Stories by English Authors: The Sea
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Various >> Stories by English Authors: The Sea
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The islet lay all night long in much the same silence which lapped
and wrapped it all the day. The water washed musically upon the
shore; the light in the lighthouse flashed at intervals; there was
no other sign of life. Toward six o'clock in the morning the dark
east grew gray; thin, long white rays shot out across the sky, and
then the light began to spread. Before the gray turned to pink or
the pink to crimson, before there was any corresponding glow in the
western sky, the man who occupied the bungalow turned out of bed,
and came forth to the veranda, clad in the silk pajamas and silk
jacket which formed the evening or dress suit in which he slept.
The increasing light showed that he was a young man still, perhaps
about thirty --a young man with a strong and resolute face and
a square forehead. He stood under the veranda watching, as he had
done every day for two years or more. the break of day and the
sunrise. He drank in the delicious breeze, cooled by a thousand
miles and more of ocean. No one knows the freshness and sweetness
of the air until he has so stood in the open and watched the dawn
of a day in the tropics. He went back to the house, and came out
again clad in a rough suit of tweeds and a helmet. His servant
was waiting for him with his morning tea. He drank it, and sallied
forth. By this time the short-lived splendour of the east was fast
broadening to right and left, until it stretched from pole to a pole.
Suddenly the sun leaped up and the colours fled and the splendour
vanished. The sky became all over a deep, clear blue, and round
about the sun was a brightness which no eye but that of the sea-bird
can face and live. The man in the helmet turned to the sea-shore,
and walked briskly along the natural mound or sea-wall. Now and
then he stepped down upon the white coral sand, picked up a shell,
looked at it, and threw it away. When he came to the sea-birds'
rock, he sat down and watched it. In the deep water below, sea-snakes,
red and purple and green, were playing about; the bluefish, who
are not in the least afraid of the snakes, rolled lazily round and
round the rock; in the recesses lurked unseen the great conger-eel,
which dreads nothing but the thing of long and horny tentacles,
the ourite or squid: round and round the rock darted the humourous
tazaar, which bites the bathers in shallow waters all for fun and
mischief, and with no desire at all to eat their flesh; and besides
these a thousand curious creatures, which this man, who had trained
his eyes by days and days of watching, came here every day to look
at. While he stood there the sea-birds took no manner of notice
of him, flying close about him, lighting on the shore close at his
feet. They were intelligent enough to know that he was only dangerous
with a gun in his hand. Presently he got up and continued his walk.
All round the sea-wall of the island measures about three miles.
He took this walk every morning and every evening in the early cool
and the late. The rest of the time he spent indoors.
When he got back it was nearly seven, and the day was growing hot.
He took his towels, went down to the shore, to a place where the
coral reef receded, leaving a channel out to the open. The channel
swarmed with sharks, but he bathed there every morning, keeping in
the shallow water while the creatures watched him from the depths
beyond with longing eyes. He wore a pair of slippers on account
of the laf, which is a very pretty little fish indeed to look at;
but he lurks in dark places near the shore, and he is too lazy to
get out of the way, and if you put your foot near him he sticks
out his dorsal fin, which is prickly and poisoned; and when a man
gets that into the sole of his foot he goes home and cuts his leg
off, and has to pretend that he lost it in action.
When he had bathed, the doctor went back to his house, and performed
some simple additions to his toilet. That is to say, he washed the
salt water out of his hair and beard; not much else. As to collars,
neckties, braces, waistcoats, black coats, rings, or any such
gewgaws, they were not wanted on this island. Nor are watches and
clocks; the residents go by the sun. The doctor got up at daybreak,
and took his walk, as you have seen, and his bath. He was then
ready for his breakfast, a solid meal, in which fresh fish, newly
caught that morning, and curried chicken, with claret and water,
formed the principal part. A cup of coffee came after, with a cigar
and a book on the veranda. By this time the sun was high, and the
glare of forenoon had succeeded the coolness of the dawn. After
the cigar the doctor went indoors. The room was furnished with a
few pictures, a large bookcase full of books, chiefly medical, a
table covered with papers, and two or three chairs. No curtains,
carpets, or blinds; the doors and windows wide open to the veranda
on both sides.
He sat down and began writing; perhaps he was a novel. I think
no one could think of a more secluded place for writing a novel.
Perhaps he was doing something scientific. He continued writing
till past midday. When he felt hungry, he went into the dining-room,
took a biscuit or two, and a glass of vermuth. Then, because it
was now the hour for repose, and because the air outside was hot,
and the sea-breeze had dropped to a dead calm, and the sun was like
a red-hot glaring furnace overhead, the doctor kicked off his boots,
threw off his coat, lay down on a grass mat under the mosquito-curtain,
and instantly fell fast asleep. About five o'clock he awoke and
got up; the heat of the day was over. He took a long draught of
cold tea, which is the most refreshing and the coolest drink in the
world. The sun was now getting low, and the air was growing cool.
He put on his helmet, and set off again to walk round his domain.
This done, he bathed again. Then he went home as the sun sank, and
night fell instantly without the intervention of twilight. They
served him dinner, which was like his breakfast but for the addition
of some cutlets. He took his coffee; he took a pipe--two pipes,
slowly, with a book; he took a whisky-and-soda; and he went to bed.
I have said that he had no watch; it hung idly on a nail; therefore
he knew not the time, but it would very likely be about half-past
nine. However that might be, he was the last person up in this
ghostly Island of the Anonymous Dead.
This doctor, captain-general, and commandant of Quarantine Island
was none other than the young man who began this history with a
row royal and a kingly rage. You think, perhaps, that he had turned
hermit in the bitterness of his wrath, and for the faults of one
simple girl had resolved on the life of a solitary. Nothing of
the kind. He was an army doctor, and he left the service in order
to take this very eligible appointment, where one lived free, and
could spend nothing except a little for claret. He proposed to stay
there for a few years in order to make a little money by means of
which he might become a specialist. This was his ambition. As for
that love-business seven years past, he had clean forgotten it,
girl and all. Perhaps there had been other tender passages. Shall
a man, wasting in despair, die because a girl throws him over?
Never! Let him straightway forget her. Let him tackle his work; let
him put off the business of love--which can always wait--until he
can approach it once more in the proper spirit of illusion, and
once more fall to worshipping an angel.
Neither nature nor civilisation ever designed a man's life to be
spent in monotony. Most of us have to work for our daily bread,
which is always an episode, and sometimes a pretty dismal episode,
to break and mark the day. One day there came such a break in the
monotonous round of the doctor's life. It came in the shape of a
ship. She was a large steamer, and she steamed slowly.
It was early in the morning, before breakfast. The doctor and one
of the lighthouse men stood on the landing-place watching her.
"She's in quarantine, doctor, sure as sure," said the man. "I
wonder what's she's got. Fever, for choice; cholera, more likely.
Well, we take our chance."
"She's been in bad weather," said the doctor, looking at her
through his glass. "Look; she's lost her mizzen, and her bows are
stove in. I wonder what's the meaning of it. She's a transport." She
drew nearer. "Troops! Well, I'd rather have soldiers than coolies."
She was a transport. She was full of soldiers, time-expired men
and invalids going home. She was bound from Calcutta to Portsmouth.
She had met with a cyclone; driven out of her course and battered,
she was making for the nearest port when cholera broke out on board.
Before nightfall the island was dotted with white tents; a hospital
was rigged up with the help of the ship's spars and canvas. The
men were all ashore, and the quarantine doctor, with the ship's
doctor, was hard at work among the cases, and the men were dropping
in every direction.
Among the passengers were a dozen ladies and some children. The
doctor gave up his house to them, and retired to a tent or to the
lighthouse or anywhere to sleep. Much sleep could not be expected for
some time to come. He saw the boat land with the ladies on board;
he took off his hat as they walked past. There were old ladies,
middle-aged ladies, young ladies. Well, there always is this
combination. Then he went on with his work. But he had a curious
sensation, as if something of the past had been revived in his mind.
It is, however, not an uncommon feeling. And one of the ladies
changed colour when she saw him.
Then began the struggle for life. No more monotony in Quarantine
Island. Right and left, all day long, the men fell one after the
other; day after day more men fell, more men died. The two doctors
quickly organised their staff. The ship's officers became clinical
clerks; some of the ladies became nurses. And the men, the rough
soldiers, sat about in their tents with pale faces, expecting. Of
those ladies who worked there was one who never seemed weary, never
wanted rest, never asked for relief. She was at work all day and
all night in the hospital; if she went out, it was only to cheer
up the men outside. The doctor was but conscious of her work and of
her presence; he never spoke to her. When he came to the hospital,
another nurse received him; if he passed her, she seemed always
to turn away. At a less troubled time he would have observed this.
At times he felt again that odd sensation of a recovered past, but
he regarded it not; he had other things to consider. There is no
time more terrible for the courage of the stoutest man than a time
of cholera on board ship or in a little place whence there is no
escape; no time worse for a physician than one when his science
is mocked and his skill avails nothing. Day after day the doctor
fought from morning till night, and far on to the morning again;
day after day new graves were dug; day after day the chaplain read
over the new-made graves the service of the dead for the gallant
lads who thus died, inglorious, for their country.
There came a time, at last, when the conqueror seemed tired
of conquest; he ceased to strike. The fury of the disease spent
itself; the cases happened singly, one or two a day instead of ten
or twenty. The sick began to recover; they began to look about
them. The single cases ceased; the pestilence was stayed; and they
sat down to count the cost. There had been on board the transport
three hundred and seventy-five men, thirty-two officers, a dozen
ladies, a few children, and the ship's crew. Twelve officers,
two of the ladies, and a hundred men had perished when the plague
abated.
"One of your nurses is ill, doctor."
"Not cholera, I do hope."
"No; I believe a kind of collapse. She is at the bungalow. I told
them I would send you over."
"I will go at once."
He left a few directions, and walked over to the house. It was, he
found, the nurse who had been of all the most useful and the most
active. She was now lying hot and feverish, her mind wandering,
inclined to ramble in her talk. He laid his hand upon her temples;
he felt her pulse; he looked upon her face; the odd feeling
of something familiar struck him again. "I don't think it is very
much," he said. "A little fever. She may have been in the sun; she
has been working too hard; her strength has given way." He still
held her wrist.
"Claude," murmured the sick girl, "you are very cruel. I didn't
know--and a girl cannot always have her own way."
Then he recognised her.
"Good heavens!" he cried, "it is Florence!"
"Not always have her own way," she repeated. "If I could have had
my own way, do you think I would--"
"Florence!" he said again; "and I did not even recognise her.
Strange!"
Another of the ladies, the colonel's wife, was standing beside him.
"You know her, doctor?"
"I knew her a long time ago--some years ago --before she married."
"Married? Florence is not married. You must be thinking of some
one else."
"No. This is Florence Vernon, is it not? Yes. Then she was formerly
engaged to marry a certain Sir William Duport."
"Oh, I believe there was some talk about an old man who wanted to
marry her. But she wouldn't have him. It was just before her mother
died. Did you know her mother?"
"I knew her mother a little when they were living at Eastbourne.
So she refused the old man, did she? and has remained unmarried.
Curious! I had almost forgotten her. The sight of her brings back
the old days. Well, after she has pulled so gallantly through the
cholera, we cannot have her beaten by a little fever. Refused the
old man, did she?"
In the dead of night he sat watching by the bedside, the colonel's
wife with him.
"I had almost forgotten," whispered the lady, "that story of the
old baronet. She told me about it once. Her mother was ill, and
anxious about her daughter because she had next to nothing except
an annuity. The old man offered; he was an unpleasant old man, but
there was a fine house and everything. It was all arranged. The girl
was quite a child, and understood nothing. She was to be sold, in
fact, to this old person, who ought to have been thinking of his
latter end instead of a pretty girl. Then the mother died suddenly,
and the girl broke it off. She was a clever girl, and she has been
teaching. For the last three years she has been in India; now she
is going home under my charge. She is a brave girl, doctor, and
a good girl. She has received half a dozen offers, but she has
refused them all; so I think there must be somebody at home."
"Claude," murmured the girl, wandering, "I never thought you would
care so much. If I had thought so, I would not have encouraged
you. Indeed, indeed, I would not. I thought we were only amusing
ourselves."
"Claude is a pretty name. What is your own Christian name, doctor?"
asked the colonel's wife, curiously.
"It is--in fact--it is Claude," he replied, blushing; but there
was not enough light to see his blushes.
"Dear me!" said the colonel's wife.
A few days later the patient, able to sit for a while in the shade
of the veranda, was lying in a long cane chair. Beside her sat
the colonel's wife who had nursed her through the attack. She was
reading aloud to her. Suddenly she stopped. "Here comes the doctor,"
she said; "and, Florence, my dear, his name, you know, is Claude.
I think you have got something to talk about with Claude besides
the symptoms." With these words she laughed, nodded her head, and
ran into the salon.
The veranda, with its green blinds of cane hanging down, and its
matting on the floor, and its easy-chairs and tables, made a pretty
room to look at. In the twilight, the fragile figure, pale, thin,
dressed in white, would have lent interest even to a stranger. To
the doctor, I suppose, it was only a "case." He pushed the blinds
aside and stepped in, strong, big, masterful. "You are much better,"
he said; "you will very soon be able to walk about. Only be careful
for a few days. It was lucky that the attack came when it did,
and not a little earlier when we were in the thick of the trouble.
Well, you won't want me much longer, I believe."
"No, thank you," she murmured, without raising her eyes.
"I have had no opportunity," he said, standing over her, "of
explaining that I really did not know who you were, Miss Vernon.
Somehow I didn't see your face, or I was thinking of other things.
I suppose you had forgotten me. Anyhow, it was not until the other
day, when I was called in, that I remembered. But I dare say you
have forgotten me."
"No; I have not forgotten."
"I thought that long ago you had become Lady Duport."
"No; that did not take place."
"I hear that you have been teaching since your mother's death. Do
you like it?"
"Yes; I like it."
"Do you remember the last time we met--on the sea-shore? Do you
remember, Florence?" His voice softened suddenly. "We had a quarrel
about that old villain; do you remember?"
"I thought you had forgotten such a little thing as that long ago,
and the girl you quarrelled with."
"The point is rather whether you remember. That is of much more
importance."
"I remember that you swore that you would never forgive a worthless
girl who had ruined your life. Did I ruin your life, Dr. Fernie?"
He laughed. He could not honestly say that she had. In fact, his
life, so far as concerned his work, had gone on much about the
same. But then, such a man does not allow love to interfere with
his career.
"And then you went and threw over the old man. Florence, why didn't
you tell me that you were going to do that? You might have told
me."
She shook her head. "Until you fell into such a rage, and called
me such dreadful names, I did not understand."
"Why didn't you tell me, Florence?" he repeated.
She shook her head again.
"You were only a little innocent, ignorant child then," he said;
"of course you could not understand. I was an ass and a brute and
a fool not to know."
"You said you would never forgive me. You said you would never
shake hands with me again."
He held out his hand. "Since," he said, "you are not going to
marry the old man, and since you are not engaged to anybody else,
why--then--in that case--the old state of things is still going
on; and--and--Florence--but if you give me your hand, I shall keep
it, mind."
"Dear me!" said the colonel's wife, standing in the doorway. "Do
quarantine doctors always kiss their patients? But you told me,
doctor dear, that your Christian name was Claude; didn't you? That
explains everything."
The ship, with those of her company whom the plague had spared,
presently steamed away, and, after being repaired, made her way to
Portsmouth dockyard. But one of her company stayed behind, and is
now queen or empress of the island of which her husband is king,
captain, commandant, and governor-general, and also resident
quarantine doctor.
THE ROCK SCORPIONS
(ANONYMOUS)
The screw steamer Jenny Jones was lying alongside a coal-hulk at
Gibraltar one October afternoon. By three o'clock her bunkers were
nearly filled, and the captain was getting ready for casting off,
when one of the natives came on board. Captain Hindhaugh looked
about for something to throw at the visitor, and only the difficulty
of selecting an efficient missile from a large and varied assortment
prevented him from letting fly at once.
The "Scorpion" said, "Ah, no, no, Capeetan! No been throw nothin'
at myself. Beesiness! I'se been com' for beesiness. Big thing,
Capeetan!"
The last phrase was spoken with such a profound wink that
Hindhaugh held his hand, and, addressing the man as one would an
ill-conditioned dog, said, "Don't keep bowing and scraping there,
you tastrel! Get it out sharp!"
The Scorpion whispered, "No been talk up here. Keep ship one hour,
two hour, three hour. You'se been com' with me, and I speak you
somethin' myself."
Like many of his tribe, this interesting native spoke a kind
of English which is not heard anywhere else on the Mediterranean
shore. A few of the people on the Rock learn to talk very well to
our men, but most of those who come about the ships use a picturesque
lingo in which "myself" the place of quite a variety of parts of
speech.
Hindhaugh invited the man below, and asked him to explain himself.
The fellow leaned over the table and chattered on, throwing quick
side glances at every few words.
"This been big thing, Capeetan. You get away a little; drop your
anchor a little. Then three felucca com' alongside, and you'se been
hoist bales. Then you 'se go where agent say you. Very big thing.
Five thousand sovereign."
"What is it? tobacco?"
"That been it."
"Where for?"
"Huelva."
"I'm not going out of Portuguese waters at no price."
"Ah, no, no, Cheesu, Capeetan--no! Five mile. We have felucca there
ready. I 'se been see him myself."
"What's the figure? what's the money?"
"You com' 'shore and see agent with myself."
Hindhaugh put a revolver in his pocket and went on deck; the
Scorpion got ashore, and hung about with an air of innocence. The
captain was about to follow when the man in charge of the hulk
called out, "Do you intend to keep bumping us like this all night?
Why don't you cast off? You're knocking us all to flinders."
Hindhaugh beckoned. "Look here, my good chap, it won't matter to
you for a couple of hours. Let us lie till dusk, and then I'll
get away. I've got important business ashore."
"That's very well, Captain. But look here; if there's anything on,
I'm in it. You understand --I'm in it."
"You understand that, do you? Well then, I'll tell you to keep
your mouth shut just now, or never another ton of coal will you
put aboard of us as long as I run here."
"All right, Captain. No need to be nasty. You'll do the square
thing, I bet."
Then Hindhaugh went ashore, and the Scorpion walked on ahead,
gazing on architectural beauties with easy interest. Presently the
two men came to a narrow stairway, and the Englishman gripped his
revolver. A dark-eyed Spaniard was waiting on a landing, and held
up two fingers when the guide passed. The Scorpion knocked at
a greasy door, and an ugly fellow, with a cowl on, looked out and
nodded. Hindhaugh stepped into a room that reeked with garlic and
decay. Two men sat in the steamy dusk at the far side. An oily
gentleman rose and bowed. "I'm the interpreter, Captain. You and
this merchant must do your business through me. What'll you take
to drink?"
"Get through your business, mister. I'm not wanting any drink."
In brief, jerky sentences the interpreter explained what was wanted.
"You steam slowly till you're near the Fleet. Then put all your
men on and get the stuff up. This man goes with you, and he'll
tell you where to go. Lie five miles off Huelva."
"I sha'n't go except to Portuguese waters."
"Good. Then the lighters will come and the men will discharge
you."
"And now," said the captain, "what about me? How much?"
"One hundred and twenty pounds."
"Can't be done. Make it two hundred and fifty."
After some haggling, a bargain was made for two hundred and twenty.
Then Hindhaugh went further: "I want one hundred and ten down before
we start, and the balance before you take an ounce of tobacco out
of us."
This was settled; the merchant bowed, and the skipper went away,
still keeping his hand on the revolver. Every cranny in the walls
seemed fit to hide a murderer--seemed made for nothing else; and
Hindhaugh thought what a fool he must have been to venture under
that foul arch.
On getting aboard, the captain sent for his brother, who sailed
as mate with him. He said, "Now, Jack, I'm going to run some risk.
You take this pistol, and get her oiled and put right. When you see
three feluccas coming alongside, get all the chaps on deck--the Dora's
crew as well as ours." (Hindhaugh was taking home a ship-wrecked
crew, and he was very grateful just then for that accession of
force.) "Whack on everything you know, and get the bales up sharp.
Tell the engineers to stand by for driving her, and leave the rest
to me. If we're nailed we'll be detained, and I don't know what
may happen; so you'll have to look slippy."
Jack replied, "All right, sir!" Quarter-deck manners were punctiliously
observed by one of the brothers.
The shadows fell low, and the crown of the Rock grew dim.
The creeping wind stole over the Pearl Rock, and set the sinister
ripples dancing; the bugles sang mysteriously through the gloom,
and the mystery of the night was in the air. The Jenny Jones stole
quietly toward the broad sheet of water where the vessels of the
Fleet heaved up their shadowy bulk above the lapping flood. All the
English sailors were stripped to the shirt, and a low hum of excited
talk came from amidships. Suddenly the raking yard of a felucca
started out from amid the haze; then came another, and another.
A sailor slipped a cork fender over the side, and there was a
muffled bump and a slight scrape. Jack, the mate, whispered, "Now,
you cripples!" and a brief scene of wild hurry and violent labour
ensued. Bale after bale was whisked aboard; the Englishmen worked
as only English sailors can, and the Scorpions excelled themselves
under the influence of fear and black wine. When the last bale was
up, Hindhaugh said to the man who first boarded him, "Who's got
the money?"
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