"SHIP, AHOY!"
"It is the last straw," says the proverb, "that breaks the camel's
back!"
Bob's courage had been on the wane long before the white, woolly fog
environed them; although, up to now he had endeavoured to brave it out
in the presence of Dick, the very consciousness that he was the main
cause of their being in such a perilous predicament preventing him from
betraying the fears he felt.
But, when this octopus of the air clutched them in its corpse-like grip,
breathing its wet vapoury breath into their faces, soddening their
clothes with heavy moisture and slackening their energies as it had
already damped their hopes of a steam-vessel coming to the rescue, Bob,
whose nerves were strained to their utmost tension, at last broke down.
"Oh, Dick!" he cried, bursting into a passion of tears, all the more
vehement now from his ever having been a manly boy and in the habit of
stifling all such displays of emotion, even when severely hurt, as had
happened on more than one occasion in a football scrimmage at school,
whence he got the name of Stoic amongst his mates. "Oh, Dick, poor
Dick! I'm sorry I made you come with me to your death! I wonder what
my mother and dad will say, and Nell too, when they come to learn that
we are lost?"
"Don't 'ee now, Master Bob, give way like that!" said
Dick, the brave lad, forgetting his own sad plight on seeing his unhappy
comrade's alarm and grief. "Cheer up, Master Bob, like a good sort! We
bean't lost yet, ye knows!"
"I'm afraid we are, Dick! I'm afraid we are!" sobbed Bob, as the pair
of unfortunates got gradually wetter and more miserable, if that were
possible; the density of the atmosphere around them increasing so that
it seemed as if they were enveloped in a drenching cloud, this mist of
the sea being the offspring of the waters, and consequently taking after
its humid parent. "Why, we're miles and miles away from land, and
drifting further and further off every moment! Oh, Dick, we're lost--
we're lost!"
"Now, don't 'ee, Master Bob, don't 'ee!" cried Dick, folding one of his
arms, like a mother, round the other's neck and drawing him towards him
to comfort him. "We ain't a bit lost yet, I tell 'ee, sure-ly. Why, we
ain't at sea as you says at all. We be ounly in the h'offin'
hereabouts."
This woke up Bob to argument.
"Only the offing, you say, Dick?" he replied, with some of his old
dogmatism as they drifted on and on, the ebb-tide that was bearing them
away on its bosom lapping against the sides of the boat with a
melancholy sound, though almost deadened by the oppressiveness of the
damp sea-fog. "Do you know how wide the Channel is `hereabouts,' as you
say?"
"No, Master Bob," said the other lad humbly. "I doesn't. I ain't no
scholard, as you knows."
"Then, I'll tell you," rejoined Bob triumphantly. "It must be nearly a
hundred miles wide here between the French and English coasts!"
Dick, however, was not abashed by this broad statement.
"That mebbe, Master Bob," he replied modestly, scratching the back of
his neck where one of his damp locks of hair tickled him at the moment.
"But, I heard the Cap'en say ounly t'other day as how there was so many
ships a-passing up and down as a boat adrift wer' bound to be sighted!"
"But, suppose a hundred ships passed us," said Bob, who would not be
comforted, in spite of all Dick's efforts. "Why, old chap, they
couldn't see us! The fog would prevent them!"
"Lor', so her would!" assented Dick, unable to gainsay this argument.
"I forgets that, I did, sure-ly!"
After a time, Bob's sobs ceased and he began to think of something else;
something that affected him, for the moment, even more strongly than his
fears.
"I'm awfully hungry, Dick," he said. "Have you got any more bread-and-
cheese left?"
"No, not a scrap," was the melancholy answer. "I giv' yer half, share
and share alike; and I've ate every crumb o' mine!"
"Isn't there anything in the locker?"
"Nothing, but the Cap'en's hatchet! Don't you bear in mind as how I
scrubbed her out afore we started?"
"Yes, so you did, I recollect," replied Bob moodily, his appetite being
well-nigh unbearable from its insatiable gnawing. "How do you feel,
Dick?"
"I feels as if I could eat the h'elephant we seed in the circus."
This made Bob laugh hysterically.
"I think I could, too," he said, between his paroxysms of laughter and
sobs. "I never felt so hungry in my life before!"
Another interval of silence followed this confession.
"I'll tell 'ee what, Master Bob," observed Dick, on their comparing
notes again presently, when both acknowledged to being cold and wet and
miserable. "Let us crawl into the cabin and lie down, hey? It'll be
warmer than here, sure-ly!"
"So it will," cried Bob, getting up and stretching his limbs, which were
stiff with cramp from sitting so long in the damp air; the fog around
them appearing to get all the thicker as the time passed. "I wonder
neither of us thought of that before?"
The two then crept in under the half-deck; and, covering themselves up
with the cutter's gaff-topsail, which had been placed within the cabin
along with some spare canvas, dropped off into a sound slumber,
forgetting their sad plight and their hunger alike, in sleep, the yacht
meanwhile still floating along, down Channel, in a west-by-north
direction with the ebb.
Their rest did not last long.
Bob was suddenly awakened from a dream of a wonderful banquet, which he
was enjoying, by a sort of rushing gurgling sound; while the boat rocked
to and fro at the same time uneasily.
Rubbing his eyes, he started up and listened for a moment.
Then, he shook Dick to arouse him.
"Hullo! Wake up!" he cried. "The wind has sprung up again; and, I
think, we're moving through the water!"
"I'll soon find out," said Dick, going outside and putting his hand over
the gunwale, calling out the instant afterwards, "You're right, Master
Bob! We be moving, right enough. Aye, so we be, sure-ly!"
"I wonder where Portsmouth is?" remarked Bob, as the two cogitated what
was best to be done, their hopes rising with the welcome breeze;
although this was only very feeble as yet, not being sufficient, indeed,
to blow away the fog that still hung over the sea.
"If we only knew whereabouts we was we'd know where to steer; but we've
turned about sich a lot, that I'd be puzzled to tell."
"So would I," agreed Bob. "But, I tell you what I think. Let us run
before the wind. It'll be sure to bring us somewhere, at all events, in
the end!"
"Aye, that it would, sure-ly, Master Bob," cried Dick, surprised at the
other's cleverness. "I declare I never as much as thought o' that!"
Thereupon, they wore the little cutter round, she having been previously
going like a crab sideways, which fully accounted for the lively motion
that had aroused them; and, Bob having stationed himself at the helm,
which he had put hard over, Dick mounted up on the fo'c's'le to act as
look-out, in case they should run against anything in the semi-darkness
around them, or, more happily still, come in sight of land.
They had not long occupied their respective positions, when Bob's
attention was attracted by a cry of alarm from his companion in the
bows.
"Lawks a mussy!" yelled out Dick in accents of unfeigned terror. "I
sees a white ghostess a-flying down on us, with big wings like a
h'angel!"
"Nonsense, Dick!" cried Bob from aft, trying to peer ahead under the
belly of the sail as he was sitting to leeward. "There are no such
things as ghosts; and, besides, I don't see anything at all but the fog
and the water!"
"Oh, lawks, Master Bob!" screamed the frightened Dick in answer to this.
"Look t'other side and then you'll p'r'aps believe me. Look t'other
side! Look t'other side! I bees afeered! I bees afeered!"
Bob shifted his seat to windward, so as to get a better view forwards
and see what had alarmed Dick.
"Why, Dick, it's a ship!" he exclaimed in an ecstasy of delight the next
instant. "What you thought are angel's wings are the vessel's sails,
though they are angel's wings to us!"
"Be her a real ship, Master Bob?" asked Dick, having another peep at the
suspicious object and still not quite convinced as yet. "Sure-ly?"
"Of course she is, I tell you," cried Bob. "Look out now and let go the
jib-sheet as I luff up. I'm going to lay-to, for the ship is coming up
with us rapidly and will run us down if we don't take care!"
She was diminishing the distance between them quickly enough.
A big ship she looked, too, appearing all the larger from the
intervening veil of mist, which magnified her proportions wonderfully,
in similar fashion to the "Fata Morgana" seen sometimes in Italian
waters.
Like as in the same spectral phenomenon, too, this vessel seemed to be
gliding towards them without sound or apparent motion.
She was a veritable phantom of the deep!
There were no lights visible on her, nor did it look as if any one was
on the watch.
So far as the boys could judge from the ocular evidence before them,
there might really not have been a single soul on board.
But, whether that was the case or no, on she came steadily towards them
bow on, emerging bigger and bigger from the ghostly mist, each movement
sensibly affecting her and increasing her size; so that, presently, she
became a monster ship.
She came too near to be pleasant, however, without sheering either to
right or aft.
It looked as if she were going to run them down!
Bob and Dick's hopes of a rescue paled before the imminent dread of a
collision that now stared them in the face--nay, was close at hand.
"Shout, Dick! Shout out with me as loud as you can so as to wake them
up on board and make them see us!" cried Bob, letting go the tiller and
standing up on top of the stern locker. "Now, all together, Dick!
Ship, ahoy! Ship, ahoy!"