one in the north--and she was determined that her
letters should not be delayed through his absence from one address or
another. These letters were immediately posted, but communication in
those days was not as it is now, and if it happened that her father
was in Cumberland, then, let him post it and coach it as he would, it
must occupy him hard upon four days--and perhaps five days--to reach
Ramsgate.

Certain Custom House officers came on board and rummaged the schooner
for contraband cargo. They stared hard at the cabin furniture, and
moved and groped here and there with eyes full of suspicion. I told
Miss Noble that my immediate business now lay at the Custom House, and
I begged to know what her plans were, that I might help her to further
them.

"I will go to a hotel," she answered, "and there wait for my father. As
you are going into the town, will you engage a sitting-room and bedroom
for me at the best hotel in the place? And I will also ask you to order
a trunk-maker to send a portmanteau down to this schooner, otherwise
I shall not know how to pack my ball-dress and jewelry. This dress,"
said she, looking down at the robe in which she was attired, and which
had formed a portion of the apparel that Don Christoval had laid in for
her, "I shall continue to wear until my father brings me the dresses I
have written for."

"I will do what you ask," said I, and, leaving her on board, I climbed
the ladder affixed to the pier wall, and bent my steps in the direction
of the Custom House.

The receiver was a little, eager-looking man, afflicted with several
nervous disorders. He could neither sit nor stand for any length of
time; he blinked hideously, and he also stuttered. My tale took the
form of a deposition, and I omitted no single point of it, save the
assassination of Don Christoval.

"This," said the little receiver, stammering and blinking--"this," he
exclaimed, when I had come to an end, "is a very extraordinary story,
sir."

"It is," said I.

"Captain Noble is a well-known gentleman," said he. "I was for a short
time on duty at Whitehaven, and heard much of him."

"His daughter has written to him," said I, "and he will doubtless be
here as fast as he can travel. And what about the schooner?"

"I must wait for instructions," he answered; "your deposition will be
sent to head-quarters."

"Have I not a lien upon her?"

"For what?" said he.

"For services rendered."

"Seems the other way about, don't it?" said he, with his stammer. "The
services appear to have been rendered by her to you."

"There are two men and a boy who want their wages," said I.

"Who is the owner, d'ye say?" exclaimed the little man.

"Don Lazarillo de Tormes."

"Well, he will be communicated with."

"No, he won't, though," said I. "We shall never hear anything more of
Don Lazarillo de Tormes. What! do you think that the man would dare
come forward and claim his schooner on top of an outrage which would
earn him transportation for life, could they get hold of him in this
country?"

"If he doesn't come forward," said the little receiver, blinking at me,
"and if the schooner remains unclaimed for any length of time, why,
then she will be sold; and there'll be your opportunity for asserting
your rights."

I walked into the town, leaving the little receiver putting on his hat
to view the wonderful schooner, with a hope, too, of catching a sight
of Miss Noble. I obtained the required accommodation for the lady at
the Albion Hotel; then, observing a shop in which some trunks were
displayed, I told the shopkeeper to send one of them, or a portmanteau
if he had such a thing, down to the schooner La Casandra. Entering
the street again, I walked a little way, and, finding myself in the
market-place, stopped to consider. I did not possess a farthing of
money in my pocket, and it would take me some time to draw my little
savings out of that London bank in which they were deposited; but money
for immediate needs I must have, and, addressing a porter in a white
apron, who stood in the market-place smoking a pipe, I asked him to
direct me to a pawnbroker. He pointed with his pipe up the street, and
proceeding in that direction I presently observed the familiar sign of
the three balls. I entered, and put down the gold chain and watch that
had belonged to Don Christoval, and for it I received twenty sovereigns
and a ticket.

I then returned to the schooner, where I found Miss Noble in the cabin
reasoning with the trunk-maker, who had arrived, bearing with him two
or three samples of the desired goods.

"He will not trust me, Mr. Portlack! and yet it is true--and too
absurd--that I can make him nothing but promises of payment."

"Pray, how much do you want?" said I.

"Fourteen shillings," she answered, and she added tranquilly, with a
slight smile, "To think that I should want fourteen shillings!"

I put down a sovereign; the man gave me change, shouldered the
remaining boxes, and went away.

Having escorted Miss Noble to her hotel, I again returned to the
schooner, which I intended should be my home until after the arrival of
Captain Noble. The two sailors asked me what they should do. I advised
them to ship aboard a collier and make their way to London, where they
would easily find some one to advise them as to what proceedings they
should take in respect of reward for the assistance they had rendered
me in carrying the schooner home. Next day they found a collier wanting
men, and, giving them a sovereign, I bade them farewell. I never heard
of them again.

Meanwhile, I kept the negro boy on board the schooner.

We had arrived at Ramsgate on a Wednesday morning. On the afternoon of
the following Tuesday I was pacing the deck of the schooner as she lay
moored against the pier wall. The harbor master had not long left me.
An hour we had spent together, I in talking and he in listening; for
the receiver, with whom he was intimate, had dropped many hints of my
story to him over a glass of whisky and water one night, and he told me
he could not rest until he had heard my version of the extraordinary
romance. It was a brilliant afternoon; a fresh breeze from the west
swept into the harbor between the pier-heads, and the water danced in
light. A few smacks, bowed down by their weight of red canvas, were
endeavoring to beat out to sea. A number of wherries straining at their
painters frolicked in the flashful tumble, past which was the slope
of beach with galleys and small boats high and dry, and many forms of
lounging boatmen. On the milk-white heights of chalk the windows of
the houses glanced in silver fires, which came and went in a sort of
breathing way as they blazed out and were then extinguished by the
violet shadows of masses of swollen cloud majestically rolling under
the sun.

I was gazing with pleasure at this animated 'longshore picture, full of
color and splendor and movement, when I observed a gentleman rapidly
coming along the pier, which happened to be almost deserted. There
was something of a deep-sea roll in his gait, and though he clutched a
stick in one hand, the other hung down at his side in a manner that is
peculiar to people who have long used the sea. I seemed to guess who he
was, and watched him approaching while I knocked the ashes out of my
pipe. He came to the edge of the wall, and, looking down, shouted out
in a hoarse voice:

"Is this schooner the Casandra?"

"Yes, sir," I answered.

He put his hand on the ladder and descended. He had a clean-shaven
face, the color of which at this moment was a fiery red, but then
he had been walking fast. His eyes were large, and remarkable for
an expression of eager expectation, as though he had been all his
life waiting to receive some important communication. His hat was a
broad-brimmed beaver; he was buttoned up in a stout bottle-green coat,
and he was booted after the fashion of country gentlemen of that age.

"My name is Noble--Captain Noble," said he. "Are you Mr. Portlack?"

"I am," said I.

"Give me your hand," he exclaimed. He grasped and squeezed my fingers
almost bloodless, letting go my hand with a vehement jerk as though he
threw it from him. "I thank you for bringing my daughter home, sir. Her
mother thanks you for your attention to her child. You have acted the
part of a gentleman, of a sailor, of a man of honor. I thank you again,
and yet again." Then, glancing along the decks of the vessel, he added,
"So _this_ is the blasted schooner, hey?"

"I trust Miss Noble has told you," said I, "how it happens that I was
on board this vessel on the night of her abduction?"

"Yes," he answered, still continuing to examine the vessel curiously,
now looking aloft, now forward, now aft, as though he could not take
too complete a view of the craft. "Yes, she told me. The scoundrels!
Thank God! I shot one of 'em. I would have shot 'em all, but the
ruffians stood over me and my son with naked cutlasses and loaded
pistols."

"I hope they did not burn the house down?"

"No, we extinguished the fire. Fifteen hundred pounds' worth of
damage--that's all!" He made a cut through the air with his stick,
exclaiming: "The rogues! the villains! They took me unaware. So many of
them, too! How many were there?"

"Two Spaniards," said I, "the master of this schooner, and four
seamen. You were attacked by seven."

"Seven!" he cried. "Seven against two! for as to my coachman and
footman--what do you think? They drove away--by heavens! they lashed
the horses and bolted! I should like to go below; I should like to
examine this blackguard craft. A fine, stout vessel all the same. A
pirate in her day, no doubt."

We descended into the cabin, which he at once made the round of,
peering at the pictures, staring at the looking-glasses, examining
the chairs, as though he were in a museum and every object was
extraordinarily curious.

"And pray, how is Miss Noble, sir?" said I. "I have not seen her since
Tuesday."

"Very well; wonderfully well," he answered.

"How do you find her in looks after her terrible experience?"

"Why, neither her mother nor I see any change. She is a shade paler
than she commonly is. But the girl has the heart of a lioness."

"So she has, sir."

"Now," said he, "Mr. Portlack, tell me about those two cursed
Spaniards. I want to get at them."

He flung his stick upon the table and threw himself into an arm-chair.

"What did your daughter tell you about those two men?" said I.

"Why, she was insensible, she says, for the greater part of the time,
and you informed her that, on the day of her recovery, you transshipped
the two miscreants at their request. What vessel received them?" and
here he pulled out a pocket-book and a pencil-case, with the intention
of taking notes.

"Your daughter told you that she was insensible, sir, and that she
continued insensible for many days?"

"Yes," said he, flourishing his pencil with an irritable gesture,
clearly annoyed at my not answering _his_ question.

"That," said I, "is all that she would be able to tell you."

My manner caused him to view me steadfastly, and the odd expression of
expectation in his eyes grew more defined.

"When your daughter awoke from her first swoon, Captain Noble, she
awoke--mad."

"What do you mean by mad?" he said.

"She was a maniac," said I. "And I wish that were all."

"Out with it--out with it _all_, then, man, for God's sake!" he
exclaimed.

"Only one Spaniard, along with the Spanish steward, left the schooner.
The body of the other Spaniard we dropped overboard."

He put his note-book on the table and tightly folded his arms on his
breast. I believe, though I could not be sure, that he then guessed
what I was about to tell him.

"I knew that your daughter was mad," said I. "Don Christoval introduced
me into her cabin, hoping, I know not what, from my visit. It was not
long after, that, being in the quarters which I then occupied yonder,"
said I, pointing, "I heard a terrible cry, and opening that door there
I witnessed Don Christoval in the act of falling and expiring, stabbed
to the heart by your daughter, who stood just within her cabin--that
one there--grasping a large knife she had managed to get possession of."

He fell back in his chair, and remained for some moments looking at
me as though he could not understand my meaning; then a sort of groan
escaped him, and he got up and began to march about the cabin.

"These are dreadful tidings for a father's ears," he exclaimed,
stopping abreast of me. Then his mood changed with almost electric
swiftness, and, hitting the table a heavy blow with his fist, he roared
out: "By --, but it served the ruffian right! It was _my_ spirit
working in her, mad as she might be. That's how I would have served
him, and the rest of them, one and all--the atrocious villains!"

"Of course you know," said I, "that your daughter is utterly ignorant
of having slain that Spaniard--ignorant of that, and ignorant that she
was out of her mind: though some dark fancy seemed to haunt her for a
while, until, by a falsehood, which I detest, I dispelled it."

"What did you tell her?"

"She asked me if she had been mad, and I said 'No'!"

"Mr. Portlack," he cried, grasping me by the hand, "you have the
delicacy of a gentleman. The more I know of you the more I honor
you.... And she stabbed him to the heart? Oh, now, to think of it! Her
mother must not be told--there must not be a whisper; she is all nerves
and imagination. Who knows of this beside yourself?"

"The five seamen," said I; "the five of a crew of Englishmen, who, when
they found that they had been tricked by the Spaniards, resolved to
leave the schooner. They sailed away in a boat for Cadiz when we were
off that port. They know all about the assassination; but, take my word
for it, they'll never let you hear of them on this side of the grave."

He began to pace the cabin afresh.

"There is another," said I, "who possesses the secret, to call it so."

"You mean yourself?"

"No; a lad--a negro boy. He is now in the schooner. I am troubled
to know what to do with him. I have made him believe that he and I
will both be hanged if he opens his lips. Yet, he may talk by and by,
Captain Noble. He is a mere lad."

"What is to be done?" said he, frowning. "Tough as I am, it would
break my heart if this were to be known. Conceive the effect of the
intelligence upon my daughter. Great Heaven! if you could but tell me
it was a dream of yours! Upon _your_ secrecy, Mr. Portlack, I know we
can all depend. Your behavior throughout is warrant enough for me. How
to thank you--But about this boy? Let me see him, will you?"

I at once went on deck and called down into the forecastle, where the
lad lay asleep in a bunk. I told him to clean himself and come to me
in the cabin, and I then returned to Captain Noble.

"There is only this lad to deal with," said I. "Believe me when I
assure you that you will never hear more of those five seamen, nor of
Don Lazarillo and the steward. Captain Dopping, the master of this
schooner, you yourself shot dead. As for me--But for myself I will say
no more than this: I hold that your daughter was barbarously used.
The men who stole her, and who drove her mad by stealing her, were
scoundrels whom I would have shot down as I would shoot down a brace
of mad mongrels, sooner than have suffered them, as foreigners, to
lay violent hands upon a countrywoman of mine, and upon so good and
sweet a young lady as your daughter. My one desire throughout has been
to make all the amends in my power. I was innocently betrayed into
this villainous business, and I trust, Captain Noble, that the theory
of reparation I have endeavored to work out establishes me in your
mind as a man in whose keeping the tragic secret of this adventure is
absolutely safe."

He endeavored to speak, but his voice failed him. He took my hand in
both his, and in silence looked at me with his eyes dim with tears.

"And now about the boy," said I. "It occurs to me that you might have
influence to procure him some situation on board a man-of-war, going
abroad or at present abroad."

He was about to answer, when the lad's legs showed in the companion-way
and down he came. Captain Noble stared at him, and he stared at the
Captain.

"A likely lad, Mr. Portlack. Does he speak English?"

"Do you speak English, Tom?" said I.

"Nuffin but English, de Lord be praised!" he answered, grinning.

Captain Noble mused as he eyed him. "You have behaved very honestly,"
said he, "and I shall want to do you a kindness. Come to the hotel
where I am stopping to-morrow morning at ten o'clock, and you and I
will have a chat."

"I'll be dere, sah."

"It will give me time to think," said Captain Noble in an aside to
me. "And come you and dine with us this evening, Mr. Portlack, will
you?" I glanced down at my clothes. "Never mind about your dress," he
continued. "We shall expect you at half-past six o'clock."

He stayed for another quarter of an hour, and then left the schooner.

Never had anything before, and I may say never has anything since,
proved so memorable to me as that dinner with Captain and Lady Ida
Noble and Miss Noble at the Albion Hotel, Ramsgate. The reason why
it was memorable you shall hear in a minute. I found Lady Ida Noble
very different from the individual I had supposed her to be, on the
representations of Don Christoval. I expected to meet a tall, haughty,
and forbidding lady, of an ice-like coldness of demeanor; instead,
I found her an impulsive little woman, in a high degree nervous and
emotional, possessed of a ready capacity of tears, resembling her
daughter in face and figure in a sort of miniature way--for Miss Noble
stood half a head taller than her mother--and a refined lady in all she
said and did. She overwhelmed me with thanks, and seemed unable to make
enough of me.

Miss Noble looked very well indeed; there was color in her cheek and
fire in her soft dark eyes, and a quiet vivacity of good health in her
bearing and movements. Indeed, her swift recovery, or rather, let me
say, her emergence into health from the horrible disease of insanity
and from her long death-like condition of catalepsy, impressed me then,
as it impresses me still, as the most startling and extraordinary of
all the incidents of our startling and extraordinary voyage.

When the ladies had left us, Captain Noble put a cigar-case upon the
table, and said:

"I have been thinking about that negro boy. I have a relative in the
West Indies, and I will send the lad out to him, if he is willing to
go. I will tell my relative the story of my daughter's abduction,
explain that I want the matter kept secret, and bid him have an eye to
the lad."

"He is a good boy," said I, "and deserves a comfortable berth."

"He shall have it," said Captain Noble, "and I will put money in his
pocket, too. I'll talk with him in the morning."

He then questioned me about Don Lazarillo, but I could tell him
nothing. The very name, indeed, I said, might be assumed, though I
thought this improbable, seeing that the other had sailed under true
colors. In talking of these Spaniards he, by design or accident,
informed me that his daughter was heiress to a considerable property.
I can not be sure of the amount he named, but I have a recollection
of his saying that on her mother's death she would inherit a fortune
of between sixty thousand and eighty thousand pounds. One subject
leading to another, he inquired as to the payment of the sailors of
La Casandra. I answered that Don Lazarillo, being terrified by the
seamen's threats, had entered his dead friend's berth and produced a
bag of gold which exactly sufficed to discharge the claims of the men.

"And what did the rogues offer you, Mr. Portlack?" said he.

"Fifty guineas, sir."

"Did you get it?"

I smiled, and answered that, instead of money, Don Lazarillo had given
me Don Christoval's watch and chain and diamond ring.

"Have you the things upon you?" said he.

"I have the ring," said I, pulling it out of my waistcoat pocket. "The
watch and chain I pawned for twenty pounds, being without money, save
a trifle in a savings bank in London. What this ring is worth I'm sure
I can't imagine," said I, looking at it. "I hope it will yield me an
outfit. I as good as lost everything I possessed when the Ocean Ranger
sailed away in chase of the Yankee, leaving me adrift."

He extended his hand for the ring, and appeared to examine it. "Have
you the pawn-ticket for the watch and chain?" he asked. I gave it to
him. "I should like to possess that watch and chain," said he, "and I
should like also to possess this ring. I'll buy them from you."

I bowed, scarcely as yet seeing my way. He pulled out his pocket-book
and extracted a check already filled in.

"You will do me the favor," said he, "to accept this as a gift, and I
will do you the favor to accept this pawn-ticket and ring as a gift."

The check was for five hundred guineas.

This noble check is the reason for my calling that dinner at the Albion
Hotel, Ramsgate, a memorable one. It laid the foundations of the little
fortune which I now possess, but which without that check I should
never have possessed, so hopelessly unprofitable is the vocation of
the mariner. But I did even better than that out of the ill-fated Don
Christoval and his friend, for, nobody appearing to claim the schooner,
she was sold after a considerable lapse of time; and when I returned
from a voyage in which I had gone as chief officer, I was agreeably
surprised at being informed, by the solicitor whom I had requested to
watch my interests during my absence, that the claim he had made on my
behalf as virtually the salvor of the schooner had been admitted, and
that I was the richer by a proportion of the proceeds amounting to a
hundred and ninety pounds.

Whether because of the influence possessed by Captain Noble, or
because the authorities (whoever _they_ might be) decided not to
take proceedings against me as the only discoverable member of the
gang who had forced Miss Noble from her home, certain it is that I
never heard anything more of the matter. I took care that my address
should be known, and carefully informed the receiver at Ramsgate, and
Captain Noble also, that I was willing while ashore at any moment to
come forward and state what I knew; but, as I have before said, I was
never communicated with. The whole story lay as dead in the minds of
those few who knew of it as though the events I have related had never
occurred.

Five years had expired since the date of my having safely restored Miss
Noble to her parents.

I was now commanding a large Australian passenger ship, and among those
who sailed to Melbourne with me was a gentleman named Fairfield. He
was a solicitor in practice at Carlisle. One day, in conversing with
him, by the merest accident I happened to pronounce the name of Captain
Noble. He asked me if I knew him. I answered warily that I had heard
of him. He grew garrulous--an unusual weakness in a lawyer--and, in the
course of a long quarter-deck yarn, told me that Miss Noble had been
for two years out of her mind, tended as a lunatic by nurses in her
father's house, but for nearly two years now she had been perfectly
well, and some six months ago had married Sir Ralph A----, Bart.,
a widower, whose estate lay within five miles of her father's. He
said that there was some mystery about the lady's past. She had been
abducted and ill-used. He never could get at the truth himself, and
would like to learn it. He understood that she went out of her mind
because of some horrible haunting fancy of having committed a murder.

That was all he could tell me, and from that day to this I have never
been able to hear of either her or her people.


THE END.




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Transcriber's Notes:

Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).

Punctuation inaccuracies were silently corrected.

The following changes have been made:

  Page  76: her stem-head, and flashed it _was changed to_
            her stemhead, and flashed it

  Page 160: she stood motiontionless gazing _was changed to_
            she stood motionlessly gazing

  Page 198: wrong that has deen done her _was changed to_
            wrong that has been done her

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End of Project Gutenberg's The Tragedy of Ida Noble, by William Clark Russell

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