CHAPTER XXIII. THE COLONEL AND HER LADYSHIP.

Wilfrid saw them too in a flash. He slightly reeled, making a fierce grasp at some gear against the mainmast to steady himself. Distant as they were, one could see, nevertheless, that they were an uncommonly fine couple. A man who was apparently the mate of the barque stood near them, and, though seemingly above rather than below the average stature, he looked a very poor little fellow alongside the towering and commanding figure of the Colonel. I witnessed no gestures, no movements, nothing of any kind to denote astonishment or alarm in either of them. They stood stock-still side by side, surveying us over an open rail that exposed their forms from their feet; he, so far as I could make out, attired in dark blue cloth or serge, and a cap with a naval peak, the top protected by a white cover; she in a dress of some sort of yellow material that fitted her figure as a glove fits the hand. But more than this one’s sight could not distinguish, saving that her hat, that was very wide at the brim, was apparently of straw or chip with one side curled up to a large crimson flower there.

I saw Miss Laura gazing with the fascination of a bird at some gilded and glowing and emerald-eyed serpent. Captain Crimp, looking round at his vessel just then, said, ‘Them’s the parties.’

‘Ay, there’s her ladyship,’ whipped out Finn, biting his lip, however, as though ashamed of the exclamation, with a dodge of his head to right and left as he levelled a look at the couple under the sharp of his hand.

‘Finn,’ cried Wilfrid, with a face as crimson as though he had exposed it to the sun all day, and with a note in his utterance as if his teeth were setting spite of him whilst he spoke, ‘get a boat lowered and brought to the gangway. You, myself, Miss Jennings, and my cousin will go aboard that barque at once. Captain Crimp will attend us in his own boat.’ He turned swiftly upon the master of the barque, and exclaimed imperiously, with wrath surging into his words till it rendered the key of them almost shrill, ‘I count upon your assistance. You must order those people off your vessel. Yonder lady is my wife, and the man alongside of her I must have—here!’ stamping his foot and pointing[216] vehemently to the deck, ‘that I may punish him. Do you understand me?’

‘Why, of course I do,’ answered Captain Crimp, manifestly awed by the wild look my cousin fastened upon him, by his manner, full of haughtiness and passion, and his tone of fierce command. ‘What I says is, do what ye like, only let me be out of the smother. My crew’s troublesome enough. Don’t want to get in no mess through castaway folks.’

Finn was yelling orders along the deck for a boat’s crew to lay aft.

On a sudden the yacht was hailed by the man whom I had noticed standing near Colonel Hope-Kennedy. ‘Schooner ahoy!’

Jacob Crimp went to the rail. ‘Hallo!’ he bawled.

‘Will yer tell my capt’n, please,’ shouted the fellow from the barque’s quarterdeck, ‘that the lady and gent desire him to come aboard, as they don’t want nothen to do with your schooner? They prefer to keep where they are, and request that no more time be lost.’

‘Ha!’ cried Wilfrid, looking round at me with an iron grin; then he half screamed to the men who were running aft, ‘Bear a hand with the boat, my lads, bear a hand with the boat! We’ve found what we’ve been hunting in yonder craft—and by God, men, we’ll have that couple out of it or sink the vessel they stand on!’

Jack is almost certain to cheer to a speech of this kind; the sailors burst out into a loud hurrah as they sprang to the falls. Captain Crimp walked to his brother’s side, and putting his hand to his mouth cried to the mate of his vessel, for such the fellow undoubtedly was, ‘Mr. Lobb.’

‘Hillo, sir.’

‘My compliments to the lady and gent, and we’re all a-coming aboard. I don’t want no trouble, tell ’em, and I don’t mean to have none.’

Scarce was the sense of this remark gatherable when Lady Monson walked to the companion and vanished below, leaving the Colonel standing erect as a sentry at the rail.

‘She’s gone to her cabin, and will lock herself in probably. What’ll be to do then?’ said I to Miss Laura.

She wrung her hands, but made no answer.

Meanwhile, in hot haste the sailors had cast adrift the gripes of the boat and lowered her. She was a roomy fabric, pulling six oars, and capable of comfortably stowing eighteen or twenty people.

‘Mr. Crimp,’ said Wilfrid, ‘get tackles aloft ready for swaying out of the hold the eighteen-pounder that lies there. D’ye understand?’

‘Ay, it shall be done,’ answered Crimp, coming away from his brother, with whom he had been exchanging some muttering sentences.

‘An eighteen-pounder!’ cried Captain Crimp, whipping round.

‘Have everything in readiness,’ cried Wilfrid, making a move[217] towards the gangway, ‘to get the gun mounted, with ball and cartridge for loading. See to it now, or look to yourself, Crimp. Come!’ he cried.

He seized Miss Laura by the hand; Finn and I followed, Captain Crimp rolling astern of us. We descended the side and entered the boat, and then shoved off, waiting when we were within a length or two of the yacht’s side for Captain Crimp to drop into his own boat.

‘Skipper,’ sang out Finn to him, ‘hail your barque, will’ee, and tell ’em to get a ladder or steps over.’

This was done; the sailors of the barque, along with the three or four yachtsmen who had been picked up out of the ‘Shark’s’ boat, scenting plenty of excitement in the air, tumbled about with alacrity. They saw more sport than they could have got out of an evening at a theatre, and I question if a man of them could have been got to handle a brace until this wild ocean drama had been played through. Meanwhile the Colonel stood rigid at the rail looking on.

‘What is to be done, Mr. Monson,’ whispered Miss Laura to me, ‘if Henrietta has locked herself up in her cabin and refuses to come out?’

‘Let us hope that her door has no lock,’ said I. ‘There are easy ways, however, of coaxing a bolt.’

‘Give way, lads!’ cried Finn. The six blades cut the water sharp as knives, and a few strokes carried us alongside the barque. We held a grim silence, saving that as the bow oar picked up his boat-hook he expectorated violently to the evil smell that seemed to come floating off the vessel’s side as she rolled towards us, driving the air our way. Evil it was, as you may suppose of a cargo of guano mixed up with the rotting carcases of sea-fowl under the blaze of the sun whose roasting eye of fire was fast crawling to its meridian. The faint breeze was dying, and the heat alongside the barque was scarce sufferable with the tingling of the luminary’s light like fiery needles darting into one’s eyes and skin off the smooth surface that flashed with a dazzle of new tin. The Colonel had left the rail and had seated himself upon a little skylight, his arms folded. The first to climb the side was Wilfrid; Finn and I followed, supporting Miss Laura between us; then came Captain Crimp. The vessel was an old craft, her decks somewhat grimy, with a worm-eaten look; the smell of the cargo coupled with the heat was hardly supportable; the crew, half naked, unwashed, and many of them wild with hair, stood sweltering in a cluster near the fore-hatch staring at us, grinning and nudging one another. But the men who had belonged to the ‘Shark’ were already leaning over the side calling to our men to hook their boat more forward that they might have a yarn.

Wilfrid, who was a little in advance of us, walked steadily up to Colonel Hope-Kennedy, who rose as my cousin approached him, letting fall his arms from their folded posture. Handsome he was[218] not—at least to my taste—but he was what would be called a fine man—exceedingly so; six feet one or more in stature, with a body and limbs perfectly proportioned to his height; small dark eyes heavily thatched, coal-black whiskers and moustache, ivory-white teeth, and an expression of intelligence in his face as his air was one of distinction. He had a very careworn look, was pale—haggard almost; dark hollows under the eyes, brought about, as I might readily suppose, by exposure and privation in an open boat. I could witness no agitation in him whatever; his nerves seemed of steel, and he confronted Wilfrid’s approach haughtily erect, merely swaying to the heel of the deck, passionless and as unmoved in his aspect as any figure of wax.

Wilfrid walked right up to him and said composedly, whilst he pointed to the gangway, ‘You will be good enough to enter my boat that my crew may convey you at once to the yacht.’

‘I shall do nothing of the kind, sir,’ answered the Colonel quietly, but in a tone distinctly audible to us who had come to a halt some paces away. ‘Captain Crimp.’

‘Sir?’ responded the master of the barque, with an uneasy shuffling step or two towards the couple.

‘You are the commander of this vessel. It is in your power to order your deck to be cleared of these visitors. I am your passenger, and look to you for protection. I decline to exchange this vessel for that yacht, and request, therefore, that you will proceed on your voyage.’ He spoke with a fine air of dignity, the effect of which was improved, I thought, by his giving himself slightly the manner of an injured man.

‘Sir, I want no trouble,’ answered Captain Crimp. ‘I onderstand that the lady you’re with is this gentleman’s wife. Every man’s got a right to his own. The gentleman means to take the lady back with him to his yacht, and I don’t think that there’s any one aboard this wessel as’ll stop him.’

‘I mean to take my wife,’ exclaimed Wilfrid, still preserving what in him was an amazing composure of voice and manner, ‘and I mean to take you too. Colonel Hope-Kennedy, you are a bloody rascal! You shall fight me—but not here. You shall fight me—yonder;’ he pointed to the ‘Bride.’ ‘This you must repay.’ He struck him hard upon the face with the back of his hand.

The cheek that had received the blow turned scarlet, the other was of a ghastly pallor. He looked at Wilfrid for a moment with such a fire in his eye, such a hellish expression of wrath in his face, that I involuntarily sprang forward to the help of my cousin, resolved that there should be no vulgar, degraded exhibition of fisticuffs and wrestling between the men.

But I was misled by the Colonel’s looks. He folded his arms, and said—exhibiting in his utterance a marvellous control over his temper—‘That blow was needless. I will fight you here or on your own vessel, as you please. But if I fight you yonder the con[219]dition must be’—he was now looking at me and addressing me—‘that I am afterwards at liberty to return to this vessel.’

Wilfrid eyed him with a savage smile. I approached the man, raising my hat. He instantly returned the salute.

‘Sir,’ I said, ‘I am Sir Wilfrid Monson’s cousin, and agree to the condition you name. To save any further exhibition of temper before those men there, may I entreat you to at once step into the yacht’s boat?’

His eye wandered about the deck for a moment or two; he then said, ‘I am without a second. That need not signify. But I must be satisfied that the duel in other respects will be in accordance with the practice of such things ashore.’

‘Oh! certainly,’ I answered.

‘What are to be the weapons?’ he inquired.

‘Pistols,’ I replied.

‘I have no pistols. I have lost all by the foundering of my yacht.’

‘We have pistols,’ said I.

He bowed, then his eye roamed over the deck again, and he exclaimed, with the air of a man thinking aloud, ‘I am without a second,’ adding decisively, ‘I am perfectly willing to give Sir Wilfrid Monson satisfaction, but I submit, sir, that it would be more convenient to wait until he and I have arrived home——’

‘No!’ thundered my cousin. ‘I do not mean that you shall arrive home.’

The Colonel glanced at him with a sneer.

‘Will you be so good as to step into the boat, sir?’ said I.

He hung in the wind with a look at the little companion hatch. ‘The lady, I presume,’ he said, addressing me, ‘is to be left——’

‘Do not mention her name!’ said Wilfrid in a trembling voice, approaching him by a stride with a countenance dark with the menace of mad blood.

The Colonel fell away from him with a swiftly passing convulsion of countenance such as might have been wrought by a sudden spasm of the heart.

‘This way, sir,’ said Finn, moving in a bustling fashion towards the gangway.

I confess I drew a breath of relief when the Colonel, without a word, and with a mechanical step, followed him. There was, indeed, no other course that he could adopt. Captain Crimp had retreated doggedly to the gangway abreast of the one we had entered by, and lay over the rail in a wooden way, with resolution to give himself no concern in this business strong in his posture. The Colonel saw, therefore, that it was useless to hope for his interference. In a few moments he had descended the side, and was being pulled aboard the ‘Bride,’ with Finn standing up in the stern sheets and singing out to us that he would return for the rest of the party shortly.

I now missed Miss Laura, and was looking around the deck for her, when she suddenly came up out of the cabin. I was standing[220] close to the hatch at the moment, which was the reason, perhaps, of her addressing me instead of Wilfrid, who was at the skylight gazing at the withdrawing boat with an absent face.

‘Mr. Monson,’ she exclaimed, ‘my sister will not answer me. I do not know where she is.’

‘Have you tried all the berths?’

‘I have knocked at every door and called to her. I did not like to turn the handles.’

I thought to myself, suppose her ladyship has committed suicide!—lying dead below with a knife in her heart! Truly a pleasant ending of our chase, with a chance on top of it of the Colonel driving a bullet through my cousin’s brains! The girl’s gaze was fastened on me; her pallor was grievous, her face full of shame, grief, consternation; her very beauty had a sort of passing withered look like a rose in the hot atmosphere of a room.

‘Wilfrid!’ I exclaimed.

He brought his eyes away from the boat with a start and approached us. ‘Miss Jennings has been overhauling the cabin below,’ said I, ‘and cannot get your wife to answer her.’

‘Have you seen her, Laura?’ he cried in a half-breathless way, stooping his face to hers, with his near-sighted eyes moistening till I looked to see a tear fall.

‘No,’ she answered. ‘She has shut herself up in her cabin. I have knocked at every berth and called to her, but she will not answer me.’

His face changed. He shouted to Captain Crimp, who was leaning with his back against the starboard rail near the gangway, watching us out of the corner of his eyes, and waiting for us to take the next step. He came to us.

‘Kindly show us,’ said Wilfrid, ‘the cabin which the lady occupies.’

‘This way,’ he answered, and forthwith trundled down the companion steps, we at his heels. We found ourselves in what Captain Crimp would doubtless have called a state cabin, a gloomy dirty interior with a board-like rude table that travelled upon stanchions so that it could be thrust up out of the road when room was wanted, whilst on either hand of it was a row of coarse lockers, the covers of which were liberally scored with the marks of knives that had been used for cutting up cake-tobacco. The upper deck was very low pitched, and, as if the heat and the disgusting smell of the cargo did not suffice, there swung from a blackened beam a lighted globular lamp the flame of which burnt into a coil of thick black smoke that filled the atmosphere with a flavour of hot fat. Yet apparently, to judge by the number of berths this rank and grimy old barque was fitted with, she had served as a passenger vessel in her heyday. There were doors conducting to little cabins forward of the living room, and there were four berths abaft contrived much as the ‘Bride’s’ were, that is to say, rendered accessible by a slender alley-way or corridor.

[221]

‘The lady’s cabin,’ said Captain Crimp, pointing, ‘is the starn one to port, the airiest of ’em all. It was chosen because it was furdest off from this here smell,’ and he snuffled as he spoke.

Wilfrid, followed by Miss Laura, at once walked to the indicated cabin. I remained standing by the table with Crimp, watching my cousin. He tried the handle of the door, found the key turned or a bolt shot, shook it a little, then, after a pause, knocked lightly.

‘Henrietta,’ he exclaimed. ‘It is I—your husband. You know my voice. I want you.’

There was no answer. He knocked again, then Miss Laura exclaimed: ‘Henrietta, open the door. Wilfrid is here—I am here, I, Laura your sister. We have come to take you home to the little one that you left behind you. Oh, Henrietta, dear, for my sake—for your child’s sake, for our father’s sake—’ her voice faltered and she broke down, sobbing piteously.

‘I hope to heaven the woman has not killed herself,’ I exclaimed to Captain Crimp. ‘But it is for you to act now. Step aft with me. You don’t want to keep her on board, I suppose?’

‘Not I,’ he answered.

‘Threaten then to break open the door. If that don’t avail, send at once for your carpenter, for you may then take it that her silence means she lies dead.’

He walked aft and beat with a fist as hard as the stock of a musket, raising a small thunder. ‘Sorry to interfere, lady;’ he exclaimed, talking at the door with his nose within an inch of it; ‘this here’s no job for the likes of me to be messing about with.’ A dead pause. ‘There’s folks who are awaiting for you to come out.’ Here he grasped the handle of the door and boisterously shook it. ‘And as there’s no call now for you to remain, and as loitering in this here heat with the hatches flush with gewhany isn’t to none of our liking, I must beg, mum,’ he shouted, ‘that you’ll slip the bolt inside and open the door.’

Another dead pause. Miss Jennings looked aghast, and indeed the stillness within the cabin now caused me to forebode the worst. It was clear, however, that no fear of the sort had visited Wilfrid. He gazed at the door with a kind of terrier-like expression in his fixed eyes.

Captain Crimp once more beat heavily and again wrestled with the handle, trying the door at the same time with his shoulder. ‘Well, mum,’ he bawled, ‘you will do as you like, I suppose, and so must I. I’m not partial to knocking my ship about, but by thunder! lady, if this here door ain’t opened at once I’ll send for the carpenter to force it.’ Another pause. He added in his hoarsest voice, addressing us generally, ‘Do she know that the gent that’s been keeping her company has gone aboard the yacht?’

‘She’ll know it now,’ I answered, ‘if she has ears to hear with.’

I noticed Wilfrid violently start on my saying this.

[222]

‘Gentlemen,’ said Captain Crimp, ‘I’ll go and fetch the carpenter,’ and he had taken a stride when the bolt within was shot, the handle turned and the door opened.

Had we come fresh from the splendour of the morning on deck we must have had great difficulty in distinguishing objects in the gloom of the little, hot, evil-smelling interior that had been suddenly revealed to us; but the twilight of the narrow passage in which we stood had accustomed our sight to the dim atmosphere. Lady Monson stood before us in the middle of the cabin reared to her fullest stature, her hands clasped in front of her in a posture of passionate resolution. I must confess that she had the noblest figure of any woman I had ever seen, and no queen of tragedy could have surpassed the unconsciously heroic attitude of scorn, indignation, hate, unsoftened by the least air of remorse or shame, that she had assumed.

‘Captain Crimp,’ she cried in a clear, rich, contralto voice that thrilled through and through one with what I must call the intensity of the emotions it conveyed, ‘how dare you threaten me with breaking open my door? I am your passenger—you will be paid for the services you have rendered. I demand your protection. Who are these people? Order them to leave your ship, sir.’

She spoke with her eyes glowing and riveted upon Captain Crimp’s awkward, agitated countenance, never so much as glancing at her husband, at her sister, or at me.

‘Well, mum,’ answered Captain Crimp, passing the back of his hand over his streaming forehead, ‘all that I know is this: here’s a gentleman as says you’re his wife; his yacht lies within heasy reach; he wants you aboard, and if so be that you are his wife, which nobody yet has denied, then you’re bound to go along with him, and I may as well tell’ee that my dooty as a man lies in seeing that ye do go.’ And here the old chap very spunkily bestowed several emphatic nods upon her.

‘Henrietta,’ cried Miss Laura, ‘have you nothing to say to me or to Wilfrid?’

‘Go!’ she shrieked, with a sharp stamp of her foot and a wild, warding-off gesture of her arms, ‘what right have you to follow me. I am my own mistress. Leave me. The mere sight of you will drive me as mad as he is!’ pointing impetuously to Wilfrid but without looking at him.

The poor little darling shrank like a wounded bird, literally cowering behind me, dismayed and terrified, not indeed by the woman’s words, but by the passion in them, the air with which she delivered them, the wrath in her face and the fire in her eyes that would have made you think they reflected a sunset. I looked at Wilfrid. Had she exhibited the least grief, the least shame, any the feeblest hint, in short, of womanly weakness, I believe he would have fallen upon his knees to her. I had observed an expression almost of adoration enter into and soften his lineaments to an aspect that I do not exaggerate in calling beautiful[223] through the exquisite pathos of the tenderness that had informed it on her throwing open the door and revealing herself to us; but that look was gone. Her scornful reference to his madness had replaced it by an ugly shadow, a scowl of malignant temper. He stepped over the coaming of the doorway, and extended his hand as if to grasp her.

‘Come!’ he exclaimed, breathing dangerously fast. ‘I want you. This is merely wasting time. Come you must! Do you understand? Come!’ he repeated, still keeping his arm outstretched.

She recoiled from him as though a cartridge had exploded at her feet and pressed her back against the side of a bunk, the edge of which she gripped with her hands.

‘Leave me!’ she said, looking at him now. ‘I hate you. You cannot control me. I abhor the very memory of you. Madman and wretch! why have you followed me?’

Captain Crimp, who had been shuffling restlessly near me, now whipped in, hoarse, angry, and determined; ‘See here, mum; all this calling of names isn’t going to sarve anybody’s purpose. I see how the land lies now. The gentleman has a right to his own, and it’s proper ye should know that ’tain’t my intention to keep ye. Let there be no more noise aboard this wessel, I beg; otherwise you’ll be having my crew shoving down into the cabin to know what’s happening. Give her your arm, sir,’ he cried, addressing me, ‘and lead her to the gangway. Your boat’ll be retarned by this time.’

My arm, thought I! Egad, I’d liefer snug the paw of a tigress under my elbow!

‘Wilfrid,’ I exclaimed, ‘let me exhort you to go on deck and take Miss Jennings with you. I am sure Lady Monson will listen to my representations. It is due to her to remember that we are four and that she stands alone, and that the suddenness, the unexpectedness of this visit, scarcely gives her a chance fully to realise what has come about, and to form an intelligent decision.’

She uttered a short hysterical laugh, without a smile, whilst her face glimmered white with rage in the gloom of the cabin. ‘My decision is quite intelligent enough to satisfy me,’ she said, in a voice so irritatingly scornful that it is out of my power to furnish the least idea of it, whilst she looked at me as though she would strike me dead with her eyes; ‘I mean to remain here.’

‘No, mum, no,’ growled Captain Crimp.

‘You know, I presume, Lady Monson,’ said I, ‘that Colonel Hope-Kennedy has gone on board the “Bride”?’

‘I do not care,’ she answered; ‘Captain Crimp, I insist upon your requesting these people to leave me.’

‘Come!’ cried Wilfrid furiously, and he grasped her by the arm.

She released herself with a shriek and struck him hard on the[224] face; a painful and disgusting scene was threatened; Miss Jennings was crying bitterly; I dreaded the madman in Wilfrid, and sprang between them as he grasped his wife’s arm again.

‘For God’s sake, Wilfrid——’ I began, but was silenced by her shrieks. She sent up scream after scream, wrestling with her husband, whose grip of steel I was powerless to relax, and who, with a purple face and a devilish grin of insanity upon his lips, was dragging her towards the door. On a sudden she seemed to suffocate, she beat the air wildly with her arm that was free. Then clapped her hand to her heart, swayed a little, and fell to the deck. I was just in time to save her head from striking the hard plank, and there she lay in a dead faint.