Faces looked down from her rail, faces from the shadow of the hurricane" deck; a line of faces and all looking down upon the little Island tug that had fallen alongside and drifted close under the liner"s flank, a short way abaft her red port-light. A murmur of talk went with the faces, as it were a stream rippling by, and mingled with the splash of water pouring over-side from the pumps. It sounded cheerfully, and from the voices on board the tug and in the lifeboat and galley towing astern our Commandant gathered that the danger was over. Again Sergeant Treacher hailed and flung a rope; this time the lifeboat"s crew caught it and made fast.
"Reub Hicks is aboard," said a voice, naming one of the St. Ann"s pilots. "He picked her up not twenty furlongs from h.e.l.l-deeps after she had missed the Little Meadows by the skin of her teeth."
"How in the name of good Providence she got near enough to miss it, being where she was, is the marvel to me," said another.
"She did, anyway," said the c.o.xswain; "for Reub himself called down the news to me in so many words."
The Commandant gazed up at the gray shadow reaching aloft into darkness. He knew those outer reefs of which the men spoke. A touch of them would have split the plates of this tall fabric like a house of cards. He and Archelaus had witnessed one such wreck, eight years ago; had waited in broad daylight, helpless, resting on their oars, unable to approach within a cable"s length of the rocks, upon which in ten minutes a steel-built five-master, of 1,200 tons, had melted to nothing before their eyes--"the rivets," as Archelaus put it, "flying out of her like shirt b.u.t.tons." But that had happened on one of the outermost reefs, beyond the Off Islands, far down by the Monk Light. How the _Milo_, no matter from what quarter approaching, had threaded her way by the h.e.l.l-deeps was to him a mystery of mysteries. She was groping it yet, her engines working dead slow; but the fog during the past hour had sensibly lightened and Reub Hicks held open water between him and the Roads, though he still kept the lead going. At the entrance of the Roads he sent the tug forward to help the steerage, and so brought her in and rounded her up as accurately as though she had been a little schooner of two hundred tons.
As the great anchor dropped, and amid the deafening rattle of its chain in the hawse-pipe, the crew astern cast off and drew their boats alongside, eager to swarm aboard and hear news of the miracle. From his galley Mr. Rogers shouted up to the captain to lower his ladder. He and his chief boatman mounted first, with a little man named Pengelly, a custom"s official, who happened to make one of the lifeboat"s crew--for the _Milo_ had come from foreign, and thus a show was made of complying with the Queen"s regulations. But the whole crowd trooped up close at their heels, and with the crowd clambered Sergeant Archelaus and Sergeant Treacher.
The Commandant had given them permission. He would remain below, he said, and look after the boat, awaiting their report.
The crowd pa.s.sed up and dispersed itself about the deck, congratulating all comers, and excitedly plying them with questions. The Islanders are a child-like race, and from his post at the foot of the deserted accommodation ladder the Commandant could hear them laughing, exclaiming, chattering with the pa.s.sengers in high-pitched voices.
He stood with his boat-hook, holding on by the grating of the ladder"s lowest step, and stared at the gray wall-sides of the liner. Yes, the ship was solid, and yet he could not believe but that she belonged to a dream; so mysteriously, against all chances, was she here, out of the deep and the night.
Someone had lashed a lantern at the head of the ladder. Lifting his eyes to it in the foggy darkness, the Commandant saw a solitary figure standing there in the gangway and looking down on him--a woman.
She lifted a hand as if to enjoin silence, and came swiftly down a step or two in the shadow of the vessel"s side.
"You are Major Vigoureux?" she asked in a quick whisper, leaning forward over him.
"At your service, madam," he stammered, taken fairly aback.
"Ah! I am glad of that!" She ran down the remaining steps and set her foot lightly on the boat"s gunwale. "You will row me ash.o.r.e?"
"If you wish it, madam." He was more puzzled than ever. He saw that she wore a dark cloak of fur and was bare-headed. She spoke in a sort of musical whisper. Her face he could not see. "In a minute or two my men----"
"We will not wait for your men," she said, quietly, seating herself in the stern sheets. "They can easily be put ash.o.r.e--can they not?--in one of the other boats."
From under her fur cloak she reached out an arm--a bare arm with two jewelled bracelets--and took the tiller. "I can steer you to the quay,"
she said, and leaning forward in the light of Sergeant Archelaus"
lantern, she lifted her eyes to the Commandant.
The Commandant pushed off, shipped the paddles into the thole pins, and began to row, as in a dream.
CHAPTER VI
HOW VASHTI CAME TO THE ISLANDS
"You do not remember me, Major Vigoureux?"
The Commandant looked at her, across the lantern"s ray. Something in her voice, vibrating like the rich, full note of a bell, touched his memory ... but only to elude it.
The face that challenged him was not girlish; the face, rather, of a beautiful woman of thirty; its shape a short oval, with a slight squareness at the point of the jaw to balance the broad forehead over which her hair (damp now, but rippled with a natural wave, defying the fog) lay parted in two heavy bands--the brow of a G.o.ddess. Her eyes, too, would have become a G.o.ddess, though just now they condescended to be merry.
Tall she was, for certain, and commanding. Her cloak hid the lines of her body, whether they were thin or ample; but, where the collar opened, her throat showed like a pillar, carrying her chin upon a truly n.o.ble poise. It was inconceivable (the Commandant said to himself) that he had met this woman before and forgotten her.
He came back to her eyes. They challenged him fearlessly. He could not have described their colour; but he saw amus.e.m.e.nt lurking deep in their glooms while she waited.
"I am sorry. It is unpardonable in me, of course----"
"And I, on the contrary, am glad," she interrupted, with a laugh that reminded him of the liquid chuckle in a thrush"s song, or of water swirling down a deep pool; "for it tells me I have grown out of recognition, and that is just what I wanted."
This puzzled him, and he frowned a little.
"You know the Islands?" he asked. "This is not your first visit?"
"You shall judge if in this darkness I steer you straight for St.
Lide"s Quay; and I take you to witness--look over your shoulder--there is no lamp on the quay-head to guide me, or at least none visible." She laughed again, but on the instant grew serious. "Yes," she added, "I can find my way among the Islands, I thank G.o.d." And this puzzled him yet more.
"You know the Islands; you are glad to return to them?"
She nodded.
"Yet you do not wish to be recognised?"
She nodded again. "I came, you see, sooner than I intended. The _Milo_ was clean out of her course."
"That goes without saying," said he, gravely.
"She was bound for Plymouth. So, you see, this little misadventure has shortened my journey by days." She paused. "No; I ought not to speak of it flippantly. I shall be very thankful in my prayers to-night ... all those women and children...."
Again she paused.
"Is my hand trembling?" she asked, lifting it and laying it again on the tiller, where it rested firm as a rock. Only the jewels quivered on her rings and bracelets, and their beauty, arresting the Commandant"s gaze, held him silent.
"To be frank with you," she went on, "I left the ship in a hurry, because I was afraid of being thanked. I don"t like publicity--much; and just now it would have spoiled everything." This explanation enlightened the Commandant not at all. "Besides," she added with a practical air, "I left a note with my maid, to be given to the captain; so he won"t imagine that I"ve tumbled overboard; and she can send my boxes ash.o.r.e to-morrow, if you will be kind enough to fetch them before the _Milo_ weighs."
"But, meanwhile?" he hazarded.
"Oh, meanwhile, I must manage somehow for the night. I slipped a few things into my hand-bag here." She drew her fur cloak a little aside, and displayed it--a small satchel hanging from her waist by a silver chain. The Commandant had a glimpse at the same moment of a skirt of rose-coloured silk, brocaded in a pattern of silver.
"And when we land," he asked, "where am I to take you?"
"I am in your hands."
He stared at her, dismayed. "But you have friends?"
"None who would remember me; not a soul, at least, in St. Lide"s."
"There is the Plume of Feathers Inn, to be sure----"
"If you recommend it," she said, demurely, as he hesitated.