LIGHTS UNDER THE SEA
The day fell powerfully hot, with scarce a breath of wind and a Pacific
sun beating fiercely on the barren rocks. What shelter was to be had we
got in the low cave behind the platform; but our eyes were rarely
turned away from the sea, and many a time we asked each other what kept
Clair-de-Lune or why the ship was missing. That the old man had some
good reason I made certain from the beginning; but the ship was a
greater matter. Either she was powerless to help us or Mister Jacob had
mistaken his orders. I knew not what to think. It was enough to be
trapped there on that bit of a rock and to tell each other that,
sleep-time or sun-time, we should be dead men if no help came to us.
"Belike the Frenchman's took with the fog and is doing a bit of a doze
on his own account," said Peter Bligh, gloomily, towards three bells in
the afternoon watch--and little enough that wasn't gloomy he'd spoken
that day. "Well, sleep won't fill my canteen anyway! I could manage a
rump-steak, thank you, captain, and not particular about the onions!"
They laughed at his notion of it, and Seth Barker sympathetically
pegged his belt up one. I was more sorry for little Dolly Venn than any
of them, though his pluck was wonderful to see.
"Are you hungry, Dolly, lad?" I asked him, by-and-bye. Foolish question
that it was, he answered me with a boy's bright laugh and something
which could make light of it:
"It's good for the constitution to fast, sir," he said, bravely; "our
curate used to tell us so when I went to church. We shall all be
saints--and Mr. Peter will have a halo if this goes on long enough!"
Now, Peter Bligh didn't take to that notion at all, and he called out,
savagely:
"To blazes with your halos! Is it Christianity to rob an honest man of
his victuals? Give me a round of top-side and leave me out of the
stained-glass window! I'm not taking any, lad--my features isn't
regular, as my poor----"
"Peter, Peter," said I, bringing him to, "so it's top-side to-day?
It was duck and green peas yesterday, Peter; but it won't be that
to-night, not by a long way!"
"If we sit on this rock long enough," chimed in Seth Barker, who was
over-patient for his size, "some on us will be done like a rasher. I
wouldn't make any complaint, captain; but I take leave to say it isn't
wisdom."
I had meant to say as much myself, but Peter Bligh was in before me,
and so I let him speak.
"Fog or no fog," cries he, "I'm for the shore presently, and that's
sure and certain. It ain't no handsome vulture that I'm going to feed
anyway! I don't doubt that you'll come with me, captain. Why, you could
play 'God save the King' on me and hear every note! I'm a toonful drum,
that's what I am----"
"Be what you like, but don't ask us to dance to your music," said I,
perhaps a little nettled; "as for going down, of course we shall,
Peter. Do you suppose I'm the one to die up here like a rat in a trap?
Not so, I do assure you. Give me twilight and a clear road, and I'll
show you the way quick enough!"
I could see that they were pleased, and Dolly Venn spoke up for them.
"You won't go alone, sir?" asked he.
"Indeed, and I shall, Dolly, and come back the same way. Don't you fear
for me, my lad," said I; "I've been in a fog before in my life, and out
of it, too, though I never loved them overmuch. If there's danger down
below, one man has eyes enough to see it. It would be a mortal waste
and pity that four should pay what one can give. But I won't forget
that you are hungry, and if there's roast duck about, Peter Bligh shall
have a wing, I promise him."
Well, they all sat up at this; and Peter Bligh, very solemnly crossing
his fingers after the Italian fashion, swore, as seamen will, that we'd
all go together, good luck or bad, the devil or the deep sea. Seth
Barker was no less determined upon it; and as for Dolly Venn, I believe
he'd have cried like a child if he'd been left behind. In the end I
gave way to them, and it was agreed that we should all set out
together, for better or worse, when the right time came.
"Your way, lads, not mine," said I; and pleased, too, at their
affection. "As you wish it, so shall it be; and that being agreed upon
I'll trouble Peter Bligh for his tobacco, for mine's low. We'll dine
this night, fog or no fog. 'Twould want to be something sulphurous, I'm
thinking, to put Peter off his grub. Aye, Peter, isn't that so? What
would you say now to an Irish stew with a bit of bacon in it, and a
glass of whisky to wash it down? Would fogs turn you back?"
"No, nor Saint Patrick himself, with a shillelagh in his hand. I'm
mortal empty, captain; and no man's more willing to leave this same
bird's nest though he had all the sulphur out of Vesuvius on his
diagram! We'll go down at sunset, by your leave, and God send us safely
back again!"
The others echoed my "Amen," and for an hour or more we all sat dozing
in the heat of the angry day. Once, I think towards seven bells of the
watch, Dolly Venn pointed out the funnels of a steamer on the northern
horizon; but the loom of the smoke was soon lost, and from that time
until six o'clock of the afternoon I do not think twenty words were to
be heard on the rock. We were just waiting, waiting, like weary men who
have a big work to do and are anxious to do it; and no sooner had the
sun gone down and a fresh breeze of night begun to blow, than we jumped
to our feet and told each other that the time had come.
"Do you, Peter, take the ladder and let Seth Barker steady the end of
it," said I. "The road's tricky enough, and precious little dinner
you'll get at the bottom of a thousand-foot chasm! If there's men on
the island, we shall know that soon enough. They cannot do more than
murder us, and murder has merits when starvation's set against it. Come
on, my lads," said I, "and keep a weather-eye open."
This I said, and willingly they heard me; no gladder party ever went
down a hillside than we four, whom hunger drove on and thirst made
brave. Dangerous places, which we should have crossed with wary feet at
any other time, now found us reckless and hasty.
We bridged the chasms with the ladder, and slid down it as though it
had been a rope. The bird's nest, where five days ago we'd first found
shelter from the islanders, detained us now no longer than would
suffice for thirsty men to bathe their faces and their hands in the
brook which gushed out from the hillside, and to drink a draught which
they remembered to their dying day. Aye, refreshing it was, more than
words can tell, and such strength it gave us that, if there had been a
hundred men on the mountain path; I do believe our steps would still
have been set for the bungalow. For we were about to learn the truth.
Curiosity is a good wind, even when you're hungry.
Now, there was a place on the headland, three hundred feet above the
valley, perhaps, whereat the hill path turned and, for the first time,
the island was plainly to be seen. Here at this place we stopped all
together and began to spy out the woods through which we had raced for
our lives six days ago. The sun had but just set then, and, short as
the twilight is in these parts, there was enough of it for us to make a
good observation and to be sure of many things. What I think struck us
all at the first was the absence of any fog such as we had heard about
both from the Frenchman and Ruth Bellenden's diary. A bluish vapour, it
is true, appeared to steam up from the woods and to loom in hazy clouds
above the lower marshland. But of fog in the proper sense there was not
a trace; and although I began to find the air a little heavy to
breathe, and a curious stupidness, for which I could not altogether
account, troubled my head, nevertheless I made sure that the story of
sleep-time was, in the main, a piece of nonsense and that we should
soon prove it to be so. Nor were the others behind me in this.
"It is no fog I see which would slow me down a knot!" said Peter Bligh,
when the island came into view; "to think that a man should go without
his dinner for yon peat smoke! Surely, captain, they are simple in
these parts and easy at the bogeys. 'Twill be roast duck, after
all--and, may-be, the sage thrown in!"
This was all well said, but Dolly Venn, quicker with his eyes, remarked
a stranger fact.
"There's no one about, sir, that I can see," said he, wisely, "and no
lights in the houses either. I wonder where all the people are? It's
curious that we shouldn't see some one."
He put it as a kind of question; but before I could answer him Seth
Barker chimed in with his deep voice, and pointed towards the distant
reef:
"They've lit up the sea, that's what they've done," said he.
"By thunder, they have!" cries Peter Bligh, in his astonishment; "and
generous about it, too. Saw any one such a thing as that?"
He indicated the distant reef, which seemed, as I bear witness, ablaze
with lights. And not only the reef, mark you, but the sea about it, a
cable's length, it may be, to the north and the south, shone like a
pool of fire, yellow and golden, and sometimes with a rare and
beautiful green light when the darkness deepened. Such a spectacle I
shall never see again if I sail a thousand ships! That luscious green
of the rolling seas, the spindrift tossed in crystals of light, foam
running on the rocks, but foam like the water of jewels, a dazzling
radiance--aye, a very carpet of quivering gold. Of this had they made
the northern channel. How it was done, what cleverness worked it, it
needed greater brains than mine to say. I was for all the world like a
man struck dumb with the beauty of something which pleases and awes him
in the same breath.
"Lights under the sea, and people living there! It's enough to make a
man doubt his senses," said I. "And yet the thing's true, lads: we're
sane men and waking; it isn't a story-book. You can prove it for
yourselves."
"Aye, and men going in and out like landsmen to their houses," cried
Peter, almost breathless; "it's a fearsome sight, captain, a fearsome
sight, upon my word."
The rest of us said nothing. We were just a little frightened group
that stared open-mouthed upon a seeming miracle. If we regarded the
things we saw with a seaman's reverence, let no one make complaint of
that. The spectacle was one to awe any man; nor might we forget that
those who appeared to live below the sea lived there, as Ruth Bellenden
had told us, because the island was a death-trap. We were in the trap
and none to show us the road out.
"Peter," said I, suddenly, for I wished to turn their thoughts away
from it, "are you forgetting it's dinner-time?"
"I clean forgot, captain, by all that's holy," said he.
"And not feeling very hungry, either," exclaims Dolly Venn, who had
begun to cough in the steaming vapour, which we laughed at. I was
anxious about the lad already, and it didn't comfort me to hear Seth
Barker breathing like an ox and telling me that it should be clearer in
the valley.
I said, "Yes, it might be," and all together we began to march again. A
sharp walk carried us from the hill path through the tangle of bushes
into the woods wherefrom danger first had come to us. The night had set
in by this time and a clear moon was showing in the sky. Rare and
beautiful, I must say, that moonlight was, shimmering through the hazy
blue vapour and coming down almost as a carpet of violet between the
broad green leaves. No scene that I have witnessed upon the stage of a
theatre was more pleasing to my eyes than that silent forest with its
lawns of grass and its patches of wonderful, fantastic light, and its
strange silence, and the loneliness of which it seemed to speak. So
awesome was it that I do not wonder we went a considerable way in
silence. We were afraid, perhaps, to tell each other what we thought.
When Peter Bligh cried out at last, we started at the sound of his
voice as though a stranger hailed us.
"Yonder," cried he, in a voice grown deep and husky; "yonder, captain,
what do you make of that? Is it living men or dead, or do my eyes
deceive me?"
I stopped short at his words and the others halted with me. We were in
a deep glen by this time; and all the surrounding woodland was shut
from our sight. Great trees spread their branches like a canopy above
us; the grass was soft and downy to the feet; the bewitching violet
light gave unnatural yet wonderful colours to the flowery bushes about
us. No fairy glen could have showed a heart more wonderful; and yet, I
say, we four stood on the borders of it, with white faces and blinking
eyes, and thoughts which none would change even with his own brother.
Why did he do it, you ask? Ah, I'll tell you why.
There were three men sleeping in the glen, and the face of one was
plainly to be seen. He lay upon his back, his hands clenched, his limbs
stiff, his eyes wide open as though some fearsome apparition had come
to him and was not to be passed by. Of the others, one had dropped face
downward and lay huddled up at the tree's foot; but the third was in a
natural attitude and I do believe that he was dead. For a long time we
stood there watching them--for he whose eyes were to be seen uttered
every now and then a dismal cry in his sleep, and the second began to
talk like a man in a delirium. Spanish he spoke, and that is a tongue I
do not understand. But the words told of agony if ever words did, and I
turned away from the scene at last as a man who couldn't bear to hear
them.
"They're sleeping," said I, "and little good to wake them, if Miss Ruth
speaks true. Come on, lads--the shore's our road and short's the time
to get there."
Peter Bligh reeled dizzily in his walk and began to talk
incoherently--a thing I had never heard him do before in all his life.
"They're sleeping, aye, and what's the waking to be? Is it the madhouse
or the ground? She spoke of the madhouse, and who'll deny, with reason?
There was air for a man in the heights and no parlour plants. I walked
forty miles to Cardiff Fair and didn't dance like this. Take bread when
you've no meat, and, by thunder, I'll fill your glasses."
Well, he gabbled on so, and not one of us gave him a hearing. I had my
arm linked in Dolly Venn's, for he was weak and hysterical, and I
feared he'd go under. Seth Barker, a strong man always, crashed through
the underwood like an elephant stampeding. The woods, I said, could
show us no more awesome sight than we had happed upon in the hollow;
but there I was wrong, for we hadn't tracked a quarter of a mile when
we stumbled suddenly upon the gardens of the bungalow, and there, lying
all together, were five young girls I judged to be natives, for they
had the shape of Pacific Islanders, and, seen in that strange light,
were as handsome and taking as European women. Asleep they were, you
couldn't doubt it; but, unlike the white men, they lay so still that
they might have been dead, while nothing but their smiling faces told
of life and breathing. They, at least, did not appear to suffer, and
that was something for our consolation.
"Look yonder, Dolly lad, and 'tell me what you see," said I, though,
truth to tell, every word spoken was like a knife through my chest;
"three young women sleeping as though they were in their own beds.
Isn't that a sight to keep a man up? If they can go through with it,
why not we--great men that have the sea's good health in them? Bear up,
my boy, well find a haven presently."
I didn't believe it, that goes without saying, nor, for that matter,
did he. But wild horses wouldn't have dragged the truth from him. He
was always a rare plucky one, was little Dolly Venn, and he behaved as
such that night.
"Better leave me? sir," he said; "I'm dead weight in the boat. Do you
go to the beach, and perhaps the ship will come back. You've been
very kind to me, Mister Begg, so kind, and now it's 'good-bye,' just
'good-bye' and a long good-night."
"Aye," said I, "and a sharp appetite for breakfast in the morning. Did
you ever hear that I was a bit of a strong man, Dolly? Well, you see, I
can pick you up as though you were a feather, and now that I have got
you into my arms I'm going to carry you--why, where do you think?--into
Ruth Bellenden's house, of course."
He said nothing, but lay in my arms like a child. Peter Bligh had
fallen headlong by the gate of the bungalow, and Seth Barker was about
raving. I had trouble to make him understand my words; but he took them
at last and did as I told him.
"Open that door--with the bludgeon if you can't do it otherwise. But
open it, man, open it!"
He drew himself up erect and dealt a blow upon the door which might
have brought down a factory chimney. I ran into the house with Dolly
Venn in my arms, and as I ran I called to Barker, for God's sake, to
help Mister Bligh. There would be no one in the house, I said, and
nothing to be got by whispers. We ran a race with death, and for the
moment had turned the corner before him.
"Get Mister Bligh to the house and bar up the door after you. The fog
will fill it in five minutes, and what then? Do you hear me, Seth
Barker--do you hear me?"
I asked the question plainly enough; but it was not Seth Barker who
replied to it. You shall judge of my feelings when a bright light
flashed suddenly in my face and a pleasant voice, coming out of
nowhere, said, quite civilly:
"The door, by all means, if you have any; regard for your lives or
mine!"