Chapter XVII
How the Duncan Came to Be at New Zealand

It would be futile to attempt to depict the feelings of Glenarvan and his companions when the music of Scotland fell on their ears. By the time they stepped on Duncan’s deck, the piper, blowing his bagpipes, was playing the Malcolm clan’s pibroch, and vigorous “Hurrahs!” saluted the laird’s return.

Glenarvan, John Mangles, Paganel, Robert, and even the Major, all cried and embraced one another. At first they were all delirious with joy. The geographer was absolutely mad. He frolicked about, and aimed his inseparable telescope at the remaining canoes that were returning to the coast.

But at the sight of Glenarvan and his companions, their ragged clothes, haggard features, and marks of horrible suffering, the yacht’s crew interrupted his demonstrations. It was ghosts who came back on board, and not those bold and brilliant travellers who had set out with with such hope on the track of the castaways three months before. Luck, chance alone, had brought them back to this ship, which they no longer expected to see again! And in what emaciated and exhausted condition!

But before thinking of his exhaustion, or the pressing needs of hunger and thirst, Glenarvan asked Tom Austin how he came to be here.

Why was the Duncan off Point Lottin on the coast of New Zealand? How was she not in the hands of Ben Joyce? By what providential destiny had God brought her across the path of the fugitives?

“Why?” “How?” “For what reason?” Tom Austin was bombarded with questions from all sides. The old sailor did not know who to listen to. He therefore resolved to listen only to Lord Glenarvan, and to answer only to him.

“But the convicts? asked Glenarvan. “What have you done with the convicts?”

“The convicts?” asked Tom Austin in the tone of a man who does not understand a question.

“Yes! The wretches who attacked the yacht?”

“Which yacht?” asked Tom Austin. “Your Honour’s yacht?”

“But yes, Tom! The Duncan, and Ben Joyce who came on board?”

“I do not know any Ben Joyce; I’ve never seen him,” said Austin.

“Never?” cried Glenarvan, stupefied by the old sailor’s replies. “So, will you tell me, Tom, why the Duncan is cruising right now off the shores of New Zealand?”

If Glenarvan, Lady Helena, Miss Grant, Paganel, the Major, Robert, John Mangles, Olbinett, Mulrady, and Wilson, did not understand the old sailor’s astonishment, what was their amazement when Tom replied in a calm voice “But the Duncan is here by Your Honour’s order.”

“By my orders?” exclaimed Glenarvan.

“Yes, My Lord. I only complied with your instructions contained in your letter of January 14^th.”

“My letter? My letter?” exclaimed Glenarvan.

At that moment, the ten travellers surrounded Tom Austin and stared at him. The letter dated at Snowy River had reached the Duncan?

“Come,” said Glenarvan; “Explain it to us, for I think I’m dreaming. Did you receive a letter, Tom?”

“Yes, a letter from Your Honour.”

“In Melbourne?”

“In Melbourne, when I was finishing repairing the damage.”

“And this letter?”

“It was not written by your hand, but signed by you, My Lord.”

“That’s the letter. My letter was brought to you by a convict named Ben Joyce.”

“No, by a sailor named Ayrton, quartermaster of the Britannia.”

“Yes! Ayrton, Ben Joyce, it’s the same person. Well! What did this letter say?”

“She gave me the order to leave Melbourne without delay, and come to the eastern shores of—”

“Australia!” exclaimed Glenarvan with a vehemence that disconcerted the old sailor.

“Australia?” repeated Tom, his eyes widening. “No! Of New Zealand!”

“Of Australia, Tom! Of Australia!” said all of Glenarvan’s companions with one voice.

Austin felt a wave a dizziness. Glenarvan spoke with such assurance that he feared he had been mistaken in reading this letter. He, the faithful and exact sailor, could he have made such a mistake? He flushed, he was troubled.

“It’s all right, Tom,” said Lady Helena, “Providence wanted—”

“No, Madame, forgive me,” said old Tom. “No! It is not possible! I was not mistaken! Ayrton read the letter like me, and it was he who wanted to bring us back to the Australian coast!”

“Ayrton?” exclaimed Glenarvan.

“Himself! He told me it was a mistake, that you would meet me at Twofold Bay!”

“Do you have the letter, Tom?” asked the Major, intrigued to the highest degree.

“Yes, Mr. MacNabbs,” Austin replied. “I’ll go get it.”

Austin ran to his forecastle cabin. During the moment of his absence, they looked at each other, they were silent, except the Major, who crossed his arms, and fixed his gaze on Paganel.

“For example, we must admit, Paganel, that it would be a bit much!”

“Huh?” said the geographer, who, with his back bowed and the glasses on his forehead, looked like a gigantic question mark.

Austin came back. He held in his hand the letter written by Paganel, and signed by Glenarvan.

“Read it, Your Honour,” said the old sailor. Glenarvan took the letter and read.

Order to Tom Austin to sail without delay and to bring the Duncan by 37° of latitude to the eastern coast of New Zealand …

“New Zealand!” Paganel leapt up and he grabbed the letter from Glenarvan’s hands, rubbed his eyes, adjusted his glasses to his nose, and read in his turn.

“New Zealand!” He said with an incredulous emphasis, as the letter dropped from his fingers.

At that moment he felt a hand lean on his shoulder. He straightened up and saw himself face to face with the Major.

“Come, my brave Paganel,” said MacNabbs gravely. “We’re just glad you did not send the Duncan to Cochinchina!”¹

This joke finished the poor geographer. The entire crew of the yacht broke out in a Homeric laugh. Paganel ran about like like a madman. He grabbed at his head with both hands, tearing at his hair. He didn’t know where to go, or what to do. He descended by the ladder from the poop, mechanically; he paced the deck, staggering back and forth, aimlessly. He went up onto the forecastle. There, his feet got tangled in a bundle of ropes. He stumbled. His hands grabbed for a rope at random.

A terrible detonation broke out. The cannon on the forecastle had fired, peppering the calm waves of a volley of grape shot. The unfortunate Paganel had grabbed the lanyard of the still loaded gun, and the hammer had struck the primer. Hence this thunderclap. The geographer was knocked down the forecastle ladder and disappeared through the hatch into the crew’s quarters.

The surprise of the explosion was followed by a cry of fear. Everyone thought something terrible had happened. Ten sailors rushed down between decks and pulled Paganel up, bent in two. The geographer did not speak.

His long body was carried onto the poop. The companions of the brave Frenchman were desperate. The Major, always the physician in an emergency, started to remove the unfortunate Paganel’s clothes in order to dress his wounds. But scarcely had he laid his hands on the dying man, than the latter sat up, as if he had been hit with an electric shock.

“Never! Never!” he exclaimed, and he pulled his ragged clothes back around himself, and buttoned them up with singular vivacity.

“But, Paganel!” said the Major.

“No! I tell you!”

“I have to see—”

“You will not see!”

“You may have broken—” said MacNabbs.

“Yes,” said Paganel, climbing back onto his long legs. “But what I have broken, the carpenter will mend!”

“What?”

“The companionway railing, which broke in my fall!”

At this reply, the bursts of laughter began again. This reply had reassured all of the worthy Paganel’s friends that had come out safe and sound from his adventure with the forecastle cannon.

“In any case,” thought the Major. “This is a strangely prudish geographer!”

However, Paganel, recovering from his great agitation, had yet to answer a question he could not avoid.

“Now, Paganel,” said Glenarvan. “Tell me truly. I recognize that your distraction was providential. Certainly, without you, the Duncan would have fallen into the hands of the convicts; without you, we would have been overtaken by the Māori! But, for God’s sake, tell me what strange association of ideas, what supernatural aberration of mind, led you to write ‘New Zealand’ for ‘Australia’?”

“Eh! Parbleu!” exclaimed Paganel, “It’s—”

But at that moment, his eyes fell on Robert and Mary Grant, and he stopped short; then he answered “What do you want, my dear Glenarvan? I am a fool, a fool, an incorrigible being, and I will die in the skin of the most famously distracted—”

“Unless you get skinned,” said the Major.

“Get skinned!” exclaimed the geographer furiously. “Is this an allusion—?”

“An allusion to what, Paganel?” asked MacNabbs in his quiet voice.

Paganel didn’t say, and the matter was dropped. The mystery of the Duncan’s presence was explained. The travellers, so miraculously saved, thought only of returning to their comfortable cabins, and breakfast.

Leaving Lady Helena and Mary Grant, the Major, Paganel, and Robert to enter the poop, Glenarvan and John Mangles held back with Tom Austin. They still wanted to question him.

“Now, old Tom,” said Glenarvan. “Answer me. Did not this order to cruise off the coasts of New Zealand seem strange to you?”

“Yes, Your Honour,” said Austin. “I was very surprised, but I am not used to questioning the orders I receive, and I obeyed. Could I do otherwise? If, by not following your instructions to the letter, a catastrophe had occurred, would I not have been guilty? Would you have done otherwise, Captain?”

“No, Tom,” said John Mangles.

“But what did you think?” asked Glenarvan.

“I thought, Your Honour, that in the interest of Harry Grant, you had to go where you told me to go. I thought that, as a result of new circumstances, a ship was to transport you to New Zealand, and that I should wait for you on the east coast of the island. Moreover, leaving Melbourne, I kept our destination a secret, and the crew knew it only when we were at sea, when the lands of Australia had already disappeared from our sight. But then an incident happened on board, which made me very perplexed.”

“What do you mean, Tom?” asked Glenarvan.

“I mean,” said Tom Austin, “when the quartermaster Ayrton learned, the day after the departure, of the Duncan’s destination—”

“Ayrton!” exclaimed Glenarvan. “So is he on board?”

“Yes, Your Honour.”

“Ayrton, here!” repeated Glenarvan, looking at John Mangles.

“God willed it!” said the young captain.

In an instant, quick as lightning, the conduct of Ayrton, his long prepared betrayal, the injury of Glenarvan, the stabbing of Mulrady, the miseries of the expedition trapped in the swamps of the Snowy, the whole wretched past appeared before the eyes of these two men. And now, by the oddest combination of circumstances, the convict was in their power.

“Where is he?” asked Glenarvan quickly.

“In a cabin of the forecastle,” replied Tom Austin, “and kept under guard.”

“Why this imprisonment?”

“Because when Ayrton saw that the yacht was sailing for New Zealand, he got furious; because he wanted to force me to change the direction of the ship; because he threatened me; because he finally attempted to incite my men to mutiny. I understood that he was a dangerous individual, and I had to take precautionary measures against him.”

“And since that time?”

“Since that time he has remained in his cabin, without trying to get out of it.”

“Good, Tom.”

At that moment Glenarvan and John Mangles were summoned to the cabin. The breakfast, which they so urgently needed, was prepared. They took their places at the table in the saloon and did not speak of Ayrton.

But when the meal was over, when the guests, refreshed and restored, were assembled on deck, Glenarvan informed them of the presence of the quartermaster on board. At the same time, he announced his intention to bring him before them.

“May I excuse myself from attending this interrogation?” asked Lady Helena. “I confess, my dear Edward, that the sight of this unfortunate man would be extremely painful to me.”

“It’s a confrontation, Helena,” Lord Glenarvan replied. “Stay, please. Ben Joyce must be face to face with all his victims!”

Lady Helena stayed for this confrontation. She and Mary Grant took seats beside Lord Glenarvan. Around them ranged the Major, Paganel, John Mangles, Robert, Wilson, Mulrady, and Olbinett: all those so seriously harmed by the betrayal of the convict. The crew of the yacht, without yet understanding the gravity of this scene, kept a profound silence.

“Bring Ayrton,” said Glenarvan.

1. ”Cochinchina” is a region in southern Vietnam.