 Chapter 4 of the Phantom Death and Other Stories. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Maria Fatima da Silva. The Phantom Death and Other Stories by William Clark Russell. A Memory of the Pacific It was in December 1858 that the ship Walter Hood shifted her birth to the Wall Sheds at Sydney to load a cargo for London. I was Chief Officer of the vessel. My name, let me say here, is Adam Chichester. I was standing on the wharf near the ship waiting for the arrival of some wagons of wool when the master of a German vessel that lay just astern of us came up to me and said, Dot was a bad shop last night. What was said I? Have not you heard of their brutal murder in Shored Street? I have not seen a morning paper. She was Dot's small shop where they sell grocery and other things on their left going up. She was a Mr. Abney, they say. Their murderer was a beastly rogue called Murray. She helped in their shop. She had been a soldier. This morning, poor Abney was found dead in her bed, meet her throat cut and her skull split. Have they got the murderer? No, Dot was their pity. He made clean off meat 60 pound. Throughout the day people coming and going talked of this murder. They yarn run thus. Mrs. Abney occupied a room next to the murdered man's. The son Thomas, a youth of about 18, used an apartment at the back of the shop. The servant lay in the attics. The assistant Murray lodged out. Neither Mrs. Abney, her son nor the servant, had heard a sound in the night. Murray had broken into the house, passed into Abney's room and murdered him. Then, from a safe whose key Abney kept under his pillow, he had taken about 60 sovereigns. Also, noiselessly, the footfalls of a cat are not stiller. The family slept on and the murder was not discovered till half past seven in the morning. It was known by these dubbing tokens that Murray was the murderer. First, the knife Abney's throat had been cut with was Murray's. After using it, he had dropped it behind some paper in the bedroom grate. Next, when he had shifted himself at his lodgings, he had buried the clothes in the back garden. A dog belonging to the woman of the house was observed to run into the garden with its nose stooped as though on a trail. And stopping where the bundle was buried, it began to scratch and howl. The woman called a neighbour. They went to the place with the spade and found Murray's clothes covered with blood stains. The man himself was off and the people who from time to time during the day gave me news of this thing told me he was still at large, that the police were in hot pursuit and there was no hope for him. That evening, I strolled up George Street for a walk and saw a great crowd at the Abney's shop. I stopped to stare with the rest of them. They call this sort of curiosity vulgar and debasing. But crime puts the significance of human emotion, misery and remorse into stocks and stones. Human passion gives the vitality of romance, tragic or comic, to the most sordid and contemptible aspects of the commonplace. I had passed that grocery shop 20 times and often looked at the house. I looked at it again now and found the matter of fact structure as strange grotesque repulsive as a nightmare. The days rolled on. Murray remained at large. His escape or at least his marvellous manner of hiding was the source of more excitement than the murder itself had proved. Most people suppose he had got clean away and was lurking among the islands unless he was halfway on the road to Europe or America. Others that he had struck inland and had perished in the wilds. But by degrees of course, the matter went out of one's head, out of mind certainly. Before the ship sailed, I could walk up George Street and look at the shop and think of other things than the murder. Yet the memory of it was freshened a day or two before the tug got hold of us by the commander of the ship, Captain Charles Lytton, telling me that amongst those who had taken births in the steerage were the widow and son of the murdered man. I'm almost sorry they chose this ship, said he, with an uneasy half laugh. For my part, I'd asleaf sail on a Friday as carry anything with such a shadow upon it as murder. They're longing catching Murray, said I. It's no fault of the police, he answered. We're not in England here. A brisk walk takes a man into desolation. When you talk of catching a murderer, you think of Beatles and fire engines and the electric telegraph. But the black man is still in this country. There's never a village pump betwixt Wooloo Maloo and the Antarctic Circle. Small one day your bushranger flourishes. We sailed on a Monday in the beginning of February, having been belated by the breakdown of some transport machinery in the interior. There went about a dozen people to the steerage company and we carried 10 passengers in the saloon. The Waterhood is a smart and beautiful clipper of a vanished type. Elliptical stern, a swelling lift of head with an exquisite entry of cut water, copper to the bends, a green hull, yards a square as a fry gate, with a noble breast of top sail and royal yards hoisting close under the truck's man of war style. On a wind 1.3, she could have given her tow rope to any black wall liner than a float and not known there was anything in her wake. When we were clear of the heads, I came aft after seeing to the ground tackle and in the waist saw a woman in deep mourning looking over the rail at the receding land. A young fellow stood beside her. He too was in black. I cannot recall a finer specimen of a young man than that youth. His height was about six feet. He held himself erect as a soldier. His breath of shoulder warranted in him the hurricane lungs of a bullson. He was looking at the land and his face was hard with a fixed and dark expression of grief. The third mate was near. I whispered to him to say if those two were the Abneys. He answered they were. When sometime later on I had led her to look about me, I observed that the widow of the murdered man and her son held a loop from their fellow passengers down on the main deck. She always appeared with a veil on. She and the youth would get together in some corner or recess and they'd sit, talking low. The steerage folks treated them with a sort of commiserative respect as though a flexion had dignified the pair. The steward told me he had picked up that after the murder of Babney, the widow had sold off the contents of the shop and her furniture. She was going home to live with her sister, the wife of a tradesman at Stepney. He told me that the son often spoke of his father's murder. His notion is, said the steward, that Murray's out of the colony and to be found in England. That's his hope. He's a bit crazed. I think with some queer dream of meeting of him and talks with his eyes shining of a day of reckoning. Otherwise, he'd have stayed in Sydney where he's got friends and where his father's murder was likely to have improved his prospects by bringing him pity and business. When the Australian coast was out of sight, the wind chopped from the westward into the south and blew a wonderful sailing breeze. Bowling a wide heave of sea from horizon to horizon in lines of milky ridges and soft dark blue valleys, freckled as with melting snow. And along this splendid foamy surface, rushed the ship with the western sunlight, red as blood, in every lifting flash of her wet sheathing. So through the night, the white water full of fire poured away on neither hand the thunderous stem. The purely shining stars reeled above our phantom heights of sail faint as steam. A ten-accordion of crimson moon rose over our bows to be eclipsed for a while by the shadowy square of a ship's canvas right ahead. But before the moon had brightened into silver, we had a stranger beam of us, and were passing her as though she were a tanker. A liberally, liberally whaler square-ended with stumped top-gallant masts, a splashing grease box gamely tumbling in our wake with a convulsive soaring and shearing of her masts and yard arms. As though sentient, but drunken too, the lonely fabric sought to follow the stars with her trucks and drag the stellar system out of gear. So through next day and a whole week of days and nights following, then the breeze scanted one afternoon and at sundown it was a glassy calm, with the languid pulse of swell out of the southeast and the sky of red gold shaded with violet cloud. Brighter eastwards when the sun was set than a stern where the light had been. The middle watch was mine that night. I turned out with a yawn at midnight and going on deck found the reflection of the moon trembling with the brushing of a delicate warm cat's pour of wind. The sails were asleep and the ship was wrinkling onwards at two knots. The moon was over our port, main top sail yard arm, and being now hard upon her full and hanging in a perfectly cloudless sky, she filled the night with a fine white glory till the atmosphere looked to brim to the very stars with her light. The southern cross itself in the south shone faint in that spacious firmament of moonlight. I never remember the like of the silence that was upon that sea. The sense of the solitude of the prodigious distances worked in one like a spirit, subduing the heart with a perception of some mysterious inaudible hush, floating to and meeting in the shape out of every remote pale ocean recess. I had used the sea for years and knew what it was to lie motionless under the line for three weeks, sterless as though the keel had been bedded in a sheet flat surface of ice or glass. But never before had the mystery, the wonder, the awe which dwell like sensations of the soul itself in any vast scene of ocean night that is silent as death, and white as death too with overflowing moonlight affected and governed me as the beauties and sublime silence of this midnight did. The second mate went below and I paced the deck alone, saving the fellow at the helm. I seemed to be the only man in the ship, not a figure was visible. But then I very well knew that to my call the deck would be instantly clamorous and alive with running shapes of semen. After I had walked a little while, I crossed to the port side where the flood of moonshine lay shivering upon the ocean, and looked at the bright white rim of the sea under the moon, thinking I saw a sail there. It was then I heard a faint cry, sounding like a hallowing out upon the water on the port bow. I strained my ears, staring ahead with intensity. Then hearing nothing, I suppose the sound that had been like a human voice hailing with some creaking or chafing noise aloft. And I was about to resume my walk when I heard it again, this time a distinct melancholy cry. Did you hear that, sir? cried the fellow at the wheel. I answered yes, and sung out for some hands to get upon the forecastle and report anything in sight. The hallowing was repeated. In a few minutes a man forward hailed the poop and told me there was a boat or something black, two points on the port bow, on which I shifted the helm for the object, which the nightglass speedily resolved into the proportions of a small open boat with a man standing up in her. By this time the captain who had been aroused by our voices was on deck. We floated slowly down upon the little boat and the captain nailed to know if the man had strength to scramble aboard alone. Yes, sir, was the answer. Then look out for the line. The boat came under the bow. A rope's end was thrown in court. The man languidly climbed into the four channels, emitting to secure the boat, which drove past and was already in our wake as the fellow was crawling over the side. Some of our seamen helped him over the rail and he then came aft, walking very slowly with an occasional reel in his gait as though drunk or excessively weak. He mounted the poop ladder with the assistance of a seamen. The moonlight was so bright it was almost the same as seeing things by day. He was a short, powerfully built man, habited in the Pacific beach coma's garb of flannel shirt and dungaree breeches without a heart or shoes. His hair was long and wild. His beard ragged. He was about 30 years of age with a hawks' bill nose and large protruding eyes hollow cheeked, and he was of the color of a corpse as he faced the moon. He begged for a drink and for something to eat. And food and a glass of rum and water were given to him before he was questioned. He then told us he had belonged to the colonial schooner, Cordelia, that had been wrecked five days before on the reef. How far distant from the present situation of our ship, he did not know. The Maas and Kanaka crew left the wreck in what he called the long boat. He said he was asleep when the schooner grounded. He did not apparently awaken until sometime after the disaster. When he came on deck, he found the schooner hard and fast and deserted. A small boat was swinging in Davids. He lowered her and left the wreck, unable to bring away anything to eat or drink with him, as the hold was awash and the vessel quickly going to pieces and floating off in staves. He delivered this yarn in a feeble voice, but fluently. Undoubtedly he had suffered, but somehow as I listened, I could not satisfy myself that what had befallen him had happened just as he stated. He asked what ship ours was and looked around quickly when he was told she was the Walter Horde from Sydney Bound to London. The captain asked him what his rating had been aboard the schooner. He answered, Able Seaman, he was then sent forward into the forecastle. I went below at four and was again on deck at eight and learned that the man we had rescued was too ill to turn to, as we call it. The ship's doctor told me he was suffering from the effects of privation and exposure, but that he was a hearty man and would be fit for working a day or two. He had told the doctor his name was Jonathan Love and that the cordially belonged to Hobart Town, at which place he had joined her. The doctor said to me he did not like his looks. I make every allowance he went on for hairiness and color and for the expression which the sufferings a man endures in a dry starving, open boat at sea will stamp upon his face, sometimes lustingly. There's an evil memory in the eyes of that chap. He glances at you as though he saw something beyond. Men of a sweet and angelic expression of countenance are rarely met with in these seas, said I. Likely as not, he will prove an escaped convict, said the doctor. Three days passed and Love still kept his hammock. But now the doctor reported him well and the captain sent orders to the both son to turn the man to and find out what he was fit for. This happened during a forenoon watch, which was mine. The day had broken in splendor. Masses of white cloud were rolling their stately bulk, prismatic as oyster shells into the northeast. And the blue in the breaks of them was of the heavenly die of the Pacific. The ship was cut scene forwards under breathing top sales and studying sales. And the curdy breakfast being ended. All the passengers were on deck. I stood at the head of the starboard pool platter watching the steerage passengers on the main deck. I took particular notice. I recollect on this occasion of the abneys, weirdo and son, as they sat on the combing of the main hatch. The youth reading aloud to his mother. It was the conscious, I suppose, of the heavy crepe and thick veil of the woman with the light, tropic garments of the rest of the people, which invited my eyes to the couple. I found my mind recalling as best my memory could. The particulars of the horrible crime, the weirdo's somber clothes, perpetuated. Then it was, and whilst I was recreating the picture of the shop in George Street, that I observed the young fellow lift his gaze from the page it had been fastened to, violently start, then leap to his feet with a sudden shriek. He was looking at the man we had rescued. He stood in the waist, trousers upturned, arms bared, posture as erect as a soldier's. A formidable iron figure of a fellow of medium height, fagged with hair about the head and face. Mother yelled the young fellow, almost in the instant of his first shriek, whilst the rescued man turned to look at him. Father's murderer, James Murray, there he is. Not by the sun, not by the sun, shouted Murray, holding out his arms as the other rushed towards him. Not by you, he's got his father's looks, any man else, but before the young fellow could grasp him, Murray in a single leap, swift and agile as the goats, had gained the foreregging and was halfway up the shrouds, the young fellow after him. Not you, roared the murderer, not with your father's face on you. So help me God, it shan't be then, and rounding to the sea, he put his hands together not overboard, brushing the outstretched hand of his pursuer as he flashed past him. Pick us up, he must hang for it. Browning's too easy, he murdered my father, and thus shouting the lads sprang into the water. Such a scene of confusion as now followed defies my pen. The ceaseless screaming of the poor widow complicated the uproar. I bore to the man at the wheel to put the helm down, the hands to lay aft to clear away and lower a boat. All our passengers were from Sydney, most of the crew had shipped at that port. Everyone there had heard of the murder of Mr. Abney, and the effect of the discovery that we had fallen in with a murderer who had so long successfully eluded justice that he had been on board a ship three days, that he was yonder floating on our quarter with the murdered man's son making for him the bold furious weeps of his arms was electrical. Women shrieked and men roared, overhead the sails flapped as the ship came to the wind, and there was the further noise of the heavy tread of seamen, the flinging down of ropes, my own and the captain's sharp commands. When I had time to look, I beheld the death struggle in the sea some quarter of a mile distant. They had grappled. God knows what intention was in the young fellow's mind. It may be he hoped to keep the murderer afloat till the boat reached them. They churned up the foam as though it was white water, there boiling on some fang of rock. The moment the boat put off, an awful silence fell upon the ship. Pull men, pull! the captain shouted, and the brine flew in sheets from the oars as the little fabric sprang forward. But though the crew with the second mate in the sternsheet stoyed like demons, they were too late. The boat was within three of her own lengths of the spot when the two men disappeared. We watched breathless with a very madness and anguish of expectation for the sight of the head of one or the other of them, but idly. And after the boat had hung some three quarters of an hour about the place where they had vanished, with the second mate standing up in her eagerly looking around, she was recalled hoisted and we proceeded on our voyage. End of A Memory of the Pacific. Chapter 5 of The Phantom Death and Other Stories This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by James K. White, Chulavista. The Phantom Death and Other Stories by William Clark Russell. So unnecessary. In 1851 he began, and who it was that began will quickly appear. I was in command of a small but well-known East Indian man. She was loading for Bombay in the West India docks in the month of August, and on returning home one afternoon I found a letter from an old friend whom I had not set eyes on for above three years. His name was Mills, Captain Francis Mills. He had just heard, he wrote, that I was in command of the Hikla, and that she was to sail for Bombay in the middle of September. He wanted to send his daughter to India in charge of a trustworthy friend. Would I dine with him and talk the matter over? I was then living in Shadwell, and Mills hailed from the other end of London. However, I promised to dine with him on the following Sunday, and with the help of the Black Wall Railway and Omnibuses I kept my word. Mills was about sixty years old, a white-haired red-faced man. He had used the sea for above thirty years, had built owned and commanded ships, and was now moored in a plain, comfortable house out of Westburn Grove. His wife had long been dead. He had one child, a daughter, to whom I had supposed him so deeply attached that I was surprised on reading his letter to find him willing to part with her. I recollected her as a pretty girl, but after three years of ocean and travel one's memory of a person grows dim. Miss Minnie Mills was not at home when I arrived. The old skipper and I found many things to talk about before we came to the point. By and by he said, My daughter, do you remember her, Cleaver? I do. She is engaged to be married. She got in tow with a parson two years ago. He was home from India, and we met him at the house of a clergyman whose church we attend. He's chaplain at Jungalpur, in a corner of the Punjab, and is now ready to marry her. I have a trifle of money, and I want to send her out to him. I wonder you can part with her. Why, yes, and so do I wonder. But I'm getting on in years. I wish to see her settled with someone to look after her before my lifelines are unrove. She has no mother. Then again I don't mind owning she's a bit uneasy, and she makes me so too. Hanker's a trifle too much after pleasure. I go to the theatre when there's nobody to take her. Pines for a few friends when I don't feel well. She's young, and her animal spirits run high, and custom, I dare say, is beginning to sicken the sympathy in her, said he, looking at his left hand which was rugged with gout, every finger with a list to port. Parting with her will be like parting with half my heart, but it's for her good, and the man she's going to sober, straight-headed, and pious a person as the most anxious parent could wish to see his daughter in charge of. You want to send her out by the heckler? I want to send her out with you. I suppose you know I'm a bachelor, said I. He exclaimed grinning. An old ape hath an old eye. You are too windward now, Cleaver. Keep so, my lad, keep so. I was never commissioned in this way before, said I. But I shall be happy to oblige you in anything. If your daughter goes as passenger in my ship, she shan't lack care and kindness. No man better than you knows a skipper's duties. A captain's eyes aren't like a cod's. He can't see round corners without a shift of nose, scarcely more than straight ahead, mostly. But I'll do my best, and that best shall be a pleasure to me. We shook hands. Soon after this Miss Minnie Mills came into the room. I stood up and bowed to as handsome a young creature as ever flashed an eye at a man. Indeed the instant impression of her beauty was disheartening. It flung a sudden weight into my obligation, and I bowed a little nervously over the hand I held. At seventeen she had been pretty merely, slight in form, reserved in manner. Now she was a woman, very handsomely clothed with her sexes' charms. Her face was full of life. Vivacity and spirit were in every turn and move of her. She had dark brown eyes, deep bland and eloquent with light. Her hair was a dark red like bronze, and she had plenty of it. Her complexion was of a charming soft whiteness tinged with colour as though either cheek reflected the shadow of a rose. In my bachelor eyes found a particular beauty in a very delicate spangling of golden freckles. They gave a summer sunny look to her beauty, ripening it till somehow you thought of orchards and a prospect of cornfields reddened with poppies. At dinner our talk was mainly of India and the voyage to it, of jungle-pore and the duties of the Reverend Joseph Moxon. Miss Minnie did not flush, nor did her eyes sparkle, nor did she manifest any particular emotion of any sort when we talked of India and Mr. Moxon. I thought she tried to divert the conversation from those topics. She asked me what theatres I had been to since my arrival in England, if I did not love dancing. For her part she adored it, she said, dancing and music. Old Captain Mills stuck stoutly in his talk to India and Moxon. When I asked Miss Minnie how she liked the notion of a residence in India, she pouted her lips kissingly and glanced at her father, but not wistfully. You'll get plenty of dancing out in India, said I. At most of the stations, a man, I understand, has little more to do than cut capers. Moxon won't have it, said Captain Mills. He shan't prevent me from enjoying myself, exclaimed the girl, with a note of mutiny. Captain Mills, with one eye closed, viewed me steadfastly with the other over the top of the wine-glass he poised. It was arranged that he should bring his daughter to the ship on the following Tuesday to look at the vessel and choose a cabin. I turned the fancy of her marriage over in my head from time to time till she came to the ship with her father, wondering that the old skipper did not see what would be plain to everybody. I mean that he was sending the girl out to be married to a man she had no liking for, who did not dance and would not allow his wife to dance, who did not sing and possibly objected to profane music, who, as my imagination figured, and as indeed I had gathered from what Mills had let fall, was just a plain homely clergyman of decided views without title to a bride of beauty and gaiety. His choice would have been well enough in a captain of dragoons. In a parson it was highly improper. I suppose Mills counted upon association doing the work of sentiment. It might end in the girl making a devoted wife and in the clergyman looking coldly upon her. I had sailed with some romantic commodities in my time and had lived to see more than one surprising, unexpected issue. Father and daughter came to the ship, and I was on board when they arrived. The Hecla was a comfortable, handsomely-equipped vessel. She carried a cutty, or saloon, with sleeping-births on either hand. The furniture and fittings were of the old world sort. Strips of mirror panelled the bulkheads. The shaft of mizzenmast was hand-painted, a piano forte was secured to the back of it. The skylights were large and handsome. I had supposed that the girl would take some interest in or show some pleasure at the sights about her. She glanced languidly and exhibited a spiritlessness of manner as though the thought of leaving her father was beginning to sit very heavily upon her heart. I observed, however, that whilst she barely had eyes for the ship, she did not neglect to look at the chief mate, Mr. Akin, who stood at the main hatch, superintending some work that was going on. He was a good-looking man, and it was therefore intelligible that the girl should notice him. He was a smart officer and understood his duty, and continued to shout orders and sing down instructions to the fellows in the hold insensible of our presence. Akin was about thirty years of age. His face was colored by weather into the manly hue of the ocean calling. He had white teeth, a finely chiseled profile, an arch, intelligent, dark gray eye. Captain Mills looked at him whilst we stood on the quarter-deck after coming out of the cutty, but seemed more struck by the smartness of his demeanor and general air than by the beauty of his face. The old salt was full of the ship and could think of little else. The voice of memories crowded upon him now that he was in the docks. I wouldn't go to it again," he exclaimed in a broken voice. Yet I loved the life. I loved the life. Miss Minnie chose a birth on the port side. I asked if she meant to bring a maid with her. No, says Captain Mills. She can do without a maid. What scope of purse, Cleaver, do you suppose I ride to? If I can do without a maid on shore, said Miss Minnie, I can do without one at sea. A note of complaint ran through her sentences as though she had a mind to make a trouble of things. A maid, said Captain Mills, will be seasick till you're up with the cape and idle and useless and carrying on with the steward for the rest of the time till you go ashore and then she'll leave you to get married. As we went to the gangway, the maid made a step to let us pass. Miss Minnie looked at him again and went over the side holding her father's arm with a sudden life in her movements as though the sight of a handsome man had worked up the whole spirit of the coquette in her. I felt rather sorry for the Reverend Joseph Moxon as I followed the couple onto the quay, hugely admiring the fine floating grace of the girl's figure, the sparkle of her dark eye as she turned her head to look at the ship. The rich tinge her hair took from the sun. In fact, I seemed to find an image of the Reverend Joseph Moxon in Old Mills' square, lurching figure alongside the sweet shape of his daughter. And that set me thinking of well-bred, jingling, handsome young officers at Moxon's station where life would provide plenty of leisure for looking and for sighing. We towed down to Gravesend on a wet morning. Nature is incapable of a gloomier exhibition of wretchedness than the scene she will paint you of the Isle of Dogs and Bugsby's Reach and the yellow stretch of water passed Woolwich on a wet day. We had convict hulks moored in the river in those times and they fitted the dark weeping weather as though they were creations of the spirit of the stream in its sulkiest and most depraved temper of invention. Their influence too, as a spectacle, was a sickness to the soul of the outward bound whilst the decks streamed and the scuppers gushed and the rigging howled to the whipping of the wet blast and the greasy water washed into the wake in a sort of oily, ironic chuckling as though the filthy god of the flood was in tow and laughing under the ship's counter at the general misery aboard. We moored to a buoy off Gravesend in the afternoon and next morning whilst it was still raining the passengers arrived. Amongst the first to mount the gangway ladder were Captain Mills and his daughter. I received them and took them into the cutty and did my best to cheer up the old man, but to no purpose. He broke down when the three of us were by ourselves and sobbed in a strange, dry-eyed, most affecting manner often turning to his daughter and bringing her to his heart and blessing her in tones which I confess made my own vision dim. She was pale with weeping. She cried out once when he turned to fondle her. Father, I don't want to go. I don't love him enough to leave you. Let me remain with you. We will return home together. It is not too late. Captain Cleaver will send my baggage ashore. This, I think, served to rally the old chap somewhat. He pulled his faculties together and in a trembling voice bade his daughter remember that the man she was going to loved her and was worthy to be loved in return. He himself was getting old, he said, and his closing days would be miserable if he believed he should die and leave her without a protector. A year is quickly lived through. She would soon be coming on a visit to England. Or, perhaps, who could tell? He might himself go out the next voyage in this very identical ship with his friend Cleaver if he then commanded her. When he was gone I called to the stewardess and bade her see to Miss Mills' comfort in every direction of the cabin life. The rest of the cutty passengers arrived quickly from Gravesend. I forget how many there were in all. I believe that every cabin was occupied. The people were of the usual sort in those days of the voyage to India by way of the Cape. A colonel and his wife, the colonel, a black-faced man with gleaming eyes that followed you to the extremities of their sockets. The wife, a vast shapeless bulk of a woman, her head covered by a wig of scarlet curls and her fingers with flashing rings sheathing them to the first joints. Several military officers of various ages, a parson, two merchants of Bombay, five or six ladies and as many children. We met with heavy weather down Channel. In this time I saw nothing of Miss Mills, though I was constant in my inquiries after her. She was not very ill, the stewardess told me. She ate and drank, but she chose to keep her cabin. One morning when the ship was flapping sluggishly over a wide heave of swell clothed to the trucks in misty sunshine which poured like pale steam into the recesses of the ocean, the girl came on deck. She was charmingly attired, I thought. Her dark red hair glowed like bronze under the proudly feathered hat. Her complexion was raised, her eyes shone. The Channel dusting had done her good, and I told her so, looking with helpless admiration into her beautiful face as I gave her my arm for a turn. After this she was punctual at table and constantly on deck. I then considered it fortunate for the Reverend Joseph Moxon that our military passengers should be, without exception, married men. The two or three who were going out alone were either leaving or joining their wives. Hence the attention the girl received was without significance. They hung about her. They ran on errands. They were full of business when she hove in sight so as to plant a chair for her and the like. But it never could come to more than that. The wives looked on and were civil and kind in a ladylike way to the girl. But I guess she was too pretty to please them. Her looks and coquettish vivacity were too conquering. Whenever she spoke at table there was an eager sweep of mustache, a universal rounding of Roman and other noses in the direction of her chair. I don't think the wives liked it but as I have said they were all very kind in a genteel way. I had made up my mind, judging from the glances the girl had directed at the handsome mate Aiken in dock that she would, though perhaps without losing her heart, yield to the influence of his manly beauty and be very willing to carry on an aimless flirtation when I was out of sight and the man in charge of the ship. I had also made up my mind if I caught the mate attempting to fool with the girl to bring him up with a round turn. In fact, I chose to be a taut hand in those matters, quite irrespective of private feelings. Apparently, however, I was to be spared the trouble of bidding my handsome mate keep himself to himself and his weather eye lifting for the ship and his duties only. Day after day passed and I never caught him speaking to her. Once only and this was at some early date when she and I were pacing the deck together and Aiken was standing at the head of the weather-poop ladder she asked me to tell her about him. Was he married? I said I believe not. I happened to know he was not. Who and what was his father? How long had he been at sea? When was he likely to get command? The subject was then changed and afterwards, though I watched them somewhat jealously, I never detected so much as a glance passed between them. The long and short of it was, I am bound to confess it. Before we had struck the canary parallels, I myself, I, Captain Cleaver, commander of the ship Heckler, was seriously in love with the girl and making my days and nights uneasy by contemplation of a proposal of marriage based on these considerations. First, that I was in love with her. Next, that she was not in love with the Reverend Joseph Moxon. Third, that I could give her a home in England and then again her father was my friend, one of my own cloth, and I had no doubt he would be delighted if I brought her home with me as my wife. No good in a short yarn like this to enter into the question of what was due from me to Joseph Moxon. Enough that I was in love with the girl and that I had quite clearly discovered she had no affection for, she did not even like or respect, Joseph. I was eight and thirty years of age and a young man at that, as I chose to think. Yet somehow Miss Minnie by no means unintentionally, as I now know, contrived to keep sentiment at bay by making me feel that in taking the place of her father whilst we were at sea, I had become her father. Never by word of lip did I give her to know that I was in love with her, but I saw she was perfectly sensible that I was her devoted admirer and that something was bound to happen before we should climb very far north into the Indian Ocean. One night, at about eleven o'clock, six bells, I climbed deck from my cabin to take a look round. The ship's latitude was then about twenty-five degrees south. It was a cool, very quiet dark night with a piece of dusky red moon dying out bulbous and distorted in the liquid blackness northwest. A few stars shone sparely. The canvas rose pale and silent. Saving the lift of the fabric on the long-drawn heave of the swell, all the life in her was in a little music of ripples breaking from her stem and tinkling aft in the noise of a summer shower upon water. I looked into the binocle and not immediately seeing the officer of the watch when a little way forward and perceived two figures to leeward standing against the poop-rail. I walked straight to them quickly. One was Mr. Aiken and the other Miss Minnie Mills. She laughed when I stepped up to her and exclaimed, No scolding, I beg! I was disturbed by a nightmare and came on deck to see if I was really upon the ocean instead of at jungle-pore. Mr. Aiken has reassured me. I shall be able to sleep now, I think. So good night to you both. And with that she left us and disappeared. I was angry, excited, exceedingly jealous. I guessed I'd been tricked and that a deal had passed between these two for many a long day gone utterly unobserved by me. I gave Mr. Aiken a piece of my mind. Never had I hazed any man as I did that fellow as he stood before me. He said it was not his fault. The girl had come on deck and accosted him. He was no ship's constable to order the passengers about. If he was spoken to, he answered. I expected he would be civil to the passengers, he supposed. I bestowed several sea-blessings on his eyes and limbs and made him understand that Miss Minnie Mills was under my protection. If I caught him speaking to her I would break him for insubordination. He was made of the ship and his business lay in doing his duty. If he went beyond it he should sling his hammock in the forecastle for the rest of the voyage. I was horribly and earnest and angry. And when I returned to my cabin I paced the floor of it as sick at heart as a jilted woman with jealousy and spleen. However, after a while I contrived to console myself with believing that their being together was an accident and that it might have been as Aiken had put it. At all events it made me somewhat easy to reflect that I had never observed them in company before. Never even caught them looking at each other. That is, significantly. She was in a sullen and pouting temper all next day. Why may I go on deck at night if I choose? said she. Your father would object, said I. You are under my care. I am responsible for you, I added, with a tender look. Would you prohibit the other lady passengers from going on deck at night? You shall have your way in anything that is good for you, said I. She flashed an arch saucy glance at me, then sighed and seemed intensely miserable on a sudden. I believe but for having caught her in Aiken's company I should then and there have offered her my hand. For a week following she was so completely in the dumps it was hard to get a word from her. Sometimes she looked as if she had been secretly crying. Yet I never could persuade myself that the appearance her eyes would at such times present was due to weeping. She moped apart. Some of the passengers noticed her behavior and spoke to me about it, thinking she was ill. The ship's surgeon talked with her and assured me privately he could find nothing wrong save that she complained of porness of spirits. She seems to hate the idea of India, said he, and wants to go home. And so she shelled, thought I. But she must arrive in India first where she may leave it to me to square the yards for her with the Reverend Joseph Moxon. We blew westwards round the Cape before a strong gale of wind. One morning at the Grey of Dawn I was aroused by a knocking on my cabin door. The second mate entered. He was a man named Wickham, a bullet-headed, immensely strong, active seaman the younger son of a baronet. He would have held command at that time, but for the drink. He grasped a woman's hat and handkerchief and exclaimed, I've just found these in the port mizzen chain, sir. I can't tell how they happen to have come there. It looks like mischief. I sprang from my cut partially clothed as I invariably was on turning in and taking the hat in my hand and bringing it to the clearer light of the large cabin window I seemed to remember it as having been worn by many mills. I snatched the handkerchief from the man and saw the initials M. M. marked upon it. This sufficed. I swiftly and completely clothed myself and entered the saloon. My first act was to send the second mate for the stewardess. The woman arrived out of the steerage where she slept. I said, speaking softly that the people in the berths on either hand might not be disturbed, go and look into Miss Mills' cabin and report to me if all is well there. She went, vanished, was some little while out of sight, then reappeared and approached me pale in the ashen light that was filtering through the skylights. Miss Mills' cabin is empty, sir. I was prepared for this piece of news, yet my heart beat with a fast, sick pulse when, without speech, I went to the girl's birth followed by the stewardess. The bunk had been occupied. The bedclothes lay tossed in it. My eye traveling rapidly over the interior was quickly taken by a note lying upon a chest of drawers. It was addressed to me and ran thus. I am tired of life and have resolved to end it. The thought of living even a short while with Mr. Moxon at Jungle-Pore has broken my heart and you are as tyrannical and cruel to me as life itself. Farewell and thank you for such kindness as you have shown me and when you see my father tell him that I died loving him and blessing him. Good God! She's committed suicide!" cried I. The stewardess shrieked. I felt mad with amazement and grief. I read and reread her letter and then looked round the birth again wondering if this were not some practical joke which she intended should be tragical by the frighted excited. I then went to work to make inquiries. I roused up Mr. Aiken and showing him the girl's note asked him if he had seen her on deck during his watch. If he himself had at any time foreboded this dreadful thing. If he could help me with any suggestions or information. He read the letter and stared blankly. His handsome countenance was as pale as milk whilst he eyed me. I seemed to find the ghastly mildness of a dead man's face in his looks. He had nothing to say. No lady had come on deck in his watch. He had not exchanged a sentence with Miss Mills since that night when I threatened to break him if I found him in her company. The men who had steered the ship throughout the night were brought out of the forecastle. No man had seen any lady jump overboard or slip into the mizzen chains. Not likely. Wouldn't the helmsman seeing such a thing yell out? The morning was now advanced. The passengers came from their births and it was quickly known for and aft that the beautiful young girl who had been moping apart for three weeks passed as though slowly going mad with melancholy had committed suicide by jumping overboard. The doctor and I and the two mates spent a long time whilst we overhung the mizzen chains in conjecturing how she had managed it. The cabin windows were small. She had certainly never squeezed her fine, ripe figure through the porthole of her birth. Therefore she had come on to the poop in some black hour of the night along the way of the quarter-deck passing like a shadow to leeward till she arrived at the mizzen rigging where the deep dye flung upon the blackness by the mizzen for it had been a quiet night, the ship under all plain sail, completely shrouded her. The rest would be easy and if she dropped from the chains which through the angle of the deck were depressed to within a few feet of the water her fall might have been almost soundless. The blow to me was terrible and for some days I was prostrated. So unnecessary, I kept on saying to myself, good heavens! For weeks I had been on the verge of proposing to her. The offer of my hand would have saved her life. I could not reconcile so enormous an act with the insignificance of the occasion for it. Old Mills was no tyrant. He had not driven her to India. She had consented. With an ill grace perhaps, not caring for the man she was going to, but there had been an acquiescence on her part too, enough of it at all events to make one wonder that she should have destroyed herself. How should I be able to meet the old captain? Where was I to find the spirit to tell him the story? The stewardess, to satisfy herself, thoroughly searched the after-part of the ship. It came to my ears that she did not believe that the girl had committed suicide, having neither cause nor courage for such an act. She fancied that one or another of the passengers had hidden her, but for what purpose? The fool of a woman could not answer that when the question was put to her. What end would the girl's hiding achieve? She was bound to come to light on our arrival at Bombay. What motive then could she have for concealing herself, for denying herself the refreshment of the deck in the Indian Ocean, ultimately to be shamefully revealed as an imposter, capable of the most purposeless and idiotic deceits? The beauty was overboard and dead, and my heart, what with disappointed love and grieving for her and sorrow for her poor old father, weighed as lead in me when I thought of it. We were within a fortnight's sale of Bombay when there broke a dawn thick and dirty as smoke, with masses of sooty vapor smoldering off the edge of the sea in the west and darkening overhead till the trucks faded out in the gloom. Yet the glass stood high, and I made nothing of the mere appearance of this weather. It lasted all day, with now and then a distant groan of thunder. A weak, hot breeze held the canvas steady, and the ship wrinkled onward holding her course, but sailing through a noon that was as evening for shadow. We dined at seven. The deck was then in charge of the second-mate Wickham. Before going below I told him to keep a bright look-out and took myself an earnest view of the sea. The dusk lay very thick upon the cold, greasy, gleaming surface of the ocean. There was not a star overhead, and maybe a man would not have been able to see a distance of half a dozen ship's lengths. About the middle of dinner I heard a great bawling, a loud and fearful crying out as for life or death. The mate, Akin, who sat at the foot of the long cutty table, caught the sound with a sailor's ear as I did, and sprang to his feet, and we rushed on deck together. I had scarcely passed through the companion hatch when the ship was struck. She healed violently over, listing on a sudden to an angle of nearly fifty degrees, and a dismal, loud general shriek rose through the open skylight, accompanied by the crash of timber overhead. Along with this went a wild hissing noise and an extraordinary sound of throbbing. I rushed to the side and saw that a large steamer had run into us. She was a big black paddle boat, one of the few large side-wheel steamers which formerly traded betwixt England and the East Indies by way of the Cape. The sky seemed charged with stars from the spangles of fire which floated along with the thick smoke from her chimney. She was full of light. Every cabin window looked like the lens of a flaming bullseye. I sprang on to the rail and hailing the steamer asked him to keep his stem into us till we found out what damage he had done and then roared to the mate but obtained no reply. I yelled again, then shouted to Wickham to tell the carpenter to sound the well. The passengers came crowding on to the poop. I told them there was no danger, that though it should come to our leaving the ship the steamer would stand by us and take all aboard. The well was sounded and two feet of water reported. On this I instantly understood that the ship was doomed, that to call the hands to the pumps would be to exhaust them to no purpose and hailing the steamer afresh as she lay hissing on our bow with her looming steam head overshadowing our forecastle I reported our condition and told him to stand by to pick us up. We immediately lowered the boats and sent away the women and as many men as there was room for. A second trip emptied the heckle of her passengers. Meanwhile the steamer at my request kept her bows right into us. At this time there were seven feet of water in the hold. It was very black and we worked with the help of lanterns. The maid appeared amongst my people now and I asked him with an oath out of the rage and distress of that hour where he had been skulking. He answered he was from the forecastle. I told him he was a liar and ordered him whilst the ship swam to take a number of the hands into the cabin and save as much of the passengers effects as they could come at. Not much time was permitted for this. Every minute I seemed to feel the ship settling deeper and deeper with a sickening sullen lift of her whole figure to every heave of the swell as though she rose wearily to make her farewell plunge. Now the vessels were disengaged and the steamer lay close abreast. I lingered almost heartbroken scarcely yet realizing to its full height this tragic disaster to my ship and my own fortunes. And then hearing them calling to me I got into the mizzen chains thinking as I did so of many mills wishing to God I was at rest and out of it all where she lay and entered one of the boats. The commander of the steamer received me in the gangway. The decks were light as noon tied with lanterns. He was a grey-haired man, tall and somewhat stately, but in a uniform after the pattern of the old East India Company's service. When he understood I was the captain he bowed and said, It's a terrible calamity, sir. I hope to live to see the day when they will compel all masters by active parliament to show lights at sea at night. A lantern was sparkling on his force day but our ship was with outside lights and when I turned to look at her the roar of her bursting decks shocked hard as a blow on the ear and the whole pale fabric of canvas melted out upon the black water as a wreath of vapor dies in the breeze. The steamer was the Norma Hall, Bulstrode commander. She was half full of invalided soldiers and other folks going home and when our own people were aboard she was an overloaded craft, humanly speaking. But after a consultation with me the captain resolved to proceed. He was flush with water and provisions and had the security besides of paddles which slapped an easy ten knots into the hull. And then again she lifted the yards of a ship of twelve hundred tons and showed as big a top sail to the wind as a frigates. All that could be done was done for us. Men turned out of their cabins to accommodate the ladies and children and a cot was slung for me at the chief officer's berth. But I needed no pillow for my head that first night. There was nothing in Lodinum short of a death-draft that could have given me sleep. But to pass by my own state of mind that came very near to a suicidal posture. At eight bells next morning the mate whose cabin I shared stepped in and exclaimed, did you know you had a woman dressed up as a man amongst your passengers? No, I exclaimed. Not likely. I should not permit such a thing. It so then, said he, our doctor twigged her at once and handed her over to the stewardess who has birthed her aft. She's a lady and a devilish pretty woman. Mighty pale though with a scared wild-blind look as though she had been dug up out of darkness and couldn't get used to the light. What name does she give? said I. I don't know. I wished immediately to see her. An extraordinary suspicion worked in my head. The mate told me she was in the stewardess's berth and directed me to it. I knocked. The stewardess opened the door and I immediately saw standing in the middle of the berth with her hands to her head pinning a bronze tress to a bed of glowing coils and miss many mills. I stared frantically, shouted, Good God! and rushed in. She screamed and shrank, then clasped her hands and reared herself loftily with a bringing of her whole shape, so to speak, together. So, said I, breathing short with astonishment and twenty conflicting passions, and this is how they commit suicide in your country, eh? The stewardess enlarged her eyes. I don't mean to marry Mr. Joseph Moxon, said the girl. In what part of the ship did you hide? I exclaimed. She made no answer. Was Mr. Akin in the secret? Still no reply. Oh, but you should answer the captain, miss, cried the stewardess. The girl burst into tears and turned her back upon me. I stepped out and asked for Captain Bulstrode. He received me in his cabin, and then I told him the story of miss many mills. I never would take charge of a young lady, said he, half laughing, though he was a good deal astonished. After an experience I underwent in that way, I'll tell it to you another time. Let's send for your mate and see what he has to say for himself. Presently Mr. Akin arrived. He was pale, but he carried a lofty, independent air. The fact was I was no longer his captain. The ship was sunk and Jack was as good as his master. I requested, representing Captain Mills as I did, that he would be candid with me, tell me how it stood between him and miss Mills, if he had helped her in her plot of suicide, where he had hidden her in the ship and what he meant to do. I thought Bulstrode looked at him with an approving eye. I am bound to repeat he was an uncommonly handsome fellow. Captain Cleaver, he said, addressing me with a very frank, straightforward face and air. I am perfectly aware that I have done wrong, sir, but the long and short of it is, miss Mills and I are in love with each other and we mean to get married. Why didn't you tell me so, I said. He looked at me knowingly. I felt myself colour. Well, said I. Anyhow, it was so confoundingly unnecessary, you know, for her to pretend to drown herself and for you to hold her in hiding. I beg your pardon. You made it rather necessary, sir. You will remember that night. So unnecessary! I thundered out in a passion. Where did she hide her? said Captain Bulstrode. I declined to answer that question, replied Aiken. And the dog kept his word, for we never succeeded in getting the truth out of him or the girl either. Though if she did not lie secret in the blackness of the after-hold, then I don't know what other part of the ship he could have kept her. Certainly not in his own cabin, which the ship's steward was in and out of often, nor in any of the cutty or steerage berths. To end this, there was a clergyman in the ship and Bulstrode, who without personal knowledge of Captain Mills, had heard of him and respected him, insisted upon the couple being married that same forenoon. They were not loth, and the parson consenting they were spliced in the presence of a full saloon. I shook the girl by the hand when the business was over and wished her well, but from beginning to end it was all so unnecessary. End of Chapter 5 Recording by James K. White, Chula Vista Chapter 6 of The Phantom Death and Other Stories This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by C. J. Thorpe The Phantom Death and Other Stories by William Clark Russell The Majors' Commission My name is Henry Adams and in 1851 I was made of a ship of twelve hundred tons named the Jessamy Bride. June of that year found her at Calcutta with cargo to the hatches and ready to sail for England in three or four days. I was walking up and down the ship's long quarter-deck sheltered by the awning when a young apprentice came after and said a gentleman wished to speak to me. I saw a man standing in the gangway. He was a tall, soldierly person with iron grey hair and spiked mustache and an aquiline nose. His eyes were singularly bright and penetrating. He immediately said, I wanted to see the captain, but as chief officer you all do equally well. When does the ship sail? On Saturday or Monday next. He ran his eye along the decks and then looked aloft. There was something bird-like in the briskness of his way of glancing. I understand you don't carry passengers? That's so, sir. Though there's accommodation for them. I'm out of sorts and have been sick for months and want to see what a trip round the Cape to England will do for me. I shall be going home, not for my health only, but on a commission. The maharajna of Ratnagiri, hearing that I was returning to England on sick leave, asked me to take charge of a very splendid gift for her majesty, the Queen of England. It is a diamond valued at fifteen thousand pounds. He paused to observe the effect of this communication and then proceeded. I suppose you know how the Co-in-Nord was sent home. It was conveyed to England, I think, said I, by HMS Medea in 1850. Yes, she sailed in April that year and arrived at Portsmouth in June. The glorious gem was entrusted to Colonel Mackison and Captain Ramsey. It was locked up in a small box with other jewels and each officer had a key. The box was secreted in the ship by them and no man on board the vessel saving themselves knew where it was hidden. Was that so? said I, much interested. Yes, I had the particulars from the commander of the vessel, Captain Lockyer. When do you expect your skipper on board? He exclaimed darting a bright sharp look around him. I cannot tell and he may arrive at any moment. The having charge of a stone was £16,000 and intended as a gift for the Queen of England as a juice of responsibility, said he. I shall borrow a hint from the method adopted in the case of the Co-in-Nord. I intend to hide the stone in my cabin so as to extinguish all risk, saving, of course, what the insurance people call the act of God. May I look at your cabin accommodation? Certainly. I led the way to the companion hatch and he followed me into the cabin. The ship had birthing room for eight or ten people, irrespective of the officers who slept aft, but the vessel had no bid for passengers. She left them to blackwall liners, to the splendid ships of green, money, wigroom and smith, and to the P&O and other steam lines. The overland route was the general choice. Few of their own decision went by way of the Cape. No one had booked with us down to this hour and we had counted upon having the cabin to ourselves. The visitor walked into every empty berth and expected it as carefully as though he had been government surveyor. He beat upon the walls and bulkheads with his cane, sent his brilliant gaze into the corners and under the bunks and up at the ceiling, and finally said as he stepped from the last of the visible cabins, this decides me, I shall sail with you. I bowed and said I was sure the captain would be glad of the pleasure of his company. I presume, said he, that no objection will be raised to my bringing a native carpenter aboard to construct a secret place, as in the case of the Co-in-Nor for the Maharajah's diamond. I don't think a native carpenter would be allowed to knock the ship about, said I. Certainly not. A little secret receptacle, big enough to receive this, said he, putting his hand in his side pocket and producing a square Morocco case of a size to berth a bracelet or a large brooch. The construction of a nook to conceal this will not be knocking your ship about. It's a question for the captain and the agents, said I. He replaced the case whose bulk was so inconsiderable that it did not bulge in his coat when he had pocketed it and said now that he had inspected the ship in the accommodation he would call it once upon the agents. He gave me his cart and left the vessel. The cart bore the name of a military officer of some distinction. Enough if, in this narrative or memorable and extraordinary incident, I speak of him as Major Byron Hood. The master of the Jessamy Bride was Captain Robert North. This man had, three years earlier, sailed with me as my chief mate. It then happened I was unable to quickly obtain command and accepted the offer of a mate of the Jessamy Bride, whose captain, I was surprised to hear, proved the shipmate who had been under me but who, some money having been left to him, had purchased an interest in the firm to which the ship belonged. We were on excellent terms, almost as brothers indeed. He never asserted his authority and left it to my own judgement to recognise his claims. I'm happy to know he had never occasioned to regret his friendly treatment of me. He came on board in the afternoon of that day on which Major Hood had visited the ship and was full of that gentleman and his resolution to carry a costly diamond round the Cape under sail instead of making his obligation as brief as steam and the old desert route would allow. I've had a long talk with him up with the agents, said Captain North. He didn't seem well. Suffering from his nerves perhaps, said I. He's a fine gentlemanly person. He told Mr. Nicholson he was twice wounded, naming towns which no Christian man could twist his tongue into the sound of. Will he be allowed to make a hole in the ship to hide his diamond in? He's agreed to make good any damage done and to pay the rate of a fare and a half for the privilege of hiding the stone. Why doesn't he give the thing into your keeping, sir? This jack-door-like hiding is a sort of reflection on our honesty, isn't it, Captain? He laughed and answered, No, I like such reflections for my part. Who wants to be burdened with the custody of precious things belonging to other people? Since he's to have the honour of presenting the diamond let the worry of taking care of it be his. This ship's enough for me. It'll be nighted, I suppose, for delivering this stone, said I. Did he show it to you, sir? No. He has it in his pocket. He produced the case, said Captain North, a thing about the size of a muffin. Wearily eyed it, but we're not curious in that direction, he added, smiling. Next morning, somewhere about ten o'clock, Major Hood came on board with two natives. One a carpenter, the other his assistant. They brought a basket of tools, descended into the cabin and were lost sight of till after two. No, I'm wrong. I was writing at the cabin table at half-past twelve when the Major opened his door, peered out, shut the door swiftly behind him with an extraordinary air and a face of caution and anxiety. And coming along to me asked for some refreshments for himself and the two natives. I called the steward who filled a tray which the Major with his own hands conveyed into his berth. Then, sometime after two, whilst I was on the gangway talking to a friend, the Major and the blacks came out of the cabin. Before they went over the side, I said, Is the work finished below, sir? It is, and to my entire satisfaction, he answered. When he was gone, my friend, who was the master of a bar, asked me who that fine-looking man was. I answered he was a passenger and then, not understanding that the thing was a secret, plainly told him what they had been doing in the cabin and why. But, said he, those two niggers will know that something precious is to be hidden in the place they've been making. I spent it in my head all the morning, said I. Who's to hinder them? said he, from blabbing to one or more of the crew. Treachery's cheap in this country. A rupee will buy a pile of roguery. He looked at me expressively. Keep a bright look out for a brace of well-oiled stowaways, said he. Is the major's business, I answered with a shrug. When Captain North came on board, he and I went into the major's berth. We scrutinised every part, but saw nothing to indicate that a tool had been used or a plank lifted. There was no sawdust, no chip of wood. Everything to the eye was precisely as before. No man will say we had not a right to look. How were we to make sure, as Captain and mate of the ship for whose safety we were responsible, that those blacks under the eye of the major had not been doing something which might give us trouble by and by? Well, said Captain North as we stepped on deck. If the diamond's already hidden, which I doubt, it couldn't be more snugly concealed if it were twenty fathoms deep in the mud here. The major's baggage came on board on a Saturday, and on the Monday we sailed. We were twenty-four of a ship's company, all told, twenty-five souls in all with major hood. Our second mate was a man named Mackenzie, to whom and to the apprentices while we lay in the river I had given the particular instructions to keep a sharp lookout on all strangers coming aboard. I had been very vigilant myself too, and altogether was quite convinced that there was no stairway below, neither white or black, though under ordinary circumstances one never would think of seeking for a native in hiding for Europe. On either hand of the Jessmy Bride's cabin five sleeping births were bulkheaded off. The major's was right aft on the starboard side. Mine was next to his. The captain occupied a berth corresponding with the major's right aft on the port side. Our solitary passenger was exceedingly amiable and agreeable at the start, and for days after. He professed himself delighted with the cabin fare and said it was not to be bettered at three times the charge in the saloons of the steamers. His drink he had himself laid in. It consisted mainly of claret and soda. He had come aboard with a large cargo of Indian cigars and was never without a long black weed bearing so me-tongue staggering up-country name that twist his lips. He was primed with professional anecdote, had a thorough knowledge of life in India, both in the towns and wilds, had seen service in Burma and China and was altogether one of the most conversable soldiers I ever met. A scholar, something of a wit, and all that he said and all that he did was rendered the more engaging by grace of breeding. Captain North declared to me he had never met so delightful a man in all his life and the pleasantest hours I ever passed on the ocean were spent in walking the deck in conversation with Major Byron Hood. For some days after we were at sea no reference was made either by the Major or myself to the Maharaja of Ratnagiri splendid gift to Her Majesty the Queen. The captain and I and Mackenzie viewed it as tabooed matter, a thing to be locked up in memory just as in fact it was hidden away in some cunningly wrought receptacle in the Major's cabin. One day at dinner however when we were about a week out from Karkata Major Hood spoke of the Maharaja's gift. He talked freely about it. His face was flushed as though the mere thought of the thing raised a passion of triumph in his spirits. His eyes shone whilst he enlarged upon the beauty and value of the stone. The captain and I exchanged looks. The steward was waiting upon us with cocked ears and that menial deaf expression of face which makes you know every word is being greedily listened to. All hands would have heard that the Major had a diamond in his cabin intended for the Queen of England and worth fifteen thousand pounds. Nay, they'd hear even more than that but in the course of his talk about the gem the Major praised the ingenuity of the Asiatic artisan whether Indian or Chinese and spoke of the hiding place the two natives had contrived for the diamond as an example of that sort of juggling skill in carving which is found in perfection among the Japanese. I thought this candor highly indiscreet. Charged too with menace. A matter gains insignificance by mystery. The Jacks would think nothing of a diamond or a ship as part of her cargo which might include a quantity of species for all they knew but some of them might think more often about it than was at all desirable when they understood it was stowed away under a plank or was to be got by tapping about for a hollow echo or probing with the judgement of a carpenter when the Major was on deck and the coast after all clear. We had been three weeks at sea. It was a roasting afternoon though I cannot exactly remember the situation of the ship. Our tacks were aboard and the bow lines triced out and the vessel was scarcely looking up to a course slightly healing away from a fiery fanning of wind off the starboard bow with the sea trembling under the sun in white hot needles of broken light and a narrow ribbon of weight glancing off into a hot blue thickness that brought the horizon within a mile of our cistern. I had charge of the deck from twelve to four. For an hour past the Major, Cigar in mouth had been stretched at his ease in a folding chair a book lay beside him on the skylight but he scarcely glanced at it. I had paused to address him once or twice but he showed no disposition to chat. Though he lay in the most easy lounging posture imaginable I observed a restless singular expression on his face accentuated yet by the looks he incessantly directed out to sea or glances at the deck forward or around him at the helm so far as he might move his head without shifting his attitude. It was as though his mind were in labor with some scheme a man might so look whilst working out the complicated plot of a play or adjusting by the exertion of his memory the intricacies of the novel piece of a mechanism. On a sudden he started up and went below a few minutes after he had left the deck Captain North came up from his cabin and for some while we paced the planks together there was a pleasant hush upon the ship the silence was as refreshing as a fold of coolness lifting off the sea a spun yarn winch was clinking on the forecastle from alongside rose the music of fretted waters I was talking to the captain on some detail of the ship's furniture when Major Hood came running up the companion steps his face as white as his waistcoat his head uncovered every muscle of his countenance rigid as with horror good God captain cried he standing in the companion what do you think has happened before we could fetch a breath he cried someone stolen the diamond I glanced at the helmsman who stood at the radiant circle of wheels staring with open mouth and eyebrows arched into his hair the captain stepping close to Major Hook said in a low steady voice what's that you tell me sir the diamonds gone explained the major fixing his shining eyes upon me whilst I observed that his fingers convulsively stroked his thumb as though he were rolling up pellets of bread or paper do you tell me the diamonds been taken from the place you hid it in said Captain North still speaking softly but with deliberation the diamond never was hidden replied the major who continued to stare at me it was in a portmanteau that's no hiding place Captain North fell back a step never was hidden he exclaimed didn't you bring two native workmen aboard for no other purpose than to hide it it never was hidden said the major now turning his eyes upon the captain I chose it should be believed it was undiscoverably concealed in some part of my cabin that I might safely and conveniently keep it in my baggage where no thief would dream of looking for it he cried with a sudden fierceness making a step full of passion out of the companion way and he looked with knitted brows towards the ship's forecastle Captain North watched him idly for a moment or two and then with an abrupt swing of his whole figure eloquent of defiant resolution he stared the major in the face and said in a quiet level voice I shan't be able to help you if it's gone it's gone a diamond's not a bale of wool whoever's been clever enough to find it will know how to keep it I must have it broken the major it's a gift from majesty the queen it's in this ship I look to you sir as master of this vessel to recover the property which some one of the people under your charge has robbed me of I'll accompany you to your cabin said the captain and they went down the steps I stood motionless gaping like an idiot into the yawn of hatch they had disappeared I'd been so used to think of the diamond as cunningly hidden in the major's birth that his disclosure was absolutely a shock with its weight of astonishment small wonder that neither captain North nor I had observed any marks of a workman's tools in the major's birth not but that it was a very ingenious stratagem far cleverer to my way of thinking than any subtle secret burial of the thing to think of the major and his two Indians sitting idly for hours in that cabin with the captain and myself all the while supposing they were fashioning some wonderful contrivance or place for concealing the treasure in and still for all the major's cunning the stone was gone who had stolen it the only fellow likely to prove the thief was the steward not because he was more or less of a rogue than any other man in the ship but because he was the one person who by virtue of his office was privileged to go in and out of the sleeping places as his duties required I was pacing the deck musing into a sheer muddle this singular business of the Maharaja of Ratnagiri's gift to the Queen of England with all sorts of dim, unformed suspicions floating loose in my brains around the central fancy of the fifteen thousand pound stone there when the captain returned he was alone he stepped up to me hastily and said he swears the diamond has been stolen he showed me the empty case was there ever a stone in it at all said I I don't think that he answered quickly there's no motive under heaven to be imagined if this whole thing's a fabrication what then sir the case is empty but I'm not made up my mind yet that the stone's missing a man's an officer and a gentleman I know I know he interrupted but still in my opinion the stone's not missing the long and short of it is he said after a very short pause with a careful glance at the skylight and companion hatch his behavior isn't convincing enough something's wanting in his passion and his vexation sincerity ah I don't intend that this business shall trouble me the angrily you acquired me to search the ship for stowaways gosh the second main steward have repeatedly overhauled the lozaret there's nobody there and if not there then nowhere else said I perhaps he's got the forepeak in his head I'll not have the hatch lifted exclaimed warmly nor will I allow the crew to be trouble there's been no theft put it that the stone is stolen who is going to find in the forecastle full of men a thing as big as half a bean perhaps if it's gone it's gone indeed whoever may have it well there's no go in this matter at all he added with a short nervous laugh we were talking in this fashion when the major joined us his features were now composed he gave sternly the captain and said loftily what steps are you prepared to take in this matter none sir his face darkened he looked with a bright gleam in his eyes at the captain then at me his gaze was piercing with the light in it without a word he stepped to the side and following his arm stood motionless I glanced at the captain there was something in the bearing of the major that gave shape vague indeed to a suspicion that had cloudily hovered about my thoughts of the man for some time past the captain met my glance but he did not interpret it when I was relieved at four o'clock by the second mate I entered my berth and presently hearing the captain go to his cabin went to him and made a proposal he reflected and then answered yes get it done after some talk I went forward and told the carpenter to step aft and bore a hole in the bulkhead that separated the major's berth from mine he took the necessary tools from his chest and followed me the captain was now again on deck talking with the major in fact detaining him in conversation as had been pre-concerted I went into the major's berth and quickly settled upon a spot for an eye hole the carpenter then went to work in my cabin and in a few minutes bore an orifice large enough to enable me to command a large portion of the adjacent interior I swept the sawdust from the deck in the major's berth so that no hint should draw his attention to the hole which was pierced in a corner shadowed by a shelf I then told the carpenter to manufacture a plug and paint its extremity of the colour of the bulkhead he bought me this plug in a quarter of an hour it fitted nicely and was to be withdrawn and inserted as noiselessly as though greased I don't want you to suppose this peeping Tom scheme was at all to my taste albeit my own proposal but the truth is the major's telling us that someone had stolen his diamond made all who lived off hotly eager to find out whether he spoke the truth or not for if he had been really robbed of the stone then suspicion properly rested upon the offices and stewards which was an infernal consideration dishonouring and inflaming enough to drive one to seek a remedy in even a baser device than that of secretly keeping watch on a man in his bedroom then again the captain told me that the major whilst they talked when the carpenter was at work making the hole had said he would give notice of his loss to the police at Cape Town at which place we were to touch and declared he'd take care no man went ashore from captain North himself down to the youngest apprentice till every individual, every sea chest, every locker, drawer, shelf and box bunk, bracket and crevice had been searched by qualified rummages on this the day of the theft nothing more was said about the diamond that is after the captain had emphatically informed majorhood to take no steps whatever in the matter I had expected to find the major sullen and silent at dinner he was not indeed so talkative as usual but no man watching and hearing him would have supposed so heavy a loss of that of a stone worth 15,000 pounds the gift of an eastern potentate to the Queen of England was weighing upon his spirits it is with reluctance I tell you that after dinner that day when he went to his cabin I softly withdrew the plug and watched him I blushed while thus outing yet I was determined for my own sake and for the sake of my shipmates to persevere I spied nothing noticeable saving this he sat in a folding chair and smoked but every now and again he withdrew his cigar from his mouth and talked to it with a singular smile it was a smile of cunning that worked like some baleful magical spirit in the fine high breeding of his features drenching his looks just as a painter of incomparable skill might colour a noble familiar face into a diabolical expression amazing those who knew it only in its honest and manly beauty I had never seen that wild grinning countenance on him before and it was rendered the more remarkable by the movement of his lips whilst he talked to himself but inaudibly a week slipped by time after time I had the man under observation often when I had charge of the deck I'd leave the captain to keep a look out and still below and watch major hood in his cabin it was a Sunday I remember I was lying in my bunk half-dosing we were then I think about three weeks sail from Table Bay when I heard the major go to his cabin I was already sick of my aimless prying and whilst I now lay I thought to myself I'll sleep what is the good of this trouble I know exactly what I shall see he is either in his chair or his bunk or overhauling his clothes or standing cigar in mouth at the open porthole and then I said to myself if I don't look now I shall miss the only opportunity of detection that may occur one is often urged by a sort of instinct in these matters I got up almost as though an impulse of habit noiselessly withdrew the plug and looked the major was at that instant standing with a pistol case in his hand he opened it as my sight went to him took out one of a brace of very elegant pistols put down the case and on his apparently touching a spring in the butt of the pistol the silver plate that ornamented the extremity sprang open as the lid of a snuff box would and something small and bright dropped into his hand this he examined with the peculiar cunning smile I have before described but owing to the position of his hand I could not see what he held though I had not the least doubt that it was the diamond I watched him breathlessly after a few minutes he dropped the stone into the hollow butt end shut the silver plate shook the weapon against his ear as though it pleased him to rattle the stone then put it in its case and the case in the portmanteau I at once went on deck where I found the captain and reported to him what I had seen he viewed me in silence with a stare of astonishment and incredulity what I had seen he said was not the diamond I told him that the thing that had dropped into the major's hand was bright and, as I thought, sparkled but it was so held I could not see it I was talking to him on this extraordinary affair when the major came on deck the captain said to me hold him in chat, I'll judge for myself and asked me to describe how he might quickly find the pistol case I did and he went below I joined the major and talked on the first subjects that entered my head he was restless in his manner, inattentive, slightly flushed in the face or a lofty manner and being half ahead taller than I glanced down at me from time to time in a condescending way this behaviour in him was what Captain North and I had agreed to call his injured air he'd occasionally put it on to remind us that he was affronted by the captain's insensibility to his lost and that the assistance of the police would be demanded on our arrival at Cape Town presently looking down the skylight I perceived the captain Mackenzie had charge of the watch I descended the steps and Captain North's first words to me were it's no diamond what then is it? a common piece of glass not worth a quarter of a farthing it's it all about then said I upon my soul there's nothing in Euclid to beat it glass? a little lump of common glass a fragment of bull's-eye perhaps what's he hiding it for? because said Captain North in a soft voice looking up and around he's mad just so said I that I'll swear to now and I've been suspecting it this fortnight past he's under the spell of some sort of mania continued the captain he believes his commission to present a diamond to the Queen possibly picked up a bit of stuff in the street that started the delusion then bought a case for it and worked out the rest as we know but why does he want to pretend that the stone was stolen from him? he's been mastered by his own love for the diamond he answered that's how I reason it madness has made his affection for his imaginary gem a passion in him and so he robbed himself of it you think that he might keep it that's about it said he after this I kept no further look out upon the major nor would I ever take an opportunity to enter his cabin to view for myself the piece of glass as the captain described it though curiosity was often hot in me we arrived at Table Bay in 22 days from the date of my seeing the major with the pistol in his hand his manner had for a week been marked by an irritability that was often beyond his control he had talked snappishly and petchantly at table contradicted aggressively and on two occasions he gave a captain north the lie but we had carefully avoided noticing his manner and acted as though he was still the high-bred polished gentleman who had sailed with us from Calcutta the first to come aboard were the customs people they were almost immediately followed by the harbormaster Scarcely had the first of the custom house officers stepped over the side when Major Hood with a very red face and a lofty dignified carriage marched up to him and said in a loud voice I have been robbed during the passage from Calcutta of a diamond worth 15,000 pounds which I was bearing as a gift from the Maharaja of Ratnagiri to a Majesty the Queen of England the customs man stared with a lobster-like expression of face no image could better hit the protruding eyes and brick-red countenance of the man I request, said the Major, rising his voice into a shout to be placed at once in communication with the police of this port no person must be allowed to leave the vessel until it has been thoroughly searched by such expert hands as you and your comfrares no, no doubt are, sir I am Major Byron Hood I have been twice wounded, my services are well known and I believe duly appreciated in the right quarters Her Majesty the Queen is not to suffer any disappointment at the hands of one who has the honour of wearing her uniform nor am I to be compelled by the act of a thief to portray the confidence the Maharaja has reposed in me he continued to harangue in this manner for some minutes during which I observed a change in the expression of the custom house officers' faces meanwhile, Captain North stood apart in earnest conversation with the harbour master they now approached the harbour master looking steadily at the Major exclaimed Good news sir, your diamond is found Ha! Who has it? You'll find it in your pistol case, said the harbour master the Major gazed round at us with his wild bright eyes his face awoke with the conflict of twenty mad passions and sensations then bursting into a loud insane laugh he caught the harbour master by the arm and in a low voice and sickening transforming leer of cunning said, come, let's go look at it we went below, we were six including two custom house officers we followed the poor madman who grasped the harbour master's arm and on arriving at his cabin we stood at the door of it he seemed heedless of our presence but on his taking the pistol case from the Portmanteau the two customs men sprang forward that must be searched by us one cried and in a minute they had it with the swiftness of experienced hands they found and pressed the spring of the pistol the silver plate flew open and out dropped a fragment of thick common glass just as Captain North had described the thing it fell upon the deck the Major sprang picked it up and pocketed it but Majesty will not be disappointed after all said he with a courtly bow to us and the commission the Maharajas honoured me with shall be fulfilled the poor gentleman was taken ashore that afternoon and his luggage followed him he was certified mad by the medical man at Cape Town and was to be retained there as I understood till the arrival of a steamer for England it was an odd bewildering incident from top to bottom no doubt this particular delusion was occasioned by the poor fellow whose mind was then fast decaying reading about the transmission of the Kohinaw and musing about it with a madman's proneness to dwell upon little things End of Chapter 6 Recording by CJ Thorpe