Part 19 (2/2)
”Hold on!” roared the bo's'n.
Whether this was advice to the luckless animal, or a general adjuration to everybody and everything to be prepared for the worst, we know not; but instead of holding on, every one let go what he or she chanced to be holding on to at the moment, and made for a place of safety with reckless haste. The rhinoceros alone obeyed the order. It held on for a second or two in a most remarkable manner to the mainmast, but another lurch of the vessel cast it loose again; a huge billow rolled under the stern; down went the bow, and the brute slid on its haunches, with its fore legs rigid in front, at an incredible pace towards the galley.
Just as a smash became imminent, the bow rose, the stern dropt, and away he went back again with equal speed, but in a more sidling att.i.tude, towards the quarter-deck.
Before that point was reached, a roll diverted him out of course and he was brought up by the main hatch, from which he rebounded like a billiard ball towards the starboard gangway. At this point he lost his balance, and went rolling to leeward like an empty cask. There was something particularly awful and impressive in the sight of this unwieldy monster being thus knocked about like a pea in a rattle, and sometimes getting into att.i.tudes that would have been worthy of a dancer on the tightrope, but the consummation of the event was not far off. An unusually violent roll of the s.h.i.+p sent him scrambling to starboard; a still more vicious roll checked and reversed the rush and dashed him against the cabin skylight. He carried away part of this, continued his career, went tail-foremost through the port bulwarks like a cannon-shot into the sea. He rose once, but, as if to make sure of her victory, the s.h.i.+p relentlessly fell on him with a weight that must have split his skull, and sent him finally to the bottom.
Strange to say, the dog Neptune was the only one on board that appeared to mourn the loss of this pa.s.senger. He howled a good deal that night in an unusually sad tone, and appeared to court sympathy and caresses more than was his wont from Jim Welton and the young people who were specially attached to him, but he soon became reconciled, alas! to the loss of his crusty friend.
The storms ceased as they neared the sh.o.r.es of England. The carpenter and crew were so energetic in repairing damages that the battered vessel began to wear once more something of her former trim aspect, and the groups of pa.s.sengers a.s.sembled each evening on the p.o.o.p, began to talk with ever-deepening interest of home, while the children played beside them, or asked innumerable questions about brothers, sisters, and cousins, whose names were as familiar as household words, though their voices and forms were still unknown.
The weather was fine, the sky was clear; warm summer breezes filled the sails, and all nature seemed to have sunk into a condition so peaceful as to suggest the idea that storms were past and gone for ever, when the homeward-bound s.h.i.+p neared the land. One evening the captain remarked to the pa.s.sengers, that if the wind would hold as it was a little longer, they should soon pa.s.s through the Downs, and say good-bye to the sea breezes and the roll of the ocean wave.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN.
BOB QUEEKER COMES OUT VERY STRONG INDEED.
It is both curious and interesting to observe the mult.i.tude of unlikely ways in which the ends of justice are ofttimes temporarily defeated.
Who would have imagined that an old pump would be the cause of extending Morley Jones's term of villainy, of disarranging the deep-laid plans of Mr Larks, of effecting the deliverance of Billy Towler, and of at once agonising the body and ecstatifying the soul of Robert Queeker? Yet so it was. If the old pump had not existed--if its fabricator had never been born--there is every probability that Mr Jones's career would have been cut short at an earlier period. That he would, in his then state of mind, have implicated Billy, who would have been transported along with him and almost certainly ruined; that Mr Queeker would--but hold.
Let us present the matter in order.
Messrs. Merryheart and Dashope were men of the law, and Mr Robert Queeker was a man of their office--in other words, a clerk--not a ”confidential” one, but a clerk, nevertheless, in whose simple-minded integrity they had much confidence. Bob, as his fellow-clerks styled him, was sent on a secret mission to Ramsgate. The reader will observe how fortunate it was that his mission was _secret_, because it frees us from the necessity of setting down here an elaborate and tedious explanation as to how, when, and where the various threads of his mission became interwoven with the fabric of our tale. Suffice it to say that the only part of his mission with which we are acquainted is that which had reference to two men--one of whom was named Mr Larks, the other Morley Jones.
Now, it so happened that Queeker's acquaintance, Mr Durant, had an intimate friend who dwelt near a beautiful village in Kent. When Queeker mentioned the circ.u.mstance of the secret mission which called him to Ramsgate, he discovered that the old gentleman was on the point of starting for this village, in company with his daughter and her cousin f.a.n.n.y.
”You'll travel with us, I hope, Queeker; our roads lie in the same direction, at least a part of the way, you know,” said the hearty little old gentleman, with good-nature beaming in every wrinkle, from the crown of his bald head to the last fold of his treble chin; ”it will be such a comfort to have you to help me take care of the girls. And if you can spare time to turn aside for a day or two, I promise you a hearty welcome from my friend--whose residence, named Jenkinsjoy, is an antique paradise, and his hospitality unbounded. He has splendid horses, too, and will give you a gallop over as fine a country as exists between this and the British Channel. You ride, of course?”
Queeker admitted that he could ride a little.
”At least,” he added, after a pause, ”I used frequently to get rides on a cart-horse when I was a very little boy.”
So it was arranged that Queeker should travel with them. Moreover, he succeeded in obtaining from his employers permission to delay for three days the prosecution of the mission--which, although secret, was not immediately pressing--in order that he might visit Jenkinsjoy. It was fortunate that, when he went to ask this brief holiday, he found Mr Merryheart in the office. Had it been his mischance to fall upon Dashope, he would have received a blunt refusal and prompt dismissal--so thoroughly were the joys of that gentleman identified with the woes of other people.
But, great though Queeker's delight undoubtedly was on this occasion, it was tempered by a soul-hara.s.sing care, which drew forth whole quires of poetical effusions to the moon and other celestial bodies. This secret sorrow was caused by the dreadful and astonis.h.i.+ng fact, that, do what he would to the contrary, the weather-c.o.c.k of his affections was veering slowly but steadily away from Katie, and pointing more and more decidedly towards f.a.n.n.y Hennings! It is but simple justice to the poor youth to state that he loathed and abhorred himself in consequence.
”There am I,” he soliloquised, on the evening before the journey began, ”a monster, a brute, a lower animal almost, who have sought with all my strength to gain--perchance _have_ gained--the innocent, trusting heart of Katie Durant, and yet, without really meaning it, but, somehow, without being able to help it, I am--_not_ falling in love; oh! no, perish the thought! but, but--falling into something strangely, mysteriously, incomprehensibly, similar to--Oh! base ingrate that I am, is there no way; no back-door by which--?”
Starting up, and seizing a pen, at this point of irrepressible inspiration, he wrote, reading aloud as he set down the burning thoughts--
Oh for a postern in the rear, Where wretched man might disappear; And never more should seek her!
Fly, fly to earth's extremest bounds,--
Bounds, mounds, lounds, founds, kounds, downds, rounds, pounds, zounds!--hounds--ha! hounds--I have it--
”Fly, fly to earth's extremest bounds, With huntsmen, horses, horns, and hounds And die!--dejected Queeker.
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