CHAPTER V.

THE LIVID FACE.

The event of the night shed a gloom, a horror, over all in the cabin next day; nor was the alarm in the breasts of Captain Phillips and his mates in the least soothed, when it was remarked that the cook's grindstone was kept at work all the forenoon, and a most ominous sharpening of sheath and clasp-knives went on, while sundry jokes were uttered audibly about "Mister Manfreddy having gone on a visit to Mr. David Jones and Old Mother Carey, without his umbrella, too;" "and the rain a fallin' like Niagary," as Badger, the Yankee, added, with a diabolical grin.

The morning sky was gray and cloudy; a heavy sea was still on, and not a sail was in sight, so Captain Phillips swept the horizon with his telescope in vain.

At breakfast Ethel and her sister were informed that Mr. Manfredi had fallen overboard in the night, and been drowned. No hint of foul play was given them, at their father's special request; but they wept and mourned for the poor young fellow, of whom they now recalled to memory so many pleasing traits and anecdotes; among others, the sad story of his little brother, Attilio, who had been so savagely shot by the Austrians at Pistoja.

His seat at table, his place in the cabin were empty; his face and form were no longer seen, and his step and voice were no longer heard.

The suddenness of the catastrophe seemed most difficult of realisation; and the words of Dana, in a passage of one of his works, which Dr. Heriot pointed out to Rose, came painfully and truthfully home to all their hearts.

"Death is at all times solemn, but never so much so as at sea. A man dies on shore; his body remains with his friends, and the mourners go about the streets; but, when a man falls overboard at sea and is lost, there is a suddenness in the event which gives it an air of awful mystery. Then at sea you miss a man so much. A dozen men are shut up together in a little bark upon the wide wide sea, and for months and months see no forms and hear no voices but their own; but one is suddenly taken from among them, and they miss him at every turn. There are no new forms or faces to fill up the gap. There is always an empty berth in the forecastle, and one more wanting when the small night-watch is mustered. There is one less to take the wheel, one less to lay out with you upon the yard. You miss his form and the sound of his voice--for habit had made them almost necessary to you, and each of your senses feels the loss."

"So we shall never see him again--never!" said Ethel, with her eyes full of tears; "so kind, good, and gentle."

"And so handsome, too!" added Rose.

"A better seaman never trod a deck," sighed Mr. Quail.

"Damnation!" was the singular addendum of Captain Phillips, through his clenched teeth, when thinking of the secret he had not revealed, and the crime which, as yet, he dared not attempt to punish.

So Ethel put past "I Promessi Sposi," which had Manfredi's name written on the fly-leaf of the first volume, as the relic of a friend with whom she had spent many happy hours, whom she never more could see, and on whose vast tomb, the boundless ocean, she almost shuddered to look--for was not Morley Ashton sleeping there too?

So the gloomy day passed slowly on, and night came on.

Retired to their little cabin, Ethel and Rose were disrobing for rest--Nance Folgate had long since gone to sleep--and now, relinquishing the sad subject of Manfredi, Rose, with a blush on her charming face, was detailing to Ethel, for the second time, her interview with Leslie Heriot, whose ring--containing a large Scottish pearl, set with diamonds--glittered on the engaged finger of her left hand.

"And you are sure that you love him, Rose?" said Ethel, as she took her sister's face caressingly and affectionately between her soft hands.

"Dearly, devotedly," was the energetic reply. "How could I do otherwise, when he is such a kind, darling fellow--and so handsome too?"

"Have you weighed well the probabilities of the future?"

"What do you mean, Ethel dear?"

"What papa may think."

"Oh, Leslie will speak to papa to-morrow, or on the next day, at the latest."

Ethel smiled sadly at her sister's confidence.

"Our voyage will soon be over, dear Rose," said she, shaking her head seriously. "Once round the Cape of Good Hope, we shall be speedily at the Isle of France, and then your dream of joy will have an end--a rough awaking; not so sad or rough as mine, but a gloomy reality, and a doubtful future, nevertheless."

Poor Rose's usually merry eyes now filled with large tears, and she permitted the braids of her fine dark hair, which her slender fingers were wreathing up for the night, to roll down in unheeded masses over her bare bosom and back, which shone white as the new-fallen snowdrift, in the light of the cabin lamp that swung above her.

"And Jack Page--poor Jack Page!" said Ethel, smiling, to arouse Rose's spirit; "is he quite forgotten--eh?"

"Oh bother Jack Page!" replied Rose, crimsoning, and with the faintest tinge of irritation in her tone, as she proceeded vigorously to knot up the masses of black hair. "He was a pleasant enough fellow to flirt with, or play croquet with at Laurel Lodge (dear old Laurel Lodge! ah, heavens! Ethel, shall we ever see it again?) He was a good fellow for fishing or sailing on the mere----"

"And to botanise with, and to gather wild flowers on Cherrywood Hill," added Ethel, a little maliciously.

"Yes; but he gave himself such insufferable airs after he became a rifle volunteer; and as for loving him, I should almost as soon think of loving your adorer, the gallant Captain Hawkshaw. By-the-by, how taciturn he has become of late."

"Perhaps he finds his task a hopeless one," said Ethel, with a haughty smile.

"He seems quite changed somehow," said Rose, slipping into bed, "does he not, Ethel dear? Why don't you speak to me?" added Rose, with sudden alarm, and springing from her berth, on perceiving her sister standing pale and motionless, her lips parted, her dark eyes dilated with terror, and their gaze fixed on the little circular window of their cabin, which was simply a pane of thick glass, about nine inches in diameter, framed in an iron ring, and secured by a powerful bolt.

Rose gazed in the same direction, and beheld, to her intense dismay, the whole aperture filled by a human face--a man's apparently--pale, livid, green, and distorted, as viewed through the coarse crystal, with large keen eyes, that glared in upon them.

Whoever the person was that dared thus to violate their privacy, he occupied a position of extreme peril, for the little window in question was below the plank sheer of the ship, and considerably abaft the mizzen chains, so that the eavesdropper must have been swinging alongside, almost with his heels in the foam that boiled under the ship's counter.

Could the sea give up its dead?

Was it a spectre--Manfredi, or Morley Ashton?

Such were Rose's first ideas, as she clung in terror to her rigid but more resolute sister, who sprang forward and vainly attempted with her delicate hands to wrench round the bolt, and open the little window; but at that moment a fierce and sardonic smile seemed to spread over that livid and distorted visage, which instantly vanished, and then nothing was seen through the aperture but the vast sea that rolled in the starlight far away.

"Papa--Nurse Folgate!" screamed Rose; but the old woman slept like one of the seven sleepers.

"Hush!" said Ethel, "'twas only some insolent seaman; but we must prevent a recurrence of this," she added, as she rapidly hung a species of curtain over the window. "Good heavens, Rose! to think how often this may have happened before, and we in total ignorance of it; but the captain shall be told in the morning."

"Oh, Ethel!" exclaimed Rose, "how terrified I am."

"Why?"

"At first I thought it was his ghost."

"Whose?"

"Poor Mr. Manfredi's."

"Nonsense, child!"

"A ghost on board of a ship, how dreadful that would be! Almost as bad as a fire, for there would be no escaping from it."

Inspired by natural emotions of doubt, Ethel opened the door and peeped out into the great cabin. All was still and quiet there, at least nothing was heard but the jarring of the rudder in its case, and of the brass swings of the lamp and tell-tale compass, with the heavy creaking of the ship's timbers, the backwash under the counter, and one other sound, to which she had become pretty familiar about this time--to wit, the profound snoring of Mr. Quail, as he lay at full length on the cabin locker, with his peacoat spread over him, and his sou'-wester at hand, ready to relieve the deck when the middle-watch was called.

She secured the door, perhaps more carefully than usual. She knelt down by Rose's side to say her prayers, after which they retired together, but lay long awake, conversing of that future, the events of which, happily, they could so little foresee, until they dropped asleep, Rose with her charming face half pillowed on Ethel's snowy shoulder.

All remained still in the ship; but while the two sisters slept with arms entwined, each "hushed like the callow cygnet in its nest," anxious hearts were watching over them elsewhere; and they formed the subject of a somewhat unusual, but animated, discussion among the seamen--a discussion of which, as yet, they were happily ignorant.