by M. M. Kaye
He reached for a tin pannikin that stood in a wooden holder against the wall, filled it from a silver flask, and finding that her hands were too bruised and nerveless to take it, held it to her mouth while she drank.
The fiery liquid burned Hero’s throat and brought a stab of agonizing pain to her cut lip, but though she coughed and choked she managed to swallow a reasonable quantity of it and was grateful for the glow of warmth it brought to her cold stomach. But the relief was only temporary, for presently she began to shiver violently and found that she had to clench her teeth to prevent them from chattering. She wished that she could lie down somewhere—anywhere. On the floor if necessary, but preferably in her own berth. If only she could contrive to get back to her cabin and out of these dreadful sodden clothes she could crawl into her berth and go to sleep. But there was something that must be said first, and she frowned in an effort to concentrate, and forcing the words between her chattering teeth said: “D-did you…w-was it you who p-pulled me out?”
“Among others.”
“T-then I have to t-thank you for s-saving my life. I am t-truly grateful.”
The tall man grinned and said: “It’s your guardian angel you should thank, my girl. I didn’t arrange to snarl you up in that mass of torn rigging, and it was that and nothing else that saved your life. We only had to haul you in. And by the look of you we gave you a pretty rough time in the process!”
Hero attempted to return his smile, but found that her mouth was so cut and swollen that the effort was too painful, and abandoning it she asked instead for Mrs Fullbright: “If she is n-not too ill I w-would like to see her, please. A-at once. And if you w-would be so k-kind as to ask the Captain to come here—”
“He’s here,” said the tall man briefly. “I’m the Captain. You’re on the wrong ship, young woman. No Mrs Fullbrights here. In fact no other woman of any sort, which is a piece of bad luck for you. Or good luck, whichever way you choose to look at it.”
He grinned at Hero, who said incredulously:‘It isn’t true. It can’t be. This is the Norah—”
She stopped suddenly, and her right eye—the other had made contact with a bollard and was already too swollen to see out of—widened in horror. “Why—it must have have been your ship that ran us down. This ship!”
“You mean who just missed running you down. That’s right. Though I have to admit that it was no thanks to us that we are not all providing food for the fishes at this moment That helmsman of yours is a hell of a smart seaman, and I’d like to meet him. He snatched his ship out of the way as neatly as be damned, with less than an inch to spare and without so much as scraping our paint Here’s to him!”
He drained the pannikin, and setting it down, turned his attention to more practical matters: “I must get back on deck and you’d better get out of those clothes and between blankets. Think you can manage it?”
“I—I’ll try,” shuddered Hero.
The man laughed again, and said: “You won’t find it too difficult, for you left half you: clothes on a broken spar, and we cut your laces. You’d better take over my bunk: it doesn’t look as though I shall be needing it for some considerable time—if ever!”
He jerked his chin in the direction of the narrow berth that occupied one wall of the cabin, and picking up a dripping oilskin, shrugged himself into it and went away; moving as easily as though the ship had been drifting in a flat calm instead of lurching violently to a howling hurricane.
The door closed behind him and presently Hero dragged herself painfully out of the chair and discovered that the stranger had spoken no more than the truth on the subject of her clothes, for her dress was in shreds. The bodice hung loose to the waist with every button gone, and the laces of her stays had been cut Even so it required prodigious efforts to remove the tattered remains, and it was probably the brandy more than mere will-power that lent her the strength to do it, and, when the last sodden garment had fallen to the floor, to stagger across to the bunk and crawl under the blankets.
She did not know how long she slept, but when she eventually awoke it was to find that someone had lit a curious oriental lamp of pierced bronze that swooped and swayed to the motion of the ship, throwing a scatter of dancing stars across the walls of the darkened cabin. Watching them, she had fallen asleep again, and then later on someone had lifted her head and given her water to drink. There had been a time, too, when the sun had been shining. But on each occasion she had fallen asleep again almost immediately, and when at last she awoke to full consciousness the lamp had again been lit.
The same small gold spatters of light that she remembered seeing before were once again dancing across the walls and ceiling. But this time they moved to the measure of a slow and stately saraband, and no longer in the frenzied tarantella of the previous night.
Hero lay still and watched them, and presently became aware that she could only see out of one eye. Touching the other one gingerly she found that it was not only swollen but exceedingly sore, and the discovery effectually banished the last traces of drowsiness and jolted her into full consciousness of where she was and how she had come there.
Her first instinctive feeling was one of profound gratitude for being alive, and for several minutes it was enough to think only of that and to be thankful, since it was indeed, as the blond stranger had said, a miracle that she had survived: a chance in a million! And then she remembered Amelia Fullbright and Captain Thaddaeus, imagining her to be dead. Oh, poor Amelia! she would take it dreadfully to heart. But how surprised and delighted she would be when Hero reappeared safe and sound. Perhaps the Norah Crayne was already standing by, waiting until she awoke, for the gale appeared to have blown itself out at last and by now it might be possible to launch a boat. She must get up at once!
It was at this point that Miss Hollis made the unpleasant discovery that the slightest movement was not only extremely painful but very nearly impossible. She appeared to have scraped an astonishing amount of skin off herself, and every inch of her body was stiff and bruised from the savage battering it had received as she had been dragged on board.
It took a considerable effort of will to pull herself out of the berth and across the room, but she set her teeth and managed it at last, though the effort brought cold beads of sweat to her forehead and made her gasp with pain. There was a tin basin, and a can of fresh water—stale and tepid but still drinkable—among other necessary amenities in a dark little closet that adjoined the cabin, and Hero drank long and thirstily and was uncritical of the taste.
There were none of her own garments in the cabin, but there was an assortment of male attire in a wall cupboard, and she pulled out a shirt at random and had barely managed to slip it on when the cabin door opened cautiously and a grizzled head peered round the comer:
“Ah! So you’re up,” it announced in a tone of satisfaction. “I suspicioned you might be. Been in ‘arf a dozen times, I ‘ave, just to take a look. I reckoned you’d be wantin’ yer vittles soon’s yer woke.”
The door opened wider to admit a spry little man with a broken nose in the middle of a face that was as brown and wrinkled as a walnut shell and entirely surrounded by grey whiskers. He sprang agilely on to the only chair, and turning up the wick in the bronze lamp said happily: “There now! That’s better, ain’t it? Now we can see wot we’re at.”
Miss Hollis, adequately concealed by white cambric as far as the knee but painfully conscious of a lavish display of bare leg and ankle below it, retreated hurriedly back to the bunk; a proceeding which her elderly visitor regarded with a tolerant and entirely understanding eye:
“You don’t ‘ave to worry, miss,” he assured her. “I’m a married man I am—five times over and two of ‘em legal. Yore safe with Batty Potter, for I seen too many wimmin to get a’sizzlin’ over ‘em at my time of life. Which is why the Captain ‘e says ter me, “You better do nursemaid. Batty,” ‘e says, “for by this-an-by-that, you’re the only respectable member of me ole crew!” Which was right �
�and some of ‘im when you come to think of it. So ‘ere I be, and werry much at your service, miss. What’ll it be? Some nice fried pancakes and a cuppa coffee?”
Hero said cautiously: “That sounds very nice, Mr—er—Potter. But I would like my clothes first, please. As soon as they are dry.”
“They’re dry all right,” nodded the only respectable member of the crew, “though a bit wore-out like. But I’m doing me best with them, an’ you shall ‘ave them back as soon as I can get ‘em to ‘ang together. ‘Ere’s your supper.”
At any other time Hero would undoubtedly have rejected the meal as uneatable, since the pancakes turned out to be flat cakes of unleavened bread, imbued with curious Eastern spices and fried in clarified butter, while the coffee was black and very sweet and thick with grounds. But by now she was feeling far too hungry to be critical, and Mr Potter, removing the denuded tray, remarked approvingly that he liked to see a wench that could do justice to her vittles, and at this rate they would soon have her on her feet again.
He had forgotten to turn down the lamp when he left, or perhaps it had simply not occurred to him to do so, and sitting propped up against her pillows Hero at last had time to take stock of her surroundings.
She was occupying a cabin that was not in the least like any of those on the Norah Crayne, for it was neither as large as her own comfortable one nor as well equipped as the Fullbrights’, and there was no comparable display of polished mahogany, bright chintz or gleaming brasswork. The furniture consisted of a single chair, a wire-fronted bookcase, a large built-in desk flanked by wall-cupboards, a chest and a wash-hand stand. The berth filled a recess facing two doors, one of which opened on to the small closet that combined the function of washroom and privy, and the other on to a companionway that led up to the open deck. The cabin boasted two portholes, but no ornaments (unless the intricately wrought Moorish lamp and a fine Persian carpet that covered the floor could be counted as such), and except for the books, whose titles it was impossible to decipher at that range, it gave no indication as to the character or tastes of the owner.
Hero found herself wondering about the Captain. She had not met many Englishmen before, for Barclay, that normally peaceable man, had unaccountably taken exception to the policy of the British Navy, when on anti-slavery patrol, of stopping any ship suspected of being a slaver. It being his considered opinion that no damn’ Britisher had any right to search an American ship, not even if it were crammed from top to bottom with slaves and could be winded five miles off!
“What we do with our own ships is our own damn’ business,” Barclay had said, “and we’ll sort it out ourselves.’ He had ceased to invite English visitors to Hollis Hill, and thereafter the few English women whom Hero had met had been teachers of music or deportment—stiff, bony spinsters, or faded widows living sadly in the past They had not impressed her, and her history books had given her a profound distrust of their nation. But the ship she was now on was presumably British (if the accent of her Captain and the dropped aitches of Mr Batty Potter were anything to go by), and since she owed her life to them, she must show a proper degree of gratitude. Though recalling the Captain’s pale eyes and misplaced sense of humour, she was not sure that this would prove too easy.
It occurred to her that she had read somewhere that exceptionally light-coloured eyes were a sign of a deceitful, untrustworthy and cruel nature, and she wondered if this were really so. Clayton’s eyes for instance, though not precisely dark, were the grey of slate or storm-clouds. But the English Captain’s were as pale as snow water—and as cold. Decidedly not a person to be trusted.
The slow swing and sway of the fretted light across the wall of the cabin had failed to make her drowsy again, and she had passed an uncomfortable night and been relieved when the sun rose and morning brought Mr Potter knocking at the door with a breakfast tray, a pile of clothing and a can of hot water:
“You’ll be needing a wash,” announced Mr Potter. “And ‘ere’s your duds. I done a right pretty job on them, though I says it meself. But if you were to ask me, I’d say you’d be better off in bed for another day or two. That peeper of yours is terrible swole, and you don’t look too good to me. If I was you I’d rest meself—stay on me back.”
Hero thanked him gratefully for the return of her clothes, but assured him that she felt quite well enough to get up, and asked him if he would add to his kindness by telling his Captain that she would like to have a few words with him in half an hour’s time.
“Well—I could, o’ course,” admitted Mr Potter. “But I ain’t so sure as ‘e’ll be able to spare you the time. “‘E’s got a mort of work on ‘is ‘ands, what with one thing and another.”
“Tell him that it’s urgent,” said Hero with decision.
Mr Potter shrugged, and having deposited a neatly folded pile of clothing on the end of the bunk, departed again; leaving her to wash and dress herself and eat a frugal breakfast.
She was surprised to discover that he had indeed made a good job of her torn garments, though being unable to match the buttons that had been wrenched from her basque he had substituted a colourful and variegated assortment that had evidently been selected at random from a well-stocked button box. But the pile did not include either slippers or stockings, and Hero realized with dismay that she must have lost the former and torn the latter to shreds, and would have to return to the Norah Crayne barefoot.
Dressing herself had proved a considerable ordeal; less on account of her bruised body than because of her stiff and painfully lacerated hands. But Miss Hollis was both stubborn and courageous, and wrestling grimly with tapes, buttons and fastenings, she had managed it at last. There remained only the tangled mass of chestnut hair that fell below her waist and defied all her efforts to reduce it to even a semblance of order, and searching for a comb she opened the nearest cupboard—to be confronted by a strange, blotched and distorted face that made her jerk back with a gasp of alarm.
It took her a full ten seconds to realize that she was looking at her own face, reflected in a small square of looking-glass above an empty shelf. And when she did so she could only stare at herself in frozen unbelief, for though it had been impossible not to be aware of the extent of her injuries, nothing had prepared her for that staggering display of bruises, or for the fact that a cut lip and a swollen jaw could present such an outrageous effect of depravity when allied to an unkempt mop of salt-stiffened and medusa-like hair. To make matters worse her once sober mourning dress of sedate black poplin, with its modest neckline and buttoned basque, now looked quite as disreputable as her battered face and tangled hair. The cheap, gaudy and ill-assorted buttons lent it an appearance of gipsy-like vulgarity, and she looked like—like some drunken, brawling drab off the street. A harpy. A harridan!
She was still staring at her reflection in horrified revulsion when a knock on the door reminded her that Mr Potter might be able to procure arnica, cold compresses and a set of plain buttons, and she turned hastily to bid him come in. But this time it was not Mr Potter, but the rightful owner of the cabin.
He stood in the open doorway with the sun shining down on his blond head, and surveying his guest, broke suddenly and outrageously into a roar of laughter. Thereby instantly and permanently dissipating any feelings of gratitude that she might have felt towards him.
“I am glad, sir,” pronounced Miss Hollis, quivering with affront, “that the sight of my injuries and my unfortunate state should afford you so much amusement. May I hope that when you have laughed your fill you will perhaps feel able to offer me some assistance?”
Her words acted as a check to his laughter but failed to take the amusement from his face, and he bowed and said: “My apologies. It was unkind of me to laugh, but I couldn’t help it. It’s that eye. It makes you look like some disorderly Billingsgate doxy who has been involved in a drunken brawl. Does it hurt very badly?”
“Strangely enough, it does! And if there is such a thing as a doctor on your ship, I should be g
lad of his services.”
“We don’t carry one, I’m afraid. I do most of the doctoring around here; though I admit my qualifications are hardly impressive. I once worked for six months in an apothecary’s shop in my early youth, and studied oriental medicine at Aleppo for an even shorter period of time. But I can probably do something about that eye.”
He called up the companionway in a language that was unfamiliar to Hero, and turning back to her, said: “I was told you wanted to see me urgently. Was it about your eye?”
“No, it was not. I wished to know how soon you would be able to transfer me back on to the Norah Crayne?
“Your ship? So that’s who she was—I didn’t have time to recognize her. She’s calling at Zanzibar this trip, I believe.”
“She is. And if you will signal her to stand by. Captain Fullbright will send a boat for me. It should be quite easy to do so now that the sea has gone down.”
“Oh, quite easy—if she were anywhere in sight, which she is not. But you don’t need to worry. I’ll be able to put you ashore at Zanzibar myself, eventually.”
“Eventually? But I wish to get there immediately!” Hero’s voice lost its note of dignity and became agitated. “Surely you must understand that I cannot allow Captain Fullbright to reach Zanzibar ahead of me? Why, if that were to happen Clay would—I mean, my uncle and aunt would imagine that I had been drowned, and I could not think of subjecting them to such a dreadful shock. We must overtake the Norah Crayne at once!”
“Not a chance,” said the Captain callously. “Even allowing for her having been blown off course she’ll raise the island inside three days with this wind. But I’m afraid I have business in these waters, and owing to that storm I may not get there myself until somewhere around the end of the month. I’m sorry, but there it is. Business before pleasure.”
