THE SHIP IN THE CAVE.
Greaves read Spanish, but spoke it ill. He was a North-countryman, and
was without musical accents for soft or swelling or voweled tongues. On
seating the lady, he looked at her and pronounced some words in her
speech. My ear told me they were barbarous. They might have been Welsh
or Erse.
“This man,” said I, pointing to one of the Spanish seamen who stood
near, “understands English.”
Greaves was about to address the sailor; he broke off, and beckoned to
Bol. The lumbering Dutchman came pitching aft like one of the bum-bowed
boats of his own country over a swell.
“Station a man on the fore royal yard, Bol,” said Greaves, “to instantly
report anything that may heave into view.”
“Ay, ay, sir.”
The Dutchman went forward again, and a minute later the sailor named
Meehan ran patting aloft.
“Fielding, should a sail be reported when I am ashore,” said Greaves,
speaking as though the lady and the Spanish seamen were not present,
“fill on your topsail and stand away under easy canvas in a direction
opposite to what the stranger may be taking. Keep your eye on her, and
haul in again for the island as she settles away. Nothing must observe
us hanging about here until we have got what we have come to take. I do
not think it likely that anything will heave into view. I give you these
directions while they are present to my mind.”
I replied in the customary affirmative of the sea.
“Now for our friends,” he exclaimed; “I will give them ten minutes to
make sure of them.” He looked at his watch, and turned to the Spanish
sailors. “Which of you speaks English?”
“Me--Antonio. I speak a little English,” answered the sailor.
“Have you enough English to make me understand how it comes to pass that
you are on this island? You may use a few Spanish words.”
The Spaniard told this story. Their ship was _La Diana_. They had sailed
from Acapulco--the date of their departure escapes me. Their ship was
bound to Cadiz. She was a rich ship, and a vessel of six hundred tons. A
few passengers went in the cabin, and her company of working hands, from
captain to boy, numbered thirty-eight souls. They steered straight south
down the meridian of 100° W., and all went well till they were in about
3° S. of the equator, when a hurricane struck the ship. Neither I nor
Greaves could clearly understand from the man’s recital what then
happened. The memory of suffering and horror worked him into passion. He
talked in Spanish, forgot that he was talking to us, addressed the lady,
who frequently sighed and moaned and lifted her eyes to heaven, while
the other Spanish sailor, holding his clenched fists a little forward of
his hips, shook them, nodding his head with a miserable, convulsed grin
of temper, and horror, and tears.
We gathered that the ship’s masts were swept out of her, that most of
the seamen made off in the boats, that the captain ordered Antonio and
his companion, whose name was Jorge, together with other seamen, to
enter a boat to receive the passengers. This we understood. Then it
seemed that though Jorge and Antonio got into the boat that lay lifting
and beating alongside, threatening to scatter in staves at every moment,
others of the crew did not follow. A lady was handed down--“the Señorita
Aurora de la Cueva,” said Antonio, with a nod of his head in the
direction of the young lady--and scarcely had the two fellows grasped
her when the boat’s line parted and the fabric blew away.
What followed was just the old-world, well-worn story of a couple of
days and a couple of nights of suffering in an open boat. Often has this
form of misery been described; and a changeless condition of ocean life
it must ever be, let the marine transformations of the coming ages be
what they may. They fell in with Greaves’ island. A heave of swell was
running from the west; the two fellows were half dead with thirst and
with the fear of dying. Spineless creatures they looked. If _they_ were
examples of the fellows who fought us at St. Vincent and Trafalgar, what
was there in the victories of our beef-fed pigtails to brag about? They
aimed for a head of reef to spring ashore, dragging the lady with them,
heedless of their boat, the wretches, thinking only of a drink of water,
and the boat went to pieces while they staggered inland.
Here Antonio swore horribly in Spanish. He smote his hands together,
squinted fiercely at Jorge, and abused him with a torrent of words. The
other hung his head and occasionally shrugged his shoulders. The lady
kept her fine eyes fastened upon me. Her face worked slightly in
sympathy with the speech of Antonio when he spoke in Spanish, and
occasionally she sighed and moaned low; but her eyes rarely left my
face. Never before had I been honored by the intent regard of eyes so
liquid, so beautiful, so full of fire, eyes whose lightest glance, when
all was well with the owner, could hardly fail to be impassioned.
“Who is this lady?” said Greaves, breaking in upon Antonio.
The man again pronounced her name.
Greaves said: “She was a passenger?”
“With her mother, my captain. Both were proceeding to Cadiz for Madrid.”
“With her mother! Then she is separated from her mother by the
shipwreck?”
“The boat would have received the mother, but the line parted.”
“Did the people you left behind perish, think you?”
Antonio replied with a shrug.
“You have been four days on the island, I understand, and there is water
in abundance?”
“There is good water among those trees,” said the Spaniard, pointing.
“And what food have you met with?”
He succeeded, with much difficulty, in making us understand that they
had lived upon terrapin, crabs, and iguanas.
“Did you get fire for dressing your food?”
Antonio put his hand in his pocket and produced a little burning-glass.
“Fielding,” said Greaves, “I am going ashore. Look to the brig and see
to the lady. Take her below; let Jimmy put meat and wine upon the table.
There’s a spare berth for her, and by and by we will make her
comfortable and keep her so till we can dispose of her. I wish she were
not here, though.” He made a face. “Go along forward, Antonio, with
your companion. D’ye see that big man there? His name is Yan Bol. Ask
him to feed you. Hold!”
Antonio and his mate faced about.
“Did you go on board the ship in the cave?”
“What ship, señor?”
“There is a ship in that cave,” said Greaves, pointing. “Did you go on
board of her?”
The man placed the sharp of his hand against his brow and looked at the
island.
“I know no ship--I know no cave, señor,” said he.
“Go forward and ask that big Dutchman to feed you,” exclaimed Greaves.
“When you think of it,” he continued, addressing me as the men walked
forward, “they would not be able to see the cave when on the island. It
is clear that they did not notice the ship when they landed on the reef;
they were too thirsty, poor devils.”
“And how could they board the ship without a boat, sir?” said I.
“True,” he answered. “I see too much, Fielding. I put on glasses and
they magnify my meat, but they don’t cheat my appetite. See to the
lady.”
He called to Bol to put a couple of lanterns into the boat and to send
the crew of the cutter aft, and walked to the gangway. In a few minutes
he was making for the island.
“Hail the masthead, Bol,” cried I, “and ascertain if all is clear round
the horizon.”
The answer fell from the lofty height in thin syllables--there was
nothing in sight. I beckoned to the lad Jimmy, who was standing by the
caboose, and bade him furnish the cabin table with the best meal he
could put upon it and to look alive. I then turned to the lady, and,
with my hat in my hand, exclaimed:
“Will you let me take you below?”
She viewed me anxiously. Her fine eyes made a passion of even a trifling
emotion in her. She did not understand, and so I had to fall to Robinson
Crusoe’s old trick of gesticulating. Heavens, how doth ignorance of
another’s tongue seal the lips! You are as one who walks dumb through
many lands. Had this poor lady had power of speech in English, or could
I have understood her Spanish, how would she have given vent to her full
breast? I could see in her lips, in her eyes, in the movement of her
features, how grievously was her heart in labor. Yes; in her face
worked the anguish of enforced silence. I pointed to the cabin, made
signs of eating, extended my hand to take hers, on which she rose, gave
me a low bow, put her hand in mine, and I led her through the companion
way.
Jimmy had not yet arrived with the meal. Still holding her hand, to
deliver myself from the absurdity of gesticulating, I conducted her to a
berth on the starboard side in the fore-part of the living room, opened
the door, and sought, with a flourish of my fist, to make her understand
that it was at her disposal.
“_Yrá ó harâ muy bien_”--It will do very well--said she.
I afterward understood this to be her remark; _then_ it was darker than
Hebrew. In fact, I thought she referred to the emptiness of the berth.
The bunk was without bedding; and that bare bunk and a little naked,
unequipped semicircle of wooden washstand, screwed into the bulkhead,
formed all the visible furniture of the interior.
I knew a few words in French, and tried her with a “_Parlez-vous
Français_, señorita?”
“_Nó, caballero_,” she answered.
I made a step into the berth, and motioned toward the bunk and the
washstand, in the hope that she would be able to collect from my
contortions that her comfort would be presently seen to. She inclined
her head and slightly smiled, and the flash of her teeth was like
sunshine betwixt her lips. Again I presented my hand, and she gave me
hers; and I led her into the cabin where Jimmy was now busy. Galloon sat
upon his chair, watching the lad lay the cloth. He pricked his ears and
growled at the Spanish lady. I shook my fist at him, and his eyes
languished, though his ears remained pricked. The lady exclaimed in
Spanish, and fearlessly walked round to the dog and patted him. Galloon
wagged his tail, but his ears remained elevated, as though one end of
him was in doubt while the other end was satisfied. I again noticed the
beauty of the lady’s hand, as she laid it on the dog, and the sparkling
of the rings upon her fingers. Jimmy breathed fast and grinned much, and
could scarcely proceed in his work for staring. I abused him for a lazy
cub and bade him bear a hand.
The meal was spread. I motioned the lady into the chair occupied by
Greaves, with further gesticulations desired her to help herself, and
poured out a bumper of claret, of which wine Greaves had laid in a
handsome stock, whether at Tulp’s cost or not I could not say. I was
greatly impressed by the self-control and dignity of this lady Aurora,
as I understood one of her names to be. Hungry I could not question she
was. Tempted, I might also feel sure she would be, by the food before
her after four days of such living as the island beach and the grove of
trees provided. Yet she helped herself to but a little at a time, first
crossing herself with great devotion before lifting her fork, then
eating with the well-bred leisureliness you would have looked to see in
her at her mother’s table. But the silence grew momentarily more
oppressive.
“Jimmy,” said I, “go forward and bring that Spanish sailor, Antonio, aft
with you, unless he’s still eating.”
At the expiration of five minutes Antonio followed Jimmy into the cabin.
“Have you had plenty to eat?” said I.
His earrings danced while he nodded--he wore earrings like those you see
on a French fishwife--his blood-stained, dark eyes searched the cabin.
“A very good ship--very kind men,” said he. “When do you sail, señor?”
“I have not sent for you to question me,” said I. “I desire you to
interpret my speech to this lady. Tell her----” and, in few, I bade him
inform her that instructions would be given for her cabin to be
comfortably equipped, and that whatever the brig could supply was at her
service.
She smiled and bowed to me on this being interpreted, and then addressed
Antonio, who, however, found himself at a loss, and was obliged to act
to make me understand. He feigned to wash his face, and unnecessarily
passed his fingers through the length of his hair, and then, finding
words, made me understand that the lady was weary, that she had slept
but little, and then on the hard ground, and that she would be thankful
to lie down and sleep. Thereupon I told Jimmy to convey my bedding to
her bunk, also to place one or two toilet conveniences of my own in her
cabin; and, after waiting to see my instructions carried out, I bowed
low and sprang on deck, with my mind full of the dollars ashore,
wondering likewise what Greaves’ report would be, whether the dollars
were still in the ship’s hold, and when he meant to go to work to
discharge the vessel of her silver.
My first look was at the weather. It was boundless azure down to the
lens-like brim of the sea--not a feather-sized wing of cloud--and a
light air of wind with just enough of weight in it to hold the backed
topsail steady to the mast. I looked at the island; the boat had entered
the cave and was lost in the shadow. I picked up the glass, and leveled
it; the dark lines of rigging and spar were faintly discernible, but the
boat was deep in the dusk and not to be seen. It was the ugliest rock of
island I had ever viewed, swart, sterile--save where the trees
stood--gloomy, menacing with its suggestion of arrested fires. A few
terrapin, or land tortoises, crawled upon the beach. Many birds, most of
them white as shapes of marble, wheeled and hovered over the further
extremity of the land with frequent stoopings and dartings, like our
gulls over a herring shoal. I swept every foot of the visible surface of
land with a telescope, but witnessed no signs of life of any sort.
Nevertheless, the two long arms of the reef strangely civilized the
beach and the face of cliff where the cave was, by their likeness to
artificial piers. They formed a very perfect, spacious harbor in which,
during a heedless moment or two, I caught myself looking for a cluster
of rowboats, for some group of shipping, for cranes and capstans, for
men walking, as though, forsooth, I gazed at the piers of a dock!
How it had come to pass that a big ship of seven or eight hundred tons
should have backed and neatly threaded an eye of cave, and fixed herself
within, Greaves had, doubtless, correctly explained. The commander of
her had stumbled upon this island in thick weather; or he may have found
the island aboard of him on a sudden in a black night. He had a reason
for bringing up in the shelter of that harbor, and when his anchors were
down it came on to blow dead in-shore. The ship dragged. Her stern made
a straight course for the opening in the cave. Would they seek to give
her a sheer to divert her from that entry? No. For there might be safety
in that cave, but outside it was certain destruction. To touch was to go
to pieces against such a steep-to front of cliff as that. But many are
the conundrums submitted by the ocean, and victoriously insoluble are
they for the most part. You may theorize as you will. Nothing is certain
but this:
There was a ship!
While I waited for the return of Greaves, I called to Bol to get a cast
of the deep-sea lead. There was no bottom at eighty fathoms. I had
expected from the appearance of the island to find a great depth of
water to the very wash of the surf. No need, therefore, to bother with
our ground tackle. And so much the better! Nothing like having your ship
under control when the land is aboard. With an offing of a mile it would
be easy to “ratch” clear any point of the island, even should it come on
to blow with hurricane power; then it would be up-helm and a brief run
for it, and a heave-to till the weather mended.
The two Spanish sailors sat, Lascar fashion, against the caboose. They
sucked alternately at a short pipe which one of them had probably
borrowed. When the lead-line was coiled away, Yan Bol rolled up to me
and said in his voice of thunder, but very civilly:
“Dot vhas a scare.”
“What was a scare?” said I.
He leveled a massive forefinger at the two Spaniards. I nodded. “Der
captain vhas some time gone,” said he. “I hope no man vhas before her.”
“And that’s my hope.”
“How many cases of dollars might der be, Mr. Fielding?”
“I don’t know.”
He looked as if he did not believe me, and said, “Vell, der more, der
better for Mynheer Tulp und oders.” He paused upon this word, _oders_. I
gazed at the island. “Der more der better, certainly,” continued he,
“yet dey vhas not so plentiful but dot efery dollar might be shipped
before dark. Tell me dey vhas plentiful some more dan dot, and, by Cott,
Mr. Fielding, der crew’s share vhas as a flea upon der dog dot scratch
her.”
“My name is Fielding, not Greaves, Yan Bol,” said I.
“Oh, yaw, dot vhas right. But I likes to tink aloud sometimes, Mr.
Fielding.”
“Are not you satisfied?” cried I, suddenly rounding upon him and looking
him full in the face.
“Perfectly satisfied, Mr. Fielding.”
“Then why, by that devil who always seems to be busy in ship’s
forecastles, come you to me now with your growlings and your questions
and your dots, and your Cotts and your dollars, Yan Bol.”
“Growlings--questions! I likes to know vhen we get der dollars on board
und make sail, dot vhas all.”
“Strike a light with your eyes and keep a lookout for yourself, and hail
the fore royal yard, will ye, and receive the man’s report.”
He went forward, and his roar swept straight aloft like a blast from the
mouth of the cannon. There was nothing in sight at sea, the man called
down. I looked toward the island and saw the boat at that moment
stealing out of the cave. I mused on Bol while the boat swept across the
satin calm surface of the natural harbor, the oars swinging like lines
of flame in the men’s hands. Was Bol going to give trouble? It was late
in the day to ask that question. It would be impossible to rid the ship
of him on this side the Horn, and by the time it came to t’other
side----
The boat arrived, and Greaves rose in the stern sheets; he rose, but he
was supported too. A sailor grasped him by either arm, and he was helped
with difficulty over the side of the brig. I was at the gangway to
receive him, and assisted by seizing his hands as the men helped him to
climb. He was pale as milk, and his mouth was drawn with pain.
“What is the matter?” I asked.
“I have had a fall,” he said, speaking with a labored breath. “I tripped
and drove my whole weight against the sharp edge of a case in the
lazarette of the ship yonder. I wish I may not have broken a rib. Help
me, Fielding.”
I took him by the arm, and Jimmy, who stood near, grasped him in
obedience to my gesture by the other arm, and together we got him into
the cabin and to his berth. He asked for brandy-and-water and drank a
tumblerful, and then requested me to help him to strip, that he might
see if he had broken any bones. He had hurt himself over the right hip,
and the skin was somewhat darkened there, but the ribs were unbroken. He
felt over himself anxiously, occasionally groaning, and said:
“No, my good angel be praised, the bones are sound. I am in torment from
the pain of the blow. That must be it, and it will pass--it will pass.”
“I would recommend you to lie perfectly still.”
“No; I must be on deck. I can sit and keep watch and look about me while
you go ashore.”
I helped him to dress, and he seemed unable to speak for pain while he
put his arms and body in motion. He then asked for another glass of
brandy-and-water and sat, saying he would rest and talk to me for ten
minutes.
“Are you in pain when you are still?” said I.
“No. I was too eager, and consequently careless, pressed forward,
tripped, and should have set fire to the ship had I swooned, for I was
alone and the fall flung the lighted lantern from me, and the candle
lay naked and burning among the cases.”
“Lord, how suddenly will a trifle become a frightful thing at sea!” said
I.
“Where is the Spanish lady, Fielding?”
“In her berth, and perhaps asleep, sir.”
“Well,” said he, after a pause, “the dollars are there.”
“I am glad to hear it, sir,” said I, feeling the blood in my cheek, for
I own that the news worked as a sort of transport in me.
“This cursed accident will hinder me from superintending the unlading of
the vessel. You must undertake that job.”
“You can trust me, captain.”
“Up to the hilt I do. Open that drawer, and hand me the pocket-book
you’ll see.” His extending his hand to receive the book made him wince.
“There are a hundred and forty cases,” said he. “You will take slings
and tackles to hoist the cases out and lower them over the side into the
boat. Be careful not to overload your boat. The money may be safely
transhipped in three journeys; so divide one hundred and forty by three
and your quotient is your lading for each trip.”
“Ay, ay, sir.”
“Be careful with your fire. I split open some of the boxes, as I told
you, to make sure of their contents. Take tools and nails and battens
with you for securing the riven cases. Be yourself in the lazarette
while this is doing.”
“Right, sir. Where will you have the cases stowed aboard us?”
“Oh, in the lazarette. I was prevented by my fall,” he exclaimed, “from
examining the rest of the cargo. Do you that when the money is
transhipped. I will act on your report if the weather allows. But should
there come a change when we have got the money, then damn your cocoa and
tin--we’ll be off.”
“Shall I remain in the ship during the trips, or take charge of the
boat?”
“Take charge of the boat, but see all your men in first.”
I faintly smiled, for here was a direction that was a little particular,
methought.
“Help me on deck, now, Fielding, and then go to work.”
I thought to myself: “It is no time, this, to speak of Yan Bol. The
matter must stand.”
He leaned upon me, and, with pain and difficulty, gained the deck. All
the men but one had come out of the boat, and the ship’s company, saving
that man and Jimmy and the fellows at the wheel and masthead, were
assembled in the gangway. They hung together in a little crowd.
Impatience burnt like fire in them--impatience and expectation and
anxiety, now complicated by the injury their captain had met with. When
we made our appearance they stared and shuffled, one and all, as though
they were mutineers, scarce masking a madness of bloody intention, and
about to make a rush aft to its execution. Is not the insanity that
drink will run into the veins and brains a sweet little cherub compared
with the demon that enters the soul of man out of the coin of gold or
silver?
“Captain,” cried Yan Bol, “I shpeaks for all handts. You vhas not hurt
much, all handts hope?”
“Not much, my lads--not much, I thank you,” answered Greaves, whom I had
helped to seat in the chair Jimmy had placed for him, and who, while he
remained motionless, seemed free from pain.
“Captain,” again cried Yan Bol, in tones like to the noise of breakers
heard in the hollow of cliffs, “again I shpeaks for all handts. Vhas der
dollars safe?”
“Yes,” answered Greaves.
The men roared out a cheer--a roaring cheer it was. It seemed to be
repeated on the island a mile off, as though there was a crew ashore
there.
I now began to sing out the instructions which Greaves had given me.
Pieces of planking for nailing over the cases were flung into the boat;
lines for slings, tackles, tools, lanterns, and the like were handed
down. The crew took their seats, and we shoved off, followed by a cheer
from the fellows who remained behind. There went with me six men--two
Dutch, the others my countrymen. The drift of the brig, though very
inconsiderable, owing to the lightness of the breeze and the apparent
absolute tidelessness of the sea, had veered the island a trifle
southerly, and the brig lay on a line with the edge of the cliff where
the cave was. The cave was, therefore, hidden from me. I stared with
great curiosity at the island as we neared it, making for the head of
the westerly reef to round into the lake-like expanse within. A more
hideous heap of rock shows not its head above the water. The cliffs of
it, where they run to any noticeable altitude, come down to the sea in
twisted masses. You would have thought the process of this island’s
formation had been arrested at some instant when the red-hot mass of it
was writhing and pouring into the ocean over the edges of its own
heaped-up stuff. No iceberg ever submitted a more fanciful sky-line; but
its toad-like hue, its several hideous complexions, made it a loathly
sight. The spirit shrinks from this bit of creation as from some
disgusting creature.
The cave was situated in the highest front of this island. The height of
this front was above two hundred feet; how much above that elevation I
know not. It was smooth and sheer, pumice-hued like the beach that swept
from it into the northeast; so smooth and sheer was it that you would
have said it had been split in twain from a like mass that had fallen
and vanished. Assuredly some enormous convulsion had gone to the
manufacture of that prodigious fissure or cave.
We pulled through the opening of the reefs, and I headed straight for
the cave. So strong was my excitement that it felt like a sort of
illness. I breathed with labor; the sweat lay like oil in the palms of
my hands, though my hands were cold. It was not now the thoughts of the
money. My excitement was no dollar madness then. I was oppressed, to a
degree I find incommunicable, by the marvelous picture, as I was now
beholding it for the first time, of the big ship clothed in the dusk of
the mighty tomb into which she had backed and where she had brought up.
I had had no leisure for the sight during my first excursion; had but
glanced at it, my head being then full of the shipwrecked people we were
bringing off, and of fancies of what might be lurking on shore. But now,
our approach being leisurely, the expanse of water to be measured
considerable, I could gaze, wonder, realize, until emotion grew
overwhelming and became a sensation of sickness in me.
Were you to split a big stone open and find a live toad in it you would
marvel. Hundreds would assemble to view the wonder, and a poor man might
get money by exhibiting it; but how many much stranger things than a
live toad imprisoned in a stone would I, as a sailor, exact the relation
and sight of, ere admitting that half the sum of that marvel of a great
ship at rest in a huge cave was approached?
At first sight the fabric looked like a piece of nature’s handiwork as
it lay in the gloom of the interior it had miraculously penetrated. It
looked, I say, as though the volcanic spasm, which had shorn the lofty
cliff into its bald front and wrought the prodigious fissure, had
contrived the hundred fragments and ruins of rocks, the splinters, the
serpentine lengths, the massive bulks, the pillar-shaped fragments into
the aspect of a ship, building the wonder in a sudden roar of
earthquake, and leaving it a faultless similitude.
“Oars!” cried I.
We floated forward with the arrested blades poised over the water. It
was burning hot; the sun stood nearly overhead, and the surface of this
strange natural harbor shone like new tin, tingling in fibers and
needles of white fire back again into the light that it reflected. We
were within a musket-shot of the entrance of the cave.
“On which side did you board, men?”
“To starboard, sir.”
“Give way gently, and, bow there, stand by with your boathook.”