in the year 1863 i sailed as ship’s doctor aboard the chiliman, in the third voyage that fine blackwall liner made to melbourne. i had obtained the berth through the influence of a relative. my own practice was a snug little concern in a town some fifty miles from london; but a change was needed, a change for my health, such a change as nothing but the oceans of the world with their several climates and hundred winds could provide, and so i resolved to go a voyage round the world on the easy terms of feeling pulses and administering draughts, with nothing to pay and nothing to receive, a seat at the cabin table, and a berth fitted with shelves and charged with a very powerful smell of chemist’s shop down aft in what is called the steerage.
i joined the ship at the east india docks, and went below to inspect my quarters. i found them gloomy and small; but any rat-hole was reckoned good enough in those days for a ship’s doctor, a person who, though of the first importance to the well-being of a ship, is, as a rule, treated by most owners and skippers with the same sort of consideration that in former times a[186] parson to a nobleman received, until he had obliged my lord by marrying his cast lady.
first let me briefly sketch this interior of saloon and steerage, since it is the theatre on which was enacted the extraordinary tragedy i am about to relate. the chiliman had a long poop; under this was the saloon, in those days termed the cuddy; cabins very richly bulkheaded went away down aft on either hand. amidships was the table, overhead the skylights, and the deck was pierced by the shaft of the mizzen-mast, superbly decorated with a pianoforte secured to the deck just abaft it. there were no ladies’ saloons, smoking-rooms, bath-rooms, as in this age, though the ship was one of the handsomest of her class. if you sought retirement you went to your cabin; if you desired a pipe you stepped on deck; if you asked for a bath you were directed to the head pump.
the chiliman’s cuddy was entered from the quarter-deck by doors close beside the two flights of steps which conducted to the poop. a large square of hatch yawned near the entrance inside, and you descended a staircase to the steerage where my berth was. the arrangement of this steerage resembled that of the cuddy, but the bulkheads and general furniture were in the last degree plain. i believe they charged about twenty-five pounds for a berth down here, and sixty or seventy guineas for a cabin up above.
whilst i stood in my berth looking around me a little bow-legged man, in a camlet jacket and a large[187] strawberry mark on his cheek, peered in and asked if i was the doctor.
“ay, dr. harris,” said i.
“i’m the ship’s steward, sir,” said he. “that’s where i sleep,” and he pointed to a cabin opposite.
i was glad to make this man’s acquaintance, and was very civil to him. i would advise all sea-going doctors on long-voyage sailing ships to speedily make friends with the head steward. i remarked upon the gloominess of my quarters, and said i was afraid when it came to my making up draughts i might blunder for the want of light. he answered that the sailors never expected much more than strong doses of glauber salts, and that in his experience passengers as a rule managed very well without physic until they got ashore again.
i asked him if we were a full ship. he answered, pretty full. about half the steerage berths were taken, and the same number of cabins would be occupied in the saloon. the ’tween-decks were crowded, he told me.
after this chat i went on deck, where i made the acquaintance of the captain and the chief mate. the ship was still in the docks, and the captain had just come aboard, and was talking to the first officer when i walked up to them. the decks were full of life, and the scene was charged with excitement and interest. groups of ’tween-decks people stood about, and numbers of drunken sailors were bawling and cutting capers on the forecastle; some saloon passengers who had joined the ship[188] in the docks walked the poop; blue peter was streaming at our fore-royal-masthead under the grey sky of the isle of dogs; in all directions rose the masts of ships, a complicated forest, bewildering with the lace-work and tracery of rigging. cargo was swinging in and out; pawls of capstan and winch were ticking like gigantic clocks to the thrust of the handspike and the revolution of the handle; the air was full of the smell of distant climes; i seemed to taste coffee and nutmeg and a pungent tickling of black pepper; but the perfume of the greasy wool-bale was dominant, and suggested nothing of the sweetness of the arabian gale.
the captain went below, the mate fell a-shouting, i walked to the brass rail that ran across the break of the poop, and gazed about me. the steerage passengers on the main-deck looked a shabbily-dressed lot of poor, distressed people—men, women, and children. i took notice that certain young fellows, apprentices or midshipmen, with brass buttons on their jackets and brass badges on their caps, warned them off the quarter-deck whenever they stepped abaft the mainmast. one of these young fellows came and stood beside me. he was a gentlemanly, fair-haired, handsome lad, now making, as he presently told me, his second voyage. i asked him why those poor people were ordered off the part of the deck that lay immediately beneath us. he said because it was the quarter-deck, to be used only by the second-class passengers.
“that dirty rabble,” said he, looking with disgust[189] at the third-class folks, “must keep to the waist and forecastle if they want air.”
“and this fine deck of poop?” said i.
“nobody uses this,” he answered, “but the saloon nobs, and the officers and the midshipmen of the ship.”
shortly before eleven the vessel hauled out of dock. there was much noise of yelling and swearing at this time; my sight and hearing were confounded, and i wondered that any mortal being should understand the exact thing to do in such a scene of clamorous distraction. people on the pier-heads shrieked farewells to those on board, and those on board sobbed and yelped in response. when we had floated over the cill, with the mud pilot on the forecastle almost apoplectic with unavailing wrath at some insult fired at him out of a hurricane lung on the wharf, a tug got hold of us, a couple of seamen lurched aft to the wheel, the hawser tautened, and away we went down the river in the fizzing wake of a pair of churning paddles.
the varied scenery of the thames—i mean its maritime details of craft of twenty different rigs and steamers of twenty different aspects thrusting up and down, some staggering athwart, others making a bee-line through the reaches—charmed and interested me who was fresh from a long spell of inland, almost rural, life, and i lingered till i was driven below by the wet which came sweeping along in a succession of drenching squalls as we rounded out of galleon’s into barking reach. i spent the remainder of that day in[190] putting my cabin to rights, examining the drugs (some of which, for antiquity, methought, might have gone round the world with cook in his first voyage), and in providing for my own comfort as best i could, and at half-past six went into the cuddy to join the people at dinner, by which hour the ship had arrived at a mooring-buoy off gravesend, and was lying motionless on her own shadow in the stream.
it was a sullen evening, already dark; and dirty blowing wet weather on deck. the muffled howling and hissing of the wind in the three towering spires of mast, and yard, and rigging communicated, i’ve no doubt, the particular brilliance and beauty i found in the appearance of the well-lighted cuddy, with its long table draped for dinner, sparkling with glass and plate, and a number of ladies and gentlemen, along with the captain and chief officer, issuing from their respective berths to take their seats. thirteen of us sat down, and when this was remarked by an elderly lady next the captain, a midshipman was sent for to neutralize the sinister influence of that number by making a fourteenth. the lad took his place with a countenance of happy astonishment. he heartily wished, i dare say, that thirteen people would sit down to dinner every day.
i understood that there were some eight or ten more passengers expected from gravesend in the morning. i looked about me to see what sort of persons i was to be associated with on an ocean passage that might run into four months. no need in this brief record of[191] a tragic event to enter into minute descriptions of the people: enough if i refer now to two persons who sat opposite me, both of whom were to prove leading actors in what i have to tell.
one of them was a man of about six-and-thirty years of age. he wore a heavy moustache slightly streaked with grey. his eyes were dark, keen, and steadfast in their gaze—steadfast, indeed, to rudeness, for his manner of looking at you was scarcely less than a deliberate scrutinizing stare. his hair was thin on the top, bushy at the sides; his complexion dark as of one who has lived long under the sun. his voice was subdued, his whole bearing well bred.
his companion was a lady: a dark, very handsome woman of three or four and twenty. her hair was black, without gloss, a soft, dark, rich black, and i never before saw a woman with so wonderful a thickness of hair as that girl had. her large, fine, dark eyes had a tropic sparkle; there was foreign blood in the glances which flashed through the long lashes. her complexion was a most delicate olive made tender by a soft lasting bloom, which rested like a lingering blush upon her cheeks. her figure looked faultless, and doubtless was so. i put the man down as a happy fellow carrying a beautiful bride away with him to the antipodes. you could not have doubted that they were newly married; his behaviour was all fondness; hers that of the impassioned young wife who finds difficulty in concealing her adoration in public.
[192]
i have thus sketched them, but i own that i was not more particularly interested in the couple than in others of the people who sat on either hand. the chief mate of the ship, however, mr. small, who occupied a seat on my left, concluded that my interest was sufficiently keen to justify him in talking to me about them; and in a low voice he told me that they were captain and mrs. norton-savage; he didn’t quite know what he was captain of, but he had gathered from some source he couldn’t recollect that he had made a fortune in south america, in lima or callao, and had been married a few weeks only, and was going to live in australia, as his wife’s health was not good, and the doctors believed the australian climate would suit her.
early next morning the rest of the passengers came on board, the tug again took us in tow, and under a dark blue sky, mountainous with masses of white cloud, the chiliman floated in tow of the tug into channel waters, where a long flowing heave despatched a great number of us to our cabins.
we met with nothing but head winds and chopping seas down channel. the ship lurched and sprang consumedly, and the straining noises of bulkheads and strong fastenings were so swift and furious in that part of the vessel where i slept that i’d sometimes think the fabric was going to pieces at my end of her. i was very sea-sick, but happily my services were never required in that time.
i think we were five days in beating clear of the[193] channel; the weather then changed, the sky brightened into a clear azure, delicately shaded by clouds; a soft wind blew out of the west, and when i made my first appearance on deck i found the ship clothed in swelling canvas from truck to waterway; her sand-white decks were lively with people in motion and the swaying shadows of the rigging; a number of ladies and gentlemen walked the poop, and the captain, with a telescope at his eye, was looking at a small steamer that was passing us at about a mile with a colour flying; captain and mrs. norton-savage stood beside him, also looking at the steamer; the foam spun along the ship’s side in wool-white wreaths, and every bubble shone like a bit of rainbow, and the streak of the vessel’s wake gleamed upon the flowing lines of the ocean astern as though she trailed a length of mother-o’-pearl.
all sights and sounds were beautiful and refreshing. i breathed deep, with exquisite enjoyment of the ocean air after my spell of confinement in my apothecary-shop of a cabin, and with growing admiration of the spectacle of the noble ship, slightly heeling from the breeze, and curtsying stately as she went, till you’d think she kept time to some solemn music rising up round about her from the deep, and audible to her only, such a hearkening look as she took from the yearning lift of her jibs and staysails.
presently the captain observed me, called me to him, and we stood in conversation for some twenty minutes, i begged his leave to take a look round the[194] ship, and he ordered a midshipman to accompany me. i peeped into the galley or ship’s kitchen, then into the forecastle, a gloomy cave, dully lighted by a lamp whose vapour was poisonous with the slush that fed it, and complicated to the landlubber’s eye by the glimmering outlines of hammocks, and the dark, coffin-like shapes of bunks and seamen’s chests. i then descended into the ’tween-decks by way of the main-hatch, and took a view of the accommodation there, and found the cabins formed of planks roughly shaped into bulkheads with partitions which made mere pigeon-holes of the places. in truth the poor third-class folk were always badly treated in those days at sea. they were ill-housed; they were half starved; they were elbowed, sworn at, and generally tyrannized over by all hands, from the captain to the cook’s mate; and in heavy weather, when the hatches were battened down, they were almost suffocated. yet they were better off than the sailors, who were not only equally half starved, half suffocated, and sworn at, but were forced to do the treadmill work of the ship also.
i regained the deck, glad to get out of this gloomy region of crying babies and quarrelling children, and grimy groups in corners shuffling greasy cards, and women with shawls over their heads mixing flour and water for a pudding, or conversing shrilly in provincial accents, some looking very white indeed, and all as though it was quite time they changed their country.
[195]
as i went along the quarter-deck on my way to the cuddy, i saw a young man standing in the recess formed by the projection of the foremost cuddy cabins and the over-hanging ledge or break of the poop. i looked at him with some attention; he was a particularly handsome young fellow, chiefly remarkable for the contrast between the lifeless pallor of his face and the vitality of his large bright, dark eyes. his hair was cropped close in military fashion; he wore a cloth cap with a naval peak. his dress was a large, loose monkey-jacket and blue cloth trousers cut in the flowing nautical style. on the beach of southsea or the sands of ramsgate he might have passed for a yachtsman; on the high seas and on the deck of a full-rigged ship with plenty of hairy sailors about to compare him with, nothing mortal could have looked less nautical.
i paused when in the cuddy to glance at him again through the window. he leaned in the corner of the recess with his arms clasped upon his breast and his fine and sparkling eyes fixed upon the blue line of the horizon that was visible above the lee bulwark-rail. my gaze had lighted upon many faces whilst i looked over the ship, but on none had it lingered. it lingered now, and i wondered who the youth was. his age might have been twenty; handsome he was, as i have said, but his expression was hard, almost fierce, and certainly repellant. whilst i watched him his lips twitched or writhed three or four[196] times and exposed a grin of flashing white teeth that was anything but mirthful, i can assure you. his clothes were good, his appearance refined, and i concluded that he was one of the cuddy passengers who had come on board at gravesend. he turned his face and saw me looking, and instantly made a step which carried him out of sight, past the cabin projection.
the steward came up out of the steerage at that moment, and wishing to know who was who in the ship i asked him to peep through the door and tell me who the melancholy pale-faced young gentleman in the nautical clothes was. he popped his head out and then said—
“he’s a young gent named john burgess, one of the steerage people. he occupies the foremost cabin to starboard beside the foot of them steps,” said he, pointing to the hatch.
“is he alone in the ship?” said i.
“all alone, sir.”
“where do those steerage people take their meals?”
“why, in the steerage, at the table that stops short abreast of your cabin.”
nothing in any way memorable happened for a considerable time. the ship drove through the atlantic impelled by strong beam and quartering winds which sometimes blew with the weight of half a gale and veiled her forecastle with glittering lifts of foam and heeled her till her lee-channels ripped through the seas in flashings fierce as the white water which leaps from[197] the strokes of the thrasher’s flails. the passengers had settled down to the routine of shipboard life. they played the piano, they sang, they hove the deck quoit, they formed themselves into whist parties. both captain norton-savage and his wife promised to become exceedingly popular with all the people who lived aft. the lady sang sweetly; she sang spanish, english, and french songs. it was understood that she was a south american, of pure spanish blood on one side. captain norton-savage told a good story. he smoked excellent cigars and was liberal with them. he came to me one day and talked about his wife, told me there was consumption in her family, and asked what i thought of a sea voyage for her and of the climate of australia. i could find nothing to object to in the man except his stare. there was something defiant in his manner of looking at you; his speech was significant with it even when nothing more was meant than met the ear. i was misled at first, and sometimes troubled myself to look under his words for his mind; then i found out that it was his stare which was responsible for what his language seemed to carry, and so, with the rest of us, took him as he offered himself.
and still i never felt quite easy with him, though no man laughed louder at his humorous stories.
i was going one morning from my berth to the cuddy when, at the foot of the steps which conducted to the hatch, i met the young man called john burgess.[198] i had seen nothing of him for days. he came out of his cabin holding his cap. plenty of light flowed through the hatch; he was very pale, and i thought seemed ill, and his eyes had a wild look. he was handsome, as i have said—at least, to my way of thinking; but there was an evil spirit in the delicate structure and lineaments of his face. i said “good morning.” he answered “good morning” in a low voice, but with a manner of impatience, as though he wished me to pass on or get out of his road.
“are you going to australia for your health?” said i, for the sake of saying something.
“no,” he answered.
“are you english?”
“pray who are you?” he exclaimed with a foreign accent.
“i am dr. harris,” i answered, smiling.
he looked uneasy on my pronouncing the word doctor, stepped back and grasped the handle of his cabin door, yet paused to say, “are you a passenger, sir?”
“i am the ship’s doctor,” i answered.
without another word he entered his cabin and shut the door upon himself.
his behaviour was so abrupt, discourteous, that i suspected his brain was at fault. indeed, i made up my mind, in the interests of the passengers, and for the security of the ship, to keep my eye upon him—that is, by accosting him from time to time, and by watching[199] him without seeming to watch whenever we should happen to be on deck together. and yet i was not altogether satisfied with my suspicion of his not being right-headed, either; i found my puzzlement going another way, but in a direction that i could by no means make clear to myself.
however, not to refine upon this matter: i think it was next day that, happening to come along from the forecastle where i had been visiting a sick sailor, i spied the young fellow standing before the mainmast in a sort of peeping posture; his eyes were directed aft; he was watching the people walking on the poop. i stopped to look at him, struck by his attitude. the great body of the mast effectually concealed him from all observers aft. he turned his head and saw me; his face was ghastly white, the expression wonderful for the tragic wrath of it. on meeting my eyes he coloured up, i never could have credited so swift a transformation of hue; his blush was deep and dark and his eyes shone like fire. he scowled angrily, stepped round the mast, and disappeared through the cuddy door.
after this i saw no more of him for a week. i questioned the steward, who told me the youth was keeping his cabin.
“what’s his name again?” said i.
“john burgess, sir.”
“that’s an english name, but he’s not an englishman,” said i.
[200]
“we don’t trouble ourselves about names on board ship, sir,” he answered. “there be pursers’ names aft as well as forrard.”
“does he ever talk to you?”
“no, sir, he might be a funeral mute for talk.”
“does he come to the table for his meals?”
“no, sir; his grub’s carried in to him.”
“when did you see him last?”
“about an hour ago.”
“does he seem well?”
“well as i am, sir.”
i asked no more questions. there was a cheerfulness in the steward’s way of answering which promised me he saw nothing peculiar in the lad. this was reassuring, for i knew he was often in and out of the young man’s berth, and anything eccentric in his conduct would strike him. as for me, it was no part of my duty to intrude upon the passengers in their privacy.
we took the north-east trade wind, made noble progress down the north atlantic, lost the commercial gale in eight or ten degrees north of the equator, and then lay “humbugging,” as the forecastle saying is, on plains of greasy blue water, scarcely crisped by the catspaw, and often, for hours at a time, without air enough to wag the fly of the vane at the masthead. one very hot night after a day of roasting calm i lingered on the poop for some while after my customary hour of retiring to rest for the refreshment of the dew-cooled atmosphere[201] and the cold breath lifting off the black surface of ocean. the awning was spread over the poop; a few shadowy figures moved slowly under it; here and there a red star indicated a smoker sucking at a cigar; the water alongside was full of smoky fire rolling in dim green bursts of cloud from the bends of the ship as she leaned with the swell. but the stars were few and faint; down in the south-west was a little play of silent lightning; the noises of the night were rare and weak, scarce more than the flap of some pinion of cloth up in the gloom, or the jerk of a wheel chain, or the subdued moan of water washing under the counter.
i smoked out my pipe and still lingered; it was very hot and i did not love the fancy of my bunk on such a night. the passengers went below one by one after the cabin lamps were turned down. six bells were struck, eleven o’clock. i took a few turns with the officer of the watch, then went on to the quarter-deck, where i found captain norton-savage smoking and chatting with two or three of the passengers under the little clock against the cuddy front. the captain offered me a cigar, our companions presently withdrew, and we were left alone.
i observed a note of excitement in captain savage’s speech, and guessed that the heat had coaxed him into draining more seltzer and brandy than was good for him. we were together till half-past eleven; his talk was mainly anecdotic and wholly concerned others. i asked him how his wife bore the heat. he answered[202] very well, he thought. did i not think the voyage was doing her good? i answered i had observed her at dinner that day and thought she looked very well in spite of her pallor. these were the last words i spoke before wishing him good night. he threw the end of his cigar overboard and went to his cabin, which was situated on the port side just over against the hatch down which i went to my quarters in the steerage.
all was silent in this part. the hush upon the deep worked in the ship like a spirit; at long intervals only arose the faint sounds of cargo lightly strained in the hold. much time passed before i slept. through the open porthole over my bunk i could hear the mellow chimes of the ship’s bell as it was struck. it was as though the land lay close aboard with a church clock chiming. the hot atmosphere was rendered doubly disgusting by the smell of the drugs. yea, more than drugs, methought, went to the combined flavour. i seemed to sniff bilgewater and the odour of the cockroach.
i was awakened by a hand upon my shoulder.
“rouse up, for god’s sake, doctor! there’s a man stabbed in the cuddy!”
i instantly got my wits, and threw my legs over the edge of the bunk.
“what’s this about a man stabbed?” i exclaimed, pulling on my clothes.
the person who had called me was the second mate, mr. storey. he told me that he was officer of the[203] watch; a few minutes since one of the passengers who slept next the berth occupied by the savages was awakened by a shriek. he ran into the cuddy, and at that moment mrs. savage put her head out and said that her husband lay dead with a knife buried in his heart. the passenger rushed on deck, and mr. storey came to fetch me before arousing the captain.
i found several people in the cuddy. the shriek of the wife had awakened others besides the passenger who had raised the alarm. captain smallport, the commander of the ship, hastily ran out of his cabin as i passed through the steerage hatch. some one had turned the cabin lamp full on, and the light was abundant. the captain came to me, and i stepped at once to the savages’ berth and entered it. there was no light here, and the cuddy lamp threw no illumination into this cabin. i called for a box of matches and lighted the bracket-lamp, and then there was revealed this picture: in the upper bunk, clothed in a sleeping costume of pyjamas and light jacket, lay the figure of captain norton-savage, with the cross-shaped hilt of a dagger standing up out of his breast over the heart and a dark stain of blood showing under it like its shadow. in the right-hand corner, beside the door, stood mrs. savage, in her night-dress; her face was of the whiteness of her bedgown, her black eyes looked double their usual size. i noticed blood upon her right hand and a stain of blood upon her night-dress over the right hip. all this was the impression of a swift glance.[204] in a step i was at captain savage’s side and found him dead.
“here is murder, captain,” said i, turning to the commander of the ship.
he closed the door to shut out the prying passengers, and exclaimed—
“is he dead?”
“yes.”
mrs. savage shrieked. i observed her dressing-gown hanging beside the door and put it on her, again noticing the blood stains upon her hands and night-dress. she looked horribly frightened and trembled violently.
“what can you tell us about this?” said captain smallport.
in her foreign accent, strongly defined by the passion of terror or grief, she answered, but in such broken, tremulous, hysteric sentences as i should be unable to communicate in writing, that being suddenly awakened by a noise as of her cabin door opened or shut, she called to captain savage, but received no answer. she called again, then, not knowing whether he had yet come to bed, and the cabin being in darkness, she got out of her bunk and felt over the upper one for him. her hand touched the hilt of the dagger, she shook him and called his name, touched the dagger again, then uttered the shriek that had alarmed the ship.
“is it suicide?” said the captain, turning to me.
[205]
i looked at the body, at the posture of the hands, and answered emphatically, “no.”
i found terror rather than grief in mrs. savage’s manner; whenever she directed her eyes at the corpse i noticed the straining of panic fear in them. the captain opened the cabin door, and called for the stewardess. she was in waiting outside, as you may believe. the cuddy, indeed, was full of people, and whilst the door was open i heard the grumbling hum of the voices of ’tween-deck passengers and seamen crowding at the cuddy front. the news had spread that one of the first-class passengers had been murdered, and every tongue was asking who had done it.
the stewardess took mrs. savage to a spare cabin. when the women were gone and the door again shut, captain smallport still remaining with me, i drew the dagger out of the breast of the body and took it to the light. it was more properly a dagger-shaped knife than a dagger, the point sharp as a needle, the edge razor-like. the handle was of fretted ivory; to it was affixed a thin slip of silver plate, on which was engraved “charles winthrop sheringham to leonora dunbar.”
“is it the wife’s doing, do you think?” said the captain, looking at the dagger.
“i would not say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to that question yet,” said i.
“she might have done it in her sleep.”
“look at his hands,” said i. “he did not stab[206] himself. will you take charge of this dagger, captain?”
“all bloody like that!” cried he, recoiling.
i cleansed it, and then he took it.
we stood conversing awhile. i examined the body again; which done, the pair of us went out, first extinguishing the lamp, and then locking the door.
the passengers sat up for the remainder of the night, and the ship was as full of life as though the sun had risen. in every corner of the vessel was there a hum of talk in the subdued note into which the horror of murder depresses the voice. the captain called his chief officer and myself to his cabin; we inspected the dagger afresh, and talked the dreadful thing over. who was the assassin? both the captain and mate cried, “who but the wife?” i said i could not be satisfied of that yet; who was charles winthrop sheringham? who was leonora dunbar? it was some comfort anyhow to feel that, whoever the wretch might be, he or she was in the ship. there were no doors to rush through, no windows to leap from, no country to scour here. the assassin was a prisoner with us all in the ship; our business was to find out who of the whole crowd of us had murdered the man, and we had many weeks before us.
in the small hours the sailmaker and his mate stitched up the body ready for the toss over the side before noon. we waited until the sun had arisen, then, our resolution having been formed, the captain and i[207] entered the berth which had been occupied by the savages and examined such baggage as we found there. the keys were in a bag; our search lasted an hour. at the expiration of the hour we had found out, mainly through the agency of a large bundle of letters, but in part also through other direct proofs, that the name of the murdered man was charles winthrop sheringham; that the name of the lady whom he had known as mrs. savage was leonora dunbar; that this miss dunbar had been an intimate friend of mrs. sheringham, and that the husband had eloped with her and taken a passage from melbourne in the ship chiliman, promising marriage in twenty solemn protestations on their arrival in australia, the ceremony to be repeated should mrs. sheringham die.
this story we got together out of the letters and other conclusive evidence. the captain was now rootedly of opinion that miss dunbar had killed sheringham.
“it’s not only the dagger,” said he, “with her name on it, which was therefore hers, and in her keeping when the murder was done; for, suppose some one else the assassin, are you to believe that he entered the savages’ berth and rummaged for this particular weapon instead of using a knife of his own? how would he know of the dagger or where to find it? it’s not the dagger only; there’s the stains on her hand and bedgown, and mightn’t she have killed him in a fit of madness owing to remorse, and thoughts of a lifelong[208] banishment from england, and horror of the disgrace and shame he’s brought her to?”
i listened in silence; but not yet could i make up my mind.
i met the stewardess coming to the captain with the key of the savages’ cabin; she wanted clothes for the lady. i asked how mrs. savage did, giving the unhappy woman the name she was known by on board.
“she won’t speak, sir,” answered the stewardess. “she’s fallen into a stony silence. she sits with her hands clasped and her eyes cast down, and i can’t get a word out of her.”
“i’ll look in upon her by-and-by,” said i.
the body was buried at ten o’clock in the morning. the captain read the funeral service, and the quarter-deck was crowded with the passengers and crew. i don’t think there was the least doubt throughout the whole body of the people that mrs. savage, as they supposed her, had murdered sheringham. it was the murder that put into this funeral service the wild, tragic significance everybody seemed to find in it, to judge at least by the looks on the faces i glanced at.
when the ceremony was ended i called for the stewardess, and went with her to miss dunbar’s cabin. on entering i requested the stewardess to leave me. the lady was seated, and did not lift her eyes, nor exhibit any signs of life whilst i stood looking. her complexion had turned into a dull pale yellow, and her face, with its expression of hard, almost blank repose,[209] might have passed for marble wantonly tinctured a dim primrose. she had exchanged her dressing-gown for a robe, and appeared attired as usual. i asked some questions, but got no answer. i then took a seat by her side, and called her by the name of leonora dunbar. she now looked at me steadily, but i did not remark any expression of strong surprise, of the alarm and amazement i had supposed the utterance of that name would excite.
i said softly, “the captain and i have discovered who you are, and your relation with charles winthrop sheringham. was it you who stabbed him? tell me if you did it. your sufferings will be the lighter when you have eased your conscience of the weight of the dreadful secret.”
it is hard to interpret the expression of the eyes if the rest of the features do not help. i seemed to find a look of hate and contempt in hers. her face continued marble hard. not being able to coax a syllable out of her, though i spared nothing of professional patience in the attempt, i left the cabin, and, calling the stewardess, bade her see that the lady was kept without means to do herself a mischief.
that day and the next passed. miss dunbar continued dumb as a corpse. i visited her several times, and twice captain smallport accompanied me; but never a word would she utter. nay, she would not even lift her eyes to look at us. i told the captain that it might be mere mulishness or a condition of mind[210] that would end in madness. it was impossible to say. the stewardess said she ate and drank and went obediently to bed when ordered. she was as passive as a broken-spirited child, she said. for her part she didn’t believe the lady had killed the poor man.
it was on the fourth day following the murder that the glass fell; it blackened in the north-west, and came on to blow a hard gale of wind. a mountainous sea was running in a few hours upon which the ship made furious weather, clothed in flying brine to her tops, under no other canvas than a small storm main-trysail. the hatches were battened down, the decks were full of water, which flashed in clouds of glittering smoke over the lee bulwark rail. the passengers for the most part kept their cabins. the cook could do no cooking; indeed the galley fire was washed out, and we appeased our appetites with biscuit and tinned meat.
the gale broke at nine o’clock on the following morning, leaving a wild, confused sea and a scowling sky all round the horizon, with ugly yellow breaks over our reeling mastheads. i was in my gloomy quarters, whose atmosphere was little more than a green twilight, with the wash of the emerald brine swelling in thunder over the porthole, when the steward arrived to tell me that one of the passengers had met with a serious accident. i asked no questions, but instantly followed him along the steerage corridor into the cuddy, where i found a group of the saloon people standing beside the figure of the young fellow named john burgess, who[211] lay at his length upon the deck. i had not set eyes on him for days and days.
i thought at first he was dead. his eyes were half closed; the glaze of approaching dissolution was in the visible part of the pupils, and at first i felt no pulse. two or three of the sailors who had brought him into the cuddy stood in the doorway. they told me that the young fellow had persisted in mounting the forecastle ladder to windward. he was hailed to come down, as the ship was pitching heavily and often dishing bodies of green water over her bows. he took no notice of the men’s cries, and had gained the forecastle-deck when an unusually heavy lurch flung him; he fell from a height of eight or nine feet, which might have broken a limb for him only; unhappily he struck the windlass end, and lay seemingly lifeless.
i bade them lift and carry him to the cabin that i might examine him, and when they had placed him in his bunk i told them to send the steward to help me and went to work to partially unclothe the lad to judge of his injuries.
on opening his coat i discovered that he was a woman.
on the arrival of the steward i told him that the young fellow called john burgess was a girl, and i requested him to send the stewardess, and whilst i waited for her i carefully examined the unconscious sufferer, and judged that she had received mortal[212] internal injuries. all the while that i was thus employed some extraordinary thoughts ran in my head.
the stewardess came. i gave her certain directions and went to the captain to report the matter. he was in no wise surprised to learn that a woman dressed as a man was aboard his ship; twice, he told me, had that sort of passenger sailed with him within the last four years.
“captain,” said i, “i’ll tell you what’s in my head! that woman below who styled herself john burgess murdered sheringham.”
“why do you think that?”
“because i believe that she’s his wife.”
“ha!” said captain smallport.
i gave several reasons for this notion; what i observed in the disguised woman’s behaviour when hidden behind the mainmast; then her being a foreigner, in all probability a south american, as leonora dunbar was, and so on.
he said, “what about the blood on miss dunbar’s hand and night-dress?”
“she told us she had felt over the body.”
“yes, yes!” he cried, “doctor, you see things more clearly than i do.”
when i had conversed for some time with captain smallport, i walked to miss dunbar’s cabin, knocked, and entered. i found her on this occasion standing with her back to the door, apparently gazing at the sea[213] through the portholes; she did not turn her head. i stood beside her to see her face and said—
“i have made a discovery; mrs. sheringham is on board this ship.”
on my pronouncing these words she screamed, and looked at me with a face in which i clearly read that her silence had been sheer sullen mulish obstinacy, with nothing of insanity in it, pure stubborn determination to keep silence that we might think what we chose.
“mrs. sheringham in this ship?” she cried, with starting eyes and the wildest, whitest countenance you can imagine.
“yes,” i answered.
“then it’s she who murdered sheringham. she is capable of it, she is a tigress!” she cried in a voice pitched to the note of a scream.
“that’s what i have come to talk to you about, and i am glad you have found your voice.”
“where is she?” she asked, and a strong shudder ran through her.
“she is in her cabin below, dying; she may be dead even now as we converse.”
she uttered something in spanish passionately and clasped her hands.
“now hear me,” said i, “since you have your ears and have found your tongue. you are suspected of having murdered the man you eloped with.”
“it is false!” she shrieked. “i loved him—oh, i loved him!”
[214]
she caught her breath and wept bitterly.
“in my own heart,” said i, touched by her dreadful misery, “i believe you guiltless. i am sure you are so now that we have discovered that mrs. sheringham is on board. will you answer a question?”
“yes,” she sobbed.
“you know that sheringham was stabbed to the heart with a dagger?”
“yes.”
“it bears this inscription: ‘charles winthrop sheringham to leonora dunbar.’ was that dagger in your possession in this ship?”
“no. mr. sheringham gave it to me. there was no such inscription as you name upon it. i left it behind when i came away. i swear before my god i speak the truth!”
her voice was broken with sobs; she spoke with deepest agitation. her manner convinced me it was as she represented.
i said, “come with me and see the woman and tell me if she is mrs. sheringham.”
she shrank and cried out that she could not go. she was perfectly sane: all her stubbornness was gone from her; she was now a miserable, scared, broken-hearted woman. i told her that the person i took to be mrs. sheringham lay insensible and perhaps dead at this moment, and, by putting on an air of command, i succeeded at last in inducing, or rather obliging, her to accompany me. she veiled herself before quitting the[215] cabin. the saloon was empty. we passed into the steerage, and she followed me into the cabin where the woman was.
the poor creature was still unconscious; the stewardess stood beside the bunk looking at its dying white occupant. i said to miss dunbar—
“is it mrs. sheringham?”
she was cowering at the door, but when she perceived that the woman lay without motion with her eyes half closed, insensible and, perhaps, dead, as she might suppose, she drew near the bunk, peered breathlessly, and then, looking around to me, said—
“she is mrs. sheringham. let me go!”
i opened the door and she fled with a strange noise of sobbing.
i stayed for nearly three hours in mrs. sheringham’s berth. there was nothing to be done for her. she passed away in her unconsciousness, and afterwards, when i looked more closely into the nature of her injuries, i wondered that she could have lived five minutes after the terrible fall that had beaten sensibility out of her over the windlass end.
i went to the captain to report her death, and in a long talk i gave him my views of the tragic business. i said there could be no question that mrs. sheringham had followed the guilty couple to sea with a determination so to murder her husband as to fix the crime of his death upon his paramour. how was this to be done? her discovery at her home of the dagger her husband[216] had given to leonora dunbar would perhaps give her the idea she needed. if miss dunbar spoke the truth, then, indeed, i could not account for the inscription on the dagger. but there could be no question whatever that mrs. sheringham had been her husband’s murderess.
this was my theory: and it was afterwards verified up to the hilt. on the arrival of the chiliman at melbourne miss dunbar was sent home to take her trial for the murder of mr. sheringham; but her innocence was established by—first, the circumstance of a woman having been found aboard dressed as a man; next, by the statement of witnesses that a woman whose appearance exactly corresponded with that of “john burgess” had been the rounds of the shipping offices to inspect the list of passengers by vessels bound to australia; thirdly, by letters written to leonora dunbar by sheringham found among mrs. sheringham’s effects, in one of which the man told the girl that he proposed to carry her to australia. finally, and this was the most conclusive item in the whole catalogue of evidence, an engraver swore that a woman answering to mrs. sheringham’s description called upon him with the dagger (produced in court) and requested him without delay to inscribe upon the thin plate, “charles winthrop sheringham to leonora dunbar.”
and yet, but for the death of mrs. sheringham and my discovery of her sex, it was far more likely than not that the wife would have achieved her aim by killing her husband and getting her rival hanged for the murder.
