A LIGHT FROM THE PAST
Four seamen only left untouched by blindness now, and two officers, to
work a ship of six hundred tons! How was it to be, how could it ever
be, done? The task was hopeless, and so all recognised on board that
unhappy, ill-omened ship, even as now the wind freshened and the bosom
of the ocean became flecked with little white spits of foam, while the
breeze, hot as the breath of a panting wolf, swept up from the south.
A breeze hot now, though once it had been cool--glacial--as it left
the icebergs of the Antarctic Circle.
What was to be done? they muttered now, as, together, the six
unstricken men took counsel while they stood in the shade of the
foredeck awning, and forgot, in their excitement, that one was the
master and owner, the other the first officer, and the four remaining
ones only poor, ignorant sailors. What! what! what!
'I,' exclaimed Pooley, at last, after much discussion, 'can at least
steer her. Some one must do it if she is to move at all; otherwise, in
spite of my seventeen stone, I would be up those ratlins like a boy.
But, even then, of what use are five to fist all the canvas she can
carry?'
'We can fist some of it, at any rate,' said Charke, strong, determined
as ever. 'By Heaven!' he cried, 'Lieutenant Bampfyld shall never go
back to any of Her Majesty's ships and say that half-a-dozen men under
the red ensign couldn't do something; couldn't make one stroke to save
themselves!' Then, in an instant, he asked the captain to go to the
wheel, while he sent the man, whose trick it was, forward, and, a
second later, he was issuing orders to his subordinates.
Somehow, these orders were obeyed, and in about an hour, during which
time all worked with a will and as if their lives depended on it, the
_Emperor of the Moon_ was under close-reefed topsails, foresail and
fore-topmast staysail, when, if she had only had her full complement
of able-bodied men to do the necessary work, she might well have been
under full sail before the still increasing wind, and making a good
nine or ten knots an hour. But, now, that was impossible; even if
those five could have got all her canvas on her the thing would have
been madness. A little further increase of force in the wind, and they
would at once have to shorten sail again--which, in the circumstances,
it would be almost impossible for them to do--or to stand by and see
the masts jumped out or blown overboard. As it was, the _Emperor_,
under the combined power of the current and what wind they could avail
themselves of, was making something like five knots an hour.
During all this time Bella had been below with Gilbert and a prey to
terrible anguish, yet endeavouring in every way to cheer and solace
him and to thrust her own fears and forebodings into the background.
Fears and forebodings of she scarcely knew what, yet fears that were,
all the same, assuming by degrees a more or less tangible shape. For
of late--indeed, long since--there had been intensifying more and more
in her mind that feeling of dislike and mistrust of Stephen Charke
which she had experienced from the first moment that she had
discovered him to be the second in command of the vessel in which she
was to make so long a voyage; for, over and over again, she had
remembered, had recalled, how he had said that he was never baulked in
the end of what he desired to obtain, and that if he wanted a thing he
generally managed to get it. And she knew that he had meant it as a
warning, if not a threat; though, certainly, since that miracle had
happened which had brought her lover into the very ship which was
taking her to India and to him, she had laughed at, had inwardly
despised, the threat, if it was one.
But now--now! With Gilbert stricken down by her side, helpless,
crippled by blindness, unable to do aught for himself or her, and with
her uncle broken down and worn almost to equal helplessness with his
enforced labour and his despair at the ruin which threatened him
through the probable destruction of his ship, what--what might not
Charke do? _He_ was not blind yet, nor----
Then, as her meditations reached this point, and while Gilbert sat by
her side on the pretty plush-covered locker with his head on her
shoulder, he broke in on those meditations, and what he said could not
by any possibility be construed by her as helping to dispel them, but,
rather, indeed, to aggravate them. 'At the rate we have been going
on,' he said, 'since I came aboard, there will not be a living soul
left with their eyesight by the end of the next two or three days. Oh,
my God! Bella, what will it be like when this ship is at the mercy of
the ocean, with every person on board blind.'
'Don't let us think about it, darling. Don't, don't! And even now some
may retain their sight. Uncle, I, Mr. Charke, the men----'
'Ah,' he said, 'Charke; yes, Charke. Excepting you, dearest, I would
sooner Charke kept his sight than almost any one else.'
'Why?' she asked, thinking that of all who were in the ship she,
perhaps, cared less whether Charke preserved his sight or not.
'Think what a strong, self-confident man he is. Even if all the others
were blinded and he was not, he would devise something for keeping the
vessel afloat, though, of course, he could not work her. He would
manage to get us all taken off somehow.'
This, the girl acknowledged, not only to him but herself, was true
enough. As regarded Charke's sailor-like self-confidence, courage and
determination, as well as how to do everything best that was necessary
in the most sudden emergency, there was nobody on board the ship, nor
ever had been, who was superior, or even equal, to him. Yet--in sole
command and possession of that ship, supposing the other inhabitants
of her should also be attacked with blindness and helplessness--what
might he not do, if his dogged resolution never to be baulked of
anything he had set his mind upon was allowed full sway? Her
imagination was not a tragic one, nor more romantic than that of most
young women who had been brought up as she had been, yet--yet--she
shuddered at fears which were almost without actual shape in her
thoughts. With all the others blind, herself included; with none to
observe what Charke did; with the opportunity of removing for ever
from his path any who had crossed it--of removing the one whom she
felt sure, whom she _divined_, he was anxious to remove; with an open
sea around him----'Oh, God!' she broke off, while exclaiming to
herself, even as her reflections shaped themselves thus, 'never--never
will I believe it. Never will I think so basely of any man, especially
since he has given me no cause to do so. And, as yet, there are plenty
left with their eyesight; plenty to see what is going on.'
Her uncle and aunt came into the saloon now, full of a distress that
was visibly marked upon both their faces as well as their demeanour,
yet both as kindly as ever in their manner, and uttering expressions
of sympathy with Gilbert in his affliction. But, all the same, Bella
could not but observe the look of absolute illness and grief on
Captain Pooley's countenance, nor help trembling inwardly at the fear
that he might be the next one attacked.
Nevertheless, he said cheerfully enough, after he had exhausted his
condolences with the young man: 'We are doing some good now, at any
rate. The "cherub" is marking about six knots; if the wind keeps where
and as it is we may yet fetch Mahe, or one of the other Seychelles. In
fact, we must reach them, or some other place, or----'
'Or what?' asked Bella, looking at him with tear-laden eyes.
'Or,' her uncle said, not, however, concluding his speech as he had
originally meant to do, 'or drift about until we fall in with another
vessel. We ought to do that, too,' he continued, 'for we are almost in
the direct track from the Red Sea to Australia; we are in the track of
the big liners.'
'How,' asked Gilbert now, while forcing a smile to his face as he
spoke, although it was but a poor, wan substitute for the bright,
joyous one that generally lit up his countenance--and, indeed, it was
only assumed with the hope of cheering his sweetheart by his side,
wherefore, like all other substitutes for the real thing, it was but a
wretched copy--'how are my brother-sufferers? It would be cheering
news to hear that some of them were regaining their sight.'
'At present,' Pooley replied, 'only one of your "fellow-sufferers"
seems to be doing so, and that's not a human being but no other than
Bella's _protégé_ the tiger-cub. That creature is, we all believe,
coming round. It is rambling about the deck by itself, but it
undoubtedly can see now to avoid hitting its head against the raffle
lying there. However,' he went on, 'here's a little information which
you may both be glad of, upon which he dropped his hand into his
nankeen jacket and produced from it an old, dirty, and much-thumbed
book, on which, in addition to many other unclean marks and stains,
were added droppings from candles.' It was evidently, as Bella at once
divined, one which had been pored over at night; while, had she been
well acquainted with the habits of those who dwelt in the forecastle,
she would have also understood that mercantile Jack is often in the
habit of sticking lighted bits of candle about whenever he wants to
read, and even to the sides of his bunk in which he lies, when he
sleeps in one instead of in a hammock.
'Millett,' her uncle went on, naming one of the men who had still
retained his eyesight, 'showed me this an hour ago. It belongs to poor
Wilks, and is a book entitled _Calamities of Sailors_, it being a
collection of odds and ends accumulated from various writers by an
unknown hand. Now, here,' he went on, 'is a strange account of
blindness attacking a vessel in much the same way as those in my poor
old _Emperor_ have been attacked, and----'
'Did they regain their sight?' exclaimed his listeners together; all
three, namely, Mrs. Pooley, Gilbert, and Bella, asking the same
question in almost the same words.
'They did,' the master went on, 'in this case. It happened on board
the _James Simpson_, in 1803. But in another, I am sorry to say, they
did not; and also, I am sorry to say, this is a very circumstantial
account, given by M. Benjamin Constant to the French Chamber of
Deputies, in 1820, when he was speaking on the horrors of the West
African slave trade. He tells how a French ship, _Le Rôdeur_, having a
crew of twenty-two men and a hundred and sixty slaves, left Bonny in
1819, and was attacked with almost precisely the same blindness which
has now fallen on most of us. Things were worse with them than in this
ship, however. They had scarcely any water, the air below was horribly
impure, and, when the poor wretched slaves were allowed on deck, they
locked themselves in each other's arms and leaped overboard in their
agony, so that the French captain ordered some of them to be shot as a
warning.'
'Yet,' exclaimed Gilbert, '_Le Rôdeur_ must have got safely into
harbour at last, or M. Constant would not have given his information.'
'Yes,' said Pooley, 'that of course is so. Pray God we do, too';
whereon he closed the book and dropped it into his pocket.
It was well he should do so. Well, too, that Bella did not ask to be
allowed to read it for herself, for it contained a good deal more than
her uncle had thought fit to read out, and described further horrors
which it was not advisable that any in that saloon should be made
acquainted with.[1]