WE BOARD THE GALLEON
The surface of the island was so honeycombed that one dared not look
elsewhere than downwards whilst walking, and so it was not until we
had drawn close to the huge rock-like lump that I was able to give my
attention to it.
How am I to describe this astonishing body? It was most clearly the
petrified fabric of a ship, a vessel of considerable tonnage, that
had been hove from the dark ocean-bed on which it had been resting
for God alone could tell how many scores of years by the prodigious
eruption that had sent this head of rock on which we stood rushing
upwards through the deep into the view of the Atlantic heaven. She had
been apparently a galleon in her day, and to judge from such shape
as I could distinguish in her, she was probably upwards of a century
and a half old. She was not much above three times as long as she was
broad, and the figure of her, therefore, was only to be got by viewing
her broadside on. She was incrusted with shells of a hundred different
kinds and colours, with much exquisite drapery of lace-like weed. This
shelly covering was manifestly very thick and astonishingly plentiful,
but though it increased her bulk it did not greatly distort her shape.
You saw the form of the craft plain in the astonishing growth and
adhesion. There was the short line of poop and then a little longer
line of quarter-deck, then a deep waist broken again by the rise of
the forecastle. You could follow the curve of the stem and cutwater
and plainly see the square of the counter rising castle-like to a
height of hard upon thirty feet from the surface on which she lay.
She suggested the structure of a ship built of shells. The remains of
a couple of masts shot up from her decks, one far forward, the other
almost amidships, each about twelve feet high, as richly clothed as the
hull with shells of many hues. She lay with a slight list; that is to
say, a little on one side, the inclination being to starboard, and so
far as one could guess, she was disconnected from the bed on which she
reposed--probably thundered clear of it by the shock of earthquake,
though she looked as solid as a block of cliff. Sparkling lines of
water spouted from her upper works, but from below that part of her
main-deck which sailors would call the covering board, she showed
herself as tight as if she had been newly caulked and launched.
The sunshine streamed purely and with great power upon her, and though
she had scarce been distinguishable from the rest of the island save
in the shape of her when the sky was dark with cloud, she now flashed
out on that side of her that faced the sun into the most barbarically
glorious, richly coloured, admirably novel object that ever mortal
eye lighted upon in this wide world. Pearl-coloured shells blended
with blue and green; there were ruby stars; growths of a crystalline
clarity prismatic as cut glass; shells of the cloud-like softness of
milk but of the hardness of marble; patches of incrustation of an
amber tint, others of a vivid green delicately relieved by the scoring
of the burnished edges of mussel-like shells. The falls of water
fell like curves of rainbow over this magnificence and splendour of
marine decoration; the tapestry of weed hung moist and of an exquisite
vividness of green. The short height of masts glittered in the sunshine
with many lovely colours of silver and rose and other hues which made a
very prism of each shaft of spar.
The whole of us stood gazing, lost in wonder; then Finn cried, ‘This is
a wonderful sight, Mr. Monson.’
‘An old galleon full o’ treasure. Who’s to know?’ exclaimed the seaman
Head.
‘From what depth will she have been thrown up?’ asked Laura.
‘From a soil too deep for human soundings,’ said I. ‘Wonderful that
the blaze of fire in the heart of which she must have soared to this
surface did not wither her up. But she seems perfect, not an ornament
injured, not a jewel on her broken, no hint of having been scorched
that I can anywhere see. She will have belonged to the last century,
Finn?’
‘Ay, sir,’ he answered, ‘and mayhap earlier. How would she show if she
was to be scraped?’
He held his long chin betwixt his thumb and forefinger, and stared
gapingly at the wondrous object.
‘We might find shelter in her,’ said the cold, haughty voice of Lady
Monson, ‘if the sea should break over the island.’
‘Happily suggested!’ I exclaimed. ‘What sort of accommodation will her
decks offer?’
‘Grit, I reckon,’ said Head.
‘Well, we can pound a space clear for ourselves, I hope,’ said I;
‘there’s canvas enough yonder on the beach to furnish us with a roof.’
‘And she’ll give us a rise of twenty or thirty feet above the level
of the island, sir,’ said Finn, ‘pretty nigh as good as a masthead
look-out. A wessel’ll have to pass a long way off not to see her! Well,
thank God! says I, for that she’s here. It’s something for a man’s
sperrits to catch hold of, ain’t it, Mr. Monson? Lor’ bless me, how
beautiful them shells look!’
Cutbill and Dowling now joined us, and stood staring like men
discrediting their senses.
‘William,’ said Finn, addressing Cutbill, ‘if ye had her safe moored in
the Thames, mate, just as she is, there’d be no need for you to go to
sea any more. There’s folks as ’ud pay a pound a head to view such a
hobject.’
‘What’s inside of her?’ said Dowling.
‘That’s to be found out,’ answered Cutbill. ‘Smite me, Mr. Monson, sir,
if the look-out of exploring of her ain’t good enough to stop a man
from being in a hurry to get away from here.’
‘Will not one of the sailors climb on board,’ said Lady Monson, ‘that
we may know the state of her decks? We shall require a shelter to-night
if a ship does not come to-day and take us off,’ and she sent her black
eyes flashing over the sea-line as she spoke, but there was nothing to
be seen.
‘How is a man to get aboard?’ exclaimed Dowling; ‘there’s nought to
catch hold of, and sailors ain’t flies.’
‘Pile casks one on top of another,’ said I, ‘and then make a
pick-a-back, the lightest hand last. I’ll lend my shoulders.’
Finn shook his head. ‘No need to risk our necks, sir. The bows are the
lowest part. Nothen’s wanted but a coil of rope. Dowling, you look
about the freshest of us, my lad. Step down where the raffle is, will
’ee, and bring along a length of the gear there.’
The fellow trudged to the beach very willingly. Had he been a merchant
sailor pure and simple, one might have looked in vain under such
conditions for hearty obedience. Mercantile Jack when shipwrecked has
a habit of viewing himself as a man freed from all restraint, and
instantly privileged by misery to grow mutinous and in all senses
obnoxious. But the instincts of the yachtsman come very near to those
of the man-of-war’s-man; and indeed, for the matter of that, I would
rather be cast away with a crew of men who knew nothing of seafaring
outside yachting than with a body of blue-jackets--I mean as regards
the promise of respectful behaviour.
Presently Dowling returned with a line coiled over his shoulder. In
truth, rope enough to rig a mast with had come ashore with the yards,
gaffs, and booms of the yacht, and the sailor had had nothing to do but
to clear away as much line as he wanted and bring it to us. Cutbill
took the stuff from him and coiled it down afresh over his fingers
as though he were about to heave the lead, then nicely calculating
distance and height with his eye he sent the fakes flying lasso fashion
sheer over the head of the huge, glittering, fossilised structure where
the incrustation forked out in a manner to suggest the existence of
what the ancient mariner termed a ‘beak,’ and the end was caught by
Dowling, who had stepped round the bows of the craft to receive it.
‘Now up you go, my lad,’ shouted Cutbill, and the sailor, who was of a
light figure, mounted as nimbly as a monkey, hand over hand; three of
us holding on to the rope t’other side to secure it for him. He gained
the deck and looked about him with an air of stupid wonder.
‘Why, it’s a plantation!’ he shouted; ‘young cork-trees a-sprouting and
flowers as big as targets! vegetables right fore and aft, and a dead
grampus under the break of the poop!’
‘Avast!’ bawled Cutbill, ‘tarn to and see if the stump of that there
foremast is sound.’
The spar was stepped well forward, after the ancient custom, with a
slight inclination towards the bow. Dowling made for it with his mouth
open, staring around and looking behind him as he went, and treading
as though he moved on broken glass. He drew close to the shell-covered
shaft that glowed with the tints of a dying dolphin and glittered and
coruscated with the richness and variety of dyes beyond imagination to
every movement that one made. After briefly inspecting it he sang out:
‘Strong enough to moor a line-of-battle ship to, sir!’
‘Then make the end of the line fast there,’ roared Cutbill.
This was done, and up went the burly salt, puffing and blowing,
swinging a crimson visage round to us as he fended himself off the
lacerating heads of the shelly armour with his toes. He got over the
side, stood staring as the other had, and then, tossing up his hands,
shouted down, ‘Looks like that piece, capt’n, that’s wrote down in the
Bible ’bout the Gard’n of Eden. Only wants Adam and Eve, damn me! Never
could ha’ dreamed of such a thing. And it’s the bottom of the sea too.
Why, it’s worth being drownded if it’s all like this down there.’
‘Any hatches?’ cried Finn.
‘Can’t see nothen for shells and vegetables.’
‘Well, just take a look round, will ’ee, and let’s know if there’s
shelter to be got for the ladies.’
Dowling sang out, ‘Main-deck’s pretty nigh awash, but there’s a raised
quarter-deck, and it’s dry from the break of it to right aft.’
‘She will be full of water,’ said I to Finn. ‘Why not scuttle her?
There are a couple of augers in the carpenter’s chest. Is that growth
to be pierced, though?’
‘Can but try, sir,’ he answered.
‘Well,’ said I, ‘one thing is certain. The sun will be standing
overhead presently. There’s no wind, and we must absolutely contrive to
protect the ladies from the pouring heat. There’s but one thing to do
for the moment, that I can see. We must manage to rig up a sail aboard
to serve as an awning. But how are the ladies to be got into her?’
Lady Monson and Laura stood close, listening anxiously.
‘Why,’ answered Finn, after thinking for a few moments, ‘we must rig
up a derrick. There’s blocks enough knocking about amongst the raffle
down there to make a whip with. The consarn’ll sarve also to hoist the
provisions up by. I allow that if once we get stowed up there, there’ll
be nothen to hurt us so far as seas goes in the heaviest gale that can
come on to blow.’
‘I shall be miserable until I am on board,’ said Lady Monson. ‘It is
dreadful to be dependent upon this low rock for one’s life. The tide
may rise.’
I met Laura’s sad and wondering eyes, and divined her thoughts. The
instinct of self-preservation was indeed a very powerful development in
her ladyship’s bosom. Is she not ashamed to let us all see how anxious
she is about her life, Laura’s glance at me seemed to say, after the
sufferings and death her behaviour has brought about--her husband
drowned, the unhappy man she abandoned her home for floating in the
depths beyond the horizon there----?
Cutbill descended, followed by Dowling.
‘’Tis an amazing sight, surely,’ he exclaimed, wringing the
perspiration in a shower from his forehead. ‘The decks is flinty hard
with shell, but I reckon a space is to be cleared just under the break
of the poop, and it feels almost cool up there arter these here rocks.
There’s a porpoise aft as’ll want chucking overboard. ’Tain’t no
grampus, as Dowling says. Only I tell ye, capt’n, that there deck’s a
sight to make a man see twenty times more’n he looks at.’
Finn’s spirits had improved through his having something else to think
of than the loss of the yacht and the drowning of her people. He was
fetching his breath, too, with comparative ease, and only at long
intervals brought his hand to his side. This improvement in him greatly
cheered me. I liked the rough, homely sailor much, and his death would
have been a blow. The man Johnson had by this time made shift to rise
and join us, but he walked with a weak step and looked very sadly, as
though a deal of the life had been washed out of him in his struggle to
fetch the shore. He was of no use to us, and I told him to go and sit
in the shadow of the hull out of the blaze of the sun.
Finn then called a council: Cutbill, myself, Dowling, and Head gathered
round him, and very briefly and with but little talk we concerted our
plans. We were all agreed that the astonishing shell-armoured fabric
could be made to yield us a tolerably secure asylum, and that the
elevation of its deck would enable us to command a wide view of the
sea, and that therefore it was our business forthwith to convey all
that we could recover from the yacht into her. I went to work with
the rest and toiled hard. The labour mainly consisted in dragging and
pulling, for we had to bring a spare boom to the galleon from the beach
to serve as a derrick for hoisting; then such sails as had been washed
ashore; then the provisions. It was like drawing teeth; everything
seemed to weigh about five times more than it should. The work was
made the harder, moreover, by the character of the ground. Had the
surface been smooth as earth is we could have tramped with tolerable
briskness; but our staggering march to the galleon under heavy loads
was converted into a very treadmill exercise by our having to dodge
the little holes large enough to neatly fit the leg to as high as the
knee, or the wider yawns and great wells of which some were big enough
to receive the whole body of us, goods and all, in one gulp. I had by
this time ascertained that the water in the larger pores and holes was
too salt to drink. It was in the smaller hollows only, and these indeed
amongst the shallowest, that the water lay scarce brackish. In short,
the fall of rain, great as it was, had not lasted long enough to drown
the brine in the deeper wells. This was an important discovery, for the
fierce sun would soon dry up the shallow apertures; and had we taken
for granted that the contents of the deeper ones were fit to drink, we
should have been brought face to face with thirst.
But happily nearly the whole of the yacht lay in piecemeal before us.
All that had been in her forepart, which yet stood, had washed out
and rolled ashore or stranded within wading distance. Our fresh water
had been carried in casks, as I believe was the custom for the most
part in those days; some of the barrels had bulged, but a few had been
swept high and dry. There were empty water casks, moreover, which had
floated up, and these we rolled aside to be filled the moment we had
leisure to devote to that task. There were no bodies to be seen, and
I was thankful for it. The sharks no doubt had been put to flight by
the explosion, but they would not be long in returning; and indeed I
gathered they were in force again, though I saw nothing resembling a
fin, from the circumstance of none of the dead, saving the few forms
which Cutbill and Dowling had slipped into the sea on the other side of
the island, having drifted in with the wreckage.
The leaden curtain had drawn far down into the west; two-thirds of the
heavens now were a dazzle of silver blue with a high sun looking down
out of it with a roasting eye, and the water a surface of shivering
glory south and east and edged crape-like in the west, but not a cloud
of the size of a thumb-nail anywhere save there. A thin line of surf
purred delicately upon the gradual slope of sulphur-lined beach, with a
weak, metallic hissing sounding along the length of it as the sparkling
ripple slipped up and down upon the honeycombed beach. The remains of
the yacht’s bows lay gaunt and motionless some distance down. Her gilt
figure-head glowed in the sunshine and made a brightness under it that
rode like a fragment of sunbeam upon the delicate lift of sea rolling
inwards. A plank or two rounding into the stern were gone and you could
see daylight through her. It seemed incredible that so stout a little
craft should have gone to pieces as she had; but then the swell had
been heavy and the ground on which she beat iron-hard, and then again
her scantling was but that of a pleasure vessel, though the staunchest
of its kind.
Meanwhile I conveyed, with the help of Cutbill, into the shadow that
was cast by the galleon, as I will call her, Laura’s box of wearing
apparel which we had fallen in with early in the morning. Oddly
enough it was the only trunk or portmanteau that had come ashore.
Some sailors’ chests had floated in, but nothing belonging to any
of us aft saving this box of Laura’s and a small chest of drawers
out of Wilfrid’s cabin, one drawer gone, and the others containing
articles of no use to us, such as gloves, neck-ties, writing material,
manuscripts sodden and illegible. The removing her clothes from the
box and spreading them to dry found Laura occupation and something
else therefore to think of than our miserable condition. Her sister
very early had withdrawn to the shadow cast by the galleon, and there
sat--Johnson lying a little way from her--apparently stirless for a
whole half-hour together; as much a fossil to the eye as the wondrous
structure that sheltered her. The black cloud of hair upon her back,
her spectral white face and dark eyes gave me an odd fancy of her as
the figure-head of the mysterious fabric that had risen in thunder and
flame from the green stillness of its ocean tomb where it had been
lying so long that the mere thought of the years put a shiver into
one, spite of the broiling orb that hung overhead. Heavens! I remember
thinking in some interval of toil, during which I paused, panting, with
my eye directed towards the galleon--figure a lonely man coming ashore
here on a moonlit night and beholding that woman seated as she now
sits, looking as she now looks, stirless as she now is, in the shadow
of that shell-covered structure shimmering like a lunar rainbow to the
moonbeam!
It was like passing from death to life to send the gaze from Lady
Monson to Laura as the little sweetheart busily flitted from sunshine
to shadow, spreading the garments to the light, her hair flashing and
fading as she passed from the radiance into the violet shade, her
figure the fairer to my enamoured eyes, maybe, for the shipwrecked
aspect of her attire that enriched by fitful and fascinating
revelations the beauty of her form by an art quite out of the reach
of the nimblest of dressmaking fingers. Her spirits and much of her
strength seemed to have returned to her. Often she would look my way
and wave her hand to me.
Half an hour after noon by the sun--for my watch had stopped when
I tumbled overboard, and so had Laura’s and Lady Monson’s--we all
assembled under the overhanging counter of the galleon for a midday
meal. The sun was almost overhead, and there was very little shadow;
which forced us to sit tolerably close together, and I could see that
her ladyship did not very much relish this intimate association with
the rough sailors; but it was either for her or for them to sit out
in the scorching, blinding light, and as she did not offer to go I
insisted on the poor fellows keeping their places, though Finn and
Cutbill shuffled as though they were for backing away. She perceived
my indifference to her sensitiveness and shot a look of hate at me.
However, I was not so insensible as she imagined, for I was very
careful to scarcely glance at her; for there she sat, unveiled, her
head uncovered, close to, to be peered at, if one chose, as if she were
a picture or a statue, and I would not pain what weak sense of shame,
what haughty confusion there might be in her by a single lift of my
eyes to her face, saving when I accosted her or she me. I observed that
the sailors were studious in their disregard of her. There was not a
man of them I dare say but would have squinted curiously at her out
of the corner of his eyes on board the yacht had she shown herself on
deck; but here it would have been taking an unfair advantage of her;
their instincts as men governed them, and no fine gentleman could ever
have exhibited a higher quality of breeding than did these rough Jacks
in this respect, as they squatted munching biscuit and potted meat and
handing on to one another the jar of sherry and water.
But often, though swiftly and very respectfully too, their glances
would go to Laura. They would look as though they found something to
hearten them in her sweet pale face, her kind smile, her pretty efforts
to bear up.
‘There ought to be a ship passing here before long,’ said Finn, with a
slow stare seawards; ‘’taint as if this here island was right in with
the African coast.’
‘The “’Liza Robbins” should be looked out for, capt’n,’ said Cutbill;
‘she was dead in our wake when we drawed ahead, steering our course to
a hair.’
‘Strange that all the yacht’s boats should have disappeared,’ said I.
‘Hammered into staves, your honour,’ said Finn; ‘ye may see bits of
them on the beach.’
‘I couldn’t swear to it,’ said Johnson languidly; ‘it was so blooming
dark; but I’ve got a notion of seeing some of the men run aft when the
yacht struck, as though making for one of the boats.’
‘I was knocked down by a rush of several sailors,’ said I.
‘If any of our chaps got away in a boat, why aren’t they here?’ asked
Dowling.
‘Why, man, consider the size of this island,’ I exclaimed; ‘a few
strokes of the oars, the boat heading out, or to the eastwards, say,
would suffice to send them clear of this pin’s-head of rock, and then
once to leeward they’d blow away. But we need not trouble to speculate:
I fear nobody has escaped but ourselves.’
Finn shook his head with a face of misery, putting down what he was
eating and fixing his eyes, that had moistened on a sudden, on the rock
he sat on.
‘How long will it be before we enter the ship?’ asked Lady Monson.
‘Oh, we shall all be aboard before sundown, I don’t doubt,’ said I.
‘Will you not have some signal ready in case a vessel pass?’ she
demanded.
‘We’ll stack the materials for a bonfire, but there is much to be done
meanwhile,’ said I.
I believed she would have addressed Cutbill or Finn rather than me,
but for the downright insolence her disregard of my presence would
have signified. No doubt she hated me for being her husband’s cousin,
for joining in his chase of her, for having helped in the duel that
cost the Colonel his life, for the part I had acted aboard the
‘’Liza Robbins,’ and for being a witness of her defeat and shame and
humiliation. Yes, such a woman as Lady Monson would violently abhor a
man for much less than this. Why should poor Wilfrid have been drowned
and she spared? I remember thinking. The world would surely have been
the better off for the saving of one honest heart out of the yacht’s
forecastle than for Lady Monson’s deliverance. But reflections of
this kind were absurdly ill-timed. I started from them on meeting
Laura’s gaze pensively watching me, and then sprang to my feet to the
perception of the overwhelming reality that confronted us all.
‘Come, lads,’ said I, ‘if you are sufficiently rested shall we turn to?’
They instantly rose; Johnson staggered on to his legs, but I told him
to keep where he was.
‘You’ll be hearty again to-morrow,’ said I, ‘and we are strong enough
to manage without you.’
He knuckled his forehead with a grateful smile and lay down again.
The work ran us deep into the afternoon. There did not seem much to be
done, but somehow it occupied a deal of time. The heat was a terrible
hindrance; it fell a dead calm, the atmosphere pressed with a tingling
vibration to the skin and swam in a swooning way, till sometimes on
pausing and bringing my hand to my brow I would see the hot blue
horizon beginning to revolve as though it were some huge teetotum with
myself perched on the top of the middle of it. With a vast deal of
trouble and after a long time a boom was secured to the stump of the
galleon’s foremast with a block at the end of it, through which a line
was rove. There had washed ashore close to the great dead shark down on
the beach a small arm-chair of red velvet that had formerly stood in
Laura’s cabin. Cutbill spied it and brought it to Finn, and said that
it would do to hoist the ladies on board by. It was accordingly carried
to the galleon, and made fast to one end of the whip. Dowling then
climbed on board whilst the others of us stood by to sway away.
‘Will you go up first, Lady Monson?’ said I.
She coldly inclined her head and came to the chair, sweeping her hair
backwards over her shoulders with a white, scared look at the height
up which she was to be hoisted. I snugged her in the chair, and passed
the end of a piece of line round her, and all being ready, we ran her
up hand over hand till she was on a level with the shell-bristling rail
of the galleon’s forecastle. Here Dowling caught hold of the chair and
drew it inboards, singing out to us to lower away, and a few moments
after the chair was floating over the side empty.
We then sent Laura aloft. She smiled at me as she seated herself, but
there was a deal of timidity in her sweet eyes, and her smile vanished
as if by magic the moment the chair was off the ground. However, she
soared in perfect safety and was received by Dowling, and no sooner
had she sent a look along the decks than her head shone over the side
and she called down to me, ‘Oh, Mr. Monson, it is exquisite--a very
Paradise of shells and sea flowers!’
‘Will you go up now, sir?’ said Finn.
‘Not yet,’ I replied; ‘I can be useful down here. Let us get Johnson
hoisted out of the way first.’
Cutbill brought the poor fellow round to the chair and we sent him
up. Dowling remained on the vessel to receive what we whipped up
aloft to him, and in the course of an hour from the time of swaying
Lady Monson aboard we had hoisted all the provisions we had brought
into the shadow of the galleon--Laura’s box of clothes, the yacht’s
foresail and fore-staysail, a bundle of mattresses that had washed out
of the forecastle, the cask of sherry, two casks of fresh water, the
carpenter’s chest, and other matters which I cannot now recall. This
was very well indeed, but we were nigh-hand spent, and had to fling
ourselves down upon the pumice rocks to rest and breathe ere tailing on
to the whip again to hoist one or another of us up.
The sun was now in the west, his light a rich crimson and the sea a
sheet of molten gold polished as quicksilver under him. The galleon’s
shadow lay broad on her port side, and in it we sprawled with scarlet
faces and dripping brows.
‘No chance of being picked up in such weather as this, sir,’ said Finn,
who had worked as hard as any of us and seemed the better for his
labours, though I observed that his breath was caught at times as if by
a spasm or shooting pain in the side.
‘We must have patience,’ said I, ‘but at the worst ’tis a tolerably
comfortable shipwreck, Finn. We are well stocked, and there’s a deal
more yet to be had if the sea will keep quiet. We’re not ashore upon
the Greenland coast, all ice ahead of us and all famine astern.’
‘No, thank the Lord,’ quoth Cutbill; ‘it’s a bad shipwreck when a man
daresn’t finger his nose for fear of bringing it away from his face.
Better too much sun, says I, than none at all.’
‘And then again,’ said I, with a glance up at the marvellous,
shell-encrusted conformation that towered with swelling bilge over our
heads, ‘here’s as good a house as one needs to live in till something
heaves in view.’
‘I’m for scuttling her at once, capt’n,’ cried Head; ‘she’ll hold a
vast o’ water, and the sooner she’s holed the sooner she’ll be empty.
Who’s to tell what’s inside of her?’
Cutbill ran his eyes thirstily over the huge fossil. ‘She was a lump of
a craft for her day,’ said he, ‘and when wessels of her size put to sea
they was commonly nearly all rich ships, so I’ve heerd.’
‘Head, you’re right,’ cried Finn. ‘Ye shall be the first to spike
her--if ’ee can. On deck there!’
‘Hillo!’ answered Dowling, putting his purple, whiskered face over the
line of shells.
‘Send down the augers and a chopper out of the carpenter’s chest.’
‘Ay, ay, sir,’ he answered, and in a few moments down came the tools.
‘Before you make a start,’ said I, ‘hoist me aboard, will you?’
I planted myself in the chair, was cleverly run up, got hold of
Dowling’s hand, and stepped on to the deck.
I was prepared to witness a rich and gorgeous show, but what I now
viewed went leagues beyond any imagination I could have conceived
of the reality. The ancient fabric had four decks, that is to say,
the forecastle, the main-deck that was like a well, a short raised
quarter-deck, and abaft all a poop, going to the narrow, castle-like
crown of the head of the stern. These decks, together with the inside
of the bulwarks, were thickly encrusted with shells of every imaginable
hue and shape and size; but in addition there flourished densely
amongst these shells a wonderful surface of marine growths, not so
dense but that the shells could be seen between, yet plentiful enough
to submit each deck to the eye as a glorious marine parterre. It was
like entering upon a scene of fairyland; there were growths of a
coralline appearance of many colours, from a Tyrian dye to a delicate
opalescent azure, huge bulbs like bloated cucumbers, flowers resembling
immense daisies, with coral-hard spikes projecting from them like the
rays which dart from the sun; long trailing plants like prostrate
creepers, others erect, as tall as my knee, resembling ferns, of a
grace beyond all expression, with their plume-like archings, blossoms
of white and carnation, green bayonet-like spikes, weeds shaped to the
aspect of purple lizards so that one watched to see if they crawled;
great round vegetables bigger than the African toad-stools, some
crimson, some of cream colour, some barred with crimson on a yellow
ground; here and there lay fish big and little, of shapes I had never
before beheld, whose vividness seemed to have lost nothing through
their being dead. Against the front of the quarterdeck was the livid
body of a porpoise. There was scarcely a vegetable growth but that
might have been wrought of steel for the unyieldingness of it. I kicked
at one toadstool-like thing and my foot recoiled as though it had
smote a little pillar of iron. The picture was made the more amazing
by the red light of the declining sun, for every white gleam had its
tinge of ruby, and what was deep of hue glowed gloriously rich. The two
shafts of masts sparkled like the jewelled fingers of a woman. And the
deep sea smell! The atmosphere was charged with an odour of brine and
weed of a pungency and quality that one felt to be possible only to a
revelation from some deepest and most secret recess of the deep. The
water that had covered the main-deck when Dowling and Cutbill had first
inspected the craft was fast draining away, but the growths there and
the shells were still soaked and gave a wet surface for the light of
the sun to flash up in, and the whole space sparkled with the glory of
the rainbow, but so much brighter than the brightest rainbow, that the
eye, after lingering, came away weeping with the dazzle.