Complete Story. Sundered Hearts

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXVIII, Issue I, 4 January 1902, Page 8

Complete Story. Sundered Hearts

A STORY OE THE SEA.

I. ( Far away to the north-east gleamed Sinbad’s Diamond Mountains, their crags of crystal salt shining like flame above the tumultuous white-maned swell of the Persian Gulf. Spray flashed high at every plunge of the steamer, gulls wheeled and screamed astern, black shad ows of mast and shrouds danced on the iron deck, while there, against the scorching sky and the light, leaning against the rails of the upper bridge, the mate stood brooding over the woman he had married for love. Married for love —she was very pretty in her practical, wilful way; fair, dainty, crisp from the silken ribbons on her hat to the fresh white cotton of her well-cut skirt; and as she lay in a deck chair, the lining of her parasol easting a flush of warm colour over her sun-brown-ed face, she seemed an impossible apparition to be found afloat on such a grimy ocean tramp as the ‘’Juliet, of Liverpool. Everybody knows that a mate is never allowed to take his wife to sea. and even now Tom wondered vaguely by what wiles she had prevailed upon her uncle, the owner, to countenance a honeymoon here in the blazing I asi. And what had induced her to marry him? His prospects? There were none. His money? The man was penniless. His gift for making love? Why she had reduced him to the very dust with

l'ier chaff. His good looks? The liiandsome, manly chivalrous idiot bad not the slightest suspicion of being so commended to a woman s eyes. As to her wanting to quarrel now, to be disdainful, whimsical, inconsequent beyond all bearing, these things were quite beyond the understanding of a mate at nine pounds a month. The lady having a will oj her own. flatly declined to conform with his theories as to the care and management of women; and so Tom, bewildered bv her moods, could only come to one rueful and totally false conclusion—that be had married a cyclone in stays’ They had quarrelled viciously, they were scarcely on speaking terms; in fact, the tramp “Juliet." bound in salt ballast from Ormuz to Bombay, carried something which was not declared in her manifest —a load of misery. And yet. after pretending to read her novel this last hour. Mrs Brunt found it a sorry vict ry that she had reduced poor Tom to silence. Looking up with a wistful smile, and two big tears ust ready to seal the peace. “This book is really too funny.” said Tom s wife, partly to herself. "One would think that love ruled the world.” 11. Their quarrel would have been notched up then, but that the steward was already half way up the lad-

der calling to Mr Brunt in a stage whisper: “Can you come aft, sir?” “Eh!” Tom went over to the ladder head. “Hush, or she’ll hear us! The old man’s took bad, sir; yes, the cap’n, “What’s wrong?” growled Tom, bending down over the handrail. "Over-eating again?” Mrs Brunt could only hear an occasional whisper. "Since this time yesterday, sir. ... he was what you may call decoltay. . . . them pilgrims we landed at Bassora. . . . I’ve been shipmates with it before . . . . Java way. . . . you’ll come, sir?” Mrs Brunt ran to the ladder head when Tom went down, and saw him stop to speak with a young sailor by the wheel house door. “Hello—who on earth told you to leave the wheel ?” “Feeling awful bad, sir,” groaned the man. “Why.” Said the mate, more kindly, “what’s wrong with you?” But the sailor only looked at him, his mouth twitching as though he tried to speak, his face white and running with perspiration, his eyes glazed; then without a word staggered away past the boats and down the ladder which led to the upper deck. Tom called to another sailor who was painting ventilators. “Johnson, relieve the wheel—east b' south.” “East b’ south it is, sir.” And the mate went aft. Mrs Brunt waited on the bridge, and listlessly she watched the cook sending away the sailors’ dinner. The fo’c'sle answered seven bells to the wheel house, and the second mate was called: after a long time came the striking of eight bel!s at noon, the clanging of the wheel, then the relieved watch went forward to dinner: but still nobody came near the upper bridge. The distant mountains had melted away in the haze; it would be a week before the land-fall at Bombay. The heat was stifling now as two bells

sounded; yet the steward never came to announce dinner, nor was the table laid under the poop awnings. Silence like the hush of death brooded over the ship, broken once by a distant scream of pain, and the time dragged on. At last the steward arrived carrying a covered tray. “Please, ma'am,” he said, briskly, “Mr Brunt wants you to take your meals here for the present —not to come down. Bos’n has orders to rig up a tent for you; I’m to bring along your bed after sundown. Will you have claret, ma’am, or beer?” With a scared white face. Mrs Brunt lay baek in her chair, staring at him; then glancing at the tray with some disfavour. “Take it away,” she said, fretfully. “No. don’t go,” she cried, laying her hand upon his shirt sleeve. “For goodness’ sake, what’s the matter with us?” She noticed the man’s hesitation. "Tell me at once!” The steward had no lie ready that would deceive a ehild. “Better now,” he muttered, “than later—orders be hanged. Well, ma’am, things might be worse. Mr Brunt’s doing splendidly for us. Fact is, ma'am, there is sickness aboard, but bless you that ain’t—” "What sickness?” “Well, ma’am—” “What is it, I say?” “Cholera.” She started to her feet. “Cholera? And he’s down there in the middle of it. Oh, do go and see if he’s all right. He looked pale! Stay, I’ll go myself. I must—l will!” "Hush, ma’am, don’t ye take on like that. Mr Brunt has nothing to fear. Why. there ain’t no confection made as’ll touch the likes of him. that is—unless you make it worse by going down.” She fell baek into the chair and rocked herself to and fro. "Cholera! Cholera!” She must not move for fear of adding to his anxiety, she must remain hopeless, helpless, useless, while he

fought the big fight with death. And ■the hours dragged on. 111. All the afternoon both watches were at work hastily rigging a hospital tent on the after hatch, one for the sailors and one for the firemen on the fore hatches, an awning for the officers on number three; washing decks, sprinkling the bedding with disinfectants, putting up wind sails to freshen, the forecastle, cabin and engineers’ mess; while down below the bilges were being flushed with the steam pumps. Mrs Brunt pretended a lively interest in the arrangements made for her comfort on the upper bridge, but it was a real distraction at supper time to hear the fat chief engineer growling to his second beside the “fiddly.” “Pickles for all hands,” snarled the chief, brandishing an unopened bottle. “so we've got to take pickles for cholera. Gim’me a match,” he was lighting his pipe now, “um”—puff, puff.—“that’s what comes of. having a fool in command. Pickles! Ever hear of such rot? One would think that lime juice was bad enough without being poisoned outright. Captain Tom Brunt! Captain Tqm Fool, scaring the hands to death with his precautions. Well, here goes his pickles, anyway.” There was a slight splash as the pickles went overboard. Was the captain dead, that Tom should have taken command? One could almost have known, she thought, by the airs and graces of the second mate, that he was a swaggering chief officer now. All through the dog watch she could hear her husband pacing the lower bridge. Little she guessed Tom's silent torment of fear for her safety, with pestilence abroad in the ship, . and his precautions, taken perhaps all too late, to save her. He dared not venture upon the upper bridge, for his clothes, his hands, his breath, must reek with infection. When he had sent up the steward with supper it was only after warning the man to keep at a safe distance. Once or twice he had come half up the ladder, cool and fresh in a clean white suit, to reassure her; but he never imagined how the woman longed to be allowed to share the risk, to help among the sick. He failed to notice her pitiful little advances, her ambition to be treated as something better than a mere doll, and had finally left her swearing to herself that she could kill him and dance on his body. Perhaps, she thought, bitterly, he was even now, while he paced up and down before the wheelhouse, evolving fresh theories on the care and management of women. • All through the evening Tom's wife paced the upper bridge, desperate because of the awful; silence settling slowly down. The moon was reeling in the fore rigging, black shadows raced across the hospital itents below, the bows of the ship lifted and plunged, lifted and thrashed in the swell, while the waves broke with a crash against her side, to be shivered into lashes of sharp spray. All the ship seemed to have fallen into a sleep of exhaustion except that the poor little restless woman wandered up and down frettingherself to death about Tom. It was all very well to play with her fool, but she had gone too far, had driven him away, so now she was alone, and frightened. Her hair was all adrift, her dress in disorder, her face was white with fear —while the moon reeled in the bright sky, while the ship reeled on the black swell, and she was alone between sea and sky with hone to comfort her. “Will he never come?” she sobbed. “Will he never come back to me ?” Then there stole up through the shadows his voice that cried between the sea and sky: "We therefore commit their bodies to the deep . . . . looking to the resurrection of the body when the sea shall give up her dead .... Blessed are the dead ... for they rest from their labours . . . Lord, have mercy upon us . . . Lord, have mercy upon jus!” Upon that there was a silence

again, but she fell on her face crying aloud. “Clive him back to me! Ob, God, forgive me —give him back to me!” IV. Now, had the Angel of Death stalked up and down the bridge, Tom’s wife would have welcomed him for company. The boiling nights passed in vain pretences of steep; in the blazing days she saw men taken off one by one never to return ; then she felt on the third evening that flesh and blood could endure no more of horror. Three firemen who had refused to eat the captain's pickles, and revolted against, the hopeless mummeries of a hospital tent, crawled down into the forecastle to die quietly. This was the worst horror of all, for despite frequent swabbing of decks, a faint, sickening odour began to permeate the vessel, and the hot air vibrated with tremulous screams of pain. Mrs Brunt stopped her ears, buried her head in the pillows, sick with crying, hopeless because her prayers seemed all to have got lost. Mingled with the throbbing of the engines, she could hear Tom’s steady footfall as he paced the lower bridge, because all night, save when he tended the' sick, he must keep wateh after watch since the second mate fell -ill. He walked ever so quietly,barefooted, not daring even to whistle lest he disturbed her rest. This had been company in other nights, his presence lending her a sense of security; but now, when the outcries of the stricken firemen gave place to a stagnant silence more awful still, the poor creature forgot her resolution to give no trouble, forgot how bravely she eould bear her loneliness, forgot everything save her terror, and eried aloud for help. He was at her side in a moment, making blundering attempts to comfort her. “See here, little woman, do you want to make yourself useful, eh? Well, when I’m not on deck, you keep watch from here, and if you see any .light or ship, stamp on the deck to rouse the man at the w’heel.” “Why, you stupid, I’ve done all that for days,” then she laughed merrily. “Tom, I’m all right, dear, never mind me. I only called out because it’s so still in the ship. I was afraid that—surely the men in the forecastle must be wanting help.” Tom went down the ladder ashamed that he should need her courage to reinforce his own, while his wife, moved by a sudden impulse, knelt down to pray for his safety in the pest-house forward. So long as he was out of sight she held her breath waiting, when he came back along the deck she returned thanks; but by the time he made his way to her side, she was sitting quite quiet in the deck chair. “Are they all right?” she whisperer!. She never saw his face, the awe - stricken face of one who has been down in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. “The poor things are asleep, darling, all three of them—fast asleep.”

The sun was blazing down upon the eastward sea, the silver rippling sea barred athwart with the villa-speckled hills and smoky ridges of Bombay; already the odour of the East was in the air, the bay was opening out within the points, the distant mountains borrowing shape and substance from the mists as the ship raced towards them. There in the bow was Tom, alert and ruddy in pyjamas and bare feet, holding forth to the boatswain and two surviving sailors who hung about the tent on the fore hatch, sullen, mutinous. “My lads,” he said, “you’ve worked nobly—you really have, indeed; I’m writing to the owners to tell them so. But that's no excuse for skulking. You know jolly well it's got to be done—done now. They must be taken out of the forecastle, and heaved overboard before we’ll be allowed into quarantine—and you’ve got to do it. Come, be men —turn to. I’ll never ask a man to do what I’m scared of myself; come, help me to clean out that hole. Mind, if you don’t” —here Tom wagged his head up and down—“you’ll jolly well go to gaol.” Still the men, black as nigger*

from hard, hot work in the stokehold —<pr the firemen were nearly all dead •—stood hanging their heads, shamed but afraid. “It’s brooms for four, coffins for three, that’s what I say,” cried the bo's’n, “I’ll go to gaol.” A’low murmur of approval greeted this sally; then old Bill Jackson spoke up defiantly. “I’d as lief go down the locker,” to wit, Davy Jones, his locker. “Might as well ax a chap to jump overboard!” Tom’s eyes flashed ominously. “No slack jaw,” he said, “another word and I’ll put you down that forecastle in irons.” The bo's’n went to the rail and spat. “Come,” said Tom, brusquely, “are you going to let me go down alone?” There was no answer, but one of the men looked up with a etart, pulling his forelock by way of a' rough salute, for a little hand was stealing round Tom’s arm. another little hand had grasped a broom from the hateb. a delicate little white face, with dusky hair and big black eyes, stoic into view looking up at Tom with a smile and just a suspicion of tears. “Tom,” said a quavering voice, “Tom, dear, don't risk their lives. Let us two clear out the fu'c’sle.” Tom clasped his wife’s face in both his rough, red hands, kissed her reverently on the forehead, then without speaking looked up at his men. . ’‘Come, lads,” growled the bo’s’n, “turn to —turn to. By George, she’ll be sending us aft to dam socks! Cap’n, I’ll stand by you, anyway.” “And I.” “And I.” “Come on, then,” said Tom. “Go aft, little wife —God bless you!”