CHAPTER XIX.

ETHEL AMID THE ATLANTIC ISLES.

Unlike the _Princess_, which, as we have shown, accomplished a most prosperous voyage, the _Hermione_ encountered a series of head-winds and hard gales; she had several of her spars carried away, and even before skirting the Bay of Biscay, had to put in requisition her spare foretopmast and topsail yards.

This was considered by all on board a singularly unlucky beginning, as Captain Phillips said; all the more so, that a pair of sparrows had built their nest in the forecrosstrees, during the time that the ship lay in the London-dock, and had finished it, too, undeterred by all the noise and bustle around them.

This was considered so good an omen, that the event was actually recorded in the ship's log; biscuit crumbs were scattered in the tops for their support, and orders were given not to disturb the birds, if possible, so they went to sea with the ship. So the female sat upon her eggs, while the male hopped and twittered about the top and below in search of the scattered crumbs; but in the first tough breeze, as some ill-disposed fellow--supposed to be Pedro Barradas--was going aloft at night, the nest was destroyed, and flung with its two little eggs on the deck; the poor birds were swept away to sea, and hence, as Mr. Quail affirmed, came the ill-luck, the head-winds and hard gales, encountered by the ship.

After passing the Madeira Isles her foremast was carried away, and at the very time when Tom Bartelot was informing Morley Ashton that she should be somewhere off St. Helena, the _Hermione_ was creeping slowly under a jury foremast into the harbour of Teguise (the chief town of Lanzarota, one of the Canary Isles), to refit; and there the dockyard appliances were so small and so poor, that she was delayed for more than a fortnight.

Mr. Basset took Ethel and Rose to a posada in the town, where, though the accommodation was miserable, as usual in all Spanish posadas, it was a vast relief, after the discomfort, circumscribed space, and monotony of the ship, to tread on _terra firmâ_, under the cloudless sky of the Canary Isles, and to see the sheep, and goats, and camels, too, browsing in the grassy pastures.

The inevitable Hawkshaw, glad, for certain cogent reasons of his own, to keep clear of the ship, or, at least, of its crew, of course accompanied them, as Mr. Basset's guest.

It should have been mentioned that when the captain came on deck next morning, after recognising Pedro Barradas on the yard-arm overnight, so complete was the change in his costume and toilet, that scarcely anyone knew him.

His thick, luxuriant brown beard, and most cherished moustaches, were shaved clean off; his hair, of which he had a great quantity, was now shorn quite short. In lieu of the scarlet tarboosh, in which he had been hitherto wont to figure, he wore a white wide-awake; and his military boots, with brass heels, were exchanged for a pair of white shoes with yellow soles.

For the natty, short sack-coat, and Spanish sash beneath it, a surtout and vest of most ample and business-like cut had been substituted. On the whole, his _tout ensemble_, if less picturesque and striking, was infinitely more respectable.

"Lor' bless me!" exclaimed old Nance Folgate, terrified to meet on the companion-stair a man whose eyes and voice she alone could recognise.

Captain Phillips and Mr. Basset laughed heartily at the change; even Ethel smiled, and Rose made great fun of it; and it was soon remarked that, with his hirsute appendages, the ci-devant captain relinquished all his South American reminiscences, the Spanish interjections and Yankeeisms, with which his conversation had been so fully flavoured hitherto--a change greatly for the better.

Hawkshaw pleaded the heat they were soon to encounter as a reason for his new toilet, though they were scarcely clear of the "chops of the Channel." For many weighty reasons, best known to himself, he kept a nervous watch upon Pedro and Zuares Barradas; and the appearance of either of these seamen coming aft, to take the wheel, or perform any other ship's duty, sent the Texan captain below, with a celerity and abruptness which was so often repeated, that there were times--especially when he was conversing with the young ladies, Mr. Basset, Captain Phillips, or Dr. Heriot--that it became so strange as to excite remark, though no one could have understood what his conduct meant.

The rough weather encountered by the _Hermione_ after leaving the British Channel afforded ample excuses for remaining below; but how to avoid his dreaded South American acquaintances during the months of a protracted voyage he knew not, and he felt the wretched conviction that it was impossible!

Whether it was a dread of some destructive revelation, or whether his growing love for Ethel had somewhat purified this luckless and guilty fellow's mind, we know not; neither can we say whether he repented the terrible past, as that could be known to Heaven and himself only. It is very possible that he may have felt alike repentance and remorse, with gleams of hope for the future, as no human character is so utterly bad as to be without one redeeming point at least.

"No time," says Robert Burns (in one of his unpublished letters preserved at Edinburgh), "can cast a light further on the present resolves of the human mind; but time will reconcile, and has reconciled, many a man to that iniquity which at first he abhorred."

The appearance of Zuares had even a more exciting effect on Hawkshaw than that of Pedro.

Zuares, the unwitting matricide of the Barranca Secca, was a more youthful but equally picturesque-looking ruffian. He was decidedly handsome, with well-cut features; his eyes and nose were very fine; but he had a cruel and savage mouth, which he inherited from his Mexican blood.

It seemed the very machination of Satan, or of a retributive destiny, that, after he had so fearfully rid himself of Ashton, now placed him in the same ship with these two men.

If seen by them, if known and recognised, he felt himself lost with Ethel, Mr. Basset, and all on board.

Should they meet him face to face, he dare not decline their recognition, and with that recognition the assumption or resumption of an old and insolent familiarity, from which he had everything to dread, and from which he shrank instinctively now.

Poor wretch! his position was far from enviable.

He felt conscious, probably, that he had led a wild and reckless, a wandering and unprofitable life; but softened now by his regard for Ethel Basset--though even that regard was full of self-interest and selfishness--he mentally resolved that, if he were spared from this disaster, this hourly terror of exposure, and if he escaped the toils and perils in which those Barradas could involve him, that he would turn over a new leaf, and be for the future a better man.

"Ah, these new leaves!" exclaims Digby Grand; "if the half of them were turned over, what a gigantic volume they would form in the life of many of us!"

With this resolution, perhaps, he strove to soothe the remorse, or guilt, he felt for the outrage on Morley Ashton. It was not his first crime, probably, nor the first time he had taken the life of a fellow-creature in some fashion.

"Barradas--Barradas!" he never ceased to mutter. "How the wheel of fortune turns! What fiend brought us together again? But fate is fate, and there is an end of it!"

Consequently, right glad was he to avail himself of a fortnight on shore at the Canaries, till the _Hermione_ was reported ready for sea, and had the blue peter fluttering at her new foremast head.

Rose found, in the Canaries, and boat visits to Santa Clara, Aleguenza, and Graciosa (three islets adjoining Lanzarota), and to the old Spanish Castle, which, in 1596, the Earl of Cumberland assailed at the head of 600 men-at-arms, ample materials for the diary she was keeping; and Ethel wrote letters to the Pages, and other dear friends at Acton-Rennel, dated from the Posado de St. Iago, opposite the Canal de Bocagna, detailing the terrors and dangers they had undergone, in such exaggerated terms as young ladies generally resort to when excited, or fired by a desire to run into flowery description.

A fine day in July--but all days are fine in that region, save those of October and November--saw the _Hermione_ entirely refitted, her spars and hamper all a-taunto, under a heavy press of sail, once more at sea, and leaving the Cape of Mascona rapidly astern, while the sharp cone of Teneriffe rose as rapidly from the ocean on her weather-bow.

For some time after this the voyage was truly delightful, and, as Mr. Basset had anticipated, the change of scene and of air acted most beneficially on Ethel. She was in excellent medical hands, too; for young Dr. Heriot, though more disposed to be attentive to Rose, was unremitting in his care of Ethel, to whose pale cheek the colour was gradually returning.

The atmosphere, especially in the evening, under the quarter-deck awning, was charming, and a day seldom passed without something occurring to break the monotony of the voyage.

The Canary Isles were passed in succession; one day they had a glimpse of Africa, about twenty miles distant. It was the great headland forming the extremity of Jebel Kahl, or the Black Mountains of Sahara.

Low, and dim, and distant looked that little strip of blue coast. How strange to think it was a portion of that vast continent of perils and wonders--the land of Park, Lander, Livingstone, Speke, and Grant!

After leaving the Canaries they had a tedious calm for nearly three days--a fresh delay.

The ocean was still as the waters of an English mere in summer. The sails hung straight and motionless upon the yards, though the ship kept sheering round from time to time, her bowsprit pointing to all the points of the compass in slow succession, and occasional swells that heaved slowly up and sunk noiselessly down in the glassy sea, jerked the neglected rudder and its wheel a few inches to and fro.

Ethel and Rose sat reading under the awning; the doctor was fishing over the taffrail; the mates were forward superintending the men, who were busy cleaning the forecastle.

Captain Phillips sat somewhat moodily on a spare topsail-yard, that was slung alongside, smoking, with his short fat legs dangling over the water, and his eyes fixed on the horizon, as if he was waiting to see the coming breeze.

Tempted by the heat, Manfredi was about to strip for a bathe about the ship's bows, when the Yankee, Bill Badger, who was busy painting the grating of the head-boards, sung out:

"Take care, mate! for here comes a fellow that gobble up the prophet Joaney. Once in his ballast port, I calculate you'll never be a capting, Mr. Manfreddy. Blowd if I don't get a harpoon, and have a shy at the beggar!"

"Look, Miss Rose," cried Captain Phillips, from his perch on the spare topsail-yard, "there goes a sea-lawyer."

Rose looked at her papa and laughed, while the ship's cook threw over a piece of rancid pork, with a sharp skewer in it, for mischief, as there is a natural antipathy between Jack Tar and Jack Shark.

The shark--a white one--turned on his back, and the piece of pork that floated steadily on the oily sea vanished into his capacious maw, the opening and shutting of which made the girls shudder, and old Nurse Folgate, who was knitting beside them, utter a "Lor' a mussy me!" with great earnestness.

Hawkshaw hoped the heat might tempt either of the Barradas to take a bathe alongside, but they were much too cautious to do so.

"How horrible!" said Ethel, as the monster sailed away, with his black triangular fin erect.

"A fellow like that would dart at a man in the sea, and snap him up as a snipe would a fly," said Dr. Heriot. "I have heard, Miss Basset, of the master of a Guinea ship, among whose cargo of slaves there prevailed a strange rage for drowning in the belief that, after death, they would be restored to their native country, their tribes and wigwams; to cure them of this, or to convince them that they could not reanimate their dead bodies, he ordered one, a gigantic negro, who had died at a ring-bolt, to be towed overboard by the heels at the end of a line. A shark rose. In an instant twenty men tailed on the rope to haul the body in, yet that instant did not suffice. The shark devoured every morsel save the feet and ankles, which were tied by the end of the rope."

One day a whale rose suddenly, about a quarter of a mile from the ship, and brought a shriek of dismay from old Nance Folgate, who clung to Manfredi, the Italian mate, on seeing it floating steadily, like Sindbad's island in the sea; and still greater was her terror when he spouted a cloud of water in the air, stuck up his flukes, and went surging down with a sound like a roar to the depths below.

On another day there came a shoal of porpoises from windward of the ship, rushing in madlike and headlong career.

On they come, on and on, surging, rollicking, flashing in the sunshine, as they leaped from one bank of water to the other, all keeping time in their ocean race, all going together, and all crossing the ship's bows in one frolicsome shoal. So close do they pass that their little red eyes can be seen twinkling and glancing; and away they go, surging and leaping on towards the far horizon, till they are lost or blinded amid "the grey and melancholy wastes" of ocean. It is always on a breezy day that these living shoals are seen. Rose clapped her hands, as if at a horse-race, when they passed.

"You English call them porpoises, from our Italian term, _porco-pesce_," said the soft voice of Manfredi; "but is it not strange, Mees Rose, that they do go so very fast with only three fins?"

"Only three, Mr. Manfredi?"

"Yes; one on the back, placed rather below the middle, and two on the breast--no more."

But greater was the excitement when a water-logged vessel, whose deck was almost flush with the sea--a brig which the waves of some mighty storm had swept of everything from stem to stern, so that the stumps of her two masts, and a few weather-worn timber-heads, alone were visible above her planks--was passed, drifting, silent and alone, about two miles to leeward.

The melancholy object excited, of course, much remark, and made Ethel and her sister weep, and speculate upon the probable fate of her crew, their story, and the story of that poor deserted ship, to the rusty chain-plates of which the barnacles and seaweed clung, as it drifted away into the wastes of sea and sky; and Ethel thought of the oft-quoted words of the Psalmist--words she had heard again and again in the old church at home:

"They who go down to the sea in ships, and do business in the great waters, these see the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the mighty deep."

Dr. Heriot, who was a very enterprising young man, Hawkshaw, and Manfredi, proposed to have a boat lowered for the purpose of visiting the wreck, and ascertaining her name; but the _Hermione_ was running free, under a press of sail, and Captain Phillips and Mr. Quail flatly refused permission; so that the old wreck was rapidly dropped astern.

On the warm summer Sunday mornings, when the quarter-deck--that looked so very small when they came on board at first--got an extra drenching, holystoning, and swabbing; when the running rigging aft was more neatly coiled over the belaying-pins, and between the four six-pound carronades; when the binnacle lamps and other brasses had received an extra polish; when camp-stools, cushions, and hassocks were brought from the cabin, and "a church was rigged;" when the somewhat motley crew assembled in their cleanest attire, and stood by, bareheaded and respectful (to all outward appearance), to hear jolly Captain Phillips read the grand and impressive service of the Church of England, with Mr. Quail, the first mate, or Dr. Leslie Heriot, acting as clerk, making all the responses; while the great ship, with her vast spread of white canvas bellying on the wind, and shining in the sun, with the British flag flying aloft in honour of the day, though no other eyes could behold it, save those in heaven; when all this took place weekly, we say, Ethel was indeed soothed and charmed by the solemnity of the scene, upon that illimitable world of waters, and her thoughts naturally reverted to the gray old house of God at home, with its Norman spire and Gothic porch, the pew where last she had sat by the side of Morley Ashton, and then she seemed to see the old yew-tree that cast its shadow on her beloved mother's grave--the grave which lay in that dear English soil she never more might tread, never more might see.