INTO THE JAWS OF DEATH.
"Let terror strike slaves mute;
Much danger makes great hearts most resolute."
--MARSTON.
"Death, when unmasked, shows us a friendly face."
--GOLDSMITH.
"Rebels, turn out your dead!"
The inhuman call came down the opened hatches, and the prisoners, stupid
with the foul air they had breathed all night, prepared to obey. So many
times they had heard the cry that they had grown callous to its coarse
brutality.
It was the end of September, and the delayed equinoctial storm would
soon ravage the coast. For a week the sea-faring folk had been expecting
it; and now at last the great gale or the forerunner of it was upon
them, for all night the waves had been rolling in from the outside with
the sound of thunder. The ship had pitched and tossed and strained at
its moorings, while the living freight in its hold prayed that it might
break away entirely. The hatches, when lifted, showed no blue sky, but
gray clouds and scurrying mist wreaths. The men, coming up out of the
hot and fetid air, shivered a little in the stiff breeze on the deck,
then opening their mouths, drank it in like wine. The faces of the
landsmen had an added ghastliness from seasickness, but they were all
bad enough to look upon,--seamen and soldiers alike. In squads of six
they took their breakfast, eating by sheer force of resolution what they
loathed, that the hunger pains might not gnaw so hard.
"How many dead this morning?" demanded the warden.
"Two,--Drake and Cowles," answered Jack Bangs.
"Nay, there are three, Master Warden," said Peter Ruffin, sadly; "I
found Richard Clevering lying stiff and stark beside me when I got up.
The bodies are there beside the capstan."
The three were stretched upon the deck; the corner of Richard's blanket,
as if by accident, fell over the upper part of his face, but the mouth
below was blue and drawn. With an exclamation of surprise and sorrow
Jack Bangs crossed the deck and, lifting the blanket for a moment,
looked at the face beneath. Then, reverently replacing it, he made the
sign of the cross above the body, and speaking a few low words to Peter,
went away. The warden, who had watched the scene satirically, gave each
corpse a shove with his foot, cursing the while.
"D--n 'em! had to die the worst day of the month, that the burial might
be the more troublesome!" He glanced at them again, gave each another
kick, and checked off their names in his book. "Here, fix these hounds
up, and cut your work short so they'll be in the ground before the storm
breaks."
"If you please, may I go in the boat this morning? Clevering was from my
town, and I should like to pay him this last respect."
"No."
Peter knew better than to urge his plea, and so stepped quietly aside.
But the warden, noticing the slow motions of one of the men to whom he
had beckoned, shouted angrily, "Out of the way there, you infernal
snail, or I'll fix you so you'll go in the boat and stay!"
Peter sprang into the man's place. "I will be very quick," he said,
touching his cap; and without another word wrapped one of the bodies
quickly in its coarse covering and took a few stitches with the needle
his comrade held out. He was so deft, and the lightning was so vivid,
that the warden grunted and let him go on. Under other circumstances he
would have been put in irons for insubordination.
The stitches in Richard's blanket were few and slight, just enough to
hold it about the body.
"What was the matter with that fellow? I never heard him say he was
sick," said one of the sentinels, stopping to look on.
Peter's pulse stood still. "He has complained for some time of a pain
about the heart. All last night he tossed and rolled, and just before
the hatches were opened, he said to me that his time had come. He's
hardly cold yet," he added hastily, as the man bent as though to touch a
hand left exposed by a rent in the blanket.
"Well, he'll have time enough to get cold in the ground," the warden
said, coming up behind, and mistaking Peter's words for a plea for more
time before the burial.
"He was a sullen chap to whom I've been looking for trouble. I'll
warrant he gets not cold between this and the devil," the guard said,
giving the stiff body a parting kick.
The waves tossed furiously, but the long-boat was launched, and two of
the guard took their places in it, while the man who was to assist Peter
at the graves followed to receive the bodies; for the sentinels never
touched them, partly through fear of contagion, and partly out of
contempt. The first two were finally lowered, and then came the moment
Peter had dreaded; those other two had been stiff and stark enough, but
he wanted no prying eyes looking on when he lifted this one, and so
before he bent over to Richard, he glanced down the deck and raised his
hand, quite casually, it seemed, to his face. Instantly, as though he
had been on the watch for a signal, Jack Bangs started a funeral hymn,
loud and wailing.
"Stop that devilish howling!" roared the warden, wheeling around.
Quick as a flash Peter, signing to his assistant, lifted the prostrate
figure at his feet and swung it over the side. The ropes grated on the
rail, and when the warden looked again, it was all over. Peter slid
instantly down one of the ropes, and he and his fellow grave-digger
untied the cords from the body and rolled it over beside the other two
in the bottom of the boat, the guards having their hands full to keep
the little craft from swamping in the waves. Then they cast off and
pulled for the shore.
"What makes you look at that carrion so confoundedly straight and
scared," one of the soldiers asked Peter, sharply, noticing how often
his eyes went to the figure at his feet.
Peter cursed himself inwardly, but he had been so afraid that the
blanket would rise and fall with a strong man's involuntary breathing
that he had watched it in a sort of fascination. Now he looked away,
answering slowly:--
"I have known him since he was a baby; he used to play with my little
boy that died, and so I keep thinking of those days."
One of the men laughed scoutingly, but the other growled out, "Let the
fool have his fling, and give me a light, Carson; my pipe's gone out in
this cursed spray." And while their heads were close together, Peter
stretched his legs out over the body, that if so it lost for a moment
its rigidity, they might not see.
It seemed to him an hour before the shore was reached and the landing
effected; then he and his assistant carried the bodies high up on the
sand. Richard's went first.
"He is alive," Peter whispered, as they moved up the beach, "but if you
give the faintest hint of it here or on shipboard by word, act, or look,
I'll throttle you like a viper."
"You need not threaten--I'm no peacher; and besides, I liked the lad,
and wish him well; but his chance is slim, and if he is taken, they will
torture him like the incarnate fiends."
An officer from the patrol, strolling near the boat, called out:--
"How many to-day, Carson?"
"Three."
"That is an unusual haul; you are thinning them out fast."
"Not half fast enough; looks as if the cursed dogs held on to life to
spite us."
"Well, 'tis said that Howe will bring back plenty of recruits from the
French fleet to fill your gaps."
"How is that? What is the news?"
But Peter was listening eagerly, hoping to catch some bit of outside
information. The officer pointed to him with elevated eyebrows, and the
guard drove him with imprecations to his task.
"Your shovel?--Well, there it is, you son of perdition! Go on, and mind
you be quick in hiding that carrion from the crows."
Beside the boat, with guns cocked and ready, the three men then
talked over the war tidings, while thirty yards up the beach the two
grave-diggers fell to their task. Rapidly the two first graves were made
and the occupants laid therein with only a muttered prayer from Peter;
and so were closed two human chapters in the varying story of life. The
wind shrieked in from the sea, edged with foam or stinging sand caught
up at the water's edge, and the heavens were like a vast slaty canopy
torn now and then by jagged lightning flashes. The scene was a fit
setting for the mournful work in hand. Once or twice while the two
laboured, one of the guards walked over to look at them, and then
wandered back to the boat and his companions.
Over the first two graves the sand was heaped high, forming, as far as
possible, a barrier for the third. Shallow that third grave was,--so
shallow that a man could scarce lie therein and be concealed; but so
it must be that the sand might not be too heavy on the body, and yet
seem to be piled up. Tenderly Peter lifted that last silent figure and
stretched it in the hollow made for it; then, while he still stooped,
he broke the frail stitches of the blanket, and snatching two pieces
of driftwood he put them crosswise over the head of the grave with their
ends on the edges. The hollow space below might contain enough air to
last a man a little while.
"Stay, here is piece of hollow cane in the sand," said the assistant,
"keep one end of it over your mouth, Richard; we will leave the other
just out of the sand; in this way you can breathe longer.--So."
"Quick, quick; the shovels! The guard is returning," cried Peter.
It seemed to them that their shovels crawled, and yet they worked like
mad. If the guard got there before they finished, all was lost. Spadeful
after spadeful,--was ever a man so hard to cover? Another step and the
sentinel would be upon them, and the blanket scarcely hidden, and those
tell-tale boards and the cane yet in sight. It was a fearful moment.
Peter's heart stood still, and his comrade's hands were like ice.
"What the devil are you so long about?"
But it was only the angry voice that reached them; a blinding lightning
flash ripped the heavens wide open, and the wind with a demoniacal
shriek rushed down the beach, throwing the sand in a swirling cloud
about the on-coming man, making him stagger with its force and snatching
away his hat and rain coat. Half blinded, he raced down the sloping
stretch to regain his garments which more than once eluded him. Then in
the lull he came back swearing furiously; and finding the men leaning on
their shovels, he stuck his bayonet into each of the three mounds. Into
the third it penetrated only a little way; but he did not notice, for
the wind was again gathering itself for a fresh burst of fury.
"Now then, get you to the boats!" he cried, standing behind them.
Peter paused a moment and crossed himself reverently, saying in a loud
voice, "Your bodies to the earth, your souls to God's care; and may you
pass to liberty in the folds of the in-rolling fog."
"Pass to hell and the devil! Get on, I say!" cried the guard, angrily,
as he struck Peter across the shoulders with his bayonet. And Peter,
having said his say, ran nimbly to the boat; and pushing it off, they
leaped in, and were soon toiling amid the breakers to reach the ship's
side.
It seemed to Richard that long months passed while he lay motionless
under that weight of sand, breathing spasmodically through the bit of
reed. The drift-boards kept the pressure partially from his chest so
that he suffered very little. The guard's bayonet had grazed his leg
without piercing it, but the thirst in his throat was something
terrible. Peter's voice had penetrated through the boards and their thin
covering of sand, so that he knew the fog was following the wind from
the sea. It was for this he had hoped, and it was this Peter meant to
tell him in those last words. Dear old Peter; how he had tried to
dissuade him from this mad plan, and when that was impossible, how he
had risked his own safety to aid him. Richard felt the tears on his face
as he recalled his friend's unselfish offices. Several times during the
wait for a stormy day he had been on the point of giving up the whole
plan, lest it work a mischief for Peter; but the latter had said it
would mean only a day in irons for him, and that he was willing to risk
that much for his friend's liberty; it was for Richard himself that he
feared. But even death had a smiling face for Richard, compared to a
winter spent in the vile ship; and so the plan had gone on, and by
Peter's care he was lying here in his grave, accounted of the world as
dead.
By and by his limbs began to cramp and ache. Through strong will power
he had kept them rigid during those terrible moments of examination and
removal from the ship. He would not have dared assay the plan had he not
known how superficial, through repetition, had become the warden's
inspection of the corpses--just a few questions and that savage kick.
Each time there had been a death during the past fortnight, he had
studied the details of the preparation and burial, until he was
convinced that he could carry his scheme to a successful close if only
Peter was allowed to be one of his sextons.
As the minutes now passed, the ache in his limbs increased, for the
pressure of the sand was stopping the circulation. Then the dryness in
his throat grew and grew, until he could bear it no longer. Had he lain
there a year, or only a day? Slowly and cautiously he drew his hands up
to his breast, then higher, and finally placed the palms against the
board over his head. The first movement brought the sand in a shower
upon his shoulders; but after a while he worked it far enough back to
leave a crack between it and its fellow. This he could only feel, for
knowing the sand would strangle and blind him, he had not as yet taken
the blanket from his face, since moving it ever so little to receive the
reed into his mouth. Next, he slowly pushed the other board downward
until a rush of cold air told him he was once more in the world of
humanity, not forever sealed in the haunt of ghouls. Cautiously he
shoved the blanket from his face and looked up into the storm-hung
heavens. It was mid-afternoon, and he had thought it must be midnight.
Eagerly he drew in the air, cool and laden with moisture, and tried to
forget his aching limbs. He dared not stir yet lest the patrol should
see him. He must wait; and while he waited, how the moments lagged!
The wind had fallen, but the waves still thundered on the shore, and the
lightning now and then raced along the clouds. Afraid to raise his head,
he could only lie still and stare straight above him into the square of
mist and clouds. With a great throb of joy he watched the gloom deepen.
He had not heard the sunset gun from the station down the beach, but the
fog would befriend him; so when he could no longer bear the straitened
position, he lifted his head and shoulders and looked around. The fog
was everywhere; scarcely could he see the tumultuous waves that
shattered themselves along the sand. He need wait no longer, no one
could see him now; and painfully and carefully he finally drew his
stiff limbs from under the sand. To stand at full length was not to be
thought of, but he rolled over and rubbed and stretched himself until
the cramp was relieved. Then he set himself to fill in and round up his
vacated grave; for Peter's sake he must do this, that no suspicion might
be aroused when the funeral boat brought its next cargo ashore. Swiftly
he worked, using a piece of the drift-board for a shovel, and crawling
from head to foot to be sure that all was right. His heart was full of
gratitude when at last it was finished, and, with a sigh of relief, he
threw the board aside and stood up straight,--a free man.
But at this moment something came out of the fog from the shore side,
and as he steadied himself upon his feet, he found himself face to face
with a man.