"I wish I could think so!" exclaimed Miss Onslow earnestly. "But, somehow, I cannot; I utterly distrust the man; it is not only his appearance but his behaviour also that is against him. He is a sailor, and, as such, must know perfectly well what respect is due to a captain; and I cannot think he was ever allowed to behave to his former captain as he just now behaved to you. I have a presentiment that he means mischief of some kind. And see, too, what influence he appears to possess over the rest of the men."
"Precisely," I agreed. "You see you are coming rapidly round to my view of his conduct; and therefore I think you will agree with me as to the immediate necessity for me to a.s.sert myself."
"Yes," she a.s.sented--"if you can do so _effectively_. But you must not go among those men unarmed. They have their knives; but you have nothing. Let us go downstairs and see if we cannot find a pistol, or something, in one or the other of our cabins. I have never yet thoroughly searched my cabin, to see what it contains."
"I have searched mine," said I, "and have found no weapon of any kind; but--ah, there is O"Gorman, now coming out of the forecastle--and the rest of the men following him. And, by Jove! they are coming aft! You are right, there is something in the wind. Kindly go below for a few minutes, until the discussion which I foresee has come to an end."
"No, indeed, I will not," whispered my companion, as she strengthened her hold upon my arm; "I will remain here with you, whatever happens.
They will never be such despicable cowards as to use violence in the presence of a woman."
There was no time to say more, for O"Gorman, with all hands excepting the man at the wheel behind him, was now within hearing distance of us.
I looked him squarely in the eye, and at once braced myself for conflict; for there was a sullen, furtive, dogged expression in his gaze, as he vainly attempted to unflinchingly meet mine, that boded mischief, although of what precise nature I could not, for the life of me, guess.
He so obviously had something to say, and was, moreover, so obviously the spokesman for all hands, that I waited for him to begin, determined to take my cue from him rather than, by speaking first, afford him the opportunity of taking his cue from me. He shifted his weight, uneasily, from leg to leg, two or three times, glanced uncomfortably from Miss Onslow"s face to mine, removed a large quid of tobacco from his cheek and carefully deposited it in his cap, and betrayed many other symptoms of extreme awkwardness and perturbation of mind for a full minute or more without discovering a way of saying what he had to say; and so uncouthly ridiculous an exhibition did he make of himself that presently I detected a tremor of repressed laughter in the pressure of my companion"s hand upon my arm, and a second or two later the young lady"s risibility so far mastered her that she felt constrained to bury her face in her pocket-handkerchief under pretence of being troubled with a sudden fit of coughing.
O"Gorman, however, was not to be so easily deceived; he at once observed the convulsion and recognised it for what it was, and the circ.u.mstance that he had excited the mirth of a girl seemed to sting him into action, for he suddenly straightened himself up and, with a vindictive glare at Miss Onslow, exclaimed:
"Ah! so ye"re laughin" at me, eh? All right, my beauty; laugh away!
Yell laugh the other side ov y"r purty face afore long!"
"O"Gorman!" I exclaimed fiercely, advancing a step or two toward him and dragging Miss Onslow after me as she tenaciously clung to my arm.
"What do you mean, sir? How dare you address yourself to this lady in such an insolent fashion? Take care what you are about, sir, or I may find it very necessary to teach you a lesson in good manners. What do you want? Why do you stand there staring at me like an idiot? If you have anything to say, please say it at once, and get about your duty."
"Oho, bedad, just listen to him!" exclaimed the fellow, now thoroughly aroused. "Get about me juty, is it? By the powers! but there"s others as"ll soon find that they"ll have to get about their juty, as well as me!"
I was by this time brought to the end of my patience; I was in a boiling pa.s.sion, and would have sprung upon the man there and then, had not Miss Onslow so strenuously resisted my efforts to release myself from her hold that I found it impossible to do so without the exercise of actual violence. At this moment one of the men behind O"Gorman interposed by muttering:--loud enough, however, for me to hear:
"Don"t be a fool, Pete, man! Keep a civil tongue in your head, can"t you; you"ll make a mess of the whole business if you don"t mind your weather eye! What"s the good of bein" oncivil to the gent, eh? That ain"t the way to work the traverse! Tell him what we wants, and let"s get the job over."
Thus adjured, O"Gorman pulled himself together and remarked, half--as it seemed--in response to the seaman, and half to me:
"We wants a manny things. And the first ov thim is: How fur are we from Table Bay?"
"Well," answered I, "if it will afford you any satisfaction to know it, I have no objection to inform you that we are just one hundred and eighty miles from it."
"And how fur may we be from the Horn?" now demanded O"Gorman.
"The Horn?" I exclaimed. "What has the Horn to do with us, or we with the Horn?"
"Why, a precious sight more than you seem to think, mister," retorted the man, with a swift recurrence to his former insolent, bullying manner. "The fact is," he continued, without allowing me time to speak, "we"re bound round the Horn; we mean you to take us there; and we want to know how long it"ll be afore we get there."
"My good fellow," said I, "you don"t know what you are talking about.
We are bound to Table Bay, and to Table Bay we go, or I will know the reason why. You may go round the Horn, or to the devil, afterwards, and welcome, so far as I am concerned."
"Shtop a bit, and go aisy," retorted O"Gorman; "it"s yoursilf that doesn"t know what you"re talkin" about. I said we"re goin" round the Horn, didn"t I? Very well; I repait it, we"re goin" round the Horn--in this brig--and I"d like to know where"s the man that"ll purvent us."
"Ah! I think I now understand you," said I, with an involuntary shudder of horror as the scoundrel"s meaning at last burst upon me, and I thought of the dainty, delicately-nurtured girl by my side; "we picked you up, and saved your lives; and now you are about to repay our kindness by turning pirates and taking the ship from us. Is that it?"
"By the piper! ye couldn"t have guessed it thruer if ye"d been guessin"
all day," answered O"Gorman coolly.
"My lads," exclaimed I, appealing to the group of seamen standing behind the Irishman, "is this true? Is it possible that you really contemplate repaying this lady and myself for what we have done for you, with such barbarous ingrat.i.tude?"
The men shuffled uneasily, looked at one another, as though each hoped that his fellow would accept the invidious task of replying to my question; and presently Price, the carpenter, spoke:
"Ay, sir; it is true. We are sorry if it is not to your liking, but we have very particular business in the Pacific, and there we must go.
This is just our chance; we shall never have a better; and we should be fools if we did not take it, now that it has come in our way."
"Very well," said I bitterly; "you are sixteen men, while I am one only; if you are absolutely resolved to perpetrate this act of monstrous ingrat.i.tude I cannot prevent you. But I positively refuse to help you in any way whatever--you have no power or means to compel me to do that--so the best plan will be for us to part; this lady and I will take the boat, with sufficient provisions and water to enable us to reach Table Bay, and you may find your way round the Horn as best you can."
O"Gorman simply laughed in my face.
"Take the boat, is it?" he exclaimed, with a loud guffaw. "Oh no, misther; that won"t do at all at all. We shall want the boat for ourselves. And we shall want your help, too, to navigate the brig for us, and we mane to have it, begor"ra!"
"I fail to see how you are going to compel me to do anything that I may resolve _not_ to do," retorted I, putting a bold face upon the matter, yet momentarily realising more clearly how completely we were in their hands, and at their mercy.
"You do?" exclaimed O"Gorman; "then wait till I tell ye. If ye don"t consint to do as we want ye to, we"ll just rig up a bit of a raft, and send ye adrift upon her--_alone_; d"ye understand me, misther--_alone_!"
"No," interposed Miss Onslow, "you shall do nothing of the kind, you cowardly wretches; where Mr Conyers goes, I go also, even if it should be overboard, with _no_ raft to float us."
"Oh no, my purty," answered O"Gorman, with the leer of a satyr, "we"d take moighty good care you didn"t do that. If Misther Conyers won"t be obligin", why, we"ll _have_ to spare _him_, I s"pose; but we couldn"t do widout you, my dear; what"d we do--"
I could bear no more. "Silence, you blackguard!" I shouted, while vainly striving to shake off Miss Onslow"s tenacious hold upon my arm, that I might get within striking reach of him--"silence! How dare you address a helpless, defenceless woman in that insulting manner? What do you expect to gain by it? Address yourself exclusively to me, if you please."
"Wid all me heart," answered O"Gorman, in nowise offended by my abuse of him. "I simply spoke to the lady because she spoke first. And bedad, it"s glad I am she did, because it"s give me the opporchunity to show ye how we mane to convart ye to our views. Navigate the brig for us, and ye"ll nayther of ye have any cause to complain of bad tratement from anny of us: refuse, and away ye goes adhrift on a raft, while the lady "ll stay and kape us company."
To say that I was mad with indignation at this ruffian"s gross behaviour but feebly expresses my mental condition; to such a state of fury was I stirred that but for the restraining hold of the fair girl upon my arm-- from which she by no means suffered me to breakaway--I should most a.s.suredly have "run amok" among the mutineers, and in all probability have been killed by them in self-defence; as it was, my anger and the bitterly humiliating conviction of my utter helplessness so nearly overcame me that I was seized with an attack of giddiness that caused everything upon which my eyes rested to become blurred and indistinct, and to whirl hither and thither in a most distracting fashion, while I seemed to lose the control of my tongue, so that when I essayed to speak I found it impossible to utter a single intelligible word; moreover, I must have been on the very verge of becoming unconscious, from the violence of my agitation, for I had precisely the same feeling that one experiences when dreaming--a sensation of vagueness and unreality as to what was transpiring, so that, when Miss Onslow spoke, her voice sounded faint and far away, and her words, although I heard them distinctly, conveyed no special significance to my comprehension.
"Mr Conyers will acquaint you with his decision in due time, when he has had leisure for reflection," said she, in those haughtily scornful tones of hers that I remembered so well. Then I felt and yielded to the pressure of her guiding hand, and presently found myself groping my way, with her a.s.sistance, down the companion ladder and into the cabin. She guided me to one of the sofa-lockers, upon which I mechanically seated myself; and then I saw her go to the swinging rack and pour out a good stiff modic.u.m of brandy, which she brought and held to my lips. I swallowed the draught, and after a few seconds my senses returned to me, almost as though I were recovering from a swoon, Miss Onslow a.s.sisting my recovery by seating herself beside me and fanning me with her pocket-handkerchief, gazing anxiously in my face the while.
"There, you are better now!" she exclaimed encouragingly, as she continued to regard me. "Oh, Mr Conyers," she continued, "I am so _very_ sorry to see you thus. But I am not surprised, after all the hardship, and anxiety, and hard work that you have been called upon to endure since the wreck of the unfortunate _City of Cawnpore_. What you have so bravely borne has been more than sufficient to undermine the health of the strongest man; and now, when we hoped that a few hours more would bring us to the end of our troubles, comes the cruel shock and disappointment of these wretches" base ingrat.i.tude to complete what hardship, anxiety, and suffering have begun. But cheer up; all is not yet lost, by any means; our deliverance is merely deferred until you shall have carried out the wishes of these men; therefore, since we have no alternative, let us accept the inevitable with a good grace--do what they require as speedily as may be, and so bring this unfortunate adventure to an end. And," she continued, after a barely perceptible pause, "have no anxiety on my account; O"Gorman and his accomplices will not molest me if you will but conform to their wishes. And, if they _should_, I shall be prepared for them: "Fore-warned is fore-armed"!"
You may imagine how deeply ashamed of myself and of my late weakness I felt as I listened to the heroic words of this delicately-nurtured girl, who had known nothing either of danger, privation, or hardship until this frightful experience of all three had come to her with the wreck of the ship which was to have conveyed her to her father"s arms. Yet terrible as her situation was, she uttered no word of repining, her courage was immeasurably superior to mine; her sympathy was all for me; there was no apprehension on her own behalf; and now, at the moment when a new and dreadful trouble had come upon the top of all that we had previously undergone, when our brightest hopes were dashed to the ground, it was she who found it needful to encourage me, instead of I having to comfort and encourage her!
Nor would she permit me to suffer the humiliation of having proved less strong than herself; at the first word of apology and self-condemnation that I uttered she silenced me by laying the whole blame upon the anxiety and fatigue to which I had been of late exposed; and when at length she had salved the wound inflicted upon my self-esteem by my recent loss of self-control, she set about the task of coaxing me to yield with at least an apparent good grace to the demands of the men-- seeing that we were completely in their power, and could do no otherwise--in order that we might secure such full measure of good treatment from them as they might be disposed to accord to us. And so convincingly did she argue that, despite my reluctance to acknowledge myself conquered, I at length gave in; being influenced chiefly thereto, not by Miss Onslow"s arguments, but by the galling conviction that in this way only could I hope to save her from the violence with which the scoundrels had almost openly threatened her in the event of my non-compliance.
This matter settled, I went on deck, where I found the entire crew congregated about the binnacle, awaiting me. They watched my approach in silence--and, as I thought, with ill-concealed anxiety--until I was within two paces of the group, when I halted, regarding them steadfastly. By this time I had completely recovered the command of my temper, and my self-possession; and as I noted their anxious looks I began to realise that, after all, these fellows were by no means so independent of me that they would be likely to wantonly provoke me; and I resolved to bring that point well home to them, with the view of driving the most advantageous bargain possible.
"Well, men," said I, "I have considered your proposal;--and have come to the conclusion that I will accede to it--upon certain conditions which I will set forth in due course. But, first of all, I should like to know what you would have done supposing I had not happened to have been a navigator?"
The rest of the men looked at O"Gorman, and he replied:
"Oh, you"d just have had to join us, or have gone overboard."
"Yes," said I. "And what then? How would you have managed without anyone to have navigated the ship for you?"
"We should ha" had to ha" done the best we could," replied Price nonchalantly.
"To what part of the Pacific are you bound?" asked I.