THE HAUNTED CASK.

Waikato Times, Volume VII, Issue 390, 12 November 1874, Page 2

THE HAUNTED CASK.

In this fashion things proceeded for about a week, during which time tbe indefatigable ensign (who, though considerably the youngest of the community, appeared to hare iairly carried hi« election as Master of the Ceremonies) conceived the brilliant idea of adding to the evening amusements what he was pleased to call ' an orchestra between the acts' — or, in other words, a few songs in the intervals of the dances, serving the double purpose of varying the entertainment, nnd giving x brcatlung-time to the le6s practised dancers. The new plan had an immense success. A vast amount of hitherto unsuspected talent wat suddenly brought to light ; and Colonel Footyn Gra\e, a wiry old sabreur who had lost a leg m some forgotten skirmish in the Sikh war, astonished the whole community by his performance of the brave old German song of The Crippled Soldier, which, as he naively remarked, had always struck him as particularly appropriate to himself: A cannon-ball comes flying, And knocks my leg off clear ; Well, where's the use of crying P Wood 'a .cheap enough down here.| One shoe and stocking lesB — tmd so Ho much more money saved, you know, To buy good German beer ! At last there came a day when tbe major spoke out. On a quiet evening, when all was still except the sounds of merry-making on the afler-deck, he espied her a little apart from the dancers, leaning o\er the side in the shadowy splendour of the moonlight, and gozing dienmily into the glittering foam. Now or never! He went straight to her as ho wuuld have marched up to a battery, and asked bravely enough, but with a tightening round his heart, which he had never felt when he threw himself bareheaded among the Sikh tulwars, the question upon wbiob hung the whole of his future life. Bhe must have_ boeu lest than woman had she not been

prepared for such an occurrence ; but, nevertheless, it taied her sorely when it camp. To give no answer was impossible : to answer decisively, m the nutter of her unstrung nerves, was almost equally so. Like a true woman, she essayed to temporise. ' Give me time,' she pleaded, ' only a little timo, to think it over ' • Tune to think it over ! ' echoed tho major's deep voice, •with the faintest tinge of scorn in its tone : ' have you been unconscious of it, then, till now ?' A Dutch foitress, when hard pressed, opens its sluices and inundates the whole scene of oction ; a woman, when driven to extremity, invariably resorts to the same expedient; Mrs Errington burst into tears. 1 You're too hard upon me,' she sobbed, m the tone of a distressed child: 'how can you talk to me like this, when my poor husband has been only three months in his— grave !' (She brought out the last word with an effort, as if it required some thought to recollect whether he had a grave or not.) ' How can you expect mo to think of a Hew love already ? If I were to forget him so soon, I could not cx- ._ joct him to he quiet m his grave ! ' , . , , JMH^^nttrds had barely passed her lips, when tbe air shook explosion from the cabin, followed by a of a scalded hyena — and then the sound of a , fall. i 4 Murder ! ' • Suicide ! ' i 'Boiler burst ! ' 4 Powder-flask 1 ' 'Sprung a leak! - Shouting these and other conjectures, the whole throng rushed pelUmell into the cabin, where a strange light awaited them. But in order to explain all this, we must go back a little. „ „ , Bill Sawyer, like a true Englishman, had never once wavered in his resolution, or ceased to watch for a chance of carrying it out ; but for some time Fate seemed persistently adverse. The covered cask remained securely en- ■ tombed in its sarcophagus of baggage ; and the few flying visits which Bill contrived to pay to the first-class cabin served only to assure him of this unwelcome fact. Could he but have got the cabin to himself for a single quarter of an hour, his brawny arms would have made fight of the intervening barricade ; but this was precisely what ho could never succeed in doing. Seldom enough could he com any plausable pretext for intruding upon the sacred ground ; and even when he did, the coast never seemed to be perfectly ' Too bad, by jingo !' growled the disappointed explorer, as he returned one evening from a fruitless reconnaissance. ' I'm blest if tbere ain't always somebody a-hangin' about that 'ere cabin, without bein' axed.' Mr Sawyer's righteous indignation prebably hindered him from seeing how completely this remark applied to himself; but his shipmates were quicker of apprehension, and greeted it with a roar of laughter that made his ears tingle. In fact, the poor fellow's life bad now become a burden to him, from the unsparing banter of his comrades upon the longdelayed fulfilment of his rash promise. From old Jack Davitt down to little Joe the cabin boy, every one had his fling at Bill. . 'Bill, my hearty, ain't yer gettin' awful thirsty, a-waitm for your liquor so long?' ' Y"ou'd best look sharp, Bill ; if yer don t do the trick ofore we sights Old England, we'll have yer up for par-jerry —blest if we don't!' 1 lell yer what, Bill— you go and drown yerself, and then tb«y'U give yer a swig o' the lush to bring yer round !' 4 Come, boys, you leave Bill alone ; don't yer see he's a-goin' to wait till the last day of the v'yge, and then drink the whole cask at one swig!' And so on by the hour, till poor Bill began to havo serious thoughts of murder or suicide. But, as the good old Russian proverb has it, ' To every man Ins hour, if ho will bub Trait for it ;' aud deliverance came at last to the much-enduring Bill in a very unexpected way. On the very day of the major's proposal, Mrs Erring* ton had suddenly recollected some ravishing article of mourning toilet which she had not yet introduced to the notice of the community' and which (according to the immemorial custom of articles when particularly wanted) turned out to be in the most un-get-at-ablo of her many boxes, the very foundation stone of tbe great pyramid. As a natural consequence, the whole edifice had to be pulled down ; and Mrs Errington's servants, who received strict orders to put the things in their places again forthwith, postponed the execution of the order (as usual) till such time as they should ) have nothing better to do, and left everything in statu quo. Bill — who, having satisfied himielf that all the passengers were on deck as usual, bad stolen in, hopelessly enough, to go through the form of reconnoitring — was not slow to appreciate this astounding gift of fortune. • Talk o' miracles !' muttered the devout adventurer ; •if this ain't one, I'm a Dutchman! Here's a lot o' good liquor a-runnin' to waste, raal unchrist'n like; and here am lan honest sailor, wantin' to make a good use on't ; and here's tbe way opened for me all to once, just like as it was clone o' purpose ! Folk may well say as how there's a providrncc in everything!' With this pious acknowledgement, Bill stepped briskly forward, and had just laid Ins hand upon the long-coveted prize, when suddenly, a craah like the report of a mitrailleuse, the top of the cask flew in shivers, and up from the frothing liquid sprang a human head, gaunt, livid, ghastly, 1 with lack-lustre eyes and grinning teeth, which, in the dim light teemed to gnash as if thirsting for blood. What Bill said or did he could never recollect. According to the subsequent testimony of tbe steward (who was first to arrive on tbe scene of action), ' he tung out as if he ■was a-hailing a ferry-boat across the Channel, and then flopped down as flat as a flounder ! ' At all events, he lay •enseless in the doorway of Mr§ Errington's state-room, half in and half out, just as the tide of passengers came pouring in en masse. ' Well, I declare,' cried Mrs Errington, sobbing with indignation, 'that horrid man has actually been trying to steal the spiritt out of my cask ! ' I promised my poor dear husband that I'd carry his body home to England : but J Ml d nothing about it. for fear of those dreadful sailors \ tnaik ng work about having a dead body on board ; and now iho ensk'i burst with the heat, and that wicked wretch has got a fine fright— and serve him quite right too ! ' So saying, ihe fainted away in the outstretched arms of Major Kyller, who, anticipating some such catastrophe, had skilfully taken up his position beside her. To this doy, the old soldier has not forgotten the incident. 'My wife may look delicate, sir,' he will say, ' but she's not one of your hysterical sort, I can promise you ! She never fainted but once in her whole life, and that was on board of a Bombay •teamer, when' — &0., &cBut however bad Mrs Errington might be, poor Bill Sawyer was infinitely worse. He had indeed ' got a fine fright ' — so fine, in fact, as to keep him under the doctor's hands for the remainder of the voyage. The first act of his convalescence was to take the pledge ; and he is now (to use his own words) ' drawn up high and dry oh shore,' as the landlord of a temperance hotel, in the club -room of which he occasionally figures as a teetotal lecturer, with brilliant success. But he has never forgotten his terrible adventure ; and to this very day (as you can hardly talk with him for half an hour without discovering) he remains firmly convinced that the Enemy of Mankind, for some inscrutible purpose of his own, introduced himself into the fa^al cask with the view of entrapping him, Bill Sawyer, into ' drirkin' some o' him,' and thereby, of course, forfeiting all hopo of ■well-being both here and hereafter. Tbe story of his rash vow, and its supernatural defeat, entertains a wondering circle every night in the parlour of the Teetotallers' Arms ; and the narrator (who, toward the close of his tale, never fails to call attention to the neat little clock on the chimney piece, presented to him, in token of forgiveness, by Mm Major Kyller) invariably wind* up his recital with the same emphatic sentence. ' So then, d'ye lee, my lads, when I cum out o' dock, and was in cruisin' horder again, 1 made a solemn vow as I'd never touch a drop o' liquor no more, to the very end o1o 1 vny Jjorn days, for no consideration whatsomedeaver ; and I wink I may say as I've kef that 'ere vow a trifle better nor kmkiid t'other «»/'