The Tragedy of Ida Noble. William Clark Russell
this I was gently compelled into motion by the two seamen, who conveyed me to an after hatch and thence down into a little interior that glittered with mirrors, and that was luminous and fragrant besides with flowers. I was still so much dazed as hardly to be fully conscious of what I was doing. Sudden joy is as confounding as sudden grief, and the delight of this deliverance from my horrible situation was as disastrous to my wits (weakened by the fearful night I had passed through) as had been the shock to them when I found myself adrift in the boat on the previous evening. The two seamen quitted the cabin, leaving me seated at the table, but their place was immediately taken by the red-headed man, by the gentleman with the foreign accent, and a minute later by a third person, a short, square, hook-nosed, black-browed, inky-bearded fellow. They viewed me for a while in silence; one of them then called "Tom," and a negro boy stepped through a door at the foremost end of the cabin.
"Bring brandy and water; also some cold meat and white biscuit. Bring the brandy first."
Who spoke I did not know. A tumbler of grog was placed in my hand, but my arm trembled so violently that I was unable to raise the glass to my lips. Some one thereupon grasped my wrist and enabled me to drink, which I did greedily, muttering, as I recollect, a broken "Thank God! thank you, gentlemen," as I put the glass quivering upon the table.
"How long have you been in this plight?" inquired the red-headed man in a voice whose harshness and coarseness, half demented as I was, I remember noticing.
"Ask him no questions yet," exclaimed one of the others. "Let him have meat, dry clothes, and sleep, and he will rally. Ay! he will rally, for he has a lively look."
The effect of the brandy was magical. It clarified my sight as though some friendly hand had swept a cobweb from each eyeball. It filled my body with strong pulses, and enabled me to hold my head erect. But by this time the negro boy had reappeared with a plate of cold boiled beef and a dish of biscuit, and I fell to—eating with the animal-like rage of starvation. I devoured every scrap that was set before me, and then with a steady hand raised and drained a second glass of grog that had been mixed by the man with the foreign accent. And now I felt able to converse.
"Gentlemen," said I, making a staggering effort to bow to them, "I thank you from the bottom of my heart for rescuing me from a horrible death. I thank you gentlemen for this bitterly-needed refreshment."
"You are soaked to the skin," said the man with the foreign accent. "You will tell us your story when you are dry and comfortable. Captain Dopping, you can lend this poor man some dry linen and clothes?"
"Ay!" responded the other, in his coarse determined voice. "Are ye able to stand?"
"I think so," I replied.
I rose, but observing that I faltered, he came round to where I was swaying, grasped me by the arm and led me to a little cabin alongside the door through which the negro boy had emerged. In this cabin were two shallow bunks or sleeping-shelves, one on top of the other. The room was lighted by a circular port-hole, and by what is called a bull's-eye—a piece of thick glass let into the deck overhead. My companion rummaged a locker, and tossing a number of garments into the lower bunk, bade me take my pick and shift myself and then turn in, and, saying this in a harsh, fierce way, he withdrew.
I removed my wet clothes, and grateful beyond all expression was the comfort of warm dry apparel to my skin, that for more than twelve hours had been soaked with rain and steeped in brine. I then stretched my length in the lower sleeping-shelf, and, after putting up a prayer of gratitude for my deliverance, closed my eyes and in a few minutes fell asleep.
I slept until about three o'clock in the afternoon. On waking I found the interior bright with sunshine. I lay for a little, thinking and taking a view of the cabin. My faculties, refreshed by sleep, were sharp in me. I could remember clearly and realize keenly. The disaster which had befallen me was a great professional blow. It had deprived me of my ship, and robbed me of an appointment I had been forced to wait some tedious months to obtain. With the ship had gone all my clothes, all my effects, everything, in short, I possessed in the wide world, saving a few pounds which I had left in a bank at home. The Ocean Hanger was bound on a voyage that would keep her away from England for two years and a half, perhaps three years; so that for, let me say, three years all that I owned in the world, saving my few pounds, would be as utterly lost to me as though it had gone to the bottom.
While I thus lay musing, the door of the berth opened, and the red-headed man—Captain Dopping—entered. Having my eyes clear in my head now, I immediately observed that he was a freckled, red-haired, staring man, with big protruding moist blue eyes and scarlet whiskers; all of his front teeth but two or three were gone, and the gaps in his gums gave his face, when he parted his lips, the grin of a skull.
I got out of the bunk when he entered.
"How do you feel now?" said he, eying me in a hard, deliberate, unwinking way.
"Refreshed and recovered," said I.
He ran his gaze over my figure to observe what garments belonging to him I had arrayed myself in, then said, "What is your name?"
"James Portlack."
"What are you?"
"What was I, you must ask," said I, with a melancholy shake of the head. "Second mate of the bark Ocean Ranger," and I told him briefly of the abominable trick which the Yankee captain had played off on Captain Hoste, and which had resulted in leaving me adrift in the desperate and dying condition I had been rescued from.
"A cute dodge, truly," said he, without any exhibition of astonishment or dislike, nay, with a hint in his air of having found something to relish in the American's device. "It is what a Welshman would call 'clebber.' This is a yarn to tickle Don Christoval."
"Who is Don Christoval?" said I.
"He is Don Christoval del Padron."
"The owner of this schooner?"
He gave a hard smile, but returned no answer.
"What is the name of this vessel?" I asked.
"La Casandra."
"Where are you from?"
"Cadiz."
"To what port?" said I, with anxiety.
He gave another hard smile, and then, eying me all over afresh, exclaimed, "Come along on deck. Don Christoval and Don Lazarillo will be wanting to see you, now you're awake."
I asked him to lend me a cap, not knowing what had become of mine, and followed him through the small brilliant cabin into which I had been conducted by the two seamen. I had a quick eye, and took note of many things in a moment or two. The cabin was peculiarly furnished, that is, for a sea-going interior. It gleamed with hanging mirrors; the sides were embellished with pictures, such as might hang upon the walls of a room ashore; there were little sofas and arm-chairs, of a kind you might see in a drawing-room, but not in the cabin of a vessel, whether a pleasure-craft or not. In short, it was evident that a portion of the furniture of a house had been employed for fitting out this interior. But where the vessel herself showed, I mean the ceiling or upper deck, the sides, the planks left visible by the carpet—there all was plain and even rough, by which signs I might know that La Casandra was not a yacht, despite the shining of the mirrors and the gilt of the picture-frames, the rich carpet under foot, the crimson velvet sofas and chairs.
I followed Captain Dopping up the narrow companion-steps, and gained the deck. The rain was gone, the gloomy sky had rolled away down the western sea-line, and the afternoon sun shone gloriously in a sky of blue piebald with stately sailing masses of swollen cream-colored vapor, which studded the blue surface of the sea with island-like spaces of violet shadow. A pleasant breeze was blowing, and it was warm with the sunshine. The schooner was under all the canvas it was possible to spread upon her, and how fast she was sailing I might know by the white line of her wake. I had no eyes at the instant for anything but the horizon, the whole girdle of which I rapidly scanned with some wild silly notion in me of catching a sight of the cloths of the Ocean Ranger, that in searching for me might have been navigated some leagues