In the Roaring Fifties Part 2

'I respect your feelings,' she said, as if making great concession.

Really, the boy was most interesting, so handsome, so unusual. She smiled upon him like a guardian angel with exquisite teeth, and the scamp turned again to the sea, apostrophizing in fo'c'sle idiom all interfering fools and sentimental humbugs.

III

Lucy Woodrow did not appear on the deck until after nightfall. Jim understood that she would insist upon expressing lifelong grat.i.tude with the usual effusion and the usual tears. He feared the ordeal, and prepared himself for it. He had seen the girl often during the voyage, sometimes accompanied by a blonde youth, whose beautiful clothes and exquisite manners afforded unfailing material for primitive satire in the forecastle, but, as a rule, quite alone, m.u.f.fled in a dark, hooded cloak, watching the sea, always with her face turned yearningly back, as if England and home lay straight out along the vessel's wake. She was middling tall, eighteen perhaps, with a thin but supple and pleasing figure, and a quiet, smileless face, that wanted only happiness to make it beautiful.

Done's misanthropy was not a quality of his nature, it was thrust upon him, and did not prevent his being a close observer of men and things; but that he had the smallest interest in any person on board was not believed by one of his s.h.i.+pmates, since he was instinctively careful to betray no concern. He had been struck by the girl's apparent loneliness.

The attentions of the blonde youth were borne meekly, as part of the contiguous discomforts--that much was obvious to the forecastle and all under. It never occurred to Jim that she was probably placed like himself, and had good reason to stand aloof.

When he had been on board the Francis Cadman a month or so, Jim was amazed to find that the att.i.tude of the pa.s.sengers and the crew towards himself was almost a.n.a.logous to that of the people of Chisley. Nearly every phase of feeling that was manifested amongst the villagers presented itself here, and he was troubled. His first suspicion was that his ident.i.ty had become known. He had small knowledge of men, and a sick fear gripped him at the thought that all communities were alike, and would reflect the suspicions and animosities of his little village if it were known among them that one of his blood had done murder, and had suffered as a murderer. But no whisper of his story reached his ears, and he remained perplexed. He had yet to learn that society in all its phases is ever intensely suspicious of the man apart. His one desire had been that he might be lost amongst the pa.s.sengers, that he might efface himself in the crowd by keeping carefully out of every man's way and concerning himself with the interests of none. By doing this he hoped to land in Australia unknown, unheeded, and start his life again, cut off from the past completely. He had only succeeded in making himself notorious. He was silent, reserved, but he was different to the others, and to hide amongst sheep one must be a sheep. Jim's very anxiety to escape notice made him conspicuous. His aloofness was resented as 'dirty pride,' and, being strange to all, he became the b.u.t.t of many.

Jim Done was not of the type that rough-living men select as the victims of their small jokes; but in the forecastle the disposition to play upon the Hermit developed from small and secret things into open hara.s.sment, and Jim's stoicism was wholly misconstrued. He did not seem to see things that would have caused others in the company to fill the s.h.i.+p with bad language and dread of death; he was impervious to rhymed jibes and broad sarcasms that were supposed to have peculiar powers of irritation if repeated constantly, day after day and night after night, without any apparent feeling, or motive, or reason under the sun.

Fire was struck one evening with a particularly good joke played upon Done in his bunk. Jim stepped down amongst the laughing men in his s.h.i.+rt, and selecting the one whose laugh was loudest and most hearty, he struck him an open-handed blow that drove him like a log along the floor. There was little noise. A narrow 'ring' was improvised, two or three bits of candle were found to help the sooty s.h.i.+p's lantern, and the men fought as they stood.

Jim's opponent was Phil Ryan, a smart young sailor, six or seven years his senior. The fight was short but lively, and the onlookers had not one word of comment to offer after the first round. The men gazed at Done with a ludicrous expression of stupid reproach. He had deceived, betrayed them; he had posed as a quiet, harmless man, with the manners of an aristocrat, when he might have been s.h.i.+p's champion at any moment by merely putting up his hands.

Phil went down five times. The fifth time he remained seated, gazing straight before him, with one sad, meditative eye, and another that looked as if it could never be of any use as an eye again.

'Get up, Ryan!' urged Phil's second.

Phil did not move; he gave no indication of having heard.

'Ryan, get up, man!' The second prompted him with his toe.

'Meanin' me?' said the vanquished.

'To be sure. Be a man! Get up and face him.'

'Divil a fear o' me!' said Ryan. 'I'm never goin' to get up agin till you put that wild man to bed.' He pointed at Jim.

'Are you licked, then, Ryan?'

'Licked it is. Any man is li'ble to wander into error, maybe, but there's wan thing about Phil Ryan, he's open to conviction, an' he's had all the conviction he wants this blessed night.'

'Then we've had enough?' said the second, with an uneasy eye on Jim.

'We have that,' continued Ryan, 'onless some other gintleman would like to resoom th' argumint where I dthropped it.' The fallen hero ran his good eye eagerly from face to face.

But Done had already returned to his bunk, and the others seemed indisposed to put him to further trouble. No more jokes were played upon the Hermit. The cynics and the wits developed a p.r.o.nouncedly serious vein, and it was resolved that for the future Jim Done should take his own road, and behave in his own peculiar way, without provoking objection from the company.

'Tis a curtyis an' gintlemanly risolution,' said Ryan, tenderly caressing his inflated eye, 'an' a great pity it is we forgot to think iv it sooner.'

The respect the forecastle had acquired for Done was vastly increased by his rescue of Lucy Woodrow. Conduct that had previously been ascribed to mere conceit was now accounted for by most romantic imaginings, for it is a cardinal belief amongst men of their cla.s.s that the true fighter is superior to all little weaknesses and small motives. When the girl crossed the moonlit deck to Done's side, the sailors drifted away out of earshot, and inquisitive eyes could not turn in Jim's direction without provoking a profane reproof.

Done's heart beat heavily as the slim, dark figure faced him, extending a trembling hand.

'I am Lucy Woodrow,' she said in a voice little above a whisper.

'Yes,' he answered simply.

Her hand closed upon his fingers, and she was silent for a moment, evidently deeply agitated. Her head was bent, hiding her face from his eyes; and he noticed curiously the moonlight glimmering like tiny sparks in her red-brown hair.

'You saved my life,' she continued; 'you risked your own. I thank you with all my heart.'

There was something in her voice that made the simple, formal words quite eloquent, but Jim scarcely heeded them; he was terrified lest she should kiss his hand, and withdrew it abruptly.

'I can only say thank you--thank you! And one says that in grat.i.tude for a mere politeness. But you understand, don't you? My heart is full.'

'Yes, I understand,' he said. 'Now, please, try to say no more about it.

I'm glad to have helped you; but the risk I took was very small after all. I've almost lived in the sea.'

She raised her face and looked into his eyes.

'It is very easy for you to speak like that,' she said; 'but I know that if it were not for you at this moment my poor body--' She sobbed and turned to the sea, with something of its terror and desolation in her face, and Done understood the grim idea that possessed her.

'Thank G.o.d, it was not to be!' he said; and he felt more deeply at that moment than he had done for many years.

Lucy Woodrow remained silent, leaning upon the gunwale with her face to the sea, and he noticed presently that she was weeping, and was silent too. When she spoke again the new feeling in her voice startled him.

'Why did you save me?' she asked in a pa.s.sionate whisper.

'Why?' He was full of wonder, and repeated the interrogation vaguely.

'Yes, why--why? You had no right!'

'Is it a matter of right?' he asked, stunned. 'I saw you fall. I don't know why I jumped over. My next conscious action was of striking out in the water. The act was quite involuntary.'

'You had no right!' Her voice was very low, but instinct with a grief that was tragic.

'Tell me what you mean.' Unconsciously, he spoke in the soothing tone one adopts towards an injured child.

'I did not fall overboard.'

'Then, what happened?'

'I threw myself into the sea!'

'You--you wished to drown?'

'Yes, I wanted to die--to be rid of my wretched, empty life.'

Done was thrilled. He gazed earnestly upon the frail young figure; he had a dawning sense of the possibilities of life and emotion in others. He, too, had often thought of self-slaughter in an abstract way as the final defiance; but here was a mere girl for whom life held so little that she craved for and dared death. A remembrance of his own sister came back to him, softening his heart to pity. He touched Lucy's arm gently.

'And when you were thanking me just now,' he said, 'you--'

'I lied? No, no, no!' she cried, with a revulsion of feeling; 'I meant it! I am grateful--indeed I am grateful! I longed to die; but the thought of was.h.i.+ng about in these terrible waters makes me ill with fear. When the waves took hold of me and swept me under I wished to live--I had a wild yearning for life. Many times since last night I have felt the water sucking me down and the mighty waves piling above me, and have felt again the utter helplessness and terror.' Shuddering, she covered her face with her hands, but continued speaking after a moment's pause. 'It was horrible to die; but I am wretched--wretched! and I shall never be brave enough to venture again--never!'