"Go on," he said to Sir Joseph, when he had got to the end of his excuses; "I never heard such an interesting story in my life. Pray go on!"
The request was not an easy one to comply with. Sir Joseph"s ideas had been thrown into confusion. Miss Lavinia"s contradictions (held in reserve) had been scattered beyond recall. Both brother and sister were, moreover, additionally hindered in recovering the control of their own resources by the look and manner of their host. He alarmed, instead of encouraging the two harmless old people, by fronting them almost fiercely, with his elbows squared on the table, and his face expressive of a dogged resolution to sit there and listen, if need be, for the rest of his life. Launce was the person who set Sir Joseph going again. After first looking attentively at Richard, he took his uncle straight back to the story by means of a question, thus:
"You don"t mean to say that the captain of the ship threw the man overboard?"
"That is just what he did, Launce. The poor wretch was too ill to work his pa.s.sage. The captain declared he would have no idle foreign vagabond in his ship to eat up the provisions of Englishmen who worked. With his own hands he cast the hen-coop into the water, and (a.s.sisted by one of his sailors) he threw the man after it, and told him to float back to Liverpool with the evening tide."
"A lie!" cried Turlington, addressing himself, not to Sir Joseph, but to Launce.
"Are you acquainted with the circ.u.mstances?" asked Launce, quietly.
"I know nothing about the circ.u.mstances. I say, from my own experience, that foreign sailors are even greater blackguards than English sailors.
The man had met with an accident, no doubt. The rest of his story was a lie, and the object of it was to open Sir Joseph"s purse."
Sir Joseph mildly shook his head.
"No lie, Richard. Witnesses proved that the man had spoken the truth."
"Witnesses? Pooh! More liars, you mean."
"I went to the owners of the vessel," pursued Sir Joseph. "I got from them the names of the officers and the crew, and I waited, leaving the case in the hands of the Liverpool police. The ship was wrecked at the mouth of the Amazon, but the crew and the cargo were saved. The men belonging to Liverpool came back. They were a bad set, I grant you. But they were examined separately about the treatment of the foreign sailor, and they all told the same story. They could give no account of their captain, nor of the sailor who had been his accomplice in the crime, except that they had not embarked in the ship which brought the rest of the crew to England. Whatever may have become of the captain since, he certainly never returned to Liverpool."
"Did you find out his name?"
The question was asked by Turlington. Even Sir Joseph, the least observant of men, noticed that it was put with a perfectly unaccountable irritability of manner.
"Don"t be angry, Richard." said the old gentleman. "What is there to be angry about?"
"I don"t know what you mean. I"m not angry--I"m only curious. _Did_ you find out who he was?"
"I did. His name was Goward. He was well known at Liverpool as a very clever and a very dangerous man. Quite young at the time I am speaking of, and a first-rate sailor; famous for taking command of unseaworthy ships and vagabond crews. Report described him to me as having made considerable sums of money in that way, for a man in his position; serving firms, you know, with a bad name, and running all sorts of desperate risks. A sad ruffian, Richard! More than once in trouble, on both sides of the Atlantic, for acts of violence and cruelty. Dead, I dare say, long since."
"Or possibly," said Launce, "alive, under another name, and thriving in a new way of life, with more desperate risks in it, of some other sort."
"Are _you_ acquainted with the circ.u.mstances?" asked Turlington, retorting Launce"s question on him, with a harsh ring of defiance in his bra.s.sy voice.
"What became of the poor foreign sailor, papa?" said Natalie, purposely interrupting Launce before he could meet the question angrily asked of him, by an angry reply.
"We made a subscription, and spoke to his consul, my dear. He went back to his country, poor fellow, comfortably enough."
"And there is an end of Sir Joseph"s story," said Turlington, rising noisily from his chair. "It"s a pity we haven"t got a literary man on board--he would make a novel of it." He looked up at the skylight as he got on his feet. "Here is the breeze, this time," he exclaimed, "and no mistake!"
It was true. At last the breeze had come. The sails flapped, the main boom swung over with a thump, and the stagnant water, stirred at last, bubbled merrily past the vessel"s sides.
"Come on deck, Natalie, and get some fresh air," said Miss Lavinia, leading the way to the cabin door.
Natalie held up the skirt of her nankeen dress, and exhibited the purple tr.i.m.m.i.n.g torn away over an extent of some yards.
"Give me half an hour first, aunt, in my cabin," she said, "to mend this."
Miss Lavinia elevated her venerable eyebrows in amazement.
"You have done nothing but tear your dresses, my dear, since you have been in Mr. Turlington"s yacht. Most extraordinary! I have torn none of mine during the whole cruise."
Natalie"s dark color deepened a shade. She laughed, a little uneasily.
"I am so awkward on board ship," she replied, and turned away and shut herself up in her cabin.
Richard Turlington produced his case of cigars.
"Now is the time," he said to Sir Joseph, "for the best cigar of the day--the cigar after breakfast. Come on deck."
"You will join us, Launce?" said Sir Joseph.
"Give me half an hour first over my books," Launce replied. "I mustn"t let my medical knowledge get musty at sea, and I might not feel inclined to study later in the day."
"Quite right, my dear boy, quite right."
Sir Joseph patted his nephew approvingly on the shoulder. Launce turned away on _his_ side, and shut himself up in his cabin.
The other three ascended together to the deck.
SECOND SCENE.
The Store-Room.
Persons possessed of sluggish livers and tender hearts find two serious drawbacks to the enjoyment of a cruise at sea. It is exceedingly difficult to get enough walking exercise; and it is next to impossible (where secrecy is an object) to make love without being found out.
Reverting for the moment to the latter difficulty only, life within the narrow and populous limits of a vessel may be defined as essentially life in public. From morning to night you are in your neighbor"s way, or your neighbor is in your way. As a necessary result of these conditions, the rarest of existing men may be defined as the man who is capable of stealing a kiss at sea without discovery. An inbred capacity for stratagem of the finest sort; inexhaustible inventive resources; patience which can flourish under superhuman trials; presence of mind which can keep its balance victoriously under every possible stress of emergency--these are some of the qualifications which must accompany Love on a cruise, when Love embarks in the character of a contraband commodity not duly entered on the papers of the ship.
Having established a Code of Signals which enabled them to communicate privately, while the eyes and ears of others were wide open on every side of them, Natalie and Launce were next confronted by the more serious difficulty of finding a means of meeting together at stolen interviews on board the yacht. Possessing none of those precious moral qualifications already enumerated as the qualifications of an accomplished lover at sea, Launce had proved unequal to grapple with the obstacles in his way. Left to her own inventive resources, Natalie had first suggested the young surgeon"s medical studies as Launce"s unanswerable excuse for shutting himself up at intervals in the lower regions, and had then hit on the happy idea of tearing her tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, and condemning herself to repair her own carelessness, as the all-sufficient reason for similar acts of self-seclusion on her side.
In this way the lovers contrived, while the innocent ruling authorities were on deck, to meet privately below them, on the neutral ground of the main cabin; and there, by previous arrangement at the breakfast-table, they were about to meet privately now.
Natalie"s door was, as usual on these occasions, the first that opened; for this sound reason, that Natalie"s quickness was the quickness to be depended on in case of accident.
She looked up at the sky-light. There were the legs of the two gentlemen and the skirts of her aunt visible (and stationary) on the lee side of the deck. She advanced a few steps and listened. There was a pause in the murmur of the voices above. She looked up again. One pair of legs (not her father"s) had disappeared. Without an instant"s hesitation, Natalie darted back to her own door, just in time to escape Richard Turlington descending the cabin stairs. All he did was to go to one of the drawers under the main-cabin book-case and to take out a map, ascending again immediately to the deck. Natalie"s guilty conscience rushed instantly, nevertheless, to the conclusion that Richard suspected her. When she showed herself for the second time, instead of venturing into the cabin, she called across it in a whisper,
"Launce!"
Launce appeared at his door. He was peremptorily checked before he could cross the threshold.
"Don"t stir a step! Richard has been down in the cabin! Richard suspects us!"
"Nonsense! Come out."
"Nothing will induce me, unless you can find some other place than the cabin."