Hard Cash Part 30

"Yes," said Fullalove, winking to Kenealy; "but we don't know what it means. Do you, sir?"

"Iss, sar. Dat ar expression he signify a darned old cuss dat says to dis child, 'My lord Vespasium, take benevolence on your insidious slave, and invest me in a bread-bag,' instead of fighting for de ladies like a freenindependum citizen. Now you two go fast asleep; dis child lie shut one eye and open de oder bery wide open on dat ar n.i.g.g.ar." And with this mysterious threat he stalked away.

His contempt for a black skin, his ebullitions of unexpected ire, his turgid pomposity, and love of long terms, may make the reader smile; but they could hardly amuse his friends just then; everything that touched upon Dodd was too serious now. The surgeon sat up with him nearly all night: in the daytime those two friends sat for hours in his cabin, watching sadly, and silently moistening his burning brow and his parched lips.

At length, one afternoon, there came a crisis, which took an unfavourable turn. Then the surgeon, speaking confidentially to these two staunch friends, inquired if they had asked themselves what should be done with the body? "Why I ask," said he, "is because we are in a very hot lat.i.tude; and if you wish to convey it to Barkington, the measures ought to be taken in time: in fact, within an hour or two after death."

The poor friends were shocked and sickened by this horrible piece of foresight. But Colonel Kenealy said, with tears, in his eyes, that his old friend should never be buried like a kitten.

"Then you had better ask Sharpe to give me an order for a barrel of spirits," said the surgeon.

"Yes, yes, for two if you like. Oh, don't die, Dodd, my poor old fellow.

How shall I ever face his wife--I remember her, the loveliest girl you ever saw--with such a tale as this? She will think it a cruel thing I should come out of it without a scratch, and a ten times better man to be dead: and so it is; it is cruel, it is unjust, it is monstrous; him to be lying there, and we m.u.f.fs to be sitting croaking over him and watching for his last breath like three cursed old ravens." And the stout colonel groaned aloud.

When the surgeon left them, they fell naturally upon another topic, the pledge they had given Dodd about the L. 14,000. They ascertained it was upon him, next his skin; but it seemed as unnecessary as it was repugnant to remove it from his living person. They agreed, however, that instantly on his decease they would take possession of it, note the particulars, seal it up, and carry it to Mrs. Dodd, with such comfort as they could hope to give her by relating the gallant act in which his precious life was lost.

At 9 P.M. the surgeon took his place by Dodd's bedside; and the pair, whom one thing after another had drawn so close together, retired to Kenealy's cabin.

Many a merry chat they had had there, and many a gaseonade, being rival hunters; but now they were together for physical companions.h.i.+p in sorrow rather than for conversation. They smoked their cigars in moody silence, and at midnight shook hands with a sigh and parted. That sigh meant to say that in the morning all would be over.

They turned in; but, ere either of them was asleep, suddenly the captain's cabin seemed to fill with roars and shrieks of wild beasts, that made the whole s.h.i.+p ring in the silent night The savage cries were answered on deck by shouts of dismay and many pattering feet making for the companion ladder; but the nearest persons to the cabin, and the first to reach it, were Kenealy and Fullalove, who burst in, the former with a drawn sword, the latter with a revolver, both in their nightgowns; and there saw a sight that took their breath away.

The surgeon was not there; and two black men, one with a knife, and one with his bare claws, were fighting and struggling and trampling all over the cabin at once, and the dying man sitting up in his cot, pale, and glaring at them.

CHAPTER XI

THE two supple dusky forms went whirling so fast, there was no grasping them to part them. But presently the negro seized the Hindoo by the throat; the Hindoo just p.r.i.c.ked him in the arm with his knife, and the next moment his own head was driven against the side of the cabin with a stunning crack, and there he was, pinned, and wriggling, and bluish with fright, whereas the other swart face close against his was dark-grey with rage, and its two fireb.a.l.l.s of eyes rolled fearfully, as none but African eyes can roll.

Fullalove pacified him by voice and touch; he withdrew his iron grasp with sullen and lingering reluctance, and glared like a disappointed mastiff: The cabin was now full, and Sharpe was for putting both the blacks in irons. No splitter of hairs was he. But Fullalove suggested there might be a moral distinction between things that looked equally dark to the eye.

"Well, then, speak quick, both of you," said Sharpe, "or I'll lay ye both by the heels. Ye black scoundrels, what business have you in the captain's cabin, kicking up the devil's delight?"

Thus threatened, Vespasian panted out his tale; he had discovered this n.i.g.g.e.r, as he persisted in calling the Hindoo, eternally prowling about the good captain's door, and asking stupid questions: he had watched him, and, on the surgeon coming out with the good news that the captain was better, in had crawled "this yar abominable egotisk." And he raised a ponderous fist to point the polysyllables: with this aid the sarcasm would doubtless have been crus.h.i.+ng; but Fullalove hung on the sable orator's arm, and told him drily to try and speak without gesticulating.

"The darned old cuss," said Vespasian, with a pathetic sigh at not being let hit him. He resumed and told how he had followed the Hindoo stealthily, and found him with a knife uplifted over the captain--a tremor ran through all present--robbing him. At this a loud murmur filled the room; a very ugly one, the sort of snarl with which dogs fly at dogs' throats with their teeth, and men fly at men's throats with a cord.

"Be quiet," said Sharpe imperiously. "I'll have no lynching in a vessel I command. Now then, you, sir, how do you know he was robbing the captain?"

"How do I know! Yah! yah! Cap'n, if you please you tell dis unskeptical gemman whether you don't miss a lilly book out of your bosom!"

During this extraordinary scene, Dodd had been looking from one speaker to another in great surprise and some confusion; but at the negro's direct appeal, his hand went to his breast and clutched it with a feeble but heartrending cry.

"Oh, him not gone far. Yah! yah!" and Vespasian stooped, and took up an oilskin packet off the floor, and laid it on the bed. "Dis child seen him in dat ar n.i.g.g.ar's hand, and heard him go whack on de floor."

Dodd hurried the packet into his bosom, then turned all grat.i.tude to his sable friend: "Now G.o.d bless you! G.o.d bless you! Give me your honest hand! You don't know what you have done for me and mine."

And, sick as he was, he wrung Vespasian's hand with convulsive strength, and would not part with it. Vespasian patted him soothingly all over, and whimpered out: "Nebber you mind, cap'n! You bery good man: this child bery fond of you a long time ago. You bery good man, outrageous good man! dam good man! I propose your health: invalesee directly!"

While Dodd was speaking, the others were silent out of respect; but now Sharpe broke in, and, with the national desire to hear both sides, called on Ramgolam for his version. The Hindoo was now standing with his arms crossed on his breast, looking all the martyr, meek and dignified.

He inquired of Sharpe, in very broken English, whether he spoke Hindostanee.

"Not I: nor don't act it neither," said Sharpe.

At this confession Ramgolam looked down on him with pity and mild contempt.

Mr. Tickell was put forward as interpreter.

_Ramgolam (in Hindostanee)._ He whom Destiny, too strong for mortals, now oppresses with iron hand and feeds with the bread of affliction----

_Mr. Tickell (translating)._ He who by bad luck has got into trouble----

_Ramgolam._ Has long observed the virtues that embellish the commander of this s.h.i.+p resembling a mountain, and desired to imitate them----

_Tickell._ Saw what a good man the captain is, and wanted to be like him----

_Vespasian._ The darned old cuss.

_Ramgolam._ Seeing him often convey his hand to his bosom, I ascribed his unparalleled excellence to the possession of some sovereign talisman. (Tickell managed to translate this sentence all but the word talisman, which he rendered--with all a translator's caution--"article.") Finding him about to depart to the regions of the blessed, where such auxiliaries are not needed, and being eager to emulate his perfections here below, I came softly to the place where he lay----

_Tickell._ When I saw him going to slip his cable, I wanted to be as good a fellow as he is, so I crept alongside----

_Ramgolam._ And gently, and without force, made myself proprietor of the amulet and inheritor of a good man's qualities----

_Tickell._ And quietly boned the article, and the captain's virtues. I don't know what the beggar means.

_Ramgolam._ Then a traitor with a dark skin, but darker soul----

_Tickell._ Then another black-hearted n.i.g.g.e.r----

_Ramgolam._ Came furiously and misappropriated the charm thus piously obtained----

_Tickell._ Ran in and stole it from me.

_Ramgolam._ And bereft me of the excellences I was inheriting: and--

Here Sharpe interrupted the dialogue by putting the misappropriator of other men's virtues in irons, and the surgeon insisted on the cabin being cleared. But Dodd would not part with the three friends yet; he begged them to watch him, and see n.o.body else came to take his children's fortune.

"I'll sink or swim with it; but oh! I doubt we shall have no luck while it is aboard me. I never had a pirate alongside before, in all these years. What is this?--here's something in it now--something hard--something heavy: and--why, it's a bullet!"

On this announcement, an eager inspection took place: and, sure enough, a bullet had pa.s.sed through Dodd's coat and waistcoat, &c., and through the oilskin and the leather pocketbook, and just dented the "Hard Cash;"

no more.

There was a shower of comments and congratulations.

The effect of this discovery on the sick man's spirits was remarkable.

"I was a villain to belie it," said he. "It is my wife's and my children's, and it has saved my life for them."