"I woke up in the tent perhaps an hour before midnight, as I judged on
looking through the opening at the stars that shone in the dark sky
through the north-east end of the valley above the sea. At the other
end, being higher, you just saw the scattered heads of the bushes
against a pale floating glimmer of air, with a pale streak of horizon.
Behind us was the height where we had the look-out, and in front the
flat top of the crag drawn somehow or other as distinct as possible upon
the faint starlight in that quarter, roughening away down on both sides
into the brushwood and dwarf cocoa-nut trees. With the stillness of the
place all round, the bare sight of that particular point gave me a
dreamy, desolate, ghastly sort of feeling, beyond aught I ever saw in my
life before: it was choking hot and heavy inside, and seemingly
throughout the hollow, though a good deal of dew began to fall,
glistening on the dark-green bushes nearest us, and standing in drops on
the fern-like cocoa-leaves which Jacobs and the other men had roofed
themselves with. They were sound asleep; and the glimpse of the soles of
their shoes and their knees, sticking out of the shadow you saw their
rough faces in, with the sight of their cutlass-hilts, served to give
one a still wilder notion of the place. One felt scarce sure of being
able to wake them, in case of anything turning up; and, at any rate, a
dread came over you of its being possibly somewhat unnatural enough to
make the thing useless.
"On the other hand, the planter kept up such a confounded snoring inside
the canvas close by me, that although there was no doubt of his being
alive, the sound of it put stranger thoughts into your head. Sometimes
his breath would be jogging on like that of a tolerably ordinary mortal,
then get by degrees perfectly quiet; and then all of a sudden go rising
and rising, faster and faster, as if some terrible dream had hold of
him, or there was some devilish monster hard in chase of his soul, till
out it broke into a fearful snort that made your very heart
jump--whereupon he'd lie as if he were finished, then go through the
whole story again. I can't tell you how that cursed noise troubled me;
'twas no use shoving and speaking to him, and all the time the old boy
was evidently quite comfortable, by something he said at last about
'indigo being up.' The best I could do was to get out and leave him to
himself; in fact, where Jones had gone at the time I didn't know, till
suddenly I caught sight of his dark figure standing on the rise at the
back of our post, and went up to him. Jones was certainly a strange
mixture, for here had he been all round the low side of the island by
himself, yet I found him leaning bareheaded on the barrel of his musket,
listening like a deer. He assured me solemnly he thought he had heard
voices for the last hour on the other side, where he hadn't been, and
asked me if I would go with him to see. Then down came our look-out from
the peak, rolling through the bushes like a sea-crow, to report his not
having seen anything, and to say they'd forgot to relieve him aloft; so
rousing up Jacobs, I sent them both back together, while Jones and I
held the opposite way for the other height.
"The moment we had got to it, _there_ was the same faint blotted-out
horizon as we had had all astern of us the night before, the same
strange unnatural paleness cast off the face of the sea, making it look
black by contrast to north-eastward and east, against the blue shadow
with the bright stars in it, where the sea rippled as usual; while the
keenest glare in the middle seemed to stream right to the breast of the
island, like the reflection of daylight down a long break in the
ice--only it was dead and ghastly to behold. The white water washed
round under the black edge of the rocks before us, to the bare sloping
beach, where it came up fairly like a wide plash of milk, glimmering and
sparkling back amongst the little sea-creatures you fancied you saw
moving and crawling out or in: till it ran along by where the reefs
were, and turned off to the dim sky again. Everything else was still,
and Jones drew a breath like one relieved: 'Nothing after all, I think,
sir!' said he. But to my mind there was something a long sight more
awful in the look of that unaccountable white water bearing down like
snow upon the island, as it were, with the wrinkles and eddies to be
seen faintly in it here and there back toward the glaring breadth of it,
and the floating streaks in the sky above; especially when he told me he
thought it was owing to millions upon millions of living things in it,
that made the same show there at two different seasons in the year, for
a week or so at a time--the appearance of it getting less distinct every
night.
"However, I had begun to grow uneasy again about the Indiaman, and the
schooner too, as well as doubtful of the fellows coming to the island at
all; on the contrary, as I said to Jones, if they saw the schooner, and
Westwood didn't manage as I told him, why both she, the ship, and
ourselves might possibly get the finishing-stroke altogether. 'The more
I think of it,' said I, 'the more foolish it seems to be here instead of
aboard!' 'Why it is, Mr Collins, I don't know,' replied Jones, 'yet I
feel as sure these men will land here as if I heard them in the woods;
and if I wasn't aware how one crime breeds another, for my part I
shouldn't be here at present, sir. Many a night afloat has the thought
of this place weighed on me, lest there was something new doing in it;
but what's buried here I'm resolved no man shall stir up, if I can help
it, sir!' A little after, as we got up and went down to the beach, all
of a sudden--like a thing he couldn't avoid--Jones began to give me some
snatches of what had happened here some years before, which, according
to him, he had got from a shipmate of his that died; and I must say it
made the blood creep in me to listen to it.
"'At the beginning of the war,' he said, 'the island had been a nest of
regular pirates, who had taken pains to make it, from a mere muddy head
of a reef with some cocoas upon it, probably into a resort on
occasions--especially as even the wild Maldive natives to southward had
somehow a dislike to it. The whole gang being taken by some cruiser or
other at sea, however, too far off to leave any clue to their harbourage
hereabouts, they were all hanged, and the place lost sight of, till, a
good many years after, a country Arab craft, bound for Dacca up the
Ganges, was driven in a gale upon the reefs some way off, without seeing
the island at all till the sea went down, and she was going to pieces.
"'There were only two Europeans aboard, both having turned Mussulmans,
and the youngest of them was mate. There was a passenger, a native
Indian merchant, and his servants, with, as was believed, his harem
below in the after-cabins, for nobody ever had seen them; but the Arab
_rais_ of the vessel and several more being washed off when she struck,
the other Mussulmans took to the only boat they had, and got ashore,
leaving the two Englishmen with the passenger. Next day the two men had
contrived a raft of the spars, whereupon the Hindoo at last brought up
his three women, veiled from head to foot, and the whole got safe to the
island. Here all the Mahometans herded together amongst themselves,
forcing the two Englishmen to keep on the other side of the island, as
they had no firearms, while the old Hindoo merchant and his native
servant got a tent pitched on the highest point for the women, where
they were no more seen than before, and a flag hoisted on a stick all
the time for a signal to ships--poor simple devil!' as Jones said with a
laugh. 'Every day he offered the Arab crew more of the gold and jewels
he had with him, to make for India and get him brought of, till at last
some of the Arabs came round to the mate and his companion, wanting them
to take the boat and go instead, otherwise they would kill both of them
at once. The two men accordingly had provisions given them, and hoisted
sail on the boat before the breeze to eastward; they had almost dropped
the island, when all at once the one in the boat's bows stepped aft to
him that had the tiller, and said it struck him the Arabs couldn't mean
well to the Hindoo and his wives, in trying to get clear of others.
"'All his companion did,' Jones said, 'was to ask if he was man enough
to go back, face them boldly, and offer to take the passenger and his
harem too, when some craft or other might come back for the Arabs, since
they weren't seamen enough to venture first in the boat. "I tell you
what," said the first, '"try the two largest breakers of water there!"
The water for use next after the open one was tasted, and it was _salt_.
'"Will you stand by me?" the second man said, after awhile. The other
had a dog with him of his own, that had swam ashore from the vessel
after the raft he landed upon, and it was sleeping in the boat's bow at
the moment, near him; the dog lifted its head as they spoke, eyed the
two, and lay down again with a low sort of growl. "Ay," answered the
other, "to the last I will--as long as you stick by _me_!" They hauled
over the sheet, laid the boat sharp on a wind, and as soon as it was
dusk began to pull back toward the island, where they got ashore in the
dark before morning.'
"Here Jones stopped, turned suddenly round to the glare of the white
water plashing upon the beach, and said no more. 'Why, Jones,' said I,
'is that all you've to tell? What came of them? For God's sake,
yes--what was the upshot?' ''Tis enough to show how one bad thing breeds
another, as I said, sir,' answered he. 'Probably in the end, though--at
any rate I only fancy the rest--'tis a horrible dream to me, for
a--a--squall came on when that shipmate of mine got so far, and we had
to reef topsails. He went overboard off the yard that very night,' said
Jones wildly.
"'The man must have been _there_,' said I, in a pointed way, 'to give
all the particulars--_he_ was the mate himself, Mr Jones!' He made no
answer, but kept gazing out to sea. 'And how long was this ago?' I
asked. 'Oh,' answered he, 'years enough ago, no doubt, sir, for both of
us to be children, if _you_ were born, Mr Collins'--and he turned his
face to me as ghastly as the water toward the horizon he was looking at
before--'at least I hope to God it was so--the man was a poor creature,
sir, bless you, and old, as it seems to me--twice my own age at the
time, Lieutenant Collins! At all events, though,' he went on, rambling
in a strange way that made me think he was going out of his mind, 'he
remembered well enough the first time he saw the white water coming down
upon the island. He was hunting--_hunting_--through the bushes and up
and down, and came up upon the crag.' 'Hunting?' I said. 'Yes, you
didn't know how it lived, or where it kept, but every night it was on
the look-out there. There was no one else, save the girl sleeping over
beyond in the hut, and the man almost fancied the water of the sea was
coming down to the rocks and the beach, like the Almighty himself, to
show He was clear of all that had happened--if he could but have
finished that brute, testifying like the very devil, he'd have been
happy, he felt! Harkye,' said he, sinking his voice to a whisper, 'when
he went back at daylight the woman was dying--she had borne a--what was
as innocent as she was, poor, sweet, young heathen!'
"And if I hadn't guessed pretty well before that Jones was the man he'd
been speaking of, his glittering eye and his stride from the beach would
have shown it; apparently he forgot everything besides at that moment,
till you'd have thought his mind gloated on this piece of his history.
'The woman!' I couldn't help saying, 'what woman? Had the rest left you
in the boat, then?'
"Jones looked upon me fiercely, then turned away; when all of a sudden
such a long unearthly quaver of a cry came down through the stillness,
from somewhere aloft in the island, that at first I didn't know what to
think, unless one of our look-out men had met with an accident, and
tumbled down. 'Twas so dark where they were, however, there was no
seeing them. Without looking for himself, Jones faced me, shivering all
over. 'What is that, Mr Collins?' whispered he, catching my arm with a
clutch like death; '_is_ there anything yonder--behind--behind--sir?' On
the flat head of the crag north-westward, black against the pale glimmer
over the very spot where we had stood half-an-hour before, to my utter
horror, there was some creature or other sitting as if it looked toward
the sea; and just then another wild, quivering, eddying sound came
evidently enough from it, like a thing that would never end. It wasn't a
human voice, that! my brain spun with it, as I glanced to Jones. 'Good
heavens!' I said, '_what_? But, by Jove! now I think of it; yes--'tis
the howl of a _dog_--nothing else!' 'Eight--ten years!' said Jones,
hoarsely, 'without food, too, and enough in that well to have poisoned
whole gangs of men for twenty years--_can_ it be an earthly being, sir?'
The stare he gave me at the moment was more frightful than aught else,
but I mentioned what Westwood and I had observed the day before.
"Before I well knew what he meant, Jones was stealing swiftly up the
rising ground to the shoulder of it. I saw him get suddenly on a level
with the creature, his musket aiming for it--there was a flash and a
shot that left the height as bare as before--and next minute, with a
short whimpering howl, the animal flew down the hill, while I heard
Jones crashing through the bushes after it, till he was lost in the
dark. Such a terrible notion it gave me of his strange story being true,
whereas before I had almost fancied it partly a craze of his, from
having lived here alone--that for a moment or two it seemed to my mind
we were still in the midst of it. I hurried back to our post, and close
upon morning Jones came over and lay down by himself, without a word,
haggard and covered with sweat.
"All next day the horizon on every side was clear of a single speck; no
signs either of ship or schooner, till I began to wish we were out of
it, hoping the _Seringapatam_ had, after all, kept the old course for
Bombay, in spite of us. I found Jones had warned the men not to get our
water out of the tank; it being poisoned in a way fit to last for years,
as the pirates knew how to do. For our parts, we had to amuse ourselves
the best way we could, waiting for the schooner to come down again for
us, which was the only thing I looked for now. That night the white
appearance of the water to north and windward seemed a good deal gone,
save where it hung like a haze in the direction it took off the island:
the stars shone out, and in two or three nights more I found from Jones
there would be nothing of it, which I hoped I should have to take on his
word.
"At daybreak, however, our look-out could all of a sudden be seen
hoisting the signal for a sail in sight, and waving his hat for us to
come. No sooner had we hurried up, accordingly, than a sail could be
made out in the south-east, hull down; and the schooner not being likely
thereaway, a certain flutter in me at once set it down for the Indiaman
at last, on her way far past the island for the open channel. Being
broad daylight, too, with a fresh breeze blowing, we saw that Foster and
his party, if they carried out their scheme, would have to wait till she
was a long way to windward at night-time, in order to get clear off. In
fact, I had everyone kept down off the height, lest the ship's glasses
might possibly notice something; while, at the same time, we hadn't even
a fire kindled to cook our victuals. I was watching her over the brow of
the hill, through the telescope, when she evidently stood round on the
other tack to get up to windward, which brought her gradually nearer.
She was a large ship, under full canvas; and at last she rose her hull
to the white streak below the bulwarks, till I began to think they
intended passing the island to eastward to make the channel. I went down
for Jones, and asked him how far the reefs actually ran out, when he
told me there would probably be signs enough of them in such a strong
breeze; besides, as he reminded me, if she was the Indiaman, it was the
captain himself that had a chart of them; in which, from the particular
nature of it--being an old buccaneering chart, as he thought--they would
be laid down quite plainly.
"Indeed, when we both returned to the height, there were lines of surf
to be noticed here and there, more than three miles out; and seeing her
by that time so distinctly, a new uneasiness began to enter my head.
There were no signals we could make, even if they didn't serve the other
way; and, to tell the truth, I didn't much like the idea of being found
there. Still, it was terrible to see her getting nearer and nearer,
without the power of doing the least thing to warn her off; spreading
and heightening before you, till you counted her sails, and saw the
light betwixt them, with the breeze always strengthening off that side
the island, and of course making it the safer for her to pass it to
leeward. The blue surges rose longer to the foam at their crests, till
one's eye got confused between them and the spots of surf rippling
greenish over the tongues of reef; in fact, it wasn't far off being
low-water at the time, and the whole was to be seen better from the
height than elsewhere, stretched out like a floor that the breeze was
sweeping across, raising a white dust where the blue melted into the
light-brown tint of the sea to leeward. The breeze came so fresh that
she even hauled down her sky-sails and fore-royal, railing off to go to
leeward of the island. At the same moment, I made out with the glass
that she was actually the _Seringapatam_, and also that she'd got a
leadsman at work in the chains. Five minutes more, and she'd have gone
time enough into the distinct brown-coloured swells to stand past the
deep end: without help from the glass, I saw the sun sparkle in the
spray from her black bows; she made a sliding forge ahead with her whole
beam on to us; when, next moment, as if she had taken a sudden yaw and
broached-to in the wind, she came fairly end on, showing the three piles
of canvas in one. A wild boding of the truth crept on me as I sprang on
the peak, waving my arms and stamping like a lunatic, as if they could
hear me.
"The next instant she had fallen a little over, her foretopmast and
main-to'gallantmast gone out of their places at the shock, and the heavy
blue swells running to her highest side in a perfect heap of foam; while
the spray rose in white jets across her weather bulwarks at every burst
of them. The Indiaman had struck on a rib of reef, or else a spit of
sand, near the very edge of the whole bank: had it been only
high-water--as I had reason to believe afterwards--she'd have gone clear
over it. As soon as the first horror of the thing was a little past, I
looked, without a word, to Jones, and he to me. 'The fellows have come
at last, certainly!' said he, in a serious enough tone. 'Mr Collins,' he
added, 'the moment I set foot on ground here, I felt sure something
would come out of it!' 'Get the men down at once, sir,' I said, 'and
let's pull out to the ship!' 'Why, sir,' answered he, 'the breeze is
likely to keep for some time as it is, and if she's completely gone,
they'll be able to bring all hands safe ashore. If you take my advice,
Mr Collins, you'll hold all fast, and show no signs of our being here at
all, in case of having something or other to manage yet that may cost us
harder!' It didn't need much thought to see this, in fact; and in place
of going down, ten minutes after we were all close amongst the bushes on
the slope, watching the wreck. What was at the bottom of all this I
didn't know; whether Captain Finch had really got wind of Foster's
scheme, and been playing with some hellish notion his heart failed him
to carry out, or how it was; but what he was to make of _this_ was the
question.
"Well, toward afternoon, the wreck seemed pretty much in the same state,
though by that time they had evidently given her up, for the boats were
beginning to be hoisted out to leeward. We couldn't see what went on
there, till one of them suddenly appeared, pulling out for the island,
about three miles off; then the large launch after it. There were
ladies' dresses to be made out in both, their cloaks and shawls
fluttering bright to the breeze as the boats dipped in the short swells;
and they were full an hour ere they got out of our sight, near the broad
beach, on the level side, where the tide was ebbing fast again, making
it a hard matter to pull the distance. Two more boats came off the ship,
filled full of casks and other matters, save the crews; the rest of the
passengers and men no doubt waiting for the launch and jolly-boat to go
back and take them ashore--for, soon after, they both could be seen
rounding the point on their way out. On coming within hail of the fresh
boats, however, they apparently gave in, since we could see the two of
them, to our great surprise, strike round, and make for the beach again
with their shipmates, spite of signals from the wreck, and shots even
fired after them. The breeze by that time flagged, leaving less of a sea
against the ship's hull in the dead water from the other reefs, and she
had fallen over again to leeward--a proof of her sticking fast where
she struck, without much fear of parting very soon in such weather; but
the sun was going down, and this being the first sign of foul play we
had observed, it was plain at all events we should have to look sharp
about us. We kept close up the height, bolted our cold junk and biscuit,
washing down with a stiff caulker, and looked every man to his tools.
"To my great satisfaction, the planter, who had watched everything
seemingly in pure bewilderment, woke up out of it when he knew how
matters stood, and handled his double-barrel as cool as a cucumber,
putting in two bullets above the small shot he had got for the birds,
and ramming down with the air of a man summing up a couple of bills
against a rascally debtor. For my own part, I must say I was longer of
coming to feel it wasn't some sort of a dream, owing to Jones's broken
story; till the thought of _who_ was to all likelihood on the very
island below, with the rest of the ladies, amongst a set of all sorts of
foremast-men thrown loose from command--half of them probably ruffians,
with some hand in the matter--it came on me like fire at one's vitals.
Meantime we sat there patiently enough for want of knowing what was to
do first, or which way we had best keep to avoid bringing matters to a
head, worse than they yet were.