CHAPTER XVII

THE ‘MAGICIENNE’

The corvette looked a mighty long distance away from the low elevation of the boat’s gunwale--almost as far as the horizon, it seemed to my eyes, though from the height of the deck of the Indiaman the sea-line showed something above the bulwarks of the man-of-war. One hardly noticed the movement in the sea on board the _Countess Ida_, so solemn and steady was the swing of the great fabric, a movement stealing into one’s thoughts like a habit, and leaving one unconscious of it; but the heave was instantly to be felt in the boat, and I own that I could not have believed there was so much swell until I felt the lift of the noiseless polished fold and marked the soft blue volume of the water brimming to the hot and blistered sides and green sheathing of the Indiaman.

A huge lump of a ship she looked as we were swept away from her; her masts soaring in three spires with the flash of a vane above the airy gossamer of the loftiest cloths; groups of passengers watching us from the violet-tinted shadow under the awning, heads of seamen at the rail, or figures of them upon the forecastle near the huge cathead that struck a shadow of its own into the water under it. The great bowsprit went tapering to the delicacy of the flying-jib-boom end marshalling the flight of white jibs; a stream of radiance floated in the water under each large window. Inexpressible is the effect she produced taken along with the dwindling of her to the impulse of our oars, with the fining down into thinnest notes of the voices of the people, and with the soft and still softening sounds of her canvas lightly swaying.

‘A grand old ship,’ exclaimed the lieutenant.

‘I had no idea she owned such a handsome stern,’ said Colledge; ‘quite a blaze of gilt, I do protest, Miss Temple. How gloriously old Keeling’s cabin-window sparkles amid the gingerbread magnificence of decoration.’

‘What is there in the art of painting to reproduce such a picture as that?’ exclaimed Miss Temple, with her dark eyes glowing to the mood of delight raised in her by the beautiful spectacle. ‘It is like looking at an image in a soap-bubble. What brush could fling those silver-bluish daintinesses of tint upon canvas, and make one see the ship through this atmosphere filled with ocean-light?’

‘Ocean-light!’ exclaimed the lieutenant, viewing her with an air of profound admiration; ‘that is the fit expression, madam. Light at sea is different from light on shore.’

‘As how?’ cried Colledge.

‘Oh, my dear fellow, see what a reflecting eye the ocean has,’ said I; ‘it stares back in glory to the glory that looks down upon it. Mould and clay can’t do that, you know.’

‘True,’ said the lieutenant.

‘Pray,’ said I, addressing him, ‘when you overhauled that hull yonder, did you meet with anything to warrant our suspicion that she was a rover?’

‘I found no papers,’ said he; ‘forward, she is burnt into a shell. All her guns are gone--dropped overboard, I suppose, to keep her afloat. She has a little round-house aft, and in it sits a man.’

‘A man?’ exclaimed Miss Temple.

‘He sits in a musing posture,’ continued the lieutenant; ‘he frowns, and seems vexed. He holds a feather pen in one hand, and supports his head on the elbow of his left arm, but he doesn’t write: possibly because there is no ink and the wind seems to have blown his paper away.’

‘Is he dead?’ exclaimed Miss Temple.

‘Quite,’ responded the lieutenant, with a smile of enjoyment of her beauty.

‘God bless me!’ cried Colledge, staring at the hull under the sharp of his hand.

‘Is she a picaroon, think you, sir?’ said I.

‘Impossible to say,’ he answered; ‘there are stands of small-arms in her cabin below, and a sweep of ’tweendecks full of piratic bedding. She will have been crowded with sailors, I should think, sir.’

The six men-of-war’s men were making the fine little cutter hum as they bent to their oars, one hairy face showing past another, the eyes of each man upon his blade, though now and again one or another would steal a respectful peep at Miss Temple. What exquisite discipline their demeanour suggested! One hardly needed to do more than glance at them to sound to the very depths the whole philosophy of our naval story. How should it be otherwise than as it is with a nation that could be the mother of such children as those fellows?

The lieutenant was very talkative, and had a deal to say about the West Coast of Africa and Cape Town; and he had a great many questions to ask about home. Miss Temple constantly directed her eyes over the side, as though affected and even startled by the proximity of the mighty surface. And boundless the light blue heaving plain looked as it went swimming to the far-off slope of sky that it seemed to wash--the vaster, the more enormous for the breaks of toy-like craft upon it; for the Indiaman and the corvette were standards to assist the mind into some perception of the surrounding immensity, and never to me did the heavens seem so high nor the curve of the ocean boundary so remote as I found them from the low seat of the cutter, with the corvette growing over the bow, and the Indiaman astern dwarfed to the dimensions of a boy’s model of a ship.

It was a longer pull than I should have believed, and roastingly hot, thanks to the flaming reflection that filled the heart of the sea, and to the motionless atmosphere, which was scarcely to be stirred even into the subtlest fanning of the cheek by our passage through it. Miss Temple’s face in the shadow of her parasol resembled some incomparable carving in marble, and but little of vitality was to be seen in it outside of her rich, full, eloquent eyes, when she fell into some pause of thought and looked away into the dim blue distance as though she beheld a vision down in it. The corvette appeared deserted, with her high bulwarks topped yet with a line of hammocks; but it was easy to see that it was known on board the lieutenant was bringing a lady along with others to visit the man-of-war, for there was already a proper gangway ladder over the side, with a grating to step out on, though the broad-beamed craft swayed more to the swell than the Indiaman, and so dipped the platform that it needed a deal of manoeuvring to save Miss Temple from wetting her feet.

Sir Edward Panton, a tall, exceedingly handsome man, with iron-grey hair and a sun-reddened complexion, received us at the gangway. He seemed scarcely able to believe his eyes when Colledge called out to him. He welcomed Miss Temple with an air of lofty respectful dignity that would have sat well upon some nobleman of magnificence welcoming a royal visitor to his home. Chairs were brought from the cabin and placed on the quarter-deck in the shelter of the awning, along with a little table, upon which were put some excellent sherry, claret, and seltzer-water, and a box of capital cigars. The look of this ship, after the Indiaman’s encumbered decks broken by their poop and topgallant forecastle, was a real treat to the seafaring eye. She was flush fore and aft: every plank was as white as a peeled almond; the black breeches of her artillery gave a noble, massive, imposing character to her tall, immensely thick bulwarks; the ratlines showed straight as thin bars of iron in the wide spread of shrouds and topmast rigging; the running gear was flemish-coiled; the brass-work sparkled like burnished gold; the snow-like cloths of the fore-course gathered an amazing brightness from their mere contrast with the red coat of a marine pacing the forecastle; the sailors, in white clothes, straw-hats, and naked feet, sprang softly here and there to the light chirrupings of a pipe, or went on with the various jobs they were about on deck and in the rigging amid a silence that one might ask for in vain among a crew of merchantmen. Far away down upon the starboard beam was the Indiaman, blue in the airy distance, with a sort of winking of shadows upon her square and lofty canvas, as the cloths swung in and out, brightening and dimming.

Sir Edward was delighted to see his cousin, and it seemed as if there was to be no end to their talk, so numberless were the questions the commander put about home, his family, doings in London, matters political, and so on, and so on. I had a chance, whilst Colledge was spinning some long twister of private interest to Sir Edward, to exchange a few words with Miss Temple, whose behaviour in the main might have easily led me to believe that she was absolutely unconscious of my presence; in fact, I shouldn’t have addressed her then but for finding in the domestic and personal gossip of the two cousins an obligation of either talking or walking away.

‘The _Countess Ida_ looks a long distance off, Miss Temple.’

‘Farther, I think, than this ship looks from her.’

‘That is owing to a change in the atmosphere. We shall be having some weather by-and-by.’

‘Not before we return, I hope.’

‘The blue thickens yonder,’ I exclaimed, indicating that quarter of the sea where I had noticed the depression of the horizon.

She gazed listlessly; her eyes then went roaming over the ship with a sparkle in them of the pleasure the whiteness and the brightness and the orderliness of all that she beheld gave her.

Presently Sir Edward exclaimed: ‘Miss Temple, you would like to inspect this vessel, I am sure. I wish to show Stephen my wife’s portrait, and I want you to see it. Mr. Dugdale, you will join us.’

Down we went into a very pleasant cabin, and the captain produced a water-colour sketch of his lady.

‘A sweet face!’ exclaimed Miss Temple; whilst Sir Edward gazed at the picture with eyes full of the yearning heart of a sailor long divorced from his love.

‘Have you found your charmer yet, Stephen?’ said he. ‘Any girl won your budding affections?’

The youth looked at me suddenly and turned of a deep red. I believe he would have said no at once, and with a cocksure face, had I not been there. Miss Temple’s gaze rested upon him.

‘Why, who is it, Stephen, eh?’ exclaimed Sir Edward with a merry laugh. ‘See how he blushes, Miss Temple! a sure sign that he has let go his anchor, though he is riding to a long scope all the way out here. Who is it, Steve?’

‘Oh, hang it, Ned, never mind; you bother a fellow so,’ answered Colledge with a fine air of mingled irritation and confusion, and a half-look at me that was just the same as saying, ‘What an ass I am making of myself!’

‘Miss Temple,’ exclaimed Sir Edward, laughing heartily again, ‘he may possibly have confided the lady’s name to you? Pray satisfy my curiosity, that I may congratulate him before we part.’

‘I am as ignorant as you are,’ she replied, with an expression of cold surprise in her face.

I marched to a porthole to look out, that I might conceal an irrepressible grin.

‘I say, show us the ship, will ye, Ned?’ shouted Colledge; ‘there’s a long pull before us, and we’re bound to India, you know.’

Captain Panton led the way out of the cabin, and went in advance with Miss Temple, pointing here and explaining there, and full of his ship. Colledge sidled up to me.

‘Dugdale,’ he exclaimed in a whisper, ‘do you believe that Miss Temple will guess from my idiotic manner just now that I’m engaged to be married?’

‘Oh yes; I saw her gaze sink right into you and then go clean through you. It is best as it is, Colledge. You may breathe freely now.’

He smothered an execration, and continued gloomy and silent for some time. There was not very much to be seen below. We were presently on deck; and after another ten minutes’ chat, during which Colledge seemed to regain his spirits, the boat was ordered alongside.

‘It shall be my secret as well as yours, Stephen, long before you are home from your tiger-hunts!’ exclaimed Sir Edward at the gangway, waggishly shaking his forefinger at his cousin.

We shook hands, entered the boat; the lieutenant took his seat, the oars sparkled, and away we went with a flourish of our hats to the commander, who stood for some time in the open gangway watching us.

‘There’s a trifle more swell than there was, I fancy,’ said I to the lieutenant.

‘I think there is,’ he answered, looking over the sea as if he thought of something else.

‘What a confounded quiz Ned is!’ exclaimed Colledge. ‘He’s rather too fond of a laugh at other people’s expense. I think that sort of thing a mistake myself.’

‘He is a very handsome gentleman,’ said I.

‘Well, I’m mighty glad to have seen him,’ said Colledge. ‘He’s a dear good fellow, only---- I hope you’ve enjoyed the trip, Miss Temple?’

‘Thoroughly, thank you; it is a delightful change. How strange to think of that toy yonder as being our home for some months to come! It is like fancying one’s self as dwelling in a star, to see her floating out there in the blue haze, as though she were poised in the atmosphere.’

She fastened her eyes on the Indiaman as she spoke. One saw in this that she had a sailor’s observation for atmospheric effect. Star-like the ship looked in the distance--a dash of misty light in the blue haze, hovering, as it were, above the junction of sea and sky, where the blending of the elements was so dim and hot that you couldn’t tell where they met.

‘Isn’t it thickening up a trifle, somehow?’ said I to the lieutenant. ‘Look to the right of the wreck there--what is that appearance?’

‘What do you see?’ he exclaimed.

‘Why, to my fancy, it is as though there were a dust-storm miles away yonder.’

He smiled, and answered: ‘Mere heat. One doesn’t need many months on the West African coast to grow used to that sort of aspects. They suggest nothing but quinine to me.’

‘What time is it?’ said Colledge.

We pulled out our watches: it was half-past four.

‘I am sorry we are returning to the Indiaman,’ said he. ‘I should like to get away from her for a little while; then one would find something of freshness in her when one returned. I am not thirsting to meet Mr. Johnson and Mr. Emmett and Mr. Greenhew again. Are you, Miss Temple?’

She slightly smiled, and said, ‘I wish Bombay were as near to us as the _Magicienne_ is to the Indiaman.’

‘I have an idea!’ cried Colledge, whose shining eyes, methought, seemed to suggest the influence of the last large bumper of sherry he had tossed down before leaving the corvette. ‘Let us kill another hour by boarding the wreck.’

‘I shall be very pleased to put the boat alongside,’ said the lieutenant. ‘What do you say, Miss Temple?’

She looked at the Indiaman, and then sent a swift glance at me, as though she would read my face without having me know she had peeped at it.

‘Will there be time before it falls dark?’ she answered. ‘I am in no hurry to return; but I do not want to make my aunt miserable by remaining out upon the water until after sunset.’

‘Oh, we have abundance of time,’ said the lieutenant.

‘It will give us so much to talk about,’ exclaimed Colledge. ‘I want to see what sort of a ship it was that frightened us so abominably the other day.’

‘What do you say, Mr. Dugdale?’ said Miss Temple.

‘I am thinking of the lonely sentinel this gentleman was telling us about as we came along,’ said I.

‘Oh, one peep! one peep at him, just one peep!’ cried Colledge: ‘_don’t_ let us go back to the Indiaman too soon. At this rate,’ he added, turning up his slightly flushed face to the sky, ‘we may have another six months of her.’

The lieutenant laughed, and, anxious to please him, as I supposed, quietly pulled a yoke-line and swept the boat’s head fair for the hull. His making nothing of the appearance I had called his attention to was reassuring. I should have thought nothing of it either but for the indent in the horizon that morning, and the recollection that grew out of it, as I have told you. But then old Keeling had let us start from his ship without a hint, and Sir Edward had uttered no caution, though, to be sure, in those days the barometer was not the shaper of marine speculations it has since become; and the silence of these two skippers, and the smile and careless rejoinder of the lieutenant, should have been amply satisfying. Nevertheless, there was no question but that the light swell heaving out of the north-west was sensibly gaining in volume and speed, and that it was the mere respiration of the ocean I could by no means persuade myself, though it might signify nothing.

Colledge grew somewhat frolicsome; indeed, I seemed to find an artificiality in his spirits, as though he would clear Miss Temple’s memory of Captain Panton’s _badinage_ by laughter and jokes. The lieutenant fell in with his humour, said some comical things, and told one or two lively anecdotes of the blacks of that part of the coast the corvette was fresh from. The men-of-war’s men pulled steadily, and the keen stem of the cutter sheared through the oil-smooth surface with a noise as of the ripping of satin; but now and again she would swing down into a hollow that put the low sides of the wreck out of sight, whilst, as we approached, I noticed that the hull was leaning from side to side in a swing which did not need to greatly increase to put the lieutenant to his trumps to get Miss Temple aboard.

But by this time the girl was showing some vivacity, smiling at the lieutenant’s jokes, laughing lightly in her clear, rich, trembling tones at Colledge’s remarks. It seemed to me as if her previous quietude had produced a resolution which she was now acting up to. She was apparently eager to inspect the wreck, and said that such an adventure would make a heroine of her at home when she came to tell the story of it.

It was a long, dragging pull over that heaving, breathless sea, and through that sweltering afternoon, with its sky of the complexion of brass about the zenith. The three craft, as they lay, formed a right-angled triangle, the apex, to call it so, being the derelict, and the getting to her involved a longer stretching of the Jacks’ backs than, as I suspected, the lieutenant had calculated on. The sweat poured from the men’s brows, and their faces were like purple rags under their straw hats as they swung with the precision and the monotony of the tick of a clock over the looms of their oars.

‘She’s rather unsteady, isn’t she?’ exclaimed Colledge as we approached the hulk.

‘So much the better,’ said the lieutenant; ‘her bulwarks are gone, and every dip inclines her bare deck as a platform for a jump.’

‘She may be sinking,’ cried Miss Temple.

‘Dry as a bone, madam, I assure you,’ said the officer. ‘I looked into her hold, and there’s scarce more water than would serve to drown a rat.’

‘I see her name in long white letters under her counter,’ I exclaimed. ‘Can you read it, Colledge?’

‘The _Aspirante_,’ said the lieutenant.

We now fell silent, with our eyes upon the hull, whilst the officer manœuvred with the yoke-lines to run the cutter handsomely alongside. A single chime from a bell came thrilling with a soft silver note through the hushed air. Miss Temple started, and the officer grinned into Colledge’s face, but nothing was said. She was a very clean wreck. Her foremast stood stoutly supported by the shrouds; but the braces of the foreyard were slack, and the swing of the spar, upon which the canvas lay rolled in awkward heaps, roughly secured by lines, as though the work of hands wild with hurry, somehow imparted a strange, forlorn, most melancholy character to the nakedness of that solitary mast. She showed no guns; her decks appeared to have been swept; the rise of her in the water proved that her people must have jettisoned a deal of whatever they were able to come at; her wheel was gone, and her rudder slowly swayed to every heave. There were a few ropes’ ends over her side, the hacked remains of standing-rigging; but the water brimmed clear of wreckage to her channels.

‘Oars!’ cried the lieutenant. The bowman sprang erect; and in a few moments we were floating alongside, soaring and falling against the black run of her, with the deck gaping through the length of smashed bulwark to the level of our heads when we stood up, each time she came lazily rolling over to us. The clear chime of the bell rang out again.

‘What is it?’ cried Miss Temple.

‘The ship’s bell,’ said the lieutenant; ‘it has got jammed as it hangs, and the tongue strikes the side when the heave is a little sharper than usual.’

He followed this on with certain directions to the men. Two of them, watching their chance, sprang on to the slope of the deck, and then went hoisting up away from us as the hull swayed wearily to starboard. ‘Stand by now!’ bawled the lieutenant. ‘Miss Temple, let me assist you on to this thwart.’ She leapt upon it with something of defiance in her manner, and the officer, grasping her elbow, supported her. I thought Colledge looked a little uneasy and pale. We waited; but an opportunity was some time in coming.

‘Mr. Colledge,’ said the lieutenant, ‘be kind enough to take my place and support the lady.’ He jumped lightly into the main-chains, and was on deck in a jiffy. ‘Haul her in close, men. Now, Miss Temple. Catch hold of my hand and of this sailor’s when I say so.’

Up swung the boat; the girl extended her hands, which were instantly grasped. ‘Jump, madam!’ and she went in a graceful bound from the thwart to the deck.

I watched till a heave brought me on a line with the chains into which I jumped.

‘Now, Mr. Colledge!’ called out the lieutenant. He hung in the wind, and I thought he would refuse to leave the boat; but Miss Temple with her face slightly flushed stood watching as though waiting for him, her noble figure swaying with a marvellous careless grace upon the floating slopes of the planks; and this started him. He got on to a thwart, where he was supported by a sailor till a chance offered for his hands to be gripped, and then he was hauled on to the hull; but he came perilously near to going overboard, for the sudden sinking away of the cutter from under him paralysed his effort to jump, and he swung against the side of the wreck in the grasp of the lieutenant and a seaman, who dragged him up just in time to save his legs from being ground by the soaring of the boat. The two sailors then jumped into the cutter, which shoved off, and lay rising and falling upon the quarter to the scope of her painter.