CHAPTER XVIII
In Which I Become Better Acquainted With Phillis Duane
There was little more to be learned, it seemed, about the actual tragedy of the burned steamship. How the fire had been started she could not say. She had been asleep. Her nurse, or ayer awoke her at the height of the stampede of passengers for the deck. Whether the officers and bulk of the crew had been killed by the explosion, or had abandoned the ship and her human freight, she did not know.
The Galland had been some months on the voyage, having circumnavigated the world, when Phillis Duane and her friends boarded her at Calcutta. She had touched at Chinese ports, and again at Tahiti. She was a British tramp steamship and Phillis seemed to think that her home port was Edinburgh. It might be that the lost girl’s friends were Scotch, and that the friends she traveled with were likewise Scotch, and that is why they had selected the ill-fated Galland to get home on.
“Do you suppose that nigger knows?” demanded Captain Bowditch, of Mr. Gates, in a whisper.
“Doubtful if you get anything out of him,” returned the mate.
“Understands English, doesn’t he?” growled the skipper.
“And speaks it. But these Hindoo servants don’t really know anything about the English sahibs they serve. The Britisher governs India in a boiled shirt and evening clothes. He is about as human to the natives as one of their own cast-iron gods. That’s how Johnny Bull has been able to boss the several million of blood-thirsty inhabitants of his colonies. No. The nigger wouldn’t be likely to know anything.”
“But why did he follow the girl to wait on her, then, Mr. Gates?” I asked.
“Because he’s a nigger—an inferior tribe. That’s the nature of ’em.”
I did not believe it. I had never read that the people of Hindoostan were particularly inferior to the whites. And Dao Singh looked to me as though he knew a whole lot more than the ordinary European. I was mistaken if he was not the best educated person aboard the Gullwing at that moment!
But it might be that the Hindoo knew nothing of the cause of the wreck and of what had become of her other passengers and the crew. Unless some other boats had been picked up from the lost Galland, her case was likely to be another of those unexplained tragedies of the deep which fill the columns of our newspapers for a few issues and then are forgotten—so easily forgotten!
The officers and I had held the brief conversation noted above when we had withdrawn out of earshot of the little girl. The cook had brought, her a beaten egg to drink as a “pick-me-up” between breakfast and dinner. When she had finished it she looked around for me again.
“Go on, boy,” said the captain. “Keep her amused. Poor little thing.”
“And encourage her to talk with you, Clint,” advised Mr. Gates. “Put what she says down in your log. If you do that, you may gradually get together a connected story of what and who she is. Such information will be valuable in aiding her to find her friends.”
I thought well of that idea, and promised to do so; though I wondered how the mate knew I kept a log. I had taken notes of my adventures ever since I had been blown out to sea on my little sloop, the Wavecrest; but at this time I did not know what an aid to memory a log—or diary—would be. By the way, a seaman never calls it “logbook;” the daybook of a ship at sea is merely a “log.” One of the most popular magazines published has a correspondence department called “The Logbook,” and that makes the sailor smile!
I had no objection to being attentive to our little passenger. I judged her to be a mighty plucky little girl. Of course, her father had been dead long enough for the first of her grief to have been assuaged before she had sailed from India. And the friends she had sailed with had won her heart; therefore she had not loved them enough to miss them much now.
She had endured privations in the drifting boat remarkably well. She told me of the man that had gone crazy and leaped overboard. She did not seem to know that the men aboard the boat with her had had no food. I began to have a remarkably high opinion of Dao Singh. Yet I knew very well that he had strangled the man I had found dead in the boat and had been unable to throw the heavy body overboard.
There’s a vast difference between the negro race and the Hindoo, I thought, remembering Mr. Gates’ words, “This Dao Singh is a remarkable man, or I am much mistaken.”
Mr. Barney came along and spoke to the little one, and she seemed to like him—as I had—at first sight. Afterward the young second mate talked a little in private with me.
“Mr. Robbins says she takes to you and is willing to talk with you, Webb.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you’re trying to draw out from her her history?”
“I am, sir.”
“It’s a good idea. There may be some difficulty in getting trace of her friends.”
“Well, she sha’n’t suffer, if her friends don’t turn up,” I said, with emphasis. “My mother is rich and she will be glad to take Phillis herself, I have no doubt.”
“That’s a good thing, too,” said Mr. Barney, heartily. “But you understand, my lad, that there may be friends expecting the girl in the Old Country, that she knows nothing about. We shall have to report the case to the British consul at Baltimore, and he will look up her folks—if she has any. In case there should be none, somebody might have to step in to save the child from being sent to an institution—in England, I presume. They would scarcely send her back to India.”
“Not much, sir!” I exclaimed. “They will have to show pretty good grounds for taking her from mother——”
“Why, you don’t know whether your mother will take her or not,” laughed Mr. Barney.
“Yes she will,” I assured him. “She’d love to have a girl like Phillis.”
And I had no fear on that score. Mother couldn’t help but fall in love with such a dear little thing as Phillis Duane. I was glad to see that Phillis seemed fond of me, too. I had never had a sister, and it struck me just then that a sister was what I had missed all my life!
We were getting on fine together and she was chattering to me just as though she had known me for years, when I spied a figure coming waveringly down the deck from the forward house.
“It’s poor Dao Singh!” exclaimed Phillis. And then she called to him in her sweet voice; but what she said none of us could understand as it was in his own tongue.
He glided rather than walked along the deck. Somehow he had obtained clean garments; and he had washed his turban. Altogether he looked very neat and trim. But he was very weak and cadaverous. That Hindoo had come pretty near starving to death, and no mistake.
When he had spoken to the girl in reply, bowing low before her, he turned quickly to me. I was not only astonished, but I felt mighty foolish when he dropped gracefully on his knees and touched the deck lightly with his forehead right at my feet.
“Dao Singh is the servant of Webb Sahib,” he said, softly.
“For the love of Mike, get up!” I gasped, and I heard Thankful Polk giggling behind me, while Mr. Barney laughed outright. “You don’t want to kneel to me.”
Singh arose and stood, with dignity, before me.
“Webb Sahib has but to command,” he said, quietly. “He is the friend and protector of Her Innocence,” indicating Phillis with a scarcely perceptible gesture. “His word is law to Dao Singh.”
“All right, if that is so,” I said, glad that he had spoken too low for anybody else to hear. “If my word’s law, just you treat me with a little less deference. I’m only a man before the mast on this ship, and it won’t do to be kowtowing to me and treating me as you do the Memsahib. That’s all right for her, Dao Singh; but I’m not used to it.”
“It is as the Sahib pleases,” he replied, gravely. “He has but to command.”
I began to wonder if a Hindoo, who was so enthusiastically my friend, might not prove to be something of a nuisance in the end!