CHAPTER XXIII

CAPTAIN BRAINE

After three days of sailors’ biscuit and strong cheese and marmalade of the flavour of foot sugar, the lump of cold salt beef that the captain’s man set before me ate to my palate with a relish that I had never before found in the choicest and most exquisitely cooked meat; and a real treat, too, to my shipwrecked sensibilities, was the inspiration of home and civilisation in the tumbler of foaming London stout. Miss Temple seemed too harassed, too broken down in mind, to partake of food; but by dint of coaxing and entreating I got her to taste a mouthful, and then put her lips to a glass of stout; and presently she appeared to find her appetite by eating, as the French say, and ended with such a repast as I could have wished to see her make.

When the man put the tray down, he went out, and the girl and I were alone during the meal. Now that I had recovered from the first heart-subduing shock of the discovery that the hull was on fire, and could realise that, even supposing she had not been set on fire, we had still been delivered from what in all probability must have proved a long, lingering, soul-killing time of expectation, dying out into hopelessness and into a period of famine, thirst, and death: I say now that I could realise our rescue from these horrors, my spirits mounted, my joy was an intoxication, I could have cried and laughed at the same time, like one in hysteria. I longed to jump from my chair and dance about the cabin that I might vent the oppression of my transports by movement. I was but a young man, and life was dear to me, and we had been in dire peril, and were safe. What a paradise was this cosy little cabin after that ghost-haunted, narrow crib of a deck-house! How soothing beyond all words to the nerves was the light floating rolling of the graceful little snow-white barque, under control of her helm, and vitalised in every plank by the impulse of her airy soaring canvas, compared with the jerky, feverish, staggering, tumblefication of the wreck, with its deadly deck leaning at desperate angles to the fang-like remnants of the crushed bulwarks, and its uncovered hatches yawning to the heavens, as though in a dumb mouthing of entreaty for extinction!

‘Oh! Miss Temple,’ I cried, ‘I cannot bring my mind to believe in our good fortune! This time yesterday! how hopeless we were! And now we are safe! I thank God, I most humbly thank God, for His mercy! Your lot would soon have become a frightful one aboard that wreck.’

‘Yet what would I give,’ she exclaimed, ‘if this ship were the _Countess Ida_! What is to become of us? For how long are we to wander about in a state of destitution, Mr. Dugdale--mere beggars, without apparel, without conveniences, dependent for our very meals upon the bounty of strangers?’ and she brought her eyes, with the old flash in them, from the table to my face, at which she gazed with an expression of temper and mortification.

‘You would not be a woman,’ said I, ‘if you did not think of your dress. But, pray, consider this: that your baggage is now recoverable; whereas, but for this _Lady Blanche_----’

‘Oh! but it would have been so happy a thing, that might so easily have happened too, had this vessel been the Indiaman.’

‘Cannot you summon a little patience to your aid?’ said I. ‘Our strange-eyed captain spoke with judgment when he suggested the probability of your exchanging his ship for the _Countess Ida_ within a week.’

‘Well, I will be patient, if I can,’ said she, looking down with an air of trouble and distress in the pout of her lip; ‘but is it not about time that the adventure ended?’

‘Suppose it may be only now beginning?’

She gave me a side-glance and exclaimed somewhat haughtily: ‘I really believe, Mr. Dugdale, you enjoy this sort of experiences; and if I were a man---- But it _must_ end!’ she added with an air as though she was about to weep. ‘It is unendurable to think of being carried about the world in this fashion. I shall insist--well, I shall bribe Captain Braine to question every ship he passes as to her destination, and the first vessel we encounter that is going home I shall go on board of.’

‘Alone?’ said I.

‘No,’ she answered, half closing her eyes and looking a little away from me; ‘you would not suffer me to travel alone? Besides, do not you want to get home too?’

‘I would rather find my way to Bombay,’ said I. ‘My baggage as well as yours is aboard the _Countess Ida_, and I should like to get it, though not at the cost of too much trouble. I am bound to India on a visit, and am not expected home for a good many months. Now, I don’t see why both of us shouldn’t keep our appointments by sticking in this barque, and sailing in her to the Mauritius, whence we ought to be able, without difficulty, to ship ourselves for Bombay. The _Lady Blanche_ has the hull of a clipper, and it will be strange if the pair of us are not ashore at Bombay some weeks before the _Countess Ida_ sails.’

She listened with impatience, and when I had ended, said: ‘If the chance offers, I shall certainly go home. I shall take the first ship that passes, though it should cost a thousand pounds to bribe Captain Braine and the commander of the vessel that receives me. How is it possible for me to continue thus?’ and here she looked at her dress. ‘And where is Mauritius? Is it not nearly as far off as Bombay? Whereas England is not so very remote from this part of the ocean.’

‘Well, Miss Temple, I am your humble servant,’ said I. ‘Head as you will, I shall most dutifully follow you.’

‘I beg that you will not be satirical.’

‘God forbid!’ said I, averting my eyes; for I was sensible that they were expressing more than I had any desire she should observe. ‘I wish to see you safe, and meanwhile happy. If we pick up a ship homeward bound, we can commission Captain Braine to request Keeling, if he encounters him, to transfer our baggage to the first craft he speaks going to England. Your aunt’s maid will know all about your luggage.’

She watched me, as though doubtful whether I was joking or not; but I was cut short by the entrance of Captain Braine.

‘I hope you have done pretty well?’ he exclaimed, after gazing at us for a short time without speaking; ‘it is poor fare, mem, for the likes of you. But the ship’ll afford nothing fresh till we kill a pig. What did you say your name was, sir?’

‘Dugdale,’ said I.

‘Ha!’ he cried, whilst he viewed me steadfastly, ‘to be sure. Dugdale. That was it. Well, Mr. Dugdale, there might be an edifying sight for you and the lady to behold from the deck.’

‘What?’ swiftly exclaimed Miss Temple with a start.

‘The hull, mem, we took you from,’ he replied in his hollow somewhat deep voice, ‘is rapidly growing into a big blaze.’

Her face changed to a mood of disappointment. I believe she thought that the captain had come to announce the Indiaman in sight: I was about to speak:

‘Captain Braine,’ she said, approaching him by a dramatic stride, and exclaiming proudly, as though she would subdue him by her mere manner to acquiescence in her wishes, ‘I am without wearing apparel, saving the attire in which you now view me, and it is absolutely necessary I should return home as speedily as possible. My mother will fear that I have perished, and I must be the bearer of my own news, or the report of my being lost may cause her death, so exceedingly delicate is her health. She is rich, and will reward you in any sum you may think proper to demand for enabling me to return to England quickly.’

An indescribable smile as she said these words crept over the man’s face and vanished. I was strongly impressed by the expression of it, and observed him closely.

‘Therefore, Captain Braine,’ she proceeded, ‘I have to entreat you to promise me that you will signal to the ships you may pass, and put me on board the first one, no matter what sort of vessel she be, that is sailing directly to England.’

He silently surveyed her, and then directed his eyes at me.

‘You’ll be wanting to get home too, sir, I suppose?’ said he.

‘Oh yes,’ I replied. ‘Miss Temple is under my care, and I must see her safe.’

He turned to her again, and stood staring; then said: ‘That’ll be all right, mem; we’re bound to be falling in with something coming along presently; and if England’s her destination and she’ll receive ye, the boat that brought you from the hull shall take you to her, weather permitting. That’ll do, I think?’

She bowed, looking as pleased as agitation and anxiety would allow her.

‘Come now and take a look at the hull,’ continued Captain Braine; ‘and then’----

‘You quite understand, I hope,’ she interrupted, ‘that any sum’----

He broke in with an odd flourish of his hand. ‘No need to mention that matter, mem,’ he exclaimed;--‘we are Christian men in that part of the country where I come from, and there’s never no talk of pay amongst us for doing what the Lord directs--succouring distressed fellow-creatures.’

With which he spun upon his heels and walked out of the cabin, leaving us to follow him.

I had no eyes nor thoughts for anything else than the hull the moment I saw her. I remember recoiling as to a blow, and panting for a few breaths with my hand to my side. She had slipped to something more than two miles away down on the starboard quarter, and although only a portion of her was as yet on fire, she was showing as a body of flame brilliant and forked, soaring and drooping against the leaden-hued background of sky. Shudder after shudder went like ice through me as my sight swept the mighty girdle of the deep, coming back to the little body of flame that most horribly to every trembling instinct in me accentuated the lonely immensity of the surface on which it glowed.

‘Think--if we were on her now!’ I muttered to Miss Temple. She hid her face.

‘Was there any valleyables aboard her, Mr. Dugdale, d’ye know?’ said the captain.

‘I cannot tell you,’ I answered in a voice subdued by emotion; ‘I did not search the sleeping-berths. There was little enough in her hold.’

‘Ye should have crept away down in the run,’ said he; ‘that’s where the chaps which peopled her would stow their booty if they had any. If I’d known she’d been a privateersman---- How came ye to set her on fire?’

‘My signal burnt through her deck, so I was informed by that gentleman there,’ I replied, indicating the square man, who stood a little way from us.

‘Was that so, Mr. Lush?’ cried the captain.

‘Was what so?’ asked Mr. Lush. The captain explained. ‘Well, I dunno,’ answered the other; ‘there was fire in the hold when I looked down, and it seemed to me as if flakes of it was falling through the deck. But what does it signify? Wood ain’t cast-iron, and if ye makes a flare upon a timber deck, why, then what I says is, stand by!’

‘Oh look, Mr. Dugdale!’ shrieked Miss Temple at that moment, tossing her arms in horror, and standing with her hands-upraised, as though in a posture of calling down a curse upon the distant thing.

My eye was on the wreck, as hers had been, and I saw it all. There was a huge crimson flash, as though some volcanic head had belched in fire; daylight as it was, the stretch of clouds above and beyond the wreck glared out in a dull rusty red to the amazing stream of flame; a volume of smoke white as steam, shaped like a balloon, and floating solid to the sight, slowly rose like some phenomenal emanation from the secret depths of the ocean. There followed the sullen, deep-throated blast of the explosion. Captain Braine snatched a telescope from the skylight and levelled it, and after peering a little, thrust the glass into my hand.

‘See if you can find out where she’s gone to,’ said he with a singular grin, in which his eyes did not participate.

I looked: the water delicately brushed by the light wind flowed in nakedness under the shadow of the slowly soaring and enlarging cloud of white smoke. Not the minutest point of black, not the merest atom of fragment of wreck, was visible. I put down the glass with a quivering hand, and going to the rail, looked into the sea to conceal my moist eyes, too overcome to speak.

‘A good job you weren’t in that hull, mem,’ said the captain to Miss Temple; ‘it would be sky high with any one that had been there by this time: a devil of a mount, as Jack says. But you’re aboard a tidy little ship now. If so be that you are at all of a nautical judge, mem, cast your eyes aloft and tell me if there’s e’er an Indeeman or a man-of-war, too, if ye will, with spars stayed as my masts is, with such a fit of canvas, with such a knowing cocked-ear like look as the run of them yardarms has, with such mastheads tapering away like the holy spire of a meetinghouse, and that beautiful little skysail atop to sarve as a cloud for any tired angel that may be flying along to rest upon! Ha!’

He drew so deep a breath as he concluded that I turned to look at him. He stood gazing up at the canvas on the main as though in an ecstasy; his hands were crossed upon his breast after the manner of coy virgins in paintings; his right knee was crooked and projected; I could not have imagined so curious a figure off the stage. Indeed, I supposed he was acting now to divert Miss Temple. I glanced at the tough, sullen, storm darkened face of old Lush, to gather his opinion on the behaviour of this captain; but his expression was of wood, and there was no other meaning in it that I could distinguish save what was put there by the action of his jaws as he gnawed upon a junk of tobacco, carrying his sight from seawards to aloft and back again as regularly as the swing of the spars.

Miss Temple drew to my side with a manner of uneasiness about her. She whispered, while she seemed to be speaking of the wreck, motioning with her hand in the direction of the smoke that was slowly drawing on to our beam in a great staring, still-compacted mass, white as fog against the leaden heaven: ‘I believe he is not in his right mind.’

‘No matter,’ I swiftly replied; ‘his ship is sound. Captain,’ I exclaimed, ‘I hope you will have a spare cabin for this lady. For my part, you may sling me a hammock anywhere, or a rug and a plank will make me all the bed I want.’

‘Oh, there’s accommodation for ye both below,’ he answered; ‘there’s the mate’s berth unoccupied. The lady can have that. And next door to it there’s a cabin with a bunk in it. I’ll have it cleared out for you. Come down and see for yourselves.’

He led the way into the little cuddy, as I may term it, and conducted us to a hatch close against the two sleeping berths right aft. He descended a short flight of steps, and we found ourselves in ’tweendecks in which I should not have been able to stand erect with a tall hat on. It was gloomy down here. I could distinguish with difficulty a number of cases of light goods stowed from the deck to the beams, and completely blocking up all the forward portion of this part of the vessel. There were two cabins in the extremity corresponding with the cabins above, with such another small hatch as we had descended through lying close against them, but covered: the entrance as I took it to ‘the run’ or ‘lazarette.’ Captain Braine opened the cabin door on the port side, and we peered into a small but clean and airy berth lighted by a large scuttle. I noticed a couple of sea-chests, a suit of oilskins hanging under a little shelf full of books, a locker, a mattress, and a bundle of blankets in the bunk, a large chart of the English Channel nailed against the side, and other matters of a like sort.

‘You’ll be able to make yourself pretty comfortable here, mem,’ said Captain Braine.

‘Are there any rats?’ asked Miss Temple, rolling her eyes nervously over the deck.

‘Bless you, no!’ answered the captain. ‘At the very worst, a cockroach here and there, mem.’

‘But this cabin is occupied,’ said I.

‘It was, young gentleman, it was,’ he exclaimed, in a hollow raven voice, that wonderfully corresponded with his countenance, and particularly somehow or other with his hair--‘it was my chief-mate’s cabin. But he’s dead, sir.’ He gazed at me steadfastly, and added, ‘Dead and gone, sir.’

Miss Temple slightly started, and with a hurried glance at the bunk, asked how long the man had been dead.

‘Three weeks,’ responded Captain Braine, preserving his sepulchral tone, as though he supposed it was the correct voice in which to deliver melancholy information.

‘May I see the next cabin?’ said Miss Temple.

‘Certainly’ he answered; and going out, he opened the door.

This room was the same size as the berth which adjoined it; but it was crowded with a collection of sailmakers’ and boatswains’ stores, bolts of canvas, new buckets, scrubbing brushes, and so on. There was a bunk under the scuttle full of odds and ends.

‘I would rather occupy this berth than the other,’ said Miss Temple.

‘You’re not afraid of ghosts, mem?’ exclaimed the captain, fixing his immense dead black eyes upon her.

‘I presume this room can be cleared out, and I prefer it to the other,’ she answered haughtily.

I broke in, somewhat alarmed by these airs: ‘Oh, by all means, Miss Temple. Choose the cabin you best like. Captain Braine is all kindness in furnishing us with such excellent accommodation. This stuff can be put into my berth, if you please, captain. I shall merely need room enough to get into my bunk.’

‘I’ll make that all right,’ he answered somewhat sulkily. ‘How about bedding? The lady’s a trifle particular, I fear. She wouldn’t be satisfied to roll herself up in a dead man’s blanket, I guess.’

‘Leave me to manage,’ said I, forcing a note of cheerfulness into my voice, though I was greatly vexed by Miss Temple’s want of tact. ‘There’s more bedding than either of us will require in less than a bolt of your canvas. We are fresh from an experience that would make a paradise of your forepeak, captain. And so,’ said I, plunging from the subject, in the hope of carrying off the ill-humour that showed in his face, ‘you are without a chief-mate?’

‘I’ll tell you about that by-and-by,’ said he. ‘This here crib, then, is to be the lady’s? Now, what have I got that you’ll be wanting, mem? There’s a bit of a looking-glass next door. He used to shave himself in it. You won’t mind that, perhaps? His image ain’t impressed on the plate. It’ll show ye true as you are, for all that he shaved himself in it.’

Miss Temple smiled, and said that she would be glad to have the glass.

‘There’ll be his hairbrush,’ continued Captain Braine, ‘though _that_ might prove objectionable,’ he added doubtfully, talking with his eyes fixed unwinkingly upon her. ‘And yet I don’t know; if it was put to soak in a bucket of salt-water, it ought to come out sweet enough. There’s likewise a comb,’ he proceeded, taking his chin betwixt his thumb and forefinger and stroking it: ‘there’s nothing to hurt in a comb, and it’s at your sarvice, mem. If poor old Chicken were here, he’d be very willing, I’m sure; but he’s gone--gone dead.’

He looked at Miss Temple again. I watched him with attention. He seemed to sink into a fit of musing; then, waking up out of it in a sudden way, he cried: ‘You’ve got no luggage at all, have ye, mem?’

‘No,’ responded Miss Temple with gravity.

‘I’m sorry,’ said he, ‘that I didn’t bring Mrs. Braine along with me this voyage. She wanted to come, poor thing, observing me to be but very ordinary during most of the time I was ashore--very ordinary indeed,’ he repeated, shaking his head. ‘If she was here we could manage.’

‘Pray, give yourself no concern on that head, captain,’ said I; ‘we shall be falling in with the Indiaman presently; and supposing the worst to come to the worst--what time do you give yourself for the run from here to the Mauritius?’

‘I’m not agoing to say--I’m not agoing to say!’ he cried with an accent of excitement that astonished me; ‘what’s the good of talking when you don’t know? Wouldn’t it be a sin to go and make promises to people in your condition and disappoint ’em? I can just tell ye this: that Baltimore itself never turned out a keel able to clip through it as this here _Lady Blanche_ can when the chance is given her. And now,’ he exclaimed, changing his voice, ‘suppose we clear out of this, and go up into the daylight and fresh air;’ and without pausing for an answer he trudged off.

I handed Miss Temple up the ladder, and we gained the little cabin, or living-room as it might be termed. The young fellow who acted as steward or servant was busy at the glass-rack. The captain called to him, and peremptorily and most intelligently gave him certain instructions with respect to the clearing out and preparing of the berths below for our reception. He told him where he would find a spare mattress--‘Quite new, never yet slept on,’ he said, contorting his figure into a bow to Miss Temple--he had a couple of shawls and a homely old rug which had made several voyages, and these were to be put into her bunk; the man was to see that the lady lacked no convenience which the barque could afford. ‘The late Mr. Chicken’s mattress was to be given to me along with his bedding, if so be that I was willing to use the same.’ Other instructions, all expressive of foresight and hospitable consideration, he gave to the fellow, who then went forward to obtain help to clear out the cabins.

‘We are deeply indebted to you, captain,’ said I, ‘for this very generous behaviour’----

‘Not a word, sir, if you please,’ he interrupted. ‘I have a soul as well as another, and I know my duty. Lady, a hint: you have some fine jewelry upon you; take my advice and put it in your pocket.’

She was alarmed by this, and looked at me.

I smiled, and said, ‘The captain of a ship is Lord Paramount; his orders must be obeyed, Miss Temple.’

Without another word she began to pull off her rings, the skipper steadfastly watching her.

‘Will you take charge of them for me, Mr. Dugdale?’ said she.

I placed them in my pocket. She then took off a very beautiful diamond locket from her throat, and this I also carefully stowed away.

‘I will remove my earrings presently,’ she exclaimed with a slight flush in her cheek and a sparkle as of ire in her gaze, though her lips still indicated an emotion of dismay.

‘My advice to you is--at once, mem,’ said the captain.

‘We must believe that Captain Braine is fully sensible of the meaning of his requests,’ said I, answering the glance she shot at me.

She removed the earrings and gave them to me. The captain stood running his eyes over her figure; then, with a melodramatic gesture, pointed to her watch. This, too, with the handsome chain belonging to it, I pocketed. He now addressed himself to contemplating me.

‘You don’t need to show any watch-chain,’ said he, speaking with his head drooping towards his left shoulder; ‘there’s no good in that signet ring either. As to the breast-pin’--he half-closed one eye--‘well, perhaps that’s a thing that won’t hurt where it is.’

He waited until I had taken off my ring and dropped my chain into my waistcoat pocket, and then, looking first of all aft and then forward, then up at the little skylight, whilst he seemed to hold his breath as though intently listening, he approached us, as we stood together, by a stride, and said in a low deep voice, tremulous with intensity of utterance: ‘My men are not to be trusted. Hush! If they imagined I suspected them, they would cut my throat and heave me overboard.’

Miss Temple took my arm.

‘Let me understand you?’ said I, wrestling with my amazement. ‘In what sense are they untrustworthy?’

He stared eagerly and nervously about him again, and then, extending the fingers of his left hand, he touched one of them after another, as though counting, whilst he said: ‘First, I have reason to believe that Lush, the carpenter, who acts as my second mate, committed a murder four years ago.’

‘Good God!’ I ejaculated.

‘Hold!’ he cried. ‘Next, there ain’t no shadow of a doubt that two at least of my able seamen are escaped convicts. Next, there is a man forward who was concerned in a mutiny that ended in the ringleaders being hung. Next’--he paused, and then exclaimed: ‘but no need to go on alarming the lady.’

‘But were you not acquainted with these men’s characters at the time of their signing articles?’ said I.

‘No, young man--no,’ he answered with a most melancholy shake of the head; ‘it’s all come out since, and a deal more atop of it. But hush! Discretion is the better part of valour, as Jack says. There’s no call to be afraid. They know the man I am, and what’s better, they know I know _them_. Ye’re quite safe, mem; only, don’t be a-tempting sailors of their sort by a sight of the valleyables you’ve been a-carrying about with you. And now, perhaps you’ll excuse me whilst I goes and looks after the ship.’

He gave us another extraordinary bow--I never met with any posture-maker who approached this man in the capacity of distorting his person--and walked out of the cabin.