SHOWING WHAT BECAME OF THE "ANDROMEDA"
The island artillery did not succeed in hitting the crippled ship
again. Three more shells were fired, but each projectile screamed
harmlessly far out to sea. A trained gunner, noting these facts, would
reason that the shore battery made good practice in the first instance
solely because its ordnance was trained at a known range. Indeed, he
might even hazard a guess that the _Andromeda's_ warm reception was
arranged long before her masts and funnel rose over the horizon. That
the islanders intended nothing less than her complete destruction was
self-evident. Without the slightest warning they had tried to sink
her; and now that she was escaping the further attentions of the field
pieces, a number of troops stationed on South Point and the Isle des
Frégates began to pelt her with bullets.
Iris, when the first paralysis of fear had passed, when her stricken
senses resumed their sway and her limbs lost their palsy, flinched from
this new danger, and sank sobbing to her knees behind the canvas shield
of the bridge. Somehow, this flimsy shelter, which sailors call the
"dodger," gave some sense of safety. Her throbbing brain was incapable
of lucid thought, but it was borne in on her mistily that the world and
its occupants had suddenly gone mad. The omen of the blood-red water
had justified itself most horribly. The dead carpenter was sprawling
over the forecastle windlass. His hand still clutched the brake. The
sailor at the wheel had been shot through the throat, and had fallen
limply through the open doorway of the chart-room; he lay there,
coughing up blood and froth, and gasping his life out. The two men
wounded by the second shell were creeping down the forward companion in
the effort to avoid the hail of lead that was beating on the ship.
Hozier was raising himself on hands and knees, his attitude that of a
man who is dazed, almost insensible. Watts had gone from the
bridge--he might have been whirled to death over the side like the
unfortunate foremast hand she had seen tossed from off the forecastle;
but Coke, whose charmed life apparently entitled him to act like a
lunatic, was actually balancing himself on top of the starboard rails
of the bridge by clinging to a stay, having climbed to that exposed
position in order to hurl oaths at the soldiers on shore. He had gone
berserk with rage. His cap had either fallen off or been torn from his
head by a bullet; his squat, powerful figure was shaking with frenzy;
he emphasized each curse with a passionate gesture of the free hand and
arm; he said among other things, and with no lack of forceful
adjectives, that if he could only come to close quarters with some of
the Portygee assassins on the island he would tear their sanguinary
livers out. It is an odd thing that men made animal by fury often use
that trope. They do really mean it. The liver is the earliest spoil
of the successful tiger.
The _Andromeda_, uncontrollable as destiny, and quite as heedless of
her human freight, swung round with the current until her bows pointed
to the islet occupied by the marksmen. All at once, Coke suspended his
flow of invectives and rushed into the chart-room, where Iris heard him
tearing lockers open and throwing their contents on the deck. To
enter, he was obliged to leap over the body of the dying man. The
action was grotesque, callous, almost inhuman; it jarred the girl's
agonized transports back into a species of spiritual calm, a mental
state akin to the fatalism often exhibited by Asiatics when death is
imminent and not to be denied. The apparent madness of the captain was
now more distressing to her than the certain loss of the ship or the
invisible missiles that clanged into white patches on the iron plates,
cut sudden holes and scars in the woodwork, or whirred through the air
with a buzzing whistle of singularly menacing sound. She began to be
afraid of remaining on the bridge; her fear was not due to the really
vital fact that it was so exposed; it arose from the purely feminine
consideration that she was sure Coke had become a raving maniac, and
she dreaded meeting him when, if ever, he reappeared.
A bullet struck the front frame of the chart-room, and several panes of
glass were shattered with a fearful din. That decided her. Coke, if
he were not killed, would surely be driven out. She sprang to her
feet, and literally ran down the steep ladder to the saloon deck.
Through the open door of the officers' mess she witnessed another
bizarre act--an act quite as extraordinary in its way as Coke's jump
over the steersman's body. In the midst of this drama of death and
destruction, Watts was standing there, with head thrown back and
uplifted arm, gulping down a tumblerful of some dark-colored liquid,
draining it to the dregs, while he held a black bottle in the other
hand. That a man should fly to rum for solace when existence itself
might be measured by minutes or seconds, was, to Iris, not the least
amazing experience of an episode crammed with all that was new, and
strange, and horrible in her life. She raced on, wholly unaware that
the drifting ship was now presenting her port bow to the death-dealing
fusillade.
Then, from somewhere, she heard a gruff voice:
"Hev' ye shut off steam, Macfarlane?"
"Ou ay. It's a' snug below till the watter reaches the furnaces," came
the answer.
So some of the men were doing their duty. Thank God for that!
Undeterred by the fact that a live shell had burst among the engines,
the oil-stained, grim-looking engineers had not quitted their post
until they had taken such precautions as lay in their power to insure
the ship's safety. A light broke in on the fog in the girl's mind.
Even now, at the very gate of eternity, one might try to help others!
The thought brought a ray of comfort. She was about to look for the
speakers when a bullet drilled a hole in a panel close to her side.
She began to run again, for a terrified glance through the forward
gangway showed that the ship was quite close to the land, where men in
blue uniforms, wearing curiously shaped hats and white gaiters, were
scattered among the rocks, some standing, some kneeling, some prone,
but all taking steady aim.
But it showed something more. Hozier was now lying sideways on the
raised deck of the forecastle; he partly supported himself on his right
arm; his left hand was pressed to his forehead; he was trying to rise.
With an intuition that was phenomenal under the circumstances, Iris
realized that he was screened from observation for the moment by the
windlass and the corpse that lay across it. But the ship's ever
increasing speed, and the curving course of her drifting, would soon
bring him into sight, and then those merciless riflemen would shoot him
down.
"Oh, not that! Not that!" she wailed aloud.
An impulse stronger than the instinct of self-preservation caused the
blood to tingle in her veins. She had waited to take that one look,
and now, bent double so as to avoid being seen by the soldiers, she
sped back through the gangway, gained the open deck, crouched close to
the bulwarks on the port side, and thus reached unscathed the foot of
the companion down which the wounded men had crawled. The zinc plates
on the steps were slippery with their blood, but she did not falter at
the sight. Up she went, stooped over Hozier, and placed her strong
young arms round his body.
"Quick!" she panted, "let me help you! You will be killed if you
remain here!"
Her voice seemed to rouse him as from troubled sleep.
"I was hit," he muttered. "What is it? What is wrong?"
"Oh, come, come!" she screamed, for some unseen agency tore a
transverse gash in the planking not a foot in front of them.
He yielded with broken expostulations. She dragged him to the top of
the stairs. Clinging to him, she half walked, half fell down the few
steps. But she did not quite fall; Hozier's weight was almost more
than she could manage, but she clung to him desperately, saved him from
a headlong plunge to the deck, and literally carried him into the
forecastle, where she found some of the crew who had scurried there
like rabbits to their burrow when the first shell crashed into the
engine-room.
Iris's fine eyes darted lightning at them.
"You call yourselves men," she cried shrilly, "yet you leave one of
your officers lying on deck to be shot at by those fiends!"
"We didn't know he was there, miss," said one. "We'd ha' fetched him
right enough if we did."
Even in her present stress of mixed emotions, the sailor's words
sounded reasonable. Every other person on board was just as greatly
stunned by this monstrous attack as she herself, and the firing now
appeared to increase in volume and accuracy. Several bullets clanged
against the funnel or broke huge splinters off the boats.
"Gord A'mighty, listen to that," growled a voice. "An' we cooped up
here, blazed at by a lot of rotten Dagos, with not a gun to our name!"
Iris was still supporting Hozier, whose head and shoulders were
pillowed against her breast as she knelt behind him.
"Can nothing be done?" she asked. "I believe Captain Coke has been
killed. Mr. Hozier is badly injured, I fear. Bring some water, if
possible."
"Yes, yes, water. . . . Only a knock on the head. . . . How did it
happen? And what is that noise of firing?"
Hozier's scattered wits were returning, though neither he nor Iris
remembered that the _Andromeda_ was waterless. He looked up at her,
then at the men, and he smiled as his eyes met hers again.
"Funny thing!" he said, with a natural tone that was reassuring. "I
thought the windlass smashed itself into smithereens. But it couldn't.
What was it that banged?"
"A shell, fired from the island," said the girl.
Hozier straightened himself a little. He was hearing marvels, though
far from understanding them, as yet.
"A shell!" he repeated vacantly. Had she said "a comet" it could not
have sounded more incredible.
"Yes. It might have killed you. Several of the men are dead. I
myself saw three of them killed outright, and two others are badly
wounded."
"Here you are, sir--drink this," said a fireman, offering a pannikin of
beer. It was unpalatable stuff, but it tasted like the nectar of the
gods to one who had sustained a blow that would have felled an ox.
Hozier had almost emptied the tin when an exclamation from an Irish
stoker drew all eyes to the after part of the ship.
"Holy war! Will ye look at that!" shouted the man. "Sure the skipper
isn't dead, at all, at all."
Iris had failed to grasp the meaning of Coke's antics in the
chart-room, but they were now fully explained. The bulldog breed of
this self-confessed rascal had taken the upper hand of him. Though he
had not scrupled to plot the destruction of the ship, and thus rob a
marine insurance company of a considerable sum of money--though at that
very instant there was actual proof of his scheme in the preparations
he had made to jam the steering-gear when the anchor was raised after
the tanks were replenished--it was not in the man's nature to skulk
into comparative safety because a foreigner, a pirate, a
not-to-be-mentioned-in-polite-society Portygee, opened fire on him in
this murderous fashion. Moreover, Coke's villainy would have
sacrificed no lives. The _Andromeda_ might be converted into scrap
iron, and thereby give back, by perverted arithmetic, the money
invested in her. But her white decks would not be stained with blood.
Whatever risk was incurred would be his, the responsible captain's, his
only. It was a vastly different thing that shot and shell should be
rained on an unarmed ship by the troops of a civilized power when she
was seeking the lowest form of hospitality. No wonder if the
bull-necked skipper foamed at the mouth and used words forbidden by the
catechism; no wonder if he tried to express his helpless fury in one
last act of defiance.
He rummaged the lockers for a Union Jack and the four flags that showed
the ship's name in signal letters. The red ensign was already
fluttering from a staff at the stern, and the house flag of David
Verity & Co. was at the fore, but these emblems did not satisfy Coke's
fighting mettle. The _Andromeda_ would probably crack like an eggshell
the instant she touched the reef towards which she was hurrying; he
determined that she would go down with colors flying if he were not put
out of action by a bullet before he could reach the main halyard.
The swerve in the ship's course as she passed the island gave him an
opportunity. In justice to Coke it should be said that he recked
naught of this, but it would have been humanly impossible otherwise for
the soldiers to have missed him. And now, while the vessel lay with
straight keel in the set of the current, the national emblem of
Britain, with the _Andromeda's_ code flags beneath, fluttered up the
mainmast.
There are many imaginable conditions under which Coke's deed would be
regarded as sublime; there are none which could deny his splendid
audacity. The soldiers, who seemed to be actuated by the utmost
malevolence, redoubled their efforts to hit the squat Hercules who had
bellowed at them and their fellow artillerists from the bridge.
Bullets struck the deck, lodged in the masts, splintered the roof and
panels of the upper structure, but not one touched Coke. He coolly
made fast each flag in its turn, and hauled away till the Union Jack
had reached the truck; then, drawn forrard by a hoarse cheer that came
from the forecastle, he turned his back on the enemy and swung himself
down to the fore-deck.
He was still wearing the heavy garments demanded by the gale; his
recent exertions, joined to the fact that the normal temperature of a
sub-tropical island was making itself felt, had induced a violent
perspiration. As he lumbered along the deck he mopped his face
vigorously with a pocket handkerchief, and this homely action helped to
convince Iris that she was mistaken in thinking him mad. His words,
too, when he caught sight of her, were not those of a maniac.
"Well, missy," he cried, "wot'll they say in Liverpool now? I s'pose
they'll 'ear of this some day," and he jerked a thumb backwards to
indicate the unceasing hail of bullets that poured into the after part
of the ship.
The girl looked at him with an air of surprise that would have been
comical under less grievous conditions. She knew, with a vague
definiteness, that death was near, perhaps unavoidable, and it had
never occurred to her that she or any other person on board need feel
any concern about the view entertained by Liverpool as to their fate.
Before she could frame a reply, however, Hozier seemed to recover his
faculties. He stood up, walked unaided to the side of the ship, and
glanced ahead.
"Shouldn't we try to lower a boat, sir?" he asked instantly.
"Wot's the use?" growled Coke. "Oo's goin' to lower boats while them
blighters on the island are pumpin' lead into us? And wot good are the
boats w'en they're lowered? They've been drilled full of holes. You
might as well try to float a sieve. Look at that," he added
sarcastically, as the side of the cutter was ripped open by a
ricochetting shot, and splinters were littered on the deck, "they know
wot they want an' they mean to get it. Dead men tell no tales. It
won't be anybody 'ere now who'll 'ave the job of lettin' the folk at
'ome know 'ow the pore ole _Andromeda_ went under."
"Are none of the boats seaworthy?"
"Not one. They're knocked to pieces. Sorry for you, Miss Yorke. But
we're all booked for Kingdom Come. In 'arf a minnit, or less, we'll be
on the reef, an' the ship must begin to break up."
Coke was telling the plain truth, but Hozier ran aft to make sure that
he was right in assuming the extent of the boats' damages. One of the
men, an Italian, climbed to the forecastle deck in order to see more
clearly what sort of danger they were running into. He came back
instantly, and his swarthy face was green with terror. Though he spoke
English well enough, he began to jabber wildly in his mother tongue.
None paid heed to him. It was common knowledge that the vessel must be
lost, and that those who still lived when she struck would have the
alternatives of being drowned, or beaten to pieces against the frowning
rocks, or shot from the mainland like so many stranded seals, if some
alliance of luck and strength secured a momentary foothold on one of
the tiny islets that barred the way. And at such moments, when the
mind is driven into a swift-running channel that ends in a cataract,
elemental passions are apt to strive with elemental fears. Few among
these rough sailors had ever given thought to the future. They had
lived from hand to mouth, the demands of a hard and dangerous
profession alternating with bouts of foolish revelry. Most of them had
looked on death in the tempest, in the swirling seas, in the uplifted
knife. But then, there was always a chance of escape, an open door for
the stout heart and ready hand; whereas, under present conditions,
there was nothing to be done but pray, or curse, or wait in stoic
silence until the first ominous quiver ran through the swift-moving
ship. So, all unknowingly, they grouped themselves according to their
nationalities, for the Latins knelt and supplicated the saints and the
Virgin Mother, the Celts roared insensate threats at the islanders who
had thrown them into the very jaws of eternity, and the Saxons stood
motionless, with grim jaws and frowning brows, disdaining alike both
frenzied appeal and useless execration.
Someone threw a cork jacket over the girl's shoulders, and bade her
fasten its straps around her waist. She obeyed without a word.
Indeed, she seemed to have lost the power of speech. Everything had
suddenly assumed such a crystal clear aspect that her eyes were gifted
with unnatural vision though her remaining senses were benumbed. The
blue and white of the sky, the emerald green of the water, the russet
brown and cold gray of the land--these shone now with a beauty vivid
beyond any of nature's tints she had ever before seen. She was
conscious, too, of an awful aloofness. Her spirit was entrenched in
its own citadel. She seemed to be brooding, solitary and remote, yet
shrinking ever within herself; quite unknowing, she offered a piteous
example of the old Hebrew's dire truism that man came naked into the
world and naked shall he depart.
In a curiously detached way she wondered why Hozier did not return.
The prayers and curses of the men surrounding her fell unheeded on her
ears. Where was Hozier? What was he doing? Why did he not come to
her? She felt a strange confidence in him. If he had not been struck
down by that calamitous shell he would have saved the ship--assuredly
he would have devised some means of saving their lives! Perhaps, even
now, he was attempting some desperate expedient! . . . The thought
nerved her for an instant. Then a rending, grinding noise was followed
by a sudden swerve and roll of the ship that sent her staggering
against a bulkhead. An outburst of cries and shouting rang through her
brain, and a shriek was wrung from her parched throat.
But the _Andromeda_ righted herself again, though there was another
sound of tearing metal, and the deck heaved perceptibly under a shock.
Ah, kind Heaven! here came Hozier, running, thundering some loud order.
"The port life-boat . . . seaworthy!"
There was a fierce rush, in which she joined. She was knocked down. A
strong hand dragged her to her feet. It was Coke, swearing horribly.
She saw Hozier leap against the flood of men.
"D--n you, the woman first!" she heard him say, and he sent the leaders
of the mob sprawling over the hatches of the forehold.
Coke, almost carrying her in his left arm, butted in among the crew
like an infuriated bull. Some of the men, shamefaced, made way for
them. Hosier reached her. She thought he said to the captain:
"There's a chance, if we can swing her clear."
Then the ship struck, and they were all flung to the deck. They rose,
somehow, anyhow, but the _Andromeda_, apparently resenting the check,
lifted herself bodily, tilted bow upward, and struck again. A mass of
spray dashed down upon the struggling figures who had been driven a
second time to their knees. There was a terrific explosion in the
after-hold, for the deck had burst under the pressure of air, and
another ominous roar announced that the water had reached the furnaces.
Steam and smoke and dust mingled with the incessant lashing of sheets
of spray, and Iris was torn from Coke's grip.
She fancied she heard Hozier cry, "Too late!" and a lightning glimpse
down the sloping deck showed some of the engineers and stokers crawling
up toward the quivering forecastle. She felt herself clasped in
Hozier's arms, and knew that he was climbing. After a few breathless
seconds she realized that they were standing on the forecastle, where
the captain and many of the crew were clinging to the windlass, and
anchor, and cable, and bulwarks, to maintain their footing. Below,
beyond a stretch of unbroken deck, the sea raged against all that was
left of the ship. The bridge just showed above the froth and spume of
sea level. The funnel still held by its stays, but the mainmast was
gone, and with it the string of flags.
The noise was deafening, overpowering. It sounded like the rattle of
some immense factory; yet a voice was audible through the din, for
Hozier was telling her not to abandon hope, as the fore part of the
ship was firmly wedged into a cleft in the rocks: they might still have
a chance when the tide dropped.
So that explained why it was so dark where a few moments ago all was
light. Iris pressed the salt water out of her burning eyes, and tried
to look up. On both sides of the narrow triangle of the forecastle
rose smooth overhanging walls, black and dripping. They were festooned
with seaweed, and every wave that curled up between the ship's plates
and the rocks was thrown back over the deck, while streams of water
fell constantly from the masses of weed. She gasped for breath. The
mere sight of this dismal cleft with its super-saturated air space made
active the choking sensation of which she was just beginning to be
aware.
"I--cannot breathe!" she sobbed, and she would have slipped off into
the welter of angry foam beneath had not Hozier tightened a protecting
arm round her waist.
"Stoop down!" he said.
She had a dim knowledge that he unbuttoned his coat and drew one of its
folds over her head. Ah, the blessed relief of it! Freed from the
stifling showers of spray, she drew a deep breath or two. How good he
was to her! How sure she was now that if he had been spared by that
disabling shell he would have saved them all!
Bent and shrouded as she was, she could see quite clearly downward.
The ship was breaking up with inconceivable rapidity. Already there
was a huge irregular vent between the fore deck and the central block
of cabins topped by the bridge. And a new horror was added to all that
had gone before. Swarms of rats were skimming up the slippery planks.
They were invading the forecastle and the forecastle deck. They came
in an irresistible army, though, fortunately for Iris's continued
sanity, the greater number scurried into the darkness of the men's
quarters.
She was watching them with fascinated eyes, though not daring to
withdraw her head from under the coat, when she heard a ghastly yell
from beneath, and an erie face appeared above the stairway. It was
Watts, mad with fright and drink.
"Save me! save me!" he screamed, and the girl shuddered as she realized
that the man did not fear death so much as he loathed the scampering
rats. He had no difficulty in climbing the steep companion, though, by
reason of the present position of all that was left of the _Andromeda_,
its pitch was thrown back to an unusual angle. He scrambled up, a
pitiable object. A couple of rats ran over his body, and as each
whisked across his shoulders and past his cheek he uttered a
blood-curdling yell. A big wave surged up into the recesses of the
cleft and was flung off in a drenching shower on to the forecastle. It
nearly swept Watts into the next world, and it drove every rodent in
that exposed place back to the dry interior.
To return, they had to use the unhappy chief officer as a causeway, and
the poor wretch's despairing cries were heartrending. He was clinging
for dear life to a bolt in the deck when Coke joined hands with a
sailor and was thus enabled to reach him. Once the skipper's strong
fingers had clutched his collar he was rescued--at least from the
instant death that might have been the outcome of his abject terror,
for there could be little doubt in the minds of those who saw his
glistening eyes and drawn lips that it would have needed the passage of
but one more rat and he would have relaxed his hold.
Coke pulled him up until he was lodged in safety in front of the
windlass. The manner of the welcome given by the captain to his _aide_
need not be recorded here. It was curt and lurid; it would serve as a
sorry passport if proffered on his entry to another world; but the
tragi-comedy of Watts's appearance among the close-packed gathering on
the forecastle was forthwith blotted out of existence by a thing so
amazing, so utterly unlooked for that during a couple of spellbound
seconds not a man moved nor spoke.