MR. MOORE ENDS HIS STORY
I took her by the hands and looked her in the face, and brought her
to my heart, and a sob shook me as I kissed her. For some moments she
merely pronounced my name, straining from my grasp to look at me.
There was something wild in the light of her soft eyes then. Maybe the
passions and sensations which in a sudden surprise of meeting would
have forced us into transports had abated; we had long both known that
we were near to each other, she that I had come to rescue her, I that
she was alive on that wreck up there. But for all that, and as long
as they were bringing the man from the wreck, it remained a sort of
unreality, a mission too marvellous to have been fulfilled, a hope
too daring, too defiant of death itself and all the terrors of this
barbarous, savage scene, to have been humanly possible.
A wonder, too, lay in her beauty and healthful looks. My imaginations
of her state, now as lying in her coffin at Cape Town, now as dead
of the cold in that same wreck we had brought her from, had coloured
to me a ghastly portrait of my memory of her; or, even when figuring
her alive in the hull, I conceived her bloodless, gaunt, sunk-eyed, a
sad, heart-sickening spectre of herself. Instead I found her fairer,
healthier, plumper by a hundredfold than she had shown when she left
England. She was dressed in furs: her hat was a turban of sealskin; her
hair was a little wild, but its dishevelment was a grace.
When at last I began to speak to her, it was in mere ejaculation, a
babble of joy and devotion--that I should have got her;--that I should
be holding her after months of fearing and of believing that she was
dead; that God should have directed me through thousands of leagues
of sea to this lonely scene of ice; and so on, and so on; whilst her
speech was little more than exclamation too. For, put yourself in our
place and judge how it would go with your heart, and tongue, till use
had softened amazement and incredulity, sobering the flow of feeling
into a gentle language of passion and pleasure.
Meanwhile they were bringing the man to the boat. The cask travelled
safely to the bows: he sprang out with the assistance of a man's hand,
and then stood on a thwart looking about him for a minute with a face
of ecstasy.
Now it was I grew a bit rational, and said to Marie:
'Who is he?'
'Mr. Selby. His conduct has been noble. Oh, Archie, his manly treatment
of me, his patient care, the encouragement, the encouragement!'
'Jump on to the ice there, two of you, and get that anchor,' sung out
Mr. Bland.
'Where's Captain Burke?' I said.
'He was drowned months ago--months ago.'
'And his wife?'
'I found her frozen to death and dragged her into the ship's kitchen
and watched beside her, and then I was alone in that wreck in a heavy,
rolling ocean for a week till he came,' and she looked towards Selby,
'sent by God, for without him--alone up there--oh, think, Archie!'
As she said this she put her hands together and her face whitened like
the ice; her eyes rolled their pupils out of sight, and with a little
moan she fainted.
I held and pillowed her, groping for and finding a flask of brandy in
my pockets. She continued in a dead faint until, the anchor having been
got, the boats were clear of the bay close in with the brig.
Selby sat in the bows. I never addressed him: I could think of nothing
but the lifeless figure I clasped. She came to just as we drew
alongside the vessel, and my gratitude, when she fetched a breath, and
opened her eyes, was scarcely less than that I had felt when I knew
she was on board the wreck. In truth, so fixed was her trance, I had
believed her dead.
She was helped over the side by Cliffe and others. The brig showed a
low side when the gangway was unshipped, and Marie was handed on deck
easily and without risk. I followed. She was very weak, yet could walk
leaning on my arm, and thus supporting her I took her into the cabin.
Then it was I strained her to my heart again, kissing her, blessing
her, thanking God for suffering me to discover and rescue her.
It would be idle to set down what now passed between us in this
first half-hour of our being alone. Our hurry of speech, the tender
interruption of caresses was as a printed page broken into sentences
without sequence. Looks will give continuity to meaning when the tongue
is still, but how to describe those passages of eloquent silence?
We had both of us a thousand things to ask and answer, and often we'd
break off to gaze at each other, scarce realising even yet that we
were together, and that the end of my heaven-directed quest was come.
By the time we had settled down into sober talk, sitting hand in hand
in front of the glowing brass stove, whilst the boy in obedience to my
orders was preparing the table for dinner, it was about five o'clock;
they had got way upon the brig; she was heeling over, and I guessed
that Cliffe was pressing her, getting every inch of northing that was
to be clawed out of the bow surge whilst it was daylight. The afternoon
was glowing with more than tropic splendour; indeed, never had I
observed such mellow richness of glory under the line, or north or
south of 23° as I had noticed in this Antarctic sunshine whilst in the
bay. But however delivered--whispered at times--sometimes interrupted
by tears, by sudden impassioned embraces, as though nothing even now
could be true but the presence and reality of the long months of her
imprisonment; but however brokenly uttered, I say her story was known,
and her relation persuaded me that in the person of Mr. Selby lived
one of the finest characters that ever graced the manliest of all the
callings. My love, my joy--though my spirits seemed to know no other
passions whilst I held her and looked at her--did not extinguish in me
for long whilst we conversed the cold dark dread that lurked in the
thought of her having been locked up with Selby for months. But whilst
I listened the jealous fear, the gloomy dislike for the extraordinary
association vanished. My heart grew hot with admiration and gratitude.
She told me of her joy at the sight of him, when, after being alone
for a week in the dismasted hull of the 'Lady Emma' with no other
companion on board than the dead body of Mrs. Burke, she groped her way
from her berth to the cabin and found him lying asleep on a locker. She
told me how he had comforted her and raised her spirits by every hope
that a sailor could invent. She instanced many fine subtle, delicate
traits of conduct; I was impressed by the refinement and native
exquisite breeding of the man whilst I listened to her. I witnessed
the gentleman, the nobleman of nature's own handiwork, in all she told
me of him. Without his inspiring companionship her spirits would have
sunk, her heart must have broken. He fetched and carried, cooked, and
toiled for her comfort; he devised a dozen schemes to divert her. Every
day he promised that a ship would come to take them off. He never lost
heart. Often he would sing with a sailor's notion of brightening her
melancholy.
No one intruded upon us, saving the boy; but our talk was not to be
overheard by him, sitting as we did close together beside the fire. And
all the while I was admiring the improved sweetness of her looks, the
plumpness of her cheeks and throat, the firmer, clearer tones of her
voice, and what shone to my sight as a soft gay light of health in her
eyes.
'Is it the ice,' said I, 'that has worked this miracle of change in
you? Or were you looking even better than you now do before your
shipwreck?'
'I cannot tell how I look,' she answered. 'What I have suffered I know.'
She talked of the Burkes, and wept when she spoke of her old nurse. She
said she believed Captain Burke committed suicide; his end was sudden;
he did not need to go upon the bowsprit to hang up the lantern--a
height of foremast stood; he went on a dangerous errand, she thought,
meaning to die, and his getting his wife to accompany him into the
bows might have signified no more than lunatic cunning.
Whilst we conversed the boy came down and asked if he should put dinner
upon the table. We had forgotten time in talking and I jumped up and
took Marie to my berth, which was to be resigned to her. I then went on
deck to make Mr. Selby's acquaintance and to bring him into the cabin
to dinner.
The wind was on the beam, a steady pouring breeze, and the heeling brig
was washing onwards, but warily and under little canvas; I had been
misled by the angle of the deck. The ice rode lofty and glaring about
us on all sides in huge groups; and masses of the stuff littered the
ocean directly in our path; the utmost vigilance was needful.
I stood a moment in the companion-way, looking at the island we were
leaving astern. It was already some miles distant, and the wreck
invisible. The far inland mountain hung solemn and sublime in the blue
air with the majestic loneliness of it. You thought of it as lifting
its height at the extreme end of the world, and the melting of its
shimmering peak into the silver azure was such a blending as made the
shadow seem as high as the heavens themselves.
Cliffe stood in earnest talk with Selby. I regarded the man awhile
before he saw me. He was dressed in the plain clothes of his calling;
doubtless he made good his wants out of Captain Burke's wardrobe; he
was rather short and very broad-shouldered; his hair was black, and of
a true cast-away man's length, falling and curling in plenty down upon
his back as though it had been a woman's; he was of a sallow complexion
and newly bearded as though used to shave when all was well.
When I went to him with my hands outstretched, he faced me with a
smile, and then it was I saw a wonderful spirit of goodness and
kindness in his countenance. I had never before witnessed a man's
nature so plainly pictured in his looks. I will not admit that I was
prejudiced in his favour by what Marie had told me and found a soul
of candour and good humour where perhaps I should otherwise have seen
nothing but an average sailorly countenance. No matter what the causes
which should have brought this man and me acquainted; let me have met
him how, when, where you will, one glance would have persuaded me that
he was a heart of oak. You saw a manly simplicity and gentleness in
every line. His eyes looked at you full, yet gently, with a charming,
winning frankness; his smile was a grace, there was something sweet in
it: and yet he was by no means good looking. His face was overcharged
by the length of its aquiline nose. His mouth, too, was out of
proportion, his eyes were something too deep set and close together to
please; nevertheless when he turned, smiling to receive me, I found a
beauty in his looks that was far above all gift of flesh.
I held him by both hands, but in what terms I thanked him for his
goodness to Miss Otway I'll not set down, because they must needs look
cold and insufficient, when in reality the tribute lay in that part
that cannot be communicated on paper, I mean in the tone of voice, the
expression of countenance, the clinging pressure of the hands.
He said, 'It's been a bad time for her, sir. The beginning was the
hardest. That week when she was alone, washing about here, much where
we now are, in the winter time when it was nearly all night, and nobody
else aboard but the corpse of Mrs. Burke, would have killed a lady of
less spirit.'
I broke in by asking him to step below with me. Cliffe said he would
remain on deck and watch the brig. I took notice that as in making
for the island, so now, a keen look-out was being kept. Hands were
stationed in the bows and on the foreyard; the rigging lay ready for
instant use. Two men were at the wheel.
Selby stopped and looked at the island astern. The whole soul of the
man seemed to rush into his face as he gazed, colouring it with memory
and a passion of gratitude and pathetic joy. He breathed deep and said.
'Thank God, I've seen the end of it! Seven months is it, sir? The
sufferings of the sea will make a year of a week. It seems as long as a
lifetime.'
He sighed again, or rather fetched a breath as of relief and ease of
heart, and followed me into the cabin.
Whilst we waited for Marie, he explained how it came about that the
hull was shelved forty feet above the wash.
He said when she first took the ice she was beaten a considerable
distance by blow upon blow of foamless swell, rolling into the shelter
out of the heavy weather beyond; she lay on her bilge. He could not
express the misery they suffered from the angle her posture sloped
her into; till, early one night, a noise of thunder roared through
the cabin as though the whole island was splitting to pieces; shock
followed shock. These volcanic throes went on for hours. He expected
every moment that the hull would be crushed to powder. Sometimes they
felt the fabric under their feet swept upwards. It was pitch dark on
deck; nothing was to be seen; but the uproar of splitting ice was at
moments deafening. He said he could compare it to nothing but to being
in a boat betwixt two line-of-battle ships when they were firing their
whole broadside artillery at each other.
It might have been about four o'clock when the hellish commotion ceased
as abruptly as it had commenced; at this hour the hull was, as she had
been for some time, resting on an almost level keel. At break of day
he went on deck, and was amazed to find the sea lying open, but at a
considerable distance below; the great ice peninsula whose bay had been
the salvation of the hull had broken away and become a majestic island,
nodding stately upon a high sea about a quarter of a mile distant. The
wreck rested upon a wide ledge with a sheer fall of ice, smooth as
though chiselled, to the wash of the surf. How it had befallen he could
not tell. Perception had lain entirely in sensation and bearing.
When Marie came out of her berth I was struck afresh by her improved
looks. I turned to Selby and said:
'This lady sailed for her health. Such distresses, such trials of mind
and body as she has suffered, should pinch the face as fire wastes wax,
and she looks so much better that her father will scarcely know her!'
'I told Mr. Moore,' she said, 'that I don't know how I may look, but
that I am alive and with him again,' said she, stealing her hand into
mine, 'is wholly owing to you.' Then raising her voice, heated into
a higher clearness by emotion, she exclaimed, 'In the presence and
hearing of my betrothed, I thank you with my heart of hearts for all
your goodness to me, for your hundred acts of noble unselfishness, for
the splendid courage and faith which supported us both through the
awful time that is now ended.'
He bowed to her in silence.
'Mr. Selby,' said I, grasping him by the hand, then putting my other
upon his, and so holding him, 'Miss Otway has spoken her gratitude; my
own I have already attempted to express. The profession of the sea has
produced some splendid characters; but it seems to me that you are one
of the finest compliments that nature ever paid to your calling.'
'I thank you for your kind words, sir,' he said, with colour and
embarrassment, 'and for yours, Miss Otway. I felt very sorry for you
when I found you alone on that dismasted hulk, and I swore to myself I
would so act that, come what might, if you were spared, you should be
able to say of me, He was a man.'
I could have hugged him!
We seated ourselves and all our talk ran upon the hull, and upon my own
adventures. I particularly noticed Selby's respectful manner to Marie.
_That_ was as satisfying to every instinct within me as though I had
shared their imprisonment. It was not a thing he just put on; it sat
with the unconscious ease of an old and fixed habit. I heard it in his
voice, I marked it in his manner of attention when she spoke; in twenty
subtle ways it was expressed as something abiding; it was, in short,
the man's, the seaman's, and the gentleman's recognition of her claims
as a woman and of her station; I knew it had been with him from the
beginning, and I loved him from that moment with a heart unshadowed by
the faintest anxiety or misgiving.
I asked him how they had managed for food.
'The hold was full of good things, sir,' he answered. 'We did not stint
ourselves, Miss Otway,' said he, smiling.
'Mr. Selby cooks charmingly,' said Marie. 'I shall never forget the
delicious dishes of broth you used to make for me.'
'The ship's cargo,' said he, 'consisted of a quantity of articles of
potted food with drink enough in stout, brandy, and whiskey to fill the
half of London with uproar and murder.'
'We had biscuits as big as bricks,' said Marie. 'I used to make bread
and milk with them.'
'Milk!' I ejaculated.
'Preserved milk, sir,' said Selby. 'I found some hundredweights of the
stuff.'
'But your fuel?' said I.
'There was about twelve ton of coal in the forepeak when we got on the
ice,' he answered. 'I never reckoned upon a long stay, the young lady
was to be kept warm, and I was a bit extravagant at the start. Then
as the days passed and nothing came along, I began to stint, with the
result that I've left about half the stock behind.'
'Did nothing heave in sight?'
'Oh, yes, sir; but never close in. I must have consumed half the cargo
of theatrical scenery, and pounds worth of patent fuel and India-rubber
in burning flares at night and making smokes by day. I reckon the smoke
was taken for something in the volcanic line. For a long time the ice
hid us from the sea. The island whose rupture threw us aloft drifted
away and gave us a clear view for a bit, but others came cruising along
with the stream of the tide, if it was not the wind that brought them,
and one moored itself right abreast--grounded, I allow--it stuck so
long.
'The whaler that reported you,' said I, 'was close in enough to get a
good sight of the wreck.'
'I did not see her,' he answered. 'I must have been below when she
passed.'
'It was cruelly cold, Archie,' said Marie. 'Weeks would pass without my
going on deck. Oh, how I loathed the sight of those cliffs of ice! And
then the ceaseless boiling of the surf.'
'I caulked the cabin into a middling warm living room,' said Selby,
'yet the cold would creep through. Water that had been boiled and left
to stand on the table within the sphere of the heat of the stove, as I
could have sworn, would take a mask of ice. I cleared the cabin to give
Miss Otway walking room. The exercise helped her. It gave her a little
spirit as well as warmth. I didn't care to see her sit drooping hour
after hour beside that little stove.'
'At such times you sang?' said I.
'Well, coming below after taking a look round, and seeing her like
that, I'd tune up my pipes, certainly,' he answered. 'It was unpleasant
to have to keep on answering her question with a "No, there's nothing
in sight."'
Thus ran our talk, and again and again whilst we conversed, I'd see
Marie stealing looks around her of delight and amazement, and often
when our gaze met, an expression of solemn joy would light up her face.
For months she had lived in the cabin of a motionless ship; now the
life of the ocean was in the fabric, whose deck her foot rested on. She
was as one who had been called from the grave to renew life, and love,
and health. It was a miracle, and I saw the marvelling of her spirit in
her eyes whenever she looked at me.
'I'll go and take a look round,' said Selby. 'I hope Captain Cliffe
will make me useful.'
He rose, respectfully bowed to us, and went on deck.
I drew Marie to the stove and sat beside her. From time to time as
we talked, we heard the sharp warning cries of the look-out men on
deck re-echoed by Cliffe and the mate aft, accompanied sometimes by
a hurried tread of feet when the braces were handled. But we were
together, too happy, too much engrossed, to heed what passed above.
Through the hum of our talk--our continuous talk--for how much had
we to tell each other?--ran the shrill sound of salt water seething;
the boy came below to take some dinner on deck to Captain Cliffe. He
then cleared the table, and Marie and I were alone again. The sunshine
blazed red upon the skylight, faded slowly, the glass grew grey, then
blackened, and a star flashed in a cabin window as a reel of the brier
brought the bright spark with a leap into the orifice.
'I remember,' Marie said, 'when I found Mrs. Burke lying dead on
the deck of the hull, that I fell upon my knees in the agony of my
distress and terror, and cried out that I was alone, asking what
I should do--what I should do? And now I am with you,' she cried,
throwing her arms round my neck and sobbing slightly. 'But what a time
has lain between!'
* * * * *
At this point Mr. Moore ends his narrative; he doubtless considered
that the interest of _his_ strand of the story ceased at the rescue of
his sweetheart.
It had been arranged that the brig should return to the Cape of Good
Hope, whatever might be the issue of her search; the little vessel,
with ceaseless vigilance, was navigated clear of the ice into open
waters, and under warmer skies, and thanks to strong westerly winds
which chased her day after day, she anchored in Table Bay in a little
more than three weeks from the hour of hoisting in her boats and making
sail from Coronation Island. The lovers' reception at Cape Town was a
memorable incident, and is still talked of by old people there. They
stayed until Miss Otway had provided herself with a wardrobe, then
embarked in a Union steamer and safely arrived at Southampton on the
morning of May 1, 1861.
Mr. Selby was presented by Sir Mortimer Otway and the banking firm of
Moore, Son & Duncan, with an interest in a ship of thirteen hundred
and forty tons, amounting to half her value, and four months after his
arrival in England, he sailed in command of her on her second voyage to
Bombay.
THE END
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SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
LONDON
[Illustration: Decoration]