Mabel's Honeymoon

by X. X.

A TRUE TALE. 

It is a wet, drizzling, cold afternoon, the wintry wind howling up the deserted streets of Sydney, and the rain plashing and spluttering in the puddles of the pavements of the footpaths, and dribbling in ghostly figures down the window panes of the shops.

It was scarcely four o'clock, but it was dark already, and the shops were all aglow with the gas that lit up the interiors with a soft and warm mellowness, seeming to defy the elements which raged war without. Shortly before dusk, a woman emerged from a miserable house in one of the most foulsome streets of the city. That she did not go of her own free will was evident, for the hand that pushed her forth almost sent her prone upon the pavement with the spitefulness born of malice and hatred.

"You can go, you hussy!" a harsh voice exclaimed from within, "and may you never darken my doors again, you wretch!"

"It does not matter." The slight and graceful figure of the other shivered with the cold. "No, not very much. It is not far to the river."

"No, it ain't; and a pleasant journey to you," was the heartless reply. And then the door was banged to, and the girl, for she seemed to be nothing more, was left standing in the cold and drizzling rain.

For a minute she did not move, but stood as though she were stupefied, and then she walked slowly away and gained the busy thoroughfare, where, in the crowds of people that moved to and fro, scarcely anyone turned their heads to look at her.

The hospital was just opposite her, and she looked up at its windows with a sickly smile.

"Starvation is not sickness," she muttered bitterly, "or they would take me in there. I—I might try the watchhouse, but I can't—I can't. I'll try the bay first, and see what the other world is like, if there is one."

A few tears ran down her cheeks; tears born of hunger and bodily weakness, and she wiped them away with her thin shawl, utterly insufficient as a covering for the poor dress underneath, and damp already with the drizzling rain. A faded dress seemed to be her only other garment, and a battered hat covered her head, under which a quantity of black hair was twisted away anyhow, so long as it was out of the way.

She turned off a right-of-way at Castlereagh street, and sat down on a doorstep to rest, until the stern "Move on" of a passing policeman made her rise and move slowly across the road. To make straight for the bay seemed to be her only thought now, and then she glanced around wearily as she walked towards the Circular Quay.

"Oh! my darling, my darling," she said; "if you could only see me now. Surely you would give me some shelter, my own love. I angered him once, I know; but he would forgive me now, if he knew all I have gone through since I met him last!"

She spoke the words with a fierce passion, that was the keynote of her whole nature, and loitered on her way as though she was yet unwilling to take such a desperate course as she at the time contemplated.

She staggered on through the sloppery streets. She was faint with hunger. A crust of bread and a little tea had been her only food for many days; and she had not broken her fast on this one yet.

She was drowsy and confused now, and scarcely able to distinguish between her fancies and reality. She was wet to the skin, and occupied a long time in her walk. As she moved forward, quite uncertain where she was going, her squalid and miserable appearance attracted some attention from the passers by.

They thought, and not unnaturally, that he had been drinking, for she tottered as she walked, muttering feebly to herself. At length she fell fainting in a corner, and would have slipped to the ground but for the grasp of a policeman who came up at that moment.

"Now then," he said, "hold up, young woman. This won't do, you know. What is the matter with you?"

"Death, I think," she said, recalled to life again by his touch and words. "Let me go, policeman. I can get out of your beat before I die, I dare say."

"Come, no more of this," he said, as she stood up once more, trembling all over, but on her feet again. "No impudence, or I shall have to lock you up. Move on, will you?"

She obeyed the mandate and moved on, and he watched her out of sight, compassionately informing a passer-by who asked what was the matter that he supposed she had been drinking.

Onwards towards Hyde Park the slight form of the girl went amid the throng of the street. She moved slowly until she reached the gate, and unconscious of where she was going, entered mechanically.

"Turned out, like a dog, to die in the cold. Cursed by my father and that woman he married. And all for you, Cecil, all for you! Oh! my darling, if you only knew—if I could only find you."

She began to mutter incoherently to herself as she walked and sometimes staggered in her gait.

"I know I angered him, but he would forgive me. God knows how I have suffered. Turned from my home because I refused to marry a wretch—because I loved my Cecil. And, after a struggle of three weary months for existence, I am kicked from that kennel like a dog to die here."

Her strength was spent, and she sat down under the dripping trees of the park; and it seemed to her that she must pass quietly out of the world in the dreary stupors that came over her.

The form of a young man wrapped in an Ulster overcoat came rapidly along the path in an opposite direction. When he arrived opposite her he stopped.

"What in the name of heaven is this?" he said to himself. "A woman, by Jove! Poor devil!"

He stooped and lifted her up. He shook her roughly. "Come, come, if there is any life left in you, you had better get up out of this. It is no fit place for any living creature to be in such a night as this."

She moaned wearily and staggered to her feet again.

"Yes, yes," she moaned; "I can get on. On, on, and on for ever."

She turned. The light of a gas lamp fell between them both. She cast her eyes towards the young man who stood there, and then suddenly straightened herself up with a half-stifled shriek.

"Cecil, my love! My own—" and he caught her as she fell.

* * *

Merrily the light vessel danced over the blue waters of the smooth Pacific ocean. Cheerily blew the breeze and filled the snowy sails with just enough force to spread them out to the widest, as they forced the noble craft over the snowy-capped billows, which reflected the dancing moonshine and cast it back cheerily as if in laughter and childish play.

Who could think, to gaze upon the calm blue sky and the dancing waters hushed in nature's serenest repose—who could ever think that they could rise in anger fierce and strong—that the gentle zephyrs which fanned them could howl and shriek with the laughter of the fiends, carrying death and destruction before them to the ill-fated vessels which were within their province.

On the poop of a barque which sailed from Sydney on the night the tale opened, sat the young people who met so mysteriously in Hyde Park.

He was on his way to join the ship in which he had taken a passage, when he found the dripping form of Mabel Montford, the one being his heart adored, the one creature his soul had loved or worshipped.

"And you are quite happy now, Mabel?" he asked, tenderly stroking her glittering dark tresses.

"Happy, Cecil?—with you? My love, my life, to be with you always, to be near to you, to hear your voice, is my one my only delight."

Softly the shades of evening fell upon the scene. Calmly rolled the billows of the main.

The young lovers had retired, the watch was set, and the ship moved onwards in her course.

What was that which obscured the stars?—which passed over them a moment, and then leaving all bright again?

The man at the wheel glanced sleepily at the heavens, and noticed a dusky film appearing to rush before his eyes, between him and the stars. It was so slight, so indistinct that after the first moment he did not notice it, and dozed again at the wheel. The watch in the forecastle was fast asleep, and so it passed.

Suddenly an icy breath of air swept across the sea. It rippled the waves, and flapped the topsails heavily. It reached the watch at the forecastle, and the man turned lazily and pulled his coat collar higher above his ears. It reached the man at the wheel, who instinctively looked up at the sky.

The stars were all shut out from view overhead with an ebon blackness.

With a cry of alarm he called the watch. The captain and the crew came rushing on the deck, and, seeing at once the point of affairs, made all haste to take in sail.

Before they could succeed, however, the storm was upon them. With a crash and a shriek like the despairing crying of the damned, the storm demon came down upon the doomed ship.

The frail instruments of man were but poor and weak protection against the enraged elements. Ropes and stays, sails and spars, went down like reeds before the terrible blast, and the ship soon lay rolling in the dreadful sea half water-logged, as the billows tore over her slippery decks.

A giant wave swept the captain overboard, and carried away the wheel and the handle of the rudder. The steering gear gone, the vessel became unmanageable, and rolled a dismal hulk upon the waters.

She was loaded with timber and could not sink. The crew knew that, and made no effort to get sail upon her, simply contenting themselves with taking shelter from the storm where they could get it.

With the night the gale passed and the vessel lay in middle-ocean, her masts and rigging gone, a stump of the mizzen mast alone remaining. She was full of water and wallowed like a log with the sea up to the decks, every wave making a clean breech over her.

When the sea went down and the wind died away, the sun set into a sea of molten gold, which foretold the approach of one of those dreadful calms peculiar to the tropics.

The thirsty sailors crowded around the cabin door, where the mate stood sweeping the horizon with his glass, in hopes of seeing anything which might give him the hope of success.

The storm had carried away the boats and bulged the water casks.

There was not a drop of fresh water in the vessel!

The demon thirst had already began to make himself felt, and the men looked with hot and parched eyes to the officer, to know what to do.

He knew of nothing.

Inside the cabin the lovers sat clasped in each others arms. What to do they knew not. There were a few bottles of lemonade left, barely enough to satisfy them for a day, and this Cecil had concealed so that his darling might keep up in the hopes of success.

Had the crew known of it they would have murdered them.

They lay down under the bulwarks and chewed pieces of canvas and tobacco to keep their mouths moist.

The night passed over and the blazing sun rose in a cloudless sky, over a sea without a ripple on its surface.

Oh! the horrors of that day! The streams of flame seemed to dart down upon the defenceless heads of the seamen as they crowded about the deck, weak and ghastly, their months and tongues swollen and dry with the want of water.

When they spoke it was a mere rattle of the organs of speech, scarcely a definable sound at all. With haggard, despairing eyes they looked in each other's faces and watched the sun go down upon their second day.

And so the night passed.

With the morning a slight breeze ruffled the ocean, and its cool breath fanned the feverish foreheads of the men, and somewhat revived them.

Revived them to madness.

The fierce, glaring, bloodshot eyes looked madly into each others' with a nameless horror which spoke more eloquently than words.

They crowded towards the cabin door and demanded admittance.

Cecil, alarmed at their appearance, refused to let them in.

"Bring out that woman," they yelled hoarsely. "You have water concealed there, and we'll have your blood. Bring her out!"

Affrighted she clung to Cecil. "O, my love, protect me!"

"Do not fear," he said, as he placed extra obstruction against the door; "they shall not harm you."

They tried to burst it in, but their weakened limbs refused to act, and they fell against it in a heap.

They renewed their efforts for a time and then gave up.

All was silent, and the sun had passed the meridian, when Cecil, hearing a wild shout of laughter, looked through a crack in the cabin door.

A horrible sight met hie eyes.

One of the seamen maddened with the agonies of the demon Thirst, had crept behind the mate as he lay on the deck, and knocked his brains out with a piece of iron.

Then he drew his knife and cut the murdered man's throat, completely severing the head from the body.

As the warm blood gurgled and spurted over the deck of the ill-fated barque, the wretch, with a howl of a maniac, pressed his mouth to the body and drank the crimson stream as it flowed.

His comrades saw him, and rushed forward with shrieks of delight.

But he kept them back with his knife, and they struggled and fought like devils until two more of them lay dead upon the deck.

The Hellish blood-feast was more than the watchman in the cabin could bear. He turned away his head and glared out of the stern windows upon the sea.

For two days more did the dreadful emaciated crew of that vessel keep the spark of life within them by the horrible feast of blood, and on the morning of the fifth day, when all was silent, Cecil looked out and saw the last remaining sole survivor stagger about the decks like a drunken man, a wild and distraught maniac, cursing himself and his God in language most dreadful to hear, and blood-curdling to listen to.

Then he sank from excessive weakness and the lovers were left alone.

Their stock of lemonade was all consumed, and death stared them in the face.

The horrible stench from the dead bodies of the murdered sailors was too much to bear, and their very souls sickened with the dreadful odour which filed the air.

Then came the sea birds in flocks around the ship, hovering in circles, attracted by the desolation.

They perched upon the bodies and devoured them bit by bit, and as each piece of rotten flesh was torn away the foetid fumes arose in a dreadful overpowering stench to the sky and seemed to fill the very atmosphere.

Hoping against hope, the lovers dragged out a weary and a dreadful existence in the lone cabin of the water-logged wreck until another day had passed, when they sank on the floor of the little room.

And then they were found at almost the last gasp by the crew of a passing vessel, who had boarded the wreck, and, searching the cabin in the hopes of finding the ship's papers, came upon them lying in each other's arms, unable to speak or move.

Kind and careful treatment soon revived them, and they lived to tell the tale of horrible suffering and woe which filled the days of Mabel's honeymoon.

Warragul Guardian and Buln Buln and Narracan Shire Advocate, Thursday 30 December 1880, holiday supplement page 2