CHAPTER XXI.
THE BEARER OF A DISGRACED NAME, IN ENGLAND--A STRANGE QUEST AND A STRANGE UNREST--HURRYING OVER TO IRELAND--TOO LATE FOR THE PACKET--THE LITTLE DESPATCH-STEAMER--HENRY FITZMAURICE, THE JOURNALIST--AN UNEXPECTED PASSAGE--THE PERIL OF THE EMERALD, AND THE END OF ALL QUESTS SAVE ONE.
Far back in the progress of this narration, when it had only reached halfthe distance to which it has now arrived, it was said of one of theprincipal persons therein involved: "Something indescribably dim andshadowy grows about the character and action of Carlton Brand at this time,* * * motives become buried in obscurity, and the narrator grows to belittle more than a mere insignificant, powerless chronicler of eventswithout connection and action without explanation." The same remark willapply with quite as much force, at this stage, to the movements of thebearer of that dishonored name, in his movements on the other side of theAtlantic, which must now be briefly recorded in their due order.
It will be remembered that the American entered his name at Liverpool, onthe twentieth day of July, with the place of his residence attached.Thenceforward enough is known, through hotel and other records, to be surethat he spent some two weeks in London, occupying lodgings at one of therespectable houses of the great metropolis, but spending his time, in otherregards, in a manner scarcely to have been expected from any previousknowledge of his life and antecedents. Was it the lawyer, _because_ thelawyer, who visited Scotland Yard the very next day after his arrival inLondon, and spent so much time with some of the leading men in charge ofthat great police-establishment, that he might have seemed to be employedin studying the whole English system of criminal detection? And was it thelawyer, _as_ the lawyer and consequently on account of his remembrance ofpast connection with the ferreting out of crime in his native land, whowent immediately afterwards into a continuous and apparently systematicround of visits to the worst haunts of vice in the Modern Babel, becoming,sometimes in disguise and sometimes in his own proper person, but alwaysmore or less closely accompanied by some member of the force, the habitueof streets in which burglars and thieves most congregated, and of lanes inwhich receivers of stolen property, forgers and all disreputable anddangerous characters were known to have their places of business or theirdens of hiding?
Or was there, leaving the profession of the lawyer out of the question,something in the peculiar surroundings of this man--something in therelations of character and connection which he had allowed to grow aroundhim, unfitting him for other amusements and researches in a city which hehad never before visited, and one supplying such marvellous temptations tothe sight-seer and the antiquarian? Or was he paying the penalty of thepast in an unrest which left him no peace except he found it in continualmotion and in the companionship and the study of those far more outlawed bystatute but not more in social position than himself? Strange questions,again, and questions which cannot be answered, at this time, by any thingmore than the mere suggestion.
Certain it is, whatever the motive, that Westminster Abbey, with its everystone sacred to the memory of the great dead, seemed to present noattractions to him, commensurate with those of Seven Dials, sacred to everyphase of poverty and villany; that the Houses of Parliament were ignored infavor of St. Giles and Bermondsey, noted for debates of a very differentcharacter from those heard before the occupant of the Woolsack and theSpeaker of the Commons; and that (this seeming so peculiarly strange in alawyer of admitted character and power) even the Lord Chancellor, renderingone of those decisions calculated to affect not only the laws of propertyin England but the whole legal system wherever the English language wasspoken, seemed to have far less attention paid to him or his dicta, thanwas given to some gownless libel on the practice of criminal law, who couldpoint out the habits and haunts of Burly Bill, the noted burglar whom hehad lately saved from transportation by proving that he was in threedifferent places at once, and neither of them the spot where the crime wascommitted,--or Snivelling Sall, reputed to be in the near companionship ofthe most successful utterer of forged notes who had so far escaped theclutches of the detective birds of prey. Night and day, during all thosetwo weeks, he seemed to eat hastily and to sleep only as if sleep was asecondary necessity of nature, to be thrown overboard whenever someall-absorbing thought should make continual wakefulness necessary.
Then the fancy (might it not be called madness?) seemed to change. He hadeither exhausted the crime of London or he had skimmed that compound untilthere was no novelty of rich villainy remaining. Without having examinedone work of art or one antiquarian curiosity (so far as could be known),and certainly without having made one effort to find a footing in thatsociety for which education and past associations would so well have fittedhim,--he flitted away from London and the name of Carlton Brand was to befound inscribed on the books of one of the leading hotels at Manchester.And what did he there? Precisely what he had been doing in London, itappeared--nothing less and nothing more. Alternately in conversation withone of the detective force or with some one of the wretches whom thedetective force was especially commissioned to bring to justice--theManchester looms (not yet _all_ stopped by the dearth of cotton and the"fratricidal war" in America) presented no more charm to him than had beenafforded by the high-toned and rational attractions of the metropolis. Attimes dressed with what seemed a studied disregard of the graces of person,and scarcely ever so arraying himself that he would have dreamed ofpresenting himself in such a guise in the midst of any respectable circleat home--two or three days ran him through the criminal life of Manchester.Then away to Birmingham, and there--but why weary with repetition when asucceeding fact can be so well indicated by one that has preceded it? Thesame unsettled and apparently aimless life--if not aimless, certainly withtendencies the most singular and unaccountable. Thence to Bristol, and fromBristol to Liverpool. From Liverpool, with flying haste the whole length ofthe island and over the border to Edinburgh, paying no more attention,apparently, to the scenes of Scottish song and story by which he dashed,than might have been necessary to remember the cattle-rievers andfree-booters who had long before furnished pattern for his lateassociates,--and seeing in the old closes and wynds frowned down upon byCalton Hill and the Castle, only retreats in which robbers could takerefuge without serious risk of being unearthed. Then, strangely enough,away southward again to Dover, with a passage-ticket for Calais taken butcountermanded before use, indicating that Paris had been in view but thatsome sudden circumstance had made a change in the all-the-whileinexplicable calculation. What was all this--the question arises oncemore--the following out of some clue on which the whole welfare of a lifewas believed to depend, or merely the vague and purposeless pursuit of somemelancholy fancy furnishing the very mockery of a clue through thatlabyrinth which borders the realm of declared madness?
The American had been something more than a month in England, and far awaybeyond his knowledge all the events before recorded as occurring toMargaret Hayley and her group of society in the White Mountains had alreadytaken place,--when one afternoon, late in August, the train that dashedinto Holyhead from Birmingham and Chester, by Anglesey and over the Menai,bore this exemplification of unrest as a passenger. Those who saw himemerge from the carriage upon the platform noticed the haste with which heappeared to step and the eagerness of his inquiry whether the train, whichhad been slightly delayed by an accident, was yet in time for the boat forDublin. She had been gone for more than an hour, and the black smoke fromher funnel was already fading away into a dim wreath driven rapidlynorthward before the sharp south-easter coming up the Channel. Night wasfast falling, with indications that it would be any thing rather than aquiet one on that wild and turbulent bit of water lying between the twoislands; and some of the old Welsh coastmen who yet lingered on the pier,when they saw the impatient man striding up and down and utteringimprecations on the delayed train, shrugged their shoulders with theremark, which he did not hear or did not choose to heed, that "_they_should be much obliged to any train that had kept them from taki
ng arocking in that cradle the night!"
Brow knit, head bent, tread nervous and almost angry, and manifesting allthe symptoms of anxiety and disappointment, the American traversed thewharf, his tall form guarded against the slight chill of the summer eveningon the coast by a coarse gray cloak which he drew closely around him as hewalked, thus adding to the restless stateliness of his appearance. At oneof his turns he was sufficiently disengaged to see a man of middle height,dressed in a somewhat dashing civilian costume, standing at a littledistance up the pier and conversing with two or three of the coastmen. Oneof the latter was pointing towards himself; and the moment after thestranger approached with a bow. He was a young man of twenty-five orthereabouts, side-whiskered and moustached, decidedly good-looking, withquite as much of the Irishman as the Englishman in his face, and seemed atall points a gentleman--more, that much rarer combination, especially onthe soil of the mother island, a frank, clever fellow!
"They tell me, sir," said the stranger, "that you were one of thepassengers on that delayed train, and that you manifest some disappointmentat missing the Dublin boat."
"They are entirely correct, sir," answered the American, returning the bow."I was very anxious, for particular reasons, to be in Dublin to-morrow; andin fact the whole object of my visiting Ireland at all, just now, may veryprobably be defeated by the accident that brought in the train that halfhour too late."
He spoke in a tone very earnest and not a little agitated. The otherremarked the fact, but he thought himself too good a judge of character tosuspect, as some other persons under similar circumstances might have done,that the anxious man was a hunted member of the swell-mob or a criminal ofsome other order, who thought it politic to get off English soil as soon aspossible. He determined, at the second glance, that he had to do with agentleman, and proceeded with the words that he had evidently intended tosay on first accosting the delayed passenger.
"You have made no arrangements for getting over, I suppose?"
"None, whatever!" answered the American. "How can I, until the boat ofto-morrow, when--when it may be too late altogether for my purpose? I waswalking off my disappointment, a sort of thing that I have been more orless used to all my life!" and the other noticed that he seemed to sighwearily--"walking it off before going to find a hotel and lying awake allnight, thinking of where I ought to have been at each particular hour."
"Well," said the stranger, "I had a motive not personal to myself, inaccosting you, or I should not have taken the liberty. I am Mr. HenryFitzmaurice, one of the London correspondents of the Dublin _Evening Mail_.I believe that I am not mistaken in supposing that I am speaking to anAmerican?"
"Not at all mistaken!" answered the American, pleased with a frankness somuch more like that of his native land than he had been in the habit ofmeeting during his short sojourn abroad. "I am called Mr. Brand--CarltonBrand, and on ordinary occasions I am a lawyer of the city ofPhiladelphia."
"That little matter over, which I should not have been able to manage underhalf an hour had I been a pure John Bull instead of two-thirds Irishman,"said the man who had introduced himself as Fitzmaurice, in a vivaciousmanner very well calculated to put the other at his ease--"now, not beingeither of us members of the Circumlocution Office, we will get at the gistof the matter at once. I am going over to Ireland to-night, or at least Iam going to make a start in that direction, and I believe that I can manageto secure you a passage if you will accept one."
"Certainly, and with many thanks, but how?" was the reply.
"Well, I am not so sure about the thanks," said Fitzmaurice, in the samepleasant tone which had before won his companion. "It is going to be a wildnight on the Channel, if I am any judge of weather, and I have crossed itoften enough to begin to have some idea. But I _must_ cross, and so mustyou, if you can, as I understand you to say."
"I must, certainly, if any thing in the shape of a vessel does so," saidthe American. "But you have not yet told me--"
"No, of course not!" the newspaper man ran on. "Always expect an Irishmanto begin his story in the middle and tell it out at each end, and you willnot be far from the fact. Well, there are some despatches for the LordLieutenant that need to be across before noon to-morrow, as the Secretaryfor Ireland has an insane fancy, and a special train left London to makethe connection with the steamer that has just gone. I came in it, and withthe Queen's messenger,--with some matters that must reach the _Mail_ inadvance of the other Dublin papers. They have a little despatch-steamerlying just below, and the messenger telegraphed to fire her up, from one ofthe back stations, when he found the chances against him. In an hour shewill have a full head of steam, and before it is quite dark we shall beclear of the coast. I have no doubt that I can procure you a passage, andif you will step round with me to the wharf where she lies, I willcertainly try the experiment. Now you have it."
"And a very kind and generous thing I have at the same time!" exclaimed theAmerican, warmly.
"As I said before, I do not know about the generosity!" replied thecorrespondent, as they took their way around the warehouses that headed thepacket-wharf, towards the pier below, where the despatch-boat lay. "Thefact is that the Emerald is not much bigger than a yawl, and though she isa splendid little sea-boat and never has found any gale in which she couldnot outlive the biggest of the merchant steamers, she is very much of acockle-shell in the way of jumping about; and people who have anypropensity for sea-sickness, a thing a good deal worse than any ordinarykind of _death_, are very likely to have a little turn at it under suchcircumstances."
"I have never been very much at sea, but I believe that I am beyond thevulgarity of sea-sickness!" was the answer; and just then they reached thedespatch-steamer.
She was indeed a little thing, as compared with the steamers which theAmerican had been in the habit of seeing sent away on sea-voyages--very lowin hull, rakish in pipe and masts, looming black in the gathering dusk ofevening, and her bulwarks seeming so low as to present the same appearanceof insecurity against falling overboard that a landsman's eye immediatelyperceives in a first glance at a pilot-boat. The steam was already well upand hissing from her escape valves, while the black smoke rolled away fromher pipe as if it had a mission to cloud the whole port with soot andcinders.
A few words with the Queen's messenger and an introduction to the Captainof the little Emerald followed; and the correspondent of the _Mail_ had notoverrated his influence with either, for in ten minutes the lawyer wasbooked for a passage over, under government auspices. In half an hour morethe despatch-boat steamed away; and when the deep dusk of night fell toshut away the Welsh coast, while the half dozen officers and their twopassengers were trifling over a very pleasant supper with wines ofantediluvian vintage accompanying, the Emerald was well off the Head,tossing about like a cork in the sea that seemed to be every moment growingmore and more violent, but making fine weather through it all, flying likea race-horse, and promising, if every thing held, to land the messenger andher other passengers at Kingstown, at very near as early an hour in themorning as those touched the shore who had left Holyhead two hours beforeby the packet.
The American remained long on the deck, in conversation with the newspapercorrespondent, delighted with the cordiality of his manner and theextensive scope of his information, as he had before been with thegenerosity which supplied himself with a passage over at the moment ofdisappointment. The Hiberno-Englishman seemed to be equally pleased withhis new friend, whom he found all that he had at first believed--agentleman, and neither pickpocket nor madman. Mr. Fitzmaurice, still ayoung man and a subordinate, had never been in America, but he hadsomething more than the ordinary newspaper stock of information aboutcountries lying beyond sea, and he had the true journalist's admirationfor the young land that has done more for journalism within fifty yearsthan all the other countries of the world through all the ages. He listenedwith pleasure to the descriptions which the lawyer was equally able andwilling to impart, of the modes in which the news-gathering operations oft
he leading American newspapers were carried on, and especially of thereckless exposures of correspondents on the battle-fields of the great war,which have all the while exhibited so much bravery and so stupendous aspirit of enterprise, combined with a lack of judgment equally injuriousand deplorable.
Mr. Fitzmaurice, on his part, resident in London during all the period ofour struggle, necessarily present at most of the Parliamentary debates inwhich the good and ill feeling of Englishmen towards the United States havebeen shown in such unfavorable proportions--acquainted with most of theleading public men of the kingdom, and with an Irishman's rattle making theconveying of his impressions a thing of equal ease and pleasure,--he hadmuch to say that interested the Philadelphian; and it would have beennotable, could he have been fairly behind the curtain as to the characterand movements of the other, to mark how the man who during two weeksresidence in London had never stepped his foot within the ParliamentHouses, could drink in and digest, from another's lips, the story of thedebates which he might so easily have heard first-handed with his own ears!
But as the newspaper man could know nothing of this, enough to say that theconversation was a pleasant one, and that hours rolled away unheeded in itscontinuance, while the little Emerald skimmed over and plunged through therough waves of the Irish Channel, and while those waves grew heavier, andthe sky darker, and the wild south-easter increased every hour in theviolence with which it whistled through the scant rigging and sent the capsof the waves whirling and dashing past the adventurous little minnow ofthe steam-navy, to fall in showers of foamy spray far to leeward.
It was past midnight when the young men, so strangely thrown together, sodifferent in position and pursuit, but so pleasantly agreeing in all theamenities of social intercourse,--began to feel the demands of sleepovermastering the excitement of the situation, left the deck and went belowto the berths in the little cramped cabin which had been prepared for them.The Queen's messenger had already retired and was sleeping so soundly inhis four-by-seven state-room, with his despatches under his pillow, thatnothing less than the going to pieces of the steamer or an order to starton a new journey could possibly have woke him. To such men, ever flyingfrom one port to another, by sea and by land, bearing the lives ofindividuals and often the welfare of whole peoples in their hands, with nomore knowledge of what they bear than has the telegraph wire of the messagethat thrills along it--to such men, habituated to excitement, hurry andexposure, that excitement really becomes a sort of second nature; and theart of sleeping on the ground, on a board, bolt upright in a chair or evenin the saddle, is one of the accomplishments soonest learned and lastforgotten. What are storms to them or to that other class to whichreference has before been made--the rough Ariels of the newspaper Prospero?Nothing, except they cause hindrance! What is even the deepest personalperil by sea or land? Nothing, except because in putting a sudden period tothe existence of the messenger it may interfere with the delivery of hisall-important despatches!
So slept the Queen's messenger, and so, after a time, in their narrowberths, slept the American and his new-made friend. Once falling away intoslumber, the very motion of the vessel made that slumber more intense andstupefying, old Mother Nature rocking her children somewhat roughly in the"cradle of the deep." And of what dreamed they? Who knows? Perhaps thehandsome and vivacious young Anglo-Irishman of the girl whose miniature hehad accidentally displayed to the eyes of the other, filling the back caseof his watch,--not yet his wife, but to be so some day when talent andenergy should bring their recompense and fortune shower her favors a littlemore liberally upon him. Perhaps the Philadelphia lawyer of wrongs andshames in his native land, of the apparently mad quest which he seemed tobe urging, and of possible coming days when all errors should be repaired,and the great stake of his life won beyond a peradventure.
How long the lawyer had slept he knew not, when some change in the motionof the boat produced the same effect on his slumbers that is said to bewrought on the sleeping miller by the stoppage of the splashing water-wheeland the rumbling burr-stones. He had slept amidst the violent motion: hepartially woke when there was a momentary cessation of it. In an instantafter the vessel seemed to be struck one tremendous blow that sent a shiverthrough every plate and rivet of her iron hull--through every board andstanchion of her cabin-work. There are men who can remain undisturbed bysuch a sensation on shipboard, but the American was by no means one ofthem; and the fumes of sleep, partially dissipated before, rolled awayalmost as suddenly as morning mists before a brisk north-wester. He wasbroad awake to feel a hand grasping him by the shoulder, and opened hiseyes to see Fitzmaurice standing by the berth and holding the joiner-workwith one hand to support himself against the fearful lurches of the vessel,while he had employed the other in arousing the apparently slumbering man.
"Get up and come out at once!" he said, his voice hoarse and agitated.
"What has happened?" asked the American, springing upright in his berth andpreparing to leap from it as men will do when such unpleasant announcementsare made. He seemed to know, intuitively and without any instruction fromthe shock which had just startled him, that some marked peril must havesent the journalist down to arouse him in that melodramatic manner.
"Why, we are in danger, I suppose--serious danger!" was the reply. "Do younot feel the change in the motion of the boat? We are in the trough of thesea, without steam, and as near as I can make out through the mist, drivingon the Irish coast with more rapidity than we bargained for!"
"Heavens!" was the very natural exclamation in reply, as the Americanmanaged with some difficulty to throw on the one or two articles ofclothing of which he had divested himself.
"I suppose that it is a bad job," the journalist continued, "and what justnow makes me feel peculiarly bad about it is the fact that I was the meansof inducing you to come on board, and that if any thing serious shouldhappen--"
"Hush! not a word of that!" said the lawyer, appreciating fully thatchivalrous generosity which after conferring a great favor could take blameto itself for any peril growing out of that favor. "Hush! You have treatedme, Mr. Fitzmaurice, with great kindness, and I hope you will believe meman enough not to misunderstand our relative positions in any thing thatmay occur."
Fitzmaurice, who seemed to be relieved by the words, but who certainly waslaboring under an amount of depression not incident alone to any peril inwhich he stood personally involved,--grasped his hand with something morethan the ordinary pressure of brief acquaintance. The motion of the boat,alternately a roll and then a heavy plunge, had now become absolutelyfearful, intermingled with occasional repetitions of that crashing blowwhich had started the American from his slumber; but holding fast of eachother and of various substantial objects that fell in their course, the twoyoung men reached the companion way and the deck, the journalist detailingmeanwhile, in hasty and broken words, what he knew of the extent of thedifficulty in which they were involved.
Up to fifteen or twenty minutes before, the little Emerald, a capitalsea-boat but possessed of but a single engine (which description of singleengine boats, by the way, should never be allowed to make voyages by opensea, except under the especial pilotage of one Malthus), had been makinggood weather, though the blow had increased to a gale and the waves of theIrish Channel increased to such size that they seemed to be opposed to theUnion and determined to make an eternal severance of the two islands.Fitzmaurice had himself awoke about an hour before, and gone upon deckbecause unable to sleep longer; and he had consequently become aware, alittle before the American in his berth did so, of an accident to thevessel. One moment of cessation of the plunging roll with which she hadbeen ploughing ahead of the waves breaking on her larboard quarter--amoment of almost perfect stillness, as if the little vessel lay moored insome quiet haven--then a sudden veering round and that terrible crash andshock of the waves under the counter, the wheel, and along the whole side,which told that she was lying helpless in the trough of the sea, a marineSamson as thoroughly disabled as if she had
been shorn of all her strengthat once by the shears of one of the Fates. A word from one of the officers,the moment afterwards, had told him of some disarrangement of the engine,consequent on the severe strain of the heavy sea upon the boat; and he hadthen been left to study out for himself the amount of peril that might beinvolved, and to observe the coolness with which officers and men devotedthemselves to a task which might or might not be successful--which mightterminate at any moment in one of those terrible seas breaching the littlevessel and foundering her as if she had indeed been nothing but ayawl-boat! It was at this stage that he had come down and wakened hisfriend of a few hours, feeling some responsibility for his safety (as wellas a presentiment with regard to him which he by no means expressed inwords), and leaving the Queen's messenger to pursue his dreamless sleepuntil it should end in Kingstown harbor or at the bottom of "Davy Jones'locker."
By the time all this had been expressed in one tenth the number of wordshere employed, they had reached the deck, and certainly the prospect therewas any thing but one calculated to reassure either. The Emerald wasrolling wheel-houses under, in the trough of the sea, but so farmysteriously relieving herself through the scuppers as it seemed impossiblethat she should do. Two men were at the wheel, but they stood necessarilyidle. Forward were half a dozen men, holding on to keep from goingoverboard at the first lurch. Even above the roar of the storm could beheard the sharp clink of hammers coming up from the engine-room and eachsounding yet one pulse-beat of Hope. The south-easter was howling withdemoniac fury, wailing through the rigging as if singing requiems for themall in advance, and driving before it the thin mists that shut away anyidea of the sky. By the light on deck and on the troubled expanse of watereastward it was evident that day was breaking; and it was through aknowledge of that fact and of the rate of speed at which they had beensteaming and driving partially before the wind all night, that Fitzmauricehad made his calculation expressed below, that they must be close on theIrish coast, a lee-shore, in such a blow, of no pleasant character.
Such was the situation--a deplorable one, as any one can readily perceivewho has ever seen its precise parallel; yet not entirely a hopeless one,for they might not be so close upon the coast as had been feared, and theengine might yet be thrown again into gear before the little vesselfoundered and in time to claw off from the danger lying to leeward.Fitzmaurice had seen the position before: the American saw it at oncethrough his own eyes and from the explanations given him by the journalist.The moment was not favorable for conversation, in that perilous motion,that roar of wind and wave and that suspense of mind; and the two youngmen held none except in a few words almost shouted to each other, but stoodfar aft on the larboard quarter, waiting calmly as two men with humaninstincts could be expected to wait for--what Heaven only knew! The face ofthe Anglo-Irishman was almost thoughtlessly calm, in spite of the anxietywhich he had so plainly expressed: that of the American was dark, his lipsset and his brow contracted, but there was no sign of shrinking and noindication of that basest passion, fear! Who could believe that the manstanding there in the gray light of morning and awaiting without oneapparent tremor of the muscles what might be an immediate and a painfuldeath, bore a name that had been so lately dishonored by the most abjectcowardice?
Suddenly there was a cry which has blanched many a cheek and made many alip tremble since Noah made his first sea-voyage in the Ark: "Land on thestarboard quarter!" followed by another and yet more startling call:"Breakers to leeward!"
Fitzmaurice and the American both turned instantly in the directionindicated, as was inevitable; and then they saw that the warning cry fromthe look-out was not the result of any illusion. The daylight was rapidlybroadening, the mist had for the moment driven away leeward; and apparentlynot more than a mile away rose a huge dark headland assuming theproportions of a mountain, while at its base and in the exact directiontowards which the doomed vessel was drifting, the sea was breaking inwreaths of white foam over ledges of rock which seemed to be already sonear that they must go grinding and crashing upon them before the lapse offive minutes. They felt that the water shoaled, too, for the plunging rollof the disabled steamer grew every moment more terrible, and just as thecry was given she was breached at the waist by a sea from which she did notimmediately clear herself. It only needed an eye that had ever scannedperil by sea and shore, to know at that moment that the Emerald and all onboard were as certainly doomed, in all human probability, as if the one hadbeen already broken up and scattered along the coast in fragments and theothers made food for fishes along the rocks of Ireland's Eye!
"The Hill of Howth and the rocks at the foot of it!" cried Fitzmaurice ashe recognized the position. "Now God help us, for they are dead to leeward,and if we have any accounts to settle we had better settle them rapidly!"
There was little agitation in his tone, now, and there was none in that ofthe American as he replied two words. They were the last he ever spoke, tomortal ear. May they have been true when he awoke from his long sleep, asthey were before he fell into it! Those two words were:
"I see!"
The two men were standing, as has been said, very near the larboardquarter. The Emerald, too, as has also been already said, was very low inthe bulwarks, as befitted her rake and her clipper appearance. Just as thelawyer uttered the two words, one of the officers of the steamer came aft,holding on amidst the terrible roll with something of the tenacity of acat, and took his place at the wheel. The mist had closed down again andthe Hill of Howth and the breakers were both for the moment shut away.
There was a jar--a creeping, trembling jar that seemed to run through thelittle steamer, from stem to stern-post, and yet no blow from the fiercewaves and no grinding of her keel upon the dreaded rocks. It waslife--motion--the beat of machinery once more! At that critical juncturethe engine had moved again for the first time, and if not safety there wasyet at least another struggle with destiny. The officer had dashed back tothrow the steamer up into the wind, the very instant that he felt the steamonce more rushing into the cylinder.
Then followed what cannot be described, because no one living can sayprecisely what occurred. Gathering way almost in an instant from the maddash of her wheels into the water, the little Emerald plunged forward asif for her life. She had but a hundred or two yards of vantage ground left,and seemed to know it. As she gathered way and the quick whirl of the wheelswept her head gradually round to the sea, one mighty wave, as if afraid ofbeing baulked of its prey and determined upon a final effort, struck herunder the weather bow and port wheel and sent her careening so low toleeward that the starboard wheel-house and even the starboard quarter-railwere under water. She rolled back again in an instant, triumphant over thegreat enemy, and thenceforward dashed away from the white breakers on herlee as if she had been merely tantalizing them with a futile prospect ofher destruction,--to make her way safely two hours afterwards intoKingstown Harbor and to land the Queen's messenger (who had just thenawoke) and the correspondent of the _Evening Mail_, only an hour later thanthe passengers by the packet had disembarked.
But she did not land the American. When the steamer rolled down with herstarboard quarter-rail under water, Fitzmaurice, standing nearest to thelarboard quarter, called out to his companion: "Look out and hold on!" thenclutched the bulwark with his own hands and obeyed his own injunction. Butwhen the steamer righted he was alone! Whether the lawyer had missedfooting and failed to grasp any point of support at the critical moment, orwhether he had lost head in the dizzying motion and gone over without evenknowing his danger,--certain it is that he had been swept overboard undercircumstances in which the whole British navy could have done no more tosave him than one child of ten years! Henry Fitzmaurice, missing him anddreading what had really occurred, thought that for one second he saw ahuman head, with the hair streaming up, away off in the yeasty water: butthat was all. And he said, bitterly, realizing all the painful facts of theevent, and taking to himself a thought of regret that was likely to clingto him while his generous he
art continued to beat:
"My God!--it was just as I thought! I have been the means of drowning thatsplendid fellow, after all!"
* * * * *
A few hours later, little Shelah, the barefooted daughter of one of thepoor fishermen whose hut stood at the foot of Howth, around northwardtowards Ireland's Eye--little Shelah, who had gone down over the rocks tothe beach when the worst of the storm was over, rushed back to the cabinwith terror in her eyes and broken words upon her lips:
"Oh, father!--there bees a man all dead and dhrownded down there by therocks beyant! And he bees so handsome and so much like a ralegintleman!--how could he dhround? Come down and see till him, father!"
The fisherman went down, and he and his rough mates removed the body anddid their humble and ineffectual all to resuscitate a body from which thebreath of life had long departed. Then the fisherman and his wife and hismates and little Shelah all mourned over the manly beauty that had beensacrificed, and wondered who he could possibly be, and where his kindredwould mourn for him. It was only when Father Michael, the good old priestof the parish was summoned, that they could form any nearer idea of thepersonality of the drowned man. Then they knew, for Father Michael couldread, as they could not, and he told them, from one of the cards in thepocket-book, that "his name had been Carlton Brand, and that he hadbelonged to Philadelphia, away over in America, where they used to be sofree and happy, but where they were fighting, now, all the time, about thenaygurs that didn't seem to him worth the throuble!"
They buried him, with such lamentations as they might have bestowed upon"one of their own," in consecrated ground in a little graveyard a mile awayfrom the Hill, westward; and Father Michael gave the dead man the benefitof a benevolent doubt as to his religion, with the remark that "there weregood Christians over in America, and this was one of them, maybe!" utteringa prayer for the repose of his soul that, if it bore him no nearer to theBeautiful Gate, certainly left him no farther away from it, while itfulfilled the behest of a simple and beautiful faith! This done, and a notedespatched to his favorite journal, giving the name and place of burial ofthe unfortunate man, Father Michael felt, as he had reason to feel, that hehad done his whole melancholy duty.
Whatever the quest of the American, it was ended: whatever had been thesecret of his unrest, it was not a secret to the eyes that thenceforthwatched over a destiny no longer temporal but eternal.
* * * * *
It has been suggested that Henry Fitzmaurice, the journalist, so strangelythrown into the company of the Philadelphian, so much pleased with hismanner and impressed by his conversation, and so suddenly separated fromhim by an accident which seemed to have something of his own handiwork inits production,--was likely to bear with him, during life, a regret born ofthat circumstance. Such being the case, it was eminently natural that ingiving a description of the accident to the despatch-steamer and the perilto her passengers, on the day following, in the _Mail_, he should havedwelt at some length on the sad fate of Mr. Carlton Brand, the American,alluded in terms of warm respect to the character which had briefly fallenunder his observation, and felicitates the far-away friends of theunfortunate man, on the fact already made public in the _Nation_, that thebody had been early recovered and received tender and honorable Christianburial.
The Coward: A Novel of Society and the Field in 1863 Page 23