CHAPTER XXII

THE ‘LADY BLANCHE’

So light was the breeze, that it was drawing on to ten o’clock in the morning before the approaching vessel lay plain on the sea. Long before this I had made her out to be a square-rigged craft, and sometimes I would imagine that she was the corvette, and sometimes that she was the _Countess Ida_. It had been a time of breathless expectation, of crushing suspense. Again and again had I mounted the rigging to make sure that she had not shifted her course, and was edging away from us. Again and again had I run my eyes round the sea with a passionate prayer in my heart that the wind might hold; for if it shifted, we stood to lose the ship; and if it fell, the calm might last all day, with the prospect of another black night before us and a deserted ocean at daybreak.

But now, drawing on to this hour of ten, the hull of the vessel had risen to its bends, and though I might be certain of nothing else, it was absolutely sure that the stranger was neither the _Magicienne_ nor the _Countess Ida_. She had puzzled me greatly for a considerable time; for even when her fore-course had fairly lifted she yet seemed to be rising more canvas. But by this hour I could distinguish. She was a small vessel, painted white--whether barque or ship I could not then tell. She had studdingsails out and skysails set, and showed as an airy delicate square of pearl; and indeed I might have believed that she was the Indiaman for that reason, until her snow-white body came stealing out to the stare I fixed upon her, and then I looked at Miss Temple.

Her sight for seafaring details was not mine. She was trembling as she said: ‘Which ship is she, Mr. Dugdale?’

‘Neither,’ I answered.

‘Neither!’ she cried.

‘Do not you observe that yonder craft has a white hull, and that she is a small ship? But what does it matter? She is bound to see us. She will rescue us; and, let the future be what it may, our one consuming need now is to quit this hull.’

She had so reckoned upon the stranger proving either the corvette or the Indiaman, that, had the approaching craft been no more than a mirage, had the fabric melted upon the air as we watched it, she could not have looked more blank, more wildly and hopelessly disappointed.

‘Neither!’ she repeated, breathing with difficulty. ‘Oh, Mr. Dugdale, what are we to do?’

‘Why, get on board of her, in the name of God,’ I cried--‘giving Him thanks when we are there.’

‘But she may--she will be’--she paused, unable to articulate: then with an effort: ‘She may be going to another part of the world.’

‘It matters not,’ I answered, observing with rapture that the vessel was heading more directly for us; ‘she will put us aboard something homeward bound. Will not that be better than stopping here, Miss Temple?’

‘Oh yes, oh yes!’ she cried; ‘but if we waited a little, the Indiaman might find us.’

‘Heaven forbid! we have waited long enough.’

So speaking, I rushed forward, picked up the handspike with which I had beaten upon the forecastle wall, secured a blanket to it, and, dancing aft, fell to flourishing it with all my might. Very slowly the vessel came floating down upon us with a light swaying of her trucks from side to side, and a tender twinkling of the folds of her lower canvas, which there was not weight enough in the wind to hold distended. Her hull was exceedingly graceful, and of a milky whiteness; and, as she leaned from us on some wide fold of the breathing waters, she exposed a hand’s-breadth of burnished copper, which put a wonderful quality of beauty and delicacy into the whole fabric, as though she were a little model in frosted silver.

‘Before she takes us on board, Mr. Dugdale,’ exclaimed Miss Temple, ‘will not you mount the rigging to see if there is another ship in sight that may prove the Indiaman?’

‘But even if the Indiaman were in sight,’ said I, ‘we should seize this the first of our opportunities to escape from this floating tomb. For heaven’s sake, let us get aboard that fellow!’

As I spoke, I seized the handspike again and frantically flourished it. All this while there was a column of smoke ascending steadily from my fire of rugs and mats and darkening the sea over the starboard bow. I was now able to make out that the coming craft was a barque. My eyes were glued to her; my heart thumped furiously; the wildest alternations of joy and dread seized me. Suppose she should prove some foreigner in charge of a man indifferent to human life, some cold-blooded miscreant who had shifted his helm merely to satisfy his curiosity, and who, on perceiving that the smoke was no more than a signal, and that the wreck floated high, should slide quietly on and leave us to our fate? Such things had been; such things were again and again happening. As she drew with a snail-like motion abreast without touching a brace, without any signs of movement about her deck, my eyes turned dim; I feared I was about to swoon.

‘Will she not stop?’ exclaimed Miss Temple, in a voice of terror.

Lifting the handspike with its fluttering blanket high above my head, I waved it furiously for some moments, then flinging it down upon the deck, applied my hands to the sides of my mouth, and, in a voice of such energy that it came near to cracking every vein in my head, I yelled: ‘Barque ahoy! For God’s sake, send a boat and take us off.’

As the words left my throat, the vessel’s helm was put down; the clew of the mainsail mounted, and her topsail yard slowly revolved, bringing every cloth upon the main aback, and in a few minutes the graceful little craft was lying without way within speaking distance of us.

In the violence of my transport, I grasped Miss Temple’s hand and again and again pressed my lips to it, congratulating her and myself so, for I had no words. The figures of the people were clearly visible: a row of heads forward, the fellow at the wheel on a short raised deck, and two men dressed in white clothes with large straw hats at the mizzen rigging. One of them leisurely clambered on to the rail, and, holding by one hand to a backstay, sang out:

‘Wreck ahoy! How many are there of you?’

‘Two of us only,’ I shouted back; ‘this lady and myself.’

‘Any contagious sickness?’

‘No, no,’ I bawled, amazed by the question. ‘Pray, send a boat.’

He continued to stand, as though viewing us meditatively; then, ‘Wreck ahoy!’

‘Hallo!’ I cried, scarcely able to send my voice owing to the consternation excited in me by the man’s behaviour.

‘Are you a sailor?’ he roared.

‘Oh, say yes, say yes!’ cried Miss Temple; ‘he may be in want of men.’

‘Ay, ay,’ I cried; ‘I’m a sailor.’

‘What sort of sailor?’

‘I belonged to an Indiaman.’

‘Afore the mast?’

‘No, no! send a boat--I’ll tell you all about it.’

He descended from the rail and apparently addressed the man that stood near, who walked to the companion-hatch and returned with a telescope; the other took it from him, then knelt down to rest the glass on the rail, and surveyed us through the lenses for at least a couple of minutes, after which he rose, returned the glass to his companion, and flourished his hand at us. I watched, utterly unable to guess what was next to happen. My fears foreboded the departure of the barque, and the impatience in me worked like madness in my blood. But mercifully we were not to be kept long in this intolerable state of suspense. A few minutes after the man, whom I supposed to be the captain, had motioned to us with his arm, a number of sailors came to the davits at the foremost extremity of the raised after-deck, where swung a small white boat of a whaling pattern. Four of them entered her, and she sank slowly to the water’s edge, where she was promptly freed from her tackles, and three oars thrown over. The fellow in the stern sheets was the man who had handed the glass to the other. The oarsmen pulled swiftly, and in a very short time the little craft was alongside.

‘Only two of ye, is it?’ said the fellow who grasped the tiller, a short, square, sun-blackened, coarse-looking sailor.

‘Only two,’ I cried.

‘Any luggage?’

‘No,’ I answered.

‘Nothen portable aboard worth carrying off, is there?’

‘Yes,’ I answered, cursing him in my heart for the delay these questions involved; ‘there are several hams, bottles of fine wine, cheeses, and the like below.’

‘Odds niggers! we’ll have ’em then,’ he exclaimed; and in an instant he was in the wreck’s chains, wriggling over the side and calling to one of his fellows to follow him. They hung in the wind a moment, staring their hardest at Miss Temple and myself; then said the short square man in white: ‘Where be the goods, master?’

I pointed to the hatch in the deck-house, and directed them to what I called the pantry. But nothing could have induced me to leave the deck. As they disappeared I stepped to the side where the bulwarks were gone.

‘Bring the boat close under, my lads,’ I exclaimed to the two fellows in her, ‘and stand by to receive the lady.’

The hull was rolling gently, with just enough of depression to render a jump into the little fabric as it rose very easy and safe. ‘Now, Miss Temple,’ I cried. She sprang without an instant’s hesitation, was caught by one of the sailors, and in a jiffy the pair of us were snug in the stern sheets side by side.

The two men could not take their eyes off us. They surveyed us with countenances of profound astonishment, running their gaze over Miss Temple as though she were some creature of another world: as well they might, indeed, seeing the contrast between the groaning, mutilated, smoking hull and this girl leaping from her deck in the choice and elegant attire of the highest fashion, as the two poor devils would imagine--for what eye would _they_ have for the disorder of her apparel?--and her hands, breast, and ears sparkling with jewels of value and splendour.

‘Are ye English, sir?’ said one of them, a middle-aged man, of an honest cast of countenance, with minute eyes deep sunk in his head, and a pair of greyish whiskers uniting at his throat.

‘Why, yes, to be sure,’ I answered.

‘The lady too, sir?’

‘Yes, man, yes. What ship are you?’

‘The _Lady Blanche_,’ he answered.

‘Where bound?’

‘To Mauritius, from the river Thames.’

I glanced at Miss Temple; but either she had not heeded the fellow’s answer or her mind failed to collect its meaning.

‘Been long aboard here, sir?’ said the man, indicating the hull by a sideways motion of his head.

‘Two nights,’ I answered. ‘There should be a corvette and an Indiaman close at hand hereabouts. Have you met with either ship?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Sighted no sail at all?’

‘Nothen like un,’ exclaimed the other sailor. ‘Th’ ocean’s gone and growed into a Hafrican desert.’

The square man in white, followed by his attendant seaman, arrived at the side, bearing between them a blanket loaded with the produce of the pantry, to judge by the clinking of bottle glass and the orbicular bulgings of cheeses and rounds of hams.

‘Catch this here bundle now,’ sung out the square man, who, later on, I ascertained was the barque’s carpenter, acting also as the second mate. ‘Handsomely over the bricks. It’s wine, bullies.’

The blanket and its contents were received, and deposited in the bottom of the boat. The men entered her, and we shoved off.

‘Did you make up that there fire, sir?’ inquired the square man, bringing his eyes in a stare of astonishment from Miss Temple to myself.

‘Yes; nobody else. This lady and I are alone.’

‘Then you’ve set the bloomin’ hull on fire,’ said he.

I started, and sent a look at the column of smoke, at which I had never once glanced whilst lying alongside, so distracted was my attention by the multiplicity of emotions which surged in me. There was no need to gaze long to gather that more was going, to the making of the coils of smoke which were now rising in soot than the nearly consumed remains of the mats and rugs which I had stacked and fed.

‘The fire’s burnt clean through the deck,’ said the square man, ‘and there are some casks in flames just forrads of the main hatch. What might they have contained, d’ye know?’

‘I don’t know,’ I answered, trembling like a half-frozen kitten as I watched the smoke, and thought of what must have come to us, if yonder barque’s approach had been delayed!

‘I suppose there’ll be gunpowder aboard?’ continued the square man. ‘Pull, lads! If a bust-up happens, it’ll find us too near at this.’

The men bent their backs, and the sharp-ended little boat went smoking through the quiet rippling waters. Nothing more was said. The square man, whose rugged, weather-blackened face preserved an inimitable air of amazement, eyed us askant, particularly running his gaze over Miss Temple’s attire, and letting it rest upon her rings. The toil of the seamen kept them silent. For my part, I was too overcome to utter a word. The passion of delight excited by our deliverance--that is to say, as signified by our rescue by the barque--was paralysed by the horror with which I viewed the growing denseness of the smoke rising from the hull. She was on fire! Great heaven, what would have been our fate--without a boat, without the materials for the construction of a raft--with no more than a few staves of casks to hold by! Such a sea-brigand as the wreck had been in her day was sure to have a liberal store of gunpowder stowed somewhere below: in all probability, in a magazine in the hold under her cabin. What, then, would there have been for us to do? We must either have sought death by leaping overboard, or awaited the horrible annihilation of an explosion!

Miss Temple’s eyes were large and her lips pale and her face bloodless, as though she were in a swoon. She was seeing how it was, and how it must have been with us, and she seemed smitten to the motionlessness of a statue by the perception as she sat by my side staring at the receding hull.

We swept to the little gangway ladder that had been dropped over the rail, and with some difficulty I assisted the girl over the side, swinging by the man-rope with one hand and supporting her waist with the other. The man who had hailed us stood at the gangway. I instantly went up to him with my hand outstretched.

‘Sir,’ said I, ‘you are the captain, no doubt. I thank you for this deliverance, for this preservation of our lives, for this rescue from what _now_ must have proved a horrible doom of fire.’

He took my hand and held it without answering, whilst he continued to stare at me with an intentness that in a very few moments astonished and embarrassed me.

‘What is your name, sir?’ he presently said.

‘Laurence Dugdale,’ I answered.

‘Mate of an Indiaman, I think you said, sir?’

‘No,’ I replied. ‘I was for two years at sea in an Indiaman as midshipman.’

He let fall my hand, and his face changed whilst he recoiled a step, meanwhile running his eyes from top to toe of me.

‘A midshipman?’ he exclaimed, with an accent of contempt. ‘Why, a midshipman ain’t a _sailor_! How long ago is it since you was a midshipman?’

‘Six years,’ I answered, completely bewildered by questioning of this sort at such a moment.

‘Six years!’ he cried, whilst his face grew longer still. ‘Why, then, I don’t suppose you’ll even _know_ what a quadrant means?’

‘Certainly I know all about it,’ I answered, with a half-glance at Miss Temple, who stood beside me listening to these questions in a torment of surprise and suspense.

‘Are ye acquainted with navigation, then?’ inquired the captain.

‘Sufficiently well, I believe, to enable me to carry a ship to any part of the world,’ I rejoined, controlling my rising temper, though I was sensible that there was blood in my cheeks and that my eyes were expressing my mood.

‘Why, then, that’s all right!’ he cried, brightening up. ‘You tell me you could find your way about with a sextant?’

‘Yes, sir, I have told you so.’

‘By heaven! then,’ he roared, ‘I’m glad to see ye! Welcome aboard the _Lady Blanche_, sir. And you, mem, I am sure.’ Here he pulled off his immense straw hat and gave Miss Temple an unspeakably grotesque bow. ‘What have you got there?’ he bawled to the square man.

‘A blanket full of wines and cheeses and ’ams,’ answered the man, who was helping to manœuvre the bundle inboards over the side.

‘All right, all right!’ shouted the captain. ‘Now put ’em down, do, and get your boat hooked on and hoisted, d’ye hear? and get your topsail yard swung. Why, who’s been and set that wreck on fire?’

‘The flare’s burnt through her deck,’ cried the square man in a surly tone, ‘and I allow she’ll be ablowing up in a few minutes.’

But she was too far distant to suffer this conjecture to alarm the captain.

‘Let her blow up,’ said he; ‘there’s room enough for her,’ and then giving Miss Temple another convulsive bow, he invited us to step into the cabin.

This was a little state-room under the short after-deck, and, with its bulkheaded berths abaft, a miniature likeness in its way of the _Countess Ida’s_ saloon. It was a cosy little place, with a square table amidships, a bench on either hand of it screwed to the deck, a flat skylight overhead, a couple of old-fashioned lamps, a small stove near to the trunk of the mizzenmast, a rack full of tumblers, and so forth.

‘Sit ye down, mem,’ said the captain, pointing to a bench. ‘Sir, be seated. I heard Mr. Lush just now talk of wines, and cheeses, and hams; but what d’ye say to a cut of boiled beef and a bottle of London stout? Drifting about in a wreck ain’t wholesome for the soul, I believe; but I never heard that it affected the appetite.’

‘You are very good,’ I exclaimed; ‘our food for the last three days has been no more than ship’s bread and marmalade--poor fare for the lady, fresh from the comforts and luxuries of an Indiaman’s cuddy.’

He went to the cabin door and bawled; and a young fellow, whom I afterwards found out was his servant, came running aft. He gave him certain directions, then returned to the table, where he sat for a long two minutes first staring at me and then at Miss Temple without a wink of his eyes. I observed that my companion shrunk from this extraordinary silent scrutiny. I had never witnessed in any other human head such eyes as that fellow had. They were a deformity by their size, being about twice too big for the width and length of his face, of a deep ink-black, resembling discs of ebony gummed upon china. There was no glow, no mind in them, that I could distinguish, scarcely anything of vitality outside their preternatural capacity of staring, that was yet immeasurably heightened by the steadiness of the lids, which I never once beheld blinking. His face was long and yellow, closely shorn, and of an indigo blue down the cheeks, upon the chin, and upon the upper lip. He had a very long aquiline nose with large nostrils, which constantly dilated, as though he snuffed up rather than breathed the air. His eyebrows were extraordinarily thick, and met in a peculiar tuft in the indent of the skull above the nose; whilst his hair, black as his eyes, and smooth and gleaming as the back of a raven, lay combed over his ears down upon his back. He was dressed in a suit of white drill, the flowing extremities of his trousers rounding to his feet in the shape of the mouth of a bell, from which protruded a pair of long square-toed shoes of yellow leather. I should instantly have put him down as a Yankee but for his accent, that was cockney beyond the endurance of a polite ear.

I broke into his intolerable scrutiny by asking him from what port his ship hailed; but he continued to stare at me in silence for some considerable time after I had made this inquiry. He then started, flourished a great red cotton pocket-handkerchief to his brow, and exclaimed: ‘Sir, you spoke?’

I repeated the question.

‘The _Lady Blanche_ is owned at Hull,’ said he; ‘but we’re from the Thames for Mauritius. And what’s your story? How came you and this beautiful lady aboard that hull? You’re gentlefolks, I allow. I see breeding in your hands, mem,’ fixing his unwinking eyes upon her rings. ‘You talk of an Indeeman. Let’s have it all afore the boiled beef comes along.’

So saying, he hooked his thumbs in his waistcoat, brought his back against the table, and forking his long shanks out, sat in a posture of attention, keeping his amazing eyes bent on my face whilst I spoke. It did not take me very long to give him the tale. He listened without so much as a syllable escaping from him, and when I had made an end, he continued to craze at me in silence.

‘By what name shall I address you?’ said Miss Temple.

He started, as before, and answered: ‘John Braine; Captain John Braine, mem; or call it Captain Braine: John’s only in the road. That’s my name, mem.’

She forced a smile, and said: ‘Captain Braine, the _Countess Ida_ cannot be far distant, and I have most earnestly to entreat you to seek her. I am sure she is to be found after a very short hunt. I have a dear relative on board of her, who will fret her heart away if she believes I am lost. All my luggage, too, is in that ship. My mother, Lady Temple, will most cheerfully pay any sum that may be asked for such trouble and loss of time as your search for the Indiaman might occasion.’

I thought he meant to stare at her without answering; but after a short pause he exclaimed: ‘The Indeeman’s bound to Bombay, ain’t she? Well, we’re a-navigating the same road she’s taking. It is three days since you lost her; where’ll she be now, then? That can only be known to the angels, which look down from a taller height than there’s e’er a truck afloat that’ll come nigh. Now, mem, I might shift my hellum and dodge about for a whole fortnight and do no good. It would be the same as making up our minds to lose her. But by keeping all on as we are, there’ll ne’er be an hour that won’t hold inside of it a chance of our rising her on one bow or t’other. See what I mean, mem? You’re aboard of a barque with legs, as Jack says. Your Indeeman’s had a three days’ start; and if so be as she is to be picked up, I’ll engage to have ye aboard of her within a week. But to dodge about in search of her--the Lord love’ee, mem! The sea’s too big for any sort of chiveying.’

‘I am completely of Captain Braine’s opinion,’ said I, addressing Miss Temple, whose face was full of distress and dismay. ‘It would be unreasonable to expect this gentleman to delay his voyage by a search that, in all human probability, must prove unprofitable. A hunt would involve the loss of our one chance of falling in with her this side the Cape.’

She clasped her hands and hung her head, but made no reply. The captain’s servant entered at that moment with a tray of food, which he placed upon the table; and the skipper bidding us fall to and make ourselves at home in a voice as suggestive of the croak of a raven as was his hair of the plumage of that bird, stalked on to the deck, where the sailors--who by this time had hoisted the boat and trimmed the barque’s yards--were coiling down the gear and returning to the various jobs they had been upon before they had hove the ship to.