Chapter 1

Nothing is so easy as falling in love on a long sea voyage, except
falling out of love. Especially was this the case in the days when the
wooden clippers did finely to land you in Sydney or in Melbourne under
the four full months. We all saw far too much of each other, unless,
indeed, we were to see still more. Our superficial attractions mutually
exhausted, we lost heart and patience in the disappointing strata
which lie between the surface and the bed-rock of most natures. My own
experience was confined to the round voyage of the _Lady Jermyn_, in the
year 1853. It was no common experience, as was only too well known
at the time. And I may add that I for my part had not the faintest
intention of falling in love on board; nay, after all these years,
let me confess that I had good cause to hold myself proof against such
weakness. 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 nineteen
years 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 name
was still unknown to her, and yet I recollect being quite fascinated by
her frankness and self-possession. She was exquisitely young, and yet
ludicrously old for her years; had been admirably educated, chiefly
abroad, and, as we were soon to discover, possessed accomplishments
which would have made the plainest old maid a popular personage on board
ship. Miss Denison, however, was as beautiful as she was young, with the
bloom of ideal health upon her perfect skin. She had a wealth of lovely
hair, with strange elusive strands of gold among the brown, that drowned
her 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, lay
sleeping somewhere in the depths of her grave, gray eyes.

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

It was in the brave old days of Ballarat and Bendigo, when ship after
ship went out black with passengers and deep with stores, to bounce home
with a bale or two of wool, and hardly hands enough to reef topsails
in a gale. Nor was this the worst; for not the crew only, but, in many
cases, captain and officers as well, would join in the stampede to the
diggings; and we found Hobson's Bay the congested asylum of all manner
of masterless and deserted vessels. I have a lively recollection of our
skipper's indignation when the pilot informed him of this disgraceful
fact. Within a fortnight, however, I met the good man face to face upon
the diggings. It is but fair to add that the _Lady Jermyn_ lost every
officer and man in the same way, and that the captain did obey tradition
to the extent of being the last to quit his ship. Nevertheless, of
all who sailed by her in January, I alone was ready to return at the
beginning of the following July.

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

There was, however, one slice of luck in store for me. I found the dear
old _Lady Jermyn_ on the very eve of sailing, with a new captain, a new
crew, a handful of passengers (chiefly steerage), and nominally no cargo
at all. I felt none the less at home when I stepped over her familiar
side.

In the cuddy we were only five, but a more uneven quintette I defy you
to convene. There was a young fellow named Ready, packed out for
his health, and hurrying home to die among friends. There was an
outrageously lucky digger, another invalid, for he would drink nothing
but champagne with every meal and at any minute of the day, and I have
seen him pitch raw gold at the sea-birds by the hour together. Miss
Denison was our only lady, and her step-father, with whom she was
travelling, was the one man of distinction on board. He was a Portuguese
of sixty or thereabouts, Senhor Joaquin Santos by name; at first it was
incredible to me that he had no title, so noble was his bearing; but
very soon I realized that he was one of those to whom adventitious
honors can add no lustre. He treated Miss Denison as no parent ever
treated a child, with a gallantry and a courtliness quite beautiful to
watch, and not a little touching in the light of the circumstances under
which they were travelling together. The girl had gone straight from
school to her step-father's estate on the Zambesi, where, a few months
later, her mother had died of the malaria. Unable to endure the place
after his wife's death, Senhor Santos had taken ship to Victoria, there
to seek fresh fortune with results as indifferent as my own. He was
now taking Miss Denison back to England, to make her home with other
relatives, before he himself returned to Africa (as he once told me) to
lay his bones beside those of his wife. I hardly know which of the pair
I see more plainly as I write--the young girl with her soft eyes and her
sunny hair, or the old gentleman with the erect though wasted figure,
the noble forehead, the steady eye, the parchment skin, the white
imperial, and the eternal cigarette between his shrivelled lips.

No need to say that I came more in contact with the young girl. She was
not less charming in my eyes because she provoked me greatly as I came
to know her intimately. She had many irritating faults. Like most young
persons of intellect and inexperience, she was hasty and intolerant in
nearly all her judgments, and rather given to being critical in a crude
way. She was very musical, playing the guitar and singing in a style
that made our shipboard concerts vastly superior to the average of their
order; but I have seen her shudder at the efforts of less gifted folks
who were also doing their best; and it was the same in other directions
where her superiority was less specific. The faults which are most
exasperating in another are, of course, one's own faults; and I confess
that I was very critical of Eva Denison's criticisms. Then she had
a little weakness for exaggeration, for unconscious egotism in
conversation, and I itched to tell her so. I felt so certain that the
girl had a fine character underneath, which would rise to noble heights
in stress or storm: all the more would I long now to take her in hand
and mould her in little things, and anon to take her in my arms just as
she was. The latter feeling was resolutely crushed. To be plain, I had
endured 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 my
tale. I lay the pen down, and a hundred of her sayings ring in my
ears, with my own contradictious comments, that I was doomed so soon
to repent; a hundred visions of her start to my eyes; and there is the
trade-wind singing in the rigging, and loosening a tress of my darling's
hair, 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 ever
after. Yet at the time I must argue with her--with her! When all my
courage should have gone to love-making, I was plucking it up to sail as
near as I might to plain remonstrance! I little dreamt how the ghost of
every petty word was presently to return and torture me.

So it is that I can see her and hear her now on a hundred separate
occasions beneath the awning beneath the stars on deck below at noon
or night but plainest of all in the evening of the day we signalled
the Island of Ascension, at the close of that last concert on the
quarter-deck. The watch are taking down the extra awning; they are
removing the bunting and the foot-lights. The lanterns are trailed
forward before they are put out; from the break of the poop we watch the
vivid shifting patch of deck that each lights up on its way. The stars
are very sharp in the vast violet dome above our masts; they shimmer on
the sea; and our trucks describe minute orbits among the stars, for the
trades have yet to fail us, and every inch of canvas has its fill of the
gentle steady wind. It is a heavenly night. The peace of God broods upon
His waters. No jarring note offends the ear. In the forecastle a voice
is 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 who
sang it again and again to please the crew she alone is at war with our
little 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 our
bluff old man, and it is not the spirit of contrariety alone which makes
me invariably take his part. Coarse he may be, and not one whom the
owners would have chosen to command the _Lady Jermyn_; a good seaman none
the less, who brought us round the Horn in foul weather without losing
stitch 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 his
part; 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 a
school-girl--you have all but told me so before to-day! If I were a
man--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 at
fault. 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 must
say I thought it was a silly question to put. It was the same the other
evening about the cargo. If the skipper says we're in ballast why not
believe him? Why repeat steerage gossip, about mysterious cargoes, at
the cuddy table? Captains are always touchy about that sort of thing. I
wasn't surprised at his letting out.”

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

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

I try to soothe her. I agree heartily with her disgust at the epithets
employed in her hearing, and towards an invalid, by the irate skipper.
But I ask her to make allowances for a rough, uneducated man, rather
clumsily touched upon his tender spot. I shall conciliate her presently;
the divine pout (so childish it was!) is fading from her lips; the
starlight is on the tulle and lace and roses of her pretty evening
dress, with its festooned skirts and obsolete flounces; and I am
watching her, ay, and worshipping her, though I do not know it yet. And
as 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's
the 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 the
men, 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 he
too 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 I
can remember. That man only married my poor mother. He sympathizes
with Captain Harris--against me; no father would do that. Look at them
together now! And you take his side, too; oh! I have no patience with
any 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 to
pacing 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 had
better cause. The Portuguese, however, saluted me with his customary
courtesy, and I thought there was a grave twinkle in his steady eye.

“Are you in deesgrace also, friend Cole?” he inquired in his all but
perfect English.

“More or less,” said I ruefully.

He gave the shrug of his country--that delicate gesture which is done
almost entirely with the back--a subtlety beyond the power of British
shoulders.

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

He sighed, and I saw his delicate fingers forsake the cigarette they
were rolling to make the sacred sign upon his breast. He was always
smoking one cigarette and making another; as he lit the new one the glow
fell upon a strange pin that he wore, a pin with a tiny crucifix inlaid
in mosaic. So the religious cast of Senhor Santos was brought twice home
to me in the same moment, though, to be sure, I had often been struck
by it before. And it depressed me to think that so sweet a child as Eva
Denison should have spoken harshly of so good a man as her step-father,
simply because he had breadth enough to sympathize with a coarse old
salt like Captain Harris.

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