Geoffrey Hampstead: A Novel

Soon another schooner loomed up in the moist air of the east wind, and, when the hull was visible, Mr. Dearborn approached Nina and said:

"Would you oblige me, madame, by allowing me to look through your glasses?"

"Certainly," said Nina; "they belong to the ship – not to me."

Dearborn took a long look at the approaching vessel. The North Star had been described to him as having a peculiar cut-away bow, and the vessel coming across their track had a perpendicular bow.

Nina then looked through the glasses intently, and for a moment they stood beside each other.

"I wonder why all the vessels seem to be crossing our track, instead of going in our direction," she said to quiet-looking Mr. Dearborn.

"I don't know much about sailing, miss. But I know that vessels can't sail straight into the wind. They seesaw backward and forward, first one way and then the other. How they get up against the wind I could never understand. They are like lawyers, I think. They see a point ahead of them, and they just beat about the bush till they get there. Some of these things are hard to take in."

Nina smiled.

"A good many of these vessels," added Mr. Dearborn, while he watched his fair companion, "are going to Oswego."

"Oh, indeed!" said Nina, unconsciously brightening.

"And the wind is ahead for that trip," said Dearborn.

"Is it?"

Nina had been round Lake Ontario in a yacht, and she had had an English boarding-school finish. She could have told the general course of the Ganges or the Hoang-ho, but she had no idea in what direction she was going on her own lake to Oswego. In English schools Canada is a land not worth learning about, and where hardly any person would live voluntarily. People go about chiefly on snow-shoes, and it is easy in most places to kill enough game for dinner from your own doorstep.

"Yes, it would take a sailing vessel a long time, I should think, to get to Oswego."

"How long do you suppose?" asked Nina.

"I don't really know. It depends on the vessel. I suppose a smart yacht could do it in a pretty short time. That Toronto yacht, the Ideal, I suppose, could – "

"Oh, you know the Ideal?"

"No. She was pointed out to me once. They say she's a rare one to go, and no mistake. That young fellow, Treadwell, that sails her – they say he is one of the finest yachtsmen in Canada."

"Oh," said Nina, laughing and blushing. It was funny to hear this quiet stranger praising Jack. She felt proud of his small glory.

"Yes," said Dearborn, rubbing his forehead, as if trying to recollect. "That's his name – Treadwell. However, it does not matter."

"Not at all," said Nina. She was somewhat more on her guard now against strangers since her experience with the Rev. Matthew Simpson. But evidently this man did not even know Jack's name, and did not want to know it for any reason.

Dearborn was hanging "off and on," as sailors say, thinking that if she knew anything about this Cresswell she would perhaps give him a lead. Not getting any lead, he muttered half aloud, by way of coming back to the point:

"Treadwell – Treadwell – no – that's not the name." Then aloud. "It's provoking when one can not remember a name, madame."

He then fell to muttering other similar sounding names, and Nina could not refrain from smiling at his stupid, mild way of bothering himself about what was clearly no use to him.

"Ah! I have it! What a relief it is to succeed in a little thing like that! Cresswell. That's the name!"

The air of triumph on the mild-eyed man was amusing, and Nina laughed softly to herself.

He turned from gazing over the water and saw her laughing. Then he smiled, too, as if he wished to join in, if there was anything to laugh at.

"You are amused, madame. Perhaps you know this gentleman quite well – and are laughing at my stupidity?"

"I ought to," said Nina, unable to resist the temptation to paralyze this well-behaved person of the middle classes. "I am his wife." And she laughed heartily at her little joke.

If ever a man did get a surprise it was detective Dearborn. For a bare instant, it threw him off his guard. He saw too much all at once. Here was the woman who perhaps had all the $50,000 on her person. He tried to show polite surprise and pleasure at the intelligence; but it was too late. For an instant he had looked keen. Comparatively, Nina was brighter nowadays. Danger and deception had sharpened her faculties. She was thoughtless enough, certainly, to mention who she was; but she did not see any reason why she should not. She might as well call herself Mrs. Cresswell now as when she got to Oswego, where she would have to do so. Mr. Dearborn had gone almost as far in self-betrayal. He longed for a warrant to arrest her, and get the money from her, but he said in his subdued, abstracted sort of way:

"How strange that is! No wonder you laugh! However, I said nothing against him – quite the contrary – and that is always a comfort when we feel we have been putting our foot in it. I was wondering, Mrs. Cresswell, who you were. It seemed to me I had seen you on the street in Toronto."

He spoke very politely. No one could take any exception to this tone. Even when he made the following remark it did not seem very much more than the ordinary growth of a chance conversation among travelers. He added:

"Let me see – a? Your maiden name was – a?" He raised his eyebrows with would-be polite inquiry; but it did not work. He had looked keen for the tenth part of a second, and now he might as well go in and rest himself for the remainder of the night.

Nina drooped her eyelids coldly.

"I do not know that that is a matter of any consequence."

She gave a little movement, as if she drew herself to herself, and she leisurely returned the glasses to their case.

Mr. Dearborn saw he had got his congé, and he wanted to kill himself. He felt rather awkward, and could not think of the right thing to say. The writer of Happy Thoughts has not provided mankind with the best reply to a snub that comes "straight from the shoulder." Even a Chesterfield may be unequal to the occasion.

"I hope you will not think me inquisitive?" he said lamely.

"Not at all," said Nina quickly. She slightly inclined her head, without looking at him, as she moved away to her chair – not wishing to appear too abrupt.

She sat there wondering who this man was, and thinking she had been foolish to say anything about herself. The evening came on chill, windy, and foggy, and she grew strangely lonely. She had got the idea that this man was watching her. It made her very nervous and wretched. She longed for some strong friend to be with her – some one on whom she could rely. Everything had conspired to depress her in the past few weeks. She had now left her home and a kind father – never to return. She was out in the world, with no one to look to but Jack. This would be a long night for her, she thought. She was too nervous to go to sleep. She felt so tired of all the unrest of her life. What would she not give to have all her former chances back before her again! How she longed for the mental peace she had known until lately. Oh, the fool she had been! the wickedness of it all! How she had been forced from one thing to another by the consequences of her fault! She was terribly wretched, poor girl, as the evening wore on. She went to her cabin and undressed for bed. She said her prayers kneeling on the damp carpet. She prayed for Jack's safety and for her own, and for the man who assisted her to all her misery. Still her despair and forlornness weighed upon her more and more. The sense of being entirely alone, without any protection from a nameless fear, which the idea of being watched all day by an unknown man greatly increased; the terrible doubt about everything in the future – all this culminated in an absolute terror. She lay in bed and tried to pray again, and then an idea she acquired when a child came to her, that prayers were unavailing unless said while kneeling on the hard floor. In all her terror, the conviction of wickedness almost made her faint, and to make things worse, she got those awful words into her head, "the wages of sin is death," and she could not get them out. Yielding to the idea that her prayers would be better if said kneeling, she climbed out panic-stricken to the cold floor, which chilled her to the bone, and terrified by the words ringing in her head she almost shrieked aloud:

"O God, take those words away from me! O God, thou knowest I have suffered! O God, I am terrified! I am alone. O God, protect me! Forgive me all things, for I do repent."

Here she felt that if she prayed any more she would be hysterical and beyond her own control. She crept back into bed; but all she could think of until she dropped to sleep, exhausted, was, "The wages of sin is death – The wages of sin – is Death."

CHAPTER XXV

Brutus:O that a man might knowThe end of this day's business ere it come!But it sufficeth that the day will end,And then the end is known.Julius Cæsar.

When Jack got on board the North Star he found that, although he had shipped as working passenger, the wily mate had taken him as one of the crew, with the intention, doubtless, of pocketing the wages which otherwise would have gone to the sailor who would have been employed. Several of the sailors were rather intoxicated, and the rest were just getting over a spree. They came down into the forecastle just before leaving, and seeing Jack there, whom they did not know, were very silent. One of them at last said:

"Is every man here a Union man?"

Jack knew he was not, and that, being ignorant of secret signs, he would perhaps be found out. He answered, "I don't belong to the Union."

The man who spoke first then, said sulkily: "That settles it; I'm going ashore. The rules says that no member shall sail on a vessel if there is any scab on board."

Jack understood from this, after a moment's thought, that this expression must refer to one who did not avail himself of the healthy privileges of the Sailors' Union.

He explained that he was only going as a passenger, and was not under pay.

This seemed to make the matter satisfactory, and after the malcontent quieted down they all got to work peacefully. It took them a long time to get all the canvas set while the tug towed the vessel out of and beyond the harbor.

Jack found he was no match for these men in the toil of making heavy canvas. He felt like a child among them. The halyards were so large and coarse to the touch, and after being exposed to the weather, their fiber was like fine wire and ate into his hands painfully, although the latter were well enough seasoned for yachting work. His hands almost refused to hold the ropes when they had got thoroughly scalded in the work, and by the time all the canvas was set he was ready to drop on the deck with exhaustion.

He was on the mate's watch. This man saw that, although Jack was physically inferior, his knowledge seemed all right. This puzzled the sailors. He was dressed in clothes which had looked rough and plebeian on the Ideal, but here he was far too well dressed. If there were tears in his clothes and in his hat, there were no patches anywhere, and this seemed to be, prima facie, a suspicious circumstance. He regretted that his clothes were not down to the standard. After being reviled on the yachts because they were so disreputable, he now felt that they were so particularly aristocratic that he longed for the garments of a tramp. He saw that if the sailors suspected that he was not one of themselves by profession they would send him to Coventry for the rest of the trip. This would be unpleasant, for as the men got sober they proved good-humored fellows in their way, although full of cranks and queer ideas.

At eight bells, on the first night, Jack came on deck in a long ulster, which, although used for duck-shooting and sailing for five years since it last saw King Street, was still painfully whole. The vessel was lying over pretty well and thrashing through the waves in creditable style. The watch just going off duty had "put it up" with the mate that Jack should be sent aloft to stow the fore-gafftopsail.

They could not make Jack out. And when he went up the weather-rigging, after slipping out of the ulster, every man on board except the captain was covertly watching him – wondering how he would get through the task. The topsail had been "clewed up" at the masthead – and was banging about in the strong wind like a suspended Chinese lantern.

Suppose a person were to tie together the four corners of a new drawing-room carpet, and were then to hoist it in this shape to the top of a tall pine tree bending in the wind to an angle of thirty degrees. Let him now climb up, and with a single long line master the banging mass by winding the line tightly around it from the top down to the bottom, and afterward secure the long bundle to the side of the tree. If this be done, by way of experiment, while the seeker after knowledge holds himself on as best he can by his legs, and performs the operation on a black night entirely by the sense of touch he will understand part of what our lake sailors have to do.

Jack, to say truly, had all he wanted. The sail was a new one. The canvas and the bolt-ropes were so stiff as to almost defy his strength. But he got it done and descended, tired enough. All hands were satisfied that he knew a good deal, and yet they said they were sure he was "not quite the clean wheat." The ulster had been very damaging.

The evening of the second day saw them still working down the lake, and having had some favorable slants of wind they had got well on their way. As Jack's watch went below at midnight, a fog had settled over the sea, and he was glad to get down out of the cold, and have a comfortable smoke before turning into his old camping blankets for the rest of his four hours off.

By the light of a bad-smelling tin lamp nailed against the Samson-post, and sitting on a locker beside one of the swinging anchor chains that came down through the hawse pipe from the deck above into the fore-peak under the man's feet, one of the sailors fell to telling one of his many adventures on the lakes. There was no attempt at humor in this story. It was a simple, artless tale of deadly peril, cold, exhaustion, and privation on our inland sea. It was told with a terrible earnestness, born of a realization of the awful anxiety that had stamped upon his perfect memory every little detail that occurred.

This was an experience when, in the month of December, the schooner he was then sailing on had been sent on a last trip from Oswego to Toronto. They had almost got around the Lighthouse Point at Toronto, after a desperately cold passage, when a gale struck them, and, not being able to carry enough canvas to weather the point, they were thus driven down the lake again with the sails either blown from the bolt-ropes or split to ribbons, with the exception of a bit of the foresail, with which they ran before the wind. To go to South Bay would probably mean being frozen in all winter, and perhaps the loss of the ship, so the captain headed for Oswego, hoping the snow and sleet would clear off to enable them to see the harbor when they got there. On the way down a huge sea came over the stern, stove in the cabin, and smashed the compasses.

"We hedn't kept no dead reckonin', an' we cudn't tell anyways how fast we wus goin'. We just druv' on afore it for hours. Cudn't see more'n a vessel's length anywheres for snow, and, as for ice, we wus makin' ice on top of her like you'd think we wus a-loadin' ice from a elevator; we wus just one of 'Greenland's icy mountings' gone adrift. Waal, the old man guv it up at last, and acknowledged the corn right up and up. Says he, 'Boys, she's a goner. We've druv' down below and past Oswego, and that's the last of her.'"

"This looked pretty bad – fur the old man to collapse all up like this; fur all on yer knows as well as I do that to get down below Oswego in a westerly gale in December means that naathin' is goin' to survive but the insurance. There's no harbors, ner shelter, ner lifeboats, ner naathin'. Yer anchors are no more use to yer off that shore than a busted postage-stamp. Thet's the time, boys, fur to jine the Salvation Army and trample down Satan under yer feet and run her fur the shore and pray to God for a soft spot and lots of power fer to drive her well up into a farm.

"Waal, gents, the old man tuckered out, and went off to his cabin fur to make it all solid with his 'eavenly parents, and two or three of us chaps as hed been watchin' things pretty close come to the conclusion thet we hedn't got below Oswego yet. So we all went in a body, as a kind o' depitation from ourselves, and says us to the old man: 'Hev you guv up the nevigation of this vessel? becus, ef yer hev, there's others here as wud like to take a whack at playin' captain.'

"'All right,' says the old man from his knees (fur he was down gettin' the prayers ready-made out of a book), 'I've guv her up,' says he; 'do you jibe your fores'l and head her fur the sutherd and look out for a soft spot. Yer kin do what yer likes with her.'

"So we jibes the fores'l then, just puttin' the wheel over and lettin' the wind do the rest of it, fer there was six inches of ice on to the sheets, and yer couldn't touch a line anywheres unless yer got in to it with a axe. Waal, the old fores'l flickers across without carryin' away naathin', and, just as we did this, another vessel heaves right across the course we bed been a-driven' on. Our helm was over and the ship was a-swingin' when we sighted her, or else we'd have cut her in two like a bloomin' cowcumber. And then we seed our chance. That ere vessel was goin' along, on the full kioodle, with every appearance of knowin' where she was goin' to – which we didn't. 'Hooray!' says we, 'we ain't below Oswego yet, and that vessel will show us the road. She's got the due course from somewheres, and she's our only chance.'

"And we follered her. You can bet your Sunday pants we was everlastin'ly right on her track. She was all we hed, boys, 'tween us and th' etarnal never-endin' psalm. Death seemed like a awful cold passage that time, boys! We wus all frost-bit and froze up ginerally; and clothes weren't no better'n paper onto us."

"But she had a leetle more fores'l onto her than we hed; and after a while she begun to draw away from us. We hed naathin' left more to set fer to catch up with her. We hollered to make her ease up, but she paid no attention. Guess she didn't hear, or thought we hed our compasses all right – which we hedn't. Waal, gents, it was a awful time. Our last chance was disappearin' in the snow-storm, and there wus us left there, 'most froze to death, and not knowin' where to go. Yer cudn't see her, thro' the snow, more'n two lengths ahead; and, when she got past that, all yer cud see was the track of her keel in the water right under our bows. Well, fellows, I got down furrud on the chains, and we 'stablished a line o' signals from me along the rest of them to the man at the wheel. If I once lost that tract in the water we wus done forever. Sometimes I wus afeared I hed lost it, and then I got it again, and then it seemed to grow weaker; and I thought a little pray to God would do no harm. And I lifts up my hand – so – "

The man had left his seat and was crouching on the floor as he told this part of the story. The words rolled out with a terrific energy as he glared down at the floor, stooping in the attitude in which he had watched the track in the water. The tones of his voice had a wild terror in them that thrilled Jack to the very core, and made him feel as if he could not breathe.

"And I lifts up me hand – so (and, gents, I wus lookin' at that streak in the water. I want yer to understand I was a-lookin' at it). And I lifts up me hand – so – and I says 'Holy Christ, don't let that vessel get off no farderer – '"

The story was never finished.

A sound came to them that seemed to Jack to be only a continuation of the horror of the story he had heard. A crash sounded through the ship and they were all knocked off their seats into the fore-peak with a sudden shock. They tumbled up on deck in a flash, and there they saw that a great steamer had mounted partly on top of the schooner's counter. The mainmast had gone over the side to leeward.

The schooner had been about to cross the steamer's course when they first saw her lights in the fog, and, partly mistaking her direction, the sailing captain had put his ship about. This brought the stern of the schooner, as she swung in stays, directly in line with the course of the steamer. The steamer's helm was put hard over, and the engines were reversed, but not until within fifty feet of the schooner. The stern of the schooner swung around as she turned to go off on the other tack, so that, although the stem or cutwater of the steamer got past, the counter of the schooner was struck and forced through the steamer's starboard bow under the false sides. When they struck, the schooner's stern was depressed in the seaway and the steamer's bow was high in the air, so that the latter received a deadly blow which tore a hole about six feet high by ten long in her bow. Both boats went ahead together, chiefly owing to the momentum of the huge steamer. And for a moment the steamer's false sides rested on what was left of the schooner's counter on the port side.

A man leaning over from the upper deck of the steamer cried:

"What schooner is that?"

"Schooner North Star, of Toronto," was the reply.

The man vaulted over the bulwarks and slid actively down the sloping side of the steamer to the deck of the schooner and looked around him. No sooner had he done so than the motion of the waves parted the two boats. The steamer ceased to move ahead. The forward canvas of the schooner had caught the wind and she was beginning to pay off on the port tack, the mainmast, mainsail, and rigging dragging in the water.

Jack, who was filled with helpless anxiety, then discovered that the steamer was the Eleusinian. At the same moment he heard a shriek from the bow of the steamer and there he saw Nina, her long hair driving behind her, beckoning him to come to help her. The steamer, filling like a broken bottle, had already taken one lurch preparatory to going down and Jack yelled:

"Jump, Nina! Jump into the water and I will save you!"

But Nina, not knowing that the steamer was going down, had not the courage to cast herself into the black heaving waves.

Jack saw this hesitation, and yelled to her again to jump. He made fast the end of a coil of light line, and then sprang to the bulwarks to jump overboard so that when he swam to the bows of the steamer Nina could jump into the water near him.

He knew without looking that the schooner, with no after-canvas set, could do nothing at present but fall off and drift away before the wind, as she was now doing, and as her one yawl boat had been smashed to dust in the collision, the only chance for Nina was for him to have a line in his hand whereby to regain the schooner as it drifted off. It was a wild moment for Jack, but his nerve was equal to the occasion. While he belayed the end of the light line to a ring on the bulwarks, he called to his mates on the schooner to let go everything and douse their forward canvas.

It takes a long time even to read what had to be done. What Jack did was done in a moment; but as he sprang to the bulwarks to vault over the side, a strong pair of arms seized him from behind and held him like a vice with his arms at his sides.

"Let me go," he cried, as he struggled in the grasp of a stranger.

"No, sir. You're wanted. I have had trouble enough to get you without letting you drown yourself."

Jack struggled wildly; but the more frantic he became the more he roused the detective to ferocity. He heaved forward to throw Dearborn over his head; but the two fell together, crashing their heads upon the deck, where they writhed convulsively.

The iron grip never relaxed. At last Jack, lifting Dearborn with him, got on his feet and, seizing something on the bulwarks to hold himself in position, he stopped his efforts to escape. "For God's sake," he cried brokenly, "for Christ's sake, let me go! See, there she is! She is going to be my wife!"

In his excitement Dearborn forgot that the woman on the steamer might have the stolen money with her. To him Jack's jumping overboard promised certain death and the loss of a prisoner.