LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER X.

       Table of Contents

      On the 21st of February the steamer Steersman left St. Malo at the morning tide. She was a collier of 900 tons, running direct between Newcastle and Port Said, but on this occasion a slight accident to her engine had made it necessary for her to put into port. Instead of going to Cherbourg, her captain had brought her on to St. Malo in the hope that he might see an old friend. Two days afterwards the steamer was at sea again, and had put Cape Frehel thirty miles behind when we call the reader’s attention to her.

      And why should we call attention to this collier more than to another, considering that hundreds of colliers pass down channel, and that the United Kingdom sends its coal to every part of the world? Why? Because Captain Antifer was on board, and with him his nephew Juhel, and with them their friend Tregomain. And why were they on an English steamer instead of in a railway carriage? When a man is interested in four millions, surely he would take his ease and think nothing of the expense! And this Antifer would have done had not an opportunity offered of travelling under pleasant conditions.

      Captain Chip, who commanded the Steersman, was an old acquaintance of Antifer’s. When the Englishman put in at St. Malo he did not fail to look up his old friend, and was warmly welcomed. When he learnt that Antifer was about to start for Port Said, he offered him a passage on the Steersman on reasonable terms. She was a good ship, capable of nine knots an hour in a calm sea, and taking a fortnight or thereabouts on the voyage to the fat end of the Mediterranean. The Steersman, it is true, was not designed for passengers; but sailors are not very difficult to please. There was at least a comfortable cabin for them, and they would not have to change vessels on the voyage—which was not without its advantages.

      And it is easy to understand why Antifer had preferred it. To be shut up in a railway carriage for so long a journey was not to his taste. Far better in his opinion to spend two weeks on a good ship amid the fresh sea breezes, than six days in a rolling box breathing smoke and dust. This was also the opinion of Juhel, if not that of the bargeman, whose field of navigation had been bordered by the banks of the Rance. He had hoped to accomplish most of the journey by railway, but his friend had decided otherwise. They were in no hurry for a day or so. If they arrived in a month or two the island would still be where it had been, and where it was no one knew but Antifer, Juhel, and Tregomain. The treasure which had been buried for thirty-one years under the seal of the double K was in no danger for a few weeks more. Consequently Antifer, eager as he might be, had accepted Captain Chip’s proposal, and that is why the reader’s attention has been called to the Steersman.

      Captain Antifer, his nephew, his friend Tregomain—provided with a good sum in gold, which the bargeman wore in his belt, and taking with them an excellent chronometer, a sextant, a nautical almanac, besides a spade and pickaxe—took their passage on the collier. The bargeman had to overcome his repugnance at venturing on a sea voyage, to brave the anger of Neptune, although he had hitherto only replied to the enchanting smiles of the river nymphs; and when Antifer ordered him to pack his portmanteau and deposit himself on board the Steersman, he obeyed without a murmur. Touching farewells were exchanged, Enogate was tenderly pressed to Juhel’s heart. Nanon shared her embraces between her brother and her nephew, and Tregomain took particular care not to squeeze too tight those who had the courage to come to his arms.

      Promises were made that they would not be long away, and that in six weeks they would be back again at St. Malo; and then, millionaire or not, Antifer would be persuaded to approve of the marriage so unluckily interrupted. And then the steamer went to the westward, and the girl followed it with her eyes until its masts disappeared below the horizon.

      But had the Steersman forgotten the two personages—who are not of minor importance—whose duty it was to follow the legatee of Kamylk Pasha? Ben Omar and Saouk were not on board; had they missed the boat?

      By no means. The fact is that it had been found impossible to persuade the Egyptian notary to embark on the steamer. On the voyage between Alexandria and Marseilles he had been as ill as even a notary could be; and now that he was doomed to go to Suez—and he knew not where—he had resolved to journey on land so long as he could avoid the sea. Saouk had not the least objection to this. Antifer was anything but eager to secure them as travelling companions, and had made an appointment to meet them at the end of the month at Suez, without saying that thence they would have to go on to Muscat, when the notary would have to brave the horrors of the perfidious element.

      Antifer had even added:

      “As your client has ordered you to be present at the digging up of the legacy, you shall be there. But if circumstances oblige us to travel together, let us keep to ourselves, for I have no desire to be on intimate terms with either you or your clerk.”

      In consequence of this, Ben Omar and Saouk had left St. Malo before the departure of the Steersman, and no one regretted them. The notary was not likely to miss the appointment! On the one hand he was urged by the fear of losing his commission, and on the other he was dominated by Saouk’s implacable will. He would be at Suez first, and there he would await Antifer’s arrival with impatience.

      The Steersman ran down along the French coast, sheltered by it from the southerly winds. Tregomain could but congratulate himself. He had resolved to make the best of the voyage by studying the manners and customs of the different countries he would be obliged to visit. But as it was the first time in his life that he had been on the sea, he was afraid of being sick; and it was with a curious and anxious eye that he gazed at the horizon where the sea met the sky. He did not try to play at being a sailor, the worthy man, nor at braving the movement of the vessel by walking about the deck. In fact his feet, accustomed to the level deck of his barge, seemed to fail him, and he sat in the stern on a bench grasping one of the stanchions, and submitting with resignation to the pitiless pleasantries of Captain Antifer.

      “Well, bargeman, how are you?”

      “Up to the present I have had nothing much the matter with me.”

      “Ah! This is only fresh-wafer sailing as yet; we are coasting the land, and you might suppose you were on your barge on the Rance. But we shall get a northerly wind soon, and then the sea will shake its fleas, and give you no time to scratch for yours.”

      “Friend, I have no fleas.”

      “It is a way of speaking. Wait till we get out of the channel.”

      “You think I shall be sick?”

      “Badly; I am sure you will.”

      Antifer’s way of consoling his friends was peculiar. Juhel tried to remove the depressing effect of his prognostics by observing,—

      “My uncle exaggerates. You will be no more sick than—”

      “Than a porpoise? That is all I wish!” replied the bargeman, pointing to two or three of those clowns of the sea tumbling in the vessel’s wake.

      In the evening the steamer rounded the furthest points of Brittany. As she was in the Straits of Four under shelter of the heights of Ouessant, the sea was not rough although there was a head wind. The passengers went to bed between eight and nine o’clock, leaving the vessel to pass Cape St. Matthieu, the Gulf of Brest, Douarnenez Bay, the race of the Sein, and head south-westwards across the Iroise.

      The bargeman dreamed that he was sick unto death; but fortunately it was only a dream. When the morning came, although the ship was rolling from side to side, diving into the hollows of the waves, and rising on their crests

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