Across India Part 3

A successful conspiracy enabled him to convey her to Bermuda. At this stage of the drama, Captain Royal Ringgold, an early admirer of the pretty widow, became an active partic.i.p.ant in the proceedings, and from that time he had been the director of all the steps taken to recover Louis's mother.

In the interim of Scoble's absence, Louis, a.s.sisted by his schoolfellow and devoted friend, Felix McGavonty, had accomplished what his father had failed to achieve in ten years of incessant search: he had found the missing million of his grandfather, and had become a millionaire at sixteen. The young man fancied that yachting would suit him; and he proposed to Squire Moses Scarburn, the trustee of all his property, to purchase a cheap vessel for his use.

The spiriting away of his mother gave a new importance to the nautical fancy of the young man. Captain Ringgold condemned the plan to buy a cheap vessel. He had made a part of his ample fortune as a s.h.i.+pmaster, and had been an officer in the navy during the last half of the War of the Rebellion. He advised the young man's mother, who was also his guardian, and the trustee to buy a good-sized steam-yacht.

A New York millionaire had just completed one of the most magnificent steamers ever built, of over six hundred tons' burden; but his sudden death robbed him of the pleasures he antic.i.p.ated from a voyage around the world in her, and the vessel was for sale at a reasonable price. The s.h.i.+pmaster fixed upon this craft as the one for the young millionaire, declaring that she would give the owner an education such as could not be obtained at any college; and that she could be sold for nearly all she cost when she was no longer needed.

This argument, and the pressing necessity of such a steamer for the recovery of Mrs. Belgrave, carried the day with the trustee. The vessel was bought; and as she had not yet been named, Louis called her the Guardian-Mother, in love and reverence for her who had watched over him from his birth. After some stirring adventures which befell Louis, the new steam-yacht proceeded to Bermuda, where Scoble had wrecked his vessel on the reefs; but the object of the search and all the s.h.i.+p's company were saved.

The Guardian-Mother returned to New York after this successful voyage, though not till Captain Ringgold had obtained a strong hint that Scoble had a wife in England. The educational scheme of the commander was then fully considered, and it was decided to make a voyage around the world in the Guardian-Mother. She was duly prepared for the purpose by Captain Ringgold.

A s.h.i.+p's company of the highest grade was obtained. The last to be s.h.i.+pped was W. Penn Sharp as a quartermaster, the only vacancy on board. He had been a skilful detective most of his life, and failing health alone compelled him to go to sea; and he had been a sailor in his early years, attaining the position of first officer of a large Indiaman.

The captain made him third officer at Bermuda, the better to have his services as a detective. He had investigated Scoble's record, and eventually found Mrs. Scoble in Cuba, where she had inherited the large fortune of an uncle whom she had nursed in his last sickness. Scoble had come into the possession of the wealth of a brother who had recently died in Bermuda. He had purchased a steam-yacht of four hundred tons, in which he had followed the Guardian-Mother, and had several times attempted to sink her in collisions.

Officers came to Cuba to arrest him for his crimes at the races, and he was sent to the scene of his villany, where the court sentenced him to Sing Sing for a long term. The court in Cuba decreed that his yacht belonged to his wife; and her new owner, at the suggestion of the commander of the Guardian-Mother, made Penn Sharp, to whom she was largely indebted for the fortune to which she had succeeded, the captain of her. The steam-yacht was the Viking, and Mrs. Scoble sailed in her to New York, and then to England, where she obtained a divorce from her recreant husband, and became the wife of Captain Sharp, who was now in command of the Blanche, the white steamer that sailed abreast of the Guardian-Mother when the wreck in the Arabian Sea was discovered.

From a sailing-yacht sunk in a squall in the harbor of New York, the crew of the steamer had saved two gentlemen. One was a celebrated physician and surgeon, suffering from overwork, Dr. Philip Hawkes. He was induced to accept the commander's offer of a pa.s.sage around the world for his services as the surgeon of the s.h.i.+p. His companion was a learned Frenchman, afflicted in the same manner as his friend; and he became the instructor on board.

Squire Scarburn, Louis's trustee, who was always called "Uncle Moses," was a pa.s.senger. Mrs. Belgrave had taken with her Mrs. Sarah Blossom, as a companion. She had been Uncle Moses's housekeeper. She was a good-looking woman of thirty-six, and one of the "salt of the earth," though her education, except on Scripture subjects, had been greatly neglected. Felix McGavonty, the Milesian crony of Louis, had been brought up by the trustee, and had lived in his family. The good lady wanted to be regarded as the mother of Felix, and the young man did not fully fall in with the idea.

When Louis recovered the stolen treasure of the jockey, he had applied to one of the princ.i.p.al losers by the crime, Mr. Lowell Woolridge, then devoted to horse-racing and yachting, for advice in regard to the disposal of the plunder. All who had lost any of the money were paid in full; and the gentleman took a fancy to the young man who consulted him. For the benefit of his son he discarded racing from his amus.e.m.e.nts. He invited Louis and his mother to several excursions in his yacht; and the two families became very intimate, though they were not of the same social rank, for Mr. Woolridge was a millionaire and a magnate of the Fifth Avenue.

The ex-sportsman was the father of a daughter and a son. At fifteen Miss Blanche was remarkably beautiful, and Louis could not help recognizing the fact. But he was then a poor boy; and his mother warned him not to get entangled in any affair of the heart, which had never entered the head of the subject of the warning. When the missing million came to light, she did not repeat her warning.

After the Guardian-Mother had sailed on her voyage all-over-the-world, Miss Blanche took a severe cold, which threatened serious consequences; and the doctors had advised her father to take her to Orotava, in the Canary Islands, in his yacht. The family had departed on the voyage; but before the Blanche, as the white sailing-yacht was called, reached her destination, she encountered a severe gale, and had a hole stove in her planking by a ma.s.s of wreckage. Her s.h.i.+p's company were thoroughly exhausted when the Guardian-Mother, bound to the same islands, discovered her, and after almost incredible exertions, saved the yacht and the family.

The beautiful young lady entirely recovered her health during the voyage, and Dr. Hawkes declared that she was in no danger whatever. The Blanche proceeded with the steamer to Mogadore, on the north-west coast of Africa, in Morocco. Here the s.h.i.+p was visited by a high officer of the army of Morocco, who was the possessor of almost unbounded wealth. He was fascinated by the beauty of Miss Blanche, and his marked attentions excited the alarm of her father and mother, as well as of the commander. He had promised to visit the s.h.i.+p again, and take the party to all the noted places in the city.

The parents and the captain regarded such a visit as a calamity, and the steamer made her way out of the harbor very early the next morning, towing the yacht. The Guardian-Mother sailed for Madeira, accommodating her speed to that of the Blanche. The party had been there only long enough to see the sights, before the high official, Ali-Noury Pacha, in his steam-yacht come into the harbor of Funchal.

The commander immediately beat another retreat; but the Fatime, as the Moroccan steamer was called, followed her to Gibraltar. Here the Pacha desired an interview with Captain Ringgold, who refused to receive him on board, for he had learned in Funchal that his character was very bad, and he told him so to his face. When the commander went on sh.o.r.e he was attacked in the street by the Pacha and some of his followers; but the stalwart captain knocked him with a blow of his fist in a gutter filled with mud. Ali-Noury was fined by the court for the a.s.sault, and, thirsting for revenge, he had followed the Guardian-Mother to Constantinople, and through the Archipelago, seeking the vengeance his evil nature demanded. He employed a man named Mazagan to capture Miss Blanche or Louis, or both of them.

Captain Sharp, who was cruising in the Viking with his wife, while at Messina found the Pacha beset by robbers, and badly wounded. The ex-detective took him on board of his steamer, procured a surgeon, and saved the life of the Moor, not only in beating off the robbers that beset him, but in the care of him after he was wounded. They became strong friends; and both the captain and Mrs. Sharp, who had been the most devoted of nurses to him, spoke their minds to him very plainly.

The Pacha was repentant, for his vices were as contrary to the religion of Mohammed as to that of the New Testament. Captain Sharp was confident that his guest was thoroughly reformed, though he did not become a Christian, as his nurse hoped he would. Then his preserver learned that the Pacha had settled his accounts with Captain Mazagan, and sold him the Fatime.

It appeared when Captain Sharp told his story to the commander of the Guardian-Mother at Aden, that Mazagan had been operating on his own hook in Egypt and elsewhere to "blackmail" the trustee of Louis. The Pacha had ordered a new steamer to be built for him in England; and when she arrived at Gibraltar, he had given the command of her to Captain Sharp, to whom he owed his life and reformation.

At Aden, Captain Ringgold discovered the white steamer, and fearing she was the one built for the Pacha, as Mazagan had informed him in regard to her, he paid her a visit, and found Captain Sharp in command of her. The Moor was known as General Noury here, and he made an abject apology to the visitor. Convinced that the Moor had really reformed his life, they were reconciled, and General Noury was received with favor by all the party.

The Blanche was sailing in company of the Guardian-Mother for Bombay when the wreck with several men on it was discovered. And now having reviewed the incidents of the past, fully related in the preceding volumes of the series, it is quite time to attend to the imperilled persons on the wreck.

CHAPTER IV

FIRST AND SECOND CUTTERS TO THE RESCUE

It was still but a dim light when the commander appeared on deck. He could not have slept more than an hour, but he was as wideawake and active as ever before in his life. He had a spygla.s.s in his hand, with which he proceeded to examine the wreck as soon as he had obtained its bearings; for he never did anything, even under such desperate circ.u.mstances as the present, until he had first ascertained what was best to be done.

"How long is it since you made out the wreck, Mr. Boulong?" he inquired, still looking through the gla.s.s.

"Mr. Scott reported cries from that direction not ten minutes ago, and the lookout aloft hailed the deck a minute or two later," replied the first officer.

"Make the course north by east," added the captain.

"North by east, sir," replied Mr. Boulong, mounting the promenade, and giving the order to the quartermaster through the window. "Steer small till you get the course, Bangs."

The captain and the third officer remained on the promenade deck, still observing the persons on the wreck, who continued to shout and to discharge their firearms till they saw the head of the steamer slowly turned to the north, when they appeared to be satisfied that relief was at hand.

"They are in a very dangerous position," said the commander. "I cannot make out what they are clinging too; but it is washed by the sea at every wave, and they cannot hold out long in that situation. I wonder that all of them have not been knocked off before this time."

"They must have some strong hold on the thing that floats them, whatever it is, for they are under water half the time," replied Scott, who was also using a spygla.s.s. "I can't make out what they are on; but it looks like a whaleback to me, with her upper works carried away."

"There are no whalebacks in these seas," replied the captain.

"But I saw one in New York Harbor; and I have read that one has crossed the Atlantic, going through the Welland Ca.n.a.l from the great lakes."

"They have no mission in these waters, though what floats that party looks very much like one. Call all hands, Mr. Boulong, and clear away the first cutter."

By this time the Guardian-Mother was on her course to the northward. The storm was severe, but not as savage as it might have been, or as the steamer had encountered on the Atlantic when she saved the sailing-yacht Blanche from foundering. The s.h.i.+p had been kept on her course for Bombay, though, as she had the gale on the beam, she was condemned to wallow in the trough of the sea; and stiff and able as she was, she rolled heavily, as any vessel would have done under the same conditions.

The change of course gave her the wind very nearly over the stern, and she pitched instead of rolling, sometimes lifting her propeller almost out of the water, which made it whirl like a top, and then burying it deep in the waves, causing it to moan and groan and shake the whole after part of the s.h.i.+p, rousing all the party in the cabin from their slumbers. The s.h.i.+p had hardly changed her course before Louis came on deck, and was soon followed by Felix McGavonty.

"What's the row, Mr. Scott?" asked the former.

"Are ye's thryin' to shake the screw out of her?" inquired the Milesian, who could talk as good English as his crony, the owner, but who occasionally made use of the brogue to prevent him from forgetting his mother tongue, as he put it, though he was born in the United States.

"Don't ye's do it; for sure, you will want it 'fore we get to Bombay."

"Don't you see those men standing upon something, or clinging to whatever floats them? They are having a close call; but I hope we shall be able to save them," replied the third officer.

The captain had gone to the pilot-house, from the windows of which the wreck could be seen very plainly, as its distance from the s.h.i.+p was rapidly reduced. By this time the entire crew had rushed to the deck, and were waiting for orders on the forecastle. Mr. Boulong, with his boat's crew, had gone to the starboard quarter, where the first cutter was swung in on her davits. The boat pulled six oars, and the c.o.c.kswain made seven hands.

With these the cutter wad quickly swung out, and the crew took their places in her, the bowman at the forward tackle, and the c.o.c.kswain at the after.

It was the same crew with which the first officer had boarded the Blanche when she was in imminent peril of going down, and he had entire confidence both in their will and their muscle. He stood on the rail, holding on at the main shrouds, ready for further orders.

In the pilot-house, with both quartermasters at the wheel, the captain was still observing with his gla.s.s the men in momentary peril of being washed from their insecure position into the boiling sea. Felix had gone aft with the first officer, and had a.s.sisted in shoving out the first cutter from the skids inboard, and Louis had come into the pilot-house with Scott.

"Has any one counted the number of men on the wreck, or whatever it is?"

inquired the commander.

"There are eleven of them," promptly replied Scott, who, as an officer of the s.h.i.+p, was in his element, and very active both in mind and body.

"Too many for one boat in a heavy sea," added Captain Ringgold. "You will clear away the second cutter, Mr. Scott, and follow Mr. Boulong to the wreck."

"All the second cutters aft!" shouted the third officer from the window; and the crew of this boat rushed up the ladder to the promenade deck, and followed the life-line to the davits of the cutter.