A Modern Buccaneer Part 32

Then returned the strange and wayward memories of Hayston and his lawless a.s.sociates--the reckless traders, the fierce half-castes, the savage islanders! Again I heard the soft voices of Lalia, Nellie, Kitty of Ebon, and smiled as I recalled their pleading, infantine ways, their flashing eyes, so eloquent in love or hate. All were gone; all had become phantoms of the past. With that stage and season of my life they had pa.s.sed away--irrevocably, eternally--and now I possessed an incentive to labour, ambition, and self-denial such as I had never before known. With such a companion as Miranda, where was the man who would not have displayed the higher qualities of his nature, who would not have risen to the supremest effort of labour, valour, or self-abnegation? Before Heaven I vowed that night, that neither toil nor trouble, difficulty nor danger, should deter me from the pursuit of fortune and distinction. So pa.s.sed our first day at sea.

With the one that followed the gale abated, and as the _Florentia_ swept southward under easy sail, comfort was restored. The pa.s.sengers settled themselves down to the enjoyment of that absolute rest and pa.s.sive luxuriousness which characterise board-ship life in fine weather. Miss Vavasour and Miranda were soon deep in earnest conversation, both for the time disregarding the books with which they had furnished themselves. Mrs. Craven had devoted herself to an endless task of knitting, which apparently supplied a subst.i.tute for thought, reading, recreation, and conversation.

I was talking to the captain when a lady came up the companion, followed by the colonel, who half lifted, half led a fine little boy of four or five years of age.

"Oh," said the captain, with a sudden movement towards the new arrivals, "I see Mrs. Percival has come on deck. Come over and be introduced." We walked over, and I received a formal bow from a handsome, pale woman, who had evidently been sojourning in the East. There is a certain similarity in all "Indian women," as they are generally called, which extends even to manner and expression. Long residence in a hot climate robs them of their roses, while the habit of command, resulting from a.s.sociation with an inferior race, gives them a tinge of hauteur--not to say unconscious insolence of manner--which is scarcely agreeable to those who, from circ.u.mstances, they may deem to be socially inferior.

So it was that Miranda, in spite of Miss Vavasour's nods and signals, received but the faintest recognition, and retreated to her chair somewhat chilled by her reception. She, however, took no apparent notice of the slight, and was soon absorbed in conversation with Miss Vavasour, her brother, and Mrs. Craven, who had moved up her chair to join the party. The colonel deserted his former friends to devote himself to his family duties, while the captain and I walked forward and commenced a discussion which had, at any rate, a strong personal interest for me.

"Now look here, Hilary," said he, as he lighted a fresh cigar. He had been smoking on the quarter-deck under protest, as it were, and thus commenced: "Listen to me, my boy! I've been thinking seriously about you and Miranda. Your start in life when you get to Sydney is important. I think I can give you a bit of advice worth following. You understand all the dialects between here and the Line Islands, don't you?"

"More than eight," I answered; "I can talk with nearly every islander from here to the Gilberts. I have learned so much, at any rate, in my wanderings."

"And a very good thing, too, for it's not a thing that can be picked up in a year, no matter how a man may work, and he's useless or nearly so without it; you can keep accounts, write well, and all that?"

I replied that I had a number of peculiar accounts to keep as supercargo to the _Leonora_, as well as all Hayston's business letters to write; that my office books were always considered neat, complete, and well kept. Then he suddenly said, "You are the very man we want!"

"Who are we, and what is the man wanted for?" I asked.

"For the South Sea Island trade, and no other," said Captain Carryall, putting his hand on my shoulder. "Old Paul Frankston (you've heard of him) and I have laid it out to establish a regular mercantile house in Sydney for the development of the island trade. The old man will back us, and the name of Paul Frankston is good from New Zealand to the North Pole and back again. I will do the whaling, cruising, and cargo business--cocoa-nut oil, copra, and curios--while you will live in one of those nice white houses at North Sh.o.r.e, somewhere about Neutral Bay, where you can see the ships come through the Heads; Miranda can have a skiff, and you a ten-tonner, so as not to forget your boating and your sea-legs. What do you think of that, eh?"

"It is a splendid idea!" I cried, "and poor Miranda will be within sound of the sea. If she were not, she would pine away like her own araucarias which will not live outside of the wave music. But how about the cash part of it? I haven't much. Most of my savings went down in the _Leonora_."

"Oh, we'll manage that somehow! Old Paul will work that part of the arrangement. I daresay your father will advance what will make your share equal, or nearly so, to ours."

"It sounds well," I said. "With partners like Mr. Frankston and yourself a man ought to be able to do something. I know almost every island where trade can be got, and the price to a cowrie that should be paid. There ought to be a fortune in it in five years. What a pity Hayston couldn't have had such a chance."

"He'd have had the cash, and the other partners the experience, in less than that time," said the captain, smiling sardonically. "He was a first-rate organiser if he had not been such a d--d scoundrel. He had some fine qualities, I allow; as a seaman he had no equal. In the good old fighting days he would have been a splendid robber baron. But in these modern times, where there is a trifle of law and order in most countries, even in the South Seas he was out of place."

"He was far from a model mariner," I said, "but it hurts me to hear him condemned. He had splendid points in his character, and no one but myself will ever know how much good there was mixed up with his recklessness and despair. I left him, but I couldn't help being fond of him to the last."

"It was a good thing for you that you did--a very good thing. You will live to be thankful for it. He was a dangerous beggar, and neither man nor woman could escape his fascination. However, that's all past and gone now. You're married and settled, remember, and you're to be Hilary Telfer, Esq., J.P., and all the rest of it directly, and the only sea-going business you can have for the future is to be Commodore of the Neutral Bay Yacht Club, or some such t.i.tle and distinction. And now I've done for the present. You go and see what Miranda thinks of it. I won't agree to anything unless she consents."

Miranda was charmed with the idea of a mercantile marine enterprise, so much in accordance with her previous habits and experiences. The added inducement of living on the sea-sh.o.r.e, with a boat, a jetty, and a bathing-house, decided her. She implicitly believed in Captain Carryall's power and ability to make our fortune; was also certain that, with Mr. Frankston's commercial aid, we should soon be as rich as the Guldensterns, the Rothschilds of the Pacific. She surrendered herself thereupon to a dream of bliss, alloyed only at intervals by a tinge of apprehension that the great undiscovered country of Sydney society might prove hostile or indifferent.

So much she communicated to Miss Vavasour as she and Mrs. Craven were reclining side by side on their deck chairs, while the _Florentia_ was gliding along on another day all sunshine, azure, and favouring breeze.

"Don't you be afraid, my dear," said the kind-hearted Mrs. Craven, "you and your husband are quite able to hold your own in Sydney society or any other; indeed, I shall be inclined to bet that you'd be the rage rather than otherwise. I wish I had you in Northamptonshire, I'd undertake to 'knock out' (as Charlie says) the local belles in a fortnight."

Miranda laughed the childishly happy laugh of unspoiled girlhood. "Dear Mrs. Craven, how good of you to say so; but, of course, I know I'm a sort of savage, who will improve in a year or two if every one is as kind as you and Miss Vavasour here; but suppose they should be like her," and she motioned towards Mrs. Percival.

This lady had never relaxed the coldness and hauteur towards Miranda and myself. She had been unable to modify her "Indian manner," as Captain Carryall and Mr. Vavasour called it, and about which they made daily jokes.

As she pa.s.sed the little group, she bowed slightly and without relaxation of feature, going forward to the waist of the ship, where she sat down and was soon absorbed in a book. The three friends smiled at each other, and continued their conversation.

"I should like to dress you for a garden-party, Miranda," said Miss Vavasour; "let me see now, a real summer day, such as we sometimes get in dear old England--not like this one perhaps, but very nice. A lovely old manor house like Gravenhurst or Hunsdon--such a lawn, such old trees, such a river, a marquee under an elm a hundred years old, and the county magnates marching in from their carriages."

"Oh, how delicious!" cried Miranda. "I have read such descriptions in books, but you--oh, how happy you must be to have lived it all!"

"It's very nice, but as to the happiness, that doesn't always follow,"

confessed the English girl with a half sigh. "I almost think you have the greater share of that. Anyhow, just as the company are a.s.sembled, I am seen walking down from the house. We are of the house party, you know, Miranda and I. She is dressed in a soft, white, embroidered muslin, very simply made, with a little, a very little Valenciennes lace. Its long straight folds hang gracefully around her matchless figure, and are confined at the waist by a broad, white moir sash; white gloves, a white moir parasol, a large Gainsborough hat with fleecy white feathers, and Miranda's costume is complete--the very embodiment of fresh, fair girlhood, unspotted from the world of fashion and folly."

CHAPTER XVI

A SWIM FOR LIFE

The words died on her lips as a shriek, wild, agonising, despairing, rang through the air, and startled not only the little group of pleased listeners, but all who happened to be on deck at the time. We started up and gazed towards the spot whence the cry had come. The colonel, who had been reading on the opposite side of the deck, calmly smoking the while, dropped his book and only saved his meerschaum by a cricketer's smart catch. The captain came bounding up from below, followed by the steward and his boy; the foc'sle hands, with the black cook, hurled themselves aft. All guessed the cause as they saw Mrs. Percival wringing her hands frantically and gazing at an object in the sea.

Her boy had fallen overboard! Yes! the little fellow, active and courageous beyond his years, had tried to crawl up to the shrouds while his mother's eyes were engaged in the perusal of the leading novel of the day. Weary of inaction, the poor little chap had done a little climbing on his own account, and an unexpected roll of the ship had sent him overboard. Light as the wind was, he was already a long way astern.

Long before all these observations were made, however, and while the astonished spectators were questioning their senses as to the meaning of the confusion, Miranda had sprung upon the rail, and in the next moment, with hands clasped above her head, was parting the smooth waters.

Rising to the surface, she swam with rapid and powerful strokes towards the receding form of the still floating child. With less rapidity of motion, I cast myself into the heaving waste of water, not that I doubted Miranda's ability to overtake and bear up the child, but from simple inability to remain behind while all that was worth living for on earth was adrift upon the wave.

I followed in her wake, and though I failed to keep near her, for the Pitcairn islanders are among the fastest swimmers in the world, I yet felt that I might be of some use or aid. Long before I could overtake her she had caught up the little fellow, and lifting him high above the water, was swimming easily towards me.

"Oh! you foolish boy!" she cried, "why did you come after me? do you want to be drowned again?" Here she smiled and showed her lovely teeth as if it was rather a good joke. It may have been, but at that time and place I was not in the humour to perceive it.

"I came for the same reason that you did, I suppose--because I could not stay behind. If anything had happened to you what should I have done?

Here comes the boat, though, and we can talk it over on board."

Some little time had been expended in lowering the boat. The ship had been brought to, but even then--and with so light a wind--it was astonishing what a distance we had fallen behind. It was a curious sensation, such specks as we were upon the immense water-plain which stretched around to the horizon. However, the _Florentia_ was strongly in evidence, and nearer and nearer came the whaleboat, with the captain at the steer-oar, and the men pulling as if they were laying on a crack harpooner to an eighty barrel whale.

We were now swimming side by side, Miranda talking to the little fellow, who had never lost consciousness, and did not seem particularly afraid of his position.

"How tremendously hard they are pulling!" I said; "they are making the boat spin again. One would think they were pulling for a wager."

"So they are," answered she, "for three lives, and perhaps another. See there! G.o.d in His mercy protect us."

I followed the direction of her turned head, and my heart stood still as my eye caught the fatal sign of the monster's presence at no great distance from us. It was _the back fin of a shark_!

"Do your best, my beloved," she continued; "we must keep together, and if he overtakes us before the boat reaches, splash hard and shout as loud as you can. I have seen a shark frightened before now; but please G.o.d it may not come to that."

The boat came nearer--still nearer--but, as it seemed to us, all too slowly. The men were pulling for their lives, I could notice, and the captain frantically urging them on. They had seen the dreaded signal before us, and had commenced to race from that moment. But for some delay in the tackle for lowering, they would have been up to us before now.

As it was we did our best. I would have taken the child, but Miranda would not allow me. "His weight is nothing in the water," she said, "and I could swim faster than you, even with him." This she showed me she could do by shooting ahead with the greatest ease, and then allowing me to overtake her. I had to let her have her own way. We were lessening the distance between us and the boat, but the sea demon had a mind to overtake us, and our hearts almost failed as we noticed the sharp black fin gaining rapidly upon us. Still there was one chance, that he would not pursue us to the very side of the boat. It was a terrible moment.

With every muscle strained to the uttermost, with lung, and sinew, and every organ taxed to utmost tension, I most certainly beat any previous record in swimming that I had ever attained. Miranda, with apparently but little effort, kept slightly ahead. The last few yards--shorter than the actual distance--appeared to divide us from the huge form of the monster now distinctly visible beneath the water, when with one frantic yell and a dash at the oars, which took every remaining pound of strength out of the willing crew, the boat shot up within equal distance. At a signal from the captain every oar was raised and brought down again with a terrific splash into the water, and a simultaneous yell. The effort was successful. The huge creature, strangely timid in some respects, stopped, and with one powerful side motion of fins and tail glided out of the line of pursuit. At the same moment the boat swept up, and eager arms lifted Miranda and her burden into it. My hand was on the gunwale until I saw her safe, whence with a slight amount of a.s.sistance I gained the mid-thwart.

"Saved, thank G.o.d!" cried the captain, with fervent expression, "but a mighty close thing; the next time you take a bath of this kind, my dear Miranda, with sharks around, you must let me know beforehand, eh?"

"Some one would have had to go, captain," she answered; "we couldn't see the dear little fellow drowned before our eyes. It was only a trifle after all--a swim in smooth water on a fine day: I didn't reckon on a shark being so close, I must say."

"I saw the naughty shark," said the little fellow, now quite recovered and in his usual spirits. "How close he came! do you think he would have eaten us all, captain?"

"Yes, my boy--without salt; you would never have seen your papa and mamma again if it had not been for this lady here."