Читать книгу Picked up at Sea - John C. Hutcheson - Страница 18

During this little interlude, Ernest Wilton had been closely engaged in watching the actions of the poor boy, “Sailor Bill.”

His face had attracted him from the first moment he caught sight of him; but when he had more leisure to observe him, after the palaver with Mr. Rawlings and the miners was over, and he noticed certain peculiarities about the object of his attention which had previously escaped his notice, his interest became greatly heightened.

Sailor Bill had altered very much in appearance since the day he had been picked up in the Bay of Biscay and taken on board the Susan Jane, a thin, delicate-looking boy with a pale face and a wasted frame. The keen healthy air and out-of-doors life out west had worked wonders with him, and he was now rosy and stalwart, his body having filled out and his cheeks grown much fatter, while he was even considerably taller than he had been some six months previously.

His bright golden-brown hair was, of course, the same, and so were the long dark lashes to the blue eyes that had so especially appealed to Captain Blowser’s fancy when he had spoken about the boy’s resemblance to a girl, for they yet bore the same peculiar far-away look as if they belonged to a person walking in his sleep, without intelligence or notice in them whatever.

As on board ship, Sailor Bill stuck to Seth Allport as his shadow, moving where he moved, stopping where he stopped, with the faithful attachment of a dog, albeit wanting in that expression of sagacity, which even the dullest specimen of the canine race exhibits on all occasions. Seth Allport seemed to be the mainspring of the boy’s action, and after a time it became almost painful to watch the two, although the sailor had now grown accustomed to being followed about in so eccentric a fashion—as had, indeed, the rest of the party, who were not so distinctly singled out by the poor boy’s regard; but it was all new and strange to Ernest Wilton as he watched and wondered.

“What is the matter with the boy?” asked he presently of Mr. Rawlings, who, from the fixed observation of his companion, had been expecting the question. “Poor fellow, he doesn’t seem all right in his mind—and a healthy, nice-looking boy, too!”

“Yes,” said Mr. Rawlings, tapping his forehead expressively, and speaking feelingly as he looked affectionately at Sailor Bill, whom all had learnt to like as they would have done a pet dog;—“something wrong there, although I hope in time he will get over it in the same way as he came by it, if God so wills it!”

“I suppose he’s got some story attached to him, eh?” said Ernest Wilton.

“No doubt,” answered Mr. Rawlings; “but nobody but himself knows it!”

“How strangely you pique my curiosity! Besides, his face seems quite familiar to me, somehow or other. Yes, it’s really quite familiar,” he repeated.

“Does it?” said Mr. Rawlings eagerly, hoping that the young engineer might be able to tell something.

“Yes,” replied the other, “and I cannot tell how or where I have seen somebody like him before. But I will recollect presently, I have no doubt, after a little more reflection.”

“We picked up the poor chap at sea, half-drowned, and bleeding from a very terrible cut across the forehead; and such a slender thin shaving of a boy that you would not have known him to be the same as he is now!”

“Indeed!” said Ernest Wilton with greater interest even than he had displayed before; and thereupon Mr. Rawlings told the whole story of Sailor Bill’s rescue, and how he afterwards saved the life of Seth Allport, to whom he had thenceforward attached himself; and how the worthy sailor had refused to part with him, and brought him out west.

The young engineer had been carefully noting all the points of the narrative while the other was speaking; and seemed to revolve the whole circumstances of Sailor Bill’s history in his mind with a view to solving the mystery.

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” said he, when Mr. Rawlings had completed his yarn, “if he belonged to that deserted ship which you subsequently came across; and that in the mutiny, or whatever else occurred on board, he got wounded and thrown into the sea.”

“That is possible,” said Mr. Rawlings, “but not quite probable, considering the time that elapsed after our saving him to meeting with the water-logged vessel, and the distance we traversed in the interval. Besides, the boy was lashed to the spar that supported him in the water, and he couldn’t have done that, with the wound he had received, by himself; so that gets rid of the theory of his being half-murdered and pitched overboard. Altogether, the story is one of those secrets of the sea that will never be unravelled, unless he comes to his senses at some time or other and tells us all about it!”

“And you don’t know his name, or anything?”

“No, only just what I have told you.”

“Had he no marks on his clothing, or anything in his pockets, that might serve for identification, should any one claim him by and by?” said Ernest Wilton, pursuing his interrogatories like a cross-examining barrister fussy over his first case.

“He had nothing on but his shirt and trousers, I tell you,” said Mr. Rawlings, laughing at what he called the badgering of the other, just as if he were in a witness-box, he said, “and boys don’t carry many letters or documents about them, especially in their trousers’ pockets; at all events, they didn’t do so when I was a boy. Stay—” he added, bethinking himself suddenly of one item of the story he had apparently forgotten till then—“I certainly passed over something.”

“What?” said Ernest, still looking at Sailor Bill steadfastly, as if trying in vain to summon up the recollection of his features from the hazy depths of his memory; for the face of the boy seemed more and more familiar to him the longer he looked.

“Well,” replied Mr. Rawlings, with a little hesitation, “I don’t suppose you want to know about the boy merely to satisfy an idle curiosity at seeing the poor, bereaved, young creature to be out of his mind?”

“Certainly not,” said Ernest Wilton. “What you have already told me, besides his own innocent, guileless look, has interested me strangely in him; and, in addition to that, I’m sure I know something about him or somebody extremely like him, which I cannot at present recall to my recollection.”

“I believe you honestly,” replied Mr. Rawlings, stretching forth his hand in token of good faith, which the other cordially grasped; “and, that being the case, I can tell you something more, which only Seth Allport and myself know about, and which we have kept to ourselves as a matter of confidence on the poor boy’s behalf. Of course, Captain Blowser of the Susan Jane knows about it, too, as he was entitled to by rights, from having picked the little chap up; but he’s at sea, and it doesn’t matter whether he divulges it or not, as it wouldn’t be of much consequence to the boy; here on land, however, where anybody might track him out from interested or other motives, it is a very different matter; so I must ask you on your word of honour to keep the circumstance to yourself.”

“Most decidedly,” said Ernest Wilton heartily; “I pledge you my word I will—until, at all events, you think it best, should things so happen, that it ought to be divulged.”

“All right,” responded Mr. Rawlings, trusting implicitly in the other’s discretion. “Now, I’ll tell you. When I said that the boy had only his shirt and trousers on in the way of garments, and that there was nothing in his pockets to disclose his identity, I related you only the simple truth, for there was nothing to trace him by; and I remember that Captain Blowser, of the Susan Jane, regretted afterwards that the spar to which we found him lashed had been cut adrift, without any one having examined it carefully to see whether there might not have been the name of the ship painted on the yard, or a portion of the canvas, or something else in the top along with the boy—for there was the topmast and yard, and all the gear of the whole mast complete, as if it had been carried away in a moment. But you recollect what I told you, of the boy’s dashing out of the cabin as if he had been taken with a sudden frenzy, and going to rescue Seth Allport when he was swept over the side by the broken topsail-halliards in that squall?”

“Yes, quite well,” answered Ernest Wilton.

“Well, after that he fainted away almost dead again for some time; and when I was bending over him trying to rouse him, I noticed a thin silken string round his neck, which I hadn’t noticed previously, nor had Jasper the steward, although his shirt had been opened there, and his bosom bared in our efforts to resuscitate him, when he first took him down into the cabin.”

“A fine silken string?” repeated the other, as Mr. Rawlings paused for a moment in his recital; “a fine silken string round his neck?”

“Yes; and on drawing out the end of it I found a small parchment parcel, carefully sealed up with red sealing-wax, and an official kind of stamp over it which had been before concealed in an inside pocket cunningly secreted in the waist-part of the boy’s flannel shirt.”

“And this parcel contained?” said the young engineer with breathless attention.

“Ah! that’s what I just don’t know,” said Mr. Rawlings with provoking coolness.