close together, but some time had been spent in routing up the cask
and getting it into the boat, and setting ourselves afloat, so that at
the moment of our shoving off--spite of the topsail of each vessel
being to the mast--the space had widened between them, till I daresay
it covered pretty nearly a mile. The wind was at west-nor'-west, and
the barque bore on the lee quarter of the _Hindoo Merchant_. The great
heat put a languor into the arms of our two seamen, and the oars rose
and fell slowly and weakly. Jackson said to me: "I hope," said he,
"they 'll be able to spare us a bite of ship's bread. Our 'n is no
better than sawdust, and if it wasn't for the worms in it," said he,
"blast me if there 'd be any nutriment in it at all. Them Cingalese
ought to ha' moored their island off the Chinese coast. They 'd have
grown rich with teaching the Johnnies more tricks than they 're master
of, at plundering sailors."
"The _Hindoo Merchant's_ bread isn't up to much, Fallows," said I,
"but this is no atmosphere to talk of bread in. What 's aboard will
carry us to the Hooghley. It is water we have to fix our minds on."
We drew alongside of the tall barque, and the master, after looking
over the rail, asked me to step aboard and drink a glass with him in
his cabin, "for," says he, "this is no part of the ocean to be thirsty
in," and he then gave directions for the cask to be got out of the
boat, and a drink of rum and water to be handed down to the two
seamen.
I stepped into the cabin and the captain put a bottle of brandy and
some cold water on the table. He asked me several questions about the
brig, and how long we were out, and where we were from, and the like,
and one thing leading to another, he happened to mention the town he
was born in, which was my native place too--Ashford, in the county of
Kent,--and here was now a topic to set us yarning, for I knew some of
his friends and he knew some of mine; and the talk seemed to do him so
much good, whilst it was so agreeable to me, that neither of us seemed
in a hurry to end it. This is the only excuse I can offer for
lingering on the barque longer than, as circumstances proved, I ought
to have done.
At last I got up and said I must be off, and I thanked him most kindly
for the obliging reception of me, and for his goodness in supplying
the brig with water, and I gave him Captain Blow's compliments, and
desired to know if we could accommodate him in any way in return. He
answered "Nothing, nothing," stepping through the hatch as he said it,
and an instant after he set up his throat in a cry.
"You 'll have to bear a hand aboard," says he, with a face of
astonishment; "look yonder! 'T is rolling down upon your brig like
smoke." He pointed to the vessel, and a little way past her I spied a
long line of white vapour no higher than Dover cliff as it looked, but
as dense as those rocks of chalk too. The sun made steam of it, but if
already it was putting a likeness of its own blankness into the sky
over it, which seemed to be dying out, as the vapour came along, as
the light perishes in a looking-glass upon which you breathe. I ran to
the side and saw my boat under the gang-way and the two men in her.
The cask was in the stern of the boat. The master of the barque cried
out to me: "Will you not stay till that smother clears? You may lose
your brig in it." I replied: "No, sir, thank you. I will take my
chance. It is more likely I should lose her by remaining here," and
with a flourish of the hand I dropped over the side and entered the
boat. "Now," cried I, "pull like the devil, men."
They threw their oars over and fell to rowing fiercely; but the barque
was not five cables' length astern of us when the first of the white
cliff of vapour smote the _Hindoo Merchant,_ and she vanished in it
like a star in a cloud. There was a fresh breeze of wind behind that
line of sweeping thickness, and in places, at the base of the mass of
blankness, it would dart out in swift racings of shadow that made one
think of the feelers of some gigantic marine spider, probing under its
cobweb as though feeling its way along. In a few minutes the cloud
drove down over us with a loud whistling of wind, and the water close
to the boat's side ran in short, small seas, every head of it hissing;
but to within the range of a biscuit toss all was flying, glistening
obscurity, with occasional bursts of denser thicknesses which almost
hid one end of the boat from the other. It was about six o'clock in
the afternoon, and there might be yet another hour of sunshine.
"'Vast rowing!" says I presently, "you may keep the oars over, but
there's no good in pulling, short of keeping her head to wind. This is
too thick to last."
"Ain't so sure of that," says Fallows, taking a slow look round at the
smother, "I 've been in these here seas for two days running in
weather arter this pattern."
"Pity we didn't stay aboard the barque," says Jackson.
"A plague on your pities!" I cried. "I know my duty, I believe.
Suppose we _had_ stayed aboard the barque, we stood to be separated
from the brig in this breeze and muckiness, and was her skipper
by-and-bye going to sail in search of the _Hindoo Merchant_?"
"A gun!" cries Fallows.
"That'll be the brig," says I, catching the dull thud of the explosion
of a nine-pounder which the _Hindoo Merchant_ carried on her
quarter-deck.
"Seems to me as though it sounded from yonder," says Jackson, looking
away over the starboard beam of the boat.
"What have ye there, men?" says I, nodding at a bundle of canvas under
the amidship thwart.
"Ship's bread," answered Jackson, with a note of sulkiness in his
voice. "It was hove to us on my asking for a bite. She was a liberal
barque. The cask's more 'n three-quarters full."
We hung upon our oars listening and waiting. There was a second gun
ten minutes after the first had been fired, and that was the last we
heard. The report was thin and distant, but whether ahead or astern I
could not have guessed by harkening. I kept up my own and endeavoured
to inspirit the hearts of the others by saying that this fog which had
come down in a moment would end in a moment, that it was all clear sky
above with plenty of moonlight for us in the night if it should happen
that the sun went down upon us thus, that Captain Blow was not going
to lose us and his boat and the cask of fresh water if it was in
mortal seamanship to hold a vessel in one situation; but the fellows
were not to be cheered, their spirits sank and their faces grew longer
as the complexion of the fog told us that the sun was sinking fast,
and I own that when it came at last to his setting, and no break in
the flying vapour, and a blackness as of ink stealing into it out of
the swift tropic dusk, I myself felt horribly dejected, greatly
fearing that we had lost the brig for good.
Just before the last of the twilight faded out of the smoke that
shrouded us, we lashed both oars together and, attaching them to the
boat's painter, threw them overboard and rode to them. Our thirst was
now extreme, and to appease it--being without a dipper to drop into
the cask--we sank a handkerchief through the bung-hole and wrung it
out in the half of a cocoa-nut shell that was in the boat as a baler,
and by this means procured a drink, each man. Grateful to God indeed
was I that we had fresh water with us. I beat the cask, and gathered
by the sound that it was more than half full. Heaven was bountiful too
in providing us with biscuit. It had been the luckiest of thoughts on
Jackson's part, though he had desired nothing more than to obtain a
relish for his own rations of buffalo hump aboard.
I never remember the like of the pitch darkness of that night. There
was a moon, pretty nearly a full one if I recollect aright; but had
she been shining over the other side of the world it would have been
all the same. Her delicate silver beam could not pierce the vapour,
and never once did I behold the least glistening of her radiance
anywhere. There was a constant noise of wind in the dense thickness,
and an incessant seething and crackling of waters running nimbly, so
that though we would from time to time bend our ears in the hope of
catching the rushing and pouring noise of the sea divided by a ship's
stem, we never could hear more than the whistling of the breeze and
the lapping of the hurrying little surges. There was a deal of fire in
the water, and it came and went in sheets like the reflection of
lightning, insomuch that we might have believed ourselves in the heart
of an electric storm; but happily the wind never gathered so much
weight as to raise a troublesome sea, and though the boat tumbled
friskily she kept dry, and there was nothing in her movements to
render me uneasy.
I told the two fellows to lie down in the bottom of the boat, and I
kept watch till I reckoned it was drawing on to about one o'clock in
the morning. Twice or thrice during that long and wretched vigil there
seemed a promise of the weather clearing, and I gazed with the
yearning of the shipwrecked; but regularly it thickened and blackened
down upon us again in blasts like the belchings of a three-decker's
broadside. It was a very watery vapour, and I was early wet to the
skin.
At about one o'clock, as I calculated, I awoke Jackson, and bade him
keep an eager look-out and not to spare his ear in putting it against
the night, "for," says I, "there's nothing to be done with the eyes;
it's all for the hearing at such a time as this, mate, and what you
can't watch for you must listen for; and wake me up to any sound you
may hear, that our three throats may hail together. O God," says I,
"if it would but thin and show the brig within reach of our shouts!"
With that I lay down and was soon fast asleep, being worn out with
excitement and grief, and when I awoke it was daylight, for there's
but little dawn off the Andamans; the sun in those seas leaps on to
the horizon from the night as it were, and flashes it into day in a
breath.
It was still thick and troubled weather, but clear to about two miles
from the side of the boat. There was very little wind, and a long
swell of the colour of lead was running from the southward. The vapour
had broken up and lay in masses round about us--long, white twisted
folds of it, like powder smoke after a great battle; and to the top of
those heaps of thickness the sky sloped in a sort of grey shadow, with
a little pencilling here and there of some small livid ring of mist,
which looked stirless as though what air there was blew low. There was
nothing in sight; we strained our gaze into every quarter but I saw
there was nothing to be seen. This smote me to the heart. I had been
in my time in several situations of peril at sea, but had never yet
experienced the horrors of an open boat amidst a vast waste of waters,
such as was this Bay of Bengal with the Andaman Islands some hundreds
of miles distant, and a near menace of roasting heat when the wide
grey stretch of cloud should have passed away and laid bare the sun's
eye of fire. We gazed with melancholy faces one at another.
"What's to be done?" says Fallows, bringing his bloodshot eyes from
the sea to my face; "if we had a sail to set we might have a chance."
"There are two oars," said I, "for a mast and a yard, and our shirts
must furnish a sail."
"But how are we to head?" says Jackson.
"Right afore the wind, I suppose," says I; "there'll be no ratching
with the rags we're going to hoist. Right afore the wind," I says;
"and we must trust to God to keep us in view till something heaves in
sight--which is pretty well bound to happen I suppose when there comes
some wind along."
I opened the canvas parcel, and found a matter of thirty biscuits; all
very sweet, good bread. We took each of us a piece, and followed on
with a drink, and then went to work to get our oars in. We all three
wore shirts, and we stripped them off our backs and cut them to lie
open. I had a little circular cushion of stout pins in my pocket, such
as a sailor might carry, and with them we brought the squares of the
shirts together, and seized the corners to one of the oars by yarns
out of an end of painter we cut off, then stepped the other oar, and
secured it with another piece of the painter; and now we had a sort of
sail, the mere sight of which, even, was a small satisfaction to us,
since the shirts being white they must needs make a good mark upon the
water, something not to be missed, unless wilfully, by a passing
vessel.
The morning passed away, and a little after twelve o'clock the water
in the south was darkened by the brushing of a wind, which drove the
hovering masses of vapour before it; and presently they had totally
disappeared, leaving a sky with rents and yawns of blue in places, and
a clear glass-like circle of horizon, upon which, however, there was
nothing to be seen. The boat moved slowly before the wind, which blew
hot as a desert breeze; I steered, and Jackson and Fallows sat near
me, one or the other from time to time getting on to a thwart to take
a view of the ocean, under the sharp of his hand.
In this fashion passed the afternoon. The night came with a deal of
fire in the water, and a very clear moon floating in lagoons of velvet
softness betwixt the clouds. The weather continued quiet; the long
swell made a pleasant cradle of the boat, and the night-wind being
full of dew, breathed refreshingly upon our hot cheeks; whilst our
ears were soothed by the rippling noise of the running waters which
seemed to cool the senses, as the breeze did the body.
It was almost a dead calm, however, at daybreak next morning. The
atmosphere was close and heavy, and there was a strange strong smell
of seaweed, rising off the ocean, which caused me to look narrowly
about, with some dim dream of perceiving land, though I should have
known there was no land for leagues and leagues.
Whilst we were munching a biscuit, I observed an appearance of steam
lifting off the water, at a distance of about half-a-mile on the
starboard side of the boat. The vapour came out of the water in the
shape of corkscrews, spirally working, and they melted at a height of
perhaps ten or fifteen feet. I counted five of these singular
emissions. Jackson said that they were fragments of mist, and we might
look out for such another thickness as had lost us the brig. Fallows
said: "No; that's no mist, mate; that is as good steam as ever blew
out of a kettle. Are there places where the water boils in this here
ocean?"
As he said these words, an extraordinary thrill passed through the
boat, followed by a sound that seemed more like an intellectual
sensation than a real noise. What to compare it to I don't know; it
was as though it had thundered under the sea. An instant later, up
from the part of the water where the corkscrew appearances were, rose
a prodigious body of steam. It soared without a sound from the deep;
it was balloon-shaped but of mountainous proportions.
"A sea-quake!" roared Jackson. "Stand by for the rollers!"
But no sea followed. I could witness no commotion whatever in the
water; the light, long swell flowed placidly into the base of the mass
of whiteness, and there was nothing besides visible on the breast of
the sea, save the delicate wrinkling of the weak draught of air. Very
quickly the vapour thinned as steam does, and as it melted off the
surface, it disclosed to our astonished gaze what at first sight
seemed to me the fabric of a great ship, but after viewing it for a
moment or two, I distinctly made out the form of an old-fashioned hull
with the half of much such another hull as she, alongside, both
apparently locked together about the bows; and they seemed to be
supported by some huge gleaming black platform; but what it was we
could not tell.
The three of us drew a deep breath as we surveyed the floating
objects. The steam was gone; there they lay plain and bare; it was as
though the wand of a magician had touched the white mass and
transformed it into the objects we gazed at.
"Down with the sail," says I, "there's something yonder worth looking
at."
We got the oars over, and pulled in the direction of the fabrics. As
we approached I could scarce credit the evidence of my own sight. The
form of one of the vessels was perfect. She was of an antique build,
and belonged to a period that I reckoned was full eighty years dead
and gone. The other--the half of her I should say--showed a much
bluffer bow, and had been a vessel of some burthen. But the wonder was
the object on which they rested. This was no more nor less than the
body of a great dead whale!
We first needed to lose something of our amazement ere we could
reasonably speculate upon what we saw; then how this had happened grew
plain to our minds. The two craft, God knows how many long years
before, had been in action and foundered in conflict. The smaller
vessel--I mean the one that lay whole before us--might have been a
privateersman; she had something of a piratical sheer forward, there
were no signs of a mast aboard either of them, one had grappled the
other to board her I dare say, and they had both gone to the bottom
linked. The vessel of which only half remained may have broken her
back in settling, and, by-and-bye, the after part of her drifted away,
leaving the dead bows still gripped by the dead enemy alongside. But
how came the whale there? Well, we three men reasoned it thus, and I
don't doubt we were right. At the moment of the sea-quake the whale
was stemming steadily towards the two wrecks resting on the bottom.
They were lifted by the explosion, which at the same time killed the
whale; but the impetus of the vast form slided it to under the lifted
keels, where it came to a stand. A dead whale floats, as we know. This
whale being dead was bound to rise, and the buoyancy of the immense
mass brought the two craft up with it, and there they were, poised by
the gleaming surface of the whale, which was depressed by their
weight, so that no portion of the head, tail, or fluke was visible.
"It's them vessels being connected," says Jackson, "as keeps them
afloat. If what holds them together forrard was to part they'd slide
off that there slipperiness and sink."
We rowed close, the three of us greatly marvelling, as you may
suppose, for never had the like of such an incident as this happened
at sea within the knowledge of ever a one of us, and Fallows alone was
a man of five and forty, who had been using the ocean for thirty-three
years. It was as scaring as the rising of a corpse out of the
depths--as scaring as if that corpse turned to and spoke when his head
showed,--to see those two vessels lying in the daylight after eighty,
aye, and perhaps a hundred years of the green silence hundreds of
fathoms deep, locked in the same posture in which they had gone down,
making you almost fancy that you could hear the thunder of their guns,
witness the flashing of cutlasses, and the rush of the boarders to the
bulwarks amidst a hurricane note of huzzaing and shrieks of the
wounded.
They were both of them handsomely crusted with shells, not of the
barnacle sort, but such as you would pick up anywhere in Ceylon or the
Andaman, some of them finely coloured, many of them white as milk, of
a thousand different patterns; and there was not one of them but what
was beautiful.
"Let's board her," says Jackson.
"Ah, but if that whale be alive!" says Fallows.
"No fear of that," said I; "if he was alive there'd be some stir in
him. The whale's not the danger; it's the lashing, which may part at
any moment. It should be in a fair way of rottenness after so many
years of salt water, and if it goes the vessels go."
"I'm for boarding her all the same," says Jackson.
But first of all we pulled round to betwixt the bows of the craft to
see what it was that connected them, and we found that they were held
together by something stronger than an old grapnel. The bluff of the
bows came together like walls cemented by sand and shell, and it was
easy by a mere glance to perceive that they would hold together whilst
the sea continued tranquil. Betwixt their heels was a hollow which the
round of the whale nicely filled, and there they all three lay, very
slowly and solemnly rolling upon the swell in as deep a silence as
ever they had risen from.
We hung upon our oars speculating awhile, and then fell to talking
ourselves into extravagant notions. Fallows said that if she had been
a privateer she might have money in her, or some purchase anyway worth
coming at. I was not for ridiculing the fancy, and Jackson gazed at
the craft with a yearning eye.
"Let's get aboard," says he.
"Very well," says I, and we agreed that Fallows should keep in the
boat ready to pick us up, if the hulk should go down suddenly under
us. We easily got aboard. From the gunwale of our boat we could place
our hands upon the level of the deck, where the bulwarks were gone,
and the shells were like steps to our feet. There was nothing much to
be seen, however; the decks were coated with shells as the sides were,
and they went flush from the taffrail to the eyes with never a break,
everything being clean gone, saving the line of the hatches which
showed in slightly raised squares, under the crust of shells that lay
everywhere like armour.
"Lord!" cried Jackson; "what would I give for a chopper or pick-axe to
smash open that there hatch, so as to get inside of her."
"Inside of her?" says I; "why she'll be full of water!"
"That's to be proved, Mr. Small," says he.
We walked forward into the bows, and clearly made out the shape of a
grapnel thick with shells, with its claws upon the bulwark rail of the
half-ship alongside, and there was a line stretched between, belayed
to what might have been a kevel on a stanchion of the craft we were
in. This rope was as lovely as a piece of fancy work, with tiny
shells; but on my touching it, to see if it was taut, it parted as if
it had been formed of smoke, and each end fell with a little rattle
against the side as though it had been a child's string of beads.
We were gaping about us, almost forgetting our distressed situation,
in contemplation of these astonishing objects which had risen like
ghosts from the mysterious heart of the deep, when we heard Fallows
calling, and on our running to the side to learn what he wanted, we
saw him standing up in the boat, pointing like a madman into the
southward. It was the white canvas of a vessel, clearer to us than to
him, who was lower by some feet. The air was still a weak draught, but
the sail was rising with a nimbleness that made us know she was
bringing a breeze of wind along with her, and in half-an-hour's time
she had risen to the black line of her bulwarks rail, disclosing the
fabric of what was apparently a brig or barque, heading almost dead on
her end for us.
Jackson and I at once tumbled into the boat, but we were careful to
keep her close to the two craft, and the amazing platform they floated
on, for they furnished out a show that was not to be missed aboard the
approaching vessel, whereas the boat must make little more than a
speck though but half-a-mile distant.
The breeze the vessel was bringing along with her was all about us
presently with a threat of weight in it. We stepped an oar, with the
shirts atop, and they blew out bravely and made a good signal.
"Why, see, Mr. Small!" cries Jackson, on a sudden, "ain't she the
_Hindoo Merchant_?"
I stood awhile, and then joyfully exclaimed, "Ay, 't is the old hooker
herself, thanks be to God!"
I knew her by her short fore-topgallantmast, by her chequered band,
and by other signs clear to a sailor's eye, and the three of us sent
up a shout of delight, for it was like stumbling upon one's very home,
as it were, after having been all night lost amidst the blackness and
snow of the country where one's house stands.
She came along handsomely, with foam to the hawsepipe, thanks to the
freshening breeze, and her main royal and topgallantsail clewing up as
she approached, for our signal had been seen; then drove close
alongside with her topsail aback and in a few minutes we were aboard,
shaking hands with Captain Blow, and all others who extended a fist to
us, and spinning our yarn in response to the eager questions put.
"But what have you there, Mr. Small?" said Captain Blow, staring at
the two craft and the whale. I explained. "Well," cries he, "call me a
missionary if ever I saw such a sight as that afore! Have ye boarded
the vessel?" pointing to the one that was whole.
"Yes," said I, "but there's nothing but shells to look at."
"Hatches open?" says he.
"No," says I, "they are as securely cemented with shells as if the
stuff had been laid on with a trowel."
Jackson, Fallows, the boatswain, and a few of the darkeys stood near,
eagerly catching what we said.
"A wonderful sight truly!" said Captain Blow, surveying the object
with a face almost distorted with astonishment and admiration. "How
many years will they have been asleep under water, think ye, Mr.
Small?"
"All a hundred, sir," said I.
"Ay," says he, "I've seen many prints of old ships, and I'll allow
that it's all a hundred, as you say, since she and the likes of she
was afloat. Why," cries he with a sort of a nervous laugh as if half
ashamed of what he was about to say, "who's to tell but that there may
be a chest or two of treasure stowed away down in her lazerette?"
"That very idea occurred to me, sir," says I.