CHAPTER XIII.

Clutha Leader, Volume V, Issue 220, 27 September 1878, Page 7

CHAPTER XIII.

The subsiding sea was now a liquid Paradise : its great pellucid braes and hillocks, shone with the sparkle, and the hues, of all the jewels in an emperor's crown. Imagine — after three days of inky sea, and pitchy sky, and Death's deep jaws snapping and barely missing — ten thousand great slopes of emerald, aquamarine, amethyst, and topaz, liquid, alive, and dancing jocundly beneath a gorgeous sun : and you will have a faint idea of what met the eyes and hearts of the rescued looking out of tbat battered, jagged, ship, upon ocean smiling back to smiling Heaven. Yet one man felt no buoyancy, nor gush of joy. He leaned against a fragment of the broken bulwark, confused between the sweetness of life preserved, and the bitterness of treasure lost, his wife's and children's treasured treasure: benumbed at heart, and | almost weary of the existence he had battled for so stoutly. He looked so moody, and answered so grimly and unlike himself, that they all held aloof from him ; heavy heart among so many joyful ones, he was in true solitude ; the body in a crowd, the soul alone. And he was sore as well as weary ; for, ot all the lubberly acts he had ever known, the way he had lost his dear ones' fortune seemed to him the worst. A voice sounded, in his ear : * Poor thing ; she has foundered.' It was Fullaiove scanning the horizon with his famous glass. 'Foundered? Who?' said Dodd;though he did not care much who sank, who swam. Then he rememberer! the vessel, whose flashing guns had shed a human ray on the unearthly horror of the black hurricane. He looked all round. Blank ! Ay, she had perished with all hands.

The sea had shallowed her, and spared him ; ungrateful. ' This turned his mind sharply. Suppose the Agra had gone down, the money would be lost as now, and his life into the bargain, a life dearer to all at home than millions of gold : he prayed inwardly to Heaven for gratitude, and goodness to feel its' mercy. This softened him a little ; and his heart swelled so, he wished he. was a woman to cry over his children's loss for an hour, and then shake all off and go through his duty somehow ; for now he was paralysed, and all seemed ended. Next, nautical superstition fastened on him. That pocket-book of his was Jonah ; It had to go or else the ship ; the moment it did go, the storm had broken as by magic. Now Superstition is generally stronger thaii rational Religion, whether they lie apart, or together in one mind : and this superstitious notion did something toward steeling the poor man. ' Come,' said he to himself, ' my loss has saved all these poor souls on board this ship. 60 be it ! Heaven's will be done ! I must bustle, or else go mad.' He turned to and worked like a horse: and with his own hands helped the men to rig parallel ropes — a substitute for bulwarks — till the perspiration ran down him. Bayliss now reported the well nearly dry, and Dodd' was about to bear up and make sail again, when one of the ship-boys, a little fellow with a bright eye and a chin like a monkey's, came up to him and said — ' Please, captain !' Then glared with awe at what he had done, and broke down. * Well, my little man V said Dodd, gently. Thus encouraged, the boy gave a great gulp, and burst in a brogue : ' Och your arnr, sure there's no rudder on her at all barrin the tiller.' ' What d'ye mean ?' Don't raurrder me, your arnr, and I'll tell ye. It's meself looked over the starrn just now; and I seen there was no rudder at all at all : Mille diaoul, sis I ; I'll tell his arnr what y'are after, slipping your rudder like my granny's list shoe, I will.' Dodd ran to the helm and looked down ; the brat was right : the blows which had so endangered the ship, had broken the rudder, and the sea had washed away uiore than half of it. The sight and the reflection made him faintish for a moment. Death passing so very close to a man sickens him afterwards. ; unless he has the luck to be brainless. ' What is your name, urchin ?' ' Ned Murphy, sir.' ' Very well, Murphy, then you are a fine little fellow, and have wiped all our eyes in the ship : run and send the carpenter aft.' ' A y» a y- sir -' The carpenter came. Like most artisans he was clever in a groove : take him out of that, and lo ! a mule, a pig, an owl. He was not only unable to invent, but ! 'so stiffly disinclined : a makeshift rudder was clean out of his way : and, as his whole struggle was to get away from every suggestion Dodd made back to groove aforesaid, the thing looked hopeless. Then Fullalove, who had stood by grinning, offered to make a bunkum rudder, provided the carpenter and mates were put urider%is orders. But, said he, I must bargain they shall be disrated if they attempt to reason. ' That is no more than fair,' said Dodd, The Yankee inventor demanded a spare maincap, and cut away one end of the square piece, so as to make it fit the stern-post : through the circle of the cap he introduced a spare mizen topmast : to this he seized a length of junk, another to that, another to that, and so on : to the outside junk he seized a spare maintop-gallant mast, and this conglomerate being now nearly as broad as a rudder, he planked over all. The sea by this time was calm; he got the machine over the stern, and had the square end ot the cap bolted to the stern-post. He had already fixed four spans of nine-inch hawser to the sides of the makeshift, two fastened to tackles,' which led into ;;the gunroom ports, and were boused taut — these kept , the lower part of the makeshift close to the stern post — and two, to which guys were now fixed and led through the aftermost ports on to the quarter-deck, where luff tackles were attached to them, by means of which the makeshift j was to be worked as a rudder. Some sail was now got on the ship, and she* was found to steer very well. Dodd tried her on every tack ; and at last ordered Sharpe to make all sail, and head for the Cape. This electrified the first mate. The breeze was very faint but southerly, and the Mauritius under their lee. They could make it in a night, and there refit, and ship a .new rudder. . He suggested tbe danger of sailing sixteen hundred miles steered by a Gimcrack ; and implored Dodd to put into. port. Dodd answered with a roughness and a certain wildhess never seen in him before: ' Danger, sir! There will be no more foul weather this voyage; Jonah is overboard.' Sharpe stared an inquiry. ' I tell you we shan't lower our topgallants once from this to the Cape: Jonah is overboard :' and hey slapped his forehead in dispair ; then, stamping impatiently with his foot, .told Sharpe'J his duty n was. to obey orders, not discuss 1 them, ' Certainly, sir,' r said Sharpef sullenly, and went out of the cabinywkh j serious thoughts ot coram •lnicatjn'g' to

the other mates an alarming suspicion about Dodd, that now, for the first time, crossed his mind. But long habit .of discipline prevailed, and hemade all sail on the the ship, and bore away for the Cape with a heavy heart ; the sea was like a mill-pond, but in that he saw only its well - known treachery, to lead them on to this unparalleled act of madness : each sail he hoisted seemed one more agent of Destruction rising at his own suicidal command. Towards evening it became nearly dead calm. The sea heaved a little, but was waveless, glassy, and the colour of a rose, incredibly brave and delicate. The look-out reported pieces of wreck to windward. As the ship was making so little way, Dodd beat up towards them: he feared it was a British ship that had foundered in the storm, and thought it his duty to ascertain and carry the sad news home. In two tacks they got near enough to see with their glasses that the fragments belonged, not to a stranger, but to the Agra herself; there was one of her waterbutts, and a broken mast with some rigging : and as more wreck was descried coming in at a little distance, Dodd kept the ship close to the wind to inspect it : on drifting near it proved to be several pieces of the bulwark, and a mahogany table out of the cuddy. This sort of flotsom was not worth delaying the ship to pick it up ; so Dodd made sail again, steering now S.E. lie had sailed about half a mile when the look-out hailed the deck again. ' A man in the water !' ' Whereabouts V ' A short league to the weather quarter.' .." Oh, we can't beat to windward for him,' said Sharpe. 'He is dead long* ago.' ' Holds his head very high for a corpse,' said the look-out. ' I'll soon know,' cried Dodd. 1 Lower the gig ; I'll go myself.' The gig was lowered, and six swift rowers pulled him to windward; while the ship kept on her course. It is most unusual for a captain to leave the ship at sea on such petty errands : but Dodd half hoped the man might be alive ; and he was so unhappy ; and, like his daughter, who probably derived the trait from him, grasped instinctivly at a chance of doing kindness to some poor fellow alive or dead. That would soothe his own sore, good heart. Wh.en they had pulled about two miles, the sun was sinking into the horizon : ' Give way, men,' said Dodd, ' or we shall not be able to see him.' The men bent to their oars, and made the boat fly. Presently the coxswain caught sight of an object bobbing on the water abeam. ' Why, that must be it,' said he : 1 the lubber ! to take it for a man's head. Why, it is nothing but a thundering old bladder, speckled white.' 'What?' cried Dodd: and fell a trembling, * Steer for it ! Give way.' ' Ay, ay, sir !' They soon came alongside the bladder, and the coxswain grabbed it : ' Hallo ! here's something lashed to it : a bottle ? * Give it me !' gasped Dodd, in a voice of agitation. ' Give it me ! Back to the ship ! Fly ! Fly ! Cut her off, or she'll give us the slip, now. 1 He never spoke a word more, but sat in a stupor of joyful wonder They soon caught the ship: he got into his cabin, broke the bottle to atoms, and found the indomitable cash uninjured. With trembling hands he restored it to its old place in his bosom, and sewed it tighter than ever. Until he felt it there once more, be could hardly realise a stroke of good fortune that seemed miraculous — though, in reality, it was less s'l-ange than the way he had lost it—-* but, now laid bodily on his heart, it set his bosom on fire : oh, the bright eye, bhe bounding pulse, the buoyant foot, the reckless joy ? He slapped Sharpe on the back a little vulgarly, for him : * Jonah is on board again, old fellow : look out for squalls.' He uttered this foreboding in a tone of triumph, and with a gay, elastic recklessness, which harmonised so well with his makeshift rudder, that Sharpe groaned aloud, and wished himself under any captain but this, and in any other ship. He looked round to make sure he was not watched, and then tapped his forehead significantly : this somewhat relieved him, and he did bis , duty smartly for a man going to the bottom with his eyes open. But ill luck is not to be bespoken any more than good : the Agra's seemed to have blown itself out; the wind veered south-west, and breathed steadily in that quarter for ten days. The topgallant sails were never lowered nor shifted day nor night all'that time : and not a single danger occurred between this acd the Cape, except to a monkey, which I fear I must relate, on account of its remoter consequences. One fine afternoon, everybody was on | deck amusing themselves as they could ; Mrs Beresford, to wit. was being I flattered under the poop awning by Kenealy. The feud between her and Dodd continued ; but under a false impression. The lady had one advantage over the gentler specimens of her sex ; she was never deterred from * The Agra, being much larger than the bottle, had drifted' to leeward in the storm.

a kind action by want of pluck, as tbey are. Pluck ? Aquilina was brimful of it. When she found Dodd was wounded, she ca3t-her wronu*s to the wind, and offered to go and nurse him. Her message came ac an unlucky moment, and by an unlucky messenger : the surgeon said, hastily, ' I can't have him bothered.' The stupid servant reported, ' He can't be worried :' and Mrs Beresford, thinking Dodd had a hand in this answer, was bitterly mortified ; and with some reason. She would have forgiven him though, if he had died ; but, as he lived, she thought she had a right to detest him ; and did ; and showed her sentiments like a lady, by never speaking to him, uor looking at him, but ignoring him with frigid magnificence on his own quarter deck. Now, among the crew of this ship was a favourite goat, good tempered, affectionate, playful : but a single vice counterbalanced all his virtues : he took a drop. A year or two ago some lighthearted tempter taught him to sip grog ; he took to it kindly, ad now arrived at such a pitch, that at grog time he used to buct his way in among the sailors, and get close to the canteen ; and, by arrangement, an allowance was always served him ; on imbibing it he passed, with quadrupedal rapidity, through three stages, the absurd, the choleric, the sleepy ; and was never his own goat again until he awoke from the latter. Now Master Fred Beresford encountered him in the second stage of inebriety, and, being a rough playfellow, tapped his nose with a battledore, instantly Billy butted ,at him; mischievous Fred screamed and jumped on the bulwarks. Pot-angry Billy went at him there ; whereupon the young gentleman with an eldrich screech, and a comparative estimate of perils that smacked of inexperience, fled into the sea, at the very moment when his anxious mother was rushing to save him ; she uttered a stream of agony, and would actually have followed him ; but was held back uttering shriek after shriek, that pierced every heart within hearing. But Dodd saw the boy go overboard, and vaulted over the bulwark ne;ir the helm, roared in the very air ' Heave the ship to !' and went splash into the water about ten yards from the place ; he was soon followed by Vespasian, and a boat was lowered as soon as possible. Dodd caught sight of a broad straw hat on the"top of a wave, swam lustily to it, and found Freddy inside : it was tied under his chin, and would have floated Goliah. Dodd turned to the ship, saw the poor mother with white face and arms outstretched as if she would fly at them, and held the urchin up high to her with a joyful ' hurrah ' The ship seemed alive and to hurrah in return with gaint voice : the boat soon picked them up, and Dodd came up the side with Freddy in his arms, and placed him in his mother's with honest pride and deep parental sympathy. Guess how she scolded and caressed her child all in a breath, and sobbed over him ! For this no human pen has ever told, nor ever will. All 1 can just manage to convey is that, after she had all but eaten the little torment, she suddenly dropped him, and made a great maternal rush at Dodd. She flung her arms round him, and kissed him eagerly, almost fiercely : then, carried away wild by mighty Nature, she patted him all over in the strangest way, and kissed his waistcoat, his arms, his hands, and rained tears of joy and gratitndeon them. Dodd was quite overpowered : 'No ! no !' said he. ' Don't now! pray don't! There, I know, my dear, I know ; I'm a father.' And he was very near whimpering himself; but recovered the man and the commander, and said, soothingly, ' There J there !' and handed her tenderly down to her cabin. All this time he had actually forgotten the packet. But now a horrible fear came on him. He hurried to his own cabin and examined it. A little salt water had oozed through the bullet-hole and discoloured the leather ; but that was all. He breathed again.- --' Thank Heaven I forgot all about a it !' said he : ' It would have made a cur of me.' :, La Beresford's petty irritation against Dodd melted at once before so great a thing : she longed to make friends with him ; but for, once felt timid : it struck her now all of a sudden that she had been misbehaving. However, she caught Dodd alone on the deck, and said to him softly, ' I want so to end our quarrel.' ' Our quarrel, madam !' said he ; ' why, I know of none : oh, about the light, eh ? Well, you see the master of a ship is obliged to be a tyrant in some things.' - ' 1 make no complaint,' said the lady, hastily, and hung her head. ' All Task you is to forgive one who has behaved like a fool, without. even the excuse of being one ; and— will you give me your hand, sir V . 'Ay, and with all my heart,' said ( Dodd, warmly, enclosing the soft little hand in his honestgrasp. • And with, no more, ado these, -two, hi»hflvers ended one of those little misunderstandings petty spirits nurse into a feud. -- — (To be Continued.)