The Old Helmet Volume II Part 42

"Ah," said Mr. Amos,--"I see. My friend will have a safe wife in you.

Do you know, when I first saw you I stood in doubt. I thought you looked like--Well, never mind! It's all right."

"Right!" said Captain Fox coming up behind them. "I am glad somebody thinks so. Right!--lying broiling here all day, and sleeping all night as if we were in port and had nothing to do--when we're a long way from that. Drove you down to-day, didn't it?" said he turning to Eleanor.

"It was so hot; I could not get a bit of permanent shade anywhere. I went below for a little while."

"And yet it's all right!" said the captain. "I am afraid you are not in a hurry to get to the end of the voyage."

Mr. Amos smiled and Eleanor blushed. The truth was, she never let herself think of the end of the voyage. The thought would come--the image standing there would start up--but she always put it aside and kept to the present; and that was one reason certainly why Eleanor's mind was so quiet and free and why the enjoyable and useful things of the hour were not let slip and wasted. So her spirits maintained their healthy tone; no doubt spurred to livelier action by the abiding consciousness of that spot of brightness in the future towards which she would not allow herself to look in bewildering imaginations.

Meanwhile the calm came to an end, as all things will; the beneficent trade wind took charge of the vessel again, and they sped on, south, south; till the sky over Eleanor's head was a new one from that all her life had known, and the bright stars at night looked at her as strangers. For study them as she would, she could not but feel theirs were new faces. The captain one day shewed her St. Helena in the distance; then the Cape of Good Hope was neared--and rounded--and in the Indian Ocean the travellers ploughed their way eastward. The island of St. Paul was pa.s.sed; and still the ship sailed on and on to the east.

Eleanor had observed for a day or two that there was an unusual degree of activity among the sailors. They seemed to be getting things into new trim; clearing up and cleaning; and the chain cable one day made its appearance on deck, where room had been made for it. Eleanor looked on at the proceedings, with a half guess at their meaning that made her heart beat.

"What is it?" she asked Captain Fox.

"What's all this rigging up? Why, we expect to see land soon. You like the sea so well, you'll be sorry."

"How soon?"

"I shouldn't wonder, in a day or two. You will stop in Sydney till you get a chance to go on?"

"Yes."

"I wish I could take you the whole way, I declare! but I would not take an angel into those awful islands. Why if you get shipwrecked there, they will kill and eat you."

"There would be little danger of that now, Captain Fox; none at all in most of the islands. Instead of killing and eating, they relieve and comfort their shipwrecked countrymen."

"Believe that?" said the captain.

"I know it. I know instances."

"Whereabouts are you going among them?" said he looking at her. "If I get driven out of my reckoning ever and find myself in those lat.i.tudes, I'd like to know which way to steer. Where's your place?"

He was not uncivil; but he liked to see, when he could manage to bring it, that beautiful tinge of rose in Eleanor's cheeks which answered such an appeal as this.

CHAPTER XV.

IN PORT.

"And the magic charm of foreign lands, With shadows of palm, and shining sands, Where the tumbling surf O'er the coral reefs of Madagascar, Washes the feet of the swarthy 'Lascar.'--"

It was but the next day, and Eleanor was sitting as usual on deck looking over the waters in a lovely bright morning, when a sound was heard which almost stopped her heart's beating for a moment. It was the cry, rung out from the mast-head, "Land, ho!"

"Where is it?" she said to the captain, who was behind her. "I do not see it anywhere."

"You will see it in a little while. Wait a bit. If you could go aloft I could shew it you now."

"What land? do you know?"

"Australia--the finest land the sun shines upon!"

"I suppose you mean, besides England."

"No, I don't, begging your pardon. England is very well for those who can take the ripe side of the cherry; poorer folks had better come here, if they want any chance at all."

The lucky sailor was coming down from the mast-head, and the captain went off to join those who were giving him sundry rewarding tokens of their joy for his news. Eleanor looked over the waste of waters eastward, feeling as if her breath had been taken away.

So much of her journey done! The rest seemed, and was, but little.

Australia was almost--_home_. And what sort of a home? And could Mr.

Rhys possibly be at Sydney to meet her? Eleanor knew he could not; yet the physical possibility would a.s.sert itself in spite of all the well-allowed moral impossibility. But at any rate at Sydney she would find letters; at Sydney she would find, perhaps very soon, the means of making the remainder of her voyage; at Sydney she could no longer prevent herself from _thinking_. Eleanor had staved off thought all the way by wisely saying and insisting to herself "Time enough when I get to Sydney." Yes; she was nearing home now. So deep, so engrossing, were her meditations and sensations, that Mr. Amos who had come up to congratulate her on the approaching termination of the voyage, spoke to her once and again without being heard. He could not see her face, but the little straw bonnet was as motionless as if its wearer had been in a dream. He smiled and went away.

Then appeared on the distant horizon somewhat like a low blue cloud, which gathered distinctness and strength of outline by degrees. It was the land, beyond doubt; the coast of New Holland itself, as the captain informed Eleanor; and going on and pa.s.sing through Ba.s.s's Strait the vessel soon directed her course northward. Little remained then before reaching port.

It was under a fair and beautiful sunlight morning that they were at last approaching Sydney. Mr. Amos was on deck as well as Eleanor, the captain standing with them; for a pilot had come on board; the captain had given up his charge, and was in command no longer. Before the watching three stretched a low unpromising sh.o.r.e of sandstone cliffs and sand.

"It is good to see it," said Mr. Amos; "but in this first view it don't shew for much."

"Don't shew for anything," said Captain Fox. "Wait till we get inside the Heads. It don't shew for anything; but it's the most glorious land the sun shines on!"

"In what particular respects?" said Mr. Amos.

"In every respect of making a living and enjoying it," said the captain. "That makes a good land, don't it?"

Mr. Amos allowed that it did.

"It's the most beautiful country, if you come to that," Captain Fox went on;--"that's what Miss Powle thinks of. I wish this was Melbourne we were coming to, instead of Sydney. I'd like to have her look at it."

"Better than this?" said Mr. Amos, for Eleanor was silent.

"A better colony, for beauty and riches," said the captain. "It's the most glorious country, sir, you ever saw! hundreds of square miles of it are as handsome as a duke's park; and good for something, which a duke's park ain't. There's a great tract of country up round Mt.

Macedon--thirty or forty miles back into the land--its softly rolling ground without a stone on it, as nice as ever you saw; and spotted with the trees they call she-oaks--beautiful trees; and they don't grow in a wood, but just stand round in clumps and ones or twos here and there, like a picture; and then through the openings in the ground you can see miles off more of just the same, till it gets blue in the distance; and mountains beyond all. And when you put here and there a flock of thousands of sheep spotting the country with their white backs--I ain't poetical, sir, but I tell you! when I saw that country first, I thought maybe I was; but it's likely I was mistaken," said the captain laughing, "for the fit has never come back since. Miss Powle thinks there's as much poetry in the water as on the land."

Still Eleanor did not move to answer; and Mr. Amos, perhaps for her sake, went on.

"What is it that country is so good for? gold? or sheep?"

"Sheep, sir, sheep! the gold grows in another part. There's enough of that too; but I'd as lieve make my money some other way. Victoria is the country for wool-growing, sir. I've a brother there--Stephen Fox--he went with little more than nothing; and now he has a flock of sheep--well, I'm afraid to say how many; but I know he needs and uses a tract of twelve thousand acres of land for them."

"That is being a pretty large land-owner, as well as sheep-owner," Mr.

Amos said with a smile.

"O he don't own it. That wouldn't do, you know. The interest of the money would buy all the wool on his sheep's backs."