When Thurstane got into the cabin, he found it pretty nearly clear of
water, the steward having opened doors and trap-doors and drawn off the
deluge into the hold.
The first object that he saw, or could see, was Clara, curled up in a
chair which was lashed to the mast, and secured in it by a lanyard. As he
paused at the foot of the stairway to steady himself against a sickening
lurch, she uttered a cry of joy and astonishment, and held out her hand.
The cry was not speech; her gladness was far beyond words; it was simply
the first utterance of nature; it was the primal inarticulate language.
He had expected to stand at a distance and ask her leave to save her life.
Instead of that, he hurried toward her, caught her in his arms, kissed her
hand over and over, called her pet names, uttered a pathetic moan of grief
and affection, and shook with inward sobbing. He did not understand her;
he still believed that she had rejected him--believed that she only
reached out to him for help. But he never thought of charging her with
being false or hard-hearted or selfish. At the mere sight of her asking
rescue of him he devoted himself to her. He dared to kiss her and call her
dearest, because it seemed to him that in this awful moment of perhaps
mortal separation he might show his love. If they were to be torn apart by
death, and sepulchred possibly in different caves of the ocean, surely his
last farewell might be a kiss.
If she talked to him, he scarcely heard her words, and did not realize
their meaning. If it was indeed true that she kissed his cheek, he thought
it was because she wanted rescue and would thank any one for it. She was,
as he understood her, like a pet animal, who licks the face of any friend
in need, though a stranger. Never mind; he loved her just the same as if
she were not selfish; he would serve her just the same as if she were
still his. He unloosed her arms from his shoulders, wondering that they
should be there, and crawling with difficulty to the cabin locker, groped
in it for life-preservers. There was only one in the vessel; that one he
buckled around Clara.
"Oh, my darling!" she exclaimed; "what do you mean?"
"My darling!" he echoed, "bear it bravely. There is great danger; but
don't be afraid--I will save you."
He had no doubts in making this promise; it seemed to him that he could
overcome the billows for her sake--that he could make himself stronger
than the powers of nature.
"Where did you come from? from another vessel?" she asked, stretching out
her arms to him again.
"I was here," he said, taking and kissing her hands; "I was here, watching
over you. But there is no time to lose. Let me carry you."
"They must be saved," returned Clara, pointing to the staterooms. "Garcia
and Coronado are there."
Should he try to deliver those enemies from death? He did not hesitate a
moment about it, but bursting open the doors of the two rooms he shouted,
"On deck with you! Into the boats! We are sinking!"
Next he set Clara down, passed his left arm around her waist, clung to
things with his right hand, dragged her up the companionway to the
quarter-deck, and lashed her to the weather shrouds, with her feet on the
wooden leader. Not a word was spoken during the five minutes occupied by
this short journey. Even while Clara was crossing the deck a frothing
comber deluged her to her waist, and Thurstane had all he could do to keep
her from being flung into the lee scuppers. But once he had her fast and
temporarily safe, he made a great effort to smile cheerfully, and said,
"Never fear; I won't leave you."
"Oh! to meet to die!" she sobbed, for the strength of the water and the
rage of the surrounding sea had frightened her. "Oh, it is cruel!"
Presently she smothered her crying, and implored, "Come up here and tie
yourself by my side; I want to hold your hand."
He wondered whether she loved him again, now that she saw him; and in
spite of the chilling seas and the death at hand, he thrilled warm at the
thought. He was about to obey her when Coronado and Garcia appeared, pale
as two ghosts, clinging to each other, tottering and helpless. Thurstane
went to them, got the old man lashed to one of the backstays, and helped
Coronado to secure himself to another. Garcia was jabbering prayers and
crying aloud like a scared child, his jaws shaking as if in a palsy.
Coronado, although seeming resolved to bear himself like an hidalgo and
maintain a grim silence, his face was wilted and seamed with anxiety, as
if he had become an old man in the night. It was rather a fine sight to
see him looking into the face of the storm with an air of defying death
and all that it might bring; and perhaps he would have been helpful, and
would have shown himself one of the bravest of the brave, had he not been
prostrated by sickness. As it was, he took little interest in the fate of
others, hardly noticing Thurstane as he resumed his post beside Clara, and
only addressing the girl with one word: "Patience!"
Clara and Thurstane, side by side and hand in hand, were also for the most
part silent, now looking around them upon their fate, and then at each
other for strength to bear it.
Meantime part of the crew had tried the pumps, and been washed away from
them twice by seas, floating helplessly about the main deck, and clutching
at rigging to save themselves, but nevertheless discovering that the brig
was filling but slowly, and would have full time to strike before she
could founder.
"'Vast there!" called the captain; "'vast the pumps! All hands stand by to
launch the boats!"
"Long boat's stove!" shouted the mate, putting his hands to his mouth so
as to be heard through the gale.
"All hands aft!" was the next order. "Stand by to launch the
quarter-boats!"
So the entire remaining crew--two mates and eight men, including the
steward--splashed and clambered on to the quarter-deck and took station by
the boat-falls, hanging on as they could.
"Can I do anything?" asked Thurstane.
"Not yet," answered the captain; "you are doing what's right; take care of
the lady."
"What are the chances?" the lieutenant ventured now to inquire.
With fate upon him, and seemingly irresistible, the skipper had dropped
his grim air of conflict and become gentle, almost resigned. His voice was
friendly, sympathetic, and quite calm, as he stepped up by Thurstane's
side and said, "We shall have a tough time of it. The land is only about
ten miles away. At this rate we shall strike it inside of three hours. I
don't see how it can be helped."
"Where shall we strike?"
"Smack into the Bay of Monterey, between the town and Point Pinos.'
"Can I do anything?"
"Do just what you've got in hand. Take care of the lady. See that she gets
into the biggest boat--if we try the boats."
Clara overheard, gave the skipper a kind look, and said, "Thank you,
captain."
"You're fit to be capm of a liner, miss," returned the sailor. "You're one
of the best sort."
For some time longer, while waiting for the final catastrophe, nothing was
done but to hold fast and gaze. The voyagers were like condemned men who
are preceded, followed, accompanied, jostled, and hurried to the place of
death by a vindictive people. The giants of the sea were coming in
multitudes to this execution which they had ordained; all the windward
ocean was full of rising and falling billows, which seemed to trample one
another down in their savage haste. There was no mercy in the formless
faces which grimaced around the doomed ones, nor in the tempestuous voices
which deafened them with threatenings and insult. The breakers seemed to
signal to each other; they were cruelly eloquent with menacing gestures.
There was but one sentence among them, and that sentence was a thousand
times repeated, and it was always DEATH.
To paint the shifting sublimity of the tempest is as difficult as it was
to paint the steadfast sublimity of the Great Cañon. The waves were in
furious movement, continual change, and almost incessant death. They
destroyed themselves and each other by their violence. Scarcely did one
become eminent before it was torn to pieces by its comrades, or perished
of its own rage. They were like barbarous hordes, exterminating one
another or falling into dissolution, while devastating everything in their
course.
There was a frantic revelry, an indescribable pandemonium of
transformations. Lofty plumes of foam fell into hoary, flattened sheets;
curling and howling cataracts became suddenly deep hollows. The indigo
slopes were marbled with white, but not one of these mottlings retained
the same shape for an instant; it was broad, deep, and creamy when the eye
first beheld it; in the next breath it was waving, shallow, and narrow; in
the next it was gone. A thousand eddies, whirls, and ebullitions of all
magnitudes appeared only to disappear. Great and little jets of froth
struggled from the agitated centres toward the surface, and never reached
it. Every one of the hundred waves which made up each billow rapidly
tossed and wallowed itself to death.
Yet there was no diminution in the spectacle, no relaxation in the combat.
In the place of what vanished there was immediately something else. Out of
the quick grave of one surge rose the white plume of another. Marbling
followed marbling, and cataract overstrode cataract. Even to their bases
the oceanic ranges and peaks were full of power, activity, and, as it
were, explosions. It seemed as if endless multitudes of transformations
boiled up through them from their abodes in sea-deep caves. There was no
exhausting this reproductiveness of form and power. At every glance a
thousand worlds of waters had perished, and a thousand worlds of waters
had been created. And all these worlds, the new even more than the old,
were full of malignity toward the wreck, and bent on its destruction.
The wind, though invisible, was not less wonderful. It surpassed the ocean
in strength, for it chased, gashed, and deformed the ocean. It inflicted
upon it countless wounds, slashing fresh ones as fast as others healed. It
not only tore off the hoary scalps of the billows and flung them through
the air, but it wrenched out and hurled large masses of water, scattering
them in rain and mist, the blood of the sea. Now and then it made all the
air dense with spray, causing the Pacific to resemble the Sahara in a
simoom. At other times it levelled the tops of scores of waves at once,
crushing and kneading them by the immense force that lay in its swiftness.
It would not be looked in the face; it blinded the eyes that strove to
search it; it seemed to flap and beat them with harsh, churlish wings; it
was as full of insult as the billows. Its cry was not multitudinous like
that of the sea, but one and incessant and invariable, a long scream that
almost hissed. On reaching the wreck, however, this shriek became hoarse
with rage, and howled as it shook the rigging. It used the shrouds and
stays of the still upright mainmast as an aeolian harp from which to draw
horrible music. It made the tense ropes tremble and thrill, and tortured
the spars until they wailed a death-song. Its force as felt by the
shipwrecked ones was astonishing; it beat them about as if it were a sea,
and bruised them against the shrouds and bulwarks; it asserted its mastery
over them with the long-drawn cruelty of a tiger.
Just around the wreck the tumult of both wind and sea was of course more
horrible than anywhere else. These enemies were infuriated by the
sluggishness of the disabled hulk; they treated it as Indians treat a
captive who cannot keep up with their march; they belabored it with blows
and insulted it with howls. The brig, constantly tossed and dropped and
shoved, was never still for an instant. It rolled heavily and somewhat
slowly, but with perpetual jerks and jars, shuddering at every concussion.
Its only regularity of movement lay in this, that the force of the wind
and direction of the waves kept it larboard side on, drifting steadily
toward the land.
One moment it was on a lofty crest, seeming as if it would be hurled into
air. The next it was rolling in the trough of the sea, between a wave
which hoarsely threatened to engulf it, and another which rushed seething
and hissing from beneath the keel. The deck stood mostly at a steep angle,
the weather bulwarks being at a considerable elevation, and the lee ones
dipping the surges. Against this helpless and partially water-logged mass
the combers rushed incessantly, hiding it every few seconds with sheets of
spray, and often sweeping it with deluges. Around the stern and bow the
rush of bubbling, roaring whirls was uninterrupted.
The motion was sickly and dismaying, like the throes of one who is dying.
It could not be trusted; it dropped away under the feet traitorously;
then, by an insolent surprise, it violently stopped or lifted. It was made
the more uncertain and distressing by the swaying of the water which had
entered the hull. Sometimes, too, the under boiling of a crushed billow
caused a great lurch to windward; and after each of these struggles came a
reel to leeward which threatened to turn the wreck bottom up; the breakers
meantime leaping aboard with loud stampings as if resolved to beat through
the deck.
During hours of this tossing and plunging, this tearing of the wind and
battering of the sea, no one was lost. The sailors were clustered around
the boats, some clinging to the davits and others lashed to belaying pins,
exhausted by long labor, want of sleep, and constant soakings, but ready
to fight for life to the last. Coronado and Garcia were still fast to the
backstays, the former a good deal wilted by his hardships, and the latter
whimpering. Thurstane had literally seized up Clara to the outside of the
weather shrouds, so that, although she was terribly jammed by the wind,
she could not be carried away by it, while she was above the heaviest
pounding of the seas. His own position was alongside of her, secured in
like manner by ends of cordage.
Sometimes he held her hand, and sometimes her waist. She could lean her
shoulder against his, and she did so nearly all the while. Her eyes were
fixed as often on his face as on the breakers which threatened her life.
The few words that she spoke were more likely to be confessions of love
than of terror. Now and then, when a billow of unusual size had slipped
harmlessly by, he gratefully and almost joyously drew her close to him,
uttering a few syllables of cheer. She thanked him by sending all her
affectionate heart through her eyes into his.
Although there had been no explanations as to the past, they understood
each other's present feelings. It could not be, he was sure, that she
clung to him thus and looked at him thus merely because she wanted him to
save her life. She had been detached from him by others, he said; she had
been drawn away from thinking of him during his absence; she had been
brought to judge, perhaps wisely, that she ought not to marry a poor man;
but now that she saw him again she loved him as of old, and, standing at
death's door, she felt at liberty to confess it. Thus did he translate to
himself a past that had no existence. He still believed that she had
dismissed him, and that she had done it with cruel harshness. But he could
not resent her conduct; he believed what he did and forgave her; he
believed it, and loved her.
There were moments when it was delightful for them to be as they were. As
they held fast to each other, though drenched and exhausted and in mortal
peril, they had a sensation as if they were warm. The hearts were beating
hotly clean through the wet frames and the dripping clothing.
"Oh, my love!" was a phrase which Clara repeated many times with an air of
deep content.
Once she said, "My love, I never thought to die so easily. How horrible it
would have been without you!"
Again she murmured, "I have prayed many, many times to have you. I did not
know how the answer would come. But this is it."
"My darling, I have had visions about you," was another of these
confessions. "When I had been praying for you nearly all one night, there
was a great light came into the room. It was some promise for you. I knew
it was then; something told me so. Oh, how happy I was!"
Presently she added, "My dear love, we shall be just as happy as that. We
shall live in great light together. God will be pleased to see plainly how
we love each other."
Her only complaints were a patient "Isn't it hard?" when a new billow had
covered her from head to foot, crushed her pitilessly against the shrouds,
and nearly smothered her.
The next words would perhaps be, "I am so sorry for you, my darling. I
wish for your sake that you had not come. But oh, how you help me!"
"I am glad to be here," firmly and honestly and passionately responded the
young man, raising her wet hand and covering it with kisses. "But you
shall not die."
He was bearing like a man and she like a woman. He was resolved to fight
his battle to the last; she was weak, resigned, gentle, and ready for
heaven.
The land, even to its minor features, was now distinctly visible, not more
than a mile to leeward. As they rose on the billows they could distinguish
the long beach, the grassy slopes, and wooded knolls beyond it, the green
lawn on which stood the village of Monterey, the whitewashed walls and
red-tiled roofs of the houses, and the groups of people who were watching
the oncoming tragedy.
"Are you not going to launch the boats?" shouted Thurstane after a glance
at the awful line of frothing breakers which careered back and forth
athwart the beach.
"They are both stove," returned the captain calmly. "We must go ashore as
we are."