"Elizabeth," he said, gently smoothing her hair, for she looked dispirited, and stood with her eyes fixed upon the ground, "I couldn't leave without having spoken to you again."

She still kept her eyes upon the ground, but didn't withdraw herself from his hand.

"Do you really care for me?—will you be my wife?"

She was silent. At last she said, a shade paler, and as if with an effort—

"Yes—Herr Beck."

"Say 'du' to me—say Carl," he pleaded, with much feeling, "and—look at me."

She looked at him, but not as he had expected. It was with a fixed, cold look she said—

"Yes, if we are engaged."

"Are we not then?"

"When is your stepmother to know it?" she asked, rather dragging the words out one after the other.

"Dear Elizabeth! These people at home here must notice nothing for—for three months, when I shall be—" But he caught an expression now in her face, and something in the abrupt way in which she drew her hand from him, that made him keep back what he had originally intended to say, and he corrected it hastily.

"Next week, then, I'll write from Arendal and tell my father, and then let my stepmother know what I have written. Are you offended, Elizabeth—dear Elizabeth? or shall I do it at once?" he broke out resolutely, and seized her hand again.

"No, no—not now! next week—let it not be till next week," she cried, in sudden apprehension, returning the pressure of his hand at the same time almost entreatingly—it was the first he had had from her.

"And then you are mine, Elizabeth?"

"Yes, then"—she tried to avoid meeting his eye.

"Farewell, then, Elizabeth! But I shall come back on Saturday. I can't live for longer without seeing you."

"Farewell!" she said, in a rather toneless voice.

He sprang down to the boat that lay waiting for him below; but she didn't look after him, and went in with bowed head the opposite way.

Small things often weigh heavily in the world of impressions. Elizabeth had been overpowered by what seemed to her the magnanimity of his nature when he had declared that he would elevate her into the position of his wife; she felt that it was her worth in his eyes which had outweighed all other considerations. That he should shrink from the inevitable conflict with his family she had on the other hand never for a moment imagined. She had no doubt felt herself that it would be painful, but had stationed herself for the occasion behind his masculine shield. When he now so unexpectedly began to press for time, at first even proposing to be away himself when the matter came on in his home, a feeling took possession of her which in her inward dread she instinctively clutched at as a drowning wretch at a straw, as it seemed to suggest a possibility even now of reconsidering her promise.

She had a hard and heavy time of it during the two days until Carl returned; and the nights were passed in fever.

On Saturday evening he came, and the first he greeted was herself: he seemed almost, as she passed in and out of the room quiet and pale, as if he didn't wish any longer to conceal the relations now existing between them.

He had with him a letter from his father, which was read aloud when the meal was over. It was dated from a South American port, and mention was made in it of Salve among others. Off Cape Hatteras they had had stormy weather, and had their topmast carried away. It remained attached by a couple of ropes, and with the heavy sea that was running, was swinging backwards and forwards, as it hung, against the lower rigging, threatening to destroy it. Salve Kristiansen had come forward in the emergency and ventured aloft to cut it adrift; and as he sat there the whole had gone over the side. He fell with it, but had the luck to be caught in a top-lift as he fell, and so saved his life. "It was pluckily done," ended the account, "but nevertheless all is not exactly right about him, and he is not turning out as well as he promised."

"I never expected very much from him," remarked Carl, with a contemptuous shrug of his shoulders; "he's a bad lot."

He didn't see the resentful eyes which Elizabeth fixed upon him for these words, and she sat for a long while afterwards out in the kitchen with her hands in her lap, silent and angry, thinking over them. A resolution was forming in her mind.

Before they retired to rest, Carl whispered to her—

"I have written to my father to-day, and—to-morrow, Elizabeth, is our betrothal-day!"

Elizabeth was the last in the room, putting it to rights, and when she left she took a sheet of paper and writing materials with her. She lay down on her bed; but about midnight she was sitting up by a light and disfiguring a sheet of paper with writing. It was to this effect:—

"Forgive me that I cannot be your wife, for my heart is given to another.—Elizabeth Raklev."

She folded the paper and fastened it with a pin for want of a wafer, and then quietly opening the door of the room where Madam Beck was sleeping, placed her lips close to her ear, and whispered her name. Madam Beck woke up in some alarm when she saw Elizabeth standing before her fully dressed, and apparently prepared for a journey.

"Madam Beck," Elizabeth said, quietly, "I am going to confide something to you, and ask for your advice and assistance. Your step-son has asked me to be his wife. It was last Sunday—and I said yes; but now I have changed my mind, and am going back to my aunt, or farther away still, if you can tell me how; for I am afraid he will follow me."

Madam Beck stared at her in mute amazement, and at first put on an incredulous and rather scornful expression; but as she came to feel that it might all be true, she raised herself involuntarily higher up in the bed.

"But—why do you come with this now, particularly in the middle of the night?" she said, with a suspicious and searching look.

"Because he has written to his father about it to-day, and means to tell you and the rest to-morrow."

"So—he has already written? That was his object, then, in bringing you into the house here," Madam Beck added, after a pause, with some bitterness.

It seemed to strike her then that there was something noble in Elizabeth's conduct; and looking at her more kindly, she said—

"Yes, you are right. It is best for you to go away—to some place where he will not find it so easy to reach you."

She lapsed into thought again. Then a brilliant idea occurred to her, and she got up and put on her clothes. She had a man's clearheadedness, and her habits of management stood her in good stead on the present occasion. The Dutch skipper Garvloit, who had married her half-sister, happened just a day or two before to have been inquiring for a Norwegian girl, who would be able to help in the house; and here was just the place for Elizabeth. She had only to go on board his vessel, that lay over at Arendal ready to sail.

Madam Beck went into the sitting-room at once, and wrote a letter to Garvloit, which she gave to Elizabeth, together with a good round sum of money—wages due, she said; and half-an-hour afterwards Elizabeth was rowing over alone in the quiet moonlight night to Arendal.

The smooth sound lay full of shining stars between the deep shadows of the ridges on either side, with a light from a mast here and there denoting the presence of vessels under the land. A falling star would now and then leave a stream of light behind it; and she felt a sense of joyous exultation that she could only subdue by rowing hard for long spells. She was like one escaped—relieved from some oppressive burden. And how she looked forward to seeing Marie Forstberg now!

She arrived in the town before daybreak, and went straight up to her aunt's, to whom she announced that Madam Beck wished her to take a place in Holland with Garvloit, who was on the point of sailing. She showed her the letter—there was no time to lose.

The old woman listened to her for a while, and then said abruptly—

"There has been some difficulty with the lieutenant, Elizabeth?"

"Yes, aunt, there has," she replied; "he made love to me."

"He did—"

"And first I said as good as yes. But I don't mean to have him—and so I told Madam Beck."

"So you wouldn't have him?" was the rejoinder, after an astonished pause; "and the reason, I suppose, was that you would rather have Salve?"

"Yes, aunt," in a low voice.

"And why in the world didn't you take him, then?"

The tears came into Elizabeth's eyes.

"Well—as people make their beds so they must lie," said the old woman, severely—and betook herself then, without any further observation, to the preparation of the morning coffee.

As Elizabeth went down to the quay, to get a boat to take her out to the merchantman, she looked in at the post-office, where she found Marie Forstberg already up, and busy in the sitting-room in her morning dress. She was greatly astonished when Elizabeth told her of her new destination.

It was such an advantageous offer, Elizabeth explained—an almost independent place in the house; and Madam Beck had herself advised her to take it.

But though she used all her wit to keep the other off the scent, Marie Forstberg found a want of connection somewhere, and Elizabeth could see it in her eyes. She asked no further questions, however; and when they took leave of each other they embraced, in tears.

Out at Tromoe the surprise was great when it was found that Elizabeth had gone. Carl Beck had found her letter under the door, but had never imagined that she had left, and had gone out with it in violent agitation of mind and did not come home again till late in the afternoon. Madam Beck had in the meantime confided the matter to her daughters, and they would understand, she said, that not a word of it must be mentioned outside the house.

Although his eyes sought for her unceasingly, Carl made no express inquiry after her till the evening, and when he heard that she was gone, and was perhaps by that time already under sail for Holland, he sat for awhile as if petrified. Looking scornfully at them then, one after another, he said—

"If I thought that I had any of you to thank for this, I'd—" here he seized the chair he had been sitting on, dashed it down upon the floor so that it broke, and sprang up-stairs.

But her letter was unfortunately clear enough—she loved another, and he knew, too, who it was.



CHAPTER XII.

It was some months after. The Juno lay ready to sail in the roads of Monte Video, where she had taken in hides as part of her home cargo. The remainder, of coffee, she was to load at Rio, and in the meantime she had filled up with coals for that port. She was lying in tropical costume, with awnings over the fore and after deck as a protection against the fierce rays of the sun; and the crew were going about in correspondingly airy clothing, with open shirts and tucked-up canvas trousers, brown and shiny with perspiration, and gasping after every breath. It was the hottest season of the year. The pitch was melting in the chinks between the planking of the decks, and the tar running down her sides.

They had lain thus for a couple of days, hoping to receive before starting the post, which they had been disappointed in not finding on their arrival. And what a disappointment this can be, only those who have been in one of these ships that go on long voyages can understand. In foreign ports there may be many a wild pleasure to be enjoyed, but the longing to hear from home is the strongest feeling among sailors after all.

The mate had gone ashore to make one last inquiry before they sailed; and as the jolly-boat came alongside again, it was seen that he had the precious packet in his hand. He sprang up the accommodation-ladder and disappeared aft without a word to where the captain was sitting by a small table with a carafe and glass before him, mopping his bald head in the heat.

"You've got them at last, then," he said, as the mate laid the packet on the table before him, and retired a few paces while he opened it.

Almost the first letter that caught his eye was one to himself from his son, and his face brightened. He ran rapidly over the others, making a comment here and there according as he was acquainted with the circumstances of the men to whom they were addressed, and gathering them up in a bundle, handed them over then to the mate, with a cheery "Here you are, Mr. Johnson—letters for every one, from wives and sweethearts, and I don't know whom besides."

The news that the post had come had spread like wildfire over the ship, and by the time the mate began to call out the addresses by the main hatch, the whole crew were assembled, with the exception of a straggler or two who had happened to be aloft, and who were now to be seen hurrying down the ratlines.

The only one who neither expected news, nor cared apparently whether he received a letter or not, was Salve Kristiansen. While the parcel was being distributed, he remained standing by the wheel, intent apparently upon watching the movements of the two men who were hoisting up and making fast the jolly-boat. His lips were compressed; and when he gave the men a hand now and then, it was not a very willing one, and was generally accompanied by some bitter or sarcastic remark. His nature since they last sailed from Arendal seemed to have turned to gall; and when the captain had casually mentioned in his letter home that he was not so well satisfied with him, he had had good reason for saying so. There had been all sorts of unpleasantness between them; and if any discontent or difference between himself and the crew prevailed, Salve was sure to be at the bottom of it. He had found a rancid salt-herring, set up on four legs with a tail, as he was walking on the poop one evening in the moonlight; and as complaints had been recently made about the food, a good deal of which had become worse than bad from the effects of the hot climate, he had at once attributed to Salve this pointed method of drawing his attention to the subject again. It seemed almost as if he had some cause for bitterness against himself personally; and as he had always treated him with marked favour, he was at a loss to comprehend the reason for it.

With the exception of the captain, who had retained his seat at the after-end of the poop, Salve was soon the only human being to be seen on deck. The whole crew had disappeared, and might have been found poring over their letters two and two, or singly, in the most out-of-the-way places, from the main and fore top even to the bowsprit end, where one had erected a pavilion for himself out of a fold of the hauled-down jib.

Captain Beck's letter, to judge from his gestures and half-audible exclamations, was not giving him the pleasure which he had anticipated. His whole face, up to the top of his head, had become red as a lobster, and he sat now drumming with one hand on his knee, and casting an occasional fierce look over at Salve, in the attitude of a man beside himself with anger. At last he brought the hand in which he held the letter down upon the table with a force that sent the decanter and glass flying, and thrusting the fragments aside with his foot, he strode up and down the deck for a couple of minutes and then came towards Salve as if he meant to say something; and as the latter could very well perceive that it was not going to be anything pleasant, his countenance assumed an expression of defiance accordingly. He changed his mind, though, before he reached him, and turning short round shouted instead—

"Where is the second mate? Where is the whole watch?" and he looked furiously about him, as if surprised, although he knew very well how they were occupied, and that it had been decided not to weigh anchor until later in the day, when they would have the evening breeze.

"Ay, ay, sir!" was heard from the mate in the long-boat; and he raised himself and came forward with the letter he had been reading in his hand.

"Stand by to man the windlass! Pipe all hands!" ordered the captain, and roared the command again gratuitously through the trumpet.

The crew turned out from their several retreats with sour looks. They had expected to be left alone until after tea-time, when there would have been a general interchange of news on the forecastle; and now there came instead a hail of orders from the speaking-trumpet, as if the captain had all of a sudden become possessed.

There was already a good deal of discontent prevailing among the crew, both on account of the bad food which they had to put up with, and on account of their leave ashore at Monte Video having been, as they thought, capriciously refused; and it was therefore something more nearly approaching to a howl than a song that was now heard from the capstan and from the party who were hoisting the heavy mainsail. The customary English chorus—

"Haul the bowline, The captain he is growling; Haul the bowline, The bowline haul"—

was sung with offensive significance; and though, at the last heavy heave with which the enormous anchor was catted up to the bows, the mate tried to create a diversion in the feeling by a cheery "Saat 'kjelimen—hal' paa," the concluding words of the song—

"Aa hal i—aa—iaa— Cheerily, men!"—

were delivered in a scornful shout.

"You'll have a chance of cooling yourselves presently, my lads," said Salve, coming up at the moment from his own heavy work with the cross-jack; "when we weather the point, all the lee-sails have to be set"—and the remark had the effect which he desired of intensifying the prevailing irritation.

In spite of the vertical heat, the hail of orders from the captain's trumpet continued, accompanied by reprimands and fault-finding all round, until the crew were nearly in a state of mutiny, and it was not until late in the evening that he showed any signs of exhaustion.

His temper had not improved next day. He looked as if he had a determination of blood to the head; and every time he came near Salve, he glared at him as if it was all he could do to control himself from an outburst of some kind or another. He knew that Salve had made love to Elizabeth, and had wished to make her presents since she had come into his house; and that the same girl was now to be his son's wife—the idea was absolutely intolerable!

At last he could contain himself no longer. Salve had just deposited a coil of rope aft, and the captain, after watching his movements with evidently suppressed irritation, broke out suddenly, without preface of any kind—

"You, I believe, had some acquaintance with that—that Elizabeth Raklev I took into my house."

Salve felt the blood rush to his heart. He seemed to know what was coming.

"The post," the captain continued, in a bitterly contemptuous tone, "has brought me the delightful intelligence that my son has engaged himself to her."

"Congratulate you, captain," said Salve. His voice almost failed him, and he was deadly pale, but his eyes flashed with a wild defiance.

He went forward, and the captain growled after him to himself, "He can have that to fret over now instead of the food;" and as the mate was coming up the cabin stairs at the moment polishing the sextant, he turned away with a look of grim satisfaction to take the altitude.

When the Juno last sailed from Arendal she had changed two of her crew. One of the new hands was a square-built, coarse-featured, uncouth-looking creature, from the fjord region north of Stavanger, who called himself Nils Buvaagen, but whose name had been changed by the others to Uvaagen (not-awake), on account of his evident predisposition to sleep. He was incredibly naive and communicative, especially on the subject of his wife and children (of which latter he apparently had his nest full), and had soon become the butt of the ship. Salve was the only one who ever took his part, and that only because he saw all the others against him; and having also been the means of saving his life when he had been washed overboard one dark night in the English Channel, he had inspired the simple fellow with a perfectly devoted attachment to him.

They were up on the mainyard together that evening, where they had been helping to carry out an order with the mainsail. The rest had gone down again, but Salve, who felt a longing to be alone, had remained aloft, and was standing on the foot-rope, with his elbows resting on the yard. Nils's sympathetic eyes had perceived from his behaviour and whole appearance that day that there was something unusual the matter with him; and when he saw that Salve remained behind, he remained too, observing that it would be pleasant to cool for a while before going to their hammocks in the close air between decks.

The sky above them blazed like a cupola "inlaid with patines of bright gold;" obliquely from the horizon the Southern Cross was rising, and the evening star shone in the warm night, before the moon had yet risen, with a silver gleam that threw clear light and shadow upon the deck below; while the vessel seemed to plough through a sea of phosphorescence, leaving in her wake a long trail of bluish glittering light.

From the forecastle below came wafted up a sentimental sailor's song, the burden of which was pretty well summed up in the two concluding lines:—

"But never more her name I'll utter till I die, For rosy though her lips were, her heart it was a lie."

It sounded melancholy at that hour, and Nils, to judge from the occasional sighs with which he had accompanied it, was moved. When it came to an end, Salve turned suddenly to him.

"You are distressing yourself for another's sweetheart now, Nils. What would you have done if it had been your own?"

"My wife!" He had evidently not for the moment taken in the idea, and looked with all his heavy countenance at Salve.

"Yes. Wouldn't you have liked to see her sunk to the bottom of the sea?"

"My Karen to the bottom of the sea! I'd go there myself first."

"Yes; but if she had been unfaithful to you?" persisted Salve, seeming to take a fiendish delight in bringing home the idea to the poor fellow.

"But she is not," was the rejoinder.

Nils had no genius for the abstract, and no more satisfaction was to be got out of him. But at the same time he had been shocked, and went down shortly after without saying a word.

Salve still remained aloft, the dull consciousness of Elizabeth's engagement with the captain's son alternating with a more active desire for revenge upon the captain himself for the manner in which he had conveyed the information; and the result of his brooding up there upon the yard was a determination to desert as soon as the Juno arrived at Rio. He would never go back to Arendal; and he would no longer tread the same deck with the father of Carl Beck.

Later on in the night, when the moon had risen, Nils, who had not been able to sleep in his hammock, came up to Salve again, and drew him aside behind the round-house, as if for a private conversation.

"What would I have done? you asked. I'll tell you," he said, after a short pause, and his honest face seemed to express a vivid realisation of the whole misery of the situation. "I would have died upon the doorstep!"

Salve stood and looked at him for a moment. There came a strange pallor over his face in the moonlight.

"Look you," he said, ironically, laying his hand upon the other's shoulder, "I have never a wife; but all the same, I am dead upon the doorstep—" Then, in the next breath, and with a sudden change of tone, he said, "Of course I am only joking, you know," and left him, with a hard, forced laugh.

Nils remained where he was, and pondered, not knowing exactly how to take it. It was possible Salve had only been making fun of him. But another feeling eventually predominated. It told him that he had had a glimpse into a despairing soul; and he was profoundly moved.



CHAPTER XIII.

They stood slowly away to the north-east along the coast of Brazil. Every morning, towards the end of the dog-watch, when the sun rose in its gorgeous majesty from the sea, there came a refreshing breeze off the land, bringing with it the perfume of a thousand aromatic herbs; albatrosses and sea-gulls circled round the ship; flying-fish were to be seen in shoals; and all nature, animate and inanimate, seemed to be freshened for the time into activity and life. But gradually the breeze would become warmer and lighter, and then die away altogether, so that before noon the sails would hang flapping against the mast. They scarcely made five knots in the watch, and the heat during the greater part of the day was unbearable—as unbearable almost as the captain's temper, which showed no signs of improvement, and which vented itself in a systematic grinding of the crew, who, Captain Beck declared, were getting into intolerable habits of idleness.

Strange things occurred on board just at this time, which, taken in connection with the captain's mood, produced an uncomfortable feeling that there was some evil influence at work by which both the ship and the captain were possessed. Groans had been distinctly heard down in the hold among the coals; and the sailmaker affirmed that on several nights in succession he had seen a man go from amidships aft along the bulwark railings, stand still and point with his hand to the compass, and then disappear in the wake of the ship. Another declared that he had seen the ship's genius proceed in the same direction and jump overboard—cap and all he was no higher than a half sea-boot; and when the genius deserts a ship, it betokens in the sailors' superstitious creed that she is about to founder.

The unaccountable sounds in the hold continued, and changed one day when the hatch was battened down to a kind of wail, which ceased, however, when, for fear of an explosion of coal-gas, it was taken off again. On the following day the cook, who had gone down for water, came hurrying back with a scared face, and declared that he had seen a man sitting there in a red jacket.

"It is the ship's genius lamenting the ship," was hesitatingly suggested by some. But when the cook objected that the creature was at least as large as Big Anders the boatswain, and proceeded besides to endow him with sable colouring and claws, the terror reached its height.

The captain had hitherto replied to these, as he conceived them, fresh attempts to provoke him, by still further grinding; but when this last observation of the cook was communicated to him, he broke out scornfully, pointing at the same time with the bitten mouthpiece of his old meerschaum pipe at the speaker—

"I think there is a sufficiently stupid devil in the hold sticking in every one of you rascals. Isn't there one of you with courage enough to go down into the coal-hold? or must I go myself?"

The first mate proposed to accompany him; but Salve now came forward and declared that he, for his part, would as soon go down into the hold as up aloft. "A man won't sweat half as much at that work," he added, with sarcastic significance.

He went down accordingly with a light, and after a few moments' search came upon a miserable, half-famished wretch, who had squeezed himself in behind the water-butt. He was as black as a negro from the coal-dust, and declared tremblingly when he came up on deck, that he had deserted from his regiment in Monte Video, which was an offence punishable by death, and that he had thought he might remain concealed until the vessel arrived at Rio; that he had come on board in the dark on the last evening they lay in the harbour, and had hidden himself under the coals; and that when they had battened down the hatch he had been nearly suffocated with coal-gas, and had lain and groaned. Occasionally he had found an opportunity at night in the dark to climb up into the jolly-boat astern, and had lain there and breathed fresh air until nearly sunrise. Once or twice he had been into the caboose and got something to eat; and sometimes he had stopped by the compass, as it seemed to him their journey was never coming to an end, and he wanted to assure himself that the vessel was really steering a northerly course to Rio, as he had heard from some one in the harbour she intended to do.

He was a young, slightly-built man, with small quick eyes, about Salve's height, and apparently a Spaniard or Portuguese, but could make himself understood in English.

The captain had some doubts as to the truth of his story, as his rank appeared to be superior to that of a common soldier; and from his anxiety not to betray his presence in the ship, even after they had got out into the open sea, he concluded that he was a political refugee, who at that time would not be very safe even at Rio. He ordered food to be given him, and promised that he should make his way ashore as best he could, but that he was not to expect help from him, as the captain had no intention of involving himself with the authorities on his account.

Salve, who, like the generality of sailors, could talk a good deal of English, gradually attached himself to the Spaniard, and found him an entertaining and clever fellow.

Before a light afternoon breeze they glided at last from the sea into the narrow channel that runs up to Rio de Janeiro—one of the loveliest in the world, with majestic granite mountains on either side, one of which was already blazing in the ruddy light of the evening sun, while the other in shade stood out a deep violet against the clear blue of the sky above. On the one side, at the foot of the Sugarloaf Mountain, they had the fortress of Praja; on the other, the Castle of Santa Cruz; and facing them on the highest point in the harbour, the slender signal-tower that announces every ship as it appears at the entrance of the channel.

So beautiful was the scene that under its softening influence Salve felt almost inclined to regret his determination to desert. The feeling, however, lasted no longer than the beauty which produced it. The soft lights died away upon the hills, and with them the softer feelings which had crept in upon his heart. Night settled down upon the outer world, and with it returned the gloomy thoughts that now for many days had made his mind their home.

It had occurred to him that the Brazilian would have it in his power to assist him in effecting his purpose, when they arrived in the harbour, and he had, therefore, found opportunities of rendering him indebted to him for many small services. He lent him clothes now to appear among the other sailors when they were mustered before the authorities, who came on board immediately after the ship entered the harbour, and it thus escaped their notice that there was one over the number returned by the captain as his crew.

The harbour pilot, however—a consequential Mulatto in a Panama hat and red feather, and decorated with a badge and staff—was more sharp-sighted, and soon perceived, from the irritable tone in which the song at the capstan was sung again as they warped the vessel round to her anchorage in the Ilha das Cobras basin, that there was discontent prevailing on board; and it was no doubt owing to a hint from him that already the same evening there were "runners" waiting about near them on the quay.

Captain Beck was out of humour both with himself and with his crew. Down in a warm climate he was always irritable, and now that he believed his authority weakened he had become a perfect tyrant. The prospect of another voyage under his command was more than many of his crew could face, and preparations were made by many of them to leave the ship as soon as they should have received whatever portion of pay on account the captain proposed, as is customary when a vessel is in harbour, to distribute. Salve, however, did not wait for this, and already, the second night, he and the Brazilian had disappeared.

There was a sharp search instituted, with the assistance of the harbour police, especially in the house of one particular runner who had been seen talking with the crew. But he gave them such full liberty to search his house, and showed such a clear conscience in the matter, that the police had to admit that they were off the scent this time.

The captain after this intrusted the nightwatches only to those among the crew upon whom he could place reliance, hauled off from the quay every evening, and absolutely refused all leave on shore. He had only received the thanks he deserved, he remarked bitterly, for having helped that red-jacketed thief, who, by way of return, had taken from him his best man. Salve's desertion, indeed, irritated him more than he cared to admit to himself. He had, according to promise, had him taught navigation by the first mate on the voyage out; and had settled in his own mind that when he himself retired from the sea Salve should command the Juno for him. He certainly never would find another of equal capacity, and at the same time so thoroughly to be depended upon; and now all his comfortable plans were upset.

Before leaving the vessel Salve placed his silver watch, on which he had scratched with the point of his knife, "In remembrance of Salve Kristiansen," in the waistcoat pocket of Nils, who was snoring loud and long in his hammock alongside; and then, unobserved by the watch on deck, the two friends clambered over to the quay in the silent night by means of the shore rope, and disappeared at once into the darkness of the neighbouring alleys. The Brazilian appeared to be well acquainted with the localities, and anxious at the same time; for he avoided the lighted streets, and often stopped at dark corners to reconnoitre, and see that the way was clear of the night police.

After picking their way for an hour among narrow lanes, they came out into a suburb where the houses began to alternate with garden walls, over which hung orange-trees diffusing their heavy perfume through the quiet night. They had to cross an open place to the other suburb, Mata Poreas, and upon the rising ground to one side of them they saw a building that looked like a fortress enclosed by a stone wall, which caused Salve's comrade considerable perturbation. It was the house of correction, before which there was always a sentry on duty.

They passed it, however, unchallenged, and after half-an-hour's further walking, the Brazilian halted at last before a garden wall, in which there was a small wicket gate. He looked cautiously round him and said excitedly—

"We must climb over here, and then—we are safe."

He climbed up on Salve's back, and so on to the top of the wall; drew Salve up beside him, and then sprang down into the little garden and began to roll about on the grass as if he had taken leave of his senses, crying, "Salvado! Salvado!"

He rushed up then to the little villa that lay half overshadowed by trees, and knocking in a particular manner at the door, called out "Paolina! Paolina!"

A female in night-dress, with a young, but rather deep voice, opened the shutter from within, and put out her head.

"Federigo!"—she said, tremblingly; and there followed then a rapid interchange of questions and answers in Spanish which Salve did not understand. He gathered merely that she was surprised to see a stranger with him, and that he calmed her apprehensions with the word "amigo," followed by a short explanation.

She opened the door, and fell impulsively on Federigo's neck, kissing him on both cheeks, and sobbing. After the custom of the place, then, she offered her cheek to Salve, and was a little surprised when he seemed not to understand her meaning, and nodded merely, as he said, half in English, half in Spanish, "good evening, senorita." It seemed to remind her, however, that in her eagerness she had forgotten her mantilla, and she left them hastily.

She came back to them again in the sitting-room almost immediately with bread, wine, fruit, and lights upon a tray; and stationed herself then in a sympathetic attitude with her arm on her brother's shoulder, while he, with lively gestures, recounted his adventures. Federigo's story seemed to be reflected from her face as from a living mirror. At one point her face became pale with passion; her black eyes flashed, and she made a sudden movement with her clenched hand in the air, as if she were giving some one a stab with a dagger. She threw her head back then with a triumphant, scornful laugh that showed her dazzling white teeth; and Salve inferred that her brother must have killed some person or other in Monte Video, probably in self-preservation, and that he was afraid the police here, in Rio, should have had information of it.

He sat and gazed at her. She was a lithe, supple-looking woman, at once graceful and fully developed; a dark beauty of the style peculiar to the South, with wonderful animation in her face, and dark flashing eyes. At the same time the play of her features was not pleasing, Salve thought. It reminded him too much of her brother—it was not feminine; and he was further repelled by the way in which she repeatedly allowed her eyes to rest upon him. He didn't know why, but Elizabeth's deep, true northern face came so vividly before him then, that he felt he could have drawn it to the life.

The not very flattering expression which this comparison had caused his face unconsciously to assume as he looked at her, was caught, unfortunately, by Paolina, as she was on the point of tendering him her thanks in her impetuous way for what she heard he had done for her brother. She stopped short in surprise, and evidently repressed a vehemently resentful impulse, while a look unpleasant for him came into her eyes. She went over then and took him by the hand in the same way she had seen him take her own on his arrival, and spoke coldly enough a few words which were meant to convey her thanks. She didn't look at him again, not even when she presently said good-night to him, after having woke up the old mulatto woman who, with herself and her mother, were the only other inhabitants of the house, and told her to make up a couple of mat beds in the adjoining room. Federigo had before that gone in to his mother, and they could be heard in eager conversation.

In Salve's mind a new impulse had been unexpectedly given to thoughts from which the novelty of his situation should have afforded him at least a temporary relief; and he lay long awake, thinking drearily about Elizabeth. When he did fall asleep at last, he dreamed that he had come into a serpent's nest, and that he was engaged in a life and death conflict with a huge snake, that was thrusting its forked tongue at him from walls, from roof, from every side; and in the gleam of its vindictive eyes, he seemed all at once to recognise Paolina.



CHAPTER XIV.

With a view to bring himself into harmony with his surroundings, he appeared next day in his suit of fine blue cloth, which he had brought with him in his bundle, together with sundry other articles, and what money he had still remaining from the pay which he had received at Monte Video. That he looked well in his handsome sailor dress was evident enough, from the surprised look with which he was greeted by Federigo's mother, when he was presented to her. She had evidently expected to see in her son's friend something in the style of the raw Brazilian sailor, a class of men who down there were generally drawn from the lowest dregs of the populace.

She herself was a withered old woman, yellow as parchment, with a mass of thick grey hair gathered in a single knot at the back of her head. She wore heavy rings on her fingers, and large earrings; her small piercing eyes had a look of burnt-out passion; and her countenance wore in a stronger degree the furtive, ratlike expression which her son's occasionally displayed.

As regards her further characteristics, Salve soon perceived that she was addicted to drink. She used to remain during the greater part of the day on the shady side of the house, or on the little veranda, with acachacas and water by her side, and incessantly smoking and rolling cigarettes; and she was often quite drunk as she mumbled her Ave Maria, and told her beads on her knees before going to bed in the evening. Still the other inmates of the house appeared to have great respect for her; and it was evident that she held the threads of whatever business they might have on hand.

The senorita was out all the morning with the old mulatto woman, making purchases for the house, Federigo said, and informing herself as to what activity was being shown in their pursuit. When she returned, she avoided addressing herself directly to Salve; and he observed that she handed over a quantity of money to her brother, which had the happy effect of bringing into his countenance a more cheerful look than it had hitherto worn that morning.

"What have you done to my sister?" Federigo asked one day, laughing; "you are not in her good graces. She is dangerous," he said, seriously; and added then, as if speculating on possibilities, "as long as you are in this house, at all events, you are safe. But mind, you are warned."

Federigo soon began to weary of their enforced confinement to the house, and in spite of his sister's efforts to dissuade him, began to go out in the evenings, coming home very late, and in a gloomy, irritable humour—evidently, from the casual remarks he let fall, having lost all his money at play.

The second morning of his stay in the house Salve had perceived that there was a want of money; and having heard the brother and sister quarrelling one day when both were in a bad humour, he thought it best to carry out, at the first convenient moment, the determination at which he had arrived, and handed over to Federigo what money he had, with the exception of a single silver piastre, saying, "That it was only right he should pay for his lodging and board."

The money, though deprecatingly, was still accepted, and in the evening Federigo was out once more, his sister remaining at home.

She and Salve, on account of their ignorance of each other's language, could not hold much conversation together, and Salve was rather glad of this wall of separation between them, as it left him more at his ease. She had, however, recently looked more often at him with a sort of interest, and on several occasions had put questions to him through her brother. Her range of ideas was apparently not extensive, as her questions always turned upon the same topic—namely, what the women were like in his country; so that he soon came to know by heart all the Spanish terms which related to that subject.

They were out on the veranda together that evening, and as she went past his back while he was leaning over in his seat, she drew her hand as if by accident lightly through his hair. If it had had the electricity of a cat's, it would have given out a perfect shower of sparks, so enraged was he at the advance.

When Federigo came home he flung his hat away angrily on to a chair, and drank down at a gulp a glass of rum that was standing on the table. He no longer wore the smart cloak he had on when he went out.

"I have gambled away all your money!" he cried, in English, to Salve, as if careless of further reticence, and made some remark then with an unpleasant laugh to his sister, who had evidently by her expression perceived at once how matters stood.

"There's my last piastre for you," said Salve, throwing it over to him. "Try your luck with it."

"He is successful in love," said Paolina, tearfully, and with a naive affectation of superstition—"he is engaged."

When her brother, who was balancing the piastre on his forefinger, laughingly translated what she had said, Salve replied snappishly, with an impatient glance at the senorita—

"I am not engaged, and never shall be."

"Unsuccessful in love!" she broke out, gleefully; "and the last piastre! To-morrow we shall win a hundred, two hundred, Federigo!"

It was clearly the conviction of her heart; and she seized a mandolin and began to dance to her own accompaniment, her eyes resting as she did so upon Salve with a peculiar expression.

"Quick, Federigo!—why not this evening?" she cried, breaking off suddenly with a laugh, and throwing the mandolin from her on to the sofa. "To-morrow his luck may be gone."

She seized her brother's hat, crushed it down upon his head, and pushed him eagerly out of the door, going with him herself to open the wicket.

She came back then to Salve, and as they sat tete-a-tete in the lamplit room with doors and windows thrown wide open, the moonlight gleaming on the dark trees outside, and the night air perfumed with the scent of flowers, she endeavoured to ingratiate herself with him by pouring out his rum-and-water and by rolling his cigarettes, an art in which it appeared from her laughter and gestures that she thought him awkward. She was in a state of feverish excitement, and kept darting off to the wicket and back again.

Salve sat and smoked, and sipped his glass unconcernedly, whilst she rocked herself backwards and forwards in a rocking-chair, with her head thrown back, and her eyes steadily fixed upon him. He heard a sigh, and she said in a low, ingratiating tone—

"I am afraid Federigo is unlucky."

Salve was not so stupid as not to comprehend her meaning. He was quite aware that she was handsome as she sat there with her hand on her knee, and her well-formed foot gracefully brought into view; but his feeling was exclusively one of indignation that such a common Brazilian baggage should presume to bring herself into comparison with Elizabeth. He flung away his cigar impatiently, and went down into the garden, without attempting to conceal his aversion. He hated all women since the one he had fixed his heart on had disappointed him, and he strode backwards and forwards now in more than usual indignation against the sex.

He was still pacing the garden when Federigo came back, heated and triumphant, with his cloak on his shoulder and a bag under his arm.

"Nearly three hundred piastres!" he cried, clearing the garden in a succession of bounds.

His sister had been asleep on the sofa, and sprang up in ecstasy at the intelligence; and they proceeded then with childish glee to spread out the silver on the table, and divide it into three. When Salve absolutely refused to take more than his one piastre back again, there came actually a look of humble admiration into the senorita's eyes. She could not comprehend such an act of self-sacrifice, although she seemed to vaguely feel that there was something noble about it. After a moment's consideration she held out her hand and said—

"Senor, give me the piastre you have in your hand, and I will give you another in return for it."

He did so, and she took it and kissed it repeatedly.

"I shall play with this one to-morrow evening," she cried joyfully, and put it into her bosom.

She carried out her intention, and came home beaming, with a whole bagful of piastres.

It seemed that the family lived only by play. The son, it is true, was in connection with one or other of the political parties of the town, with the prospect of an appointment as officer in a volunteer corps if any rising took place; but that did not in the meantime bring in money, and how they managed to get along when luck went against them it was not easy to see.

Salve meanwhile was becoming rather tired of being on land. The seclusion had suited him well enough at first, until the senorita had begun to pay him attentions; but now that she evidently remained at home all day solely on his account, to dress at him, and play off all sorts of coquetry upon him, he began to find it intolerable; and when the Juno at last had sailed, he announced one day that he meant to go down to the harbour and look for employment.

The senorita turned pale, but soon recovered her self-possession, and even joked with him about it; and later on her brother persuaded him to defer his intention for three days, until he had attended a gathering of Federigo's friends, which was to take place one night down in one of the suburbs.

That evening, when her brother had gone out as usual to play, the senorita sat down in the window of the room where Salve was, and through which he would have to pass to go into the garden. She had undone her luxuriant hair, and had put on a languishing look, and every now and then thrummed absently on her guitar, humming gently to herself as she fixed her black eyes upon him. Salve saw himself in a manner besieged, and felt half inclined to brush past her and escape into the garden; but it would have seemed too deliberately unfriendly. The only sign which betrayed his consciousness of the situation was the somewhat hasty way in which he puffed his cigarette.

"You really mean to leave us?" she said at last sadly, in almost a beseeching tone.

"Yes, senorita," was the reply, and evidently it came from the bottom of his heart; he was angry, and weary of her importunity.

He had hardly said it before, thrusting her hand into her bosom, she had sprung to her feet, and a stiletto whizzed past his ear, and stuck quivering in the wall close to his head. Her supple body was still in motion, her face was pale, and her eyes were flashing: then with a sudden transition she threw herself back and laughed.

"Were you frightened?" she cried. But Salve showed no sign of it. He was provoked, but cool; and not being the kind of man who would deign to engage in a conflict with a woman, he left the stiletto sticking in the wall, though at first he had thought of seizing it.

"Look here!" she said, suddenly darting over and drawing it out, and then practising with it, laughing all the while, at various spots on the walls of the room, which she hit every time to a nicety.

"You were frightened—confess that you were," she said, teasingly, sitting down opposite to him, heated with the exercise she had gone through. She gazed into his face with her cheek resting on her hand and her elbow on the table. "You were afraid; and now you are angry. The women in your country don't do such things!"

Salve turned to her with a look of icy rebuff. "No, senorita," he replied, curtly, and went down into the garden.

Thereupon she seized the guitar again, and began strumming an accompaniment apparently to her thoughts. It was no longer lively music she played, but something of a menacing strain, in keeping with the look in her eyes, and she seemed in a manner to hiss the air through her teeth.

Later on in the evening she came tripping over to him with a coquettish smile, and after the custom of the country offered him a cigarette, which she had begun to smoke herself. When he rather ungallantly declined it, she exclaimed furiously, stamping her foot—

"Senor!"

But she recovered herself in a moment, and said laughing, with at all events apparent good-nature, something which meant that she understood that this might perhaps not be a custom in his country.

Salve felt much relieved when her brother came home, and told him that the meeting he was waiting for was to take place on the following evening.



CHAPTER XV.

It was into a badly-lighted tavern, with two or three rooms leading out of one another, that his friend then conducted him. Men of the most various social positions, many with a military look, and in half-threadbare uniforms, filled the inner rooms; and in the outer one he had seen upon entering a number of seafaring men, who looked like Americans, and who nodded to him on the strength of his sailor's dress. There were several women, more or less well dressed, moving about among them, and others standing with eager faces over the gambling-table in the inner room. All were drinking acachacas, and the whole place was pervaded with a cloud of tobacco-smoke, out of which there came a deafening clamour of talk.

Salve had a seat found for him by his friend at a long table, amongst a number of bronzed, bearded men, with large hats, leather breeches, and spurs, whose company he by no means cared about. They looked like mounted bullock-drivers, such as he had seen at Monte Video, or still more, perhaps, like brigands, or banditti.

"They belong to Mendez's volunteer corps," whispered Federigo, as he presented him then to the chief of the party, who sat at the top of the table—a powerful fellow, with a weather-beaten complexion, heavy black mustachios, and a pair of small active eyes, which, more than once afterwards, when Salve was not looking, were turned critically upon him.

Every now and then they clinked their glasses together to some party toast; but otherwise they were quiet enough at first. People of the same calibre sat round other tables in the immediate neighbourhood; and at another were intermingled well-dressed persons from the town, who were carrying on a whispered conversation, and who appeared anxious.

The shouting, and the noise, and the laughter kept increasing. There were already drunken faces at the table, and in several directions quarrelling and the sound of blows were beginning to be heard. Federigo, who seemed to be known to many in the rooms, had mixed with the crowd, and Salve's neighbours on either side were now playing eagerly with dice, diving from time to time for small silver pieces into heavy leathern purses, that seemed to have been destined for sums very different from what their present meagre contents represented. So many debased, avaricious countenances as he saw around him he had never imagined that it would be possible to collect in one spot, and he made up his mind to have no more to do with them than he could possibly help. He might congratulate himself, he thought, if he escaped from them with a whole skin, and he felt in his breast-pocket to see that his knife was there.

One of the North Americans who had nodded to him, in virtue of his sailor's dress, when he entered, came over to him now and asked him to come and sit with them; but as he rather felt himself under Federigo's charge, he declined just then. Shortly after, to his surprise, he saw the senorita standing at the gaming-table, with her head, which was all he could see, beautifully dressed; and he observed that the eyes of the keeper of the tavern—a tall, lean Portuguese, with a long, sallow face, and hardly any hair on his head, who himself presided at the table—were turned towards her continually with a look of humble, tender concern. She was playing excitedly, and losing every time. At last she stopped, in evident irritation, and beckoned him to one side, with a certain authority, in spite of his having the table to attend to.

They spoke eagerly together, and Salve caught a rapid glance directed towards himself by the senorita, which he did not at all like. She was unnaturally pale; and he saw that she finally gave the other her hand, which he kissed with an enraptured expression, and she then disappeared from the room.

The landlord's face beamed the whole evening afterwards, and he bowed politely to Federigo as he passed the table. The latter, the next time he came near Salve, whispered rather scornfully—

"I believe my sister has bartered away her soul this evening, and promised to marry that old money-bag there who keeps the tavern. Congratulate us, amigo mio!"

Salve observed that the said money-bag conferred now more than once with the man at the head of his own table, and was apparently making terms with him; and that the latter also, when he thought he was not observed, glanced over at himself in a way that was very far from putting him at his ease.

The American who had spoken to him before—a tall, athletic-looking man, with a fair beard round a hard Yankee face, and with a remnant of gold lace on the sleeve of his jacket—had since been at the gaming-table, and had been losing one doubloon after another.

"They don't play fair, my lad!" he cried in English to Salve, to whom he seemed anxious to make up.

"I daresay not," was the reply; "it's a vile den."

"What country do you hail from?"

"Norway."

"Ah! Norwegian. Good sailors."

"Deserted at Rio?" he asked then, with a laugh, as if he expected, as a matter of course, an answer in the affirmative.

"Shall I play for you?" he asked presently.

"No money."

"Here's a guinea on account of your wages on board the 'Stars and Stripes,' for Valparaiso and Chinchas!" he cried, with a laugh that was heard above the surrounding din; and flinging a gold piece on the table, he lost it.

He turned, and putting his hand to his mouth, shouted—

"One more on account!" and another gold piece shared the fate of the first.

"One more on account!" there came again, and with the same result.

Salve had by this time had about enough of this free-and-easy and undesired playing on his account. The man's face, moreover, with all its joviality, by no means attracted him, and he shouted to him in a sharply-protesting tone—

"Play for yourself, Yankee."

The American seemed not to be able to hear on that side, for he repeated, coolly nodding to him—

"One more on account!"

Salve's patience was exhausted. He had been sitting all this time squeezed up in the narrow space between the bench and the wall with people on both sides of him, preventing his getting out; but now grasping his neighbour violently by the shoulder, he sprang all at once across the table and over to the unabashed Yankee, with an irresistible feeling that, come what might, he would get out into the freedom of the open air once more.

Just then there came from the furthest room a cry of "police." The lights in that room were at once extinguished; and a moment after, those in the room where Salve was on the point of falling foul of the American (who, to his great surprise, found him all of a sudden confronting him) went out also.

Their hostile relations, however, were almost immediately turned into friendly ones. For Salve, who had seen the landlord making a rush towards him, felt himself suddenly, in the midst of the confusion caused by the darkness, seized by two men and forced towards a door leading in another direction than that in which he saw the stream was setting, and which no doubt was the way out.

"Help, Yankee! there's some villany on here; the small door to the right!" he shouted, with great presence of mind, and at the same moment the door was slammed behind him. A handkerchief was tied over his mouth; he was tripped up and brought heavily to the ground, where his feet and hands were tied, and he was then shot into a dark side-room, which seemed to be at the back of a press, that was unlatched to pass him through.

"H'm!" said the Yankee coolly, to himself. "I am not going to lose his pay, if I know it," and he set out accordingly in search of the police, with whom he had no outstanding account.

Salve was certain he had heard the senorita's voice whispering in the outer room; and not long after he heard the latch in the press raised, and she stood before him with a light. She looked at him mischievously, and spilt some oil out of the lamp on to his face with a little scornful laugh. But her expression changed then to that of a tigress burning for revenge that is compelled to put off the gratification of her fury, and she darted out again, clapping down the latch behind her.

Salve lay tightly bound with his hands behind his back. But his cat-like suppleness enabled him eventually to wriggle his sheath-knife out of his breast pocket, and he found no great difficulty then in freeing himself from his bonds.

He stood now with his knife in his hand and listened.

Before long he heard the American's voice, with the police, and they appeared to be searching. He shouted to them; and the next moment he was released.

"He is one of our crew—belongs to the Stars and Stripes," said the American, arresting Salve, who, as long as he got out of this accursed town now, did not care in what capacity it might be, and offered no opposition.

"You have not improved your beauty, my lad," said his rescuer, derisively, as he held up the light to his face.

"I should like to have one word with the tavern-keeper before I go," said Salve.

"And that is what we have not the slightest inclination for," said the American—who, it now appeared, was boatswain on board—in a dry tone of authority. "We are not going larking with the police. Besides, having once recovered that trifle of wages, I don't mean to risk losing it again."

The Yankees made a close ring round their prisoner, and there was nothing for it but to follow as he was directed. A look, however, at the boatswain gave him to understand that that question of the wages would be settled between them when they got on board.



CHAPTER XVI.

The Stars and Stripes lay in the roads with the Union flag at her gaff. She was a long, black, and, at the water-line, well-shaped vessel, with a crew of thirty-two men; and Salve was so taken with her appearance that as they came alongside he silently congratulated himself on his luck in getting a berth in her. They were so obliging, moreover, as to give him a berth to himself in a separate cabin below. But, to his intense indignation, no sooner had he entered it than the door was latched on the outside, and when he tried to kick it open, it was signified to him that during the short time they had still to be at Rio, he was to remain in confinement, that they might be sure of him. The heat was intolerable down there; and to add to that, there was incessant crying and groaning going on in the hold beside him, as if it were full of sick people. It was the vilest treatment he had ever been subjected to.

The work of taking in the cargo went on uninterruptedly the whole night, as if they were in a particular hurry to get out of the harbour, and about noon the anchor was weighed while the contents of the last lighter were being taken on board.

When Salve, some hours after, was set at liberty, they were already out in the open sea off the mouth of the channel. The captain, the three mates, and several of the inferiors in command, when on deck, wore gold-laced caps and a kind of uniform, as on a man-of-war, and the officer of the watch was armed. The crew, on the other hand, were almost to a man shabby, and they seemed to consist of men of every nationality—English, Irish, Germans, and Americans, not to mention half a dozen negroes and mulattoes. As no one took any notice of him, he went about as he pleased for a while; and presently saw, with a disagreeable sensation, no less than three corpses carelessly sewed up in sail-cloth dropped over the side of the ship that was turned from the land, without the slightest ceremony. The uncomfortable feeling which this incident had aroused was anything but allayed when he heard presently from a little pale cabin-boy with whom he had entered into conversation that it had been successfully concealed from the harbour authorities that there was yellow fever on board; that there were many more lying sick below; and that one of those who had just been heaved overboard, had died the day before in the very berth in which Salve had slept that night.

In the evening he was called aft to the captain, who was standing with the boatswain at his elbow. He was a spare, energetic-looking man, of about forty years of age, with thick black whiskers, marked features, and rather hollow cheeks, and with carefully dressed, glossy hair. He was smoking a handsome pipe with a long stem inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and took a sip from time to time from a cup of black coffee that was standing on the skylight.

"What is your name?" he asked, nodding in reply to Salve's salute.

"Salve."

"Salve," repeated the captain, with an English pronunciation of the name; "and Norwegian?"

"He looks too respectable for the pack he'll have to herd with," he muttered to the boatswain.

"Able seaman?"

"Yes."

"You have had three guineas on account?" he went on, after a couple of puffs to keep his pipe alight, as he looked into his ledger; "a month's wages."

"No, sir," said Salve, firmly, "I have had nothing on account,"—and he proceeded then to relate the circumstances under which the supposed payment had been made. "I have not been regularly engaged till this moment, if I am so now; but up to this I have been treated like a dog, and worse."

The captain took no notice of his last observation, and merely said shortly and sternly—

"The three guineas are owing to him, boatswain Jenkins. His place will be in the foretop. A steady hand will be wanted among all that rabble there."

"Another time you'll perhaps play on your own account, and not on the sailors'," he observed, turning to the boatswain; but Salve caught the remark.

With this the conference came to an end, the boatswain's expression prophesying that when the opportunity offered Salve should pay for his triumph. He went about nursing his prominent chin, and twisting his yellow whiskers, and found a victim for the present in a wretched Mulatto, who was scouring for the cook. After first correcting him sharply for nothing, he coolly felled him to the deck with a handspike, and left him lying there unable to move.

Salve's blood boiled at the sight; but his indignation gave way presently to astonishment when he saw the poor fellow get up and go on indefatigably with his work, after first quietly wiping his own blood off the saucepan. There was a limit to brutality, he thought, and in his disgust he almost envied him the blow he had received.

He provided himself now from the purser with a suit of seaman's clothes in lieu of the rather damaged cloth ones which he wore; and the sailmaker gave him out hammock clothes, to be paid for out of his wages. He proceeded then to hang his hammock from one of the beams between decks; and while he was doing so observed another man in a canvas suit like his own, similarly occupied, not far from him. He couldn't be mistaken—it was Federigo.

The latter had, as Salve afterwards heard, been taken by the police during the affair in the tavern. He had seen how Salve had been rescued by the boatswain of the Stars and Stripes; and having managed to escape from his captors on the way to the guard-house, he had sought a similar refuge.

Salve's indignation at his sister's baseness was still too fresh for Federigo's reappearance to be in any way agreeable to him, although he believed him to be innocent of any complicity in that business. At the same time, the latter's conscience was apparently not entirely clear in the matter, for there was a certain conscious sense of humiliation in his expression, combined with something which made Salve feel that he must be upon his guard. Neither spoke to the other, and it might have been supposed from their bearing towards one another that they had never met before.

It very soon became clear to Salve that he could not have hit upon a more unfortunate ship. The crew was composed of the dregs of the New Orleans and Charleston docks—men with every species of vice and degradation stamped upon their countenances, and amongst whom every second word was some infamous oath or blasphemy. Blows with handspikes were of common occurrence, and brutality and violence generally were the order of the day. There was no court of appeal, and the immunity which any one individual might enjoy depended entirely upon how far he was protected by the officers—who, however, in a general way, did not interfere in the quarrels forward—or had formed a league with others.

The Americans and the Irish banded together, and being the most numerous, practised a shameless system of tyranny against any who could not defend themselves—a miserable sickly Spaniard, who had been forced to work until he had actually dropped, having recently been more especially the object of their attentions. Their supremacy, however, was contested by a party of seven or eight tattered countrymen of the latter, with one or two Portuguese, who were always ready with their knives, and who formed a sort of opposition. To this party Federigo had attached himself.

Salve stood alone. The Americans and Irish had at first reckoned upon having him with them, but had gradually turned against him. They had taken offence at his apparent disinclination to associate with them more than he could help. He seemed to think himself too good for them; and in addition to that, the seaman-like qualities which he displayed made them dislike him out of envy. But their hostility was perhaps mainly due to the boatswain, who encouraged the idea among the rest of the crew that he was favoured by the officers. Federigo came out now in an unexpectedly friendly light; and Salve perceived that it was only owing to him that all the Portuguese were not against him also. The result was that the two gradually approached such other again.

There were of course in such a collection of riff-raff, individual bullies whose hands were against every man, but who to some extent kept each other in check. The one most feared of these was a huge, copper-coloured, scarred Irishman, who seemed periodically to be possessed by a very demon of violence, and to be actually running over with bad blood. He had been in irons for some time before the vessel arrived at Rio, for having one day sworn on deck that he would murder the captain. It was with this ruffian that Salve had first to measure himself, the boatswain being the immediate cause.

One day when the large bell forward had rung for dinner, the boatswain gave an order which detained Salve for some time after the others had taken their places at the long table in the round-house, and when he came in everything was eaten up, and he lost his dinner. The following day exactly the same thing happened, and he had to content himself with his breakfast and supper rations for the day. He perfectly understood the meaning of it. In smartness and activity he was so far beyond comparison superior to any of the other foretop hands, that the boatswain had not been able to find any excuse for subjecting him to punishment: he was going to try and hit him in another way. On his lonely watch that night Salve decided what he should do if the trick was practised a third time upon him. It would be better to bring things to a crisis at once than have his strength gradually exhausted by continued insufficiency of food.

The same order being given at the same time next day, he carried it out as speedily as he could, and hurried on then to the round-house, where the others were already at their dinner, with a bowl of meat and soup to every two men.

He sat down by the side of the Irishman, who he saw had a bowl to himself.

"Put the bowl this way," he said, coolly.

The Irishman merely looked at him contemptuously. He was evidently astonished at his audacity, but went on eating composedly.

Salve felt that he must not be beaten.

"Life for life, Irishman," he cried, springing to his feet, and as the other also rose, giving him a blow in the face that sent him backwards on the bench against the wall.

A fierce conflict now ensued. The Irishman got up like a bleeding ox, and catching up a marline-spike that was hanging from the beam, gave Salve a deep wound in the cheek, the scar of which he carried his whole life through. They drew their knives then; and Salve's coolness and activity soon gave him the superiority over his furious and unwieldy opponent. His movements were like those of a steel spring; and pale and smiling, he delivered every blow with such well-calculated effect, that the affair ended with the Irishman, bleeding profusely and half-unconscious, tumbling out of the narrow doorway to save himself.

There were not a few who were glad enough that the dreaded Irishman should have been worsted, and it was to this feeling Salve was indebted for being allowed to fight it out alone with him. He stuck his knife now into the table by the side of his dish, and, looking round him, asked, "Is there any one else now who would like to keep me out of my meat?"

There was no answer.

"While I am about it," he continued, without noticing the blood that was running down his face and over his hands, "I'll settle this matter once for all. I have two days' rations owing to me. Very well. For the next two days I shall keep one dish to myself. I shall see then what the Irishman or any one else thinks of it."

The Irishman was confined to his hammock the whole week with wound-fever, and Salve had for the first time won the respect of the crew. He felt at the same time that he had commenced a desperate struggle, and that if he was to enjoy any sort of security in this company of ruffians whom he had now set at defiance, he must take the game into his own hands, and make himself at least as much feared as the Irishman had been. Accordingly, instead of waiting to be challenged, he deliberately became the aggressor, and set himself to dispense justice as he pleased.

The one who, next to the Irishman, was most dreaded, was a broad-shouldered mulatto, who carried on a petty system of pillage against any one that was not supported, unluckily for him, by any party; and Salve himself had been obliged one evening to put up with having his hammock taken down, and the mulatto's hung in its place. He had seen him in several fights, and had observed his peculiar tactics; the result of his observations being the conviction that the man had not the strength which he was anxious to make the others think he had. In pursuance of this policy, he had picked a quarrel with him on the head of that matter of the hammock, and with a similarly decisive result. The mulatto rejoiced in the name of Januarius, and Salve accordingly requested him to remember that there was something still owing to him for the eleven other months of the year. He was a cur by nature, and never seemed to have the slightest desire to renew the struggle afterwards, which was not the case with the Irishman, with whom Salve perceived, directly the man came on deck again, that a fresh trial of strength was inevitable.

An opportunity was not long in offering, and Salve seized it at once, so that the challenge might come from him. The Irishman had taken a fancy to the boots of the wretched Spaniard who was ill, and was now wearing them.

"Irishman," said Salve, as the other passed him, when they were lounging about after dinner, "that is an awkward pair of boots you have on there. If you take my advice you'll return them to their owner, or—I shall have to pull them off you."

The Irishman glared at him, but turned pale at the last threat; and Salve's eye seemed to light up at the prospect of carrying it out. The former made the mistake of preparing to defend himself instead of taking the aggressive, and in a moment was knocked down and stunned for an instant by a couple of unexpected blows from Salve, who flew at him like a tiger-cat. The crew gathered round. The Irishman seized a heavy iron pump-handle as a weapon, and Salve a handspike; and Salve kept his word. He pulled the boots off as the other lay senseless on the deck, and took them down to the Spaniard.

In point of physical strength, Salve was far from being the equal of many of these men, who, he knew very well, were now only looking out for an occasion to get the better of him. His only chance was to take the initiative on all occasions, and to seem the most reckless and the most careless of life, and the most eager to fight of them all. He therefore flew at his man without hesitation on the slightest provocation, and whenever he threatened took care to keep his word.

The constant strain upon his energy became at last like a fever in his blood, and the life he was leading began to show itself in his face. He had come to be reckoned on board as one of those stubborn, unruly spirits that are common enough among the dregs of humanity to be met with in ships' holds in that quarter of the globe, and who usually end their career at the yard-arm, or by a bullet from the captain's revolver. In this very ship, before they came into Rio, at the time the Irishman had been put in irons, the captain had, without any hesitation, shot down from the yard one of the crew, whom he supposed to be the ringleader of the mutineers. He looked upon Salve now with increasing distrust, wondering how he could ever have been so mistaken in a man as he had been in him. "But put a man to herd with rabble, and it's hard for him not to become one of them," he said; and, deteriorated though he was, Salve was still the smartest sailor he had on board.

The boatswain kept out of his way now as much as possible, for he had heard that Salve had sworn to tear his entrails out if he gave him any fresh cause for offence. The latter knew very well, though, that he was meditating something against him, and was not surprised therefore at being called aft one day to stand a formal trial before the captain for the expression which he had used with regard to the boatswain, and which he did not affect to deny, "as the boatswain," he said, "had wished to take his life."

"I mean to leave the ship," he said, "the moment we come to Valparaiso. I am only engaged so far. But, indeed, I care little what becomes of me," he ended, gloomily.

The captain probably had his own notions with regard to the boatswain, as Salve escaped the severe punishment he had expected, and was only condemned to solitary confinement for fourteen days on bread-and-water.

"That will take you down a bit, my lad," said the captain.

The boatswain, however, made up for the leniency of his superior by a little ingenuity of his own; and every day, when Salve was enjoying his meagre fare in his place of confinement, the mulatto, whom he had triumphed over, by the boatswain's orders, took his dinner of hot meat and ate it outside the door, close to the hole through which the light was admitted, that the savoury smell might make its way in and tantalise him.

At first, Salve rather enjoyed the repose which his confinement afforded him; but as his hunger increased he grew irritable, and at dinner-time one day he approached his face to the opening.

"Mulatto!" he began; and the other looked up and grinned with his white teeth, pleased to see some sign at last that his attentions had not been thrown away—"that's good food you have there."

"Excellent," replied the other, mischievously, and with an inward chuckle.

"It makes me picture to myself your future," Salve continued, placidly, "how it will be with you when I come out again. You will be like that lobscouse, my friend. Had that never occurred to you?"

The mulatto went on eating, but grew absent. His nature, as before observed, was not a courageous one, and it was obvious that his food at last began to stick in his throat.

"It is much the same as if you were sitting there and feeding on yourself," said Salve, after a longer pause, during which he had watched the other's lengthening countenance. "That's just what it will be, my dear friend, unless—"

"Unless—?" repeated the mulatto, pricking up his ears.

"Unless you take good care to pass your dinner in here to me every day from this time. There are only five days more, and I have fasted for nine, while you have been feeding away, so you are getting off cheaply enough. If the boatswain sees you passing in food to me, you'll be punished, so you will have to be cautious, and hold up the plate yourself before the opening, that he may think you are eating right in my face."

These were humiliating terms; and the mulatto made no immediate reply. He merely sat with his woolly head bent down in a thoughtful attitude. But the next day he stationed his broad person with the plate in his hand up in front of the opening, and Salve mercilessly took every morsel there was on it.

It was a matter of the last importance to him not to be reduced in strength, as he knew his life was in his own hands; and that he was anything but taken down, and was as ready as ever for a fight, he showed, when he came out, in a sanguinary encounter which he engaged in gratuitously for Federigo with one of the Americans, and in which it would otherwise undoubtedly have gone hard with the Brazilian.

It was not out of any respect for him that Salve took his part. He looked upon him as false, treacherous, and entirely unprincipled; there was nothing he did or said that did not seem pervaded with these characteristics. But he helped him on the strength of that comradeship which among these reprobates has its inviolable laws; and further than that, there was something akin to a personal friendship existing between them. Federigo was decidedly interesting. He could talk more or less on almost every subject, and he was full of theories which he propounded during their watches together, and to which Salve eagerly listened. There was, he said, among other remarks, and in a superior manner, no such thing as religion, no such being as God. Such ideas were only for dunderheads, who, moreover, in every country had their own particular form of belief for the clever people and the priests to turn to their own purposes. In reference to that, he told many stories of the impositions practised by the priests in Brazil; and had many agreeable anecdotes, too, about the beliefs of the wretched little race whose Sun land they were passing at the time. He pronounced, in a word, for the right of the strongest, and for piastres, women, and freedom as the great objects of existence. What other god than Salve, he once asked ironically, had prevented the Irishman from taking the life of the miserable Spaniard down there in the hold? or what god other than Fear prevented the boatswain from felling Salve himself to the deck with a handspike? Although Salve despised the speaker, his arguments made no slight impression upon him. What god, he asked himself, would save him, if he did not take care of himself among all these ruffians who surrounded him? and had there been any such controlling Power in the world, he thought with bitterness, a great deal in his life would have been very different. Conversations of this kind always made him feel thoroughly bad.

"What do you suppose," he suddenly asked, one evening as they were talking together on their watch, "your sister meant to do with me, Federigo, if I had not escaped?"

Up to this they had avoided touching upon this tender subject, and Federigo answered, evasively—

"I'm sure I don't know. She takes wild notions sometimes."

"Yes—but what do you think? I know you had no hand in the matter."

"H'm! I had rather not say," replied Federigo, obviously relieved, but with a peculiar smile, as if his fancy was ranging not without enjoyment through the region of possibilities. "She scalded a monkey once, that had bitten her, slowly to death with boiling-water. But her ingenuity was endless."

Salve felt a shudder run through him, and something in his face told the other that he had better not indulge his fancy any further; and he hastened, therefore, to add half in joke and half by way of consolation—

"Poor Antonio Varez will pay for her having been obliged to marry him, never fear. Yes, she is rich and happy," he concluded with a sigh, as if he envied her; and the subject dropped.



CHAPTER XVII.

They doubled Cape Horn, and came to Valparaiso. But, on the morning they were to enter the harbour, Salve, to his intense exasperation, was put under arrest. The captain found him too useful in keeping the crew in order forward, and therefore took the most effectual means of preventing him from putting into execution his declared determination to leave the ship on their arrival at that port.

After leaving Valparaiso they called at the Chincha Islands, took in a cargo of guano for China, and shaped their course then eastward across the calm southern ocean, whose lonely monotony was only broken by the occasional appearance of one of the larger kind of sea-birds, or by the distant spouting of a whale. On board, however, the same peace was far from prevailing. That little nut-shell that crept like a dot across the limitless expanse of waters was a little floating hell, where every evil passion raged from morning until night; and it was only by secretly fomenting discord and divisions among the crew that the officers could sleep with any sense of security in their berths. As it was, a large section of them, with the Irishman at their head, had a project on hand for murdering their officers, and converting the ship into a whaling vessel. And even Salve, in moments of bitterness and indignation at the tyranny to which he was subjected by these men, whose lives were at the mercy of the crew, would sometimes entertain the thought of joining with the mutineers, who were restrained from carrying out their designs mainly by the fear which he had inspired, and by the refusal of his sanction. Many a desperate struggle with himself he went through when one of his tyrants passed him on deck in the dark, and the temptation to stick a knife into his back would rise strong within him, and almost master him. The other's life hung upon a hair, and Salve knew it; but that hair was stronger than he thought. Elizabeth's face, and the still unexhausted might of early impressions, made him always shrink from the thought of having a murder on his conscience, and to that depth he never fell, deteriorated though his character gradually became, from daily association with everything that was vile, to that degree that he lost all power of believing in the existence of good amongst his fellow-creatures, or in a higher Power.

We need follow no further this dark period of his life. After a year and a half on board the Stars and Stripes, and many a wild scene of turbulence and riot, he brought his connection with her to a close at last at New Orleans, where the accumulation of his wages was handed over to him.

The life on board the other vessels in which he afterwards served did not differ greatly from that which he had left; but he had become accustomed to it, and his sensibilities were blunted by long habit. It was not until some four years had thus passed that he again began to feel a longing for Europe—he would not acknowledge to himself that it was Norway exactly that he wanted to see again;—and after looking out then for some time for a suitable ship for the home voyage, he found himself at last with his Brazilian friend on board a large barque that was homeward bound from Curacoa, with tobacco and rum, for Rotterdam and Nieuwediep.

Federigo had been his inseparable companion through all the vicissitudes of his southern life; the secret of his faithful attachment, as Salve suspected, being that the latter had saved money, which he had turned into gold pieces and kept in a belt round his waist. He had never, like Federigo, sought occasions to squander his pay on land in gambling or in other diversions. He hated women; and in the taverns which were frequented by sailors he was looked upon as a dangerous customer, to whom it was prudent to give as wide a berth as possible. Federigo, he fancied, looked upon him as his reserve cash-box; and when on one occasion, after they came into port, the Brazilian proposed that they should desert and put their money into some mines that were very favourably reported of just then, and share the profits, Salve remarked with perfect composure that he thought it highly probable that if they started upon any expedition of the kind, his friend, if he got him alone some fine night in a lonely place, would quietly stick his knife into him and make off with the whole. He therefore declined the proposition, but their relations nevertheless continued as friendly as before. Money was the only power, Salve reflected with bitterness, and this satisfaction at least he could now enjoy in life.

It had become so obvious to him that Federigo's attachment was more to his money than to himself, that he determined to get rid of his irksome attentions. Accordingly, when they arrived at Nieuwediep, he made all his arrangements for leaving the vessel, legally this time, without saying a word to him of his intention; and Federigo only heard of it at the last moment when he met him coming up with his hammock clothes. He turned pale, and tears came into his eyes,—whether from a feeling of injured friendship, or from disappointment, Salve could not quite make out. The expression of his face, with his restless small black eyes, resembled that of a disturbed rat. At last he fell on Salve's neck in his impetuous way, and broke out—

"But at any rate we must have one parting glass together this evening. I don't know how I shall ever do without you—it is so long now since we two have chummed together."

Against his better reason Salve allowed himself to feel a little softened at the thought; and the remembrance of all the attachment this scoundrel had shown for him aroused something that almost resembled emotion.

"It is no use, my friend," he replied; "what is done can't be undone. But I'll give you this evening, at all events. You'll find me waiting for you in the Aurora."

As usual at this season of the year, there were a great many vessels in the harbour, and the Aurora tavern was full that evening of seafaring folk laughing and talking and singing, and renewing, or laying the foundations of, acquaintanceships over brandy or gin; while in the little room over the bar, dance music was going on uninterruptedly, and the boards were creaking under alternate Dutch schottische and English hornpipe.

To properly appreciate a genuine sailors' reel or hornpipe, one should see it danced by men who for a whole year at a time have been battling with the waves and storms in every corner of the world, and who during all that time have hardly set eyes upon a female form. They come on shore bursting with a full masculine longing for the society of the other sex, with a year's stored-up feeling to let out; and there is a positive intoxication to them in the mere dance—in the mere holding at Nieuwediep Anniken or Bibecke, or at Portsmouth Mary Ann, by the waist; and Mary Ann and Bibecke perfectly understand this, and for the moment feel themselves persons of no small importance. There is no element of coarseness in the feeling. The sailor is more given to sentiment proper than perhaps any other class of men, and generally speaking a more romantic feeling for woman is cherished on board ship than anywhere else in the world. If we wish to find in these times quietly romantic enthusiasm, we must be the companion of the sailor on his lonely watch, or listen to him as he lies on the forecastle and talks with naive simplicity about his wife or his sweetheart—how their attachment came about, and what he means to buy for her when he gets into port. Love on board ship is a more naturally rich and varying theme than it is in the peasant's monotonous life; and being in love, by reason of separation from the object of his love, is a different thing to the sailor, a something more entirely of the heart and the imagination, which does not lose its ideal hue in the wear and tear of everyday use. A married sailor is always an object of quiet respect to his comrades who have not had means to take the same step themselves; and without exaggeration it may be said that woman is present in her truest sense in the midst of the often outwardly rough life on board ship—warm, loving, and venerated, and surrounded by all the enchantment which distance can supply. If we are tempted to think otherwise, we have not penetrated to the simple, childlike nature which underlies the sailor's rough exterior.

The exteriors, indeed, in the dancing-room of the Aurora that evening were rough enough. Through the cloud of steam and tobacco-smoke, men of the most various physiognomies were to be seen, the majority tanned and bearded, with their hats on the back of their heads, and short clay pipes in their mouths, and all in the wildest state of enjoyment, dripping with perspiration and dancing indefatigably. There were French and Swedish sailors in their red woollen shirts, Norwegians and Danes in blue, with white canvas trousers, Yankees and English all in blue; and as they swung the gracefully dressed Dutch girls with their small white caps and little capes, and petticoats fastened up to do justice to the neat shoes and white stockings below, vying with each other who should dance the best and longest, the foundation of many a friendship or enmity was laid, to be prosecuted later on in the evening over a bottle of brandy or in a stand-up fight.