Chapter 7

We first needed to lose something of our amazement ere we could reasonably speculate upon what we saw; then how this had happened grew plain to our minds. The two craft, God knows how many long years before, had been in action and foundered in conflict. The smaller vessel--I mean the one that lay whole before us--might have been a privateersman; she had something of a piratical sheer forward, there were no signs of a mast aboard either of them, one had grappled the other to board her I dare say, and they had both gone to the bottom linked. The vessel of which only half remained may have broken her back in settling, and, by-and-bye, the after part of her drifted away, leaving the dead bows still gripped by the dead enemy alongside. But how came the whale there? Well, we three men reasoned it thus, and I don't doubt we were right. At the moment of the sea-quake the whale was stemming steadily towards the two wrecks resting on the bottom. They were lifted by the explosion, which at the same time killed the whale; but the impetus of the vast form slided it to under the lifted keels, where it came to a stand. A dead whale floats, as we know. This whale being dead was bound to rise, and the buoyancy of the immense mass brought the two craft up with it, and there they were, poised by the gleaming surface of the whale, which was depressed by their weight, so that no portion of the head, tail, or fluke was visible.

"It's them vessels being connected," says Jackson, "as keeps them afloat. If what holds them together forrard was to part they'd slide off that there slipperiness and sink."

We rowed close, the three of us greatly marvelling, as you may suppose, for never had the like of such an incident as this happened at sea within the knowledge of ever a one of us, and Fallows alone was a man of five and forty, who had been using the ocean for thirty-three years. It was as scaring as the rising of a corpse out of the depths--as scaring as if that corpse turned to and spoke when his head showed,--to see those two vessels lying in the daylight after eighty, aye, and perhaps a hundred years of the green silence hundreds of fathoms deep, locked in the same posture in which they had gone down, making you almost fancy that you could hear the thunder of their guns, witness the flashing of cutlasses, and the rush of the boarders to the bulwarks amidst a hurricane note of huzzaing and shrieks of the wounded.

They were both of them handsomely crusted with shells, not of the barnacle sort, but such as you would pick up anywhere in Ceylon or the Andaman, some of them finely coloured, many of them white as milk, of a thousand different patterns; and there was not one of them but what was beautiful.

"Let's board her," says Jackson.

"Ah, but if that whale be alive!" says Fallows.

"No fear of that," said I; "if he was alive there'd be some stir in him. The whale's not the danger; it's the lashing, which may part at any moment. It should be in a fair way of rottenness after so many years of salt water, and if it goes the vessels go."

"I'm for boarding her all the same," says Jackson.

But first of all we pulled round to betwixt the bows of the craft to see what it was that connected them, and we found that they were held together by something stronger than an old grapnel. The bluff of the bows came together like walls cemented by sand and shell, and it was easy by a mere glance to perceive that they would hold together whilst the sea continued tranquil. Betwixt their heels was a hollow which the round of the whale nicely filled, and there they all three lay, very slowly and solemnly rolling upon the swell in as deep a silence as ever they had risen from.

We hung upon our oars speculating awhile, and then fell to talking ourselves into extravagant notions. Fallows said that if she had been a privateer she might have money in her, or some purchase anyway worth coming at. I was not for ridiculing the fancy, and Jackson gazed at the craft with a yearning eye.

"Let's get aboard," says he.

"Very well," says I, and we agreed that Fallows should keep in the boat ready to pick us up, if the hulk should go down suddenly under us. We easily got aboard. From the gunwale of our boat we could place our hands upon the level of the deck, where the bulwarks were gone, and the shells were like steps to our feet. There was nothing much to be seen, however; the decks were coated with shells as the sides were, and they went flush from the taffrail to the eyes with never a break, everything being clean gone, saving the line of the hatches which showed in slightly raised squares, under the crust of shells that lay everywhere like armour.

"Lord!" cried Jackson; "what would I give for a chopper or pick-axe to smash open that there hatch, so as to get inside of her."

"Inside of her?" says I; "why she'll be full of water!"

"That's to be proved, Mr. Small," says he.

We walked forward into the bows, and clearly made out the shape of a grapnel thick with shells, with its claws upon the bulwark rail of the half-ship alongside, and there was a line stretched between, belayed to what might have been a kevel on a stanchion of the craft we were in. This rope was as lovely as a piece of fancy work, with tiny shells; but on my touching it, to see if it was taut, it parted as if it had been formed of smoke, and each end fell with a little rattle against the side as though it had been a child's string of beads.

We were gaping about us, almost forgetting our distressed situation, in contemplation of these astonishing objects which had risen like ghosts from the mysterious heart of the deep, when we heard Fallows calling, and on our running to the side to learn what he wanted, we saw him standing up in the boat, pointing like a madman into the southward. It was the white canvas of a vessel, clearer to us than to him, who was lower by some feet. The air was still a weak draught, but the sail was rising with a nimbleness that made us know she was bringing a breeze of wind along with her, and in half-an-hour's time she had risen to the black line of her bulwarks rail, disclosing the fabric of what was apparently a brig or barque, heading almost dead on her end for us.

Jackson and I at once tumbled into the boat, but we were careful to keep her close to the two craft, and the amazing platform they floated on, for they furnished out a show that was not to be missed aboard the approaching vessel, whereas the boat must make little more than a speck though but half-a-mile distant.

The breeze the vessel was bringing along with her was all about us presently with a threat of weight in it. We stepped an oar, with the shirts atop, and they blew out bravely and made a good signal.

"Why, see, Mr. Small!" cries Jackson, on a sudden, "ain't she the _Hindoo Merchant_?"

I stood awhile, and then joyfully exclaimed, "Ay, 't is the old hooker herself, thanks be to God!"

I knew her by her short fore-topgallantmast, by her chequered band, and by other signs clear to a sailor's eye, and the three of us sent up a shout of delight, for it was like stumbling upon one's very home, as it were, after having been all night lost amidst the blackness and snow of the country where one's house stands.

She came along handsomely, with foam to the hawsepipe, thanks to the freshening breeze, and her main royal and topgallantsail clewing up as she approached, for our signal had been seen; then drove close alongside with her topsail aback and in a few minutes we were aboard, shaking hands with Captain Blow, and all others who extended a fist to us, and spinning our yarn in response to the eager questions put.

"But what have you there, Mr. Small?" said Captain Blow, staring at the two craft and the whale. I explained. "Well," cries he, "call me a missionary if ever I saw such a sight as that afore! Have ye boarded the vessel?" pointing to the one that was whole.

"Yes," said I, "but there's nothing but shells to look at."

"Hatches open?" says he.

"No," says I, "they are as securely cemented with shells as if the stuff had been laid on with a trowel."

Jackson, Fallows, the boatswain, and a few of the darkeys stood near, eagerly catching what we said.

"A wonderful sight truly!" said Captain Blow, surveying the object with a face almost distorted with astonishment and admiration. "How many years will they have been asleep under water, think ye, Mr. Small?"

"All a hundred, sir," said I.

"Ay," says he, "I've seen many prints of old ships, and I'll allow that it's all a hundred, as you say, since she and the likes of she was afloat. Why," cries he with a sort of a nervous laugh as if half ashamed of what he was about to say, "who's to tell but that there may be a chest or two of treasure stowed away down in her lazerette?"

"That very idea occurred to me, sir," says I.

"By your pardon, capt'n," here interrupted Jackson, knuckling his forehead, "but that may be a question not hard to settle if ye'll send me aboard with a few tools."

The captain looked as if he had had a mind to entertain the idea, then sent a glance to windward.

"She'll be full of water," said I.

"Ay," said the captain, turning to Jackson, "how then?"

"We can but lift a hatch and look out for ourselves, sir," answered the man.

"Right," says the captain; "but you'll have to bear a hand. Get that cask on board. Any water in it?" says he.

"Yes, sir," says I.

"Thank God for the same then," says he.

But whilst they were manoeuvring with the cask the breeze freshened in a sudden squall, and all in a minute, as it seemed, a sort of sloppy sea was set a-running. The captain looked anxious, yet still seemed willing that the boat should go to the wreck. I sent some Lascars aloft to furl the loose canvas, and whilst this was doing, the wind freshened yet in another long-drawn blast that swept in a shriek betwixt our masts.

"There's nothing to be done!" sung out the skipper; "get that boat under the fall, Jackson; we must hoist her up."

The darkeys lay aft to the tackles, and Jackson climbed over the rail with a countenance sour and mutinous with disappointment. He had scarcely sprung on to the deck, when we heard a loud crash like the report of a small piece of ordnance, and, looking towards the hulks, I was just in time to see them sliding off the back of the whale, one on either side of the greasy, black surface. They vanished in a breath, and the dead carcass, relieved of their weight, seemed to spring, as though it were alive, some ten or twelve feet out of the seething and simmering surface which had been frothed up by the descent of the vessels; the next moment it turned over and gave us a view of its whole length--a sixty to seventy-foot whale, if the carcass was an inch, with here and there the black scythe-like dorsal fin of a shark sailing round it.

Jackson hooked a quid out of his mouth and sent it overboard. His face of mutiny left him, and was replaced by an expression of gratitude. Five minutes later the old _Hindoo Merchant_ was thrusting through it with her nose heading for the river Hooghley, and the darkeys tying a single reef in the foretopsail.

_The Strange Tragedy of the "White Star_."

It is proper I should state at once that the names I give in this extraordinary experience are fictitious; the date of the tale is easily within the memory of the middle-aged.

The large, well-known Australian liner _White Star_ lay off the wool-sheds in Sydney harbour slowly filling up with wool; I say slowly, for the oxen were languid up-country, and the stuff came in as Fox is said to have written his history--"drop by drop." We were, however, advertised to sail in a fortnight from the day I open this story on, and there was no doubt of our getting away by then.

I, who was chief officer of the vessel, was pacing the poop under the awning, when I saw a lady and gentleman approaching the vessel. They spoke to the mate of a French barque which lay just ahead of us, and I concluded that their business was with that ship, till I saw the Frenchman, with a flourish of his hat, motion towards the _White Star_, whereupon they advanced and stepped on board.

I went on to the quarter-deck to receive them. The gentleman had the air of a military man: short, erect as a royal mast, with plenty of whiskers and moustache, though he wore his chin cropped. His companion was a very fine young woman of about six and twenty years; above the average height, faultlessly shaped, so far as a rude seafaring eye is privileged to judge of such matters; her complexion was pale, inclined to sallow, but most delicate, of a transparency of flesh that showed the blood eloquent in her cheek, coming and going with every mood that possessed her. She wore a little fall of veil, but she raised it when her companion handed her over the side in order to look round and aloft at the fabric of spar and shroud towering on high, with its central bunting of house flag pulling in ripples of gold and blue from the royalmast head; and so I had a good sight of her face, and particularly of her eyes.

I never remember the like of such eyes in a woman. To describe them as neither large nor small, the pupils of the liquid dusk of the Indian's, the eyelashes long enough to cast a silken shadow of tenderness upon the whole expression of her face when the lids dropped--to say all this is to convey nothing; simply because their expression formed the wonder, strangeness, and beauty of them, and there is no virtue in ink, at all events in my ink, to communicate it. I do not exaggerate when I assure you that the surprise of the beauty of her eyes when they came to mine and rested upon me, steadfast in their stare as a picture, was a sort of shock in its way, comparable in a physical sense to one's unexpected handling of something slightly electric. For the rest, her hair was very black and abundant, and of that sort of deadness of hue which you find among the people of Asia. I cannot describe her dress. Enough if I say that she was in mourning, but with a large admixture of white, for those were the hot weeks in Sydney.

"Is the captain on board?" inquired the gentleman.

"He is not, sir."

"When do you expect him?"

"Every minute."

"May we stop here?"

"Certainly. Will you walk into the cuddy or on to the poop?"

"Oh, we'll keep in the open, we'll keep in the open," cried the gentleman, with the impetuosity of a man rendered irritable by the heat. "You'll have had enough of the cuddy, Miss Le Grand, long before you reach the old country."

She smiled. I liked her face then. It was a fine, glad, good-humoured smile, and humanised her wonderful eyes just as though you clothed a ghost in flesh, making the spectre natural and commonplace.

As we ascended the poop ladder, the gentleman asked me who I was, quite courteously, though his whole manner was marked by a quality of military abruptness. When he understood I was chief officer he exclaimed:

"Then Miss Le Grand permit me to introduce Mr. Tyler to you. Miss Georgina Le Grand is going home in your ship. She will be alone. We have placed her in the care of the captain."

"Perhaps," said Miss Le Grand with another of her fine smiles, "I ought to introduce you, Mr. Tyler, to my uncle, Colonel Atkinson."

Again I pulled off my cap, and the colonel laughed as he lifted his wide straw hat. I guessed he laughed at a certain naïvete in the girl's way of introducing us.

The colonel was disposed to chat. Out of England Englishmen are amongst the most talkative of the human race. Likely enough he wanted to interest me in Miss Le Grand because of my situation on board. A chief mate is a considerable figure. If any mishap incapacitates the master, the chief mate takes charge. We walked the poop, the three of us, in the violet shadow cast by the awning; the colonel constantly directed his eyes along the quay to observe if the captain was coming. During this stroll to and fro the white planks I got these particulars, partly from the direct assertions of the colonel, partly from the occasional remarks of the girl.

Colonel Atkinson had married her father's sister. Her father had been an officer in the army, and had sailed from England with the then Governor of New South Wales. After he had been in Sydney a few months he sent for his daughter, whom he had left behind him with a maternal aunt, her mother having died some years before. She reached Sydney to find her father dead. His Excellency was very kind to her, and she found very many sympathetic friends, but her home was in England, and to it she was returning in the _White Star_, under the care of the master, Captain Edward Griffiths, after a stay of nearly five months in Sydney with her uncle, Colonel Atkinson.

Half an hour passed before the captain arrived. When he stepped on board I lifted my cap and left the poop, and the captain and the others went into the cuddy.

Our day of departure came round, and not a little rejoiced was I when the tug had fairly got hold of us, and we were floating over the sheet-calm surface of Sydney Bay, past some of the loveliest bits of scenery the world has to offer, on our road to the mighty ocean beyond the grim portals of Sydney Heads. We were a fairly crowded ship, what with Jacks and passengers. The steerage and 'tween-decks were full up with people going home; in the cuddy some of the cabins remained unlet. We mustered in all, I think, about twelve gentlemen and lady passengers, one of whom, needless to say, was Miss Georgina Le Grand.

I had been busy on the forecastle when she came aboard, but heard afterwards from Robson, the second mate, that the Governor's wife, with Colonel Atkinson, and certain nobs out of Government House had driven down to the ship to say good-bye to the girl. She was alone. I wondered she had not a maid, but I afterwards heard from a bright little lady on board, a Mrs. Burney, one of the wickedest flirts that ever with a flash of dark glance drew a sigh from a man, that the woman Miss Le Grand had engaged to accompany her as maid to Europe had omitted to put in an appearance at the last moment, in perfect conformity with the manners and habits of the domestic servants of the Australian colonies of those days, and the young lady having no time to procure another maid had shipped alone.

At dinner on that first day of our departure, when the ship was at sea and I was stumping the deck in charge, I observed, in glancing through the skylight, that the captain had put Miss Le Grand upon the right of his chair, at the head of the table, a little before the fluted and emblazoned shaft of mizzenmast. I don't think above five sat down to dinner; a long heave of swell had sickened the hunger out of most of them. But it was a glorious evening, and the red sunshine, flashing fair upon the wide open skylights, dazzled out as brilliant and hospitable a picture of cabin equipment as the sight could wish.

I had a full view of Miss Le Grand, and occasionally paused to look at her, so standing as to be unobserved. Now that I saw her with her hat off I found something very peculiar and fascinating in her beauty. Her eyes seemed to fill her face, subduing every lineament to the full spiritual light and meaning in them, till her countenance looked sheer intellect, the very quality and spirit of mind itself. This effect, I think, was largely achieved by the uncommon hue of her skin. It accentuated colour, casting a deeper dye into the blackness of her hair, sharpening the fires in her eyes, painting her lips with a more fiery tinge of carnation through which, when she smiled, her white teeth shone like light itself.

I noticed even on this first day, during my cautious occasional peeps, that the captain was particularly attentive to the young lady; in which, indeed, I should have found nothing significant--for she had in a special degree been committed to his trust--but for the circumstance of his being a bachelor. Even then, early and fresh as the time was for thinking of such things, I guessed when I looked at the girl that the hardy mariner alongside of her would not keep his heart whole a week, if indeed, for the matter of that, he was not already head over ears. He was a good-looking man in his way; not everybody's type of manly beauty, perhaps, but certain of admiration from those who relish a strong sea flavour and the colour of many years and countless leagues of ocean in looks, speech, and deportment. He was about thirty-five, the heartiest laugher that ever strained a rib in merriment, a genial, kindly man, with a keen, seawardly blue eye, weather-coloured face, short whiskers, and rising in his socks to near six feet. I believe he was of Welsh blood. This was my first voyage with him. The rigorous discipline of the quarter-deck had held us apart, and all that I could have told of him I have here written.

For some time after we left Sydney nothing whatever noteworthy happened. One quiet evening I came on deck at eight o'clock to take charge of the ship till midnight. We were still in the temperate parallels, the weather of a true Pacific sweetness, and, by day, the ocean a dark blue rolling breast of water, feathering on every round of swell in sea-flashes, out of which would sparkle the flying-fish to sail down the bright mild wind for a space, then vanish in some brow of brine with the flight of a silver arrow.

This night the moon was dark, the weather somewhat thick, the stars pale over the trucks, and hidden in the obscurity a little way down the dusky slope of firmament. Windsails were wriggling fore and aft like huge white snakes, gaping for the tops and writhing out of the hatches. The flush of sunset was dying when I came on deck. I saw the captain slowly pacing the weather side of the poop with Miss Le Grand. He seemed earnest in his talk and gestures. Enough western light still lived to enable me to see faces, and I observed that Mrs. Burney, standing to leeward of a skylight talking with a gentleman, would glance at the couple with a satirical smile whenever they came abreast of her.

But soon the night came down in darkness upon the deep; the wind blew damp out of the dusk in a long moan over the rail, heeling the ship yet by a couple of degrees; the captain sang out for the fore and mizzen-royals to be clewed up and furled, and shortly afterwards went below, first handing Miss Le Grand down the companion-way.

I guessed the game was up with the worthy man: he had met his fate and taken to it with the meekness of a sheep. He might do worse, I thought, as I started on a solitary stroll, so far as looks are concerned; but what of her nature--her character? It was puzzling to think of what sort of spirit it was that looked out of her wonderful eyes; and she was not a kind of a girl that a man would care to leave ashore; so much beauty, full of a subtle endevilment of some sort, as it seemed to me, must needs demand the constant sentinelling of a husband's presence. That was how it struck me.

By eleven o'clock all was hushed throughout the ship: lights out, the captain turned in, nothing stirring forward save the flitting shape of the look-out under the yawn of the pale square of fore-course. It was blowing a pleasant breeze of wind, and lost in thought I leaned over the rail at the weather fore-end of the poop watching the cold sea-glow shining in the dark water as the foam spat past, sheeting away astern in a furrow like moonlight. I will swear I did not doze; that I never was guilty of whilst on duty in all the years I was at sea; but I don't doubt that I was sunk deep in thought, insomuch that my reverie may have possessed a temporary power of abstraction as complete as slumber itself.