CHAPTER XXI.

OUT OF SCYLLA AND INTO CHARYBDIS.

The little excitement consequent on discovering the piece of wreck, the rescue of those who were on it, and the speculation caused by the recent uproar in the night, and the exclusion of Hawkshaw from the cabin, soon passed over among the crew, who now began to consider that there were on board four more men to feed, to win over to the project of Pedro Barradas--a process which seemed doubtful--or to be got rid of, if the attempt to win them failed.

The only one with whom they supposed there was a chance of success was Noah Gawthrop, or "Old Sticking-plaster," as they named him, from the patch on his nose; and hence Badger, and one or two others, were deputed to sound him on the subject; but the chief defect in their plans arose from a doubt of the ship's whereabouts, and whether Captain Phillips would haul up for Table Bay.

Some were disposed to enlist Hawkshaw in their daring scheme, or at least to sound him, too, as a little homicide in no way injured a man in their estimation; while the misery of Hawkshaw's position on board might have made him ready to embrace any proposition that came short of jumping into the sea.

Neglected, to all appearance forgotten--for who could sympathise with an assassin?--he had passed the whole of the first day without food in the fore-rigging. Towards evening Quaco brought him a pot of hot coffee from the galley, which was a grateful beverage to his parched throat, and in the twilight he came down stiff, sore, and benumbed, and walked about amidships.

There, Joe, the steward, came to say, that when he "wished to go below, his traps and berth were 'tween decks, where he would have full leisure to employ his mind in squaring the circle."

At this jibe he clenched his hands to chastise Joe; but felt too much crushed to make even the attempt, and turned in silence away.

On the second or third day after his expulsion from the cabin, when retiring to his place between decks--the same quarter in which the four hammocks had been hung--he encountered Miss Basset, and passed her so closely that he felt her skirts brush against him.

Though dark and soft, Ethel's eyes were at times keen and piercing, for they possessed a wonderful power and beauty of expression--a beauty one may meet with perhaps but once in a lifetime. As she passed Hawkshaw, she drew aside her skirt, as if to avoid contact, and hastily cast down her eyes, as if loath to humiliate him, while her breast heaved, and her cheek grew painfully pale; but in her eyes, as they flashed beneath their downcast lashes, Hawkshaw could see the horror, the loathing, and even terror with which his presence inspired her.

More humbled than ever by this, though he could have expected nothing else, he slunk to his place of penance--his prison he deemed it, as he seldom left it--and casting himself upon the sea-chest, groaned aloud in rage, in bitterness, and agony of spirit.

His food was brought to him by Quaco, the black cook; but his appetite was gone, so each meal was taken away almost untasted.

"By golly, Massa Hawkshaw, you had better eat and keep strong," said Quaco, with a grin on his shining face.

"Why--what the devil is it to you whether I eat or not, you black thief?" asked Hawkshaw, savagely.

"Kindness, on'y kindness, massa--yaas, yaas," he replied, grinning more broadly than ever.

"I want none, even from you."

"Dat be bad--dat is; but, golly! don't you know what Pedro Barradas am up to?"

"No."

"He's agoin' to be massa capting."

"What?"

"He's agoin' to trim de ship by de starn, he is. Jolly, ain't it! But there will be no loblolly boys allowed to skulk 'tween decks arter dat--by golly! no," and, grinning away like an ogre, with his yellow eyeballs gleaming, his white teeth and angular cheek-bones shining, Quaco retired with the greasy wooden mess-kid on which he had brought Hawkshaw some hot lobscouse.

Quaco's words made his heart beat faster, and set him to think deeply, and with indescribable agitation.

The proposed seizure of the ship was again upon the _tapis_.

Should he acquaint Captain Phillips of it; but perhaps he knew of it already more fully, and was quite prepared.

By his silence, Ethel might be destroyed; by speaking in time, she might be saved; but only saved for Morley Ashton. Damning thought! The first impulse made him start to his feet, to summon Joe; the second made him sink back sullenly on the sea-chest again.

To join those in the cabin was but to serve Morley Ashton and those who loathed him; to league with the mutineers, whom he dreaded, was but to sink deeper in disgrace and more hopelessly into crime.

On shore, he would have gladly fled from them all; but in that floating prison, the _Hermione_, he had but one resource left--to join the crew--if he would save his own life. He felt himself helplessly at the mercy of the Barradas; and, by joining them in the scuffle or conflict that must precede the capture of the ship, he might find a fair means of putting a period to Morley Ashton's existence, if some one else did not anticipate him. Morley he hated with a tiger-like emotion--a mingled dread and aversion.

For himself, he might yet have Ethel in his power. Some very daring, dark, and incoherent thoughts flashed through his mind. He might have her, in spite of Fate and Fortune, too; and afterwards, when once on shore, she would feel herself compelled to link her future life with his.

The shore--any shore--oh, how he longed for it.

He felt himself constrained to avoid the deck, save in the night, and thus to spend the entire day below.

Secluded there like a felon, avoided like a reptile, he asked himself, was he really the man of yesterday or the day before?--the same Cramply Hawkshaw who had sat at table with the Bassets and officers of the ship, enjoying their society and companionship, as an equal and friend?

Was the past, indeed, gone for ever? He was on board the same ship (how he loathed and cursed every rope in her rigging, every plank in her hull); he still heard the same daily sounds on deck, the same voices from time to time, and more than once he had heard Rose Basset's ringing laugh; there was the same rush of water alongside; the same moaning of the wind aloft; the same bell clanging the half hours; all seemed unchanged but he alone!

He could not bring back the perfect idea of himself, or what he was.

How bitterly he felt, how impatiently he spurned the restraint imposed upon him in the circumscribed space of the ship, and longed for land, any land, as we have said--Africa, even Dahomey, were welcome--that he might escape and hide himself from all; but chiefly from the Bassets, before whom he had so successfully glozed over his secret life and real character by a network of lies, crimes, and cunning--a network which Morley's sudden appearance had torn aside.

Right well he knew the light in which all viewed him now--a swindler, impostor, and worse.

Unless it lingered in the emotions of envy and wounded self-esteem, his selfish passion for Ethel had quite evaporated, amid his shame and humiliation, or was almost merged in his vengeful hate of Morley--a sentiment rendered all the deeper by the wrongs already attempted without success.

So there, between decks, in the scene of his last attempted crime, he sat and brooded darkly on the past, or scheming out the future; a trial he did not dread, even if the vessel reached the Isle of France, and Morley Ashton urged it by an appeal to the civil authorities.

There would be but his bare accusation, without a single witness to support it, so a bare denial was all that was necessary, for well he knew that no human eye had seen that encounter by the verge of Acton Chine, in England.

Then there was a memory of Ethel's loathing attitude and averted glance lingering like a barbed arrow in his heart.

"Yes," said he, aloud, "I feel the time at hand when I may requite hate with deeper hate."

"_Buenos noches, mi hombre de nada_," ("Good night, my rascal, or man of nothing") said a voice in his ear, and, starting from his reverie, he found himself confronted by the tall and muscular figure of Pedro Barradas.

It was night now, and the candle flickered dimly in the lantern of perforated tin, which swung from a beam above, and its downward rays fell on the dark face and picturesque figure of the South American seaman, with his crisp locks and coal-black beard, his tawny ears, in each of which a silver ring was glittering, his loose shirt of dark blue woollen, open at his breast, on which a cross was tattooed, and girt at the waist by a Spanish scarlet sash, in which his Albacete knife was stuck.

A fierce and malicious grin pervaded his sombre features--such a grin as one might imagine in the face of a laughing fiend--as he surveyed the crushed and miserable Hawkshaw, who, being quite unarmed, was not without emotions of terror and alarm.

"You scurvy _ladrone_," said Pedro, grinding his strong white teeth, "when I remember that evening in the Barranca Secca, between Xalappa and the Puebla de Perote, and the use you made of your lasso, I wonder what devil prevents me from putting my knife into you."

Hawkshaw started back, and glanced hopelessly about for a weapon. Pedro laughed hoarsely; but his merriment did not allay the alarm of Hawkshaw, who knew that such men as he could jest with their victim while the knife was piercing his heart.

"So the air of the cabin has not agreed with you, eh? Well, I daresay you have been worse lodged and fixed in Texas, where some of the huts are no better than a _retranche_; but I think you had better come forward and hitch in with us."

Hawkshaw still glanced uneasily about him.

"Demonio! why don't you speak, and be d----d to you?" roared Pedro, losing his patience, which was never at any time a very extensive commodity. "Have you lost your lying tongue as well as your wits?"

"No, Pedro Barradas, I have lost neither."

"How long it is since I have heard my name on your tongue, _companero_; not since we were diggers together on the banks of the Feather River. Speak out--_presto_!"

"What do you want with me, or require of me?"

"I am exceedingly anxious to ascertain something of which the crew have been kept in ignorance for some time past."

"Something--from me?" asked Hawkshaw, with surprise.

"Yes."

"You mean the progress and working of the vessel?"

"Precisely so; her whereabouts upon the sea."

"How should I know?"

"How you should or should not is nothing to me; but, _presto_, no equivocation," said Pedro, placing his right hand on the haft of his knife.

"Then, for the soul of me, I cannot tell you," replied Hawkshaw, with great earnestness.

"You must have heard it mentioned, casually or otherwise, in the cabin. The latitude and longitude, I mean."

"If so, may I die if I can remember them now."

Pedro's eyes began to gleam dangerously; but he changed his tactics, and asked:

"What does the captain mean to do with you?"

"Do with me?" stammered Hawkshaw.

"Yes, _santos_! I spoke plain enough."

"But I do not understand," said Hawkshaw, evasively.

"Must I speak more plainly?"

"If you please."

"How cursedly polite we are," sneered Pedro. "Well, most illustrious Senor Caballero, does he mean to maroon you, or hang you?"

"Neither; and in either case it is not probable he would consult you."

"Well, _companero_, perhaps he will land you at El Cabo de Bueno Esparanza?" said Pedro, with more suavity.

"We are not to touch at the Cape," was the unwary reply.

"Not to touch at the Cape?" repeated Pedro, so loudly that he might have been heard in the cabin.

"No."

"Why."

"Simply because I have been given to understand that we are past it."

"_Por vida del demonio_! Past it, say you?" exclaimed Pedro, as if communing with himself.

"One thing, at least, is certain. We are not, I am sorry to say, to touch at the Cape."

"And who told you this?"

"The captain himself."

Pedro uttered a tremendous Spanish oath, expressive of extreme astonishment and satisfaction.

"So--so this cunning old Englander has been keeping us all in the dark as to where we are?"

"Exactly."

"But wherefore?"

"That I cannot say," said Hawkshaw, evasively.

"_Morte de Dios_! does he suspect?--does he smell at a rat!" exclaimed the Spaniard, with a sudden rage; but Hawkshaw remained silent. "We must be somewhere off the coast of La Tierra de Natal, and if so, by the ship's steering to-day, the mouth of the Mozambique Channel should be upon our weather-bow; yet how far distant, none but the captain and his mates can say," continued Pedro, as if in communion with himself; but he was wrong in his supposition, for the ship, at the time he spoke, was about a hundred miles to the southward of Algoa Bay, which opens between Cape Recife and Cape Padrone in southern Africa.

"Listen to me," said Pedro, suddenly, with a savage glare in his black eyes, a low and husky tone in his deep, sonorous voice, his right hand on the haft of his knife, and his left planted on Hawkshaw's shoulder with the grasp of a vice. "We mean to take this ship, and run her on our own account; but as four new hands have been added to the officers, will you join us? It is a fair offer--your only chance of vengeance, too: for, ashore, you will not be worth a rotten castano."

"Well--well--I am with you," said Hawkshaw, in a low and husky voice.

"_Bueno!_ we should fight for the ship whether you were with us or not. Your hand on it, mate! But first, what terms do you want?"

"My life, in the first place, to be respected by all, and to be set ashore on the first land we see, as I am not a seaman."

"The _first_ land may be a sea-weedy rock, at the mouth of the Mozambique," said Pedro, with a diabolical grin, as it suggested a new idea of cruelty. "Your share of plunder?"

"I seek no plunder. I seek but revenge and liberty."

"Your hand, then; and let us forget all about the Barranca Secca."

Pedro grasped in his strong, hard hand the shrinking fingers of Hawkshaw, thinking the while;

"This ship once ours, I shall soon make short work of it with _you_, my fine fellow!" Grinding his teeth, he added aloud, "If you betray us, woe to you."

"I am pledged," said Hawkshaw, in a voice like a groan.

"The cargo is valuable, so we shall go in for a good stroke of business together."

"When--when do you make the attempt?"

"To-morrow night, or the next, at latest."

"I shall be ready."

"Then to-morrow evening at four bells, in the second dog-watch, be in the forecastle bunks, and you will learn all. Till then, companero, be silent, and _remember_!"

With another significant touch of his knife-handle, Pedro retired, leaving Hawkshaw in a very unenviable state of mind. As a bold and reckless ruffian, the Spanish American valued him little as an ally; but the chief object of his visit had been attained--information that the ship, instead of being hauled up for Table Bay, was _past_ it.