Part 8 (2/2)

”Well, I might have known that,” said I, laughing at my own stupid question that yet had sense in it too. ”I should have asked you if the compa.s.s is to be trusted?”

”Ay, sir. He's a first-cla.s.s compa.s.s. There's nothen to make him go wrong. Yet it's astonis.h.i.+ng what a little thing will put a compa.s.s out. I've heered of a vessel that was pretty nigh run ash.o.r.e all along of the helmsman--not because he couldn't steer; a better hand never stood at a wheel; but because he'd been physicking of himself with iron and steel, and had taken so much of the blooming stuff that the compa.s.s was wrong all the time he was at the helm.”

”A very good story,” said I.

”I'm sure you'll forgive me, sir,” he proceeded, ”for asking if your young lady wears any steel bones about her--contrivances for hoisting her dress up astarn--crinolines--bustles--you know what I mean, Mr.

Barclay?”

”I cannot tell,” said I.

”I've heered speak of the master of a vessel,” he went on (being a very talkative man when he got into the ”yarning” mood), ”whose calculations was always falling to pieces at sea. Two and two never seemed to make four with him; ontil he found out that one of his lady pa.s.sengers every morning brought a stool and sat close agin the binnacle; she wore steel hoops to swell her dress out with, and the local attraction was such, your honour, that the compa.s.s was sometimes four or five points out.”

I told him that if the compa.s.s went wrong it would not be Miss Bella.s.sys' fault; and having had enough of the deck, I rejoined my sweetheart, and, in the cabin, with talking, reading, she singing--very sweetly she sang--we killed the hours till bed-time.

This was our third night at sea, and I was now beginning to think that instead of three or four days we should occupy a week, and perhaps longer, in making Mount's Bay; in which conjecture I was confirmed when, finding myself awake at three o'clock in the morning, I pulled on my clothes and went on deck to take a look round, and found the wind a light off-sh.o.r.e air, the stars s.h.i.+ning, and the _Spitfire_, with her canvas falling in and out with sounds like the discharge of small arms, rolling stagnantly upon a smooth-backed run of swell lifting out of the north-east, but with a slant in the heave of it that made one guess the impulse which set it running was fair north.

I was up again at seven o'clock, with a resolution to let the weather shape my decision as to sticking to the vessel or going ash.o.r.e, and was not a little pleased to find the yacht making good way with a brilliant breeze gus.h.i.+ng steady off her starboard bow. The heavens looked high with fine weather clouds, prismatic mare-tails for the most part, here and there a snow-white, swelling shoulder of vapour hovering over the edge of the sea.

Caudel told me we were drawing well on to Portland, but that the wind had headed him, and he was off his course, so that, unless he put the yacht about, we should not obtain a sight of the land.

”No matter,” said I, ”let us make the most of this slant.”

”That's what I'm for doing, sir. My principle is, always make a free wind, no matter what be the air that's ablowing. Some men's for ratching with the luff of their fore and aft canvas rounding in aweather, so cleverly do they try to split the eye of the breeze. I'm for sailing myself,” and he cast a glance up at the rapful canvas, following it on with a look at Jacob Crew, who was suddenly gnawing upon his quid at the tiller, as though to keep him in mind by the expression of his eye of injunctions previously delivered.

The greater part of this day Grace and I spent on deck, but nothing whatever happened good enough to keep my tale waiting whilst I tell you about it. Strong as the off-sh.o.r.e breeze was, there was but little sea, nothing to stop the yacht, and she ran through it like a sledge over a snow plain, piling the froth to her stem-head and reeling off a fair nine knots as Caudel would cry out to me with an exultant countenance of leather every time the log was hove. He talked of being abreast of the _Start_ by three o'clock in the morning.

”Then,” said I to my sweetheart, ”if that be so, Grace, there will be but a short cruise to follow.”

At this she looked grave, and fastened her eye with a wistful expression upon the sea over the bows as though Mount's Bay lay there, and as though the quaint old town of Penzance, with its long esplanade and rich flanking of green and well-tilled heights, would be presently showing.

I read her thoughts and said, ”I have never met Mrs. Howe, but Frank's letters about her to me were as enthusiastic as mine were about you to him. He calls her sweetly pretty. So she may be. I know she is a lady; her connections are good; I am also convinced by Frank's description that she is amiable; consequently, I am certain she will make you happy and comfortable until--” and here I squeezed her hand..

”It is a desperate step, Herbert,” she sighed.

Upon which I changed the subject.

There was a n.o.ble flaring sunset that evening. The crimson of it was deep and thunderous; the wild splendour was rendered portentous by an appearance as of bars of cloud stretched horizontally across, as though they railed in the flames of a continent on fire. All day long the wind had been heading us a little off our course, which by magnetic compa.s.s was about W.S.W., and this magnificence of sunset at which Grace and I continued to stare with eyes of admiration and wonder, neither of us having ever seen the like of the red and burning glory that overhung the sea, stood well up on the starboard bow. The Channel waters ran to it in a dark and frothing green till they were smitten by the light, when they throbbed in blood for a s.p.a.ce, then flowed in dark green afresh, hardening into a firm, cold, darkly green horizon.

A small screw steamer, with her funnel sloping almost over her stern, and her greasy poles of masts resembling fibres of gold in the sunset, was bruising her way up Channel with a frequent c.o.c.k of her bow or stern which made one wonder where the sea was that tossed her so.

There was nothing else in sight, and by the time she vanished the last rusty tinge of red had perished in the west, and the loneliness of the sea came like a sensible quality of cold into the darkening twilight.

”How desolate the ocean looks on a sudden!” said Grace.

I thought so too as I glanced at the ashen heads of the melting billows and up aloft at the sky, where I took notice of an odd appearance of vapour, a sort of dusky smearing, as it were--a clay-like kind of cloud, as though rudely laid on by a trowel--I cannot better express the uncommon character of the heavens that evening. Here and there a star looked sparely and bleakly down, and in the west there was a paring of moon, some day or two old, s.h.i.+ning and crystalline enough to make the dull gleam of the stars odd as an atmospheric effect.

But the breeze blew steady; there was nothing to disturb the mind in the indications of the barometer; hour after hour the little s.h.i.+p was swarming through it handsomely, and we were now drawing on much too close to Mount's Bay (albeit this evening we were not yet abreast of the _Start_) to pause because of a thunder-coloured, smoking sunset, and because of a hard look of sky that might yield to the stars before midnight and discover a wide and cloudless plain of luminaries.

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