Blue Lights: Hot Work in the Soudan by R. M. Ballantyne (best novels of all time TXT) 📕
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- Author: R. M. Ballantyne
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And small blame to him, as Flynn might have said, for before him stood his ideal of a fairy, an angel, a sylph—or anything beautiful that best suits your fancy, reader! Sunny hair, sunny eyes—earnest and inquiring eyes—sunny smiles, and eyebrows to match. Yes, she had eyebrows distinctly darker than her hair, and well-defined over a pair of large brown eyes.
Poor Miles was stricken, as we have said; but—would you believe it?—there were men there looking at that girl at that time who, to use their own phraseology, would not have accepted a dozen of her for the girls they had left behind them! One young fellow in particular murmured to himself as follows—“Yes, very well in her way, no doubt, but she couldn’t hold a candle to my Emmy!” Perhaps the most cutting remark of all—made mentally, of course—was that of Sergeant Grady, who, for reasons best known to himself, had left a wife, describable as a stout well-favoured girl of forty, behind him.
“In twenty years or so,” he thought, “she may perhaps be near as good-lookin’ as my Susy, but she’ll never come quite up to her—never!”
“Come this way, Mrs Drew,” said the captain. “I will show you the men’s quarters. Out of the way, my man!”
Flushing to the roots of his hair, Miles stepped hastily aside.
As he did so there was heard an awful rend of a sort that tests the temper of women! It was followed by a musical scream. The girl’s dress had caught on a block tackle.
Miles leaped forward and unhooked it. He was rewarded with a smiling “Thank you,” which was followed by a blush of confusion as Miss Drew’s mother exclaimed, “Oh! Marion—how could you?” by way of making things easier for her, no doubt!
“You did that, young man, about as smart as I could a’ done it myself,” growled a voice behind him.
The speaker was Jack Molloy, and a general titter followed Miles as he hurried away.
As we have said, the weather became much worse when the troop-ship drew near to the Bay of Biscay; and it soon became evident that they were not to cross that famous portion of the Atlantic without experiencing some of the violent action for which it is famed. But by that time most of the soldiers, according to Molloy, had got their sea-legs on, and rather enjoyed the tossing than otherwise.
“I do like this sort o’ thing,” said a beardless young fellow, as a number of the men sat on camp-stools, or stood on the weather-side of the deck, chatting together about past times and future prospects.
“Ha!” exclaimed a seaman, who stood near them coiling up a rope; “hold on till you’ve got a taste o’ the Bay. This is a mill-pond to that. And you’ll have the chance to-night. If you don’t, I’m a Dutchman.”
“If I do, you’ll have a taste of it too, old salt-water, for we’re in the same boat,” retorted the young red-coat.
“True, but we ain’t in the same body;” returned the sailor. “I should just like to see your four-futt legs wobblin’ about in a nor’-west gale. You’d sing another song.”
“Come, Macleod,” cried Moses Pyne, “tip us a Gaelic song.”
“Hoots, man, wull ye be wantin’ to be made sea-seek?—for that’s what’ll do it,” said the big Scotsman. “Na, na, let Gaspard sing us ‘The Bay o’ Biscay O!’ That’ll be mair appropriate.”
There was a general chorus of assent to this; and as Gaspard Redgrave was an obliging man, untroubled by false modesty, he cleared his throat and began. His voice, being a really splendid one, attracted all the men who chanced to be within range of it: among others, Miles, who was passing at the moment with a bag of biscuits in one hand and a meat-can in the other. He leaned up against one of those funnels which send fresh air down to the stokers of steam-ships. He had listened only a few moments when Marion Drew glided amongst the men, and seemed to stand as if entranced with delight in front of him, steadying herself by a rope, for the vessel was pitching a good deal as well as rolling considerably.
At the first chorus the crowd burst forth with wild enthusiasm—
“As we lay, on that day,
In the Bay of Biscay O!”
Dwelling with unnecessary length and emphasis on the “O!”
At the close of the second verse the men were preparing to burst forth again when Miles observed an approaching billow which caused him to start in alarm. Although unused to the aspect of waves, he had an instinctive feeling that there was danger approaching. Voices of warning were promptly raised from different parts of the vessel, but already the loud chorus had begun and drowned every other sound. Miles dropped his biscuits and sprang towards Marion, who, with flashing eyes and parted lips, was gazing at Gaspard. He just reached her when the wave burst over the side, and, catching most of the men quite unprepared, swept them with terrible violence towards the lee-side of the deck.
Marion was standing directly in the line of this human cataract, but Miles swung her deftly round into the lee of the funnel, a handle of which she happily caught, and clung to it like a limpet.
Her preserver was not so fortunate. The edge of the cataract struck him, swept him off his legs, and hurled him with many comrades against the lee bulwarks, where he lay stunned and helpless in the swishing water.
Of course soldiers and sailors ran from all parts of the vessel to the rescue, and soon the injured men were carried below and attended to by the doctors; and, considering the nature of the accident, it was matter for surprise that the result was no worse than some pretty severe contusions and a few broken ribs.
When Miles recovered consciousness, he found himself in his hammock, with considerable pain in various parts of his body, and the Reverend James Drew bending over him.
“You’re all right now, my fine fellow,” he said, in a low comforting voice. “No bones broken, so the doctors say. Only a little bruised.”
“Tell me, sir,” said Miles, rousing himself, “is—is your daughter safe?”
“Yes, thanks be to God, and to your prompt assistance, she is none the worse—save the fright and a wetting.”
Miles sank back on his pillows with a feeling of profound satisfaction.
“Now, you must try to sleep if you can,” said the clergyman; “it will do you good.”
But Miles did not want anything to do him good. He was quite content to lie still and enjoy the simple fact that he had rescued Marion, perhaps from death—at all events from serious injury! As for pain—what was that to him? was he not a soldier—one whose profession requires him to suffer anything cheerfully in the discharge of duty! And was not love the highest duty?
On the strength of some such thoughts he forgot his pain and calmly went to sleep.
The wave which had burst with such disastrous effect on the deck of the troop-ship was but the herald of one of those short, wild storms which occasionally sweep with desolating violence over the Atlantic Ocean, and too frequently strew with wreck the western shores of Europe.
In the Bay of Biscay, as usual, the power of the gale was felt more severely than elsewhere.
“There’s some sort o’ mystery about the matter,” said Jack Molloy to William Armstrong, as they cowered together under the shelter of the bridge. “Why the Atlantic should tumble into this ’ere bay with greater wiolence than elsewhere is beyond my comprehension. But any man wi’ half an eye can see that it do do it! Jist look at that!”
There was something indeed to look at, for, even while he spoke, a mighty wave tumbled on board of the vessel, rushed over the fore deck like Niagara rapids in miniature, and slushed wildly about for a considerable time before it found its way through the scuppers into the grey wilderness of heaving billows from which it sprang.
The great ship quivered, and seemed for a moment to stagger under the blow, while the wind shrieked through the rigging as if laughing at the success of its efforts, but the whitey-grey hull rose heavily, yet steadily, out of the churning foam, rode triumphant over the broad-backed billow that had struck her, and dived ponderously into the valley of waters beyond.
“Don’t you think,” said the young soldier, whose general knowledge was a little more extensive than that of the seaman, “that the Gulf Stream may have something to do with it?”
Molloy looked at the deck with philosophically solemn countenance. Deriving no apparent inspiration from that quarter, he gazed on the tumultuous chaos of salt-water with a perplexed expression. Finally and gravely he shook his weather-beaten head—
“Can’t see that nohow,” he said. “In course I knows that the Gulf Stream comes out the Gulf o’ Mexico, cuts across the Atlantic in a nor’-easterly direction, goes slap agin the west of England, Ireland, and Scotland, and then scurries away up the coast o’ Norway—though why it should do so is best known to itself; p’r’aps it’s arter the fashion of an angry woman, accordin’ to its own sweet will; but what has that got for to do wi’ the Bay of Biscay O? That’s wot I wants to know.”
“More to do with it than you think, Jack,” answered the soldier. “In the first place, you’re not quite, though partly, correct about the Gulf Stream—”
“Well, I ain’t zactly a scienkrific stoodent, you know. Don’t purfess to be.”
“Just so, Jack. Neither am I, but I have inquired into this matter in a general way, an’ here’s my notions about it.”
“Draw it fine, Willum; don’t be flowery,” said the sailor, renewing his quid. “Moreover, if you’ll take the advice of an old salt you’ll keep a tighter grip o’ that belayin’-pin you’ve got hold of, unless you wants to be washed overboard. Now then, fire away! I’m all attention, as the cat said at the mouth o’ the mouse-hole.”
“Well, then,” began Armstrong, with the slightly conscious air of superior knowledge, “the Gulf Stream does not rise in the Gulf of Mexico—”
“Did I say that it did, Willum?”
“Well, you said that it came out of the Gulf of Mexico—and, no doubt, so far you are right, but what I mean is that it does not originate there.”
“W’y don’t you say what you mean, then, Willum, instead o’ pitchin’ into a poor chap as makes no pretence to be a purfessor? Heave ahead!”
“Well, Jack,” continued the soldier, with more care as to his statements, “I believe, on the best authority, that the Gulf Stream is only part of a great ocean current which originates at the equator, and a small bit of which flows north into the Atlantic, where it drives into the Gulf of Mexico. Finding no outlet there it rushes violently round the gulf—”
“Gits angry, no doubt, an’ that’s what makes it hot?” suggested the sailor.
“Perhaps! Anyhow, it then flows, as you say, in a nor’-easterly direction to the coasts of Great Britain and Ireland. But it does more than that. It spreads as it goes, and also rushes straight at the coasts of France and Spain. Here, however, it meets a strong counter current running south
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