A NAMELESS HAVEN.
Now, all night long those two floated. For hours there was but a step
between them and death; but death kept its distance. The boat, like
some treacherous, living thing, whose cruelty had been appeased in
that angry overturn, was pacified now, and seemed resolved to protect
the remnant of its charge. It rode lightly over crest after crest.
They bailed it out as well as they could, and disposed carefully
the odds and ends left in it――a shawl, a bottle, a soaked bundle of
clothing――poor relics, terribly eloquent. They fought away the chill
and misery of their situation as well as Philip’s energy could devise,
and not unsuccessfully. Before long he took the tiller in the darkness,
and with straining eyes and tense nerves aided the boat to weather the
subsiding seas.
They could not talk much――a few sentences here and there, and then
long silence. Gerald was exhausted, and besides that his shoulder had
suffered a severe wrench. He lay on his back in the bottom of the boat,
staring into the gloom; for the moon had gone, and only a shimmer in
the atmosphere marked where she sulked, far up above. The lad set his
teeth, to keep from crying out with pain and with the dreadfulness of a
situation so novel to a boy reared like a hot-house plant.
“I wonder if we will ever get out of this alive?” he thought every
now and then. But he answered Philip’s solicitous questions as to his
welfare with a tone that nobly feigned ease and hope. Gulping and
struggling down any thing like a sob, his prompt “Yes, Philip,” or “No,
Philip,” was the only sound that carried any comfort to Touchtone’s
heart. “There is no use in asking questions,” he said to himself.
“Philip don’t know anymore about what is before us than I do, and I
guess he hates to have to tell me so.”
By and by the dragging daylight began to whiten the air. The ocean
gradually paled from inkiness to lead-color, and from lead-color to
streaked gray, and the gray to a yeasty milk. The dashing waves had
given place to a rolling swell on which the boat was lifted, but ever
seemed urged forward――whither? Dawn advanced. But such a dawn and such
a day! For when the latter had fairly come the fog hung closer than
ever. Hour by hour passed with no reasonable gain in the light. Whether
the sun was on the one side or the other, before or behind, no man
could have told. They were ever surrounded by a dirty greenish haze
that made their faces more wan, and that mixed sea and air into one
elastic wall, which moved with them as they moved and closed about them
as they slid helplessly onward into it.
With the lessening of his strength and the rolling of the boat Gerald
became deathly sick. Philip could do little for that. His own arms
were stiff; every now and then a chill ran down his body that boded
future discomfort if they were not soon delivered from this present
one. But he kept to his post. Thanks to his determination, the boat met
wave and crest with less and less motion and no mishap, and he said
to himself, as he glanced at Gerald’s despairing face, that he “was
good for a whole day’s steering, if need be, and a great deal beyond
that.” Fortunately, it was not cold, though the stormy chilliness made
the early air sharp. In silence, except for a word from Touchtone or
a sigh from Gerald, who lay in the bottom of the boat with his eyes
closed, they moved onward whither waves and current might shape their
sluggard’s course.
Suddenly, about noon, Gerald sat up and declared he felt better. He
seemed to have awakened from a stupor of weariness and sickness that
had been on him.
“Let me take the tiller,” he pleaded. “Indeed I can, just as well as
you. You must be used up.”
“Used up steering nowhere, and with hardly any sea running?” returned
Philip, continuing to smile, not a little relieved to see color
returned into his _protégé’s_ face, and with something like the usual
tone to his voice. “Not a bit! I’m glad if you’re able to move about
again, though I must say you’ve not much occasion to do that at
present. Sit down there. See how the waves have gone down. O, we’re
going to get along bravely presently. You’ll see!”
“But which way are we going?”
“Well, that I can’t positively inform you,” Philip replied, trying to
treat lightly the most important worry that now pressed on him, “but no
great distance from land, I’m somehow inclined to think. A steamer, or
something, may pick us up any hour.”
“But perhaps every hour we are slipping out to sea all the farther?”
“Let us hope not. O, no! I’m sure not such bad luck as that. I――I
don’t think, Gerald,” he added more seriously, “that you and I have
been――carried through last night――to be put in worse trouble much
longer. Keep up a good heart, like the brave fellow you are! We have
water and biscuit enough for the time we shall need them, I’m sure.”
And he remembered gratefully Captain Widgins and poor Eversham’s
forethought. “We’re drifting along the coast somewhere; we shall know
before long.”
“O, it has been terrible!” exclaimed Gerald, piteously. “If we only
knew any thing of the others on the steamer――or about papa, or what the
people on shore think about us――or how any thing is to end for us!”
“We’ll know all that in good time, depend on it.”
He spoke confidently; but the uncertainty of how “any thing was to
end” for them was indeed a mighty weight.
“The main thing will soon be to get word to your father as soon as
we can. Newspaper accounts will make him believe――well, almost any
thing. Doesn’t it seem about a hundred years to you since two or three
days ago?” he went on, as conversationally as he could. “That funny
adventure in the train――our stopping with Mr. Hilliard――last night’s
excitement? We can’t say we haven’t had a good deal crowded in, since
we bid Mr. Marcy and the Ossokosee good-bye, can we? Or that we haven’t
had enough of a story to tell your father when we get safe and sound to
Halifax?”
“I shall be glad to find out sometime what made the explosion,” said
Gerald, easing his position, and already decidedly more tranquil.
“So shall I. They kept it from us as long as they could, didn’t they?”
“_You_ did from me, I know,” Gerald answered. He gave Philip a grateful
look. “You wanted to keep me from being frightened. O, I know. I sort
of suspected that. How _awfully_ good and――thoughtful――”
“Very, very, very,” Philip replied, dryly. “I wish my goodness and my
thoughtfulness together had gone as far as keeping you and me safe in
New York, instead of taking the _Old Province_.”
“But――then――then,” said Gerald, eagerly, “we couldn’t have any such
story to tell people for the rest of our lives――if we get through this
part of it all right. I guess we will. I’m sure we will. Philip”――he
suddenly changed his tone――“what was that quarrel, just before we
put off last night, between some man――a gentleman, I think――and the
captain? Don’t you remember? He said his son was with us. You spoke to
Mr. Eversham, too.”
“It was a mistake,” Philip quickly responded. “I――I happened to know
it, and Captain Widgins didn’t want to lose an instant. So he put a
stop to the man’s tongue.”
The afternoon glided away in much the same way as the morning. After
their rations had been apportioned and eaten Gerald slept heavily.
No succoring vessel, no glimpses of the sun――fog and the sea still
curtaining them around. Philip took account of their provisions. There
were two boxes of biscuit, but the water was low in its can. The two
light satchels that had been hanging across their shoulders, by straps,
at the time of the boat’s overturn had not parted their company, but
they contained no eatables. Philip stared out, thinking, it seemed to
him, every thing that had ever happened to him in his whole life until
this afternoon as far away and unreal. Now and then he read a few
pages in a battered copy of Scott’s Poems that he had been carrying in
his pocket for a week or two. Night came. With the last light their
situation was unchanged, except that they seemed to be in a particular
current which sped the boat along with uncommon persistency in a
particular direction――north, south, east, or west, he surmised in turn.
Gerald broke down pitifully once. The strain and privation began to
tell visibly on the little boy. Then he slept again. Pitch darkness
once more. The sea was almost tranquil. Once Philip thought he heard
breakers roaring afar on his right, but the faint sound died directly.
To steer was useless. He was beaten down, by weariness, exposure, and
sleeplessness, night and day. He would be on the alert for both. But
he could not be. Unwillingly his senses grew dull, his head drooped.
He lay back in the stern, thinking that he was resisting nature
successfully, and that his ears and eyes, at least, were performing
their self-sacrificing task. In a few moments he slept profoundly, so
unwakably that he did not feel the edge of the stern-seat pressing into
his neck, nor the occasional dash of a few drops of water over his face.
Awake once more? A cry of wonder and astonishment broke from his lips
when he started up. It was a shout of delight that made Gerald, too,
open his eyes and lift himself quickly upright.
Where were the night, the fog, the threatenings of the sea? It was a
bright, golden, enchanting autumn morning, a little past sunrise. The
air was clear as crystal, the sky the bluest of blue, the sea twinkling
in the early rays. As far as their eyes could see on one side stretched
the water, all its threats turned to one calm smile. A pale sail or two
showed above the horizon. On one side opened out the limitless ocean;
on the other, only some ten or twelve miles away, stretched the coast
near to which they had been tossing ever since their helplessness to
reach it had begun.
But there was far more than that of immediate promise that their
perils were ended as suddenly as they had risen. There lay, in full
view, perhaps two miles from the spot where they drifted, in a current
carrying them straight in its direction, a low green island. They
could see one or two white buildings, probably a farm-house and other
structures. The crow of cocks and the low of a cow came to their ears
distinctly. They made out from where they were several tilled fields,
stone walls and fences, a hollow tract that possibly contained a pond
of fresh water for cattle; and trees grew in an orchard behind the
dwelling-house, around which were clumps and patches of deeper verdure.
There was no mistake. They were not to be cast on any desolate shore,
like some new Robinson Crusoes; but if they could make that land they
would set their feet in some one of the little water-locked farms
that now and then occur along the shore of the seaboard States of New
England――solitary little spots that the owners sometimes make green
with every thing, from corn to clover, and to the kitchen-garden of
which more than one yachtsman can testify.
“Do you think we can make it?” asked Gerald. They had forgotten every
thing of the stern and wearisome past, in their relief and hope.
“I should say we were going there about as straight as we could,” cried
Philip. “This is a wonderfully steady current. They’re lazy folks
there, though. No smoke from the chimneys yet, and it’s a good deal
after six, you say. If only we could row!”
The boat kept on its course with Philip’s care. The light air blew
in their faces and dashed the little waves gayly. They were going to
get to shore! They were saved! They should see their friends again
and tell with living lips the story of their dangers and deliverance.
They almost held their breaths with hope and suspense. Still nearer
and nearer they slowly drew to the island. New details and those of
the farm and the farm-house――there seemed to be only one――came, bit by
bit, into clearer sight. At the land’s nearer edge rocks and shallows
alternated and long stretches of brush or meadow sloped back. A little
creek opened in view, with a rough pier built out into it, and from
the rickety dock ran back a road or lane, between what appeared to be
corn-fields, to the door of the house, with its high roof and two or
three wings. A fence inclosed it and a garden; and some tall trees
grouped themselves beside its chimney.
Thanks to friendly current and wind, they made steady progress toward
their unexpected refuge. At one or two points less and less fairly in
front of them the surf broke, but not to any formidable extent nor for
many yards, apparently. Occasionally they did not seem to move at all.
Then would come a gentle impetus, and they glided on. The sun was high
in the sky, a hot autumn day was well in course before the boat drifted
around and into a tiny cove quite on the landward shore of the island
and back of the farm and its structures, which they must reach on
foot. They grounded in a shoal. They could not secure the boat, though
they were unwilling to risk its loss. At last they were compelled to
do this. They attempted little carrying. Wet and panting, especially
Philip, without whose assistance Gerald scarcely could have landed
where they came in, they got to the firm ground.
Yes, it was not a dream! Their feet pressed earth at last. They walked
slowly up the narrow, rocky beach to a stony field full of daisies and
coarse grass. They turned around a buckwheat patch, and, last, they
struck a lane that apparently traversed the entire length of their
unknown host’s farm and premises. All was beautiful and peaceful in the
sunshine of noon, though they were too exhausted and anxious to think
of nature. They met nobody yet. The farm-house loomed up in the midst
of its trees nearer and nearer. They plodded on wearily. Soon they came
to a turn in the lane. A dog barked loudly from the edge of the garden
fifty yards beyond, succeeding to a great patch of wild laurel. Philip
called out a friendly “Holloa!” twice or thrice as they advanced. No
one answered from right or left. Perhaps it would be well for him to go
on alone for a few moments, anxious as he was to have Gerald well cared
for.
“You stay here,” he said, accordingly, making Gerald sit down amid
the laurel in one angle of a stone wall. “I’ll just walk ahead――and
lecture that dog――and ring the bell and rouse the community, whatever
it amounts to, and then I’ll come back and carry you into it in
triumph. I wont leave you a moment longer than it will take me to break
the news to them that they have got a couple of shipwrecked mariners on
their hands who want luncheon――or breakfast.”
Gerald sat down, anxious, but nothing loath. Philip quickened his steps
and went on toward the distant garden-gate and the yet silent house.