Volume III Part 2 (1/2)

'If you are going on deck, will you have the kindness to send Mr. Jones to me?' said he.

I pulled the door to, and regained the p.o.o.p.

'The Captain wants you,' I called to Mr. Jones, who immediately left the deck.

Helga came to me.

'He refuses to trans.h.i.+p us,' said I.

'He dare not!' she cried, turning pale.

'The man, all smiles and blandness, says no, with as steady a thrust of his meaning as though it were a boarding-pike. We have to determine either to jump overboard or to remain with him.'

She clasped her hands. Her courage seemed to fail her; her eyes shone brilliant with the alarm that filled her.

'Can nothing be done? Is it possible that we are so entirely in his power? Could we not call upon the crew to help us?' A sob arrested her broken exclamations.

I stood looking at the approaching steamer, wrestling with my mind for some idea to make known our situation to her as she pa.s.sed, but to no purpose. Why, though she should thrash through it within earshot of us, what meaning could I hope to convey in the brief cry I might have time to deliver? I cannot express the rage, the bitterness, the mortification, the sense, too, of the startling absurdity of our position, which fumed in my brain as I stood silently gazing at the steamer, with Helga at my side, white, straining her eyes at me, swiftly breathing.

In the short time during which I had been below, the approaching vessel had shaped herself upon the sea, and was growing large with a rapidity that expressed her an ocean mail-boat. Already with the naked sight I could catch the glint of the sun upon the gilt device at her stemhead, and sharp flashes of the reflection of light in some many-windowed deck structure broke from her, end-on as she was, to her slow stately swaying, as though she were firing guns.

The Captain remained below. A few minutes after Mr. Jones had gone to him, he--that is, the mate--came on to the p.o.o.p bearing a great black board, which he rested upon the deck.

'Captain Bunting's compliments, Mr. Tregarthen,' said he, 'and he'll be glad to know if this message is satisfactory to you?'

Upon the board were written, in chalk, in very visible, decipherable characters, like the letters of print, the following words:

HUGH TREGARTHEN, OF TINTRENALE, BLOWN OUT OF BAY NIGHT OCTOBER 21ST, IS SAFE ON BOARD THIS s.h.i.+P, 'LIGHT OF THE WORLD,'

BUNTING, MASTER, TO CAPE TOWN.

PLEASE REPORT.

'That will do,' said I coldly, and resumed my place at the rail.

Helga said, in a low voice:

'What is the object of that board?'

'They will read the writing aboard the steamer,' I answered, 'make a note of it, report it, and my mother will get to hear of it and know that I am alive.'

'But how will she get to hear of it?'

'Oh, the message is certain to find its way into the s.h.i.+pping papers, and there will be twenty people at Tintrenale to hear of it and repeat it to her.'

'It is a good idea, Hugh,' said she. 'It is a message to rest her heart.

It may reach her, too, as quickly as you yourself could if we went on board that steamer. It was clever of you to think of it.'

'It was the Captain's suggestion!' I exclaimed.

'It is a good idea!' she repeated, with something of life coming into her blanched, dismayed face; 'you will feel a little happier. I shall feel happier too. I have grieved to think your mother may suppose you drowned. Now, in a few days she will know that you are well.'