"Day broke soon after five, and as the light brightened out I caught sight of a gleam on the edge of the sea. It was as white with the risen sun upon it as an iceberg. I levelled the glass and made out the topmast canvas of a small vessel. There was nothing to excite one in the spectacle of a distant sail. The barque's work went on; the decks were washed down, the look-out aloft hailed and nothing reported, and at seven bells the crew went to breakfast, at which hour we had risen the distant sail with a rapidity that somewhat puzzled the captain and me. For, first of all, she was not so far off now but that we could distinguish the lay of her head. She looked to be going our way, but clearly she was stationary, for the Swan, which was the name of our barque, though as seaworthy an old tub as ever went to leeward on a bowline, was absolutely without legs: nothing more sluggish was ever afloat; for her then to have overhauled anything that was actually under way would have been marvellous.

"'Something wrong out there, Grainger?' said the captain.

"'Looks to me to be all in the wind with her,' I answered.

"'Make out any colour?' said the captain.

"'Nothing as yet,' said I.

"'Shift your helm by a spoke or two,' said he. 'Meanwhile, I'll go to breakfast.'

"He was not long below. By the time he returned we had risen the distant vessel to the line of her rail. I got some breakfast in the cabin; on passing again through the hatch I found the captain looking at the sail through the telescope.

"'She is a small brig,' said he, 'and she has just sent the English colours aloft with the jack down. She is all in the wind, as you said. Her people don't seem to know what to do with her.'

"She now lay plain enough to the naked sight; a small black brig of about a hundred and eighty tons, apparently in ballast as she floated high on the water. She, like ourselves, carried short topgallantmasts, but the canvas she showed consisted of no more than topsails and courses. I took the glass from the captain, and believed I could make out the heads of two or three people showing above the bulwark rail abaft the mainmast.

"'What's their trouble going to prove?' said the captain.

"'They're waiting for us,' said I. 'They saw us, and put the helm down, and got their little ship in irons instead of backing their topsail yard. No sailor-man there, I doubt.'

"'A small colonial trader, you'll find,' said the captain, 'with a crew of four or five Kanakas. The captain's sick and the mate was accidentally left ashore at the last island.'

"It blew a four-knot breeze—four knots, I mean, for the Swan. Wrinkling the water under her bows, and smoothing into oil a cable's length of wake astern of her, the whaler floated down to the little brig within hailing distance. We saw but two men, and one of them was at the wheel. There was an odd look of confusion aloft, or rather let me describe it as a want of that sort of precision which a sailor's eye would seek for and instantly miss, even in the commonest old sea-donkey of a collier. Nothing was rightly set for the lack of hauling taut. Running gear was slackly belayed, and swung with the rolling of the little brig like Irish pennants. The craft was clean at the bottom, but uncoppered. She was a round-bowed contrivance, with a spring aft which gave a kind of mulish, kick-up look to the run of her.

"One of the two visible men, a broad-chested, thick-set fellow, in a black coat and a wide, white straw hat, got upon the bulwark, and stood holding on by a backstay, watching our approach, but he did not offer to hail. I thought this queer; it struck me that he hesitated to hail us, as though wanting the language of the sea in this business of speaking.

"'Brig ahoy!' shouted the captain.

"'Hallo!' answered the man.

"'What is wrong with you?'

"'We are short-handed, sir, and in great distress,' was the answer.

"'What is your ship, and where are you from, and where are you bound to?'

"When these questions were put the man looked round to the fellow who stood at the brig's little wheel. It was certain he was not a sailor, and it was possible he sought for counsel from the helmsman, who was probably a forecastle hand. He turned his face again our way in a minute, and shouted out in a powerful voice:

"'We are the brig Cyprus, of Sydney, New South Wales, bound to the Cape of Good Hope, and very much out of our reckoning, I dare say, through the distress we're in.'

"The captain and I exchanged looks.

"'Heading as you go,' the captain sang out, 'you're bound on a true course for the Antarctic Circle, and, anyway, it's a long stretch for Agulhas by way of Cape Horn out of these seas. How can we serve you?'"

'Will you send one of your officers in a boat?' came back the reply very promptly, 'that he may put us in the way of steering a course for the Cape of Good Hope? He'll then guess our plight, and if you'll lend us a hand or two we shall be greatly obliged. We can't send a boat ourselves—we're too few.'

"'He's no sailor-man, that fellow,' said the captain, 'and he ha'n't got the colonial brogue, either. I seem to smell Whitechapel in that chap's speech. Is he a passenger? Why don't he say so? Looks like a play-actor, or a priest. But take a boat, Grainger, and row over and see what you can make of the mess they're in. There's something rather more than out-of-the-way in that job, if I'm not mistaken.'

"A boat was lowered; I entered it, and was rowed across to the brig by three men. No attempt was made to throw us the end of a line, or in any way to help us. The bowman got hold of a chain plate, and I scrambled into the main-chains and so got over the rail, bidding the men shove off and lie clear of the brig, whose rolling was somewhat heavy, owing to her floating like an egg-shell upon the long Pacific heave.

"I glanced along the vessel's decks forward, and saw not a soul. I observed a little caboose, the chimney of which was smoking as though coal had within the past few minutes been thrown into the furnace. I saw but one boat; she stood chocked and lashed abaft the caboose—a clumsy, broad-beamed long-boat, capable of stowing perhaps fifteen or twenty men at a pinch. I also took notice of a pair of davits on the starboard side, past the main rigging; they were empty.

"I stepped up to the heavily-built man who had answered the captain's questions. He received me with a grotesque bow, pinching the brim of his wide straw hat as he bobbed his head. I did not like his looks. He had as hanging a face as ever a malefactor carried. His features were heavy and coarse, his brow low and protruding, his eyes small, black, and restless, and his mouth of the bulldog cast.

"'We're much obliged to you for this visit,' he said. 'Might I ask your name, sir?'

"'My name is Grainger—Mr. James Grainger,' I answered, scarcely wondering at the irregularity of such a question on such an occasion, perceiving clearly now that the fellow was no sailor.

"'What might be your position in that ship, Mr. Grainger?' said the man.

"'I'm mate of her,' said I.

"'Then I suppose you're capable of carrying a ship from place to place by the art of navigation?' he exclaimed.

"'Why, I hope so!' cried I. 'But what is it you want?' and here I looked at the man who was standing at the helm, grasping the spokes in a manner that assured me he was not used to that sort of work; and I was somewhat struck to observe that in some respects he was not unlike the fellow who was addressing me—that is to say, he had quite as hanging a face as his companion, though he wanted the other's breadth and squareness, and ruffian-like set of figure; but his forehead was low, and his eyes black and restless, and he was close-cropped, with some days' growth of beard, as was the case with the other. He was dressed in a bottle-green spencer and trousers of a military cut, and wore one of those caps which in the days I am writing of were the fashion amongst masters and mates.

"'If you don't mind stepping into the cabin,' said the man with whom I was conversing, 'I'll show you a chart, and ask you to pencil out a course for us; and with your leave, sir, I'll tell you over a glass of wine exactly how it's come about that we're too few to carry the brig to her destination unless your captain will kindly help us.'

"'Are you two the only people aboard?' said I.

"'The only people,' he answered.

"Anywhere else, under any other conditions, I might have suspected a treacherous intention in two men with such hanging countenances as this lonely brace owned; but what could I imagine to be afraid of aboard a brig holding two persons only, with the whaler's boat and three men within a few strokes of the oar, and the old barque, Swan, full of livelies, many of them deadly in the art of casting the harpoon, within easy hail?

"The man who invited me below stepped into the companion-way; I followed and descended the short flight of steps. The instant I had gained the bottom of the ladder I knew by the sudden shadow which came into the light that the companion hatch had been closed; this must have been done by the fellow who was standing at the wheel. It was wisely contrived. Assuredly had the way been open, I should have rushed upon deck and sprung overboard: because after descending the steps I beheld five or six men standing in a sort of waiting and listening posture under the skylight. Instantly my left arm was gripped by the man who had asked me to step below, while another fellow, equally powerful, and equally ruffianly in appearance, grasped me by the right arm.

"'Now,' said the first man, 'if you make the least bit of noise or give us any trouble, we'll cut your throat. We don't intend to do you any harm, but we want your services, and you'll have to do what we require without any fuss. If not, you're a dead man.'

"So saying, they threw open the door of a berth, ran me into it, shut the door, and shot the lock. I had been so completely taken by surprise that I was in a manner stunned. I stood in the middle of the cabin just where the fellows had let go of me, staring around, breathing short and fierce, my mind almost a blank. But I quickly rallied my wits. I understood I had been kidnapped; by what sort of people I could not imagine, but beyond question because I understood navigation, as I had told the man. I listened, but heard no noise of voices, nor movements of people in the cabin. Through the planks, overhead, however, came the sound of a rapid tread of feet, accompanied by the thud of coils of rope flung hastily down. The cabin porthole was a middling-sized, circular window. I saw the whaler in it as in a frame. I unscrewed the port, but with no intention to cry out, never doubting for a moment from the looks of the men that they would silence me in some bloody fashion as had been threatened.

"Just as I pulled the port open a voice overhead sang out: 'Get back to your ship, you three men; your mate has consented to stop with us as we're in want of a navigator.'

"'Let him tell us that himself,' said one of my men; 'let him show up. What ha' ye done with him?'

"'Be off,' roared one of the people, in a savage, hurricane note.

"There was a little pause as of astonishment on the part of the boat's crew—I could not see them, the boat lay too far astern,—but after a bit I heard the splash of oars, the boat swept into the sphere of the porthole, and I beheld her making for the barque.

"I was now sensible, however, not only by observing the whaler to recede, but by hearing the streaming and rippling of broken waters along the bends, that the people of the brig had in some fashion trimmed sail and filled upon the vessel. We were under way. The barque slided out of the compass of the porthole, but now I heard her captain's voice coming across the space of water, clear and strong:

"'Brig ahoy! What do you mean by keeping my mate?'

"To this no answer was returned. Again the captain hailed the brig; but owing to the shift in the postures of the two vessels, and to my having nothing but a circular hole to hear through, I could only dimly and imperfectly catch what was shouted. The cries from the whaler grew more and more threadlike. Indeed, I knew the brig must be a very poor sailer if she did not speedily leave the Swan far astern.

"And now, as I conjectured from the noise of the tread of feet and the hum of voices, the brig on a sudden seemed full of men; not the eight or ten whom I had beheld with my own eyes, but a big ship's company. And the sight of the crowd, I reckoned, as I stood hearkening at the open porthole—amazed, confounded, in the utmost distress of mind—was probably the reason why the captain of the Swan had not thought proper to send boats to rescue me. Be this as it will I was thunderstruck by the discovery—the discovery of my hearing, and of my capacity as a sailor of interpreting shipboard sounds—that this little brig, which I had supposed tenanted by two men only, had hidden a whole freight of human souls somewhere away in the execution of this diabolical stratagem. What was this vessel? Who were the people on board her? What use did they design to put me to? And when I had served them, what was to be my fate?

"Quite three hours passed, during which I was left unvisited. Sometimes I heard men talking in the cabin; over my head there went a regular swing of heavy feet, a pendulum tread, as of half-a-score of burly ruffians marching abreast, and keeping a look-out all together. The door of my berth was opened at last, and the villain who had seduced me into the brig stepped in.

"'I was sorry,' said he, 'to be obliged to use threats. Threats aren't in our way. We mean no mischief. Quite the contrary; we count upon you handsomely serving us. Come into the cabin, sir, that I may make you known to my mates.'

"His manner was as civil as a fellow with his looks could possibly contrive, and an ugly smile sat upon his face whilst he addressed me, and I observed that he held his great straw hat in his hand, as though to show respect.

"About twenty men were assembled in the cabin. I came to a dead stand on the threshold of the door of the berth, so astounded was I by the sight of all those fellows. I ran my eye swiftly over them; they were variously dressed—some in the attire of seamen, some in such clothes as gentlemen of that period wore, a few in a puzzling sort of military undress. They all had cropped heads, and many were grim with a few days' growth of beard and moustache. They had the felon's look, and there was somehow a suggestion of escaped prisoners in their general bearing. A dark suspicion rushed upon me with the velocity of thought, as I stood on the threshold of the door of the berth for the space of a few heart-beats, gazing at the mob.

"The cabin was a plain, old-fashioned interior. A stout, wide table secured to stanchions ran amidships. Overhead was a skylight. There were a few chairs on either hand the table, and down the cabin on both sides went a length of lockers. Some of the men were smoking. A few sat upon the table with their arms folded; others lounged upon the lockers, and in chairs. They stared like one man at me, whilst I stood looking at them.

"'Is he a navigator, Swallow?' said one of them—a wiry, dark-faced man, who held his head hung, and looked at you by lifting his eyes.

"'Ay, mate of the whaler—James Grainger by name,' answered the fellow who had opened the door of my berth. 'Salute him, bullies. He's the charley-pitcher for to handle this butter-box.'

"The voices of the men swelled into a roar of welcomes of as many sorts as there were speakers. One of them came round the table and shook me by the hand.

"'My name's Alexander Stevenson,' said he; 'come and sit you down here.'

"All very civilly he conducted me to a chair at the head of the table. And now, happening to glance upwards, I spied seven or eight faces peering down at me through the skylight.

"'Swallow, do the jawing, will 'ee?' said the man who called himself Stevenson.

"'Why, yes,' answered Swallow, posting himself at the top of the table, and addressing me through the double ranks of men on either side. 'This is how it stands with us, Mr. Grainger—clear as mud in a wineglass; and we're sorry it should have come to it, for your sake. But do your duty by us faithfully, and we'll take care you sha'n't suffer. We're thirty-one convicts in all. We were thirty-two, but Milkliver Poppy took a header, and went for the land and the lickspittle; if he lives he'll get his liberty for a reward. We were bound from Hobart to Norfolk Island. You'll have heard of that settlement?'

"I said 'Yes,' and an odd guttural laugh broke from some of the men.

"'Well, mister,' continued the man Swallow, 'Norfolk Island was a destination that didn't accord with our views. And what more d' ye want me to say? Here we are, and we want our liberty, and we mean to get it without any risk, and you're the man to help us.'

"'What do you want me to do?' said I, speaking boldly, and looking about me steadily, for now I perceived exactly how it was with the brig, and the worst had been explained and the whole mystery solved when Swallow told me they were convicts; and likewise I had plenty of time to screw my nerves up.

"Several men spoke at once on my asking the above question. Stevenson roared out: 'Let Swallow man the jaw tackle, boys. One at a time, or you'll addle the gent.'

"'This is what we want you to do,' said Swallow. 'There are scores of islands in these seas, and we want you to carry us to them; heaving-to off them one after another that we may pick and choose, some going ashore here, and some there, for our game is to scatter. That's clear, I hope.'

"'I understand you,' said I."

"Swallow seemed at a loss. Stevenson then said: 'But we shall want nothing that's got a white settlement on it; nothing that's likely to have a pennant flying near. We've got no fixed notions. We leave it to you to raise the islands, and it'll be for us to select and take our chance.'

"'There'll be charts aboard, I suppose?' said I.

"Instantly one of them stepped into a cabin and returned with a bag full of charts. I turned them out upon the table and promptly came across charts of the North and South Pacific oceans. These charts gave me from the Philippines to Cape St. Lucas, and from the Eastern Australian coast to away as far as 120 deg. W. longitude. The men did not utter a word whilst I looked; I could hear their deep breathing, mingled with the noise of a hard sucking of pipes. One of them who looked through the skylight called down. Swallow silenced him with a gesture of his fist.

"'Have you got what's wanted here, Mr. Grainger?' said Stevenson.

"'All that I shall want is here,' I answered.

"'A low growl of applause ran through the men.

"'Will you be able to light upon the islands that'll prove suitable for us men to live on without risk until the opportunity comes in the shape of vessels for us to get away?' said Swallow.

"'I'll do my best for you,' said I. 'I see your wants, and you may trust me, providing I may trust you. What's to become of me when you're out of the brig? That's it!'

"'You'll stay on board and do what you like with the vessel,' answered Swallow. 'She'll be yours to have and hold. Make what you call a salvage job of it, and your pickings, mister, 'ull be out and away beyond the value of what we've been obliged to make you leave behind you.'

"'Ain't that fair?' said a man.

"'Is my life safe?' said I.

"'Ay,' cried the Swallow, with a great oath, striking the table a heavy blow with his clenched fist. 'Understand this and comfort yourself. There's been no blood shed in this job, and there'll be none, so help me God—you permitting, mister.'

"When this was said, a fellow, whom I afterwards heard called by the name of Jim Davies, asked if I was willing to take an oath that I would be honest. I said, 'Yes.' He stood up and dictated an oath full of blasphemy, shocking with imprecations, and grossly illiterate. The eyes of the crowd fastened upon me, and some of the ruffians watched me in a scowling way with faces dark with suspicion, till I repeated the horrid language of the man Davies, and swore, after which the greater bulk of them went on deck.

"Swallow put some beef and biscuit on the table and a bottle of rum, and bade me fall to. He told me to understand that I was captain of the ship; that I was at liberty to appoint officers under me; and that, though none of the convicts had been seafaring men, they had learnt how the ropes led and how to furl canvas, and would obey any orders for the common good which I might deliver. I ate and drank, being determined to put the best face I could on this extraordinary business, and asked for the captain's cabin, that I might find out what nautical instruments the brig carried. Swallow, Stevenson, and a convict named William Watts conducted me to a berth right aft on the starboard side. They told me it had been occupied by the captain, and should be mine. Here I found all I needed in the shape of navigating instruments, and went on deck with Swallow and the others.

"I could see nothing of the Swan; she was out of sight from the elevation of the brig's bulwarks. All the convicts were on deck, and the brig looked full of men. Those who had been above whilst I was in the cabin with the others, approached and stared at me, but not insolently—merely with curiosity. They seemed a vile lot, one and all. With some of them every other word was an oath; their talk was almost gibberish to my ears with thieves' slang. I wondered to find not one of them dressed in felon's garb; but on reflection I concluded that they had plundered the crew and the people who had had charge of them and of the Cyprus, and had forced all those they drove out of the brig to change clothes before quitting the vessel.

"However, it was my immediate policy to prove my sincerity. I valued my life, and I had but to look at the men to reckon that it would not be worth a rushlight if they suspected I was not doing my best to find them a safe asylum among the islands in the Pacific. Accordingly, I fetched one of the charts, placed it upon the skylight, where those who gathered about me could see it, and laid off a course for the Tonga Islands; telling the men as I pointed to the group upon the chart that if no island thereabouts satisfied them, we could head for the Fijis or cruise about the Friendly or Navigator groups, working our way as far as the Low Archipelago, betwixt which and the first island we sighted we ought certainly to fall in with the sort of hiding-place they wanted. My words raised a grin of satisfaction in every face within reach of my voice.

"I stepped to the helm and headed the brig on a northerly course, and stood awhile looking at the compass to satisfy myself that the convict who grasped the spokes understood what to do with the wheel. He managed fairly well. I then asked Swallow to serve as my chief mate, and Stevenson to act as second, and calling the rest of the felons together, I divided them into two watches. My next step was to crowd the little brig with all the canvas she could spread, and set every stitch of it properly. Thus passed the first day.

"I have no time to enter minutely into what happened till we made a small point of land in the neighbourhood of the Friendly Islands. There was abundance of provisions on board, plenty of fresh water, and a stock of spirits intended for the commandant and soldiers at Macquarie Harbour and Norfolk Island; but though the convicts freely used whatever they found in the brig's hold, never once was there an instance of drunkenness amongst them. I guessed them all to be as desperate a set of miscreants as were ever transported for crime upon crime from a convict establishment; yet they used me very well. Saving their villainous speech, their behaviour was fairly decorous. They sprang to my bidding, sir'd me as though they had been seamen and I their captain, and, indeed, by their behaviour so reassured me that my dread of being butchered vanished, and I carried on the brig as assured of my personal safety—providing I dealt by them honestly—as though I had been on board the old Swan.

"We sighted several vessels, but, as you may suppose, we had nothing to say to them. Off the first island we came across I hove the brig to; the convicts got the long-boat out, and a dozen of them went ashore to examine and report. Five returned; the remainder had chosen to stay. We made three of the islands; the natives of two of them were threatening, and frightened the convicts back to the brig; the third proved uninhabited—a very gem of an island was this,—and here fifteen convicts went ashore, and thrice the boat went between the island and the brig with provisions and necessaries for their maintenance.

"But it gave me a fortnight of anxious hunting to discover such another island as the remaining convicts considered suitable. This at last we fell in with midway betwixt the Union group and the Marquesas; and here the rest of the felons went ashore, after almost emptying the brig's hold of provisions and the like. They kept the long-boat, and left me alone in the brig. Some of them shook hands with me as they went over the side, and thanked me for having served them so honestly.

"It was in the evening when I was left alone. The sun was setting behind the island, off which a gentle breeze was blowing. My first business was to run the ensign aloft, jack down. I then trimmed sail as best I could with my single pair of hands, and, putting the helm amidships, let the brig blow away south-west, designing to make for one of the Navigator Islands, where I might hope to fall in with assistance, either from the shore or from a vessel. But, shortly after midnight the brig, sailing quietly, grounded upon a coral shoal, fell over on to her bilge, and lay quiet. I was without a boat, and could do nothing but wait for daylight, and pray for a sight of some passing vessel. All next day passed, and nothing showed the wide horizon round; but about nine o'clock that night, the moon shining clearly, I spied a sail down in the south. She drew closer, and proved a little schooner. I hailed her with a desperate voice, and to my joy was answered, and in less than ten minutes she sent a boat and took me aboard."

The South Seaman's narrative ends abruptly here, but it is known that he was conveyed to Honolulu, at which place, strangely enough, the Swan touched after he had been ashore about a week. He at once went on board, related his strange experiences to his captain, and proceeded on his whaling career with the easy indifference of a sailor accustomed to tragic surprises.

The brig Cyprus went to pieces on the shoal on which she had grounded. It is on record that of the convicts retaken on their return to England, two were hanged—namely, Watts and Davies; two others, Beveridge and Stevenson, were transported for life to Norfolk Island; and Swallow was sent back to Macquarie Harbour.



The Adventures of Three Sailors.

TOLD BY DANIEL SMALL, ONLY MATE.

Our vessel was a little brig, named the Hindoo Merchant, and we sailed on a day in March in the year of our Lord 1857, from Trincomalee bound to Calcutta. The captain, myself, and three sailors were Europeans; the rest of the ship's company, natives. Though we were "flying light" as the term is—that is to say, though there was little more in the ship's hold than ballast, and though she had tolerably nimble heels, for what one might term a country-wallah—yet the little ship was so bothered with head winds and light airs, and long days of stagnation, that we had been several weeks afloat before we managed to crawl to the Norrad of the Andaman parallels, which yet left a long stretch of waters before us. If this remainder of the ocean was not to be traversed more fleetly than the space we had already measured, then it was certain we should be running short of water many a long while before the Sandheads came within the compass of our horizon, and to provide against the most horrible situation that the crew of a ship can find themselves placed in, we kept a bright look-out for vessels, and within four days managed to speak two; but they had no water to spare, and we pushed on.

But within three days of our speaking the second of the two vessels we sighted a third, a large barque, who at once backed her topsail to our signals, and hailed us to know what we wanted. My captain, Mr. Roger Blow, stood up in the mizzen-rigging and asked for water. They asked how much we needed; Captain Blow responded that whatever they could spare would be a god-send. On this they sung out: "Send a boat with a cask and you shall have what we can afford to part with." Captain Blow then told me to put an eighteen-gallon cask in the port-quarter boat, and go away to the barque with it. "They'll not fill it," said he, "but a half'll be better than a quarter, and a quarter'll be good enough; for we stand to pick up more as we go along."

I had called to two of the English sailors, named Mike Jackson and Thomas Fallows, to get into the boat, when the cask had been placed in her; and when I had entered her the darkeys lowered us; we unhooked and shoved off. There was a pleasant breeze of wind blowing; it blew hot, as though it came straight from the inside of an oven, the door of which had been suddenly opened; the sky had the sort of glazed dimness of the human eye in fever; but right overhead it was of a copperish dazzle where the roasting orb of the sun was. I could not see a speck of cloud anywhere, which rendered what followed the more amazing to my mind for the suddenness of it.

The two vessels at the first of their speaking had been tolerably close together, but some time had been spent in routing up the cask and getting it into the boat, and setting ourselves afloat, so that at the moment of our shoving off—spite of the topsail of each vessel being to the mast—the space had widened between them, till I daresay it covered pretty nearly a mile. The wind was at west-nor'-west, and the barque bore on the lee quarter of the Hindoo Merchant. The great heat put a languor into the arms of our two seamen, and the oars rose and fell slowly and weakly. Jackson said to me: "I hope," said he, "they 'll be able to spare us a bite of ship's bread. Our 'n is no better than sawdust, and if it wasn't for the worms in it," said he, "blast me if there 'd be any nutriment in it at all. Them Cingalese ought to ha' moored their island off the Chinese coast. They 'd have grown rich with teaching the Johnnies more tricks than they 're master of, at plundering sailors."

"The Hindoo Merchant's bread isn't up to much, Fallows," said I, "but this is no atmosphere to talk of bread in. What 's aboard will carry us to the Hooghley. It is water we have to fix our minds on."

We drew alongside of the tall barque, and the master, after looking over the rail, asked me to step aboard and drink a glass with him in his cabin, "for," says he, "this is no part of the ocean to be thirsty in," and he then gave directions for the cask to be got out of the boat, and a drink of rum and water to be handed down to the two seamen.

I stepped into the cabin and the captain put a bottle of brandy and some cold water on the table. He asked me several questions about the brig, and how long we were out, and where we were from, and the like, and one thing leading to another, he happened to mention the town he was born in, which was my native place too—Ashford, in the county of Kent,—and here was now a topic to set us yarning, for I knew some of his friends and he knew some of mine; and the talk seemed to do him so much good, whilst it was so agreeable to me, that neither of us seemed in a hurry to end it. This is the only excuse I can offer for lingering on the barque longer than, as circumstances proved, I ought to have done.

At last I got up and said I must be off, and I thanked him most kindly for the obliging reception of me, and for his goodness in supplying the brig with water, and I gave him Captain Blow's compliments, and desired to know if we could accommodate him in any way in return. He answered "Nothing, nothing," stepping through the hatch as he said it, and an instant after he set up his throat in a cry.

"You 'll have to bear a hand aboard," says he, with a face of astonishment; "look yonder! 'T is rolling down upon your brig like smoke." He pointed to the vessel, and a little way past her I spied a long line of white vapour no higher than Dover cliff as it looked, but as dense as those rocks of chalk too. The sun made steam of it, but if already it was putting a likeness of its own blankness into the sky over it, which seemed to be dying out, as the vapour came along, as the light perishes in a looking-glass upon which you breathe. I ran to the side and saw my boat under the gang-way and the two men in her. The cask was in the stern of the boat. The master of the barque cried out to me: "Will you not stay till that smother clears? You may lose your brig in it." I replied: "No, sir, thank you. I will take my chance. It is more likely I should lose her by remaining here," and with a flourish of the hand I dropped over the side and entered the boat. "Now," cried I, "pull like the devil, men."

They threw their oars over and fell to rowing fiercely; but the barque was not five cables' length astern of us when the first of the white cliff of vapour smote the Hindoo Merchant, and she vanished in it like a star in a cloud. There was a fresh breeze of wind behind that line of sweeping thickness, and in places, at the base of the mass of blankness, it would dart out in swift racings of shadow that made one think of the feelers of some gigantic marine spider, probing under its cobweb as though feeling its way along. In a few minutes the cloud drove down over us with a loud whistling of wind, and the water close to the boat's side ran in short, small seas, every head of it hissing; but to within the range of a biscuit toss all was flying, glistening obscurity, with occasional bursts of denser thicknesses which almost hid one end of the boat from the other. It was about six o'clock in the afternoon, and there might be yet another hour of sunshine.

"'Vast rowing!" says I presently, "you may keep the oars over, but there's no good in pulling, short of keeping her head to wind. This is too thick to last."

"Ain't so sure of that," says Fallows, taking a slow look round at the smother, "I 've been in these here seas for two days running in weather arter this pattern."

"Pity we didn't stay aboard the barque," says Jackson.

"A plague on your pities!" I cried. "I know my duty, I believe. Suppose we had stayed aboard the barque, we stood to be separated from the brig in this breeze and muckiness, and was her skipper by-and-bye going to sail in search of the Hindoo Merchant?"

"A gun!" cries Fallows.

"That'll be the brig," says I, catching the dull thud of the explosion of a nine-pounder which the Hindoo Merchant carried on her quarter-deck.

"Seems to me as though it sounded from yonder," says Jackson, looking away over the starboard beam of the boat.

"What have ye there, men?" says I, nodding at a bundle of canvas under the amidship thwart.

"Ship's bread," answered Jackson, with a note of sulkiness in his voice. "It was hove to us on my asking for a bite. She was a liberal barque. The cask's more 'n three-quarters full."

We hung upon our oars listening and waiting. There was a second gun ten minutes after the first had been fired, and that was the last we heard. The report was thin and distant, but whether ahead or astern I could not have guessed by harkening. I kept up my own and endeavoured to inspirit the hearts of the others by saying that this fog which had come down in a moment would end in a moment, that it was all clear sky above with plenty of moonlight for us in the night if it should happen that the sun went down upon us thus, that Captain Blow was not going to lose us and his boat and the cask of fresh water if it was in mortal seamanship to hold a vessel in one situation; but the fellows were not to be cheered, their spirits sank and their faces grew longer as the complexion of the fog told us that the sun was sinking fast, and I own that when it came at last to his setting, and no break in the flying vapour, and a blackness as of ink stealing into it out of the swift tropic dusk, I myself felt horribly dejected, greatly fearing that we had lost the brig for good.

Just before the last of the twilight faded out of the smoke that shrouded us, we lashed both oars together and, attaching them to the boat's painter, threw them overboard and rode to them. Our thirst was now extreme, and to appease it—being without a dipper to drop into the cask—we sank a handkerchief through the bung-hole and wrung it out in the half of a cocoa-nut shell that was in the boat as a baler, and by this means procured a drink, each man. Grateful to God indeed was I that we had fresh water with us. I beat the cask, and gathered by the sound that it was more than half full. Heaven was bountiful too in providing us with biscuit. It had been the luckiest of thoughts on Jackson's part, though he had desired nothing more than to obtain a relish for his own rations of buffalo hump aboard.

I never remember the like of the pitch darkness of that night. There was a moon, pretty nearly a full one if I recollect aright; but had she been shining over the other side of the world it would have been all the same. Her delicate silver beam could not pierce the vapour, and never once did I behold the least glistening of her radiance anywhere. There was a constant noise of wind in the dense thickness, and an incessant seething and crackling of waters running nimbly, so that though we would from time to time bend our ears in the hope of catching the rushing and pouring noise of the sea divided by a ship's stem, we never could hear more than the whistling of the breeze and the lapping of the hurrying little surges. There was a deal of fire in the water, and it came and went in sheets like the reflection of lightning, insomuch that we might have believed ourselves in the heart of an electric storm; but happily the wind never gathered so much weight as to raise a troublesome sea, and though the boat tumbled friskily she kept dry, and there was nothing in her movements to render me uneasy.

I told the two fellows to lie down in the bottom of the boat, and I kept watch till I reckoned it was drawing on to about one o'clock in the morning. Twice or thrice during that long and wretched vigil there seemed a promise of the weather clearing, and I gazed with the yearning of the shipwrecked; but regularly it thickened and blackened down upon us again in blasts like the belchings of a three-decker's broadside. It was a very watery vapour, and I was early wet to the skin.

At about one o'clock, as I calculated, I awoke Jackson, and bade him keep an eager look-out and not to spare his ear in putting it against the night, "for," says I, "there's nothing to be done with the eyes; it's all for the hearing at such a time as this, mate, and what you can't watch for you must listen for; and wake me up to any sound you may hear, that our three throats may hail together. O God," says I, "if it would but thin and show the brig within reach of our shouts!" With that I lay down and was soon fast asleep, being worn out with excitement and grief, and when I awoke it was daylight, for there's but little dawn off the Andamans; the sun in those seas leaps on to the horizon from the night as it were, and flashes it into day in a breath.

It was still thick and troubled weather, but clear to about two miles from the side of the boat. There was very little wind, and a long swell of the colour of lead was running from the southward. The vapour had broken up and lay in masses round about us—long, white twisted folds of it, like powder smoke after a great battle; and to the top of those heaps of thickness the sky sloped in a sort of grey shadow, with a little pencilling here and there of some small livid ring of mist, which looked stirless as though what air there was blew low. There was nothing in sight; we strained our gaze into every quarter but I saw there was nothing to be seen. This smote me to the heart. I had been in my time in several situations of peril at sea, but had never yet experienced the horrors of an open boat amidst a vast waste of waters, such as was this Bay of Bengal with the Andaman Islands some hundreds of miles distant, and a near menace of roasting heat when the wide grey stretch of cloud should have passed away and laid bare the sun's eye of fire. We gazed with melancholy faces one at another.

"What's to be done?" says Fallows, bringing his bloodshot eyes from the sea to my face; "if we had a sail to set we might have a chance."

"There are two oars," said I, "for a mast and a yard, and our shirts must furnish a sail."

"But how are we to head?" says Jackson.

"Right afore the wind, I suppose," says I; "there'll be no ratching with the rags we're going to hoist. Right afore the wind," I says; "and we must trust to God to keep us in view till something heaves in sight—which is pretty well bound to happen I suppose when there comes some wind along."

I opened the canvas parcel, and found a matter of thirty biscuits; all very sweet, good bread. We took each of us a piece, and followed on with a drink, and then went to work to get our oars in. We all three wore shirts, and we stripped them off our backs and cut them to lie open. I had a little circular cushion of stout pins in my pocket, such as a sailor might carry, and with them we brought the squares of the shirts together, and seized the corners to one of the oars by yarns out of an end of painter we cut off, then stepped the other oar, and secured it with another piece of the painter; and now we had a sort of sail, the mere sight of which, even, was a small satisfaction to us, since the shirts being white they must needs make a good mark upon the water, something not to be missed, unless wilfully, by a passing vessel.

The morning passed away, and a little after twelve o'clock the water in the south was darkened by the brushing of a wind, which drove the hovering masses of vapour before it; and presently they had totally disappeared, leaving a sky with rents and yawns of blue in places, and a clear glass-like circle of horizon, upon which, however, there was nothing to be seen. The boat moved slowly before the wind, which blew hot as a desert breeze; I steered, and Jackson and Fallows sat near me, one or the other from time to time getting on to a thwart to take a view of the ocean, under the sharp of his hand.

In this fashion passed the afternoon. The night came with a deal of fire in the water, and a very clear moon floating in lagoons of velvet softness betwixt the clouds. The weather continued quiet; the long swell made a pleasant cradle of the boat, and the night-wind being full of dew, breathed refreshingly upon our hot cheeks; whilst our ears were soothed by the rippling noise of the running waters which seemed to cool the senses, as the breeze did the body.

It was almost a dead calm, however, at daybreak next morning. The atmosphere was close and heavy, and there was a strange strong smell of seaweed, rising off the ocean, which caused me to look narrowly about, with some dim dream of perceiving land, though I should have known there was no land for leagues and leagues.

Whilst we were munching a biscuit, I observed an appearance of steam lifting off the water, at a distance of about half-a-mile on the starboard side of the boat. The vapour came out of the water in the shape of corkscrews, spirally working, and they melted at a height of perhaps ten or fifteen feet. I counted five of these singular emissions. Jackson said that they were fragments of mist, and we might look out for such another thickness as had lost us the brig. Fallows said: "No; that's no mist, mate; that is as good steam as ever blew out of a kettle. Are there places where the water boils in this here ocean?"

As he said these words, an extraordinary thrill passed through the boat, followed by a sound that seemed more like an intellectual sensation than a real noise. What to compare it to I don't know; it was as though it had thundered under the sea. An instant later, up from the part of the water where the corkscrew appearances were, rose a prodigious body of steam. It soared without a sound from the deep; it was balloon-shaped but of mountainous proportions.

"A sea-quake!" roared Jackson. "Stand by for the rollers!"

But no sea followed. I could witness no commotion whatever in the water; the light, long swell flowed placidly into the base of the mass of whiteness, and there was nothing besides visible on the breast of the sea, save the delicate wrinkling of the weak draught of air. Very quickly the vapour thinned as steam does, and as it melted off the surface, it disclosed to our astonished gaze what at first sight seemed to me the fabric of a great ship, but after viewing it for a moment or two, I distinctly made out the form of an old-fashioned hull with the half of much such another hull as she, alongside, both apparently locked together about the bows; and they seemed to be supported by some huge gleaming black platform; but what it was we could not tell.

The three of us drew a deep breath as we surveyed the floating objects. The steam was gone; there they lay plain and bare; it was as though the wand of a magician had touched the white mass and transformed it into the objects we gazed at.

"Down with the sail," says I, "there's something yonder worth looking at."

We got the oars over, and pulled in the direction of the fabrics. As we approached I could scarce credit the evidence of my own sight. The form of one of the vessels was perfect. She was of an antique build, and belonged to a period that I reckoned was full eighty years dead and gone. The other—the half of her I should say—showed a much bluffer bow, and had been a vessel of some burthen. But the wonder was the object on which they rested. This was no more nor less than the body of a great dead whale!

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

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

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

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

"Let's board her," says Jackson.

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

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

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

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

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

"Let's get aboard," says he.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Hatches open?" says he.

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

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

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

"All a hundred, sir," said I.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes, sir," says I.

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

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

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

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

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



The Strange Tragedy of the "White Star."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"He is not, sir."

"When do you expect him?"

"Every minute."

"May we stop here?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I was startled into violent wakefulness by a cannonade of canvas aloft, and found the ship in the wind. I looked aft; the wheel was deserted—at least I believed so, till on rushing to it, meanwhile shouting to the watch on deck, I spied the figure of the helmsman on his face close beside the binnacle.

I thought he was dead. The watch to my shouts came tumbling to the braces, and in a few minutes the captain made his appearance. The ship was got to her course afresh, by which time the man who had been steering was so far recovered as to be able to sit on the grating abaft the wheel and relate what had happened.

He was a Dane, and spoke with a strong foreign accent, beyond my art to reproduce. He said he had been looking away to leeward, believing he saw a light out upon the horizon, when on turning his head he beheld a ghost at his side.

"A what?" said the captain.

"A ghost, sir, so help me—" and here the little Dane indulged in some very violent language, all designed to convince us that he spoke the truth.

"What was it like?" asked the captain.

"It was dressed in white and stood looking at me. I tried to run and could not, but fell, and maybe fainted."

"The durned idiot slept," said the captain to me, "and dreamt, and dropped on his nut."

"Had I dropped on my nut, should not have woke up then?" cried the Dane, in a passion of candour.

"Go forward and turn in," said the captain. "The doctor shall see you and report to me."

When the man was gone the captain asked me if I had seen anything likely to produce the impression of a ghost on an ignorant, credulous man's mind? I answered no, wondering that he should ask such a question.

"How long was the man in a fit, d'ye think?" said he, "that is, before you found out that the wheel was deserted?"

"Three or four minutes."

He looked into the binnacle, took a turn about the decks, and, without saying anything more about the ghost, went below.

The doctor next day reported that the Dane was perfectly well, and of sound mind, and that he stuck with many imprecations to his story. He described the ghost as a figure in white that looked at him with sparkling eyes, and yet blindly. He was unable to describe the features. Fright, no doubt, stood in the way of perception. He could not imagine where the thing had come from. He was, as he had said, gazing at what looked like a spark or star to leeward, when turning his head he found the Shape close beside him.

The captain and the doctor talked the thing over in my presence, and we decided to consider it a delusion on the part of the Dane, a phantom of his imagination, mainly because the man swooned after he saw the thing, letting go the wheel so that the ship came up into the wind, and it was impossible to conceive that a substantial object could have vanished in the time that elapsed between the man falling down and the flap of sails which had called my attention to the abandoned helm.

However, nothing was said about the matter aft: the sailors adopted the doctor's opinion, some viewing the thing as a "Dutchman's" dodge to get a "night in."

A few days later brought us into cold weather: this was followed by the ice and conflicts of the Horn. We drove too far south, and for a week every afternoon we hove-to under a close-reefed maintopsail for fear of the ice throughout the long hours of Antarctic blackness. We were in no temper to think of ghosts, and yet though no one had delivered the news authoritatively, it had come by this wild bleak time to be known that Captain Griffiths and Miss Le Grand were engaged. Mrs. Burney told me so one day in the cuddy, and with a wicked flash of her dark eye wondered that people could think of making love with icebergs close at hand.

It was no business of mine, and seemingly I gave the matter no heed, though I could find leisure and curiosity sometimes for an askant glance at the captain and his beauty when they were at table or when the weather permitted the lady to come on deck, and their behaviour left me in very little doubt that he was deeply in love with her; but whether she was equally enamoured of him I could not guess.

We beat clear of the latitude of roaring gales blind with snow, and mountainous ice-islands like cities of alabaster in ruins, and seas ridging in thunder and foam to the height of our mizzentop, and heading north blew under wide wings of studding sails towards the sun, every day sinking some southern stars out of sight, and every night lifting above the sea-line some gem of the heavens dear to northern eyes.

I went below at eight bells on a Friday morning when we were two months "out" from Sydney, as I very well remember. The ship had then caught the first of the south-east trade-wind. All was well when I left the deck. I was awakened by a hand violently shaking my shoulder. I sprang up and found Robson, the second mate, standing beside my bunk. He was pale as the ghost the Dane had described.

"There's been murder done, sir," he cried. "The captain's killed."

I stared at him like a fool, and echoed mechanically and dully: "Murder done! Captain killed!" Then collecting my wits I tumbled into my clothes and rushed to the captain's cabin, where I found the doctor and the third mate examining poor Griffith's body. It was half-past-six o'clock in the morning, and the daylight strong, but none of the passengers were moving. The captain had been stabbed to the heart. The doctor said he had been killed by a single thrust. The body was clothed in white drill trousers and a white linen shirt, which was slightly stained with blood where the knife had pierced it.

Who had done this thing? It was horrible, unprovoked murder! throughout the ship the captain had been the most popular man on board. The forecastle liking for him was as strong as sentiment of any sort can find expression in that part of a vessel. There had never been a murmur. Indeed I had never sailed with a better crew. Not a man had deserted us at Sydney and of the hands on board at least half had sailed with the captain before.

We carefully searched the cabin, but there was nothing whatever to tell us that robbery had been committed. However, a ghastly, shocking murder had been perpetrated; the man on whose skill and judgment had depended the safety of the ship and the many lives within her had been foully done to death in his sleep by some mysterious hand, and we determined at once upon a course.

First, I sent for some of the best and most trustworthy seamen amongst the crew, and bringing them into the captain's cabin, showed them the body. I then, in my capacity as commander of the vessel, authorised them to act as a sort of detectives or policemen, and to search every part of the ship and all the berths in the steerage and 'tween-decks for any clue to the doer of the deed. It was arranged that the cabins of the first-class passengers should be thoroughly overhauled by the second and third mates.

All this brought us to the hour when the passengers arose, and the ship was presently alive. The news swept from lip to lip magically; in all parts of the ship I saw men and women talking, with their faces pale with consternation and horror. I had not the courage to break the news to Miss Le Grand, and asked the doctor, a quiet, gentlemanly man, to speak to her. I was on the poop looking after the ship when the doctor came from the young lady's berth.

"How did she receive the news?" said I.

"I wish it may not break her heart," said he, gravely. "She was turned into stone. Her stare of grief was dreadful—not the greatest actress could imagine such a look. There'll be no comforting her this side of England."

"Doctor, could he have done it himself?"

"Oh, heaven, no, sir!" and he explained, by recalling the posture of the body and the situation of the hands, not to mention the absence of the weapon, why it was impossible the captain should have killed himself.

I don't know how it came about; but whilst I paced the deck waiting for the reports of the mates and the seamen and the passengers who were helping me in the search, it entered my head to mix up with this murder the spectre, or ghost, that had frightened the Dane at the wheel into a fit, along with the memory of a sort of quarrel which I guessed had happened between Captain Griffiths and Miss Le Grand. It was a mere muddle of fancies at best, and yet they took a hold of my imagination. I think it was about a week before this murder that I had observed the coolness of what you might call a lovers' quarrel betwixt the captain and his young lady, and without taking any further notice of it I quietly set the cause down to Mrs. Burney, who, as a thorough-paced flirt, with fine languishing black eyes, and a saucy tongue, had often done her best to engage the skipper in one of those little asides which are as brimstone and the undying worm to the jealous of either sex. The lovers had made it up soon after, and for two or three days previously had been as thick and lover-like as sweet-hearts ought to be.

But what had the ghost that had affrighted the Dane to do with this murder? And how were Mrs. Burney's blandishments, and the short-lived quarrel betwixt the lovers to be associated with it? Nevertheless, these matters ran in my head as I walked the deck on the morning of that crime, and I thought and thought, scarce knowing, however, in what direction imagination was heading.

The two mates, the seamen, and the passengers arrived with their reports. They had nothing to tell. The steward and the stewardess had searched with the two mates in the saloon or cuddy. Every cabin had been ransacked, with the willing consent of its occupants. The forecastle, and 'tween-decks, and steerage, and lazarette had been minutely overhauled. Every accessible part of the bowels of the ship had been visited; to no purpose. No stowaway of any sort, no rag of evidence, or weapon to supply a clue was discovered.

That afternoon we buried the body and I took command of the ship.

I saw nothing of Miss Le Grand for two days. She kept her cabin, and was seen only by the stewardess, who waited upon her. At the expiration of that time I received a message, and went at once to her berth. I never could have figured so striking a change in a fine woman full of beauty in so short a time, as I now beheld. The fire had died out of her eyes, and still there lurked something weird in the very spiritlessness, and dull and vacant sadness of her gaze. Her cheeks were hollow. Under each eye rested a shadow as though it was cast by a green leaf.

Her first words were: "Cannot you find out who did it?"

"No, madam. We have tried hard; harder for the captain's sake than had he been another, for the responsibility that rests upon the master of an ocean-going vessel makes him an object of mighty significance, believe me, to us sailors."

"But the person who killed him must be in the ship," she cried, in a voice that wanted much of its old clear music.

"One should suppose so; and he is undoubtedly on board the ship; but we can't find him."

"Did he commit suicide?"

"No. Everybody is accounted for."

"What motive," she exclaimed, with a sudden burst of desperate passionate grief, that wrung her like a fit from head to foot, "could any one have for killing Captain Griffiths! He was the gentlest, the kindest—oh, my heart! my heart!" and, hiding her face, she rocked herself in her misery.

I tried my rough, seafaring best to soothe her. Certainly, until this moment I never could have supposed her love for the poor man was so great.

The fear bred of this mysterious assassination lay in a dark and heavy shadow upon the ship. None of us, passengers or sailors, turned in of a night but with a fear of the secret bloody hand that had slain the captain making its presence tragically known once more before the morning.

It happened one midnight, when we were something north of the equator, in the calms and stinging heat of the inter-tropic latitudes, that, having come on deck to relieve the second mate, and take charge of the ship till four o'clock, I felt thirsty, and returned to the cuddy for a drink of water. Of the three lamps only one was alight, and burnt very dimly. There was no moonlight, but a plenty of starshine, which showered in a very rippling of spangled silver through the yawning casements of the skylights.

Just as I returned the tumbler to the rack whence I had removed it, the door of Miss Le Grand's cabin was opened, and the girl stepped forth. She was arrayed in white; probably she was attired in her bed-clothes. She seemed to see me at once, for she emerged directly opposite; and I thought she would speak, or hastily retire. But, after appearing to stare for a little while, she came to the table and leaned upon it with her left hand, sighing several times in the most heart-broken manner; and now I saw by the help of the dim lamplight that her right hand grasped a knife—the gleam of the blade caught my eye in a breath!

"Good gracious!" I cried to myself, instantly, "the woman's asleep! This, then, is the ghost that frightened the Dane. And this, too, was the hand that murdered the captain!"

I stood motionless watching her. Presently, taking her hand off the table, she turned her face aft, and with a wonderfully subtle, stealthy, sneaking gait, reminding one strangely of the folding motion of the snake, she made for the captain's cabin.

Now, that cabin, ever since Griffith's death, I had occupied, and you may guess the sensations with which I followed the armed and murderous sleep-walker as she glided to what I must call my berth, and noiselessly opened the door of it. The moment she was in the cabin her motions grew amazingly swift. She stepped to the side of the bunk I was in the habit of using, and lifting the knife plunged it once, deep and hard—then came away, so nimbly that it was with difficulty I made room for her in the doorway to pass. I heard her breathe hard and fast as she swept by, and I stood in the doorway of my cabin watching her till her figure disappeared in her own berth.

So, then, the mystery was at an end. Poor Captain Griffith's murderess was his adored sweetheart! She had killed him in her sleep, and knew it not. In the blindness of slumber she had repeated the enormous tragedy, as sinless nevertheless as the angel who looked down and beheld her and pitied her!

I went on deck and sent for the doctor, to whom I communicated what I had seen, and he at once repaired to Miss Le Grand's berth accompanied by the stewardess, and found her peacefully resting in her bunk. No knife was to be seen. However, next morning, the young lady being then on deck, veiled as she always now went, and sitting in a retired part of the poop, the second mate, the doctor, and the stewardess again thoroughly searched Miss Le Grand's berth, and they found in a hollow in the ship's side, a sort of scupper in fact for the porthole, a carving knife, rusted with old stains of blood. It had belonged to the ship, and it was a knife the steward had missed on the day the captain was killed.

Since the whole ghastly tragedy was a matter of somnambulism, all points of it were easily fitted by the doctor, who quickly understood that the knife had been taken by the poor girl in her sleep just as it had been murderously used. What horrible demon governed her in her slumber, who shall tell? For my part I put it down to Mrs. Burney and a secret feeling of jealousy which had operated in the poor soul when sense was suspended in her by slumber.

We tried to keep the thing secret, taking care to lock Miss Le Grand up every night without explaining our motive; but the passengers got wind of the truth and shrunk from her with horror. It came, in fact, to their waiting upon me in a body and insisting upon my immuring her in the steerage in company with one of the 'tween-deck's passengers, a female who had offered her services as a nurse for hire. This action led to the poor girl herself finding out what had happened. God knows who told her or how she managed to discover it; but 't is certain she got to learn it was her hand that in sleep had killed her lover, and she went mad the selfsame day of her understanding what she had done.

Nor did she ever recover her mind. She was landed mad, and sent at once to an asylum, where she died, God rest her poor soul! exactly a year after the murder, passing away, in fact, at the very hour the deed was done, as I afterwards heard.



The Ship Seen on the Ice.

In the middle of April, in the year 1855, the three-masted schooner Lightning sailed from the Mersey for Boston with a small general cargo of English manufactured goods. She was commanded by a man named Thomas Funnel. The mate, Salamon Sweers, was of Dutch extraction, and his broad-beamed face was as Dutch to the eye as was the sound of his name to the ear. Yet he spoke English with as good an accent as ever one could hear in the mouth of an Englishman; and, indeed, I pay Salamon Sweers no compliment by saying this, for he employed his h's correctly, and the grammar of his sentences was fairly good, albeit salt: and how many Englishmen are there who correctly employ the letter h, and whose grammar is fairly good, salt or no salt?

We carried four forecastle hands and three apprentices. There was Charles Petersen, a Swede, who had once been "fancy man" in a toy shop; there was David Burton, who had been a hairdresser and proved unfortunate as a gold-digger in Australia; there was James Lussoni, an Italian, who claimed to be a descendant of the old Genoese merchants; and there was John Jones, a runaway man-of-warsman, pretty nearly worn out, and subject to apoplexy.

Four sailors and three apprentices make seven men, a cook and a boy are nine, and a mate and a captain make eleven; and eleven of a crew were we, all told, men and boy, aboard the three-masted schooner Lightning when we sailed away one April morning out of the river Mersey, bound to Boston, North America.

My name was then as it still is—for during the many years I have used the sea, never had I occasion to ship with a "purser's name"—my name, I say, is David Kerry, and in that year of God 1855 I was a strapping young fellow, seventeen years old, making a second voyage with Captain Funnel, having been bound apprentice to that most excellent but long-departed mariner by my parents, who, finding me resolved to go to sea had determined that my probation should be thorough: no half-laughs and pursers' grins would satisfy them; my arm was to plunge deep into the tar bucket straight away; and certainly there was no man then hailing from the port of Liverpool better able to qualify a young chap for the profession of the sea—but a young chap, mind you, who liked his calling, who meant to be a man and not a "sojer" in it—than Captain Funnel of the schooner Lightning.

The four sailors slept in a bit of a forecastle forward; we three apprentices slung our hammocks in a bulkheaded part of the run or steerage, a gloomy hole, the obscurity of which was defined rather than illuminated by the dim twilight sifting down aslant from the hatch. Here we stowed our chests, and here we took our meals, and here we slept and smoked and yarned in our watch below. I very well remember my two fellow apprentices. One was named Corbin, and the other Halsted. They were both of them smart, honest, bright lads, coming well equipped and well educated from respectable homes, in love with the calling of the sea, and resolved in time not only to command ships, but to own them.

Well, nothing in any way noteworthy happened for many days. Though the schooner was called the Lightning, she was by no means a clipper. She was built on lines which were fashionable forty years before, when the shipwright held that a ship's stability must be risked if she was one inch longer than five times her beam. She was an old vessel, but dry as a stale cheese; wallowed rather than rolled, yet was stiff; would sit upright with erect spars, like the cocked ears of a horse, in breezes which bowed passing vessels down to their wash-streaks. Her round bows bruised the sea, and when it entered her head to take to her heels, she would wash through it like a "gallied whale," all smothered to the hawse-pipes, and a big round polished hump of brine on either quarter.