The Golden Hope. A romance of the deep

Front matter

I ■ THE GOLDEN HOPE "She was standing as though transfixed, with an expression on her of wildest astonishment. Her eyes were opened to the fullest extent. She sought to speak, but her lips turned white with the effort, and her throat crimsoned as wit.i strangulation." — P. 38S. "The Golden nope.' THE GOLDEN HOPE A ROMANCE OF JHE DEEP. BY W. CLARK RUSSELL, AUTHOR OF "a sea queen," "the wreck of the grosyenor," "a sailor's sweetheart, etc., etc. " I had a dream which was not all a dreai NEW EDITION IN ONE VOLUME. LONDON : GRIFFITH, FARRAN & CO. NEWBERY HOUSE, 39, CHARING CROSS ROAD printed by tillotson and son, mealhouse lane bolton i AUTHOR'S NOTE. In a novel the Author wrote, and that was published in 1875, entitled "John Holdsworth : Chief Mate," he attempted the portrayal of a condition of mind in a single respect resembling that which he deals with in this Story.

But the means by which the faculty of memory is re-vitalised differ as widely as the character of the tales. This will be evident to those who have read "John Holdsworth," and who may be able to recall how he was a sailor who was deprived of his memory by suffering from long exposure in an open boat, and how the power of recollection was restored to him when he made his way from Australia to England, and in the little inland village of Southbourne beheld the house in which he had courted the girl he had left behind him as his wife. CONTENTS. CHAsTEn. PAGE. I. — THE VERULAM 9 II.— THE DOWNS 12 III.— THE LOVERS 18 IV. — THE VERULAM SAILS 23 V. — THE DREAM 26 VI.— THE SKETCH 32 VII.— BAD NEWS 38 VIII. — VERIFICATION 43 IX— A

LETTER 49

Chapter. 1

lO XXII. SMARTLY MANAGED ■ *"" XXIII.— DOUBTS XXIV.— THE COURSE IS CHANGED 1(" XXV.— A TERRIBLE NIGHT 1''6 XXVI.— THE NIGHT BEFORE 188 XXVII.— JUNE THE SECOND 19C XXVIII.— THE TRUTH 20.5 XXIX. — THEY LEAVE THE ISLAND 213 XXX.— IN THE CABIN 218 XXXI.— ARCHER'S STORY 226 XXXII. — THE TANGLED HAIR 234 XXXIII.- THE DREAMER 246 XXXIV. — A STEAMER SIGHTED 251 XXXV.— THE SCHOONER IS SPOKEN .... • 259 XXXVI.— A NEW PASSENGER 267 XXXVII.— THE BABY IS FED 275 XXXVIII. — THE BLINDNESS OF THE MIND 281 <CXXIX.— AN INCIDENT . . 288 XL. — THE BURNING SHIP 303 XLI. — STONE ADVISES 311 XLII.— OVERBOARD 318 XLIII.— THE BURIAL OF THE BABY . ... 323 XLIV.— THE NEW DAWN 336 XLV.— HOME . THE GOLDEN HOPE: A ROMANCE OF THE DEEP.

CHAPTER I. THE VERULAM.

One bright, hot, summer afternoon there might have been seen from the summit of the North Foreland, where the herbage goes down in undulations of vivid green to the sharp, white, precipitous chalk, as fair and fine a show as ever our English Channel — fruitful as it is and has been for centuries in grand marine spectacle — submitted to a lover of sea-pieces. ThS sight was a large, full-rigged ship, an East Indiaman, of the burden of about fourteen hundred tons, which in those days constituted a very big vessel. She was not a Company's craft, though she might well have been built to sail in the noble and stately procession of ships which were regularly making the voyages to the East and back, by way of the Cape of Good Hope, under the flag of the Honourable Body in LeadenhaU Street. A light air was blowing from the north west, scarce wrinkling the pale blue or green, one hardly knew which, that came gleaming out from a vague horizon, dim with the heat, and melting into a faintness of sky that arched up into pure liquid sapphire to where it whitened into dazzle around the sun.

The ship was under all sail, and as she came B THE GULDEN HOPE. 2 r-'ftty round the Foreland, gliding upon the smooth water as though it was a surface of satin, yet so quietly as not to raise the tiniest sparkle of foam at her stem, she braced her yards up to the westering wind and boarded her main tack, and then you saw shadows in the hollow of her cloths, and the glossy edges of her sails shining wan as white silk to the sun, and the staysails mounting like pencilled drawings in the shade of the square canvas, and the jibs lifting out seawards from the long spars beyond the bowsprit, as if they were the wings of some mighty sea-bird yearning for the ocean solitude that lay a thousand miles down behind the silver of the sea-line under the glorious luminary. The beautiful ship floated, with the spacious dignity con ferred by her exceedingly square yards, lifting her royals to the blue as if she would enrich its loveliness with their cloud-like summer daintiness of tint and texture, without the least per ceptible inclination of her lofty, frigate-like spars to heel her hull ; though in the shadow of her on this side, the glimmer of her brassy sheathing might be seen trembling through the translucency under the wide channels and under the width of glossy blackness that separated her broad, wide bands, broken by ports, from the water's edge.

What could equal such a spectacle, standing with cameo-like clearness upon the sea and sky ; every sail sleeping to the hum of the drowsy wind ; the golden line of the Goodwins over her portbow ; glitterings, keen as mirrors could fling, breaking from all parts of her in many colours, as though her sides and decks were garnished with jewels ; her tall single topsails giving her the bland, old-fashioned grace one loves to see perpetuated in tha ship-of-war ; with here and there the flutter of women's apparel, the twinkle of a parasol, the glitter of a uniform' upon her high poop lying bare to the heat under the cross-jack yard, sav. where a narrow line of shadow was flung upon the white planks by the lee clew of the mainsail sheeted aft, and a crowd of lively hearties forward looking at the coast over the massive cathead, at which the ponderous anchor hung stoppered ready for letting go?

The ship was the Verulam, bound to Bombay, loaded with a valuable cargo. She had left Gravesend very early that morn ing, and had brought a brave wind along with her till she was abreast of Margate, when it grew weak with a gliding of it westwards, and to judge from the haze in the sky where it touched the horizon, likely enough it would fall dead west, if THE VERULAM. 3 it did not die ere it reached that quarter ; which naturally the hairy-faced crowds forwards would not greatly relish the prospect of, since it certainly meant detention in the Downs, with all the bother of bringing up and furling, and afterwards getting the anchor again for a fresh start , though one or two old salts, with junks standing high in their cheeks, ventured an opinion that if the wind died westering it was likely to easter in coming to life again ; otherwise, why should France out yonder be making a shadow as if the haze wasn't a thing to be took notice of?

I keep you on the North Foreland watching the ship as she glides by, as it is a point from which you see her best ; for, note, as she widens the water betwixt her and the coast that trends south-west to Broadstairs, how new beauties steal out in the trembling of her stern windows to the lustre lifting off her iridescent wake into them , how the giltwork upon the quarter gallery, visible to us, seems to writhe like yellow fire there ; and how, as the helmsman heads her fair for the Downs, bringing the dim blue South Foreland on the weather bow, the amazing squareness of her black yards is revealed, ascending one by one to where the royal-yards stand mastheaded just under the silver white trucks, and stretching their now darkened spaces of canvas in that wonderful symmetry of configuration which the eye loved to trace when it followed the towering sails of such a vessel as this from the tacks of the courses to the head earings of the topmost cloths.

Softly, always softly and quietly, she went along, with the heavier sails flattening in to the still failing breeze, and with once only a drag upon the lee-braces to meet the westering tendency of the off-shore draught. What a picture is this I am striving to depict, with only a drop of ink as a paint-box ! It is not merely the line of chalk coast crowned with verdure, nor the splendour of the sun's reflection upon the water that whitens out into blue from either side the effulgence, nor the three or four sails hovering upon the distant mistiness, nor the still, hot beauty of the whole framework, whose central charm is the stately and spacious-winged Indiaman, toned into unspeakable tenderness of tints by the azure softness of the English summer atmosphere ; it is the thoughts she inspires which, by entering into this shining picture, give the vitality of the soul itself to it.

For as you watch the ship, becoming smaller and smaller as she goes, the sense of the infinity of Nature and the tremendo] forces she can let slip, but which now lie sleeping and hidden, contrasts with the little ness of the fabric that, with a musical vibration in her rigging, and with Heaven's light gilding her with the placidity of its afternoon lustre, is bravely descending into the liquid amphi theatre of a thousand conflicts of storm and billow, where there are infuriated midnights, and tempests of lightning and thunder, and the perils of ice and rock, and the subtle antagonism of stagnant calms and head winds of poisonous gentleness ! Who does not think of such things when watching from the solid earth the slow receding of a ship into the swallowing leagues of distance, and when the crowds of living beings within her are present to the mind, with all that humanity, thus collected and confined within a narrow space, signifies in respect of the bitterness of leave-taking, the hope that lures to adventure, the memories which thicken in the brain till the coast of the island home dissolves in the tears which the sternest effort cannot always suppress ?

God speed her ! we cry- God protect her ! we pray. For, familiar as we Englishmen are with the deep, never can the sailing of a ship, full of souls, for ports lying on the other side of the world be so common a thing as not to move the contemplative mind into solemn fancies and into prayerful wishes.

Chapter II. The Downs

Shortly before six o'clock the Indiaman was abreast of Deal. She had swum lazily to this point, having been helped by the tide rather than by the impulse of her sails which now hung motionless from the yards ; for the Channel water lay like a sheet of glass — there was not a fold in its expanse that was shot with sapphire, melting into faint blue, with dim, steely tints, furrowed by the shadow of the tide where it shoaled — to sway the littlest punt upon it ; and the stately fabric upreared her mastheads steady as spires. The air had died out, and the sun, past the Foreland, poured his slanting light in rays of ruddy gold, as though he was able to concentrate his fire now that there was no movement in the atmosphere to disperse his beams. Several vessels were at anchor in the Downs, and there were people on Deal beach to sHE DOWNS. 5 witness the frigate-like smartness with which the Verulam brought up.

So perfect was the stillness of the air, and so polished the water for the transmission of sound, that the silvery, shrill piping of the boatwain's summons, re-echoed by his mates' whistlings, might have penetrated to Upper Deal ; and then, as if influenced by a single mechanical force, such as sets the complicated gear of a watch travelling, the super structure of the Verulam seemed to fall to pieces, as yards descended, sails melted, jibs and staysails sank, and the anchor fell like an electric bolt from the cathead, followed by the long, hoarse thunder of the cable it carried, and the sharp, rain-like hissing of the mass of foam expiring into blue water again where the anchor had vanished. It was not long, as you may suppose of such a ship as this, manned as all such craft should be, before she was at rest, lightlystraining at her cable, against whose surface-links the tide broke in a thread that met the huge stem beyond and rippled past in wrinkles too delicate to distort the mirrored picture of polished sides and white and black band painted in the water ; nay, even deeper yet sank the reflection, for the western light was upon the masts, and fragments of their fragile heights were measured in tremulous gold beneath the shadow of the hull, along with a thin streaming of white radiance under each cabin window and glazed scuttle.

The Verulam had not been at anchor above half-an-hour when a man, just arrived by coach from Dover, walked swiftly to the esplanade and gazed for some moments intently at the Indiaman, as if seeking to make sure of her. He was a young clergyman, this side of thirty, but of a stature and breadth of shoulders which made him look ten years older than he was. He held the sharp of his hand to his brow and peered under it at the ship, fixing an eager, intent stare upon her, and his fine eyes flashed with the doubt and surprise that anyone could have seen worked in him. A boatman, with his arms buried in his pockets as high as the elbows, stood near gazing sea wards, but keeping the visitor carefully in the corner of his gaze, ready to bother him with invitations the instant the chance offered. " I say, my man," said the clergyman, addressing him quickly, "can you tell me if that ship there is the Verulam ?"

" Ay, that's the Werulam," answered the boatman, with half a glance at her. "Wan' to go aboard, sir?" " Why is she anchored ?" "Whoy? Because there ain't no wind," responded the boatman, plainly surprised by the nautical ignorance implied by the question. " Yes, certainly. I might have known that," answered the clergyman, looking up and around, and then sending another yearning glance at the ship. " Has she not come very fast from Gravesend ? I understood that she was not likely to pass here much before midnight." " Well, she has come fast, I daresay. But she ain't past yet ye see, sir." " How long will she lie at anchor ?" " Whoy," said the boatman, " that'll depend. Whilst it's calm she'll stick where she is. If it comes on westerly, which ain't onlikely, she'll have to keep all on deferring of her woyage.

On t'other hand, if e'er a draught blows favourable she'll git under way ; for them there Indiamen appears to me to be always in a hurry till the woyage is regularly commenced, after which they keeps yer waitin'. Put yer aboard sir ?" Whilst the longshoreman expressed his views, the clergyman stood lost in anxious and troubled thought; then muttering lo himself, " I must see her, I must see her !" he told the boat man to row him to the vessel. If the water, lying a darkish green under the shadow of the land, needed a detail to complete its beauties of mirrored ships and blue distance and the yellowness — fast growing red — of the south-west sky over the Foreland, it might have been found at that moment in a long, slender, white gig, glittering with brass rowlocks and the uniforms of six young midshipmen leaning from the bright oars which rose and fell with fine precision as the boat sheared through the still surface, steered by a dark skinned, elderly, sailor-like man, who held the white yoke-lines with gloved hands.

" That'll be the Werulam's gig with the skipper in her," said the boatman. On which the clergyman instantly turned with great eagerness to look, but the swiftness of the reefers' rowing had brought the captain's back upon the parson. The boatman plied his oars very leisurely he had found a " job," and meant to make use of it. But he had sense enough to see that any observations he might feel disposed to bestow upon his fare would be wasted ; so the oars rose and fell in silence, were it not for the splash of them, or the hum of life ashore growing weaker, or the voices from the ships at anchor, the clank of a pawl coming plainly, mixed up with confused THE DOWNS. 7 sounds from the Indiaman, now fast showing larger and larger, with a canvassed gangway ladder over the side, heads swarming along her length, and here and there a face glimmering in the dark frame of a porthole.

" A beautiful wessel, certainly. Don't suppose as there's e'er a h'admirality as could offer anything more persuadin' to a man's eye," exclaimed the boatman, half-rounding his body to take his measure for going alongside. He dropped his oars and, catching the ladde^, brought the punt to the grating at the bottom of the steps. " Am I to wait here, sir ?" " Yes," answered the clergyman ; and with the look of a person who nerves himself for a desperate ordeal he ascended the ship's side. A middle-aged gentleman stood near the gangway, and when the clergyman stepped on deck he grasped his hand. " Fortescue !" he cried. " I saw you coming. You are devoted, indeed ! 'Tis a meeting we could not have dreamt of. How in the name of all that's wonderful came you to foresee that we should anchor in the Downs ?"

" I did not foresee it, doctor," replied Fortescue. " I hoped it, but I came to Deal only with the dream of seeing the last of the ship. I never dared expect more than a glimpse of her as she passed onwards, taking my happiness with her. Will this visit tax my darling, do you think ? I could not help coming, doctor," he exclaimed, with a tremble in his voice and a passionate, sweeping glance around him, "but if you think " " No, no," interrupted the doctor, " I know what yea would say. She may be the happier for this later farewell, perhaps. Anyhow, here you are and you are bound to see her now. She's in her cabin. Step this way, Fortescue." He led him to under the break of the poop. " The cuddy is full of stewards and passengers flitting about. Stop till I announce you — it must be done with judgment, you know — and then I'll take you to her."

The doctor, so called — real name Dr. Joseph Clayton — a short, energetic, kindly-faced, dusky-eyed man, entered the cuddy and left the Reverend Malcolm Fortescue standing alone in the recess formed by the overhanging of the poop-deck. There were a hundred matters to interest him had he had an eye for anything but what was passing in his c ,vn heart. The ship, being outward bound, was like a farmyard, with the smell of fodder, the lowing of a cow or two, the bleating of sheep, the mutterings of scores of hens in the coops, the grubbing grunting of pigs forward ; and she was like a street, were it not for a sort of aimlessness in the moving of the people, with the crowds of passengers and sailors, the latter chiefly in the bows and about the galley, the former everywhere, along with the children and a few coloured nurses with gold in their noses, and eyes looming witch-like out of cotton hoods.

Mr. Fortescue was kept waiting some minutes, during which time nobody took any notice of him, nor he of the strange and interesting scene before him. Once or twice he glanced through the window next him, and once or twice he stirred as though to a shudder, and this he would follow by a glance at the open gangway. Presently Dr. Clayton came out through the door. " I had to keep you waiting," he said. " She was very much surprised. 'Tis almost a pity, perhaps, after all; 'good-bye,' once said, should be meant, for when bonds are to be severed, my argument is, for the love of God be quick with the knife ! But come — she is waiting." " If she cannot bear it " faltered the clergyman. " No, no, she'll bear it. Besides, she knows you're here, and is waiting ;" and so speaking, the doctor entered the cuddy and led Mr. Fortescue to a cabin on the port side, midway the length of the interior.

He knocked softly, opened the door, and they entered. A girl stood with one hand upon her heart and the other clasping the back of an armchair, from which she had hastily risen, as might be guessed by the book that had fallen from her lap and lay open on the deck near her feet. Emotion had driven every drop of blood from her cheeks, and the pink in the atmosphere, flowing through the open port, only served to accentuate her desperate whiteness. For some moments there was silence ; then, with a sob, she came to For tescue's arms and their lips met, whilst the doctor picked up the book with a shaking hand and put his head into the deep port-hole to whisk a crystal off the side of his nose. " Agatha, my beloved, have I done wrong ?" whispered Fortescue. " I did not expect to see you again — it is very sudden," she answered, lifting her head as if she would try to look at him and putting her forehead against his breast again.

" I came to Deal wishing to see the vessel pass — wantin^ to see the last of her," he said. " I was told she would sail through the Downs — it was the barest chance, even this I THE DOWNS. 9 knew, and they told me she might anchor here. But I never dared hope that till I saw her from Deal beach, and how could I help coming ? How could I help coming, Agatha ? It shortens the long year by a few days. It is five days since we parted, and now that we are together again the twelvemonth will be less by that time." " Ay, that's quite true, and a sensible view, after all," said Dr. Clayton, wheeling round. " Though, Agatha, as I told Fortescue, when the knife has to be used, the fewer the flourishes the better. It was your whiteness that caused me to say it, dear." Fortescue held the girl and they whispered together, he with his lips upon her ear, and she with her face hidden, till at another remark let fall by Dr. Clayton, she drew back with a long sigh and wet eyes, and seated herself with the languor of an invalid.

One saw her to but little advantage at a time like this, when, white with agitation, and grieving for reasons as bitter as any that ever dismissed an adored sweetheart from her lover to seek health upon the mighty ocean. Yet her beauty shone through her sorrow, and the swiftest glance would have enabled anyone to recall with admiration the soft, purely grey eyes, the abundant, auburn hair full of a soft, gold light, and the delicacy, sweetness and refinement of her pretty, womanly features. The young clergyman knelt by her side and took her hand, and Dr. Clayton backed to the door and there stood watching them, as though puzzled, for here plainly was a love that had the artlessness of babyhood in its indifference to observation and to the sense of embarrassment it might put into others, and the doctor, not clearly perceiving whether he should leave his step-daughter and the clergyman alone, also very strongly felt that he did not want to serve by only standing and waiting whilst they repeated their bitter farewell.

But they had been alone often enough before ; when he was in India, and when they were strolling hand in hand along the beach or working together at some little decoration for the old church ; and why not, therefore, now — now, indeed, of all times, when, haply by this hour to-morrow, the ship might be far away down Channel on her voyage of many thousand miles ? Besides, there was something too touching and solemn for any third person to witness and hear in the grieving, troubled, impassioned gaze Fortescue fixed upon the girl, her glances at him, his lifting of her delicate, white hand to his lips, the low murmurs which passed between them, the frequent, tremulous sighs which would interrupt her, and the caresses which followed. " When do you return ?" asked the doctor, with his hand on the door-handle.

" Soon, but I need not hurry. I must sleep at Deal to-night. It will not be dark before eight. I will leave then," answered Fortescue, pleading, as though he feared Dr. Clayton meant to tell him that Agatha was delicate and that leave-takings were cruel, and that he must mind what he was about. Possibly this was in the doctor's mind, but anyhow he did not say so. He exclaimed, "Well, don't go without seeing me," and left the cabin. We will imitate him. What little was told at this final meeting disclosed so much that was sanctified by the pathos of embraces, by vows again and again repeated, by prayer offered up to God by them both, kneeling hand in hand, and weeping as they prayed, that the mere thought of it recreates their actual presence, and I softly shut the door upon them as one who has no business in the cabin.

He had said he would leave before the dark came along, and as thei"e is an hour of sunshine and of scarlet sunset remaining, let me occupy the interval by asking you to step with me on the poop of the Verulam, where, as the blue deepens in the east till a star shines in it, and whilst the exquisite repose of this summer Channel evening gathers an element of luminous tenderness from the vessels at anchor to south and east of us and from the yellow shining of the French coast that swims in the purple atmosphere over the starboard quarter, I may tell you as briefly as I can who Mr. Fortescue is and who Agatha, and how it happened that she was starting on a voyage that, according to the marine reckoning of those quiet, ambling days of trade, must certainly keep them apart for twelve months at least.

Chapter III. The Lovers

The Reverend Malcolm Fortescue was curate of St. James's, a. small, very old church in a village on the south coast, which I will call Wyloe. He was a tall, grave-faced, handsome young man, nearly thirty years old; and though the reference may seem prosaic and out*of place here, it is necessary that I should say THE LOVERS. 11 he had a fortune of between seven thousand and eight thousand pounds, the interest of which enabled him to serve, for a stipend scarce more than nominal, as curate to a friend of his father, the Reverend Alfred Clayton, Vicar of Wyloe. Mr. Fortescue was a very active, healthy man, and conse quently a useful parish-worker. He was an excellent reader and preacher. Besides which, everybody could see he laboured for the love of God only. He was extremely good-looking, which gave substance to ethereal spirituality by a very captivating sort of human sentiment.

His eyes were large, black and lustrous, very soft in their glance, but there were moments — when arguing, or when his mind was quickened by something that lifted it out of the trodden, dusty parish-round and put it upon the green freshness on either hand — in which you'd notice a sharp sparkling that pierced the pensiveness of his gaze like a beam of light shooting out of the indigo that overlaps the ocean on a midsummer night. It was as though his soul, lying bright but concealed in him, rose to take a peep at you, and no one, attentive to such indications, could have doubted that, under neath his religious and professional gentleness, was some strength of character. So much for the most expressive of his features. For the rest, his face was marked with a complexion of melancholy. His piety, perhaps, was not of a very cheerful sort.

Yoo know there are people who will go on brooding and asking themselves questions, and " h 'analysing of theirselves," as an old sailor once said to me, till dissection ends in nothing but bones. The spirit takes wing, and the understanding — if any be left — reckons everything lost. It need not be said that Mr. Fortescue did not go to any such length as this, but he certainly gave you the notion that he thought too much in one direction, and that there was even more than a touch of mysticism in his nature, and that he was thus generating qualities in himself which might come by-and-bye to making people wonder at him and to hint that he would be the better for a change of scene. Wyloe is within a mile of the sea, and when you approach the edge of the low cliff you look down on black rocks and sand and shingle and a line of surf winding out of sight on either hand about a mile each way.