A VOLCANIC ISLAND.
I lost my senses after I had been in the water a few minutes: whether
through being nearly strangled by the foam which broke incessantly over
me, or through being struck by some fragment of the wreck I cannot
say. Yet I must have retained my grip of the piece of spar I had
grabbed hold of on being swept overboard with the proverbial tenacity
of the drowning, for I found myself grasping it when I recovered
consciousness. I lay on my back with my face to the sky, and my first
notion was that I had dropped to sleep on the yacht’s deck, and that
I had been awakened by rain falling in torrents. But my senses were
not long in coming to me, and I then discovered that what I believed
to be rain was salt spray flying in clouds upon and over me from a
thunderous surf that was roaring and raging within a few strides. It
was very dark, there was nothing to be seen but the white boiling of
the near waters with the intermittent glancing of the heads of melting
seas beyond. I felt with my hands and made out that I was lying on
something as hard as rock, honeycombed like a sponge. This I detected
by passing my hand over the surface as far as I could reach without
rising. After a little I caught sight of a black shadow to the right
thrown into relief by the broad yeasty throbbing amid which it stood.
It was apparently motionless, and I guessed it to be a portion of the
‘Bride.’ The wind howled strongly, and the noise of the breaking seas
was distracting. Yet the moment I had my mind, as I may say, fully,
I was sensible of a heat in the air very nearly as oppressive as had
been the atmosphere in the cabin of the yacht that evening; and this
in spite of the wind which blew a stiff breeze and which was full of
wet besides. Then it was that there entered my mind the idea that the
yacht had struck and gone to pieces upon a volcanic island newly hove
up in that sudden great flame which had leapt upon our sight over the
‘Bride’s’ bows some two or three hours before at a distance, as we had
computed, of fifteen miles, and which had seemed to set the whole of
the northern heavens on fire.
I felt round about me with my hands again; the soil was unquestionably
lava, and the heat in it was a final convincing proof that my
conjecture was right. I rose with difficulty, and standing erect looked
about, but I could distinguish nothing more than a mere surface of
blackness blending with and vanishing in the yelling and hissing night
flying overhead. I fell upon my knees to grope in that posture some
little distance from the surf to diminish by my withdrawal something
of the pelting of the pitiless storm of spray; and well it was that I
had sense enough to crawl in this manner, for I had not moved a yard
when my hand plunged into a hole to the length of my arm. The cavity
was full of water, deep enough to have drowned me for all I knew,
whilst the orifice was big enough to receive three or four bodies of
the size of mine lashed together. There was no promise of any sort of
shelter. The island, as well as I could determine its configuration
by the surf which circled it, went rounding out of the sea in a small
slope after the pattern of a turtle-shell. However, I succeeded in
creeping to a distance where the spray struck me without its former
sting, and then I stood up and putting my hands to the sides of my
mouth shouted as loud as my weak condition would suffer me.
A voice deep and hoarse came back like an echo of my own from a
distance, as my ear might conjecture, of some twenty paces or so.
‘Hallo! Who calls?’
‘I, Mr. Monson. Who are you.’
‘Cutbill,’ he roared back.
I brought my hands together, grateful to God to hear him, for how was I
to know till then but that I might be the only survivor of the yacht’s
company?
‘Can you come to me, Cutbill?’ I cried.
‘I don’t like to let go of the lady, sir,’ he answered.
‘Which lady?’ I shouted.
‘Miss Jennings.’
‘Is she alive, Cutbill?’
‘Ay, sir.’
By this time my sight was growing used to the profound blackness. The
clouds of pallid foam along the margin of the island flung a sort of
shadow of ghastly illumination into the atmosphere, and I fancied I
could see the blotch the figure of Cutbill made to the right of me on
the level on which I stood. I forthwith dropped on my knees again and
cautiously advanced, then more plainly distinguished him, and in a few
minutes was at his side. It was the shadowy group, the outlines barely
determinable by my sight, even when I was close to, of the big figure
of the sailor seated with the girl supported on his arm. I put my lips
close to the faint glimmer of her face, and cried ‘Laura, dearest, how
is it with you? Would God it had been my hand that had had the saving
of you!’
She answered faintly, ‘Take me; let me rest on you?’
I put my arm round her and brought her head to my breast and so held
her to me. Soaked as we were to the skin like drowned rats, the heat
floating up out of the body of volcanic stuff on which we lay prevented
us from feeling the least chill from the pouring of the wind through
our streaming clothes.
‘Oh, my God, Laura!’ I cried, ‘I feared you were gone for ever when I
lost my hold of you.’
‘The life-buoy you put on saved me,’ she exclaimed, so faintly, that I
should not have heard her had not my ear been close to her lips.
‘The lady had a life-buoy on, sir,’ said the deep voice of Cutbill,
‘she was stranded alongside of me, and I dragged her clear of the surf
and have been holding of her since, for this here soil is a cuss’d hard
pillow for the heads of the likes of her.’
‘Are you hurt, Cutbill?’
‘No, sir, not a scratch that I’m aware of. I fell overboard and a swell
run me ashore as easy as jumping. But I fear most of ’em are drownded.’
‘Lady Monson!’ I cried.
‘I don’t know, sir.’
‘And my cousin?’
‘Mr. Monson!’ he exclaimed in a broken voice, ‘the instant I felt what
had happened I laid hold of Sir Wilfrid to drag him on deck! He yelled
out and clung, and ’twould have been like mangling the gentleman, sir,
to have used my whole strength upon him if so be as my arms had been
equal to the job of even making him budge. I gave up; I wanted to save
my life, sir; I could hear the vessel going to pieces and reckoned upon
his following me if I ran out. I fear he’s drownded, sir.’
‘Ah, great heaven! Poor Wilf! Merciful Father, that this desperate
voyage should end thus!’
I felt the girl shuddering and trembling on my breast.
‘Darling,’ I cried, ‘take heart! Daylight has yet to tell us the whole
story. How sudden! How shocking! Cutbill, you have lungs; for God’s
sake, hail the darkness, that we may know if others are living!’
He did so; a faint halloo, sounding some distance from the right,
replied. He shouted again and an answer was again returned, this time
in another voice; it was feebler, but it proved at all events that
there were others besides ourselves who had survived the destruction
of the yacht. What the hour was I did not know. The night wore away
with intolerable and killing slowness, the wind decreased, the sea
moderated, the boiling of the surf that had been fierce for a long
while took a subdued note, and the wind blew over us free of spray.
Till daybreak I was cradling Laura on my arm. Frequently she would
sit up to lighten the burthen of her form, but as often as she did
so, again would she bring her head to my breast. What the dawn was to
reveal I could not imagine, yet I felt so much happiness in the thought
of Laura’s life being spared and in having her at my side, that I
waited the disclosures of daybreak without dread.
At last there came a sifting of grey light into the east. By this time
there was no more than a gentle wind blowing; but the sky had continued
of an impenetrable blackness all night, and when day broke I witnessed
the reason of the oppressive obscurity in a surface of leaden cloud
that lay stretched all over the face of the heavens without the least
break visible in it anywhere.
It was natural that the moment light enough stole into the atmosphere
to see by, my first look should be at the girl by my side. Her head was
uncovered; I in slipping on the lifebuoy, or Cutbill in removing it
from her, had bared her hair, and the beautiful gold of it lay like a
cloud upon her back and shoulders. It was as dry as were our clothes;
the heat of the island had indeed served us as an oven. She was deadly
pale, hollow-eyed, with a shadow as of the reflection of a spring
leaf under each eye; her lips blanched, her countenance piteous with
its expression of fear. Her dress had been torn by the wreckage: more
shipwrecked than she no girlish figure could ever have looked, yet her
beauty stole through all like a spirit breathing in her, and I could
not release her without first pressing her to my heart and kissing her
hand and fondling it, whilst I thanked God that she was alive and that
we were together.
The yacht had broken in half from a few feet abaft of where her
foremast had stood. All the after part of her had disappeared;
nothing remained but the bows with the black planks winding round,
jagged, twisted, broken; an incredible ruin! The putty-coloured shore
that looked to the eye to trend with something of the smoothness of
pumice-stone to the wash of the surf was dark with wreckage. I saw
several figures lying prone amongst this litter of ribs and planks and
cases and the like; there were others again recumbent higher up--five
of them I counted--a few hundred paces distant, two of whom, as the
three of us sat casting our eyes about us, slowly rose to their legs to
survey the scene. One of these was Finn, the other one of the crew of
the ‘Bride.’
I exclaimed, pointing to the furthest of the three figures who
continued recumbent, ‘Isn’t that a woman?’
Cutbill stared; Laura, whose eyes were keen, said, ‘Yes. Is it
Henrietta or my maid?’
Finn perceived us and held up his hand, and made as if to come to us;
but on a sudden he pressed his side, halted, and then slowly seated
himself. I gazed eagerly around me for signs of further life. It was
now clear daylight, with a thinning of the leaden sky in the east
that promised a sight of the sun presently with assurance of a clear
sky a little later on. It was to be easily seen now that this island
which had brought about the destruction of the ‘Bride’ was a volcanic
upheaval created in the moment of the prodigious blaze of light we
had viewed in the north. It was of the form of an oyster-shell, going
with a rounded slope to amidships from one margin to another, and was
everywhere of a very pale sulphur colour. It was within a mile in
circumference, and therefore, but a very short walk in breadth, and at
its highest point rose to between twelve and fifteen feet above the
sea. There stood, however, on the very apex of it, if I may so term
the central point of its rounded back, a vast lump of rock, as I took
it to be. But my eye ran over it incuriously. We were making towards
Finn and the others when I glanced at it, and my mind was so full that
I gave the thing no heed.
It was necessary to walk with extreme caution. The island was like a
sponge, as I have before said, punctured with holes big and little,
some large as wells and apparently deep. But for these holes walking
would have been easy, for everywhere between the surface was as smooth
as if it had been polished. In many parts a sort of vapour-like steam
crawled into the air. Now that the wind was gone you felt the heat of
this amazing formation striking up into the atmosphere, and I confess
my heart fell sick in me on considering how it should be when the
sun shone forth in power and mingled the sting of its glory with the
oven-like temperature of this fire-created island.
There were many dead fish about, some floating belly up in the wells,
others dry, of all sizes and sorts, with the dark-blue, venomous form
of a dead shark a full fifteen feet long close down by the edge of the
sea, about forty paces to the left of the wreck.
Laura walked without difficulty. She leaned upon my arm, but there was
no weight in her pressure. The lifebuoy had held her head well above
water, and she had been swept ashore without suffering; the resting of
her limbs, too, through the long hours of the night had helped her;
there was comfort also in the dryness of her clothes, and I was very
sensible likewise that my presence gave her heart and spirit.
‘It is Henrietta!’ she exclaimed.
Yes! the figure that at a distance might have passed for Lady Monson or
Laura’s maid now proved the former. She had been resting some little
distance apart from the others with her head upon her arm, but suddenly
she sat upright and looked fixedly towards us. She, like Laura, was
without covering to her head; her pomp of black hair fell with gipsy
wildness to her waist; her posture was so still, her regard of us so
stubbornly intent, that I feared to discover her mind was wanting.
‘I will go to her,’ said Laura.
Yet I witnessed the old recoil in her as though there was nothing
in the most tragic of all conditions to bate her sister’s subduing
influence. She withdrew her hand from my arm and pressed forward; as
she approached, Lady Monson slowly rose, tottered towards her, threw
her clasped hands upwards with her face upturned, and then fell upon
Laura’s neck.
Finn called feebly to me, ‘God be praised you’re safe, Mr. Monson, and
sound, I hope, sir? And how is it with ye, mate?’ addressing Cutbill.
I grasped his hand; the tears gushed into his eyes, and he pointed
towards the wreck and to the bodies amongst the stuff that had been
washed ashore, whilst he slowly shook his head. He looked grey,
haggard, hollow, ill, most miserable, as though he had lived ten years
since last night and was sick and near his end.
‘Cap’n,’ cried Cutbill in a broken voice, ‘’twas no man’s fault. Who’s
to keep a look-out for islands after this pattern?’
I seated myself by Finn’s side. ‘Keep up your heart,’ said I. ‘You are
not hurt, I trust?’
‘Something struck me here,’ said he, putting his hand to his
left breast, ‘whilst I was swimming, and it makes me feel a bit
short-winded. But it isn’t that what hurts me, Mr. Monson. It’s the
thoughts of them who’ve gone, and the sight of what was yesterday, sir,
the sweetest craft afloat. Who’d have thought she’d have crumbled up
so fast? reg’larly broke her back and gone into staves aft! She was
staunch, but only as a pleasure wessel is.’
I asked Cutbill to examine the people who were lying on what I must
call the beach, and report if there was any life in them.
‘My cousin is drowned,’ I said to Finn.
‘Oh, blessed God!’ he answered. ‘Cutbill knows; he couldn’t get him out
of his berth, I allow!’
‘Ay, that was it,’ I said, ‘but this is no time for grieving for the
dead, Finn. Regrets are idle. How are we who are spared to save our
lives? Are the yacht’s boats all gone?’
I ran my eye along the beach and over the sea, but nothing resembling
a boat was visible. The sailor that had stood up with Finn when I had
first caught sight of them had seated himself a little distance away,
Lascar fashion, and I noticed him at that moment dip his forefinger
into a hole close beside him, suck it and then drink by lifting water
in the palm of his hand. I called to him, ‘Is it fresh?’
‘Pretty nigh, sir,’ he answered.
There was such another little hole near me half full of water, as
indeed was every well or aperture of the kind that I saw. I dipped as
the sailor had and found the water slightly, but only very slightly,
brackish. This I concluded was owing to the overwhelming weight of rain
that had followed the upheaval of this island overflowing the hollows
and holes in it so abundantly as to drown the salt water, with which,
of course, the cavities had been filled when this head of lava had been
forced to the surface. I bade Finn dip his hand and taste, and told him
that our first step must be to hit upon some means of storing a good
supply before the heat should dry up the water.
There were two sailors lying close together a few yards from where the
seaman had squatted himself, and I called to him to know if they were
alive. He answered ‘Yes,’ and shouted to them, on which they turned
their heads, and one of them languidly rose to his elbows, the other
lay still.
‘It will be the wreckage that drownded most of them and that hurt them
that’s come off with their lives,’ exclaimed Finn. ‘It was like being
thrown into whirling machinery. How many shall we be able to muster?
I fear _they’re_ but bodies, sir,’ indicating the figures over which
Cutbill was stooping.
All this while Laura and her sister were standing and conversing. I
was starting to walk to the wreckage that stood at the foreshore, when
Laura slightly motioned to me to approach her. I at once went to her,
watching every foot of ground I measured, for the island was just a
surface of pitfalls, and one could not imagine how deep the larger
among them might prove. Lady Monson bowed to me with as much dignity as
if she were receiving me in a ball-room. Her face looked like a dead
woman’s vitalised by some necromantic agency, so preternatural was the
ghastly air produced by the contrast between the tomb-like tincture of
the flesh and the raven blackness of her mass of flowing hair, and the
feverish glow in her large dark eyes. I returned her salutation, and
she extended a lifeless, ice-cold hand.
‘I am asking Laura what is to become of us,’ she exclaimed with a
distinct hint of her imperious nature in her voice, and fastening her
eyes upon me as from a habit of commanding with them.
‘I cannot tell,’ I answered; ‘our business is to do the best we can for
ourselves.’
‘How many are living?’ she asked.
‘We do not as yet know, but I fear no more than you see alive. My
cousin is drowned, I fear.’
Her eyes fell, she drew a deep breath and continued looking down; then
her gaze, full of a sudden fire, flashed to my face again.
‘I am not accountable for his death, Mr. Monson. Why do you speak
significantly of this dreadful thing? I did not desire his death. I
would have saved his life had the power to do so been given to me. Oh
God!’ she cried, ‘it is cruel to talk or to look so as to make me feel
as if the responsibility of all this were mine!’
She clasped one hand over another upon her heart, drawing erect her
fine figure into a posture full of indignant reproach and passionate
deprecation. Indeed, had I never met her before and not known better,
I should have taken her to be some fine tragedy actress who could not
perform in the humblest article of an everyday commonplace part without
dressing her behaviour with the airs of the stage.
‘Pardon me,’ I exclaimed, ‘you mistake. I meant nothing significant. I
thought you would wish to know if your husband had been spared. This is
no moment for discussing any other question in the world but how we are
to deliver ourselves from this terrible situation.’
As I turned to leave them I thought she regarded me with entreaty,
almost with wistfulness, if such eyes as hers could ever take that
expression, but she remained silent; and giving my love a smile--for my
love she was now, and I cannot express how my heart went to her as she
stood pale, worn, heavy-eyed, but lacking nothing of her old tenderness
and sweetness and fairness by the side of her sister, listening timidly
to the haughty, commanding creature’s words--I walked to meet Cutbill,
who was slowly returning from his inspection of the bodies.
‘They’re all dead, sir,’ he exclaimed.
‘Ah!’ I cried.
‘There’s poor old Mr. Crimp----’ his voice failed him. He added, a
little later, ‘they look more to have been killed than drownded, sir.’
‘Sir Wilfrid?’
‘No, he isn’t amongst them.’
We stood together looking towards the bodies.
‘Cutbill,’ said I, ‘We must all turn to now and collect what we can
from the wreck that may prove useful to us. There’s nothing to eat here
saving dead fish which will be rotting presently.’
The sea stretched in lead under the lead of the sky saving in the far
east, where the opening of the heavens there had shed a pearly film
upon it bright with sunrise. The swell had flattened and was light, and
rolled sluggishly to the island, sliding up and down the smooth incline
soundlessly, save when now and again some head of it broke and boiled
and rushed backwards white and simmering. I sent a long look round, but
there was nothing in sight. One could follow the ocean girdle sheer
round the island with but the break only of the queer rugged mass of
rock in the centre where the slope came to its height. The line of
shore which the remains of the yacht centred was a stretch of some
hundred and fifty feet of porous rock like meerschaum in places, the
declivity very gradual. It was covered with wreckage, and remains of
the vessel continued to be washed ashore by the set and hurl of the
swell.
I went to work with Cutbill to haul high and dry whatever we were able
to deal with. We were presently joined by two of the sailors. Finn and
the other man made an effort to approach, but I perceived they were too
weak and would be of no use to us, and I called to them to continue
resting themselves. Laura and Lady Monson were seated together and
watched us. I could not gather that they conversed; at least, though I
often directed a glance at them, I never observed that they looked at
each other as people do who talk.
We toiled a long hour, and in that time had stacked at a good distance
from the wash of the sea a store of articles of all kinds: casks of
flour, salt beef, biscuit for forecastle use, a cask of sherry, some
cases of potted meats, and other matters which I should only weary you
by cataloguing. Had the shore been steep too we should probably have
got nothing, but it shelved gently far past the point where the yacht
had struck, and as the goods had floated out of the yacht they were
rolled up like pebbles of shingle by the swell till they stranded;
and, as I have said, even as we were busy in collecting what we wanted
other articles came washing towards us. Every cask and barrel that
was recoverable we saved for the sake of the drink it might contain.
Amongst other things we succeeded in dragging high and dry the yacht’s
foresail. This was a difficult job, for first it had to be cut from
the gear that held it to its wreck of spar, and then we had to haul it
ashore, which was as much as the four of us could manage. We also saved
the yacht’s chest of tools, a box of Miss Laura’s wearing apparel, and
a small chest of drawers which had stood in my poor cousin’s cabin.
Cutbill and another seaman who stood the firmest of the rest of us on
their shanks had to wade breast-high before we could secure many of
these goods which showed in the hollow of the swell but were too heavy
to be trundled further up by the heave of the water, whose weight was
fast diminishing. There was little risk, but it took time; plenty of
rope had come ashore, and we secured lines to the men whilst they
carried ends in their hands to make fast to the articles they went
after. Then they waded back to us and the four of us hauled together,
and in this way, as I have said, we saved an abundance of useful things.
There was plenty yet to come at, but we were forced to knock off
through sheer fatigue. Our next step was to get some breakfast. I was
very eager that poor Finn and the man that was lying near him should be
rallied, and counted on a substantial meal and a good draught of wine
going far towards setting them on their legs again.
‘Cutbill,’ said I, ‘whilst I overhaul the stores for breakfast, will
you take Dowling,’ referring to the stronger of the two men who had
joined us, ‘and bury those bodies there? They make a terrible sight
for the ladies to see. I have not your strength of heart, Cutbill; the
handling of the poor creatures would prove too much for me. Yet if you
think it unreasonable that I should not assist----’
‘Oh, no, sir! it’s a thing that ought to be done. We shall have to
carry ’em t’other side. They may slip into deep water there.’ He called
to Dowling, and together they went to the bodies.
The carpenter’s chest was padlocked. Happily I had a bunch of keys in
my pocket, one of which fitted. The chest was liberally furnished; we
armed ourselves with chisel and hammers, a gimlet and the like, with
which tools we had presently opened all that we needed to furnish us
with a hearty repast. We stood casks on end for tables, and boxes and
cases served as seats. There were sailors’ knives in the tool-chest,
and we emptied and cleaned a jar of potted meat to use as a drinking
vessel. The prostrate seaman, whose name was Johnson, was too weak
to rise: so I sent Head to him, this fellow being one of the sailors
who had worked with us on the beach, with a draught of sherry, some
biscuits, and tinned meat, and had the satisfaction of seeing him fall
to after he had tossed down the wine. Finn managed to join us, but he
ate little and seemed broken down with grief.
There is much that I find hard to realise when I look back and reflect
upon the incidents of this wild excursion of which I have done my
best to tell you the story; but nothing seems so dream-like as this
our first meal upon that newly-created spot of sulphurous rock in
the deepest solitude of the heart of the mighty Atlantic. The leaden
curtain had gradually lifted off the face of the east, leaving a band
of white-blue sky there ruled off by the vapour in a line as straight
as the horizon. The sun floated clear in it; his slanting beam had
flashed up the waters midway beneath into an azure of the delicate
paleness of turquoise; but all the western side lay of a leaden hue
yet under the shadow of the immense stretch of almost imperceptibly
withdrawing vapour. At one cask sat Laura and Lady Monson. The weak
draught of wind kept my sweetheart’s golden hair trembling; but Lady
Monson’s hung motionless upon her back; it made one think of a thunder
cloud when one looked at it and noticed the lightning of her glance
as she sent her eyes in a tragic roll from the distant horizon to the
fragment of rock and on to the island slope with the great strange bulk
of rock nodding, as it seemed, on top; and the corpse-like whiteness
of her face was a sort of stare in itself to remind you of the bald,
stormy glare you sometimes see in the brow of a tempest lifting sombre
and sulkily past the sea-line. Finn’s eyes clung with drooping lids
to the fragment of the ‘Bride’; Head reclined near me in a sailor’s
reckless posture, feeding heartily; down on the beach the figures of
Cutbill and Dowling were passing out of sight with one or another of
their dreadful burthens and then returning. None of us seemed able to
look that way.
‘All yon wessel’s company saving the eight of us gone!’ exclaimed Finn.
‘And she’s what? Look at her. Just the shell of a yacht’s head. Oh, my
God, Mr. Monson, how terrible sudden things do happen at sea!’
‘I never would ha’ believed that the “Bride” ’ud tumble to pieces like
that though, capt’n,’ exclaimed Head.
‘Oh, man,’ cried Finn, ‘the swell lifted and dropped her. Didn’t ye
feel it? Poor Sir Wilfrid! Mr. Monson, sir--I’d take his place if he
could be here.’
‘I believe it, Finn. I am sure you would,’ I said with a swift glance
at Lady Monson, whose head sank as she caught the poor fellow’s remark.
‘Has this island been thrown up from the very bottom of the sea?’ asked
Laura.
‘From the very bottom of the sea,’ I answered, ‘and from a depth out
of soundings too. It is the head of a mountain of lava created in a
flash of fire, and taller, maybe, from base to peak than half-a-dozen
Everests one on the top of another.’
‘Do not ships sail this way?’ said Lady Monson.
‘Plenty of them, my lady,’ answered Finn. ‘No fear of our being long
here. A hisland in these waters where it is all supposed to be clear
is bound to bring wessels close in to view it. The “’Liza Robbins”
oughtn’t to be fur off.’ He shuddered and cried, ‘Poor Jacob Crimp!
poor old Jacob! Gone! and the werry echo of the yarn he was spinning me
last night ain’t yet off my ears.’ He buried his long, rugged face in
his hands, shaking his head.
‘Is there any means of escaping should a vessel not pass by?’ inquired
Lady Monson.
‘We must pin our faith on being sighted and taken off,’ I answered.
‘But where are we to live meanwhile? What is there on this horrible
spot to shelter us?’ she exclaimed with a sudden start, and darting a
terrified look around her. ‘If stormy weather should come, the waves
will sweep this island. How shall we be able to cling to it? All our
provisions will be washed away. How then shall we live?’
‘It’ll take a middling sea to sweep this here rock, your ledship,’ said
Johnson feebly. ‘But it is to be swept capt’n. What’s the height o’ un?’
‘Two fadom end on, I allow,’ said Head.
‘Silence!’ roared Finn, putting the whole of his slender stock of
vitality as one should suppose into his shout. ‘What d’ye want? to
scare all hands by jawing? My lady, there’s nothen to be afraid of. It
blew strong last night arter the yacht had stranded; but this island
wasn’t swept or we shouldn’t be here.’
I met my sweetheart’s frightened eyes, and to change the subject asked
Lady Monson if she had reached the shore unaided.
‘No,’ she answered. ‘I owe my life to the sailor who is with that big
seaman down there,’ meaning Dowling. ‘I am unable to explain. I was
unconscious before I left the yacht.’
‘Her ladyship was washed overboard,’ said Finn. ‘Dowling, who was
swimming, got one of his hands foul of your hair, my lady. He kept
hold, towed your ladyship as the swell ran him forrads, felt ground,
and hauled ye ashore. He behaved well.’
‘My poor maid is drowned!’ cried Laura.
‘Too many, miss, too many! Oh, my God, too many!’ muttered poor Finn.
Meanwhile my eye had been resting incuriously upon the singular lump
of rock that stood apparently poised on the highest slope in the very
centre of the island. On a sudden I started to a perception that for
the instant I deemed purely fanciful. The block of stuff was distant
from where we were eating our breakfast some two hundred and eighty to
three hundred yards. The complexion of it whilst the sky was in shadow
had so much of the meerschaum-like tint of the island that one easily
took it to be a mass of lava identical with the rest of the volcanic
creation; but the sun was now pouring his brilliant white fires upon
it, and I noticed a deal of sparkling in it as though it were coated
with salt or studded with flints of crystal, whilst the bed in which it
lay and the slope round about were of a dead, unreflecting pale yellow.
My fixed regard attracted the attention of the others.
One of the two seamen looked and called out, ‘That ain’t a part of the
island, sir.’
‘What form does it take to your fancy?’ I asked, addressing my
companions generally.
There was a pause and Laura said, ‘It looks like a ship, an unwieldy
vessel coming at us. Do you notice two erections like broken masts?’
Finn peered under his hand.
‘It certainly looks uncommonly like as if it had been a ship in its
day,’ he exclaimed, ‘but these ’ere convulsions, I am told, are made up
o’ fantastics.’
Cutbill and his companion were now approaching; they were fiery hot,
their faces crimson, and they moved with an air of distress. Yet
Cutbill made shift to sing out as he approached, pointing as he spoke,
‘Mr. Monson, there’s a ship ashore up there, sir. You get the shape of
her plain round the corner.’
‘Come, lads!’ I cried, ‘sit and fall to. There’s plenty to eat here and
drink to give you life. You have got well through a bitter business.
Finn, do you feel equal to inspecting that object?’
‘Ay, sir,’ he answered. ‘I’m drawing my breath better. But it’s the
mind, Mr. Monson--it’s the mind.’
‘Then come, all of us who will,’ I cried. ‘Laura, here is my arm for
you, and here is a pocket handkerchief too to tie round your head.’
Lady Monson looked at her sister and rose with her. Laura came to my
side and we started.