DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES

CHAPTER I. LOVE ON THE OCEAN

Nothing is so easy as falling in love on a long sea voyage, except falling out of love. Especially was this the case in the days when the wooden clippers did finely to land you in Port Royal or in New Amsterdam under the four full months. The passengers saw far too much of each other, unless, indeed, they were to see still more. Their superficial attractions mutually exhausted, they lost heart and patience in the disappointing strata which lie between the surface and the bed-rock of most natures. Among the passengers, James Norrington suffered a loss of his naval commission, after a most tragic altercation with a notorious pirate and an unloving fiancé, and had quitted the city of Port Royal. It was no common experience, as was only too well known and remarked upon by all the citizens of the city. Norrington, for his part, had not the faintest intention of falling in love on board; nay, after all the years he wasted loving Elizabeth and his heart had been left as a wind blasted wreck, coarse and sun bleached. Yet the ship carried a young lady, on her way to New Amsterdam, who might have made short work of many a softer heart.

Eva Denison was her name, and she cannot have been more than nineteen years of age. Norrington's own name was still unknown to her, and yet he found himself quite fascinated by her frankness and self-possession. She was exquisitely young, and yet ludicrously old for her years; had been admirably educated, chiefly abroad, and, as he was soon to discover, possessed accomplishments which would have made the plainest old maid a popular personage on board ship. Miss Denison, however, was as beautiful as she was young, with the bloom of ideal health upon her perfect skin. She had a wealth of lovely hair, with strange elusive strands of gold among the brown, that drowned her ears in sunny ripples; and a soul greater than the mind, and a heart greater than either, lay sleeping somewhere in the depths of her grave, gray eyes.

It was in the brave old days of the East India Trading Company, when ship after ship went out black with passengers and deep with stores, to bounce home with a bale or two of wool, and hardly hands enough to reef topsails in a gale. Norrington had decided over night that he had suffered enough of the scorn of his former acquaintances and wandered dejectedly toward the docks. There was, however, one slice of luck in store for him. He found the dear old Lady Jermyn on the very eve of sailing, with a new captain, a new crew, a handful of passengers (chiefly steerage), and nominally no cargo at all. He felt none the less at home when he stepped over her familiar side of a ship at sea.

In the cuddy there were only five, but a more uneven quintet I defy you to convene. There was a young fellow named Wormfud, packed out for his health, and hurrying home to die among friends. There was an outrageously lucky digger, another invalid, for he would drink nothing but champagne with every meal and at any minute of the day, and had been seen to pitch raw gold at the sea-birds by the hour together. Miss Denison was the only lady, and her step-father, with whom she was travelling, was the one man of distinction on board. He was a Portuguese of sixty or thereabouts, Senhor Joaquin Santos by name; at first it was incredible to Norrington that he had no title, so noble was his bearing; but very soon he realized that Santos was one of those to whom adventitious honors can add no luster. He treated Miss Denison as no parent ever treated a child, with a gallantry and a courtliness quite beautiful to watch, and not a little touching in the light of the circumstances under which they were travelling together. The girl had gone straight from school to her step-father's estate on the Zambezi, where, a few months later, her mother had died of the malaria. Unable to endure the place after his wife's death, Senhor Santos had taken ship to the Caribbean, there to seek fresh fortune with results as indifferent as Norrington's own. He was now taking Miss Denison back to England, by way of the colonies, to make her home with other relatives, before he himself returned to Africa to lay his bones beside those of his wife.

No need to say that Norrington came more in contact with the young girl. She was not less charming in his eyes because she provoked him greatly as he came to know her intimately. She had many irritating faults. Like most young persons of intellect and inexperience, she was hasty and intolerant in nearly all her judgments, and rather given to being critical in a crude way. She was very musical, playing the guitar and singing in a style that made their shipboard concerts vastly superior to the average of their order; but Norrington had seen her shudder at the efforts of less gifted folks who were also doing their best; and it was the same in other directions where her superiority was less specific. The faults which are most exasperating in another are, of course, one's own faults; and Norrington was very critical of Eva Denison's criticisms. He felt so certain that the girl had a fine character underneath, which would rise to noble heights in stress or storm: all the more would he long to take her in hand and mould her in little things, and anon to take her in his arms just as she was. The latter feeling was resolutely crushed. To be plain, he had endured what is euphemistically called "disappointment" already; and, not being a complete coxcomb, he had no intention of courting a second.

So it is that at the close of that last concert on the quarter-deck, the watch took down the extra awning; they removed the bunting and the foot-lights. The lanterns were trailed forward before they were put out; from the break of the poop they watched the vivid shifting patch of deck that each lit up on its way. The stars were very sharp in the vast violet dome above their masts; they shimmered on the sea; and the trucks describe minute orbits among the stars, for the trades have yet to fail them, and every inch of canvas has its fill of the gentle steady wind. It is a heavenly night. The peace of God broods upon His waters. No jarring note offends the ear. In the forecastle a voice hummed a song of Eva Denison's that had caught the fancy of the men; the young girl who sang it so sweetly not twenty minutes since who sang it again and again to please the crew she alone is at war with their little world she alone would head a mutiny if she could.

"I hate the captain!" she says again.

"My dear Miss Denison!" Norrington begins; for she has always been severe upon the bluff old man, and it is not the spirit of contrariety alone which makes Norrington invariably take his part. Coarse he may be, and not one whom the owners would have chosen to command the Lady Jermyn; a good seaman none the less, who brought them through foul weather without losing stitch or stick. Norrington thinks of the ruddy ruffian in his dripping oilskins, on deck day and night for their sakes, and once more he must needs take his part; but Miss Denison stops him before he can get out another word.

"I am not dear, and I'm not yours," she cries. "I'm only a school-girl—you have all but told me so before to-day! If I were a man—if I were you—I should tell Captain Harris what I thought of him!"

"Why? What has he done now?"

"Now? You know how rude he was to poor Mr. Wormfud this very afternoon!"

It was true. He had been very rude indeed. But Wormfud also had been at fault. It may be that Norrignton was always inclined to take an opposite view, but he felt bound to point this out, and at any cost.

"You mean when Wormfud asked him if we were out of our course? I must say I thought it was a silly question to put. Any sailor worth half his weight in salt can tell by the stars that we have drifted no less than fifteen leagues off course. It was the same the other evening about the cargo. If the skipper says we're in ballast, which we are not, it does us no good to constantly question him. Why repeat steerage gossip, about mysterious cargoes, at the cuddy table? Captains are always touchy about that sort of thing. I wasn't surprised at his letting out."

Eva stares at Norrington in the starlight. Her great eyes flash their scorn. Then she gives a little smile—and then a little nod—more scornful than all the rest.

"You never are surprised, are you, Mr. Norrington?" says she. "You were not surprised when the wretch used horrible language in front of me! You were not surprised when it was a—dying man—whom he abused!"

He tries to soothe her. He agrees heartily with her disgust at the epithets employed in her hearing, and towards an invalid, by the irate skipper. But Norrington also asks her to make allowances for a rough, uneducated man, rather clumsily touched upon his tender spot. Norrington shall conciliate her presently; the divine pout (so childish it was!) is fading from her lips; the starlight is on the tulle and lace and roses of her pretty evening dress, with its festooned skirts and obsolete flounces; and he is watching her, ay, and worshipping her, though he does not know it yet. And as they stand there comes another snatch from the forecastle:—

"What will you do, love, when I am going.

With white sail flowing,

The seas beyond?

What will you do, love—"

"They may make the most of that song," says Miss Denison grimly; "it's the last they'll have from me. Get up as many more concerts as you like. I won't sing at another unless it's in the fo'c'sle. I'll sing to the men, but not to Captain Harris. He didn't put in an appearance tonight. He shall not have another chance of insulting me."

Was it her vanity that was wounded after all? "You forget," said Norrington, "that you would not answer when he addressed you at dinner."

"I should think I wouldn't, after the way he spoke to Mr. Wormfud; and he too agitated to come to table, poor fellow!"

"Still, the captain felt the open slight."

"Then he shouldn't have used such language in front of me."

"Your father felt it, too, Miss Denison."

"Mr. Norrington, my father has been dead many; many years; he died before I can remember. That man only married my poor mother. He sympathizes with Captain Harris—against me; no father would do that. Look at them together now! And you take his side, too; oh! I have no patience with any of you—except poor Mr. Wormfud in his berth."

"But you are not going."

"Indeed I am. I am tired of you all."

And she was gone with angry tears for which Norrington blamed himself as he fell to pacing the weather side of the poop. Senhor Santos and the captain were in conversation by the weather rail. Norrington fancied poor old Harris eyed him with suspicion, and Norrington wished he had better cause. The Portuguese, however, saluted Norrington with his customary courtesy, and there seemed to be a grave twinkle in his steady eye.

"Are you in deesgrace also, friend Norrington?" he inquired in his all but perfect English.

"More or less," said Norrington ruefully.

He gave the shrug of his country—that delicate gesture which is done almost entirely with the back—a subtlety beyond the power of British shoulders.

"The senhora is both weelful and pivish," said he, mixing the two vowels which (with the aspirate) were his only trouble with the British tongue. "It is great grif to me to see her growing so unlike her sainted mother!"

He sighed, and Norrington saw his delicate fingers forsake the cigarette they were rolling to make the sacred sign upon his breast. He was always smoking one cigarette and making another; as he lit the new one the glow fell upon a strange pin that he wore, a pin with a tiny crucifix inlaid in mosaic. So the religious cast of Senhor Santos was brought twice home to Norrington in the same moment, though, to be sure, he had often been struck by it before. And it depressed him to think that so sweet a child as Eva Denison should have spoken harshly of so good a man as her step-father, simply because he had breadth enough to sympathize with a coarse old salt like Captain Harris.

Norrington turned in, alas; he was a heavy sleeper then.

CHAPTER II. THE MYSTERIOUS CARGO

"Wake up, Norrington! The ship's on fire!"

It was young Wormfud's hollow voice, as cool, however, as though he were saying he was late for breakfast. Norrington started up and sought him wildly in the darkness.

"You're joking," was his first thought and utterance; for now Wormfud was lighting a candle, and blowing out the match with a care that seemed in itself a contradiction.

"I wish I were," he answered. "Listen to that!"

He pointed to the cabin ceiling; it quivered and creaked; and all at once Norrington was as a deaf man healed.

One gets inured to noise at sea, but to this day it passes him how even he could have slept an instant in the abnormal din which he now heard raging above his head. Sea-boots stamped; bare feet pattered; men bawled; women shrieked; shouts of terror drowned the roar of command.

"Have we long to last?" he asked, as he leaped for his clothes.

"Long enough for you to dress comfortably. Steady, old man! It's only just been discovered; they may get it under. The panic's the worst part at present, and we're out of that."

But was Eva Denison? Breathlessly he put the question; the answer was reassuring. Miss Denison was with her step-father on the poop. "And both of 'em as cool as cucumbers," added Wormfud.

They could not have been cooler than this young man, with death at the bottom of his bright and sunken eyes. He was of the type which is all muscle and no constitution; athletes one year, dead men the next; but until this moment the athlete had been to Norrington a mere and incredible tradition. In the afternoon he had seen his lean knees totter under the captain's fire. Now, at midnight, it was as if his shrunken limbs had expanded in his clothes; he seemed hardly to know his own flushed face, as he caught sight of it in the mirror.

"By Jove!" said he, "this has put me in a fine old fever; but I don't know when I felt in better fettle. If only they get it under! I've not looked like this all the voyage."

And he admired himself while Norrignton dressed in hot haste: a fine young fellow; not at all the natural egotist, but cast for death by the doctors, and keenly incredulous in his bag of skin. It revived one's confidence to hear him talk. But he forgot himself in an instant, and gave Norrington a lead through the saloon with a boyish eagerness that made Norrington actually suspicious as he ran. It was only when they plunged upon the crowded quarter-deck, and his own eyes read lust of life and dread of death in the starting eyes of others, that such lust and such dread threatened to consume him in turn, so that his veins seemed filled with fire and ice.

The first wild panic was subsiding even then; at least there was a lull, and even a reaction in the right direction on the part of the males in the second class and steerage. A huge Irishman at their head, they were passing buckets towards the after-hold; the press of people hid the hatchway from sight until Norrington gained the poop; but he heard the buckets spitting and a hose-pipe hissing into the flames below; and he saw the column of white vapor rising steadily from their midst.

At the break of the poop stood Captain Harris, his legs planted wide apart, very vigorous, very decisive, very profane. But the night was as beautiful as it had been an hour or two back; the stars as brilliant, the breeze even more balmy, the sea even more calm; and the ship was hove-to already, against the worst.

In this hour of peril the poop was very properly invaded by all classes of passengers, in all manner of incongruous apparel, in all stages of fear, rage, grief and hysteria; as they made their way among this motley nightmare throng, Norrington took Wormfud by the arm.

"The skipper's a brute," said he, "but he's the right brute in the right place to-night, Wormfud!"

"I hope he may be," was the reply. "But we were off our course this afternoon; and we were off it again during the concert, as sure as we're not on it now."

"I noticed as much myself. No doubt he has good reason for it. I'm just as certain of it as I'm certain that we've a cargo aboard which none of us is supposed to know anything about."

The latter piece of gossip was, indeed, all over the ship; but this allusion to it struck Wormfud as foolishly irrelevant and frivolous. Norrington suggested that the officers would have had more to say about it than Wormfud, if there had been anything in it.

"Officers be damned!" cried the consumptive, with a sound man's vigor. "They're ordinary seamen dressed up; I don't believe they've a second mate's certificate between them, and they're frightened out of their souls."

"Well, anyhow, the skipper isn't that and I myself am here. I have been a commodore in His Majesty's service and I do not flee in the face of danger."

"No; he's drunk; he can shout straight, but you should hear him try to speak."

Norrington made his way aft without rejoinder. "Invalid's pessimism," was his private comment. And yet the sick man was whole for the time being; the virile spirit was once more master of the recreant members; and it was with illogical relief that Norrington found those he sought standing almost unconcernedly beside the binnacle.

His little friend was, indeed, pale enough, and her eyes great with dismay; but she stood splendidly calm, in her travelling cloak and bonnet, and with all his soul he hailed the hardihood with which he had rightly credited my love. Yes! He loved her then. It had come home to him at last, and he no longer denied it in his heart. In his innocence and his joy he rather blessed the fire for showing him her true self; and there he stood, loving her openly with his eyes (not to lose another instant), and bursting to tell her so with his lips.

But there also stood Senhor Santos, almost precisely as Norrington had seen him last, cigarette, tie-pin, and all. He wore an overcoat, however, and leaned upon a massive ebony cane, while he carried his daughter's guitar in its case, exactly as though they were waiting for a train. Moreover, Norrignton thought that for the first time he was being regarded by Santos with no very favoring glance.

"You don't think it serious?" Norrington asked him abruptly, his heart still bounding with the most incongruous joy.

Santos gave him his ambiguous shrug; and then, "A fire at sea is surely sirrious," said he.

"Where did it break out?"

"No one knows; it may have come of your concert."

"But they are getting the better of it?"

"They are working wonders so far, senhor."

"You see, Miss Denison," Norrington continued ecstatically, "our rough old diamond of a skipper is the right man in the right place after all. A tight man in a tight place, eh?"

"Senhor Norrignton is right," said Santos, " But you must never spik against Captain 'Arrees again, menma."

"I never will," the poor child said; yet Norrington saw her wince whenever the captain raised that hoarse voice of his in more and more blasphemous exhortation; and Norrignton began to fear with Wormfud that the man was drunk.

Norrington's eyes were still upon his darling, devouring her, revelling in her, when suddenly he saw her hand twitch within her step-father's arm. It was an answering start to one on Santos' part. The cigarette was snatched from his lips. There was a commotion forward, and a cry came aft, from mouth to mouth:

"The flames! The flames!"

Norrignton turned, and caught their reflection on the white column of smoke and steam. He ran forward, and saw them curling and leaping in the hell-mouth of the hold.

The quarter-deck now staged a lurid scene: that blazing trap-door in its midst; and each man there a naked demon madly working to save his roasting skin. Abaft the mainmast the deck-pump was being ceaselessly worked by relays of the passengers; dry blankets were passed forward, soaking blankets were passed aft, and flung flat into the furnace one after another. These did more good than the pure water: the pillar of smoke became blacker, denser: they were at a crisis; a sudden hush denoted it; even the hoarse skipper stood dumb.

Norrington had rushed down into the waist of the ship—blushing for his delay—and already he was tossing blankets with the rest. Looking up in an enforced pause, he saw Santos whispering in the skipper's ear, with the expression of a sphinx but no lack of foreign gesticulation—behind them a fringe of terror-stricken faces, parted at that instant by two more figures, as wild and strange as any in that wild, strange scene. One was the luckless lucky digger, the other a gigantic Zambesi , who for days had been told off to watch him; this was the servant (or rather the slave) of Senhor Santos.

The digger planted himself before the captain. His face was reddened by a fire as consuming as that within the bowels of the gallant ship. He had a huge, unwieldy bundle under either arm.

"Plain question—plain answer," Norrignton heard him stutter. "Is there any —— chance of saving this —— ship?"

His adjectives were too foul for print; they were given with such a special effort at distinctness, however, that Norrignton was smiling one instant, and giving thanks the next that Eva Denison had not come forward with her guardian. Meanwhile the skipper had exchanged a glance with Senhor Santos, and all felt that he was going to tell them the truth.

He told it in two words—"Very little."

Then the first individual tragedy was enacted before every eye. With a yell the drunken maniac rushed to the rail. The Zambesi was at his heels—he was too late. Uttering another and more piercing shriek, the madman was overboard at a bound; one of his bundles preceded him; the other dropped like a cannon-ball on the deck.

The Zambesi caught it up and carried it forward to the captain.

Harris held up his hand. All were still before they had fairly found their tongues. His words did run together a little, but he was not drunk.

"Men and women," said he, "what I told that poor devil is Gospel truth; but I didn't tell him we'd no chance of saving our lives, did I? Not me, because we have! Keep your heads and listen to me. There's two good boats on the davits amidships; the chief will take one, the second officer the other; and there ain't no reason why every blessed one of you shouldn't sleep in New Amsterdam to-morrow night. As for me, let me see every soul off of my ship and perhaps I may follow; but by the God that made you, look alive! Mr. Arnott—Mr. McClellan—man them boats and lower away. You can't get quit o' the ship too soon, an' I don't mind tellin' you why. I'll tell you the worst, an' then you'll know. There's been a lot o' gossip goin', gossip about my cargo. I give out as I'd none but ship's stores and ballast, an' I give out a lie. I don't mind tellin' you now. I give out a cussed lie, but I give it out for the good o' the ship! What was the use o' frightenin' folks? But where's the sense in keepin' it back now? We have a bit of a cargo," shouted Harris; "and it's gunpowder—every damned ton of it!"

The effect of this announcement may be imagined; my hand has not the cunning to reproduce it on paper; and if it had, it would shrink from the task. Mild men became brutes, brutal men, devils, women—God help them!—shrieking beldams for the most part. Never shall Norrington forget them with their streaming hair, their screaming open mouths, and the cruel ascending fire glinting on their starting eyeballs!

Pell-mell they tumbled down the poop-ladders; pell-mell they raced amidships past that yawning open furnace; the pitch was boiling through the seams of the crackling deck; they slipped and fell upon it, one over another, and the wonder is that none plunged headlong into the flames. A handful remained on the poop, cowering and undone with terror. Upon these turned Captain Harris, stemming the torrent of maddened humanity.

"For'ard with ye!" yelled the skipper. "The powder's underneath you in the lazarette!"

They were gone like hunted sheep. And now abaft the flaming hatchway there were only the four surviving saloon passengers, the captain, his steward, the Zambesi , and the quarter-master at the wheel. The steward and the Zambesi Norrington observed putting stores aboard the captain's gig as it overhung the water from the stern davits.

"Now, gentlemen," said Harris to Norrignton and Senhor Santos, "I must trouble you to step forward with the rest. Senhor Santos insists on taking his chance along with the young lady in my gig. I've told him the risk, but he insists, and the gig'll hold no more."

"But she must have a crew, and I can row." stated Norrington fiercely; for Eva Denison sat weeping in her deck chair, and his heart bled faint at the thought of leaving her, he who loved her so, and might die without ever telling her his love! Harris, however, stood firm.

"There's that quartermaster and my steward, and Jose the Zambesi," said he. "That's quite enough, Mr. Norrington, for I ain't above an oar myself; but, by God, I'm skipper o' this here ship, and I'll skip her as long as I remain aboard!"

Norrignton saw his hand go to his belt and saw the pistols stuck there for mutineers. He looked at Santos. He answered Norrington with his neutral shrug, and he struck a match and lit a cigarette in that hour of life and death! Then last Norrignton looked at Wormfud; and he leant invertebrate over the rail, gasping pitiably from his exertions in regaining the poop, a dying man once more. Norrington pointed out his piteous state.

"At least," He whispered, "you won't refuse to take him?"

"Will there be anything to take?" said the captain brutally.

Santos advanced leisurely, and puffed his cigarette over the poor wasted and exhausted frame.

"It is for you to decide, captain," said he cynically; "but this one will make no deeference. Yes, I would take him. It will not be far," he added, in a tone that was not the less detestable for being lowered.

"Take them both!" moaned little Eva, putting in her first and last sweet word.

"Then we all drown, Evasinha," said her stepfather. "It is impossible."

"We're too many for her as it is," said the captain. "So for'ard with ye, Mr. Norrington, before it's too late."

But his darling's brave word for him had fired his blood, and he turned with equal resolution on Harris and on the Portuguese. "I will go like a lamb," said he, "if you will first give me five minutes' conversation with Miss Denison. Otherwise I do not go; and as for the gig, you may take me or leave me, as you choose."

"What have you to say to her?" asked Santos, coming up to Norrington, and again lowering his voice.

Norrignton lowered his still more. "That I love her!" he answered in a soft ecstasy. "That she may remember how I loved her, if I die!"

Santos' shoulders shrugged a cynical acquiescence.

"By all mins, senhor; there is no harm in that."

Norrignton was at her side before another word could pass his withered lips.

"Miss Denison, will you grant me five minutes', conversation? It may be the last that we shall ever have together!"

Uncovering her face, she looked at him with a strange terror in her great eyes; then with a questioning light that was yet more strange, for in it there was a wistfulness he could not comprehend. She suffered him to take her hand, however, and to lead her unresisting to the weather rail.

"What is it you have to say?" she asked him in her turn. "What is it that you—think?"

Her voice fell as though she must have the truth.

"That we have all a very good chance," said he heartily.

"Is that all?" cried Eva, and Norrington's heart sank at her eager manner.

She seemed at once disappointed and relieved. Could it be possible she dreaded a declaration which she had foreseen all along? Norrignton's evil first experience rose up to warn him. No, he would not speak now; it was no time. If she loved him, it might make her love him less; better to trust to God to spare them both.

"Yes, it is all," he said doggedly.

She drew a little nearer, hesitating. It was as though her disappointment had gained on her relief.

"Do you know what I thought you were going to say?"

"No, indeed."

"Dare I tell you?"

"You can trust me."

Her pale lips parted. Her great eyes shone. Another instant, and she had told him that which he would have given all but life itself to know. But in that tick of time a quick step came behind, and the light went out of the sweet face upturned to his.

"I cannot! I must not! Here is—that man!"

Senhor Santos was all smiles and rings of pale-blue smoke.

"You will be cut off, friend Norrington," said he. "The fire is spreading."

"Let it spread!" he cried, gazing his very soul into the young girl's eyes. "We have not finished our conversation.

"We have!" said she, with sudden decision. "Go—go—for my sake—for your own sake—go at once!"

She gave Norrignton her hand. He merely clasped it. And so he left her at the rail-ah, heaven! how often they had argued on that very spot! So he left her, with the greatest effort of all his life (but one); and yet in passing, full as his heart was of love and self, he could not but lay a hand on poor Wormfud's shoulders.

"God bless you, old boy!" he said to him.

He turned a white face that gave Norrington half an instant's pause.

"It's all over with me this time," he said. "But, I say, we was right about the cargo?"

And Norrington heard a chuckle as he reached the ladder; but Wormfud was no longer in his mind; even Eva was driven out of it, as he stood aghast on the top-most rung.