Chapter 11

The Indian attack had hitherto prevented his realising this sudden change of fortune, and now that he was fully conscious of it, all he could do was to silently shake Ernest Wilton's hand first, and then Noah Webster's; and after that each of those of the miners who pressed near him for the purpose, full of sympathy with "the good luck of the boss," and forgetting already the fate of their lost comrades in the sight of the glittering metal before them--their natural good spirits being perfectly restored a little later on, when Mr Rawlings assured them, on his recovering his speech, that he fully intended now keeping to the promise he had given when the venture was first undertaken, and would divide half the proceeds of the mine, share and share alike, among the men, in addition to paying them the wages he had engaged to do.

The ringing hurrahs with which the jubilant miners gave vent to their gladness on the reiteration of Mr Rawlings' promise, were so loud that they reached the ears of Seth, who was watching by the sleeping boy, and the latter woke up immediately with a frightened air, as if suffering from the keenest terror.

"It's all right, my b'y, all right," said Seth soothingly; and at the same time Wolf, who had entered the house and crept up by the side of the bed, leapt up on the boy and licked his face.

"Where am I, Sam?" he said to Seth, the dog's greeting having apparently calmed him down as well as the ex-mate's kindly manner; "are they after me still, Sam?"

"You are here with us," saith Seth, puzzled at the boy's addressing him so familiarly; "but my name arn't Sam, leastways, not as I knows on."

The boy looked in his face, and seemed disappointed.

"No, you are not Sam, though you are like him. Oh, now I recollect all?" and he hid his face in his hands and burst into a passionate fit of crying, as if his heart would break.

"There, there," said Seth, patting him on the back, "it's all right, I tell you, my b'y; an' when Seth says so I guess he means it!"

But the boy would not stop weeping; and Seth, thinking that some harm might result to his newly-awakened reason if he went on like that, strode to the door and summoned help, with a stentorian hail that rang through the valley as loudly as the cheer of the miners had done one instant before.

"Ahoy there, all hands on deck!" he shouted, hardly knowing what he was saying, adding a moment afterwards, "Wilton, you're wanted! Look sharp."

"Here I am," cried Wilton, hurrying up, with Mr Rawlings after him. "What is the matter now, Seth?"

"I can't make him do nothing" said that worthy hopelessly. "He takes me to be some coon or other called Sam, an' then when I speaks he turns on the water-power and goes on dreadful, that I'm afeard he'll do himself harm. Can't you quiet him, Wilton; he kinder knowed you jest now?"

"I'll try," said Ernest; and kneeling by the boy's side, he drew his hands away from his face and gently spoke to him.

"Frank! look at me: don't you know me?"

"Ye-e-es," sobbed he, "you--_you_ are Ernest. But how did you come here? you weren't on board the ship. Oh, father! where are you, and all the rest?"

And the boy burst out crying again, in an agony of grief which was quite painful to witness.

Presently, however, he grew more composed; and, in a broken way, Ernest managed to get his story from him--a terrible tale of mutiny, and robbery, and murder on the high seas.

This was his story, as far as could be gathered from his disconnected details.

Frank Lester, much against his mother's wishes, had persuaded his father to take him with him in the early part of the previous year to the diamond fields in South Africa, whither Mr Lester was going for the purpose of purchasing some of the best stones he could get for a large firm who intrusted him with the commission. The object of the journey had been safely accomplished, and Mr Lester and Frank reached Cape Town, where they took their return passage to England in a vessel called the _Dragon King_.

Seth nudged Mr Rawlings at this point.

"Didn't I say that was the name of the desarted ship?" he asked in a whisper.

And Mr Rawlings nodded his assent.

The _Dragon King_--to continue Frank's, or Sailor Bill's story--was commanded by a rough sort of captain, who was continually swearing at the men and ill-treating them; and, in the middle of the voyage a mutiny broke out on board, started originally by some of the hands who wished merely to deprive the captain of his authority, and put the first mate, who was much liked by the men, in his place; but the outbreak was taken advantage of by a parcel of desperadoes and ne'er-do-weels, who were returning home empty handed from the diamond diggings, and were glad of the opportunity of plundering the ship and passengers--whence the mutiny, from being first of an almost peaceful character, degenerated into a scene of bloodshed and violence which it made Frank shudder to speak about.

His father, fearing what was about to happen, and that, as he was known as having been up the country and in the possession of jewels of great value, the desperadoes would attempt to rob him first, placed round Frank's neck, in the original parchment-covered parcel in which he had received them from the bank at the diamond fields, the precious stones he had bought, with all his own available capital as well as his employers' money, thinking that that would be the last place where the thieves would search for them.

"And now they are lost," added the boy with another stifled sob, "and poor mother will be penniless."

"Nary a bit," said Seth; and pulling out the little packet by the silken string attached round his neck--which the poor boy had not thought of feeling for even, he was so confident of his loss--he disclosed it to his gaze. "Is that the consarn, my b'y?" he asked.

"Oh!" exclaimed Frank in delighted surprise. "It is, with the bank seal still unbroken, I declare!"

And opening the parchment cover he showed Ernest and the rest some diamonds of the first water, that must have been worth several thousand pounds.

After his father had given the parcel into his care, Frank went on to say, events transpired exactly as he had anticipated. Most of the passengers were robbed, and those that objected to being despoiled tranquilly, murdered. Amongst these were his father, whom the ruffians killed more out of spite from not finding the valuables they expected on him. He, Frank, escaped through the kindness of one of the sailors, who took a fancy to him, and hid him up aloft in the ship's foretop when the men who had possession of the ship would have killed him.

"This sailor," said Frank, "was just like that gentleman there," pointing to Seth.

"Waal neow, that's curious," said Seth. "Was his name Sam?"

"It was," said the boy.

"This is curious," said Seth, looking round at the rest; "it is really. I wouldn't be at all surprised as how that's my brother Sam I haven't heerd on for this many a year, or seed, although he's a seafarin' man like myself, an' I oughter to 'ave run across his jib afore now. Depend on it, Rawlings, that the reason the boy stuck to me so when he hadn't got his wits, and came for to rescue me aboard the _Susan Jane_, and arterwards, was on account of my likeness to Sam."

And as nobody could say him nay, it may be mentioned here that that was Seth's fervent belief ever after.

The last recollection that Frank had of the ship and the mutineers was of an orgie on board the _Dragon King_ in the height of a storm, and of one of the murderous villains finding out his retreat in the foretop, where the sailor who protected him lashed him to the rigging, so that he could not tumble on deck if he should fall asleep. He remembered a man with gleaming eyes and great white teeth swearing at him, and making a cut at him with a drawn sword. After that, all was a complete blank to him till he had just now opened his eyes and recognised Ernest.

"An' yer don't recollect being picked up at sea an' taken aboard the _Susan Jane_, and brought here, nor nuthin'?" inquired Seth.

"Nothing whatever," said Frank, who showed himself to be a remarkably intelligent boy now that he had recovered his senses. "I don't remember anything that happened in the interval."

"Waal, that is curious," observed Seth.

That was all the story that Frank Lester could tell of the mutiny on board the _Dragon King_, and his wonderful preservation.

All the mutineers, and some of their victims too most probably, met their final doom shortly afterwards in the storm that had dismasted the ship, leaving it to float derelict over the surface of the ocean; all but the three whose corpses the visiting party from the _Susan Jane_ had noticed on the submerged deck. These must have survived the tempest only to perish finally from each other's murderous passions, after having lingered on in a state of semi-starvation possibly--although Frank said that the desperadoes from the diamond fields, who were the ringleaders on board, were originally the most attenuated, starved-looking mortals he had ever seen in his life.

STORY ONE, CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE.

HOMEWARD-BOUND.

The work at the mine went on steadily. The "pocket" was cleared of the quartz it contained, and the whole, amounting to two hundred and fifty tons, passed through the stamp.

The soldiers, on their return from their victory over the Sioux, had spread the news of the wonderful find of gold at Minturne Creek, and miners had flocked up in hundreds. When the pocket was emptied, a debate arose whether a heading should be driven along the course of the lode to the spot where Mr Rawlings' cousin had struck gold, and where it was probable that another pocket existed. It was, however, decided to accept the offer of a body of wealthy speculators, who offered 100,000 pounds for the set. This was indeed far less than they would have gleaned from it had the second pocket turned out as rich as the first, for the gold, when all the quartz was crushed, amounted in value to 350,000 pounds. Half of the total amount was divided by Mr Rawlings, according to his promise, among the miners. Seth receiving three shares, Noah Webster two, and the men one each. To Ernest Wilton he gave one-fourth of his own share of the proceeds.

Then, starting from the spot where they had toiled so hard, the little band set out for the haunts of civilisation once more, leaving behind, where they had found a solitary valley, a place dotted with huts and alive with busy men.

At Bismark the men separated, some to proceed back to their beloved California, to star it among their fellows with their newly acquired wealth, others to dissipate it in riotous living in the nearest frontier towns, while others again, struck with the greed of gold, thought that they had not yet got enough, and proceeded rapidly to gamble away what they had.

Mr Rawlings went eastwards towards Boston, intending to take steamer thence to England, which he resolved never to leave again in the pursuit of adventure now that fortune had so generously befriended him; and with him came Ernest Wilton, taking charge of his recovered cousin; and Seth, who could not bear to lose sight of his former protege.

Josh and Jasper had been left behind, the two darkeys sinking their mutual jealousy, and determining to start a coloured hotel on the Missouri, for the benefit of travelling gentlemen of their own persuasion; so too had Noah Webster, who said he liked hunting better than civilisation, and intended to pass the remainder of his days out west in the company of Moose, who was as eager after game as he was himself and as fearless of the Indians, should they again trouble them, after their Minturne Creek experiences.

Wolf, however, was one of the homeward-bound party. He certainly could not be abandoned after all his faithful services, and the wonderful instinct he had displayed, more than his master had done, in recognising Frank, whom he had not seen since puppyhood, when Ernest Wilton's aunt, Frank's mother, gave him to the young engineer.

As luck would have it, on the arrival of Mr Rawlings and his party at Boston whom should they meet accidentally at the railway depot but Captain Blowser, of the _Susan Jane_, as hearty and jolly as of yore, and delighted to see them! His ship he "guessed" was just going to Europe, and he would be only too glad of their taking passage in her.

Need it be mentioned that the captain's offer was accepted; and that, long before Frank Lester--the "Sailor Bill" whom Seth loved, and the crew of the _Susan Jane_ and the gold-miners of Minturne Creek had regarded with such affection--had arrived in England to gladden his mother's heart by his restoration, as if from the dead, when he had long been given up for lost, together with his father's property which he carried with him, he had learnt every detail, as if he had been in his right senses at the time, of how he had been "Picked up at Sea?"

STORY TWO, CHAPTER ONE.

GREEK PIRATES AND TURKISH BRIGANDS. A TALE OF ADVENTURE BY SEA AND LAND.

IN BEYROUT HARBOUR.

"It's a thundering shame our sticking here so long; and I'm sick of the beastly old place," said Tom Aldridge in a grumbling tone, as he leant over the bulwarks listlessly, crumbling bits of biscuit into the sea to attract the fish, which would not be attracted, and gazing in an idle way at the roof of the pacha's palace, that glittered under the rays of the bright Syrian sun. "I'm sick of the place, Charley!" he repeated, more venomously than before.

"So am I, Tom," said Charley Onslow, his fellow-midshipman on board the _Muscadine_, an English barque of some seven or eight hundred tons, that lay, along with several foreign vessels of different rig, in the bay of Beyrout--as pretty a harbour as could be picked out in a score of voyages, and about the busiest port in the whole of the Levant.

"So am I, Tom," said Charley with the utmost heartiness. "I am as tired of it as I am of the eternal dates and coffee, coffee and dates, on which these blessed Arab beggars live, and which everybody makes a point of offering to one, if a chap goes ashore for a minute; while, on board, we've nothing now to do but to check off the freight as it comes alongside before it's lowered in the hold, and look out at the unchanging picture around us, which is so familiar that I believe I could paint it with my eyes shut if I were an artist. Talk of the beauty of Beyrout, indeed! To my taste, it's the most monotonous hole I was ever in in my life, and I hate it!"

And yet, in spite of Charley Onslow's peevish criticism, the scene around him and his companion was charming enough.

The _Muscadine_ was anchored out in the roads, close to the jutting promontory on which the lazaretto buildings were lately erected, that stretched out like an arm into the harbour; and the view from her deck presented a beautiful panorama of the semi-European, semi-Oriental town, nestling on the very edge of the blue waters of the Mediterranean, and surrounded by gently-undulating hills, that were terraced with symmetrical rows of trim olive-trees and vineyards, rising tier upon tier, the one above the other; amidst which, occasionally peeped out slily the white cupola of some suburban villa belonging to one of the wealthy merchants of the port, or the minaret of a Moslem mosque, standing out conspicuously against the shrubbery of foliage formed of different tints of green, from the palest emerald shade to the deepest indigo, that culminated finally in the cedar-crowned heights of the mountains of Lebanon in the purple distance.

It was not a quiet scene either, as might have been imagined from the idle ennui of both the young sailors, whom it seemed to have well-nigh bored to death. On the contrary, to an unprejudiced looker-on it was quite the reverse of being inactive.

In the foreground the harbour was lively enough, with boats and caravels, and other Turkish craft of all sizes and shapes, darting here and there like great white-winged dragon-flies, as they were wafted swiftly one moment by some passing whiff of air, or lying still on the surface of the sea as the wind fell and they were temporarily becalmed, until another gust came from the hills to rouse them out of their noontide sluggishness.

Amongst them, too, were ships' boats belonging to the different vessels, anchored, like the _Muscadine_, out in the roads, being pulled to and from the shore, anon laden with merchandise, anon returning for more; while, of course, the dingy black smoke and steady paddle-beat of the inevitable steamer, that marks the progress of Western civilisation in the East, made themselves seen and heard, to complete the picture and make the contrast the more striking.

"Tom," said Charley presently, after the two had remained silent for some time, still standing in the shade of the awning aft, that protected them from the burning heat of the sun, which was at its most potent point, it being just mid-day.

"Yes," said the other grumpily, as if disinclined even for conversation.

"It has just gone eight bells."

"Can't I hear as well as you, Charley? What's the use of bothering a fellow? Do leave me alone."

"I only wanted to say, Tom, that the skipper said we might go ashore this afternoon if we liked, as soon as the second mate came on board; and there he is coming off in the jolly-boat now."

"I don't care whether Tompkins comes off or not," replied Tom Aldridge in the same peevish tone as he had spoken at first. "What's the good of going ashore?"

"Oh, lots of good," said Charley Onslow more cheerily. "Better than stopping here cooped-up like a fowl and being grilled in the sun."

"Well, I can't see the difference between getting roasted ashore and roasted on board, for my part," retorted Tom. "It's six of one and half-a-dozen of the other."

"You lazy duffer!" said Charley laughing; "you are incorrigible. But do come along with me, Tom. We haven't landed now for two days, and I can't stand the _Muscadine_ any longer."

"I suppose you'll have your way, as you always do," grumbled the other, turning away at last from his listless contemplation of the prospect with which he had owned himself so disgusted. "I don't know how it is, Charley, but you seem to manage me and everybody here just as you like; you can come round the skipper even, when you set your mind to it, and that is what no one else can do!"

"You forget Mr Tompkins."

"I don't count him at all," said Tom Aldridge indignantly. "He's a sneak, and gets his way by wheedling and shoe-scraping! But you, Charley, go to work in quite a different fashion. Why, I'm hanged if you don't cheek a fellow when you want to get something out of him. It's your Irish impudence that does it, my boy, I expect."

"Sure, an' it's a way we have in the ould counthry," said Charley, putting on the brogue so easily that it seemed natural to him--which indeed it was, as he was born not twenty miles from Cork, in the neighbourhood of which is situated the far-famed "Blarney stone," that is supposed to endow those who kiss it with the "gift of the gab;" and Charley must have "osculated it," as a Yankee would say, to some purpose.

"Be jabers, thin, ye spalpeen," laughed Tom--who had got out of his grumpy state quickly enough; for his disposition was almost as light-hearted as that of his friend, and it was only the heat and the confinement on board ship when in harbour that had previously oppressed his spirits--"let us look smart, and be off. Here's that fellow Tompkins just coming up the side, and I don't want any more of his company than I can help! Tell him we're going by the captain's permission, Charley. I don't want to say a word to him after that row this morning. You are still on speaking terms with him, and I'm not. And while you are settling matters with the old sneak, I'll get the dinghy ready, and fetch up the bottle of brandy I promised that jolly old Turk at the coffee-shop."

"You'd better water it a bit, Tom," said Charley, as the other was diving down the companion-stairs. "It's awfully strong; and you know Mohammedans are not accustomed to it."

"Not a drop of it, my boy," replied he, disappearing for a moment from view, and his voice receding in the distance. "I promised the old infidel that he should have the real stuff, and I'll let him see that a giaour can keep his word."

In a second or two he came up again, the bottle, however, concealed in the pocket of his reefer of light blue serge. And hauling in the painter of the boat, which was floating astern, while Charley was still confabulating with the second officer, who had come on board in the meantime, he sat himself down in her, and waited patiently till his chum had done with the obnoxious Mr Tompkins, who seemed to have a good deal to say, and that of a not very pleasant character. "Bother the chap!" said Charley, when he was at length released, and, shinning down a rope, sat down in the stern-sheets of the dinghy, as Tom Aldridge took up the sculls and shoved off from the ship. "He's got as much to say as Noah's great-grandmother. And the gist of it all, fault-finding, of course."

"What can you expect from a pig, eh?" said Tom, philosophically, when the boat was well clear of the _Muscadine_, setting to work leisurely and pulling to shore, while Charley reclined at his ease on the cushions which he had taken the trouble to fix up for himself, and--did nothing, as usual.

It was the general sort of "division of labour" amongst them.

However, they were fast friends, and, as Tom didn't complain, nobody else has any right to find fault.

"A grunt, I suppose," replied Charley, in answer to Tom's conundrum. "At least, from a Welsh pig, like Tompkins. An Irish one, bedad! would have better manners."

"Bravo, Charley!" exclaimed Tom, bursting out into a laugh in which his companion as heartily joined. "You stick to your country, at all events, which is more than can be said for our leek-eating friend. He always wishes to deny that he belongs to the land of the Cymri and hails from Swansea, as he does. The sneak! I'm sure a decent Welshman would be ashamed to own him. But, don't let us worry ourselves any longer about Tompkins; it's bad enough to have him with us on board, without lugging him ashore, too; hang him!"

"Ay, ay, so say I," sang out Charley, in the best accord.

And then, after a few more vigorous strokes from the sculls, propelled by Tom's muscular arms, the bow of the dinghy stranded on the sandy shore, and the two boys landed in the highest glee, without a trace of the ill-humour and despondency in which they had been apparently plunged not an hour or so before.

STORY TWO, CHAPTER TWO.

THE COFFEE-SHOP IN BEYROUT.

Pushing past the crowds of busy and idle people, Greeks, Turks, Armenians, Maronites, Arabs, Frenchmen, and a few English, like themselves, who thronged the narrow streets, which were lined on either side with stores built in the American fashion for the disposal of European goods; narrow Eastern shops, and bazaars and caravanserais, hung with carpets, and displaying grapes and figs, and all sorts of fruit in true Oriental style; they made their way towards a Turkish coffee-house that was situated not far from the waterside, and much patronised by those who, like themselves, had to do with ships and seafaring concerns--although, they did not arrive very quickly at their destination, for the time for the noonday halt having passed by, the usual caravans from Damascus and the interior were coming in, long trains of camels, asses, and mules, laden with coffee, raw silk, rhubarb, untanned leather, figs, aromatic gums, and all the varied merchandise that comes through Arabia and Persia to the ports of the Levant; and, consequently, the main thoroughfares were so blocked with these commercial pilgrims from the desert, that it was as much as Tom and Charley could do to get along.