Mrs. Falchion

Chapter 3

A TALE OF NO MAN'S SEA

Inside the cabin Hungerford closed the door, gripped me by the arm, and

then handed me a cheroot, with the remark: "My pater gave them to me last

voyage home. Have kept 'em in tea." And then he added, with no appearance

of consecutiveness: "Hang the bally ship, anyhow!"

I shall not attempt to tone down the crudeness of Hungerford's language.

It contents me to think that the solidity of his character and his worth

will appear even through the crust of free-and-easy idioms, as they will

certainly be seen in his acts;--he was sound at heart and true as steel.

"What is the matter, Hungerford?" I asked lighting the cheroot.

"Everything's the matter. Captain, with his nose in the air, and trusting

all round to his officers. First officer, no good--never any use since

they poured the coal on him. Purser, ought to be on a Chinese junk.

Second, third, fourth officers, first-rate chaps, but so-so sailors.

Doctor, frivolling with a lovely filly, pedigree not known. Why, confound

it! nobody takes this business seriously except the captain, and he sits

on a golden throne. He doesn't know that in any real danger this swagger

craft would be filled with foolishness. There isn't more than one good

boat's crew on board--sailors, lascars, stewards, and all. As for the

officers, if the surgeon would leave the lovely ladies to themselves,

he'd find cases worth treating, and duties worth doing. He should keep

himself fit for shocks. And he can take my word for it--for I've been at

sea since I was a kid, worse luck!--that a man with anything to do on a

ship ought to travel every day nose out for shipwreck next day, and so

on, port to port. Ship-surgeons, as well as all other officers, weren't

ordained to follow after cambric skirts and lace handkerchiefs at sea.

Believe me or not as you like, but, for a man having work to do, woman,

lovely woman, is rocks. Now, I suppose you'll think I'm insolent, for I'm

younger than you are, Marmion, but you know what a rough-and-tumble

fellow I am, and you'll not mind."

"Well, Hungerford," I said, "to what does this lead?"

"To Number 116 Intermediate, for one thing. It's letting off steam for

another. I tell you, Marmion, these big ships are too big. There are

those canvas boats. They won't work; you can't get them together. You

couldn't launch one in an hour. And as for the use of the others, the

lascars would melt like snow in any real danger. There's about one decent

boat's crew on the ship, that's all. There! I've unburdened myself; I

feel better."

Presently he added, with a shake of the head: "See here: now-a-days we

trust too much to machinery and chance, and not enough to skill of hand

and brain stuff. I'd like to show you some of the crews I've had in the

Pacific and the China Sea--but I'm at it again! I'll now come, Marmion,

to the real reason why I brought you here. . . . Number 116 Intermediate

is under the weather; I found him fainting in the passage. I helped him

into his cabin. He said he'd been to you to get medicine, and you'd given

him some. Now, the strange part of the business is, I know him. He didn't

remember me, however--perhaps because he didn't get a good look at me.

Coincidence is a strange thing. I can point to a dozen in my short life,

every one as remarkable, if not as startling, as this. Here, I'll spin

you a yarn:

"It happened four years ago. I had no moustache then, was fat like a

whale, and first mate on the 'Dancing Kate', a pearler in the Indian

Ocean, between Java and Australia. That was sailing, mind you--real

seamanship, no bally nonsense; a fight every weather, interesting all

round. If it wasn't a deadly calm, it was a typhoon; if it wasn't either,

it was want of food and water. I've seen us with pearls on board worth a

thousand quid, and not a drop of water nor three square meals in the

caboose. But that was life for men and not Miss Nancys. If they weren't

saints, they were sailors, afraid of nothing but God Almighty--and they

do respect Him, even when they curse the winds and the sea. Well, one day

we were lying in the open sea, about two hundred and fifty miles from

Port Darwin. There wasn't a breath of air. The sea was like glass; the

sun was drawing turpentine out of every inch of the 'Dancing Kate'. The

world was one wild blister. There wasn't a comfortable spot in the craft,

and all round us was that staring, oily sea. It was too hot to smoke, and

I used to make a Sede boy do my smoking for me. I got the benefit of the

smell without any work. I was lying under the droop of a dingey, making

the Sede boy call on all his gods for wind, with interludes of smoke,

when he chucked his deities and tobacco, and, pointing, shouted, 'Man!

man!'

"I snatched a spy-glass. Sure enough, there was a boat on the water. It

was moving ever so slowly. It seemed to stop, and we saw something lifted

and waved, and then all was still again. I got a boat's crew together,

and away we went in that deadly smother. An hour's row and we got within

hail of the derelict--as one of the crew said, 'feelin' as if the

immortal life was jerked out of us.' The dingey lay there on the glassy

surface, not a sign of life about her. Yet I had, as I said, seen

something waved. The water didn't even lap its sides. It was ghostly, I

can tell you. Our oars licked the water; they didn't attack it. Now, I'm

going to tell you something, Marmion, that'll make you laugh. I don't

think I've got any poetry in me, but just then I thought of some verses I

learned when I was a little cove at Wellington--a devilishly weird thing.

It came to me at that moment like a word in my ear. It made me feel

awkward for a second. All sailors are superstitious, you know. I'm

superstitious about this ship. Never mind; I'll tell you the verses, to

show you what a queer thing memory is. The thing was called 'No Man's

Sea':

"In a minute I was beside him, and found he wasn't dead. Brandy brought

him round a little; but he was a bit gone in the head, and muttered all

the way back to the ship. I had unbuttoned his shirt, and I saw on his

breast a little ivory portrait of a woman. I didn't let the crew see it;

for the fellow, even in his delirium, appeared to know I had exposed the

thing, and drew the linen close in his fingers, and for a long time held

it at his throat."

"What was the woman's face like, Hungerford?" I asked.

He parried, remarking only that she had the face of a lady, and was

handsome.

I pressed him. "But did it resemble any one you had ever seen?"

With a slight droop of his eyelids, he said: "Don't ask foolish

questions, Marmion. Well, the castaway had a hard pull for life. He

wouldn't have lived at all, if a breeze hadn't come up and let us get

away to the coast. It was the beginning of the monsoon, and we went

bowling down towards Port Darwin, a crowd of Malay proas in our wake.

However, the poor beggar thought he was going to die, and one night he

told me his story. He was an escaped convict from Freemantle, Western

Australia. He had, with others, been taken up to the northern coast to do

some Government work, and had escaped in the dingey. His crime was

stealing funds belonging to a Squatting and Mining Company. There was

this extenuating circumstance: he could have replaced the money, which,

as he said, he'd only intended to use for a few weeks. But a personal

enemy threw suspicion on him, accounts were examined, and though he

showed he'd only used the money while more of his own was on the way to

him, the Company insisted on prosecuting him. For two reasons: because it

was itself in bad odour, and hoped by this trial to divert public

attention from its own dirty position; and because he had against him not

only his personal enemy, but those who wanted to hit the Company through

him. He'd filched to be able to meet the large expenses of his wife's

establishment. Into this he didn't enter minutely, and he didn't blame

her for having so big a menage; he only said he was sorry that he hadn't

been able to support it without having to come, even for a day, to the

stupidity of stealing. After two years he escaped. He asked me to write a

letter to his wife, which he'd dictate. Marmion, you or I couldn't have

dictated that letter if we'd taken a year to do it. There was no religion

in it, no poppy-c**k, but straightforward talk, full of sorrow for what

he'd done, and for the disgrace he'd brought on her. I remember the last

few sentences as if I'd seen them yesterday. 'I am dying on the open sea,

disgraced, but free,' he said. 'I am not innocent in act, but I was not

guilty of intentional wrong. I did what I did that you should have all

you wished, all you ought to have. I ask but this--and I shall soon ask

for nothing--that you will have a kind thought, now and then, for the man

who always loved you, and loves you yet. I have never blamed you that you

did not come near me in my trouble; but I wish you were here for a moment

before I go away for ever. You must forgive me now, for you will be free.

If I were a better man I would say, God bless you. In my last conscious

moments I will think of you, and speak your name. And now good-bye--an

everlasting good-bye. I was your loving husband, and am your lover until

death.' And it was signed, 'Boyd Madras.'

"However, he didn't die. Between the captain and myself, we kept life in

him, and at last landed him at Port Darwin; all of us, officers and crew,

swearing to let no one know he was a convict. And I'll say this for the

crew of the 'Dancing Kate' that, so far as I know, they kept their word.

That letter, addressed in care of a firm of Melbourne bankers, I gave

back to him before we landed. We made him up a purse of fifty

pounds,--for the crew got to like him,--and left him at Port Darwin,

sailing away again in a few days to another pearl-field farther east.

What happened to him at Port Darwin and elsewhere, I don't know; but one

day I found him on a fashionable steamer in the Indian Ocean, looking

almost as near to Kingdom Come as when he starved in the dingey on No

Man's Sea. As I said before, I think he didn't recognise me; and he's

lying now in 116 Intermediate, with a look on him that I've seen in the

face of a man condemned to death by the devils of cholera or equatorial

fever. And that's the story, Marmion, which I brought you to hear--told,

as you notice, in fine classical style."

"And why do you tell ME this, Hungerford--a secret you've kept all these

years? Knowledge of that man's crime wasn't necessary before giving him

belladonna or a hot bath."

Hungerford kept back the whole truth for reasons of his own. He said:

"Chiefly because I want you to take a decent interest in the chap. He

looks as if he might go off on the long voyage any tick o' the clock. You

are doctor, parson, and everything else of the kind on board. I like the

poor devil, but anyhow I'm not in a position to be going around with

ginger-tea in a spoon, or Ecclesiastes under my arm,--very good things.

Your profession has more or less to do with the mind as well as the body,

and you may take my word for it that Boyd Madras's mind is as sick as his

torso. By the way, he calls himself 'Charles Boyd,' so I suppose we

needn't recall to him his former experiences by adding the 'Madras.'"

Hungerford squeezed my arm again violently, and added: "Look here,

Marmion, we understand each other in this, don't we? To do what we can

for the fellow, and be mum."

Some of this looks rough and blunt, but as it was spoken there was that

in it which softened it to my ear. I knew he had told all he thought I

ought to know, and that he wished me to question him no more, nor to

refer to Mrs. Falchion, whose relationship to Boyd Madras--or Charles

Boyd--both of us suspected.

"It was funny about those verses coming to my mind, wasn't it, Marmion?"

he continued. And he began to repeat one of them, keeping time to the

wave-like metre with his cheroot, winding up with a quick, circular

movement, and putting it again between his lips:

I went to Charles Boyd's cabin, and knocked gently. There was no

response. I entered. He lay sleeping soundly--the sleep that comes after

nervous exhaustion. I had a good chance to study him as he lay there. The

face was sensitive and well fashioned, but not strong; the hands were

delicate, yet firmly made. One hand was clinched upon that portion of his

breast where the portrait hung.