CHAPTER XXIII.

THE CRISIS AT LAST.

On the morrow, a gale like that we have described carried the ship still farther on her course; but again, towards evening, the sea and wind went down together, and a calm and lovely night stole over the world of waters.

Morley had intended to speak to the two Barradas about what he suspected--his knowledge of their secret history. Had he found an opportunity for doing so, much evil would, perhaps, have been averted, as he might have exercised a little influence over them; but one time they were aloft in the rigging, at another, tarring down the backstays, clapping on chafing gear, or otherwise occupied most of the day, as they now began to feel a _personal interest_ in the ship; so no opportunity occurred, and the fatal evening of the intended mutiny crept on.

And, notwithstanding that he was a quiet and peaceable man, and possessed of much of the caution usually attributed to his countrymen, matters were precipitately brought to a crisis by Morrison, Tom Bartelot's Scotch mate, as we shall soon have occasion to show.

On this night our old friend was at the wheel, as a volunteer; and, as the atmosphere was singularly calm, Morley and Ethel, Rose and Heriot, were on deck, sometimes seated in pairs, conversing in low and confidential tones, or promenading, arm-in-arm, between the break of the deck and the taffrail.

Mr. Basset and the captain were smoking near the companion-hatch, Mr. Quail had turned in below, and the second mate, Foster, had charge of the ship, whose lofty spread of snow-white canvas shimmered with a weird effect in the light of the rising moon, which heaved up at the horizon, the size of three European moons--sublime and vast--to shed a blaze of silver radiance far across the sea.

Noah's hints had already made Captain Phillips take in his studding-sails and royals, so the ship was now running snugly and easily, under the fore and main-course, topgallant-sails, jib and spanker.

Ethel sat silently, with her hands clasped on Morley's left arm, for the moonlight on the water, the stars above, and his familiar voice, made her think of home, and the beautiful garden at Laurel Lodge, with its ribbon-borders of pinks, mignonette, and scarlet geraniums; its roseries, its gigantic sweet peas, her sister's boasted azaleas, which Hawkshaw had ridiculed in an evil hour; its avenues of laurels and stately old sycamores.

She now drew forth her mother's miniature, which she wore in her breast, at the end of a slender gold chain. It had been taken in that dear mother's youth, when she closely resembled Ethel herself.

Who that surveyed that soft, bright, smiling face, could realise the idea that it was the image of one who had long been dead, and had passed away.

So, as Ethel gazed upon it, her mother's figure, expression of face, and tone of voice, the embodiment of that gentle friend and loving mentor, all a mother should be, "the best and most beautiful of earth's creatures," rose to memory, strangely mingled with recollections of her death and of her funeral, on a sunny day, in peaceful Acton churchyard, while the familiar bell tolled solemnly in the old grey Norman tower, and when the turf looked so green, the fresh earth so brown, and that awful and mysterious grave, as it yawned beneath the old yew tree, so deep, so terrible!

Then there was the reverend rector, her father's dearest friend, reading the beautiful and impressive service for the faithful departed, while his voice faltered and his eyes glistened. It was the last day of an English autumn, when the leaves of the tall oaks in the Chase, and the foliage of every coppice, were brown and crisp, and when all the world seemed hushed and still; when even the village urchins who clambered on the churchyard wall were mute, and sat uncovered, and no sound stirred the air but the rector's voice, and the solemn bell that boomed in the time-worn tower, and shook its ivy leaves.

So all that sad and mournful day came vividly back and unbidden to memory now.

"Mamma, dear, dear mamma! she did so love you, Morley!" said Ethel, as she closed the miniature, and placed it tenderly in her bosom.

Inspired by livelier thoughts on the other side of the quarter-deck, merry Rose Basset and the doctor were leaning over the bulwarks, and watching the luminous animacula that gleamed in the passing waves.

In the second chapter of our history, we have related how Mr. Basset had considered the early engagement between Morley Ashton and Ethel the mere fancy of a boy and girl--a fancy which separation, or the spirit of change, might cause to wear away and be forgotten.

But now, by his most providential restoration, by the strength of their mutual regard, by what the poor fellow had undergone; by what Ethel, too, had suffered, and, more than all, by the necessity for securing her future happiness, he felt himself bound to do the utmost in his power to advance Morley's interests, when they all reached their new home in the Mauritius, and a reiterated promise to this effect had made the young pair supremely happy.

Rose and the doctor were the next consideration; what was to be done with them?

The excitement consequent to recent events; the expected outbreak among the crew; the discovery of the wreck, its occupants, and their story, together with Hawkshaw's villainy, had so fully occupied the attention of all on board, that Heriot had scarcely found an opportunity for broaching a matter, which Captain Phillips's jokes had quite prepared our friend, the judge, to have laid before him, for his earnest consideration and kindly sympathy--neither of which he had quite made up his mind to accord; but Rose had always flirted with some one; and when two favourable occasions came to pass, Heriot was dissuaded by her thoughtlessly saying:

"Now, don't bother yet, my dear old darling Leslie," for this was her unromantic style ("a jolly one," the doctor thought it) of addressing him.

Mr. Basset would have been blind indeed, had he not seen the growing intimacy which existed between them; but he had no idea that matters had proceeded the length of interchanged promises. Neither did he observe the ring which Rose now wore on her engaged-finger--to wit (for the information of the uninitiated), the third of the right hand; and to use a hackneyed phrase, "as fairy" a finger as ever rejoiced in that pleasant decoration, for among Rose's chief beauties were her hands, plump, white, and tiny.

Recent events, we have said, prevented explanations, or any account of what the doctor's prospects were.

"Not much, they are, certainly, dear, dear Rose," whispered Heriot, as they sat together in the moonlight, while the ship still sped before the wind, with all the reefs out of her topsails. "I have, one way and another, but 100_l._ a year at present. Had I more, I would have sought out a snug practice at home, and not roved about as the surgeon of a sea-going merchantman."

"Then you would not have met me, sir," said Rose, with waggish asperity.

"But I have an uncle, a jolly old fellow, who loves me well, for my mother was his only sister; and he loves me for that, perhaps, rather than any merits of my own."

"My poor modest Leslie! well--and this uncle?"

"When he dies--distant may the day be when he does so!--I shall come into 400_l._ per annum more. If at the Isle of France, I could battle the watch----"

"Battle what?"

"Oh, it is an old college phrase; I mean, fight my way into a practice somehow. With you to cheer me on, we should do very well. Then, an M.D., to get a practice, must have a wife."

"Why?"

"What is the difference between a doctor and a student? 'There is but a degree between them,' says some one; but until the student has the magical letters M.D. added to his name, he is nothing, and even then he will never get the _passepartout_ to private houses, unless he has a wife; and where could I find one dearer, sweeter, more playful and joyous, more charming than----"

"Me, you would say?"

"Yes."

Then here, as no one was looking, there followed a sound which made honest Morrison, who was at the wheel, "prick up his ears," and laugh quietly to himself in the moonlight.

A ship, of course, does not offer the lover-like facilities of shady lanes, green thickets, rosy bowers, or flowery garden walks; but it produces a thousand occasions for polite attention, amidst its rolling, tumbling, and pitching about, its extreme discomfort and peculiarity, which are not given by the solid and immovable earth, and which the fair dwellers thereon do not require; but it is, nevertheless, a very awkward place for indulging in little bits of osculation--a phrase for which I refer my fair reader to her dictionary, if she knows it not.

All as yet was quiet in the _Hermione_.

The embers of discord were still smouldering amid the crew, and the brave ship flew steadily over the shiny waters of the moonlit sea, her ghostly shadow falling far across them.

Inspired by the calm and beauty of the night, Morrison, as he leaned thoughtfully over the wheel, his left hand grasping an upper spoke, and his right hand a lower one, thinking, perhaps, of his present shattered prospects, without ship or funds, his distant home, and his mother's cottage by the Dee, was singing to himself in a low and plaintive voice.

Ethel looked up and listened, though she scarcely knew the language in which he sang--a portion of a sweet little song (by some local poet), and which he recalled, as we do now, from memory, though perhaps he may have heard it from his mother, to whom this brave and honest fellow was attached, with a devotion that was almost childish.

"The tear dims my e'e As I look to heaven hie, And sigh to be free Frae want and frae wae; But I dinna see the road, For between me and my God A darkness has come doon, Like the mist on the brae.

"The nicht is wearin' past, The mist is fleein' fast, And heaven is bricht at last To the closin' e'e; In the hollow o' the hill, The weary feet are still, And the weary heart is hame To its ain countrie."

At that moment the ship's bell clanged.

"Stand by to heave the log--relieve the wheel," cried Mr. Foster.

After considerable delay Badger, the Yankee, came slowly shambling aft, to "take his trick" at the helm, and at the same time the whole crew came scrambling noisily up the fore-scuttle, where the watch on deck joined them, and they gathered in a group about the windlass-bitts.

Captain Phillips, Mr. Basset, and Tom Bartelot, exchanged glances of intelligence and inquiry, while the second named, inspired by some miserable foreboding, grew deadly pale.

"You have not hurried yourself, mate," said Morrison.

"No; didn't intend to, I reckon," drawled the Yankee, in his nasal twang.

"Why did you not come aft the moment the bell struck?"

"Now, stranger," said Badger, in a tone of mock expostulation, "d'ye wish your few brains blowed out with the cook's bellows, or not, that you asks questions or gives orders here?"

"Take the wheel, and take it in silence," said Morrison, haughtily and sternly; for, although no mate on board the _Hermione_, he still felt the habit of authority strong within him.

"I knowed a man at Cape Cod, in the state of Massachusetts," continued Badger, still delaying, and speaking slowly through his long nose; "a Scotchman he was, Mr. Morrison, and the very moral o' you, with a hook nose and chin, that 'ad hold a ginger-nut between 'em, who fed sea-gulls with iron filings, and sold their wings for steel pens. A 'cute crittur! But, as I said, he was called a Scotchman, though I calc'lates he was a Yankee Jew of Hirish parentage."

"If you don't take the wheel, I'll show you the foretop with a vengeance, my fine fellow," said Morrison, who could stand anything but sneers at his country.

"You're riled a bit, you air, and your monkey's getting up. You've been too well fed, mate," drawled Badger. "I reckons that at home, in your own little clearin' of a country, you fed upon fir shavings and cold water. As for decent junk, reg'lar old hoss, and plum-duff, I calc'late you never heerd on 'em afore. Now, in this here craft, as the junk's atrowcious, so that even an 'ungry Scotchman or a blue shark wouldn't look at it, we mean to have a blow-out to-night in the cabin, and on the best in the steward's locker too."

At that moment Mr. Foster, who, with Joe, had been heaving the log-line, on hearing words, came aft, and took the wheel from the hands of Morrison, who was trembling with suppressed passion.

"Go forward, you rascally carrion," said the Scotchman, "or, by the heavens above us, I soon will make blue sharks' meat of you."

Badger drew his knife, which gleamed in the moonlight, but at the same instant he was laid sprawling on the deck by a blow from the butt-end of a revolver with which Captain Phillips had armed Morrison, and which the latter swung at the full length of his arm and with no unsparing hand.

The cry of rage uttered by Badger was answered by a yell from the forecastle, and all the crew came rushing aft, armed with knives, capstan-bars, and some with pistols, which they had hitherto secreted in their sea-chests.

"Below, ladies, below--into the cabin, and barricade the door; quick, quick!" cried Captain Phillips, as Ethel and Rose, to their astonishment and terror, were hurried, almost thrust down, the companion-stair.

Then several pistol-shots were exchanged, and a furious struggle instantly took place on deck.