In Kedars Tents | Page 7

be known as a journalist of ability. They
talked on indifferent topics for some time. Then the new-comer said
jerkily:
'Heard the news?'
'No,' answered Conyngham.
'Alfred Pleydell--young fellow who resisted the Chartist rioters at
Durham--died yesterday morning.' Frederick Conyngham had placed
himself in front of Horner, who was still seated in the low chair by the

fire. He found Horner's toe with his heel.
'Is that so?' he said gravely. 'Then I'm off.'
'What do you mean?' asked the journalist with a quick look--the man
had the manner of a ferret.
'Nothing, only I'm off, that's all, old man. And I cannot ask you to stay
this evening, you understand, because I have to pack.'
He turned slowly on Horner, who had recovered himself, but still had
his hand over his face.
'Got any money, Geoff?' he asked.
'Yes, I have twenty pounds if you want it,' answered the other in a
hoarse voice.
'I do want it--badly.'
The journalist had taken up his hat and stick. He moved slowly towards
the door, and, there pausing, saw Horner pass the bank-notes to
Conyngham.
'You had better go too,' said the Irishman. 'You two are going in the
same direction, I know.'
Horner rose, and, half laughing, Conyngham pushed him towards the
door.
'See him home, Blake,' he said. 'Horner has the blues to-night.'
CHAPTER III.
LIKE SHIPS UPON THE SEA.

'No one can be more wise than destiny.'

'What are we waiting for? why, two more passengers--grand ladies as
they tell me--and the captain has gone ashore to fetch them,' the first
mate of the 'Granville' barque, of London, made answer to Frederick
Conyngham, and he breathed on his fingers as he spoke, for the
north-west wind was blowing across the plains of the Medoc, and the
sun had just set behind the smoke of Bordeaux.
The 'Granville' was lying at anchor in the middle of the Garonne river,
having safely discharged her deck cargo of empty claret casks and
landed a certain number of passengers. There are few colder spots on
the Continent than the sunny town of Bordeaux when the west wind
blows from Atlantic wastes in winter time. A fine powder of snow
scudded across the flat land, which presented a bleak brown face,
patched here and there with white. There were two more passengers on
board the 'Granville,' crouching in the cabin--two French gentlemen
who had taken passage from London to Algeciras in Spain, on their
way to Algiers.
Conyngham, with characteristic good-nature, had made himself so
entirely at home on board the Mediterranean trader that his presence
was equally welcomed in the forecastle and the captain's cabin. Even
the first mate, his present interlocutor, a grim man given to muttered
abuse of his calling and a pious pessimism in respect to human nature,
gradually thawed under the influence of so cheerful an acceptance of
heavy weather and a clumsy deck cargo.
'The ladies will be less trouble than the empty casks, at all events,' said
Conyngham, 'because they will keep below.'
The sailor shook his head forebodingly and took an heroic pinch of
snuff.
'One's as capable of carrying mischief as the other,' he muttered in the
bigoted voice of a married teetotaller.
The ship was ready for sea, and this mariner's spirit was ever uneasy
and restless till the anchor was on deck and the hawser stowed.

'There's a boat leaving the quay now,' he added. 'Seems she's lumbered
up forr'ard wi' women's hamper.'
And indeed the black form of a skiff so laden could be seen
approaching through the driving snow and gloom. The mate called to
the steward to come on deck, and this bearded servitor of dames
emerged from the galley with uprolled sleeves and a fine contempt for
cold winds. A boy went forward with a coil of rope on his arm, for the
tide was running hard and the Garonne is no ladies' pleasure stream. It
is not an easy matter to board a ship in mid-current when tide and wind
are at variance, and the fingers so cold that a rope slips through them
like a log-line. The 'Granville,' having still on board her cargo of coals
for Algeciras, lay low in the water with both her anchors out and the
tide singing round her old- fashioned hempen hawsers.
'Now see ye throw a clear rope,' shouted the mate to the boy who had
gone forward. The proximity of the land and the approach of women--
a bete noire no less dreaded--seemed to flurry the brined spirit of the
Granville's' mate.
Perhaps the knowledge that the end of a rope, not judged clear, would
inevitably be applied to his own person, shook the nerve of the boy on
the forecastle--perhaps his hands were cold and his faculties benumbed.
He