CHAPTER XIII.

CAPTAIN HAWKSHAW'S TROUBLES INCREASE.

Inspired by some emotion beyond curiosity--a feeling which it would be alike impossible to define or describe, Hawkshaw had gone between decks to look at the rescued men.

A man had been left to watch them. He was Bolter, the Canadian, to whom Dr. Heriot had given strict injunctions that the sleepers were not to be disturbed to gratify the mere curiosity of the crew; and he growled out a few words by way of warning to Hawkshaw, who, assuming a jaunty air, said:

"Now, my amphibious biped, how are your patients?"

"None of your names, mister," replied the Canadian, knitting his brows.

"You mistake me, my good fellow; I simply wished to know how our new friends are."

"Judge for yourself--blow'd if I know," was the sulky rejoinder, as Bolter replaced a tremendous expectoration (which he shot fairly over Hawkshaw's shoulder and out at the lee port) by a huge quid; "but they seemed all goin' forren--out'ard bound, till the doctor hove 'em up fresh."

Each was in his hammock sleeping soundly, in that deep, drowsy torpor which enables even "the famished to escape from the pangs of hunger, and those who are perishing of thirst to escape for a time from the agony of the parched throat"--the sleep that covereth a man all over like a mantle, as honest Sancho Panza said, when, in the fulness of his heart, he blessed the great inventor thereof.

On tiptoe Hawkshaw passed from sleeper to sleeper.

One seemed a brawny and weather-beaten seaman, with grizzled locks, that were fast becoming gray; his bare and muscular chest was tattooed blue with gunpowder. This was our old friend Noah Gawthrop.

The second he looked at was somewhat hard-featured, with a high forehead, dark, full eyebrows, a well-shaped nose, and one of those prominent chins which bespeak firmness, decision of character, and indomitable perseverance. He was the Scotch mate, Bill Morrison.

The next was a pale, wan lad, whose handsome but attenuated features----

"Gad's fury!" burst from the lips of Hawkshaw, as the sudden recognition of those features struck a terror into his soul. "He here! he! Can it be possible?"

"Hullo, shipmate, what's the row?" said Bolter, looking up from a sea-chest, on which he was lolling, with his hands in his pockets; "Vast and belay this gab o' yours, or you'll waken 'em up, which is clear ag'in the doctor's orders."

"A mosquito stung me," said Hawkshaw, with a confusion which Bolter's perceptions were not fine enough to discover.

"A miskitty in these latitudes!" he exclaimed, mockingly. "I'm not so jolly green a hand as to believe that; but be off on deck, and leave me to keep my watch 'athout you. I may say this, though the ship is yet trimmed by the starn," added the fellow, with an insolent grimace, for like the rest of the crew, whom the Barradas influenced, he had a peculiar aversion for Hawkshaw.

The latter had now shrunk back, scarcely breathing, after assuring himself that the pale sleeper was indeed Morley Ashton; and then flashed upon his mind the keen and savage idea of getting him again removed from his path--by strangling him in his sleep, by putting poison in his food--and thus to send him out of the world ere his eyes again fully opened on it, and ere he, Hawkshaw, could be destroyed by the story he had to tell--by the great crime he had to reveal.

From the cabin, as we have told, he went on deck, and, desirous of avoiding all, of seeking that solitude so impossible to find on board ship, he ascended into the fore-rigging, and sat there, amid a whirl, a chaos of thought, endeavouring to consider his prospects and position now!

Could he have been mistaken?

Impossible! The likeness had been too deeply impressed upon his memory since that awful night at Acton Chine; so he needed not to go between decks again, and, moreover, he dared not, lest Morley should awake and recognise him.

"How came he to escape death at the Chine? How to be sailing on the sea, and hereabout too?" thought Hawkshaw. "Oh, strange, and most accursed fatality! But for me, perhaps, we might have passed that piece of wreck--passed it unseen by all on board; but Fate is retributive; I was the first to descry, the first to be anxious to visit it."

For a moment, but a moment only, there came into his soul a gleam of joy, with the conviction that he was not, as he had so long remorsefully considered himself, the destroyer of a fellow-creature.

His victim--Heaven alone knew how!--had escaped, and was here alive and safe on board the _Hermione_. The ever-present idea of crime, with the word that had seemed ever before his eyes, on his lips, and in his heart--that shone in his dreams like those letters of flame that flashed on the vision of Belshazzar, could be a terror to him no longer.

The proverbs, that "Murder will out;" that "God's retribution will fall upon a murderer;" the law, that "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed," would haunt him no more,--for this crime at least.

Such were his ideas for a moment; but the next, cold, selfish fear resumed its sway, and reason showed him that he was yet an assassin by intent--one whom his intended victim would expose, crush, and destroy, _if_--what?--he was not anticipated, crushed and destroyed _first_.

To Hawkshaw, this waif from the ocean was worse by a thousand degrees than his _rencontre_ with the two Barradas.

To avoid the accusations, the shame and contumely that Morley Ashton could heap upon him, by the exposure of his falsehood, cruelty, and hypocrisy, he would, happily, now have relinquished even Ethel Basset, and all he had hoped from her father's patronage in the Isle of France. He would gladly have fled; but whither could he fly--how, when, where?--encompassed as he was by the sea? Save in its depth, there was no escape from this accursed ship, as there was no eluding his own conscience, in this floating prison, the _Hermione_--how he loathed the name!--with her crew of foul and treacherous mutineers.

He had one hope left. Morley might die on getting food. He seemed so weak when brought on board, that the powers of digestion might be past, so that death might ensue from mere inanition.

But then his three companions would probably know his story, and were certain, if they survived, to reveal all Hawkshaw's guilt.

In the bitterness of his soul, he contemplated suicide, by slipping quietly overboard before the fatal recognition and discovery took place; but then came the fierce thought--if one of us is to perish, why should not he? and what time so fitting as now, when he is weak--almost dying? And thus, in his blind desperation, some of his old Mexican instincts or propensities grew strong within him, and he conceived the fiendish idea of strangling, or otherwise destroying, the half-dead lad in the night.

If marks of violence were found upon him, Hawkshaw knew there were so many "black sheep" in the forecastle, that one of them would readily be blamed for the crime.

A fierce eagerness to put himself in a safe position, to prevent the discovery that would blight him for ever, now possessed his whole soul, and, nerving it for the deadly task he had to do, made him long for the darkness and silence of night, when he resolved to make the attempt.

In this pleasant mood of mind, he heard the cabin bell rung by Joe the steward, announcing dinner, and descending reluctantly from his perch in the fore-rigging, he went aft and took his seat between Ethel and Dr. Heriot, who were conversing gaily, while he had all the misery of having to veil over the secret serpent that gnawed at his heart, by an outward air of ease, security, and pleasantry, which, however, was nearly put to flight by Captain Phillips asking if he had seen the devil in the foretop, he looked so very white about the gills.

One portion of the conversation, maintained amid the clinking of glasses and plates, and the difficulty of balancing wine-glasses nicely when the ship rolled, was by no means calculated to restore his equanimity.

"Miss Basset," said the young doctor, blandly, "I hope you will come with me, and visit those poor fellows?"

"Yes, with pleasure. Rose and papa will come too."

"Well, it will cheer them a bit to see your dear, kind, pretty faces," said Captain Phillips, bowing to each sister, ere he drained his glass of sherry.

"You will quite spoil my girls by flattering them," said Mr. Basset, laughing.

"Our good captain is too honest for flattery," resumed Dr. Heriot; "but, Miss Basset, there is one fellow there who interests me much, though why I cannot say. Please to look at him well when you see him. There is something very remarkable about him."

"Indeed, how, pray?"

"I judge by his bearing, and the general expression of his face. As a clever American writer says, of a similar impression, 'His is one of those cases which are more numerous than supposed by those who have never lived anywhere but in their own homes, and have never walked but in one line from their cradles to their graves. We must leave our straight paths for the by-ways and low places of life, if we would learn truths by strong contrasts, and in hovels, in forecastles, and among our own outcasts in foreign lands, see what has been brought upon our fellow-creatures by accident, hardship, or vice.'

"Vice!" repeated Hawkshaw, with a nervous start, and in dread lest Morley had already discovered himself.

"Oh, do not misunderstand me. I merely completed the quotation. Heaven forbid, Mr. Hawkshaw, that I should attribute vice to one so gentle as my poor patient; but to-morrow, or at latest, next day, you shall see them, ladies, and I shall have much pleasure in being your guide between decks."

Hawkshaw felt as if the doctor was dictating his sentence of degradation and death; but he strove to preserve an unmoved countenance, and to affect a pleasant demeanour.

Then he had to do the honours of the table to Ethel Basset, while his food seemed to choke him, with the agreeable consciousness that he whom she still loved, and for whom she still sorrowed, Morley Ashton, was asleep quietly in his hammock, on the other side of the after-bulkhead, and scarcely three feet distant from her chair.