THE THIRD DAY.
As no object could be served by keeping the sail hoisted, they hauled
it down and spread a portion of it over the widow and her child.
Holdsworth kept watch till ten, and then awakened Winyard, who watched
till twelve; afterwards Johnson watched; and so the three men took
turn and turn about, all through the long and breathless night, until
daybreak, which found Winyard awake in the stern-sheets, watching the
pale dawn breaking in the east.
Its approach at first was imperceptible. A faint gray mingled in
the prevailing darkness, and gradually grew more defined; the
stars languished, and those in the extreme east hid themselves.
Then a clearer light broke stealthily about the eastern horizon;
the sea caught the glimmering dawn, and mirrored a pale and sickly
illumination, infinitely vague, as would be the reflection in a
looking-glass of a faint light. But soon the lustre broadened, and
streaks of horizontal silver floated above the deep, and stood in
layers of crystalline clearness, awaiting a more ardent transformation.
Then a delicate pink flushed a wide space in the eastern sky, which
spread and spread until the farthermost heavens shook off the heavy
curtains of the night and melted into a pale and visionary blue.
Anon, upon the eastern water-line, stood a mere speck of white and
exceedingly brilliant light--a pure silver point of glory--which, as
the eye watched it, increased in size, flinging flake upon flake of
glittering icy splendour upon the water, until, as with a sudden bound,
it soared in sun-like shape and flooded the heavens and the sea with
strong rejoicing light.
It awoke Holdsworth, who started up and stared around him.
“Look, sir!” said Winyard, in a whisper that sounded fierce with
excitement, pointing towards the south-east, where, upon the remote
horizon, stood a white speck clearly defined by the sunshine.
Holdsworth hollowed his hands tube-wise, gazed intently for some
moments, and then cried, “A sail!”
“Becalmed, master, as we are!” shouted Winyard; whereat the sleepers in
the boat stirred and opened their eyes.
“Out oars, my men!” sang out Holdsworth. “A sail, General! Do you see
her? Look, Mrs. Tennent; follow the direction of my finger! She is
becalmed! She cannot escape us! Hurrah, my lads!”
In less time than it takes me to write it, both seamen were bending to
the oars like madmen, making the water break in clear lines of ripple
against the boat’s bows, which headed directly for the distant sail.
Language is powerless to describe the excitement of the poor creatures.
Mrs. Tennent shed tears; the General, upon whose constitution,
debilitated by old age, their perilous situation and the mental
sufferings which accompanied it were beginning seriously to tell, stood
clutching the mast, his eyes riveted upon the white speck, and his
attenuated face flushed with eagerness and hope. The men, stretching to
the long oars, looked from time to time over their shoulders to remark
the progress they were making, and encouraged each other with cheerful
cries.
They had but two oars, and the boat was heavy and moved reluctantly to
the pressure of the blades; moreover, the men were weakened by exposure
and want of nourishing food. Still they urged the boat through the
water at pretty nearly three miles an hour; and Holdsworth repeatedly
encouraged them by representing that every stroke of the oars brought
the boat nearer within the range of the vision of those on board the
vessel, and increased the likelihood, under God’s providence, of their
rescue.
When the vessel was first sighted, she could not have been less than
ten miles distant; this was made manifest by the circumstance of their
continuing to row a full hour before they had exposed her large sails,
and even then her hull was invisible. The ocean, meanwhile, remained
perfectly polished, without a shadow anywhere upon its vast bosom to
indicate the passage of wind.
The seamen presently showing symptoms of distress, Holdsworth took an
oar, and bade Winyard, whom he replaced, to drink some rum, and hand a
draught to Johnson. The General begged to take Johnson’s place for a
time while the man rested himself; but the poor old gentleman, after
rowing a few strokes, found himself utterly unequal to the weight of
the oar, and he returned to his seat covered with perspiration, and
breathing with difficulty and pain.
It was seven o’clock by Holdsworth’s watch before the hull of the
vessel grew discernible; and then Johnson, whose sight was very keen,
pronounced her to be a large three-masted brigantine. She had all her
sails set, but she was still so remote as scarcely to be distinguished
by an inexperienced eye from a cloud.
Winyard, who steered, asked Mrs. Tennent for her black shawl, with
which he climbed up the mast and made it fast, flagwise. The motion of
the boat hardly created draught enough to unfurl it; but, drooping as
it did, it could scarcely fail to serve as a signal. The calm which
would have disheartened them under other circumstances, as suspending
all prospect of a rescue whilst it lasted, was now deeply welcome
to them as a guarantee of their speedy release from the horrors of
their situation. As the vessel grew in dimensions under the desperate
exertions of the rowers, Mrs. Tennent became hysterical, laughed and
wept at the same moment, and hugged her boy passionately to her. The
old General stood up waving his handkerchief, and talking to himself,
even wildly at times.
Holdsworth was now steering, and he bent eager glances in search of
some signal, some flag whose spot of colour would surely be visible
even at that distance, to tell them they were seen.
Suddenly he cried out:
“Johnson--Winyard! Look! tell me what you can see?”
The men rested on their oars simultaneously and turned their heads
towards the vessel. A silence ensued, lasting some moments. Then
Johnson exclaimed:
“There’s smoke coming out of her. Don’t you see it, like a blue line
between her fore and main masts?”
“Maybe they’re boiling the pitch-kettle abaft the galley, as we used
aboard the ‘Mary Ann,’” said Winyard, wiping his forehead with his bare
arm; “let’s make for her, boys.”
And he fell to his oar again.
The water rippled round the boat’s sides once more, and the shawl at
the mast-head fluttered.
Five minutes passed; and then Holdsworth, whose eyes never wandered
from the vessel, saw something black pass up her sails, rise over her
masts and there hang. Another followed; another yet; volumes now, and
each volume denser, blacker than its predecessor.
“She’s on fire!” he shouted; at which the men tilted up their oars and
stood up.
Quicker and quicker the black volumes, like balls growing in size as
they mounted, were vomited up, and resembled an endless series of
balloons rising from the deck; they met when they reached a short
height above the masts, mingled and formed into a livid line which
gradually stretched north and south, but very slowly. The spectators
in the boat were paralysed; but their emotions were too various and
conflicting to permit the deeper, deadlier ones of disappointment and
despair to make themselves felt as yet.
Holdsworth broke a long silence by exclaiming, “Can you see them
putting off?”
“No--I see nothing. I reckon she’s abandoned hours ago,” answered
Winyard.
The General sank upon his knees with a groan, clutching the gunwale and
staring at the burning vessel over his knuckles. There was no sign of
a boat anywhere--no sign of living creature being on board the doomed
craft. The smoke, which appeared to have been pent up in the hold,
had now escaped on a sudden; and thick and thicker yet it mounted,
marking an ugly stain upon the pure morning sky, and hanging sombre and
menacing over the smouldering vessel like a thunder-cloud. Soon a short
tongue of flame protruded; then came another and a longer one, which
seemed to whiz with a yellow radiance up the rigging and bury itself
in the smoke. Then the fire burst out in all directions; in the time
it would take you to count ten, the vessel was a mass of flame, keen,
brilliant, coiling, with streams of thin blue smoke sailing out of
each yellow ray, mingled with particles of burning matter that winked
among the heavy cloud like fireflies in a dark evening. She was four
or five miles off; a mere toy on the surface of the sea; and yet those
who watched her from the boat could distinctly hear the crackling of
the fire, and the seething of her flaming spars as they fell into the
water. Anon the fires flickered, and up drove new volumes of smoke,
which paled and thinned as the rekindled flames burst forth again and
darted their spear-shaped fangs into the smoke-hidden sky.
For above an hour this terrible and magnificent spectacle lasted,
during which not a word escaped the lips of the inmates of the boat.
Their minds seemed incapable of understanding the extinction of the
hope that had sustained them since sunrise, by a catastrophe so
unexpected, by a horror which united the extreme of sublimity with
the extreme of misfortune, and which appeared scarcely more than a
vision--so unforeseen, so incredible, so illusive, so ghastly, so
terrific was it.
By this time the whole of the upper masts were gone, adding fuel to the
interior furnace of the hull, and the three lower masts were burning
stumps. Suddenly the blazing mass appeared to rise in the air; the
fires went out as if by magic, and an opaque cloud, burnished a livid
blue by the sunshine, floated on the water. Not for many moments after
the flames had vanished came a concussion that rent the air, loud and
violent as a thunder-clap among mountains. The cloud lifted, and where
the vessel had been the sea was a smooth outline, reflecting only the
dark shadow of the slowly-mounting smoke, and dotted here and there
with black remnants of the wreck.
“Mr. Holdsworth,” said the General in a faint voice, sinking backwards
against a thwart, “I am dying.”
His hands were pressed to his heart; he was breathing quickly and
convulsively, and his face was bloodless. His exclamation broke the
spell that held the others gazing in the direction of the smoke. They
turned quickly, and Holdsworth jumped over to the old man and supported
his head on his knee.
“No, no, General; don’t say that. This is a bitter disappointment; but
we believe in God’s goodness. He cannot mean that we should perish.
Johnson, pour some rum into the pannikin. Mrs. Tennent, dip your
handkerchief into the sea and kindly pass it here.”
They put the spirit to the old man’s lip, and he drank a little, but
gasped for breath when he had swallowed it and clenched his hands. They
spread the wet handkerchief over his forehead and loosened his cravat.
“I----I know not what this giddiness may mean,” the General stammered,
while the lustre faded out of his eyes. “If it is death ... I am ready
to meet it. God is merciful and good. His Son is my Redeemer ... He
will take me to Himself ... how faint! how faint! But I have eaten
nothing”...
He ceased with a sudden gasp.
“You will feel better presently,” said Holdsworth, while Mrs. Tennent
took the old man’s hand and fanned his face. “The shock of the burning
ship has been too great for you. But you will live to recall this time.
You have as manly a heart as ever God blessed His creatures with. Don’t
let it fail you now.”
“I have ... I have striven to do my duty,” murmured the old man, so
faintly that his words were scarcely audible. “I have served my country
... she is a great empire ... a great empire ... and my heart is with
old England, too;” forcing a smile, “we should know each other better,
sir, and our prejudices would leave us, for .... for.... See! yonder is
Charleston!” he suddenly exclaimed, his eyes kindling, and drawing his
hand from Mrs. Tennent’s, to point with it into the infinite horizon.
“Do you see that house on the left, there, with the green facing it?
I was born there, sir. Observe the barberry-bushes with the red fruit
on them--just there I fought my cousin, when we were boys ... he’s a
senator now, and they tell me a good speaker. Oh, how the time goes!”
he sighed wearily. “But there’s my wife ... she is holding the little
one by the hand, and nodding to me to attend her.... A moment, Sarah,
a moment! Gentlemen, farewell. I beg your kind word in my favour among
your countrymen, whom I honour. I am a plain American gentleman--a
general, gentlemen ... but tell them that my sword was never drawn from
its scabbard for any cause but a good one, and ... Ah, farewell! You
see, gentlemen, my wife awaits me, and the little one beckons.”
He made a gesture as though he would bow; his venerable and honoured
head sank upon his bosom; then he started, looked about him with a
glazing eye, and smiling sweetly, whispered, “Sarah, I am coming,” lay
back and spoke no more.
When, after long watching him, they knew that he was dead, they covered
him over with the sail, meaning to commit him to the sea when the widow
should be asleep.
Holdsworth was so greatly overcome that for many minutes he could not
raise his head nor speak. The widow, with her eyes fixed on the water,
sat motionless, a fixed image of despair. Her boy crept about the
bottom of the boat at her feet, with somewhat weakly movements, though
his body had not yet suffered enough to kill the infancy in his mind.
The sailors, made selfish by the bitter disappointment of the morning,
talked of their chances of rescue, and discussed the subject of the
burning ship. Johnson probably solved the mystery of the deserted
vessel when he suggested that during the night the hands had found the
cargo on fire--and he judged by the blaze she made, and the smoke, and
the long time she was smouldering, that she was freighted with cotton
or coal--and had battened down the hatches; but not having the means of
getting the fire under, they struck and took to the boats, obliging the
skipper to go along with them, and left the vessel to her fate. Just
such another case happened to a messmate of his in the Bay of Biscay.
The crew left their ship smouldering under battened hatches. But _she_
was boarded by a Frenchman, who smothered the fire and towed her into
Bordeaux.
“Where was the brigantine’s crew, now?” Winyard wondered.
“I wish we could fall in with them, if only for company’s sake,”
replied Johnson.
But of that there was very little chance.
All the afternoon the calm lasted, with light mists hanging in wreaths
upon the horizon. But about the hour of sunset the smoke that had risen
from the burning ship, and which had not drifted more than a couple of
miles to the southward throughout the day, came sailing slowly towards
the boat and passed high overhead, thinning its bulk as it travelled
in an easterly direction. A light breeze heralded it; they hoisted the
sail, put the boat’s head round, and stood east-south-east.
The night fell, but the light breeze held steady. When they thought
Mrs. Tennent was asleep, they raised the body of the General in their
arms from the bottom of the boat. The night was lustrous with yellow
stars, which diffused sufficient light to enable them to see the old
man’s face. The eyes were closed, and, though the under-jaw was fallen,
there yet lingered an expression both of firmness and sweetness about
the mouth. The draught under the sail moved his white hairs.
“Mates,” said Holdsworth in a whisper, “we pray that God has taken
this noble gentleman’s soul to Himself, and that, though his body be
dispersed in the sea, it will rise again at the Day of Judgment, in
the shape we now behold it, to become a partaker of life everlasting,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
The two sailors answered Amen!
All three of them then tenderly handed the body, over the boat’s side,
and let it gently slip into the water. The white hair glimmered for
a brief moment on the dark surface, and then the body sank or was
swallowed up in the gloom; and the boat rippled onwards, cutting the
star flakes in the sea with her stem, and leaving them glittering in
silver fragments in her wake.