But Ortho was not drowned. Dawn found the _Gamecock_ still afloat, still
scudding like a mad thing in the run of the seas. There was no definite
dawn, no visible up-rising of the sun; black night slowly changed into
leaden day, that was all.
Ortho looked around him. There was nothing to be seen but a toss of
waters, breakers rushing foam-lipped before, beside him, roaring in his
wake. The boat might have been a hind racing among a pack of wild hounds
intent on overwhelming her and dragging her under. There was nothing in
sight. He had missed the Scillies altogether, as he had long suspected.
After passing the Runnelstone he had kept his eyes skinned for the
coal-fire beacon on St. Agnes (the sole light on the Islands), but not a
flicker of it had he seen. He must have passed the wrong side of the
Wolf and have missed the mark by miles and miles. As far as he could get
his direction by dawn, the wind had gone back and he was running due
south now. South—whither? He did not know and cared little.
Anson was dead, sitting up, wedged in the angle of the bows. He had died
about an hour before dawn, Ortho thought, after a dreadful paroxysm of
choking. Ortho had cried out to him, but got no answer beyond a
long-drawn sigh, a sigh of relief, the sigh of a man whose troubles are
over. Anson was dead, leaving a widow and three young children. His old
friend was dead, had died in agony, shot through the lungs, and left to
choke his life out in an open boat in mid-winter. Hatred surged through
Ortho, hatred for the Preventive. If he ever got ashore again he’d
search out the man that fired that shot and serve him likewise, and
while he was choking he’d sit beside him and tell him about Anson in the
open boat. As a matter of fact, the man who fired the shot was a recruit
who let off his piece through sheer nerves and congratulated himself on
having hit nobody—but Ortho did not know that.
All they had been trying to do was to make a little money—and then to
come shooting and murdering people . . . ! Smuggling was against the
law, granted—but there should have been some sort of warning. For two
winters they had been running cargoes and not a soul seemed to care a
fig; then, all of a sudden, crash! The crash had come so suddenly that
Ortho wondered for a fuddled moment if it had come, if this were not
some ghastly nightmare and presently he would wake up and find himself
in bed at Bosula and all well. A cold dollop of spray hit him in the
middle of the back, drenching him, and there was Anson sitting up in the
bows, the whole front of his smock deluged in blood; blood mingled with
sea water washed about on the bottom of the boat. It was no dream. He
didn’t care where he was going or what happened. He was soaked to the
skin, famished, numb, body and soul, and utterly without hope—but
mechanically he kept the boat scudding.
The clouds were down very low and heavy bellied. One or two snow squalls
swept over. Towards noon a few pale shafts of sunshine penetrated the
cloud-wrack, casting patches of silver on the dreary waters. They
brought no warmth, but the very sight of them put a little heart into
the castaway. He fumbled in the locker under his seat and found a few
scraps of stinking fish, intended for bait. These he ate, bones and all,
and afterwards baled the boat out, hauled his sheet a trifle and put his
helm to starboard with a hazy idea of hitting off the French coast
somewhere about Brest, but the gig promptly shipped a sea, so he had to
let her away and bale again.
Anson was getting on his nerves. The dead man’s jaw lolled in an idiotic
grin and his eyes were turned up so that they were fixed directly on
Ortho. Every time he looked up there were the eyes on him. It was more
than he could stand. He left the tiller with the intention of turning
Anson over on his face, but the gig showed a tendency to jibe and he had
to spring back again. When he looked up the grin seemed more pronounced
than ever.
“Grizzling because you’re out of it and I ain’t, eh?” he shouted, and
was immediately ashamed of himself. He tried not to look at Anson, but
there was a horrid magnetism about those eyes.
“I shall go light-headed soon,” he said to himself, and rummaged afresh
in the locker, found a couple of decayed sand-eels and ate them.
The afternoon wore on. It would be sunset soon and then night again. He
wondered where next morning would see him, if it would see him at all.
He thought not.
“Can’t go on forever,” he muttered; “must sleep soon—then I’ll be
drowned or froze.” He didn’t care. His sodden clothes would take him
straight down and he was too tired to fight. It would be all over in a
minute, finished and done with. At home, at the Owls’ House now, Wany
would be bringing the cows in. Bohenna would be coming down the hill
from work, driving the plow oxen before him. There would be a grand fire
on the hearth and the black pot bubbling. He could see Martha fussing
about like an old hen, getting supper ready, bent double with
rheumatism—and Eli, Eli . . . He wondered if the owls would hoot for
him as they had for his father.
He didn’t know why he’d kept the boat going; it was only prolonging the
misery. Might as well let her broach and have done with it. Over with
her—now! But his hand remained steadfast and the boat raced on.
The west was barred with a yellow strip—sunset. Presently it would be
night, and under cover of night Fate was waiting for him crouched like a
footpad.
* * * * *
He did not see the vessel’s approach till she was upon him. She must
have been in sight for some time, but he had been keeping his eyes ahead
and did not look round till she hailed.
She was right on him, coming up hand over fist. Ortho was so surprised
he nearly jumped out of his clothes. He stood up in the stern sheets,
goggling at her foolishly. Was it a mirage? Had he gone light-headed
already? He heard the creak of her yards and blocks as she yawed to
starboard, the hiss of her cut-water shearing into a sea, and then a
guttural voice shouting unintelligibly. She was real enough and she was
yawing to pick him up! A flood of joy went through him; he was going to
live after all! Not for nothing had he kept the _Gamecock_ running. She
was on top of him. The short bowsprit and gilded beak stabbed past; then
came shouts, the roar of sundered water, a rope hurtling out of reach; a
thump and over went the _Gamecock_, run down. Ortho gripped the gunnel,
vaulted onto the boat side as it rolled under, and jumped.
The vessel was wallowing deep in a trough at the time. He caught the
fore-mast chains with both hands and hung trailing up to the knees in
bubbling brine. Something bumped his knee. It was Anson; his leer seemed
more pronounced than ever; then he went out of sight. Men in the
channels gripped Ortho’s wrists and hoisted him clear. He lay where they
threw him, panting and shivering, water dribbling from his clothes to
the deck.
Aft on the poop a couple of men, officers evidently, were staring at the
_Gamecock_ drifting astern, bottom up. They did not consider her worth
the trouble of going after. A negro gave Ortho a kick with his bare
foot, handed him a bowl of hot gruel and a crust of bread. Ortho gulped
these and then dragged himself to his feet, leaned against the
main-jeers and took stock of his surroundings.
It was quite a small vessel, rigged in a bastard fashion he had never
seen before, square on the main mast, exaggerated lugs on the fore and
mizzen. She had low sharp entry, but was built up aft with quarter-deck
and poop; she was armed like a frigate and swarming with men.
Ortho could not think where she housed them all—and such men, brown,
yellow, white and black, with and without beards. Some wore pointed red
caps, some wisps of dirty linen wound about their scalps, and others
were bare-headed and shorn to the skin but for a lock of oily hair. They
wore loose garments of many colors, chocolate, saffron, salmon and blue,
but the majority were of a soiled white. They drew these close about
their lean bodies and squatted, bare toes protruding, under the break of
the quarter-deck, in the lee of scuttle butts, boats, masts—anywhere
out of the wind. They paid no attention to him whatever, but chatted and
spat and laughed, their teeth gleaming white in their dark faces, for
all the world like a tribe of squatting baboons. One of them produced a
crude two-stringed guitar and sang a melancholy dirge to the
accompaniment of creaking blocks and hissing bow-wave. The sunset was
but a chink of yellow light between leaden cloud and leaden sea.
There was a flash away in the dusk to port followed by the slam of a
gun.
A gigantic old man came to the quarter-deck rail and bellowed across the
decks. Ortho thought he looked like the pictures of Biblical
patriarchs—Moses, for instance—with his long white beard and mantle
blowing in the wind.
At his first roar every black and brown ape on deck pulled his hood up
and went down on his forehead, jabbering incoherently. They seemed to be
making some sort of prayer towards the east. The old man’s declamation
finished off in a long-drawn wail; he returned whence he had come, and
the apes sat up again. The guitar player picked up his instrument and
sang on.
A boy, twirling a naming piece of tow, ran up the ladders and lit the
two poop lanterns.
Away to port other points of light twinkled, appearing and disappearing.
The negro who had given him the broth touched him on the shoulder,
signed to him to follow, and led the way below. It was dark on the main
deck—all the light there was came from a single lantern swinging from a
beam—but Ortho could see that it was also packed with men. They lay on
mats beside the hatch coamings, between the lashed carriage-guns,
everywhere; it was difficult to walk without treading on them. Some of
them appeared to be wounded.
The negro unhooked the lantern, let fall a rope ladder into the hold and
pushed Ortho towards it. He descended a few feet and found himself
standing on the cargo, bales of mixed merchandise apparently. In the
darkness around him he could hear voices conversing, calling out. The
negro dropped after him and he saw that the hold was full of
people—Europeans from what he could see—lying on top of the cargo.
They shouted to him, but he was too dazed to answer. His guide propelled
him towards the after bulkhead and suddenly tripped him. He fell on his
back on a bale and lay still while the negro shackled his feet together,
picked up the lantern and was gone.
“Englishman?” said a voice beside him.
“Aye.”
“Where did you drop from?”
“Picked up—I was blown off-shore.”
“Alone?”
“Yes, all but my mate, and he’s dead. What craft is this?”
“The _Ghezala_, xebec of Sallee.”
“Where are we bound for?”
“Sallee, on the coasts of Barbary, of course; to be sold as a slave
among the heathen infidels. Where did you think you was bound for?
Fortunate Isles with rings on your fingers to splice a golden
queen—eh?”
“Barbary—infidels—slave,” Ortho repeated stupidly. No wonder Anson had
leered as he went down!
He turned, sighing, over on his face. “Slaves—infidels—Barb . . .” and
was asleep.