A Marriage at Sea Part 26

"I don't know if I'm right in calling you _sir_?" he exclaimed; "I didn't rightly catch your name."

"My name is Mr. Herbert Barclay."

"Thank ye, sir. I was going to say if you and her ladys.h.i.+p--"

"No, not her ladys.h.i.+p," I interrupted, guessing that the fellow, having caught the name of Lady Amelia Roscoe, was confounding Grace with that t.i.tle; but here I broke off, with a conscious look, I fear, for I could not speak of my sweetheart as Miss Bella.s.sys with that ring on her finger, nor would it have been safe to talk of her as my wife either: in her presence, at all events, for she had the most sweet ingenuous face imaginable, through which every mood and thought peeped, and Captain Verrion's eyes seemed somewhat shrewd.

"I was going to say, sir," he proceeded, "that you're welcome to any of the sleeping berths you may have a mind to. If you will take your choice I'll have the beds got ready."

The berths were aft--mere boxes, each with a little bunk, but all fitted so as to correspond in point of costliness with the furniture of the living or state room. We chose the two foremost berths as being the farthest of the sleeping places from the crew; and this matter being ended, and after declining Captain Verrion's very civil offer of refreshments, we returned to the deck.

The steamer was thras.h.i.+ng through it at an exhilarating speed. The long blue Atlantic surge came briming and frothing to her quarter, giving her a lift at times that set the propeller racing, but the clean-edged, frost-like band of wake streamed far astern, where in the liquid blue of the afternoon that way hung the star-coloured cloths of the _Carthusian_, a leaning shaft, resembling a spire of ice.

"Bless me!" I cried, "how we have widened our distance! When a man falls overboard with what hideous rapidity must his s.h.i.+p appear to glide away from him!"

"Is it not delightful to be independent of the wind, Herbert?"

exclaimed Grace, as she took my arm.

"Yes, but consider the beauty of a tower of canvas compared to that yellow chimney pot," said I. "The _Carthusian_!" I added, sending my glance at the distant airy gleam; "we shall never forget her. Yet she seems but a phantom s.h.i.+p too; some sea vision of one's sleep, so quickly has it all happened, and so astonis.h.i.+ng what has happened. But _has_ old Parsons made us man and wife?"

She shook her head.

"That cabin wedding this morning," I continued, "ought to be a fact if all the rest is a dream. But you must go on wearing that ring, Grace, and since it is on I shall have to call you Mrs. Barclay. Don't go and pull it off now. I saw this captain fasten his eye upon it, and we must be one thing or the other, my sweet."

"Oh, anything to please you, Herbert," she replied, pouting as was her custom when she was not of my mind; "but try to call me Mrs. Barclay as seldom as possible."

Thus we chatted as we walked the deck. We had the afterpart of the little s.h.i.+p entirely to ourselves; the captain came and went, but never offered to approach. There was a mate as I supposed, a man without a gold band to his cap, but with b.u.t.tons to his coat, who replaced the skipper on the bridge when he quitted it. Owing to deck structures, funnel-casing and the like, I could see but little of the forward part of the yacht; but such men as showed seldom glanced aft, and then with such an air of respect as was excessively refres.h.i.+ng after the narrow, inquiring and continuous inspection we had been honoured with aboard the _Carthusian_. The quietude of a man-of-war was in the life of the yacht; the seamen spoke low; if ever one of them smoked a pipe he kept himself out of sight with it. In fact, it was like being aboard one's own vessel, and now that we were fairly going home, being driven towards the English Channel at a steady pace of some twelve or thirteen knots in the hour by the steady resistless thrust of the propeller, we could find heart to abandon ourselves to every delightful sensation born of the sweeping pa.s.sage of the beautiful steamer, to every emotion inspired by each other's society, and by the free, boundless, n.o.ble prospect of dark blue waters that was spread around us.

We were uninterrupted till five o'clock. The captain then advanced, and saluting us with as much respect as if we had been the earl and his lady, he inquired if we would have tea served in the cabin. I answered that we should be very glad of a cup of tea; but that he was to give himself no trouble; the simplest fare he could put before us we should feel as grateful for as if he sat us down to a mansion house dinner.

He said that the steward had been left ash.o.r.e at Madeira, but that a sailor, who knew what to do as a waiter, would attend upon us.

"Who would suppose, Grace," said I, when we were alone, "that the ocean was so hospitable? Figure us finding ourselves ash.o.r.e in such a condition as was our lot when we thought the _Spitfire_ sinking under us--in other words, _in want_! At how many houses might we have knocked without getting shelter or the offer of a meal? This is like being made welcome in Grosvenor Square, and you may compare the _Carthusian_ to a fine mansion in Bayswater."

"I have had quite enough of the sea, Herbert," she answered. "Its hospitality is not to my taste; and yet, if you owned such a steamer as this, I believe I should be willing to make a voyage in her with you when we are married."

I let this pa.s.s, holding that I had already said enough as to the legitimacy of our s.h.i.+pboard union.

And now what follows I need not be very minute in relating. The captain contrived for "tea," as he called it, as excellent a meal as we could have wished for; white biscuit, good b.u.t.ter, bananas, a piece of virgin corned-beef, and preserved milk to put into our tea. What better fare could one ask for? I had a pipe and tobacco with me, and as I walked the deck in the evening with my darling, I had never felt happier.

It was a rich autumn evening; the wind had slackened and was now a light air, and we lingered on deck long after the light had faded in the western sky, leaving the still young moon s.h.i.+ning brightly over the sea, across whose dark, wrinkled, softly-heaving surface ran the wake of the speeding yacht, in a line like a pathway traversing a boundless moor.

We pa.s.sed one or two shadowy s.h.i.+ps, picking them up and then dropping them with a velocity, that to our homeward-yearning hearts was exceedingly soothing and comforting. Then, when the strong, continuous sweep of the breeze raised by the pa.s.sage of the steamer grew too strong for Grace, we descended into the cabin, where our sailor attendant, lighted the fine chandelier or candelabra, and Grace and I sat in splendour, our forms reflected in the mirrors, everything visible as by sunlight, though there must have been some magic above the art of the sun in those soft pencils of light flowing from the centre-piece of oil-flames; for never before had I observed in my darling so delicate and tender a bloom of complexion; her hair, too, seemed to gather a deeper richness of dye, and her eyes--

But, enough of such parish talk; though I know not why a lover should not be as fully privileged to celebrate his sweetheart's perfection in prose, as a poet is in verse. It is a matter of custom rather than of taste. Dante might have praised his Beatrice, Waller his Sacharissa, Horace and Prior their Chloes, and a very great many other gentlemen a very great many other ladies in prose sentences, quite as fine and true to the understanding as their verse. But would they have found readers? It is this consideration that makes me take a hurried leave of Grace's eyes.

CHAPTER XIV

HOMEWARD BOUND

I heartily appreciated the Earl of ----'s theory of sea-beds when I sprang into my narrow shelf of bunk, and found myself buoyant on some very miracle of spring mattress. I slept as soundly as one who sleeps to wake no more; but on going on deck some little while before the breakfast was served, I was grievously disappointed to find a wet day.

There was very little wind, but the sky was one dismal surface of leaden cloud, from which the rain was falling almost perpendicularly with a sort of obstinacy of descent that was full of the menace of a tardy abatement. Fortunately, the horizon lay well open; one could see some miles, and the steamer was was.h.i.+ng along at her old pace--a full thirteen, with a nearly becalmed collier, ragged, wet and staggering, all patches and bentinck-boom, dissolving rapidly into the weather over the starboard quarter. Captain Verrion, in streaming oilskins, catching sight of my head, came aft to inquire if I had slept comfortably. We then talked of the weather.

"One may know the English Channel ain't fur off, sir," said he, with a grin, as he looked up at the sky.

"Ay," said I, "and how would it be with us if we depended upon sails?

There is better music to me in the noise of your engine-room than in the finest performance of the first opera orchestra in the world."

He respectfully a.s.sented; and to kill the time as I stood under shelter, I asked a few questions about the earl and countess, related our adventures, taking care, however, to let him suppose that we were a young married couple out on a yachting honeymoon--not that I said this; I allowed him to infer it; spoke of the chances of the _Spitfire_, and then seeing Grace at the foot of the ladder, joined her, and presently we were at breakfast.

It rained incessantly, but, happily, the wind remained small, and we travelled along as quietly in that three hundred and fifty ton yacht as though we reposed in the saloon of an Atlantic giantess. A number of volumes filled the shelves of a sumptuous bookcase; I took the liberty of seeking for a book for Grace, and found that the collection consisted almost entirely of novels. His lords.h.i.+p was as wise in his choice of literature for sea-going purposes as in his taste for spring-mattresses, for what but a novel in a yacht's cabin on a wet day can fix the attention?

It was some time after three o'clock in the afternoon, that on a sudden the engines were "slowed down," as I believe the term is, and a minute later the revolutions of the propeller ceased. There is always something startling in the abrupt cessation of the pulsing of the screw in a steamer at sea. One gets so used to the noise of the engines, to the vibrating sensation communicated in a sort of tingling throughout the frame of the vessel by the thras.h.i.+ng blades, that the suspension of the familiar sound falls like a loud and fearful hush upon the ear.

Grace, who had been dozing, opened her eyes.

"What can the matter be?" cried I.

As I spoke I heard a voice, apparently aboard the yacht, hailing. I pulled on my cap, turned up the collar of my coat, and ran on deck expecting to find the yacht in the heart of a thickness of rain and fog with some big shadow of a s.h.i.+p looming within biscuit-toss. It was raining steadily, but the sea was not more shrouded than it had been at any other hour of the day, saving perhaps that something of the complexion of the evening, which was not far off, lay sombre in the wet atmosphere. I ran to the side and saw at a distance of the length of the steam yacht, my own hapless little dandy, the _Spitfire_! Her main mast was wholly gone, yet I knew her at once. There she lay, looking far more miserably wrecked than when I had left her, lifting and falling forlornly upon the small swell, her poor little pump going, plied, as I instantly perceived, by the boy, Bobby Allett.

I had sometimes thought of her as in harbour, and sometimes as at the bottom of the sea, but never, somehow, as still was.h.i.+ng about, helpless and sodden, with a gus.h.i.+ng scupper and a leaky bottom. Caudel, poor old Caudel, stood at the rail shouting to Captain Verrion, who was singing out to him from the bridge.

I rushed forward, bawling to Captain Verrion, "That's the _Spitfire_; that's my yacht!" and then at the top of my voice I shouted across the s.p.a.ce of water between the two vessels, "Ho, Caudel! where are the rest of you, Caudel? For G.o.d's sake launch your boat and come aboard!"

He stood staring at me, dropping his head first on one side, then on the other, doubting the evidence of his sight, and reminding one of the ghost in Hamlet: "It lifted up its head and did address itself to motion as it would speak." Astonishment appeared to bereave him of speech. For some moments he could do nothing but stare, then up went both hands with a gesture that was eloquent of--"Well, I'm _blowed_!"

"Come aboard, Caudel! Come aboard!" I roared, for the little dandy still had her dinghey and I did not wish to put Captain Verrion to the trouble of fetching the two fellows.

With the motions and air of a man dumb-founded, or under the influence of drink, Caudel addressed the lad, who dropped the pump handle, and between them they launched the boat, smack-fas.h.i.+on. Caudel then sprang into her with an oar and sculled across to us. He came floundering over the side, and yet again stood staring at me as though discrediting his senses. The colour appeared to have been washed out of his face by wet; his very oilskins seemed to have surrendered their water-proof properties, and they clung to his frame as soaked rags would. His boots were full of water, and his eyes resembled pieces of jellyfish fixed on either side his nose. I grasped his hand.

"Of all astonis.h.i.+ng meetings, Caudel! But how is it that you are here?

What has become of the main mast? Where are the rest of the men?

Never did a man look more s.h.i.+pwrecked than you. Are you thirsty? Are you starving?"

By this time Captain Verrion had joined us, and a knot of the steamer's crew stood on the forecastle looking first at the _Spitfire_, then at Caudel; scarcely, I daresay, knowing as yet whether to feel amused or amazed at this singular meeting. Caudel had the slow, laborious mind of the merchant sailor. He continued for some moments to heavily and damply gaze about him, then said:

"Dummed if this ain't wonderful, too. To find you here, sir! and your young lady, Mr. Barclay?"

"Safe and well in the cabin," I answered; "but where are the others, Caudel?"

"I'll spin you the yarn in a jiffy, sir!" he answered, with a countenance that indicated a gradual recollection of his wits. "Arter you left us we got some sail upon the yacht; but just about sundown it breezed up in a bit of a puff and the rest of the mast went overboard, a few inches above the deck. Well, there we lay. There was nothen to be done. Job Crew, he says to me, 'What's next?' says he. 'What but a tow home,' says I. 'It'll have to be that,' says he, 'and pretty quick, too,' he says, 'for I've now had nigh enough of this galliwanting.' Job was awanting in sperrit, Mr. Barclay. I own I was surprised to hear him, but I says nothen, and d.i.c.k Files, _he_ says nothen, and neither do Jim Foster. Well, at daybreak a little barque bound to the River Thames comes along and hails us. I asked her to give me a tow that I might have a chance of falling in with a tug. The master shook his head, and sings out that he'd take us aboard, but we wasn't to talk of _towing_. On this Job says, 'Here goes for my clothes.' Jim follows him. d.i.c.k says to me, 'What are you going to do?' 'Stick to the yacht,' says I. He was beginning to argue. 'No good atalking,' says I, 'here I am and here I stops.' Wouldn't it have been a blooming shame," he added, turning slowly to Captain Verrion, "to have deserted that there dandy when nothen's wanted but an occasional spell at the pump, and when something was bound to come along presently to give us a drag?"

Captain Verrion nodded, with a little hint of patronage, I thought, in his appreciative reception of Caudel's views.

"Well, to make an end of the yarn, Mr. Barclay," continued Caudel, "them three men went aboard the barque, taking their clothes with 'em; but when I told Bobby to go too, 'No,' says he, 'I'll stop and help ye to pump, sir.' There's the makings of a proper English sailor, Mr.

Barclay, in that there boy," he exclaimed, casting his eyes at the lad who had again addressed himself to the pump.