GREAVES’ ISLAND.
I pulled off my coat and lay down. Eleven o’clock was struck on deck
before I closed my eyes. I was much excited. The prospect of the dawn
disclosing the island kept me restless. Was there an island in this part
of these seas for the dawn to disclose? and, if an island existed, would
there be a cave in it, and would that cave contain a large Spanish ship,
with five hundred and fifty thousand dollars stowed away in cases in her
lazarette?
I reviewed Greaves’ behavior. He had been cool, I thought, seeing that
this was the eve of the day that was to bring us off the island and put
the dollars within reach of our oars. He had joked at the overwhelming
apparition of the white water; he had talked of worms and fallen stars;
he had treated a magnificent phenomenon without reverence; and, in one
way or another, he had acted as though to-morrow were to be charged with
no more than what to-day had held. These and the like reflections kept
me awake. Shortly after six bells had been struck I fell asleep.
At midnight Bol aroused me to take his place, and I went on deck to keep
watch until four o’clock. It was a quiet, rippling night; the moist
breath of old ocean gushed pleasantly over the larboard quarter, and the
brig slipped softly forward, clothed with studding sails. Several
shadowy figures of the crew moved about the deck; their motions were
restless; they’d go to the side, bend over, and peer ahead. At any other
time it was just the night for a quiet snooze about the decks, with a
coil of rope for a pillow, and the stars right overhead to watch until
they winked one asleep. But the men were too restless to “plank it” this
night. They guessed the island to be somewhere away out yonder in the
dusk. They might hope at any moment for an order from the quarter-deck
to back the main topsail yard. They were under the spell of the almighty
dollar!
Bol hung near, waiting for me to arrive.
“Anything in sight, Bol?”
“Noting, Mr. Fielding,” he answered out of the depth of his lungs; “but
dere vhas time. She vhas not to-morrow yet.”
“No more white water?”
“No, by tunder, Mr. Fielding. Enough vhas as goodt as a feast. I like
der captain’s notion of a star. She vhas a fine idea. Der verm vhas
silly. How shall a verm shine in vater. Vill not der vater put her light
out?”
I was in no humor to talk to him about phosphorus.
“You had better go forward and get some rest,” said I. “Should daylight
give us the island there will be plenty to do for all hands.”
He grunted and moved forward, but not to turn in. His unwieldy shape
joined other flitting forms, and I heard his deep voice rumbling first
on one bow and then on t’other as he crossed the deck.
Greaves made his appearance three or four times during this middle
watch. He did not stay. He would come up to me and say:
“Well, what do you see?”
“I see nothing.”
“All the same, it’s in sight, but you’re not a cat, Fielding. Mind your
helm. The difference of a quarter of a point might sink the island for
us by daybreak.”
He would then go to the binnacle and stand looking upon the card,
address the helmsman, and after running his eyes over the canvas and
stepping to the side, not to peer ahead like the men, but to judge of
the rate of sailing by the passage of the sea fire through the deep
shadow made by the hull, disappear through the companion way.
It was very dark at four o’clock in the morning, at which hour my watch
ended. When eight bells were struck I went into the head and sunk my
sight into the obscurity forward, running my gaze from beam to beam, for
though it was very black there were stars sparely shining over the sea
line, and by the obliteration of a handful of them might I guess the
presence of land; but I saw nothing. I went aft and found Bol near the
wheel and Greaves in the act of stepping through the hatchway. Eight
bells had not long been chimed and the larboard watch had not yet gone
below.
“While all hands are on deck reduce sail, Mr. Fielding,” said Greaves.
“Take in your studding sails and ease her down to the main topgallant
sail.”
“Ay, ay, sir.”
Nothing more was said. Yan Bol went forward, I remained aft, whence I
delivered the necessary orders. The heavier canvas was rolled up by all
hands; the watch was then called--that is to say, the larboard watch
were sent below. Daybreak was still an hour off. I said to myself, if
the island is hereabouts there will be plenty to do when daylight comes.
Let me sleep while I can; and for the second time that night I withdrew
to my cabin and lay down, “all standing,” ready for a call.
I slept well, and was awakened by a beating upon the door. The voice of
the lad Jimmy called out:
“It’s eight bells, sir.”
“Any news of the island?” I cried.
I received no reply; in fact, the lad had run on deck the instant he had
called the time to me. The berth was full of light and the glass of the
scuttle was a trembling, brilliant, silver-blue disk, with the ocean
splendor flowing to it. I stepped on deck, and the moment my head was
clear of the companion way I beheld the island. It stood at a distance
of about seven miles upon the lee or starboard bow. Greaves was pacing
the deck, with his hands locked behind him and his head thoughtfully
bent. Yan Bol stood in the gangway and all hands were forward
breakfasting in the open; they grasped pannikins of steaming tea; they
sawed with jack-knives at cubes of beef, blue with brine, locked by
their hairy thumbs to biscuits, which served for trenchers; the muscles
of their leather cheeks moved slowly as they chawed, chawed, chawed,
cow-like; and cow-like still they moved their eyes slowly in their
sockets to direct them at the island over the bow.
The morning was a wide field of day, a full heaven of tropic splendor,
with a light breeze off the larboard beam blowing you knew not whence,
for there was never a cloud for the wind to come out of. They had made
all plain sail on the brig; she was floating forward, spars erect, under
royals; the studding sails were stowed and the booms rigged in.
I stood staring for some moments, with my mind in a state of confusion.
_There_ was the island! The mass of it standing upon the light blue
glory of water northeast was a hard rebuke to my skepticism. Yet--shall
I say it--not the most mercenary of the munching Jacks in the bows could
have felt a keener delight at the sight of that island than I. It
signified dollars and independence to my ardent hopes. I had thought
much upon my share of six thousand pounds, dreamt of the money often,
had builded many fancies tall and radiant upon Greaves’ bond, and,
sometimes had I believed that Greaves’ story was true, and sometimes had
I believed that Greaves’ story was a dream, and therefore a lie. And
now there was the island, down away over the starboard bow, a lump of
shadow against the blue, to verify Greaves’ assurance of an island being
thereabout anyhow, and on the merits of that verification to warrant all
the rest of the wonder of cave, of ship, and of a lazarette full of
dollars!
For a few moments only I stood staring. Thought hath wondrous velocity,
and in a few moments much will pass through the mind. I stepped up to
Greaves as his walk brought him to me. I should have wished to give him
my hand, but the etiquette of the quarter-deck forbade that.
“Captain,” said I, in a low voice, full, nevertheless, of cordiality and
enthusiasm, “I warmly congratulate you.”
“And yourself,” said he dryly.
“And myself,” said I, “and all hands, including Mynheer Tulp.”
“Seeing is believing,” said he, still dryly. I looked at the island.
“And yet,” continued he, “though that land be there the ship and her
cargo may be nothing more than a dream.”
He had seen a little deeper into me than I had supposed. Finding him
sarcastic I held my peace, and the better to cover my silence stooped to
caress Galloon. He changed his voice and manner.
“My observations,” said he, “of the latitude and longitude of that
island were perfectly correct, you see.”
“Perfectly correct, indeed,” I echoed. “It is strange that so big a rock
should remain uncharted.”
“Nothing is strange at sea--in this sea particularly. The Spaniards are
always for making their journeys by one road. Anything lying off that
road they miss, unless they happen to be blown on to it, when one of two
things happens; they perish, or they petition the Madonna and escape. If
they escape, they have no more to tell about the rock or coast from
which they narrowly came off with their lives than if they had perished.
Why is that island uncharted by the Spaniards? Is it because no mariner
among them has fallen in with it? Oh, they are lazy rogues all, they are
lazy rogues all; timid, fearful navigators, execrable hydrographers.”
“It is odd that no Englishman should have fallen in with it.”
“That is as it happens to be.”
I fetched the glass, and steadied it upon the rail, and looked. The
island stood up large and livid, tawny in patches, a huge cinderous
heap. The hue, and even the appearance of it, somewhat reminded me of
Ascension viewed at a distance. One or two parts were robed with green.
There was a tremble and flash of surf at the extremities, and I guessed
that when the sea ran high, it would break very fiercely and dangerously
against all weather-fronting corners of that lonely rock. Greaves came
and stood beside me. I was conscious of his presence, and talked to him
with my eye at the telescope.
“In what part of the island is the cave situated, sir?”
“Do you observe a lump of land swelling above the edge of the cliff to
the left?”
“Yes.”
“That lump or mound is the summit of the front of the rock in which lies
the cave. We are opening it from the southward. I opened it, when I fell
in with that land, from the westward.”
“It is a volcanic pile,” said I. “I observed points of rocks like
chimneys. They may have smoked once upon a time.”
He took the glass from me, leisurely inspected the island, and walked
the deck his earlier thoughtful posture, head bowed, hands locked behind
him. I understood what was in his mind, and held off; he would have
nothing to say until the wreck of the Spaniard stood before him in its
dusky tomb. He mastered his anxiety, but would now and again pause and
direct at the island a look that, with its accompanying play of face,
expression of lip, suggestion of posture, told more of what was passing
in him than had he talked for an hour.
He ordered the boy Jimmy to put breakfast on the skylight; and we ate,
standing or walking, but exchanging very few words. Thus slipped the
time away, and so slipped we through the water. The brig bowed as she
went; a long breathing spell followed her astern, and the sails came in
to the mast as she rose with the heave of the dark blue brine. The
sailors lay over the forecastle head, waiting for the approach of the
island and for orders. Now and again one would point and one would
speak, but expectation lay as a weight upon their minds. It subdued
them. For there was the island, to be sure, and the cave, no doubt, was
round the corner, and in that cave might be the ship. But the dollars,
the dollars, ah! Lay they there still massive, good tender as the
guinea, plentiful as roe in the herring, noble coins to tassel a
handkerchief with, to clink out the sweetest music in the world with to
the accompaniment of deck-blistered feet marching across the gangway to
the wharf, to the joys of the alley boarding house, to the delights of
the runner’s parlor--lay they there still in the moldering hold within
the cave?
So did I interpret the thoughts of the sailors, and I would have bet the
last dollar of my share upon the accuracy of my construction of their
several countenances and attitudes.
“Let her go off,” said the captain.
The man at the helm put the wheel over by two or three spokes.
“Steady!” exclaimed Greaves. He viewed the island through the glass. “We
are opening the reef,” said he; and, taking the telescope from him, I
instantly discerned the sallow line of a projection of rock, with a
dazzle of sunshine coming and going along the base of the formation as
the swell rose and sank there.
Deep silence fell upon the brig. All hands of us--nay, my beloved
Galloon and the very brig herself--seemed to know that in a few minutes
the cave would lie open before us.
And a few minutes disclosed it. I viewed the picture as though I had
beheld it before, so clearly had Greaves painted it in his description,
so familiar had it grown by frequent meditation. Almost abreast of us
now, within a mile, lay a very perfect little natural harbor. The reefs
swept out from either hand the island. They looked like piers. They
needed but a lighthouse to have passed, at a glance, for roughly
constructed artificial piers. Within their embrace lay a wide, smooth
surface of dark blue water. A flat, livid front of rock overlooked, on
the left, this placid expanse. Low down on the right of this rock ran a
herbless and treeless beach, without scintillation as of sand or gleam
as of coral--a dead ground of foreshore, mouse-colored; a sort of
pumice, with a small shelving to the wash of the water. But I had no
eyes for that beach then, nor for any other portion of the island saving
the vast, sullen, gloomy fissure which denoted the entrance of the cave
right amidships of the tall face of flat rock.
Greaves let fall the glass from his eye. He swung it with an odd gesture
of irritable triumph.
“Back the main topsail, Mr. Fielding.”
I instantly delivered the necessary orders for heaving the ship to. The
men sprang out of the bows, and rushed to the braces and clew garnets as
though to a summons which signified life or death to them. The brig’s
way was arrested. She came with her head to the southwest, bringing the
island upon her starboard quarter. All the time, while I sung out orders
and while the men were hauling upon the braces, Greaves stood at the
rail, his eye glued to the glass that was pointed at the cavern. He
turned his head when the noise about our decks had ceased, and,
observing me standing at a little distance regarding him, he beckoned.
“Look for yourself,” said he.
I brought the tube to bear upon the cave, and for some moments saw
nothing but the darkness of the interior. A singular appearance of
darkness it was, burnished to the gleam of a raven’s wing by the
silver-blue atmosphere, by the azure glory floating off the surface of
the natural harbor through which I viewed it. But after a little I
seemed to make out a sort of intricacy of pale lines in that gloom.
Well, _pale_ I will not call them. They were of a lighter hue than the
dusk out of which they stole to the eye. Then, knowing very well that
that complication of shadow signified the spars, yards, and rigging of a
large ship, I seemed to distinguish the form of the fabric; could almost
swear to her bowsprit, to the tops, to the side she showed, to the
crosses of the lower masts and fore and main yards.
“What do you see?” said Greaves.
“A ship,” said I.
“Oh, you have no doubt?”
“I should have plenty of doubt,” said I, “if you had not told me how to
name, how to define that bewildering muddle of shadow.”
“Give me the glass!” cried he suddenly, with a change and vehemence of
voice that made the abrupt note of it wild as madness itself to my ears.
I started, gave him the glass, and watched him.
“My God!” he cried, “I fear we are too late.”
“Captain,” called Bol from the gangway, “dere vhas people valking on der
beach.”
The telescope fell with a crash from Greaves’ hand. He gazed at me with
an ashen face. “It was my _only_ fear!” he cried. “Are we too late?”
“I see three people,” said I, after looking awhile. “One of them is a
woman.”
“Are you sure of that?” he shouted.
“One of them is a woman,” I repeated. “Two men and one woman. I see no
more. One of the men is waving his hat, and now the woman is waving
something white--a handkerchief. They are castaways.”
Greaves snatched the glass from me.
“You are right, I believe,” he exclaimed, after looking. “What should a
woman be doing in a salvage or wrecking job? Yes; they are flourishing
to us. I did not before observe that one was a woman. Get a boat manned,
Mr. Fielding, and bring them aboard. I am mad till I learn what their
business is there, who they are, what has brought them to _this_ of all
the hundred rocks of the Pacific.”
“Which boat shall I take, sir?”
“The cutter. Let the crew go armed. Those two fellows and the woman may
prove a piratical decoy, for all you know. Mind your eye as you enter
the reefs, and hold on your oars to parley. There may be a big gang in
ambush round the corner at the extremity of the flat there.”
I have elsewhere told you that we carried three boats--a little one,
which we termed a jolly-boat, stowed in a big one amidships, and abreast
of these boats lay a third boat in chocks. This boat, whose capacity
rose to a lading of from twenty to five-and-twenty people, we termed the
cutter. Tackles were swiftly carried aloft. While this was being done
the fellows who were to man her armed themselves with cutlasses and
pistols. The boat was then swayed over the side, six men and myself
entered her, and we headed for the island.
We gained the entrance of the natural harbor, and I bid the men pause on
their oars while I looked and considered. I gave no attention to the
singular aspect of the island, nor to the wondrous revelation of the
ship in the vast cave. I could think of nothing but the three people on
the beach. Were they decoys, as Greaves had suggested? Was there a crowd
of formidable ruffians somewhere in hiding, close at hand but ready for
a rush when the moment should arrive? I gazed carefully around, but saw
nothing resembling a boat. We might be quite sure that there was no
vessel in the neighborhood; the island was small, we had sailed half
round it before heaving to. It was impossible to imagine that any craft
with masts could be lying off the north side of the island without our
having caught sight of her as we approached. But then it might matter
nothing that no vessel should be in sight. Likely as not the ship in the
cave had been discovered and explored, in which case the discoverer had
acted as Greaves had--sailed away for a port to re-embark in a properly
equipped expedition; a number of men had been thrown ashore to work at
the caverned Spaniard, while the vessel to which they belonged to went
away to put the horizon betwixt her and the rock, lest, by hovering and
lingering close to, she should invite the attention of anything that
passed.
These were my thoughts as I stood up in the stern sheets staring around.
But the woman? Truly, methought, had Greaves conjectured that fellows
engaged on such an errand as this of clearing the Spaniard’s hold, would
not burden themselves with a woman ashore, at all events. No noise came
from the island. A low note of the thunder of the surf hummed from the
north side, a great number of sea birds were wheeling about in the air
over that northern part at too great distance for their cries to reach
us.
“Give way,” said I.
We pulled into the middle of the harbor, halted afresh, and now we had a
good view of the three people, who, throughout this time of our tardy
approach, continued to flourish to us, but without calling. The two men
were apparently forecastle hands--foreigners. They wore grass hats,
wide-brimmed, sombrero fashion; their clothes were loose blue shirts or
blouses and blue trousers; they were barefooted; they were both of them
hairy and dark, one of them of the color of coffee. Their hair lay upon
their backs in a snaky shower, and I caught a glance of earrings as they
moved their heads.
The woman I could not very clearly make out. Her gown was of some
pearl-colored stuff--it had a look of shot silk, but I dare not attempt
any descriptions in this way. She wore a large white hat with a white
veil coiled round the crown of it, ready for dropping over the face.
Some sort of mantilla she had on. She was a tall and graceful figure of
a woman, and, as she stood a little apart from the men I observed the
grace of a dancer in her attitudes of entreaty, in her gesticulations to
us to approach.
We pulled closer in to the beach upon which those three were standing.
One of the men cried out to us, the other clasped his hands, and the
woman stood motionlessly, gazing.
“What language is that?” said I.
None of my men could tell me. The man continued to exclaim,
gesticulating very eagerly and wildly. I listened, and thought he spoke
in French.
“Are you French?” I sung out.
“Spaniards, señor, Spaniards,” he answered, in Spanish.
“Do you speak English?”
He cried back that he understood a little English.
“Are there others, besides yourselves, on this island?”
He answered “No.”
“What are you doing here?”
“We are shipwrecked,” he answered, but in an accent I cannot imitate;
the spelling would be meaningless to eye and brain.
“How long have you been here?”
He held up his right hand, the thumb pressed into the palm, that his
four fingers might answer my question.
Here the woman exclaimed in Spanish. Her voice was clear, sweet, and
rich. It came to the ear like music from the beach. There seemed no
harshness of shipwreck, no weakness of privation or despair in it. She
spoke with her face directed to the boat, but I could not understand one
word she uttered.
“Do you wish to be taken off this island?” I cried.
“Yes, señor, yes,” shouted the man who had answered throughout. “We
starve here--we die here if you do not take us off.”
I again looked very carefully about, fearful still lest some deadly
trick was intended, but could see no sign of anything elsewhere on the
island living or stirring. All was motionless; nothing came along with
the wind but the sound of the creaming of waters, the throb and hum of
surf at a distance.
“Back in, men,” said I.
We got the boat stern-on to the beach. It was like a lake for the quiet
lipping of the water there. The men held their places on the thwarts,
ready at the instant of a cry to give way.
“Come, madam,” said I to the lady.
She approached, comprehending my gesture. I took her by the hands and
helped her to spring over the stern; then seated her. The two men jumped
in, and we shoved off. I looked back and around as we pulled away for
the opening betwixt the reefs. Nothing stirred.
The woman had very fine features. Her eyes were large, dark, and full of
fire; her complexion a very delicate, pale olive; her mouth small and
firm. Indeed, her mouth wanted but a corresponding and helping
expression of sweetness and of tenderness in the other lineaments to be
a lovely feature. She was clearly a lady. Her hands were small--models
of hands to the finger-tips; her hair was extraordinarily thick,
plentiful beyond anything I ever saw in a woman, and of a rich dead
blackness. She wore a pair of long gold earrings, bulb-shaped, with a
ball at each extremity in which sparkled a little star of diamonds. Some
rings, too, she had--one on the forefinger of her right hand was a
cross, formed of a sort of dark stone set upon gold, probably a signet
ring. No other jewelry did she carry. Her clothes were of some rich
stuff, but I could not give a name to the material; a magically
contrived combination of dyes, swiftly blending and alternating with
every move, and cheating the eye kaleidoscopically--the product of some
Asiatic loom, an art that may have ceased as an art, and that has been
extinguished by the neglect of taste. So much for my observations of
this Spanish lady while we were making for the brig.
I found nothing remarkable in the two seamen. One had a pinched look; he
was hollow in the eyes, and an expression of fear lay on his face. In
appearance they answered to the beachcomber of the present day. They
were hairy, dirty, and wild. A small silver crucifix gleamed in the moss
upon the chest of the fellow who spoke English.
I had no time to ask questions. The men swung upon their oars with a
will, and the brig lay scarcely a mile distant. I inquired of the lady
if she spoke English. She bent her fine eyes very wistfully upon me, and
shook her head on the Spanish sailor explaining what I had said. I again
inquired of the fellow who understood my speech if there were others
upon the island, and he answered, with energy and with passion, that
there had been but three, as though he understood me to refer to his
shipwreck. I asked if they had found water on the island. He answered
“Yes,” and pointed to some cliffs past the beach, where stood a small
grove of trees and vegetation, resembling guinea grass, along with a
thickness of green bushes coming down the slope.
But now we were alongside the brig. I helped the lady up the side; the
two Spanish seamen followed. Greaves called down an order for the boat
to keep alongside, and for two hands to remain in her. He then
approached us, holding his hat while he bowed to the lady, who returned
his salutation with a slow, very stately, elegant gesture,
irreconcilable with the horrors from which she was newly rescued, and
with the distress and apprehension in which she must continue until she
reached her home, wherever _that_ might be.
“She is Spanish, sir,” said I, “and understands not a syllable of our
tongue.”
He called to Jimmy to bring a chair from the cabin, and placed it for
her in some square of shadow cast by the canvas. The crew of the brig,
saving the two men over the side, were collected in the bows, and talked
eagerly, and often looked our way and then at the island. Yan Bol, pipe
in mouth, towered among the men.