night would have come down, and if the weather did not clear,
the blackness would be that of the tomb. What would the _Ruby_
do? Remain hove-to and wait for moonlight or for daybreak to
seek for me? A fragment of comfort I found in remembering that
the wreck’s position would be known to Captain Bow and his
mates, so that their search for me, if they searched at all,
ought not to prove fruitless; though to be sure much would
depend upon the drift of the hulk. Presently, fearing that
there might be no water or provisions on board, I was seized
with a sudden thirst, bred by the mere apprehension that I
might come to want a drink. There was still light enough to
enable me to search the interior, and now I suppose something
of my manhood must have returned to me, for I made up my mind
to waste no moment of the precious remaining time of day in
imaginations of horror and of death and in dreams of desperate
despondency. I went on my hands and knees to the hatch, lest
if I stood up I should be knocked down by the abrupt rolling
of the craft, and entered the cabin. On deck all was naked and
sea-swept from the taffrail to the “eyes,” and if there were
aught of drink or of food to be had it must be sought below. I
recollected that one of the forward berths or cabins, which the
second mate and I had looked into, had shown in the gloom as a
sort of pantry; that is to say, in peering over my companion’s
shoulders, I had caught a glimpse of crockery on shelves, the
outlines of jars and so forth. But the inspection had been very
swift, scarce more than a glance. I made for this cabin now,
very well remembering that it was the last of a row of three
or four on the starboard side. I opened the door, and secured
it by its hook to the bulkhead that I might see, and after
rummaging a little I found a cask of ship’s bread, a small cask
(like a harness cask) a quarter full of raw pickled pork, a
jar of vinegar, two large jars of red wine, and best of all,
a small barrel about half full of fresh water, slung against
the bulkhead, with a little wooden tap fixed in it, for the
convenience as I supposed of drawing for cabin use. There were
other articles of food, such as flour, pickles, dried fruit,
and so on; the catalogue would be tedious, nor does my memory
carry it.
I poured some wine into a tin pannikin, and found it a very
palatable, sound claret. I mixed me a draught with cold
water, and ate a biscuit with a little slice of some kind of
salt sausage, of which there lay a lump in a dish, and found
myself extraordinarily refreshed. I cannot tell you indeed
how comforted I was by this discovery of provisions and fresh
water, for now I guessed that if the weather did not drown the
wreck, I might be able to support life on board of her until
the _Ruby_ took me off, which I counted upon happening that
night if the moon shone, or most certainly next morning at
latest. My heart however sank afresh when I regained the deck.
The sudden change from the life, the cheerfulness, the security
of the Indiaman, to _this_—“Oh, my God! my God!” I remember
exclaiming as I sank down under the lee of the fragment of
bulwark, with a wild look around into the thickness and along
the spray-darkened planks of the heaving and groaning derelict.
The loneliness of it! no sounds save the dismal crying of
the wind sweeping on high through the atmosphere, and the
ceaseless seething and hissing of the dark-green frothing seas
swiftly chasing one another out of sight past the wall of
vapour that circled the wreck, with the blank and blinding mist
itself to tighten as with a sensible ligature into unbearable
concentration the dreadful sense of solitude in my soul.
Slowly the wind softened down, very gradually the seas sank,
and their worrying note of snarling melted into a gentler tone
of fountain-like creaming. But the vapour still filled the air,
and so thick did it hang that, though by my watch I knew it to
be the hour of sundown, I was unable to detect the least tinge
of hectic anywhere, no faintest revelation of the fiery scarlet
light which I knew must be suffusing the clear heavens down
to the easternmost confines above this maddening blindness of
mist.
Then came the blackness of the night. So unspeakably deep a
dye it was that you would have thought every luminary above
had been extinguished, and that the earth hung motionless in
the sunless opacity of chaos out of which it had been called
into being. The hours passed. I held my seat on the deck with
my back against a bulwark stanchion. It was a warm night with
a character as of the heat of steam owing to the moisture
that loaded and thickened the atmosphere. Sometimes I dozed,
repeatedly starting from a snatch of uneasy slumber to open
my eyes with ever-recurring horror and astonishment upon the
blackness. Gleams of the sea-fire shot out fitfully at times
from the sides of the wreck, and there was nothing else for the
sight to rest upon. At midnight it was blowing a small breeze
of wind and the sea running gently—at midnight I mean as I
could best reckon; but the darkness remained unchanged, and I
might know that the fog was still thick about me by no dimmest
spectre of moon or star showing.
I then slept, and soundly too, for two or three hours, and when
I awoke it was daylight, the sea clear to the horizon, the sky
a soft liquid blue with masses of white vaporous cloud hanging
under it like giant bursts of steam, and the sun shining
with a sort of misty splendour some degree or two above the
sea-line. There was a pleasant air blowing out of the north,
with power to wrinkle the water and no more. My limbs were so
cramped that for a long while I was incapable of rising; when
at last my legs had recovered their power I stood erect and
swept the ocean with my eyes. But the light blue surface went
in undulations naked to the bend of the heavens on all sides.
I looked and looked again, but to no purpose. I strained my
sight till an intolerable torment in my eyeballs forced me to
close my lids. There was nothing in view. I very well remember
falling on my knees and grovelling upon the deck in the anguish
of my spirit. I had so surely counted on daylight exhibiting
the _Ruby_ somewhere within the circle which enclosed me that
the disappointment which came out of the bald vacancy of the
ocean struck me down like a blow from a hammer. Presently I
lifted up my head and regained my feet, and feeling thirsty
moved with a tread of lead to the yawning hatch, sending the
most passionate, yearning glances seaward as I walked, and
halting again and again to the vision of some imagination of
break in the continuity of the gleaming girdle—some delicate
shoulder of remote cloud, some imaginary speck which dissolved
upon the blue air whilst my gaze was on it.
I mixed some wine and water, and made a light repast off
biscuit and a piece of Dutch cheese that was on the shelf. I
then thought I would look into the cabins for a chair to sit
upon on deck, for a mattress to lie upon, for something also
that might make me a little awning, and pushed open the door
of the berth immediately facing the pantry, as I may call
it. The wreck was rolling very lightly, and her decks were
now as easy to step as the Indiaman’s. This berth contained
a bunk and bedding, a sailor’s chest, some clothes hanging
against the bulkhead, but nothing to serve my turn. The next
was similarly furnished, saving that here I took notice that a
small quantity of wearing apparel lay about as though scattered
in a hurry, and that the lid of a great box, painted a dark
green with the letter D in white upon it, had been split open
as though the contents were to be rifled, or as though the lock
had resisted and there had been no time to coax it save by a
chopper. I passed into a third cabin. This had some comfort of
equipment in the shape of shelves and a chest of drawers, and
had doubtless been the commander’s. There was a very handsome
telescope on brackets, a few books, a quadrant, a large silver
timepiece, a small compass and one or two other matters of a
like sort upon a little table fitted by hinges in a corner;
there were three chests in a row with a litter of boots and
shoes, a soft hat or two, a large handsome cloak costly with
fur, and so forth, strewed about the deck.
I was looking with wonder at these articles when my eye
was taken by something bright near the smallest of the
three chests. I picked it up; it was an English sovereign.
Others lay about as though a handful had been clutched and
dropped—here being the same manifestations of terrified hurry
as, it seemed to me, I witnessed in the other cabins. The lid
of the small chest was split in halves, and the chopper that
had seemingly been wielded rested against the side of the
box. A massive padlock was still in the staples. I lifted the
half of the lid and was greatly astonished by the sight of
a quantity of gold pieces lying in divisions of a tray that
fitted the upper part of the chest. Each division contained
coins of various nations. They were all gold pieces—English,
Portuguese, Brazilian and coins of the United States. I prised
open the padlocked part of the lid and seized the tray to lift
it that I might observe what lay underneath. But the weight of
gold in it was so great that I had to exert my utmost strength
to raise one end of the tray on to the edge of the box; which
done, I was able to slide it along till the bottom of the box
was revealed.
The sight of the gold had filled me with expectations of
beholding some amazing treasure under the tray. What I there
saw was a heap of rough, brick-shaped stuff of a dull, rusty,
reddish tint. I grasped a lump, and though I had never seen
gold in that form before, I was satisfied by the extraordinary
weight of the piece I held that all those coarse, rough,
dull-coloured bricks were of the most precious of metals. I
slided the tray back to its place and let fall the two halves
of the lid with another look around me for any article that
might be useful to me on deck. The excitement kindled by the
spectacle of the gold rapidly died away. I dully mused on it,
so to speak, whilst my eye roamed, languidly speculating about
it, with a strange indifference in my thoughts, concluding
that it represented the privateersman’s sorted plunder; that
in all likelihood when the rush had been made to the boats one
or more had split open this chest to fill their pockets, but
had been obliged to fly for their lives ere they could find
time for more than a scrambling clutch at the tray. But it was
the contents no doubt of this chest—if indeed this chest held
all the treasure of the buccaneer—that was indicated by the
writer of the letter in the concluding line of it, the closing
words of which had been found illegible by the young fellow who
translated the missive.
I put the telescope under my arm and passed into the cabin,
and found a small chair near the arms rack, and near it upon
the deck lay a great cotton umbrella, grimy and wet with the
saturation of the cabin. I took it up thankfully and carried it
with the chair up the steps. There was a great plenty of ropes’
ends knocking bout. I cut a piece and unlaid the strands, and
securing the umbrella to a stanchion, sat down on the chair
under it; and indeed without some such shelter the deck would
have been insupportable, for low as the sun still was in the
east, his fires were already roasting, and I well knew what
sort of temperature was to be expected as he floated higher,
leaving my form with a small blotch of southern shadow only
yoked to it.
I passed the morning in sweeping the horizon with the
telescope. It was a noble glass—a piece of plunder, with an
inscription that represented it as a gift from the officers of
a vessel to her commander; I forget the names, but recollect
they were English. The placidity of the day dreadfully
disheartened me. There was but little weight in the languid
air to heave the _Ruby_ or any other vessel into view. The sea
under the sun was like brand new tin for the dazzle of it, and
as the morning advanced the heavy, vaporous clouds of daybreak
melted out into curls and wisps like to the crescent moon, with
a clear sky rising a pale blue from the horizon to overhead to
where it swam into the brassy glory which flooded the central
heavens. Weary of sitting, and exhausted by looking, I put down
the glass and went to the main hatch with the idea of making
out what water there was in the hold. The pumps were gone and
the wells of them sank like black shafts into the deck. But
whatever there was of water in the hulk lay so low that I
could not catch so much as a gleam of it. There was some light
cargo in the hold—light as I reckoned by the sit of the wreck
upon the water; chiefly white wooden cases, with here and there
canvas bales; but whatever might have been the commodities
there was not much of them, at least amidships, down into which
I stood peering.
I then walked on to the forecastle and lifted the hatch-cover.
This interior looked to have been used by the people of _La
Mulette_ as a sort of sail-locker. The bulkhead extended but a
very short distance abaft the hatch, and the deck was stowed
with rolls of sails, coils of spare rigging, hawsers, tackle
and so forth. I put my head into the aperture and took a long
and careful survey of the interior, for the mate and I had not
explored this part of the brig, and it was possible, I thought,
I might find the bodies of the three survivors here. But there
was nothing whatever to be witnessed in that way; so I closed
the hatch again and went aft.
The day passed, the light breeze lingered, but it brought
nothing into sight. I would think as I sent my glance along the
naked, sea-swept, desolate deck, gaunt and skeleton-like, with
its ragged exhibition of splintered plank and crushed bulwark,
that had there been a mast left in the hull I might from the
summit of it be able to see the _Ruby_, whose topmast cloths
lay sunk behind the horizon to the eyes which I levelled from
the low side of the wreck. “Oh!” I would cry aloud, “if I could
but be sure that she was near me though hidden!” Maddening as
the expectation might have been which the sight of her afar
would have raised in me, yet the mere having her in view,
no matter how dim, deceptive a speck she proved, would have
taken a deal of the bitterness, the heart-subduing feeling of
hopelessness out of the wild and awful sense of desolation that
possessed me.
The sun sank; with the telescope trembling in my hands I
made a slow, painful circle of the ocean whilst the western
magnificence lay upon it, and then let fall the glass and fell
into the chair, and with bowed head and tightly-folded arms,
and eyes closed to mitigate by the shadowing of the lids the
anguish of the fires which despair had kindled in them—for
my heart was parched, no relief of tears came to me—I waited
for the darkness of a second night to settle down upon the
wreck. But on this day the gloom fell with the brilliance of
stars, and some time after eight the moon rose, a moist, purple
shield, at whose coming the light draught of wind died out
and the ocean flattened into a breathless, polished surface.
When presently the moon had soared and whitened, the sea
looked as wide again as it was to the showering of her light,
brimming the atmosphere with a delicate silver haze; indeed
there went a shadowing round about its confines to the shaft
of moonlight on the water that made it seem hollow where the
wreck lay, and it was like floating in the vastness of the
firmament that bent over it to glance over the side of the hull
and see the mirror-like breast studded with reflections of the
larger stars, and to follow the shadow of the deep, curled at
the extremities as it seemed, to the tropic astral dust that
twinkled there like dew trembling to the breath of a summer
night wind.
I had brought up some blankets from below and these I made
a kind of mattress of under the shelter of the umbrella. It
was about ten o’clock, I think, when I threw myself down
upon them. A pleasant breeze was then blowing directly along
the wake of moonlight, and the water was rippling like the
murmurs of a brook against the sides of the pale, silent,
gently-rolling hull. I lay awake for a long time listening
to this cool, refreshing, tinkling sound of running ripples,
with a mind somewhat weakened by my distress. Indeed, many
thoughts wearing a complexion of delirium passed through my
head with several phantasies which must have frightened me as
a menace of madness had my wits been equal to the significance
of them. For example, I can recall seeing, as I believed, the
_Ruby_ floating up towards the wreck out of the western gloom,
luminous as a snow-clad iceberg, with the soft splendour of
the moonshine on her canvas; I recollect this, I say, and that
I laughed quietly at the thought of her approach, as though
I would ridicule myself for the fears which had been upon me
throughout the day; then of jumping up in a sudden transport
and passion of delight; when the vision instantly vanished;
whereupon a violent fit of trembling seized me, and I sank down
again upon the blankets groaning. But the agitation did not
linger; some fresh deception of the brain would occur and win
my attention to it.
This went on till I fell asleep. Meanwhile the breeze continued
to blow steadily, and the rippling of water along the bends was
like the sound of the falling of large raindrops.
I awoke, and turning my head towards the fore-part of the
wreck, I spied the figure of a man erect and motionless on the
forecastle. The moon was low in the west; I might guess by
her position that daybreak was not far off. By her red light
I saw the man. I sat erect and swept a glance round; there
was no ship near me, no smudge upon the gloom to indicate a
vessel at a distance. Father of heaven! I thought, what _is_
it? Could yonder shadowy form be one of the three sailors who
had been left on the wreck? Surely I had closely searched the
hull; there was nothing living aboard of her but myself. The
sweat-drops broke from my brow as I sat motionless with my
eyes fixed upon the figure that showed with an inexpressible
ghostliness of outline in the waning moonlight. On a sudden
there arose another figure alongside of him, seemingly out of
the hard planks of the deck; then a third; and there the three
of them stood apparently gazing intently aft at me, but without
a stir in their frames, that I could witness. Three of them!
I rose to my feet and essayed to speak, but could deliver no
more than a whisper. I tried again, and this time my voice
sounded.
“In the name of God, who, and what are you?”
“Ha!” cried one of them. He said something to his companions,
in words which were unintelligible to me, then approached,
followed by the others, all three of them moving slowly, with a
wavering gait, as though giddy.
“Som drink for Christu’s sake!” said the man who had called Ha!
pointing his finger at his mouth, and speaking in a tone that
made one think of his throat as something rough, like a file.
By this time it was clear to me they were no ghosts. I imagined
them negroes, so dark their faces looked in the dim west rays
and failing starlight. Whence they had sprung, in what manner
they had arrived, I could not imagine; but it was not for me to
stand speculating about them in the face of the husky appeal
for drink.
There was a parcel of candles in the pantry—as I term it. I
had a flint and steel in my pocket, and followed by the men, I
led the way below, bidding them stand awhile till I obtained
a light; and after groping and feeling about with my hands,
I found the paper of candles, lighted one, and then called
to the men. They arrived. I pointed to the jars, saying in
English, there was wine in them; and then to the slung cask
of water, and then to the food on the shelves. They instantly
grasped each one of them a pannikin, and mixed a full draught
and swallowed it, with a strange trembling sigh of relief and
delight. They then fell upon the biscuit and sausage, eating
like famished wolves, both fists full, and cramming their
mouths. They were not very much more distinguishable by the
feeble light of the candle than on deck; however, I was able
to see they were not blacks. The man who had addressed me
was of a deep Chinese yellow, with lineaments of an African
pattern, a wide flat nose, huge lips, eyes like little shells
of polished ebony glued on porcelain. His hair was the negro’s,
a black wiry wool. He wore a short moustache, the fibres like
the teeth of a comb, and there was a tuft of black wool upon
his chin. Small gold earrings, a greasy old Scotch cap, a
shirt like a dungaree jumper, and loose trousers thrust into a
pair of half Wellingtons, completed the attire of the ugliest,
most villainous-looking creature I had ever set eyes on. His
companions were long-haired, chocolate-browed Portuguese, or
Spaniards—_Dagos_ as the sailors call them; I noticed a small
gold crucifix sparkling upon the mossy breast of one of them.
Their feet were naked, indeed their attire consisted of no more
than a pair of duck or canvas breeches, and an open shirt,
and a cap. They continued to feed heartily, and several times
helped themselves to the wine, though before doing so, the
yellow-faced man would regularly point to the jar with a nod,
as though asking leave.
“You Englis, sah?” he exclaimed, when he had made an end of
eating. I said yes. “How long you been hear, sah?”
I told him. He understood me perfectly though I spoke at
length, relating in fact my adventure. I then inquired who he
and his companions were, and his story was to the following
effect: That he was the boatswain, and the other two, able
seamen, of a Portuguese ship called the _Mary Joseph_, bound
to Singapore or to some Malay port. The vessel had been set
on fire by one of the crew, an Englishman, who was skulking
drunkenly below after broaching a cask of rum. They had three
boats which they had hoisted out; most of the people got away
in the long boat, six men were in the second boat, he and his
two comrades got into the jolly-boat. They had with them four
bottles of water, and a small bag of ship’s bread, and nothing
more. They parted company with the other boats in the night,
and had been four days adrift, sailing northwards by the sun
as they reckoned, under a bit of a lug, and keeping an eager
look-out though they sighted nothing; until a little before
sundown that evening, they spied the speck of this wreck, and
made for it, but so scant was the wind, and so weak their
arms that it had taken them nearly all night to measure the
distance, which would be a few miles only. They got their boat
under the bow—she was lying there now, he said—and stepped
on board one after the other. This explained to me their
apparition. Of course I had not seen the boat or heard her as
she approached, and to me, lying aft, the three men rising over
the bows looked as though, like ghostly essences, they had
shaped themselves on the forecastle out through the solid plank.
I addressed the others, but the yellow man told me that their
language was a jargon of base Portuguese, of which I should be
able to understand no more than here and there a word, even
though I had been bred and educated in Lisbon.
“We mosh see to dah boat,” he exclaimed, and spoke to his
mates, apparently to that effect.
I extinguished the candle, and followed them on deck. It was
closer upon daybreak than I had supposed. Already the grey was
in the east, like a light filtering through ash-coloured silk,
with the sea-line black as a sweep of India ink against it
and the moon a lumpish, distorted mass of faint dingy crimson,
dying out in a sort of mistiness westwards, like the snuff of a
rushlight in its own smoke. Even whilst the three fellows were
manœuvring with the boat over the bow, the tropic day filled
the heavens in a bound, and it was broad morning all at once,
with a segment of sun levelling a long line of trembling silver
from the horizon down to mid-ocean. My first glance was for the
_Ruby_, but the sea lay bare in every quarter. The fellows came
dragging their boat aft; I looked over and saw that the fabric
was of a canoe-pattern, with a queer upcurled bow, and a stern
as square as the amid-ship section of the boat; four thwarts,
short oars with oval-shaped blades, and a small mast with a
square of lugsail lying with its yard in the bottom of the boat
The yellow man pointing to her exclaimed in a hoarse, throaty,
African guttural, “It is good ve keep hor. Dis wreck hov no
’atch; she sink, and vidout hor,” nodding at the boat again,
“were ve be?”
I said yes, by all means let us secure the boat. He exclaimed
that for the present she would lie safely astern, and with that
they took a turn with the line that held her and she rested
quietly on the sea clear of the quarter.
Forthwith the three fellows began to explore the hull. The
yellow man or boatswain, as I must henceforth call him, said
no more to me than this as he pointed to the yawning hatches:
“You are gen’elman,” with an ugly smile intended no doubt for
a stroke of courtesy as he ran his eye over me: “ve are common
sailor. Ve vill see to stop dem hole. More fresh vataire to
drink ve need. Possib more bee-low. Also tobacco.” And thus
saying he cried out to the others in their own dialect, and the
three of them went to the main hatchway and disappeared down it.
I lifted the telescope and ran it over the sea, then sighed
as with a breaking heart I laid the glass down again upon the
deck. A strong sense of dismay filled me whilst I sat musing
upon the men who were now coolly rummaging the vessel below.
The rascality which lay in every line of the ugly yellow
ruffian’s face, coupled with the stealthy, glittering glances,
the greasy, snaky hair, the dark piratic countenances of the
others might well have accounted for the apprehension, the
actual consternation indeed which fell upon me whilst I thought
of them. But that was not all. The recollection of the gold
rushed upon me as a memory that had clean gone out of my mind,
but that had suddenly flashed back upon me to communicate a
sinister significance to the presence of the three Portuguese
seamen. I can clearly understand now that my brain, as I had
said, had been weakened by the honor of my situation, and
by the long madness of expectation which had held it on fire
whilst I searched the sea and waited for the _Ruby_ to appear.
So that, instead of accepting these three foreign sailors as
a kind of godsend with whose assistance I might be enabled to
doctor up the wreck so as to fit her to float until help came,
not to speak of them as companions in misery, human creatures
to talk to, beings whose society would extinguish out of this
dreadful situation the intolerable element of solitude—I say
instead of viewing these men thus, as might have happened,
I believe, had I been my old self, a profound fear of and
aversion from them seized me, and such was the state of my
nerves at that time, I call to mind that I looked at the boat
which hung astern with a sort of hurry in me to leap into her,
cast her adrift, and sail away.
With an effort I mastered my agitation, constantly directing
glances at the sea with a frequent prayer upon my lip that if
not the _Ruby_, then at least some ship to rescue me would
heave into view before sundown that night.
The men were a long while below. I stepped softly to the
companion hatch, and bent my ear down it that I might know if
they had made their way through the ’tween decks bulkhead into
the cabin. The chink of money was very distinct, but that was
all. Presently, however, I heard them talking in low voices,
but their tongue was Hebrew to me, and I went back to my chair,
looking yet again around the sea-line. I think they had been
at least an hour below when they arrived on deck, emerging
through the main hatch. They then walked forward without taking
any notice of me, and disappeared through the fore-scuttle,
whence, after a while, they arose bearing amongst them several
tarpaulins which they had come across. I took it that there
was a carpenter’s chest down there, for the yellow boatswain
flourished a hammer in one hand, and a box of what proved to
be round-headed nails in the other. They carefully secured
the hatch with a couple of these tarpaulins, then came to
the quarter-deck, and similarly roofed the skylight and the
companion hatch, saving that they left free a corner flap to
admit of our passage up and down.
“Dis is sailor vork,” said the boatswain, giving me a nod,
whilst his face shone like a yellow sou’-wester in a squall
of wet with the sweat that flooded his repulsive visage. “Dah
vataire keep out now, sah.”
“It is well done,” said I, softening my voice to disguise the
emotion of disgust and aversion which possessed me at sight of
the ugly, treacherous, askant sort of stare he fastened upon me
whilst he spoke. “Have you breakfasted?”
He came close to me before answering; the other two meanwhile
remaining at the hatch and looking towards me.
“Ay,” he then said, “dere ish plenty biscuit, plenty vataire,
plenty beef,” indicating with a grimy thumb a portion of the
hold that lay under the cabin floor. “Dere ish plenty gold
too,” he added in a hoarse, theatrical sort of whisper, with a
sudden gleam of his little horrible eyes which to my fancy was
as much like the blue flash off some keen and polished blade of
poniard as anything I can figure to liken it to.
“Yes,” said I carelessly, “plenty I believe. But I must break
my own fast now. We shall need fresh water before the day’s
out, and, praised be the saints, there is plenty of it, you
say.”
With that I went to the hatch, turned the flap of the tarpaulin
and descended, eyed narrowly by the two fellows who stood
beside it, and as I gained the interior I heard them say
something to the boatswain, who responded with an off-hand
sort of _ya_, _ya_! as though he would quiet a misgiving in
them. I made a hurried meal of some wine, biscuit and cheese,
and noticing as I passed on my way to the cabin again that
the door of the berth in which the chest of gold stood was
shut, I tried the handle and found it locked. The key was
withdrawn. Smothering a curse upon the hour that had brought
these creatures to the wreck, I lighted a cigar (of which I
had a leather case half-full in my pocket), more for the easy
look of it than for any need I felt for tobacco just then, and
went in a lounge to the shelter of my umbrella. The boatswain
was examining the telescope when I arrived. He instantly put
it down on perceiving me and went forward to where his mates
were. They peered first over one side, pointing and talking,
and arguing with amazing volubility and with astonishing
contortions; they then crossed to the other side, and looked
over and fell into the same kind of hot, eager talk and
gesticulations. It was easy to guess that they spoke about the
spars which floated, held by their gear, against the wreck.
After a bit they came to an agreement, disappeared in the
forecastle and returned with tackles and coils of rope. One
of them went over the side, and after a while there they were
hauling upon purchases and slowly bringing the spar out of
water, the boatswain talking and bawling with furious energy
the whole while. I went forward to help them, and the yellow
ruffian nodded when I seized hold of the rope they were pulling
at, and cried with a hoarse roar of laughter, “Yash, yash. Ve
make a mast, ve make a yart, and ve put up sail, and ve steer
to our own countree and be reech men.”
Dagos as they were, they had some trick of seamanship amongst
them. There was stump enough left of the foremast to secure the
heel of a spar to, and by four o’clock that afternoon, with a
break of but a single half-hour for a meal and a smoke (they
had found plenty of pipes and tobacco in the seamen’s chests
between decks), they had rigged up and stayed a jury-mast and
crossed it with a yard manufactured from a boom of the wreckage
to larboard; which, light as the breeze was, yet furnished them
with spread of sail enough to give the sheer-hulk steerage way.
I had lent them a hand and done my landsman’s best, and had
gone aft to rest myself and to sweep the sea with the telescope
for the hundredth time that day. The three men were below
getting some supper. The hull was stirring through the water
at a snail’s pace to a weak, hot wind blowing right over her
taffrail out of the south-east. The helm was amidships, and
her short length of oil-smooth wake showed her going straight
without steering. I could distinctly hear the men conversing
in the cabin. I reckoned because they knew their lingo was
unintelligible to me that they talked out. There was a fiery
eagerness in the tones they sometimes delivered themselves in,
but earnestly as I listened I could catch no meaning but that
of their imprecations, which readily enough took my ear owing
to a certain resemblance between them and Spanish and Italian
oaths. A short interval of silence followed. All three then
came on deck, one of them carrying a jar and another a canvas
bag. I instantly observed that every man of them had girded
a cutlass to his side. They seemed to avoid my gaze as they
walked to the pin to which the line that connected the boat was
belayed, and hauled her alongside. I threw away my cigar and
stood up. The first idea that occurred to me was, they were
going to victual the boat, sway the chest of gold into her and
sail away from me; and I cannot express with what devotion I
prayed to my Maker that this might prove so. I looked from one
to the other of them. Once I caught a side-long glance from the
boatswain; otherwise they went to this business as though I
were not present, talking in rough, hurried whispers, with an
occasional exclamation from the yellow ruffian, that was like
saying, “Make haste!” When the boat was alongside one of them
dropped into her, and received the jar and bag from the other.
He then returned, and the moment he was inboards the boatswain,
rounding upon me, drew his cutlass and pointed to the boat.
“Be pleashed to get in and go away!” he exclaimed.
“Go away!” I echoed, too much thunderstruck by the villain’s
order to feel or witness the horror of the fate designed for
me. “What have I done that you should——?”
He interrupted me with a roar. “Go quick!” he cried, lifting
his weapon as though to strike, “or I kill you!”
The hands of the others groped at the hilts of their cutlasses;
all three eyed me now, and there was murder in every man’s
look. Without a word I stepped to the side, and sprang into
the boat. One of them threw the line off the pin into the sea.
“Hoise your sail and steer that way, or we shoot!” bellowed the
yellow ruffian, waving his cutlass towards the sea astern. God
knows there were small arms enough in the cabin to enable them
to fulfil _that_ threat. I grasped the halliards, mast-headed
the little lug, and throwing an oar over the stern, sculled
the boat’s head round, and in a minute was slipping away from
the hull, at the stern of which the three men stood watching
me, the blade in the boatswain’s hand shining to the sun like
a wand of fire as he continued to point with it into the
south-east.
Here now was I adrift in the mighty heart of the Indian Ocean
in a small boat like a canoe, so shaped that she was little
likely to lie close to the wind; hundreds of leagues from the
nearest point of land, and in a part of the deep navigated
in those days at long intervals only—I mean by the Dutch and
English traders to the east; for the smaller vessels kept a
much more westerly longitude than where I was, after rounding
the Cape; often striking through the Mozambique or so climbing
as to keep Mauritius aboard. Never was human being in a more
wildly-desperate situation. I did not for an instant doubt
that this was the beginning of the end, that if I was not
capsized and drowned out of hand by some growing sea, I was
to perish (unless I took my own life) of hunger and thirst.
Yet the rage and terror which were upon me when I looked over
my shoulder at the receding wreck passed away, with the help
of God to be sure, ere the figures of the miscreants who had
served me thus had been blended by distance out of their shapes
into the body and hues of the hull. I thought to myself it is
an escape, at all events. I _may_ perish here; yet is there
hope; but had I stayed _yonder_ I was doomed: the sight of the
gold had made them thirsty for my life. In my sleep, ay, or
even waking, they would have hacked me to pieces and flung me
overboard to the sharks here.
In this consideration, I say, I seemed to find a source of
comfort. If I died as I now was, it would be God’s act, whereas
had I remained in the wreck I must have been brutally butchered
by the wretches whom the devil had despatched to me in the
darkness of the morning that was gone. Nevertheless I was at a
loss to comprehend their motive in thus using me. First of all
by sending me away in their boat, they had robbed themselves
of their only chance of escape should the wreck founder.
Then again, I was a man, with a serviceable pair of hands
belonging to me, and how necessary willing help was to persons
circumstanced as they were, they could easily have gathered
from the labours of the day. Besides, they would be able to
judge of my condition by my attire, and how could they be sure
that I should demand the treasure or put in my claim for a
share of it? But I need not weary you with my speculations.
The sun sank when there was a space of about a league betwixt
my boat and the wreck, and the darkness came in a stride out of
the east. The wind was weak and hot, and there was a crackling
noise of ripples round about the boat as she lay with scarce
any way upon her, lightly but briskly bobbing upon the tropic
ocean dimples. When the darkness came I let fall my sail,
intending later on, when the wreck should have got well away
towards the horizon, to head north; for methought the further
I drew towards the equator out of these seas the better would
be my chance of being rescued. The stars were very plentiful,
rich, and brilliant that night. I gave God thanks for their
company, and for the stillness and peace upon the ocean, and I
prayed to Him to watch over and to succour me. When the moon
rose I stood up and looked around, but saw nothing of the
wreck; on which I hoisted my sail afresh and headed the boat
north, as I conjectured by the position of the moon. There was
a deal of fire in the sea, and I would again and again direct
my eyes at the fitful flashing over the side with a dread in me
of witnessing the outline of a shark.
The moon had risen about two hours, when I spied the gleam
of water in the bottom of the boat. I was greatly startled,
believing that she was leaking. Certainly there had been no
water when I first entered her, nor down to this minute had I
noticed the light or heard the noise of it in her. There was a
little pewter mug in the stern sheets, a relic of the ship from
which the Portuguese had come. I fell to bailing with it, and
presently emptied the boat. No more water entered, for which at
first I was deeply thankful; but after a little I got musing
upon how it could have penetrated, seeing that no more came;
and then a dreadful suspicion entering my mind, I looked for
the jar which the Portuguese had handed into the boat, and saw
it lying on its bilge in the bows. I picked it up and shook it;
it was empty! It had been corked by a piece of canvas which
still remained in the bung, but on the jar capsizing through
the jerking of the boat, the water had easily drained out, and
it was this precious fluid which I had been feverishly baling
and casting overboard!
Maddened as I was by this discovery, I had yet sense enough
remaining to sop my handkerchief in the little puddle that
still damped the bottom of the boat, and to wring the moisture
into the pewter measure. But at the outside half a pint was the
utmost I recovered, which done I sat me down, my face buried in
my hands, with my eyes scorched as though they were seared by
the burning tears that rose to them from my full and breaking
heart.
The night passed. Hour after hour I lay in a sort of
stupefaction in the stern sheets, taking no notice of the
weather, my eyes fixed upon the stars, a little space of which
directly over my head I would crazily essay to number. Once I
pressed the handkerchief to my parched lips, but found the damp
of it brackish, and threw it from me. But I would not touch the
precious drop of water I had preserved. Too bitterly well did
I guess how the morrow’s sun would serve me, and the very soul
within me seemed to recoil from the temptation to moisten my
dry and burning tongue.
[Illustration]
The memory of the early hours of that morning, of daybreak,
of the time that followed, is but that of a delirium. I took
no heed of my navigation. The sheet of the sail was fast, and
the boat travelled softly before the gentle breeze that sat in
little curls upon the water. I recollect thinking in a stupid,
half-numbed way, that the boat was pursuing the path of the
wreck whose one sail would suffer her to travel only straight
before the wind. But the pain of thirst, the anguish of my
situation, the maddening heat of the sun, the cruel, eternal
barrenness of the ocean; these things combined lay like death
upon me. I was sensible only that I lived and suffered. There
was biscuit in the canvas bag which had been put in the boat.
I thought by munching a fragment to ease the anguish in my
throat, but found I could not swallow. Ah, heavenly God! the
deliriousness of the gaze which I fastened upon the clear,
cool, blue water over the side, the horrible temptation to
drink of it, to plunge, and soak, and drown in it the torment
of the seething and creaming noises of its ripples against the
burning sides of the boat, which sickened the atmosphere with
their poisonous smell of hot paint!
The night came—a second night. Some relief from the thirst
which tortured me I had obtained by soaking my underclothes,
and wearing the garments streaming. It was a night of wonderful
oceanic beauty and tenderness: the moon, a glorious sphere
of brilliancy, the wind sweet and cool with dew, and the sea
sleeping to the quiet cradling of its swell. I had not closed
my eyes for many a long weary hour, and nature could hold out
no longer. It was a little before midnight I think that I fell
asleep; the boat was then sailing quietly along, and steering
herself, making a fair straight course of her progress—though
to what quarter of the heavens she was carrying me I knew not,
nor for a long while had thought of guessing. When I awoke the
darkness was still upon the ocean, and the moon behind a body
of high light cloud which she whitened and which concealed her,
though her radiance yet lay in the atmosphere as a twilight.
Right ahead of me, but at what distance I could not imagine,
there floated a dark object upon the water. My glance had gone
to her sleepily, but the instant it fell upon her I sprang to
my feet, and bounded like a dart into the bow of the boat, and
stood with my hands on the square of the canoe-shaped stem
straining my sight into the gloom.
She was a ship—no doubt of that; yet she puzzled me greatly.
The light was so thin and deceptive that I could distinguish
little more than the block of blackness she made upon the dark
sea. Apparently she was lying with all sails furled, or else
hauled up close to the yards. One moment I would think that she
was without masts; then I imagined I could perceive a visionary
fabric of spar and rope. But she was a ship! Help she would
yield me—the succour of her deck, and, oh my God! one drink,
but _one_ drink of water!
I flung the oars over, and weak as I was fell to rowing with
might and main. The boat buzzed through the ripples to the
impulse of my thirst-maddened arms. The shadow ahead slowly
loomed larger and closer, till all in a breath I saw by a
sudden gleam of moonlight which sparkled through a rent in the
cloud, that she was _La Mulette_!
I dropped the oars, let fall the sail, and stood with my eyes
fixed upon her, considering a little. Would the men murder me
if I boarded her? Or would they not fill my empty jar for me on
my beseeching them, on my pointing to my frothing lip as the
yellow man had done, on my asking for water only, promising to
depart at once? Why, it was better to be butchered by their
cutlasses than to perish thus. I felt mad at the thought of a
long sweet draught of wine and water out of a cold pannikin,
and rendered utterly defiant, absolutely reckless by my
sufferings, and by the dream and allurement of a drink of
water, I fell to the oars again, and rowed the boat alongside
the wreck.
I now noticed for the first time that the mast and sail which
the fellows had erected were gone. Indeed the mast lay over
the side, and the sail floated black under it in the water. I
listened; all was hushed as death in the motionless hulk. I
secured the painter of the boat to the chain plate, sprang on
to the deck and stood looking a minute. Close to the wheel lay
the figure of a man. He was sound asleep as I might suppose,
his head pillowed on his arm, and the other arm over his face
in a posture of sheltering it. He was the only one of the three
visible. Wildly reckless always and goaded with the agony of
thirst I went straight to the hatch and dropped into the cabin.
The blackness was that of a coal-mine, but I knew the way, and
after a little groping found the pantry door and entered. With
an eager hand I sought for a candle, found one and lighted it,
and in a few minutes my thirst was assuaged and I was standing
with clasped uplifted hands thanking God for the exquisite
comfort of the draught. Yet I drank cautiously. My need made
me believe that I could have drained a cask to its dregs, but
I forced my dreadful craving to be satisfied with scarce more
than a quarter of a pint. The drink relaxed the muscles of
my throat and I was able to eat. Afterwards I drank a little
again, and then I felt a new man.
I stayed about twenty minutes in the pantry, in which time I
heard no kind of noise saving a dim creak now and again from
the hold of the wreck. Extinguishing the candle I entered the
cabin and stood debating with myself on the course I should
follow. Water I must have: should I fill a jar and carry
it stealthily to the boat and be off and take my chance of
managing the business unheard? Yes, I would do that, and if I
aroused the sleepers, why, seeing that I was willing to go they
might not refuse me a supply of drink....
I was musing thus when there was the sound of a yawn on deck.
At that moment I remembered the array of cutlasses that
embellished the cabin ceiling. It was the noise the fellow
made, the perception that one of the three at all events was
awake with his mates somewhere at hand to swiftly alarm, which
put the thought of those cutlasses into my head, or it is fifty
to one if in the blackness of that interior I should have
recollected them. I sprang upon the table and in a moment was
gripping a blade. The very feel of it, the mere sense of being
armed sent the blood rushing through my veins as though to
some tonic of miraculous potency. “Now,” thought I, setting my
teeth, “let the ruffians fall upon me if they will. If my life
is to be taken it shall not be for the want of an English arm
to defend it.”
I jumped on to the deck, went stealthily to the foot of the
steps and listened. The man yawned again, and I heard the
tread of his foot as he moved, whence I suspected him to be
the yellow boatswain, the others being unshod, though to be
sure there were shoes enough in the ’tween decks for them had
they a mind to help themselves. As I sent a look up through the
lifted corner of tarpaulin over the hatch I spied the delicate,
illusive grey of daybreak in the air, and so speedy was the
coming of the dawn that it lay broad with the sun close under
the rim of the horizon ere I could form a resolution whilst
listening to make sure that he who was on deck continued alone.
Then hearing him yawn again and no sound of the others reaching
my ears, I mounted the steps and gained the deck.
[Illustration]
It was the Portuguese boatswain, as I had imagined. He was in
the act of seating himself much in the same place where I had
seen him sleeping when I boarded the vessel; but he instantly
saw me as I arose, and remained motionless and rigid as though
blasted by a flash of lightning. His jaw dropped, his hideous
little eyes protruded bright with horror and fright from their
sockets, and his yellow face changed into a sort of greenish
tint like mottled soap or the countenance of a man in a fit.
No doubt he supposed me a spectre, rising as I did in that way
out of the cabin when the rogue would imagine me a hundred
miles off, or floating a corpse in the water, and I dare say
but for the paralysis of terror that had fixed his jaw some
pious sentences would have dropped from him. For my part I hung
in the wind undecided, at a loss to act. I sent a look over my
shoulder to observe if the others were about, and the movement
of my head seemed like the release of him from the constraint
of my eye. He leapt into an erect posture and rushed to the
side, saw the boat, uttered a cry for all the world resembling
the rough, saw-like yell of the albatross stooping to some bait
in the foaming eddies of a wake, in a bound came back to the
binnacle, the body of which stood, though the compass, hood
and glass were gone, and thrusting his hand into it pulled out
a pistol which he levelled at me. The weapon flashed as I ran
at him. Ere he had time to draw the cutlass which dangled at
his hip, I had buried the blade, the large heavy hilt of which
I grasped with both hands, deep in his neck, crushing clean
through his right jaw; and even whilst he was in the act of
falling I had lifted and brought the cutlass down upon him
again, this time driving the edge of it so deep into his skull
that the weight of him as he dropped dead dragged the weapon
out of my hand, and it was a wrestle of some moments to free
the blade.
I swept round fully prepared for the confrontment of the
others, who, I took it, if they were sleeping below, would rush
up on deck on hearing the report of the pistol. My head was
full of blood; I felt on fire from my throat to my feet. God
knows why or how it was, for I should have imagined of myself
that the taking of a human life would palsy my muscles with
the horror of the thing to the weakness of a woman’s arm; and
yet in the instant of my rounding, prepared for, panting for a
sight of the other two, I seemed conscious of the strength of a
dozen men in me.
All was still. The sun had risen in splendour; the ocean was
a running surface of glory under him, and the blue of the
south had the dark tenderness of violet with the gushing into
it of the hot and sparkling breeze which had sprung up in the
north with the coming of the morn. Where were the others? My
eyes reeled as they went from the corpse of the Portuguese
to the pistol he had let drop. I picked it up; it was a rude
weapon belonging to the armoury of _La Mulette_. I conjectured
that the miscreant would not have thus armed himself without
providing a stock of ammunition at hand, and on putting my arm
into the binnacle stand I found, sure enough, a powder-horn
and a parcel of pistol-bullets. I carefully loaded the weapon,
narrowly seeing to the priming, all the while constantly
glancing along the deck and listening. Then with the pistol in
one hand and the cutlass in the other, I stepped below, furious
and eager for a sight of the dead man’s mates.
The lifted tarpaulin let the morning sunshine fall fair into
the cabin, and now I saw that which had before been invisible
to me; I mean a great blood-stain upon the deck, with a
spattering of blood-drops and spots of more hideous suggestion
yet, round about. A thin trail of blood went from the large
stain upon the floor along through the passage betwixt the
berths, and so to the main hatch. Ha! thought I, _this_
signifies murder! I found nothing in the cabins. The door of
the berth in which the chest of gold stood, was locked, but
on putting my whole weight against it with knee and shoulder
it flew open. The contents of the place were as I had before
taken notice of; and there were no signs here of either dead or
living men. I regained the deck, and walking forward observed a
thin line of blood going from the coamings of the main hatch to
the side. It was the continuation and termination of the trail
below, and most unmistakably denoted the passage of a bleeding
body borne through the hatch and cast overboard. I walked
further forward yet, and on the forecastle witnessed another
wide stain of blood. It looked fresher than the other—nay, it
was not yet dry, and the heat went out of my body, and ice cold
shudders swept through my limbs as I turned my back upon it,
sick, dizzy, and trembling.
Those horrible marks gave me the whole story as fully as though
the dead brute aft had recited it to me at large ere I struck
him down. He had murdered his mates one after the other to be
alone with the gold. It had been murder cold and deliberate,
I was sure. There were no signs of a struggle; there were no
hints of any previous conflict in the person of the yellow
Portuguese. It was as though he had crept behind the men one
after another, and struck them down with a chopper. Indeed I
was as sure of this as though I had witnessed the deed; and
there was the chest of gold in the cabin to explain the reason
of it. How he hoped to manage if he fell in with a ship (and I
know not what other expectation of coming off with his life he
could have formed) it is useless to conjecture. Some plausible
tale no doubt he would have taken care to prepare, claiming the
gold as his by law of treasure-trove.
I let fall the weapons, and lay over a little strip of
bulwark, panting for breath. My eyes were upon the water over
the side, but a minute after on directing them at the sea-line,
I spied the sails of a ship, a square of pearl glimmering
in the blue distance, and slightly leaning from the hot and
brilliant breeze gushing fair down upon her starboard beam.
Scarce had my mind time to recognize the object as a ship, when
it vanished; a reddish gloom boiled up mistlike all about me;
the ocean to a mile away from the side of the wreck turned of
the deep crimson of blood, spinning round like a teetotum; then
followed blackness, and I remember no more....
When consciousness returned I found myself lying in a bunk in
a ship’s cabin. The place was familiar to me, and I recollect
in a weak way trying to find out why it should be so. “Why,
confound it all,” I muttered, “this is my cabin aboard the
_Ruby_. God! what a dream it has been!”
“Very glad your senses have returned to you, Mr. Catesby. It’s
been a doocid long faint, sir,” exclaimed a familiar voice, and
no less a person than the second mate of the _Ruby_ came to my
bedside.
A moment after the door opened, and the doctor of the ship
entered. I was about to speak; he peremptorily motioned
silence, felt my pulse and brow, nodding approvingly; then
addressing the mate, thanked him for keeping watch and told
him he could go. As my dawning intellects brightened, my
eagerness to make sure of the reality of the adventure I had
come through grew into a little fever. When I looked round the
cabin and saw my clothes hanging upon the bulkhead, my books,
the twenty odds and ends of the homely furniture of my berth,
I could not but believe that I had fallen ill, been seized
perhaps with a fever, and that the incidents of the wreck, the
open boat, the murderous Portuguese, were a mere vision of my
distempered brain. But for some hours the doctor had his way,
would not suffer me to talk, with his own hand brought me broth
and wine, and now, finding me strong enough, as I supposed, to
support a conversation, went out and in a few minutes returned
with Captain Bow.
It was _then_ my suspicion that all that had happened to me
was most horribly and fearfully real was confirmed. The boat
that had left me aboard the wreck had been sighted sweeping
down in the mist; twenty ropes’ ends had been hove at her from
the _Ruby_, and in a few minutes her people were safe on the
Indiaman’s deck. Sail was shortened to close-reefed topsails,
but a black blowing night drew around, as you know, and when
the dawn broke the wreck was nowhere visible. Light, baffling
weather followed. Meanwhile Bow swore that he would not quit
these waters till he had exhausted the inside of a week in
search for me. At sunrise that morning the wreck was signalled
from the foretopgallant yard of the _Ruby_. The ship was
immediately headed for it, and in a couple of hours the hulk
was close aboard. The chief officer was sent in charge of a
boat, and I was found lying, dead as they thought, a fathom’s
distance from a large stain of blood, whilst aft was the body
of a half-caste with his head cut open. They left _him_ as he
lay, but me they handed into the boat to carry on board, with
the design of giving me a Christian burial, till the doctor,
looking at me, asked if they wanted to add to the horrors
of the wreck by drowning a living man, and ordered me to be
conveyed at once to my bed.
This was the captain’s story, and I then related mine. Both he
and the doctor exchanged looks as I talked. It was tolerably
evident to my mind that they only believed in about a quarter
of what I told them.
“But, Captain,” I cried, “on my solemn honour as a gentleman,
as I am alive here to say it, there was gold to the value of
many thousands of pounds in the chest.”
“Yes, yes,” he answered with a glance of compassion at me. “I
don’t doubt it, Mr. Catesby. So much the better for the mermen
when it goes down to them; it will render the mermaids more
placable, I don’t doubt.”
“But, gracious mercy!” I cried, “it is only the sending of a
boat, you know. Why, sir, there’s enough in that chest to yield
a little fortune to every mother’s son of us aboard.”
“Yes, yes,” said Captain Bow, with a faint smile of concern
at the doctor, who kept his eyes with a knowing look in them
fastened upon the deck. “But we took you off the wreck, my dear
sir, a little before nine o’clock, and it is now after four,
and as our speed has been a comfortable eight knots ever since,
you may reckon the hulk at sixty miles’ distance astern. No,
Mr. Catesby, we’re bound to Bombay this time in earnest, sir.
No more hunting after wrecks this voyage.”
But I got every man-jack of the passengers, with the whole
ship’s company to boot, to credit my story up to the hilt
before we had measured half the length of the Bay of Bengal,
and such was the conviction I had inspired forwards at all
events that the third mate one night told me it was reported
that a number of the forecastle hands had made up their minds
to charter, if possible, if not, then to run away with, a
country wallah on the _Ruby’s_ arrival at Bombay, and sail the
Indian Ocean till they fell in with the wreck—if she was still
afloat.
But now to resume the story of Master Rockafellar’s voyage: we caught
the south-east trades much closer to the equator than they are used to
blow, and bowled merrily down the South Atlantic, rounding the Cape of
Good Hope at a distance of fifty leagues from it, and driving ahead, with
a strong westerly gale over our stern, straight as an arrow for Cape
Leeuwin. Though the _Lady Violet_ showed like a frigate upon the water,
with a beam that made her look somewhat tub-like, and a round massive
bow that would crush a sea as the head of a whale might, she sailed
nobly, easily reeling off a full twelve knots when there was wind enough
to drive her, looking up when on a bowline with erect spars and a wake
without an inch of lee-way in it; and I have known her, even in regions
of calms and cats-paws and baffling airs, to travel in some mysterious
manner a hundred miles in twenty-four hours.
She was a favourite ship among passengers, and almost as punctual in
her dates as though she were a steamer; and this voyage, true to her
old records, she sailed through the Sydney Heads one sparkling morning
at about eight o’clock, making the time of her passage from the Thames
exactly eighty-one days.
I will pass swiftly over our stay at Sydney. I should need a deal of room
to describe the glories of this rich Australian scene, of islands and
blue water and shores, with white houses peeping out from amidst the
fringe of the bush. We hauled in alongside the Circular Quay, and then
followed much grimy work in the shape of discharging cargo, furbishing
up the ship, attending to the rigging, and the like. Then the vessel was
conveyed to the other side of the harbour to receive her freight of wool.
I was ashore a good many times, yet cannot say that I saw much of Sydney.
Many a long hour would I spend in the beautiful Botanical Gardens, gazing
at the astonishing vegetation, and watching with admiration the songless
birds of superb plumage which throng those acres of grace, beauty, and
colour. Mr. Cock took me to the theatre. I was out rowing and sailing too
very often; but the captain would not let me have much liberty. He said I
was too young to be cruising about ashore alone, and indeed my half-crown
a week did not help me very largely to partake of the diversions of
Sydney. My chief pleasure lay in sitting in the main-chains, when there
was nothing to do, and fishing. Many fish, wonderful in colour, did I
haul up, and some of them were a very delicate food.
The _Lady Violet_ was pretty deep with wool when we were towed out to
sea. The passengers we had brought out were replaced by a new set—all
of them colonials, intending a visit to the old home for purposes of
pleasure or business. Three of our sailors had run away, and new men
were taken in their place; otherwise the ship’s company remained as it
had been.
I remember going on the forecastle in the second dog-watch of the first
day that we were out, and leaning over the head-rail and looking into
the evening-shadowed distance, and saying to myself, “We are homeward
bound!” Ah, the delight of those words to the sailor, be he old or young!
It is the most inspiriting of all the sentiments in the songs Jack sings.
It is a thought that seems to compensate for all past hardships, and to
hearten a man to endure all that may be harsh and painful in the time
that yet lies between him and his arrival home. My young heart beat high,
I remember, and I found a wonderful delight, as I overlay the forecastle
rail, in looking straight down under me, where the coppered fore-foot of
the ship was sheering through the satin-like seas rolling to her bow,
and in thinking that every fathom of white water, with its tinkling
foam-bells and bubbles of yellow spume which ran past, shortened the
distance between me and my dear old home by six feet!
We were in the South Pacific now, making for the terrible Cape Horn,
about whose enormous icebergs and leviathan seas and black snow-storms
there was a deal said in our midshipmen’s berth; but it was still
delicious weather; the indescribable sweetness and softness of the
Pacific was in the temperature; the sun-touched billows chased us in
lines of dark blue and flaming gold; sea-birds with breasts of snow,
poised on long tremulous wings of ermine, hovered in our wake; and the
albicore and the bonito merrily kept us company, as the _Lady Violet_
went ambling through the caressing waters.
[Illustration: “LISTENING TO THE YARNS HE SPUN.”]
This was the pleasantest part of the voyage, so far as I was concerned.
I made friends with one of the boatswain’s mates, and was much in the
forecastle with him during my watches below. I can see myself now,
sitting on his sea-chest, listening to the yarns he spun me about the
voyages he had made and the countries he had visited, or learning from
him how to lay up sennit, to wield a marline-spike, to use the palm and
needle, and so on. A lamp fed by slush spluttered under a blackened beam
just over us; a number of hammocks hung from the ceiling or upper deck,
with here and there a weather-darkened face, well whiskered, overlying
the edge of the canvas with a pipe in its mouth. A double tier of bunks
went curving into the eyes of the ship where the hawse-pipes were, and
where the gloom lay heavy. In one of these beds a man would lie with a
book in his hand, laboriously reading, his lips moving like a child’s
as his eyes spelt down the page. Squatting on a chest would be a grim
unshaven salt, sourly stitching at a pair of breeches. Elsewhere
you would see a fellow greasing his sea-boots, another munching at a
sea-biscuit with his eyes fixed like an owl’s, a third cutting up a
pipeful of tobacco from a black flat cake that made me think of toffee.
Yet, despite the life and movement within, the forecastle was always very
quiet. My boatswain’s mate would talk to me in hoarse whispers, and the
other sailors rarely conversed above their breath. Sleep is naturally
prized at sea. The opportunities for taking it are short, and must be
made the most of. Hence, seamen are very careful that their mates, when
turned in, should repose undisturbed that when their own turn comes round
for a nap they may sleep in quiet.
The dog-watches are the holiday hours at sea, and on a fine evening,
whilst we were in the Pacific, I would repair to the forecastle and there
sit, listening to and watching the men until the sun went down and the
black shadow of night came along. They had a fiddle amongst them, and one
of them played the concertina, and these instruments made music enough
to set them a-dancing. I have laughed till the tears stood in my eyes
to watch the brawny capering Jacks sliding about in a waltz, tenderly
embracing one another as partners, capsizing over the flukes of the
stowed anchors, and making a very pageant of the forecastle deck—with
its rough details of capstan, catheads, scuttle and the like—by their
swimming, floating, jovial figures, coloured of every hue with the
clothes they wore. My friend the boatswain’s mate danced the hornpipe
to perfection. He valued himself on this art, and was not always very
forward in obliging us. When he suffered himself to be coaxed, the treat
he gave us was a real one. He would dress himself so as to resemble a
man-of-war’s man, and make his appearance with a straw hat on the back of
his head-on “nine-hairs,” as sailors say—flowing trousers, pumps, an open
shirt that disclosed his mossy breast, and take his stand on a part of
the forecastle where the passengers aft could see him. The fiddler would
then clamber on to the booms over the long-boat, and begin to saw away,
and off would start the boatswain’s mate in a delightful shuffle—feet
twinkling, legs vibrating, arms arched—a manly figure indeed! whilst the
sailors noisily clapped their hands in huge relish of the show.
We were drawing into colder weather, though Cape Horn was still a long
way off, when there happened two incidents in the same morning, one
of which—as you will suppose when I have related it—made a very deep
impression on me.
The ship was under all plain sail, by which is signified all the canvas
a vessel carries saving her studding-sails. The breeze was moderate
and off the bow, and there was very little sea; but through the bosom
of the deep there ran, as regular as the beat of the pulse, a long
swell, slipping its volumes into our quarter with weight enough in
each broad-backed fold to keep the _Lady Violet_ curtseying until the
forecastle of her looked as flat as a spoon on the slope of water ahead.
I was at work with Kennet in one of the quarter-boats, clearing her out.
The boat hung from a pair of irons, termed “davits,” over the side,
and was steadied by flat mat-like lashings, called “gripes.” From over
the gunwale of the boat we could obtain a clear view of the sea ahead,
whereas, from the poop the horizon over the bows was concealed by the
foresail and mainsail.
Presently, pausing in my work to glance ahead, I caught sight of a body
of foam about a couple of points on the bow, as we should say, though how
far off it was I could not imagine. Figure the moon reflecting herself in
water just as she shows in the heavens—that is to say, as a bright silver
disk—and you will obtain a good idea of the appearance on which my eyes
had fastened. It rose and fell upon the swell, by which one knew that it
must be afloat, whatever it was.
“See that, Kennet?” said I.
He peered and cried, “Ha! doth it move?”
We stared at it.
“No,” said he, “it ith’nt moving. I thought it wath a whirlwind firtht. I
thay tho’—what the doothe—tain’t a _windmill_, ith it?”
I now saw, as he had seen, what resembled the vanes of a windmill
revolving in the foam—a wet black arm that rose and fell out of the white
seething like to the blades of a propeller rotating under the counter of
a tall light steamer, amidst the boiling of the water churned up by the
machine.
“See that thrasher!” suddenly shouted the chief mate. “By George,
gentlemen and ladies, a fight between a thrasher and a whale, as I live!
A rare sight, truly!”
And all the passengers who were on deck came rushing with him over to
the side to look. As we approached, the spectacle grew in magnitude, and
proved one of the wildest—I may say one of the most terrific—pictures
which the imagination could body forth, even of the sea—that arena of
wonders and of terrors. There was so much fury of foaming water, that
it was hard to distinguish the gigantic combatants. Yet now and again
I would catch a sight of a large space of the gleaming dark body of a
leviathan whale, upon which the great arms of the thrasher were beating
in blows, the echoes of which had something of a metallic twang in them
that made you think of a giant blacksmith striking upon an enormous
anvil. The boiling commotion covered a large space of water, and might
easily have passed for the first fierce foamings of a waterspout.
I watched, breathless with astonishment and awe, my eyes half out of my
head. Here was something to talk about to my father and mother! But would
they believe it? It was a sight I could scarcely credit, specially when
Kennet told me that what I saw of the whale was only a little bit of him.
“Will the thrasher kill him?” said I.
“I expect tho,” he answered; “anyhow, of the two, I’d thooner not be the
whale.”
When the monster duellists had settled down upon our quarter, the long
black arms suddenly vanished. The seething turmoil expired into smooth
water, and the swell rolled flawless as before.
“The whale’th killed,” said Kennet; “keep a bright look-out, Rockafellar,
and you’ll thee his body rithe.”
But though I stared long and earnestly, it was to no purpose; the body
did _not_ rise: haply because the whale wasn’t dead.
“Oh, but,” said Kennet, “a big chap like that ithn’t going to rithe up
with a pop ath though he wath a little fith. When a whale gothe to work,
no matter what hith buthineth ith, he’th bound to take hith time. Did you
ever thee a fat man hurry himthelf. Courth not. Tho ith it with whaleth.”
For a long time I continued to furtively glance at the sea, and then gave
up looking, secretly pleasing myself with the idea that the whale was
still alive, and not very much hurt; for it seemed to me very hard that
any creature should meet with so dreadful an end as being flogged to
death.