Dead Men Tell No Tales

by E. W. Hornung

  DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES

  By E. W. Hornung

  CONTENTS

  Chapter I Love on the Ocean

  Chapter II The Mysterious Cargo

  Chapter III To the Water's Edge

  Chapter IV The Silent Sea

  Chapter V My Reward

  Chapter VI The Sole Survivor

  Chapter V I Find a Friend

  Chapter VI A Small Precaution

  Chapter VII My Convalescent Home

  Chapter VIII Wine and Weakness

  Chapter IX I Live Again

  Chapter X My Lady's Bidding

  Chapter XI The Longest Day of My Life

  Chapter XII In the Garden

  Chapter XIII First Blood

  Chapter XIV A Deadlock

  Chapter XV When Thieves Fall Out

  Chapter XVI A Man of Many Murders

  Chapter XVII My Great Hour

  Chapter XVIII The Statement of Francis Rattray

  CHAPTER I. LOVE ON THE OCEAN

  Nothing is so easy as falling in love on a long sea voyage, exceptfalling out of love. Especially was this the case in the days when thewooden clippers did finely to land you in Sydney or in Melbourne underthe four full months. We all saw far too much of each other, unless,indeed, we were to see still more. Our superficial attractions mutuallyexhausted, we lost heart and patience in the disappointing stratawhich lie between the surface and the bed-rock of most natures. My ownexperience was confined to the round voyage of the Lady Jermyn, in theyear 1853. It was no common experience, as was only too well knownat the time. And I may add that I for my part had not the faintestintention of falling in love on board; nay, after all these years,let me confess that I had good cause to hold myself proof against suchweakness. Yet we carried a young lady, coming home, who, God knows,might have made short work of many a better man!

  Eva Denison was her name, and she cannot have been more than nineteenyears of age. I remember her telling me that she had not yet come out,the very first time I assisted her to promenade the poop. My own namewas still unknown to her, and yet I recollect being quite fascinated byher frankness and self-possession. She was exquisitely young, and yetludicrously old for her years; had been admirably educated, chieflyabroad, and, as we were soon to discover, possessed accomplishmentswhich would have made the plainest old maid a popular personage on boardship. Miss Denison, however, was as beautiful as she was young, with thebloom of ideal health upon her perfect skin. She had a wealth of lovelyhair, with strange elusive strands of gold among the brown, that drownedher ears (I thought we were to have that mode again?) in sunny ripples;and a soul greater than the mind, and a heart greater than either, laysleeping somewhere in the depths of her grave, gray eyes.

  We were at sea together so many weeks. I cannot think what I was made ofthen!

  It was in the brave old days of Ballarat and Bendigo, when ship aftership went out black with passengers and deep with stores, to bounce homewith a bale or two of wool, and hardly hands enough to reef topsailsin a gale. Nor was this the worst; for not the crew only, but, in manycases, captain and officers as well, would join in the stampede to thediggings; and we found Hobson's Bay the congested asylum of all mannerof masterless and deserted vessels. I have a lively recollection of ourskipper's indignation when the pilot informed him of this disgracefulfact. Within a fortnight, however, I met the good man face to face uponthe diggings. It is but fair to add that the Lady Jermyn lost everyofficer and man in the same way, and that the captain did obey traditionto the extent of being the last to quit his ship. Nevertheless, ofall who sailed by her in January, I alone was ready to return at thebeginning of the following July.

  I had been to Ballarat. I had given the thing a trial. For the mostodious weeks I had been a licensed digger on Black Hill Flats; and I hadactually failed to make running expenses. That, however, will surpriseyou the less when I pause to declare that I have paid as much as fourshillings and sixpence for half a loaf of execrable bread; that my mateand I, between us, seldom took more than a few pennyweights of gold-dustin any one day; and never once struck pick into nugget, big or little,though we had the mortification of inspecting the "mammoth masses" ofwhich we found the papers full on landing, and which had brought thegold-fever to its height during our very voyage. With me, however, aswith many a young fellow who had turned his back on better things, themalady was short-lived. We expected to make our fortunes out of hand,and we had reckoned without the vermin and the villainy which renderedus more than ever impatient of delay. In my fly-blown blankets I dreamtof London until I hankered after my chambers and my club more than aftermuch fine gold. Never shall I forget my first hot bath on getting backto Melbourne; it cost five shillings, but it was worth five pounds, andis altogether my pleasantest reminiscence of Australia.

  There was, however, one slice of luck in store for me. I found the dearold Lady Jermyn on the very eve of sailing, with a new captain, a newcrew, a handful of passengers (chiefly steerage), and nominally no cargoat all. I felt none the less at home when I stepped over her familiarside.

  In the cuddy we were only five, but a more uneven quintette I defy youto convene. There was a young fellow named Ready, packed out forhis health, and hurrying home to die among friends. There was anoutrageously lucky digger, another invalid, for he would drink nothingbut champagne with every meal and at any minute of the day, and I haveseen him pitch raw gold at the sea-birds by the hour together. MissDenison was our only lady, and her step-father, with whom she wastravelling, was the one man of distinction on board. He was a Portugueseof sixty or thereabouts, Senhor Joaquin Santos by name; at first it wasincredible to me that he had no title, so noble was his bearing; butvery soon I realized that he was one of those to whom adventitioushonors can add no lustre. He treated Miss Denison as no parent evertreated a child, with a gallantry and a courtliness quite beautiful towatch, and not a little touching in the light of the circumstances underwhich they were travelling together. The girl had gone straight fromschool to her step-father's estate on the Zambesi, where, a few monthslater, her mother had died of the malaria. Unable to endure the placeafter his wife's death, Senhor Santos had taken ship to Victoria, thereto seek fresh fortune with results as indifferent as my own. He wasnow taking Miss Denison back to England, to make her home with otherrelatives, before he himself returned to Africa (as he once told me) tolay his bones beside those of his wife. I hardly know which of the pairI see more plainly as I write--the young girl with her soft eyes and hersunny hair, or the old gentleman with the erect though wasted figure,the noble forehead, the steady eye, the parchment skin, the whiteimperial, and the eternal cigarette between his shrivelled lips.

  No need to say that I came more in contact with the young girl. She wasnot less charming in my eyes because she provoked me greatly as I cameto know her intimately. She had many irritating faults. Like most youngpersons of intellect and inexperience, she was hasty and intolerant innearly all her judgments, and rather given to being critical in a crudeway. She was very musical, playing the guitar and singing in a stylethat made our shipboard concerts vastly superior to the average of theirorder; but I have seen her shudder at the efforts of less gifted folkswho were also doing their best; and it was the same in other directionswhere her superiority was less specific. The faults which are mostexasperating in another are, of course, one's own faults; and I confessthat I was very critical of Eva Denison's criticisms. Then she hada little weakness for exaggeration, for unconscious egotism inconversation, and I itched to tell her so. I felt so certain that thegirl had a fine character underneath, which would rise to noble
heightsin stress or storm: all the more would I long now to take her in handand mould her in little things, and anon to take her in my arms just asshe was. The latter feeling was resolutely crushed. To be plain, I hadendured what is euphemistically called "disappointment" already; and,not being a complete coxcomb, I had no intention of courting a second.

  Yet, when I write of Eva Denison, I am like to let my pen outrun mytale. I lay the pen down, and a hundred of her sayings ring in myears, with my own contradictious comments, that I was doomed so soonto repent; a hundred visions of her start to my eyes; and there is thetrade-wind singing in the rigging, and loosening a tress of my darling'shair, till it flies like a tiny golden streamer in the tropic sun.There, it is out! I have called her what she was to be in my heart everafter. Yet at the time I must argue with her--with her! When all mycourage should have gone to love-making, I was plucking it up to sail asnear as I might to plain remonstrance! I little dreamt how the ghost ofevery petty word was presently to return and torture me.

  So it is that I can see her and hear her now on a hundred separateoccasions beneath the awning beneath the stars on deck below at noonor night but plainest of all in the evening of the day we signalledthe Island of Ascension, at the close of that last concert on thequarter-deck. The watch are taking down the extra awning; they areremoving the bunting and the foot-lights. The lanterns are trailedforward before they are put out; from the break of the poop we watch thevivid shifting patch of deck that each lights up on its way. The starsare very sharp in the vast violet dome above our masts; they shimmer onthe sea; and our trucks describe minute orbits among the stars, for thetrades have yet to fail us, and every inch of canvas has its fill of thegentle steady wind. It is a heavenly night. The peace of God broods uponHis waters. No jarring note offends the ear. In the forecastle a voiceis humming a song of Eva Denison's that has caught the fancy of the men;the young girl who sang it so sweetly not twenty minutes since whosang it again and again to please the crew she alone is at war with ourlittle world she alone would head a mutiny if she could.

  "I hate the captain!" she says again.

  "My dear Miss Denison!" I begin; for she has always been severe upon ourbluff old man, and it is not the spirit of contrariety alone which makesme invariably take his part. Coarse he may be, and not one whom theowners would have chosen to command the Lady Jermyn; a good seaman nonethe less, who brought us round the Horn in foul weather without losingstitch or stick. I think of the ruddy ruffian in his dripping oilskins,on deck day and night for our sakes, and once more I must needs take hispart; but Miss Denison stops me before I can get out another word.

  "I am not dear, and I'm not yours," she cries. "I'm only aschool-girl--you have all but told me so before to-day! If I were aman--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. Ready this very afternoon!"

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

  "You mean when Ready asked him if we were out of our course? I mustsay I thought it was a silly question to put. It was the same the otherevening about the cargo. If the skipper says we're in ballast why notbelieve him? Why repeat steerage gossip, about mysterious cargoes, atthe cuddy table? Captains are always touchy about that sort of thing. Iwasn't surprised at his letting out."

  My poor love stares at me in the starlight. Her great eyes flash theirscorn. Then she gives a little smile--and then a little nod--morescornful than all the rest.

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

  I try to soothe her. I agree heartily with her disgust at the epithetsemployed in her hearing, and towards an invalid, by the irate skipper.But I ask her to make allowances for a rough, uneducated man, ratherclumsily touched upon his tender spot. I shall conciliate her presently;the divine pout (so childish it was!) is fading from her lips; thestarlight is on the tulle and lace and roses of her pretty eveningdress, with its festooned skirts and obsolete flounces; and I amwatching her, ay, and worshipping her, though I do not know it yet. Andas we 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'sthe 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 themen, 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 I,"that you would not answer when he addressed you at dinner."

  "I should think I wouldn't, after the way he spoke to Mr. Ready; and hetoo 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."

  I hear nothing plainer than her low but quick reply:

  "Mr. Cole, my father has been dead many; many years; he died before Ican remember. That man only married my poor mother. He sympathizeswith Captain Harris--against me; no father would do that. Look at themtogether now! And you take his side, too; oh! I have no patience withany of you--except poor Mr. Ready 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 I blamed myself as I fell topacing the weather side of the poop--and so often afterwards! So often,and with such unavailing bitterness!

  Senhor Santos and the captain were in conversation by the weather rail.I fancied poor old Harris eyed me with suspicion, and I wished he hadbetter cause. The Portuguese, however, saluted me with his customarycourtesy, and I thought there was a grave twinkle in his steady eye.

  "Are you in deesgrace also, friend Cole?" he inquired in his all butperfect English.

  "More or less," said I ruefully.

  He gave the shrug of his country--that delicate gesture which is donealmost entirely with the back--a subtlety beyond the power of Britishshoulders.

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

  He sighed, and I saw his delicate fingers forsake the cigarette theywere rolling to make the sacred sign upon his breast. He was alwayssmoking one cigarette and making another; as he lit the new one the glowfell upon a strange pin that he wore, a pin with a tiny crucifix inlaidin mosaic. So the religious cast of Senhor Santos was brought twice hometo me in the same moment, though, to be sure, I had often been struckby it before. And it depressed me to think that so sweet a child as EvaDenison should have spoken harshly of so good a man as her step-father,simply because he had breadth enough to sympathize with a coarse oldsalt like Captain Harris.

  I turned in, however, and I cannot say the matter kept me awake in theseparate state-room which was one luxury of our empty saloon. Alas? Iwas a heavy sleeper then.