Stories by English Authors: The Sea
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Various >> Stories by English Authors: The Sea
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"Full speed ahead, and stand by!" shouted the captain down the
engine-room tube.
"Signal to her to heave to, and if she does not obey, fire a shot
right across her bows, Mr. O'Riley," continued the commander.
"Mr. Brabazon, you take a boat and thirty men well armed. Board
her, and have her hatches off at once. You'll stand no nonsense,
I know."
"All right, sir," cried the lieutenant, an active, somewhat imperious
officer, of the Civis Romanus sum type. He had been unusually
disgusted at his commander's decision to leave The Black Swan without
searching her; and he was delighted that a more active policy had
been begun.
"I say, Brabazon," whispered the commander to him, as he was going
over the side, "you know I'm stepping a bit beyond bounds, and
I'm just a little anxious. If she turns out to be a slaver, as
we suspect, step to the taffrail and wave your handkerchief, will
you?"
"I will, sir; I'm certain it will be all right," cheerfully responded
the first lieutenant.
A tall, slim, youngish man, in white linen, received the British
officer as he set foot on the deck of The Black Swan.
"I am at present in command of this craft, sir," said the young
American. "The skipper is not fit just at present. We had a visit
from you two days ago, I think. Can I do anything for you?"
"Yes; I want you to take off your hatches," said the lieutenant,
sharply.
"Well, sir," began the Yankee, "I guess your demand is beyond your
treaty powers."
"I know all about that. I must have the hatches off."
"And you are detaining me and overhauling my cargo on no grounds
whatever--"
"Will you do it at once?" broke in the British officer.
"I repeat--ON NO GROUNDS WHATEVER; will cause an in--ter--na--tional
difficulty, and may bring re--markably unpleasant con--sequences
to your captain. Now--"
"Off with your hatches!" cried the lieutenant.
"Sir!"
"If you don't, by George, I will!"
"You know clearly what you're doing, sir?"
"I do."
"And you know the risk you run?"
"I do. No more palaver. Off with them at once, or I'll break them
open."
Further resistance was useless. The thing was done; and the moment
the first hatch was raised the sickening effluvium that issued from
the hold proclaimed the truth. Nearly three hundred slaves were
packed between-decks, many of the poor creatures standing so close
that they could not lie down.
With a look of speechless contempt at the young mate of the
schooner, the lieutenant walked to the side of the ship and waved
his handkerchief. That instant a loud British cheer rang over the
water, given by the blue-jackets, who could be seen clustering in
the rigging like bees.
"I told our skipper judgment would overtake us," said the Yankee.
"Say, mister," he added, in another tone, "seeing that the game's
up, suppose we have a glass of iced champagne downstairs?"
The lieutenant hesitated. To drink with the mate of a slaver!
But--iced champagne!
Slowly he moved toward the companionway. "I don't mind if I do,"
he said, at length; "and you may as well bring up your papers with
the drinks, for I shall carry them on board the Petrel. Of course
you understand that you are my prize."
And having set a guard at the hatchways, the lieutenant descended
the cabin stairs.
The iced champagne was duly forthcoming, and under its genial
influence Lieutenant Brabazon began to feel something like pity
for the young mate who had been so early seduced into the paths of
crime. Probably he had a mother or a sweetheart somewhere in the
States who imagined that he was already on his way home, whereas
now his character was ruined, even if he escaped a long term of
imprisonment.
This feeling was strengthened as he saw that his companion was
gazing mournfully at his glass without speaking a word. At length
the young man lifted his head.
"Say, mister, what'll they do to me, do you think?"
"I can't tell. Of course you know that what you have been engaged
in is a kind of piracy?"
"No!"
"I believe so. Cargo and crew are confiscated, of course. What
they will do with you I can't tell."
"They won't hang me, will they?"
"Probably not," said the lieutenant; "but let this be a warning
to you. You see what it is to wander off the straight course and
hanker after forbidden gains. Lead an honest life in future, when
you are released from custody. Avoid vicious companions--But what's
this?" he cried, as his eye fell on an empty scabbard hanging on the
wall. It looked very like a United States service sword scabbard,
and immediately the thought darted through his mind that this
hypocritical young Yankee (who had been pretending to wipe away a
tear as he listened to the lieutenant's good advice) had been doing
something worse, or at least more heavily punished, than running
cargoes of slaves.
The British officer looked round the cabin. A United States navy
cap was lying on a plush-covered bench.
"Ah! you've been having a brush with an American man-of-war!" cried
Lieutenant Brabazon. "You will have to tell my superior officer
how you came into possession of these articles. I most place you
under arrest!" And, bitterly regretting that he had sat down to
table with the fellow, the British officer rushed on deck.
"Quartermaster," he cried, "bring up a guard of four men, and take
this man," pointing to the Yankee, who had followed him on deck,
"to the Petrel. If he tries to escape, shoot him at once!"
The quartermaster advanced to seize the prisoner; but before
he reached him he involuntarily stopped short. A roar of laughter
sounded in his ears. The American mate and his companions were
shrieking and staggering about the deck; even the crew of the
slaver were, every man Jack of them, grinning from ear to ear. The
lieutenant was dumfounded.
"Excuse me, sir; but the joke was too good," said the Yankee, coming
forward and holding out his hand. "I am the first lieutenant of the
United States war-ship Georgia, in command of a prize crew on board
this vessel, taking her to ---- to have her condemned. We seized
her yesterday. Hearing that you had been on a visit to her the
day before, and had gone away without doing anything, I couldn't
resist the temptation of taking you in. Hope you don't bear malice?
Let's finish that magnum of champagne."
It was evidently the best thing to be done; but the lieutenant was
not a first-rate companion on that occasion.
"Give my respects to your commander," called out the United States
officer, as his guest went down into his boat, "and advise him
from me not to be so jolly particular another time. And I'll try
to take your kind advice and sail a straight course in future!" he
cried, as her Majesty's boat shot away for the last time from the
side of The Black Swan.
MELISSA'S TOUR
BY GRANT ALLEN
Lucy looked across the table at me with a face of blank horror.
"O Vernon," she cried, "what are we EVER to do? And an American
at that! This is just TOO ghastly!" It's a habit of Lucy's, I may
remark, to talk italics.
I laid down my coffee-cup, and glanced back at her in surprise.
"Why, what's up?" I exclaimed, scanning the envelope close. "A
letter from Oxford, surely. Mrs. Wade, of Christchurch--I thought
I knew the hand. And SHE's not an American."
"Well, look for yourself!" Lucy cried, and tossed the note to me,
pouting. I took it, and read. I'm aware that I have the misfortune to
be only a man, but it really didn't strike me as quite so terrible.
"DEAR MRS. HANCOCK: George has just heard that your husband and
you are going for a trip to New York this summer. COULD you manage
to do us a VERY GREAT kindness? I hope you won't mind it. We have
an American friend--a Miss Easterbrook, of Kansas City, niece of
Professor Asa P. Easterbrook, the well-known Yale geologist--who
very much wishes to find an escort across the Atlantic. If you
would be so good as to take charge of her, and deliver her safely
to Dr. Horace Easterbrook, of Hoboken, on your arrival in the States,
you would do a good turn to her, and at the same time confer an
eternal favour on "Yours very truly, "EMILY WADE."
Lucy folded her hands in melodramatic despair.
"Kansas City!" she exclaimed, with a shudder of horror. "And Asa
P. Easterbrook! A geologist, indeed! That horrid Mrs. Wade! She
just did it on purpose!"
"It seems to me," I put in, regarding the letter close, "she did
it merely because she was asked to find a chaperon for the girl;
and she wrote the very shortest possible note, in a perfunctory
way, to the very first acquaintance she chanced to hear of who was
going to America."
"Vernon!" my wife exclaimed, with a very decided air, "you men are
such simpletons! You credit everybody always with the best and
purest motives. But you're utterly wrong. I can see through that
woman. The hateful, hateful wretch! She did it to spite me! Oh,
my poor, poor boy; my dear, guileless Bernard!"
Bernard, I may mention, is our oldest son, aged just twenty-four,
and a Cambridge graduate. He's a tutor at King's, and though he's
a dear good fellow, and a splendid long-stop, I couldn't myself
conscientiously say I regard guilelessness as quite his most marked
characteristic.
"What are you doing?" I asked, as Lucy sat down with a resolutely
determined air at her writing-table in the corner.
"Doing!" my wife replied, with some asperity her tone. "Why,
answering that hateful, detestable woman!"
I glanced over her shoulder, and followed her pen as she wrote:
"MY DEAR MRS. WADE: It was INDEED a delight to us to see your neat
little handwriting again. NOTHING would give us greater pleasure,
I'm sure, than to take charge of your friend, who, I'm confident,
we shall find a most charming companion. Bernard will be with us,
so she won't feel it dull, I trust. We hope to have a very delightful
trip, and your happy thought in providing us with a travelling
companion will add, no doubt, to all our enjoyment--especially
Bernard's. We both join in very kindest regards to Mr. Wade and
yourself, and I am ever
"Yours most cordially,
"LUCY B. HANCOCK."
My wife fastened down the envelope with a very crushing air. "There!
THAT ought to do for her," she said, glancing up at me triumphantly.
"I should think she could see from that, if she's not as blind as
an owl, I've observed her atrocious designs upon Bernard, and mean
to checkmate them. If, after such a letter, she has the cheek to
send us her Yankee girl to chaperon, I shall consider her lost
to all sense of shame and all notions of decency. But she won't,
of course. She'll withdraw her unobtrusively." And Lucy flung the
peccant sheet that had roused all this wrath on to the back of the
fireplace with offended dignity.
She was wrong, however. By next evening's post a second letter
arrived, more discomposing, if possible, to her nerves than the
first one.
"Mrs. Lucy B. Hancock, London.
"DEAR MADAM: I learn from my friend, Mrs. Wade, of Oxford College,
that you are going to be kind enough to take charge of me across
the ocean. I thank you for your courtesy, and will gladly accept
your friendly offer. If you will let me know by what steamer you
start, I will register my passage right away in Liverpool. Also,
if you will be good enough to tell me from what depot you leave
London, and by what train, I will go along with you in the cars.
I'm unused to travel alone. "Respectfully, "MELISSA P. EASTERBROOK."
Lucy gazed at it in despair. "A creature like that!" she cried, all
horror-struck. "Oh, my poor, dear Bernard! 'The ocean,' she says!
'Go along with you in the cars!' 'Melissa P. Easterbrook!'"
"Perhaps," I said, tentatively, "she may be better than her name.
And at any rate, Bernard's not BOUND to marry her!"
Lucy darted at me profound volumes of mute feminine contempt. "The
girl's pretty," she said, at last, after a long, deep pause, during
which I had been made to realise to the full my own utter moral
and intellectual nothingness. "You may be sure she's pretty. Mrs.
Wade wouldn't have foisted her upon us if she wasn't pretty, but
unspeakable. It's a vile plot on her part to destroy my peace of
mind. You won't believe it, Vernon; but I KNOW that woman. And what
does the girl mean by signing herself 'Respectfully,' I wonder?"
"It's the American way," I ventured gently to interpose.
"So I gather," my wife answered, with a profound accent of contempt.
To her anything that isn't done in the purest English way stands
ipso facto self-condemned immediately.
A day or two later a second letter arrived from Miss Easterbrook,
in reply to one of Lucy's suggesting a rendezvous. I confess it
drew up in my mind a somewhat painful picture. I began to believe
my wife's fears were in some ways well grounded.
"Mrs. Lucy B. Hancock, London [as before].
"DEAR MADAM: I thank you for yours, and will meet you on the day
and hour you mention at St. Pancras depot. You will know me when
you see me, because I shall wear a dove-coloured dress, with bonnet
to match, and a pair of gray spectacles.
"Respectfully,
"MELISSA P. EASTERBROOK."
I laid it down and sighed. "A New England schoolmarm!" I exclaimed,
with a groan. "It sounds rather terrible. A dove-coloured dress and
a pair of gray spectacles! I fancy I can picture her to myself:
a tall and bony person of a certain age, with corkscrew curls, who
reads improving books and has views of her own about the fulfilment
of prophecy."
But as my spirits went down so Lucy's went up, like the old man
and woman in the cottage weather-glass. "That looks more promising,"
she said. "The spectacles are good. Perhaps, after all, dear
Bernard may escape. I don't think he's at all the sort of person
to be taken with a dove-coloured bonnet."
For some days after Bernard came home from Cambridge we chaffed a
good deal among ourselves about Miss Melissa Easterbrook. Bernard
took quite my view about the spectacles and dress. He even drew
on an envelope a fancy portrait of Miss Easterbrook, as he said
himself, "from documentary evidence." It represented a typical
schoolmarm of the most virulent order, and was calculated to
strike terror into the receptive mind of ingenuous youth on simple
inspection.
At last the day came when we were to go to Liverpool. We arrived
at St. Pancras in very good time, and looked about on the platform
for a tall and hard-faced person of transatlantic aspect, arrayed
in a dove-coloured dress and a pair of gray spectacles. But we
looked in vain; nobody about seemed to answer to the description.
At last Bernard turned to my wife with a curious smile. "I think
I've spotted her, mother," he said, waving his hand vaguely to the
right. "That lady over yonder--by the door of the refreshment-room.
Don't you see? That must be Melissa." For we knew her only as
Melissa already among ourselves; it had been raised to the mild
rank of a family witticism.
I looked in the direction he suggested, and paused for certainty.
There, irresolute by the door, and gazing about her timidly with
inquiring eyes, stood the prettiest, tiniest, most shrinking little
Western girl you ever saw in your life--attired, as she said, in
a dove-coloured dress, with bonnet to match, and a pair of gray
spectacles. But oh, what a dove-coloured dress! Walter Crane
might have designed it--one of those perfect travelling costumes
of which the America girl seems to possess a monopoly; and the
spectacles--well, the spectacles, though undoubtedly real, added
just a touch of piquancy to an otherwise almost painfully timid
and retiring little figure.
The moment I set eyes on Melissa Easterbrook, I will candidly
admit, I was her captive at once; and even Lucy, as she looked at
her, relaxed her face involuntarily into a sympathetic smile. As a
rule, Lucy might pose as a perfect model of the British matron in
her ampler and maturer years--"calmly terrible," as an American
observer once described the genus; but at sight of Melissa she
melted without a struggle. "Poor wee little thing, how pretty she
is!" she exclaimed, with a start. You will readily admit that was
a great deal from Lucy.
Melissa came forward tentatively, a dainty blush half rising on her
rather pale and delicate little cheek. "Mrs. Hancock?" she said, in
an inquiring tone, with just the faintest suspicion of an American
accent in her musical, small voice. Lucy took her hand cordially.
"I was sure it was you, ma'am," Melissa went on, with pretty confidence,
looking up into her face, "because Mrs. Wade told me you'd be as
kind to me as a mother; and the moment I saw you I just said to
myself, 'That MUST be Mrs. Hancock; she's so sweetly motherly.'
How good of you to burden yourself with a stranger like me! I hope,
indeed, I won't be too much trouble."
That was the beginning. I may as well say, first as last, we were
all of us taken by storm "right away" by Melissa. Lucy herself
struck her flag unconditionally before a single shot was fired; and
Bernard and I, hard hit at all points, surrendered at discretion.
She was the most charming little girl the human mind can conceive.
Our cold English language fails, in its roughness, to describe her.
She was petite, mignonne, graceful, fairy-like, yet with a touch
of Yankee quaintness and a delicious espieglerie that made her
absolutely unique in my experience of women. We had utterly lost
our hearts to her before ever we reached Liverpool; and, strange to
say, I believe the one of us whose heart was most completely gone
was, if only you'll believe it, that calmly terrible Lucy.
Melissa's most winning characteristic, however, as it seemed to me,
was her perfect frankness. As we whirled along on our way across
England, she told us everything about herself, her family, her friends,
her neighbours, and the population of Kansas City in general. Not
obtrusively or egotistically,--of egotism Melissa would be wholly
incapable,--but in a certain timid, confiding, half-childlike way,
as of the lost little girl, that was absolutely captivating. "Oh
no, ma'am," she said, in answer to one of Lucy's earliest questions;
"I didn't come over alone. I think I'd be afraid to. I came with a
whole squad of us who were doing Europe. A prominent lady in Kansas
City took charge of the square lot. And I got as far as Rome with
them, through Germany and Switzerland, and then my money wouldn't
run to it any further; so I had to go back. Travelling comes high
in Europe, what with hotels and fees and having to pay to get your
baggage checked. And that's how I came to want an escort."
Bernard smiled good-naturedly. "Then you had only a fixed sum," he
asked, "to make your European tour with?"
"That's so, sir," Melissa answered, looking up at him quizzically
through those pretty gray spectacles. "I'd put away quite a little
sum of my own to make this trip upon. It was my only chance of
seeing Europe and improving myself a piece. I knew when I started
I couldn't go all the round trip with the rest of my party; but I
thought I'd set out with them, anyway, and go ahead as long as my
funds held out; and then, when I was through, I'd turn about and
come home again."
"But you put away the money yourself?" Lucy asked, with a little
start of admiring surprise.
"Yes, ma'am," Melissa answered, sagely. "I know it. I saved it."
"From your allowance?" Lucy suggested, from the restricted horizon
of her English point of view.
Melissa laughed a merry little laugh of amusement. "Oh no," she
said; "from my salary."
"From your salary!" Bernard put in, looking down at her with an
inquiring glance.
"Yes, sir; that's it," Melissa answered, all unabashed. "You see,
for four years I was a clerk in the post-office." She pronounced
it "churk," but that's a detail.
"Oh, indeed!" Bernard echoed. He was burning to know how, I could
see, but politeness forbade him to press Melissa on so delicate
a point any further.
Melissa, however, herself supplied at once the missing information.
"My father was postmaster in our city," she said, simply, "under
the last administration,--President Blanco's, you know,--and he
made me one of his clerks, of course, when he'd gotten the place;
and as long as the fun went on, I saved all my salary for a tour
in Europe."
"And at the end of four years?" Lucy said.
"Our party went out," Melissa put in, confidentially. "So, when
the trouble began, my father was dismissed, and I had just enough
left to take me as far as Rome, as I told you."
I was obliged to explain parenthetically, to allay Lucy's wonderment,
that in America the whole personnel of every local government office
changes almost completely with each incoming President.
"That's so, sir," Melissa assented, with a wise little nod. "And
as I didn't think it likely our folks would get in again in a
hurry,--the country's had enough of us,--I just thought I'd make
the best of my money when I'd got it."
"And you used it all up in giving yourself a holiday in Europe?"
Lucy exclaimed, half reproachfully. To her economic British mind
such an expenditure of capital seemed horribly wasteful.
"Yes, ma'am," Melissa answered, all unconscious of the faint
disapproval implied in Lucy's tone. "You see, I'd never been
anywhere much away from Kansas City before; and I thought this was
a special opportunity to go abroad and visit the picture-galleries
and cathedrals of Europe, and enlarge my mind and get a little
culture. To us a glimpse of Europe's an intellectual necessary."
"Oh, then you regarded your visit as largely educational?" Bernard
put in, with increasing interest. Though he's a fellow and tutor
of King's, I will readily admit that Bernard's personal tastes lie
rather in the direction of rowing and foot-ball than of general
culture; but still, the American girl's point of view decidedly
attracted him by its novelty in a woman.
"That's so, sir," Melissa answered once more, in her accustomed
affirmative. "I took it as a sort of university trip. I graduated
in Europe. In America, of course, wherever you go, all you can see's
everywhere just the same--purely new and American; the language,
the manners, the type, don't vary. In Europe, you cross a frontier
or a ribbon of sea, and everything's different. Now, on this trip
of ours, we went first to Chester to glimpse a typical old English
town--those rows, oh, how lovely! And then to Leamington for
Warwick Castle and Kenilworth. Kenilworth's just glorious--isn't
it?--with its mouldering red walls and its dark-green ivy, and
the ghost of Amy Robsart walking up and down upon the close-shaven
English grass-plots."
"I've heard it's very beautiful," Bernard admitted, gravely.
"What! you live so close, and you've never BEEN there!" Melissa
exclaimed, in frank surprise.
Bernard allowed with a smile he had been so culpably negligent.
"And Stratford-on-Avon, too!" Melissa went on, enthusiastically,
her black eyes beaming. "Isn't Stratford just charming! I don't
care for the interminable Shakespeare nuisance, you know; that's
all too new and made up; we could raise a Shakespeare house like
that in Kansas City any day. But the church and the elms and the
swans and the river! I made such a sweet little sketch of them all,
so soft and peaceful. At least, the place itself was as sweet as
a corner of heaven, and I tried as well as I could in my way to
sketch it."
"I suppose it IS very pretty," Bernard replied, in a meditative
tone.
Melissa started visibly. "What! have you never been there, either?"
she exclaimed, taken aback. "Well, that IS odd, now! You live in
England, and have never run over to Stratford-on-Avon! Why, you
do surprise me! But there! I suppose you English live in the midst
of culture, as it were, and can get to it all right away at any
time; so perhaps you don't think quite as much of it as we, who
have to save up our money, perhaps for years, to get, for once in
our lives, just a single passing glimpse of it. You live at Cambridge,
you see; you must be steeped in culture right down to the finger-ends."
Bernard modestly responded, twirling his manly moustache, that the
river and the running-ground, he feared, were more in his way than
art or architecture.
"And where else did you go besides England?" Lucy asked, really
interested.
"Well, ma'am, from London we went across by Ostend to Bruges, where
I studied the Memlings, and made a few little copies from them,"
Melissa answered, with her sunny smile. "It's such a quaint old
place--Bruges; life seems to flow as stagnant as its own canals.
Have you ever been there?"
"Oh, charming!" Lucy answered; "most delightful and quiet.
But--er--who are the Memlings? I don't quite recollect them."
Melissa gazed at her open-eyed. "The Memlings?" she said, slowly;
"why, you've just missed the best thing at Bruges if you haven't
seen them. They've such a naive charm of their own, so innocent
and sympathetic. They're in the Hopital de St. Jean, you know, where
Memling put them. And it's so delightful to see great pictures
like those (though they're tiny little things to look at) in their
native surroundings, exactly as they were first painted--the 'Chasse
de Ste. Ursule,' and all those other lovely things, so infantile
in their simplicity, and yet so exquisitely graceful and pure and
beautiful. I don't know as I saw anything in Europe to equal them
for pathos in their own way --except, of course, the Fra Angelicos
at San Marco in Florence."
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