Stanley Weyman - The Story of Francis Cludde

We had stood thus for a few moments when a harsh voice, hailing us from above, put an end to our several thoughts and forebodings. We looked up and I saw half a dozen night-capped heads thrust over the bulwarks. A rope ladder came hurtling down at our feet, and a man, nimbly descending, held it tight at the bottom. "Now, madame!" he said briskly. They all, I noticed, had the same foreign accent, yet all spoke English; a singularity I did not understand, until I learned later that the boat was the Lions Whelp , trading between London and Calais, and manned from the latter place.

Mistress Bertram ascended quickly and steadily, holding the baby in her arms. The other made some demur, lingering at the foot of the ladder and looking up as if afraid, until her companion chid her sharply. Then she too went up, but as she passed me-I was holding one side of the ladder steady-she shot at me from under her hood a look which disturbed me strangely.

It was the first time I had seen her face, and it was such a face as a man rarely forgets. Not because of its beauty; rather because it was a speaking face, a strange and expressive one, which the dark waving hair, swelling in thick clusters upon either temple, seemed to accentuate. The features were regular, but, the full red lips excepted, rather thin than shapely. The nose, too, was prominent. But the eyes! The eyes seemed to glorify the dark brilliant thinness of the face, and to print it upon the memory. They were dark flashing eyes, and their smile seemed to me perpetually to challenge, to allure and repulse, and even to goad. Sometimes they were gay, more rarely sad, sometimes soft, and again hard as steel. They changed in a moment as one or another approached her. But always at their gayest, there was a suspicion of weariness and fatigue in their depths. Or so I thought later.

Something of this flashed through my mind as I followed her up the side. But once on board I glanced round, forgetting her in the novelty of my position. The Whelp was decked fore and aft only, the blackness of the hold gaping amidships, spanned by a narrow gangway, which served to connect the two decks. We found ourselves in the forepart, amid coils of rope and windlasses and water-casks; surrounded by half a dozen wild-looking sailors wearing blue knitted frocks and carrying sheath-knives at their girdles.

The foremost and biggest of these seemed to be the captain, although, so far as outward appearances went, the only difference between him and his crew lay in a marlin-spike which he wore slung to a thong beside his knife. When I reached the deck he was telling a long story to Mistress Bertram, and telling it very slowly. But the drift of it I soon gathered. While the fog lasted he could not put to sea.

"Nonsense!" cried my masterful companion, chafing at his slowness of speech. "Why not? Would it be dangerous?"

"Well, madam, it would be dangerous," he answered, more slowly than ever. "Yes, it would be dangerous. And to put to sea in a fog? That is not seamanship. And your baggage has not arrived."

"Never mind my baggage!" she answered imperiously. "I have made other arrangements for it. Two or three things I know came on board last night. I want to start-to start at once, do you hear?"

The captain shook his head, and said sluggishly that it was impossible. Spitting on the deck he ground his heel leisurely round in a knothole. "Impossible," he repeated; "it would not be seamanship to start in a fog. When the fog lifts we will go. 'Twill be all the same to-morrow. We shall lie at Leigh to-night, whether we go now or go when the fog lifts."

"At Leigh?"

"That is it, madam."

"And when will you go from Leigh?" she cried indignantly.

"Daybreak to-morrow," he answered. "You leave it to me, mistress," he continued, in a tone of rough patronage, "and you will see your good man before you expect it."

"But, man!" she exclaimed, trembling with impotent rage. "Did not Master Bertram engage you to bring me across whenever I might be ready? Ay, and pay you handsomely for it? Did he not, sirrah?"

"To be sure, to be sure!" replied the giant unmoved. "Using seamanship, and not going to sea in a fog, if it please you."

"It does not please me!" she retorted. "And why stay at Leigh?"

He looked up at the rigging, then down at the deck. He set his heel in the knothole, and ground it round again. Then he looked at his questioner with a broad smile. "Well, mistress, for a very good reason. It is there your good man is waiting for you. Only," added this careful keeper of a secret, "he bade me not tell any one."

She uttered a low cry, which might have been an echo of her baby's cooing, and convulsively clasped the child more tightly to her. "He is at Leigh!" she murmured, flushing and trembling, another woman altogether. Even her voice was wonderfully changed. "He is really at Leigh, you say?"

"To be sure!" replied the captain, with a portentous wink and a mysterious roll of the head. "He is there safe enough! Safe enough, you may bet your handsome face to a rushlight. And we will be there to-night."

She started up with a wild gesture. For a moment she had sat down on a cask standing beside her, and forgotten our peril, and the probability that we might never see Leigh at all. Now, I have said, she started up. "No, no!" she cried, struggling for breath and utterance. "Oh, no! no! Let us go at once. We must start at once!" Her voice was hysterical in its sudden anxiety and terror, as the consciousness of our position rolled back upon her. "Captain! listen, listen!" she pleaded. "Let us start now, and my husband will give you double. I will promise you double whatever he said if you will chance the fog."

I think all who heard her were moved, save the captain only. He rubbed his head and grinned. Slow and heavy, he saw nothing in her prayer save the freak of a woman wild to get to her man. He did not weigh her promise at a groat; she was but a woman. And being a foreigner, he did not perceive a certain air of breeding which might have influenced a native. He was one of those men against whose stupidity Father Carey used to say the gods fight in vain. When he answered good-naturedly, "No, no, mistress, it is impossible. It would not be seamanship," I felt that we might as well try to stop the ebbing tide as move him from his position.

The feeling was a maddening one. The special peril which menaced my companions I did not know; but I knew they feared pursuit, and I had every reason to fear it for myself. Yet at any moment, out of the fog which encircled us so closely that we could barely see the raft below-and the shore not at all-might come the tramp of hurrying feet and the stern hail of the law. It was maddening to think of this, and to know that we had only to cast off a rope or two in order to escape; and to know also that we were absolutely helpless.

I expected that Mistress Bertram, brave as she had shown herself, would burst into a passion of rage or tears. But apparently she had one hope left. She looked at me.

I tried to think-to think hard. Alas, I seemed only able to listen. An hour had gone by since we parted from that rascal in the court, and we might expect him to appear at any moment, vengeful and exultant, with a posse at his back. Yet I tried hard to think; and the fog presently suggested a possible course. "Look here," I said suddenly, speaking for the first time, "if you do not start until the fog lifts, captain, we may as well breakfast ashore, and return presently."

"That is as you please," he answered indifferently.

"What do you think?" I said, turning to my companions with as much carelessness as I could command. "Had we not better do that?"

Mistress Bertram did not understand, but in her despair she obeyed the motion of my hand mechanically, and walked to the side. The younger woman followed more slowly, so that I had to speak to her with some curtness, bidding her make haste; for I was in a fever until we were clear of the Whelp and the Lion Wharf. It had struck me that, if the ship were not to leave at once, we were nowhere in so much danger as on board. At large in the fog we might escape detection for a time. Our pursuers might as well look for a needle in a haystack as seek us through it when once we were clear of the wharf. And this was not the end of my idea. But for the present it was enough. Therefore I took up Mistress Anne very short. "Come!" I said, "be quick! Let me help you."