The Dereliction of the El Dorado.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XIII, Issue XV, 13 October 1894, Page 348

The Dereliction of the El Dorado.

By

EDWARD CARLTON.

• FROM THe' eNQUSH ILLUSTRATED MAGAZINE*" ATTHEW CAPPER, third mate, told me the story as I lay in a deck chair during the middle watch of an intolerable African night, unable to sleep or even to rest in the heavy atmosphere of a state-room. The land then loomed upon onr starboard quarter, gloriously lit with the full light of a great moon ; but there was not a breath of breeze even to belly a skysail, not a spell of cool as the watches passed and the terrible dawn spread over the sea. The mate alone seemed proof against the visitation of the heat, nay, almost shivered in the worst hours of it; and when I gave him a cigar, he held it nnlighted as a man who is carried by his mind from the present to a vivid memory of the past. ‘ I’ve told the story,’ said he, ‘ to few ; mostly silent ones. I don’t know why you shouldn’t have it if you’ll hold back names where the men I speak of are part of the affair ; though, likely enough, many of them are dead and gone now. That’s Cape Verde showing to starboard there ; and it wasn’t a hundred miles from here that I last saw the El Dorado—a good ship, sir, though bought cheap and manned by rats.’ * You had your trouble with her, did you not?’ I asked. • 1 did, more’s the pity. And what follows ? Why, there’s not an owner that will trust me with a kettle now, though I’ve told half of them what I’m going to tell you. I’m tarred with the brush that blacked the rest, as honest a lot as you’ll pick up between Portsmouth and the Scillies, when they signed with me.’ * And what turned them?’ ‘ Ay, what turned them ? That’s the story. What made us all creep about as though the devil’s shadow was on the ship. What made them rave like madmen three days after we saw the last of Europe ? I’ll tell you in a word—it was a woman; the woman who commissioned me to the schooner ; the woman for whom I bought it.’ ‘ You interest me,’ said I ; • let’s get some more beer and have the yarn. My head’s like a mop in a bucket, and there’ll be no sleep this watch, anyway.’ We called the steward from below, for the whole ship was awake then and until dawn ; and when we had the beer the mate began to talk to me. I was waking a passage home from the Cape, the modern Mecca of the invalid, and had already come near to the Verde Islands in the fullrigged ship Celso, of which this curious man was third officer. I describe him as curious with some reason. While he could not have been past his thirty-fifth year, he had the face of a sexagenarian, and the saddest eyes man ever had. Scarred with furrows and wrinkles as a study by Rembrandt, there was yet so much nobility about his countenance, he had such a perfection of balance in his features, and wore his melancholy with such a pretty grace that I could understand the words in which women spoke of him ; and the meaning of the ejaculation ‘ Poor fellow,’ which followed bis footsteps. But his story is the better index to his personality, and I give it from pure memory ; yet accurately, I am sure, since no man who once heard it could forget either the pathos or the pity of it. ‘ Well,’ said he, ‘ it’s more years back than you could count upon your hand, seven maybe, maybe eight, though tune does not concern me now. I was at Portsmouth then, land locked after the dirtiest summer of the century, and waiting a ship since I could not get a yacht. It’s wonderful the hold a white deck has on a man once he’s trod it, sir. I know many who would take a pound a month less to skipper a cutter, even if you offered them a five master. That was how I felt. I’d had a bit of a job with an old schooner—she belonged to Ransom, the brewer —but August came and found me with my hands in my pockets, and precious little besides. Most owners went out of commission before September because of the wet, days not fit for dogs they were; and I was just about to sign for a berth as •‘second” on the Ocean Queen, when the letter came to me.’

• You didn’t mention a letter,’ said I, as I offered him a match. • Didn’t I ?’ he went on, without lighting his cigar, ‘ well, it began with the letter —the queerest letter a seaman ever had. It was a note which held nothing less than a draft for two thousand pounds put into my hand by a stranger. She signed herself Emile Aldibert, and wrote from an address in Great Portland street. Of course, there had been some one to speak for me, I don’t doubt that; but a man who has not often called a hundred pounds his own may be thrown off bis helm when he finds two thousand plumped down upon him, and left to be spent at his discretion. That was my case, and I was just for all the world like a big yacht griping for the wind. Twice I read the note, then twice again, but I could not get the bearings of it anyway. First, you see, I was asked to buy to the best of my judgment a sailing ship large enough to make a journey to the Cape. Cheapness, said the lady, was a consideration, but so was safety; and then in her little writing, going up and down like

the scrawl of a mosoo, she said that she wished me to tit out this ship, and to man her with the smallest number of men which could bring her safely to port. But —and mark it as strange—everything was to be done in my name and not in hers. She said that the recommendation she had of me led her to trust me like an old servant; but she pressed upon me the necessity of very great economy in my actions and hoped that the two thousand pounds would be money enough for her purpose. With that direction she hoped that I would accept two hundred and fifty pounds to take the vessel to the Cape, and sell her to the best advau tage on my return ; that I would hurry on the work, and would communicate with her, so soon as the ship was ready, at the address she gave me. * This was the letter I read, ay, scores of times in the next three days, and carried about Portsmouth with me, wandering for hours like a man in a dream. Who was Emile Aldibert, and why did she want to go by her own ship to the Cape, when she could have bought a passage for a tenth of the sum ? Why had she chosen me ? for what reason was all this cry about secrecy ? It was possible, I said, that she was running from the police ; but a liner even then would have been the safer craft. It was equally possible that she was mixed up with some man ; but I could not bring my mind to learn how a yacht would help her in that case. A man who sees water tor the best part of a year is not usually quick at thinking. Lay it all down on a chart for him, and he will take you there. Tie him up ashore, with his lungs full of smoke, and he will smile while you pick his pocket. I was never an exception to the rule, and the woman’s letter seemed to knock my wits all to pieces. For three days, as I tell you, the draft for two thousand burnt a bole in my mind ; on the fourth, I found myself bidding, with all the excitement of a big buyer, for a fore and aft schooner which lay in the harbour. That was the year of deep-sea depression in every yard ; you could pick up iron ships for a third of what they cost. The schooner ran out at one hundred and ninety eight tons, with gear as good as gold all through, and I bought her, as I’m a living man, for nine bundled sovereigns. Three weeks later I bad her fitted with gewgaws, and silks, and good bedding, which many a rich shoreman might have thought himself lucky to see ; and with a crew of twelve besides myself and the mate, good men all, that knew me as I knew them, we waited for my lady on the first day ot October. ‘ Now I was very proud of that ship, sir, from the start. I had said to myself, “ Provision is to be made for petticoats, and lam responsible for it.” There wasn’t a thing in any of the cabins aft that I did not see to myself. I put up a booby batch where a common wooden bed bad been ; I carpeted the companion, and trimmed the chief cabin with blue and gold, until it was as fine as a stateroom. On the day that we looked for the lady to come, I had enough flowers about the place to stock a market, great bouquets of them fore and aft, and more in the saloons. As for the men, there never was a smarter lot ; and I dressed them in white ducks and blue jerseys with the name of the ship, the El Dorado, written in gold all across their caps. Every rag in the sail-room was new, and we’d worked on the decks till they shone like a dancing floor. You may imagine, then, that I was not very pleased when, at six o’clock on the day I looked for the lady to come, a crone of sixty, who gabbled in a tongue that no decent man would

pretend to understand, came off in the boat, and made signs that she wanted to inspsct ns. I took her round, civilly of course, but I felt sore abont it; and when she said that her mistress wonld come aboard at twelve o’clock on the following night, 1 thonght again of the mystery which was about all the business, and it stuck in my mind like an uncanny thing.

* On the following day, just before eight bells, the lady’s luggage came off in the boat—a pile of trunks, some light hampers, and a cage with a raven who croaked dismally in it. The bird had an uncanny look, and the hands grouped round its cage and discussed it. The older ones shook their heads (there were three croaks from the bird, they counted), and thought no luck would come of it; Martin Key, the boatswain, said plain out, “ that if he’d known what he was shipping with, he’d sooner have signed to h 11the younger men asked themselves why the owner wanted to come aboard at midnight ? It was altogether snch a bit of a thing as will set a crew talking ill, and make hands dissatisfied before sheets are home. I talked to them straight out, as yon may think ; told them to go back if they were tired of the job before it began ; but they only said that they felt themselves all right with me, and would thank me to pitch the raven into the Solent. Why the bird put them out I never knew ; some men account ravens lucky ; others have different stories of them. Our lot were put up to it by the N orwegian mate, Hesmer ; and, coupling it with the mystery about the lady, they read the bird as an evil omen. * They were this way when the owner came abroad at midnight, accompanied by the crone, but with no soul, man, woman, or child, to wish her a “God-speed.” She was a bit of a thing, a slight girlish creature, who did not appear to be twenty-three years of age; and I was never more astonished in my life than when first I saw her ; her face nigh covered in a blue mantle, but tears running down her cheeks like rain, and big saucer-like eyes, which seemed to look through and throngh you. I met her ashore, and when she thanked me very sweetly for what I had done, and said she could never repay me, I was like a man struck in a squall with topsails unhoused, and I just stood there and stammered like a booby. There never was a prettier morsel on God’s earth, never one with such kindness in her baby face, and such a something which went straight to a man’s heart. I was in love with her long before she set foot on the deck ; and when I had a glimpse of her whole face as she sat nnder the lamp of the cabin I felt myself all of a tremble, like one who has heard good news. Then we weighed, and by the forenoon watch stood well down Channel with a smoking breeze almost abaft, and every stitch set the ship could carry. * We hid been at sea a week, and were making a long reach out of the Bay before anything more passed which would be worth your hearing. The schooner well repaid my trust in htr. She was the greatest ship to windward I ever handled ; and she stood stiff as a chimney even with three parts of a gale on her beam. The men began to forget their talk, an 1 were what I took them to be, smart hands, who would have done credit to any service. But the trouble began again on the seventh day, as I could see, and it began becaus • our owner and passenger never showed herself on deck, nor, for the matter of that, allowed any of us to enter her cabin. She was even waited on at meals by the hag she broi’ht with her, and the old creature passed the dishes thro igh the panel to the galley just for all the world as if it was death for any of the crew to see her mistress. This wouldn’t have mattered so much if there had not been talk of other things—of wild nights of weeping, of hysterical laughter, of a woman crying like one in agony, and of strange sights which the hands, now beginning to be wound up, declared that they had seen and heard. The boatswain, Martin Key, was at the bottom of it as 1 knew, and one night I sent for him to my room, and put it straight to him : * “ Key,” said I, “ what’s all this nonsense, and who set it afloat ?”

• " Ay, sir,” he said, “ it may be nonsense, but you don’t look for to quell it that way. Ask Mr Hesmer, sir, he’s from Norway, and like enough he knows.” * •* Never mind Mr Hesmer,” said I, “but speak for yourself. They tell me you have seen something to frighten you in the chief cabin. Now, you're not a child or a woman, and this ship’s not the place for hysterics—l want to know as between man and man what the trouble is ?’’

* He looked white enough at this, and began to finger his hat, as seamen will. * “ No, sir,” he said presently, “ I couldn’t tell you what I’ve seen, and what I think I durstn’t, tell you. If I should be right, there’s not a man of us but what would walk into the sea the minute after he knew it—God forbid ! I’m a plain able man, with no learning in my figure-head, and like enough I’m wrong. But you ask Mr Hesmer, sir.”

There was nothing to be done with a man like this, as you may think. I sent him to his work, and went on deck with my mind in a blind fog, and my nerves twitching indiescribably. The plain truth.was that, if it had not been for a pretty face, and the sweetest smile man ever looked upon, I had gone into the saloon there and then and told my owner all that was being said in the fo’castle. But when I wanted to do it, when my plain common sense told me to solve the thing at once, another impulse held me back. The gin had stipulated for privacy. I, in a sense, was her protector ; I felt, even in that early stage, that her life might be in my hands. She had some great sorrow, no doubt, but what concern was that of mine 1 It would be a personal degradation, I imagined, to give any heed to the maunderings of a superstitious crew. More than that, and there is not gain in withholding it, I was just about as deep down in love with her as ever man was with woman, and dared no risk the possibility of her anger. What was it to me or to the men, I asked, if she chose to bide in her |cabin ? what concern of ours, if she was haunted by trouble ? It was her own ship, bought with her own money, and it was hers to do with as she pleased. And I was determined that she should be talked about no more, and that I would so deal with the first man who broached the topic again that the talk of it should end there and then.

* These things went round in my head as I walked the watch, and waited for Hesmer to come up at eight bells. It is true that I could not escape the questions which my mind put to me, or fail to ask, Who is my passenger ? Where does she come from ? Has she friends ? What is her trouble ? But they, as such questions ever will, ceased to harass me when my affection for the girl grew, and my imagination fed upon the one picture of her I had known. A man’s love is rarely tricked out with logic ; mine was no exception. When I kept my watch on that night I saw the vision of her face, turn where I would; and I Knew that I

would have given half my life if the other half could have been spent with her. Sentiment, you say, and possibly it was, but of such sentiment are the exquisite moments of life.

* It was a little after eight bells when Hesmer came on deck and relieved me. Before I went below I had a few words with him, and told him that Key had referred me to him. I thought that be had no plain straightness of manner with me in the business, but did not unduly press him when he made the shape of a tale. * “ The fact is,” said he, “ your men are scared, and that’s just the whole of it. I told Key, it was yesterday, something that might possibly explain away the whole of it, but there’s a thousand chances to one I’m wrong, and I’m not going to talk of it. You don’t forget I'm Norwegian born, and have in my head things that wouldn’t occur to an Englishman. If you take my word, you’ll leave ’em be, and in a week you’ll hear no more of it. This sort of affair is fed on words, and the more you listen to ’em, the more trouble they’ll give yon.” ‘ Well, I think you’re right,’ said I, ‘ and the next man who comes to me with a crank in his head is going to have it knocked out with a handspike. Just put that abroad, and see if it helps them.” ‘ “ I will,” said he, “ but listen a minute ; there’s crying down in the cabin again. ’ • Sure enough, as we stood at the open skylight there came up from the saloon below a pitiful moaning and wailing, the like to which I have never heard. Long-drawn sobs which cut your heart to hear were followed by screams as of rage ; then came grating exclamations in a tongue I did not understand ; and a sound of weeping, deep and bitter as of ultimate distress. So painful altogether was the outbreak, and so much was I moved at the suffering of a mere child—as my owner always was in my mind—that I did what I had never done before, and went down the companion to the cabin door. Before that, I had sent Hesmer forward, telling him that one of us only should intrude upon the lady’s privacy, and that I meant to do the work myself. ‘At my first knock npon the panel the sounds within the saloon died away. I heard muttered whispering, and then the door was drawn back a little way, and she face of the beldame appeared thrust around it. Stealthily as she did the business, I could yet see for one moment into the cabin, and the sight struck my nerves as no shock before or since has ever done. I saw in that moment an apparition beautiful enough to blind a man—the apparition of a woman with golden yellow hair streaming all over her shoulders, of a woman who was yet a girl, but whose face, with all its extravagant loveliness, was yet running with tears and distorted with such visual tokens of misery that my heart seemed ready to burst at the sight of it. More than this, the hag gave me no opportunity to remember, for she began to rant like a fury ; and above the sound of her rasping voice I heard the words of the girl herself crying, “ How dare you come to my cabin ! How dare you after all your promises 1” • When I got up the companion I was like a man whipped. She had reproached me for a breach of good faith ; and all said and done I was only her servant. I was that mad with shame I could have cut my right hand off; and I went straight to my own room and fell upon my bed to pass four hours, which I would not number again for the command of a liner. The second glimpse of the girl’s face had only added to my first impression. I can remember every line of it now as though she stood before me, the play of the moutb, the pathos of the eyes, the flush of red npon the cheeks. And I can remember how curious I thought it then that her shoulders and her arms were all bound up in a great white cloth, and that the crone seemed to fear my looking into the cabin just as much as if the dead lay there. But the mystery, great as I knew it to be, went out of my mind before the other feeling—the feeling that I would surrender every pleasure of my life if by my service I could earn the gratitude of the seemingly friendless creature who thus had come to my charge. 1 On the next morning after I had spent weary hours in my bunk, 1 found a strange spirit abroad amongst my men. They were silent and moody, and for the first time they avoided me. I talked to one or two of them, but they would give me nothing definite in reply ; Hesmer himself had become taciturn and did his duty with a heavy spirit, which was in concord with my own feelings, though for a very different reason. As for the chief cabin, that had become suddenly as silent as the grave ; we did not hear even the sound of talking there ; the whole ship was stricken with an unspeakable gloom, in which the croaking of the raven was like a knell. And we went on in this miserable truce for many days, no man coming near me when he could stay away, none seeking my confidence or returning it. ‘ It must have been at a point not twenty miles from here that the climax came. The stiff breeze which had brought us to Africa fell away altogether after we’d sighted the islands; and we stood in toward the land with canvas slack and decks on fire almost with the heat. 1 had turned in through the second “ dog,” but came up at eight bells, and was on deck until midnight. Most of my time I spent hovering near the skylight of the woman’s cabin, as if to get a sound of her voice to my consolation; the rest I passed leaning over the taffrail and thinking how strange it was that I should be near the African coast at all. When the watch changed I slept an hour in my bunk, but the heat was intolerable, and I went up to the deck again determined to make another effort to speak to Hesmer, and to drag from him the whole of his suspicions. To my surprise I could not find him either on deck or below ; and the hand, Thompson, at the wheel stammered and stuttered with unmistakeable

desire to lie when I questioned him. Before I could take any steps to solve the mystery of the mate’s absence, he appeared quickly coming over the bulwarks, and stood before me unabashed. He had climbed into the main chains to spy npon the woman through the port of her cabin ; and wben I remembered what he bad done I could have struck him down as he stood.

‘“Mr Hesmer,” said I, my fingers tingling with rage, “ you seem to have been well occupied. I congratulate you on your employment, watching a lady in her cabin.” * “ You speak the truth,” said he, answering with impu dent confidence, “and nnybe she’s a lady, but it was no lady’s act to book us for this trip.” * He took all my command from me at the boldness of his answer, and I asked him stutteringly : ‘ “ What do you mean ? For the love of God speak plain 1” * “ 1 mean, Mr Capper,” said he, “ that me and the men are going ashore in the long boat within the next hour, and you’re coming with us.” ‘ “ Mr Hesmer,” said I, quite calmly, “ your intentions towards me are very kind, but the first man that puts a finger on the boat may look to have bis funeral in the same hour. Let’s have an end of this nonsense. What is it to you and the hands if the lady chooses to keep her own cabin and her own counsel; are we not all her servants ? What is this thing you hint at perpetually ? Are you all mad ? It seems to me very like it Must I take means to make you sane? As there's a God above me I'll shoot the first man that speaks to me of it again like I’d shoot a dog. You hear me ? then attend to it, and turn the hands up. I've something to say to them." * He heard the order quite calmly, then stepped up to me, and whispered a word in my ear. * “ Before you do that, I’d like you to answer a question,” said he. “ Have you ever thought why yon lady won’t show amongst us? Likely you haven’t; but I’m going to tell ye. Man, she’s a leper 1” ‘ I listened to him as one listens to the echo of a cry. He seemed like a man speaking afar off; I could not get the whole of bis words into my head. But he repeated them, and slowly my mind shaped the truth, and a great gulf seemed to leap up between the vision of the girl and myself ; and there was an intolerable pain at my heart, so that I stood rocking for a spell, and then, as they told me, fell flat upon the deck. When I came to my senses I was in the long-boat, bound up like a log ; and the whole of the crew sat round, speaking kind words, but firm ones. The El Dorado herself was drifting two miles away astern, just as it might be into yon bank of cloud. * What I did in the next hour God alone knows. My struggles to free myself from the ropes at my wrists and ankles cut me almost to the bone. I tried to throw myself into the Sea, but the men held me back. I told them a hundred times that they ran no risk on board the ship ; but they laughed at me. It was their fear that every man would be stricken down even then with the overwhelming horror ; and they were as madmen, rowing swiftly for the land, while I implored them until my voice stuck in my throat, and tears ran down my face. In my delirium I thought to hear the girl calling me to her help ; I saw her again, as I had first seen her with her beautiful face tender in sorrow, and death very near to her. Then I must have lost my wits entirely, for I came to reason many weeks after in St. Louis at the house of the English consul. * You may ask if I made no effort to follow the derelict ship and come up with her, but how could I ? The crew were before me with their tale. They said that the ship had foundered at sea, and that the catastrophe had robbed me of my mind. And one by one they disappeared covertly, lest the truth should come to light ; but those who had heard my story shook their heads and said that my memory would be restored presently. When I returned to England people were still more incrednlous. The El Dorado drifted ashore fifty miles from Cape Verde; but the passengers were not on board her. The discovery of the wreck seemed to confirm the bands ; and I was looked upon as a man with a weak head ; and for many months owners would not speak to me. The ban lies upon me to this day ; it has crushed my future, and taken away my hope of life.’ • «»«««* * But the girl 1’ said I, when he had ceased to speak for some time, * did you never fathom the mystery of her case ?’ ‘ln some part, yes. The mate Hesmer sent a paper from Nantes, in France, a year after the El Dorado stranded ; and there I read of the disappearance of the young wife of a merchant named Oliver. He was a man of travel, and had married in Norway into a family at Trondhjem ; but during his absence at Algiers his wife had left him and was never subsequently heard of. The paper spoke of the cirl’s philanthropy, and of her noble work in the leper hospital at Bergen ; and then pointed out how curious it was that she had sold her jewels in Paris before quitting the country. This woman, said Hesmer, was your Madame Aldibert; and I believe he spoke truth. It's always been my opinion that she must have taken the disease before she was married, and then, when the fearful thing came upon her, she fled from her husband that he might never know.’ * And why did she want to go to the Cape?’ * Ah, that helps the case. She told me to take her to the Cape, but I don’t doubt that her real destination was Robben Island, where the great leper hospital is. She thought, perhaps, the voyage would do something for her. Poor thing 1 Death was welcome to her, I’m sure ; but what a life, my God, and what a curse 1’ And with an infinite tenderness in his voice as he finished his story, Matthew Capper lurched oil to bis work forward.