The man drew himself up and saluted.
“If you please, doctor, one of the prisoners is taken sick, and as the dinner’s over, and he’s pretty bad, I ventured to disturb your honour.”
“You ass!” says Pine–who, like many gruff men, had a good heart under his rough shell–“why didn’t you tell me before?” and knocking the ashes out of his barely-lighted pipe, he stopped that implement with a twist of paper and followed his summoner down the hatchway.
In the meantime the woman who was the object of the grim old fellow’s suspicions was enjoying the comparative coolness of the night air. Her mistress and her mistress’s daughter had not yet come out of their cabin, and the men had not yet finished their evening’s tobacco. The awning had been removed, the stars were shining in the moonless sky, the poop guard had shifted itself to the quarter-deck, and Miss Sarah Purfoy was walking up and down the deserted poop, in close tête-à-tête with no less a person than Captain Blunt himself. She had passed and repassed him twice silently, and at the third turn the big fellow, peering into the twilight ahead somewhat uneasily, obeyed the glitter of her great eyes, and joined her.
“You weren’t put out, my wench,” he asked, “at what I said to you below?”
She affected surprise.
“What do you mean?”
“Why, at my–at what I–at my rudeness, there! For I was a bit rude, I admit.”
“I? Oh dear, no. You were not rude.”
“Glad you think so!” returned Phineas Blunt, a little ashamed at what looked like a confession of weakness on his part.
“You would have been–if I had let you.”
“How do you know?”
“I saw it in your face. Do you think a woman can’t see in a man’s face when he’s going to insult her?”
“Insult you, hey! Upon my word!”
“Yes, insult me. You’re old enough to be my father, Captain Blunt, but you’ve no right to kiss me, unless I ask you.”
“Haw, haw!” laughed Blunt. “I like that. Ask me! Egad, I wish you would, you black-eyed minx!”
“So would other people, I have no doubt.” “That soldier officer, for instance. Hey, Miss Modesty? I’ve seen him looking at you as though he’d like to try.”
The girl flashed at him with a quick side glance.
“You mean Lieutenant Frere, I suppose. Are you jealous of him?”
“Jealous! Why, damme, the lad was only breeched the other day. Jealous!”
“I think you are–and you’ve no need to be. He is a stupid booby, though he is Lieutenant Frere.”
“So he is. You are right there, by the Lord.”
Sarah Purfoy laughed a low, full-toned laugh, whose sound made Blunt’s pulse take a jump forward, and sent the blood tingling down to his fingers ends.
“Captain Blunt,” said she, “you’re going to do a very silly thing.”
He came close to her and tried to take her hand.
“What?”
She answered by another question.
“How old are you?”
“Forty-two, if you must know.”
“Oh! And you are going to fall in love with a girl of nineteen.”
“Who is that?”
“Myself!” she said, giving him her hand and smiling at him with her rich red lips.
The mizen hid them from the man at the wheel, and the twilight of tropical stars held the main-deck. Blunt felt the breath of this strange woman warm on his cheek, her eyes seemed to wax and wane, and the hard, small hand he held burnt like fire.
“I believe you are right,” he cried. “I am half in love with you already.”
She gazed at him with a contemptuous sinking of her heavily fringed eyelids, and withdrew her hand.
“Then don’t get to the other half, or you’ll regret it.”
“Shall I?” asked Blunt. “That’s my affair. Come, you little vixen, give me that kiss you said I was going to ask you for below,” and he caught her in his arms.
In an instant she had twisted herself free, and confronted him with flashing eyes.
“You dare!” she cried. “Kiss me by force! Pooh! you make love like a schoolboy. If you can make me like you, I’ll kiss you as often as you will. If you can’t, keep your distance, please.”
Blunt did not know whether to laugh or be angry at this rebuff. He was conscious that he was in rather a ridiculous position, and so decided to laugh.
“You’re a spitfire, too. What must I do to make you like me?”
She made him a curtsy.
“That is your affair,” she said; and as the head of Mr. Frere appeared above the companion, Blunt walked aft, feeling considerably bewildered, and yet not displeased.
“She’s a fine girl, by jingo,” he said, cocking his cap, “and I’m hanged if she ain’t sweet upon me.”
And then the old fellow began to whistle softly to himself as he paced the deck, and to glance towards the man who had taken his place with no friendly eyes. But a sort of shame held him as yet, and he kept aloof.
Maurice Frere’s greeting was short enough.
“Well, Sarah,” he said, “have you got out of your temper?”
She frowned.
“What did you strike the man for? He did you no harm.”
“He was out of his place. What business had he to come aft? One must keep these wretches down, my girl.”
“Or they will be too much for you, eh? Do you think one man could capture a ship, Mr. Maurice?”
“No, but one hundred might.”
“Nonsense! What could they do against the soldiers? There are fifty soldiers.”
“So there are, but–”
“But what?”
“Well, never mind. It’s against the rules, and I won’t have it.”
“‘Not according to the King’s Regulations,’ as Captain Vickers would say.”
Frere laughed at her imitation of his pompous captain.
“You are a strange girl; I can’t make you out. Come,” and he took her hand, “tell me what you are really.”
“Will you promise not to tell?”
“Of course.”
“Upon your word?”
“Upon my word.”
“Well, then–but you’ll tell?”
“Not I. Come, go on.”
“Lady’s-maid in the family of a gentleman going abroad.”
“Sarah, you can’t be serious?” “I am serious. That was the advertisement I answered.”
“But I mean what you have been. You were not a lady’s-maid all your life?”
She pulled her shawl closer round her and shivered.
“People are not born ladies’ maids, I suppose?”
“Well, who are you, then? Have you no friends? What have you been?”
She looked up into the young man’s face–a little less harsh at that moment than it was wont to be–and creeping closer to him, whispered–“Do you love me, Maurice?”
He raised one of the little hands that rested on the taffrail, and, under cover of the darkness, kissed it.
“You know I do,” he said. “You may be a lady’s-maid or what you like, but you are the loveliest woman I ever met.”
She smiled at his vehemence.
“Then, if you love me, what does it matter?” “If you loved me, you would tell me,” said he, with a quickness which surprised himself.
“But I have nothing to tell, and I don’t love you–yet.”
He let her hand fall with an impatient gesture; and at that moment Blunt–who could restrain himself no longer–came up.
“Fine night, Mr. Frere?”
“Yes, fine enough.”
“No signs of a breeze yet, though.”
“No, not yet.”
Just then, from out of the violet haze that hung over the horizon, a strange glow of light broke.
“Hallo,” cries Frere, “did you see that?”
All had seen it, but they looked for its repetition in vain. Blunt rubbed his eyes.
“I saw it,” he said, “distinctly. A flash of light.” They strained their eyes to pierce through the obscurity.
“Best saw something like it before dinner. There must be thunder in the air.”
At that instant a thin streak of light shot up and then sank again. There was no mistaking it this time, and a simultaneous exclamation burst from all on deck. From out the gloom which hung over the horizon rose a column of flame that lighted up the night for an instant, and then sunk, leaving a dull red spark upon the water.
“It’s a ship on fire,” cried Frere.
Chapter III.
The Monotony Breaks
They looked again, the tiny spark still burned, and immediately over it there grew out of the darkness a crimson spot, that hung like a lurid star in the air. The soldiers and sailors on the forecastle had seen it also, and in a moment the whole vessel was astir. Mrs. Vickers, with little Sylvia clinging to her dress, came up to share the new sensation; and at the sight of her mistress, the modest maid withdrew discreetly from Frere’s side. Not that there was any need to do so; no one heeded her. Blunt, in his professional excitement, had already forgotten her presence, and Frere was in earnest conversation with Vickers.