The Wreck of the Golden Mary | Page 6

in a good ship of the best build, well owned, well arranged,
well officered, well manned, well found in all respects, we parted with
our pilot at a quarter past four o'clock in the afternoon of the seventh of
March, one thousand eight hundred and fifty-one, and stood with a fair
wind out to sea.
It may be easily believed that up to that time I had had no leisure to be
intimate with my passengers. The most of them were then in their
berths sea-sick; however, in going among them, telling them what was
good for them, persuading them not to be there, but to come up on deck
and feel the breeze, and in rousing them with a joke, or a comfortable
word, I made acquaintance with them, perhaps, in a more friendly and
confidential way from the first, than I might have done at the cabin
table.
Of my passengers, I need only particularise, just at present, a
bright-eyed blooming young wife who was going out to join her
husband in California, taking with her their only child, a little girl of
three years old, whom he had never seen; a sedate young woman in
black, some five years older (about thirty as I should say), who was
going out to join a brother; and an old gentleman, a good deal like a
hawk if his eyes had been better and not so red, who was always talking,
morning, noon, and night, about the gold discovery. But, whether he
was making the voyage, thinking his old arms could dig for gold, or
whether his speculation was to buy it, or to barter for it, or to cheat for
it, or to snatch it anyhow from other people, was his secret. He kept his
secret.
These three and the child were the soonest well. The child was a most

engaging child, to be sure, and very fond of me: though I am bound to
admit that John Steadiman and I were borne on her pretty little books in
reverse order, and that he was captain there, and I was mate. It was
beautiful to watch her with John, and it was beautiful to watch John
with her. Few would have thought it possible, to see John playing at
bo-peep round the mast, that he was the man who had caught up an iron
bar and struck a Malay and a Maltese dead, as they were gliding with
their knives down the cabin stair aboard the barque Old England, when
the captain lay ill in his cot, off Saugar Point. But he was; and give him
his back against a bulwark, he would have done the same by half a
dozen of them. The name of the young mother was Mrs. Atherfield, the
name of the young lady in black was Miss Coleshaw, and the name of
the old gentleman was Mr. Rarx.
As the child had a quantity of shining fair hair, clustering in curls all
about her face, and as her name was Lucy, Steadiman gave her the
name of the Golden Lucy. So, we had the Golden Lucy and the Golden
Mary; and John kept up the idea to that extent as he and the child went
playing about the decks, that I believe she used to think the ship was
alive somehow--a sister or companion, going to the same place as
herself. She liked to be by the wheel, and in fine weather, I have often
stood by the man whose trick it was at the wheel, only to hear her,
sitting near my feet, talking to the ship. Never had a child such a doll
before, I suppose; but she made a doll of the Golden Mary, and used to
dress her up by tying ribbons and little bits of finery to the
belaying-pins; and nobody ever moved them, unless it was to save them
from being blown away.
Of course I took charge of the two young women, and I called them
"my dear," and they never minded, knowing that whatever I said was
said in a fatherly and protecting spirit. I gave them their places on each
side of me at dinner, Mrs. Atherfield on my right and Miss Coleshaw
on my left; and I directed the unmarried lady to serve out the breakfast,
and the married lady to serve out the tea. Likewise I said to my black
steward in their presence, "Tom Snow, these two ladies are equally the
mistresses of this house, and do you obey their orders equally;" at
which Tom laughed, and they all laughed.

Old Mr. Rarx was not a pleasant man to look at, nor yet to talk to, or to
be with, for no one could help seeing that he was a sordid and selfish
character,