Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  But something, he did not know what, kept unconsciousness at bay; something that in comparison with his splitting head and sickening qualms was a slight, yet a growing discomfort. To escape it, and to relieve his aching hips, he rose on his elbow and with an exclamation of disgust he turned over. He found no relief; on the contrary, he awoke, shivering, to the fact that he was wet and chilled to the bone. The close air, reeking with an odour noisome to him at the moment, turned his stomach, and he sat up, and leant his head on his hand. He looked dizzily about him.

  A second later he staggered to his feet, staring with incredulous eyes at the floor of the cabin. Things were afloat, nay, it was all afloat; and through the shallow flood that covered the boards rose here and there a stream of bubbles.

  For the space of half a minute, Joe, propping himself against a bunk, eyed the phenomenon stupidly. His first notion was that the horrors, of which he had had one experience, had taken on a new shape. But even while he glowered at the water it seemed to rise, and the truth broke on his bemused senses. With a hoarse cry he splashed to the door, dragged it open with difficulty, and in a panic he scrambled up the companion. He gained the deck, he looked wildly round him in search of the watch. He saw no watch. There was no living creature on deck. But he saw enough and too much. He saw that, motionless as the brig lay, the sea was chopping briskly about her under a rising breeze, and he sprang to the port quarter and looked over.

  One glance confirmed his fears. A second look he cast at the Lively Peggy, swaying gently at her moorings, the length of two cables away. Then he raised his voice and yelled, his headache and his qualms alike forgotten. He reeled, still shouting, to the starboard gunwale — no, there was no boat there either. Hurling shrill cries through the grey morning stillness, he ran to the fo’c’sle, and dropped into it. Here there was but a splash of water on the planks, but he had seen too much to be deceived. He tore the nearest sleeper from his bunk. “Turn out!” he screamed. “Turn out, you swabs!” He seized another by the hair, and shook him. “Turn out! Turn out! The brig’s sinking! The brig’s sinking, you drunken pigs!”

  “What the blazes—”

  “I tell you the brig’s sinking!” Joe repeated, desperately shoving the resisting seaman to the ladder. “There’s no boat, and I can’t swim. She’s down a’most to the chains now!”

  The man swore at him, struck at him, thought him mad. But Joe persisted. He dragged out another; he pushed them, angry and furious as they were, on deck. There a single glance over the side was enough, and three panic-stricken voices bawled across the grey waters. “Ahoy, there! Ahoy, the Peggy! Help! We are sinking!” they screamed.

  Three other men staggered up, sleep in their eyes. For them, too, a glance was enough. The brig was low in the water and sinking. The sounding-rod, hastily dropped, showed so many feet of bilge that pumping, if they had had the strength, was useless. Still, “Haul out those Frenchies!” one cried. “Set them to the pumps and—”

  “Set them to your grandmother!” Joe retorted bitterly. “They’ve gone and taken the boats — they’re half-way across with this wind, damn them! And scuttled her, you thundering swabs, while you snored!”

  “Ay, and broached the top tier o’ casks!” a seaman muttered, sniffing the brandy that scented the morning air. The main body of the French crew had been removed, but those who had been left, having escaped from the part of the hold in which they had been confined, had made a job of it.

  Cursing furiously, the men raised their voices together. But to no effect. Not a head showed above the bulwarks of the Peggy, and it was plain that there, too, the handful left on board, had made free with the liquor. No help was to be expected from them. Desperate, two of the men bunged an empty cask and reeved a line about it, while others sought for loose gratings and began hurriedly to lash them together — but without ceasing to shout. Oaths of anger at their own folly flew like hail, for all saw that, though they might save themselves, the prize was doomed and there would be a heavy reckoning to pay. But first to save themselves, for, sailor-like, not a man could swim, and the pale misty water, heaving sullenly about them, was creeping up the brig’s side.

  Still the sleeping Peggy remained blind, deaf, and mute. She gave no sign; even her boats lay to landward of her and out of sight. The men strained their eyes, searching the Cove and the slope of the bluff. But the slumbering cottages that sprinkled the Cove might have been a hundred miles away for all the hope they gave. Budgen’s lay hidden from them by the hull of the Peggy.

  Yet it was from one of the cottages that help came. The men’s voices had grown hoarse with hailing, when one of them, looking shorewards, saw a man moving on the path that led to the Cove. As he descended towards the beach, his eyes alighted on the Belle Dame, and he seemed to be wondering if the alarm was a drunken freak. Then — and pretty quickly — the man appeared to grasp their plight, and to the watchers’ joy he started into activity. He ran across the shingle and pushed down a dingy. He hurried to the loft for sculls, and shoved off, plying one over the stem.

  For a space he was lost behind the bulk of the Peggy, and the men trembled lest he should board the privateer. If he did he might be too late, for with every moment the French brig wallowed more deeply. But apparently the man had grasped the need for haste, for two minutes later he came into sight rounding the stern of the Peggy and plashing over the ripples. He wore no more than a shirt and breeches, and “It’s young Bligh,” one exclaimed.

  “Ay, ’tis the Lieutenant!” a second agreed, and in haste to shift the blame they cursed the watch on the Peggy for drunken swine.

  Bligh twirled his boat round to come under the quarter. “Is it too late to do anything?” he shouted.

  “Ay, sir! We are but five.”

  “Scuttled?” He held his boat a few yards from the chains.

  “To be sure,” they cried, shamefaced. They tried to carry it off by cursing the Frenchies.

  “Are her money and papers on board?”

  “The skipper took the money!”

  He measured her depth with his eyes. “Then get her log!” he ordered. “He’s not taken that, I’ll be bound.” And as they hesitated, “Jump, men!” he added, “or, by the Lord, I don’t take you off!”

  They measured the risk, each loth to go below. But the habit of authority carried it, two of the men hurried to the cabin, the others turned and snatched up such possessions as they chose. Two minutes later Bligh took aboard, sinking his craft to the gunwale, five of the meekest sailormen that ever used the sea — and Joe. Nor was it too soon. The brig was sinking sluggishly, keeping an even keel and as little moved by the small sea that was running as if she had stood on the stocks. She was as good as lost and gone, the prize so hardly won, with her rich store of brandy and all that it meant of profit and pay and prize-money.

  Bligh looked darkly at the men, but said not a word until they had rowed him to the Peggy. Then “Get aboard and rouse them out!” he said sternly. “You’d all get six dozen if you sailed with me. If you value your skins, I’d advise you to get out of sight before this is known!”

  The men, ashamed to retort, hastened to do as they were bidden. Joe alone kept his seat, and with him for a crew Bligh went on towards the beach. “How did you come aboard?” he asked, eyeing Joe with distaste.

  Joe told him. “They’d all ha’ been drowned but for me,” he said proudly. He, at any rate, was not responsible.

  “And no loss!” the Lieutenant retorted. He was thinking for how small a fault he had suffered — in comparison with these! Yet a horror seized him, as with the pure air of the morning cooling his brow he reflected on the likeness between his case and theirs. He thought of Peggy, from whose side he had risen to look at the weather as seamen will, and looking had caught the faint sound of a distant hail. He thought of Peggy, her fair young face cradled on her white arm, and he swore once more to keep the vow that he had taken.

  Should he go up and tell Budgen? No, Budgen would hear the news soon enoug
h. Let him sleep while he might! Then he thought of the Rector and his concern in the prize, and it must be admitted that he laughed. Next to Budgen’s the Rector’s loss would be the gravest.

  He kept a backward eye on the brig, and as the boat touched the beach he uttered an exclamation. Joe, whose face was set that way, joined in it. Slowly, smoothly, with just one gentle swirl, the Belle Dame quivered, bowed, and sank. The flags at the peak hovered a few seconds above the surface, then they too sank beneath it, and were gone. Where she had floated the sea heaved awhile, smooth and grey and misty to the offing, broken only by the Peggy’s hull and her bare poles.

  The Lieutenant groaned. He was a seaman, and no seaman could view that sight unmoved.

  CHAPTER XIV

  NEWS of the catastrophe, favoured by Joe, was not long, we may be sure, in reaching the town. It sped abroad, indeed, like wild-fire in stubble. Within twenty minutes the alarm was travelling down the main street of Beremouth. Early risers threw up windows, sluggards, aroused from their sweetest sleep, stared blankly at one another, hasty feet sounded on the cobbles. Within an hour the Cove and the headland were black with gazers. All Beremouth seemed to have deserted their pillows to stand and gape at the sea that heaved cold and vacant about the bereft privateer. Prize and fortune had sunk as if by magic, and with sorrow anger was largely mingled. That so much brandy should be wasted was an affliction that came home to many; they eyed the thankless waves that had swallowed it and could have wept! But bad as this was, it was no measure of the misfortune. That which lay beneath the waves, and, alas, lay so far below them that salvage was impossible, was now gold, doubly gilt. Men reckoned up the stout ship and the prize cargo, doubled the profit and the prize-money, and multiplied four-fold the wealth it would have brought to the little port. The tradesmen saw their visions of full tills and slates cleared of debts turn to thin air, and “Pity! pity!” quoth one laconically, and flattered himself that he had summed up in a phrase the lamentations of more wordy men.

  But, a Welshman and a foreigner, he did but touch the surface of the wound. It was in its pride that Beremouth suffered most sorely. It saw itself held up for a laughing-stock, and knew that never, never would the little town hear the end of that fat prize! Saltash would chuckle in its high places, Yealmpton would laugh aloud, Fowey and Falmouth hold their sides as they told the rich story of Beremouth and its Letter of Marque. Wherever they went the tale of Gotham and the men who planted a hedge about the nightingale would be told of them! Loud and deep were the curses spent on the French, on the drunken crew, on Ozias and Budgen. The heroes of yesterday were become the scapegoats of to-day, and no man spared them or pitied them.

  Had the watch that had slept on duty shown themselves, they would have been roughly handled. But they had taken Bligh’s advice, slipped ashore, and hidden themselves, in fear, it was said, not so much of Budgen as Ozias. Of Ozias strange tales were told. It was rumoured that, roused with difficulty and confronted with the fact, he had called for a stupendous measure of brandy, swallowed it at a draught, and sunk into the happy insensibility from which he had been dragged. Of Budgen darker stories were told, and though all that was said of him did not pass for gospel, it was agreed that he had been seized with the rope round his neck, and that he now lay in a darkened room held down by four strong seamen. The more morbid gazed hungrily at the windows of his house, while others wondered with gusto what the Rector would say to it, and added that they would not for a fortune be in Budgen’s shoes when they met.

  Of all concerned, young Bligh alone, it was allowed, came well out of it. He had saved the watch — though that, perhaps, was a pity. And it was whispered that he had warned Budgen of the danger of leaving the Frenchmen on board. And but for the antipathy which the longshoreman of that day felt for the Service — an antipathy that the work of the press-gang continually fed — he would have been a hero. As it was, when the crowd began to leave the Cove and stream back over the headland, more than one group raised a cheer as they passed the Blighs’ cottage, and if the Lieutenant had not laughingly held Peggy back, a fair face blushing with pride would have beamed its thanks from the window. There, at any rate, was a happy heart that day.

  In the upshot the part that Bligh had played did not go without its reward. Budgen took an odd and certainly an unexpected line. Of the sufferers by the disaster he was the greatest. He had seen himself for a few intoxicating hours freed from embarrassment and raised above care. He awoke to find himself the poorer by his share of the cost of the cruise, his debt increased, and his creditor justly incensed with his management. The effect on a morose man might have been foreseen, yet it took people by surprise. He turned ugly, as his neighbours said. He took refuge in a sullen determination to do nothing. He set himself to spite the Rector at all costs. He would not borrow more, he would not refit the Peggy, he would hear of no more cruises, he would only sit and sulk at home, his door closed to all, and the black dog on his back. He would do nothing — with one exception.

  He took back Charles Bligh. Informed by this time why the Rector had been anxious to get rid of the young man, whose presence in the place was a continual reminder of his daughter’s disgrace, Budgen re-engaged him in open defiance of his patron, and hugged himself on the trick. He knew himself to be in the Rector’s power. Well, the Rector, d — n him, should not have it all his own way. He, too, should suffer.

  When Dr. Portnal heard this and that Bligh was again at work at the Cove, his vexation and wrath were hot enough to satisfy even Budgen. He sent for the boat-builder, and scolded, threatened, argued; but to no purpose. He might as well have argued with a stone wall. Budgen, glum and soured, allowed that his affairs were desperate. He did not deny that his only hope lay in another cruise — and the Rector was willing to make, and offered to make, a last advance for the purpose. But he was not to be moved. He would not hear reason. He would not lay his last stake on the table. He took a gloomy pleasure in repeating this and in thwarting the other. He’d run no more risk o’ blame, he said. “And Ozias won’t go afloat again, that’s sure,” he added.

  “He is not the only seaman in the world,” the Rector answered angrily.

  “Well, he be the only one for me, and the only one I trust.”

  “Then,” the Rector retorted, his wrongs rising before him, “you trust a man whose negligence has cost you dearly — and me!”

  “Then I don’t trust nobody, and that’s about it.”

  “But — but why employ the other man? He’s only an added cost to you — an expense, Budgen,” the Rector continued sternly, “that you cannot afford.”

  “‘Cause I can’t do my books without him!” Budgen rejoined. “Nor I won’t.” And that was his last word. Though Dr. Portnal, bringing all the terror of his brow into play, said more to the same effect, Budgen was not to be moved. He only repeated sullenly what he had said a dozen times before.

  So, while the excitement died away, and days stretched into weeks, the Lively Peggy lay stripped and idle at her moorings, and of Sunday evenings the Beremouth lads and lasses gathered along the churchyard wall, and gazing down at her, cracked nuts and ate gingerbread. To Budgen, who could not look through the diamond panes of his fuchsia-clad home without seeing her, swaying with the tide, she became almost as great an eye-sore as to the Rector had become the son-in-law, who every day was visible going to and from his humble work.

  For, rage as he might, the Rector could move neither the one nor the other. And he suffered. It was not only that he felt the man’s presence and that of the daughter who had so lowered herself, to be a disgrace to him, but he found in their neighbourhood a perpetual reminder of the fall that his pride and his belief in himself had sustained. Yet he had to put up with Bligh’s presence; he could not avoid him. There was no corner he turned that might not disclose him, no moment that he could hold himself free from the fear of his appearance. Take what care he might, they must meet. When this happened — and it happened about once a week — the two passed wit
hout speaking. The young man looked before him, a smile of amusement twinkling in his eyes. The elder tried to frown down his enemy, and to crush him under the weight of his displeasure, but failing to meet the other’s gaze, he was forced to pass on with a sense of defeat that recalled their encounter at the cottage and stung him almost to madness. In a long career of mastery it was his first check, and it was very bitter to him.

  He laid it at his daughter’s door, and, sad to say, he came near to hating her. She had never been a Portnal, he told himself; her notions had never been his! She had been false to her caste as well as to her duty. Yet for very shame he could not treat her as he treated the man. He could not ignore her if chance threw her in his way, and aware of this he considered long and carefully how he would deal with her, and he prepared himself. It is doubtful if Peggy did, but it would have availed her little if she had. When the meeting, on her side equally dreaded and desired, came about — when returning one day from the town with her poor shopping she saw her father, portly and formidable, descending the road towards her, and she knew that, prepared or not, she could not escape, the girl’s heart failed her. Her knees shook under her, the beating of her heart stifled her: she had to force herself to go on. But though, as they met, speech deserted her and she could only, clutching her parcel to her breast, meet his grim silence with piteous looks, she did find words at last.

  “Father, forgive me!” she cried — and what more could she have said, had she prepared herself?— “Oh, sir — forgive us, I beseech you!” And if they had not been in the public eye she would have fallen on her knees before him.

  But he was not melted. He looked at her with smouldering eyes as if he would learn whether poverty and hardship had altered her. “It is useless,” he said. “You have disgraced yourself, and me, and your sister. Forgiveness cannot wipe out the stain. You have taken your own road. You have chosen to sink yourself, and on the level you have sought you must live. We cannot raise you.”