When Thurstane heard, or rather guessed from the captain's gestures, that
the boats were stove, he called, "Are we to do nothing?"
The captain shouted something in reply, but although he put his hands to
his mouth for a speaking trumpet, his words were inaudible, and he would
not have been understood had he not pointed aloft.
Thurstane looked upward, and saw for the first time that the main topmast
had broken off and been cut clear, probably hours ago when he was in the
cabin searching for Clara. The top still remained, however, and twisted
through its openings was one end of a hawser, the other end floating off
to leeward two hundred yards in advance of the wreck. Fastened to the
hawser by a large loop was a sling of cordage, from which a long halyard
trailed shoreward, while another connected it with the top. All this had
been done behind his back and without his knowledge, so deafening and
absorbing was the tempest. He saw at once what was meant and what he would
have to do. When the brig struck he must carry Clara into the top, secure
her in the sling, and send her ashore. Doubtless the crowd on the beach
would know enough to make the hawser fast and pull on the halyard.
The captain shouted again, and this time he could be understood: "When she
strikes hold hard."
"Did you hear him?" Thurstane asked, turning to Clara.
"Yes," she nodded, and smiled in his face, though faintly like one dying.
He passed one arm around the middle stay of the shrouds and around her
waist, passed the other in front of her, covering her chest; and so, with
every muscle set, he waited.
Surrounded, pursued, pushed, and hammered by the billows, the wreck
drifted, rising and falling, starting and wallowing toward the awful line
where the breakers plunged over the undertow and dashed themselves to
death on the resounding shore. There was a wide debatable ground between
land and water. One moment it belonged to earth, the next lofty curling
surges foamed howling over it; then the undertow was flying back in savage
torrents. Would the hawser reach across this flux and reflux of death?
Would the mast hold against the grounding shock? Would the sling work?
They lurched nearer; the shock was close at hand; every one set teeth and
tightened grip. Lifted on a monstrous billow, which was itself lifted by
the undertow and the shelving of the beach, the hulk seemed as if it were
held aloft by some demon in order that it might be dashed to pieces. But
the wave lost its hold, swept under the keel, staggered wildly up the
slope, broke in a huge white deafening roll, and rushed backward in
torrents. The brig was between two forces; it struck once, but not
heavily; then, raised by the incoming surge, it struck again; there was an
awful consciousness and uproar of beating and grinding; the next instant
it was on its beam ends and covered with cataracts.
Every one aboard was submerged. Thurstane and Clara were overwhelmed by
such a mass of water that they thought themselves at the bottom of the
sea. Two men who had not mounted the rigging, but tried to cling to the
boat davits, were hurled adrift and sent to agonize in the undertow. The
brig trembled as if it were on the point of breaking up and dissolving in
the horrible, furious yeast of breakers. Even to the people on shore the
moment and the spectacle were sublime and tremendous beyond description.
The vessel and the people on board disappeared for a time from their sight
under jets and cascades of surf. The spray rose in a dense sheet as high
as the maintopmast would have been had it stood upright.
When Thurstane came out of his state of temporary drowning, he was
conscious of two sailors clambering by him toward the top, and heard a
shout in his ears of "Cast loose."
It was the captain. He had sprung alongside of Clara, and was already
unwinding her lashings. Thrice before the job was done they were buried in
surf, and during the third trial they had to hold on with their hands, the
two men clasping the girl desperately and pressing her against the
rigging. It was a wonder that she and all of them were not disabled, for
the jamming of the water was enough to break bones.
They got her up a few ratlines; then came another surge, during which they
gripped hard; then there was a second ascent, and so on. The climbing was
the easier and the holding on the more difficult, because the mast was
depressed to a low angle, its summit being hardly ten feet higher than its
base. Even in the top there was a desperate struggle with the sea, and
even after Clara was in the sling she was half drowned by the surf.
Meantime the people on shore had made fast the hawser to a tree and manned
the halyard. Not a word was uttered by Clara or Thurstane when they
parted, for she was speechless with exhaustion and he with anxiety and
terror. The moment he let go of her he had to grip a loop of top-hamper
and hold on with all his might to save himself from being pitched into the
water by a fresh jerk of the mast and a fresh inundation of flying surge.
When he could look at her again she was far out on the hawser, rising and
falling in quick, violent, perilous swings, caught at by the toppling
breakers and howled at by the undertow. Another deluge blinded him; as
soon as he could he gazed shoreward again, and shrieked with joy; she was
being carefully lifted from the sling; she was saved--if she was not dead.
When the apparatus was hauled back to the top the captain said to
Thurstane, "Your turn now."
The young man hesitated, glanced around for Coronado and Garcia, and
replied, "Those first."
It was not merely humanity, and not at all good-will toward these two men,
which held him back from saving his life first; it was mainly that motto
of nobility, that phrase which has such a mighty influence in the army,
"_An officer and a gentleman_." He believed that he would disgrace his
profession and himself if he should quit the wreck while any civilian
remained upon it.
Coronado, leaving his uncle to the care of a sailor, had already climbed
the shrouds, and was now crawling through the lubber hole into the top.
For once his hardihood was beaten; he was pale, tremulous and obviously in
extreme terror; he clutched at the sling the moment he was pointed to it.
With the utmost care, and without even a look of reproach, Thurstane
helped secure him in the loops and launched him on his journey. Next came
the turn of Garcia. The old man seemed already dead. He was livid, his
lips blue, his hands helpless, his voice gone, his eyes glazed and set. It
was necessary to knot him into the sling as tightly as if he were a
corpse; and when he reached shore it could be seen that he was borne off
like a dead weight.
"Now then," said the captain to Thurstane. "We can't go till you do.
Passengers first."
Exhausted by his drenchings, and by a kind of labor to which he was not
accustomed, the lieutenant obeyed this order, took his place in the sling,
nodded good-by to the brave sailors, and was hurled out of the top by a
plunge of surf, as a criminal is pushed from the cart by the hangman.
No idea has been given, and no complete idea can be given, of the
difficulties, sufferings, and perils of this transit shoreward. Owing to
the rising and falling of the mast, the hawser now tautened with a jerk
which flung the voyager up against it or even over it, and now drooped in
a large bight which let him down into the seethe of water and foam that
had just rushed over the vessel, forcing it down on its beam ends.
Thurstane was four or five times tossed and as often submerged. The waves,
the wind, and the wreck played with him successively or all together. It
was an outrage and a torment which surpassed some of the tortures of the
Inquisition. First came a quick and breathless plunge; then he was
imbedded in the rushing, swirling waters, drumming in his ears and
stifling his breath; then he was dragged swiftly upward, the sling turning
him out of it. It seemed to him that the breath would depart from his body
before the transit was over. When at last he landed and was detached from
the cordage, he was so bruised, so nearly drowned, so every way exhausted,
that he could not stand. He lay for quite a while motionless, his head
swimming, his legs and arms twitching convulsively, every joint and muscle
sore, catching his breath with painful gasps, almost fainting, and feeling
much as if he were dying.
He had meant to help save the captain and sailors. But there was no more
work in him, and he just had strength to walk up to the village, a citizen
holding him by either arm. As soon as he could speak so as to be
understood, he asked, first in English and then in Spanish, "How is the
lady?"
"She is insensible," was the reply--a reply of unmeant cruelty.
Remembering how he had suffered, Thurstane feared lest Clara had received
her death-stroke in the slings, and he tottered forward eagerly, saying,
"Take me to her."
Arrived at the house where she lay, he insisted upon seeing her, and had
his way. He was led into a room; he did not see and could never remember
what sort of a room it was; but there she was in bed, her face pale and
her eyes closed; he thought she was dead, and he nearly fell. But a
pitying womanly voice murmured to him, "She lives," with other words that
he did not understand, or could not afterward recall. Trusting that this
unconsciousness was a sleep, he suffered himself to be drawn away by
helping hands, and presently was himself in a bed, not knowing how he got
there.
Meantime the tragedy of the wreck was being acted out. The sling broke
once, the sailor who was in it falling into the undertow, and perishing
there in spite of a rush of the townspeople. One of the two men who were
washed overboard at the first shock was also drowned. The rest escaped,
including the heroic captain, who was the last to come ashore.
When Thurstane was again permitted to see Clara, it was, to his great
astonishment, the morning of the following day. He had slept like the
dead; if any one had sought to awaken him, it would have been almost
impossible; there was no strength left in body or spirt but for sleep.
Clara's story had been much the same: insensibility, then swoons, then
slumber; twelve hours of utter unconsciousness. On waking the first words
of each were to ask for the other. Thurstane put on his scarcely dried
uniform and hurried to the girl's room. She received him at the door, for
she had heard his step although it was on tiptoe, and she knew his knock
although as light as the beating of a bird's wing.
It was another of those interviews which cannot be described, and perhaps
should not be. They were uninterrupted, for the ladies of the house had
learned from Clara that this was her betrothed, and they had woman's sense
of the sacredness of such meetings. Presents came, and were not sent in:
Coronado called and was not admitted. The two were alone for two hours,
and the two hours passed like two minutes. Of course all the ugly past was
explained.
"A letter dismissing you!" exclaimed Clara with tears. "Oh! how could you
think that I would write such a letter? Never--never! Oh, I never could.
My hand should drop off first. I should die in trying to write such
wickedness. What! don't you know me better? Don't you know that I am true
to you? Oh, how could you believe it of me? My darling, how could you?"
"Forgive me," begged the humbled young fellow, trembling with joy in his
humility. "It was weak and wicked in me. I deserved to be punished as I
have been. And, oh, I did not deserve this happiness. But, my little girl,
how could I help being deceived? There was your handwriting and your
signature."
"Ah! I know who it was," broke out Clara. "It has been he all through. He
shall pay for this, and for all," she added, her Spanish blood rising in
her cheeks, and her soft eyes sparkling angrily for a minute.
"I have saved his life for the last time," returned Thurstane. "I have
spared it for the last time. Hereafter--"
"My darling, my darling!" begged Clara, alarmed by his blackening brow.
"Oh, my darling, I don't love to see you angry. Just now, when we have
just been spared to each other, don't let us be angry. I spoke angrily
first. Forgive me."
"Let him keep out of my way," muttered Thurstane, only in part pacified.
"Yes," answered Clara, thinking that she would herself send Coronado off,
so that there might be no duel between him and this dear one.
Presently the lover added one thing which he had felt all the time ought
to have been said at first.
"The letter--it was right. Although _he_ wrote it, it was right. I have no
claim to marry a rich woman, and you have no right to marry a poor man."
He uttered this in profound misery, and yet with a firm resolution. Clara
turned pale and stared at him with anxious eyes, her lips parted as though
to speak, but saying nothing. Knowing his fastidious sense of honor, she
guessed the full force with which this scruple weighed upon him, and she
did not know how to drag it off his soul.
"You are worth a million," he went on, in a broken-hearted sort of voice
which to us may seem laughable, but which brought the tears into Clara's
eyes.
The next instant she brightened; she knew, or thought she knew, that she
was not worth a million; so she smiled like a sunburst and caught him
gayly by the wrists.
"A million!" she scoffed, laughingly. "Do you believe all Coronado tells
you?"
"What! isn't it true?" exclaimed Thurstane, reddening with joy. "Then you
are not heir to your grandfather's fortune? It was one of _his_ lies? Oh,
my little girl, I am forever happy."
She had not meant all this; but how could she undeceive him? The tempting
thought came into her mind that she would marry him while he was in this
ignorance, and so relieve him of his noble scruples about taking an
heiress. It was one of those white lies which, it seems to us, must fade
out of themselves from the record book, without even needing to be blotted
by the tear of an angel.
"Are you glad?" she smiled, though anxious at heart, for deception alarmed
her. "Really glad to find me poor?"
His only response was to cover her hands, and hair, and forehead with
kisses.
At last came the question, When? Clara hesitated; her face and neck
bloomed with blushes as dewy as flowers; she looked at him once piteously,
and then her gaze fell in beautiful shame.
"When would you like?" she at last found breath to whisper.
"Now--here," was the answer, holding both her hands and begging with his
blue-black eyes, as soft then as a woman's.
"Yes, at once," he continued to implore. "It is best everyway. It will
save you from persecutions. My love, is it not best?"
Under the circumstances we cannot wonder that this should be just as she
desired.
"Yes--it is--best," she murmured, hiding her face against his shoulder.
"What you say is true. It will save me trouble."
After a short heaven of silence he added, "I will go and see what is
needed. I must find a priest."
As he was departing she caught him; it seemed to her just then that she
could not be a wife so soon; but the result was that after another silence
and a faint sobbing, she let him go.
Meantime Coronado, that persevering and audacious but unlucky conspirator,
was in treble trouble. He was afraid that he would lose Clara; afraid that
his plottings had been brought to light, and that he would be punished;
afraid that his uncle would die and thus deprive him of all chance of
succeeding to any part of the estate of Muñoz. Garcia had been brought
ashore apparently at his last gasp, and he had not yet come out of his
insensibility. For a time Coronado hoped that he was in one of his fits;
but after eighteen hours he gave up that feeble consolation; he became
terribly anxious about the old man; he felt as though he loved him. The
people of Monterey universally admitted that they had never before known
such an affectionate nephew and tender-hearted Christian as Coronado.
He tried to see Clara, meaning to make the most with her of Garcia's
condition, and hoping that thus he could divert her a little from
Thurstane. But somehow all his messages failed; the little house which
held her repelled him as if it had been a nunnery; nor could he get a word
or even a note from her. The truth is that Clara, fearing lest Coronado
should tell more stories about her million to Thurstane, had taken the
women of the family into her confidence and easily got them to lay a sly
embargo on callers and correspondents.
On the second day Garcia came to himself for a few minutes, and struggled
hard to say something to his nephew, but could give forth only a feeble
jabber, after which he turned blank again. Coronado, in the extreme of
anxiety, now made another effort to get at Clara. Reaching her house, he
learned from a bystander that she had gone out to walk with the Americano,
and then he thought he discovered them entering the distant church.
He set off at once in pursuit, asking himself with an anxiety which almost
made him faint, "Are they to be married?"