CHAPTER IX

A SECRET BLOW

At sea, a very little thing goes a very long way, and you will suppose that this incident of the monkeys gave us plenty to talk about and to wonder at. At the dinner table that evening old Keeling favoured us with a long yarn about a French craft that capsized somewhere off the Scilly Islands with four men in her: how the air in her hold kept her buoyant; how the fellows climbed into the run and sat with their heads against the ship’s bottom; how one of them strove with might and main to knock a plank out, that he might see if help was about, in nowise suspecting that if he let the air escape the hull would sink; how, all unknown to the wretched imprisoned men, a smack fell in with the capsized craft and tried to tow her, but gave up after the line had parted two or three times; how she finally stranded upon one of the Scilly Isles; and how one of the inhabitants coming down to view the wreck, shot away as though the devil were in chase of him, on hearing the sound of voices inside.

Mr. Johnson whispered to me: ‘I _don’t_ believe it;’ and Colonel Bannister listened with a fine incredulous stare fixed upon the skipper’s crimson countenance; but the rest of us were vastly interested, especially the elder ladies, who, behind old Keeling’s back, spoke of him as ‘a love.’

We settled it amongst us to purchase the monkeys from the boat’s crew which had rescued them, leaving the ape for the seamen to make a pet of. The matter was talked over at that dinner, and I overheard Miss Temple ask Mr. Colledge to try to secure the little monkey with the red waistcoat for her. She was the only one of the ladies who wanted a monkey.

‘Would _you_ like one, Miss Hudson?’ said I.

She shuddered in the prettiest way.

‘Oh, I hate monkeys,’ she cried; ‘they are so like men, you know!’

‘Then, by every law of logic,’ bawled the colonel with a loud laugh, ‘you must hate men more, madam. Don’t you see?--ha! ha! Why do you hate monkeys? Because they are like men. How much, then, must you hate men, the original of the monkey!’

He roared with laughter again. In fact, there never was a man who more keenly relished his own sallies of wit than Colonel Bannister.

Miss Hudson coloured, and fanned herself.

‘I hate monkeys too,’ cried Mr. Greenhew, ‘and for the reason that makes Miss Hudson averse to them;’ and here he looked very hard at the colonel.

‘Well, certainly a fellow-feeling don’t _always_ make us kind,’ murmured Mr. Riley in an audible voice, and putting a glass into his eye to look around him as he laughed.

Here the steward said something in a low voice to Mr. Prance, who looked at me, and said in a hollow tragic tone: ‘Five of the monkeys have gone dead, sir.’

I called the news down the table to the captain.

‘I’m sorry to hear it, Mr. Dugdale,’ he answered in a dry voice; ‘but you don’t want me to open a subscription list for the widows, do ye?’

‘Can any one say if the little chap with the red waistcoat’s dead?’ cried Mr. Colledge.

‘Dead hand gone, sir,’ exclaimed the cockney head steward.

‘What is left of the lot?’ inquired Keeling.

‘The hape, sir; and the two little chaps that was rescued with their tails half ate up, as is supposed by themselves,’ responded the steward.

Mr. Johnson burst out a-laughing.

‘Tails eaten up!’ cried Mrs. Bannister, poising a pair of gold glasses upon her Roman nose as she addressed the captain. ‘Are there any sharks here?’

‘I should say not, madam,’ answered the skipper. ‘It is a trick monkeys fall into of biting their own tails, as human beings gnaw their finger-nails.’

‘And when they have consumed their tails, Captain Keeling,’ said Mrs. Hudson, in a rather vulgar voice, ‘do they go on with the rest of themselves?’

‘I believe they are only hindered, madam,’ said Keeling, with a grave face, ‘by discovering themselves, after a given limit, somewhat inaccessible.’

‘I dislike monkeys,’ said Mrs. Joliffe to Mr. Saunders; ‘but I should imagine that natural philosophers would find their habits and tastes very interesting subjects for study.’

The little chap moved uneasily in his chair, with a half-glance up and down, to see if anybody smiled.

‘The monkey eating his tail,’ exclaimed Mr. Emmett, ‘is to my mind a very beautiful symbol.’

‘Of what?’ inquired Mr. Hodder.

‘Of a dissipated young man devouring the fortune left him,’ answered Mr. Emmett.

‘Very true; very good, indeed!’ cried Mr. Adams, the lawyer, with a laugh.

The death of the monkeys extinguished the scheme of purchasing them. The one-eyed ape was not to be thought of; and now it was known that the tails of the other survivors were merely stumps, the subject was very unanimously dropped, and the three poor beasts left for the sailors to do what they pleased with.

As an incident, the matter might have served for the day, so dull is life on shipboard with nothing to look forward to but mealtime. But something else was to happen that evening.

Two bells--nine o’clock--had been struck. Most of the passengers were below, for there was a deal of dew in the air, too much of it for the thin dresses of the ladies, who, through the skylight, were to be seen reading and chatting in the cuddy, with a party of whist-players at the table, Mr. Emmett’s and Mr. Hodder’s noses close together over a cribbage board, and Colledge at chess with Miss Temple, Miss Hudson opposite, leaning her shining head on her arm bare to the elbow, a faultless limb indeed, watching them. The breeze had freshened at sundown. There was a half-moon in the heavens, with a tropic brightness of disc, and the ocean under her light spread away to its limits in a surface firm and dark as polished indigo, saving that under the planet there was a long trembling wake, and an icy sparkle in the eastern waters, over which some large, most beautiful star was hanging; but though there was breeze enough to put a merry rippling into the sea, the feathering of each little surge was too delicate to catch the eye, unless the white water broke close; and the deep brimmed to the distant luminaries, a mighty shadow.

The skipper was below; Mr. Cocker had charge of the deck, and I joined him in his walk. He talked of the monkeys, how the poor wretches had died one after another in the forecastle.

‘I saw one of them die,’ said he: ‘upon my life, Mr. Dugdale, it was like seeing a human being expire. I don’t wonder women dislike that kind of beasts. For my part, I regard monkeys as poor relations.’

‘What were the men laughing at, shortly after we had come up from dinner?’ I asked.

‘Why, sir, at little John Chinaman. The ape was on the fore-hatch, secured by a piece of line round his waist. Johnny went to have a look at him. There was nobody about--at least he thought so. He stared hard at the ape, who viewed him eagerly with his one eye, and then said: “I say, where you from, hey?” The ape continued to look. “Oh, you can speakee,” continued John; “me savee you can for speakee. Why you no talkee, hey? Me ask where you from? Where you from?” The ape caught a flea. “How you capsize, hey?” asked the Chinese lunatic as gravely, Mr. Dugdale, so the men say, as if he were addressing you or me. “Speakee soft--how you capsize, hey?” This went on, I am told, for ten minutes, the men meanwhile coming on tip-toe to listen over the forecastle edge till they could stand it no longer, and their roar of laughter was what you heard, sir.’

‘A mere bit of sham posture-making in Johnny, don’t you think?’ said I. ‘He might guess the men were listening. Had he been a negro, now. But a Chinaman would very well know that a monkey can’t talk.’

‘This John is one who doesn’t know, I’ll swear. Besides, sir, the Chinese are not such geniuses as are imagined. There are thousands amongst them to correspond with our ignorant superstitious peasantry at home. I remember at Chusan that four Chinamen were engaged to carry a piano out of the cabin. Whilst they were wrestling with it on the quarter-deck, a string broke with a loud _twang_, on which they put the instrument down and ran away, viewing it from a distance with faces working with alarm and astonishment. The mate called to know what they meant by dropping their work. “Him spirit! him speakee,” they cried; in fact, they would have no more to do with the piano; and when some of the crew picked it up to carry it to the gangway, the quivering Johns went backing and recoiling on to the forecastle, as though the instrument were a cage with a wild beast in it that might at any moment spring out on them.’

Whilst he was speaking I had been watching a star slowly creeping away from the edge of the mainsail to leeward, as though it were sweeping through the sky on its own account on a course parallel with the line of the horizon. My attention was fixed on what my companion said, and my gaze rested mechanically upon the star. Suddenly the truth flashed upon me, and I started.

‘Why, Mr. Cocker, what’s happening to the ship? Are we going home again? She is coming to rapidly! You will be having all your stun’-sails there to larboard aback in a minute.’

He had been too much engrossed by our chat to notice this.

‘Wheel there!’ he shouted, running aft as he cried. ‘What are you doing with the ship? Port your hellum, man, port your hellum!’

I hastily followed, to see what was the matter. The wheel was deserted, and as I approached, I saw the circle revolve against the stars over the taffrail like a windmill in a gale. Alongside, prone on the deck, his arms outstretched and his face down, was the figure of the helmsman.

‘He is in a fit,’ cried the second mate, grasping the wheel and revolving it, to bring the ship to her course again.

Here Captain Keeling came hastily up the companion steps.

‘Where’s the officer of the watch?’ he shouted.

‘Here, sir,’ answered Cocker from the wheel.

‘Do you know, sir,’ cried the skipper, ‘that you are four points off your course?’

‘The helmsman has fallen down in a fit, or else lies dead here, sir,’ responded the second-mate.

The skipper saw how it was, and bawled for some hands to come aft. Such of the passengers as were on deck gathered about the wheel in a group.

‘What is that?’ exclaimed little Mr. Saunders, stooping close to the prostrate seaman’s head. ‘Blood, gentlemen!’ he exclaimed. ‘See the great stain of it here! This man has been struck down by some hand.’

‘What’s that? what’s that?’ cried old Keeling, bending his crowbar of a figure to the stain. ‘Ay, he has been struck down as you say, Mr. Saunders. Who has done this thing? Look about you, men; see if there’s anybody concealed here.’

Three or four fellows had come tumbling aft. One took the wheel from the second mate; and the others, along with the midshipmen of the watch, fell to peering under the gratings and into the gig that hung astern flush with the taffrail, and up aloft; but there was nothing living to be found, and the great fabric of mizzen masts and sails whitened to the truck by the moon, and the yard-arms showing in black lines against the stars, soared without blotch or stir, saving here and there a thin shadow upon the pallid cloths creeping to the movement of the spars.

Dr. Hemmeridge now arrived. The seaman, who appeared as dead as a stone, was turned over, and propped by a couple of sailors, and the doctor took a view of him by the help of the binnacle lamp. There was a desperate gash on the left side of the head. The small straw hat that the poor fellow was wearing was cut through, as though to the clip of a chopper. There was a deal of blood on the deck, and the man’s face was ghastly enough, with its beard encrimsoned and dripping, to turn the heart sick.

‘Is he dead, think you?’ demanded the captain.

‘I cannot yet tell,’ answered the doctor. ‘Raise him, men, and carry him forward at once to his bunk.’

The sailors, followed by the doctor, went staggering shadowily under their burden along the poop and disappeared, leaving a little crowd of us at the wheel dumb with wonder, and looking about us with eyes which gleamed to the flame of the binnacle lamp that Mr. Cocker yet held.

‘Now, _how_ has this happened?’ demanded old Keeling, after a prolonged squint aloft. ‘Had you left the deck, Mr. Cocker?’

‘No, sir, not for a living instant; Mr. Dugdale will bear witness to that.’

‘It is true,’ I said.

‘Did no man from forward come along the poop?’

‘No man, sir; I’ll swear it,’ answered Mr. Cocker.

‘Any of you young gentlemen been aloft?’ said Keeling, addressing the midshipmen.

‘No, sir,’ answered one of them, ‘neither aloft nor yet abaft the mizzen rigging for the last half-hour.’

The old chap took the lamp out of Mr. Cocker’s hand and looked under the gratings, then got upon them and stared into the gig, as though dissatisfied with the earlier inspection of these hiding-places.

‘Most extraordinary!’ he exclaimed; ‘did some madman do it, and then jump overboard?’

He looked over the sides to port and starboard. The quarter galleries were small, with bumpkins for the main-braces stretching out from them. They were untenanted.

‘What was the man’s name, Mr. Cocker?’

‘Simpson, sir.’

‘Was he unpopular forward, do you know? Had he quarrelled lately with any man?’

‘I will inquire, sir.’

Old Keeling seemed as bewildered as a person newly awakened from a dream; and, indeed, it was an extraordinary and an incredible thing. Mr. Saunders and Mynheer Hemskirk, with one or two others who were on the deck at the time, swore that no man had come aft from the direction of the forecastle. They were conversing in a group a little forward of the mizzen mast, and could take their oaths that there was no living creature abaft that point at the time of the occurrence saving the man who had been so mysteriously felled to the deck.

‘He most hov done it himself,’ said Hemskirk.

‘What! Dealt himself a blow that sheared through his hat into his skull?’ cried old Keeling.

‘I’ve been making inquiries, sir,’ said the second-mate, approaching us, ‘and find that Simpson, instead of being disliked, was a general favourite. No man has been aft, sir.’

‘Something must have fallen from the rigging,’ said Mr. Saunders.

‘Sir,’ cried the captain in a voice of mingled wrath and astonishment, ‘when anything falls from aloft, it drops plumb, sir--up and down, sir. The law of gravitation, Mr. Saunders, is the same at sea as it is on shore. What could fall from those heights up there’--and here he turned up his head like a hen in the act of drinking,--‘to strike a man standing at the wheel all that distance away?’

The news had got wind below, and the passengers came up in twos and threes from the cuddy, asking questions as they arrived, the loudest and most importunate amongst them, needless to say, being Colonel Bannister. There was real consternation amongst the ladies at the sight of the bloodstain. I shall not easily forget the picture of that poop-full of people: the staring of the women at the dark blotch against the wheel, whilst they held themselves in a sort of posture of recoil, holding their dresses back, as if something were crawling at them; the subdued wondering air of the men, restlessly looking about them, one going to the rail to gaze over, the dusky form of another stooping to peer under the gratings, a third with his head lying back straining his sight at the airy empearled spire of the cloths rising from the cross-jack to the royal yard, the mizzen-top showing clear and firm as a drawing in Indian ink against the delicate shimmering concavity of the topsail. The half-moon rode in brilliance over the main topgallant yard-arm, and the dark swell rolled in soundless heavings to the quarter, with the wake of the planet lying in the shape of a silver fan to half way across the ocean, and not a cloud in the whole wide velvet-black depths to obscure so much as a thumbnail of stardust.

‘What has happened, Dugdale?’ exclaimed Colledge, accosting me at once as he rose through the companion with Miss Temple at his side.

‘A man that was at the helm has been struck down,’ said I.

‘By whom?’ said he.

‘Why, that’s it,’ I answered; ‘nobody knows, and I don’t think anybody ever will know.’

‘Is he dead?’ asked Miss Temple.

‘I cannot say,’ I responded; ‘his hat was cut through and his head laid open. There is a dreadful illustration of what has happened close against the wheel.’

‘In what form?’ she asked.

‘Blood!’ said I.

‘Why, it’s _murder_, then!’ cried Colledge.

‘It looks like it,’ said I, with a glance at Miss Temple’s face, that showed white as alabaster to the moonlight, whilst in each glowing dark eye sparkled a little star of silver far more brilliant than the ice-like flash of the diamonds which trembled in her ears. ‘But be the assassin what he may, I’ll swear by every saint in the calendar that he’s not aboard this ship.’

‘Pray, explain, Mr. Dugdale,’ exclaimed Miss Temple in a voice of curiosity at once haughty and peevish.

I made no answer.

‘My dear fellow, what do you want to imply?’ said Colledge: ‘that the man was struck down--by somebody out of doors?’ and his eyes went wandering over the sea.

‘It seems my mission, Miss Temple,’ said I with a half-laugh, ‘to furnish you with information on what happens on board the _Countess Ida_. Once again let me enjoy the privilege you do me the honour to confer upon me;’ and with that, in an offhand manner, I told her the story as you have it.

‘Did anybody, think you, crawl out of the hind windows,’ exclaimed Colledge, ‘and creep up over the stern and strike the man down?’

‘No,’ said I.

‘How did it happen, then?’ asked Miss Temple fretfully.

‘Why,’ I answered, looking at her, ‘the blow was no doubt dealt by a spirit.’

‘Lor’ bless us, how terrifying!’ exclaimed Mrs. Hudson, who, unknown to me, had drawn to my elbow to listen. ‘What with the heat and the sight of that blood!’ she cried, fanning herself violently. ‘A spirit, did you say, sir? Oh, I shall never be able to sleep in the ship again after this.’

I edged away, finding little pleasure in the prospect of a chat with Mrs. Hudson with Miss Temple close at hand to listen to us. At that moment Dr. Hemmeridge made his appearance. He stalked up to the captain, who stood with his hand gripping the vang of the spanker gaff, returning short almost gruff answers to the questions fired at him.

‘The man’s alive, sir,’ said the doctor; ‘but he’s badly hurt. I’ve soldered his wound; but it is an ugly cut.’

‘Is he conscious?’ demanded Keeling.

‘He is.’

‘And what does he say?’

‘He has nothing to say, sir. How should he remember, Captain Keeling? He fell to the blow as an ox would.’

‘Ha!’ cried the skipper; ‘but does he recollect seeing anybody lurking near him--has he any suspicion’----

‘Sir,’ answered the doctor, ‘at the present moment his mind has but half an eye open.’

I made one of the crowd that had assembled to hear the doctor’s report, and stood near the binnacle stand--close enough to it, in fact, to be able to lay my hand upon the hood. My eye was travelling from the ugly patch that had an appearance as of still sifting out upon the white plank within half a yard of me, when I caught sight of a black lump of something just showing in the curve of the base of the binnacle stand betwixt the starboard legs of it. It was gone in a moment with the slipping off it of the streak of moonshine that had disclosed it to me. Almost mechanically, whilst I continued to listen to the doctor, I put my toe to the thing; then, still in a mechanical way, picked it up. It was a large stone, something of the shape of a comb, with a twist in the middle of it, and of a smooth surface on top, but rugged and broken underneath, with a length of about five inches jagged into an edge as keen as a flint splinter. It was extraordinarily heavy, and might in that quality have been a lump of gold.

‘Hallo!’ I cried, ‘what have we here?’ and I held it to the glass of the binnacle to view it by the lamplight.

‘What is that you are looking at, Mr. Dugdale?’ called out old Keeling.

‘Why,’ said I, ‘neither more nor less to my mind than the weapon with which your sailor has been laid low, captain.’

There was a rush to look at it. Keeling held it up to the moonlight, then poised it in his hand.

‘Who could have been the ruffian that hove it?’ he cried.

‘Allow me to see it,’ exclaimed little Mr. Saunders, and he worked his way, low down amongst us, to the captain. He weighed the stone, smelt it, carefully inspected it, then looked up to the captain with a grin that wrinkled his large, long, eager, wise old face from his brow to his chin. ‘A suspicion,’ he exclaimed, ‘that has been slowly growing in my mind is now confirmed. No mortal hand hove this missile, captain. It comes from the angels, sir.’

He paused.

‘Lawk-a-daisy, what is the man going to say next?’ cried out Mrs. Hudson hysterically.

‘Captain Keeling, ladies and gentlemen,’ continued little Saunders, nursing the stone as tenderly while he spoke as if it had been a new-born babe, ‘this has fallen from those infinite spangled heights up there. It is, in short, a meteorolite, and, so far as I can now judge, a very beautiful specimen of one.’