'SHE WILL NEVER KNOW'
'How in Heaven's name has she ever done it?' muttered Charke to
himself, three minutes later, as, dripping like a dog dragged out of a
pond, he still stood by the wheel while holding on like a vice to the
spokes. And still both he and Gilbert had each got their legs twisted
in the radii to prevent them from slipping, since now the ship lay
over frightfully to starboard and did not recover herself at all. 'Ah,
well,' he continued, 'it does not matter much how. Another five
minutes and over she goes--turtle. It is a hundred to one she has six
feet of water below.'
How had she done it? That was the wonder, the marvel; the more
especially a wonder if, as Charke thought, she had six feet of water
in her, since twice that amount would have taken her to the bottom
even though she lay in the most tranquil waters of the universe. It
was impossible she would have risen again, if overloaded thus. Yet,
water in her or not, she had accomplished a marvellous feat for any
craft that ever left the shipbuilder's yard. For, from down below in
those awful depths, with, on either side of her, and glistening all
around her in the glare of the lightning like the sides of a crevasse,
those walls of sea, she had still risen above them and had (a moment
or so after they seemed to be closing in on her and shutting her out
for ever from the world above) been once more poised on the crest of a
huge billow. She had done it, and now lay listing over on to her
starboard side, as some great wounded creature might do whose right
ribs had all been broken in by the blows of a pole-axe. But still she
travelled through the water in the darkness of the night; for now the
lightning was ceasing and, also, she carried no lighted lantern since
there were none to attend to such things--while, even though there had
been, the beating of the gale would soon have extinguished them. She
travelled swiftly, too, cutting her way through billow and wave,
taking in huge seas aft which swept her decks--yet going still. But
with some of those spectral forms, those blind groping men, departed
for ever; swept down the sloping deck by tons of water, down and over
into the ocean. And of the few, the three who had still their sight,
one lay with a broken neck at the foot of the foredeck companion-way,
having been flung down the hatch-way head foremost; the other two were
drunk. They had broken into the steward's room, where there were none
to control them, and had found some bottles of beer, as well as one of
brandy and one of rum--and this was the result!
At that moment the wheel spun round in Gilbert's hands, dragging him
with it in its revolution, so that he thought he would have to let go
or be thrown in a somersault over into the sea; then, as he forced it
back, he heard Charke's voice bellowing at him:
'Can you hold her up for five minutes? I can grasp the spokes no more;
I am done. I would not have let go like that, God knows I wouldn't,
but I have lost all sensation in my arms and hands. I will lead Fagg
out. Perhaps he can help.'
'I may hold her steady,' Gilbert answered, 'but no more. What can a
blind, stricken man do?'
'It is enough,' Charke said. 'Sight would not aid you to do more, and,
after all, it is of no use. We but prolong life for nothing. Yet, here
goes.'
He made his way below, falling, sliding down the companion-ladder,
tumbling along in the darkness to where he judged the door of Fagg's
cabin was; he fell over things that had been hurled out of the
steward's pantry on the port side--broken dishes, plates, tin
utensils, potatoes peeled ready for cooking, and a joint of meat--he
felt all these with his feet and benumbed hands, and found a bottle,
too, which his smell told him was rum. Then he tore the cork out of it
with his teeth and drained a tumblerful of the raw spirits. That gave
him fresh life and energy; the blood coursed and danced through his
veins again, his fingers began to feel, his arms to strengthen.
Sliding back the door of Fagg's cabin he called him by name, and,
receiving no answer, felt in the berth to see if he was there, while,
even as he discovered that the bed was empty, he trod on an upturned
face, and then stooped down and felt it and the head, and found the
latter all broken. Whereby he understood what had happened to the
unfortunate young officer, and knew that he had either been hurled out
of his bed against a bulkhead, or, being out of it, had been dashed to
death.
He would have gone back now to relieve Gilbert, and was turning to do
so when his eye caught the glimmer of a light down the narrow gangway
leading to the saloon, and he knew at once that somehow those within
had managed to get the bracket-lamp over the table lit. Whereon he
went towards that saloon, intent on seeing how those who were in
it--especially _one_ in it--were preparing to meet their end. Were
they bearing up bravely? Was she--was that girl who maddened him, that
girl, through his unrequited love for whom, he knew, he felt, that all
his better qualities had been driven out of him--preparing to meet her
death nobly, valiantly?
The sight he saw might have struck horror to a bolder, a better man
than he. A sight more fitting to meet the eyes of one who gazed into a
catacomb or charnel-house than into what had been, not long before, a
pretty, bright saloon. Mrs. Pooley lay flat upon her back, moaning
feebly, her stout body rolling backwards and forwards with every swing
of the ship and every plunge it made. The captain was on his face, and
above him lay half the debris of the shattered, sea-wrecked cabin.
But Bella! She frightened, startled him!
'The others may be dead,' he whispered, 'but she, surely she is alive.
God! how her eyes stare, yet--yet how lovely she is still.'
The girl was sitting upright upon the saloon sofa, her hands gripping
the head of it as though, all unconscious as she appeared to be, she
still knew that she must do that to save herself from being flung
down, and her lips moved faintly. Then he wrenched the bottle of rum
from out of his pocket, he having put it there with a view to
administering some to Gilbert when he regained the deck, rival though
he was, and moistened her lips with it.
'Miss Waldron--Bella,' he whispered, allowing himself in those last
moments the luxury of calling her by the name that he had whispered so
often softly to himself. 'Bella! for God's sake, say something. Tell
me that you are not dying.'
And she did whisper something--a word that he heard above all the roar
of the hurricane thundering aloft, above the awful concussions of the
ship's sides as again and again the tons of water struck at her,
heavily, savagely, and as, also, she struck at them in her maimed
progress; above even the rattle of ship's furniture rolling about, and
the sickening thumps of the unlashed piano as it beat against the stem
of the mizzen-mast. She whispered a word or so.
'Gilbert,' those white, cold lips muttered; 'Gilbert, my darling, we
are dying together. Clasp me to your arms now. Hold me in them to the
end.'
With a moan, not a curse!--a curse would not have availed or eased him
now--he started back in that dim cabin, hurling the bottle from him as
he did so. His rival! his rival! again, even now! His name the last
word on her lips, his image the last thing present to her in the hour
of death. Then he fled from the cabin back again to his post, back to
the wheel to which he swore he would lash himself, and so go down
thinking of nothing but his duty. There was, his fevered mind told
him, nothing but that--but his duty--left. As he went along he
noticed, distraught though he was, that the vessel was making a kind
of rotatory movement under him; that she seemed, indeed, to be gliding
round and round in a circle although beaten back more than once by the
awful force beneath her.
'He has left the wheel!' he cried, his swift and accurate seaman's
knowledge and intelligence telling him at once what had happened. 'Is
he mad--or dead?'
And clutching, grasping at everything that offered a hold to him, he
forced himself back to where the wheel stood, only to find when there
that Gilbert was lying senseless by it. Senseless but not dead, as one
thrust of Charke's hand under the other's wet clothes, towards the
region of the heart, told him very well. An instant later he had
resumed his hold on the spokes, and was endeavouring to put the ship
on her course before the howling winds, to keep her straight on into
the dark, impenetrable depth of blackness ahead of her.
Again the marvel was that she did not go over, or did not suddenly
sink beneath the weight of water that was pouring in on all
sides--sink like a stone. And he began to tell himself now that, as
she had borne up so long, as the storm could, by no possibility,
become worse and must, at last, abate, there was still a hope. A hope
of what? That he and Bella might both be saved; be saved, and saved
alone, together. 'She is alive and I am alive. The others are dead, or
dying. Oh, God! if she and I are spared----'
But that sentence was never finished!
For, as he partly uttered it there came an awful crash, a crash that
hurled him back, then flung him over and over on the poop--a grinding,
horrible concussion, followed by the most terrible thumps and by the
sudden cessation of the ship's passage. And, a moment later, the
vessel heeled over, though still beating and thumping heavily, so that
now the water poured into her forwards, and, gradually, her fore-part
was entirely immersed. But still the pounding and the awful grating
continued, while growing worse and worse.
'She has struck,' he muttered to himself. 'Struck on a reef or a rock.
The end has truly come.'
In a moment he had picked himself up from the poop-deck, and,
difficult as it was to move with the vessel beating backwards and
forwards, had dragged himself down to the saloon--down to where Bella
was, the woman whom he would save or die with.
The lamp had gone out with the concussion. All was in darkness, and,
above the roar of the tempest outside, he could hear the furniture
beating about the saloon as the ship swayed and wrenched. Yet he went
on towards where he had left her ten minutes before; on towards the
sofa on which she had been sitting almost unconscious.
She was not there he found, but, instead, lying insensible at the foot
of the sofa. Insensible, he knew, because, to his words, his summons,
she returned no answer. Then, in a moment, he had seized her in his
arms, had lifted her up, and, with her head upon his shoulder, was
groping his way with unsteady, stumbling feet towards the gangway.
Her head upon his shoulder now, her hair brushing his face now, in
this moment, in the hour of destruction--for one, for both of them!
Her head upon his shoulder! And he a mortal man! It was beyond
endurance; more than he could bear! Acknowledging this, recognising
it, he slightly moved, with the hand which was around those shoulders,
that face so close to him, that face so close, so cold and chill--and
kissed her long and passionately.
'She will never know,' he muttered, 'never know. Yet--yet it has made
death sweeter. Death! the death that will be ours ere many more
moments have passed.'
Yet, near as that death was, so near as to be beyond all doubt, as
much beyond all doubt as that the rocking, shivering ship was breaking
up fast, he felt his way towards where he knew the life-buoys were,
and rapidly fitted one on to each of them; while, as he did so, he
murmured again and again:
'If any are saved it can only be she and I. Yet even of that there is
no hope.'