The Eagle Cliff, R. M. Ballantyne [best fiction books to read .txt] 📗

actually be a murderer, at the best a man-slaughterer, without knowing it, and would carry in his bosom a dreadful secret, and a terrible uncertainty, to the end of his life!

Of course he could go to that great focus of police energy—Scotland Yard—and give himself up; but on second thoughts he did not quite see his way to that. However, he would watch the daily papers closely. That evening, in a frame of mind very different from the mental condition in which he had set out on his sixty miles’ ride in the afternoon John Barret presented himself to his friend and old schoolfellow, Bob Mabberly.

“You’re a good fellow, Barret; I knew you would come; but you look warm. Have you been running?” asked Mabberly, opening the door of his lodging to his friend. “Come in: I have news for you. Giles Jackman has agreed to go. Isn’t that a comfort? for, besides his rare and valuable sporting qualities, he is more than half a doctor, which will be important, you know, if any of us should get ill or come to grief. Sit down and we’ll talk it over.”

Now, it was a telegram from Bob Mabberly which led John Barret to suddenly undertake a sixty miles’ ride that day, and which was thus the indirect cause of the little old lady being run down. The telegram ran as follows:—

“Come instanter. As you are. Clothes unimportant. Yacht engaged. Crew also. Sail, without fail, Thursday. Plenty more to say when we meet.”

“Now, you see, Bob, with your usual want of precision, or care, or some such quality—”

“Stop, Barret. Do be more precise in the use of language. How can the want of a thing be a quality?”

“You are right, Bob. Let me say, then, that with your usual unprecision and carelessness you sent me a telegram, which could not reach me till late on Wednesday night, after all trains were gone, telling me that you sail, without fail, on Thursday, but leaving me to guess whether you meant Thursday morning or evening.”

“How stupid! My dear fellow, I forgot that!”

“Just so. Well to make sure of losing no time, instead of coming here by trains, which, as you know, are very awkward and slow in our neighbourhood, besides necessitating long waits and several changes, I just packed my portmanteau, gun, rods, etcetera, and gave directions to have them forwarded here by the first morning train, then took a few winks of sleep, and at the first glimmer of daylight mounted my wheel and set off across country as straight as country roads would permit of—and—here I am.”

“True, Barret, and in good time for tea too. We don’t sail till morning, for the tide does not serve till six o’clock, so that will give us plenty of time to put the finishing touches to our plans, allow your things to arrive, and permit of our making—or, rather, renewing—our acquaintance with Giles Jackman. You remember him, don’t you?”

“Yes, faintly. He was a broad, sturdy, good-humoured, reckless, little boy when I last saw him at old Blatherby’s school.”

“Just so. Your portrait is correct. I saw him last month, after a good many years’ interval, and he is exactly what he was, but considerably exaggerated at every point. He is not, indeed, a little, but a middle sized man now; as good-humoured as ever; much more reckless; sturdier and broader a great deal, with an amount of hair about his lip, chin, and head generally that would suffice to fit out three or four average men. He has been in India—in the Woods and Forests Department, or something of that sort—and has killed tigers, elephants, and such-like by the hundred, they say; but I’ve met him only once or twice, and he don’t speak much about his own doings. He is home on sick-leave just now.”

“Sick-leave! Will he be fit to go with us?” asked Barret, doubtfully.

“Fit!” cried Mabberly. “Ay, much more fit than you are, strong and vigorous though you be, for the voyage home has not only cured him; it has added superabundant health. Voyages always do to sick Anglo-Indians, don’t you know? However ill a man may be in India, all he has to do is to obtain leave of absence and get on board of a ship homeward bound, and straightway health, rushing in upon him like a river, sends him home more than cured. So now our party is made up, yacht victualled, anchor tripped; and—‘all’s well that ends well.’”

“But all is not ended, Bob. Things have only begun, and, as regards myself, they have begun disastrously,” said Barret, who thereupon related the incident of the little old lady being run down.

“My dear fellow,” cried Mabberly, laughing, “excuse me, don’t imagine me indifferent to the sufferings of the poor old thing; but do you really suppose that one who was tough enough, after such a collision, to sit up at all, with or without the support of the railings, and give way to indignant abuse—”

“Not abuse, Bob, indignant looks and sentiments; she was too thorough a lady to think of abuse—”

“Well, well; call it what you please; but you may depend upon it that she is not much hurt, and you will hear nothing more about the matter.”

“That’s it! That’s the very thing that I dread,” returned Barret, anxiously. “To go through life with the possibility that I may be an uncondemned and unhung murderer is terrible to think of. Then I can’t get over the meanness of my running away so suddenly. If any one had said I was capable of such conduct I should have laughed at him. Yet have I lived to do it—contemptibly—in cold blood.”

“Contemptibly it may have been, but not in cold blood, for did you not say you were roused to a state of frenzied alarm at the sight of the bobby? and assuredly, although unhung as yet, you are not uncondemned, if self-condemnation counts for anything. Come, don’t take such a desponding view of the matter. We shall see the whole affair in the morning papers before sailing, with a report of the old lady’s name and condition—I mean condition of health—as well as your unmanly flight, without leaving your card; so you’ll be able to start with an easy— Ha! a cab! yes, it’s Jackman. I know his manservant,” said Mabberly, as he looked out at the window.

Another moment and a broad-chested man, of about five-and-twenty, with a bronzed face—as far as hair left it visible—a pair of merry blue eyes, and a hearty manner, was grasping his old schoolfellows by the hand, and endeavouring to trace the likeness in John Barret to the quiet little boy whom he used to help with his tasks many years before.

“Man, who would have thought you could have grown into such a great long-legged fellow?” he said stepping back to take a more perfect look at his friend, who returned the compliment by asking who could have imagined that he would have turned into a Zambezian gorilla.

“Where’ll I put it, sor?” demanded a voice of metallic bassness in the doorway.

“Down there—anywhere, Quin,” said Jackman turning quickly; “and be off as fast as you can to see after that rifle and cartridges.”

“Yes, sor,” returned the owner of the bass voice, putting down a small portmanteau, straightening himself, touching his forehead with a military salute, and stalking away solemnly.

“I say, Giles, it’s not often one comes across a zoological specimen like that. Where did you pick him up?” asked Mabberly.

“In the woods and forests of course,” said Jackman, “where I have picked up everything of late—from salary to jungle fevers. He’s an old soldier—also on sick-leave, though he does not look like it. He came originally from the west of Ireland, I believe; but there’s little of the Irishman left, save the brogue and the honesty. He’s a first-rate servant, if you know how to humour him, and, being a splendid cook, we shall find him useful.”

“I hope so,” said Mabberly, with a dubious look.

“Why, Bob, do you suppose I would have offered him as cook and steward if I had not felt sure of him?”

“Of course not; and I would not have accepted him if I had not felt sure of you, Giles, my boy; so come along and let’s have something to eat.”

“But you have not yet told me, Bob,” said Jackman, while the three friends were discussing their meal, “what part of the world you intend to visit. Does your father give you leave to go wherever you please, and stay as long as you choose?”

“No; he limits me to the Western Isles.”

“That’s an indefinite limitation. D’you mean the isles of the Western Pacific?”

“No; only those of the west of Scotland. And, to tell you the truth, I have no settled or definite plan. Having got leave to use the yacht all the summer on condition that I don’t leave our own shores, I have resolved to begin by running at once to the wildest and farthest away part of the kingdom, leaving circumstances to settle the rest.”

“A circumstantial account of the matter, no doubt, yet rather vague. Have you a good crew?”

“Yes; two men and a boy, one of the men being skipper, and the nearest approach to a human machine you ever saw. He is a Highlander, a thorough seaman, hard as mahogany and about as dark, stiff as a poker, self-contained, silent, except when spoken to, and absolutely obedient.”

“And we set sail to-morrow, early?” asked Barret.

“Yes; after seeing the morning papers,” said Mabberly with a laugh.

This, of course, turned the conversation on the accident, much to the distress of Barret, who feared that the jovial, off-hand reckless man from the “woods and forests” would laugh at and quiz him more severely than his friend Bob. To his surprise and great satisfaction, however, he found that his fears were groundless, for Jackman listened to the account of the incident quite gravely, betrayed not the slightest tendency to laugh, or even smile; asked a good many questions in an interested tone, spoke encouragingly as to the probable result, and altogether showed himself to be a man of strong sympathy as well as high spirits.

Next morning found our three adventurers dropping down the Thames with the first of the ebb tide, and a slight breeze from the south-west; Mabberly and Jackman in the very small cabin looking after stores, guns, rods, etcetera; Barret anxiously scanning the columns of a newspaper; Quin and the skipper making each other’s acquaintance with much of the suspicion observable in two bull-dogs who meet accidentally; the boy in the fore part of the vessel coiling ropes; and the remainder of the crew at the helm.

“Port! port! stiddy,” growled the skipper.

“Port it is; steady,” replied the steersman in a sing-song professional tone, as a huge steamer from the antipodes went slowly past, like a mighty leviathan of the deep.

“Is it to the north, south, east, or west we’re bound for, captain?” asked Quin, with a voice like that of a conciliatory bassoon.

“I don’t know where we’re bound for,” growled the skipper slowly. “Starboard a bit; stiddy!”

“Steady!” sang out the man at the tiller.

A few hours carried them into the German Ocean. Here Quin thought he would try again for a little information.

“Sure it’s nor’-east we’re steerin’, captain,” he remarked in a casual way.

“No, it’s not,” growled the skipper, very much through his nose; “she’s headin’ west.”

“It’s to somewhere that coorse will take us in the ind, no doubt, if we carry on?” suggested Quin, interrogatively.

“Ay; oot to sea,” replied the skipper.

Quin was obliged to give it up for the time being.

For some time they were nearly becalmed; then, as the land dropped astern and the shades of night deepened, the wind fell altogether, and, when the stars came out, a profound calm prevailed over the gently undulating sea. The exuberant spirits of our three friends were subdued by the sweet influences around, and, as the hour for rest drew near, the