CHAPTER XVIII.

THE EXPULSION.

Hawkshaw's hand, as we have stated, fell unconsciously on the loaded revolver which lay by his side, but was instantly withdrawn.

He had not the courage to die by his own hand, in the fashion to which the old Romans were so partial in all their griefs and difficulties. He looked up with a half-haggard and half-bullying or defiant expression, as Captain Phillips, Mr. Quail, the doctor, and Mr. Basset entered the cabin.

The latter gave him a long, steady, and withering glance, and after knocking at the door of Ethel's little cabin or state-room, entered it hastily. Then the varying exclamations of astonishment and joy which were heard within it sounded as additional knells of disgrace--they might be those of death to Cramply Hawkshaw; and now, after surveying him long and sternly, Captain Phillips addressed him with great deliberation.

Hawkshaw found himself regarded with horror and aversion, but no ashes of fire were heaped upon his miserable head, for the good, jolly captain was the only person who spoke.

"Sir, give me up that revolver."

Hawkshaw seemed to be stunned, and did not reply.

"The revolver, sir; do you hear me?"

"Why?"

"Never mind why or wherefore--they matter little now."

"I thought that we were all armed for a particular purpose."

Captain Phillips smiled bitterly.

"Yes," said he; "but you can be no longer trusted with arms on board my ship."

"Indeed!" said Hawkshaw, who knew not very well whether to cringe or bully, and pondered in his desperation.

"Yes; so surrender your arms. I'm an easy-going fellow, but one who won't be trifled with, for all that. Your revolver!"

Hawkshaw reluctantly handed Captain Phillips the loaded weapon.

"Thank you. Now, sir, I must inform you that we have had a long interview with the men in the 'tween-decks--those whom you so kindly undertook to watch, though such a duty was scarcely necessary--and after the revelations they have made, but chiefly after the account given of you by Mr. Morley Ashton--you wince at the name, I see--you can no longer remain in the cabin of the _Hermione_."

"Revelations! Did I not say that one--one at least--of these men was mad?"

"You shall not be sent forward," continued the captain, "among my crew, however congenial some of their spirits may be."

"What, then?" asked Hawkshaw, with undisguised alarm.

"You shall be secluded between decks till the end of the voyage, or be sent on shore at the first land we make, in the hope that we may never see you more."

"At the Cape of Good Hope?" asked Hawkshaw eagerly.

"I do not mean to touch at the Cape now, as we are so far to the southward of it," replied the captain, little foreseeing that this information was to have a fatal influence over all on board.

"Sir," replied Hawkshaw, gathering courage for a moment, "may I remind you that my passage to the Isle of France----"

"Is paid for, you would say?"

"Yes--_carambi_!"

"By Mr. Ashton's money. Ha! ha! I have known of a man being marooned on a rock in the Gulf of Florida--aye, or set adrift on a hencoop, or in a punt, with three biscuits and a bottle of water, in the middle of the South Pacific--a poor devil who was far less criminal than you. I would to Heaven we had never seen you. No ship with such a thorough-bred rascal on board could hope for a prosperous voyage; and," continued the captain angrily, as his professional superstitions came to memory, "the fact of having you with us sufficiently accounts for the loss of our foremast after passing the Madeira Isles, for the mysterious loss of poor Manfredi, and the head winds we have uniformly encountered. Why, damme! we might as well have had a parson, or an undocked Tom cat aboard. Seclusion from among us is a punishment slight indeed for the crimes of which you have been guilty, but chiefly for your double and dastardly attempts upon the life of that young gentleman. You understand me, sir."

"I understand only, Captain Phillips, that your mind has been poisoned by a parcel of infamous falsehoods, which, on the first shore we make, I shall ram down the throat of him who uttered them with a pistol-bullet!"

"I hope the person referred to will not be such a confounded donkey as to exchange shots with a convicted assassin," replied Phillips.

"Assassin! I--I--I----"

Choking with sudden and uncontrollable passion, Hawkshaw sprang up from the locker, his bloodshot eyes flashing with fire, his face pale and haggard, the veins of his temples swollen like whipcord, and his heart stung with the idea that Ethel in her little cabin could hear all that passed. His voice, husky and inarticulate, failed him, but his bearing was so threatening that Captain Phillips cocked the revolver pistol, and said, sternly:

"If you attempt to strike me, I will shoot you down like a gull. Quit the cabin this instant, and if you would keep your heels out of the bilboes, never let me find you aft the break of the quarterdeck."

Hawkshaw's hands were opened and clenched convulsively, as if his fingers twitched for an object to grapple with, and on which to vent the pent-up rage and shame that consumed him; yet he found that he had no resource but to submit and retire, so he slowly left the cabin, but with an air of defiance which so ill became him, and so ill befitted his present predicament, that Phillips, the mate, and doctor, knew not whether to pity or laugh at him.

But the whole episode was a painful one, as they could not forget, at this climax of his humiliation, that this man, so summarily disgraced and cast forth from among them as an unclean thing, had been for so many months their companion and associate, their friend, and, to all appearance, their equal.

He repaired to the quarter-deck, and the cool breeze that swept over the morning sea gratefully fanned his flushed face and throbbing brow. For a time he was blind with rage, and trod mechanically to and fro over the very cabin wherein Ethel and Rose (now filled with tumultuous joy by the strange tidings their father had brought them, were making a hurried toilette); till the appearance of Mr. Quail, who came to relieve the deck, to call the watch, to change the helmsman, and have the log hove, recalled the stern order of Captain Phillips, and, descending the break of the quarter-deck, he went sullenly forward--a proscribed man.

As he did so a mocking laugh met his ear.

It came from Pedro Barradas--who had just relieved the wheel, and who, being ignorant of the events that had transpired in the cabin, naturally supposed that Hawkshaw had, as usual, quitted the quarter-deck to avoid him.

For a moment this laugh stung him deeply; but many emotions were conflicting in his breast on this miserable morning, so that he scarcely felt anger at Barradas.

He had passed a sleepless night; but no sensation of weariness felt he, as he clambered into the fore-rigging, and sat there to consider his position--to watch the inmates of the cabin, and to avoid the crew, until he could conceal himself somewhere for the night.

Oh, how he longed for its friendly shadow and concealment--longed for it, while the beams of the morning sun gilded all the sea, and lit up the full swelling sails of the _Hermione_.

Feverish, and madly excited by the many emotions which had convulsed him since the moment in which he recognised the sleeping Morley Ashton, and more especially by the terrible and wicked thoughts of the past night, a longing for vengeance, or victory, rather--victory at any risk or price--filled his heart, till he nearly became mad, when thoughts of his rival's safety, restoration, and triumph were contrasted with his own exposure, expulsion, and disgrace.

The crew, among whom he dared not venture, would soon learn the whole story, and, knowing alike their reckless character and their nefarious projects, he already felt, by anticipation, the sharp stings of their fierce and brutal mockery, and the coming vengeance of those he had contemptuously ignored--the Barradas.

"Why did I not put a bullet through my head before old Phillips took away my pistol?" thought he. "Had I done so, by this time, perhaps, I would have been peacefully at rest below the surface of that blue and shining sea, instead of being perched up here, a moody wretch--a miserable and disappointed outcast."

Slowly, slowly the sunny morning wore on.

He heard Joe the steward's bell--once a welcome sound--rung for breakfast. The smoking ham and eggs, broiled chicken, tea and coffee, were borne from the steaming galley, aft to the cabin; he knew that the whole party, with their familiar faces, would be assembled at table as usual; and others, too, he shrewdly anticipated, would be there. Nor was he mistaken; for all the four castaways were so much better this morning, notwithstanding the recent disturbance, that they had quitted their hammocks, with the intention of coming on deck.

Perhaps they had already begun to feel that necessity which so soon impresses the sick or ailing on board of ship--the expediency of getting well as soon as possible (especially in such a ship as the _Hermione_); for, after a time, there is but little sympathy to spare for useless hands, either fore or aft; "an overstrained sense of manliness being the characteristic of seafaring men, or rather of life on board ship."

Apart from these considerations, and being bodily better, the knowledge that Ethel Basset was only separated from him by a few planks worked a miracle upon Morley Ashton.

Their sodden and surf-beaten rags had all been thrown overboard, so Morley was attired from the wardrobe of Dr. Heriot; the others were supplied by the captain and Mr. Basset; and the appearance of Noah Gawthrop, when rigged out in a black swallow-tailed dress coat, belonging to the latter gentleman, with gilt buttons, and lappels of watered silk, an old crimson velvet waistcoat, an ample pair of dark tartan trowsers, and a sou'-wester of Mr. Quail's, was unique, and excited considerable speculation when he came on deck.

Forgetting his "landlubber-like toggery," with sailor-like instinct, Noah cast his eyes aloft, and critically surveyed all the rigging, and a smile, that puckered up the wrinkles of his old face, showed that the result of his scrutiny was satisfactory.

His remarkably ill-favoured visage was in no way improved by a patch of black sticking-plaster, with which Dr. Heriot had covered a cut on the bridge of his copper-coloured nose, the result of Hawkshaw's random blow in the matutinal row between decks.

Descending the break of the quarter-deck, Noah went forward, to get his breakfast with the crew, concerning whom the officers of the ship deemed it yet unwise to give him any warning.

He had considerably recovered his strength, and was eagerly welcomed by the seamen as he walked forward, and all gathered in a group about him in the break of the deck at the forecastle bunks, clamorous to hear his yarn about the loss of his ship--where she was from, where bound to, what she was loaded with, and so forth--to hear all about himself, and, though recorded last, not the least exciting topic on which they wished enlightenment, was the cry that had come from between decks in the first hour of the morning watch.

Noah, seated on the barrel of the windlass, with a tin mug of scalding hot coffee, together with a slice of salt junk, and Quaco's "plum-duff," after denouncing the tea and arrowroot of Joe the steward, proceeded to give, in his own fashion, a rambling narrative of all the recent events in which he had borne a part.

The words which he uttered did not reach the ear of Hawkshaw, in his lofty perch; but suddenly all eyes were simultaneously cast aloft to where he sat near the sling of the foreyard, and Noah threateningly shook his clenched hand at him, while a roar of mocking laughter from the crew--that bitter laughter which he so long dreaded--filled his heart with rage and spite, that he nearly fell from his seat among his tormentors.

For a time, it seemed as if all these villainous upturned faces--the thick, African nose and sausage-like lips of Quaco, the glittering eyes and olive face of Zuares Barradas, the hideous squat form of Sharkey--a wretch with the life of Manfredi to atone for--Badger, with his sunken orbs and great square jaw; Bolter, the unhealthy-looking Canadian, and all the rest--had been turned into mocking fiends, who would yet drive him to more desperate deeds, for he was now expelled, cast forth from among those with whom he had associated, without a prospect of return, or a hope of retrieving himself.

"Is not life altogether a long comedy," says some one, "with Fate for the stage-manager, and Passion, Inclination, Love, Hate, Revenge, Ambition, Avarice, by turns, in the prompter's box?"

Hawkshaw felt bitterly in his soul that his life had been a tragedy, in which the evil passions alone had played their parts by turns, and sometimes all together.

What would the last scene of that tragedy be?

"Hallo, foretop there!" cried Bill Badger, the tall, lantern-jawed, and odious Yankee. "Well, capting, I guess you're chawed up rayther. Thunder and lightning! come, ship with us in the little game we've got in hand. Jine us; you carn't do better now; and who knows but you may get your gal with the black shiners, after all?"

"_El cuchillo primero!_ (My knife first)" said Zuares Barradas, touching the haft of his Albacete knife with ferocious significance.

Honest Noah opened his eyes very wide at these singular remarks, which were followed by another roar of brutal laughter. On this, Hawkshaw, to get, if possible, beyond the reach of their conversation, trembling in every limb with rage, and with a strange blindness coming over his sight, as the old clamorous ferocity gathered in his soul, while feeling that the mocking words had not been uttered in vain--as they suggested certain ideas of probable vengeance on his exposers--proceeded to climb farther up the rigging, until he perched himself on the fore-crosstrees, his past experience having made him seaman enough to achieve this.