"Very sorry, miss, but it can"t be done," reaffirmed the quartermaster, not without misgivings, for the speaker was a favourite on board, and not a little so with the captain himself, a grizzled and, withal, crusty salt, of whom those under him stood considerably in awe. "If there were any message now, miss, I might make so bold as to take it," he added conciliatorily.
"Message? Message? No; I must tell him myself," came the quick rejoinder, accompanied by another stamp of the foot. "Let me up! Man, man, a life--lives--depend on it--at any rate one."
The seaman gave way, resigning himself to a "logging," and, perchance, other pains and penalties. In a moment the girl had gained the bridge.
The captain and two of the officers turned in anger, which subsided on the part of the latter as they saw the ident.i.ty of the intruder. The first still looked grim.
"Well, young lady?" he began in a voice that would have sent most of the other pa.s.sengers down double quick with a stuttered apology, but with this one it went for nothing.
"Captain, that ship we just ran into--there was someone on board."
The captain looked grimmer still. "Just ran into" had a characteristically ugly sound in his ears.
"Humph!" he snorted. "Just ran into! Just ran into! That infernal old blasted derelict hulk, whose owners ought to be--" And then he remembered the s.e.x and ident.i.ty of the speaker, and with a gulp went on.
"Now, how the--how the--well, how d"you make out there"s anyone on board her?" he rapped out in a sort of subdued hurricane blast of a voice.
"Because I saw. I saw a man lying on her deck as plainly as I see you and Mr Gibson now. Do turn back and see--quick--or you may never find her again in the dark. I saw him, mind you--I swear to G.o.d I saw him-- by the deck lights as we crashed past. You can"t leave him alone to die. You can"t!"
"Saw him? Saw a mare"s nest," grumbled the captain. "Let me tell you, young lady, it"s not my business to start overhauling derelict hulks at midnight--brutes that might have sent us to the bottom. Fortunately, we only sc.r.a.ped this one. Well, well," he appended sourly, "we"re ahead of our time, so we might as well make sure of this. Put her round, Gibson."
"Ah! I thought sailors were always ready to help each other," said the girl triumphantly.
An order was given, and, in the result, the _Runic_ changed her course, and was bearing round, going dead slow, so as to head for the late dangerous obstruction. The excitement was intense among the pa.s.sengers, who thronged the bulwarks at every coign of vantage, eagerly scanning the dark, silent sea. Suddenly the engines stopped, and a boat was lowered.
"Where is she? Can you see her?" were among the buzzed, eager comments as the boat"s lantern receded into the gloom. Soon came a hail and the sound of gruff voices over the water. The light of the lantern grew larger and larger. The boat was returning.
Heavens! what was this? With the boat"s crew there stepped aboard a tall, bearded man burned almost to the copper hue of a savage and wearing what looked like the attire of one. Thus he appeared in the electric lights to the eyes of the excited throng.
"Who are you, my man, and what"s your ship?" began the captain brusquely.
"Thank G.o.d, I"m going home at last!" exclaimed the stranger, gazing around in a weary and dazed sort of way.
"Yes--yes; but--who are you?" repeated the captain more crisply.
"Why--it"s Mr Wagram!"
The interruption or answer proceeded from the girl who had been the cause of the search. The castaway turned, looking more puzzled than ever.
"Yes; that"s my name," he answered. "But--I ought to know that voice, and yet--and yet--"
"Of course you ought," and, casting all conventionality to the winds, the girl sprang forward, seizing one of his hands in both of hers. "Oh, how thankful I am that we have been the means of saving you! What must you have been through! Welcome--a thousand times welcome!"
"Miss Calmour, surely? Why, of course it is. How glad I am to see you again." And in the face of this sun-tanned and unkempt-looking savage here under the ship"s lights Delia could detect the same look as that which had glanced down upon her in the park at Hilversea that glowing summer afternoon after the life-and-death struggle with the escaped beast. "I was a pa.s.senger on the _Baleka_, captain," he went on to explain.
"Pa.s.senger on the _Baleka_ were you? Then, my good sir, it"s lucky we"re homeward bound, because your people will be just about beginning to go to law over your leavings," returned the captain, who was of a cynical bent. "The only pa.s.senger missing from her was given up as lost. But--you haven"t been aboard that old hooker ever since, I take it?"
"No; indeed. I"ve had some strange experiences--can hardly believe I"m not dreaming now. What ship"s this?"
"The _Runic_. White Torpedo line, bound for London from Australian ports."
"And what of the _Baleka"s_ people? Were they found?"
"Yes; all picked up, some here, some there."
"Captain," interrupted that same clear, sweet, fluty voice, "I"m surprised at you. Here"s a shipwrecked mariner been thrown on board, and instead of doing all you can for him you keep him standing here all night answering questions."
"By Jove! you"re right, Miss Calmour," was the bluff reply. "Gibson,"
turning to the chief, "take the gentleman to the saloon, and tell the stewards to get him all he wants."
"I don"t want much at present, thanks," answered Wagram. "A barber, and some clothes are my most urgent needs; but I suppose we can compa.s.s something in that line to-morrow."
"Why, of course," said Delia; "but don"t throw away that picturesque costume. Come along below, now. I"m going to take care of you this evening."
And she did--laying her commands upon the stewards for this and for that as if the whole ship belonged to her. Then she sat and talked to him as he ate some supper, forestalling every possible want, pressing this and that upon him, and yet without ostentatious fuss. And the castaway, who for months had beheld no woman"s face save those of brutal, debased blacks, wondered uneasily whether he were dreaming, as this beautiful girl sat there attending to his wants with an almost loving a.s.siduity.
Yes; he decided, she certainly was beautiful. Time, change, the conditions of a new life, had put the last touches to the sufficiency of her attractiveness as he remembered her.
"By Jove!" exclaimed the chief officer, who had dropped in to hear some of the castaway"s story, "you"ve had some pretty rough ups and downs, and no mistake; and you might as well have tumbled into the boats with the rest after all, for the kid was all right and not left below at all."
"Is that a fact?" said Wagram eagerly.
"Rather. You were throwing away your life going below at such a time in any case, and in this instance it was all for nothing."
Delia had been wishing the chief officer anywhere. She wanted Wagram to herself, and here Gibson sat prosing his tiresome old sea yarns. Now, however, she brisked up, and insisted upon hearing the whole story. She had been quite out of the way of newspapers of late, and had not even heard of the loss of the _Baleka_, or that the man sitting here before her had been given up as lost, a victim to his own heroic act.
"By George! I must go," said the chief. "Mind you ask for anything you want, Mr Wagram, for I conclude you"ve come aboard in a state of temporary and complete dest.i.tution."
"That"s just my case," laughed Wagram. "Funny, isn"t it?" turning to the girl in time to catch the look in her eyes called there by the story she had just heard. "And now tell me about yourself, and how they all are in Ba.s.singham."
"We"ve left Ba.s.singham, you know, Mr Wagram. My father died soon after you went, and we couldn"t stop on at Siege House. So we went up to London, and--well, things were not easy."
"I didn"t know; I have had no news from Hilversea for a long, long time--have been so on the move, you know."
"How you must long to get back. Dear old, beautiful Hilversea!"
The bright spirits and former lightheartedness seemed to have left her.
Her voice was sad. The other made a mental note of it, and deduced that they had fallen upon hard times. Well, that he would certainly do his best to remedy by some means or other. Then she told him about herself; how her other sister--not Clytie--had married in Australia, married very fairly well, too, and had got her out there on a visit. But they had not got on--she did not tell him that the other had conceived a jealousy of her from the very first--and so she was returning to England.
They talked on until even the other pa.s.sengers, who, by twos and threes, had been pa.s.sing through the saloon in quite unusual numbers to catch another glimpse of the castaway, had disappeared, and the stewards were rolling up the carpets.
"Good-night, Mr Wagram," said the girl as they parted. "I can"t tell you how glad I am to see you again, and what a happiness it is to think that the ship I was on board of was the one to rescue you. To-morrow you must tell me your adventures in full. You will--won"t you?"
He promised, with some reservations, and they parted. But Delia found that sleep utterly refused to come her way--and she wanted to sleep, wanted to look her best in the morning. Her cabin mate, an elderly lady, was fast asleep, but she herself seemed doomed to night-long wakefulness. The scuttle was open and she lay with her face to it, watching the dark sky with its twinkle of misty stars, half lulled by the rush and "sough" of smooth water from the sides of the liner. What wonderful workings of Fate had thrown this man here? And he would not have been here but for her. But for her persistence he would have been miles and miles behind, left to perish miserably on the lonely deep.
The other pa.s.sengers had treated her statement with good-humoured ridicule; the captain himself would hardly be persuaded to put back--and what if he had not? But he had--and it had been entirely due to her that he had. She had saved Wagram"s life--as surely as any life ever had been saved--she and she alone.
The sweetness of the thought began to soothe her, and sleep seemed to be coming at last. Then, through it, something--perhaps the sight of the smooth sea through which the great liner was rushing on even keel-- brought back to her mind certain words uttered on a woodland road in the dusk of a winter afternoon; weird words about green seas, smooth and oily, and a battered ship, and terrors--and, perhaps, death, but, if not death, then great happiness. The croakings of the old gipsy came back now--and, good heavens! what coincidence was this? Here were all the conditions--the smooth seas and the battered hulk--the terror gone through--terrors of every kind, up to that of being left on the derelict--the agony of seeing this ark of safety recede from reach of call. "Perhaps death?" He had been s.n.a.t.c.hed from death at that moment, s.n.a.t.c.hed from it by her, as surely as though by her own hand. "But, if not death, then great happiness." In the hot, thick stillness of the night Delia"s brain was busy. The prediction had been directed to herself, not to him. And then it seemed to merge into a joint prediction, but--great happiness? Well, was it not? She had rescued him from death--she alone. Was not that a great happiness? Further, it would be nearly a fortnight ere they reached England, and during that time she would see him daily, talk with him, under conditions of which a week was equivalent to a year under the old state of things. Would not that be "great happiness?"
And then she remembered not only the prediction, but the scorn and contempt with which he had treated both it and its utterer, extending just an overflow ripple of it to her. And with a smile at the recollection she fell into a quiet sleep. Nearly a whole fortnight of happiness--great happiness--lay before her.
In the event so it proved. From the next morning, when they met--he clothed and barbered, and looking exactly as she remembered him in the dear old days of yore--"clothed, and in his right mind" as he smilingly told her in his old, dry, humorous way--pacing the deck in the cool hours, or seated in some snug, shady corner in roomy deck-chairs, talking about home--they two were nearly always together; and the home-sick wanderer felt at home already, and the girl forgot for the time her own dreary prospects, with the struggle for life all opening out before her, to be begun and gone through again. He would go back to luxury and his high estate, while she--? Yet even this she forgot in those sweet, dreamy, sunny days which would soon--only too soon--be over.