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  • 1863
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and Death’s deep jaws snapping and barely missing–ten thousand great slopes of emerald, aquamarine, amethyst and topaz, liquid, alive, and dancing jocundly beneath a gorgeous sun: and you will have a faint idea of what met the eyes and hearts of the rescued looking out of that battered, jagged ship, upon ocean smiling back to smiling Heaven.

Yet one man felt no buoyancy, nor gush of joy. He leaned against a fragment of the broken bulwark, confused between the sweetness of life preserved and the bitterness of treasure lost–his wife’s and children’s treasured treasure; benumbed at heart, and almost weary of the existence he had battled for so stoutly. He looked so moody, and answered so grimly and unlike himself, that they all held aloof from him; heavy heart among so many joyful ones, he was in true solitude; the body in a crowd, the soul alone. And he was sore as well as heavy; for of all the lubberly acts he had ever known, the way he had lost his dear ones’ fortune seemed to him the worst.

A voice sounded in his ear: “Poor thing! she has s foundered.”

It was Fullalove scanning the horizon with his famous glass.

“Foundered? Who?” said Dodd; though he did not care much who sank, who swam. Then he remembered the vessel, whose flashing guns had shed a human ray on the unearthly horror of the black hurricane. He looked all round.

Blank.

Ay, she had perished with all hands. The sea had swallowed her, and spared him–ungrateful.

This turned his mind sharply. Suppose the _Agra_ had gone down, the money would be lost as now, and his life into the bargain–a life dearer to all at home than millions of gold: he prayed inwardly to Heaven for gratitude and goodness to feel its mercy. This softened him a little; and his heart swelled so, he wished he was a woman to cry over his children’s loss for an hour, and then shake all off and go through his duty somehow; for now he was paralysed, and all seemed ended. Next, nautical superstition fastened on him. That pocket-book of his was Jonah: it had to go or else the ship; the moment it did go, the storm had broken as by magic.

Now Superstition is generally stronger than rational Religion, whether they lie apart or together in one mind; and this superstitious notion did something toward steeling the poor man. “Come,” said he to himself “my loss has saved all these poor souls on board this ship. So be it! Heaven’s will be done! I must bustle, or else go mad.”

He turned to and worked like a horse: and with his own hands helped the men to rig parallel ropes–a substitute for bulwarks–till the perspiration ran down him.

Bayliss now reported the well nearly dry, and Dodd was about to bear up and make sail again, when one of the ship-boys, a little fellow with a bright eye and a chin like a monkey’s, came up to him and said–

“Please, captain!” Then glared with awe at what he had done, and broke down.

“Well, my little man?” said Dodd gently.

Thus encouraged, the boy gave a great gulp, and burst in in a brogue, “Och your arnr, sure there’s no rudder on her at all barrin the tiller.”

“What d’ye mean?”

“Don’t murder me, your arnr, and I’ll tell ye. It’s meself looked over the starrn just now; and I seen there was no rudder at all at all. Mille diaoul, sis I; ye old bitch, I’ll tell his arur what y’are after, slipping your rudder like my granny’s list shoe, I will.”

Dodd ran to the helm and looked down; the brat was right: the blows which had so endangered the ship, had broken the rudder, and the sea had washed away more than half of it. The sight and the reflection made him faintish for a moment. Death passing so very close to a man sickens him _afterwards,_ unless he has the luck to be brainless.

“What is your name, urchin?”

“Ned Murphy, sir.”

“Very well, Murphy, then you are a fine little fellow, and have wiped all our eyes in the ship: run and send the carpenter aft.”

“Ay, ay, sir.”

The carpenter came. Like most artisans, he was clever in a groove: take him out of that, and lo! a mule, a pig, an owl. He was not only unable to invent, but so stiffly disinclined: a makeshift rudder was clean out of his way; and, as his whole struggle was to get away from every suggestion Dodd made back to groove aforesaid, the thing looked hopeless. Then Fullalove, who had stood by grinning, offered to make a bunkum rudder, provided the carpenter and mates were put under his orders. “But” said he, “I must bargain they shall be disrated if they attempt to reason.” “That is no more than fair,” said Dodd. The Yankee inventor demanded a spare maincap, and cut away one end of the square piece, so as to make it fit the stem-post: through the circle of the cap he introduced a spare mizen topmast: to this he seized a length of junk, another to that, another to that, and so on: to the outside junk he seized a spare maintop-gallant mast, and this conglomerate being now nearly as broad as a rudder, he planked over all. The sea by this time was calm; he got the machine over the stern, and had the square end of the cap bolted to the stern-post. He had already fixed four spans of nine-inch hawser to the sides of the makeshift, two fastened to tackles, which led into the gunroom ports, and were housed taut–these kept the lower part of the makeshift close to the stern post–and two, to which guys were now fixed and led through the aftermost ports on to the quarter-deck, where luff-tackles were attached to them, by means of which the makeshift was to be worked as a rudder.

Some sail was now got on the ship, and she was found to steer very well. Dodd tried her on every tack, and at last ordered Sharpe to make all sail and head for the Cape.

This electrified the first mate. The breeze was very faint but southerly, and the Mauritius under their lee. They could make it in a night and there refit, and ship a new rudder. He suggested the danger of sailing sixteen hundred miles steered by a gimcrack; and implored Dodd to put into port.

Dodd answered with a roughness and a certain wildness never seen in him before: “Danger, sir! There will be no more foul weather this voyage; Jonah is overboard.” Sharpe stared an inquiry. “I tell you we shan’t lower our topgallants once from this to the Cape: Jonah is overboard:” and he slapped his forehead in despair; then, stamping impatiently with his foot, told Sharpe his duty was to obey orders, not discuss them. “Certainly, sir,” said Sharpe sullenly, and went out of the cabin with serious thoughts of communicating to the other mates an alarming suspicion about Dodd, that now, for the first time, crossed his mind. But long habit of discipline prevailed, and he made all sail on the ship, and bore away for the Cape with a heavy heart. The sea was like a mill-pond, but in that he saw only its well-known treachery, to lead them on to this unparalleled act of madness: each sail he hoisted seemed one more agent of Destruction rising at his own suicidal command.

Towards evening it became nearly dead calm. The sea heaved a little, but was waveless, glassy, and the colour of a rose, incredibly brave and delicate.

The look-out reported pieces of wreck to windward. As the ship was making so little way, Dodd beat up towards them: he feared it was a British ship that had foundered in the storm, and thought it his duty to ascertain and carry the sad news home. In two tacks they got near enough to see with their glasses that the fragments belonged, not to a stranger, but to the _Agra_ herself. There was one of her waterbutts, and a broken mast with some rigging: and as more wreck was descried coming in at a little distance, Dodd kept the ship close to the wind to inspect it: on drifting near, it proved to be several pieces of the bulwark, and a mahogany table out of the cuddy This sort of flotsam was not worth delaying the ship to pick it up; so Dodd made sail again, steering now south-east.

He had sailed about half a mile when the look-out hailed the deck again.

“A man in the water!”

“Whereabouts?”

“A short league on the weather quarter.”

“Oh, we can’t beat to windward for _him,_” said Sharpe; “he is dead long ago.”

“Holds his head very high for a corpse,” said the look-out.

“I’ll soon know,” cried Dodd. “Lower the gig; I’ll go myself.”

The gig was lowered, and six swift rowers pulled him to windward, while the ship kept on her course.

It is most unusual for a captain to leave the ship at sea on such petty errands: but Dodd half hoped the man might be alive; and he was so unhappy; and, like his daughter, who probably derived the trait from him, grasped instinctively at a chance of doing kindness to some poor fellow alive or dead. That would soothe his own sore, good heart.

When they had pulled about two miles, the sun was sinking into the horizon. “Give way, men,” said Dodd, “or we shall not be able to see him.” The men bent to their oars and made the boat fly

Presently the coxswain caught sight of an object bobbing on the water abeam.

“Why, that must be it,” said he: “the lubber! to take it for a man’s head. Why, it is nothing but a thundering old bladder, speckled white.”

“What?” cried Dodd, and fell a-trembling. “Steer for it! Give way!”

“Ay, ay, sir!”

They soon came alongside the bladder, and the coxswain grabbed it. “Hallo! here’s something lashed to it: a bottle!”

“Give it me!” gasped Dodd in a voice choked with agitation. “Give it me! Back to the ship! Fly! fly! Cut her off, or she’ll give us the slip _now._”

He never spoke a word more, but sat in a stupor of joyful wonder.

They soon caught the ship; he got into his cabin, he scarce knew how: broke the bottle to atoms, and found the indomitable Cash uninjured. With trembling hands he restored it to its old place in his bosom, and sewed it tighter than ever.

Until he felt it there once more, he could hardly realise a stroke of good fortune that seemed miraculous–though, in reality, it was less strange than the way he had lost it;* but now, laid bodily on his heart, it set his bosom on fire. Oh, the bright eye, the bounding pulse, the buoyant foot, the reckless joy! He slapped Sharpe on the back a little vulgarly for him:–

“Jonah is on board again, old fellow: look out for squalls.”

*The _Agra_, being much larger than the bottle, had drifted faster to leeward in the storm.

He uttered this foreboding in a tone of triumph, and with a gay elastic recklessness, which harmonised so well with his makeshift rudder, that Sharpe groaned aloud, and wished himself under any captain in the world but this, and in any other ship. He looked round to make sure he was not watched, and then tapped his forehead significantly. This somewhat relieved him, and he did his duty smartly for a man going to the bottom with his eyes open.

But ill luck is not to be bespoken any more than good: the _Agra’s_ seemed to have blown itself out; the wind veered to the south-west, and breathed steadily in that quarter for ten days. The topgallant sails were never lowered nor shifted day nor night all that time, and not a single danger occurred between this and the Cape, except to a monkey, which I fear I must relate, on account of its remoter consequences. One fine afternoon, everybody was on deck amusing themselves as they could: Mrs. Beresford, to wit, was being flattered under the Poop awning by Kenealy. The feud between her and Dodd continued, but under a false impression. The lady had one advantage over the gentler specimens of her sex; she was never deterred from a kind action by want of pluck, as they are. Pluck? Aquilina was brimful of it. When she found Dodd was wounded, she cast her wrongs to the wind, and offered to go and nurse him. Her message came at an unlucky moment, and by an unlucky messenger: the surgeon said hastily, “I can’t have him bothered.” The stupid servant reported, “He can’t be worried;” and Mrs. Beresford, thinking Dodd had a hand in this answer, was bitterly mortified; and with some reason. She would have forgiven him, though, if he had died; but, as he lived, she thought she had a right to detest him, and did; and showed her sentiments like a lady, by never speaking to him, nor looking at him, but ignoring him with frigid magnificence on his own quarter-deck.

Now, among the crew of this ship was a favourite goat, good-tempered, affectionate, and playful; but a single vice counterbalanced all his virtues: he took a drop. A year or two ago some light-hearted tempter taught him to sip grog; he took to it kindly, and was now arrived at such a pitch that at grog-time he used to butt his way in among the sailors, and get close to the canteen; and, -by arrangement, an allowance was always served out to him. On imbibing it, he passed with quadrupedal rapidity through three stages, the absurd, the choleric, the sleepy; and was never his own goat again until he awoke from the latter. Now Master Fred Beresford encountered him in the second stage of inebriety, and, being a rough playfellow, tapped his nose with a battledore. Instantly Billy butted at him; mischievous Fred screamed and jumped on the bulwarks. Pot-angry Billy went at him there; whereupon the young gentleman, with all eldrich screech, and a comparative estimate of perils that smacked of inexperience, fled into the sea, at the very moment when his anxious mother was rushing to save him. She uttered a scream of agony, and would actually have followed him, but was held back, uttering shriek after shriek, that pierced every heart within hearing.

But Dodd saw the boy go overboard, and vaulted over the bulwark near the helm, roared in the very air, “Heave the ship to!” and went splash into the water about ten yards from the place. He was soon followed by Vespasian, and a boat was lowered as quickly as possible. Dodd caught sight of a broad straw hat on the top of a wave, swam lustily to it, and found Freddy inside: it was tied under his chin, and would have floated Goliath. Dodd turned to the ship, saw the poor mother with white face and arms outstretched as if she would fly at them, and held the urchin up high to her with a joyful “hurrah.” The ship seemed alive and to hurrah in return with giant voice: the boat soon picked them up, and Dodd came up the side with Freddy in his arms, and placed him in his mother’s with honest pride and deep parental sympathy.

Guess how she scolded and caressed her child all in a breath, and sobbed over him! For this no human pen has ever told, nor ever will. All I can just manage to convey is that, after she had all but eaten the little torment, she suddenly dropped him, and made a great maternal rush at Dodd. She flung her arms round him, and kissed him eagerly, almost fiercely: then, carried away wild by mighty Nature, she patted him all over in the strangest way, and kissed his waistcoat, his arms, his hands, and rained tears of joy and gratitude on them.

Dodd was quite overpowered. “No! no!” said he. “Don’t now, pray, don’t! There! there! I know, my dear, I know; I’m a father.” And he was very near whimpering himself; but recovered the man and the commander, and said, soothingly, “There! there!” and he handed her tenderly down to her cabin.

All this time he had actually forgotten the packet. But now a horrible fear came on him. He hurried to his own cabin and examined it. A little salt water had oozed through the bullet-hole and discoloured the leather; but that was all.

He breathed again.

“Thank Heaven I forgot all about it!” said he: “it would have made a cur of me.”

Lady Beresford’s petty irritation against Dodd melted at once– before so great a thing: she longed to make friends with him; but for once felt timid. It struck her now all of a sudden that she had been misbehaving. However, she caught Dodd alone on the deck, and said to him softly, “I want so to end our quarrel.”

“Our quarrel, madam!” said he; “why, I know of none: oh, about the light eh? Well, you see the master of a ship is obliged to be a tyrant in some things.”

“I make no complaint,” said the lady hastily, and hung her head. “All I ask you is to forgive one who has behaved like a fool, without even the excuse of being one; and–will you give me your hand, sir?”

“Ay, and with all my heart,” said Dodd warmly, enclosing the soft little hand in his honest grasp.

And with no more ado these two highflyers ended one of those little misunderstandings petty spirits nurse into a feud.

The ship being in port at the Cape, and two hundred hammers tapping at her, Dodd went ashore in search of Captain Robarts, and made the _Agra_ over to him in the friendliest way, adding warmly that he had found every reason to be satisfied with the officers and the crew. To his surprise, Captain Robarts received all this ungraciously. “You ought to have remained on board, sir, and made me over the command on the quarter-deck.” Dodd replied politely that it would have been more formal. “Suppose I return immediately, and man the side for you: and then you board her, say, in half-an-hour?”

“I shall come when I like,” replied Robarts crustily.

“And when will you like to come?” inquired Dodd, with imperturbable good-humour.

“Now, this moment: and I’ll trouble you to come along with me.”

“Certainly, sir.”

They got a boat and went out to the ship: on coming alongside, Dodd thought to meet his wishes by going first and receiving him. But the jealous, cross-grained fellow, shoved roughly before him and led the way up the ship’s side. Sharpe and the rest saluted him: he did not return the salute, but said hoarsely, “Turn the hands up to muster.”

When they were all aft, he noticed one or two with their caps on. “Hats off and be —- to you!” cried he. “Do you know where you are? Do you know who you are looking at? If not, I’ll show you. I’m here to restore discipline to this ship: so mind how you run athwart my hawse: don’t you play with the bull, my men; or you’ll find his horns —- sharp. Pipe down! Now, you, sir, bring me the log-book.”

He ran his eye over it, and closed it contemptuously: “Pirates, and hurricanes! _I_ never fell in with pirates nor hurricanes: I have heard of a breeze, and a gale, but I never knew a seaman worth his salt say ‘hurricane.’ Get another log-book, Mr. Sharpe; put down that it begins this day at noon; and enter that Captain Robarts came on deck, found the ship in a miserable condition, took the command, mustered the officers and men, and stopped the ship’s company’s grog for a week for receiving him with hats on.”

Even Sharpe, that walking Obedience, was taken aback. “Stop–the ship’s company’s–grog–for a week, sir?”

“Yes, sir, for a week; and if you fling my orders back in my face instead of clapping on sail to execute them, I’ll have you towed ashore on a grating. Your name is Sharpe; well my name is Dammedsharpe, and so you’ll find.”

In short, the new captain came down on the ship like a blight.

He was especially hard on Dodd: nothing that commander had done was right, nor, had he done the contrary, would that have been right: he was disgracefully behind time; and he ought to have put in to the Isle of France, which would have retarded him: his rope bulwarks were lubberly: his rudder a disgrace to navigation: he, Robarts, was not so green as to believe that any master had really sailed sixteen hundred miles with it, and if he had, more shame for him. Briefly, a marine criticaster.

All this was spoken _at_ Dodd–a thing no male does unless he is an awful snob–and grieved him, it was so unjust. He withdrew wounded to the little cabin he was entitled to as a passenger, and hugged his treasure for comfort. He patted the pocket-book, and said to it, “Never _you_ mind! The greater Tartar he is, the less likely to sink you or run you on a lee shore.”

With all his love of discipline, Robarts was not so fond of the ship as Dodd.

While his repairs were going on he was generally ashore, and by this means missed a visit. Commodore Collier, one of the smartest sailors afloat, espied the Yankee makeshift from the quarter-deck of his vessel, the _Salamanca,_ fifty guns. In ten minutes he was under the _Agra’s_ stern inspecting it; then came on board, and was received in form by Sharpe and the other officers. “Are you the master of this ship, sir?” he asked.

“No, commodore. I am the first mate: the captain is ashore.”

“I am sorry for it. I want to talk about his rudder.”

“Oh, _he_ had nothing to do with that,” replied Sharpe, eagerly: “that was our dear old captain: he is on board. Young gentleman! ask Captain Dodd to oblige me by coming on deck! Hy! and Mr. Fullalove too.”

“Young gentleman?” inquired Collier. “What the devil officer is that?”

“That is a name we give the middies; I don’t know why.”

“Nor I neither; ha! ha!”

Dodd and Fullalove came on deck, and Commodore Collier bestowed the highest compliments on the “makeshift.” Dodd begged him to transfer them to the real inventor, and introduced Fullalove.

“Ay,” said Collier, “I know you Yankees are very handy. I lost my rudder at sea once, and had to ship a makeshift; but it was a cursed complicated thing, not a patch upon yours, Mr. Fullalove. Yours is ingenious and _simple._ Ship has been in action, I see: pray how was that, if I may be so bold?”

“Pirates, commodore,” said Sharpe. “We fell in with a brace of Portuguese devils, lateen-rigged, and carrying ten guns apiece, in the Straits of Gaspar: fought ’em from noon till sundown, riddled one, and ran down the other, and sunk her in a moment. That was all your doing, Captain: so don’t try to shift it on other people; for we won’t stand it.”

“If he denies it, I won’t believe him,” said Collier, “for he has got it in his eye. Gentlemen, will you do me the honour to dine with me to-day on board the flag-ship?”

Dodd and Fullalove accepted. Sharpe declined, with regret, on the score of duty. And as the cocked hat went down the side, after saluting him politely, he could not help thinking to himself what a difference between a real captain, who had something to be proud of, and his own unlicked cub of a skipper with the manners of a pilot-boat. He told Robarts the next day: Robarts said nothing, but his face seemed to turn greenish, and it embittered his hatred of Dodd the inoffensive.

It is droll, and sad, but true, that Christendom is full of men in a hurry to hate. And a fruitful cause is jealousy. The schoolmen, or rather certain of the schoolmen–for nothing is much shallower than to speak of all those disputants as one school–defined woman, “a featherless biped vehemently addicted to jealousy.” Whether she is more featherless than the male can be decided at a trifling expense of time, money, and reason: you have but to go to court. But as for envy and jealousy, I think it is pure, unobservant, antique Cant which has fixed them on the female character distinctively. As a molehill to a mountain is women’s jealousy to men’s. Agatha may have a host of virtues and graces, and yet her female acquaintance will not hate her, provided she has the moderation to abstain from being downright pretty. She may sing like an angel, paint like an angel, talk, write, nurse the sick, all like an angel, and not rouse the devil in her fair sisters, so long as she does not dress like an angel. But the minds of men being much larger than women’s, yet very little greater, they hang jealousy on a thousand pegs. Where there was no peg, I have seen them do with a pin.

Captain Robarts took a pin, ran it into his own heart, and hung that sordid passion on it.

He would get rid of all the Doddites before he sailed. He insulted Mr. Tickell, so that he left the service and entered a mercantile house ashore: he made several of the best men desert, and the ship went to sea short of hands. This threw heavier work on the crew, and led to many punishments and a steady current of abuse. Sharpe became a mere machine, always obeying, never speaking: Grey was put under arrest for remonstrating against ungentlemanly language; and Bayliss, being at bottom of the same breed as Robarts, fell into his humour, and helped hector the petty officers and men. The crew, depressed and irritated, went through their duties pully-hauly-wise. There was no song under the forecastle in the first watch, and often no grog on the mess table at one bell. Dodd never came on the quarter-deck without being reminded he was only a passenger, and the ship was now under naval discipline. _”I_ was reared in the royal navy, sir,” would Robarts say, “second lieutenant aboard the _Atalanta:_ that is the school, sir, that is the only school that breeds seamen.” Dodd bore scores of similar taunts as a Newfoundland puts up with a terrier in office: he seldom replied, and, when he did, in a few quiet dignified words that gave no handle.

Robarts, who bore the name of a lucky captain, had fair weather all the way to St. Helena.

The guard-ship at this island was the _Salamanca._ She had left the Cape a week before the _Agra._ Captain Robarts, with his characteristic good-breeding, went to anchor in-shore of Her Majesty’s ship: the wind failed at a critical moment, and a foul became inevitable. Collier was on his quarter-deck, and saw what would happen long before Robarts did; he gave the needful orders, and it was beautiful to see how in half a minute the frigate’s guns were run in, her ports lowered, her yards toppled on end, and a spring carried out and hauled on.

The _Agra_ struck abreast her own forechains on the _Salamanca’s_ quarter.

(Pipe.) “Boarders away. Tomahawks! cut everything that holds!” was heard from the frigate’s quarter-deck. Rush came a boarding party on to the merchant ship and hacked away without mercy all her lower rigging that held on to the frigate, signal halyards and all; others boomed her off with capstan bars, &c., and in two minutes the ships were clear. A lieutenant and boat’s crew came for Robarts, and ordered him on board the _Salamanca,_ and, to make sure of his coming, took him back with them. He found Commodore Collier standing stiff as a ramrod on his quarter-deck. “Are you the master of the _Agra?_” (His quick eye had recognised her in a moment.)

“I am, sir.”

“Then she was commanded by a seaman, and is now commanded by a lubber. Don’t apply for your papers this week; for you won’t get them. Good morning. Take him away.”

They returned Robarts to his ship, and a suppressed grin on a score of faces showed him the clear commanding tones of the commodore had reached his own deck. He soothed himself by stopping the men’s grog and mast-heading three midshipmen that same afternoon.

The night before he weighed anchor this disciplinarian was drinking very late in a low public-house. There was not much moon, and the officer in charge of the ship did not see the gig coming till it was nearly alongside: then all was done in a flurry.

“Hy! man the side! Lanterns there! Jump, you boys, or you’ll catch pepper.”

The boys did jump, and little Murphy, not knowing the surgeon had ordered the ports to be drooped, bounded over the bulwarks like an antelope, lighted on the midship port, which stood at this angle /, and glanced off into the ocean, lantern foremost: he made his little hole in the water within a yard of’ Captain Robarts. That Dignity, though splashed, took no notice of so small an incident as a gone ship-boy: and if Murphy had been wise and stayed with Nep. all had been well. But the poor urchin inadvertently came up again, and without the lantern. One of the gig’s crew grabbed him by the hair, and prolonged his existence by an inconsiderate impulse.

“Where is the other lantern?” was Robarts’ first word on reaching the deck: as if he didn’t know.

“Gone overboard, sir, with the boy Murphy.”

“Stand forward, you, sir,” growled Robarts.

Murphy stood forward, dripping and shivering with cold and fear.

“What d’ye mean by going overboard with the ship’s lantern?”

“Och, your arnr, sure some unasy divil drooped the port; and the lantern and me we had no foothold at all at all, and the lantern went into the say, bad luck to ut; and I went afther to try and save ut–for your arnr.”

“Belay all that!” said Robarts; “do you think you can blarney me, you young monkey? Here, Bosen’s mate, take a rope’s-end and start him!–Again!–Warm him well!–That’s right.”

As soon as the poor child’s shrieks subsided into sobs, the disciplinarian gave him Explanation for Ointment: “I can’t have the Company’s stores expended this way.”

The force of discipline could no farther go than to flog zeal for falling overboard: so, to avoid anticlimax in that port, Robarts weighed anchor at daybreak; and there was a southwesterly breeze waiting for this favourite of fortune, and carried him past the Azores. Off Ushant it was westerly, and veered to the nor’-west just before they sighted the Land’s End: never was such a charming passage from the Cape. The sailor who had the luck to sight Old England first nailed his starboard shoe to the mainmast for contributions; and all hearts beat joyfully–none more than David Dodd’s. His eye devoured the beloved shore: he hugged the treasure his own ill luck had jeopardised–but Robarts had sailed it safe into British waters–and forgave the man his ill manners for his good luck.

Robarts steered in for the Lizard; but, when abreast the Point, kept well out again, and opened the Channel and looked out for a pilot

One was soon seen working out towards him, and the _Agra_ brought to. The pilot descended from his lugger into his little boat, rowed alongside, and came on deck; a rough, tanned sailor, clad in flushing, and in build and manner might have passed for Robarts’ twin brother.

“Now then, you, sir, what will you take this ship up to the Downs for?”

“Thirty pounds.”

Roberts told him roughly he would not get thirty pounds out of’ _him._

“Thyse and no higher, my Bo,” answered the pilot sturdily: he had been splicing the main brace, and would have answered an admiral.

Robarts swore at him lustily: Pilot discharged a volley in return with admirable promptitude. Robarts retorted, the other rough customer rejoined, and soon all Billingsgate thundered on the _Agra’s_ quarter-deck. Finding, to his infinite disgust, his visitor as great a blackguard as himself, and not to be outsworn, Robarts ordered him to quit the ship on pain of being man-handled over the side.

“Oh, that’s it, is it?” growled the other: “here’s fill and be off then.” He prudently bottled the rest of his rage till he got safe into his boat, then shook his fist at the _Agra_, and cursed her captain sky-high. “You see the fair wind, but you don’t see the Channel fret a-coming, ye greedy gander. Downs! You’ll never see them: you have saved your —- money, and lost your —- ship, ye —- lubber.”

Robarts hurled back a sugar-plum or two of the same and then ordered Bayliss to clap on all sail, and keep a mid-channel course through the night.

At four bells in the middle watch, Sharpe, in charge of the ship, tapped at Robarts’ door. “Blowing hard, sir, and the weather getting thickish.”

“Wind fair still?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then call me if it blows any harder,” grunted Robarts.

In two hours more, tap, tap, came Bayliss, in charge. “If we don’t take sail in, they’ll take themselves out.”

“Furl to-gallen’sels, and call me if it gets any worse.”

In another hour Bayliss was at him again. “Blowing a gale, sir, and a Channel fog on.”

“Reef taupsles, and call me if it gets any worse.”

At daybreak Dodd was on deck, and found the ship flying through a fog so thick that her forecastle was quite invisible from the poop, and even her foremast loomed indistinct and looked distant. “You’ll be foul of something or other, Sharpe,” said he.

“What is that to you?” inquired a loud rough voice behind him. “I don’t allow passengers to handle my ship.”

“Then do pray handle her yourself; captain! Is this weather to go tearing happy-go-lucky up the Channel?”

“I mean to sail her without your advice, sir; and, being a seaman, I shall get all I can out of a fair wind.”

“That is right Captain Robarts, if you had but the British Channel all to yourself.”

“Perhaps you will leave me my deck all to myself.”

“I should be delighted: but my anxiety will not let me.” With this Dodd retired a few steps, and kept a keen look-out.

At noon a lusty voice cried “Land on the weather beam!”

All eyes were turned that way and saw nothing.

Land in sight was reported to Captain Robarts.

Now that worthy was in reality getting secretly anxious: so he ran on deck crying, “Who saw it?”

“Captain Dodd, sir.”

“Ugh! Nobody else?”

Dodd came forward, and, with a respectful air, told him that, being on the look-out, he had seen the coast of the Isle of Wight in a momentary lift of the haze.

“Isle of Fiddlestick!” was the polite reply; “Isle of Wight is eighty miles astern by now.”

Dodd answered firmly that he was well acquainted with every outline in the Channel, and that the land he had seen was St. Katherine’s Point

Robarts deigned no reply, but had the log heaved: it showed the vessel to be running twelve knots an hour. He then went to his cabin and consulted his chart; and, having worked his problem, came hastily on deck, and went from rashness to wonderful caution. “Turn the hands out, and heave the ship to!”

The manoeuvre was executed gradually and ably, and scarce a bucketful of water shipped. “Furl taupsles and set the main trysail! There, Mr. Dodd, so much for you and your Isle of Wight. The land you saw was Dungeness, and _you_ would have run on into the North Sea, I’ll be bound.”

When a man, habitually calm, turns anxious, he becomes more irritable; and the mixture of timidity and rashness he saw in Robarts made Dodd very anxious.

He replied angrily, “At all events, I should not make a foul wind out of a fair one by heaving to; and if I did, I would heave to on the right tack.”

At this sudden facer–one, too, from a patient man–Robarts staggered a moment. He recovered, and with an oath ordered Dodd to go below, or he would have him chucked into the hold.

“Come, don’t be an ass, Robarts,” said Dodd contemptuously.

Then, lowering his voice to a whisper, “Don’t you know the men only want such an order as that to chuck you into the sea?”

Robarts trembled. “Oh, if you mean to head a mutiny—-“

“Heaven forbid, sir! But I won’t leave the deck in dirty weather like this till the captain knows where he is.”

Towards sunset it got clearer, and they drifted past a revenue cutter, who was lying to with her head to the northward. She hoisted no end of signals, but they understood none of them, and her captain gesticulated wildly on her deck.

“What is that Fantoccio dancing at?” inquired Captain Robarts brutally.

“To see a first-class ship drift to leeward in a narrow sea with a fair wind,” said Dodd bitterly.

At night it blew hard, and the sea ran high and irregular. The ship began to be uneasy, and Robarts very properly ordered the top-gallant and royal yards to be sent down on deck. Dodd would have had them down twelve hours ago. The mate gave the order: no one moved. The mate went forward angry. He came back pale. The men refused to go aloft: they would not risk their lives for Captain Robarts.

The officers all assembled and went forward: they promised and threatened; but all in vain. The crew stood sullen together, as if to back one another, and put forward a spokesman to say that “there was not one of them the captain hadn’t started, and stopped his grog a dozen times: he had made the ship hell to them; and now her masts and yards and hull might go there along with her skipper, for them.”

Robarts received this tidings in sullen silence. “Don’t tell that Dodd, whatever you do,” said he. “They will come round now they have had their growl: they are too near home to shy away their pay.”

Robarts had not sufficient insight into character to know that Dodd would instantly have sided with him against a mutiny.

But at this juncture the ex-captain of the _Agra_ was down in the cabin with his fellow-passengers, preparing a general remonstrance: he had a chart before him, and a pair of compasses in his hand.

“St. Katherine’s Point lay about eight miles to windward at noon; and we have been drifting south and east this twelve hours, through lying to on the starboard tack; and besides, the ship has been conned as slovenly as she is sailed. I’ve seen her allowed to break off a dozen times, and gather more leeway. Ah! here is Captain Robarts. Captain, you saw the rate we passed the revenue cutter. That vessel was nearly stationary; so what we passed her at was our own rate of drifting, and our least rate. Putting all this together, we can’t be many miles from the French coast, and, unless we look sharp and beat to windward, I pronounce the ship in danger.”

A horselaugh greeted this conclusion.

“We are nearer Yarmouth sands than France, I promise you, and nothing under our lee nearer than Rotterdam.”

A loud cry from the deck above, “A LIGHT ON THE LEE BOW!”

“There!” cried Robarts with an oath: “foul of _her_ next! through me listening to your nonsense. He ran upon deck, and shouted through his trumpet, “All hands wear ship!”

The crew, who had heard the previous cry, obeyed orders in the presence of an immediate danger; and perhaps their growl had really relieved their ill-humour. Robarts with delight saw them come tumbling up, and gave his orders lustily: “Brail up the trysel! up with the helm! in with the weather main brace! square the after yards!”

The ship’s bow turned from the wind, and, as soon as she got way on her, Robarts ran below again, and entered the cabin triumphant

“That is all right: and now, Captain Dodd, a word with you. You will either retire at once to your cabin, or will cease to breed disaffection in my crew, and groundless alarm in my passengers, by instilling your own childish, ignorant fears. The ship has been underlogged a hundred miles, sir; and but for my caution in lying to for clear weather we should be groping among the Fern Isl—-“

CRASH!

An unheard-of shock threw the speaker and all the rest in a mass on the floor, smashed every lamp, put out every light; and, with a fierce grating noise, the ship was hard and fast on the French coast, with her stern to the sea.

One awful moment of silence; then, amidst shrieks of agony, the sea struck her like a rolling rock, solid to crush, liquid to drown, and the comb of a wave smashed the cabin windows and rushed in among them as they floundered on the floor, and wetted and chilled them to the marrow. A voice in the dark cried, “O God! we are dead men.”

CHAPTER XIV

“ON deck for your lives!” cried Dodd, forgetting in that awful moment he was not the captain; and drove them all up, Robarts included, and caught hold of Mrs. Beresford and Freddy at their cabin door and half carried them with him. Just as they got on deck the third wave, a high one, struck the ship and lifted her bodily up, canted her round, and dashed her down again some yards to leeward, throwing them down on the hard and streaming deck.

At this tremendous shock the ship seemed a live thing, shrieking and wailing, as well as quivering with the blow.

But one voice dissented loudly from the general dismay. “All right men,” cried Dodd, firm and trumpet-like. “She is broadside on now. Captain Robarts, look alive, sir; speak to the men! don’t go to sleep!”

Robarts was in a lethargy of fear. At this appeal he started into a fury of ephemeral courage. “Stick to the ship,” he yelled; “there is no danger if you stick to the ship,” and with this snatched a life-buoy, and hurled himself into the sea.

Dodd caught up the trumpet that fell from his hand and roared, “I command this ship. Officers come round me! Men to your quarters! Come, bear a hand here and fire a gun. That will show us where we are, and let the Frenchmen know.”

The carronade was fired, and its momentary flash revealed that the ship was ashore in a little bay; the land abeam was low and some eighty yards off; but there was something black and rugged nearer the ship’s stern.

Their situation was awful. To windward huge black waves rose like tremendous ruins, and came rolling, fringed with devouring fire; and each wave as it charged them, curled up to an incredible height and dashed down on the doomed ship–solid to crush, liquid to drown –with a ponderous stroke that made the poor souls stagger, and sent a sheet of water so clean over her that part fell to leeward, and only part came down on deck, foretaste of a watery death; and each of these fearful blows drove the groaning, trembling vessel farther on the sand, bumping her along as if she had been but a skiff.

Now it was men showed their inner selves.

Seeing Death so near on one hand, and a chance of escape on the other, seven men proved unable to resist the two great passions of Fear and Hope on a scale so gigantic and side by side. Bayliss, a midshipman, and five sailors stole the only available boat and lowered her.

She was swamped in a moment

Many of the crew got to the rum, and stupefied themselves to their destruction.

Others rallied round their old captain, and recovered their native courage at the brave and hopeful bearing he wore over a heart full of anguish. He worked like a horse, encouraging, commanding, doing; he loaded a carronade with a pound of powder and a coil of rope, with an iron bar attached to a cable, and shot the rope and bar ashore.

A gun was now fired from the guard-house, whose light Robarts had taken for a ship. But no light being shown any nearer on the coast, and the ship expected every minute to go to pieces, Dodd asked if any one would try to swim ashore with a line made fast to a hawser on board.

A sailor offered to go if any other man would risk his life along with him. Instantly Fullalove stripped, and Vespasian next

“Two is enough on such a desperate errand,” said Dodd with a groan.

But now emulation was up, and neither Briton, Yankee, nor negro would give way. A line was made fast to the sailor’s waist, and he was lowered to leeward; his venturesome rivals followed. The sea swallowed those three heroes like crumbs, and small was the hope of life for them.

The three heroes being first-rate swimmers and divers, and going with the tide, soon neared the shore on the ship’s lee quarter; but a sight of it was enough: to attempt to land on that rock with such a sea on was to get their skulls smashed like eggshells in a moment. They had to coast it, looking out for a soft place.

They found one, and tried to land; but so irresistible was the suction of the retiring wave, that, whenever they got foot on the sand, and tried to run, they were wrenched out to sea again, and pounded black and blue and breathless by the curling breaker they met coming in.

After a score of vain efforts, the negro, throwing himself on his back, went in with a high wave, and, on touching the sand, turned, dug all his ten claws into it clenched his teeth, and scrambled like a cat at a wall. Having more power in his toes than the Europeans, and luckily getting one hand on a firm stone, his prodigious strength just enabled him to stick first while the wave went back; and then, seizing the moment, he tore himself ashore, but bleeding and bruised all over, and with a tooth actually broken by clenching in the convulsive struggle.

He found some natives dancing about in violent agitation with a rope, but afraid to go in and help him; and no wonder, not being seagulls. By the light of their lanterns, he saw Fullalove washing in and out like a log. He seized one end of the rope, and dashed in and grabbed his friend, and they were hauled ashore together, both breathless, and Fullalove speechless

The negro looked round for the sailor, but could not see him. Soon, however, there was a cry from some more natives about fifty yards off and laterns held up; away he dashed with the rope just in time to see Jack make a last gallant attempt to land. It ended in his being flung up like a straw into the air on the very crest of a wave fifteen feet high, and out to sea with his arms whirling, and a death shriek which was echoed by every woman within hearing.

In dashed Vespasian with the rope, and gripped the drowning man’s long hair with his teeth: then jerked the rope, and they were both pulled ashore with infinite difficulty. The good-natured Frenchmen gave them all three lots of _vivats_ and brandy and pats on the back, and carried the line for them to a flagstaff on the rocks nearer the stern of the ship.

The ship began to show the first signs of breaking up: hammered to death by the sea, she discharged the oakum from her opening seams, and her decks began to gape and grin fore and aft. Corpses of drunken sailors drowned between decks now floated up amidships, and washed and rolled about among the survivors’ feet These, seeing no hope, went about making up all quarrels, and shaking hands in token of a Christian end. One or two came to Dodd with their hands out.

“Avast ye lubbers!” said he angrily; “do you think I have time for nonsense? Foksel ahoy! axes, and cut the weather shrouds!”

It was done; the foremast went by the board directly, and fell to leeward: a few blows of the axe from Dodd’s own hand sent the mainmast after it.

The _Agra_ rose a streak; and the next wave carried her a little farther on shore.

And now the man in charge of the hawser reported with joy that there was a strain on it.

This gave those on board a hope of life. Dodd bustled and had the hawser carefully payed out by two men, while he himself secured the other end in the mizen top: he had left that mast standing on purpose.

There was no fog here; but great heavy black clouds flying about with amazing swiftness extinguished the moon at intervals: at others she glimmered through a dull mist in which she was veiled, and gave the poor souls on the _Agra_ a dim peep of the frail and narrow bridge they must pass to live. A thing like a black snake went down from the mizen-top, bellying towards the yawning sea, and soon lost to sight: it was seen rising again among some lanterns on the rock ashore: but what became of it in the middle? The darkness seemed to cut it in two; the sea to swallow it. Yet, to get from a ship going to pieces under them, the sailors precipitated themselves eagerly on that black thread bellying to the sea and flickering in the wind. They went down it, one after another, and anxious eyes straining after them saw them no more: but this was seen, that scarce one in three emerged into the lights ashore.

Then Dodd got an axe, and stood in the top, and threatened to brain the first man who attempted to go on the rope.

“We must make it taut first,” said he; “bear a hand here with a tackle.”

Even while this was being done, the other rope, whose end he had fired ashore, was seen moving to windward. The natives, it seems, had found it, half buried in sand.

Dodd unlashed the end from the bulwarks and carried it into the top, and made it fast: and soon there were two black snakes dipping shrorewards and waving in the air side by side.

The sailors scrambled for a place, and some of them were lost by their own rashness. Kenealy waited coolly, and went by himself.

Finally, Dodd was left in the ship with Mr. Sharpe and the women, and little Murphy, and Ramgolam, whom Robarts had liberated to show his contempt of Dodd.

He now advised Mrs. Beresford to be lashed to Sharpe and himself, and venture the passage; but she screamed and clung to him, and said, “I dare not! oh I dare not!”

“Then I must lash you to a spar,” said he, “for she can’t last much longer.” He ordered Sharpe ashore. Sharpe shook hands with him, and went on the rope with tears in his eyes.

Dodd went hard to work, lashed Mrs. Beresford to a piece of broken water-butt: filled Fred’s pockets with corks and sewed them up (you never caught Dodd without a needle; only, unlike the women’s, it was always kept threaded). Mrs. Beresford threw her arms round his neck and kissed him wildly: a way women have in mortal peril: it is but their homage to courage. “All right!” said Dodd, interpreting it as appeal to his protection, and affecting cheerfulness: “we’ll get ashore together on the poop awning, or somehow; never you fear. I’d give a thousand pounds to know where high water is.”

At this moment, with a report like a cannon, the lower decks burst fore and aft: another still louder, and the _Agra’s_ back broke. She parted amidships with a fearful yawn, and the waves went toppling and curling clean through her.

At this appalling sound and sight, the few creatures left on the poop cowered screaming and clinging at Dodd’s knees, and fought for a bit of him.

Yes, as a flood brings incongruous animals together on some little isle in brotherhood of fear–creatures who never met before without one eating the other; and there they cuddle–so the thief Ramgolam clung to the man he had tried to rob; the Hindoo Ayan and the English maid hustled their mistress, the haughty Mrs. Beresford, and were hustled by her, for a bit of this human pillar; and little Murphy and Fred Beresford wriggled in at him where they could: and the poor goat crept into the quivering mass trembling like an aspen, and not a butt left either in his head or his heart. Dodd stood in the middle of these tremblers, a rock of manhood: and when he was silent and they heard only the voice of the waves, they despaired; and whenever he spoke, they started at the astounding calmness of his voice and words, and life sounded possible.

“Come,” said he, “this won’t do any longer. All hands into the mizen-top!”

He helped them all up, and stood on the ratlines himself: and, if you will believe me, the poor goat wailed like a child below. He found in that new terror and anguish a voice goat was never heard to speak in before. But they had to leave him on deck: no help for it. Dodd advised Mrs. Beresford once more to attempt the rope: she declined. “I dare not! I dare not!” she cried, but she begged Dodd hard to go on it and save himself.

It was a strong temptation: he clutched the treasure in his bosom, and one sob burst from the strong man.

That sob was but the tax paid by Nature; for pride, humanity, and manhood stood staunch in spite of it. “No, no, I can’t,” said he “I mustn’t. Don’t tempt me to leave you in this plight, and be a cur! Live or die, I must be the last man on her. Here’s something coming out to us, the Lord in Heaven be praised!”

A bright light was seen moving down the black line that held them to the shore; it descended slowly within a foot of the billows, and lighting them up showed their fearful proximity to the rope in mid-passage: they had washed off many a poor fellow at that part.

“Look at that! Thank Heaven you did not try it!” said Dodd to Mrs. Beresford.

At tins moment a higher wave than usual swallowed up the light: there was a loud cry of dismay from the shore, and a wail of despair from the ship.

No! not lost after all! The light emerged, and mounted, and mounted towards the ship.

It came near, and showed the black shiny body of Vespasian, with very little on but a handkerchief and a lantern–the former round his waist, and the latter lashed to his back: he arrived with a “Yah! yah!” and showed his white teeth in a grin.

Mrs. Beresford clutched his shoulder, and whimpered, ” Oh, Mr. Black!”

“Iss, Missy, dis child bring good news. Cap’n! Massah Fullalove send you his congratulations, and the compliments of the season; and take the liberty to observe the tide am turn in twenty minutes.”

The good news thus quaintly announced caused an outburst of joy from Dodd, and, sailor-like, he insisted on all hands joining in a cheer. The shore re-echoed it directly. And this encouraged the forlorn band still more; to hear other hearts beating for them so near. Even the intervening waves could not quite annul the sustaining power of sympathy.

At this moment came the first faint streaks of welcome dawn, and revealed their situation more fully.

The vessel lay on the edge of a sandbank. She was clean in two, the stern lying somewhat higher than the stem. The sea rolled through her amidships six feet broad, frightful to look at, and made a clean breach over her forward, all except the bowsprit to the end of which the poor sailors were now discovered to be clinging. The afterpart of the poop was out of water, and in a corner of it the goat crouched like a rabbit: four dead bodies washed about beneath the party trembling in the mizen-top, and one had got jammed in the wheel, face uppermost and glared up at them, gazing terror-stricken down.

No sign of the tide turning yet, and much reason to fear it would turn too late for them and the poor fellows shivering on the bowsprit.

These fears were well founded.

A huge sea rolled in, and turned the forepart of the vessel half over, buried the bowsprit, and washed the men off into the breakers.

Mrs. Beresford sank down, and prayed, holding Vespasian by the knee.

Fortunately, as in that vessel wrecked long syne on Melita, “the hind part of the ship stuck fast and remained immovable.”

But for how long?

Each wave now struck the ship’s weather quarter with a sound like a cannon fired in a church, and sent the water clear into the mizen-top. It hit them like strokes of a whip. They were drenched to the skin, chilled to the bone, and frozen to the heart with fear. They made acquaintance that hour with Death. Ay, Death itself has no bitterness that forlorn cluster did not feel: only the insensibility that ends that bitterness was wanting.

Now the sea, you must know, was literally strewed with things out of the _Agra_; masts, rigging, furniture, tea-chests, bundles of canes, chairs, tables; but of all this jetsam, Dodd’s eye had been for some little time fixed on one object: a live sailor drifting ashore on a great wooden case. It struck him after a while that the man made very little way, and at last seemed to go up and down in one place. By-and-bye he saw him nearer and nearer, and recognised him. It was one of the three washed off the bowsprit.

He cried joyfully, “The tide has turned! here’s Thompson coming out to sea.”

Then there ensued a dialogue, incredible to landsmen, between these two sailors, the captain of the ship and the captain of the foretop, one perched on a stationary fragment of that vessel, the other drifting on a pianoforte, and both bawling at one another across the jaws of death.

“Thompson ahoy!”

“Hal-lo!”

“Whither bound?”

“Going out with the tide, and be d—-d to me.”

“What, can’t ye swim ?”

“Like a brass figure-head. It’s all over with poor Jack, sir.”

“All over! Don’t tell me! Look out now as you drift under our stern, and we’ll lower you the four-inch hawser.”

“Lord bless you, sir, do, pray!” cried Thompson, losing his recklessness with the chance of life.

By this time the shore was black with people, and a boat was brought down to the beach, but to attempt to launch it was to be sucked out to sea.

At present all eyes were fixed on Thompson drifting to destruction.

Dodd cut the four-inch hawser, and Vespasian, on deck, lowered it with a line, so that Thompson presently drifted right athwart it. “All right, sir!” said he, grasping it, and, amidst thundering acclamations, was drawn to land full of salt water and all but insensible. The piano landed at Dunkirk three weeks later.

In the bustle of this good and smart action the tide retired perceptibly.

By-and-bye the sea struck lower and with less weight.

At 9 P. M. Dodd took his little party down on deck again, being now the safest place; for the mast might go.

It was a sad scene: the deck was now dry, and the dead bodies lay quiet around them with glassy eyes; and, grotesquely horrible, the long hair of two or three was stiff and crystallised with the saltpetre in the ship.

Mrs. Beresford clung to Vespasian: she held his bare black shoulder with one white and jewelled hand, and his wrist with the other, tight. “Oh, Mr. Black,” said she, “how brave you are! It is incredible. Why, you came back! I must feel a brave man with both my hands or I shall die. Your skin is nice and soft, too. I shall never outlive this dreadful day.”

And now that the water was too low to wash them off the hawser, several of the ship’s company came back to the ship to help the women down.

By noon the _Agra’s_ deck was thirty feet from the sand. The rescued ones wanted to break their legs and necks, but Dodd would not permit even that. He superintended the whole manoeuvre, and lowered, first the dead, then the living, not omitting the poor goat, who was motionless and limp with fright.

When they were all safe on the sand, Dodd stood alone upon the poop a minute, cheered by all the sailors, French and English, ashore, then slid down a rope and rejoined his companions.

To their infinite surprise, the undaunted one was found to be snivelling.

“Oh, dear! what is the matter?” said Mrs. Beresford tenderly.

“The poor _Agra_, ma’am! She was such a beautiful sea-boat: and just look at her now! Never sail again: never! never! She was a little crank in beating, I can’t deny it; but how she did fly with the wind abaft. She sank a pirate in the straits, and weathered a hurricane off the Mauritius; and after all for a lubber to go and lay her bones ashore in a fair wind: poor dear beauty!”

He maundered thus, and kept turning back to look at the wreck, till he happened to lay his hand on his breast He stopped in the middle of his ridiculous lament wore a look of self-reproach, and cast his eyes upward in heartfelt gratitude.

The companions of so many adventures dispersed.

A hospitable mayoress entertained Mrs. Beresford and suite; and she took to her bed, for she fell seriously ill as soon as ever she could do it with impunity.

Colonel Kenealy went off to Paris: “I’ll gain that, any way, by being wrecked,” said he.

If there be a lover of quadrupeds here, let him know that Billy’s weakness proved his strength. Being brandied by a good-natured French sailor, he winked his eye; being brandied greatly, he staggered up and butted his benefactor like a man.

Fullalove had dry clothes and a blazing fire ready for Dodd at a little rude auberge. He sat over it and dried a few bank-notes. he had loose about him, and examined his greater treasure, his children’s. The pocket-book was much stained, but no harm whatever done to the contents.

In the midst of this employment the shadow of an enormous head was projected right upon his treasure.

Turning with a start, he saw a face at the window: one of those vile mugs which are found to perfection amongst the _canaille_ of the French nation–bloated, blear-eyed, grizzly, and wild-beast like. The ugly thing, on being confronted, passed slowly out of the sun, and Dodd thought no more of it.

The owner of this sinister visage was Andre Thibout, of whom it might be said, like face like life; for he was one of those ill-omened creatures who feed upon the misfortunes of their kind, and stand on shore in foul weather hoping the worst, instead of praying for the best: briefly, a wrecker. He and his comrade, Jacques Moinard, had heard the _Agra’s_ gun fired, and came down to batten on the wreck: but ho! at the turn of the tide, there were gensdarmes and soldiers lining the beach, and the Bayonet interposed between Theft and Misfortune. So now the desperate pair were prowling about like hungry, baffled wolves, curses on their lips and rage at their hearts.

Dodd was extremely anxious to get to Barkington before the news of the wreck; for otherwise he knew his wife and children would suffer a year’s agony in a single day. The only chance he saw was to get to Boulogne in time to catch the _Nancy_ sailing packet; for it was her day. But then Boulogne was eight leagues distant, and there was no public conveyance going. Fullalove, entering heartily into his feelings, was gone to look for horses to hire, aided by the British Consul. The black hero was upstairs clearing out with a pin two holes that had fallen into decay for want of use. These holes were in his ears.

And now, worn out by anxiety and hard work, Dodd began to nod in his chair by the fire.

He had not been long asleep when the hideous face of Thibout reappeared at the window and watched him. Presently a low whistle was uttered outside, and soon the two ruffians entered the room, and, finding the landlady there as well as Dodd, called for a little glass apiece of absinthe. While drinking it, they cast furtive glances towards Dodd, and waited till she should go about her business, and leave them alone with him.

But the good woman surmised their looks, and knowing the character of the men, poured out a cup of coffee from a great metal reservoir by the fire, and waked Dodd without ceremony: “Voici votre cafe, Monsieur!” making believe he had ordered it.

“Merci, Madame!” replied he, for his wife had taught him a little French.

“One may sleep _mal a propos,_” muttered the woman in his ear. “My man is at the fair, and there are people here who are not worth any great things.”

Dodd rubbed his eyes and saw those two foul faces at the end of the kitchen: for such it was, though called _salle a manger._ “Humph!” said he; and instinctively buttoned his coat

At that Thibout touched Moinard’s knee under the table.

Fullalove came in soon after to say he had got two horses, and they would be here in a quarter of an hour.

“Well, but Vespasian? how is he to go?” inquired Dodd.

“Oh, we’ll send him on ahead, and then ride and tie.”

“No, no,” said Dodd, “I’ll go ahead. That will shake me up. I think I should tumble off a horse; I’m so dead sleepy.”

Accordingly he started to walk on the road to Boulogne.

He had not been gone three minutes when Moinard sauntered out.

Moinard had not been gone two minutes when Thibout strolled out.

Moinard kept Dodd in sight and Thibout kept Moinard.

The horses were brought soon after, but unfortunately the pair did not start immediately, though, had they known it, every moment was precious. They wasted time in argument. Vespasian had come down with a diamond ring in one ear, and a ruby in the other. Fullalove saw this retrograde step, and said grimly, “Have you washed but half your face, or is this a return to savagery?”

Vespasian wore an air of offended dignity. “No, sar; these yar decorations come off a lady ob i cibilisation: Missy Beresford donated ’em me. Says she, ‘Massah Black’–yah! yah! She always nick-nominates dis child Massa Black– ‘while I was praying Goramighty for self and pickaninny, I seen you out of one corner of my eye admirationing my rings; den just you take ’em,’ says dat ar aristocracy: ‘for I don’t admirationise ’em none: I’ve been shipwrecked.’ So I took ’em wid incredible condescension; and dat ar beautiful lady says to me, ‘Oh, get along wid your nonsense about coloured skins! I have inspectionated your conduct, Massa Black, and likewise your performances on the slack rope,’ says she, ‘in time of shipwreck: and darn me,’ says she, ‘but you are a man, you are.’ ‘No, Missy,’ says I superciliously, ‘dis child am not a man, if you please, but a coloured gemman.'” He added, he had put them in his ears because the biggest would not go on his little finger.

Fullalove groaned. “And of course, the next thing, you’ll ring your snout like a pig or a Patagonian. There, come along, ye darn’d–Anomaly.”

He was going to say “Cuss,” but remembering his pupil’s late heroic conduct, softened it down to Anomaly.

But Vespasian always measured the force of words by their length or obscurity. “Anomaly” cut him to the heart: he rode off in moody silence and dejection, asking himself sorrowfully what he had done that such a mountain of vituperation should fall on him. “Anomaly!!”

They cantered along in silence; for Fullalove was digesting this new trait in his pupil, and asking himself could he train it out, or must he cross it out. Just outside the town they met Captain Robarts walking in; he had landed three miles off down the coast. “Hallo!” said Fullalove.

“I suppose you thought I was drowned?” said Robarts spitefully; “but you see I’m alive still.”

Fullalove replied, “Well, captain, that is only one mistake more you’ve made, I reckon.”

About two English miles from the town they came to a long straight slope up and down, where they could see a league before them; and there they caught sight of David Dodd’s tall figure mounting the opposite rise.

Behind him at some little distance were two men going the same way, but on the grass by the roadside, whereas David was on the middle of the road.

“He walks well for Jacky Tar,” said Fullalove.

“Iss, sar,” said Vespasian sulkily; “but dis ‘Analogy’ tink he not walk so fast as those two behind him, cos they catch him up.”

Now Vespasian had hardly uttered these words when a thing occurred, so sudden and alarming, that the speaker’s eyes protruded, and he was dumfounded a moment; the next a loud cry burst from both him and his companion at once, and they lashed their horses to the gallop and went tearing down the hill in a fury of rage and apprehension.

Mr. Fullalove was right, I think: a sailor is seldom a smart walker; but Dodd was a cricketer, you know, as well. He swung along at a good pace and in high spirits. He had lost nothing but a few clothes, and a quadrant, and a chronometer; it was a cheap wreck to him, and a joyful one: for peril past is present delight. He had saved his life, and what he valued more, his children’s money. Never was that dear companion of his perils so precious to him as now. One might almost fancy that, by some strange sympathy, he felt the immediate happiness of his daughter depended on it. Many in my day believe that human minds can thus communicate, overleaping material distances. Not knowing, I can’t say. However, no such solution is really needed here. All the members of a united and loving family feel together and work together–without specific concert–though hemispheres lie between: it is one of the beautiful traits of true family affection. Now the Dodds, father, mother, sister, brother, were more one in heart and love than any other family I ever saw: woe to them if they had not.

David, then, walked towards Boulogne that afternoon a happy man. Already he tasted by anticipation the warm caresses of his wife and children, and saw himself seated at the hearth, with those beloved ones clustering close round him. How would he tell them Its adventures–Its dangers from pirates–Its loss at sea–Its recovery–Its wreck–Its coming ashore dry as a bone; and conclude by taking It out of his bosom and dropping It in his wife’s lap with “Cheer, boys, cheer!”

Trudging on in this delightful reverie, his ear detected a pitpat at some distance behind him: he looked round with very slight curiosity and saw two men coming up. Even in that hasty glance he recognised the foulface of Andre Tiribout, a face not to be forgotten in a day. I don’t know how it was, but he saw in a moment that face was after him to rob him, and he naturally enough concluded It was their object.

And he was without a weapon, and they were doubtless armed. Indeed, Thibout was swinging a heavy cudgel.

Poor Dodd’s mind went into a whirl and his body into a cold sweat. In such moments men live a year. To gain a little time he walked swiftly on, pretending not to have noticed them: but oh! his eyes roved wildly to each side of the road for a chance of escape. He saw none. To his right was a precipitous rock; to his left a profound ravine with a torrent below, and the sides scantily clothed with fir-trees and bushes: he was, in fact, near the top of a long rising ground called _”La Mauvaise Cote,_” on account of a murder committed there two hundred years ago.

Presently he heard the men close behind him. At the same moment he saw at the side of the ravine a flint stone about the size of two fists: he made but three swift strides, snatched it up, and turned to meet the robbers, drawing himself up high, and showing fight in every inch.

The men were upon him. His change of attitude was so sudden and fiery that they recoiled a step. But it was only for a moment: they had gone too far to retreat; they divided, and Thibout attacked him on his left with uplifted cudgel, and Moinard on his right with a long glittering knife. The latter, to guard his head from the stone, whipped off his hat and held it before his head: but Dodd was what is called “left handed:” “ambidexter” would be nearer the mark (he carved and wrote with his right hand, heaved weights and flung cricket-balls with his left). He stepped forward, flung the stone in Thibout’s face with perfect precision, and that bitter impetus a good thrower lends at the moment of delivery, and almost at the same moment shot out his right hand and caught Moinard by the throat. Sharper and fiercer collision was never seen than of these three.

Thibout’s face crashed; his blood squirted all round the stone, and eight yards off lay that assailant on his back.

Moinard was more fortunate: he got two inches of his knife into Dodd’s left shoulder, at the very moment Dodd caught him in his right-hand vice. And now one vengeful hand of iron grasped him felly by the throat; another seized his knife arm and twisted it back like a child’s. He kicked and struggled furiously, but in half a minute the mighty English arm and iron fingers held the limp body of Jacques Moinard with its knees knocking, temples bursting, throat relaxed, eyes protruding, and livid tongue lolling down to his chin. A few seconds more, and, with the same stalwart arm that kept his relaxed and sinking body from falling, Dodd gave him one fierce whirl round to the edge of the road, then put a foot to his middle, and spurned his carcase with amazing force and fury down the precipice. Crunch! crunch! it plunged from tree to tree, from bush to bush, and at last rolled into a thick bramble, and there stuck in the form of a crescent But Dodd had no sooner sent him headlong by that mighty effort, than his own sight darkened, his head swam, and, after staggering a little way, he sank down in a state bordering on insensibility. Meantime Fullalove and Vespasian were galloping down the opposite hill to his rescue.

Unfortunately, Andre Thibout was not dead, nor even mortally wounded. He was struck on the nose and mouth; that nose was flat for the rest of his life, and half of his front teeth were battered out of their sockets, but he fell, not from the brain being stunned, but the body driven to earth by the mere physical force of so momentous a blow, knocked down like a ninepin. He now sat up bewildered, and found himself in a pool of blood, his own. He had little sensation of pain, but he put his hand to his face, and found scarce a trace of his features, and his hand came away gory. He groaned.

Rising to his feet, he saw Dodd sitting at some distance; his first impulse was to fly from so terrible an antagonist, but, as he made for the ravine, he observed that Dodd was in a helpless condition, wounded perhaps by Moinard. And where was Moinard?

Nothing visible of him but his knife: that lay glittering in the road.

Thibout with anxious eye turned towards Dodd, kneeled to pick it up, and in the act a drop of his own blood fell on the dust beside it. He snarled like a wounded tiger, spat out half-a-dozen teeth, and crept on tiptoe to his safe revenge.

Awake from your lethargy or you are a dead man!

No! Thibout got to him unperceived, and the knife glittered over his head.

At this moment the air seemed to fill with clattering hoofs and voices, and a pistol-shot rang. Dodd heard and started, and so saw his peril. He put up his left hand to parry the blow, but feebly. Luckily for him Thibout’s eyes were now turned another way, and glaring with stupid terror out of his mutilated visage: a gigantic mounted fiend, with black face and white gleaming, rolling eyes was coming at him like the wind, uttering horrid howls. Thibout launched himself at the precipice with a shriek of dismay, and went rolling after his comrade; but ere he had gone ten yards he fell across a young larch-tree and hung balanced. Up came the foaming horses: Fullalove dismounted hastily and fired three deliberate shots down at Thibout from his revolver. He rolled off, and never stopped again till he splashed into the torrent, and lay there staining it with blood from his battered face and perforated shoulder.

Vespasian jumped off, and with glistening eyes administered some good brandy to Dodd. He, unconscious of his wound, a slight one, relieved their anxiety by assuring them somewhat faintly he was not hurt, but that, ever since that “tap on the head” he got in the Straits of Gaspar, any angry excitement told on him, made his head swim, and his temples seem to swell from the inside.

“I should have come off second-best but for you, my dear friends. Shake hands over it, do! O, Lord bless you! Lord bless you both. As for you, Vespasian, I do think you are my guardian angel. Why, this is the second time you’ve saved my life. No, it isn’t: for it’s the third.”

“Now you git along, Massa Cap’n,” said Vespasian. “You berry good man, ridicalous good man; and dis child ar’nt no gardening angel at all; he ar a darned Anatomy” (with such a look of offended dignity at Fullalove).

After examining the field of battle and comparing notes, they mounted Dodd on Vespasian’s horse, and walked quietly till Dodd’s head got better; and then they cantered on three abreast, Vespasian in the middle with one sinewy hand on each horse’s mane; and such was his muscular power, that he often relieved his feet by lifting himself clean into the air, and the rest of the time his toe but touched the ground, and he sailed like an ostrich and grinned and chattered like a monkey.

Sad to relate, neither Thibout nor Moinard was ended. The guillotine stood on its rights. Meantime, what was left of them crawled back to the town stiff and sore, and supped together–Moinard on liquids only–and vowed revenge on all wrecked people.

The three reached Boulogne in time for the _Nancy,_ and put Dodd on board: the pair decided to go to the Yankee Paradise–Paris.

They parted with regret and tenderly, like old tried friends; and Vespasian told Dodd, with tears in his eyes, that though he was in point of fact only a darned Anemo, he felt like a coloured gemman at parting from his dear old Captain.

The master of the _Nancy_ knew Dodd well, and gave him a nice cot to sleep in. He tumbled in with a bad headache and quite worn out, and never woke for fifteen hours.

And when he did wake, he was safe at Barkington.

He and It landed on the quay. He made for home.

On the way he passed Hardie’s bank, a firm synonymous in his mind with the Bank of England.

A thrill of joy went through him. Now it _was_ safe. When he first sewed It on in China, It seemed secure nowhere except on his own person. But since then, the manifold perils by sea and land It had encountered through being on him, had caused a strong reaction in his mind on that point. He longed to see It safe out of his own hands and in good custody.

He made for Hardie’s door with a joyful rush, waved his cap over his head in triumph, and entered the bank with It.

Ah!

CHAPTER XV

CHRONOLOGY.–The Hard Cash sailed from Canton months before the boat race at Henley recorded in Chapter I., but it landed in Barkington a fortnight after the last home event I recorded in its true series.

Now this fortnight, as it happens, was fruitful of incidents, and must be dealt with at once. After that, “Love” and “Cash,” the converging branches of this story, will flow together in one stream.

Alfred Hardie kept faith with Mrs. Dodd, and, by an effort she appreciated, forbore to express his love for Julia except by the pen. He took in Lloyd’s shipping news, and got it down by rail, in hopes there would be something about the _Agra;_ then he could call at Albion Villa. Mrs. Dodd had given him that loophole: meantime he kept moping for an invitation, which never came.

Julia was now comparatively happy, and so indeed was Alfred; but then the male of our species likes to be superlatively happy, not comparatively; and that Mrs. Dodd forgot or perhaps had not observed.

One day Sampson was at Albion Villa, and Alfred knew it. Now, though it was a point of honour with poor Alfred not to hang about after Julia until her father’s return, he had a perfect right to lay in wait for Sampson and hear something about her; and he was so deep in love that even a word at second-hand from her lips was a drop of dew to his heart.

So he strolled up towards the villa. He had nearly reached it, when a woman ran past him making the most extraordinary sounds: I can only describe it as screaming under her breath. Though he only saw her back, he recognised Mrs. Maxley. One back differeth from another, whatever you may have been told to the contrary in novels and plays. He called to her: she took no notice, and darted wildly through the gate of Albion Villa. Alfred’s curiosity was excited, and he ventured to put his head over the gate. But Mrs. Maxley had disappeared.

Alfred had half a mind to go in and inquire if anything was the matter: it would be a good excuse.

While he hesitated, the dining-room window was thrown violently up, and Sampson looked out. “Hy! Hardie! my good fellow! for Heaven’s sake a fly, and a fast one!”

It was plain something very serious had occurred: so Alfred flew towards the nearest fly-stand. On the way, he fell in with a chance fly drawn up at a public-house; he jumped on the box and drove rapidly towards Albion Villa. Sampson was hobbling to meet him–he had sprained his ankle or would not have asked for a conveyance–to save time he got up beside Alfred, and told him to drive hard to Little Friar Street. On the way he explained hurriedly: Mrs. Maxley had burst in on him at Albion Villa to say her husband was dying in torment: and indeed the symptoms she gave were alarming, and, if correct, looked very like lockjaw. But her description had been cut short by a severe attack, which choked her and turned her speechless and motionless, and white to the very lips.

“‘Oho,’ sis I, ‘brist-pang!’ And at such a time, ye know. But these women are as unseasonable as they are unreasonable. Now, angina pictoris or brist-pang is not curable through the lungs, nor the stomick, nor the liver, nor the stays, nor the saucepan, as the bunglintinkerindox of the schools pretind, but only through that mighty mainspring the Brain; and instid of going meandering to the Brain round by the stomick, and so giving the wumman lots o’ time to die first, which is the scholastic practice, I wint at the Brain direct, took a puff o’ chlorofm put m’ arm round her neck, laid her back in a chair–she didn’t struggle, for, when this disorrder grips ye, ye cant move hand nor foot–and had my lady into the land of Nod in half a minute; thin off t’ her husband; so here’s th’ Healer between two stools–spare the whipcord, spoil the knacker!–it would be a good joke if I was to lose both pashints for want of a little unbeequity, wouldn’t it–Lash the lazy vagabin!–Not that I care: what interest have I in their lives? they never pay: but ye see custom’s second nature; an d’Ive formed a vile habit; I’ve got to be a Healer among the killers: an d’a Triton among–the millers. Here we are at last, Hiven be praised.” And he hopped into the house faster than most people can run on a good errand. Alfred flung the reins to a cad and followed him.

The room was nearly full of terrified neighbours: Sampson shouldered them all roughly out of his way, and there, on a bed, lay Maxley’s gaunt figure in agony.

His body was drawn up by the middle into an arch, and nothing touched the bed but the head and the heels; the toes were turned back in the most extraordinary contortion, and the teeth set by the rigour of the convulsion, and in the man’s white face and fixed eyes were the horror and anxiety, that so often show themselves when the body feels itself in the grip of Death.

Mr. Osmond the surgeon was there; he had applied a succession of hot cloths to the pit of the stomach, and was trying. to get laudanum down the throat, but the clenched teeth were impassable.

He now looked up and said politely, “Ah! Dr. Sampson, I am glad to see you here. The seizure is of a cataleptic nature, I apprehend. The treatment hitherto has been hot epithems to the abdomen, and—-“

Here Sampson, who had examined the patient keenly, and paid no more attention to Osmond than to a fly buzzing, interrupted him as unceremoniously–

“Poisoned,” said he philosophically.

“Poisoned!!” screamed the people.

“Poisoned!” cried Mr. Osmond, in whose little list of stereotyped maladies poisoned had no place. “Is there any one you have reason to suspect?”

“I don’t suspect, nor conject, sir: I know. The man is poisoned, the substance strychnine. Now stand out of the way you gaping gabies, and let me work. Hy, young Oxford! you are a man: get behind and hold both his arms for your life! That’s you!”

He whipped off his coat laid hold of Osmond’s epithems, chucked them across the room, saying, “You may just as well squirt rose-water at a house on fire;” drenched his handkerchief with chloroform, sprang upon the patient like a mountain cat and chloroformed him with all his might.

Attacked so skilfully and resolutely, Maxley resisted little for so strong a man; but the potent poison within fought virulently: as a proof, the chloroform had to be renewed three times before it could produce any effect. At last the patient yielded to the fumes and became insensible.

Then the arched body subsided and the rigid muscles relaxed and turned supple. Sampson kneaded the man like dough by way of comment.

“It is really very extraordinary,” said Osmond.

“Mai–dearr–sirr, nothing’s extraornary t’ a man that knows the reason of iverything.”

He then inquired if any one in the room had noticed at what intervals of time the pains came on.

“I am sorry to say it is continuous,” said Osmond.

“Mai–dearr–sirr, nothing on airth is continuous: iverything has paroxysms and remissions–from a toothache t’ a cancer.”

He repeated his query in various forms, till at last a little girl squeaked out, “If–_you_—please, sir, the throes do come about every ten minutes, for I was a looking at the clock; I carries father his dinner at twelve.”

“If you please, ma’am, there’s half a guinea for you for not being such an’ ijjit as the rest of the world, especially the Dockers.” And he jerked her half a sovereign.

A stupor fell on the assembly. They awoke from it to examine the coin, and see if it was real, or only yellow air.

Maxley came to and gave a sigh of relief. When he had been insensible, yet out of pain, nearly eight minutes by the clock, Sampson chloroformed him again. “I’ll puzzle ye, my friend strych,” said he. “How will ye get your perriodical paroxysms when the man is insensible? The Dox say y’ act direct on the spinal marrow. Well, there’s the spinal marrow where you found it just now. Act on it again, my lad! I give ye leave–if ye can. Ye can’t; bekase ye must pass through the Brain to get there: and I occupy the Brain with a swifter ajint than y’ are, and mean to keep y’ out of it till your power to kill evaporates, being a vigitable.”

With this his spirits mounted, and he indulged in a harmless and favourite fiction: he feigned the company were all males and medical students, Osmond included, and he the lecturer. “Now, jintlemen,” said he, “obsairve the great Therey of the Perriodeecity and Remitteney of all disease, in conjunckshin with its practice. All diseases have paroxysms and remissions, which occur at intervals; sometimes it’s a year, sometimes a day, an hour, ten minutes; but whatever th’ interval, they are true to it: they keep time. Only when the disease is retirin, the remissions become longer, the paroxysms return at a greater interval, and just the revairse when the pashint is to die. This, jintlemen, is man’s life from the womb to the grave: the throes that precede his birth are remittent like ivery thing else, but come at diminished intervals when he has really made up his mind to be born (his first mistake, sirs, but not his last); and the paroxysms of his mortal disease come at shorter intervals when he is really goon off the hooks: but still chronometrically; just as watches keep time whether they go fast or slow. Now, jintlemen, isn’t this a beautiful Therey?”

“Oh, mercy! Oh, good people help me! Oh, Jesus Christ have pity on me!” And the sufferer’s body was bent like a bow, and his eyes filled with horror, and his toes pointed at his chin.

The Doctor hurled himself on the foe. “Come,” said he, “smell to this, lad! That’s right! He is better already, jintlemen, or he couldn’t howl, ye know. Deevil a howl in um before I gave um puff chlorofm. Ah! would ye? would ye?”

“Oh! oh! oh! oh! ugh!—-ah!”

The Doctor got off the insensible body, and resumed his lecture calmly, like one who has disposed of some childish interruption. “And now to th’ application of the Therey: If the poison can reduce the tin minutes’ interval to five minutes, this pashint will die; and if I can get the tin minutes up t’ half hour, this pashint will live. Any way, jintlemen, we won’t detain y’ unreasonably: the case shall be at an end by one o’clock.”

On hearing this considerate stipulation, up went three women’s aprons to their eyes.

“Alack! poor James Maxley! he is at his last hour: it be just gone twelve, and a dies at one.”

Sampson turned on the weepers. “Who says that, y’ ijjits? I said the case would end at one: a case ends when the pashint gets well or dies.”

“Oh, that is good news for poor Susan Maxley; her man is to be well by one o’clock, Doctor says.”

Sampson groaned, and gave in. he was strong, but not strong enough to make the populance suspend an opinion.

Yet, methinks it might be done: by chloroforming them.

The spasms came at longer intervals and less violent, and Maxley got so fond of the essence of Insensibility, that he asked to have some in his own hand to apply at the first warning of the horrible pains.

Sampson said, “Any fool can complete the cure; and, by way of practical comment, left him in Mr. Osmond’s charge; but with an understanding that the treatment should not be varied; that no laudanum should be given; but, in due course, a stiff tumbler of brandy and water, or two. “If he gets drunk, all the better; a little intoxication weakens the body’s memory of the pain it has endured, and so expedites the cure. Now off we go to th’ other.”

“The body’s memory!” said Mr. Osmond to himself: “what on earth does the quack mean?”

The driver _de jure_ of the fly was not quite drunk enough to lose his horse and vehicle without missing them. He was on the look out for the robber, and as Alfred came round the corner full pelt, darted at the reins with a husky remonstrance, and Alfred cut into him with the whip: an angry explanation–a guinea–and behold the driver sitting behind complacent and nodding.

Arrived at Albion Villa, Alfred asked Sampson submissively if he might come in and see the wife cured.

“Why, of course,” said Sampson, not knowing the delicate position.

“Then ask me in before Mrs. Dodd,” murmured Alfred coaxingly.

“Oo, ay,” said the Doctor knowingly: “I see.”

Mrs. Maxley was in the dining-room: she had got well of herself, but was crying bitterly, and the ladies would not let her go home yet; they feared the worst and that some one would blurt it out to her.

To this anxious trio entered Sampson radiant. “There, it’s all right. Come, little Maxley, ye needn’t cry; he has got lots more mischief to do in the world yet; but, O wumman, it is lucky you came to me and not to any of the tinkering dox. No more cat and dog for you and him but for the Chronothairmal Therey. And you may bless my puppy’s four bones too: he ran and stole a fly like a man, and drove hilter-skilter. Now, lf I had got to your house two minutes later, your Jamie would have lairned the great secret ere this.” He threw up the window. “Haw you! come away and receive the applause due from beauty t’ ajeelity.”

Alfred came in timidly, and was received with perfect benignity and self-possession by Mrs. Dodd, but Julia’s face was dyed with blushes, and her eyes sparkled the eloquent praise she was ashamed to speak before them all. But such a face as her scarce needed the help of a voice at such a time. And indeed both the lovers’ faces were a pretty sight and a study. How they stole loving glances, but tried to keep within bounds, and not steal more than three per minute! and how unconscious they endeavoured to look the intervening seconds! and what windows were the demure complacent visages they thought they were making shutters of! Innocent love has at least this advantage over melodramatic, that it can extract exquisite sweetness out of so small a thing. These sweethearts were not alone, could not open their hearts, must not even gaze too long; yet to be in the same room even on such terms was a taste of Heaven.

“But, dear heart!” said Mrs. Maxley, “ye don’t tell me what he ailed. Ma’am, if you had seen him you would have said he was taken for death.”

“Pray what _is_ the complaint?” inquired Mrs. Dodd.

“Oh, didn’t I tell ye? Poisoned.”

This intelligence was conveyed with true scientific calmness, and received with feminine ejaculations of horror. Mrs. Maxley was indignant into the bargain: “Don’t ye go giving my house an ill name! We keeps no poison.”

Sampson fixed his eyes sternly on her: “Wumman, ye know better: ye keep strychnine, for th’ use and delectation of your domestic animal.”

“Strychnine! I never heard tell of it. Is that Latin for arsenic?”

“Now isn’t this lamentable? Why, arsenic is a mital; strychnine a vigitable. N’hist me! Your man was here seeking strychnine to poison his mouse; a harmless, domistic, necessary mouse. I told him mice were a part of Nature as much as Maxleys, and life as sweet tit as tim: but he was dif to scientific and chrisehin preceps; so I told him to go to the Deevil: ‘I will,’ sis he, and went t’ a docker. The two assassins have poisoned the poor beastie between ’em; and thin, been the greatest miser in the world, except one, he will have roasted his victim, and ate her on the sly, imprignated with strychnine. ‘I’ll steal a march on t’other miser,’ sis he; and that’s you: t’ his brain flew the strychnine: his brain sint it to his spinal marrow: and we found my lorrd bent like a bow, and his jaw locked, and nearer knowin the great secret than any man in England will be this year to live: and sairves the assassinating old vagabin right.”

“Heaven forgive you, Doctor,” said Mrs. Maxley, half mechanically.

“For curin a murrderer? Not likely.”

Mrs. Maxley, who had shown signs of singular uneasiness during Sampson’s explanation, now rose, and said in a very peculiar tone she must go home directly.

Mrs. Dodd seemed to enter into her feelings, and made her go in the fly, taking care to pay the fare and the driver out of her own purse. As the woman got into the fly, Sampson gave her a piece of friendly and practical advice. “Nixt time he has a mind to breakfast on strychnine, you tell me; and I’ll put a pinch of arsenic in the salt-cellar, and cure him safe as the bank. But this time he’d have been did and stiff long before such a slow ajint as arsenic could get a hold on um.”

They sat down to luncheon, but neither Alfred nor Julia fed much, except upon sweet stolen looks; and soon the active Sampson jumped up, and invited Alfred to go round his patients. Alfred could not decline, but made his adieux with regret so tender and undisguised, that Julia’s sweet eyes filled, and her soft hand instinctively pressed his at parting to console him. She blushed at herself afterwards, but at the time she was thinking only of him.

Maxley and his wife came up in the evening with a fee. They had put their heads together, and proffered one guinea. “Man and wife be one flesh, you know, Doctor,” said the rustic miser.

Sampson, whose natural choler was constantly checked by his humour, declined this profuse proposal. “Here’s vanity!” said he. “Now do you really think your two lives are worth a guinea? Why, it’s 252 pence! 1008 farthings!”

The pair affected disappointment–vilely.

At all events, he must accept this basket of gudgeons Maxley had brought along. Being poisoned was quite out of Maxley’s daily routine, and had so unsettled him, that he had got up, and gone fishing–to the amazement of the parish.

Sampson inspected the basket. “Why, they are only fish,” said he; _”I was in hopes they were pashints._” He accepted the gudgeons, and inquired how Maxley got poisoned. It came out that Mrs. Maxley, seeing her husband set apart a portion of his Welsh rabbit, had “grizzled,” and asked what that was for; and being told “for the mouse,” and to “mind her own business,” had grizzled still more, and furtively conveyed a portion back into the pan for her master’s own use. She had been quaking dismally all the afternoon at what she had done, but finding Maxley–hard but just–did not attack her for an involuntary fault, she now brazened it out, and said, “Men didn’t ought to have poison in the house unbeknown to their wives. Jem had got no more than he worked for,” &c. But, like a woman, she vowed vengeance on the mouse: whereupon Maxley threatened her with the marital correction of neck-twisting if she laid a finger on it.

“My eyes be open now to what a poor creature do feel as dies poisoned. Let her a be: there’s room in our place for her and we.”

Next day he met Alfred, and thanked him with warmth, almost with emotion. “There ain’t many in Barkington as ever done me a good turn, Master Alfred; you be one on ’em: you comes after the Captain in my book now.”

Alfred suggested that his claims were humble compared with Sampson’s.

“No, no,” said Maxley, going down to his whisper, and looking, monstrous wise: “Doctor didn’t go out of his business for me: you did.”

The sage miser’s gratitude had not time to die a natural death before circumstances occurred to test it. On the morning of that eventful day which concluded my last chapter, he received a letter from Canada. His wife was out with eggs; so he caught little Rose Sutton, that had more than once spelled an epistle for him; and she read it out in a loud and reckless whine: “‘At — noon — this — very — daie — Muster — Hardie’s a-g-e-n-t, aguent — d-i-s dis, h-o-n — honour_ed_ — dis-honour_ed_–a–bill; and sayed.'” Here she made a full stop. Then on to the next verse.

“‘There — were no — more — asses.'”

“Mercy on us! but it can’t be asses, wench: drive your spe-ad into’t again.”

“‘A-s-s-e-t-s. Assets.'”

“Ah! Go an! go an!”

“‘Now — Fatther — if — you — leave — a s-h-i-l-l-i-n-g, shilling — at –Hardie’s — after — this — b-l-a-m-e, ble-am — your — self — not– me — for — this — is — the — waie — the r-o-g-u-e-s, rogews — all– bre-ak — they — go — at — a– d-i-s-t-a-n-c-e, distance — first– and — then — at — h-o-m-e, whuoame. — Dear — fatther’ — Lawk o’ daisy, what ails you, Daddy Maxley? You be as white as a Sunday smock. Be you poisoned again, if _you_ please?”

“Worse than that–worse!” groaned Maxhey, trembling all over. “Hush!–hold your tongue! Give me that letter! Don’t you never tell nobody nothing of what you have been a reading to me, and I’ll–I’ll–It’s only Jem’s fun: he is allus running his rigs–that’s a good wench now, and I’ll give ye a halfpenny.”

“La, Daddy,” said the child, opening her eyes, “I never heeds what I _re-ads:_ I be wrapped up in the spelling. Dear heart, what a sight of long words folks puts in a letter, more than ever drops out of their mouths; which their fingers be longer than their tongues, I do suppose.”

Maxley hailed thus information characteristically. “Then we’ll say no more about the halfpenny.”

At this, Rose raised a lamentable cry, and pearly tears gushed forth.

“There, there!” said Maxley, deprecatingly; “here’s two apples for ye; ye can’t get them for less: and a halfpenny or a haporth is all one to you, but it is a great odds to me. And apples they rot; halfpence don’t.”

It was now nine o’clock. The bank did not open till ten; but Maxley went and hung about the door, to be the first applicant.

As he stood there trembling with fear lest the bank should not open at all, he thought hard, and the result was a double resolution: he would have his money out to the last shilling; and, this done, would button up his pockets and padlock his tongue. It was not his business to take care of his neighbours; nor to blow the Hardies, if they paid him his money on demand. “So not a word to my missus, nor yet to the town-crier,” said he.

Ten o’clock struck, and the bank shutters remained up. Five minutes more, and the watcher was in agony. Three minutes more, and up came a boy of sixteen whistling, and took down the shutters with an indifference that amazed him. “Bless your handsome face!” said Maxley with a sigh of relief.

He now summoned up all his firmness, and, having recourse to an art in which these shrewd rustics are supreme, made his face quite inexpressive, and so walked into the bank the every-day Maxley externally, but within a volcano ready to burst if there should be the slightest hesitation to pay him his money.

“Good morning, Mr. Maxley,” said young Skinner.

“Good morning, sir.”

“What can we do for you?”

“Oh, I’ll wait my turn, sir.”

“Well, it is your turn now, if you like.”

“How much have you got of mine, if you please, sir?”

“Your balance? I’ll see. Nine hundred and four pounds.”

“Well, sir, then, if _you_ please, I’ll draa _that._”

(“It has come!” thought Skinner.) “What, going to desert us?” he stammered.

“No,” said the other, trembling inwardly, but not moving a facial muscle: “it is only for a day or two, sir.”