Charlie to the Rescue by R. M. Ballantyne (unputdownable books .txt) 📕

he at once took a ticket for Sealford.

Just as the train was on the point of starting, two elderly gentlemen came on the platform, in that eager haste and confusion of mind characteristic of late passengers.

“This way, Captain,” cried one, hailing the other, and pointing energetically with his brown silk umbrella to the Sealford carriages.

“No, no. It’s at the next platform,” returned the Captain frantically.

“I say it is here,” shouted the first speaker sternly. “Come, sir, obey orders!”

They both made for an open carriage-door. It chanced to be a third class. A strong hand was held out to assist them in.

“Thank you,” said the eldest elderly gentleman—he with the brown silk umbrella—turning to Red Shirt as he sat down and panted slightly.

“I feared that we’d be late, sir,” remarked the other elderly gentleman on recovering breath.

“We are not late, Captain, but we should have been late for certain, if your obstinacy had held another half minute.”

“Well, Mr Crossley, I admit that I made a mistake about the place, but you must allow that I made no mistake about the hour. I was sure that my chronometer was right. If there’s one thing on earth that I can trust to as reg’lar as the sun, it is this chronometer (pulling it out as he spoke), and it never fails. As I always said to my missus, ‘Maggie,’ I used to say, ‘when you find this chronometer fail—’ ‘Oh! bother you an’ your chronometer,’ she would reply, takin’ the wind out o’ my sails—for my missus has a free-an’-easy way o’ doin’ that—”

“You’ve just come off a voyage, young sir, if I mistake not,” said Crossley, turning to Red Shirt, for he had quite as free-and-easy a way of taking the wind out of Captain Stride’s sails as the “missus.”

“Yes; I have just returned,” answered Red Shirt, in a low soft voice, which scarcely seemed appropriate to his colossal frame. His red garment, by the way, was at the time all concealed by the pilot-coat, excepting the collar.

“Going home for a spell, I suppose?” said Crossley.

“Yes.”

“May I ask where you last hailed from?” said Captain Stride, with some curiosity, for there was something in the appearance of this nautical stranger which interested him.

“From the southern seas. I have been away a long while in a South Sea whaler.”

“Ah, indeed?—a rough service that.”

“Rather rough; but I didn’t enter it intentionally. I was picked up at sea, with some of my mates, in an open boat, by the whaler. She was on the outward voyage, and couldn’t land us anywhere, so we were obliged to make up our minds to join as hands.”

“Strange!” murmured Captain Stride. “Then you were wrecked somewhere—or your ship foundered, mayhap—eh?”

“Yes, we were wrecked—on a coral reef.”

“Well now, young man, that is a strange coincidence. I was wrecked myself on a coral reef in the very same seas, nigh three years ago. Isn’t that odd?”

“Dear me, this is very interesting,” put in Mr Crossley; “and, as Captain Stride says, a somewhat strange coincidence.”

“Is it so very strange, after all,” returned Red Shirt, “seeing that the Pacific is full of sunken coral reefs, and vessels are wrecked there more or less every year?”

“Well, there’s some truth in that,” observed the Captain. “Did you say it was a sunk reef your ship struck on?”

“Yes; quite sunk. No part visible. It was calm weather at the time, and a clear night.”

“Another coincidence!” exclaimed Stride, becoming still more interested. “Calm and clear, too, when I was wrecked!”

“Curious,” remarked Red Shirt in a cool indifferent tone, that began to exasperate the Captain.

“Yet, after all, there are a good many calm and clear nights in the Pacific, as well as coral reefs.”

“Why, young man,” cried Stride in a tone that made old Crossley smile, “you seem to think nothing at all of coincidences. It’s very seldom—almost never—that one hears of so many coincidences happening on this side o’ the line all at once—don’t you see.”

“I see,” returned Red Shirt; “and the same, exactly, may be said of the other side o’ the line. I very seldom—almost never—heard of so many out there; which itself may be called a coincidence, d’ee see? a sort of negative similarity.”

“Young man, I would suspect you were jesting with me,” returned the Captain, “but for the fact that you told me of your experiences first, before you could know that mine would coincide with them so exactly.”

“Your conclusions are very just, sir,” rejoined Red Shirt, with a grave and respectful air; “but of course coincidences never go on in an unbroken chain. They must cease sooner or later. We left our wreck in three boats. No doubt you—”

“There again!” cried the Captain in blazing astonishment, as he removed his hat and wiped his heated brow, while Mr Crossley’s eyes opened to their widest extent. “We left our wreck in three boats! My ship’s name was—”

“The Walrus,” said Red Shirt quietly, “and her Captain’s name was Stride!”

Old Crossley had reached the stage that is known as petrified with astonishment. The Captain, being unable to open his eyes wider, dropped his lower jaw instead.

“Surely,” continued Red Shirt, removing his wide-awake, and looking steadily at his companions, “I must have changed very much indeed when two of my—”

“Brooke!” exclaimed Crossley, grasping one of the sailor’s hands.

“Charlie!” gasped the Captain, seizing the other hand.

What they all said after reaching this point it is neither easy nor necessary to record. Perhaps it may be as well to leave it to the reader’s vivid imagination. Suffice it to say, that our hero irritated the Captain no longer by his callous indifference to coincidences. In the midst of the confusion of hurried question and short reply, he pulled them up with the sudden query anxiously put—

“But now, what of my mother?”

“Well—excellently well in health, my boy,” said Crossley, “but woefully low in spirits about yourself—Charlie. Yet nothing will induce her to entertain the idea that you have been drowned. Of course we have been rather glad of this—though most of our friends, Charlie, have given you up for lost long ago. May Leather, too, has been much the same way of thinking, so she has naturally been a great comfort to your mother.”

“God bless her for that. She’s a good little girl,” said Charlie.

“Little girl,” repeated both elderly gentlemen in a breath, and bursting into a laugh. “You forget, lad,” said the Captain, “that three years or so makes a considerable change in girls of her age. She’s a tall, handsome young woman now; ay, and a good-looking one too. Almost as good-lookin’ as what my missus was about her age—an’ not unlike my little Mag in the face—the one you rescued, you remember—who is also a strappin’ lass now.”

“I’m very glad to hear they are well, Captain,” said Charlie; “and, Shank, what of—”

He stopped, for the grave looks of his friends told him that something was wrong.

“Gone to the dogs,” said the Captain.

“Nay, not quite gone—but going—fast.”

“And the father?”

“Much as he was, Charlie, only somewhat more deeply sunk. The fact is,” continued Crossley, “it is this very matter that takes us down to Sealford to-day. We have just had fresh news of Shank—who is in America—and I want to consult with Mrs Leather about him. You see I have agents out there who may be able to help us to save him.”

“From drink, I suppose,” interposed our hero.

“From himself, Charlie, and that includes drink and a great deal more. I dare say you are aware—at least, if you are not, I now tell you—that I have long taken great interest in Mrs Leather and her family, and would go a long way, and give a great deal, to save Shank. You know—no, of course you don’t, I forgot—that he threw up his situation in my office—Withers and Company. (Ay, you may smile, my lad, but we humbugged you and got the better of you that time. Didn’t we, Captain?) Well, Shank was induced by that fellow Ralph Ritson to go away to some gold-mine or other worked by his father in California, but when they reached America they got news of the failure of the Company and the death of old Ritson. Of course the poor fellows were at once thrown on their own resources, but, instead of facing life like men, they took to gambling. The usual results followed. They lost all they had and went off to Texas or some such wild place, and for a long time were no more heard of. At last, just the other day, a letter came from Ritson to Mrs Leather, telling her that her son is very ill—perhaps dying—in some out o’ the way place. Ritson was nursing him, but, being ill himself, unable to work, and without means, it would help them greatly if some money could be sent—even though only a small sum.”

Charlie Brooke listened to this narrative with compressed brows, and remained silent a few seconds. “My poor chum!” he exclaimed at length. Then a flash of fire seemed to gleam in his blue eyes as he added, “If I had that fellow Ritson by the—”

He stopped abruptly, and the fire in the eyes died out, for it was no part of our hero’s character to boast—much less to speak harshly of men behind their backs.

“Has money been sent?” he asked.

“Not yet. It is about that business that I’m going to call on poor Mrs Leather now. We must be careful, you see. I have no reason, it is true, to believe that Ritson is deceiving us, but when a youth of no principle writes to make a sudden demand for money, it behoves people to think twice before they send it.”

“Ay, to think three times—perhaps even four or five,” broke in the Captain, with stern emphasis. “I know Ralph Ritson well, the scoundrel, an’ if I had aught to do wi’ it I’d not send him a penny. As I said to my—”

“Does your mother know of your arrival?” asked Mr Crossley abruptly.

“No; I meant to take her by surprise.”

“Humph! Just like you young fellows. In some things you have no more brains than geese. Being made of cast-iron and shoe-leather you assume that everybody else is, or ought to be, made of the same raw material. Don’t you know that surprises of this sort are apt to kill delicate people?”

Charlie smiled by way of reply.

“No, sir,” continued the old gentleman firmly, “I won’t let you take her by surprise. While I go round to the Leathers my good friend Captain Stride will go in advance of you to Mrs Brooke’s and break the news to her. He is accustomed to deal with ladies.”

“Right you are, sir,” said the gratified Captain, removing his hat and wiping his brow. “As I said, no later than yesterday to—”

A terrific shriek from the steam-whistle, and a plunge into the darkness of a tunnel stopped—and thus lost to the world for ever—what the Captain said upon that occasion.