For the Term of His Natural Life Part 9

"Ah," says the humorist, "pa.s.s him out; it'll be one the less. We'd rather have his room than his company."

"Sentry, here's a man sick."

But the sentry knew his duty better than to reply. He was a young soldier, but he had been well informed of the artfulness of convict stratagems; and, moreover, Captain Vickers had carefully apprised him "that by the King's Regulations, he was forbidden to reply to any question or communication addressed to him by a convict, but, in the event of being addressed, was to call the non-commissioned officer on duty." Now, though he was within easy hailing distance of the guard on the quarter-deck, he felt a natural disinclination to disturb those gentlemen merely for the sake of a sick convict, and knowing that, in a few minutes, the third relief would come on duty, he decided to wait until then.

In the meantime the tailor grew worse, and began to moan dismally.

"Here! 'ullo!" called out his supporter, in dismay. "Hold up 'ere! Wot's wrong with yer? Don't come the drops 'ere. Pa.s.s him down, some of yer,"

and the wretch was hustled down to the doorway.

"Vater!" he whispered, beating feebly with his hand on the thick oak.

"Get us a drink, mister, for Gord's sake!"

But the prudent sentry answered never a word, until the ship's bell warned him of the approach of the relief guard; and then honest old Pine, coming with anxious face to inquire after his charge, received the intelligence that there was another prisoner sick. He had the door unlocked and the tailor outside in an instant. One look at the flushed, anxious face was enough.

"Who's that moaning in there?" he asked.

It was the man who had tried to call for the sentry an hour back, and Pine had him out also; convictism beginning to wonder a little.

"Take 'em both aft to the hospital," he said; "and, Jenkins, if there are any more men taken sick, let them pa.s.s the word for me at once. I shall be on deck."

The guard stared in each other's faces, with some alarm, but said nothing, thinking more of the burning ship, which now flamed furiously across the placid water, than of peril nearer home; but as Pine went up the hatchway he met Blunt.

"We've got the fever aboard!"

"Good G.o.d! Do you mean it, Pine?"

Pine shook his grizzled head sorrowfully.

"It's this cursed calm that's done it; though I expected it all along, with the ship crammed as she is. When I was in the Hecuba--"

"Who is it?"

Pine laughed a half-pitying, half-angry laugh.

"A convict, of course. Who else should it be? They are reeking like bullocks at Smithfield down there. A hundred and eighty men penned into a place fifty feet long, with the air like an oven--what could you expect?"

Poor Blunt stamped his foot.

"It isn't my fault," he cried. "The soldiers are berthed aft. If the Government will overload these ships, I can't help it."

"The Government! Ah! The Government! The Government don't sleep, sixty men a-side, in a cabin only six feet high. The Government don't get typhus fever in the tropics, does it?"

"No--but--"

"But what does the Government care, then?"

Blunt wiped his hot forehead.

"Who was the first down?"

"No. 97 berth; ten on the lower tier. John Rex he calls himself."

"Are you sure it's the fever?"

"As sure as I can be yet. Head like a fire-ball, and tongue like a strip of leather. Gad, don't I know it?" and Pine grinned mournfully. "I've got him moved into the hospital. Hospital! It is a hospital! As dark as a wolf's mouth. I've seen dog kennels I liked better."

Blunt nodded towards the volume of lurid smoke that rolled up out of the glow.--"Suppose there is a shipload of those poor devils? I can't refuse to take 'em in."

"No," says Pine gloomily, "I suppose you can't. If they come, I must stow 'em somewhere. We'll have to run for the Cape, with the first breeze, if they do come, that is all I can see for it," and he turned away to watch the burning vessel.

CHAPTER VI. THE FATE OF THE "HYDASPES".

In the meanwhile the two boats made straight for the red column that uprose like a gigantic torch over the silent sea.

As Blunt had said, the burning ship lay a good twelve miles from the Malabar, and the pull was a long and a weary one. Once fairly away from the protecting sides of the vessel that had borne them thus far on their dismal journey, the adventurers seemed to have come into a new atmosphere. The immensity of the ocean over which they slowly moved revealed itself for the first time. On board the prison ship, surrounded with all the memories if not with the comforts of the sh.o.r.e they had quitted, they had not realized how far they were from that civilization which had given them birth. The well-lighted, well-furnished cuddy, the homely mirth of the forecastle, the setting of sentries and the changing of guards, even the gloom and terror of the closely-locked prison, combined to make the voyagers feel secure against the unknown dangers of the sea. That defiance of Nature which is born of contact with humanity, had hitherto sustained them, and they felt that, though alone on the vast expanse of waters, they were in companionship with others of their kind, and that the perils one man had pa.s.sed might be successfully dared by another. But now--with one ship growing smaller behind them, and the other, containing they knew not what horror of human agony and human helplessness, lying a burning wreck in the black distance ahead of them--they began to feel their own littleness. The Malabar, that huge sea monster, in whose capacious belly so many human creatures lived and suffered, had dwindled to a walnut-sh.e.l.l, and yet beside her bulk how infinitely small had their own frail c.o.c.kboat appeared as they shot out from under her towering stern! Then the black hull rising above them, had seemed a tower of strength, built to defy the utmost violence of wind and wave; now it was but a slip of wood floating--on an unknown depth of black, fathomless water. The blue light, which, at its first flashing over the ocean, had made the very stars pale their l.u.s.tre, and lighted up with ghastly radiance the enormous vault of heaven, was now only a point, brilliant and distinct it is true, but which by its very brilliance dwarfed the ship into insignificance. The Malabar lay on the water like a glow-worm on a floating leaf, and the glare of the signal-fire made no more impression on the darkness than the candle carried by a solitary miner would have made on the abyss of a coal-pit.

And yet the Malabar held two hundred creatures like themselves!

The water over which the boats glided was black and smooth, rising into huge foamless billows, the more terrible because they were silent. When the sea hisses, it speaks, and speech breaks the spell of terror; when it is inert, heaving noiselessly, it is dumb, and seems to brood over mischief. The ocean in a calm is like a sulky giant; one dreads that it may be meditating evil. Moreover, an angry sea looks less vast in extent than a calm one. Its mounting waves bring the horizon nearer, and one does not discern how for many leagues the pitiless billows repeat themselves. To appreciate the hideous vastness of the ocean one must see it when it sleeps.

The great sky uprose from this silent sea without a cloud. The stars hung low in its expanse, burning in a violent mist of lower ether. The heavens were emptied of sound, and each dip of the oars was re-echoed in s.p.a.ce by a succession of subtle harmonies. As the blades struck the dark water, it flashed fire, and the tracks of the boats resembled two sea-snakes writhing with silent undulations through a lake of quicksilver.

It had been a sort of race hitherto, and the rowers, with set teeth and compressed lips, had pulled stroke for stroke. At last the foremost boat came to a sudden pause. Best gave a cheery shout and pa.s.sed her, steering straight into the broad track of crimson that already reeked on the sea ahead.

"What is it?" he cried.

But he heard only a smothered curse from Frere, and then his consort pulled hard to overtake him.

It was, in fact, nothing of consequence--only a prisoner "giving in".

"Curse it!" says Frere, "What's the matter with you? Oh, you, is it?--Dawes! Of course, Dawes. I never expected anything better from such a skulking hound. Come, this sort of nonsense won't do with me. It isn't as nice as lolloping about the hatchways, I dare say, but you'll have to go on, my fine fellow."

"He seems sick, sir," said (with) compa.s.sionate bow.

"Sick! Not he. Shamming. Come, give way now! Put your backs into it!"

and the convict having picked up his oar, the boat shot forward again.

But, for all Mr. Frere's urging, he could not recover the way he had lost, and Best was the first to run in under the black cloud that hung over the crimsoned water.

At his signal, the second boat came alongside.

"Keep wide," he said. "If there are many fellows yet aboard, they'll swamp us; and I think there must be, as we haven't met the boats," and then raising his voice, as the exhausted crew lay on their oars, he hailed the burning ship.