CHAPTER XXII.

ZUARES AND THE SHARK.

The voyage of the _Hermione_ had now lasted several weeks.

During that time Hawkshaw had never ventured to resume the subject which Ethel had so summarily dismissed on that evening in Acton Chase--the evening which had an end so fatal--the subject, of his passion for her, and certainly, as such things grow and mature by propinquity, it was more deeply rooted now than it was then.

He was wisely and sedulously attentive during their daily and hourly intercourse in the circumscribed space on shipboard--attentive, but nothing more.

Yet Ethel knew well what those delicate attentions inferred, and shrank from them systematically and intuitively, and in such a manner, though quiet and gentle, as to give the persevering ex-captain of Texan troopers not the shadow of a hope for the future.

Moreover, he was rather galled to perceive that ever since that evening when Morley Ashton disappeared, Ethel had adopted a nun-like soberness of attire and colour that reminded one of mourning. Save Morley's engagement-ring, she wore no ornament, and Hawkshaw knew that to the black ribbon around her neck was attached a locket, with a braid of Ashton's hair entwined with her own, on one side, and on the other, a miniature of herself, for it was the same locket which he had worn when in Africa, and which she had found lying on his toilet-table on the morning after his mysterious disappearance and supposed death.

She knew that he had always borne it next his heart, and now she resolved it should ever be worn next her own; for with such things do lovers solace themselves.

Hawkshaw knew, we say, quite well, that the black ribbon around that white and slender neck sustained that which she deemed an affectionate memento; so he never dared to ask her what it was, lest its production should serve as a curb and rebuke to himself; and while it was worn thus, he deemed it almost hopeless to resume the task of entreating her to love him, or permit his loving her. So day followed day, and still the great ship that bore them all flew on, but not always successfully, for she encountered such a succession of headwinds, as served almost to prove the truth of what our old friend Bill Morrison, of the _Princess_, stated to Morley, about a ship that had a "shedder" of blood on board; and now, even jolly Captain Phillips lost his temper with his mates, his crew, himself, and everybody but Rose Basset, who, he was wont to say, "could wind him round her little finger like a bit o' spunyarn."

Though the _Hermione_ made long tacks westward and eastward, on the latter sometimes "sighting" the coast of Africa, and though the winds were ahead, and fearfully protracting the voyage, the weather was very fine, almost to monotony, and thus for days after the moonlit evening on which Manfredi told his tale, nothing occurred to disturb the even tenor of the voyage, save the usual sights to be seen at sea.

A drove of porpoises dashing in the wind's eye; a shower of silvery flying-fish crossing the vessel's course, and falling in hundreds, like a glittering torrent, into the sea, from, which they had sprung; the stormy petrels tripping gracefully with brown wings outspread, above the snowy spray, or the black fin of a shark prowling for offal in the vessel's wake astern; and once a sucking-fish was seen fixed to the rudder, where it remained for weeks, wriggling and twisting, for no amount of motion in the water, not even the waves of the wildest storm that furrows up the sea, can shake it off when once it adheres to a ship's bottom, to a whale, or a shark, as it is sometimes wont to do.

Captain Phillips was not superstitious enough to believe that this small parasite retarded the progress of a ship, though such has been for ages the idea of those who live, and have lived, by salt water, as we may find in many

"----a book, From Captain Noah down to Captain Cook,"

but more especially in the works of many who have written of nautical phenomena between the days of Pliny, Plutarch, and Captain Dampier. Yet to watch from the taffrail its obstinate adherence and wriggling, amid the foam down below, was for some time an amusement which duly found a record in the journal or diary which Rose kept for the special perusal of her friend Lucy Page when they met again.

On another day a ship was passed, "bound for Europe"--they had ceased to speak of Britain now--and all crowded to the side to hear her hailed. On she came, and each vessel backed her maintopsail and showed her colours, plunging stern down and head, their cutwaters dripping with foam, their bright copper, that rose to the bends, flashing in the sun, the sails of the stranger shivering, as the _Hermione_ kept the weather-gauge of her.

"Ahoy!" came faintly from a trumpet over the sea; "what ship is that?"

"The _Hermione_, of London--two months out--bound for Singapore. What ship are you?"

"The _Robert Bruce_, of Glasgow, bound for Europe."

"Where from?"

"Batavia."

"Report all well."

"Aye, aye; good-bye."

Then the latitude and longitude, chalked on a black board, would be shown over the quarter of each ship; the colours were dipped at the gaff-peak, the yard-heads filled, a parting cheer exchanged, and each left the other to plough through the waste of waters, and each, ere the sun set, would be "hull down" to the other, at the horizon.

Then Rose hurried to her desk to record this trivial, but, to her, important episode; but, alas! events were soon to occur which would make her diary, if kept amid them, the most startling work of the kind ever penned by a human hand--especially a hand so small and so pretty as hers.

That the young Scotch surgeon, Dr. Leslie Heriot, was very much captivated by Rose was evident to all in the cabin; but Rose was so accustomed to have plenty of admirers to talk to, laugh, and flirt with, when on shore, that to have an acknowledged dangler on board ship seemed nothing unusual, and she accepted his attentions accordingly.

She conceived it to be a penchant that had begun with the voyage, and would end with it; but, being less volatile than she was, to our young M.D. and F.R.C.S. of Edinburgh, it was a passion deeper than she thought, and of that she was to have ample proof ere long.

Whether it was that the irritation always consequent to headwinds extended from the occupants of the after cabin to those of the forecastle bunks, we know not; but about this time a very perceptible difference began to manifest itself in the tone and conduct of the crew towards the passengers--towards each other generally, and the officers of the ship in particular; in short, a general insolence of bearing, to which the latter had been quite unaccustomed.

We have stated that they were a mixed crew; that the coloured, the foreign, and the Yankee elements largely predominated among them; hence, they were not the kind of men to stand upon trifles.

Thus, when two had their grog stopped for insolence to Mr. Quail when ordering them to work the spun-yarn winch, they drew their knives, and swore they "would have blood, if not their Jarnaiky rum;" and so menacing generally was the conduct of the rest, that Mr. Quail was polite enough to content himself by entering in the ship's log a threat he affected not to overhear, and gave the mutineers their grog two days after, when both got three tremendous sousings, when ordered to "lay out forward and furl the gib."

The watch on deck at night went sometimes to sleep, committing the care of the vessel to the winds and the man at the helm; and, as he occasionally chose to nod also at his post, the _Hermione_ was thrice thrown in the wind, hove flat aback with all her studding-sails set, and fortunate it was that, on each of these occasions, the wind was light, or some of her masts would have gone by the board.

Sailors are never idle when at sea, as a ship perpetually finds work for every hand at all times, were it only to "polish the chain-cable;" but the crew of the _Hermione_ were resolutely slothful.

By day, the men who lounged about the forecastle bitts, or stood in a row with their backs against the bow to leeward, exchanged strange cries, whoops, signals, and scraps of low ribald songs with those who were engaged aloft, or elsewhere; and more than once the man at the wheel ventured to do so likewise; and when told by Captain Phillips never again to come aft the mainmast, or appear on the quarter-deck, he very deliberately spat thereon, and told him that he and his quarter-deck might both be--not blessed at least.

These unusual indications were quite enough to cause alarm, and a day seldom passed that Captain Phillips, Mr. Quail, and his three mates, did not confer about them, or exchange glances, the anxiety and import of which Mr. Basset and his two daughters knew nothing.

The captain dreaded that this secret spirit of disorder might develop itself in scenes of outrage when the old, and now almost disused, ceremony of receiving Neptune and crossing the Line took place. To ignore the occasion might cause discontent, and to celebrate it might provoke what he feared; but, fortunately, for twenty-four hours, about the time of crossing the equator, the wind blew almost a hurricane, so Neptune and his visit were alike forgotten.

There was one occasion on which Hawkshaw hoped to get rid, at least, of one of his chief sources of dread--the Barradas.

There fell a dead calm one day about noon; the air was almost suffocating, the sea like glass or oil, and there was not a breath of wind to stir the canvas, or even to wave the scarlet fringes of the quarter-deck awning, under the shade of which Ethel and Rose reclined languidly, with light summer dresses, and fan in hand.

It was strange that with this listlessness below there seemed to be aloft a current of air, which did not descend even to the skysail-yards, but played with the vane and its scarlet streamer on the mainmast-head.

On this day the _Hermione_ was about a hundred miles to the northward of St. Helena. The air was thin and ambient; the sunlight, broad and blazing, exhaling from the sea a thin white haze, which, at the dim horizon, made the sea and sky so blend together, that none could tell where cloud began and water ended.

Through the glassy surface of the still, calm sea the black crooked fin of a great shark was seen, as he glided stealthily alongside, preceded, as usual, by the long, wriggling pilot-fish.

It was evidently a white shark, by the mode in which he swallowed; for when the cook cast some offal to him, he turned on his back, and opening his dreadful mouth, exhibited his six-fold row of teeth, triangular, and sharp as razors. This terrible apparatus for mastication is quite flat in the mouth when the shark is in a state of quietude; but when biting or swallowing food, it has the power of erecting it with vast power, by the enormous muscles of the jaw.

The whole body being of a light ash colour, his grim form, with the motion of his pectoral fins, could be distinctly seen, as he floated alongside, or glided to and fro.

Now Zuares Barradas, a daring and athletic young fellow, stripped of everything but his canvas trousers, appeared suddenly in the starboard forechains with a coil of rope in his hand, and a murmur almost rang along the deck, as he made one end of his coil fast to a belaying-pin, preparatory to plunging into the sea.

"Oh, Mr. Quail!" exclaimed Ethel, "is he about to fish for that dreadful thing?"

"No, miss," replied Quail, quietly; "he is going to attack it."

"Attack it?"

"Yes, in the water. Shouldn't care if a few more tried the same game," growled the mate.

"Is it not rashness--madness? So handsome a young man, too," continued Ethel, greatly excited.

"It is rashness and madness too, as you say, Miss Basset."

"You will prevent it, surely?"

"By no means. The weather is warm; if he wants a dip, let him have it," replied the mate, who had not forgotten that Zuares was one of the men who had drawn his knife when his grog was stopped.

Before he could be either warned or prevented, the younger Barradas sprang into the jolly-boat, which had been alongside for the carpenter, who had taken advantage of the calm to perform some piece of work upon the outer sheathing.

Shoving off to the full extent of the painter, Zuares stood for a moment in an attitude which showed his handsome, athletic, and tawny form to great advantage, and when the horrible shark came within six yards of the boat, rising at the same time so near to the surface that his gray body shone through the pea-green sea, as if scaled with gold and silver, a cry of terror burst from Ethel Basset, as Zuares plunged headlong into the water, within three feet of his jaws.

Turning instantly, the shark shot towards his expected prey, who rose near his tail, and, on the shark turning again, dived once more beneath him, with a skill and courage he could only have acquired on the half-savage shores of his native country.

All on deck beheld this strange and perilous game with breathless interest, and even the ruffianly crew were hushed into silence by a scene so unexpected.

Thrice the ill-matched antagonists appeared on the surface, Zuares swimming with the hand he had at liberty, and keeping the other, with the coiled rope, behind him on his loins, the shark following, but warily, as if in doubt. Each time Zuares got breath he dived headlong down, and on the third time, the monster dived after him, so closely and so simultaneously, that not a doubt remained in the minds of those who lined the ship's gunwale that they had encountered below, and that the bubbles, now rising fast to the surface, would soon be tinged with blood.

Even the swarthy visage and beetling brow of Pedro Barradas grew pale; and his present emotion found vent in a heavy curse.

Ethel and Rose covered their faces, and sank down on the quarter-deck seat. Nance Folgate gazed steadily at the place where the shark and seaman had disappeared, and continued to utter a series of noisy outcries, and "Lor' a mussy me's!"

Five, ten, fifteen, twenty seconds elapsed--they seemed an age; then suddenly the slack of the rope at the starboard fore-rigging was seen to tighten and pay out.

"Tail on--tally on--yeo-heavo!" was now the cry, and a dozen pairs of strong hands were pulling at it, and meeting, apparently, with a resistance that threatened to snap the rope.

At that moment, Zuares Barradas, panting, breathless and weary, rose to the surface at some distance, and swam leisurely towards the boat, while the shark--round the tail of which, and the small back fin that is close thereto, he had, in some fashion known best to himself, contrived to loop the rope tightly--was drawn, ignominiously and in great wrath, tail-foremost from his proper element.

A hurrah, rather varying in its cadence, as it did not come from British throats, greeted the monster's appearance as he floundered alongside, with his head downwards, and his awful jaws rasping and scraping in impotent fury against the ship's outer sheathing.

Up, up he was hoisted tailwise; then the carpenter, armed with his hatchet, descended into the fore-chains, and put an end to his power, by severing the spinal column, after which Jack Shark was cut adrift to perish, and amid great exultation the intrepid Zuares was hauled on board.

His right arm was severely lacerated and bleeding; but this, he stated, was done by one of the monster's fins, and not its jaws.

Handsome though the young fellow was, Ethel and Rose beheld him more with fear than admiration, for his feat savoured of a courage that was reckless or diabolical.

"True," said Dr. Heriot, aside to Mr. Quail; "a fellow who sets so little store upon his own life will set still less upon ours."

Although Captain Phillips would, perhaps, have felt small regret had Zuares shared the fate of the Prophet Jonah, he ordered the steward to give him a good tot of grog, and ere long, as the breeze sprang up and sail was made on the ship, nothing remained of an adventure so exciting, but an entry made very briefly by Mr. Quail in the ship's log:--

"4 P.M., _calm. Zuares Sarradas caught and killed a shark_.

"6 P.M., _steady breeze; people employed in shifting the foretopsail and slushing the mainmast. Pumps attended to as usual._"

The pumps and the foretopsail were evidently of more importance to Mr. Quail than the shark and its story.