The Honour of the Flag Part 9

It is proper I should state at once that the names I give in this extraordinary experience are fict.i.tious; the date of the tale is easily within the memory of the middle-aged.

The large, well-known Australian liner _White Star_ lay off the wool-sheds in Sydney harbour slowly filling up with wool; I say slowly, for the oxen were languid up-country, and the stuff came in as Fox is said to have written his history--"drop by drop." We were, however, advertised to sail in a fortnight from the day I open this story on, and there was no doubt of our getting away by then.

I, who was chief officer of the vessel, was pacing the p.o.o.p under the awning, when I saw a lady and gentleman approaching the vessel. They spoke to the mate of a French barque which lay just ahead of us, and I concluded that their business was with that s.h.i.+p, till I saw the Frenchman, with a flourish of his hat, motion towards the _White Star_, whereupon they advanced and stepped on board.

I went on to the quarter-deck to receive them. The gentleman had the air of a military man: short, erect as a royal mast, with plenty of whiskers and moustache, though he wore his chin cropped. His companion was a very fine young woman of about six and twenty years; above the average height, faultlessly shaped, so far as a rude seafaring eye is privileged to judge of such matters; her complexion was pale, inclined to sallow, but most delicate, of a transparency of flesh that showed the blood eloquent in her cheek, coming and going with every mood that possessed her. She wore a little fall of veil, but she raised it when her companion handed her over the side in order to look round and aloft at the fabric of spar and shroud towering on high, with its central bunting of house flag pulling in ripples of gold and blue from the royalmast head; and so I had a good sight of her face, and particularly of her eyes.

I never remember the like of such eyes in a woman. To describe them as neither large nor small, the pupils of the liquid dusk of the Indian's, the eyelashes long enough to cast a silken shadow of tenderness upon the whole expression of her face when the lids dropped--to say all this is to convey nothing; simply because their expression formed the wonder, strangeness, and beauty of them, and there is no virtue in ink, at all events in my ink, to communicate it.

I do not exaggerate when I a.s.sure you that the surprise of the beauty of her eyes when they came to mine and rested upon me, steadfast in their stare as a picture, was a sort of shock in its way, comparable in a physical sense to one's unexpected handling of something slightly electric. For the rest, her hair was very black and abundant, and of that sort of deadness of hue which you find among the people of Asia.

I cannot describe her dress. Enough if I say that she was in mourning, but with a large admixture of white, for those were the hot weeks in Sydney.

"Is the captain on board?" inquired the gentleman.

"He is not, sir."

"When do you expect him?"

"Every minute."

"May we stop here?"

"Certainly. Will you walk into the cuddy or on to the p.o.o.p?"

"Oh, we'll keep in the open, we'll keep in the open," cried the gentleman, with the impetuosity of a man rendered irritable by the heat. "You'll have had enough of the cuddy, Miss Le Grand, long before you reach the old country."

She smiled. I liked her face then. It was a fine, glad, good-humoured smile, and humanised her wonderful eyes just as though you clothed a ghost in flesh, making the spectre natural and commonplace.

As we ascended the p.o.o.p ladder, the gentleman asked me who I was, quite courteously, though his whole manner was marked by a quality of military abruptness. When he understood I was chief officer he exclaimed:

"Then Miss Le Grand permit me to introduce Mr. Tyler to you. Miss Georgina Le Grand is going home in your s.h.i.+p. She will be alone. We have placed her in the care of the captain."

"Perhaps," said Miss Le Grand with another of her fine smiles, "I ought to introduce you, Mr. Tyler, to my uncle, Colonel Atkinson."

Again I pulled off my cap, and the colonel laughed as he lifted his wide straw hat. I guessed he laughed at a certain navete in the girl's way of introducing us.

The colonel was disposed to chat. Out of England Englishmen are amongst the most talkative of the human race. Likely enough he wanted to interest me in Miss Le Grand because of my situation on board. A chief mate is a considerable figure. If any mishap incapacitates the master, the chief mate takes charge. We walked the p.o.o.p, the three of us, in the violet shadow cast by the awning; the colonel constantly directed his eyes along the quay to observe if the captain was coming.

During this stroll to and fro the white planks I got these particulars, partly from the direct a.s.sertions of the colonel, partly from the occasional remarks of the girl.

Colonel Atkinson had married her father's sister. Her father had been an officer in the army, and had sailed from England with the then Governor of New South Wales. After he had been in Sydney a few months he sent for his daughter, whom he had left behind him with a maternal aunt, her mother having died some years before. She reached Sydney to find her father dead. His Excellency was very kind to her, and she found very many sympathetic friends, but her home was in England, and to it she was returning in the _White Star_, under the care of the master, Captain Edward Griffiths, after a stay of nearly five months in Sydney with her uncle, Colonel Atkinson.

Half an hour pa.s.sed before the captain arrived. When he stepped on board I lifted my cap and left the p.o.o.p, and the captain and the others went into the cuddy.

Our day of departure came round, and not a little rejoiced was I when the tug had fairly got hold of us, and we were floating over the sheet-calm surface of Sydney Bay, past some of the loveliest bits of scenery the world has to offer, on our road to the mighty ocean beyond the grim portals of Sydney Heads. We were a fairly crowded s.h.i.+p, what with Jacks and pa.s.sengers. The steerage and 'tween-decks were full up with people going home; in the cuddy some of the cabins remained unlet. We mustered in all, I think, about twelve gentlemen and lady pa.s.sengers, one of whom, needless to say, was Miss Georgina Le Grand.

I had been busy on the forecastle when she came aboard, but heard afterwards from Robson, the second mate, that the Governor's wife, with Colonel Atkinson, and certain n.o.bs out of Government House had driven down to the s.h.i.+p to say good-bye to the girl. She was alone. I wondered she had not a maid, but I afterwards heard from a bright little lady on board, a Mrs. Burney, one of the wickedest flirts that ever with a flash of dark glance drew a sigh from a man, that the woman Miss Le Grand had engaged to accompany her as maid to Europe had omitted to put in an appearance at the last moment, in perfect conformity with the manners and habits of the domestic servants of the Australian colonies of those days, and the young lady having no time to procure another maid had s.h.i.+pped alone.

At dinner on that first day of our departure, when the s.h.i.+p was at sea and I was stumping the deck in charge, I observed, in glancing through the skylight, that the captain had put Miss Le Grand upon the right of his chair, at the head of the table, a little before the fluted and emblazoned shaft of mizzenmast. I don't think above five sat down to dinner; a long heave of swell had sickened the hunger out of most of them. But it was a glorious evening, and the red suns.h.i.+ne, flas.h.i.+ng fair upon the wide open skylights, dazzled out as brilliant and hospitable a picture of cabin equipment as the sight could wish.

I had a full view of Miss Le Grand, and occasionally paused to look at her, so standing as to be un.o.bserved. Now that I saw her with her hat off I found something very peculiar and fascinating in her beauty. Her eyes seemed to fill her face, subduing every lineament to the full spiritual light and meaning in them, till her countenance looked sheer intellect, the very quality and spirit of mind itself. This effect, I think, was largely achieved by the uncommon hue of her skin. It accentuated colour, casting a deeper dye into the blackness of her hair, sharpening the fires in her eyes, painting her lips with a more fiery tinge of carnation through which, when she smiled, her white teeth shone like light itself.

I noticed even on this first day, during my cautious occasional peeps, that the captain was particularly attentive to the young lady; in which, indeed, I should have found nothing significant--for she had in a special degree been committed to his trust--but for the circ.u.mstance of his being a bachelor. Even then, early and fresh as the time was for thinking of such things, I guessed when I looked at the girl that the hardy mariner alongside of her would not keep his heart whole a week, if indeed, for the matter of that, he was not already head over ears. He was a good-looking man in his way; not everybody's type of manly beauty, perhaps, but certain of admiration from those who relish a strong sea flavour and the colour of many years and countless leagues of ocean in looks, speech, and deportment. He was about thirty-five, the heartiest laugher that ever strained a rib in merriment, a genial, kindly man, with a keen, seawardly blue eye, weather-coloured face, short whiskers, and rising in his socks to near six feet. I believe he was of Welsh blood. This was my first voyage with him. The rigorous discipline of the quarter-deck had held us apart, and all that I could have told of him I have here written.

For some time after we left Sydney nothing whatever noteworthy happened. One quiet evening I came on deck at eight o'clock to take charge of the s.h.i.+p till midnight. We were still in the temperate parallels, the weather of a true Pacific sweetness, and, by day, the ocean a dark blue rolling breast of water, feathering on every round of swell in sea-flashes, out of which would sparkle the flying-fish to sail down the bright mild wind for a s.p.a.ce, then vanish in some brow of brine with the flight of a silver arrow.

This night the moon was dark, the weather somewhat thick, the stars pale over the trucks, and hidden in the obscurity a little way down the dusky slope of firmament. Windsails were wriggling fore and aft like huge white snakes, gaping for the tops and writhing out of the hatches. The flush of sunset was dying when I came on deck. I saw the captain slowly pacing the weather side of the p.o.o.p with Miss Le Grand.

He seemed earnest in his talk and gestures. Enough western light still lived to enable me to see faces, and I observed that Mrs. Burney, standing to leeward of a skylight talking with a gentleman, would glance at the couple with a satirical smile whenever they came abreast of her.

But soon the night came down in darkness upon the deep; the wind blew damp out of the dusk in a long moan over the rail, heeling the s.h.i.+p yet by a couple of degrees; the captain sang out for the fore and mizzen-royals to be clewed up and furled, and shortly afterwards went below, first handing Miss Le Grand down the companion-way.

I guessed the game was up with the worthy man: he had met his fate and taken to it with the meekness of a sheep. He might do worse, I thought, as I started on a solitary stroll, so far as looks are concerned; but what of her nature--her character? It was puzzling to think of what sort of spirit it was that looked out of her wonderful eyes; and she was not a kind of a girl that a man would care to leave ash.o.r.e; so much beauty, full of a subtle endevilment of some sort, as it seemed to me, must needs demand the constant sentinelling of a husband's presence. That was how it struck me.

By eleven o'clock all was hushed throughout the s.h.i.+p: lights out, the captain turned in, nothing stirring forward save the flitting shape of the look-out under the yawn of the pale square of fore-course. It was blowing a pleasant breeze of wind, and lost in thought I leaned over the rail at the weather fore-end of the p.o.o.p watching the cold sea-glow s.h.i.+ning in the dark water as the foam spat past, sheeting away astern in a furrow like moonlight. I will swear I did not doze; that I never was guilty of whilst on duty in all the years I was at sea; but I don't doubt that I was sunk deep in thought, insomuch that my reverie may have possessed a temporary power of abstraction as complete as slumber itself.

I was startled into violent wakefulness by a cannonade of canvas aloft, and found the s.h.i.+p in the wind. I looked aft; the wheel was deserted--at least I believed so, till on rus.h.i.+ng to it, meanwhile shouting to the watch on deck, I spied the figure of the helmsman on his face close beside the binnacle.

I thought he was dead. The watch to my shouts came tumbling to the braces, and in a few minutes the captain made his appearance. The s.h.i.+p was got to her course afresh, by which time the man who had been steering was so far recovered as to be able to sit on the grating abaft the wheel and relate what had happened.

He was a Dane, and spoke with a strong foreign accent, beyond my art to reproduce. He said he had been looking away to leeward, believing he saw a light out upon the horizon, when on turning his head he beheld a ghost at his side.

"A what?" said the captain.

"A ghost, sir, so help me--" and here the little Dane indulged in some very violent language, all designed to convince us that he spoke the truth.

"What was it like?" asked the captain.

"It was dressed in white and stood looking at me. I tried to run and could not, but fell, and maybe fainted."

"The durned idiot slept," said the captain to me, "and dreamt, and dropped on his nut."

"Had I dropped on my nut, should not have woke up then?" cried the Dane, in a pa.s.sion of candour.

"Go forward and turn in," said the captain. "The doctor shall see you and report to me."

When the man was gone the captain asked me if I had seen anything likely to produce the impression of a ghost on an ignorant, credulous man's mind? I answered no, wondering that he should ask such a question.

"How long was the man in a fit, d'ye think?" said he, "that is, before you found out that the wheel was deserted?"

"Three or four minutes."

He looked into the binnacle, took a turn about the decks, and, without saying anything more about the ghost, went below.

The doctor next day reported that the Dane was perfectly well, and of sound mind, and that he stuck with many imprecations to his story. He described the ghost as a figure in white that looked at him with sparkling eyes, and yet blindly. He was unable to describe the features. Fright, no doubt, stood in the way of perception. He could not imagine where the thing had come from. He was, as he had said, gazing at what looked like a spark or star to leeward, when turning his head he found the Shape close beside him.

The captain and the doctor talked the thing over in my presence, and we decided to consider it a delusion on the part of the Dane, a phantom of his imagination, mainly because the man swooned after he saw the thing, letting go the wheel so that the s.h.i.+p came up into the wind, and it was impossible to conceive that a substantial object could have vanished in the time that elapsed between the man falling down and the flap of sails which had called my attention to the abandoned helm.

However, nothing was said about the matter aft: the sailors adopted the doctor's opinion, some viewing the thing as a "Dutchman's" dodge to get a "night in."

A few days later brought us into cold weather: this was followed by the ice and conflicts of the Horn.

We drove too far south, and for a week every afternoon we hove-to under a close-reefed maintopsail for fear of the ice throughout the long hours of Antarctic blackness. We were in no temper to think of ghosts, and yet though no one had delivered the news authoritatively, it had come by this wild bleak time to be known that Captain Griffiths and Miss Le Grand were engaged. Mrs. Burney told me so one day in the cuddy, and with a wicked flash of her dark eye wondered that people could think of making love with icebergs close at hand.