"Then you may take it he don"t _require_ no message, bein" toler"bly safe. As for yourself, you stick to me. Understand? Whatever happens, you stick to me."
The Major did not understand in the least; but their conversation at this moment was interrupted by a roar of applause from all quarters of the house as Tom Taffrail, with a realistic blow from the shoulder, laid his persecutor prostrate on the deck.
"Brayvo!" grunted Bill Adams. "The lad"s nimble enough with his fives, I will say, for all his sea-lawyerin"."
"We must "ave him, Bill; if I take him myself we must "ave him!"
cried Ben Jope, dancing with admiration. ""Tis no more than a mercy, neither, after the trouble he"s been and laid up for hisself."
Into what precise degree of mental confusion Mr. Jope had worked himself the Major could never afterwards determine; though he soon had every opportunity to think it out at leisure.
For the moment, as a boatswain"s whistle shrilled close behind his ear, he was merely bewildered. He did not even know that the mouth sounding it was Mr. Jope"s. It _ought_ to have sounded on board H.M.S. _Poseidon_.
As the crowd to right and left of him surged to its feet, he saw at intervals along the gallery, sailor after sailor leap up with drawn cutla.s.s. He saw some forcing their way to the exits; and as the packed throng, swaying backwards, bore him to the giddy edge of the gallery rails, he saw the whole audience rise from their seats with white upturned faces.
"The Press!" called someone. Half a dozen, then twenty, then a hundred voices took up the cry:
"The Press! The Press!"
He turned. What had become of Mr. Jope?
What, indeed? Cutla.s.s between teeth, Mr. Jope had heaved himself over the gallery rail, caught a pillar between his dangling feet, and slid down it to the Upper Circle; from the Upper Circle to the Dress Circle; from the Dress Circle to the Pit. A dozen seamen hurrahed and followed him. To the audience screaming, scattering before them, they paid no heed at all. Their eyes were on their leader, and in silence, breathing hard, each man"s teeth clenched upon his cutla.s.s, they hounded after him and across the Pit at his heels.
It may be that this vivid reproduction of his alleged exploit off Pernambuco for the moment held Mr. Orlando B. Sturge paralysed.
At any rate, he stood by the footlights staring, with a face on which resentment faded into amaze, amaze into stupefaction.
It is improbable that he dreamed of any personal danger until the moment when Mr. Jope, leaping the orchestra and crashing, on his way, through an abandoned violoncello, landed across the footlights and clapped him on the shoulder.
"Never you mind, lad!" cried Mr. Jope cheerfully, taking the cutla.s.s from between his teeth and waving it. "You"ll get better treatment along o" we."
"What mean you? Unhand me--Off, I say, minion!"
"It"ll blow over, lad; it"ll blow over. You take my advice and come quiet--Oh, but we _want_ you!--an" if you hear another word about this evening"s work I"ll forfeit my mess."
"Hands off, ruffian! Help, I say, there--Help!"
"Shame! Shame!" cried a dozen voices. But nine-tenths of the audience were already pressing around the doors to escape.
At a nod from Mr. Jope, two seamen ran and cut the cords supporting the drop-scene.
"Heads, there! Heads!"
The great roller fell upon the stage with a resounding bang.
With the thud of it, a hand descended and smote upon the Major"s shoulder.
"Come along o" me. _You"ll_ give no trouble, anyway."
"Eh?" said the Major. "My good man, I a.s.sure you that I have not the slightest disposition to interfere. These scenes are regrettable, of course. I have heard of them, but never actually a.s.sisted at one before; still, I quite see the necessity of the realm demands it, and the realm"s necessity is--or should be--the supreme law with all of us."
"And you can _swim_. You"d be surprised, now, how few of "em could take a stroke to save their lives. Leastways," Mr. Adams confessed, "that"s _my_ experience."
"I beg your pardon."
"Ben"s impulsive. I over"eard him tellin" you to stick fast to him; but, all things considered, that"s pretty difficult, ain"t it?
Never you mind; _I"ll_ see you aboard the tender."
"Aboard the tender?"
The Major stepped back a pace as the fellow"s absurd mistake dawned on him. "Why, you impudent scoundrel, I"m a Justice of the Peace!"
But here a rush of the driven crowd lifted and bore him against the gallery rail. A hand close by shattered the nearest lamp into darkness, and the flat of a cutla.s.s (not Bill Adams"s) descending upon our hero"s head, put an end for the while to speech and consciousness.
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 hoa.r.s.e 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 c.h.i.n.k"s a.s.sistant 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 circ.u.mstances 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_?"