CHAPTER XXXIII. THE SECOND NIGHT.

The dim hectic that was lingering in the atmosphere when we entered the hold was now gone; the evening had fallen on a sudden as dark as midnight: it was all as black as factory smoke away west and overhead, but a star still shone weak as a glow-worm in the east. A second flash of lightning, but this time afar, glanced out the figure of Lady Monson standing on the forecastle and calling to Laura.

‘She is not hurt!’ I exclaimed.

‘I am coming, Henrietta,’ said Laura.

‘I shall die if I am left alone here!’ cried Lady Monson. ‘I believed that that flash just now had struck me blind.’

‘Keep hold of my arm, Laura,’ said I, ‘and walk as if the deck were filled with snakes.’

We cautiously stepped the wild growths of the planks, rendered as dangerous as the holes outside of the rocks by the dusk, and approached Lady Monson.

‘May I conduct you to the cabin?’ said I.

‘I would rather remain here,’ she answered; but there was no longer the old note of imperious determination in her voice. In fact it was easy to see that she did not care to be alone when the[335] lightning was fierce and when a heavy storm of wet and wind was threatened.

‘Shall we take in this here sail, sir?’ cried Finn from the other side of the deck, ‘before it’s blown away?’

‘No; keep all fast, Finn,’ said I; ‘her ladyship desires to remain here.’

‘Are you going to stop with me, Laura?’ said Lady Monson.

‘Suffer me to answer for Miss Jennings,’ I exclaimed. ‘I make myself answerable for her health and comfort. I could not endure that she should be exposed when there is a safe and dry shelter within a biscuit-toss of us.’

Just then was a blinding leap of lightning; the electric spark seemed to flash sheer from the western confines to the eastern star, scoring the black firmament with a line of fire that was like the splitting of it. A mighty blast of thunder followed.

‘Hark!’ I cried, as the echoes of it went roaring and rolling into the distance. My ear had caught a rushing and hissing noise, and looking into the direction of the sea, over which the thick of the tempest was hanging, I saw what seemed a line of light approaching us.

‘Rain!’ I shouted, ‘flashing the phosphorescent water up into flame.’

‘No, sir, no!’ roared Cutbill; ‘it’s wind, sir, wind! ’Tis the boiling of the water that looks like fire.’

He was right. An instant’s listening enabled me to catch the yell of the squall sounding in the distance like a moaning sort of whistling through the seething of the ploughed and lacerated waters.

‘Laura, give me your hand,’ I cried. ‘Lady Monson, if you are coming——’

‘I will accompany you,’ she answered, and very nimbly, and much to my astonishment, she slipped her hand under my arm and clung to me. So! There was yet a little of the true woman remaining in her, and it would necessarily discover itself soonest in moments of terror.

The illuminated square of hatchway not only enabled us to avoid the ugly gap down which it was mighty easy to plump by mistake in the confusion of the blackness and in the bewilderment following upon the blinding playing of the lightning; it threw out a faint haze of light that went sifting into a considerable area over the main deck, so that we were able to make haste without risk; and after a few minutes of floundering, with an interval of groping when we came to the incline of shells which conducted to the quarter-deck, I succeeded in lodging the two ladies fairly in the shelter of the cabin, and not a moment too soon. We were scarce entered when a squall of terrific violence burst upon the little island. It took the galleon with a glare of lightning of noontide brilliance, a roar of thunder, and such a hurricane howling of wind that no tornado ever shrieked under the heavens more deafeningly.[336] One by one the men arrived. The lightning was so continuous that I could see their figures stealing along the deck, and they made for the cabin door by it as directly as though guided by a stretched hand-line.

‘Did you get in the sail?’ I cried to Finn.

‘Lord love ’ee, sir,’ he roared, ‘it fled to the first blast like a puff of baccy smoke.’

‘Hark to the sea a-getting up!’ said Dowling. ‘Here’s a breeze to start this old waggin. Stand by for a slide, says I. I wish them holes was plugged.’

‘Belay, you old owl,’ grumbled Cutbill hoarsely; ‘ain’t there blue lights enough here without you hanging of more out? There’ll be no sliding with this here hulk onless it’s to the bottom when it’s time for her to go.’

Nevertheless the sea had risen as if by magic. The swift heaping up of it was the stranger because there had been no preceding swell. The first of the squall had swept over a sheet of water polished as any mirror without a heave, as might have been seen by a glance at the island beach, where the edge of the ocean was scarce breathing. Now the shrilling and screaming of the wind was filled with the noise of ploughed and coiling surges dissolving in masses upon the rocks from which they recoiled with a horrible hissing and ringing sound. The continual electric play filled the cabin with light as it glittered upon the sail over the skylight above, or coloured the black square of the door with violet and green and golden brilliance. It was true tropic lightning, a heaven of racing flames, and the thunder a continuous roll, one burst following another till the explosions seemed blent into a uniform roar.

Lady Monson had seated herself on Laura’s mattress. My dear girl and I reposed upon a roll of the sail; the men had flung themselves down, one leaning his head upon his elbow, another Lascar fashion, a third sitting upright with his arms folded. There were no wonders in this cabin as in the hold, no marvellous and beautiful conformations, self-luminous as one might say, and making a greenish moonlight radiance of their own. Yet the interior seemed the wilder to the imagination for its very nakedness, for the austere desolation of it as it glanced out to the levin brand to its castle-shaped confines. It forced fancy to do its own work, to revitalise it with the ghostly shapes of beings that in life had filled it, to regarnish it with the feudal furniture of its age. I was heartily thankful that the two skeletons had been turned out. By every flash I could see Lady Monson’s black eyes roaming wildly, and though I might have counted upon Laura’s spirit whilst I was by her side and held her hand, I could have reckoned with equal assurance upon some wretched distracting display in her sister, had the two embracing skeletons remained in yonder corner to serve as a moral for the motive of this voyage, to be witnessed by the illumination of the lightning, and to add a horror of their own to the[337] sound of the thunder, to the fierce crying of the wind, and to the boiling of the beating seas.

‘I say, Finn,’ I shouted to him, ‘here’s the wind before the rain, my friend—you were mistaken.’

‘My sight ain’t what it was, sir,’ he answered.

‘It’s a commotion to blow something along in sight of us,’ said Cutbill.

‘Wonder if that there hold’s lighted up every night like that?’ said Head; ‘enough to make a man think that there must be sperrits aboard who trims their inwisible lamps when it comes on dark.’

‘Sorry I ain’t got my green spectacles with me,’ said Cutbill; ‘if you was to put them on, mate, you’d see them sperrits dancing.’

‘Proper sort of ball-room, though, ain’t it, miss?’ exclaimed Finn, addressing Laura.

‘How touching,’ said Dowling, who I could see by the lightning pulling out his whiskers as if trimming himself, ‘for them skellingtons to go on a-loving of one another for all these years! Supposing they was husband and wife: then if they was living they’d ha’ given up clinging to each other a long time ago.’

Cutbill hove a curse at him under his breath, but the man did not seem to hear.

‘It’s curious,’ continued this sea philosopher in a salt, thick voice that seemed not a little appropriate to the strong fish-like, marine, drowned smell of this interior, ‘they should go on a-showing of affection which they’d sicken at if they was coated with flesh.’

‘Pray hold your tongue!’ said Lady Monson. ‘Captain Finn, please request that sailor to be silent.’

‘Told ’ee so,’ I heard Cutbill growl; ‘always a-sticking of that hoof of yourn into the wrong biling.’

Scarce had this been muttered when all on a sudden the squall ceased; there fell a black, dead calm; no more lightning played, not a murmur of thunder sounded; there was nothing to be heard but the roar of the near surf upon the beach and the creaming of seas off the huge area of the angry waters. In its way this sudden cessation, this abrupt, this instant hush on high, was more terrifying than the wildest outbreak of tempest. The lightning had been so continuous that in a manner we had grown used to it, and we had been able to see one another’s faces by it whilst we conversed as though by some lamp that waned and then waxed brilliant to its revolutions. Now we sat plunged in impenetrable blackness, whilst we sat hearkening, to use an Irishism, to the incredible silence of the atmosphere. Not the faintest loom of the galleon could be distinguished through the open door; yet the sheen of the mystic illumination in her hold hovered like a faint green mist over the hatch and dimly touched a little space of the marine growths round about.

[338]

‘What’s a-going to happen now?’ cried Finn; but I did not know that he had left the cabin until I heard him calling from the outside, ‘My eye, your honour, here it comes; a shower this time.’

I groped my way out, feeling down with my outstretched hands one of the men who was groping to the door also. The stagnant air was as thick as the fumes of brimstone and oppressively hot. It made one gasp after coming out of the cabin, where it was kept almost cool somehow by the strong weedy and salt-water smell that haunted it. I looked over the rail and saw the sea at the distance of about half a mile away from us, flaming as though it were an ocean of brandy on fire, only that the head of the luminous appearance had as straight a line to the eye as the horizon. But I could now observe how phosphorescent was the sea that, whilst tranquil, had hung a lustreless shadow by marking the vivid flashes of light in the white smother of the froth down in the gloom of the beach and the sharp darting gleams beyond.

I groped back to the cabin, followed by the others, found Laura by the shadow her figure made upon the dim glimmer of the sail and seated myself beside her. Then plump fell the rain. It was just a sheet of descending water, and spite of the fossilised decks being thickened by marine verdure, the hull echoed to the downpour with a noise as distracting and deafening as a goods train passing at full speed close alongside. But the wonder of that rain lay not so much in its weight as in its being electric. It came down black, but it sparkled on striking the decks as though every drop exploded in a blaze. I never witnessed such a sight before, and confess that I was never so frightened by anything in all my life.

‘Why, it’s raining lightning!’ called Head.

‘The vessel will be set on fire!’ cried Lady Monson.

‘Nothen to be afraid of, my lady,’ shouted Cutbill; ‘these fiery falls are common down here. I’ve been rolling up the maintop-garnsail in rain of this sort in the Bay of Bengal when ye’d ha’ thought that the ship had been put together out of lighted brimstone; every rope a streak of flame, and the ocean below as if old Davy Jones was entertaining his friends with a game of snapdragon.’

It was, no doubt, as Cutbill had said; but then there was not only the sight of the fire flashing out along the length of the vessel as far as the doorway permitted the eye to follow the deck, to the roaring, ebony, perpendicular discharge of the clouds; there was the tremendous thought of our being perched on the head of a newly-formed volcanic rock, that had leapt into existence on such another night as this. Suppose it sank under us! Here were all necessary conditions of atmosphere, at least, to justify dread of such a thing. Would the ship float? Was she buoyant enough to tear her keel from the rock and outlive the whirlpool or gulf which might follow the descent of a mountain of lava of whose dimen[339]sions it was impossible to form a conception? But she had six holes in her; and then, again, there was still plenty of water in the hold, whose volume must already have been further increased—rapidly and greatly increased—by the cataract that fell in a straight line to the broad yawn of the uprooted hatch.

My consternation was, indeed, so great that I could not speak. I felt Laura press my hand, as though the dew in the palm of it and the tremor of my fingers were hints sufficient to her of the sudden desperate fit of nervousness that possessed me; but I could not find my tongue. Figure being out in a horrible thunderstorm, miles from all shelter, and seized by an overmastering apprehension that the next or the next flash will strike you dead! My torment of mind was of this sort. I philosophised to myself in vain. There was nothing in the consideration that others shared my danger—most often a source of wonderful comfort to a person in peril—that I could but die once, that there were harder deaths than drowning, and the like, to restore me my self-possession. I was unnerved and in a panic of terror, fired afresh by the fearful fancy that had entered my brain on the preceding night of this head of rock gaping and letting us down to God knows what depth. All the time I was feeling with a hideous, nervous intensity with feet, fibres, and instincts for any faint premonitory jar or thrill in the hull to announce that this island was getting under way for the bottom again.

I believe that the electric rain had a deal to do with the insufferable distress of my mind at that time, for when it ceased—with the same startling suddenness that had marked the drop of the wind—I rallied as though to a huge bumper of brandy. My hands were wringing wet, yet cold as though lifted from a bucket of water; the perspiration poured down my face, but my nerves had returned to me.

‘What now is to be the next act of this wild play?’ said I.

‘A breeze of wind, your honour,’ cried Finn out of the black gap of the door; and sure enough I felt the grateful blowing of air cooled by the wet.

The weight of rain had wonderfully deadened the sea, and the surf that a little while ago broke with passion and fury now beat the rocks with a subdued and sulky roaring sound. It had clarified to the westwards somewhat, the dusk was of a thinner and finer sort there, with a look of wind in the texture of the darkness; but it continued a black night, with no other relief to the eye than the pale preternatural haze of light in the square of the main-hatch and the occasional vivid flash of phosphor out at sea. But the wind swept up rapidly, and within a quarter of an hour of the first of its breezing it was blowing hard upon a whole gale; the old galleon hummed to it as though she had all her rigging aloft. In an incredibly short time the sea was making clean breaches over the island, rendering the blackness hoary with a look of snow squalls as it slung its sheets of thrilling and throbbing and hissing[340] spume high into the dark sweep of the gale. One saw the difference between this sort of weather and the night on which the ‘Bride’ had struck. Then the heaviest of the surf left a clear space of rock; but there were times now when the smother came boiling to the very bends of the galleon, striking her till you felt her tremble with huge quivering upheavals of froth over and into her; and it was like being at sea to look over the side and witness the white madness of water raging and beating on either hand. Every now and again a prodigious height of steam-like spray would go yelling up with the sound of a giantess’s scream into the flying darkness from some pipe-like conduit in the porous rock. These columns of water were so luminous with fire, so white with the crystalline smoke into which they were converted by the incalculable weight of the sea sweeping into the apertures, that, dark as it was, one saw them instantly and clearly. They soared with hurricane speed in a straight line, then were arched by the gale like a palm; and if ever the wind brought the falling torrent to our decks the stonified ship shook to the mighty discharge as though the point of land on which she lay were being rent by the force of flame and thunder which created it.

We sat in the cabin in total darkness. It made our condition unspeakably dreadful to be without light. We had tinder-boxes, but there was nothing to set fire to, nothing that would steadily flame and enable us to see; nor was there any prospect now of our being able to make a flare should we catch a glimpse of a ship, for what before would have made a fine bonfire was soaked through. It was up to a man’s knees on the main-deck, and the cabin would have been flooded but for the sharp spring or rise of the planks from the poop front to the stern. Such darkness as we sat in was like being blind. There was nothing to be seen through the door but pale clouds of spray flying through the air. Just the faintest outline of our figures upon the white ground of the sail was visible, but so dim, so indeterminable as to seem but a mere cheat of the fancy. A lamp or a candle would have rendered our condition less intolerable. The men could then have made shift to bring some sherry and provisions from the forecastle; the mere toying with food would have served to kill the time. We could have looked upon one another as we conversed, but the blackness of that interior was so profound that it weighed down upon us like the very spirit of dumbness itself. I have often since wondered whether men who are trapped in the bottom of a mine and lie waiting in the blackness there for deliverance—I have often wondered, I say, how long such poor fellows continue to talk to one another. The intervals of silence, I am sure, must rapidly grow greater and greater. There is something in intense darkness in a time of peril that seems to eat all the heart and courage out of a man. The voice appears to fall dead in the opacity as a stone vanishes when hurled at snow.

Cutbill and Finn did their best to keep up our hearts. They[341] spoke of the certainty of this wind bringing a ship along with it. What should we have done without this galleon? they asked; but for the shelter it provided us with we should have been swept like smoke by the seas off the rocks. There was no fear, they said, of the old hooker not holding together. She was bound into one piece by the brine that had made a stone of her, and by the coating of shells, and if all ships afloat were as staunch as she was there would be an end of underwriting and drowned sailors would be few.

I helped in such talk and did my best, but our spirits could not continue to make headway against the blackness that was rendered yet more subduing by the uproar without, and by our being unable to imagine from moment to moment what was next to happen.

By-and-by the men stretched themselves upon the sail and slept. I passed my arm round Laura’s waist and brought her head to my shoulder, and after a little her regular breathing let me know that she was asleep. Lady Monson was close to us, but she might have been on the forecastle for all that I could distinguish of her. Whether she sat or reclined, whether she slumbered or was wide awake throughout, I could not imagine. She never once spoke. At times my head would nod, but as regularly would I start into wakefulness afresh to the heavy fall of a sheet of water splashing into the main-deck, or to some sudden shock of the blow of a sea either against the galleon’s side or upon the near rock. Nobody had suggested keeping a look-out. Indeed, had ships been passing us every five minutes we could have done nothing.

It was probably about two o’clock in the morning when the gale abated. The wind fell swiftly, as it mostly does in those parallels; a star shone in the black square of the door; the pouring and boiling of waters about us ceased, and the sounds of the sea sank away into the distance of the beach. I should have stepped on deck to take a look round but for Laura, who slumbered stirlessly and most reposefully upon my shoulder, supported by my arm, and I had not the heart to disturb the sweet girl by quitting her. Added to this, I could guess by looking through the doorway that it was still too black to see anything spite of the glance of starlight, and even though I should discern some pallid vision of a running ship, there was nothing dry enough to signal her with. So, being dog-tired, I let drop my chin, and was presently in as deep a sleep as the soundest slumberer of them all.

Deep and deathlike indeed must have been my repose, for somehow I was sensible of being stormily shaken even whilst my wits were still locked up in sleep.

‘Why, Mr. Monson, sir,’ roared Finn in my ear, ‘ye ain’t so sleepy, I hope, as not to care to git away. Hallo, I say, hallo!’

‘Father of mercy, what is it now?’ I cried, terrified in my dazed condition by his bull-like voice.

‘Why, sir,’ he answered, ‘there’s a barque just off the island.[342] She’s seen our signals, and ’s slipping close in with hands at the maintops’l brace.’

‘Ha!’ said I, and I sprang to my feet.

Finn rushed out again. I had been the last of the sleepers apparently, and was the only occupant of the cabin. The sun was risen, but, as I might suppose by his light, he had scarce floated yet to three or four times the height of his diameter. The doorway framed a silvery blue heaven, and the wondrous vegetation of the deck sparkled in fifty gorgeous dyes, streaming wet after the night, and every blob of moisture was jewel-coloured by the particular splendour it rested upon. I darted on to the quarter-deck, looked wildly towards the forecastle, then perceived that my companions had gathered upon the poop. Laura came running to me, heedless of the perilous deck, pointing and speechless, her eyes radiant. There was a long swell washing from the westwards, but to the eastwards of the island the water ran away smooth like the short wake of a great ship, till the shouldering welter swept to it again; and there where the blue heave was, with the sun’s dazzle a little away to the right, was a small barque slightly leaning from the pleasant morning breeze, and sliding slowly but crisply through it with a delicate lift of foam to the ruddy gleam of her sheathing, and her canvas glistening sunwards, bright as the cloths of a pleasure vessel.

‘That’s what we’ve been awaiting for!’ shouted Finn.

I came to a dead halt, looking at the barque with Laura hanging on my arm. There was a fellow in the mainchains swinging a leadline, but it was plain that the weight fell to the full scope without result. Then on a sudden round came the maintopsail yard to us with a flattening in of the cotton white cloths from the folds of the course to the airy film of the tiny sky-sail.

‘Forward, Head! forward, Dowling, as if the devil were in chase of ’ee,’ bawled Finn, ‘and get that whip rove and the chair made fast.’

The men ran to the work. Cutbill was following them.

‘No, William,’ cried Finn; ‘stop where ’ee are a minute. The shipwreck t’other night ain’t left me my old woice. Hist! there’s a chap hailing us.’

‘What island’s that, and who are you and what manner of craft is that you’re aboard of?’ came from the rail of the barque’s quarter-deck in a thin, reed-like, but distinctly audible voice.

Cutbill roared back, ‘We’re the surwiwors of the schooner-yacht ‘Bride,’ cast away three nights ago. Will you take us off, sir?’

‘How many are there of you?’

‘Seven, including two ladies.’

‘Five, Mr. Cutbill, tell ’em,’ shouted Dowling from the forecastle; ‘me and Head stops here.’

‘Have you a boat?’ came from the barque.

‘No, sir,’ roared Cutbill.

[343]

‘I’ll send one. Make ready to come along.’

Lady Monson was the first of us to press forward to the forecastle. The main-deck was ankle deep, but we splashed through it like a pack of racing children and gained the fore-end of the galleon without misadventure. I was mad with impatience, and all being ready with the whip and chair I plumped Laura most unceremoniously into the seat, caught hold of the line over her head, and down we were lowered. Up then soared the empty chair and out swung her ladyship, who plunged into my arms and came very near to throwing me in her eagerness to leap out before the rocks were within reach of her feet.

‘Now,’ said I, ‘the men can manage for themselves,’ and with that I seized hold of Lady Monson’s hand, grasped Laura by the arm, and away we trudged to the beach off which the barque was lying. I was still so newly awakened from a very stupor of slumber that I moved and thought as though in a dream. Yet my wits were sufficiently collected to enable me to keep a bright look-out for holes. Again and again I secretly heaped curses upon the hindrance of this porous surface, for it forced us into deviations which seemed to make a league of a distance that would have been but a few minutes’ walk on reasonable soil. The energy of our strides forbade speech; we could only breathe, and what little mind this sudden chance of deliverance had left us we had to exclusively devote to the pitfalls.

They had lowered a boat aboard the barque by the time that we arrived at the water’s edge, breathless, and the three of us staring with a feverish greediness, a thirsty, frantic desire, I may say, which ocean peril, of all earthly dangers, paints with most perfection upon the eye. She was a good-sized boat of a whaling pattern, sharp at both ends, pulled by three men who peered continuously over their shoulders as they rowed, and steered by a small man in a blue jacket and a broad-brimmed straw hat. By the time she was close in the others had joined us. I had heard much heated talk amongst them as they came down from the galleon, springing over the holes and wells, and Finn at once said to me:

‘What d’ee think, your honour? here’s Head and Dowling gone mad! They say there’s bullion to be met with in that hulk up there, and they mean to stop with her till they’ve got it.’

‘Nonsense!’ I exclaimed.

‘By the ’Tarnal, then, Mr. Monson,’ cried Dowling, ‘there’s no leaving with me yet. Here’s a chance that ain’t going to happen more’n once to a sailor-man.’

‘Ashore there!’ came from the little chap at the tiller of the boat; ‘what sort of beach have you got for grounding?’

‘Pumice-stone, sir,’ answered Finn.

‘Don’t like it,’ said the little fellow with a shake of his head. ‘Is it steep to?’

‘He ought to be able to see by looking over the side,’ grumbled Finn; then aloud, ‘Slopes as gradual as the calf of a man’s leg.’

[344]

‘Well, then, you won’t mind wading,’ said the little fellow.

‘Cutbill, Finn,’ I cried, ‘carry her ladyship, will you? Dowling or Head, come and lend me a hand to convey Miss Jennings.’

The little fool obliged us to wade waist high by keeping off, so confoundedly anxious was he to keep his keel clear of the ground. However, we easily got the ladies into the boat; then Cutbill, Finn, and I gripped the gunwale and rolled inboards; but Dowling coolly waded shorewards again to where Head was standing.

‘Aren’t you two men coming?’ cried the little fellow, who afterwards proved to be the second mate of the barque, a doll of a man with bright eyes, diminutive features, red beard, and hands and feet of the size of a boy of ten.

‘No, sir,’ answered Dowling; ‘there’s treasure in that there craft, and my mate and me’s going to stop to overhaul the cargo.’

The three seamen belonging to the boat stared on hearing this, instantly pricking up their ears with sailors’ sympathy and fastening devouring eyes on the galleon.

‘They have no reason to believe there is treasure,’ I cried; ‘it is a mere idle hope on their part. Exhort them to come, sir. They stand to perish if they are left here.’

‘Now, then, don’t keep us waiting, my lads,’ exclaimed the second mate.

‘We mean to stop here,’ responded Head decisively.

‘But have you any provisions?’

‘Enough washed out of the yacht to sarve our tarn,’ answered Dowling; ‘but we should be glad of another cask of fresh water.’

‘Well, you’ll not get that,’ answered the second mate; ‘our own stock’s not over-plentiful. Now, once more, are ye coming?’

They shook their heads, and in a careless, reckless manner Head half-swung his back upon us.

‘Give way!’ cried the second mate.

‘But it’s like helping them to commit suicide, Finn,’ I exclaimed.

‘They ought to be seized and forced into the boat,’ said Lady Monson, looking with a shudder at the galleon.

‘They’ve got a notion there’s money in that there hulk,’ exclaimed Finn, ‘and they’ll stick to her till they satisfies themselves one way or the other.’

‘Small fear of them not being taken off when they’re ready to go,’ said the mate, staring hard at Lady Monson and then at Laura; ‘that island’s a novelty which’ll bring every ship that heaves her masthead within sight of it running down to have a look at. Volcanic, eh? And that shell-covered arrangement up there rose along with it?’

‘Ay,’ said Finn.

‘Well,’ said the little second mate, ‘why shouldn’t she have[345] treasure, aboard? She has the look of one of them plate ships you read of.’

‘I’d take my chance with them two sailors,’ said the fellow who was pulling the bow oar.

‘So would I,’ said the man next to him.

The stroke gazed yearningly through the hair over his eyes.

The sea of the preceding night had cleared the beach of every vestige of the yacht; all the fragments which had littered the rocks were gone. As we drew out from the island it took in the brilliant sunshine the complexion of marble, and the wondrous old galleon lying on top sparkled delicately with many tints as our point of view was varied by the stroke of the oars. The resolution of the two men vexed and grieved me beyond all expression; but what was to be done? My spirit shrank at the mere thought of their determination when I reflected upon the damp, dark, ocean-smelling cabin, the luminous hold, the two skeletons, the vegetation and shells, whose novelty, wonder, glory seemed to carry the structure out of all human sympathy, as though it were the product of a form of existence whose creations were not to be met with under the stars. We drew rapidly to the barque. She was an exceedingly handsome model, painted green, rigged with a masterly eye to accurate adjustment down to the most trivial detail.

‘What’s her name, sir?’ asked Finn.

‘The “Star of Peace,”’ answered the second mate.

‘Homeward bound, I hope, sir?’ says Cutbill.

‘Ay,’ said the little man, grinning, ‘and long enough about it too. Sixty-one days from Melbourne as it is.’

Finn whistled; Laura looked at the mate on hearing him say that the ship was from Melbourne.

‘Oars!’ A boathook caught the accommodation ladder and we gained the deck. The captain of the barque stood in the gangway to receive us; he was a Scotchman with a slow, kind, thoughtful face, grey hair that showed like wire on end with thickness and stubbornness as he lifted his straw hat to the ladies. His grey, keen, seawardly eye rapidly took stock of us. I briefly related our story.

‘I remember the “Bride,” sir,’ he said. ‘She was owned by Sir Wilfrid Monson, who married Miss Jennings of Melbourne.’

‘This is Lady Monson,’ I said; ‘her sister, too, Miss Jennings.’

‘Indeed!’ he exclaimed, with a sort of slow surprise giving a little animation to his speech. ‘I have the honour of being acquainted with Mr. Jennings. He came on board this vessel three days before we sailed along with a gentleman, Mr. Hanbury’—Laura slightly nodded—‘to whom a portion of the freight belongs. I see the likeness now,’ he added, looking with admiration at Lady Monson.

She glowed crimson, and turned with a haughty step to the rail to conceal her face.

[346]

‘I have always heard this world was a small one, captain,’ said I, ‘small enough, thank God, to enable your ship to fall in with that rock there. To what port are you bound?’

‘London, sir. There are a couple of cabins at your service. There are no females aboard,’ looking at Laura and running his eye over her dress with a glance on to Lady Monson; ‘I judge ye were cast away in little more than what you stood up in?’

‘By the way, Laura,’ said I, ‘we ought not to leave your box of odds and ends behind us.’

‘Oh, no; bring off everything,’ exclaimed the captain. ‘I’ll send the boat ashore.’

It was arranged that Finn should fetch the box and make a final effort to persuade the two men to come off. The captain of the barque laughed when I told him of the fellows’ resolution, and seemed to make little of it. ‘If they’ve got a notion there’s treasure there, sir,’ he exclaimed, ‘you’ll not move ’em. I know Jack’s nature. He’d follow old Nick if he believed he’d take him to where there were dollars. Ships enough’ll be coming in sight of that rock. I don’t fear for the men’s safety.’

‘But it is a volcanic creation, captain. It may vanish just as it rose, in a flash.’

‘Ha!’ cried he, sucking in his breath, ‘my word! But I should never have thought of that. Better try and coax those men off,’ he exclaimed, walking to the rail and putting his head over and addressing Finn who had entered the boat.

‘I’ll do my best, sir,’ answered Finn, and shoved off.

‘Now, ladies and gentlemen,’ said the captain, returning to us, ‘will you step below that we may see how you’re to be made comfortable?’

After the galleon the cabin of a smack would have been sheer Paradise. Here was a breezy, plain, substantial homely interior. The sunshine brilliantly flooded it, the eastern splendour of water rippled in lines of light upon the bulkheads; the hot morning breeze gushed humming through the skylight into it. The captain led us to a couple of berths forward of the state cabin, and the first object I witnessed was my face reflected in a looking-glass. Heavens! what a contrast to the Pall Mall exquisite of a few months before! Unshaven, sunblackened, unbrushed, unwashed; my linen dark, my clothes expressing every feature of shipwreck in rents, stains, and the like; I needed but a few further grimy embellishments to have passed to admiration as a back alley sailor. The captain’s name was Richardson; he seemed fascinated by Lady Monson, called for his servant or steward, bade him procure at once every convenience of hot water, towels, hair-brushes and the like; continued to congratulate himself upon having been the means of delivering the daughters of Mr. Jennings of Melbourne from a situation of distress and peril, and so warmed up to the occasion, but slowly as the kettle boils, that I easily saw there was small fear of Laura and her sister not being made as thoroughly[347] comfortable as the accommodation supplied by the barque would permit.

I was too anxious, however, about the fellows on the island to linger below, and went on deck, leaving Captain Richardson talking to the ladies, protesting in hearty Scotch accents his anxiety to serve them to the utmost of his ability, questioning the steward about sheets and blankets, bidding him likewise tell the cook to make haste with the breakfast, asking Lady Monson if she drank tea or coffee, and so on and so on. The boat was off the island and Finn ashore, coming down from the galleon to the beach with Laura’s box slung betwixt him and Dowling, whilst Head trudged close behind. Then there was a long talk; I could see Finn pointing to the hulk and then to the barque, flourishing his arms and emphatically nodding at one or the other as he addressed them. Cutbill stood in the gangway looking on.

‘I hope the captain will prevail upon them to leave that place,’ said I to him.

‘He won’t, sir,’ answered Cutbill; ‘and blowed if I don’t feel now, Mr. Monson, as if I’d made a mistake in leaving it myself!’

Here the mate of the barque stepped up to me—an immense man, even bigger than Cutbill, in a long white coat with side pockets so vast that one might have thought that he could have stowed the little second mate away in one of them.

‘Do those chaps think that there’s plunder to be found aboard that effigy?’ he asked in a voice rendered unutterably hoarse and harsh by probably years of roaring out in foul weather, supplemented by rum and the natural gift of a deep note.

‘Don’t know about plunder, sir,’ answered Cutbill, ‘but they reckon there may be chests of plate and bullion stowed away aft.’

‘Stowed away in their eye!’ growled the mate. ‘Where did she come from?’

‘The bottom of the sea, sir.’

‘An old galleon,’ said he, cocking his eye at her, ‘and a volcanic burst up,’ he continued. ‘Well, I don’t know, if so be she’s a galleon, likely as not those chaps are right. Why, they thought nothing in the days she belonged to in stowing a matter of six or seven millions of dollars in the lazarettes of craft of that kind.’

‘By the Lord, Mr. Monson,’ burst out Cutbill, ‘I must go ashore, sir! I feel I’m a-doing wrong in being here!’

‘You’ll have to swim then,’ said the mate drily, ‘for that boat is meant for our davits when she comes alongside, and it will then be time to trim sail.’

At that moment I observed Finn shaking the two sailors by the hand. He then entered the boat and made for the barque, whilst Head and Dowling walked slowly up to the galleon and sat down in the shade of her under her counter, whence they continued to watch us.

‘It’s no good, Mr. Monson, sir,’ said Finn, as he came clambering[348] and panting over the side; ‘they call it a gold mine, and there’s no persuading of ’em to leave it.’

‘Up with this boat,’ roared the mate; ‘stand by to round in on those topsail braces.’

The boat soared to her davits, the milk-white squares of canvas on the main went floating onwards into full bosoms; the barque, bowing to the swell, broke the flashing water into trembling lines; slowly, almost imperceptibly, that marble-looking hump of rock with its glittering centre-piece stole away upon the quarter, its solitude somehow making the ocean look as wide again as it was. Laura came on deck and stood by my side.

‘Oh, Charles!’ she exclaimed, ‘we have left the poor fellows behind, then?’

‘They refuse to leave. Observe Cutbill,’ said I, pointing to the huge figure of the honest tar as he lay over the rail, his face knotted up with conflicting emotions, whilst his expression was rendered spasmodic by his manner of gnawing upon a quid that stood in his cheek. ‘He is lamenting the loss of a princely income, and would have returned to the island could he have got a boat. Mark Finn, too; with what a mixture of thirstiness and misgiving does he stare!’

‘The poor creatures are waving to us,’ said Laura.

Instantly throughout the barque there was a general flourishing of arms and Scotch caps and straw hats. We lingered watching them till the island looked to be no more than a small blue cloud floating low upon the water.

‘Poor Wilfrid!’ suddenly exclaimed Laura, and her eyes dimmed with tears.

‘It has been a hard time for you, dear one!’ I exclaimed, ‘but the end of the black chapter is reached, let us believe. See! here comes the captain’s man with a tray of good things. But I must positively shave before I can sit down to breakfast, if there is a razor on board to borrow.’

We walked together to the companion hatch, but even there we lingered a little with our eyes dwelling upon that distant azure film which seemed now to be fainting out as though it were a wreath of sea-mist that was being fast devoured by the sun.