STRANGE SIGHTS ASHORE, AND WHAT WE SAW OF THEM
Now, when Seth Barker cried out that a ship was ashore on the dangerous
reefs to the northward of the main island, it is not necessary to tell
you what we, a crew of British seamen, were called upon to do. The
words were scarcely spoken before I had given the order, "Stand by the
boats," and sent every man to his station. Excited the hands were, that
I will not deny; excited and willing enough to tell you about it if
you'd asked them; but no man among them opened his lips, and while they
stood there, anxious and ready, I had my glass to my eye and tried to
make out the steamer and what had befallen her. Nor was Mister Jacob
behind me, but he and Peter Bligh at my side, we soon knew the truth
and made up our minds about it.
"There's a ship on the reef, sure enough, and by the cut of her she's
the Santa Cruz we spoke this afternoon," said Mr. Jacob, and added, "a
dangerous shore, sir, a dangerous shore."
"But full of kind-hearted people that fire their guns at poor
shipwrecked mariners," put in Peter Bligh. I wouldn't believe him at
first, but there was no denying it, awful truth that it was, when a few
minutes had passed.
"Good God," cried I, "it can't be so, Peter, and yet that's a rifle's
tongue, or I've lost my hearing."
Well, we all stood together and listened as men listen for some poor
creature's death-cry, or the sounds which come in the stillness of the
night to affright and unnerve us. Sure enough, you couldn't have
counted ten before the report of guns was heard distinctly above the
distant roar of breakers; while flashes of crimson light, playing about
the reef, seemed to tell the whole story without another word from me.
"Those devils ashore are shooting the crew," cried I; "did man ever
hear such bloody work? I'll have a reckoning for this, if it takes me
twenty years. Lower away the boats, lads; I'm going to dance to that
music."
They swung the two longboats out on the davits, and the port crew were
in their seats, when Mister Jacob touched my arm and questioned my
order--a thing I haven't known him to do twice in ten years.
"Beg pardon, sir," said he, "but there's no boat that will help the
Santa Cruz to-night."
"And why, Mister Jacob--why do you say that?"
"Because she's gone where neither you nor I wish to go yet awhile,
Mister Begg."
I stood as though he had shot me, and clapping my glass to my eye I
took another look towards the northern reef and the ship that was
stranded there. But no ship was to be seen. She had disappeared in a
twinkling; the sea had swallowed her up. And over the water, as an
eerie wail, lasting and doleful, came the death-cries of those who
perished with her.
"God rest their poor souls and punish them that sent them there," said
Peter Bligh fervently; but Mister Jacob was still full of his prudent
talk.
"We're four miles out, and the moon will be gone in ten minutes, sir.
You couldn't make the reef if you tried, and if you could, you'd find
none living. This sea would best the biggest boat that ever a ship
carried--it will blow harder in an hour, and what then? We've friends
of our own to serve, and the door that Providence opens we've no right
to shut. I say nothing against humanity, Captain Begg, but I wouldn't
hunt the dead in the water when I could help the living ashore."
I saw his point in a moment, and had nothing to say against it. No
small boat could have lived in the reefs about the northern end of the
island with the sea that was running that night. If the devils who
fired down upon the poor fellows of the Santa Cruz were still watching
like vultures for human meat, fair argument said, the main island would
be free of them for us to go ashore as we pleased. A better opportunity
might not be found for a score of months. I never blame myself, least
of all now, when I know Ruth Bellenden's story, that I listened that
night to the clearheaded wisdom of Anthony Jacob.
"You're right, as always, Mister Jacob. I've no call to take these good
fellows on a fool's errand. And it's going to blow hard, as you say.
We'll take in one of the boats, and those that are for the shore will
make haste to get aboard the other."
This I said to him, but to the men I put it in a few seaman's words.
"Lads," I said, "no boat that Southampton ever built could swim in
yonder tide where it makes between the reefs. We'd like to help
shipmates, but the chance is not ours. There's another little shipmate
ashore there that needs our help pretty badly. I'm going in for her
sake, and there's not a man of you that will not do his duty by the
ship when I'm gone. Aye, you'll stand by Mister Jacob, lads, I may tell
him that?"
They gave me a rousing cheer, which was a pretty foolish thing to have
done, and it took all my voice to silence them. Lucky for us, there was
a cloud over the moon now, and darkness like a black vapour upon the
sea. Not a lamp burned on the Southern Cross; not a cabin window but
had its curtain. What glow came from her funnel was not more than a
hazy red light over the waters; and when five of us (for we took Harry
Doe to stand by ashore) stepped into the longboat, and set her head due
west for the land, we lost the steamer in five minutes--and, God knows,
we were never to see her again on the high seas or off.
Now, I have said that the wind had begun to blow fresh since sunset,
and at two bells in the first watch, the time we left the ship, the sea
ran high, and it was not oversafe even in the longboat to be cruising
for a shore we knew so little about. I have always accounted it more
good luck than good seamanship which brought us to the cove at last,
and set us all, wet but cheerful, on the dry, white sand about the
ladder's foot. There was shelter in the bay both for man and ship, and
when we'd dragged the longboat up on the beach we gave Harry Doe his
orders and left him to his duty.
"If there's danger fire your gun," said I--"once, if you wish to call
us; twice, if you think we should stand off. But you won't do that
unless things are at the worst, and I'm hoping for the best, when you
won't do it at all."
He answered, "Aye, aye," in a whisper which was like a bear's growl;
and we four, Peter Bligh, Seth Barker, and the lad Dolly, besides
myself, climbed the ladder like cats and stood at the cliff's head. To
say that our hearts were in our mouths would not be strict truth, for I
never feared any man, beast, or devil yet; and I wasn't going to begin
that night--nor were the others more ready, that I will answer for
them. But remembering the things we had seen on the reef, the words
which Ruth Bellenden had spoken to me, and that which happened to the
lad and myself last time we came ashore; remembering this, it's not to
be wondered at that our hearts beat a bit quicker, and that our hands
went now and again to the pistols we carried. For, just think of
it--there we were at nine o'clock of a dark night, in a thick wood,
with the trees making ghosts about us, and the path as narrow as a
ship's plank, and no knowledge who walked the woods with us, nor any
true reckoning of our circumstance. What man wouldn't have held his
tongue at such a time, or argued with himself that it might end badly,
and he never see the sun again? Not Jasper Begg, as I bear witness.
Now, I put myself at the head of our fellows and, the better to find
the track, I went down on my hands and my knees like a four-footed
thing, and signalling to those behind with a bosun's whistle, I led
them well enough through the wood to the wicker-basket bridge; and
would have gone on from there straight down to the house but for
something which happened at the clearing of the thicket, just as I
stood up to bid the men go over. Startling it was, to be sure, and
enough to give any man a turn; nor did I wonder that Peter Bligh should
have cried out as he did when first he clapped eyes upon it.
"Holy Mother of Music," says he, "'tis the angels singing, or I'm a
dirty nigger!"
"Hold your tongue," says I, in a whisper; "are you afraid of two young
women, then?"
"Of three," says he, "which being odd is lucky. When my poor
father----"
"To hell with your father," says I; "hold your tongue and wait."
He lay low at this, and the rest of us gaped, open-mouthed, as though
we were staring at a fairy-book. There, before us, coming down from the
black rocks above, leaping from step to step of the stone, were three
young girls; but, aye, the queerest sort that ever tantalized a man
with their prettiness. You may well ask, the night being inky dark, how
we managed to see them at all; but let me tell you that they carried
good rosin torches in their hands, and the wild light, all gold and
crimson against the rocks, shone as bright as a ship's flare and as
far. Never have I seen such a thing, I say, and never shall. There were
the three of them, like young deer on a bleak hillside, singing and
laughing and leaping down, and, what's more, speaking to each other in
an odd lingo, with here a word of French and there a word of German,
and after that something that was beyond me and foreign to my
understanding.
"God be good to me--saw man ever such a sight? And the dress of 'em,
the dress of 'em," whispers Peter Bligh. But I clapped my hand upon his
mouth and stopped him that time.
"The dress is all right," said I; "what I'm wondering is how three of
that sort came in such a place as this. And well born too, well born,
or I don't know the meaning of the term!"
They were pretty creatures and their dress was like the rest of them.
Short skirts all looped and filled with flowers, toggery above cut out
of some white skin, with caps to match and their hair falling in big
ramping curls about it--they were for all the world like the dancers
you see at a stage play and just as active. And to hear their voices,
sweet and musical, floating from ravine to ravine like a choir singing
in a place of echoes, aye that was something you might not soon forget.
But what they were doing in such a place, or how they came there, the
Lord above alone knew, and not a plain seaman like Jasper Begg.
[Illustration: Like dancers at a stage play.]
"What are they saying, Peter--what do you make of it?" I asked him,
under my breath.
"'Tis the French lingo," says he, foolish-like, "and if it's not that,
'tis the German--leastwise no Christian man that I know of could
distinguish between 'em."
"Peter," says I, "that's what you learn in the asylum. 'Tis no more the
French lingo than your own. Why, hearken to it."
Well, he listened, and soon we heard a pretty echo from the valley, for
they'd gone down towards the gardens now; and one word repeated often
had as nice a touch of music as I remember hearing. It was just this:
"Rosamunda--munda--munda," and you can't think how fresh the young
voice sounded in that lonely place, or what a chill it gave a man when
he remembered the devils over at the reef and what they'd done to the
crew of the Santa Cruz. I do believe to this day that our fellows
imagined they'd seen nothing more nor less than an apparition out of
the black rocks above them; and it wasn't until I'd spoken to them in
good honest English that I got them to go on again.
"Flesh or spirit, that's not a lot to whiten a man's gills," cried I;
"why, thunder, Peter Bligh, you're big enough to put 'em all in your
pocket, and soft enough they'd lie when they got there. Do you mean to
tell me," I asked him, "that four hale and strong men are to be
frightened out of their wits by three pretty girls?--and you a
religious man, too, Peter! Why, I'm ashamed of you, that I am, lads,
right down ashamed of you!"
They plucked up at this, and Peter he made haste to excuse himself.
"If they was Christian men with knives in their hands," says he, "I'd
put up a bit of a prayer, and trust to the Lord to shoot 'em; but them
three's agen all reason, at this time of night in such a lone place."
"Go on with you, Peter," chimes in Dolly Venn; "three ripping little
girls, and don't I wish they'd ask me in to tea! Why, look, they're
down by the house now, and somebody with them, though whether it's a
man or a woman I really don't pretend to say."
"I'm derned if I don't think it's a lion," says Seth Barker, asking my
pardon for the liberty.
We all stood still at this, for we were on the hillside just above the
house now; and down on the fair grass-way below us we espied the three
little girls with their torches still burning, and they as deep in talk
with a stranger as a man might have been with his own mother. A more
remarkable human being than the one these little ladies had happened
upon I don't look to see again the world around. Man or lion--God
forgive me if I know what to call him. He'd hair enough, shaggy hair
curling about his shoulders, to have stuffed a feather bed. His dress
was half man's, half woman's. He'd a tattered petticoat about his legs,
a seaman's blouse for his body, and a lady's shawl above that upon his
shoulders--his legs were bare as a barked tree, and what boots he had
should have been in the rag-shop. More wonderful still was it to
see the manner of the young ladies towards him--for I shall always
call them that--they petted him and fondled him, and one put a mock
crown of roses on his head. Then, with that pretty song of theirs,
"Rosamunda--munda--munda," they all ran off together towards the
northern shore and left us in the darkness, as surprised a party of
men as you'll readily meet with.
"Well," says Peter Bligh, and he was the first among us to speak,
"yon's a nice shipmate to speak on a quiet road. So help me thunder,
but I wouldn't pass round the tin for him in a beauty show, no, not
much! Did ye see the hair of him, captain--did ye see the hair?"
"And the girls kissing him as though he were Apollo," cries Dolly Venn,
who, I don't doubt, would have done the kissing willingly himself. But
I hushed their talk, and without more ado I went straight down to Ruth
Bellenden's house. All the strange things we'd seen and heard, the
uncanny sights, the firing on the reef, the wild man ashore, the little
girls from the hills--all these, I say, began to tell me my mistress's
story as a written book might never have done. "She's need of me," I
said, "sore need; and by God's help I'll bring her out of this place
before to-morrow's sun."
For how should I know what long days must pass before I was to leave
Ken's Island again?