CHAPTER XVII.

UNMASKED.

The time spent by the captain and his companions in the place where the four castaways were located must have appeared interminable to the wretched Hawkshaw, as they remained there fully an hour, for much had to be inquired into, and much more related and explained.

Resolved to question, cross-question, sift, and refine, and all unconscious of the surprise that was awaiting him, Mr. Basset, with tolerable lawyer-like activity and importance, fussily followed jolly Captain Phillips, who had one hand stuffed into that pocket of his pea-jacket which held his revolver, and in the other hand he swung a ship's lantern.

To Mr. Basset's unpractised eye, the 'tween decks seemed rather a dreary den, to say the best of it. It was lower in height, or, to write more correctly, between beams, than the ship's cabin, and its furniture was exceedingly simple, consisting only of a small breaker or gang-cask, and wooden drinking tot, set upon a sea-chest which was securely lashed to the bulkhead, while a railway rug and poncho wrapper lay thereby.

Then his eye caught four queer-looking long bags, that swung by clews and cleats from the beams longitudinally, and ont of each of the aforesaid bags a human face was peering, with eyes expressive of inquiry and interest; but their features could not be discerned, for all was darkness, or nearly so, except where the light of the lantern fell.

"Hallo, my friends," said Captain Phillips, as he held his lantern up, and took a rapid survey of them all, "so you are awake, I see. What the deuce has been doing here, that we are all turned up in the night, or rather the middle of the morning watch, in this way, eh?"

"I don't understand what it is all about, sir," replied Tom Bartelot; "but a few minutes ago, in my sleep, I heard a terrible cry."

"Who was it that bit the gentleman?" asked Phillips, angrily.

"I did, your honour," replied Noah Gawthrop, looking over the edge of his hammock, and twitching his grizzled forelock.

"You--and you acknowledge it!" said the captain, turning towards him with angry surprise.

"Yes; and I hope as I have left the marks o' my blessed grinders in him, that's all."

"The fellow is mad," said Mr. Basset in an undertone.

"Do you think so?"

"Who else would talk thus?"

"Likely enough, sir," whispered Joe, the steward; "for I heard that old one this morning saying that he was tormented by a marine drummer, and shouting for all hands to reef topsails. He seemed to think himself on board a man-o'-war."

"A little crazed, perhaps, by recent suffering," suggested Mr. Basset. "A short sleep may soothe him; but a bite is a serious offence--a very serious offence."

"I ain't no more mad than your honour," said Noah, who had overheard their whispers, and looked up angrily; then he added, in a different tone, "But--is that you, Captain Phillips--lor' bless you, don't you mind o' me?"

"No, I do not," replied the captain, curtly.

"Not remember old Noah Gawthrop, as sailed for ten year and more with your brother, Captain Bill, and was wrecked with him in the Straits of Sunda?"

"Noah, it is, by Jupiter!" exclaimed Phillips, shaking the old seaman's hand with genuine warmth. "This is, indeed, strange; 'tis long since we last met, Noah."

"Five years ago, if it is a day, since I came home from the West Ingees, and ran up the Mersey in a old sweating sugar-ship--her berths aft and bunks for'ard a swarming with bugs and cockroaches, a crew of Jamaiky darkies, and her lower rigging all alive with poll-parrots. I see you minds o' me, Captain Phillips--lor' bless me, in course you does, and know that I am no more mad than yourself, or my own good captain here, Mr. Thomas Bartelot, of the _Princess_ as was, poor old craft."

"Oh, glad to see you, captain," said Phillips, shaking hands with Tom on this blunt introduction; "and glad too, that we came so opportunely to save you."

"Yes," resumed Noah, "I'm the man as saved your nevvy, Master Bill, when all hands went down in the Straits of Sunda, and I brought the child home with me, and gave him to yourself, as your honour very well knows. I was father and mother, dry nurse, and wet nurse, and everything to that 'ere boy, I was; and many a time I rope's-ended him, too, for putting plugs o' powder in my 'baccy pipe, or japanning the starn o' my trousers with new pitch. So you knows me well enough."

"Of course I do, Noah, my brave old salt."

"Of course you does. Ah, sir, your brother, Captain Bill, would never have been lost, but in passing the straits during a south-east monsoon, he hugged the coast of Java, with his port tacks aboard, and so we went bump ashore on a blessed coral reef, where the sea made clean breaches over us. I made a grab at Master Bill, who was hauling his pet tom-cat by the tail out o' the wash to leeward, and then we all crouched under the weather-bulwarks, ready to cut away the masts, if necessary. But the sea saved us the trouble; for there came a regular snorer, that carried away the topmasts at the caps, breaking them sharp off like 'baccy pipes, the midship-house, boats, and everything went to leeward, while the ship parted, breaking her back fairly on the reef. I found myself in the dark, swimming away for the bare life, among sharks and long seaweed, with little Bill riding on my back like Sinbad's Old Man o' the Sea, and, top of all, the tom-cat, holding on to Bill with all his claws out. 'Hold on, you young warmint,' says I, and so he did, until we got ashore, and next day we were sent off by the Dutch in a queer jigamaree, with a lateen sail forward, and a dandy in her starn, to a British man-o'-war, that was bearing through the straits on a taut bowline, before the same monsoon that finished us off on the coral reef."

"But why did you bite the man?" asked Captain Phillips, who had listened with some impatience, returning to the matter in hand.

"Because he is a pirate, if ever one broke biscuit!'

"Take care, Noah; he is one of our cabin passengers."

"I was a watching him, your honour, and I had queer suspicions that he meant foul play to one of us at least, and so I pretended to snooze, keeping watch with one eye open, though he did pass the light twice athwart my face. I saw him, your honour, though he doused the glim, and I could make out that he was going to strangle--to garotte, in true Californy style--my shipmate here, young Master Morley Ashton, who was asleep----"

"Mr. Morley Ashton!" exclaimed Mr. Basset, in an excited voice, as he hurried round to the other side of the hammock; "I should like to see the gentleman who is named so."

"Surely I should know that voice!" cried Morley, springing up in his hammock, and almost falling back within it, overwhelmed by astonishment on finding himself face to face with Mr. Basset--with the father of Ethel!

"What is this?--who is this? You, Morley Ashton, on board the _Hermione_?" exclaimed Mr. Basset, in a gust of genuine bewilderment, equalled only by that of Morley, who trembled with anticipation and astonishment, and who felt at his heart a sudden and clamorous joy. "You one of the four men taken from that melancholy wreck! How came it to be? Explain--tell me. Good heavens! how? Oh, my poor boy, Morley, we have long numbered you with the dead, and have mourned for you as such--none more, believe me, than my dearest girl."

"Where am I, sir?--what ship is this?" stammered Morley, as a new light began to break in upon him, while grasping Mr. Basset's hand, with one arm thrown caressingly round his neck. "Am I on board the _Hermione_? Has she picked us up--saved us from death?"

"Yes, sir; this is the _Hermione_, of London," said Captain Phillips, "too long delayed by contrary winds, and the loss of a mast near the Canaries."

"Oh, Morley Ashton," began Mr. Basset, "if you did but know----"

"Ashton?--Ashton?" interrupted the captain; "are you the gentleman who was to have sailed with us--who telegraphed for a cabin berth, and was not forthcoming when we dropped down the river?"

"I am the same, sir."

"What came of you? How did you disappear?"

"I was a victim to the foulest treachery and cowardice!"

"At the hands of whom?" asked Mr. Basset.

"Cramply Hawkshaw."

"What! he whom Gawthrop bit in the dark?"

"Bit, that I might know him again, your honour, for I warn't strong enough to grapple with him."

"And who, he says, attempted to strangle you in your sleep?" asked Dr. Heriot, coming forward.

"Hawkshaw here! on board with you--with _her_!" said Morley, in a faint voice, as certain undefinable, but terrible, suspicions arose in his mind.

"Yes; he is with us, a cabin passenger," replied Mr. Basset.

"Here! here! on board the _Hermione_?" continued Morley, almost vacantly, for his brain spun round.

"Yes, sir, in your place," said the captain.

"Great Heavens!"

"Your passage was taken out, your berth ready, the money paid; but you had slipped from your moorings somehow, so he went in your place. There is nothing very wonderful in that, is there?"

"He went with Ethel?" said Morley, in a tremulous and imploring voice to Mr. Basset.

"He came with me, as the son of my old friend, Tom Hawkshaw, of Lincoln's Inn, to push his fortune in the Mauritius," said Mr. Basset, hastily.

"And Ethel--Ethel?" continued Morley, in a broken voice, while his eyes filled with tears.

"Is well, though she has mourned for you deeply," replied Mr. Basset. "But pray be calm, my poor boy. How terribly agitated you are! Do not doubt her, or misunderstand me."

"And I shall see her--see her again?"

"Very soon--in ten minutes, perhaps."

"Oh, this is indeed happiness," sighed Morley, sinking back in his hammock. "Heaven is kind--most singularly merciful to me. But Hawkshaw--that wretch!" he added, starting up with new energy. "Oh, Ethel must shun, avoid and loathe him, for she knows not that he is an assassin!"

"How an assassin?"

"Or one who would be such."

"A regular-built pirate, and no mistake--a rascally Californy piccaroon!" added Noah, with sundry adjectives, which we feel the propriety of omitting.

"Aye, Mr. Basset, as Douglas Jerrold says, 'he is a scoundrel, who would whet a knife on his father's tombstone to kill his mother.' Oh, you know him not as I too surely, too truly, and too well know him, and all of which he is capable."

"These are severe and sweeping assertions. Explain this enigma--this most unaccountable affair."

"You remember, Mr. Basset, the night of my sudden disappearance from Laurel Lodge?"

"I shall never forget it. You had gone to Acton station, concerning a telegram from London."

"Concerning a berth in this very ship!"

"Yes."

"Returning alone, I met Cramply Hawkshaw, who entered into conversation with me, offered me a cigar, gradually lured me to the summit of the rocks above the Chine. There we sat listening to the village chimes in the old church tower, chatting, smoking, and enjoying the pleasant breeze from the Bristol Channel, till he, inspired by rivalry, jealousy, and hate, or by some fiendish combination of them all, at a moment when I was completely off my guard, by one furious blow struck me over the cliff into the Chine!"

"The Chine--oh, my God!" said Mr. Basset, in a voice that sank low with horror. "We came to look for you, Cramply and I, for he said that he had seen you walking there, and certainly we found marks of a struggle--the gravel dislodged, and the turf torn. You fell into the sea of course, but from that height! How--by what miracle did you escape?"

"A miracle, a narrow chance indeed! A turf-covered ledge received me, and there for many, many hours, more than a night and a day, I remained sleepless, and scarcely daring to move, chilled less perhaps by the cold sea-breeze than by the horror of drowning if I rolled off the narrow shelf, of dying slowly by starvation and falling a prey to the sea-birds at last, till I was saved by my friend Captain Bartelot, whose vessel passed below me."

Excited by the memory of all he had undergone, Morley's voice faltered and grew weak as he spoke.

"Yes, sir," said Bartelot, striking in, "we chanced to see a human figure perched up among the gulls and cormorants, so we made a longer tack close in shore, and sent off a boat's crew, who climbed to the top of the rocks and hove him the end of a line. He was then towed up, and being quite insensible, Morrison, my mate, brought him on board. So, being outward bound--a storm having been signalled by Admiral Fitzroy, and beginning to break white in the offing, we had no time for backing and filling, or chopping about the rocky shore at Acton--I stood right down the Channel, intending to put him aboard the first suitable ship. We never overhauled any but foreigners, so we took him with us to Rio. He has often been well-nigh out of his mind sometimes, sir, about--I may be pardoned mentioning her name--Miss Basset; but he was in safe hands with me, sir, his old schoolfellow, Tom Bartelot."

"A strange and terrible story!" exclaimed Dr. Heriot.

"Poor Ethel, Morley," said Mr. Basset; "oh, what she has endured, and in silence, too!"

"I can know that well, by what I, too, endured. Dear, dear Ethel; and I shall see her----"

"So soon as she can be wisely informed of the great surprise, of the great joy, that await her. But that fellow, Hawkshaw--the fact of how I have been duped, deluded, and disgraced by the pretended friendship of such a man, falls like a thunderbolt upon me!" exclaimed good, easy Mr. Scriven Basset, with more energy than he was wont to exhibit, "and to think of my poor, sweet, and virtuous girls being contaminated by the society of such a man, and my secluded home being polluted by his presence, though sheltered there under the name of his good and worthy father! Damme! it's enough to make one suspicious of all mankind!"

Mr. Basset thrust one hand into his breast, and the other under the tails of his coat, and trod to and fro the whole length of the 'tween-decks, about twelve feet or so, swelling and reddening with just ire and indignation.

Bartelot, Morrison, and Gawthrop added many details corroborating the remarkable escape of Morley from Acton Chine, and descriptive of his mental sufferings during the voyage to Rio de Janeiro; and by the time this interview, so full of stirring interest to all concerned in it, was over, and the captain and his companions had quitted the 'tween-decks, a new day had dawned, the sun was rising brightly from the sea, and throwing the shadow of the lofty _Hermione_ far astern upon the gleaming waters to the westward.