The String of Pearls; Or, The Barber of Fleet Street. A Domestic Romance.

short chain dependent from the cabin-roof. "There," said the captain. "The chandelier is alight now, and you will be able to see about you. Hilloa! Where are you now?" "Why, I rather think I fell off the shelf," said Todd. "I beg your pardon, the state berth, I mean." "Then you had better turn in again, for we shall have, I think, a squally sort of night rather. There are symptoms of a sou wester, and if so, you will know a little of what weather is in the Channel." "Where are we now?" said Todd, mournfully. "About fifteen miles off the North Foreland, so we are tolerably quiet just yet; but when we turn the head of the land, it's likely enough we may find out what the wind means to say to us." While the captain spoke, he tugged on a complete suit of waterproof apparel, that seemed as thick and inflexible as so much armour covered with tar, and then up he went upon deck again, leaving Todd to the society of his own reflections and the chandelier. The Lively William was going on just then with a flowing sheet, so that she was carrying a tolerably even keel, and Todd was able to get up and reach his berth; but at the moment that he laid hold of the side of it to clamber in, the ship was tacked, and away went Todd to the opposite side of the state-cabin with the rug in his grasp that did duty as a counterpane in the berth. "This will kill me," he groaned. "Oh, this will kill me. But yet--yet I am escaping, and that is something. There will be a storm, but all ships are not lost that encounter storms." Todd made up his mind to remain where he was, jammed up against the cabin partition, until the ship should right itself sufficiently for him to make another effort to reach his berth. After a few minutes he thought he would make the attempt. "Now," he said. "Now, surely, I can do it. I will try. How the wind howls, to be sure, and how the waves dash against the ship's sides, as though they would stave in her timbers; but all is well, no doubt. I will try again." Very cautiously now Todd crept to his berth, and this time the winds and the waves were kind enough only to move the ship so that he knocked his head right and left a little, and managed then to scramble on to the little inconvenient shelf, with its damp mattress that served for a bed. "Ah," said Todd, "and there are people who might, if they liked, stay on land all their lives, and yet they pretend to prefer the sea. There's no accounting for tastes." By dint of jerking it a little from under him, Todd propped the mattress against the outer edge of the berth; so that provided the vessel did lurch in that direction, it was not so likely to tumble him out, and there he lay listening to the winds and the waves. "A storm in the Channel!" he muttered. "From what that beast of a captain said, it appears we are to have one. Well, well, I have weathered many a storm on land, and now I must put up with one at sea." At this moment, there was a tremendous bustle upon deck, and some orders were issued that were quite unintelligible to Todd. There was, however, a great flapping of canvas, and a rattling of chains. The Lively William was weathering the South Foreland, and just going to do battle with half a gale of wind in the Channel. Up to this point, Todd had, with something approaching to resignation, put up with the disagreeables about him; and upon the principle of the song which states that-- "When a man travels, he mustn't look queer, If he meets a few rubs that he does not meet here," he regarded his position with philosophy; but now there came over him a dreadful sensation. A cold clammy dew burst out upon his face--all strength fled from his limbs, and with a deep groan, Todd began to feel the real horror of sea sickness. Nothing can be like sea sickness but death, and nothing can be like death but sea sickness. Todd had never suffered from that calamity before; and now that it came upon him, in all its aggravated horrors, he could not believe that it was a mere passing indisposition, but concluded that he must have been poisoned by the captain of the ship, and that his last hour was come. And now Todd would fain have made a noise, and called for help. He would have liked to fire one of his pistols in the face of that captain, provided he could but have got him to the side of his berth; but he had not strength left to utter a word above a whisper; and as for moving his hand to his pockets to get out his fire-arms, he could not so much as lift a finger. All Todd could do was to go on, and to get each moment worse and worse with that awful sensation of sickness, which resembles the sickness of the soul at parting from its mortal house, to which it had clung so long. The wind howled upon the deck and through the cordage of the vessel--the spray dashed over her bulwarks, and each moment the storm increased in fury. CHAPTER CLXVIII. TODD GETS A WORLD OF MARITIME EXPERIENCE. The idea that he was poisoned grew upon Todd each moment, and to such a man, it was truly terrific to think that he should come to so fearful an end. "Help! Help!" he groaned; but after all, it was only a groan and not a cry--not that that mattered; for if he had had the lungs of ten men all concentrated in his own person, and had so been able to cry out with a superhuman voice, it would have been most completely lost amid the roar of the wind, and the wild dashing of the waves. The storm was certainly increasing. "Oh, this sickness!" groaned Todd. "Oh, dear--oh, dear!" At the moment that he was so bad that, in his want of experience of what sea sickness really was, he thought every moment would be his last, he heard some one coming down into the cabin, and one of the crew rolled rather than walked into it. "Help!" said Todd; "oh, help!" "You go to the d--l!" said the man. "The captain is washed overboard, and we are all going to the bottom, so I am one who likes to take a little spirits with him to qualify the water that one may be obliged to swallow. That's it. Steady, craft, steady." Practised as this man no doubt was in the art of keeping his footing upon an undulating surface, the pitching of the ship was so tremendous, that even he was thrown to the cabin floor with considerable violence, and had no easy task to rise again. "No!" cried Todd, finding that positive fright lent him strength, "you do not mean that?" "Mean what, you old sinner?" "That we shall be lost?" The man nodded, and having opened a little cupboard, he brought out a little bladder of spirits, and placing it to his lips, he drank a large quantity, while he held by the cupboard door to keep himself from falling. "That will do," he said, as he dropped the bladder to the floor, and then, after several unsuccessful efforts to do so, he scrambled upon deck again. "I, too, will drink," said Todd; "oh, yes, I will drink. I feel that if anything will give me strength to bear the horrors of the night, it will be my old and well-tried friend, brandy." He cast his eyes upon the bladder of spirits that the sailor had thrown to the floor. The spirit was slowly weltering out of the bladder, and running in a stream across the cabin. As the odour of it saluted the nose of Todd, he exclaimed,-- "It is brandy! I must and will have some!" It was all very well for Todd to say that he must and would have some of the brandy, but the difficulty of getting at it was one by no means easy to surmount. He recollected what a job he had to get into his berth again upon the occasion that he had got out of it before, and he dreaded to place himself in a similar predicament; yet he found the vessel was more steady, although the wind had not at all abated. Yes, it certainly was more steady. "I will try," said Todd. "I must have some." With a determination, then, to get at the choice liquor, which was wasting what Todd considered its sweetness upon the cabin floor, he slid out of his little bed-place, and the ship giving a sudden roll in a trough of the sea, he fell sprawling to the floor. "Oh, I shall be killed!" he yelled. "This frightful voyage will be the death of me! It is too terrible! Oh, Heaven! It is much too terrible! Help!--mercy!" Todd lay upon his back on the cabin floor, with his arms and legs stretched out like a gigantic St. Andrew's cross. Something touched his hand; it was the bladder of brandy, that, as the ship rolled, had moved towards him. He clutched it with a feeling of despair, and brought it to his lips. With the exception of about half a pint, the brandy had made its way on to the cabin floor; but it was strong, pure spirit--such brandy, in fact, as smugglers might well reserve for their own private drinking; so that the half pint was a very tolerable dose to take at once, and Todd drained it to the last drop. "Better!" he said; "oh, yes, I am better, now." The fumes of the strong spirit mounted to his brain, and got the better, for the time, of that frightful feeling of sickness which had been so like death, that Todd had mistaken it for the last pangs that he was likely to feel in this world. "Oh, yes, I am better. How the wind howls now, and how the waves dash the ship hither and thither. The deck, yes, the deck will be the place for me. Oh, gracious! what was that?" A loud crash, and a scream from some drowning wretches who had gone overboard along with a mast, had broken upon his ears. Terror sat at his very heart, and unable any longer to endure the frightful suspense of being below, he tried, upon his hands and knees, to crawl upon the deck. By no other mode could Todd have had the slightest hope or expectation of reaching the deck of that fated vessel, but as he tried it, he did, after a time, succeed in dragging himself up from the cabin. The sea was washing over the deck, and for a few moments he could see no one. He watched for a lull in the wind, and then he cried-- "Help! help! Oh, help!" "Who's that?" shouted a voice. "I!" said Todd. "Go to blazes, then!" "Oh, how kind!" groaned Todd. "How very considerate at such a time as this, too." The wind that had lulled for a few moments, now came with a frightful gush, and Todd was glad to find the fragments of a quantity of cordage, belonging to some of the top parts of the mast that had gone overboard, to cling to till the gust had passed over the ship. Then there came some tons of salt water over him, and he was nearly bereft of the power of breathing. "Oh, this is dreadful!" he said. "This is truly dreadful!" "Hands off!" growled a voice. "Everybody for himself here. Hands off, I say." "What do you mean?" said Todd. "Do you speak to me?" The voice had sounded close to him; and now again, with an angry tone, it cried-- "Some one has got hold of my leg!" "Oh, I dare say I have," said Todd, "but I didn't know. There, I have left go. Who are you, sir, eh?" "Oh! don't bother!" "Well, but is there any danger?" "Danger! I rather think there is. I suppose you are the love of a passenger that the captain brought on board?" "Yes, I am the passenger," said Todd. Why he should be called a love of a passenger he did not exactly know; but he repeated his question concerning the condition of the ship; and at the next lull of wind, for it came now very strangely in gusts, he got a not very consolatory reply. "Why, as to danger," said the man, "that's rather past, I reckon; but, perhaps, you are a landsman, and have not yet thoroughly made up your mind." "To what?" "To be drowned, some day or night, as I have." "Oh, no--no! Don't say that. Drowning is a very dreadful death, indeed. I am sure it is."