The Seafarers

Transcriber's Notes:
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https://books.google.com/books?id=u3spAQAAIAAJ
(the University of California)

THE SEAFARERS

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

A Bitter Heritage.
Fortune's My Foe.
The Scourge of God.
Across the Salt Seas.
The Clash of Arms.
Denounced.
In the Day of Adversity.
The Hispaniola Plate.
The Desert Ship.
A Gentleman Adventurer.
The Silent Shore.
His Own Enemy.

THE SEAFARERS

BY

JOHN BLOUNDELLE-BURTON

AUTHOR OF 'THE CLASH OF ARMS'
'FORTUNE'S MY FOE,' 'ACROSS THE SALT SEAS'

LONDON
C. ARTHUR PEARSON LIMITED
HENRIETTA STREET W.C.
1900

TO

ALL OLD FRIENDS AND COMRADES

WHO HAVE BEEN, OR ARE STILL

SEAFARERS

EITHER IN THE ROYAL NAVY
OR OTHER BRANCHES OF THE SEA SERVICE

I INSCRIBE THIS BOOK

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

['SWEETER THAN BLUE-EYED VIOLETS OR THE DAMASK ROSE']

That Bella Waldron should have felt sad, and her night's rest have been disturbed in consequence, was, in the circumstances, most natural. For one cannot suppose that any young girl leaves her home, her mother, and her country without much grief and perturbation; without tears and sorrow and heavy sighs, as well as tremendous fears that she may never return to, nor see, them again. And such is what Bella was about to do when this particular night should have come to an end: she was about to traverse not one ocean, but two; to pass from a life that, if not luxurious, was at least comfortable, to another which, if more brilliant, would undoubtedly be strange, and, consequently, not easily to be adopted at first. In fact, to go from one side of the world to the other.

Yet, all the same, it was singular that, between her intervals of weeping and sobbing, and when she had at last cried herself to sleep, she should have been tormented with such frightful dreams as those which came to her. Dreams of horrors that in their weirdness became almost ludicrous, or would have been ludicrous to those who, knowing of them, did not happen to be experiencing them. Thus, the idea of a crocodile regarding one with a glittering eye from its ambush in the sand, seems for some reason, in our waking moments, to conjure up a comical sense of terror--perhaps because of the 'glittering eye'; yet there was nothing comical about it to the mind of Bella as she awoke with a shriek from her sleep after the vision of the creature had had momentary existence in the cells of her brain. And, even when she was thoroughly awakened and knew that she had only been suffering from a bad dream, she still shuddered at the recollection, and muttered, 'It appeared as if it was creeping towards me to seize me with its horrid jaws! Oh, it was dreadful!'

Then she slept again--only, however, to dream of other things. Of a desolate shore at first, with, upon it, a misty creature waving its hands mournfully above its head, those hands being enveloped in some gauzy material, so that the figure appeared more like a skirt-dancer than aught else; then, of two lions fighting savagely; and then of a vast black cave with an opening as high as St. Paul's and as wide as a railway terminus is long, against which, armed with a spear and protected with a buckler, she seemed to stand trembling. Trembling, too, because she could not see one yard into the deep and profound darkness before her, yet into which, as she peered furtively and with horror, she appeared to perceive things--forms half-animal and half-human--crawling, revolving, creeping about. Then, again, she awoke with a start.

But by now the room was light with the gray, mournful glimmer of the approaching dawn; so light that she could see her wicker-basket trunks in their American-cloth wrappers standing by the wall, with the lids open against it; soon, too, she heard the sparrows twittering outside, as well as other congenial suburban sounds, such as the newspaper boys shrieking hideously to one another, and the milkman uttering piercing yells; and--though it was her last day in England--she was glad to spring out of bed and know herself once more a unit in the actual world instead of a wanderer in a world of dreams.

'I wish,' the girl muttered to herself, standing by the window and drawing up the blind half-way, whereby she was enabled to see that the gray dawn of a May morning gave promise of a warm, fine day later on, 'that, if I were to have such bad dreams at all, I might have been spared them on the very day of my departure for the other side of the globe. I am not superstitious, yet, yet--well!--I shall think of this dream, I know, for many a day to come.' Then she slipped on her dressing-gown, thrust her pretty little white feet into some warm, felt bath-slippers, and, opening her door quietly, because it was still early and she did not wish to awaken those in the house who might be asleep, she went across the passage to her mother's room.

Yet, ere she did so, let us regard this young girl, whose story and adventures we are now to follow--this girl whose dreams of leering crocodiles and dark, mystic caves, with hideous creatures gyrating in them, will, as we shall see, be far outnumbered and outshone by the actual realities that she will experience in her passage across the world. For it had been resolved on by Fate, or Providence, or Destiny, or whatever one may term that power which controls our earthly existence, that to Bella Waldron were to come experiences, strange, horrible, and fantastic, such as the last decade of our expiring century rarely assaults men with, and women hardly ever. Standing there in the now clear light of the morning, her long dressing-gown enshrouding her tall, shapely, and svelte figure, and with her masses of hair hanging dishevelled--hair a warm brown with golden gleams in it, such as has the ripening corn--an observer would decide at once that she was beautiful. Beautiful, also, by the gift of clear, hazel-gray eyes--eyes that were pure and innocent in their glance; beautiful as well by her softly-rounded face, her rich red lips--the upper one divinely short--and also by her colouring. If, too, one applies to her the lines of that old poet dead and gone two hundred years ago, the words describing Gloriana:--

More fair than the red morning's dawn,
Sweeter than pearly dews that scent the lawn,
Than blue-eyed violets, or the damask rose
When in her hottest fragrancy she glows,

Bella Waldron may be considered as depicted.

'Mother,' she said, going in now to the room where the poor lady whom she addressed had herself passed a sad and tearful night, bemoaning the fact that soon--in a few hours--indeed now--because the fateful day had come--her child was to be torn from her. 'Oh, mother! It is to-day--to-day! Oh, my darling! how can I part from you?' And then, folding her mother in her arms while she sat on the bedside, the two women wept together.

'Yet,' said Mrs. Waldron, to whom advancing years brought the power of philosophic resignation, if not the thorough strength to overcome that which rendered her unhappy, 'yet, Bella, my dearest, it is so much for you. Such a position, such a future! Oh, think of it! A position you could scarcely ever have hoped to obtain. And the love, my child, the love! Think how Gilbert loves you and you love him. For you do love him, Bella. Of all men, he is the one for you.'

'With my whole heart and soul I love him!' her daughter answered. 'Mother, if I had never met him I do not believe I could have ever loved any other man. Ah, I am glad Juliet called Romeo the god of her idolatry! It has taught me how to think of Gilbert.'

'And the position, Bella. The position--think of that! In our circumstances, even though you come of a good stock and are descended from ladies and gentlemen on both sides from far-off years, you could never have hoped to make such a match.'

'The position is nothing to me, mother. I love Gilbert fondly. I long to be his wife. Why should I think of the position?'

'Every woman must think of it, child. When you are as old--and worn--as I am, you--you will teach your own children to think of it. It is everything to be the wife of a gentleman, better still the wife of a man of rank. Everything! Short of being the wife of a distinguished man, a man whose name is on everybody's tongue, there is no other position so good. And, even then, that distinguished man may not be a gentleman as well. That would be dreadful. Yet your husband will be both. Think, Bella! He is sure to become a nobleman, and he may become the most renowned admiral in the Navy.'

'You dear old mother! But I love Gilbert because he is Gilbert. Otherwise, neither the nobility which is certain, nor the renown which is prospective, would take me across the world to him. Do you think I would go to Bombay to marry the heir to a title or a possible admiral if I did not love him?'

'Heaven forbid!' Mrs. Waldron replied, as she sat up in her bed and smoothed her hair. 'Heaven forbid! Yet,' she murmured, perhaps a little weakly for a lady who had just delivered herself of such admirable sentiments, 'yet I do honestly think, darling, that the love you bear each other--yes! above all, the love--and the position--I must think of the position, Bella!--and the certainty of a brilliant future for you, reconcile me a little to parting with you. Some day, when you are a mother, you will understand me.'

'I understand you now, darling. Yet, yet--ah!' and now she sobbed on her mother's shoulder--'yet, to think of our being parted for so long--for three years! Gilbert must remain on the station for that length of time.' Now it is certain that Mrs. Waldron was sobbing too, yet, because there was something of the Spartan mother, something, too, of Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, about her, she calmed her sobs. For she, too, had been ruthlessly torn by an all-conquering lover, who would take no denial, from her parents, arms. Yet that lover had had no such proud future to offer her as the Gilbert of whom they spoke had to offer his beloved Arabella; for her there had been nothing to flavour her existence except the glorious spice tasted by us all--of loving and being loved. And now--now that she was what she called old--which was not the case, since she was still short of her forty-fifth year--now she knew--and, knowing, said--that love accompanied by brilliant prospects and an assured future was the most satisfactory of all loves.

'Your father,' Mrs. Waldron said, 'remained on his station, the Pacific, for seven years, and we were separated all that time. He there, I here, in London. And in lodgings, Bella--oh those lodgings and that cooking!--you remember, darling? You must remember the lodgings and the cooking, child though you were. And he was not a future peer, though he did once think he might become an admiral.'

'Forgive me, mother,' Bella said, kissing her mother again and again. 'I will not repine any more. I ought not to do so, I know. For is not my Gilbert the handsomest, bravest sailor that ever wore the Queen's uniform? And it won't be so long after all. Only--only--I do wish there wasn't that awful journey. Oh if there were only a bridge!' and for the first time she smiled. 'Or a railway,' she added.

'I am sure, Bella,' her mother said, forgetting how she would feel that evening when her child was gone, and neither the bright voice nor brisk footsteps would be heard any more in the house, 'I am sure you cannot complain of the manner in which you are going out. The vessel may not be as comfortable as they say the great liners are, but at least your uncle is the captain, and it is his own ship. And that cabin he showed us yesterday, when we went down to Gravesend, is far better than anything you could get in any liner, even the best. I had one once, when I went out to join your father at Halifax, in which there was nowhere but the pockets of my clothes to keep things in, while the other lady above me could open the scuttle as she lay in her berth. And your cabin is as big as a dining-room, with a sofa----'

'You dear, darling mother!' Bella exclaimed. 'You are an angel to comfort me thus, when I know all the time that your heart is as sad as mine. Oh if we had not to part!' And again the two women hugged and kissed each other.

CHAPTER II

[STEPHEN CHARKE]

A year before this momentous day when Arabella Waldron was to set sail for India in her uncle's full-rigged ship, the Emperor of the Moon, there had come to her that supreme joy which is the most sweet experience of a young girl's life. The man she was madly in love with had asked her to be his wife, and, so far as it was possible to forecast the future, it seemed that before them both there stretched a long vista of happy years to be spent together, or as many years together as a sailor and his wife can pass during the greater part of their lives. Yet, who can foretell the future--even so much as what to-morrow may bring forth? To-day we are here, to-morrow we are gone. A bicycle accident has done for us, or we have caught a fever or pneumonia, and we are no more. How, then, was Bella to know that events would so shape themselves that, ere she had been a year engaged to her future husband, she would be on board the Emperor of the Moon, bound for the other side of the world, and that during her passage in the good old ship, named after an ancient play--a representation of which one of the late owners had witnessed in his boyhood--she would encounter such calamities and perils? But let us not anticipate. Rather, instead, let us describe who Bella was, and how she came to love and to be loved, to be wooed and won.

Our English girl! The girl fairly tall, and full to the brim with health; full, too, of a liking for all exercise which befits the dawning woman--for boating, riding, walking, cycling: not ashamed to acknowledge that she likes a good dance and that she has a good appetite for a ball supper; one who is, withal, not a fool! Where in all the world can you find anything better than that--better than the honest girls who have been our mothers, are our wives, and, please God, are what our daughters will be?

Such a one was Bella Waldron. She could take a scull--and pull it, too--as well as any of her sisters whom you shall meet 'twixt Richmond and Windsor; she could cycle thirty miles a day, eat a good dinner afterwards, and then go to a dance in the evening; and she thought nothing of walking from West Kensington to Piccadilly or Regent Street, with a glance at the Kensington High Street shops on her way!--especially when the winter remnant sales were on and advertised daily in glowing terms. Of riding she knew little, because horse-exercise is a more or less expensive luxury, and also because an income of £600 a year does not allow much in the way of luxuries, even when there are only two people in the family and two servants (with an odd boy) kept. And that sum represented Mrs. Waldron's income.

Bella's mother had been a Miss Pooley, who had married the late Commander Waldron (retired with the brevet rank of captain), and to this lady there remained only one near relative, besides Bella, at the time this veracious narrative opens. Now, this gentleman merits a slight description, not only because he plays a considerable part in those adventures and tribulations which, later on, befell the girl, but also because he occupied a position almost unique and, consequently, conspicuous in these modern days. Fifty--nay, thirty years ago, there would not have been anything peculiar in the career he followed; but now, with the twentieth century close upon us, that career was almost a singular one.

Captain Pooley was a sea captain--a mercantile sea captain--owning two ships of his own, and always in command of one of them. That which he now commanded was the very Emperor of the Moon of which you have already heard, and of which, if you follow this narrative, you will hear a great deal more; the other was a brig called Sophy, which will not figure at all in these pages. Now Captain Pooley, as he was called by everybody, though, of course, he had no right whatever to that distinctive appellation, had as a young man possessed an extraordinary love for the sea, so intense a love, indeed, that he, not being able to obtain a nomination for the Royal Navy, had induced his father to apprentice him to the merchant service. Later in life--one must be brief in these preliminary descriptions!--he had, after obtaining all his certificates, purchased one after the other, with some little money he had inherited, shares in first the one ship and then the second, and eventually, by aid of savings and successful trading, had become the entire owner of both. For the rest--to be again brief--he was a gentleman in manner and in feelings, while in his person he was a handsome, burly man, with the brightest of blue eyes, a vast shock of remarkably white hair above a good-looking, ruddy, tan-brown face; and was also the possessor of a smile which appeared more often than not upon his good-humoured countenance, and helped to make him welcome wherever he went, both at home and abroad. He was, it should be added, a married man, but childless, and it was not unusual for him to occasionally take his wife on the voyages he made for the purpose of transporting the goods which he sold in distant parts of the world, as well as for the purpose of purchasing other goods for sale in England. Otherwise, Mrs. Pooley remained at home in a pretty little villa at Blackheath, of which he owned a long lease.

It was a year before the great joy of Bella's life came to her that the 'captain,' returned from a voyage to Calcutta, and, as was always the case with him, he went to West Kensington to visit his sister and niece, accompanied by his wife. These visits were invariably paid, and also invariably returned by Mrs. and Miss Waldron, and were generally productive of a great deal of pleasure on either side. Captain Pooley--as we will continue to term him--was a kind-hearted, open-handed man, who loved his own kith and kin and cherished an old-fashioned notion--still in existence, Heaven be praised, amongst many members of various classes of society--that people should do as much as lay in their power to make their relatives happy. Wherefore, on this night, he said, as he took the head of Mrs. Waldron's table--which she always insisted on his doing whenever he stayed with her--and while he carved a pair of most excellent fowls:

'So I think we shall have a good time of it all round, Mary,'--Mary being Mrs. Waldron's name. 'To-night we will go to the Lyceum, and to-morrow--well, to-morrow--we'll see. Then, next week, Southsea. Southsea's the place for us. Great doings there next week, Bell. The visit of the foreign fleet now there will beat everything that has gone before.'

'But the expense, George!' exclaimed his sister. 'The expense will be terrible. I saw in the paper that everything would be at famine price.'

The captain pooh-poohed this remark, however, saying that an old friend of his, who had retired from the Royal Navy and was now living at that lively watering-place, knew of a little furnished house which could be obtained reasonably if taken for the following week, as well as for the principal one. And he clinched the remark by saying, 'And I have told him to secure it.' There was therefore nothing further to be said on that score, Bella alone remarking that she had the best old uncle and aunt that ever lived.

'There will be,' he continued, putting a slice of the breast upon her plate, probably as a reward for her observation, 'plenty to amuse Bella. There is a garden-party at Whale Island; another given by the General; and a ball given by the Navy at the Town Hall. That's the place for you, Bella. If you don't find a husband there--and you a sailor's daughter, too--well!----'

But these remarks were hushed by his wife, who told him not to tease the child, and by the beautiful rose blush which promptly rushed to his niece's cheeks. Yet, all the same, Bella thought it very likely that she would have a good time of it.

They were playing Madame Sans-Gêne at the Lyceum that evening--though Pooley rather wished it had been something by Shakespeare--and on the road to the theatre in the cab he told them that he had taken another stall, to which he had invited a young friend of his whom he had run against in town a day or two ago.

'And a very good fellow, too,' he said, 'besides being a first-rate sailor. And he has had a pretty hard struggle of it, owing to his being cursed with a cross-grained old father, who seemed to imagine his son was only brought into the world that he might sit upon him in every way. All the same, though, Stephen Charke got to windward of him somehow.'

'Whoever is he, uncle?' Bella asked, interested in this story of the unknown person who was to make a fifth of their party; while her mother addressed a similar question to Mrs. Pooley.

'He is,' said the captain, 'a young man of about thirty, who once went to sea with me in the Sophy; the son of an old retired officer, who was years ago in a West Indian regiment. After petting and spoiling the boy, and--as Stephen Charke himself told me--almost treating him with deference because he happened to have been born his son, he afterwards endeavoured to exert a good deal of authority over him, which led to disagreeables. He wanted the lad to go in for the Army, and Stephen wanted to go to sea.'

'And got his way, apparently,' said Bella.

'He did,' her uncle replied, 'by absolutely running away to sea--just like a hero in a boy's book.'

'How lovely!' the girl exclaimed.

'Ha! humph!' said Pooley, rather doubtfully, he being a man who entirely disapproved of disobedience in any shape or form from a subordinate. 'Anyhow, his experiences weren't lovely at first. They don't take runaways in the best ships, you know. However, he stuck to it--he had burnt his boats as far as regards his father--and--well!--he holds a master's certificate now, and he's both a good sailor and a good fellow. He is in the Naval Reserve, too, and has had a year in a battleship.'

'And his father?' Mrs. Waldron asked. 'Are they reconciled?'

'The old man is dead, and Charke has three or four thousand or so, which makes him more or less independent. He's a queer fish in one way, and picks and chooses a good deal as to what kind of ship he will serve in. For instance, he won't go in a passenger steamer, because, he says, the mates are either treated with good-natured tolerance or snubbed by the travellers, and he aims at being an owner. However, as I said before, he's a good fellow.'

By this time the cab had forced its way along the Strand amidst hundreds of similar vehicles, many of which were disgorging their fares at the various other theatres, and at last, after receiving a gracious permission to pass from those autocratic masters of the public--the police stationed at the foot of Wellington Street--wrenched itself round and pulled up in its turn beneath the portico of the theatre.

'There's Charke!' said Pooley, while, as he spoke, a rather tall, good-looking man of dark complexion, who was irreproachably attired in evening dress, came up to them and was duly introduced.

To Bella, whose knowledge of the world--outside the quiet, refined circle in which she had moved--was small, this man came more as a surprise than anything else. She knew nothing of the sea, although she was the daughter of an officer who had been in the Royal Navy, and her idea of what a 'mate' was like was probably derived from those she had seen on the Jersey or Boulogne packet-boats, when her mother and she had occasionally visited these and similar places in the out-of-town season. Yet Stephen Charke (she supposed because he was a gentleman's son, and also because of that year in a battleship as an officer of the R.N.R.) was not at all what she had expected. His quiet, well-bred tones as he addressed her--with, in their deep, ocean-acquired strength, that subtle inflexion which marks the difference between the gentleman and the man who is simply not bad-mannered--took her entirely by surprise; while the courteous manner in which he spoke, accompanied by something that proclaimed indubitably his acquaintance, not only with the world, but its best customs, helped to contribute to that surprise. So that, as they proceeded towards their stalls, she found herself reflecting on what a small acquaintance she had with things in general outside her rather limited circle of vision.

CHAPTER III

['LET THOSE LOVE NOW WHO NEVER
LOVED BEFORE']

The 'captain' led the way into the five stalls he had booked, followed, of course, by the elder ladies, and, as Stephen Charke naturally went last, it fell out that Bella and he sat by each other. And between the acts, the intervals of which were quite long enough for sustained conversation to take place, the girl had time to find her interest in him, as well as her surprise, considerably increased. She had perused in her time a few novels dealing with the sea, and, in these, the mates of ships of whom she had read had more or less served to confirm her opinion, already slightly formed from real life. But, when Charke began to talk to her about the actual source from which the play they were witnessing was drawn, she acknowledged to herself that, somehow, she must have conceived a wrong impression of those seafarers. Certainly he, she thought, could not be one of the creatures who cursed and abused the men if they objected to their food, and threatened next to put them in irons; nor did she remember that such individuals had ever been depicted in sea stories as knowing much about the Revolution in France and the vulgar amusements of Napoleon.

Then, during the next interval, he approached the subject of the forthcoming festivities at Portsmouth, to which Bella's uncle had told him he was going to take his relatives, and from that he glided off into the statement that he himself would be there.

'I am going down next Monday,' he said, 'to see one or two of my old mess-mates of the Bacchus--in which I served for a year in the Channel Squadron--and I fancy I shall be in at most of the functions. Have you ever been to a naval ball?'

Bella told him she never had been to one, her mother's intimacy with the Service having entirely ceased since Captain Waldron's death, and he then proceeded to give her an account of what these delightful functions were like. Indeed, so vividly did he portray them that Bella almost wished they were going on that very night to take part in one.

When the play was over, she--who acknowledged to herself that which probably no power on earth would have induced her to acknowledge so soon to any one else, namely, that Stephen Charke was an agreeable, if not a fascinating, companion--in company with the others prepared to return to West Kensington, bidding goodbye to him in the vestibule of the theatre.

'Where are you staying?' Mrs. Waldron asked him, as they stood on the steps waiting for their cab to make its appearance in turn. 'And are you in London for any time?'

Charke mentioned the name of a West End caravanserai, at which he had a room, as his abode for the next day or so, and by doing so he administered one more shock of surprise to the girl standing hooded and muffled by his side. For, again, in her ignorance, or perhaps owing to her reading of nautical novels, she had always thought of the officers of merchant vessels as living somewhere in the purlieus of Ratcliffe Highway when ashore, and rarely penetrating farther west than the city itself. It seemed, however, that either she had formed a totally erroneous impression of such people, or that the above sources of information must be wrong if all were really like Mr. Charke. But then, suddenly, there occurred to her mind the fact that her uncle had said this young officer was in possession of some few thousand pounds of his own--and this, probably, would explain why he was living in a comfortable manner when he was ashore.

'I am at home to my friends every other Friday,' Mrs. Waldron said, as now the cab had got to the portico, and a man was bawling out 'Mrs. Pooley's carriage' at the top of his voice--which announcement, nevertheless, served the purpose required--'and the day after to-morrow happens to be one of those Fridays. If you care to call--though I know gentlemen despise such things--we shall be glad to see you.'

'I do not despise them,' Charke answered, 'and I shall be delighted to come.'

Then he bade them all good-night, saw the cab off, and strolled down to his hotel. In his innermost heart Charke did despise such things as 'at homes,' or 'tea fights,' as he termed them contemptuously to himself, yet, in common with a great many other men, he was willing enough to go to them when there was any attraction strong enough to draw him.

And he told himself that there was an attraction at Mrs. Waldron's such as he had never been subjected to before.

'What a lovely girl,' he thought to himself; 'what eyes and hair--and a nice girl, too! Now I begin to understand why other men curse the sea, and say they would rather earn their living on shore driving busses than following our calling. And, also, why they nail up photographs in their cabins and watch every chance of getting mails off from the shore. I suppose I should have understood it earlier if I had ever met a girl like this.'

He did call on the following Friday, after having passed the intervening two days in wandering about London; in going to a race meeting one day and a cricket match at the Oval the next; in trying a dinner at one foreign restaurant on the Wednesday, and another at a second foreign restaurant on Thursday; but all the time he felt restless and unsettled, and wished that four o'clock on Friday was at hand.

'This won't do,' he said to himself, before the cricket match on Thursday was half over, and while he sat baking in the sun that streamed down on to the Oval--which disturbed him not at all, and had no power to make him any browner--'this won't do. I must go to sea at once. By the time I have seen that girl again I shall be head over ears in love with her. And the interest on £4000 in India Stock--by Jove! it isn't quite £4000 since I've been loafing about on shore!--and a chief officer's pay won't keep a wife. Not such a wife as she would be, anyway.'

He did not know it--or, perhaps, he did know it and would not acknowledge it to himself--but he was very nearly head over ears in love with Bella Waldron already. And he had only seen her once--been by her side at a theatre for three hours--with three intervals of ten minutes in which to talk to her! Yet the girl's beauty, her gentle innocence, and above all, that trusting confidence with which she seemed to look out upon all that was passing before her, and to regard the world as what it appeared to be and to take it at its own valuation, had captured him. Still, he should have known--he must have known--that when a man who has never thought much of the women he has met heretofore, and has generally forgotten what their features were like by the next day, takes to lying awake for hours dreaming at last of one woman with whom he has by chance come into contact, he is as nearly in love with her as it is possible for him to be.

So, at least, those report who have been in love, and so it has been told to the writer of this narrative!

He made his way to Montmorency Road, West Kensington, exactly at four o'clock, and while he sat in the pretty drawing-room talking to Mrs. Waldron, who was alone at present--the appearance of Bella being promised by her mother in a few moments--he found himself wondering what the girl did with her life here. He had seen a bicycle in the passage as he was shown upstairs, so he supposed she rode that; while there were some photographs of rather good-looking men standing about on the semi-grand and on the plush-covered mantelshelf--which made him feel horribly annoyed, until Mrs. Waldron, seeing his glance fixed on them, informed him that they were mostly cousins who were out of the country, and that one or two of them happened to have succumbed to various climatic disorders abroad, for which catastrophes he did not seem to feel as sorry as he supposed he ought to do. Then Bella came in, looking radiantly beautiful in a summer dress (a description of which masculine ignorance renders impossible), and Stephen Charke was happy for ten minutes. For they all talked of the impending fêtes at Portsmouth in honour of the foreign fleet, and Charke found himself in an Elysium when Bella promised him--without the slightest self-consciousness or false shame--that she would undoubtedly have some dances reserved for him.

Yet, soon, other callers came in, and Stephen Charke found himself deprived of the pleasure of further conversation with Bella. An elderly dowager claimed her attention, and a middle-aged lady--of, as he considered, menacing aspect--regaled him with the evil doings of her domestic servants, a subject of about as much interest to this wanderer of the seas as that of embroidery or tatting would have been. An Irish Doctor of Divinity also disturbed his meditations on Bella's beauty by telling funny stories, the point of which the divine had forgotten until he refreshed his memory by reference to a little note-book in which he had them all written down, while a young militia subaltern who had failed for the Army--and seemed rather proud of it!--irritated him beyond endurance. Yet, even through this fatuous individual, there came something that was welcome to him, since he saw Bella regarding the youth with a look of scarcely veiled contempt, and he longed to tell the idiot that the only failure for which women have no pity in this world is that of the intellect.

'Goodbye,' he said to Bella, who accompanied him to the head of the stairs, after he had made his adieux to her mother. 'Goodbye. Next week--Portsmouth--and--my dances.'

'I shall not forget,' she said.

After which he wandered off by devious and intricate ways (which reminded him of some of the narrow passages he knew of between the islands in the China seas) and so arrived at the District Railway.

And all the time he was telling himself that he was a fool--an absolute fool. 'I have fallen in love with a girl I have only seen twice,' he meditated, as the train ran through the sulphurous regions underground, and he endeavoured to protect his lungs by smoking cigarette after cigarette; 'a girl who is not, and never can be, anything to me. She will make a good match some day; she must make a good match--girls of her position and looks always do; and, a year or two hence, I shall luff into some unearthly harbour abroad, and run against Pooley, who will tell me that she has done so.'

Yet, all the same, he took comfort from remembering that he had not seen anybody at Mrs. Waldron's 'afternoon' who was likely to be the individual to carry her off.

But, in spite of this soothing reflection, he braced himself to a stern resolution: he determined that, as already in his life he had triumphed over other things, so he would triumph now. He would triumph over this swift-flowering and still growing love; conquer it by absence from the object which inspired it; trample it down till there was nothing left of life in it.

'I have no money to keep a wife,' he thought, as he walked up from Charing Cross Station to his hotel; 'certainly no money to keep such a wife as she would be. And, even if I had, it is not likely that she would marry me; "a common mate," as I have heard ourselves called. Portsmouth shall end it,' he concluded. 'I'll have one good week there, and then to sea again on a long cruise. That ought to do it! I'll go down to the docks to-morrow and see what's open.'

Wherefore, full of this determinate resolution to drive from out of him the frenzy which had taken possession of his heart and mind, he went to the hotel and read in his bedroom for an hour or so, during all of which time Bella Waldron's face was looking out at him from the pages of the Navy and Army Illustrated, and was always before him until he went forth to try still another foreign restaurant. Yet she was there too, and her pure, innocent eyes were gazing at him across the imitation flowers and the red candle-shades in the middle of the table; and so, also, they were in the stalls of the Empire, until he fell asleep in his seat. Nor was she absent from his mind during the long hours of the night.

CHAPTER IV

[PORTSMOUTH EN FÊTE]

The lunch at Whale Island was over, and there was a slight breathing-space ere the garden-party, which followed it, began. Meanwhile, from Southsea pier, from down by the pontoon at the foot of the old Hard, and over from Gosport, picket-boats, steam pinnaces, and launches--all belonging to Her Majesty's ships lying out at Spithead--were coming fast, as well as shore boats and numerous other craft that blackened the waters. And they bore in them a gaily-dressed crowd of men and women, the ladies being adorned in all those beauteous garments which they know so well how to assume on such an occasion; while, among the gentlemen, frock-coats, tall hats, and white waistcoats, as well as full dress, or 'No. 1' uniform, were the order of the day. For all these ship's-boats, after putting off from the battleships and cruisers to which they belonged, had, by order of the Vice-Admiral commanding the Channel Squadron, called at the above-named places to fetch off the visitors to the Whale Island festivities.

Stephen Charke, in the uniform of the R.N.R., came in the picket-boat of the Bacchus, wherein he had been lunching with the wardroom officers, and as she went alongside of Southsea pier, and afterwards at the Old Town pier, he had eagerly scanned the ladies who were waiting to be taken off. He was not, however, particularly disappointed or cast down at not seeing the one girl he was looking out for at either of them, since, in the continual departure of similar boats, and the running backwards and forwards of these craft between Whale Island and the landing-stages, it was, of course, hardly to be supposed that she would happen upon the particular boat in which he was.

He saw her, however, directly he, with his companions, had made their way to the lawn on which the wife of the Port-Admiral was receiving her guests, and--in so seeing her--he recognised instantly that he was not going to enjoy his afternoon as much as he had hoped to do.

'Who's that?' he asked of the Staff-Commander of the Bacchus, with whom he happened to be walking at the moment. 'I mean that flag-lieutenant talking to the young lady in the white dress?'

'That?' replied his companion, regarding the young officer indicated. 'Oh, that's Gilbert Bampfyld, flag-lieutenant to the Rear-Admiral. He's a good chap; I'll introduce you later. A lucky fellow, too. He's heir to his uncle, Lord D'Abernon. He's all right,' he concluded inconsequently.

'I know the young lady,' Stephen said. 'I've been at sea with her uncle.'

'Good-looking,' said the Staff-Commander, who was a single man. 'Fine girl, too. I hope she's coming to the ball.'

'She is,' Charke replied, and then stood observing her companion from the little group of which they now formed part.

Certainly the young officer was 'all right,' if good looks and a manly figure can entitle any one to that qualification. He was undoubtedly handsome, with the manliness which women are stated (by authorities on such matters) to admire: his bright eyes and good complexion, as well as his clear-cut, regular features, leaving little else to desire. He was also fairly tall, while, if anything were required to set off his appearance, it was furnished by his full-dress and his flag-lieutenant's aiguillettes. He was talking now in an animated way, as Charke could see easily enough from where he stood by the refreshment tent; and it was not possible for him to doubt that he was making himself very interesting to Bella.

For a moment, Stephen stood hesitating as to whether he should go up and present himself to the girl who had never been out of his thoughts since he said 'goodbye' to her in West Kensington; then, while he still debated the matter in his mind, Bella saw him and smiled and nodded pleasantly, while she looked--as he thought--as though she expected he should come up to her. Which of course decided him.

There was no affectation in the manner wherewith Bella greeted him; in truth, she was glad to see him and, honestly, as she did everything else, she said so.

'I have been looking for you for the last half-hour,' she remarked, as he reached her side, 'and wondering if you were coming or not'; after which she introduced Stephen Charke and Gilbert Bampfyld to each other. Then, some other officers coming up at this moment, more introductions took place, while Bampfyld said that he must move off.

'I have escaped from my Admiral for a few moments,' he said, while he added with a laugh: 'I am not quite sure, however, that he is not congratulating himself on having escaped from me. I hope, Miss Waldron,' he added, 'that you have an invitation for the ball?'

'Yes,' Bella said; and she smiled at Lieutenant Bampfyld's request that he might not be forgotten on that occasion, though she did not say positively whether that calamity would occur or not. Then, when he had moved on to join the distinguished officer to whom it was his duty to be attached almost as tightly as a limpet to a rock, she said to Charke, 'Come, now, and see mamma. She is in the shade behind the tent, and she has found an old friend of father's.'

But it was so evident that Mrs. Waldron was thoroughly enjoying herself with that old friend, who was a retired post-captain (she was, indeed, at the moment of their arrival engaged in reminiscences of the North American and West Indian stations), that they strolled away together, and, finding soon another shady seat, sat down and passed an agreeable hour or so. Wherefore, as you may thus see, Stephen Charke did spend a happy afternoon, notwithstanding that first apparition of the flag-lieutenant in converse with the girl who was now never out of his thoughts. Indeed, it would have been to him a perfect afternoon, had he not more than once seen Bampfyld (who again appeared to have escaped from his Admiral!) roaming about the place with a somewhat disconsolate, as well as penetrating, look upon his face; which look Charke construed into meaning that the other was seeking for the girl of whom he himself had now obtained temporary possession. However, even so, he did not think it necessary to call Bella's attention to the fact. But we must not tarry over these soft summer beguilements to which the old naval capital and all in her had given themselves up. There lie other matters before us--matters which, when they afterwards occurred, caused three people now partaking of these enjoyments to, perhaps, cast back their memories,--memories that were not untinged by regret. Suffice it, therefore, that we hurry on, and passing over another garden-party which took place at the Military Commandant's, and an 'at home' given on board the foreign visitors, flagship, as well as entertainments at which only the male sex were present, we come to the Naval ball at the Town Hall.

That was a great night, a night on which, if one may judge by subsequent events, many loving hearts were made happy; on which, too, some saw the dawn of the first promise of future happiness--and one man, at least, was made unhappy. It was a great night! A night no more forgotten by three people in the days that followed it than was the garden-party which preceded it by a day or so.

The First Lord of the Admiralty led off the quadrille with the wife of the Commander-in-Chief, while the Prince who was in command of the foreign fleet danced with the First Lord's wife; there being in that set, round which the other guests formed a vast circle, the most prominent individuals then present in Portsmouth. And Bella, standing close by with her hand upon the arm of Stephen Charke, while they waited for the first dance in which all the guests could participate, felt that, at last, she knew what a ball was.

'It isn't quite like a State Ball,' whispered Lieutenant Bampfyld to them as he passed by with his Admiral, he being qualified to give such information in consequence of his duties as flag-lieutenant having often given him the opportunity of attending those great functions, 'but it is much prettier.' Then he disappeared for a time.

'It could scarcely be prettier than it is,' Bella said to Charke. 'How has the room been made so beautiful?'

'The men of the Vernon have done it all,' her companion answered; 'they are good at that sort of thing.'

As, indeed, they seemed to be, judging by the effect they had produced. Trophies of arms, flags, devices, life-buoys white as snow, with the names of vessels belonging both to the visitors and ourselves painted in gold upon them, decorated the vast room; while, from the dockyard, had been unearthed old armour and weapons, such as, in these present days, are forgotten. Also the colour lent by various uniforms, naval, military, and marine, as well as by flowers and the bouquets carried by ladies, added to the brilliant scene--while the sombre black of civilians helped to give a contrast to the bright hues. For civilians were not forgotten: Admiralty officials, private residents, special correspondents--with a wary eye on their watches, so that they might be able to rush over to the Post-office with their last messages for the great London and provincial papers--were all there.

'Come,' said Stephen Charke, as the band of the Royal Marines struck up the first waltz, 'come, Miss Waldron; it is our turn now.'

And for ten minutes he realised what happiness meant.

That he would have to resign her for the greater part of the evening, he knew very well--her programme was already full!--his name appearing three times on it, and Lieutenant Bampfyld's also three times--yet, later, he did so none the less willingly for that knowledge. How could he? He loved the girl with his whole heart and soul--madly! 'I shall love her always, until I die,' he muttered to himself as he stood by, seeking no other partner and watching her dancing now with the flag-lieutenant. Then, next, he saw her dancing with the flag-lieutenant of the other Admiral--though that did not seem to him to be so disturbing a matter. 'Till I die!' he repeated again; and then once more called himself a fool.

His second dance with her arrived, and once more he was in his seventh heaven; for the moment he was again supremely happy.

'I hope I may have the pleasure of taking you in to supper,' he almost whispered in her ear as they paused for a moment for breath, and it seemed as if the light of his enjoyment--for that evening at least--had been suddenly extinguished when she, raising those sweet, clear eyes to his, exclaimed:

'Oh, I am so sorry! But I have promised Lieutenant Bampfyld that he shall do so.'

For the remainder of the ball Charke did not let a single dance pass by without taking part in it, and allowed his friends to introduce him right and left to any lady who happened to require a partner, though reserving, of course, the one for which he was engaged to Bella at what would be almost the end of the evening. In fact, as his friend the Staff-Commander said, 'he let himself go pretty considerably,' and he so far exemplified that gentleman's remark that he took in to supper one of the plainest of those middle-aged ladies who happened to be gracing the ball with their presence.

Yet this lady found nothing whatever to complain of to herself (to her friends she would have uttered no complaint of her cavalier, even though he had been as stupid as an owl and as dumb as a stone, she being a wary old campaigner), but, instead, thought him a charming companion. Perhaps, too, she had good reason to do so, since, from the moment he conducted her across the temporarily constructed bridge which led from the Town Hall proper to the supper tent erected in a vacant plot of ground, his conversation was full of smart sayings and pleasant, though occasionally sub-acid, remarks on things in general. Yet, naturally, it was impossible that she should know that the undoubtedly bright and piquant conversation with which he entertained her was partly produced by his bitterness at seeing Gilbert Bampfyld and Bella enjoying themselves thoroughly at a table à-deux close by where he and his partner were seated, and partly by his stoical determination to 'let things go.' And by, also, another determination at which he had arrived--namely, to go to sea again at the very first moment he could find a ship.

CHAPTER V

['SO FAREWELL, HOPE!']

Nine months had passed since the entertainment of the foreign fleet at Portsmouth--months that had been pregnant with events concerning the three persons with whom this narrative deals; and Bella sat now, at the end of a dull March afternoon, in the pretty drawing-room in West Kensington. She sat there meditating deeply, since she happened to be alone at the moment, owing to Mrs. Waldron having gone out to pay several calls.

Of all who had been at those entertainments, of all in the party which, in the preceding June, had gathered together at Portsmouth, the three ladies of the family, Mrs. Waldron, Mrs. Pooley, and Bella, were alone in England; the three men--the three sailors--were all gone to different parts of the world. Captain Pooley had sailed with his vessel to Australia; Stephen Charke had gone to China as first officer of a large vessel; and Gilbert Bampfyld, who, in consequence of the Rear-Admiral's retirement, no longer wore the aiguillettes of a flag-lieutenant, had been appointed to the Briseus, on the East Indian station.

And Bella, sitting now in her arm-chair in front of the drawing-room fire, with a letter lying open on her lap before her, was thinking of the writer of that letter, as well as of all that it contained. If one glances at it as it lies there before her, much may be gleaned of what has happened in those nine months; while perhaps, also, some idea, some light, may be gained of that which is to come.

'My Darling,' it commenced (and possibly the writer, far away, may have hoped that, as he wrote those words, they would be kissed as often by the person to whom they were addressed as he fondly desired), 'My Darling--Your letter came to me to-day, and I must write back to you at once--this very instant--not only because I want to put all my thoughts on paper, but also because I can thus catch the P. and O. mail. How good! how good you are! While, also, I do not forget how good your mother is. I know I ought not--at least I suppose I ought not--to ask you to do such a thing as come out to me, and I can assure you I hesitated for weeks before daring to do so. Yet, when I reflected that, if you could not bring yourself to come, as well as induce your mother to give her consent to your coming, we could not possibly be married for three years, I could not hesitate any longer. And now--now--oh, Bella, my darling! I could dance for joy if my cabin was big enough to allow of such a thing--you are coming! You will come! How happy we shall be! I can think of nothing else--nothing. You don't know how I feel, and it's useless for me to try to tell you....'

No more need be read of this letter, however, and, since the reader will shortly be informed of what led to it, nothing more need be said than that, after a good deal of explanation as to how the young lady to whom it was addressed was to make her plans for reaching Bombay, it was signed 'Gilbert Bampfyld.'

So that one sees now what had been the outcome of that week of delight at Portsmouth during the last summer; one understands all that had been the result of those garden-parties and that ball.

They--the festivities--were followed by a renewal of the acquaintanceship between Mrs. Waldron and her daughter and Gilbert Bampfyld, as, indeed, the latter had quite made up his mind should be the case, and as--since the truth must always be spoken--Bella had hoped would happen. They were followed, that is to say, directly the naval man[oe]uvres were over, for which important function both divisions of the Channel Squadron were of course utilised, while not a week had elapsed from the time of the return of the ships to their stations before Gilbert Bampfyld presented himself in Montmorency Road. And that presentation of himself at this suburban retreat was, it is surely unnecessary to say, succeeded by many other things, all showing what was impending and what actually happened later on. Gilbert Bampfyld told Bella that he loved her and wanted her for his wife, and--well, one can imagine the rest. What was there to stand between those loving hearts? What? Nothing to impede their engagement, nothing that need have impeded their immediate marriage, except the fact that Bella's maiden modesty could never have been brought to consent to a union so hurriedly entered into as would have been necessary, had she agreed to become Gilbert's wife ere he set out for Bombay to join the Briseus, to which he was now appointed.

One regrets, however, when describing such soft and glowing incidents as these, that space is so circumscribed (owing to the canvas having to be filled with larger events now looming near) as to leave no room for more minute description of this love idyl. It would have been pleasant to have dwelt upon Bella's ecstatic joy at having been asked to be the wife of the one man--the first man--whose love she had ever desired (ah, that is it--to be the first man or the first girl who has ever touched the heart of him or her we worship); only it must not be--the reader's own imagination shall be asked to fill the missing description. Let those, therefore, who remember the earliest whispered word of love they ever spoke or had spoken to them; who recall still the first kiss they ever gave or took; and those who can remember, also, all the joy that came to them when first they loved and knew themselves beloved, fill the hiatus. That will suffice.

'We shall be so happy, dearest,' Gilbert said, when all preliminaries had been arranged in so far as their engagement was concerned, and when he did not know at the time that he was about to be sent on foreign service, but hoped that he would either be allowed to remain in the Channel Squadron or be transferred to the Training Squadron, or, at worst, appointed to the Mediterranean. 'We shall be so happy, darling. I hoped from the first to win you--though--though sometimes I feared there might be some one else.'

'There could never have been any one else. Never, after I had once met you,' she murmured. 'Oh, Gilbert!' and then she, too, said she was so happy. Yet a moment later she whispered: 'But, somehow, it seems too good to be true. All has come so easily in the way that I--well, as we--desired, that sometimes I think there may be--that something may arise to--to----'

'What--prevent our marriage? Nothing can do that. Nothing could have done that--nothing!'

'Suppose your uncle, Lord D'Abernon, had objected?' she said, remembering that she had heard how this nobleman was not always given to making things quite as easy and comfortable to those by whom he was surrounded as was considered desirable. 'Suppose that had happened?'

'Oh, he's all right,' Gilbert replied. 'He expected his opinion to be asked and his consent obtained, and all that sort of thing, but, outside that, he's satisfied. And if he wasn't, it wouldn't have made any difference to me--after I had once seen you.' For which remark he was rewarded with one of those chaste salutes which Bella had learnt by now to bestow without too much diffidence. As regards Mrs. Waldron--well, she was a mother, and it was not to be supposed that such a distinguished match as Bella was about to make could be aught but satisfactory to her; while Captain Pooley, who had not yet departed with the Emperor of the Moon for Australia, told his niece that she was a lucky girl. He also informed Gilbert that, as he was a childless man, Bella would eventually fall heiress to anything he and his wife might leave behind them. Matters looked, therefore, as though they would all go merry as the proverbial marriage bell. All, as the old romancists used to say, was very well.

Then fell the first blow--the one that was to separate those two fond hearts. Gilbert was suddenly appointed to the Briseus and ordered to proceed to Bombay to join her at once, and a fortnight later he was gone, and poor Bella was left behind lamenting.

She was sitting, lamenting still, before her fire on this March day, with this newly-arrived letter on her lap--in solemn truth, she had been lamenting his departure ever since it had taken place--when, suddenly, there broke in upon her ears the sound of a visitor's knock below. Then, ere she could distinguish whose voice was addressing the servant who had answered the door, she heard a manly footstep on the stairs, and, a moment later, the maidservant announced: 'Mr. Charke.' Mr. Charke! the man whose memory had almost faded from her mind--as she had reproached herself for more than once, when it did happen to recur to her--the man whom she had learnt to like so much during all that happy time last year. Now, as she gazed on him, and noticed how brown he was as he came forward--more deeply browned, indeed, than she had thought it possible for him, who was already so tanned and sunburnt, to be--and noticed, too, the strong, self-reliant look on his face, she reproached herself again. She acknowledged, also, that she had liked him so much that even her new-found happiness ought not to have driven all recollection of him entirely from her mind.

Then she greeted him warmly, saying all the pleasant little words of welcome that a woman whose heart goes in unison with her good breeding knows how to say; and made him welcome. Yet, as she did so, she observed that he was graver, more sad, it seemed to her, than she had ever remarked before.

'You are not ill?' she asked, as this fact became more and more apparent to her. 'Surely, you, a sailor, have not come back from the sea unwell? At least I hope not.'

'No,' he said, 'no. Nor, I hope, do I seem so. Do you know that, besides any desire to call and see you, I came for another purpose?' and now his eyes rested on her with so strange a light--so mournful, deep a light--that in a moment her woman's instinct told her what he meant as plainly as though his voice had done so.

Like a flash of lightning, that instinct revealed to her the fact that this man loved her; that, from the moment they had parted, months ago, she had never been absent from his mind. She knew it; she was certain she was right--she could not be deceived! Then to herself she said: 'Heaven help him--Heaven prevent him from telling me so.'

But aloud, her heart full of pity, she said: 'Indeed,' and smiled bravely on him while she spoke. 'Indeed, what was that purpose?'

'To congratulate you. To----

'Congratulate me!'

'Yes. I met the Emperor of the Moon at Capetown. We were both homeward bound. And--and--your uncle told me the news. I offer my congratulations now.' Yet, as he said the words, she saw that his face was turned a little aside so that she could not perceive his eyes. Congratulations! Well, they might be sincere in so far as that, because he loved her, he wished her well and desired that she should be happy, but--but--otherwise--no! it was not to be thought upon.

As he said the words: 'I congratulate you,' he followed an old custom--one more foreign than English--and held out his hand, taking hers. And he kept it, too, fast in his own, while he said in the voice that his struggles with the elements had made so deep and sonorous:

'Yes, I congratulate you. I must do that. To--to--see you happy--to know you are so, is all that I have--all--I hope for now. Yet there is no treachery to him in what I say. Heaven help me! I mean none--but--but--I--from the first--I have lo----'

'No, no,' she murmured, striving to withdraw her hand, yet not doing so angrily. 'No, no. Don't say it, Mr. Charke. Don't, pray don't.' And, now, neither could he see her eyes nor her averted face. 'Don't say it. You do not desire to make me unhappy?' she murmured.

'Never, as God hears me. But--I have said it. I had to say it. Goodbye.'

'Goodbye,' she said--and then, as he neared the door, she turned once and looked at him with eyes that were full of intense pity and compassion.

CHAPTER VI

['AND BEND THE GALLANT MAST, MY BOYS']

Events are now drawing near to that night when Bella was to have those distressing dreams which have been mentioned at the opening of this narrative; all was arranged for her departure to Bombay. A little more, and she will be on her way to India and to wedlock.

Yet all had not been quite easy and smooth in the settlement of affairs. At first, Mrs. Waldron, good, loving mother though she was, and fully cognisant of the facts--namely, that Bella loved Lieutenant Bampfyld madly and would be an unhappy woman if she did not become his wife long ere three years had passed, and that the match which her child was about to make was undoubtedly a brilliant one--refused to hear of such a thing as that she should go out to him.

'If you are worth having,' she said, when first the proposal was submitted to her, 'you are surely worth coming for.' And, since this was a truism, it was hardly to be gainsaid. Yet, as we know by now, she had been won over by her daughter's pleadings and entreaties; by, too, the plain and undeniable fact that there was not the slightest possibility of Lieutenant Bampfyld being able to come home to marry her, or to return to England in any way--short of being invalided--until the Briseus herself returned.

Then, no sooner had this difficulty been surmounted than another reared its head before mother and daughter. How was she to go out to Bombay alone and unprotected? A young married woman, who had to proceed to India to join her husband, might very well undertake such a journey, but not a young single woman such as Bella was, while for chaperon or protectress there was no one forthcoming. At first, it is true, Mrs. Waldron had meditated accompanying Bella herself (she being an old sailor, to whom long sea voyages were little more than railway journeys are to some more stay-at-home ladies); only, down in the depths of her nature, which was an extremely refined one, there was some voice whispering to her that it would be indelicate to thus bring her daughter out in pursuit of her affianced husband. It is true, however, that authorities on social etiquette who have since been consulted have averred that this was a false feeling which was in possession of Mrs. Waldron's mind; but be that as it may, it existed. Then, too, she still regarded the matter of her child going to her future husband, instead of that husband coming to fetch her, as one of particular delicacy; one of such nicety as to permit of no elaboration; and she resolved that, come what might--even though she should have to purchase, or hire rather, the services of an elderly and austere travelling companion--she must not herself accompany Bella.

'Heaven knows what is to be done,' she said to her daughter, as they discussed the important point, 'but I suppose it will come to that'; the 'that' meaning the hired chaperon. Then she sighed a little, remembering how the late Captain Waldron had encompassed thousands of miles in a voyage which he made from the Antipodes to espouse her.

Yet, ere many days had passed, the clouds of obstruction were suddenly removed in a manner which seemed almost--as the fond mother stated--providential. Captain Pooley's ship had followed home, after a week or so of interval, that in which Stephen Charke had returned to England, and its arrival was soon succeeded by his own in Montmorency Road.

'Going out to him to be married!' he exclaimed, after his sister--who happened to be alone at the time of his visit--had made him acquainted with what she had given her consent to some two or three months before, on Gilbert's application backed up by Bella's supplications, and which consent she had moaned over inwardly ever since she had so given it. 'Going out to be married, eh? Why, she must want a husband badly!' Yet, because he knew well enough the customs of Her Majesty's service and the impossibility which prevailed in that service of an officer coming home to marry his bride, he did not repeat her words, 'If she is worth having, she is worth coming for.'

'So other people have thought, if they have not openly said so,' Mrs. Waldron replied. 'I am sure they must have thought so. Yet,' she went on, with determination, 'I have agreed to it, and I cannot retract my word. It is given, and must be kept. No, it is not that which troubles me.'

'What, then?'

'Why, the getting out. How is the child to go alone, in a great liner, with two or three hundred passengers, all the way to Bombay? How?' she repeated.

'Bombay, eh? Bombay. Oh, well, if that's her destination, she can go comfortably enough. There need be no trouble about that. Only she will be more than double the time the P. and O., or any other line, would take to carry her.'

'What do you mean, George?'

'Why,' he said, 'I happen to be taking the old Emperor to Bombay next month with a general cargo--calling at the Cape on the way. She can go with me, and welcome. There's a cabin fit for a duchess which she can have.'

* * * * * *

It was a cabin fit for a duchess, as Bella and her mother acknowledged when, a fortnight later, they went down to Gravesend to inspect the Emperor of the Moon, and after it had been decided in solemn family conclave that, by this ship, the former should make the voyage to India. And it was more than likely that the girl would make it under particularly pleasant circumstances, since this was one of those occasions on which Mrs. Pooley had decided to accompany her husband, she not having felt very well during the past winter. At present, the cabin was empty and denuded of everything, Pooley having decided to have it refurnished; but when he told them how that furniture would be arranged in the great roomy place, which would have been dignified as a 'state-room' in one of the old clippers, Bella said again, as she had said so often before, that 'he was the best old uncle in the world.'

Now the Emperor of the Moon was a smart, though old-fashioned, full-rigged ship of about six hundred tons, her lines being perfect, while leaving her full of room inside. Her saloon was a comfortable one, well furnished with plush-covered chairs and benches--the covering being quite new; a piano--also looking new--was lashed to the stem of the mizzen-mast, while there were swinging vases, in which, no doubt, fresh ferns and flowers would be placed later. On deck she was very clean and white, with much brass and everything neat and shipshape, while the seaman who should regard her bows and stern would at once acknowledge that she left little to desire, old as she was. For, in the days when she was laid, they built ships with a view to both sea qualities and comfort, and the Emperor of the Moon lacked neither. Her sleeping-cabins were bedrooms, her saloon was a dining-room as good as you would find in a fifty-pound-a-year suburban residence, and her masts would have done credit to one of Her Majesty's earlier ships.

Altogether, Bella was pleased with everything, especially with her cabin, which was on the port side of the saloon, and she was, besides, pleasantly excited at the idea of so long a sailing voyage.

'I know,' she said to her uncle, 'that we shall have a delightful time of it, and for companionship I shall have you and auntie. That's enough.'

'You will have some one else, too,' Pooley said, with a smile; 'you know I have two officers. Come'--and again he smiled--'it is our "lay days,"' by which he meant that they were shipping their cargo. 'Come, I will introduce them to you.' Then he led the way up the companion to the deck.

They met one of these officers, the second mate, a young man whom Pooley introduced as Mr. Fagg, and then, while they were all talking together, Bella heard a deep, low voice behind her say: 'How do you do, Miss Waldron?' A voice that caused her to start as she turned round to find herself face to face with Stephen Charke.

'You!' she exclaimed involuntarily. 'You! Are you going on this voyage?'

'I am first officer,' he said. 'I wanted a berth, and Captain Pooley has given me one.' And amidst her uncle's joyous laughter and his remark that he knew this would be a pleasant surprise for Bella, and while, too, Mrs. Waldron said that she was delighted to think he would be in the ship to look after her daughter, that daughter had time to think herself--to reflect.

In her heart, she would far rather that Charke had not been here; while she wondered, too, how he could have brought himself to accept his present position, knowing, as he must have known, that she was going in the ship.

'It is so vain, so useless,' she thought; 'and can only lead to discomfort. We shall both feel embarrassed all the way. Oh, I wish he were not coming!' Then, although she pitied him, and although she had always liked him, she resolved that, through the whole of the time they were together in the ship, she would see as little of Stephen Charke as possible.

'You do not object to my presence, I hope?' he said a moment later, as they both stood by the capstan alone--Pooley and his wife and sister having moved off forward. 'I should be sorry to think that my being here was disagreeable to you. I have to earn my living, you know.'

'What right could I have to object, Mr. Charke?'

'Perhaps you think I have behaved indiscreetly?'

For a moment she let her eyes fall on him and rest upon his own; then she said: 'I will not give any opinion. You have to earn your living, as you say; while as for me--well, you know what I am going to India for.'

'Yes,' he answered. 'I do know.' After which he added: 'Do not be under any wrong impression. I shall not annoy you. I am the chief officer of this ship and you are a passenger. That is, I understand, how the voyage is to be made?'

'If you please,' Bella replied very softly, and the tones of her voice might well have brought some comfort to him, if anything short of the possession of her love could have done so.

A fortnight or three weeks later the pilot had left the Emperor of the Moon, the lee main braces were manned, the ship was lying over under her canvas, the wind was well astern. Bella was on her way to India and her lover!

Let us pass over this parting between mother and child, the fond embraces, the tears and sobs which accompanied that parting following after the dawn when we first made the girl's acquaintance, and following, too, that night of unrest and disturbing dreams. No description of such partings is necessary; many of us, young and old, men and women, have had to make them; to part from the loved, gray-haired mother who has sobbed on our breast ere we went forth to find our livelihood, if not our fortune, in a strange world; many of us have had to let the child of our longings and our hopes and prayers go forth from us who have sheltered and nurtured it--from us who have perhaps prayed God night and day that, in His mercy, it might never leave our side. We go away ourselves because we must; also they go from us because they must; and there is nothing but the same hope left in all our hearts--the hope that we shall not be forgotten--that, as the years roll by, those we have left behind will keep a warm spot for us in their memory, or that those who have left us behind will sometimes turn their thoughts back longingly to us in our desolation. It has to be, and it has to be borne; alas, that parting is the penalty we all have to pay for having ever been permitted to be together.

And, so, across the seas, the stout old Emperor of the Moon went; buffeting with the Channel, throwing aside the rough waves with her forefoot as though she despised them, sinking England and home behind her with every plunge she made.

And at the moment that she was leaving the Lizard far away astern of her, and was running well out into the Atlantic, a telegram was delivered in Montmorency Road addressed to Bella, which was opened by her mother. A telegram signed 'Gilbert,' which ran: 'Don't start. Briseus appointed to East Coast Africa, slaver catching.' A telegram that had come three days too late! A telegram that was re-forwarded to Capetown, where it lay for forty-seven days awaiting the arrival of the Emperor of the Moon, and, then,--was forgotten!

CHAPTER VII

['AN OCEAN WAIF']

From the time the men had sheeted home the topsails as the Emperor of the Moon got under way until now when, having left the Cape of Good Hope behind her, she was travelling through the water at a very fair speed and with her head set due north, scarcely anything had occurred much worthy of note. Soon--after the first two days had passed, during which time Bella had lain flat in her berth in the large roomy cabin provided for her by her uncle, while his wife had administered to her odd glasses of champagne, little cups of rich, succulent soup, and such like delicacies--the girl was able to reach the deck. And, once there and under an awning stretched from the ensign staff to past the mizzen-mast, she would sit and meditate for hours on the forthcoming meeting with her lover which was drawing nearer and nearer with each plunge of the Emperor's forefoot into the sapphire sea. Sometimes, too, she would read aloud a novel to Mrs. Pooley, who, perhaps because she was good and motherly, and fat, would listen to nothing but the most romantic love-stories which the vivid brains of fashionable novelists could turn out; though, when alone, and reading for her own amusement, Bella would pore over books of adventure in wild parts of the world, or devour some of the histories of marine voyages which her uncle possessed in his neat mahogany bookcases below.

Of Stephen Charke she saw, of course, a good deal, as it was natural she should do. You cannot be in a ship, however large or small, without seeing much of all on board; but when it comes to sitting down every twenty-four hours to what Captain Pooley called 'four square meals a day, with intervals between for refreshments,' you must not only be brought into constant touch with your companions, but also enter into much discourse with them. Yet, as the girl told herself, Charke was behaving well, extremely well; so that, gradually, she lost all sense of discomfort that would otherwise have arisen through being thrown continuously into his society, and, ere long, she would observe his approach without the slightest tremor of susceptibility. Soon, too, she began to acknowledge to herself that Stephen was a gentleman in his feelings, and that, no matter what his sentiments might be towards her--if they existed still and were unchanged from what they had once been--he at least knew how to exercise that control over them which a gentleman should be capable of. Until now, he had never said one word to her that any other person might not have uttered who had found himself thrown into her society on board the Emperor of the Moon, nor had he unduly sought her presence or, being in it, endeavoured to remain there as long as it was possible.

Nothing of much note had occurred thus far on the voyage, it has been said; yet there had of course been some of those incidents without which no voyage of any distance is ever made. Once through the Bay, and, while they ran swiftly south, they had found themselves in a dense fog--a most unusual thing in such a latitude and at such a time of year; then, upon the top of that fog, there had sprung up a stiff breeze which gradually developed into a gale, so that, from clewing the main royal to furling the top-gallant sails of the mizzen and foremasts was but the action of a moment, as was the next work of taking in the main top-gallant sail. And thus, ere long, Bella had her first experience of what a storm at sea was like, and, as she heard the live stock grunting and squealing forward; the ship's furniture more or less thundering about wherever it could get loose; the piano--on which, only the night before, she had played the accompaniment to her uncle's deep bass voice as he trolled out 'In Cellar Cool'--thumping heavily against the bulkhead to which it was usually lashed, and the cries of the sailors as they uttered words which might not, perhaps, be properly denominated as 'cries, alone, she began to wonder how her darling Gilbert could ever have chosen such a calling. While, too, the streaming planks when, at last, she ventured on deck, the dull sepia clouds and the mournful look of the Emperor herself, under reefed topsails, foresail, fore topmast staysail, main trysail and spanker, as she rolled and yawed about in the troughs and hollows of the sea, and took the water first over one bow and then over another--and then, for a change, over her stem--only increased that wonder.

Yet, lo! the next morning--for the sea is a great quick-change artist, volatile and variable as a flirt, though too often as tragic as Medea herself--when Bella looked out of her scuttle, against which the green water now slapped boisterously but not viciously--all was changed. A bright sun shone down from the blue heavens, the ship had still got a roll on her, though not an unpleasant one--and the girl felt hungry. Which was as good a sign that the storm was over as could well be wished for.

'It has been a rough night,' Stephen Charke said, as he rose from his breakfast on her entrance to the saloon, helped her to her chair, and bade the steward bring coffee and hot rolls and bacon--all of which were already perfuming the air. 'Your uncle is now on deck. We have been there all night.'

'I thought,' said Bella, pouring out her coffee and smiling pleasantly, since now all fear had departed from her mind that Charke would misconstrue any friendly marks of intimacy she might be disposed to graciously bestow on him, 'that I was at the end of my journey. Indeed, that we all were; that it was brought to a sudden end; accomplished. That----'

'That,' said Stephen, smiling too, sadly enough, yet enhancing wonderfully his dark, handsome looks by doing so, 'that perhaps Mr. Bampfyld might miss his bride!'

For a moment Bella's hazel eyes flashed at him, and he thought how wondrously beautiful they looked as they did so--then a serious expression came on her face. While, after pausing a moment, as though scarcely knowing what answer to make or whether she should make one at all, she said: 'Yes. That he might miss his bride. My death, and that alone, could cause him to do so.' And as she spoke she looked Stephen straight in the face, while feeling again--to her regret--that old sentiment of doubt of him which she had come to believe she had conquered and subdued.

'His death would cause the same result,' he answered, speaking slowly, hesitatingly, for in truth he felt as if he were treading on dangerous ground. And in a moment he found such was the case.

'Mr. Charke,' the girl said, very quietly now, 'I should be so much obliged to you if, during the remainder of our journey together, you will neither discuss my affairs nor those of my future husband, nor him. It will make the voyage pleasanter to me if you will do that.'

As she spoke, the bell struck two, and, since the watches had been disorganised by the storm of the night, that sound meant that Captain Pooley would now come below for his breakfast, and his place above be taken by the mate. Therefore, he turned towards the stairs, muttering: 'I beg your pardon, I am sure. Pray forgive me. I will not offend again.' Then he disappeared on to the deck.

Yet an hour later he stood by her side beneath the awning, and now he was directing her attention to something that, a mile off, was the object of attention from every one on board. The captain and his wife were both regarding it fixedly; so, too, were the men forward; the only persons not present being, of course, the watch below and the second mate, Mr. Fagg, who had now turned in.

'What do you make it out to be?' asked Pooley of Stephen, as they still gazed at it. 'It is not a baby nor a child; yet it is scarcely bigger than the first. Can it be a dog?'

'No,' said Charke authoritatively, as though his younger eyesight was not to be disputed; 'it is either a young tiger or a panther cub afloat on a water-cask. There has been a wreck during the night, I expect, and it has got adrift. Perhaps,' he said, 'if we cruise around a bit we may find some human life to save.'

'How should it be aboard any ship?' asked the captain. 'Who takes tigers or panthers for passengers?'

'Plenty of people,' Charke answered quietly. 'They are brought home to sell to the menageries and zoos. A cub like that is worth twenty pounds--worth looking after. Guffies bring them home sometimes, sailors often. Meanwhile,' he added, 'according to the set of the waves, that thing will be alongside us in a quarter of an hour. I'll bet a day's pay it strikes the ship betwixt the main and mizzen channels.'

'Oh,' exclaimed Mrs. Pooley and Bella together, 'do let us save it and get it on board! It will,' said the latter, 'be such a lovely plaything--and such a curiosity! Fancy a girl from West Kensington who has never had a plaything or pet more stupendous than a canary, a cat, or a fox-terrier, having a tiger. Why,' she exclaimed, with a laugh which gave to her short upper lip an appearance of tantalising beauty, 'Una will be outdone by me--a girl of the nineteenth century!'

Tantalising or not as that smile might be, it led to the salvation of the cub; for, with a swift look at the captain which was meant to ask for his assent, Charke called to one of the sailors to get over into the channels and down on to the fourth futtock, he telling him with wonderful accuracy the exact spot where the water-cask would strike the stationary ship. Five minutes later, that which he had calculated with such precision came to pass, the cask touched the vessel's side almost immediately beneath the man's feet, and, in another moment, the cub had been caught by its loose skin in the exact middle of its back and hauled up, squealing, spitting and scratching, on to the deck.

'The little beast!' exclaimed the mate, as he sucked the back of his hand where the creature had clawed him; 'the little beast! this is a pretty reward for our saving it from drowning!' and he administered a sound kick to the thing as it lay on the deck. So sound and rousing a one, indeed, that it gave a grunt of pain, and, with its claws--about as big, or bigger, than those of a good-sized cat--endeavoured to fasten on to his legs. While, from its yellow, scintillating eyes, it emitted a glance of such malignant ferocity as, had it been more fully grown, might have alarmed a braver man than he.

'Oh, how cruel to kick that poor little half-drowned thing!' Bella exclaimed reproachfully; 'it never meant to hurt you, only it was frightened. Poor little thing!' she said again, and, even as she spoke, she knelt down on the deck and stroked the wet, striped ball that lay there. And it seemed as if her gentleness had some power to soothe whatever ferocious instincts--still dormant and undeveloped at present--were smouldering within it. For, instead of now using its paws as weapons with which to strike out and attack anything near it, it played with her as a kitten plays with a ball, tapping at her hand and trying to catch it, and pushing and kicking against her with its hind legs.

'You see,' she said, looking up at Charke with a glance in which she could not disguise her dislike of his violence, 'you see, at present, at least, it does not try to harm those who treat it well.'

'Yes,' he said, 'I see.' Then he added, half-bitterly, half-morosely: 'No one doubts your powers of fascination, Miss Waldron.'

CHAPTER VIII

['HIS NAME IS--WHAT?']

The saving of this creature, which Bella elected to call Bengalee, because she said she was sure it came from Bengal, and also because she had once sung a song having that name, was followed by no other events of any importance whatever. Nor need their stay at the Cape be dwelt upon, because it consisted simply of various visits which were paid in the outskirts by Mr. and Mrs. Pooley, accompanied by Bella; by the unloading of a considerable portion of the cargo of the Emperor of the Moon, and by the refilling of the hold with other goods saleable in India.

And, now, they were once more on their way towards the Equator, going due north instead of due south, as when they had last approached it, and with a cool southern breeze driving the Emperor along under full sail. Yet, so gentle was this breeze that, even if there had been any who were not sailors in the ship--as Bella, as well as Mrs. Pooley, might now well be considered, after the length of voyage she had already gone through, added to a few extra days and nights of turbulence and storm--scarcely would they have felt any inconvenience from the motion. Thus, therefore, with occasionally a dropping of the wind which reduced their speed a few knots, and, sometimes, with a total drop in it, so that they did not progress a knot an hour, while the ship swung slowly round and round the compass, they found themselves at the time which is about to be described in about Latitude 45.10 S., and Longitude 30.50 E., or, as near as may be, about 250 miles to the S.W. of Mauritius.

Wherefore, since the Emperor of the Moon has arrived thus far in the Indian Ocean there has now to be set down a series of strange events which befell her, of so remarkable and peculiar a nature that one wonders that those events have never been chronicled before. For, far different from the ordinary stress and disasters which overtake ships at sea were those which have to be described; far different from those which the recorders of maritime calamities are in the habit of chronicling either in romance or dry-as-dust descriptions of facts.

All of which the writer now proceeds to relate, beginning with so strange a coincidence as, perhaps, none but those readers who, in their voyage through life, have recognised that truth is more strange than the wildest fiction, will be willing to allow within the bounds of likelihood. However, to make a beginning--since the coincidence is true--the Emperor of the Moon was in those latitudes above described when, it being a bright hot morning with the sea already gleaming like molten brass, with the pitch between the planks already of the consistency of putty, and with the brasswork in such a state of heat that it was unsafe to touch it unless one wanted to leave the skin of his palms and fingers behind them, the look-out on the fo'c's'le head yelled: 'Sail, right ahead!' Now, since nothing of this kind, neither steamer nor sailing vessel, had been seen since they had northed out of the west-wind drift, and since, also, the liners were rarely found outside of the Equatorial current, this cry was sufficient to fill every one on board with a considerable amount of interest and excitement.

'Whereaway?' called out Charke, who was on the poop at this moment, the captain, his wife, and Bella being below at breakfast; and, ere the man could repeat that the sail was right ahead and about five miles off, all those others there had come on deck.

'How pretty it looks, shining in the sun!' the girl exclaimed, as she regarded it through a pair of marine glasses which her uncle had placed at her disposal; 'and how the sail glistens! It looks like a star.'

'Humph!' said the captain, as he gazed through his binocular. 'Like a star! True enough, so it does. And,' he said, addressing the two mates who were standing near him, 'we have seen such stars hereabouts before, eh? Do you think,' he went on, addressing Charke, lowering his voice a little, 'it is one of those?'

'Don't know,' Charke said, working his own glass a good deal. 'Can't see how it can be; too far to the east. Bussorah, Muscat, Ras-el-Had, Mohamrah, Oman--that's their mark. What should they be doing here?'

'All the same,' exclaimed Pooley, 'it's the rig, and the true shape, that of a Jargonelle pear cut in half. I do believe that's what it is. They might have been blown out of their course, you know, or chased by one of Her Majesty's ships. What do you think?'

'I think,' said Charke, who always spoke of everything connected with his calling in the most unemotional manner possible, 'I think we shall know when we come up to her, as we must do in about half an hour. While,' he continued, with a subdued tone in his voice, while his eye glinted sideways towards where Bella stood, 'we are not naval officers but only humble merchant seamen. There's no prize-money for us, therefore it is not our business.'

Bella had, of course, been listening attentively to all that had been said since she had come on deck after running lightly up the poop ladder, and now, hearing these words about 'naval officers' and 'prize-money,' her interest became more intense than before.

'Oh, uncle!' she exclaimed, putting her hand on his sleeve, 'what does it all mean? Naval officers and prize-money! That's not one of Her Majesty's ships?'

'No, my dear,' the captain replied, 'that is not one of Her Majesty's ships; but I shall be precious surprised if she doesn't turn out to be one of the very craft that Her Majesty's ships are always on the look-out for hereabouts, only rather closer in towards the African coast than this. She has all the build of an Arab slave-dhow.'

'Ay,' exclaimed Charke, who was still using his glass freely, from where he stood behind them. 'Ay, and something more than the build, too. If I'm not mistaken, her hatches have open gratings. What do you say, Fagg?' turning to his junior.

'Seems so, sir,' said that young officer, who never wasted more words than necessary, 'though I'm not quite sure.'

'I am,' replied Charke. 'I can see the grating slits perfectly as we get nearer.'

'What does that mean?' asked Bella, to whom this conversation conveyed nothing.

'It means,' said Pooley, 'that there is live stock below those gratings. Black cattle, as they used to be called on the West Coast. Ordinary hatches, to simply cover up cargo, are not made to let the air in. Cargo can do without breathing.'

'How awful!' Bella exclaimed, while through her mind there ran recollections of what she had heard or read casually of the slave trade in the old days, and also of the horrors of the North-West passage. 'How awful!'

'Bad enough,' replied Pooley, 'though not as bad as the old West African days, nor as shocking as you might think. The slave trade is a valuable one in this ocean, and those who are carried in the dhows are well enough fed. Rice, Indian corn, maize, and cassava is given them for food, and they have mats and matting galore to sleep on. Persian merchants and Arab gentlemen don't buy starved scarecrows for their domestic servants.'

'Whatever she is, and whatever her cargo is, there's something wrong with her,' the chief mate suddenly exclaimed. 'She's off the wind now, and the fellow who was at the helm has left it. It is abandoned. By Jove!' he exclaimed, 'he is lying wriggling by it. What on earth's the matter?'

'And,' added the second mate, 'there's a negro woman waving a red scarf. Something's wrong there, no doubt.'

'We shall be up to them in ten minutes,' the master said, all bustle and excitement now. 'Let go the foretack. Stand by to lower the starboard-quarter boat'; while, as he spoke, the men of the watch who had been leaning on the fife-rail rushed to the falls to be ready to let the boat sink to the water when the proper moment came. To Bella this seemed the most exciting moment of her life! There, in front of her, was one of those vessels, the name of which, or class of which, was almost unknown to her, except that, from odds and ends of conversation with her lover, she had gathered that these were the things in the chasing of which part of his existence might be passed until they met once more at Bombay. Here, on this glistening, glassy sea, the dhow lay--her one mast raking towards her bow instead of her stern, as is the case with most vessels of the Western world, and her long white triangle of a sail unfilled and flapping listlessly. A dhow--perhaps a slaver! as her uncle and the mate had said--a dhow in sore distress with, writhing by her helm, the man who had lately been steering her, and, over her bow, that negro woman waving frantically the red scarf. Excitement there was, indeed, in all this; excitement which caused Bella, even as she eagerly watched the vessel they were approaching, to wonder how the striking up of the band at a ball, or the ring of the prompter's bell ere the curtain rose on a drama that all London was flocking to see, could have ever stirred her pulses. What were they, those trivialities, to the smiling, glistening face of this Eastern sea--to the horror and the cruelties that this now tranquil ocean's bosom had enfolded through the ages.

Still the negress waved, not recognising, perhaps, in her blind, besotted, dumb, animal-like ignorance that help was at hand, and still, through their glasses, they could see that he who had steered the dhow now lay motionless. Then, at her ear, as the Emperor came within six cable-lengths of the dhow, her uncle gave a few rapid orders, the second mate, accompanied by the boat's crew, jumped into the quarter-boat--the man at the wheel luffed until the vessel had not a motion in her. Swiftly the boat was lowered, the rudder and thole pins shipped, and she was on her way to the dhow.

'What do you make of it?' the master roared to Fagg ten minutes later, as, by then, the Emperor of the Moon had come closer to the dhow through the motion of the swell. 'What?'

'I don't know what to make of it, sir,' the second mate called back. 'The man who was steering is, I think, dead. He does not move, and there is a white film over his eyes. The woman who waved the handkerchief seems well, but I cannot understand what she means. She does nothing but howl and point below.'

'Are the hatches grated?'

'Yes, sir, and there are four negroes beneath them. It is a slave dhow for certain. The negroes are shackled and handcuffed.'

'Have you searched further?'

'I am going to do so now. The ship is settling, I think. There is a kind of poop superstructure forming cabins.'

'Search at once; then bring all alive on board us.'

In a moment Mr. Fagg had disappeared into what he had termed a 'kind of poop superstructure,' and, while he was in it, all on board the Emperor were occupied in speculating on what could have brought a slaver so far to the East and out of her ordinary course, and also in wondering what the mate would find during his further search.

But that wonderment was soon to be resolved, for, ere Mr. Fagg had been out of their sight five minutes, he rushed back from the superstructure to the deck, and bawled through his hands:

'There is a young naval officer lying in the poop cabin, and he is slightly wounded. His name is--is----'

'What?' roared Pooley, astonished at the mate's hesitation.

'It is marked on the rim of his cap--inside. It is--I--I am afraid it is Miss Waldron's fiancé. The--the--name is Bampfyld.'

CHAPTER IX

[ Come over, come home
Through the salt sea foam.]

Never, perhaps, on all that old highway of the waters, that silent road along which so many had steered their course to fabled Ormuz and to Ind, nor amidst fierce sea-fights 'twixt Arab and Persian, or Arab and European in later centuries, nor in the howl of storm when the waters closed around the shipwrecked and doomed, had there arisen a more piercing shriek than that which now issued from Bella Waldron's blanched lips.

'My God!' she screamed, repeating the second mate's words. '"The name is Bampfyld!" Oh, it's Gilbert--Gilbert! There is no other in the Navy List. Let me go to him, uncle!'

'No, no,' the master said, while good Mrs. Pooley put her arms round the girl as she stood there by the poop-rails and endeavoured to calm and soothe her. 'No, no, Bella; they will bring him on board directly, then,'--and in his desire to ease the girl's heart he raised the ghost of a smile to his lips--'then you shall nurse him till he is well. Yet,' he muttered to Charke, as he walked over to where the first mate stood, 'yet, how on earth does he find himself in that infernal dhow!'

'Heaven knows,' the other answered. 'But, perhaps, 'tis not so strange, after all. There may have been a fight between his ship and the slaver--though there's not much fight in them when they get a sight of the British Flag!--or he may have been sent to board her and got cut down, or half-a-hundred things. All of which,' he added, with his now usual cynicism, 'are equally likely or unlikely. Anyhow, he is here--or will be in a few moments--and we shall have him for a passenger to Bombay. Your niece is in luck, sir,' and he turned on his heel and went down the ladder to the deck to see to the raising of the boat, which was now making its way back to the ship.

To Stephen Charke, still loving the girl as madly as he did, still raging inwardly at the knowledge that every knot which the ship made was bringing her nearer to the man who, as he considered, had torn her from him, this incident seemed the last and most crushing blow of all. God knows what hopes the mate had cherished in his bosom since first he had learnt that Bella was to be a passenger in her uncle's ship for about four months; what ideas might have been revolving in his mind as to whether, in those four months, something extraordinary, something almost unheard of--not to be dreamt of nor foreseen--might happen to give him one more chance of winning her. He was a romantically-minded man, a man with so rich an imagination that, to him, there sometimes came ideas that few are ever burdened with. And, in that full and teeming imagination, there had been pictured to him visions of the Emperor of the Moon being wrecked and Bella and he alone spared--he, of course, saving her at the peril of his own life and winning her away from her more aristocratic lover by so doing. Or, he dreamt of that lover being himself wrecked and lost, or pierced by an Arab spear in some affray, or shot in a hand-to-hand fight with a particularly bold slaver (since he knew well enough that the ships of the Bombay station were often enough down here) or--or--or he cherished any mad vision that first rose to his brain.

And now--now--this very man, this successful rival, this aristocratic naval officer, with his high birth and future peerage, was actually being brought aboard the ship where the woman was whom they both loved--brought on board 'slightly wounded,' and his own last chance thus gone. Gone for ever now! Perhaps, therefore, it was no wonder he should bite his lip and smother unholy murmurs deep down in his throat; perhaps, too, he merits compassion. He had loved this girl fondly since first he set eyes on her, and once, at one time, he thought he had almost won her. Then this other had come in his way, had swept him out of Bella's heart, or the approach to it, and his chance was over. Yet, once again, they had met through an almost unheard of, and scarcely to be imagined, opportunity, and--lo! here was his successful rival once more at hand to thwart him. It was hard on him, or, as he muttered to himself, 'devilish rough.'

The quarter-boat was coming back to the ship now, Fagg steering her, while, between him and the stroke oar, there lay the body of the young naval officer, clad in his 'whites.' And again as Bella, madly whispering 'Gilbert, Gilbert, my darling,' stood by the head of the accommodation ladder--which had been lowered while the boat was gone to the dhow--the men brought her lover gently up and laid him on the deck under the awning.

'Oh, Gilbert!' she cried again, as now she bent over him, while stroking his hair, which, on the left side of his head, was all matted with thick coagulated blood, 'Oh, Gilbert! to think that we should meet thus! Sir!' she screamed to Fagg, who was about to descend again to the boat to fetch off the others still in the dhow, 'where is he wounded? Where? Have you had time to discover?'

'I have looked him over, Miss Waldron, and, to tell you the truth, I do not think there is much the matter with him.'

'Thank God! Oh, thank God!'

'That blood,' the second mate continued, 'comes from a heavy contusion at the side of his head, but the skull is uninjured. Also there is no concussion--observe the pupils of the eyes are not at all dilated.' Then he turned away and went swiftly down the ladder again, muttering that, if he was to save the Arabs and the negroes, there was no time to be wasted. The dhow was filling fast, he added. There was a big hole in her below the waterline, and a quarter of an hour would see the end of her.

And now Gilbert was carried to the cabin corresponding with Bella's on the port side of the vessel, aft of the saloon, and Mrs. Pooley, with the steward, went in to undress him, telling Bella that, as soon as he was comfortably placed in the bunk, she should come and take her place by his side. Whereon the girl, distracted by both her hopes and fears--hopes that the second mate was right in his surmises as to her lover's wounds, and fears that he was wrong--sat herself down on the great locker that was in the gangway, and gave herself up to tearful meditations.

'Ah, if he should die!' she murmured; 'if he should die! Then my heart will break.'

Though, as you shall see, and have undoubtedly divined, Gilbert was not to die then, at least.

But, by this time, other things were taking place above which were almost as startling as the discovery of Lieutenant Bampfyld in that slave-dhow. Startling, not only because of the unexplained cause that had brought the Arab slaver into this portion of the Indian Ocean, but also because of the strange and mysterious behaviour of those others who were now being conveyed on board the Emperor of the Moon. Ere they came, however, Mr. Fagg had sent over information surprising enough in itself, and sufficient to prepare all on board the ship for what, a little later, they were to see.

'The owner--if he is the owner,' he cried, 'the man who fell down while steering, is dead. He is stiffening. I presume I had best leave him to go down with the dhow?'

'Ay,' called back Pooley. 'Ay. What about the others?'

'I cannot make them out. The negress seems well enough, but terribly frightened. As for the four men below, they all appear blind. We have taken their shackles off and they grope their way about as though in the dark. My men have to lead them up the ladders--yet their eyes look clear enough.'

'Have they been kept in the dark, think you, and is the sun dazzling them now?'

'No, sir. The open gratings have furnished the part of the hold they were in with plenty of light.' He paused a moment, and those in the Emperor saw him gazing down steadfastly to that hold; then he called again: 'We must come away now, sir. The water is pouring in. The dhow will not swim much longer.'

'Do so,' answered back Pooley; and five minutes afterwards the boat was on her way to the ship, laden with the rescued negroes. Mr. Fagg had proved right in his surmise as to the necessity for leaving the slaver at once. For, ere he came on board, she was observed to heel over a little to starboard, then to further do so with a jerk; then, suddenly, she righted until she was on a level keel--and, next, sank below the waves like a stone, the body of the dead man, who had fallen down while steering, alone remaining above the heaving waters, and being swirled round and round in the whirlpool caused by the wreck, until it too went down.

Creeping up the companion, their hands directed to the side-ropes by the sailors; feeling the steps with their huge splay feet--as a mule feels its way along the thin line of insecure path that rounds the smooth face of a precipice--those stricken men came; huge, splendid specimens of the swart negroes of Wyassa and Wahiyou and Wagindo, whom the Arab slaver ships from Kilwa, below Zanzibar, and transports to Bussorah and Mohamra, whence they often reach the more distant Turkish harems. Now, looking at them as they stood on the deck of the Emperor of the Moon, it seemed as though their course was almost run. For, though these men would never be slaves to Arab or Persian or Turk, of what use to himself or any one else is an unhappy blind nigger who, to exist at all, must work like a dray-horse?

'Poor wretches!' said Pooley to Charke as they both stood regarding these blacks, 'see how the shackles have eaten into their ankles. Poor brutes! They say that sometimes these fellows sell themselves willingly into slavery; I doubt much if these have done so. Ah, well! we must take them with us to Bombay, where, at least, they will be free. I wish,' he added, 'we could communicate with them somehow and learn who and what they are.'

'Perhaps,' said Charke quietly, unemotionally as ever, 'Lieutenant Bampfyld can tell us when he comes to. Since he was in the dhow, he probably knows what she was and where she came from.' Then, breaking off to cast his eye around, he said: 'Sir, there is a breeze coming aft. Shall we not make sail?'

'Ay,' cried Pooley, springing to the poop, 'ay, we have had little enough wind for some days. Summon the watch.'

A few moments later the order to square the yards thundered along the deck; the men rushed to the braces. Far off, up from the dusky, wizard south, the wind was coming as they fisted the canvas, and the Emperor, heeling over, gathered way and sped once more towards India. She gathered way faster and faster as outer jib and topsails were loosed and sheeted home, fore and main top-gallant sails and spanker yards braced sharp up, and main-sail, main-royal and mizzen top-gallant sails set, as well as jibs and staysails. She talked, as the sailors say, as she went through the water; she hummed and sang beneath the breeze that came up from far down by the Antarctic circle--a breeze whose cool breath was gone and was, instead, perfumed now by the warm spicy odours of adjacent Mauritius and Reunion. Away, over the vast waste of golden waters she flew, and the master, standing on the poop, called down to his first mate joyfully to ask him if this would not do well enough for Bombay.

'Ay, ay, sir,' answered Charke, turning round from giving orders to the men aloft to answer his chief. 'Ay, ay, sir.'

While to himself he muttered: 'Bombay! India! Well, when we are there, all is ended for me!'

CHAPTER X

[THE GROWING TERROR]

The sailor is, as all the world knows, a light-hearted, mercurial creature. Face to face with death in some form or other during every hour of his life--although, often, the mere presence of death is neither known nor suspected--he is only too elated and happy when momentarily without anything to cause him anxiety. Such was the case now with Captain Pooley, since his beautiful ship was rapidly picking up all the time she had lost by lack of wind and delays, 'and since,' as he jovially phrased it, 'all his new passengers were doing well.'

'First and foremost,' he said that evening, as he sat at the head of his table with Bella in the place of honour on his right hand, his wife on the left, and Mr. Fagg opposite to him, while his honest, sunburnt face gleamed rubicund beneath the inch of white under his hair which his cap had preserved from the sun, 'Bella's young man is all right. Then Bella's new plaything, the tiger, takes kindly to its lodgings--though you will have to sell it, my child, directly we get to Bombay, and distribute the money it fetches among the men. Then those wretched slaves--even they will eat and drink, won't they, Fagg?'

'Not much of that, sir,' the second mate answered, who was eating and drinking pretty well himself, however; 'they don't care to do much of either. They make a good deal of moaning up in that deck-cabin forward which you have given them. The woman, however, seems all right. I suppose the lieutenant has not been able to tell you much about the dhow yet, Miss Waldron?' he asked, bending forward a little as he addressed her.

'At present,' she replied, 'we have had little conversation. He says, however, that he sent me a telegram from Bombay, telling me not to start as the Briseus was coming down here. He only came-to an hour ago, however,' she went on, while a ravishing blush swept over her face, 'and we--we--have had so much to----'

'Spare her, Fagg,' said Pooley, with a laugh, and passing the claret at the same time. 'Spare her. Suppose you woke up one fine afternoon and found your sweetheart bending over you in your berth and whispering all sorts of endearing things in your ears, as well as kiss----'

'Uncle!' cried Bella, while Mrs. Pooley touched her husband's arm reprovingly with her forefinger, and Mr. Fagg hid his face behind the vase of brilliant Cape gooseberries on the table. 'Uncle!' Whereon the bluff, good-natured sailor desisted, and began to speculate on the blindness with which the rescued negroes were attacked, and on that attack being, as he imagined, a recent one. 'They capture these poor wretches inland,' he went on musingly, 'in the big lake region as often as not; but, as far as I have ever heard, blindness is not one of their afflictions. Moreover, these Arab owners and captains wouldn't buy blind slaves, either for selling farther north, or for using as sailors in their dhows. Therefore, I take it, this blindness must have come on them since they were shipped. That's strange, isn't it?' while, as he spoke, he rose, and went to his neat mahogany bookcase which was securely fastened to one of the saloon's bulkheads, and took down the two medical works he possessed--the one dealing with all general human complaints to which our flesh is heir, and the other with tropical diseases more especially. Yet neither under the heading of 'Eye,' nor 'Blindness,' nor 'Optics,' could he find aught that bore upon the subject; nor, in his book on tropical complaints, could he discover any information that might enlighten him as to why the four negroes should be so stricken.

He spoke again, however, after turning over the leaves of these erudite volumes a second time, saying: 'Fever, I know, sometimes produces blindness as an after-effect, yet--well, we have all seen these fellows, and there's no fever in them, I should say. Oh, deuce take this confusion of tongues!' he exclaimed irritably; 'if it did not exist we could find out so much from the sufferers themselves. Bella, our only hope is in you and your patient. If Lieutenant Bampfyld can't tell us something, we shall never know who these men and the woman are, where they came from, what is the matter with them, and to whom the dhow belonged. Can he speak anything but English, child?'

'He knows some Hindustani,' Bella replied; 'and, I think he said, some words of Swahili. He has taken up Eastern languages in the Service, which was one of the reasons for his being appointed to the Briseus. He may be some help. At least he can tell us how he came on board that horrid ship.'

As she spoke, eight-bells struck on deck, and, as the sound came through the skylight, both she and Mr. Fagg rose, the girl doing so because it was the hour at which she intended to visit Gilbert again, and the latter because it was time to relieve Stephen Charke, who would now come below to take his supper. For Bella had fixed this hour for paying her last evening visit to her future husband because she knew that the second mate would then descend, and she was never now desirous of being more in his company than necessary.

She therefore left the saloon before Fagg could have relieved Charke, and, going to the cabin in which Gilbert Bampfyld lay, pushed back the curtain that hung at the door and went in to him, while observing as she did so that he was awake and gazing upwards as he lay. And she saw that he smiled happily on perceiving her, and whispered the word 'Darling' as she advanced to his bedside.

'You are better, dearest,' she said, bending over him and putting her hand on his forehead, which was cool and moist. 'Much better. Aunt will come soon with fresh bandages for your poor head, and then you will have a good night's refreshing sleep. And to-morrow, perhaps, you will be able to tell us how you came to be in that hideous slaver. Oh, Bertie!'--for so she often called him--'what a mercy it was that we found you as we did. And what a miracle that we should have met thus. Home-keeping and narrow-minded people would say, if they read it all in a book, that such a thing was unnatural and impossible.'

Their first meeting, their joy at discovering that they had come together again in this marvellous manner; their rapture when, a few hours before, Gilbert Bampfyld had emerged from his stupor and unconsciousness, has not been forgotten, although the description of it has been omitted. Omitted for the simple reason that most of us have been, or are, lovers; most of us have known in our time, or know now--and those are the happy ones!--the sweet, unutterable joy with which such meetings are welcomed. Who does not remember the sudden, quickened beat of the heart at some period of their existence, as they met again the one they loved the best of all in this world; the creature upon whom their thoughts were for ever dwelling, and from whom those thoughts, however wandering they had heretofore been, were, at last, never more to roam! Picture to yourself, therefore, what rhapsody was Bella's when, forgetting everything else but that she held her lover to her heart, she wept over his salvation from an awful, swift, impending death; picture also to yourself the delirious joy which coursed through Gilbert's now unclouded mind, as he found himself in her arms--with her--close to her. Picture this, and no further description is needed of their meeting in that cool, darkened cabin of the old ship. Imagine for yourself what your own ecstasy would have been in such or kindred circumstances, and you possess the knowledge of what theirs was.

'Darling,' he said again now, as she held to his lips a cooling drink that she had brought into the cabin with her, 'darling, I can tell you in half-a-dozen sentences or less----'

'No,' she said. 'No; not now. To-morrow, when you have slept----'

'Yes, now. Why, dearest, I am well! I could take the middle watch to-night if necessary, or--or--do anything that a sailor may be called on to do. And as for finding me in that dhow, why, it's the simplest thing on earth--or the waters. Listen. The Briseus, as you would have learnt by that telegram I sent you if you had ever received it, was suddenly ordered to join the Cape Squadron--dhow-catching. And I can tell you we were not so very long before the game began, since by the time we were abreast of Kilwy--which is the southern limit of the legal slave trade--we fell in with twelve dhows, one of them being our friend from which I was rescued by your people. And you may depend we were after them like lightning, while beginning to ply them with shell and shot from our little gun forward. They scattered, of course, though some got hit and lay disabled on the water, while I went off in the whaler with her crew to attack one that seemed badly knocked about. The one in which I was when found by you.'