Rogues and Vagabonds. George R. Sims

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ and weeks never a sail might be seen.

      The night was dark.

      The sea was rough, and there had been a panic. The boats had been filled with passengers and some of the crew at once. The captain had shouted to them to keep near the ship, but the order had been disobeyed. When the light dawned those on board the Bon Espoir scanned the horizon, and saw no floating thing upon the waves.

      A light mist hung like a veil over the waters, narrowing their range of vision. The wind had sunk, the waves were at rest, and the sun bursting through the mist gleamed upon a vast expanse of smiling sea.

      Those who had stuck to the ship, hoping against hope that she might keep afloat yet until they fell into the track of other vessels, took counsel together and talked of a raft when every effort to save the vessel had been found useless.

      But they were in a latitude where the storm came swiftly on the calm; where, with little warning, the baby waves swelled into gigantic billows, and the sighing zephyr, gathering sudden strength, shrieked aloud and lashed the sea to fiercest fury.

      The sailors who remained were principally foreigners. They had remained on the ship all night, refusing to work when they found the water gaining on them. They had gone below, torn their hair, beaten their breasts, cried aloud to the saints. Then they attacked the spirit store, and drank till they reeled down and slept a brutish, drunken sleep where they lay.

      The passengers still left were all men, but unskilled. Without the aid of the sailors they could not make a raft. The sailors were not in a condition to move—certainly not to work. They had resigned themselves to their fate now. That strange sense of calm which comes mercifully even to cowards when hope is absolutely dead had fallen on them all.

      They stood leaning over the ship’s sides, waiting for the end, their faces pale, their eyes haggard, and their thoughts far away.

      Some of them had wives and children at home, and the images of their beloved ones rose up before them. They seemed to pierce the space and see the place that would know them no more. One man whispered to those who stood near him that he had heard his little boy cry “Father!” and another said that in the night he had seen his wife hearing his little ones their prayers, and when they said “God bless papa!” she looked up, and her eyes were filled with tears.

      There were yet some hours between them and death, and they could still talk to each other.

      It seemed a relief to do so; it created a companionship in misery; they cheered each other with their voices.

      There was a clergyman among the passengers, and, as the captain went away to his post after a few last words of encouragement to the little band, the reverend gentleman asked their attention for a moment.

      Earnestly and calmly, as became an English gentleman in the presence of death, the man of God prayed to the Throne of Grace for strength and sustenance in this hour of supreme peril. Briefly he addressed his little flock of doomed ones, and then went his way, deeming the last moments of his fellow-voyagers sacred to themselves.

      As he was walking quietly aft, he felt a hand laid upon his shoulder.

      He turned, and found that one of the passengers had followed him. He was a quiet, gentlemanly man, who had hardly spoken to any one during the voyage. He was tall, dark, and well built, apparently a man of five or six and thirty. The face was pleasing at first glance, the features being well cut, and not too prominent. But on a closer inspection the defects were apparent. The lips were sensual; the eyes had that strange look which one sees in the hunted animal. The fear of something behind was apparent upon the face the moment the features were disturbed from their repose. A dark moustache covered the too thick upper lip, and the rest of the face was bronzed with long travel and exposure to sun and sea. One thing would instantly attract the attention of the ordinary observer—the strange way in which “indecision” was expressed in his countenance. His eyes and his lips would have revealed the secret of his character to a physiognomist at once.

      He had evidently made up his mind in a hurry to say something to the clergyman. Directly that gentleman turned kindly, and asked what service he could render him, he hesitated.

      ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said, after a pause; ‘but can I speak with you alone?’

      They walked to a deserted part of the ship.

      ‘I am going to make an extraordinary statement to you,’ said the passenger, his undecided eyes now looking in the clergyman’s face and now resting on the deck; ‘but I think I ought to. You are a clergyman, and I know no one better to whom in the hour of death I can confess a secret that should not die with me.’

      The clergyman surveyed his interviewer earnestly for a moment.

      ‘Is it a crime?’ he asked.

      The passenger nodded.

      ‘I don’t want to die with it on my mind,’ he murmured. ‘I fancy when the—the end comes, I shall die easier.’

      ‘My friend,’ said the clergyman, kindly, ‘do not imagine that a confession at the last moment takes guilt from the soul. To confess a crime to one who is about to share your fate is, perhaps, rather a superstitious than a religious deed. Let us understand each other. We both believe that we are about to die. You confess to me, perhaps thinking that no possible harm can come to you from it—that you run no such risk as you would in confessing under other circumstanccs.’

      ‘I haven’t thought about that,’ answered the passenger, almost in a whisper. ‘Let me tell some human being my secret, and it will at least be off my mind. I feel as if the secret would choke me if I kept it any longer. I cannot die with murder on my soul.’

      ‘Murder!’ exclaimed the clergyman, starting back; then, recovering himself, he added, ‘Speak on; but I warn you that whatever you tell me, should we, by the Lord’s will, be saved, I will keep as no secret. Neither shall you deny it. Write.’

      The clergyman drew out his pocket-book, and handed it, with a pencil, to the passenger.

      The latter hesitated.

      Presently, with a supreme effort, he wrote:—

      ‘On board the Bon Espoir.

      ‘The ship is sinking rapidly. I, Gurth Egerton, believing that I am about to die, do solemnly declare that on the night of the 15th of September, 18—, I stabbed my cousin, Ralph Egerton, in a gambling-house, kept by a man named Heckett, and that the wound proved fatal. I freely make this confession, and may God forgive me.

      ‘Signed, Gurth Egerton.’

      The clergyman took the book from him and read it. Then he wrote something beneath it.

      The confession once made, a swift revulsion of feeling came over Gurth Egerton. He reached out his hand, as though he would have snatched it back.

      The clergyman closed the book and thrust it into his pocket.

      ‘Unhappy sinner!’ he said; ‘even now you repent the acknowledgment of your awful crime. Pray, for your time is short. Remember, should God spare me, I will use every effort to bring you to justice.’

      As the last words left his lips, and Gurth Egerton, with a white face, was about to turn away, a loud cry rang out from СКАЧАТЬ