CHAPTER XVI.

UNDER THE TROPIC OF CAPRICORN.

Next morning, when Morley ventured up, everything was dripping wet; on deck and aloft all bore cheerless evidence of a rough night that had passed.

The _Princess_ had but little canvas spread, for the sea was rising still; the fore, main, and mizzen topsails were taken off her, and ere long she was speeding before the wind and sea under a close-reefed foresail and storm staysail.

Morrison, one of the most powerful men on board, with another grim old seaman, named Noah Gawthrop, whose weather-beaten visage resembled nothing on land or sea but a knot on a gnarled oak tree, were at the wheel, and it was with the utmost difficulty they could keep the helm, so heavily did breaker after breaker poop the ship.

Though heavy, the wind was fair for the _Princess_, but it bore her away from the shores of Britain, was Morley's first and regretful idea.

No other craft was in sight, and the gray sky imparted an opaque tint to the dark and tumbling sea, which seemed to follow her brine-dripping sides, as swiftly she darted on, at times cleaving asunder, or riding across, the long rolling mountains of water that burst in hissing showers over the varnished bowsprit and gilded catheads, over the iron windlass and forecastle bitts, and after drenching the cowering watch, poured away through the scuppers to leeward as the buoyant ship rose on each successive wave, like a gallant sea-bird trussing her pinions.

Amid that waste of waters, no living thing was visible from the deck, save a brown flock of Mother Carey's chickens, the stormy petrels, tripping with outspread wings up the slope of one wave and down the slope of another.

Though accustomed to the sea, by his past voyaging, Morley gazed around him with a bewildered air. He addressed something--he knew not what--to the men at the wheel, but the Scotch mate was too full of anxiety about his steering to reply, and, as for Mr. Noah Gawthrop, he heard the remark with stolid indifference, and expectorated vociferously to leeward.

The bronzed face and keen gray eyes of the Scotchman were turned alternately to the leech of the close-reefed foresail, the bellying of the storm staysail, and the compass-box, while his feet were planted firmly on the deck-grating, and his weather-beaten hands grasped the wheel like his shipmate on the other side.

Neither of these men ever spoke to each other. Instinct and skill taught them simultaneously and mutually when to keep her full and by, when to let her yaw, or when to let her ship a sea.

Wearied with toil, and the double watching of the past night, Captain Bartelot was asleep in his damp clothes on the cabin-locker. So noon passed away, and still the _Princess_ flew on through mist and spray, under her close-reefed foresail and storm staysail.

Another vessel, similarly stripped of canvas, flew past them on the opposite tack, and, like a spectre, disappeared in the wrack and gloom; but, anon, the wind and sea went gradually down together, the clouds burst asunder, and the sun came joyously forth.

The gale gradually abated to a fine spanking breeze, the mainsail was set, and the reefs shaken out of the foresail; topsail after topsail were hoisted and sheeted home. Then followed the studding-sails and royals, and the _Princess_, with everything on her that "would draw," swept out into the waters of the mighty Atlantic.

A lovely evening followed, and a rosy sunset, but not a ship was in sight, and Morley now calculated that they must be more than 200 miles from land.

"By Jove, this is excellent!" exclaimed Tom Bartelot, lounging back in his chair, after a late dinner (for on this day the cook's fire had been washed out of the caboose); "how happy I am to have you here, Morley. Confess, old fellow, that you couldn't have fallen into better hands."

"I do confess it most willingly; but, my dear old friend, I must be set on shore, if possible, at the first opportunity. I have Hawkshaw to punish, and Ethel to save from the insult of his presence."

"On shore, with the breeze blowing thus--the Scilly Isles more than 150 miles astern, and not a sail in sight."

"But, Ethel--the Bassets--what will they think of my sudden disappearance? What story may that rascal tell them?"

"Nothing that you can't unsay by-and-bye."

"Unsay when it may be too late."

"Too late!"

"And to have Ethel left in the power, or rather, subjected to the wiles and addresses of one so cruel, so artful."

"Tut, tut, if she would slip from her moorings by the old man's side, to sail in company with a rascally pirate, she's not worth much, friend Morley, and certainly not worth regretting."

"Ethel shall judge what I have suffered, by what she is suffering herself."

"Try some of that brandy-and-water, and don't get into the doldrums. Light a cheroot--there's a box of capital ones on the locker behind you. Have patience; in a few months at farthest----"

"Months! You talk to me of patience, Tom, as if you had never seen me practise it."

"In what way?"

"Have you forgotten when I was broiling, for a pittance, on the Bonny river? how I toiled, worked, aye, slaved, and cheered myself with the thoughts of Ethel Basset, and an English home? For three years I had patience, amid adversity and illness. Heaven knows how I got through those three years, Tom."

"Just as you shall get over the three months that must pass before you reach the Mauritius after visiting Rio."

"Well, I returned, as I have told you, to find that her future home was to be elsewhere than in England; that we were to be separated, perhaps, hopelessly; that I had a rival, too, a kinsman, a _protégé_ of her father's, a son of a certain Tom Hawkshaw, of Lincoln's Inn--a fellow without honour, honesty, money, or scruple."

"I'd like to give him a dip at the end of a deep-sea line."

"Sail, homeward-bound, on the weather-bow!" reported Morrison, one morning, a few days after this.

Morley's heart leaped, and he rushed on deck to look at the stranger--a smart bark, close-hauled, with all her starboard-tacks aboard. She was evidently a foreigner, being painted a pale pea-green.

"A Baltic craft, I take her to be," said Morrison. "Here she comes, running sharp on a wind, with a bone in her teeth."

"A bone?" repeated Morley.

"Yes; the spray flying under her cutwater, and over her catheads. Don't you remember the fun we used to have with De Vavasour Spout, the cockney supercargo, when talking all manner of nautical rubbish to him. Morrison, run up our ensign; lay the mainyard to the mast; steward, hand up the trumpet, we'll overhaul her."

The orders were promptly obeyed; the stranger also backed his mainyard, and showed his ensign--black and white.

"Prussian," said Morrison.

"Bound for the Elbe," added Bartelot, whose hail was answered in a hoarse dissonance, that made even Noah Gawthrop's grim visage relax with a smile, as he sent the debris of his quid to leeward, and anathematised foreigners in general, and their Hugos in particular, while each vessel stood off on her course again.

"No chance for you, Morley," said Bartelot, "so we'll give it up and think no more about it."

Ten days elapsed after this, and, in all that space never once did the _Princess_ come within hail of a homeward-bound ship, so Morley strove to resign himself to his fate.

"Rio de Janeiro be it," said he.

He took his watch with the rest of the crew, and endeavoured to make the time pass; but weary, weary was his lot for days and weeks--days and weeks of mental suffering, during which he fretted, chafed, and loathed, at times, the floating prison which bore him away, almost hopelessly, from the watery path which he now concluded Ethel must be traversing--she, due southward, towards the sun; and he, south-westward, towards the land of fire.

It is an age of swift postal arrangements, of telegrams, magnetic and electric, but nothing could avail Morley there on the wide, wide sea; the appliances of modern science were there as nugatory and of as little avail as in the days when Columbus ploughed the same waters in search of the western world--he had nothing to console him save patience and hope.

She might be dying of grief for his loss, for people sometimes do die of grief, though, pardon me for the heresy, fair reader, people seldom die for love; and, unless assisted by some good genii or spirits of the air, Morley was powerless, and without the means of acquainting her that he was safe, alive, well, and had miraculously escaped a most foul and deliberate attempt to assassinate him.

So, weary were the days and more weary the nights, while the swift ship flew on, making a most prosperous voyage towards a clime of sunnier skies and brighter seas than those of England; but, weary though it seemed, and insufferably slow, the time passed, nevertheless.

Each day the sun grew hotter and rose higher overhead.

The Line was passed; Father Neptune came on board in all the splendour of oakum wig, tar, and yellow ochre; and Morley, having crossed the Line before, escaped being shaved with a hoop and bathed in salt water, though old Noah Gawthrop, who personated the god of the ocean, and Morrison, who personated Amphitrite, the mother of Triton, had some very waggish views respecting him. And now the atmosphere was hot, indeed.

"When I was last at Rio," said old Noah, whose voice, like worthy Tom Pipes's, had "a cadence like that of an east wind singing through a cranny"--"the crabs and winkles were roasted in their shells upon the shore."

The winds continued favourable; the _Princess_ steadily held her course, and the day on which they would probably see Rio Janeiro was already confidently spoken of by Tom Bartelot and his first mate, Bill Morrison, for both were practical seamen, and holders of first-class certificates.

Though a grave and stern man, and one deeply imbued with many of the northern superstitions of his country, with a few--but luckily a very few--of its theological whim-whams, Morrison became a great friend of Morley, and, though a believer in mysterious lights, warnings, and presentiments, in second sight, second hearing, and so forth, he was remarkably well informed, well educated, and spoke Latin, and more than one European language fluently.

His face was browned by long exposure to every climate in the world; he had faced all the dangers of the deep, and their name is legion; he was hardy, tough, and athletic, and, being at times conversational, he learned from Morley, long ere the voyage was over, the whole history of his love, rivalry, and adventures.

"Take heart, young gentleman," said he, as they kept their watch together on a lovely moonlight night, when drawing near the tropic of Capricorn; "when I was a bairn at home, my mother (God bless her puir auld body!) aye taught me that 'the ways o' Providence were dark and intricate, perplexed wi' mazes and distressed wi' errors,' and I have seen but little reason to alter my opinion in manhood, or as I grow aulder in the horn, as we say in Scotland. But something tells me that you will bring this rascally piccaroon up wi' a round turn yet."

"But Miss Basset?"

"If _she_ countenanced him," interrupted the Scotchman, turning his keen gray eyes and knitted brows to Morley, "why, then, I say, e'en let her go with a flowing sheet."

"Which means----"

"That you'll be well free of so unseaworthy a craft."

So, at this period of their story, the loved and the loving, Morley Ashton and Ethel Basset, are both traversing the same mighty ocean. Morley knew that, if Ethel lived, she would now inevitably be sailing for the Isle of France; but she, alas! believed that her lover was no more, and lost to her indeed for ever!

Will they ever meet more?

They may meet peacefully and happily again, never to separate; or, it may be, that they shall be united never more on this side of the grave, for both are now upon the sea, and the perils encountered by those who go down into the great deep and see the wonders thereof--wreck, storm, fire, mutiny, piracy, and famine--may be the lot of one or of both.

The wheel of fortune turns, and anon we shall see!