KERGUELEN LAND.
As soon as Mr. Meeson, saved from drowning by her intervention, lay
gasping at the bottom of the boat, Augusta, overcome by a momentary
faintness, let her head fall forward on to the bundle of blankets in
which she had wrapped up the child she had rescued, and who, too
terrified to speak or cry, stared about him with wide-opened and
frightened eyes. When she lifted it, a few seconds later, a ray from
the rising sun had pierced the mist, and striking full on the sinking
ship, as, her stern well out of the water and her bow well under it,
she rolled sullenly to and fro in the trough of the heavy sea, seemed
to wrap her from hull to truck in wild and stormy light.
“She’s going!—by George, she’s going!” said the seaman Johnnie; and as
he said it the mighty ship slowly reared herself up on end. Slowly—very
slowly, amidst the hideous and despairing shrieks of the doomed
wretches on board of her, she lifted her stern higher and higher, and
plunged her bows deeper and deeper. They shrieked, they cried to Heaven
for help; but Heaven heeded them not, for man’s agony cannot avert
man’s doom. Now, for a space, she was standing almost upright upon the
water, out of which about a hundred feet of her vast length towered
like some monstrous ocean growth, whilst men fell from her in showers,
like flies benumbed by frost, down into the churning foam beneath. Then
suddenly, with a swift and awful rush, with a rending sound of breaking
spars, a loud explosion of her boilers, and a smothered boom of
bursting bulkheads, she plunged down into the measureless deeps, and
was seen no more forever.
The water closed in over where she had been, boiling and foaming and
sucking down all things in the wake of her last journey, while the
steam and prisoned air came up in huge hissing jets and bubbles that
exploded into spray on the surface.
The men groaned, the child stared stupefied, and Augusta cried out,
“_Oh! oh_!” like one in pain.
“Row back!” she gasped, “row back and see if we cannot pick some of
them up.”
“No! no!” shouted Meeson; “they will sink the boat!”
“‘Taint much use anyway,” said Johnnie. “I doubt that precious few of
them will come up again. They have gone too deep!”
However, they got the boat’s head round again—slowly enough, Augusta
thought—and as they did so they heard a feeble cry or two. But by the
time that they had reached the spot where the Kangaroo went down, there
was no living creature to be seen; nothing but the wash of the great
waves, over which the mist once more closed thick and heavy as a pall.
They shouted, and once they heard a faint answer, and rowed towards it;
but when they got to the spot whence the sound seemed to proceed, they
could see nothing except some wreckage. They were all dead, their agony
was done, their cries no more ascended to the pitiless heavens; and
wind, and sky, and sea were just as they had been.
“Oh, my God! my God!” wept Augusta, clinging to the thwarts of the
tossing boat.
“One boat got away—where is it?” asked Mr. Meeson, who, a wet and
wretched figure, was huddled up in the stern-sheets, as he rolled his
wild eyes round striving to pierce the curtain of the mist.
“There’s something,” said Johnnie, pointing through a fog-dog in the
mist, that seemed to grow denser rather than otherwise as the light
increased, at a round, boat-like object that had suddenly appeared to
the starboard of them.
They rowed up to it; it was a boat, but empty and floating bottom
upwards. Closer examination showed that it was the cutter, which, when
full of women and children, had been fastened to the vessel and dragged
down with her as she sank. At a certain depth the pressure of the water
had been too great and had torn the ring in the bow bodily out of her,
so that she returned to the surface. But those in her did not return—at
least, not yet. Once more, two or three days hence, they would arise
from the watery depths and look upon the skies with eyes that could not
see, and then vanish for ever.
Turning from this awful and most moving sight, they rowed slowly
through quantities of floating wreckage—barrels, hencoops (in one of
these they found two drowned fowls, which they secured), and many other
articles, such as oars and wicker deck-chairs—and began to shout
vigorously in the hope of attracting the attention of the survivors in
the other boat, which they imagined could not be far off. Their
efforts, however, proved fruitless, owing to the thickness of the fog;
and in the considerable sea which was running it was impossible to see
more than twenty yards or so. Also, what between the wind, and the wash
and turmoil of the water, the sound of their voices did not travel far.
The ocean is a large place, and a rowing-boat is easily lost sight of
upon its furrowed surface; therefore it is not wonderful that, although
the two boats were at the moment within half a mile of each other, they
never met, and each took its separate course in the hope of escaping
the fate of the vessel. The boat in which were Lady Holmhurst and some
twenty other passengers, together with the second officer and a crew of
six men, after seeing the Kangaroo sink and picking up one survivor,
shaped a course for Kerguelen Land, believing that they, and they
alone, remained to tell the tale of that awful shipwreck. And here it
may be convenient to state that before nightfall they were picked up by
a sealing-whaler, that sailed with them to Albany, on the coast of
Australia. Thence an account of the disaster, which, as the reader will
remember, created a deep impression, was telegraphed home, and thence,
in due course, the widowed Lady Holmhurst and most of the other women
who escaped were taken back to England.
To return to our heroine and Mr. Meeson.
The occupants of the little boat sat looking at each other with white
scared faces, till at last the man called Johnnie, who, by-the-way, was
not a tar of a very amiable cast of countenance, possibly owing to the
fact that his nose was knocked almost flat against the side of his
face, swore violently, and said “It was no good stopping there all the
etceteraed day.” Thereupon Bill, who was a more jovial-looking man,
remarked “that he, Johnnie, was etceteraed well right, so they had
better hoist the fore-sail.”
At this point Augusta interposed, and told them that the captain, just
as the vessel came into collision, had informed her that he was making
Kerguelen Land, which was not more than sixty or seventy miles away.
They had a compass in the boat, and they knew the course the Kangaroo
was steering when she sank. Accordingly, without wasting further time,
they got as much sail up as the little boat could carry in the stiff
breeze, and ran nearly due east before the steady westerly wind. All
day long they ran across the misty ocean, the little boat behaving
splendidly, without sighting any living thing, till, at last, the night
closed in again. There was, fortunately, a bag of biscuits in the boat,
and a breaker of water; also there was, unfortunately, a breaker of
rum, from which the two sailors, Bill and Johnnie, were already taking
quite as much as was good for them. Consequently, though they were cold
and wet with the spray, they had not to face the added horrors of
starvation and thirst. At sundown, they shortened sail considerably,
only leaving enough canvas up to keep the boat ahead of the sea.
Somehow the long night wore away. Augusta scarcely closed her eyes; but
little Dick slept like a top upon her bosom, sheltered by her arms and
the blanket from the cold and penetrating spray. In the bottom of the
boat lay Mr. Meeson, to whom Augusta, pitying his condition—for he was
shivering dreadfully—had given the other blanket, keeping nothing for
herself except the woollen shawl.
At last, however, there came a faint glow in the east, and the daylight
began to break over the stormy sea. Augusta turned her head and stared
through the mist.
“What is that?” she said, in a voice trembling with excitement, to the
sailor Bill, who was taking his turn at the tiller; and she pointed to
a dark mass that loomed up almost over them.
The man looked, and then looked again; and then halloaed out joyfully,
“Land—land ahead!”
Up struggled Mr. Meeson on to his knees—his legs were so stiff that he
could not stand—and began to stare wildly about him.
“Thank God!” he cried. “Where is it? Is it New Zealand? If ever I get
there, I’ll stop there. I’ll never get on a ship again!”
“New Zealand!” growled the sailor. “Are you a fool? It’s Kerguelen
Land, that’s what it is—where it rains all day, and nobody lives—not
even a nigger. It’s like enough that you’ll stop there, though; for I
don’t reckon that anybody will come to take you off in a hurry.”
Mr. Meeson collapsed with a groan, and a few minutes afterwards the sun
rose, while the mist grew less and less till at last it almost
disappeared, revealing a grand panorama to the occupants of the boat.
For before them was line upon line of jagged and lofty peaks,
stretching as far as the eye could reach, gradually melting in the
distance into the cold white gleam of snow. Bill slightly altered the
boat’s course to the southward, and, sailing round a point, she came
into comparatively calm water. Then, due north of them, running into
the land, they saw the mouth of a great fjord, bounded on each side by
towering mountain banks, so steep as to be almost precipitous, around
whose lofty sides thousands of sea fowl wheeled, awaking the echoes
with their clamour. Right into this beautiful fjord they sailed, past a
line of flat rocks on which sat huge fantastic monsters that the
sailors said were sea-lions, along the line of beetling cliff, till
they came to a spot where the shore, on which grew a rank,
sodden-looking grass, shelved gently up from the water’s edge to the
frowning and precipitous background. And here, to their huge delight,
they discovered two huts roughly built of old ship’s timbers, placed
within a score of yards of each other, and a distance of some fifty
paces from the water’s edge.
“Well, there’s a house, anyway,” said the flat-nosed Johnnie, “though
it don’t look as though it had paid rates and taxes lately.”
“Let us land, and get out of this horrible boat,” said Mr. Meeson,
feebly: a proposition that Augusta seconded heartily enough.
Accordingly, the sail was lowered, and, getting out the oars, the two
sailors rowed the boat into a little, natural harbour that opened out
of the main creek, and in ten minutes her occupants were once more
stretching their legs upon dry land; that is, if any land in Kerguelen
Island, that region of perpetual wet, could be said to be dry.
Their first care was to go up to the huts and examine them, with a
result that could scarcely be called encouraging. The huts had been
built some years—whether by the expedition which, in 1874, came thither
to observe the transit of Venus, or by former parties of shipwrecked
mariners, they never discovered—and were now in a state of ruin. Mosses
and lichens grew plentifully upon the beams, and even on the floor;
while great holes in the roof let in the wet, which lay in little slimy
puddles beneath. Still, with all their drawbacks, they were decidedly
better than the open beach; a very short experience of which, in that
inclement climate, would certainly have killed them; and they
thankfully decided to make the best of them. Accordingly, the smaller
of the two huts was given up to Augusta and the boy Dick, while Mr.
Meeson and the sailors took possession of the large one. Their next
task was to move up their scanty belongings (the boat having first been
carefully beached), and to clean out the huts and make them as
habitable as possible by stretching the sails of the boat on the damp
floors and covering up the holes in the roof as best they could with
stones and bits of board from the bottom of the boat. The weather was,
fortunately, dry, and as they all (with the exception of Mr. Meeson,
who seemed to be quite prostrated) worked with a will, not excepting
Master Dick—who toddled backwards and forwards after Augusta in high
glee at finding himself on terra firma—and by midday everything that
could be done was done. Then they made a fire of some drift-wood—for,
fortunately, they had a few matches—and Augusta cooked the two fowls
they had got out of the floating hen-coop as well as circumstances
would allow—which, as a matter of fact, was not very well—and they had
dinner, of which they all stood sadly in need.
After dinner they reckoned up their resources. Of water there was an
ample supply, for not far from the huts a stream ran down into the
fjord. For food they had the best part of a bag of biscuits weighing
about a hundred pounds. Also there was the cask of rum, which the men
had moved into their own hut. But that was not all, for there were
plenty of shellfish about if they could find means to cook them, while
the rocks around were covered with hundreds of penguins, including
specimens of the great “King penguin,” which only required to be
knocked on the head. There was, therefore, little fear of their
perishing of starvation, as sometimes happens to ship wrecked people.
Indeed, immediately after dinner, the two sailors went out and returned
with as many birds’ eggs—mostly penguin—as they could carry in their
hats. Scarcely had they got in, however, when the rain, which is the
prevailing characteristic of these latitudes, set in, in the most
pitiless fashion; and soon the great mountains with which they were
surrounded, and those before them, were wrapped in dense veils of
fleecy vapour. Hour after hour the rain fell without ceasing,
penetrating through their miserable roof, and falling—drop, drip,
drop—upon the sodden floor. Augusta sat by herself in the smaller hut,
doing what she could to amuse little Dick by telling him stories.
Nobody knows how hard she found it to have to invent stories when she
was thus overwhelmed with misfortune; but it was the only way of
keeping the poor child from crying, as the sense of cold and misery
forced itself into his little heart. So she told him about Robinson
Crusoe, and then she told him that they were playing at being Robinson
Crusoe, to which the child very sensibly replied that he did not at all
like the game, and wanted his mamma.
And meanwhile it grew darker and colder and damper hour by hour, till
at last the light went out, and left her with nothing to keep her
company but the moaning wind, the falling rain, and the wild cries of
the sea-birds when something disturbed them from their rest. The child
was asleep at last, wrapped up in a blanket and one of the smaller
sails; and Augusta, feeling quite worn out with solitude and the
pressure of heavy thoughts, began to think that the best thing she
could do would be to try to follow his example, when suddenly there
came a knock at the boards which served for a door to the shanty.
“Who is it?” she cried, with a start.
“Me—Mr. Meeson,” answered a voice. “Can I come in?”
“Yes; if you like,” said Augusta, sharply, though in her heart she was
really glad to see him, or, rather, to hear him, for it was too dark to
see anything. It is wonderful how, under the pressure of a great
calamity, we forget our quarrels and our spites, and are ready to jump
at the prospect of the human companionship of our deadliest enemy. And
“the moral of that is,” as the White Queen says, that as we are all
night and day face to face with the last dread calamity—Death—we should
throughout our lives behave as though we saw the present shadow of his
hand. But that will never happen in the world while human nature is
human nature—and when will it become anything else?
“Put up the door again,” said Augusta, when, from a rather rawer rush
of air than usual, she gathered that her visitor was within the hut.
Mr. Meeson obeyed, groaning audibly. “Those two brutes are getting
drunk,” he said, “swallowing down rum by the gallon. I have come
because I could not stop with them any longer—and I am so ill, Miss
Smithers, so ill! I believe that I am going to die. Sometimes I feel as
though all the marrow in my bones were ice, and—and—at others just as
though somebody were shoving a red-hot wire up them. Can’t you do
anything for me?”
“I don’t see what is to be done,” answered Augusta, gently, for the
man’s misery touched her in spite of her dislike for him. “You had
better lie down and try to go to sleep.”
“To sleep!” he moaned; “how can I sleep? My blanket is wringing wet and
my clothes are damp,” and he fairly broke down and began to groan and
sob.
“Try and go to sleep,” urged Augusta again.
He made no answer, but by degrees he grew quieter, overwhelmed,
perhaps, by the solemn presence of the darkness. Augusta laid her head
against the biscuit-bag, and at last sank into blissful oblivion; for
to the young, sleep is a constant friend. Once or twice she woke, but
only to drop off again; and when she finally opened her eyes it was
quite light and the rain had ceased.
Her first care was for little Dick, who had slept soundly throughout
the night and appeared to be none the worse. She took him outside the
hut and washed his face and hands in the stream and then sat him down
to a breakfast of biscuit. As she returned she met the two sailors,
who, although they were now fairly sober, bore upon their faces the
marks of a fearful debauch. Evidently they had been drinking heavily.
She drew herself up and looked at them, and they slunk past her in
silence.
Then she returned to the hut. Mr. Meeson was sitting up when she
entered, and the bright light from the open door fell full upon his
face. His appearance fairly shocked her. The heavy cheeks had fallen
in, there were great purple rings round his hollow eyes, and his whole
aspect was one of a man in the last stage of illness.
“I have had such a night” he said, “Oh, Heaven! such a night! I don’t
believe that I shall live through another.”
“Nonsense!” said Augusta, “eat some biscuit and you will feel better.”
He took a piece of the biscuit which she gave him, and attempted to
swallow it, but could not.
“It is no use,” he said; “I am a dying man. Sitting in those wet
clothes in the boat has finished me.”
And Augusta, looking at his face, could not but believe him.