Transcriber's Note:
Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.

HEART OF OAK

VOL. I.

PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
LONDON

HEART OF OAK

A THREE-STRANDED YARN

BY

W. CLARK RUSSELL

AUTHOR OF
'THE WRECK OF THE GROSVENOR' 'THE PHANTOM DEATH'
'THE CONVICT SHIP' ETC.

IN THREE VOLUMES—VOL. I.

LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY
1895

CONTENTS

OF

THE FIRST VOLUME

HEART OF OAK

CHAPTER I MISS OTWAY OPENS THE STORY

I date the opening of this narrative, February 24, 1860.

I was in the drawing-room of my father's house on the afternoon of that day, awaiting the arrival of Captain Burke, of the ship 'Lady Emma,' and his wife, Mary Burke, who had nursed me and brought me up, and indeed been as a mother to me after my own mother's death in 1854; but she had left us to marry Captain Edward Burke, and had already made two voyages round the world with him, and was presently going a third.

My father sat beside the fire reading a newspaper. His name was Sir Mortimer Otway; he was fourth baronet and a colonel; had seen service in India, though he had long left the army to settle down upon his little seaside estate. He was a man of small fortune. Having said this, I need not trouble you with more of his family history.

I was his only surviving child, and my name is Marie; I have no other Christian name than that; it was my mother's. My age was twenty and my health delicate, so much so that Captain and Mrs. Burke were coming from London expressly to talk over a scheme of my going round the world in their ship for the benefit of my appetite and spirits and voice, and perhaps for my lungs, though to be sure they were still sound at that date.

Ours was a fine house, about a hundred years old; it stood within a stone's throw of the brink of the cliff; walls and hedges encompassed some seventy or eighty acres of land, pleasantly wooded in places, and there was a charming scene of garden on either hand the carriage drive. I stood at the window with my eyes fastened upon the sea, which went in a slope of grey steel to the dark sky of the horizon, where here and there some roaming mass of vapour was hoary with snow. It was blowing a fresh breeze, and the throb of the ocean was cold with the ice-like glances of the whipped foam. Presently it thickened overhead, and snow fell in a squall of wind that darkened the early afternoon into evening with smoking lines of flying flakes. The sea faded as the reflection of a star in troubled water. My father put down his newspaper and came to the window. He was a tall man, bald, high-coloured; his eyes were large and black, soft in expression, and steady in gaze; his beard and moustache were of an iron grey, he was sixty years old, yet still preserved the soldier's trick of carrying his figure to the full height of his stature.

'At what hour do you say they're to be here?'

'At three.'

He glanced at his watch, then out of the window.

'That doesn't look like a scene where a delicate girl's going to get strong!'

'No,' I answered with a shiver.

'But a crown piece on a chart will often cover the area of worse weather than this, and for leagues beyond all shall be glorious sunshine and blue water.'

'It's hard to realise,' said I, straining my eyes through the snow for a sight of the sea.

'Well,' he exclaimed, turning his back upon the window, 'Bradshaw is an able man; his instances of people whom a sea voyage has cured are remarkable, and weigh with me. Living by the seaside is not like going a voyage. It's the hundred climates which make the medicine. Then the sights and sounds of the ocean are tonical. Are sailors ever ill at sea? Yes, because they carry their sickness on board with them, or they decay by bad usage, or perish by poisonous cargoes. The sea kills no man—save by drowning.'

He took a turn about the room, and I stared through the window at the flying blankness.

'Steam is more certain,' he went on, thinking aloud. 'You can time yourself by steam. But then for health it doesn't give you all you want. At least we can't make it fit in your case. It would be otherwise if I had the means or was able to accompany you, or if I could put you in charge of some sober, trustworthy old hand. Steam must signify several changes to give you the time at sea that Bradshaw prescribes. It's out of the question. No; Mrs. Burke's scheme is the practicable one, and I shall feel easy when I think of you as watched over by your old nurse. But I have several questions to ask. When are they coming? Have they missed their train?'

About five minutes after this they were shown in.

Mrs. Burke, my old nurse, was a homely, plain, soft-hearted woman, a little less than forty years of age at this time. She was stout, and pale, though she was now a traveller, with large, short-sighted blue eyes, a flat face, and a number of chins. She was dressed as you would wish a homely skipper's wife to be: in a neat bonnet with a heavy Shetland veil wrapped around it; a stout mantle, and a gown of thick warm stuff. She sank a little curtsey to my father, who eagerly stepped forward and cordially greeted his old servant; in an instant I had my arms round her neck. You will believe I loved her when I tell you she had come to my mother's service when I was a month old, and had been my nurse and maid, and looked after me as a second mother down to the time when she left us to be married.

Her husband stood smiling behind her. He was short, an Irishman: he looked the completest sailor you can imagine—that is, a merchant sailor. He was richly coloured by the sun, and his small, sharp, merry, liquid blue eyes gleamed and trembled and sparkled in their sockets like a pair of stars in some reflected hectic of sunset in the eastern sky. Everything about him told of heartiness and good humour: there was something arch in the very curl of his little slip of whiskers. A set of fine white teeth lighted up his face like a smile of kindness whenever he parted his lips. He was dressed in the blue cloth coat and velvet collar, the figured waist-coat and bell-shaped trousers, of the merchant service in those days, and over all he wore a great pilot-cloth coat, whose tails fell nearly to his heels; inside of which, as inside a sentry box, he stood up on slightly curved, easily yielding legs, a model of a clean, wholesome, hearty British skipper.

Of course I had met him before. I had attended his marriage, and was never so dull but that the recollection of his face on that occasion would make me smile, and often laugh aloud. He had also with his wife spent a day with us after the return of his ship from the first voyage they had made together. My father shook him cordially by the hand. He then led him into the library, whilst I took Mrs. Burke upstairs.

We could have found a thousand things to say to each other; there were memories of sixteen years of my life common to us both. I could have told her of my engagement and shown her my sweetheart's picture; but I was anxious to hear Captain Burke on the subject of my proposed voyage, and so after ten minutes we went downstairs, where we found my father and the captain seated before a glowing fire, already deep in talk.

The captain jumped up when I entered, my father placed a chair for Mrs. Burke, who curtseyed her thanks, and the four of us sat.

'Well, now, Mrs. Burke,' said my father, addressing her very earnestly, 'your husband's ship is your suggestion, you know. You've sailed round the world in her and you can tell me more about the sea than your husband knows'—the captain gave a loud, nervous laugh—'as to the suitability of such a ship and such a voyage as you recommend to Miss Otway.'

'I am sure, Sir Mortimer,' answered Mrs. Burke, 'that it'll do her all the good, and more than all the good, that the doctors promise. I should love to have her with me.' She turned to look at me affectionately. 'Since you can't accompany her, sir, I'd not like to think of her at sea, and me without the power of caring for her. No steamer could be safer than the "Lady Emma."' The captain uttered a nervous laugh of good-humoured derision of steamers. 'If you will trust my dear young lady to me, I'll warrant you, Sir Mortimer, there's not the most splendid steamship afloat that shall make her a comfortabler home than my husband's vessel.'

'I have some knowledge of the sea, Captain Burke,' said my father. 'I have made the voyage to India. What is the tonnage of the "Lady Emma"?'

'Six hundred, sir.'

'That's a small ship. The "Hindostan" was fourteen hundred tons.'

'You don't want stilts aboard of six hundred tons to look over the head of the biggest sea that can run,' answered the captain.

'She sails beautifully and is a sweet-looking ship,' said my old nurse.

'When do you start?' asked my father.

'I hope to get away by the end of next month, sir.'

'Your little ships, I understand, which are not passenger vessels, often sail very deeply loaded and are unsafe in that way,' said my father.

'There can be nothing wrong with a man's freeboard, sir, when his cargo is what mine's going to be next trip: stout, brandy, whisky, samples of tinned goods, a lot of theatre scenery, builder's stuff like as doors and window frames, patent fuel and oil-cake.'

'Gracious, what a mixture!' cried his wife.

'What I suppose is termed a general cargo?' said my father; 'not the best of cargoes in case of fire.'

'What cargo is good when it comes to that, sir?' asked Captain Burke, smiling. 'We must never think of risks at sea any more than we do ashore. To my fancy there's more peril in a railway journey from here to London than in a voyage from the Thames round the world.'

'Miss Otway must be under somebody's care, Sir Mortimer,' said Mrs. Burke.

'How do you think she looks?'

'Not as she'll look when I bring her back to you, sir.'

'It's astonishing what a lot of colouring matter there is for the blood in sea air,' said Captain Burke. 'When I was first going to sea I was as pale as a baker; or, as my old father used to say, as a nun's lips with kissing of beads; afterwards——' he paused with an arch look at his wife. 'And the colour isn't always that of rum either,' he added.

'Where does the ship first sail to, nurse?' said I.

'Tell my young lady, Edward,' she answered.

'We're bound to Valparaiso, and that's by way of Cape Horn,' said the captain. 'We there discharge, fill afresh, and thence to Sydney, New South Wales, thence to Algoa Bay, and so home—a beautiful round voyage.'

'Right round the world, and so many lovely lands to view besides!' exclaimed Mrs. Burke, looking at me; 'always in one ship, too, in one home, Sir Mortimer, with me to see to her. Oh, I shall love to have her!'

My father looked out of the window at the wild whirl of snow that had thickened till it was all flying whiteness through the glass, with the coming and going of the thunder of a squall in the chimney, and a subdued note of the snarling of surf, and said, 'Cape Horn will be a cold passage for Miss Otway.'

'It's more bracing than cold,' said Captain Burke. 'People that talk of Cape Horn and the ice there don't know, I reckon, that parrots and humming birds are to be met with in Strait le Maire. I was shipmate with a man who's been picking fuchsias in such another snowfall as this down on the coast of Patagonia.'

'Miss Marie, you should see an iceberg; it's a beautiful sight when lighted up by the sun,' said my nurse.

'Beautifuller when under the moon and lying becalmed like a floating city of marble, and nothing breaking the quiet save the breathing of grampuses,' exclaimed the captain.

In this strain we continued to talk for some time. My father better understood than I did that my very life might depend upon my going a voyage, and spending many months among the climates of the ocean. All the doctors he had consulted about me were agreed in this, and the last and the most eminent, whose opinion we had taken, had advised it with such gravity and emphasis as determined him upon making at once the best arrangements practicable, seeing that he was unable to accompany me for several reasons; one, and a sufficient, being his dislike of the sea when on it. Our long talk ended in his proposing to return with Captain Burke to London to view the 'Lady Emma,' which was lying in the East India Docks, and my old nurse consented to stop with me until he returned, so that we could chat about the voyage and think over the many little things which might be necessary to render my trip as happy and comfortable as foresight could contrive. The one drawback that kept my father hesitating throughout this meeting with Captain Burke and his wife was this: the 'Lady Emma' would not carry a surgeon. But that question, they decided, would be left until he had seen the ship, and satisfied himself that she would make me such a sea-home as he could with an easy heart send me away in.

CHAPTER II MARIE'S SWEETHEART

My father went to London next day with Captain Burke. I denied myself to callers, and until my father came back remained alone with my old nurse, once or twice taking a ramble along the seashore when the sun shone; but my health was bad, and I had as little taste for walking as for company.

I suffered from a sort of spiritlessness and a dull indifference to things. My health was the cause of my low-heartedness: but there were many reasons now why I should feel wretched. It was not the merely leaving my father and my home for a twelvemonth and longer, to wander about the ocean in a ship in search of colour for my cheeks and light for my eyes and strength for my voice; but for my health I should have been married in the previous October; and now my marriage must be put off till the sea had made me strong, and I was to be sundered from the man I loved for months and months.

My betrothal had happened whilst my old nurse Burke was away; it was therefore news to her, and she listened to all about it with eager, affectionate attention. I told her that my sweetheart was Mr. Archibald Moore, the son of a private banker in the City of London. I had met him at a ball in the neighbourhood, and within a month of that we were engaged. He was the sweetest, dearest, handsomest—I found I did not want words when it came to my praising him and speaking of my love.

She said: 'Does he often come to see you, Miss Marie?'

'Often. Every week. He is occupied with his father in the bank, and can only spare from Saturday to Monday.'

'Will he be here next Saturday?'

'I hope so.'

'Dear heart! Oh, Miss Marie, I have a thought: will not his father spare him to sail with us, so that you can be together?'

I shook my head.

'But why not?'

'Father would not hear of it.'

She reflected and exclaimed, 'And Sir Mortimer would be quite right. To be sure it would not do. Is it not a pity that we have to live for our neighbours? Neighbours have broken folks' hearts, as well as their fortunes. Why shouldn't you two be together on board my husband's ship? But the neighbour says No, and people have to live for him. Drat the prying, squinting starer into one's windows! he forces us to dress out a better table than our purses can afford, and to give balls when we ought to be cutting down the weekly bills. But he don't like the sea, my dear. There are no neighbours at sea. Unfortunately the wretch stops ashore; people have to come back, and so he has 'em again!'

Mrs. Burke made much of Mr. Moore's portrait. She had never seen a handsomer gentleman. What was his age? I answered 'Thirty.' 'All the sense,' said she, 'that a man's likely to have he'll have got between thirty and forty. It'll comfort you, Miss Marie, to remember that Mr. Moore's thirty when you're away. He's old enough to know what he's about: he's made up his mind; there'll be no swerving.'

This was a sort of gabble to please me. She knew my nature, and when and how to say just the sort of thing to set my spirits dancing. In truth the part of my proposed banishment hardest to bear was the fear that a long absence would cool the heart of the man I loved.

On Friday Mrs. Burke left us to rejoin her husband, whose home was in Stepney, and on that day my father returned. He was in good spirits. He had seen the 'Lady Emma' and thought her a fine ship. She was classed high, and was yacht-like as a model. Mr. Moore had accompanied him and Captain Burke to the docks, and was wonderfully pleased with the vessel and her accommodation.

'We've got over the difficulty of a doctor,' said my father.

'How?' I answered.

'Burke has consented to engage one. I told him if he would carry a surgeon, by which I mean feed and accommodate him in the ship, I would bear the other charges. He has a month before him, and may find a man who wants a change of air and who'll give his services for a cabin and food. Or, which is more likely, he'll meet with some intelligent young gentleman who wants to try his 'prentice hand on sailors before starting in practice ashore. Doctors find sailors useful as subjects; they can experiment on them without professional anxiety as to the result.'

Now that it was as good as settled I was to sail in the 'Lady Emma,' I looked forward to meeting Mr. Moore next day with dread and misery. I was going away alone. All the risks of the sea lay before me. I was low and poor in health. Who could be sure that the ocean would do for me all that the doctors had promised? Who was to say it would let me return alive? I might never meet my love again. When I said good-bye to the man who by this time should have been my husband, it might be for ever, and the thought made the prospect of meeting him next day almost insupportable.

He found me alone in the drawing-room. The servant admitted him and closed the door. I stood up very white and crying; he took me in his arms and kissed me, led me to a chair and sat beside me, holding my hand and nursing it, and looking into my face for a little while, scarcely able to speak. How shall I describe him, whose love for me, as you shall presently read, was such as to make my love for him, when I think of him as he sat beside me that day, as I follow him in memory afterwards, too deep for human expression? He was tall, fair, eyes of a dark blue, deep but gentle, and easily impassioned. He wore a large yellow moustache, and was as perfectly the model of an English gentleman in appearance as Captain Burke was a merchant skipper.

He began immediately on the subject of my voyage.

'It's hard we should be parted; but I like your little ship, Marie. I've not met your old nurse, but I judge from what your father tells me you could not be in better and safer hands. Captain Burke seems a fine fellow—a thorough, practical seaman. I wish I could accompany you.'

'Oh, Archie, I shall be so long alone!'

'Ay, but you're to get well, dearest. I've thought the scheme over thoroughly. If there's nothing for it but a voyage as the doctors insist, your father's plans, your old nurse's suggestion, could not be bettered. Who would look after you on board a big steamer? There is nobody to accompany you—no relative, nobody we know, no party of people I can hear of to entrust you to—making, I mean, such a voyage as the doctors advise. I should be distracted when you were gone in thinking of you as alone on a steamship at sea, with not a soul to take the least interest in you saving the captain; and captains, I believe, do not very much love these obligations. Civility, of course, everybody expects, but a big ship to look after is a big business to attend to.'

'It will be a terribly long voyage.'

'To Valparaiso, and then to Sydney and Algoa Bay, and home. About fourteen months. So Burke calculates it. A long time, Marie; but if it is to make you strong, it will not be too long.'

In this wise we talked; then, there being two hours of daylight left, I put on my hat and jacket and, taking my lover's arm, went with him slowly down the great gap in the cliffs to the seashore. It was sheltered down here. The yellow sunshine lay upon the brown sand, and flashed in the lifting lengths of seaweed writhing amidst the surf, and had a sense of April warmth, though it was a keen wind that then blew—a northerly wind, strong, with a hurry of white clouds like endless flocks of sheep, scampering southwards. The sands made a noble promenade, surf-furrowed and hard as wood; the breakers tumbled close beside us with a loud roar of thunder, and exquisite was the picture of the trending cliffs, snowclad, gleaming with a delicate moonlike light in the pale airy blue distance. All sights and sounds of sky and sea appealed to me now with a meaning I had never before found in them. I would stop my lover as we walked, to observe the swift and beautiful miracle of the moulding of a breaker as it arched out of the troubled brine, soaring, into a snowstorm, arching headlong to the sands with the foam flying from its rushing peak like white feathers streaming from a dazzling line of helmets; and once or twice as we talked, I would pause to mark the flight of the gulls stemming the wind aslant in curves of beauty, or sailing seawards on level, tremorless wings, and flinging a salt ocean song with their short raw cries through the harsh bass and storming accompaniment of the surf.

'If the breeze does not make me strong here, why should the sea make me strong elsewhere?' I said.

'It is the change. I have heard of desperate cases made well by travel.'

'It is hard! To think that my health should force me to that!' I exclaimed, pointing to a little vessel that had rounded out of a point two miles distant, and was lifting the white seas to the level of her bows as she sank and soared before the fresh wind, every sail glowing like a star, her rigging gleaming like golden wire, her decks sparkling when she inclined them towards us, as though the glass and brass about her were rubies and diamonds. 'I wonder if she will ever return, Archie?'

'Why not? Cheer up, dearest.'

We watched her till she had shrunk into a little square of dim orange, with the freckled green running in hardening ridges southwards, where the shadow of the early February evening was deepening like smoke, making the ocean distance past the sail look as wide again to the imagination as the truth was. I shuddered and involuntarily pressed my lover's arm.

'The wind is too cold for you,' he said, and we slowly returned home up through the great split in the cliff amongst whose hollows and shoulders the roar of the surf was echoed back in quick, sudden, intermittent notes like the sound of guns at sea.

From this date until I sailed my time was wholly occupied in preparing for the voyage. I went to London with my father to shop; Mrs. Burke accompanied us, and half our purchases were owing to her advice. Fortunately for her, as the wife of a sailor who was able to take her to sea with him, she was childless, and could afford to give me much of her time. They reckoned I was to be away fourteen months, but Captain Burke advised us, having regard to the character of the voyage, especially to the passage from Valparaiso to Sydney, to stock for a round trip of eighteen months: this he thought would provide for a good margin. Clothes for all the climates, from the roasting calms of the line down to the frost-black gales of the Horn, were purchased; many delicacies were laid in—a hundred elegant trifles of wine and condiments, of sweetmeats and potted stuffs, to supplement the captain's plain table or to find me a relish for some hungry howling hour when the galley fire should be washed out. Mr. Moore wrote that he frequently visited the ship, and that he and Mrs. Burke between them were making my cabin as comfortable as my old nurse's foresight and experience could manage.

So went by this wretched time of waiting and of preparation.

About a fortnight before the ship sailed my father received a letter from Captain Burke, telling him that he had engaged a surgeon. His name was Owen. His age he said was about forty-three; he was a widower. The loss of his wife and two daughters three years before this period had broken him down; he was unable to practise; had travelled in the hopes of distracting his mind, but his means were slender and he was unable to be long away or go far; yet when he endeavoured to resume work he found himself unequal to his professional calls. He thereupon sold his practice and had lived for some months in retirement upon a trifling income. Having seen Captain Burke's advertisement he offered his services in exchange for a free voyage. The captain described him as a gentlemanly man, his credentials excellent, and his experience considerable.

CHAPTER III THE 'LADY EMMA'

On the morning of a day for ever memorable to me as the date of my departure from my home—namely, March 31, 1860—my father and I went to London, there to stay till April 2, when it was arranged that I should go on board the ship at Gravesend. My grief worked like a passion in me; yet I was quiet; my resolution to be calm whitened my cheeks, but again and again my eyes brimmed in spite of my efforts.

Oh, I so feared this going away alone! Even though I was to be in the company of my faithful, dear Mrs. Burke, my very heart so shrank up in me at the idea of saying farewell to my lover, with the chance of never seeing him more, that sometimes when I said my prayers I would ask God to make me too ill to leave home.

It was a melancholy grey day when I drove with my father to the station; the east wind sang like the surf in the naked, iron-hard boughs, and the sea streamed in lines of snow into the black desolate distance, unbroken by a gleam of sail, save, as we turned the corner which gave me a view of the ocean, I caught sight of a lonely black and red carcass of a steamer staggering along, tall and naked as though plucked, with a hill of foam under her counter; the melancholy and desolation of the day was in her, and no picture of shipwreck could have made that scene of waters sadder.

I had bidden good-bye to all I knew during the week: there were no more farewells to be said. We entered the train, and when we ran out of the station I felt that my long voyage had truly commenced. I'll not linger over my brief stay in London. Mr. Moore was constantly with me: indeed we were seldom apart during those two days of my waiting to join the ship at Gravesend. His father and sister called to say good-bye; I was too poorly and low-spirited to visit them. In truth I never once left the hotel until I drove with my father and Mr. Moore to the station to take the train to Gravesend.

Before embarking, however, I made the acquaintance of Mr. Owen, the surgeon of the ship. He had occasion to be in the West End of London, and Mrs. Burke asked him to call. I viewed him with considerable curiosity, for it was not only he was to be my medical adviser—I could not but reflect that I was to be locked up in a small ship with this man for very many months, with no other change of society than Captain and Mrs. Burke. I was pleasantly disappointed in him. I had figured a yellow, long-faced, melancholy man, with a countenance ploughed by frequent secret weeping, and furrowed by pitiful memories and night thoughts black as Dr. Young's. Instead there entered the room briskly, with a sideways bow cleverly executed whilst in motion, the right arm advanced, a short, plump figure of a man in a coat cut in something of a clerical style, short legs, and a face that would have been reasonably full but for its long aquiline nose, and contraction of lineaments due to a big bush of hair standing out stiff in minute curls over either ear. Otherwise he was bald.

My father was extremely polite to him. He stayed an hour and partook of some slight refreshment. He stared at me very earnestly, felt my pulse, considered me generally with polite professional attention, and, after he had put certain questions, said to my father with significant gravity:

'You may console yourself, sir, for the temporary loss of your daughter; I do not scruple to say that in sending her on this voyage you will be saving her life. I believe I can recognise her case, and strongly share the opinion of those who prescribe a long residence on board ship upon the ocean.'

My father's face lighted up: nothing I believe could have heartened him more at the moment than this assurance. Mr. Moore took Mr. Owen by the hand and said:

'We shall be trusting her to you, sir; she is very dear to me. We should be man and wife but for her health.'

'All that my anxious attention can give her she shall have,' said Mr. Owen, bowing over my lover's hand.

Yet he did not stay his hour without letting us see, poor fellow, that in the depths of his heart he was a grieving man. He said nothing; no reference was made to his affliction: but in certain pauses the pain of memory would enter his face like a shadow, and sometimes he would sigh tremulously as one in sorrow sighs in sleep, scarcely knowing you saw, that he did so.

When he was gone, my father said to Mr. Moore that his spirits felt as light again now that he had seen what sort of man it was who would have charge of my health.

'Taking all sides of it,' he said, 'I don't think we could have done better. Marie goes with an old nurse who loves her as her own child; Mr. Owen seems a kind-hearted, experienced, practical man. I hope he understands that our appreciation of his kindness will not be restricted to bare thanks on the return of the vessel. The more I see of Burke, the better I like him. He is an honest, experienced seaman from crown to heel, and in saying that I am allowing him all the virtues. No; the arrangements are wholly to my satisfaction and my mind is at rest. It will be like a long yachting trip for Marie: she will have a fine ship under her, and all the seclusion and comfort of a yacht combined with the safety of ample tonnage. I am satisfied. It was a cruel difficulty; we have had to meet it; it is well met, and now, Marie, there is nothing to do but wait. Have patience. The months will swiftly roll by—then you will return to us, a healthy, fine young woman, full of life and colour and vigour, instead of——' His voice broke off in a sob and he turned his head away. I ran to him and he held me.

On April 2 we went down to Gravesend. Mr. Moore accompanied us. Captain Burke had telegraphed that the 'Lady Emma' was lying off that town and would tow to sea in the afternoon of the 2nd. We arrived at Gravesend at about twelve o'clock and drove to a hotel. All my luggage had been sent on board the ship in the docks. Mrs. Burke waited for us in a room overlooking the river; here she had ordered luncheon to be served. She seemed hearty and happy: kissed me, and curtseyed to my father and Mr. Moore, and taking me to the window said:

'There she is, Miss Marie. There's your ocean home. What do you think of her as a picture?'

She pointed to a vessel that was straining at a buoy almost immediately opposite. A tug was lying near her. It was a young April day; the sunshine thin and pale, the blue of the heavens soft and dim, with a number of swelling bodies of clouds, humped and bronzed, sailing with the majesty of line-of-battle ships into the south-west. A brisk wind blew and the river was full of life. The grey water twinkled and was flashed in places into a clearness and beauty of bluish crystal by the brushing of the breeze. The eye was filled and puzzled for some moments by the abounding tints and motion. A large steamer with her line of bulwarks palpitating with heads of emigrants was slowly passing down; another with frosted funnel and drainings of red rust on her side, as though she still bled from the scratches of a recent vicious fight outside, was warily passing up: beside her was a large, full-rigged ship towing to London, and the sluggish passage of the masts, yards, and rigging of the two vessels, the steamer sliding past the other, combined with the sudden turning of a little schooner close by, all her canvas shaking, and with the heeling figure of a brig, her dark breasts of patched canvas swelling for the flat shores opposite, a spout of white water at her forefoot, and a short-lived vein of river-froth at her rudder; then, close in, two barges heaped with cargo, blowing along stiff as flag-poles under brown wings of sail; these with vessels at both extremities of the Reach, coming and going, interlacing the perspective of their rigging into a complication of colours and wirelike outlines, for ever shifting: all this wonderful changing life, I say, adding to it the trembling of the stream of river, the pouring of smoke, the pulling and shivering of flags, put a giddiness into the scene, and for some moments I stared idly, with Mrs. Burke beside me pointing to the 'Lady Emma.'

My eye then went to the ship, and rested upon as pretty a little fabric as probably ever floated upon the water of the Thames. I may venture upon a description of her and speak critically: indeed I must presuppose some knowledge of the sea in you, otherwise I shall be at a loss; for as you shall presently discover I was long enough upon the ocean, under circumstances of distress scarcely paralleled in the records, to learn by heart the language of the deep, how to speak of ships and tell of sailors' doings, and I cannot but name the things of the sea in the language in which the mariner talks of them.

The 'Lady Emma' was a full-rigged ship, between six hundred and seven hundred tons in burthen; she was a wooden ship—iron sailing vessels were few in those days; she was painted black; but though loaded for the voyage she sat lightly upon the water, and a hand's-breadth of new metal sheathing burned along her water-line like a gilding of sunlight the length of her. Her lower masts were white, her upper masts a bright yellow; her yards were very square, or as a landsman would call them wide: the most inexperienced eye might guess that when clothed in sail she would spread wings as of an albatross in power, breadth, and beauty for a meteoric flight over the long blue heave.

'How do you like her, Miss Marie?' said Mrs. Burke.

'She is a pretty ship, I think,' I answered.

'She is a beauty,' said the good woman; 'she outsails everything.'

'She has a fine commanding lift about the bows,' said Mr. Moore, passing his arm through mine. 'Captain Burke tells me she has done as much as three hundred and twelve miles in the twenty-four hours.'

'So she has, sir,' said Mrs. Burke.

'I wish she'd maintain that rate of sailing all the time Marie is aboard,' said my father.

'Oh, Sir Mortimer, this going will seem but as of yesterday's happening when yonder ship's out there again, returned, and your dear girl's in your arms, strong, fine, and hearty, rich in voice, and bright-eyed as she used to be when a baby. These voyages seem long to take, and when they're ended it's like counting how many fingers you have to remember them, so easy and quick it all went.'

Lunch was served and we seated ourselves, but my throat was dry and I could swallow nothing but a little wine. My father and Mr. Moore pretended to eat; suddenly looking up I met my sweetheart's gaze: a look of inexpressible tenderness and distress entered his face, and starting from his seat he went to the window, and kept his back to us for a few minutes. Mrs. Burke went to him and whispered in his ear; I perfectly understood that she begged him to bear up for my sake: indeed it needed but for my father and my lover to give way, for me to break down utterly, with a menace of consequent prostration that must put an end to this scheme of a voyage on the very threshold of it.

We left the hotel at two o'clock and walked slowly to the pier. I was closely veiled. I could not have borne the inquisitive stare of the people as we passed. Whilst we waited for a boat, I watched a mother saying good-bye to her son, a bright-haired boy of fourteen in the uniform of a merchant midshipman. She was in deep mourning, a widow, and I had but to look at her pale face to know that the boy was her child. The lad struggled with his feelings; his determination to be manly and not to be seen to cry by the people standing round about nor to go on board his ship with red eyes doubtless helped him. He broke away from her with a sort of sharp sobbing laugh, crying, 'Back again in a year, mother, back again in a year,' and left her. She stood as though turned to stone. When in the boat he flourished his cap to her; she watched him like a statue with the most dreadful expression of grief the imagination could paint. Never shall I forget the motionless figure of that widow mother and the grief in her face, and the look in her tearless eyes.

'There's plenty of sorrow in this world,' said Mrs. Burke, as the four of us seated ourselves in the boat, 'and there's no place where more grief's to be seen than here, owing to the leave-takings and the coming back of ships with news.'

'Master of a ship fell dead yesterday just as he was a-stepping ashore,' said the waterman who was rowing us. 'Bad job for his large family.'

'You'll take care to have a letter ready before the ship is out of the Channel, Marie,' said my father. 'Mrs. Burke, your husband will give Miss Otway every opportunity of sending letters home?'

'I'll see to it, Sir Mortimer.'

We drew alongside the ship. Captain Burke and Mr. Owen stood at the gangway to receive us. When I went up the ladder, supported by my father, Captain Burke with his hat off extended his hand, saying:

'Miss Otway, welcome on board the "Lady Emma." She has received my whisper. She knows her errand and what's expected of her. She'll keep time, Sir Mortimer; and the magic that'll happen betwixt the months whilst our jibboom is pointing to as many courses as the compass has marks is going to transform this delicate, pale young lady into the heartiest, rosiest lass that ever stepped over a ship's side.'

'I pray so, I pray so,' exclaimed my father.

'Captain Burke is not too sanguine,' exclaimed Mr. Owen with a smile.

'When do you start?' asked Mr. Moore.

'Soon after three, sir, I hope,' answered Captain Burke.

I ran my eye over the ship. The scene had that sort of morbid interest to me which the architecture and furniture of a prison cell takes for one who is to pass many months in it. I beheld a long white deck, extending from the taffrail into the bows, with several structures breaking the wide lustrous continuity: one forward was the galley, the ship's kitchen; this side of it was a large boat with sheep bleating inside her; whilst underneath was a sty-full of pigs, flanked by hen-coops whose bars throbbed with the ceaseless protrusion and withdrawal of the flapping combs of cocks and the heads of hens. Near us was a great square hatch, covered over with a tarpaulin, and farther aft, as the proper expression is, was a big glazed frame for the admission of light into the cabin; some distance past it a sort of box, curved to the aspect of a hood, called the companion-way, conducted you below. At the end of the ship was the wheel, like a circle of flame with the brasswork of it flashing to the sun, and immediately in front stood the compass box or binnacle, glittering like the wheel, and trembling to its height upon the white planks like a short pillar of fire.

A number of sailors hung about the forecastle, and a man leaned in the little door of the galley in a red shirt, bare to the elbows, eying us, with a pair of fat, dough-like, tattooed arms crossed upon his breast, a picture of stupid, sulky curiosity.

We stayed for a few minutes talking in the gangway; Mrs. Burke then asked me to step below and see my cabin, and I went down the steps followed by the rest, and entered the ship's little plain state-room.

I stopped at the foot of the ladder and drew my breath with difficulty. What was it? An extraordinary sensation of icy chill had passed through me. It was over in an instant, but it was as though the hand of death itself had clutched my heart. Was it a presentiment working so potently as to affect me physically? Was it some subtle motion of the nerves influenced by the sight of the interior, and by the strange shipboard smells in it which there was no virtue in the hanging pots of flowers to sweeten? I said nothing. My father halted to the arrest of my hand, supposing I wished to look about me, and yet, oh, merciful God! when I date myself back to that hour, and think of me as entering that cabin for the first time, and then of what happened afterwards, I cannot for an instant question—nay, with fear and awe I devoutly believe—that the heart-moving sensation of chill which came and went in the beat of a pulse was a breath off the pinion of my angel of fate or destiny, stirring in the thick-ribbed blackness of the future at sight of my first entrance into the scene of my distress. Do not think me fanciful nor high strained in expression or imagination. My meaning will be clear to you.

The Burkes had done their best to make this state cabin comfortable to the eye. Shelves full of books were secured to the ship's wall: a couple of globes of gold and silver fish hung under the skylight, where too were some rows of flowers hanging in pots. A couple of tall glasses were affixed to the cabin walls, and the lamp was handsome and of bright metal. A new carpet was stretched over the deck, and the table was covered with a cloth, so that the interior looked like a little parlour or living-room ashore. I also observed a stove in the fore end of the cabin; it looked new, as though fitted for this particular voyage.

'Dear Miss Marie, let me show you your bedroom,' said Mrs. Burke.

A narrow corridor went out of this living room in the direction of the stern; on either hand were cabins, four of a side. Mrs. Burke threw open a door on the port or left hand side, and we entered a large berth. Two had been knocked into one for my use.

'This is bigger than anything I could have secured for you on board a steamer,' said my father.

My old nurse's eyes were upon me whilst I gazed around. They had made as elegant a little bedroom of the place as could possibly be manufactured on board a plain, homely sailing ship. Every convenience was here, and the furniture was handsome. They had put pink silk curtains to my bunk which was single—that is, the upper shelf was removed so that I should have the upper deck clear above me when I pillowed my head. They had prettily decorated with drapery a large oval glass nailed to the bulkhead: this mirror caught the light trembling off the river, and brimming through the porthole and filled the interior with a radiance of its own as though it had been a lamp. The carpet was thick and rich; the armchair low and soft. A writing table stood in the corner, and on it was a lovely bouquet; the berth was rich with the smell of those delicious flowers; the atmosphere sweet as a breeze in a garden of roses. It was my lover's gift, sent on board the ship just before she left the docks, but I did not know this until after I had said good-bye to him.

'It is as comfortable as your bedroom at home, Marie,' said my father.

'I find your thoughtful heart everywhere here, nurse,' said I.

'We have all done our best, and our best shall go on being done,' she answered, smiling, and meeting my father's gaze she dropped him one of her little old-world curtseys.

'I don't think you'll find anything missing, sir,' said Captain Burke, 'from Mr. Owen's medicine chest down to the smallest case of goodies in the lazarette.'

'My daughter is in kind hands. I am satisfied,' said my father, and he came to me and put his arm round my neck.

Captain Burke, saying he was needed on deck, went out. Mrs. Burke and Mr. Owen followed; my father stepped into the state-room that I might be alone with my lover.

He caught me quickly to his heart and kissed me again and again with a passion of grief and love. We had exchanged our vows before, over and over. We could but kiss and whisper hopes of a sweet meeting, of a lasting reunion by-and-by. It was like a parting between a young bride and bridegroom, but with a dreadful significance going into it out of my health and out of the thought of the perils of the sea. Indeed, a sadness as of death itself was in that parting, and I know Archie felt that, as I did, when he released me and stood a moment looking into my white face.

When we went into the cabin I found my father earnestly conversing with Mrs. Burke. He was asking questions about my luggage and effects, and impressing certain things upon her memory. A few minutes later Captain Burke came down the companion-steps, and, halting before he reached the bottom, exclaimed:

'Sir Mortimer, I'm sorry to say the tug'll be laying hold of us now almost immediately.'

My father started, looked at me with something frantic in the expression of his face, then crying 'Well, if the time has come——' and took me in his arms. Then with tears standing in his eyes, and gazing upwards, he asked God to bless and to protect me, and to restore me, his only child, in safety and in health to him; and now speechless with grief, mutely looking a farewell to Mrs. Burke, who herself was weeping, he went on deck, followed by Mr. Moore, whose leave-taking here had been no more than a single kiss pressed upon my forehead as I stood beside the table after my father had released me.

When they were gone I sank into a chair; Mrs. Burke looked with wet eyes through a cabin window. She was right to let my grief have its way. After a little I heard the voices of men chorusing on deck; overhead people regularly tramped to and fro. Mr. Owen came into the cabin and said:

'Pray, Miss Otway, let me conduct you above. The air will refresh you, and the picture of the river is striking and full of life.'

'Come, dear Miss Marie, with me,' said Mrs. Burke, and I put my arm through hers and went on deck.

I stood still on discovering that our voyage was begun. Our ship had been moored to a buoy; there had been no anchor to weigh, no wild music of seamen nor hoarse quarter-deck commands to give the news of departure to those under deck; the little tug had quietly manœuvred for our tow-rope, and now the ship's bows were pointing down the river, her keen stem shearing through the froth of the paddle-wheels ahead, with some sailors heave-hoing as they dragged upon the ropes which hoisted certain staysails and jibs; the old town of Gravesend was sliding away upon the quarter. I strained my eyes in vain for a sight of the boat in which my father and Mr. Moore might have been making for the shore. Well perhaps that I could not distinguish her. I think it would have broken my heart then to have seen them, thus, for the last time, making their way ashore for that home I was leaving for months, and perhaps for ever!

'We have started, nurse!' I exclaimed.

'Yes, dear,' she answered. 'Do not make haste to cease crying. Let nature work by degrees in her own fashion. I shall soon see my dear girl looking proudly with health, and oh, the joy of your meeting with your father and Mr. Moore, and my happiness when I see them staring at you, scarce knowing you for your beauty and brightness!'

The water blazed with sunshine, the merry twinkling of it by the fresh April wind made the whole Reach a path of dazzling light. Twenty vessels of all sorts were about us: some leaned with rounded canvas soft as sifted snow, with yellow streaks of metal glancing wet to the light out of the brackish foam, that wanted the shrillness and spit of the froth of the brine; some lifted bare skeleton scaffolds of spars and yards as they towed past; some were no bigger than a Yarmouth smack, and some were great steamers and deep and lofty ships from or for the Antipodes. But whatever you looked at was beautiful with the hues of the afternoon, the backing of the green land, the inspiration of the sea, the spirit of ocean liberty wide as the horizon that is boundless, and high as the air through which the clouds blew.

CHAPTER IV MARIE BEGINS HER VOYAGE

This was the first voyage I had ever made. I was born in England, and was left at school when my mother went round the Cape to India on the second visit my father paid to that country. I had never in my life crossed a wider breast of water than the English Channel between Folkestone and Boulogne. Everything here, then, you will suppose was wonderfully new to me; infinitely stranger indeed than had the ship been a steamer whose funnel and masts have commonly but little in them to bewilder the landgoing eye.

Hundreds of times had I watched ships passing over the blue or grey waters which our house overlooked; but they were as clouds to me, indeterminable though beautiful decorations of the deep: I knew nothing of their inner life, of one's sensations on board, what the sailors in them did. I looked up now and beheld three masts towering into a delicate fineness to the altitude of their own starry trucks, with yards across, rigging complex as the meshes of a web, white triangular sails between. A sailor stood at the wheel, floating off from it with the easy, careless posture of the sea, his knotted hands gripping the spokes of the gleaming circle. A stout-faced man in the tall hat of the London streets, his neck swathed in a red shawl, walked up and down the deck near the cabin skylight. Mrs. Burke told me he was the pilot. She pointed to a man who was standing on the forecastle as though keeping a look-out on the tug, and said that he was Mr. Green, the first mate of the ship: indeed the only mate. The boatswain, she informed me, who was not a certificated officer, would take charge of her husband's watch when the ship was at sea.

She talked thus to distract my mind. I asked her what she meant by her 'husband's watch,' thinking she meant the timekeeper in his pocket.

'Why,' she said, 'every ship's crew is divided into two companies or watches, called port and starboard; the starboard watch is the captain's and the other the mate's. Let us walk a little. Already you are looking better, positively.'

Here Mr. Owen joined us.

'I declare, doctor,' exclaimed Mrs. Burke, 'that Miss Otway has already got a little colour in her cheeks, more even since we left Gravesend than, I warrant, Sir Mortimer has seen in her the last twelvemonth gone. If she means to begin to look well so soon, how will it be with her, sir, when this ship's bowsprit is pointing the other way and we shall be all ready to go ashore?'

Mr. Owen, in a soft felt hat, an academic bush of hair under either side of it, like the cauliflower wig of olden days, and a warm, heavy black cloak, might have passed for a clergyman. He asked permission to stroll the deck with us, and pointed out objects ashore and upon the water with an intelligence that proved him the possessor of a talent for colour.

Once he broke off in what he was saying to look at the land; he sighed deeply, yet, forcing a smile, said to Mrs. Burke:

'That parting should never be a sad one which promises a happy meeting, at the cost of no more than patience.'

'Truly indeed not,' said Mrs. Burke cheerily.

'It is the meeting! it is the meeting! promise that, and what is the leave-taking?' he exclaimed, and was all on a sudden too moved to speak: he faintly bowed, and went to the ship's side and looked at the shore.

We did not long remain on deck. I found the wind cold, my head slightly ached; I was weary with the exhaustion which follows upon fretting. Mrs. Burke went with me to my cabin, and we spent a long while in talking, recalling old memories, and most of the time she was cheerfully busy in seeing that my things were in their place and that I wanted for nothing.

The night had drawn down dark over the ship when we passed from my berth into the state cabin. It was about seven o'clock. Supper was ready. The table was bright with damask and silver and flowers; under the skylight the large globe lamp glowed steadily, and filled the interior with the soft radiance of sperm oil. I heard some men singing out on deck and the noise of ropes flung down upon the planks. The sound was strange and put a sort of wildness into this interior, despite its fifty civilising details of furniture.

A young sandy-haired youth, long and lank, in a camlet jacket, stood at the foot of the companion-steps, and swung a bell with evident delight in the noise he made. Mr. Owen started up from a locker in the corner of the cabin on seeing us, and exclaimed:

'There is a brave wind blowing. Captain Burke hopes to be off Deal by midnight.'

'That will be famous work,' said Mrs. Burke. 'But this is a clipper ship.'

'Are we sailing?' said I.

'Yes. Some canvas is spread. But the tug still has hold of us,' responded Mr. Owen.

I felt no movement in the ship. She was going along with the seething steadiness of a sleigh. Just then Captain Burke came below. His composed, cheerful face, peak-bearded with red hair and arch, merry Irish eyes, seemed to bring a new atmosphere of light into the place. He addressed some friendly sympathetic question to me; we then seated ourselves, I on the captain's right, and Mr. Owen at the foot of the table.

It was my first meal at sea, if indeed the ship could then be called at sea, and memorable to me for that reason. I had tasted no food since breakfast, and now tried to eat, but less from appetite than from the desire to please my old nurse. My chat with her before supper had determined me to fight with my grief, to regard the voyage as a long holiday yachting excursion, which should be happy if I accepted it as a twelvemonth's diversion that was to end in making me a new woman, and in fitting me to become a wife. It was this last point that Mrs. Burke had insisted upon, and, like a good many ideas which are obvious and commonplace when uttered, it took my fancy, lighted up my views as though it had been a sort of revelation, and whilst I sat at supper I was so composed that more than once I caught Mr. Owen dart a glance of surprise at me when I answered or put a question.

'The sea is very smooth here, Edward,' said Mrs. Burke.

'There's no sea yet,' he answered. 'It's river so far. We're towing through what's called the Warp, near the Nore, whose light ye should be able to see, Miss Otway,' said he, getting up and ducking and bobbing to command the whole compass of a cabin window.

'I wonder the ship doesn't run the tug down,' said Mr. Owen.

The captain looked at me with his merry eyes and chuckled.

'Ay, we're a match for the old slapper even with nothing on us but fore and aft canvas and two topsails,' said he. 'I wish Sir Mortimer was with us. Here's a voyage to thread a heart through the strands of his years. I don't know that ever I met a gentleman I took a greater fancy to, unless it's Mr. Moore,' and he gave me a bow, whilst I smiled, feeling a faint glow in my cheeks.

'There'll be a full moon at eight,' said Mr. Owen.

'So there will, sir, thank God,' answered Captain Burke. 'We sailors can never have too much light. No, not even in our wives' eyes,' said he, with an askant arch look at Mrs. Burke.

And now he began to talk. Though without the brogue in his tongue, he had the fluency and humour of his country. He was full of stories of adventure and experience; scarce a sea he had not navigated in his day. His wife watched me eagerly, and if ever I smiled her face lighted up and her kind eyes shone. All his efforts were directed to cheer me. Observing Mr. Owen smelling at an egg he exclaimed:

'What's that you've got?'

'Something laid too soon, captain.'

'Doctor,' said the captain, 'I know a sailor who made an experiment: he put a number of French eggs under a sitting rooster, and what d'ye think was hatched? Cocks and hens in the last stage of decrepitude! They hopped and staggered about in his little back-yard, and died of old age in twenty-four hours. That was his test of a bad egg. If he wanted to make sure he hatched it.'

Thus ran his careless, good-humoured gabble, and perhaps had he talked wisely and soberly he would not have done me any good.

He went on deck presently, and the mate, Mr. Green, came below to get his supper. He was a middle-aged man, of a very nautical cut in figure and clothes, with a sneering face, and a beard of wiry iron hair covering his throat, though he shaved to the round of his chin, and a droop of left eyelid put the expression of an acid leer into that side of his face.

Mr. Owen had withdrawn to his cabin. Mrs. Burke and I sat at a little distance upon a comfortable sofa near the stove. The mate squared his elbows and fell to work slowly but diligently, often lifting his knife to his mouth and chewing with the solemnity of a goat.

'He rose from before the mast,' said Mrs. Burke. 'I hope he's a good sailor. This is his first voyage with my husband. He holds a master's certificate, but that don't signify much, I expect. A man wants to know human nature to command a crew of sailors. He's been a common seaman himself, and fared ill, and worked hard on a starvation wage, as most of the poor creatures do, and that's likely to make him hard with the men and unpitying. It's always so. It's the person who's been in service that makes the exacting mistress.'

All this she spoke softly. She then inquired of the mate how the weather was on deck.

'Why, not so fine as it is down here, mum,' he answered. 'There's a vast of stars, but 'tis black till the moon comes up.'

'Where are we now?'

'The Girdler ain't far off,' he answered, masticating slowly.

'Is the tug still towing us?'

'Oh, certainly yes, mum!'

He did not seem disposed to talk, and answered with grimaces and the awkward air of a man ill at ease.

I was looking at his square sturdy figure, with his weather-ploughed face and the muscles all about it working like vigorous pulses to the movement of his jaws, when I felt a slight motion of the ship, a gentle, cradling heave of the deck: the lamp and all things pendulous swayed; creaking noises arose from all parts; a sudden giddiness took me. The movement was repeated with the regularity of a clock's tick.

'Isn't the sea getting up?' exclaimed Mrs. Burke, staring at the gleaming ebony of the skylight windows and then around her.

The mate arrested the tumbler whose contents he was turning into his mouth to distend his lips in a grin, which he probably thought concealed.

'Why, I thought we were still in the river!' cried Mrs. Burke again.

The mate, picking up his cap, rose, contorted his square figure into a bow to us, and went up the companion-steps.

The motion of the vessel affected me. Mrs. Burke got a pillow and made me comfortable on the sofa, and, wrapping herself in a shawl, went on deck. She returned presently and said that the river had widened into a sea, with danger-lights sparkling here and there, and the full moon rising solemnly and beautifully upon the port bow. She hugged herself and said it was blowing fresh, and the ship under several breasts of canvas was chasing the little tug, which was splashing ahead as fast as she could go.

'We're doing between seven and eight miles an hour. Only think!' she cried. 'We shall be opening the lights of Margate very soon. To think of Margate and the sands and the shrimps, and us sailing past it to the other end of the world. How do you feel, my dear?'

I answered that I felt sick.

'You will suffer for a day or two,' said she, 'and then you'll take no more notice of it than I do. Hark! what is that?'

The sounds proceeded from Mr. Owen's cabin.

'They'll never get a cure for it,' said Mrs. Burke, looking in the direction of the doctor's berth.

I lay motionless, feeling very uncomfortable and ill. Mrs. Burke gave me some brandy and put toilet vinegar to my head. She advised me to go to bed, but I begged leave to rest where I was. The motion of the ship grew more lively the further she was towed towards the mouth of the river, where the weight of the field of water past the Forelands would dwell in every heave. At last, a little while after ten o'clock, I told Mrs. Burke I felt as if the fresh air would revive me, on which she wrapped me up in shawls and helped me on deck. She walked on firm legs with the ease of an old salt, whilst I so swung and reeled upon her arm that I must have fallen twenty times but for her support.

But, nevertheless, the moment I emerged through the little companion-hatch, with its load of warm atmosphere closing behind me in a sensible pressure of mingled cabin smells and heat, I felt better; a shout of bright strong moonlight wind fair betwixt my parted lips swept away for the time all sensation of nausea: I breathed deep and looked about with wonder.

It was a fine, noble night-scene of water and ship. We were following the tug under three topsails and a main topgallant sail and a flight of fore and aft canvas; the sails swelled pale as steam into the moonlight air, carrying the eye to the fine points of the mastheads, whose black lines were beating time for a dance of stars. High up was the moon, full, yellow, and glowing; if land was near, it was buried in the wild windy sheen under the orb; the water rolled in liquid silver, islanded here and there by the black flying shadows of bodies of vapour hurling headlong, down the wind north-east: ahead the black smear of the tug's smoke full of sparks, with a frequent rush of crimson flame out of the funnel's throat, was flying low.

Captain Burke came from the pilot's side to salute me, and pointing abeam to starboard (I offer no excuse for writing of the sea in the language of the sea) exclaimed:

'There's Whitstable somewhere down there, Miss Otway. And yonder should be Herne Bay. With a powerful telescope we should presently be able to see the bathing machines on Margate beach.'

'What is that out there?' I asked.

'A Geordie,' he answered, 'a north-country collier.'

She was swarming along, a very spectre of a ship, lean, visionary, glistening like the inside of an oyster shell in the moonlight, which whitened the black hull of her into the same sort of misty sheen that was upon the water, till she was blended with the air brimful of moonlight, making a mocking phantom of her to fit in with the desolation beyond, where you saw a red star of warning hinting at ooze, and white crawling streaks and a pallid rib or two, with some fragment of mast upward pointing in a finger of wreck, dumbly telling you whither the spirit of the rest of it all had flown.

I watched our little ship bowing in pursuit of the tug; she curtseyed her white cloths to the moon, and the brine flashed at her bows at every plunge, and went away in a wide, rich race astern, for there was the churning of the paddles in it too.

But soon I was overcome by nausea once more, the magic of the fresh air failed me, and, yielding now to Mrs. Burke's entreaty, I suffered her to carry me to my cabin.

After this for the next four or five days I was so miserably ill that I lay as one in a fit or swoon, scarcely sensible of more, and therefore remembering but little more, than that Mrs. Burke was hour after hour in my cabin, sleeping beside me on a mattress during the night, and watching over me throughout that distressing time with touching and unwearied devotion. Mr. Owen was too ill to visit me; but what could he have done? Did he cure his own nausea? I think he knew of no physic for mine.

Indeed we met with very heavy weather in the Channel. The wind shifted shortly after the tug had let go of the ship and blew a moderate breeze out of the south-east, but in the morning the breeze freshened into a gale; a head sea ran strong, short, and angry; the captain drove the vessel along under shortened canvas, with sobbing decks and spray-clouded bows as I learnt; but to me, inexperienced as I was, her behaviour seemed frightfully wild and dangerous. I sometimes thought she was going to pieces. My cabin was aft, the machinery of the helm was nearly overhead, and the noise of it when she plunged her counter into the foam, and the rudder received the blow of some immense volume of rushing brine, sent shock after shock through the planks, and through me as I lay in my bunk.

But the stupor of sea-sickness was upon me, I had no fear; had the ship actually gone to pieces I do not think I could or should have opened my mouth to cry out. All that I asked for was death, and I was so sick even unto that state that I cannot remember I once wished myself at home, or thought for an instant of my father or Mr. Moore.

But on the fifth day I was well enough to sit up and partake of a little cold fowl and wine, and next day I was able to go on deck.

By this time we were clear of the English Channel, and I looked around me at the great ocean, swelling in long lines of rich sparkling blue under the high morning sun. Far away, blue in the air, were some leaning shafts of ships, and at the distance of a quarter of a mile a large steamer was passing, steering the same road as ourselves.

Weak as I was after my long confinement below, dazzled and confused too by the splendour of the morning, and the novelty and wonder of that windy scene of our bowing ship, clothed in canvas, gleaming like silk to the trucks, I could not but pause with a start of admiration when my sight went to that steamer. Captain Burke, seeing me as I leaned on his wife's arm, crossed the deck, and after some commonplaces of genial greeting told me that yonder vessel was a French man-of-war. She was round sterned with portholes for guns there, and two white lines full of gun-ports ran the length of her tall, shapely sides. She was ship-rigged, and lifted a lustrous fabric of square canvas and delicate cordage to the soft blue skies, a wide space of whose field the gilded balls of her trucks traced as she rolled heavily but with majesty, crushing the water at her bows to the impulse of her sails and propeller into a heap of splendid whiteness, like to the foam at the foot of some giant cataract. She was the noblest sea-piece I had ever beheld: the tricolour was at her gaff-end, a blue vein of smoke, filtering from a short black funnel, scarcely tarnished the azure over the horizon betwixt her fore and main masts; a great gilt eagle was perched with outstretched wings under her bowsprit, and seemed to be poised for a soaring flight as though affrighted by the roar of spume beneath; her decks were a blaze of light and colour when she rolled them towards us, with the sparkle of uniforms, the flash of sun-stars in bright metal, and gleams breaking from I know not whence, like sudden flames from artillery.

'I think I see her in charge of an English lieutenant,' said Captain Burke, 'making a straight course for Portsmouth. They have built good ships for us and will build again.'

He placed chairs, and Mrs. Burke and I seated ourselves. I could now look about me with enjoyment of what I beheld. The sun shone with some warmth, and the wind blowing freely out of the west was of an April mildness. The whole life of the universe seemed to be in that ocean morning, with our ship in the middle of it bowing as she drove over the long blue knolls. The hour was half-past eleven. Smoke was feathering down upon the water over the lee side out of the chimney of the galley, through whose door as I looked I saw a sailor emerge holding a steaming tub, with which he staggered in the direction of a little square hole on the forecastle. Immediately after a second sailor rolled out similarly burthened.

'The men are going to dinner,' said Mrs. Burke.

'What do you give them to eat?' I asked the captain.

'To-day,' said he, 'they'll dine on beef and pudding.'

'It sounds a good dinner,' said Mrs. Burke. 'But all the while I'm at sea, I'm wondering how sailors contrive to get through their work on the food they get.'

'Go and put those notions into their shaggy heads forwards and there'll be a mutiny,' said the captain.

'Beef as tasteless as one's boot if one could imagine it boiled,' said Mrs. Burke, 'pudding like slabs of mortar, biscuits which glide about on the feet of hundreds of little worms called weevils. Edward has had to live on such food in his day, and I believe it is the beef and pork of his seafaring youth that give him his premature looks. He oughtn't to seem his age by ten years.'

He eyed her archly and kindly. 'Premature is a good word,' said he. 'Sailors are always too soon in life. Soon with their money, and soon with their drink and pleasures, and soon with their years, so that it is soon over with them.'

'They're a body of workmen I'm very sorry for,' said Mrs. Burke; 'their wrongs are not understood, and they've got no champions.'

As she pronounced these words the hairy head of a man, clothed in a Scotch cap, showed in the little square of the forecastle hatch; he took a wary view of the quarter-deck, then rose into the whole body of a man picturesquely attired in a red shirt, blue trousers, a belt round his waist, and a knife in a sheath upon his hip. He was followed by three others, and after a short conversation they came along the decks towards us.

Captain Burke, appearing not to notice them, told his wife he was going to fetch his sextant. Mr. Green, the sour-leering mate, was trudging the weather side of the quarter-deck. The man who had first risen, the hairy one of the Scotch cap, exclaimed, as the four of them came to a halt in the gangway:

'Can we have a word with the capt'n, sir?'

'What d'e want?' answered the mate, speaking with half his back turned on them as though he addressed some one out upon the water.

'We're come to complain that the beef to-day ain't according to the articles.'

'As how?' said the mate, still looking seawards.

''Tain't sweet, sir.'

'No call to eat of it,' said the mate, turning his head and letting his leering eye droop upon them.

'That's not the way to speak,' whispered Mrs. Burke to me with a note of impatience and temper. 'Why shouldn't the meat be tainted? It's so in butchers' shops often enough.'

'If there's no call to eat of it there's no call to turn to on it,' said one of the men with a surly laugh.

Here Captain Burke arrived with a sextant in his hand.

'What is it, my lads?' said he quickly, but good-humouredly.

'The starboard watch's allowance of meat's gone off, sir,' said the man in the Scotch cap civilly enough.

'The fok'sle's dark with the smell of it,' said another.

'Notice a blue ring round the flame of the lamp?' said the captain.

''Tain't meat for men,' exclaimed the man, who had growled out a laugh.

'Go and bring aft what remains of it,' said Captain Burke, and he stepped to the side and adjusted his sextant to get a meridional observation.

The men trudged forward. I could not but notice how eloquent of grumbling their postures were as they walked. Experience has long since assured me that no man can so perfectly make every limb and lineament of him look his grievance as the sailor.

They presently returned, bearing a dish: Captain Burke stooped to it and sniffed.