The Red Derelict

Three times he has sighted this sad derelict, twice stood on board her. Has this been ordered with a purpose? Yet – why not? And with the thought he flings off his upper garment of woven grass. He is going to explore the interior of the ship – so far as he is able.

On the former occasion of his standing here he would have shrank from such an attempt, not only on account of the possible horrors that he might find, but because doubting his power to carry out so hazardous a venture. Now it is different. Good swimmer as he was before, now he is as thoroughly at home in the water as the barbarous inhabitants of yonder coast – that is to say, as thoroughly at home as in his natural element. He gazes down into the gaping pit of the companion-way, then, drawing a long breath, dives down into the blackness within.

At first he can see little enough as he gropes his way around, then by the sickly green light through the glass ports, and also that coming down the companion-way, he is able to make out the interior of the cuddy. A few small fish, imprisoned, dart hither and thither, but of human bodies there is no sign. Then, unable to hold his breath any longer, he shoots up once more into outer air.

Shading his eyes, so that the glare may not impede his vision for his next descent, he sits for a few minutes taking in the air, then, feeling rested, dives down once more into the heart of the waterlogged ship.

Now he can see better, can distinguish some sodden litter lying about, but still no human bodies. Then, just as he is about to give up all further exploration, his hand encounters something hard.

It is lying in one of the bunks – a small box or case of some sort. Grasping it firmly he makes for the companion-way again and rises to the surface, and on arriving there the fit of gasping, and a desire to vomit, shows that he has been under water long enough. His find is a flat, oblong, tin case of about eight inches by four, and it is hermetically sealed.

He examines it with vivid curiosity – the outside, that is – for he quickly decides that this is no time for investigating its contents. But it is time for a little frugal refreshment; wherefore, hauling in his canoe by the painter, he proceeds to hand up the requisites for a sparing meal. While he does so a great shark rises from beneath the hulk – it might have been the identical one that had so nearly gripped him before – but it inspires in him no particular horror now; in fact, scarcely any attention. A mere shark is a mere nothing to the dwellers on those coasts.

Having taken off the edge of his appetite he leans back against the ragged stump of the mainmast, and for the first time for long, experiences a craving for tobacco. Perhaps the yearning is brought about by feeling the deck of a ship under him, for he has long since learnt to do without it. Looking idly at the tin case the thought comes over him that it may contain some clue with regard to his brother or to his brother’s fate, and acting upon the idea he stows it away carefully, together with the skeleton of the pistol, within the skin pouch which is slung round his neck by way of a pocket. Then a drowsiness comes over him, and he falls asleep.

The sun flames hot above him, but this causes him no inconvenience now. He slumbers on, and a light breeze rises, rippling the oily surface of the sea – blowing off shore. It winnows in a grateful coolness about him, lulling into deeper slumber, and – the derelict drifts on.

The red rim of the sun touches the sea, seeming to meet the molten water as with a hiss, for the slight breeze has died down with evening, and the last light floods redly over the ghastly hulk with its single human occupant – this man with the attire and colour of a savage and the straight refined features of a European. The sudden, twilightless tropical night falls, falls blackly, and the sleeper sleeps on.

Crash! Whirr! Splash! The hulk starts, shivers from stem to stern, and a great wave comes roaring over her, sweeping the poop by several feet. Half stunned by the concussion the sleeper starts up, to be knocked half senseless by violent contact with the stump of the mainmast; yet even then instinct moves him to grip hold of something firm and hang on for all he knows, and well for him that it is so, or he would have been whirled into the sea in a moment by the volume of water sweeping over him. An immense blaze of lights flashes before his dazed gaze, together with a very babel of voices and a wild roaring and a rush of white foam – then another wave rolls over him. Half stunned, half choked, he strives to lift up his voice, but it refuses its office. At last he succeeds in effecting a hoarse attempt at a shout.

But the receding lights away there in the black gloom are receding farther and farther, the receding babel of voices too, and amid these and the roar of steam how shall his hoarse-throated, feeble shout find its way across the intervening waste? It cannot. Instinctively he springs for his canoe, with a wild idea of overtaking his one chance of rescue by sheer strength of arm. But of it there is no sign – except the frayed end of the painter rope by which it had been made fast. Swamped, crushed by the weight of water which had swirled over the hulk, it has gone to the bottom, and with it his slender stock of provisions. And the tiers of lights are now far distant, and he is left here, as one before him was left – alone on this ghastly hulk – left to die, with his one chance of rescue gliding away in demoniacal mockery upon the black midnight sea.

Chapter Thirty Seven.
The Echo of a Prophecy

“Let me pass. Quick! I want to see the captain.”

“But you can’t go on the bridge, miss; it’s against orders.” And the stalwart quartermaster barred with his substantial form the steps leading up to the bridge.

“But I must see the captain, and I will. Do you hear? Let me pass,” with a quick stamp of the foot.

Seen by the electric lights the speaker was a well-formed, beautiful girl, her face pale, and her eyes glowing with excitement and purpose. Behind her, a little in the background, buzzed a throng of excited passengers.

“Very sorry, miss, but it can’t be done,” reaffirmed the quartermaster, not without misgivings, for the speaker was a favourite on board, and not a little so with the captain himself, a grizzled and, withal, crusty salt, of whom those under him stood considerably in awe. “If there were any message now, miss, I might make so bold as to take it,” he added conciliatorily.

“Message? Message? No; I must tell him myself,” came the quick rejoinder, accompanied by another stamp of the foot. “Let me up! Man, man, a life – lives – depend on it – at any rate one.”

The seaman gave way, resigning himself to a “logging,” and, perchance, other pains and penalties. In a moment the girl had gained the bridge. The captain and two of the officers turned in anger, which subsided on the part of the latter as they saw the identity of the intruder. The first still looked grim.

“Well, young lady?” he began in a voice that would have sent most of the other passengers down double quick with a stuttered apology, but with this one it went for nothing.

“Captain, that ship we just ran into – there was someone on board.”

The captain looked grimmer still. “Just ran into” had a characteristically ugly sound in his ears.

“Humph!” he snorted. “Just ran into! Just ran into! That infernal old blasted derelict hulk, whose owners ought to be – ” And then he remembered the sex and identity of the speaker, and with a gulp went on. “Now, how the – how the – well, how d’you make out there’s anyone on board her?” he rapped out in a sort of subdued hurricane blast of a voice.

“Because I saw. I saw a man lying on her deck as plainly as I see you and Mr Gibson now. Do turn back and see – quick – or you may never find her again in the dark. I saw him, mind you – I swear to God I saw him – by the deck lights as we crashed past. You can’t leave him alone to die. You can’t!”

“Saw him? Saw a mare’s nest,” grumbled the captain. “Let me tell you, young lady, it’s not my business to start overhauling derelict hulks at midnight – brutes that might have sent us to the bottom. Fortunately, we only scraped this one. Well, well,” he appended sourly, “we’re ahead of our time, so we might as well make sure of this. Put her round, Gibson.”

“Ah! I thought sailors were always ready to help each other,” said the girl triumphantly.

An order was given, and, in the result, the Runic changed her course, and was bearing round, going dead slow, so as to head for the late dangerous obstruction. The excitement was intense among the passengers, who thronged the bulwarks at every coign of vantage, eagerly scanning the dark, silent sea. Suddenly the engines stopped, and a boat was lowered.

“Where is she? Can you see her?” were among the buzzed, eager comments as the boat’s lantern receded into the gloom. Soon came a hail and the sound of gruff voices over the water. The light of the lantern grew larger and larger. The boat was returning.

Heavens! what was this? With the boat’s crew there stepped aboard a tall, bearded man burned almost to the copper hue of a savage and wearing what looked like the attire of one. Thus he appeared in the electric lights to the eyes of the excited throng.

“Who are you, my man, and what’s your ship?” began the captain brusquely.

“Thank God, I’m going home at last!” exclaimed the stranger, gazing around in a weary and dazed sort of way.

“Yes – yes; but – who are you?” repeated the captain more crisply.

“Why – it’s Mr Wagram!”

The interruption or answer proceeded from the girl who had been the cause of the search. The castaway turned, looking more puzzled than ever.

“Yes; that’s my name,” he answered. “But – I ought to know that voice, and yet – and yet – ”

“Of course you ought,” and, casting all conventionality to the winds, the girl sprang forward, seizing one of his hands in both of hers. “Oh, how thankful I am that we have been the means of saving you! What must you have been through! Welcome – a thousand times welcome!”

“Miss Calmour, surely? Why, of course it is. How glad I am to see you again.” And in the face of this sun-tanned and unkempt-looking savage here under the ship’s lights Delia could detect the same look as that which had glanced down upon her in the park at Hilversea that glowing summer afternoon after the life-and-death struggle with the escaped beast. “I was a passenger on the Baleka, captain,” he went on to explain.

“Passenger on the Baleka were you? Then, my good sir, it’s lucky we’re homeward bound, because your people will be just about beginning to go to law over your leavings,” returned the captain, who was of a cynical bent. “The only passenger missing from her was given up as lost. But – you haven’t been aboard that old hooker ever since, I take it?”

“No; indeed. I’ve had some strange experiences – can hardly believe I’m not dreaming now. What ship’s this?”

“The Runic. White Torpedo line, bound for London from Australian ports.”

“And what of the Baleka’s people? Were they found?”

“Yes; all picked up, some here, some there.”

“Captain,” interrupted that same clear, sweet, fluty voice, “I’m surprised at you. Here’s a shipwrecked mariner been thrown on board, and instead of doing all you can for him you keep him standing here all night answering questions.”

“By Jove! you’re right, Miss Calmour,” was the bluff reply. “Gibson,” turning to the chief, “take the gentleman to the saloon, and tell the stewards to get him all he wants.”

“I don’t want much at present, thanks,” answered Wagram. “A barber, and some clothes are my most urgent needs; but I suppose we can compass something in that line to-morrow.”

“Why, of course,” said Delia; “but don’t throw away that picturesque costume. Come along below, now. I’m going to take care of you this evening.”

And she did – laying her commands upon the stewards for this and for that as if the whole ship belonged to her. Then she sat and talked to him as he ate some supper, forestalling every possible want, pressing this and that upon him, and yet without ostentatious fuss. And the castaway, who for months had beheld no woman’s face save those of brutal, debased blacks, wondered uneasily whether he were dreaming, as this beautiful girl sat there attending to his wants with an almost loving assiduity. Yes; he decided, she certainly was beautiful. Time, change, the conditions of a new life, had put the last touches to the sufficiency of her attractiveness as he remembered her.

“By Jove!” exclaimed the chief officer, who had dropped in to hear some of the castaway’s story, “you’ve had some pretty rough ups and downs, and no mistake; and you might as well have tumbled into the boats with the rest after all, for the kid was all right and not left below at all.”

“Is that a fact?” said Wagram eagerly.

“Rather. You were throwing away your life going below at such a time in any case, and in this instance it was all for nothing.”

Delia had been wishing the chief officer anywhere. She wanted Wagram to herself, and here Gibson sat prosing his tiresome old sea yarns. Now, however, she brisked up, and insisted upon hearing the whole story. She had been quite out of the way of newspapers of late, and had not even heard of the loss of the Baleka, or that the man sitting here before her had been given up as lost, a victim to his own heroic act.

“By George! I must go,” said the chief. “Mind you ask for anything you want, Mr Wagram, for I conclude you’ve come aboard in a state of temporary and complete destitution.”

“That’s just my case,” laughed Wagram. “Funny, isn’t it?” turning to the girl in time to catch the look in her eyes called there by the story she had just heard. “And now tell me about yourself, and how they all are in Bassingham.”

“We’ve left Bassingham, you know, Mr Wagram. My father died soon after you went, and we couldn’t stop on at Siege House. So we went up to London, and – well, things were not easy.”

“I didn’t know; I have had no news from Hilversea for a long, long time – have been so on the move, you know.”

“How you must long to get back. Dear old, beautiful Hilversea!”

The bright spirits and former lightheartedness seemed to have left her. Her voice was sad. The other made a mental note of it, and deduced that they had fallen upon hard times. Well, that he would certainly do his best to remedy by some means or other. Then she told him about herself; how her other sister – not Clytie – had married in Australia, married very fairly well, too, and had got her out there on a visit. But they had not got on – she did not tell him that the other had conceived a jealousy of her from the very first – and so she was returning to England.

They talked on until even the other passengers, who, by twos and threes, had been passing through the saloon in quite unusual numbers to catch another glimpse of the castaway, had disappeared, and the stewards were rolling up the carpets.

“Good-night, Mr Wagram,” said the girl as they parted. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you again, and what a happiness it is to think that the ship I was on board of was the one to rescue you. To-morrow you must tell me your adventures in full. You will – won’t you?”

He promised, with some reservations, and they parted. But Delia found that sleep utterly refused to come her way – and she wanted to sleep, wanted to look her best in the morning. Her cabin mate, an elderly lady, was fast asleep, but she herself seemed doomed to night-long wakefulness. The scuttle was open and she lay with her face to it, watching the dark sky with its twinkle of misty stars, half lulled by the rush and “sough” of smooth water from the sides of the liner. What wonderful workings of Fate had thrown this man here? And he would not have been here but for her. But for her persistence he would have been miles and miles behind, left to perish miserably on the lonely deep. The other passengers had treated her statement with good-humoured ridicule; the captain himself would hardly be persuaded to put back – and what if he had not? But he had – and it had been entirely due to her that he had. She had saved Wagram’s life – as surely as any life ever had been saved – she and she alone.

The sweetness of the thought began to soothe her, and sleep seemed to be coming at last. Then, through it, something – perhaps the sight of the smooth sea through which the great liner was rushing on even keel – brought back to her mind certain words uttered on a woodland road in the dusk of a winter afternoon; weird words about green seas, smooth and oily, and a battered ship, and terrors – and, perhaps, death, but, if not death, then great happiness. The croakings of the old gipsy came back now – and, good heavens! what coincidence was this? Here were all the conditions – the smooth seas and the battered hulk – the terror gone through – terrors of every kind, up to that of being left on the derelict – the agony of seeing this ark of safety recede from reach of call. “Perhaps death?” He had been snatched from death at that moment, snatched from it by her, as surely as though by her own hand. “But, if not death, then great happiness.” In the hot, thick stillness of the night Delia’s brain was busy. The prediction had been directed to herself, not to him. And then it seemed to merge into a joint prediction, but – great happiness? Well, was it not? She had rescued him from death – she alone. Was not that a great happiness? Further, it would be nearly a fortnight ere they reached England, and during that time she would see him daily, talk with him, under conditions of which a week was equivalent to a year under the old state of things. Would not that be “great happiness?”

And then she remembered not only the prediction, but the scorn and contempt with which he had treated both it and its utterer, extending just an overflow ripple of it to her. And with a smile at the recollection she fell into a quiet sleep. Nearly a whole fortnight of happiness – great happiness – lay before her.

In the event so it proved. From the next morning, when they met – he clothed and barbered, and looking exactly as she remembered him in the dear old days of yore – “clothed, and in his right mind” as he smilingly told her in his old, dry, humorous way – pacing the deck in the cool hours, or seated in some snug, shady corner in roomy deck-chairs, talking about home – they two were nearly always together; and the home-sick wanderer felt at home already, and the girl forgot for the time her own dreary prospects, with the struggle for life all opening out before her, to be begun and gone through again. He would go back to luxury and his high estate, while she – ? Yet even this she forgot in those sweet, dreamy, sunny days which would soon – only too soon – be over.

There were others on board, though, to whom this change was not so welcome, and who – for human nature is human after all – fervently wished this picked-up castaway – well – back again on the hulk from which he had been picked up. For Delia Calmour, with her beauty and tact and sunniness of disposition, had reigned a queen among the male section of the passengers, and the long voyage, now nearing its close, had been long enough to render more than one heart rather sore.

“I must not monopolise you all day, and every day, like this, child,” Wagram had said to her. “You are good-nature itself towards a tiresome old bore with but one idea in his head. You must go and make things lively for the others a bit sometimes or I shall feel like an interloper.”

“Am I tiring you, then?” she would answer softly.

“Now, you know that is absurd. Still, I must not be selfish.”

“You – selfish? What next?”

“I’m afraid I am – very. Now, they are getting up that last fancy-dress dance before we get into what may possibly be rough water. Go and help them in that as you would have done before. I want to see you enjoying yourself. I am afraid I am too much of a fogey to cut into that sort of thing actively myself.”

She did not answer that “that sort of thing” was an inane and vapid method of enjoying herself, compared with half-an-hour of ordinary conversation with him. She complied – and submissively. Incidentally, she found that the “enjoyment” involved a heated passage-of-arms with the third officer; item, subsequently with a fine young Australian whom she had refused twice during the voyage; but these were trifles light as air under the circumstances.

Then the days grew fewer and fewer, and the grey waters of the Bay of Biscay gave way to the greyer waters of the English Channel. The Runic would soon be securely docked in her berth.