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Major Vigoureux, a novel by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch |
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Chapter 9. The Salving Of S.S. Milo |
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_ CHAPTER IX. THE SALVING OF S.S. MILO
Then he remembered, and called out to Sergeant Archelaus. Sergeant Archelaus appeared, a moment later, ready dressed, and on more than usually good terms with himself. He had indued his master's trousers, and, save for an unfashionable bagginess at the hips, they fitted him surprisingly well. "Good morning, Archelaus. Did you happen to hear, last night, at what time the _Milo_ weighs anchor?" "I heard the captain, sir, tell the pilots to be aboard at half-after-seven. But with a vessel of her size you may count on their waiting till high-water or thereabouts." "In any case"--the Commandant consulted his watch--"we have not too much time. Where is Treacher?" "Downstairs, sir, along with his missus, stoking the kitchen fire, with mattresses built up before it like a sandbag battery. Seems to me the woman's been spending half the night airing one thing and another. She says the place is like a vault. Not," added Archelaus, magnanimously, "that I mind her talk." "Quite right, Archelaus. I particularly hope you won't quarrel with Mrs. Treacher while she is here waiting on Miss--er--on the lady." "If," said Archelaus, darkly, "as how I wanted to quarrel with a female, I should have taken and married one long ago. As 'tis, when the woman's tongue becomes afflicting, I turns round and pities Treacher. There's more ways of doing that than in so many words, and you'd be astonished how they both dislikes it." "At any rate," said the Commandant, mildly, "they have saved you the trouble of being late with the fire this morning. So you may fetch me my shaving-water at once, please." He sprang out of bed and reached for his dressing-gown, astonished at his own good spirits. "It does make a difference," said he aloud, though the remark was addressed to himself. "It do," said Archelaus, turning in the doorway. "I--I beg your pardon?" The Commandant turned about, a trifle confused. "It may seem a little thing; but it gives a man self-respect, and I'm glad you noticed 'em." Archelaus looked down at his legs, complacently. "Always supposin'," he added, "they don't take me for a Frenchman, owing to the fulness hereabouts." Yes, certainly, it made a difference--to rise in the morning with a sense of something waiting to be done. So the Commandant put it to himself while he shaved, standing at his dressing-table under the barrack window. The window was set high in the wall: too high to afford him a view of the Islands, even though he stood on tip-toe. But through it and above the open pane he caught a glimpse of blue sky and lilac-coloured cloud, touched with gold by the risen sun. He could guess the rest. A perfect morning!--clean and crisp, with the sea a translucent blue, and sunlight glittering on the Island beaches; the air still, yet bracing, and withal ineffably pure--a morning mysterious with the sense of autumn, but of autumn rarified by its passage over the salt strait, deodorised, made pure of marsh fog and the rotting leaf. The Commandant hummed to himself in the intervals of his shaving, which nevertheless he performed meticulously by force of habit. It was his custom to shave, and very carefully, before taking his bath. For years he had made a ritual of his morning toilet: so many passes of his razor across the strop (to be precise, one hundred and fifty, neither more nor less), so many douches with the sponge, so many petitions afterwards on his knees. Yes, it is to be feared that his prayers, no less than his shaving, had become a drill, though one may plead for him that he always went through it conscientiously. A stroke too few across the strop--a petition to the Almighty missed--either would have worried him with a feeling that the day had been begun amiss. He was poor, but with the never-failing well on Garrison Hill he could come clean as the richest to his prayers. Even Miss Gabriel had to admit that the poor man (as she put it) knew how to take care of his person. "We shall be in good time, Archelaus," said the Commandant, with a side glance at his watch; "that is, if you'll step down the hill and get the boat ready." Archelaus, whose hearing had not improved of late, checked himself in the act of filling his master's tub. "I didn't clearly catch what you said, for the splashing.... Boat? If you want the boat, I put her off to the moorings last night. Found her tied up and bumping against the quay steps, quite as if money was no object to any of us." "Thank you. Yes, I relied on your finding and mooring her properly. Well, now, when you are ready I want you to unmoor her again. We are going off to the liner to fetch Miss--that is to say--the lady's boxes." Sergeant Archelaus faced about slowly, cap in hand. "Oh--oh!" said he slowly. "Relative of yours, sir?--making so bold." "Dear me, no; nothing of the sort." "Paying lodger, perhaps.... Or else we've come into a fortune all of a sudden, an' that accounts for Treacher's playing ad lib. with the coals--begging your pardon again." The Commandant winced, and came within an ace of gashing himself severely. He had forgotten the penny in his pocket, the gulf between this and pay-day ... and Vashti, no doubt, was used to fare daintily, luxuriously! "I really think"--he turned on Archelaus in sudden anger--"you might know better than to stare into the glass when I am shaving. Moreover, you forget your place, and inexcusably, even for an old servant." Archelaus resumed his filling of the bath, and, having filled it, withdrew without another word. Yes; but while the manner of Archelaus' speech had deserved rebuke, in the matter of it Archelaus was right. The matter of it was urgent, too, and not to be played with. In an hour or so Vashti would be awake.... She must delay dressing until her boxes arrived; but, once dressed, she would expect breakfast. The larder, to his knowledge, contained but the rusty end of a flitch of green bacon--that, and perhaps a couple of rusty eggs, a loaf, and some salt butter. Fool that he was! And a minute ago he had greeted the day so light-heartedly! What was to be done? In the pauses of sponging and towelling himself, the Commandant asked the question again and again. Could he go to Mrs. Treacher and borrow back the four shillings he had given her last night? Fish, new-laid eggs, fresh butter, marmalade, the best tea procurable in the Islands.... Yes, undoubtedly four shillings would go a long way towards providing breakfast. But after breakfast would come luncheon, and after luncheon-- There was Mr. Tregaskis, of the Shop. Mr. Tregaskis sold almost everything "advantageous to life"--as Shakespeare's exiles said upon another island: everything from bacon and pickles to boots, iron-mongery, and sun-bonnets. For twelve years the Commandant had dealt with Mr. Tregaskis, paying whatever Mr. Tregaskis charged him, and always in ready money. He knew, moreover, that Mr. Tregaskis gave credit: and yet, after twelve years of ready-money dealing, he winced as he saw himself entering the shop and proposing to open an account. He foresaw himself inexorably driven to it. But he foresaw himself also stammering out the suggestion with every sign of conscious rascality. And, after all, was it honest to enter a shop and open an account with one penny in pocket? Suppose that, next pay-day, no pay were forthcoming! He must approach Mr. Tregaskis: there was no help for it. Yet the prospect pleased him so little that, as he walked down the hill to the quay, he decided to put off the interview, and was almost running past the shop (which had just been unshuttered) when Mr. Tregaskis himself appeared, framed of a sudden in the upper and open half of his shop doorway. "Eh? Is it you, sir? Good morning!" he called. "Good morning! And a fine morning, too, Mr. Tregaskis." "After a night of marvels. You've heard about the liner, sir, out in the Roads?... 'Tis all a mystery to me how she ever found her way in." "I am putting off to learn the particulars. And, by the way, Mr. Tregaskis"--the Commandant paused--"I intended to call in upon you on my way back." "Anything I can do for you, sir, and at any time," responded Mr. Tregaskis. "I suppose, now," he added, "you'd take it as a liberty if I was to ask for a seat in your boat?" "Not in the least. There she is, waiting off the quay steps: so if you have business on board, put on your hat, come along with me, and welcome!" "Thanking you kindly, sir. Which I was reckoning that--she being from foreign parts and the Islands the first place she've touched at, I might pick up a bravish order in the way of fresh milk and eggs, not to mention that Job Clemow sold me half-a-hundredweight of plaice, with a cod or two, that he took on the spiller yesterday." "Come along, by all means," repeated the Commandant, moving off towards the quay steps; and Tregaskis, having tucked his shop-apron around his waist and run into the back passage for his billy-cock hat, hurried in his wake. Reuben Tregaskis--known throughout the Islands as The Bester--was a genial ruffian of familiar accost, red-faced, round in the stomach, utterly unscrupulous at a bargain. The Commandant did not like him, and particularly disliked the prospect of asking him a favour. Most of all he regretted, as they pushed off, that chance this morning had forced him to put such a man under a small obligation. He feared that, when it came to asking leave to open an account, he might seem to be using this advantage. (Such a fear, it scarcely needs saying, was groundless. In his business dealings, The Bester was superior alike to gratitude and rancour, and would bargain with his own mother as with his worst enemy.) The Commandant, oppressed with his own thoughts, bent his attention upon the steering, and punctuated with monosyllables only the exuberant flow of Mr. Tregaskis' conversation, which, bye-and-bye, as they neared the roadstead, resolved itself into offers of wagers on the length, tonnage, and actual carrying capacity of the liner. She lay very nearly in the middle of the roadstead, broadside-on to the morning sunshine, and the more the Commandant studied her the more he wondered at last night's miracle. She had not yet begun to weigh, though he discerned a couple of St. Ann's pilots talking with an officer on the bridge. Presently the officer left them, and descended to the deck, where he stood in the gangway awaiting the boat. "Major Vigoureux?" he asked, lifting the peak of his cap, as she fell alongside. The Commandant, not a little astonished, returned the salutation. "That is my name, sir." "I have been expecting you," said the officer. "I am Captain Whitaker, at your service--the skipper of this vessel, in fact, and thankful enough, I can tell you, to be alive this morning and in command of her. Madame's boxes are on deck here, if you do me the favour to climb on board.... Ah, and here is Madame's maid, to give account of them!" The Commandant, drawing breath at the head of the ladder, and glancing down the _Milo's_ majestic length of deck, was aware of four large trunks, and beside them a neat, foreign-looking woman, who curtsied in foreign fashion as she came forward. "M'sieur will take my duty to Madame, and tell her that I have done my best to pack to her orders. The rest I am to report from Plymouth, when we arrive." "And I daresay," put in Captain Whitaker, with an amused turn of the eye towards the trunks, then back at the Commandant, "Madame would call these 'just a few necessaries.' Though I say to you, sir," he went on gravely, "that all the _Milo's_ hold--and the _Milo_ will carry close on four thousand tons--hasn't room enough to stow what Madame deserves, be it in clothes or jewels." "I--I beg your pardon?" "She hasn't told you? No; I bet she wouldn't," said Captain Whitaker. "Come down to my cabin, sir, and let me offer you a brandy-and-soda? No? Then, perhaps, you'll do me the honour to join me at breakfast--which must be ready at this moment," he added, as eight strokes sounded on the ship's bell forward. "Never mind the size of the trunks, sir; one of my men shall help you ashore with 'em." In the Captain's cabin, which had a floor of parquet and panels of teak set in mahogany, stood a table with a white cloth upon it, and a breakfast array of blue-and-white china. A steward, in a blue suit with brass buttons, brought the meats in dishes of polished electro-plate, and on a small sideboard stood other dishes with small spirit lamps burning beneath. The Commandant seated himself; ate, drank, and marvelled. "You know Madame?" asked Captain Whitaker, helping himself to a dish of kidneys and bacon. He nodded, intercepting the Commandant's gaze. "We keep them in ice, if you're not above trying our fare. You'll find they are not bad. My other meals I take with the passengers, but I breakfast alone, as a rule." The Commandant's mind ran on the breakfast yet to be extracted from Mr. Tregaskis' shop. "You know her?" asked Captain Whitaker. "I once had the pleasure--years ago----" "If that's so"--Captain Whitaker nodded--"we'll take her praises for granted. She's great; you can sum it up at that. By the way, did she happen to tell you why she is leaving the ship here?" "Yes; she went ashore in a hurry, she said, to avoid being thanked----" "Then I guessed right." "--though," confessed the Commandant, "I haven't a notion what she meant." Captain Whitaker set down his breakfast-cup and buttered himself a piece of toast, gazing the while long and earnestly at his companion. "No? Then I'll tell you. The passengers don't know it as yet, though I've caught a guess or two flying around; but the truth is sure to come out, sooner or later. Man, it was she that saved the _Milo_ last night, in that ghastly twenty minutes before we picked up the pilot.... Oh, I see by your face you don't believe me!--but you must take it or leave it. Shall I go on?" "Go on," said the Commandant. "We were due out of New York on the 27th, but missed our tide in clearing and didn't pass the bar till early next morning. We carried fifty-nine saloon passengers, seventy-five second, and a hundred and twenty-five steerage, with a crew of a hundred exactly. Besides these we had the mails--two hundred and twenty bags--and a fair amount of dollars in specie (I needn't tell how much.) The weather was thick from the first with a heavy sea running on the other side. We met it full just outside Sandy Hook, and for three days I pitied the passengers. The third night out the mischief happened. I had left the bridge soon after four bells and was just turning in for my beauty-sleep when I heard an unholy racket below in the engine-room, and felt the ship slow down of a sudden. One of the rods had kicked loose from its gib and started to flail around death and destruction. Thanks to Crosbie, our first engineer, she was brought up before kicking our insides out, and we hove to; but the repairs cost us close on eighteen hours. By daybreak the weather was thickening worse than ever, though with no great amount of wind, and we started again in a fog so thick that from the bridge you could see her bows, and only just. Well, that's how it was with us, all the way across. We seemed to carry the fog; and though it lifted a bit, off and on, it never looked like giving us a chance of an observation. All yesterday afternoon I was worried by the thought that we'd overrun our reckoning and must be somewhere near the Islands, and about two o'clock--though the soundings were good--I ordered the engines to be reduced below the half-speed at which she was running. "To ease the passengers' minds I had arranged for a concert in the saloon after dinner, and Madame--she had booked with us under a name that wasn't her own to dodge the New York newspaper men, but the passengers recognized her--had promised me to sing to them. (You have heard her, eh?--it makes you cry, and not mind, either, who sees you.) I remember now that she looked at me pretty straight when she gave the promise, but seeing me not minded to speak, she asked no questions. "Well, the concert came off. At any other time I'd have given pounds to be sitting there and listening; but the worry on my mind kept me to the bridge, and from there I heard her, the notes lifting up through the saloon sky-light as if heaven and earth had somehow got capsized or else an angel had come aboard to sing us clear of the fog. There were three of us on the bridge--myself, and the third officer, Mr. Francillon, and a seaman called Petersen; and when the song ended--it was a little Italian something-or-other, very bright and gay--and the clapping began and the calls for an encore, I couldn't stand it any longer, and I was afraid she'd be starting on 'Home, Sweet Home,' or something of that sort, and I didn't want Mr. Francillon to see my face. So I made up an excuse and sent him off to the chart-house for a pair of dividers (which I didn't want), and away he went. "When he was gone I stood by the wheel for a bit listening as the clapping died down. It stopped at last, and I braced myself up and waited to have my feelings wrung, when just behind me I heard a step on the ladder. Of course, I took it for Mr. Francillon returning, and I wheeled about, short-tempered like, to tell him he needn't be tip-toeing--we weren't on the bridge to listen to grand opera--when what do I see but Madame! 'You needn't look so cross, Captain,' she says; 'for I know well enough I'm breaking all rules, and I'll go away quietly and sing to them again. But we're somewhere near the Islands, and the call came on me to warn you!' 'Why, truly, ma'am,' I answered, 'I believe we're not far off them.' 'We're close to them,' she answered me, nodding her head. 'I'm Island-born, Captain, and I feel 'em in my blood.' I put this down to craziness--hysterics--or whatever you choose to call it; but just to soothe her mind and get her down quietly off the bridge I sang out to the leadsman to know if he had found soundings. I was bending over the rail when I felt a touch on my arm, and heard her cry out 'Starboard! Hard a-starboard--hard!'--just like that." Captain Whitaker dropped his voice to a low, fierce whisper as he imitated her. "It took the helmsman sharp and sudden, so that he had begun to put the wheel down before he realised that the order didn't come from me; and the next moment Madame had flung herself upon it and was helping with both hands. 'Hullo!' says I, stepping after her smartly, and as good as asking if she or I commanded the _Milo_. The passengers below had started to sing 'D'ye ken John Peel?' and were yelling out a lot of silly hunting-cries with the chorus. I could hear nothing above the racket. But, sure enough, looking to port over my shoulder as I laid hand on the wheel to check it, I saw a whitish smear that meant breakers; and the smear no sooner showed than above it a great black cliff stood out as if 'twere a moving thing and meant to carve into us right amidships--a great cliff with a rock on it like the Duke of Wellington's nose. A man from the top of it could have jumped onto our bulwarks, and I shut my eyes as it overhung, waiting for the crash; but it slid by and was gone like a slide you pass through a magic lantern. "'Port now! Port for your life!' she called out; and I saw first of all her hand go out to push Petersen off, and then the little sparks flickering on her rings as she gripped the spokes, and checking 'em, dragged the wheel back hand over hand. A man's strength she must have had. 'Help me,' was all she said, in a kind of panting voice, and as I caught hold to help it over, 'That was the Head! Hard up, now! and ring down for full speed!' 'Full speed!' I grunted, yet pressing on the wheel all the time--'It's stop her you mean, and anchor.' 'What, here? with Hell-deeps on your starboard bow and a five-knot tide running! Full speed ahead--there's no room to swing--no, nor half.' She stopped my hand on the bell and rang down herself, 'full speed ahead'; and the passengers whooping away at 'John Peel!' all the while. "Then, as the engines began to run, she looked at me, still holding on by the wheel. 'They may do it,' she said, 'they may do it. At half speed she'd never point off, against a five-knot tide.' 'God have mercy on us!' was all I could say. 'If you know--?' 'Know?' she caught me up. 'I was brought up to know. But she'll never do it if she don't pick up way.... Ah, that's better!' she said with a kind of sigh staring over the starboard bow into the fog. 'Now!'--and we held our breath, all of us; for Mr. Francillon was back on the bridge standing close behind her and wondering what the devil was up. She let thirty seconds pass, and then turned to him as if he'd been there all the while and she knew it. "'Look astern,' she said, 'and maybe, if you're clever, you can see the Monk.' "'The Monk!' We cried this out together; for that we had passed the Monk without sighting her or catching sound of her fog-horns was a thing incredible. "'But so it is,' said she. 'We have passed the Monk; passed it close. Don't I know the Pope's Head on Lesser Teague? Now hard-a-port still--for we've the Gunnel Dogs somewhere there to leeward, and they're worse almost than Hell-deeps.' "We were racing by this time. There was nothing in the world to see--only the fog, which had turned, within the last minute, to dusk; and nothing to feel except that we were racing down between the walls of it like a stick caught in a mill heat. Worse it was; we were driving down full tilt with a five-knot tide under us. If we struck there was one consolation; the end would come soon. As 'John Peel' ended we could hear the tide race take up the tune and hum it on the wind of our passage; and above it I heard the third officer call out that he had glimpsed a light astern. "'The Monk!' said Madame, nodding her head to me to help her in easing off the wheel. "And I don't know, sir, if you have ever been through a gale at sea; a really tight gale, I mean; with a while in it--maybe an hour only, maybe twenty-four--when the odds are slowly turning against you. Then there comes a point when, with nothing to show for it, you feel that you are holding your own; and another point when you feel that, bar accidents, the worst is over. The sea seems to break just as savage as ever, and you can't swear that the wind has lessened. You have nothing to point to, but, all the same, you know, and can thank the Lord. "That's how it was with the _Milo_. I couldn't say when the danger ceased; but I found myself looking at Madame across the binnacle lamp and she was looking at me. My hand went out and I rang down for half-speed, then for dead slow. We stood there and listened while the engines changed their beat from one to the other. In the saloon they had started a comic song with a chorus. Said she, after a bit, 'You can bring up now and wait for morning. North of the Gunnel here there's an eddy slack where the tides meet, and you may count on thirty fathoms.' "I called down to know what the lead reported. I felt my voice shaking and the leadsman's voice shook a bit too as he called back that he had found the bottom with the red seventeen fathom mark. Half a minute later he sang out that his line had lost it. I was just about calling to let go anchor when away on our starboard bow we heard the pilots hailing. We sent up a flare, and at sight of it the lighthousemen, away on the Monk, began banging, and small blame to them!" _ |
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