Buch lesen: «A Veldt Vendetta»

Chapter One.
A Voyage of Discovery

I had not a friend in the world.

My own fault? No doubt. It is usually said so, at any rate, so of course must be true. For I, Kenrick Holt, who do this tale unfold, am not by nature and temperament an expansive animal, rather the reverse, being constitutionally reticent; and, is it not written that the world takes you at your own valuation? Still, I had managed to muddle on through life somehow, and gain a living so far – which was satisfactory, but in an uncongenial and sedentary form of occupation – which was not. Incidentally I owned to the ordinary contingent of acquaintances, but at the period of which I write I had not a friend in the world – only brothers.

Of these, one owned an abominable wife, the other a snug country living, which combination of circumstances may account for the fact that we had rather less to do with each other on the whole than the latest conjunction of club acquaintances. Incidentally, too, I owned relatives, but for ordinary reasons, not material to this narrative, they didn’t count.

“Great events from little causes spring” is a truism somewhat shiny at the seams. In the present instance the “little cause” took the form of an invite from the last-mentioned of my two brethren – he who drew comfortable subsidy for shepherding a few rustics in the national creed to wit – to run down and get through a week with him at his vicarage.

I was out of sorts and “hipped,” not so much through overwork as through remaining in town too long at a stretch: for, except a day off now and then up the river, I had stuck to my office all through the hot months, and it was now September. In passing, it may be mentioned I held a secretaryship to a not very long floated company; a fairly good berth – as long as it lasted. As long as it lasted! There lay the rub. For I had held two similar berths before!

Well, this invite came in pat. A blow of country air would do me all the good in the world just then. The invite was something of an event, as may be conjectured in the light of certain foregoing remarks; still, that didn’t matter. Nothing did – according to my then philosophy – except lack of the needful, and an abominable noise when one wanted to go to sleep. The first I had experienced more than once, the second I was destined to – and notably if I accepted the invite. However, that didn’t weigh. The only thing that remained was to pack up and send a wire.

I had packed, and found out a convenient train. But the first thing in the morning brought a counter-wire —

“Sorry must put you off dick and bertha got scarlatina holt.”

Here was a nuisance – the said Dick and Bertha being among the certain arch-contributors in prospective to the second of the things that matter in life, as referred to above. Yes, it was a nuisance. I was all ready to start, and the weather was perfect; just that soft, golden, hazy kind of September weather that is exquisite in the country, and here was I, doomed to the reek of asphalt and wood paving once more, just as I was rejoicing in the prospect of a week of emancipation therefrom. Well, I would go somewhere, but it wasn’t the same thing, for I am not partial to solitary jaunts, albeit in most matters self-concentrated. At any rate, I would not go back to work.

I strolled round to the club, thinking out an objective the while. There were few habitués there, but a sprinkling of strangers, for we were housing another kindred institution pending its summer cleaning. Among these was a man I knew, and as we got talking over our “split” I found he was in the same predicament as myself.

“Don’t know where to go?” he said. “I’ll tell you. There’s a jolly little place on the Dorsetshire coast – Whiddlecombe Regis – right out of the public beat, only known to a few, and they always go back there. Jolly pretty country, first-rate bathing, and not bad sea fishing. Let’s run down together for a week or so. We can capture a train from Waterloo at a decent hour to-morrow. Waiter, just fetch me the ABC, will you?”

The ABC was fetched, and we put our heads together over it, and in the result the following afternoon saw us deposited – after a five-mile coach ride from the nearest station – in front of the principal inn at Whiddlecombe Regis.

It was a delightfully picturesque and retired place, with its one long steep street, and flat massive church tower; and seemed to deserve all the encomium which Bindley had bestowed upon it. It nestled snugly in its own bay, which was guarded by bold headlands, all crimson and gold with heather and gorse, shooting out into the sparkling blue of a summer sea. Not a cloud was in the sky, and against the soft haze in the offing a trail of smoke here and there marked out the flight of a passing steamer.

Our “decent train from Waterloo” had proved to be a dismally early one, consequently we found ourselves at our destination at an early hour of the afternoon. So after we had lunched – plainly but exceedingly well – I suggested we should go down to the beach and take on a good pull if there was a light boat to be had, and a sail if there was not.

But Bindley was not an ideal travelling companion; I had found that out in more than one trifling particular on the way down. Nor did he now jump at my suggestion with the alacrity it deserved – or at any rate which I thought it did. He made various objections. It was too hot – and so forth. He felt more like taking it easy. What was the good in coming away for a rest if one began by grinding one’s soul out? he said.

However, I was bursting with long-pent-up energy. The glorious open air, after the reek and fogginess of London had already begun to put new life into me, and the smooth blue of the sea and its fresh salt whiff invited its exploration. So I left Bindley to laze in peace and took my way down to the beach. For a moment I had felt inclined to fall in with his idea, or at any rate to wait an hour or two until he felt inclined to fall in with mine, but the feeling passed. How little I knew what the next twelve hours or so were destined to bring forth!

The beach at Whiddlecombe Regis held everything in common with the beach at half a hundred similar places. There were the same fishing boats and the same whiff thereof – some with their brown sails up and drying, and two or three of their blue jerseyed owners doing odd jobs about them; others alone and deserted, with nets hung over the side to dry. Children were paddling in the little sparkling rims of froth left by each ripple of the tide, and under the redolent shelter of the boats aforesaid their nurses and governesses, seated beneath sunshades, gossipped, or looked up from the Family Herald to inspect the passing male stranger and grumble at the heat.

“Boat, sir?”

The hail, proceeded from a weather-beaten seafarer. I was beyond the fishing craft by now, and in front lay, drawn up on the beach, a dozen or so of rowing boats and – marvellous to relate – among them one, light and an outrigger.

“Well, I feel like an hour’s pull,” I answered. “This one will do.”

The salt looked out seaward a moment. Then he said —

“Well, sir, she be only good in smooth water, and it’s that now. Be you much in the way of boats, sir?”

“Rather,” I answered readily, for I fancied myself in the sculling line, it being one of my favourite forms of recreation. And I suppose I looked my words, for my amphibious friend ran the pair-oar down into the water without more ado.

Though not a skiff, the craft was light and well built, and in a very few moments I was sending her over the smooth waters of the bay at a pace which should soon render the village of Whiddlecombe Regis a mere blur against a wall of green hillside and crimson-clad down – and that without any effort. The exhilaration of it was glorious – the swift easy glide, the free open sea, the cloudless blue sky above, and the racing headlands. Beyond these other promontories appeared; only to be merged in their turn into the spreading extent of the fast-receding coastline. The boat went beautifully. I had got her over half a dozen miles in no time. I would make it a round dozen straight out; then back – and get in at dusk, in nice time for dinner.

What an ass Bindley was to come down to a place like this merely for the fun of going to sleep, I thought, as I skimmed onwards; and then it occurred to me that as this was the only craft of the kind on the beach, I should have missed the splendid exhilaration afforded by my present exercise, as she was certainly not built to carry two, and I had thoughts of hiring her for the time I should be down here, so as to ensure always being able to take her out when wanted.

I had, as near as could be judged by time, about accomplished my prescribed dozen miles, and was pulling the boat round to return, when in spite of the exercise I felt chilly. Then as I faced out to seaward and perceived the cause I felt chillier still – and with reason.

Fog.

Creeping up swiftly, insidiously, like a dark curtain over the sea it was already upon me. Heavens! how I pulled. But pull I never so lustily, send the light craft foaming through the water as I was doing, the dread enemy was swifter still – and all too subtle. Already the coastline was half blotted out, and the remainder blurred and indistinct, but up-Channel the sea was still clear. Well, by holding a straight course now, and keeping what little wind there was upon my right ear, I could still fetch the land even if I did not soon run into clear weather again.

But the smother deepened, lying thick upon the surface. Already the air seemed darkening, and now a distance of half a dozen yards on either hand was all that was visible – sometimes not as much.

Was it demoralisation evoked by this sudden blotting out of the world around, as I found myself alone in the dark vastness of this spectral silence? – for now I felt tired and was obliged to rest on my sculls more than once. And again and again, though hot and perspiring, I shivered.

Now through the silence came the whooping of a steamer’s siren. Another, further out, answered in ghostly hoot. Heavens! what did this mean? Had I, while resting, been insidiously turned round and was now sculling my utmost out into mid-Channel – and – right into the path of passing shipping? And with the thought it occurred to me that no sound of the shore – the striking of a church clock or the bark of a dog, for instance, reached my ears. The thought was an uncomfortable one – almost appalling. One thing was clear. Further rowing was of no use at all.

Again rose the hoot of that spectral foghorn, and as it ceased I lifted up my voice and shouted like mad. But the steamer was probably not near enough for those on board of her to hear my yell, and from the repetition of the sound she seemed to be passing.

It was now almost dark. Shivering violently, I put on my coat and waistcoat – which I had thrown off when beginning my pull – but they were light summer flannels and of small protection – and looked the situation in the face. Here was I, in a cockleshell of a craft, which even the smallest rising of the sea would inevitably swamp, shut in by thick impenetrable fog anywhere out towards mid-Channel, and drifting Heaven knew where, with nothing to eat, nothing to drink, and a long night before me to do it in. I might be picked up, but it was even more likely I might be run down, and with the thought I seemed to see a black, towering cut-water rush foaming from the oily smother, to crash into my little craft and bear me down drowning and battered beneath the grim iron keel.

Time went by; it must have been hours – to me it seemed years. In the overwhelming unearthly blackness of the fog I sat and shivered, a prey to the most unutterably helpless feeling. If it were only daylight, and the fog would lift, I should be picked up in no time in so congested a waterway as the Channel was at this point. But such a consideration now only served to enhance the horror of the position, for it wanted hours and hours to daylight, and here I was, with no means of showing a light except a matchbox containing some dozen and a half of wax vestas, and right in the way of anything that came along. That was an idea anyhow. I might light a pipe. The glow, tiny as it was, might attract notice in the dark. But though a greater smoker than the average I am not one of those who can enjoy tobacco on an empty stomach, and the latter condition being all there, I soon had to desist, and think of the cosy dinner we should now long since have been sitting down to, Bindley and I, in the snug inn at Whiddlecombe Regis; which, whether it lay north, south, east or west of me at that moment, Heaven only knew.

It may be guessed I had expended a good deal of lung power in periodical shouting. I had heard fog-horns whooping from time to time, but more or less distant, and once I had heard the powerful beat of a propeller and the rush of a great liner, quite near by. But as Fate would have it, at that critical point I had shouted myself well-nigh voiceless, and the clank and clatter on board and the wash of her way must have drowned my feeble attempts, for she passed on, and presently a succession of waves furrowed up by her passage caused my little cockleshell to dance in the most lively fashion. Thus I was left alone in the blackness once more, sick and faint with hunger, and my teeth chattering with the cold, to such an extent that it seemed to me the very noise they made ought in itself to attract the attention of passing craft.

After that I seemed to fall into a state of semi-somnolence for a time, out of which I was roused by the motion of the boat. I awoke with a start. There was a freshening in the air, as though a breeze were springing up; and indeed such was the case. The fog, too, had lifted, for I could see stars. But the momentary exultation evoked by this idea subsided in a new alarm. The sea was getting up, and I needed not a reminder of the old salt from whom I had hired the boat that the latter was only good for smooth water. Here was a new peril, and a very real one. And there was a decidedly “open sea” kind of whiff about the freshening breeze.

I pulled the boat round so as to keep her head to the waves, which seemed to be increasing every moment. Their splash wetted me, rendering the cold more biting than ever, and then – a strange roaring sound bellowed in my ears. A huge green eye shot forward in the darkness, and a tall dark mass towered foaming above me. At that moment I opened my mouth and emitted the most awful yell that ever proceeded from human throat. Then came the crash – as I knew it would. I seemed to be shot forward into space, then dragged through leagues of cold and rushing waters, while gripping something hard and resisting as though life depended on it. Then another shock, and I knew no more.

Chapter Two.
A Waif

“Seems to be coming to, don’t he?”

“Not quite. Better leave him alone a bit longer.”

Was I dead, and were these voices of another world? Hardly. They had a homely and British intonation which savoured too much of this one. Then I grew confused, and dozed off again.

Was I dreaming, or where was I? shaped out the next thought as I heard the voices again. Lying with closed eyes, returning consciousness began to assert itself. A certain heaving movement, which could be produced by nothing else than a ship at sea, made itself felt – a movement not unknown to me, for I had made a voyage to Australia and back earlier in my hitherto uneventful career – and a pounding, vibrating sound, which jarred somewhat roughly upon my awakened nerves, told that the vessel was a steamship. Opening my eyes drowsily, I saw that I was lying in a bunk, and the fresh air blowing in through an open skylight was breezy and salt. There was no mistaking my present quarters. I was in a ship’s cuddy. A table, covered with a faded cloth of many colours, stood in the middle of the room, and the slant of an apparently useless pillar running from floor to ceiling, and through the same, could only be that of a mast.

“Feeling better now, sir?”

Two men had glided into the room and were watching me. One was tall, slim, and well made, with a clear-cut face and dark pointed beard, the other red and broad and burly; and when they spoke I recognised the voices I had heard before.

“Yes, thanks. At least I think so,” I answered faintly.

“Better give him a tot of rum. That’ll bring him to,” said the broad red man, in a voice that rumbled.

“Not much. Grog on top of that whack on the head he got would be the death of him. Oh, steward! tell the doctor to send along that broth,” he called out to some one outside.

“Where am I?” was my next and obvious question.

“Board the Kittiwake, bound for East London. Cargo, iron rails,” answered the broad red man.

“Let’s see. You ran me down, didn’t you?” I said confusedly.

“Run you down? Well, sonny, you lurched your ironclad against our bows in a way that was reckless. And you warn’t carrying no lights neither, which is clean contrary to Board o’ Trade regulations, and dangerous to shippin’.”

“What a narrow squeak I must have had. Are you the captain?”

“No, sir. This here’s the captain, Captain John Morrissey,” and he turned to the good-looking, dark-bearded man, whom at first I had taken for the ship’s surgeon.

“Narrow squeak’s hardly the word for it, Mr Holt,” said this man in a pleasant voice. “It’s more of a miracle than I’ve seen in all my experience of sea-going. Ah, I see the doctor has sent you your broth; you’d better take it, and I wouldn’t talk too much just yet, if I were you.”

“You carry a doctor, then. Are you a liner?”

Both laughed at this.

“No, no, Mr Holt,” answered the captain. “Doctor’s a seafaring term for the ship’s cook, and I believe in this instance you’ll find his prescriptions do you more good than those of the real medico.”

I sipped the broth, and felt better; but still had a very confused, not to say achy, feeling about the head, and again began to feel drowsy.

“I suppose I’ll be all right by the time we get in,” I said. “Right enough to land, shan’t I?”

The broad red man rumbled out a deep guffaw. The captain’s face took on a strange look – comical and warning at the same time.

“You’ll be all right long before we get in, Mr Holt,” he said. “Now, if you take my advice, you’ll go to sleep again.”

I did take it, and I must have slept for a long time. Once or twice I half woke, and it seemed to be night, for all was dark save for a faint light coming in through the closed portholes, and the lulling rocking movement and swish of the water soon sent me off again. Even the throb of the propeller was soothing in its regularity.

“You’ve had a good sleep, sir. Feel better this morning, sir?”

It was broad daylight, and the motion of the ship had changed to a very decided roll. I sat up in my bunk.

“Shall we be in soon, steward?” I asked, recognising that functionary.

“Be in soon? Why, hardly, sir,” he answered, looking puzzled. “We don’t touch nowhere.”

“No, I suppose not. But where are we now?”

“Well into the Bay.”

“The Bay! What Bay?”

“Bay o’ Biscay, sir,” he replied, looking as though he thought the effects of my buffeting had impaired my reasoning faculties.

“Bay of Biscay!” I echoed. “The Channel, you mean. The captain said we were bound for East London.”

“So we are, sir, and we’re heading there at nine knots an hour. We shan’t do so much, though, if this sou’wester keeps up.”

An idea struck me, but it was a confused one.

“Steward,” I said, sitting bolt upright. “Will you oblige me with a piece of information. Where the devil is East London?”

“Eastern end of the Cape Colony, Mr Holt; and a bad port of call, whichever way you take it.”

The answer came from the captain, who entered at that moment. The steward went on with his occupation, that of laying the table for breakfast.

“Great Scott!” I cried, as the truth dawned upon me. “But – ”

“I see how it stands,” said the captain with a smile. “You thought East London meant the East India Docks. I didn’t set you right at the time, because you might have got into a state of excitement, and rest was the word just then. Now I think you are fairly on your legs again.”

“But – botheration! I don’t want to take a voyage to the Cape. I suppose you can put me ashore somewhere, so I can get back.”

“I’m afraid not. We don’t touch anywhere. But I think even the voyage is the lesser evil of the two. Better than lying at the bottom of the Channel, I mean.”

“Well, certainly. Don’t think me ungrateful, Captain Morrissey; but this will mean a lot to me. I shall lose my berth, for one thing.”

“Even that isn’t worse than losing your life, and you had a narrow squeak of that. By the way, were you sculling across the Channel for a bet?”

“Haw, haw, haw!” rumbled the broad red man, who had rolled in in time to catch this question.

I joined in the laugh, and told them how I came to be found in such a precarious plight. Then I learned how my rescue had been effected, and indeed miraculous hardly seemed the word for it. But that the steamer was going dead slow in the fog, and I had clung to her straight stern with the grip of death, I should have been crushed down beneath her and cut to pieces by the propeller. Even then they had hauled me on board with difficulty. The boat, of course, had been knocked to matchwood.

“You had a gold watch and chain upon you, a pocket-book, and some money?” said the captain. “How much was there?”

“Let me see; five pounds and some change. I forget how much.”

The captain disappeared through a door, and immediately re-entered.

“Count that,” he said.

I picked up a five-pound note, two sovereigns, and some silver change.

“Seven pounds, nine and a halfpenny,” I said. “Yes, that’s about what it was.”

“That’s all right. I took care of it for you. Here’s your watch and chain. I ventured to open the pocket-book to find out your identity. Now, if you’ll take my advice you’ll get up and join us at breakfast.”

I took it, and soon the captain and I and the broad red man, who was the chief mate, and rejoiced in the name of Chadwick, were seated at table, and I don’t know that grilled chops and mashed potato – for the fresh meat supply had not yet run out – ever tasted better. The while we discussed the situation.

“The nearest point I could land you at would be the Canaries,” the captain was saying, “and I daren’t do that. My owners are deadly particular, and it might be as much as my bunk was worth – and I’ve got a family to support.”

“Well, I haven’t,” I answered, “so I wouldn’t allow you to take any risk of the kind on my account, captain, even if you were willing to. But – what about passing steamers?”

The two sailors looked at each other.

“The fact is,” went on the captain, “it’s blowing not only fresh, but strong. The glass is dropping in a way that points to the next few days finding us with our hands all full. After that we shan’t sight anything much this side of the Cape, and it’ll hardly be worth your while to tranship then. I’m afraid you’ll have to make up your mind to do the whole passage with us.”

I recognised the force of this, and that it was a case of resigning myself to the inevitable. And the thought ran through my mind how strange are the workings of events. But for my brother’s invite I should have been safe and snug and humdrum in my City office. But for the cancelling of that invite I should never have found my way to Whiddlecombe Regis, or even have heard of such a place; and now here I was, after a perilous experience, launched upon the high seas, bound for a distant colony, and that without any will of my own in the matter. Well, when I got there, I could always arrange a return passage. I had some means of my own – not enough to keep me without working, unless I chose to live upon what would amount to the wages of an artisan. Therefore there was nothing to cause me serious anxiety, unless it were that my berth would probably be filled up. But, as I have hinted, the tenure of it was somewhat precarious, so some consolation lay that way, and I could doubtless find another. So I reasoned, forgetting that after all we are blind and helpless instruments in the hands of Fate, a lesson which my experience so far might well have reminded me – certainly in total unconsciousness of what stirring experiences, perilous and otherwise, lay between now and when I should once more behold the English coastline.

“You seem a good sailor, at any rate, Mr Holt,” said the captain, breaking in upon my meditations.

“Why, I never thought of feeling seasick,” I answered. “It didn’t occur to me.”

“No? Well, you’re all right then. If we’ve done, I would suggest a turn on deck. If we get a bad blow, you may not be able to get there for a while, so better make the most of it now.”