Gil the Gunner | Page 8

it was a cold, wintry sort of facial sunshine.
"Ah, I see," he said, "you are Mr Vincent, I suppose?"
"Yes, I am, sir, and that is my luggage. What then?"
"Only that my name is Brace, and I suppose we are to be fellow-passengers."
"I--I--beg your pardon," I stammered, with my face turning scarlet.
"There is no need," he said coldly. "Perhaps it was my fault for fastening the door."
He turned away, stooped down to a trunk in which glistened a bunch of keys, turned the lock, and then altered his mind and unlocked the trunk, and took out his keys.
"No," he said rising, "there will be no need for that."
He turned coldly, and went out of the cabin, leaving me with the sensation that I had behaved rudely and insolently to an officer who was my superior, and under whose orders I supposed I was to be.
"Nice beginning," I said to myself, and I sat down on one of my own trunks, feeling anything but comfortable, as I came to the conclusion that I had made an enemy who would pay me handsomely during the voyage.
"This is a happy sort of place," I muttered, as I sat listening to the banging of cabin doors and shouting of people for stewards and others, and angry complaints about being kept waiting; and all the time there was a stamping, tramping, and rattling going on overhead that was maddening.
And there I sat, gazing dreamily at the little round pane of glass which lit the cabin, till I grew so hot and weary of the stuffy little cupboard of a place, that I got up and went on deck again, to find that the great vessel had been cast loose, and that hawsers and capstans were being used to work us out of the dock.
We were already some little distance from the dock wall, which was crowded with the friends of the soldiers and sailors on board, those of the passengers for the most part remaining to go down the river, while the men thronged the bulwarks, and climbed to every point of vantage, to respond, with shouts and cheers, to waving of hands and, bonnets and the shrill good-byes.
"Everybody seems to have some one to say good-bye to him but me," I thought again; and half pitying, half contemptuously, I leaned over the side watching the little crowd of excited women and old men who hurried along the dock quay so as to keep abreast of the vessel.
"A sad thing, too--saying good-bye," I thought. "Perhaps they'll never come back and meet again, and--"
My heart seemed to stand still, and I clutched the edge of the bulwark spasmodically, for all at once as I watched the women pressing along the edge of the stone quay, their faces turned toward us as they cried out to the men on board, I saw one young-looking thing wave her handkerchief and then press it to her eyes, and in imagination I heard her sobbing as she hurried on with the rest. But next instant I saw that she had caught her foot in one of the ropes strained from the great ship to the edge of the quay, and plunged forward headlong to strike the water twenty feet below, and disappear.
A wild shriek from the quay was mingled with the excited shouts of the men on board. Then orders were rapidly given, men ran here and there, and amidst a great deal of shouting, preparations were made for lowering down the nearest boat.
But all the time the huge East Indiaman, now steadily in motion, was gliding slowly toward the dock entrance, and the unfortunate woman had risen to the surface, and was beating the water slowly with her hand.
"She'll be drowned long before that boat's down," said a gruff voice behind me, plainly heard in the shouting and excitement. "Why don't they throw her a life-buoy?"
As whoever it was spoke a yellow ring fell from the vessel, splashed, and floated on the surface, but nowhere near the drowning woman. Two men ran along the quay to throw ropes. Other ropes were sent flying in rings from the Jumna's stern; but I could see that the woman was too helpless to reach them, even if she saw them, which was doubtful, and the watching and waiting grew horrible.
The woman was now many yards away from where I stood, and I had seen her wild eyes gazing up as if into mine as we glided by her, the look seeming in my excitement to appeal specially to me, and at last I could bear it no longer.
I drew myself up on to the bulwark, and looked round.
The boat stuck with something wrong about one of the davits; no other boat was visible; no one had leaped and swum to save the woman,