THE ISLAND AND THE WRECK
All hands were filled with joy. It was betrayed in their alacrity and
easy faces: Johnson smiling broadly at the wheel, Nares studying the
sketch chart of the island with an eye at peace, and the hands clustered
forward, eagerly talking and pointing: so manifest was our escape, so
wonderful the attraction of a single foot of earth after so many suns
had set and risen on an empty sea! To add to the relief, besides, by one
of those malicious coincidences which suggest for Fate the image of an
underbred and grinning schoolboy, we had no sooner worn ship than the
wind began to abate.
For myself, however, I did but exchange anxieties. I was no sooner out
of one fear than I fell upon another; no sooner secure that I should
myself make the intended haven, than I began to be convinced that Trent
was there before me. I climbed into the rigging, stood on the board, and
eagerly scanned that ring of coral reef and bursting breaker, and the
blue lagoon which they enclosed. The two islets within began to show
plainly--Middle Brooks and Lower Brooks Island, the Directory named
them: two low, bush-covered, rolling strips of sand, each with
glittering beaches, each perhaps a mile or a mile and a half in length,
running east and west, and divided by a narrow channel. Over these,
innumerable as maggots, there hovered, chattered, and screamed millions
of twinkling sea-birds; white and black; the black by far the largest.
With singular scintillations, this vortex of winged life swayed to and
fro in the strong sunshine, whirled continually through itself, and
would now and again burst asunder and scatter as wide as the lagoon: so
that I was irresistibly reminded of what I had read of nebular
convulsions. A thin cloud overspread the area of the reef and the
adjacent sea--the dust, as I could not but fancy, of earlier explosions.
And, a little apart, there was yet another focus of centrifugal and
centripetal flight, where, hard by the deafening line of breakers, her
sails (all but the tattered topsail) snugly furled down, and the red rag
that marks Old England on the seas beating, union down, at the main--the
_Flying Scud_, the fruit of so many toilers, a recollection of so many
lives of men, whose tall spars had been mirrored in the remotest corners
of the sea--lay stationary at last and for ever, in the first stage of
naval dissolution. Towards her the taut _Norah Creina_, vulture-wise,
wriggled to windward: come from so far to pick her bones. And, look as I
pleased, there was no other presence of man or of man's handiwork; no
Honolulu schooner lay there crowded with armed rivals, no smoke rose
from the fire at which I fancied Trent cooking a meal of sea-birds. It
seemed, after all, we were in time, and I drew a mighty breath.
I had not arrived at this reviving certainty before the breakers were
already close aboard, the leadsman at his station, and the captain
posted in the fore cross-trees to con us through the coral lumps of the
lagoon. All circumstances were in our favour, the light behind, the sun
low, the wind still fresh and steady, and the tide about the turn. A
moment later we shot at racing speed betwixt two pier heads of broken
water; the lead began to be cast, the captain to bawl down his anxious
directions, the schooner to tack and dodge among the scattered dangers
of the lagoon; and at one bell in the first dog-watch we had come to our
anchor off the north-east end of Middle Brooks Island, in five fathoms
water. The sails were gasketed and covered, the boats emptied of the
miscellaneous stores and odds and ends of sea-furniture, that
accumulate in the course of a voyage, the kedge sent ashore, and the
decks tidied down: a good three-quarters of an hour's work, during which
I raged about the deck like a man with a strong toothache. The
transition from the wild sea to the comparative immobility of the lagoon
had wrought strange distress among my nerves: I could not hold still
whether in hand or foot; the slowness of the men, tired as dogs after
our rough experience outside, irritated me like something personal; and
the irrational screaming of the seabirds saddened me like a dirge. It
was a relief when, with Nares, and a couple of hands, I might drop into
the boat and move off at last for the _Flying Scud_.
"She looks kind of pitiful, don't she?" observed the captain, nodding
towards the wreck, from which we were separated by some half a mile.
"Looks as if she didn't like her berth, and Captain Trent had used her
badly.--Give her ginger, boys," he added to the hands, "and you can all
have shore liberty to-night to see the birds and paint the town red."
We all laughed at the pleasantry, and the boat skimmed the faster over
the rippling face of the lagoon. The _Flying Scud_ would have seemed
small enough beside the wharves of San Francisco, but she was some
thrice the size of the _Norah Creina_, which had been so long our
continent; and as we craned up at her wall-sides, she impressed us with
a mountain magnitude. She lay head to the reef, where the huge blue wall
of the rollers was for ever ranging up and crumbling down; and to gain
her starboard side, we must pass below the stern. The rudder was hard
aport, and we could read the legend--
FLYING SCUD
HULL
On the other side, about the break of the poop, some half a fathom of
rope-ladder trailed over the rail, and by this we made our entrance.
She was a roomy ship inside, with a raised poop standing some three feet
higher than the deck, and a small forward house, for the men's bunks and
the galley, just abaft the foremast. There was one boat on the house,
and another and larger one, in beds on deck, on either hand of it. She
had been painted white, with tropical economy, outside and in; and we
found, later on, that the stanchions of the rail, hoops of the
scuttle-butt, etc., were picked out with green. At that time, however,
when we first stepped aboard, all was hidden under the droppings of
innumerable sea-birds.
The birds themselves gyrated and screamed meanwhile among the rigging;
and when we looked into the galley, their outrush drove us back.
Savage-looking fowl they were, savagely beaked, and some of the black
ones great as eagles. Half-buried in the slush, we were aware of a
litter of kegs in the waist; and these, on being somewhat cleaned,
proved to be water-beakers and quarter-casks of mess beef with some
colonial brand, doubtless collected there before the _Tempest_ hove in
sight, and while Trent and his men had no better expectation than to
strike for Honolulu in the boats. Nothing else was notable on deck, save
where the loose topsail had played some havoc with the rigging, and
there hung, and swayed, and sang in the declining wind, a raffle of
intorted cordage.
With a shyness that was almost awe, Nares and I descended the companion.
The stair turned upon itself and landed us just forward of a thwart-ship
bulkhead that cut the poop in two. The fore part formed a kind of
miscellaneous store-room, with a double-bunked division for the cook (as
Nares supposed) and second mate. The after part contained, in the midst,
the main cabin, running in a kind of bow into the curvature of the stern;
on the port side, a pantry opening forward and a stateroom for the mate;
and on the starboard, the captain's berth and water-closet. Into these we
did but glance, the main cabin holding us. It was dark, for the
sea-birds had obscured the skylight with their droppings; it smelt rank
and fusty: and it was beset with a loud swarm of flies that beat
continually in our faces. Supposing them close attendants upon man and
his broken meat, I marvelled how they had found their way to Midway Reef;
it was sure at least some vessel must have brought them, and that long
ago, for they had multiplied exceedingly. Part of the floor was strewn
with a confusion of clothes, books, nautical instruments, odds and ends
of finery, and such trash as might be expected from the turning out of
several seamen's chests, upon a sudden emergency and after a long cruise.
It was strange in that dim cabin, quivering with the near thunder of the
breakers and pierced with the screaming of the fowls, to turn over so
many things that other men had coveted, and prized, and worn on their
warm bodies--frayed old underclothing, pyjamas of strange design, duck
suits in every stage of rustiness, oil-skins, pilot coats, embroidered
shirts, jackets of Ponjee silk--clothes for the night watch at sea or the
day ashore in the hotel verandah: and mingled among these, books, cigars,
bottles of scent, fancy pipes, quantities of tobacco, many keys, a rusty
pistol, and a sprinkling of cheap curiosities--Benares brass, Chinese
jars and pictures, and bottles of odd shells in cotton, each designed, no
doubt, for somebody at home--perhaps in Hull, of which Trent had been a
native and his ship a citizen.
Thence we turned our attention to the table, which stood spread, as if
for a meal, with stout ship's crockery and the remains of food--a pot of
marmalade, dregs of coffee in the mugs, unrecognisable remains of food,
bread, some toast, and a tin of condensed milk. The table-cloth,
originally of a red colour, was stained a dark brown at the captain's
end, apparently with coffee; at the other end it had been folded back,
and a pen and ink-pot stood on the bare table. Stools were here and
there about the table, irregularly placed, as though the meal had been
finished and the men smoking and chatting; and one of the stools lay on
the floor, broken.
"See! they were writing up the log," said Nares, pointing to the
ink-bottle. "Caught napping, as usual. I wonder if there ever was a
captain yet that lost a ship with his log-book up to date? He generally
has about a month to fill up on a clean break, like Charles Dickens and
his serial novels.--What a regular lime-juicer spread!" he added
contemptuously. "Marmalade--and toast for the old man! Nasty, slovenly
pigs!"
There was something in this criticism of the absent that jarred upon my
feelings. I had no love indeed for Captain Trent or any of his vanished
gang; but the desertion and decay of this once habitable cabin struck me
hard. The death of man's handiwork is melancholy, like the death of man
himself; and I was impressed with an involuntary and irrational sense of
tragedy in my surroundings.
"This sickens me," I said; "let's go on deck and breathe."
The captain nodded. "It is kind of lonely, isn't it?" he said; "but I
can't go up till I get the code signals. I want to run up 'Got Left' or
something, just to brighten up this island home. Captain Trent hasn't
been here yet, but he'll drop in before long; and it'll cheer him up to
see a signal on the brig."
"Isn't there some official expression we could use?" I asked, vastly
taken by the fancy. "'Sold for the benefit of the underwriters: for
further particulars apply to J. Pinkerton, Montana Block, S.F.'"
"Well," returned Nares, "I won't say but what an old navy quartermaster
might telegraph all that, if you gave him a day to do it in and a pound
of tobacco for himself. But it's above my register. I must try something
short and sweet: KB, urgent signal, 'Heave all aback'; or LM, urgent,
'The berth you're now in is not safe'; or what do you say to PQH?--'Tell
my owners the ship answers remarkably well.'"
"It's premature," I replied; "but it seems calculated to give pain to
Trent. PQH for me."
The flags were found in Trent's cabin, neatly stored behind a lettered
grating; Nares chose what he required, and (I following) returned on
deck, where the sun had already dipped, and the dusk was coming.
"Here! don't touch that, you fool!" shouted the captain to one of the
hands, who was drinking from the scuttle-butt. "That water's rotten!"
"Beg pardon, sir," replied the man. "Tastes quite sweet."
"Let me see," returned Nares, and he took the dipper and held it to his
lips. "Yes, it's all right," he said. "Must have rotted and come sweet
again.--Queer, isn't it, Mr. Dodd? Though I've known the same on a Cape
Horner."
There was something in his intonation that made me look him in the face;
he stood a little on tiptoe to look right and left about the ship, like
a man filled with curiosity, and his whole expression and bearing
testified to some suppressed excitement.
"You don't believe what you're saying!" I broke out.
"O, I don't know but what I do!" he replied, laying a hand upon me
soothingly. "The thing's very possible. Only, I'm bothered about
something else."
And with that he called a hand, gave him the code flags, and stepped
himself to the main signal halliards, which vibrated under the weight of
the ensign overhead. A minute later, the American colours, which we had
brought in the boat, replaced the English red, and PQH was fluttering at
the fore.
"Now, then," said Nares, who had watched the breaking out of his signal
with the old-maidish particularity of an American sailor, "out with
those handspikes, and let's see what water there is in the lagoon."
The bars were shoved home; the barbarous cacophony of the clanking pump
rose in the waist; and streams of ill-smelling water gushed on deck and
made valleys in the slab guano. Nares leaned on the rail, watching the
steady stream of bilge as though he found some interest in it.
"What is it that bothers you?" I asked.
"Well, I'll tell you one thing shortly," he replied. "But here's
another. Do you see those boats there, one on the house and two on the
beds? Well, where is the boat Trent lowered when he lost the hands?"
"Got it aboard again, I suppose," said I.
"Well, if you'll tell me why!" returned the captain.
"Then it must have been another," I suggested.
"She might have carried another on the main hatch, I won't deny,"
admitted Nares, "but I can't see what she wanted with it, unless it was
for the old man to go out and play the accordion in on moonlight
nights."
"It can't much matter, anyway," I reflected.
"O, I don't suppose it does," said he, glancing over his shoulders at
the spouting of the scuppers.
"And how long are we to keep up this racket?" I asked. "We're simply
pumping up the lagoon. Captain Trent himself said she had settled down
and was full forward."
"Did he?" said Nares, with a significant dryness. And almost as he spoke
the pumps sucked, and sucked again, and the men threw down their bars.
"There, what do you make of that?" he asked. "Now, I'll tell, Mr. Dodd,"
he went on, lowering his voice, but not shifting from his easy attitude
against the rail, "this ship is as sound as the _Norah Creina_. I had a
guess of it before we came aboard, and now I know."
"It's not possible!" I cried. "What do you make of Trent?"
"I don't make anything of Trent; I don't know whether he's a liar or
only an old wife; I simply tell you what's the fact," said Nares. "And
I'll tell you something more," he added: "I've taken the ground myself
in deep-water vessels; I know what I'm saying; and I say that, when she
first struck and before she bedded down, seven or eight hours' work
would have got this hooker off, and there's no man that ever went two
years to sea but must have known it."
I could only utter an exclamation.
Nares raised his finger warningly. "Don't let _them_ get hold of it,"
said he. "Think what you like, but say nothing."
I glanced round; the dusk was melting into early night; the twinkle of a
lantern marked the schooner's position in the distance; and our men,
free from further labour, stood grouped together in the waist, their
faces illuminated by their glowing pipes.
"Why didn't Trent get her off?" inquired the captain. "Why did he want
to buy her back in 'Frisco for these fabulous sums, when he might have
sailed her into the bay himself?"
"Perhaps he never knew her value until then," I suggested.
"I wish we knew her value now," exclaimed Nares. "However, I don't want
to depress you; I'm sorry for you, Mr. Dodd; I know how bothering it
must be to you, and the best I can say's this: I haven't taken much time
getting down, and now I'm here I mean to work this thing in proper
style. I just want to put your mind at rest; you shall have no trouble
with me."
There was something trusty and friendly in his voice; and I found myself
gripping hands with him, in that hard, short shake that means so much
with English-speaking people.
"We'll do, old fellow," said he. "We've shaken down into pretty good
friends, you and me; and you won't find me working the business any the
less hard for that. And now let's scoot for supper."
After supper, with the idle curiosity of the seafarer, we pulled ashore
in a fine moonlight, and landed on Middle Brooks Island. A flat beach
surrounded it upon all sides; and the midst was occupied by a thicket of
bushes, the highest of them scarcely five feet high, in which the
sea-fowl lived. Through this we tried at first to strike; but it were
easier to cross Trafalgar Square on a day of demonstration than to
invade these haunts of sleeping sea-birds. The nests sank, and the eggs
burst under footing; wings beat in our faces, beaks menaced our eyes,
our minds were confounded with the screeching, and the coil spread over
the island and mounted high into the air.
"I guess we'll saunter round the beach," said Nares, when we had made
good our retreat.
The hands were all busy after sea-birds' eggs, so there were none to
follow us. Our way lay on the crisp sand by the margin of the water; on
one side, the thicket from which we had been dislodged; on the other,
the face of the lagoon, barred with a broad path of moonlight, and
beyond that the line, alternately dark and shining, alternately hove
high and fallen prone, of the external breakers. The beach was strewn
with bits of wreck and drift; some redwood and spruce logs, no less than
two lower masts of junks, and the stern-post of a European ship--all of
which we looked on with a shade of serious concern, speaking of the
dangers of the sea and the hard case of castaways. In this sober vein we
made the greater part of the circuit of the island; had a near view of
its neighbour from the southern end; walked the whole length of the
westerly side in the shadow of the thicket; and came forth again into
the moonlight at the opposite extremity.
On our right, at the distance of about half a mile, the schooner lay
faintly heaving at her anchors. About half a mile down the beach, at a
spot still hidden from us by the thicket, an upboiling of the birds
showed where the men were still (with sailor-like insatiability)
collecting eggs. And right before us, in a small indentation of the
sand, we were aware of a boat lying high and dry, and right side up.
Nares crouched back into the shadow of the bushes.
"What the devil's this?" he whispered.
"Trent," I suggested, with a beating heart.
"We were damned fools to come ashore unarmed," said he. "But I've got to
know where I stand." In the shadow, his face looked conspicuously white,
and his voice betrayed a strong excitement. He took his boat's whistle
from his pocket. "In case I might want to play a tune," said he grimly,
and thrusting it between his teeth, advanced into the moonlit open,
which we crossed with rapid steps, looking guiltily about us as we went.
Not a leaf stirred; and the boat, when we came up to it, offered
convincing proof of long desertion. She was an eighteen-foot whaleboat
of the ordinary type, equipped with oars and thole-pins. Two or three
quarter-casks lay on the bilge amidships, one of which must have been
broached, and now stank horribly; and these, upon examination, proved to
bear the same New Zealand brand as the beef on board the wreck.
"Well, here's the boat," said I; "here's one of your difficulties
cleared away."
"H'm," said he. There was a little water in the bilge, and here he
stooped and tasted it.
"Fresh," he said. "Only rain-water."
"You don't object to that?" I asked.
"No," said he.
"Well, then, what ails you?" I cried.
"In plain United States, Mr. Dodd," he returned, "a whaleboat, five ash
sweeps, and a barrel of stinking pork."
"Or, in other words, the whole thing?" I commented.
"Well, it's this way," he condescended to explain. "I've no use for a
fourth boat at all; but a boat of this model tops the business. I don't
say the type's not common in these waters; it's as common as dirt; the
traders carry them for surf-boats. But the _Flying Scud?_ a deep-water
tramp, who was lime-juicing around between big ports, Calcutta and
Rangoon and 'Frisco and the Canton River. No, I don't see it."
We were leaning over the gunwale of the boat as we spoke. The captain
stood nearest the bow, and he was idly playing with the trailing
painter, when a thought arrested him. He hauled the line in hand over
hand, and stared, and remained staring, at the end.
"Anything wrong with it?" I asked.
"Do you know, Mr. Dodd," said he, in a queer voice, "this painter's been
cut? A sailor always seizes a rope's end, but this is sliced short off
with the cold steel. This won't do at all for the men," he added. "Just
stand by till I fix it up more natural."
"Any guess what it all means?" I asked.
"Well, it means one thing," said he. "It means Trent was a liar. I guess
the story of the _Flying Scud_ was a sight more picturesque than he gave
out."
Half an hour later the whaleboat was lying astern of the _Norah Creina_;
and Nares and I sought our bunks, silent and half-bewildered by our late
discoveries.