Chapter 14. The "Vesuvius" Bomb

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_ CHAPTER XIV. THE "VESUVIUS" BOMB

He awoke with a racking headache in pitchy darkness; and with the twilight of returning consciousness there grew in him an awful fear that he had been coffined and buried alive. For he lay at full length in a bed which yet was unlike any bed of his acquaintance, being so narrow that he could neither turn his body nor put out an arm to lift himself into a sitting posture; and again, when he tried to move his legs, to his horror they were compressed as if between bandages. In his ear there sounded, not six inches away, a low lugubrious moaning. It could not come from a bed-fellow, for he had no bed-fellow. . . . No, it could be no earthly sound.

With a strangled cry he flung a hand upwards, fending off the horrible darkness. It struck against a board, and at the same instant his cry was echoed by a sharp scream close beside him.

"Angels and ministers of Gerrace defend us!" The scream sank to a hoarse whisper and was accompanied by a clank of chains. "Not dead? You--you are not dead?"

The Major lay back in a cold sweat. "I--I thought I was," he quavered at length. But at this point his mysterious bed seemed to sway for a moment beneath him, and he caught his breath. "Where am I?" he gasped.

"At sea," answered the voice in a hollow tone.

"At sea!" In a sudden spasmodic attempt to sit upright, the Major almost rolled himself out of his hammock.

"Ay, poor comrade--if you are indeed he whom I saw lifted aboard unconscious from the tender--'tis the dismal truth."

"Beneath the Orlop's darksome shade
Unknown to Sol's bright ray,
Where no kind chink's assistant aid
Admits the cheerful day.

"I am not, in the practical sense, seaman enough to determine if this noisome den be the precise part of the ship alluded to by the poet under the name of Orlop. But the circumstances correspond; and my stomach informs me that the vessel is in motion."

"The vessel?" echoed the Major, incredulous yet. "_What_ vessel?"

"As if to omit no detail of horror, she is called, I believe, the _Vesuvius_ bomb. Phoebus, what a name!"

It drummed for some seconds in the Major's ear like an echo.

"Yes, yes . . . the theatre," he murmured.

"The theatre? You were in the theatre? Then you saw _me_?"

"I beg your pardon."

"_Me_--Orlando B. Sturge. Yes, sir, if it be any consolation to you, know that I, Orlando B. Sturge, of the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, am your temporary partner in adversity, your co-mate and brother in exile, with the added indignity of handcuffs; and all by an error which would be absurd if it weren't so infernally serious."

"There has been some horrible mistake."

"A mistake, sir, for which these caitiffs shall pay dearly," Mr. Sturge promised in his deepest tragedy voice.

"A Justice of the Peace!"

"Eh?"

"With a Major's commission!"

"Pardon, I think you must be confusing me with some other person. Orlando B. Sturge is my name, sir, and familiar--as I may say without vanity--wherever the Thespian art is honoured. But yesterday the darling of the public; and now, in the words of our national bard:"

"'--Now lies he here,
And none so poor to do him reverence.'

"You are familiar with the works of Shakespeare, sir? Your speech, if you will allow me to say so, suggests a respectable education."

"I have dipped into them," answered the Major inattentively, absorbed in his own woes.

"My consolation is, this will get into the newspapers; and then let these ignorant ruffians beware!"

"The newspapers! God forbid!" The Major shuddered.

"Ha?" Mr. Sturge drew back in dark surprise. "'Tis the language of delirium. He raves. What ho, without there!" he called aloud.

"What the devil's up?" responded a voice from the darkness behind the Major's head. It belonged to a marine standing sentry outside a spare sail which shut off the _Vesuvius's_ sick bay from the rest of the lower deck.

"A surgeon, quick! Here's a man awake and delirious."

"All right. You needn't kick up such a row, need you?" growled the marine.

"Like Nero, I am an angler in a lake of darkness. You have handcuffed me, moreover, so that even if this accursed sty contains a bell-rope--which is improbable--I am debarred from using it. A light, there, and a surgeon, I say!"

The marine let fall the sail flap and withdrew, grumbling. But apparently Mr. Sturge's mode of giving an order, being unlike anything in his experience, had impressed him; for by and by a faint ray illumined the dirty whitewashed beams over the Major's hammock, and four persons squeezed themselves into the sick bay--the marine holding a lantern and guiding the ship's surgeon, who was followed in turn by our friends Mr. Jope and Mr. Bill Adams.

The _Vesuvius_ bomb, measuring but a little more than ninety feet over all, with a beam of some twenty-seven feet, and carrying seventy odd men and boys, with six long six-pounder guns and a couple of heavy mortars, could spare but scanty room for hospital accommodation. At a pinch, a dozen hammocks could be slung in the den which the marine's lantern revealed; but how a dozen sick men could recover there, and how the surgeon could move between the hammocks to perform his ministrations, were mysteries happily left unsolved. As it was, the two invalids and their visitors crowded the place to suffocation.

"Delirious, you say?" hemmed the surgeon, a bald little man with a twinkling eye, an unshaven chin and a very greasy shirt frill. "Well, well, give me your pulse, my friend. Better a blister on the neck than a round shot at your feet, hey? I near upon gave you up when they brought you aboard--upon my word I did." The Major groaned. "You seemed a humane man, sir," he answered feebly. "Spare me your blisters and get me put ashore, for pity's sake!"

The doctor shook his head. "My good fellow, we weighed an hour ago with a fresh northerly breeze. I haven't been on deck, but by the cant of her we must be clear of the Sound already and hauling up for Portsmouth."

"On your peril you detain me, sir! I'll have your fool of a captain broken for this--cashiered, sir--kicked out of the service, by Heaven! I am a Justice of the Peace, I tell you!"

"And _coram_," put in Mr. Sturge, "and _custalorum_. He'll make a Star-Chamber matter of it. . . . The poor fellow's raving, I tell you. A curse on your inhumanity! But I can wait for my revenge at Portsmouth. Approach, fellows, and knock off those gyves."

"Justice of the Peace!" echoed Ben Jope, paying no attention whatever to Mr. Sturge, but turning on Bill Adams with round, wondering eyes. "I _told_ you he was something out o' the common. And you ain't had no more sense than to knock him over the head with a cutlass!"

"I did not," protested Bill Adams. "He took it accidental, you being otherwise engaged; an' I stuck to the creatur', thinkin' as how you _wanted_ him."

"But _why_ should I want him?"

"Damned if I know. If it comes to that"--Bill Adams jerked a thumb towards the hammock containing Mr. Sturge--"what d'ye want _him_ for?"

"Oh, _him_?" answered Mr. Jope with a grin. "In a gale off Pernambuco--"

"What on earth are you two talking about?" asked the surgeon, who had seated himself on the deck and, with the lantern between his feet, was busily preparing a blister.

"Beggin' your pardon, sir, but you haven't been on deck yet? You haven't _seen_ the ducks we brought aboard last night?"

"My good man, can I be in two places at once? I have been up all night with Mr. Wapshott, and the devil of a time he's given me. When they brought me this poor fellow, I hadn't time to do more than order him into hammock--indeed I hadn't. Now, then"--he stood on his feet again and addressed the marine--"fetch me a basin of water and I'll bathe his head."

"Is Mr. Wapshott bad, sir?" asked Ben Jope.

"H'm," the surgeon hesitated. "Well, I don't mind admitting to you that he was very bad indeed; but about six bells I got a draught to take effect, and he has been sleeping ever since."

"And you didn't see the Captain brought aboard, sir?"

"I did not. 'Brought,' you say?"

Ben Jope nodded his head, and for a moment or two watched in silence the sponging of our Major's scalp. "I've known this here ship in the variousest kinds o' weathers," he announced at length, with quiet conviction, "but they was fool's-play one and all compared with what's ahead of us."

"If it comes to that again," put in Bill Adams, "I don't see but this here Justice o' the Peace is the plum o' the whole bunch. Maybe"--he turned to his friend--"you ain't never seen a Justice o' the Peace? I hev'."

"W'y," asked Ben Jope, "what's there peculiar about 'em?"

"I got committed by one some years ago," Mr. Adams answered, with a grave effort of memory. "At a place called Farnham, it was, a way inland up the Portsmouth Road. Me and the landlord of a public there came to words, by reason he called his house 'The Admiral Howe,' but on his signboard was the face of a different man altogether. Whereby I asked him why he done so. Whereby he said the painter didn't know How. Whereby I knocked him down, and he called in the constables and swore he'd meant it for a joke; and they took me afore a Justice; and the Justice said he wouldn't yield to nobody in his respect for our Navy, but here was a case he must put his foot down, and if necessary with an iron hand; and gave me seven days. Which I mention because I couldn't pay the fine, having no more than a few coppers besides what I stood up in, and was then on my way home from the wreck of the _Duck Sammy_ brig, which went ashore on the back of the Wight. But if you ask me what was peculiar about the man, he was called Bart.--Sir Samuel Brooks Bart.--and lived in a fine house as big as Greenwich Hospital, with a gold watch-chain across his belly you could have moored a pinnace by, and gold in his pockets correspondin'. Whereby I larned ever since to know my betters when ashore, and behave myself lowly and give 'em a wide berth. But this isn't one, nor the beginnings of one, for I took the liberty to s'arch his pockets."

"Indeed, sir," our hero appealed to the surgeon, "my name is Hymen-- Major Solomon Hymen--of Troy, in Cornwall. On inquiry you will find that I am actually Chief Magistrate of that borough. Nay, I implore you--"

The surgeon, having bathed the wound and bound it with three strips of plaster, took up the blister, and was on the point of applying it, using persuasions indeed, but with the air of one who would take no denial, when a terrible outcry at once arrested him and drowned the Major's protestations.

The cry--it sounded like the roar of a wounded bull--came from the deck overhead. Its echoes sounded the very bowels of the ship; but at the first note of it Ben Jope had clutched Bill Adams by the arm.

"He's seen 'em!" he gasped. "Run, doctor, run--there's a dear soul-- or he'll be doin' murder!"

"Seen what?"

"Run, I tell you! Come!" Suiting the action to the word, Mr. Jope, still gripping his comrade's arm, rushed him out of the sick bay, the doctor and the marine at their heels. In the excitement, the Major tumbled out of his hammock, tore aside the sail-flap, and staggered after them along the dim and empty lower-deck to a ladder which led up to daylight.

How to describe the spectacle which met his dazzled eyes as he thrust his head above the hatchway? Aloft the _Vesuvius_ spread her full sails in cloud upon cloud of dove-coloured grey (for, in fact, she carried very dingy canvas) against the blue of heaven, and reached along with the northerly breeze on her larboard quarter, heeling gently, yet just low enough for the Major to blink as his gaze, travelling beyond the lee bulwarks, caught the dazzle of foam knocked up and spreading off her blunt bows. But not long did he gaze on this; for in the scuppers under the bulwarks, in every attitude of complete woe, some prostrate, some supine, all depicted with the liveliest yellows and greens of seasickness beneath their theatrical paint, lay the crew of H.M.S. _Poseidon_. Yes, even the wicked Lieutenant reclined there with the rest, with one hand upraised and grasping a ring-bolt, while the soft sway of the ship now lifted his garish tinselled epaulettes into the sunlight, now sank and drew across them, as upon a dial, the edge of the bulwarks' shadow.

Right above this disconsolate group, and almost right above the Major's head as he thrust it through the hatchway--or, to be more precise, at the head of the ladder leading to the _Vesuvius's_ poop-- clung a little wry-necked, red-eyed, white-faced man in dishevelled uniform, and capered in impotent fury. But as when a child is chastised he yells once and there follows a pause of many seconds while he gathers up lung and larynx for the prolonged outcry, so after his first bull-roar Captain Crang, of the _Vesuvius_ bomb, clung to the rail of the poop-ladder and wrestled for speech, while a little forward of the waist his crew huddled before the storm, yet (although the Major failed to perceive this) not without exchanging winks.

"Wha--_what_? In the name of ten thousand devils, what the '----' is _that_?" yelled the Captain, and choked again.

"_In_ a gale--_off_ Pernambuco," murmured Mr. Jope. "Steady, Bill; steady does it, mind!" Advancing to the foot of the ladder, he touched his forelock and stood at attention. "Pressed men, sir. Found in the theayter and brought aboard, as _per_ special order."

The Captain's throat could be seen working within his disordered cravat. "Them! But--Oh, help me--look at 'em, Bos'n!"

"Sir!"

"Look at' em!"

"It's not for me to object, sir. As you was sayin', they don't look it; but bein' ear-marked, so to speak--"

"Where is Mr. Wapshott?"

"Below, sir, as I understand," answered Mr. Jope demurely.

"You mean to tell me, you '--' '--', that Mr. Wapshott allowed--"

But just then, from a hatchway immediately behind Captain Crang, there slowly emerged--there uprose--a vision whereat our Major was not the only spectator to hold his breath. A shock of dishevelled red hair, a lean lantern-jawed face, desperately pallid; these were followed by a long crane-neck, and this again was continued by a pair of shoulders of such endless declivity as surely was never seen but in dreams. And still, as the genie from the fisherman's bottle, the apparition evolved itself and ascended, nor ceased growing until it overlooked the Captain's shoulder by a good three-fourths of a yard, when it put out two hands as if seeking support and stood swaying, with a vague, uneasy smile.

"D'ye hear me?" thundered the Captain, leaning forward over the ladder.

"Ay, ay, sir," Ben Jope answered cheerfully.

"Then what the '--' are ye staring at, you son of a '--'? Like a stuck pig, '--' you! Like a clock-face! Like a glass-eyed cat in a '--' thunderstorm! Like a--"

Here, as Captain Crang drew breath to reload, so to speak, a slight yawing of the ship (for which the helmsman might be forgiven) brought the tall shadow of the apparition athwart his shoulder, and fetched him about with an oath.

"Eh? So _there_ you are!"

Mr. Wapshott, still with his vague smile, titubated a moment, advanced with a sort of circumspect dancing motion to the rail of the poop, laid two shaking hands upon it, heaved a long sigh, and nodded affably.

"_Tha's_ all right. Where else?"

"Look there, sir!" Captain Crang wagged a forefinger at the crowd in the scuppers. "I want your explanation of _that!_"

Mr. Wapshott brought his gaze to bear on the point indicated; but not until he had scanned successively the deck gratings, the rise of the forecastle and the main shrouds.

"Re-markable," he answered slowly. "Mos' remarkable. One funniest things ever saw in my life. Wha's yours?"

"My what, sir?"

"Eggs. Eggs-planation. Mus' ask you, sir, be so good hear me out."

"Good Lord!" With a sudden look of horror Captain Crang let go his hold of the poop-ladder and staggered back against the bulwarks. "You don't mean--you're not telling me--that _I_ brought that menagerie aboard last night!" His gaze wandered helplessly from the first officer to the crew forward.

"Now then, Bill, steady does it," whispered Mr. Jope, and saluted again. "You'll excuse me, sir, but Mr. Wapshott was below last night when we brought you aboard from dinin' with his R'yal Highness."

"I remember nothing," groaned Captain Crang. "I never _do_ remember when--and before the Duke too!"

Mr. Jope coughed. "His R'yal Highness, sir--if you'll let me say so--was a bit like what you might call everyone else last night. He shook hands very affectionate, sir, at parting, an' hoped to have your company again before long."

"Did he so? Did he so?" said Captain Crang. "And--er--could you at the same time call to mind what I answered?"

Mr. Jope looked down modestly. "Well, sir, having my hands full at the time wi' this here little lot, I dunno as I can remember precisely. Was it something about the theayter, Bill?" he demanded, turning to Mr. Adams.

"It wor," answered Mr. Adams sturdily.

"And as how you'd never shipped a crew o' playactors afore, but you'd do your best?"

"Either them very words or to that effect," confirmed Mr. Adams, breathing hard and staring defiantly at the horizon.

"The theatre? . . . I was at the theatre?" Captain Crang passed a shaking hand over his brow. "No, damme! . . . and yet I remember now at dinner I heard the Duke say--"

Here it was Captain Crang's turn to stare dumbfounded at an apparition, as a pair of handcuffed wrists thrust themselves up through the main hatchway and were painfully followed by the rest of Mr. Orlando B. Sturge.

"Oh, good Lord! Look! Is the ship full of 'em?" shouted the Captain.

"They ain't real," murmured Mr. Wapshott soothingly. "You'll get accustomed. They began by being frogs," he explained, with the initiatory air of an elder brother, and waved a feeble hand. "Eggs-- if you'll 'low me, sir, to conclude--egg-sisting in the 'magination only. Go 'way--shoo!"

But Mr. Sturge was not to be disembodied so easily. On the contrary, as the vessel lurched, he sat down suddenly with a material thud and clash of handcuffs upon the poultry-coop, nor was sooner haled to his feet by the strong arm of Mr. Adams than he struck an attitude and opened on the Captain in his finest baritone.

"'Look,' say'st thou? Ay, then, look! Nay, gloat if thou wilt, tyrant--miscreant shall I say?--in human form! Yielding, if I may quote my friend here"--Mr. Sturge laid both handcuffed hands on the shoulder of Bill Adams--"yielding to none, I say, in my admiration of Britain's Navy, I hold myself free to protest against the lawlessness of its minions. I say deliberately, sir, its minions. My name, sir, is Orlando B. Sturge. If that conveys aught to such an intelligence as yours, you will at once turn this vessel round and convey us back to Plymouth with even more expedition than you brought us hither."

Captain Crang fell back and caught at the mizzen shrouds.

"Was I so bad as all that?" he stammered, as Ben Jope, believing him attacked by apoplexy, rushed up the poop-ladder and bent over him.

"Lor' bless you, sir," said Mr. Jope, "the best of us may be mistaken at times. But as I've al'ays said, and will maintain, gentlemen will be gentlemen."

But Captain Crang, letting slip his grasp of the shrouds, plumped down on deck in a sitting posture and with a sound like the echo of his own name. _

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