away, away over the wide waters; farewell, a long, a last farewell to the civilized world! coldstream’s parting with lawrence is over; both felt that they should never look on each other’s face on this side the grave, but that they should meet on the other side. the breeze fills out the swelling sails; the vessel bounds over the waves. the smell of the sea, the glitter on the waters, the sense of having only the blue sky above, exercised a sensible influence on both the coldstreams. a slight tinge of colour came to oscar’s pale, thin cheeks, and io’s dark eyes brightened with something like pleasure.
“it is nice to be again on the free billows,” she said; and she mentally added, “these so-called black waters are wondrously blue.”
there were other convicts on board besides coldstream, but with most of them no communication could be held, such a diversity of tongues is found in the vast extent of india. there were, however, one burmese man, and a woman who was a bengali. some knowledge of the language of the latter io had picked up during her weary stay in calcutta.
the burmese looked with curiosity on the fair, youthful lady, bound, like himself, to the andaman islands. oscar heard the man muttering to himself, “i wonder what bad thing she has done? she doesn’t look like one of our sort.”
“the lady has done nothing bad,” said coldstream; “she only goes into exile because she will not desert her husband.”
“my boy’s mother is not like that,” observed the burmese with a gloomy smile; “she would never go across the black waters for me, though it was through her that i got into all this trouble.”
“what did you do?” asked oscar, who saw that the manly-looking fellow seemed inclined for conversation.
“a rascally mussulman pulled off the veil of my boy’s mother. i was not going to stand that, so i stuck my knife into him. but he did not die,” added the burmese.
“are you not glad that he did not die?” asked oscar.
“not i,” was the fierce reply. “i would as soon be hanged as sent across the black waters. if the thing came over again, i’d do just the same as i did.”
io, in the meantime, had gone up to the bengali woman, who, in her soiled sari, was crouching on the deck in an attitude of hopeless dejection.
io made the most of her little stock of bengali; her gentle, winning manner went further than her words. she at length made the convict look up, and, after a considerable time, drew from her something like the following tale:—
“the children’s father5 did not love me. he wanted a boy, and only girls came—one, two, three, four girls! the last was very little; i could carry her in my hand—like that. i could give her no nourishment; baby was thin—you could count all her bones. she cried all day and all night. baby’s father was angry at the crying; he said he would throw her into the ganges. so i put her under water; and a sahib saw it, and gave me into the charge of the sepoys. if i had put a little poison into baby’s mouth, no one would have known anything about it.”
“how horrible!” exclaimed io, intuitively drawing back. “how could you hurt your own baby?”
“i did not hurt her; i put her to rest,” said the woman, who was utterly unconscious of having committed a sin.
io went and compared notes with her husband, who had had a long talk with the burmese convict.
“neither of these poor creatures has any sense of the heinousness of their guilt,” observed oscar. “the man acted from an idea of honour; the woman thought it no cruelty to still the wailings of a miserable, unwelcomed babe.”
“o oscar, if these be specimens of our future companions in banishment, you have a grand, a glorious work before you!”
the same thought had flashed across the mind of coldstream. was it not possible that the lord was indeed guiding by his eye one unworthy of the least of all his mercies, and guiding to a position of greater usefulness than coldstream had ever occupied before?
the coldstreams, during the rest of the voyage, devoted much time to teaching their convict companions, and, both with burmese and bengali, the seed of the word appeared to fall into ground softened by sorrow. poor lachmi, who had been down-trodden by man, and terrified by legends regarding demon-like deities, clung to the thought that there was one religion of love. the burmese received the truth in simplicity, and rejoiced to hear that there was one who would stand his friend, though the world had cast him off. nor was this all. coldstream found ready listeners in the lascars who manned the vessel, and who had never before had any one to speak to them of a saviour. the captain, a rough, honest englishman, watched with surprise the quiet but earnest work which was turning his ship into a floating bethel.
“i don’t know how such as you ever found your way into a penal settlement,” observed captain partridge to coldstream on the evening before they landed. “i think i’ve a jonah on board.”
“one brought from lower depths than ever was jonah,” was oscar’s reply.
“and going to preach to worse sinners than those of old nineveh,” said the captain. “i see that you’ve brought your gourd with you,” he added, as he glanced at io, who was standing gazing in the direction of the land from which “the spicy breezes” were already wafted over the ocean.
“god grant that i may not love her too well or lose her too early,” thought coldstream; “she is all that is left to me upon earth.”
