Homeward Bound - James Fenimore Cooper (free e books to read .txt) 📗

and English, and French, to invite any one who might be secreted to come forth. No sound answered these friendly calls. Again Captain Truck went aloft to look into the interior, but he beheld nothing more than the broad and unpeopled desert.

A place where the camels had descended to the beach was at no great distance, and thither most of the party proceeded, mounting to the level of the plain beyond. In this little expedition, Paul Blunt led the advance, and as he rose over the brow of the bank, he cocked both barrels of his fowling-piece, uncertain what might be encountered. They found, however, a silent waste, almost without vegetation, and nearly as trackless as the ocean that lay behind them. At the distance of a hundred rods, an object was just discernible, lying on the plain half-buried in sand, and thither the young men expressed a wish to go, first calling to those in the ship to send a man aloft to give the alarm, in the event of any party of the Mussulmans being seen. Mr. Effingham, too, on being told their intention, had the precaution to cause Eve and Mademoiselle Viefville to get into the cutter, which he manned, and caused to pull out over the bar, where she lay waiting the issue.

A camel's path, of which the tracks were nearly obliterated by the sands, led to the object; and after toiling along it, the adventurers soon reached the desired spot. It proved to be the body of a man who had died by violence. His dress and person denoted that of a passenger rather than that of a seaman, and he had evidently been dead but a very few hours, probably not twelve. The cut of a sabre had cleft his skull. Agreeing not to acquaint the ladies with this horrible discovery, the body was hastily covered with the sand, the pockets of the dead man having been first examined; for, contrary to usage, his person had not been stripped. A letter was found, written by a wife to her husband, and nothing more. It was in German, and its expressions and contents, though simple, were endearing and natural. It spoke of the traveller's return; for she who wrote it little thought of the miserable fate that awaited her beloved in this remote desert.

As nothing else was visible, the party returned hastily to the beach, where they found that Captain Truck had ended his investigation, and was impatient to return. In the interest of the scene the Montauk had disappeared behind a headland, towards which she had been drifting when they left her. Her absence created a general sense of loneliness, and the whole party hastened into the jolly-boat, as if fearful of being left. When without the bar again, the cutter took in her proper crew, and the boats pulled away, leaving the Dane standing on the beach in his solitary desolation--a monument of his own disaster.

As they got further from the land the Montauk came in sight again, and Captain Truck announced the agreeable intelligence that the jury mainmast was up, and that the ship had after-sail set, diminutive and defective as it might be. Instead of heading to the southward, however, as heretofore, Mr. Leach was apparently endeavouring to get back again to the northward of the headland that had shut in the ship, or was trying to retrace his steps. Mr. Truck rightly judged that this was proof his mate disliked the appearance of the coast astern of him, and that he was anxious to get an offing. The captain in consequence urged his men to row, and in little more than an hour the whole party were on the deck of the Montauk again, and the boats were hanging at the davits.


Chapter XVII.


I boarded the king's ship; now on the beak,
Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin,
I flam'd amazement.

TEMPEST.


If Captain Truck distrusted the situation of his own ship when he saw that the mate had changed her course, he liked it still less after he was on board, and had an opportunity to form a more correct judgment. The current had set the vessel not only to the southward, but in-shore, and the send of the ground-swell was gradually, but inevitably, heaving her in towards the land. At this point the coast was more broken than at the spot where the Dane had been wrecked, some signs of trees appearing, and rocks running off in irregular reefs into the sea. More to the south, these rocks were seen without the ship, while directly astern they were not half a mile distant. Still the wind was favourable, though light and baffling, and Mr. Leach had got up every stitch of canvas that circumstances would at all allow; the lead, too, had been tried, and the bottom was found to be a hard sand mixed with rocks, and the depth of the water such as to admit of anchoring. It was a sign that Captain Truck did not absolutely despair after ascertaining all these facts, that he caused Mr. Saunders to be summoned; for as yet, none of those who had been in the boats had breakfasted.

"Step this way, Mr. Steward," said the captain; "and report the state of the coppers. You were rummaging, as usual, among the lockers of yonder unhappy Dane, and I desire to know what discoveries you have made! You will please to recollect, that on all public expeditions of this nature, there must be no peculation or private journal kept. Did you see any stock-fish?"

"Sir, I should deem this ship disgraced by the admission into her pantry of such an article, sir. We have tongues and sounds in plenty, Captain Truck, and no gentleman that has such diet, need ambition a stock-fish!"

"I am not quite of your way of thinking; but the earth is not made of stock-fish. Did you happen to fall in with any butter?"

"Some, sir, that is scarcely fit to slush a mast with, and I do think, one of the most atrocious cheeses, sir, it was ever my bad fortune to meet with. I do not wonder the Africans left the wreck."

"You followed their example, of course, Mr. Saunders, and left the cheese."

"I followed my own judgment, sir, for I would not stay in a ship with such a cheese, Captain Truck, sir, even to have the honour of serving under so great a commander as yourself. I think it no wonder that vessel was wrecked! Even the sharks would abandon her. The very thoughts of her impurities, sir, make me feel unsettled in the stomach."

The captain nodded his head in approbation of this sentiment, called for a coal, and then ordered breakfast. The meal was silent, thoughtful, and even sad; every one was thinking of the poor Danes and their sad fate, while they who had been on the plain had the additional subject of the murdered man for their contemplation.

"Is it possible to do nothing to redeem these poor people, father, from captivity?" Eve at length demanded.

"I have been thinking of this, my child; but I see no other method than to acquaint their government of their situation."

"Might we not contribute something from our own means to that effect? Money, I fancy, is the chief thing necessary."

The gentlemen looked at each other in approbation, though a reluctance to be the first to speak kept most of them silent.

"If a hundred pounds, Miss Effingham, will be useful," Sir George Templemore said, after the pause had continued an awkward minute, laying a banknote of that amount on the table, "and you will honour us by becoming the keeper of the redemption money, I have great pleasure in making the offer."

This was handsomely said, and as Captain Truck afterwards declared, handsomely done too, though it was a little abrupt, and caused Eve to hesitate and redden.

"I shall accept your gift, sir," she said; "and with your permission will transfer it to Mr. Effingham, who will better know what use to put it to, in order to effect our benevolent purpose. I think I can answer for as much more from himself."

"You may, with certainty, my dear--and twice as much, if necessary. John, this is a proper occasion for your interference."

"Put me down at what you please," said John Effingham, whose charities in a pecuniary sense were as unlimited, as in feeling they were apparently restrained. "One hundred or one thousand, to rescue that poor crew!"

"I believe, sir, we must all follow so good an example," Mr. Sharp observed; "and I sincerely hope that this scheme will not prove useless. I think it may be effected by means of some of the public agents at Mogadore."

Mr. Dodge raised many objections, for it really exceeded his means to give so largely, and his character was formed in a school too envious and jealous to confess an inferiority on a point even as worthless as that of money. Indeed, he had so long been accustomed to maintain that "one man was as good as another," in opposition to his senses, that, like most of those who belong to this impracticable school, he had tacitly admitted in his own mind, the general and vulgar ascendency of mere wealth; and, quite as a matter of course, he was averse to confessing his own inferiority on a point that he had made to be all in all, while loudest in declaiming against any inferiority whatever. He walked out of the cabin, therefore, with strong heart-burnings and jealousies, because others had presumed to give that which it was not really in his power to bestow.

On the other hand, both Mademoiselle Viefville and Mr. Monday manifested the superiority of the opinions in which they had been trained. The first quietly handed a Napoleon to Mr. Effingham, who took it with as much attention and politeness as he received any of the larger contributions; while the latter produced a five-pound note, with a hearty good-will that redeemed the sin of many a glass of punch in the eyes of his companions.

Eve did not dare to look towards Paul Blunt, while this collection was making; but she felt regret that he did not join in it. He was silent and thoughtful, and even seemed pained, and she wondered if it were possible that one, who certainly lived in a style to prove that his income was large, could be so thoughtless as to have deprived himself of the means of doing that which he so evidently desired to do. But most of the company was too well-bred to permit the matter to become the subject of conversation, and they soon rose from table in a body. The mind of Eve, however, was greatly relieved when her father told her that the young man had put a hundred sovereigns in gold into his hands as soon as possible, and that he had seconded this offering with another, of embarking for Mogadore in person, should they get into the Cape de Verds, or the Canaries, with a view of carrying out the charitable plan with the least delay.

"He is a noble-hearted young man," said the pleased father, as he communicated this fact to his daughter and cousin; "and I shall not object to the plan."

"If he offer to quit this ship one minute sooner than is necessary, he does, indeed, deserve a statue of gold," said John Effingham; "for it has all that can attract a young man like him, and all too that can awaken his jealousy."

"Cousin Jack!"