"I am going to die!" he groaned. "I am going to die, and I"ve been a bad man: I"ve been the head of a publishing company all my life!"
Augusta gently pointed out to him that publishing was a very respectable business when fairly and properly carried on, and not one that ought to weigh heavy upon a man at the last like the record of a career of successful usury or burgling.
He shook his heavy head. "Yes, yes," he groaned; "but Meeson"s is a company and you are talking of private firms. They are straight, most of them; far too straight, I used always to say. But you don"t know Meeson"s--you don"t know the customs of the trade at Meeson"s."
Augusta reflected that she knew a good deal more about Meeson"s than she liked.
"Listen," he said, with desperate energy, sitting up upon the sail, "and I will tell you--I must tell you."
Asterisks, so dear to the heart of the lady novelist, will best represent the confession that followed; words are not equal to the task.
Augusta listened with rising hair, and realised how very trying must be the life of a private confessor.
"Oh, please stop!" she said faintly, at last. "I can"t bear it--I can"t, indeed."
"Ah!" he said, as he sunk back exhausted. "I thought that when you understood the customs at Meeson"s you would feel for me in my present position. Think, girl, think what I must suffer, with such a past, standing face to face with an unknown future!"
Then came a silence.
"Take him away! Take him away!" suddenly shouted out Mr. Meeson, staring around him with frightened eyes.
"Who?" asked Augusta; "who?"
"Him--the tall, thin man, with the big book! I know him; he used to be Number 25--he died years ago. He was a very clever doctor; but one of his patients brought a false charge against him and ruined him, so he had to take to writing, poor devil! We made him edit a medical encyclopaedia--twelve volumes for 300, to be paid on completion; and he went mad and died at the eleventh volume. So, of course, we did not pay his widow anything. And now he"s come for me--I know he has. Listen! he"s talking! Don"t you hear him? Oh, Heavens! He says that I am going to be an author, and he is going to publish for me for a thousand years--going to publish on the quarter-profit system, with an annual account, the usual trade deductions, and no vouchers. Oh! oh! Look!--they are all coming!--they are pouring out of the Hutches! they are going to murder me!--keep them off! keep them off!" and he howled and beat the air with his hands.
Augusta, utterly overcome by this awful sight, knelt down by his side and tried to quiet him, but in vain. He continued beating his hands in the air, trying to keep off the ghostly train, till, at last, with one awful howl, he fell back dead.
And that was the end of Meeson. And the works that he published, and the money that he made, and the house that he built, and the evil that he did--are they not written in the Book of the Commercial Kings?
"Well," said Augusta faintly to herself when she had got her breath back a little, "I am glad that it is over; anyway, I do hope that I may never be called on to nurse the head of another publishing company."
"Auntie! auntie!" gasped d.i.c.k, "why do the gentleman shout so?"
Then, taking the frightened child by the hand, Augusta made her way through the rain to the other hut, in order to tell the two sailors what had come to pa.s.s. It had no door, and she paused on the threshold to prospect. The faint foggy light was so dim that at first she could see nothing. Presently, however, her eyes got accustomed to it, and she made out Bill and Johnnie sitting opposite to each other on the ground.
Between them was the breaker of rum. Bill had a large sh.e.l.l in his had, which he had just filled from the cask; for Augusta saw him in the act of replacing the spigot.
"My go!--curse you, my go!" said Johnnie, as Bill lifted the sh.e.l.l of spirits to his lips. "You"ve had seven goes and I"ve only had six!"
"You be blowed!" said Bill, swallowing the liquor in a couple of great gulps. "Ah! that"s better! Now I"ll fill for you, mate: fair does, I says, fair does and no favour," and he filled accordingly.
"Mr. Meeson is dead," said Augusta, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up her courage to interrupt this orgie.
The two men stared at her in drunken surprise, which Johnnie broke.
"Now is he, Miss?" he said, with a hiccough: "is he? Well, a good job too, says I; a useless old landlubber he was. I doubt he"s off to a warmer place than this "ere Kerguelen Land, and I drinks his health, which, by-the-way, I never had the occasion to do before. Here"s to the health of the departed," and he swallowed the sh.e.l.lfull of rum at a draught.
"Your sentiment I echoes," said Bill. "Johnnie, the sh.e.l.l; give us the sh.e.l.l to drink the "ealth of the dear departed."
Then Augusta returned to her hut with a heavy heart. She covered up the dead body as best she could, telling little d.i.c.k that Mr. Meeson was gone by-by, and then sat down in that chill and awful company. It was very depressing; but she comforted herself somewhat with the reflection that, on the whole, Mr. Meeson dead was not so bad as Mr. Meeson in the animated flesh.
Presently the night set in once more, and, worn out with all that she had gone through, Augusta said her prayers and went to sleep with little d.i.c.k locked fast in her arms.
Some hours afterwards she was awakened by loud and uproarious shouts, made up of s.n.a.t.c.hes of drunken songs and that peculiar cla.s.s of English that hovers ever round the lips of the British Tar. Evidently Bill and Johnnie were raging drunk, and in this condition were taking the midnight air.
The shouting and swearing went reeling away towards the water"s edge, and then, all of a sudden, they culminated in a fearful yell--after which came silence.
What could it mean? wondered Augusta and whilst she was still wondering dropped off to sleep again.
CHAPTER XI.
RESCUED.
Augusta woke up just as the dawn was stealing across the sodden sky. It was the smarting of her shoulders that woke her. She rose, leaving d.i.c.k yet asleep, and, remembering the turmoil of the night, hurried to the other hut. It was empty.
She turned and looked about her. About fifteen paces from where she was lay the sh.e.l.l that the two drunkards had used as a cup. Going forward, she picked it up. It still smelt disgustingly of spirits. Evidently the two men had dropped it in the course of their midnight walk, or rather roll. Where had they gone to?
Straight in front of her a rocky promontory ran out fifty paces or more into the waters of the fjord-like bay. She walked along it aimlessly till presently she perceived one of the sailor"s hats lying on the ground, or, rather, floating in a pool of water. Clearly they had gone this way. On she went to the point of the little headland, sheer over the water. There was nothing to be seen, not a single vestige of Bill and Johnnie.
Aimlessly enough she leant forward and stared over the rocky wall, and down into the clear water, and then started back with a little cry.
No wonder that she started, for there on the sand, beneath a fathom and a half of quiet water, lay the bodies of the two ill-fated men. They were locked in each other"s arms, and lay as though they were asleep upon that ocean bed. How they came to their end she never knew. Perhaps they quarrelled in their drunken anger and fell over the little cliff; or perhaps they stumbled and fell not knowing whither they were going. Who can say? At any rate, there they were, and there they remained, till the outgoing tide floated them off to join the great army of their companions who had gone down with the Kangaroo. And so Augusta was left alone.
With a heavy heart she returned to the hut, pressed down by the weight of solitude, and the sense that in the midst of so much death she could not hope to escape. There was no human creature left alive in that vast lonely land, except the child and herself, and so far as she could see their fate would soon be as the fate of the others. When she got back to the hut, d.i.c.k was awake and was crying for her.
The still, stiff form of Mr. Meeson, stretched out beneath the sail, frightened the little lad, he did not know why. Augusta took him into her arms and kissed him pa.s.sionately. She loved the child for his own sake; and, besides, he, and he alone, stood between her and utter solitude.
Then she took him across to the other hut, which had been vacated by the sailors, for it was impossible to stay in the one with the body, which was too heavy for her to move. In the centre of the sailors" hut stood the cask of rum which had been the cause of their destruction. It was nearly empty now--so light, indeed, that she had no difficulty in rolling it to one side. She cleaned out the place as well as she could, and returning to where Mr. Meeson"s body lay, fetched the bag of biscuits and the roasted eggs, after which they had their breakfast.
Fortunately there was but little rain that morning, so Augusta took d.i.c.k out to look for eggs, not because they wanted any more, but in order to employ themselves. Together they climbed up on to a rocky headland, where the flag was flying, and looked out across the troubled ocean. There was nothing in sight so far as the eye could see--nothing but the white wave-horses across which the black cormorants steered their swift, unerring flight. She looked and looked till her heart sank within her.
"Will Mummy soon come in a boat to take d.i.c.k away?" asked the child at her side, and then she burst into tears.
When she had recovered herself they set to collecting eggs, an occupation which, notwithstanding the screams and threatened attacks of the birds, delighted d.i.c.k greatly. Soon they had as many as she could carry; so they went back to the hut and lit a fire of drift-wood, and roasted some eggs in the hot ashes; she had no pot to boil them in. Thus, one way and another the day wore away, and at last the darkness began to fall over the rugged peaks behind and the wild wilderness of sea before. She put d.i.c.k to bed and he went off to sleep. Indeed, it was wonderful to see how well the child bore the hardships through which they were pa.s.sing. He never had an ache or a pain, or even a cold in the head.
After d.i.c.k was asleep Augusta sat, or rather lay, in the dark listening to the moaning of the wind as it beat upon the shanty and pa.s.sed away in gusts among the cliffs and mountains beyond. The loneliness was something awful, and together with the thought of what the end of it would probably be, quite broke her spirit down. She knew that the chances of her escape were small indeed. Ships did not often come to this dreadful and uninhabited coast, and if one should happen to put in there, it was exceedingly probable that it would touch at some other point and never see her or her flag. And then in time the end would come. The supply of eggs would fail, and she would be driven to supporting life upon such birds as she could catch, till at last the child sickened and died, and she followed it to that dim land that lies beyond Kerguelen and the world. She prayed that the child might die first. It was awful to think that perhaps it might be the other way about: she might die first, and the child might be left to starve beside her. The morrow would be Christmas Day. Last Christmas Day she had spent with her dead sister at Birmingham. She remembered that they went to church in the morning, and after dinner she had finished correcting the last revises of "Jemima"s Vow." Well, it seemed likely that long before another Christmas came she would have gone to join little Jeannie. And then, being a good and religious girl, Augusta rose to her knees and prayed to Heaven with all her heart and soul to rescue them from their terrible position, or, if she was doomed to perish, at least to save the child.
And so the long cold night wore away in thought and vigil, till at last, some two hours before the dawn, she got to sleep. When she opened her eyes again it was broad daylight, and little d.i.c.k, who had been awake some time beside her, was sitting up playing with the sh.e.l.l which Bill and Johnnie had used to drink rum out of. She rose and put the child"s things a little to rights, and then, as it was not raining, told him to run outside while she went through the form of dressing by taking off such garments as she had, shaking them, and putting them on again. She was slowly going through this process, and wondering how long it would be before her shoulders ceased to smart from the effects of the tattooing, when d.i.c.k came running in without going through the formality of knocking.
"Oh, Auntie! Auntie!" he sang out in high glee, "here"s a big ship coming sailing along. Is it Mummy and Daddie coming to fetch d.i.c.k?"
Augusta sank back faint with the sudden revulsion of feeling. If there was a ship, they were saved--s.n.a.t.c.hed from the very jaws of death. But perhaps it was the child"s fancy. She threw on the body of her dress; and, her long yellow hair--which she had in default of better means been trying to comb out with a bit of wood--streaming behind her, she took the child by the hand, and flew as fast as she could go down the little rocky promontory off which Bill and Johnnie had met their end. Before she got half-way down it, she saw that the child"s tale was true--for there, sailing right up the fjord from the open sea, was a large vessel. She was not two hundred yards from where she stood, and her canvas was being rapidly furled preparatory to the anchor being dropped.
Thanking Providence for the sight as she never thanked anything before, Augusta sped on till she got to the extreme point of the promontory, and stood there waving d.i.c.k"s little cap towards the vessel, which moved slowly and majestically on, till presently, across the clear water, came the splash of the anchor, followed by the sound of the fierce rattle of the chain through the hawse-pipes. Then there came another sound--the glad sound of human voices cheering. She had been seen.
Five minutes pa.s.sed, and then she saw a boat lowered and manned. The oars were got out, and presently it was backing water within ten paces of her.