One of the Six Hundred: A Novel
suspicions, and our abhorrence of him.
"After we had toiled on for two hours in silence, he suddenly stopped us
all by an oath.
"'_Nombril de Belzebub!_' he exclaimed to Captain Benson, 'what is the
use of looking for food or game in these infernal wastes, into which
your stupidity has led us? Let us cast lots, and find out who shall be
shot for the food of the rest!'
"'Silence, wretch,' said Captain Benson.
"'To that it will come at last,' said Urbain, grinning.
"'Perhaps it has come to it already,' said Bob Jenner, unwisely.
"'Ah, _sacre_! You think I murdered that boy, do you? And you think so,
too?' he added to me.
"'I have not said so,' I replied, evasively.
"'You had better not, or by ----, if you thought me capable of
committing such an act, or if you said it----' and so on he rambled
incoherently, threatening and bullying; but all the while most surely
confirming our just suspicions.
"'Let us cut him adrift; leave him behind; if we can do so, to-night,'
whispered Jenner to me.
"Low though the whisper was, it caught the huge ears of Urbain, even
while muffled by the lappets of a sealskin cap.
"'Leave me behind, will you? Well, you may do so; but, diable! I shall
not be left without food.'
"About an hour after this we met with a terrible but significant
catastrophe. While we were all proceeding in Indian file behind the
captain, Urbain stumbled on a piece of slippery ice; he fell, and in
doing so, his musket exploded, lodging its contents right in the back of
the head of my poor messmate, Bob Jenner, who fell back, and expired
without a groan.
"We were appalled by the suddenness of this calamity; all, save Urbain,
who rubbed his knees, muttered an oath, and reloaded with all the
rapidity of alarm; while each of us read in his neighbour's face the
conviction that there was more of design than accident in what had taken
place, though it had all the appearance of a casualty.
"Dissembling still, and having but little time for grief, we covered
poor Bob's remains with snow, and resumed our melancholy march.
"We were but six now, and five of those were famished scarecrows.
"A mile farther on, we found the ruins of a deserted log hut, which we
hailed with extravagant joy, as our first approach to civilization, and
the abode of human beings. There we resolved to pass the night, which
was approaching, and there we kindled a fire, and with blocks of snow
filled up the doorway, while the smoke escaped by an aperture in the
roof.
"Oh, how genial was the warmth we felt; and though we had only a few
fragments of moist bark to chew, we would have felt almost happy, but
for the recent catastrophe, and for our dread of Urbain Gautier, who as
soon as twilight fell said he would go in search of a shot, and taking
his gun went away.
"We breathed more freely when he left us; but we shuddered with intense
loathing when we knew that he was returning to the place where our dead
companion--too surely murdered by his hand--lay uncoffined in the snow.
"We felt that we were no longer safe with him, and all were conscious
that he should die, as a judicial retribution.
"Lots were cast for the dangerous office of executioner, and the fate
fell on me.
"Instead of alarm or compunction, I felt as one who had a terrible duty
to perform. I became conscious that justice to the dead and to the
living, if not my own personal safety, demanded the fulfilment of the
terrible task which had become mine, and with the most perfect coolness
and deliberation I overhauled my gun, examined the charge, carefully
capped it anew, and sleeplessly awaited him I was to destroy--this
wretch--this ghoul or vampire, on his return from his horrid repast amid
the snow--a repast which his own treachery and cruelty had provided; and
as I waited thus the face of poor Willy Ormiston, and the cheery voice
of poor Bob Jenner, as I had often heard it, when he sang at the wheel,
or when sharing the night-watch, came powerfully and distinctly to
memory.
"I threw more dry branches on the fire, and bidding my shipmates sleep,
addressed myself to the task of watching, and half dozing, with my
weapon beside me.
"I felt sure that Urbain hated me; that he knew I suspected him, and
would too probably be his next victim, especially if my shot missed him,
as he might then legally slay me, and would do so by a single blow.
"Already I felt my flesh creep at the idea of its furnishing a collop
for him, perhaps to-morrow night, when he stole back from the next
halting place.
"I shall never forget the weary moments of that exciting night. I have
somewhere read that 'it is one of the strange instincts of half slumber
to be often more alive to the influence of subdued and stealthy sounds
than of louder noises. The slightest whisperings, the low murmurings of
a human voice, the creaking of a chair, the cautious drawing back of a
curtain, will jar upon and rouse the faculties that have been insensible
to the rushing flow of a cataract, or the dull booming of the sea.'
"I must have been asleep, however, when a sound startled me, and I could
hear footsteps treading softly over the crisp and frozen snow. Rousing
myself, I started to the aperture which passed for a doorway, and which,
as I have stated, we had partially blocked up by snow; and through it,
about fifty paces distant, I saw the tall dark form of Urbain towering
between me and the ghastly white waste beyond. He loomed like a giant
in the bright but waning moon, that was sinking behind the hills that
are as yet unnamed, while a blood-red streak to the westward showed
where the morning was about to break.
"My heart beat fast, every pulse was quickened, and every fibre tingled,
as I raised the musket to my shoulder, took a deliberate aim, and, when
he was within twenty paces of me, fired, and shot him dead!
"The bullet entered his mouth, and passed out of the base of the skull
behind, injuring the brain in its passage, and destroying him instantly.
"So Captain Benson told me, for I never looked on his face again, though
I have often seen it since in my dreams.
"About two hours after this summary act of justice we were found and
relieved by a travelling party of Indians, Micmacs, who come from the
continent of America at times, and domicile themselves chiefly along the
western shore of the island, to hunt the beaver by the banks of the
Serpentine Lake.
"They conveyed us through the fur country of the Buenoventura people to
the miserable little settlement of that name, where we remained till the
ice broke up, when we were taken to St. John's in a seal-fisher.
"There our perils and suffering ended. We had shipped on board
different crafts for different countries, and the next year saw me
appointed captain of this clipper-ship, the _Pride of the Ocean_."[*]
[*] A character not unlike Urbain Gautier figures in the account of the
first or second expedition of Sir John Franklin.
*CHAPTER XXVIII.*
Pass we the long, unvarying course, the track
Oft trod, that never leaves a trace behind;
Pass we the calm, the gale, the change, the tack,
And each well-known caprice of wave and wind,
Cooped in their winged sea-girt citadel;
The foul, the fair, the contrary, the kind,
As breezes rise and fall, and billows swell,
Till on some jocund morn--lo, land! and all is well.
BYRON.
Pleasantly we traversed the almost tideless waters of the Mediterranean,
the great inland sea of Europe.
We generally had a fair wind; but in our tacks southward and northward
more than once we sighted the shores of Europe on one side, and those of
Africa on the other.
The routine of transport life varied but little, so every passing sail
became an object of speculation and interest. Day by day, and
frequently night after night, we walked with the same person on the same
side of the quarter-deck, turning short round at the taffrail aft, and
at the break forward, to resume the same pace, without making a remark,
for all our mutual ideas had been interchanged over and over again, and
no tie remained, save that of being comrades, weary and worn alike,
though each had his own thoughts, the mental orbit in which his soul
revolved, and these were, perhaps, three thousand leagues astern.
Every probable and possible phase of the war we had dissected and
discussed, and the future excitement that was to come we contrasted
impatiently with the quiet, inglorious monotony of the present, while
the swift clipper cleft the classic waters of the Mediterranean.
The monotony on board was once varied by a trivial practical joke played
by M'Goldrick, the paymaster, on the colonel and some of the English
officers, who had been deriding Scottish cookery. He produced at dinner
a valuable preserve, which he had previously had carefully soldered up
in a tin case, by the armourer's aid, and which he had compounded with
the joint assistance of the ship's cook and my man, Pitblado.
It was duly boiled, and produced at table in its tin case as a scarce
and rare Parisian decoction--_Farina d'avoine au fromage_, or some such
name; and after being partaken of by Beverley, Studhome, and the rest,
was pronounced excellent, though it proved, after all, to be only a very
ill-made Scotch haggis.
In the Mediterranean we were frequently impressed by the extreme
blueness of the water. It seemed to have a purer and deeper tint than
we had ever seen it wear even in higher latitudes, especially when the
weather was fine, and light scattered clouds were floating through the
sky.
About a fortnight after passing "old Gib," the outline of Malta and its
sister isle, the abode of Calypso, rose from the morning sea on our lee
bow; and during the whole of a lovely day our eyes were strained in that
direction, watching that rocky shore of so many great and glorious
memories--the last stronghold of Christian chivalry--the link between
Britain and her Indian empire--our "halfway house" to the
Bosphorus--with all its cannon bristling as the mistress of the
Mediterranean and Levant.
As we drew nearer, our field-glasses enabled us to trace the rocky
outline of the greater isle--the hilly range of which is only about a
hundred feet higher than the dome of St. Paul's--and the steep, rugged
coast to the north-east, beyond which lie the _casals_, or villages of
the lank, yellow-visaged, black-bearded, and malicious-looking Maltese,
concerning whom I do not mean to afflict my reader with either a
description or a dissertation.
The evening gun flashed redly from the Castle of St. Elmo, and the
harbour lights of Valetta were sparkling brightly amid the golden
evening haze, as we ran into the harbour, round which a thousand or more
pieces of cannon were bristling on battery and platform, and on coming
to anchor found that we were only a pistol-shot astern of the _Ganges_,
which had on board Wilford's troop of ours, and which had come in two
days before us.
We were only to wait the refilling of our tank with fresh water, of
which, being a horse transport, we required an unusual quantity; and now
our poor nags were neighing in concert in the hold, for, as Captain
Binnacle termed it, "they smelt the land."
No officer or soldier was permitted to go on shore, unless on duty, for
already Malta was crowded with troops, so much so that the 93rd
Highlanders were actually bivouacking in a burying-ground. But these
orders did not prevent us from visiting our comrades in the _Ganges_; so
Binnacle sent off his gig, with the colonel, Studhome, Sir Harry
Scarlett, and me.
We found that all were well on board, and had suffered no casualties,
save the loss of four horses by disease. Unlike us, however, they had