As I stood at the wheel I considered how I should act when the storm
had passed. And I was justified in so speculating, because now the sky
was clear right away round, and the stars large and bright, though a
strong gale was still blowing and keeping the sea very heavy.
Indeed, the clearness of the sky made me think that the wind would go
to the eastward, but as yet there was no sign of it veering from the
old quarter.
We had been heading west ever since we hove to, and travelling
broadside on dead south south-east. Now, if wind and sea dropped, our
business would be to make sail if possible, and, with the wind holding
north north-west, make an eight hours' board north-easterly, and then
round and stand for Bermuda.
This, of course, would depend upon the weather.
It was, however, more than possible that we should be picked up very
soon by some passing ship. It was not as though we were down away in
the South Pacific, or knocking about in the poisonous Gulf of Guinea,
or up in the North Atlantic at 60°. We were on a great ocean highway,
crossed and re-crossed by English, American, Dutch, and French ships,
to and from all parts of the world; and bad indeed would our fortune
be, and baleful the star under which we sailed, if we were not
overhauled in a short time and assistance rendered us.
A great though unexpressed ambition of mine was to save the ship and
navigate her myself, not necessarily to England, but to some port
whence I could communicate with her owners and ask for instructions.
As I have elsewhere admitted, I was entirely dependent on my
profession, my father having been a retired army surgeon, who had died
extremely poor, leaving me at the age of twelve an orphan, with no
other friend in the world than the vicar of the parish we dwelt in,
who generously sent me to school for two years at his own expense, and
then, after sounding my inclinations, apprenticed me to the sea.
Under such circumstances, therefore, it would be highly advantageous
to my interests to save the ship, since my doing so would prefer some
definite claims upon the attention of the owners, or perhaps excite
the notice of another firm more generous in their dealings with their
servants, and of a higher commercial standing.
Whilst I stood dreaming in this manner at the wheel, allowing my
thoughts to run on until I pictured myself the commander of a fine
ship, and ending in allowing my mind to become engrossed with thoughts
of Mary Robertson, whom I believed I should never see again after we
had bidden each other farewell on shore, and who would soon forget the
young second mate, whom destiny had thrown her with for a little time
of trouble and suffering and death, I beheld a figure advance along the
poop, and on its approach I perceived the boatswain.
"I've been sounding the well, Mr. Royle," said he. "I roused up on a
sudden and went and did it, as I woke up anxious; and there's bad news,
sir, twelve inches o' water."
"Twelve inches!" I cried.
"It's true enough. I found the bull's-eye on the cuddy table, and the
rod don't tell no lies when it's properly used."
"The pumps suck at four inches, don't they?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then that's a rise of eight inches since half-past nine o'clock. What
time is it now?"
"Twenty minutes arter ten."
"We must man the pumps at once. Call Cornish. You'll find the steward
on a mattress against the companion ladder."
He paused a moment to look round him at the weather, and then went away.
I could not doubt now that the ship was leaky, and after what we
had endured, and my fond expectation of saving the vessel--and the
miserable death, after all our hopes, that might be in store for us--I
felt that it was very very hard on us, and I yielded to a fit of
despair.
What struck most home to me was that my passionate dream to save Mary
Robertson might be defeated. The miseries which had been accumulated on
her wrung my heart to think of. First her shipwreck, and then the peril
of the mutiny, and then the dreadful storm that had held us face to
face with death throughout the fearful day, and then the death of her
father, and now this new horror of the ship whereon we stood filling
with water beneath our feet.
Yet hope--and God be praised for this mercy to all men--springs
eternal, and after a few minutes my despair was mastered by reflection.
If the ship made no more water than eight inches in three-quarters
of an hour, it would be possible to keep her afloat for some days by
regular spells at the pump, and there were four hands to work them if
Miss Robertson steered whilst we pumped. In that time it would be a
thousand to one if our signal of distress was not seen and answered.
Presently I heard the men pumping on the main-deck, and the boatswain's
voice singing to encourage the others. What courage that man had! I,
who tell this story, am ashamed to think of the prominence I give to
my own small actions when all the heroism belongs to him. I know not
what great writer it was who, visiting the field of the battle of
Waterloo, asked how it was that the officers who fell in that fight had
graves and monuments erected to them, when the soldiers--the privates
by whom all the hard work was done, who showed all the courage and won
the battle--lay nameless in hidden pits? And so when we send ships to
discover the North Pole we have little to say about poor Jack, who
loses his life by scurvy, or his toes and nose by frost-bites, who
labours manfully, and who makes all the success of the expedition
so far as it goes. Our shouts are for Jack's officer; we title him,
we lionize him--_his_ was all the work, all the suffering, all the
anxiety, we think. I, who have been to sea, say that Jack deserves as
much praise as his skipper, and perhaps a little more; and if honour
is to be bestowed, let Jack have his share; and if a monument is to be
raised, let poor Jack's name be written on the stone as well as the
other's; for be sure that Jack could have done without the other, but
also be sure that the other couldn't have done without Jack.
Chained to my post, which I dared not vacate for a moment, for the ship
pitched heavily, and required close watching as she came to and fell
off upon the swinging seas, I grew miserably anxious to learn how the
pumping progressed, and felt that, after the boatswain, my own hands
would do four times the work of the other two.
It was our peculiar misfortune that of the four men on board the ship
three only should be capable; and that as one of the three men was
constantly required at the wheel, there were but two available men
to do the work. Had the steward been a sailor our difficulties would
have been considerably diminished, and I bitterly deplored my want
of judgment in allowing Fish and the Dutchman to be destroyed; for
though I would not have trusted Johnson and Stevens, yet the other two
might have been brought over to work for us, and I had no doubt that
the spectacle of the perishing wretches in the long-boat, as she was
whirled past us, would have produced as salutary an effect upon them as
it had upon Cornish; and with two extra hands of this kind we could not
only have kept the pumps going, but have made shift to sail the ship
at the same time.
The hollow thrashing sounds of the pump either found Miss Robertson
awake or aroused her, for soon after the pumping had commenced she came
on deck, swathed in the big warm overcoat and fur cap.
Such a costume for a girl must make you laugh in the description; and
yet, believe me, she lost in nothing by it. The coat dwarfed her figure
somewhat, but the fur cap looked luxurious against her fair hair,
and nothing could detract from the exquisite femininity of her face,
manner, and carriage. I speak of the impression she had made on me in
the daytime; the starlight only revealed her white face now to me.
"Is the water still coming into the ship?" she asked.
"The bo'sun has reported to me that eight inches deep have come into
her since half-past nine."
"Is that much?"
"More than we want."
"I don't like to trouble you with my questions, Mr. Royle; but I am
very, very anxious."
"Of course you are; and do not suppose that you can trouble. Ask me
what you will. I promise to tell you the truth."
"If you find that you cannot pump the water out as fast as it comes in,
what will you do?"
"Leave the ship."
"How?" she exclaimed, looking around her.
"By that quarter-boat there."
"But it would fill with water and sink in such waves as these."
"These waves are not going to last, and it is quite likely that by
this time to-morrow the sea will be calm."
"Will the ship keep afloat until to-morrow?"
"If the water does not come in more rapidly than it does at present,
the ship will keep afloat so long as we can manage to pump her out
every hour. And so," said I, laughing to encourage her, "we are not
going to die all at once, you see."
She drew quite close to me and said--
"I shall never fear death while you remain on board, Mr. Royle. You
have saved me from death once, and, though I may be wicked in daring to
prophesy, yet I feel _certain_--_certain_," she repeated, with singular
emphasis, "that you will save my life again."
"I shall try very hard, be sure of that," I answered.
"I believe--no, it is not so much a belief as a strong conviction,
with which my mind seems to have nothing to do, that, whatever dangers
may be before us, you and I will not perish."
She paused, and I saw that she was looking at me earnestly.
"You will not think me superstitious if I tell you that the reason of
my conviction is a dream? My poor father came and stood beside me: he
was so _real_! I stretched out my arms to him, and he took my hand and
said, '_Darling, do not fear! He who has saved your life once will
save it again. God will have mercy upon you and him for the prayers
you offered to Him._' He stooped and kissed me and faded away, and I
started up and heard the men pumping. I went to look at him, for I
thought ... I thought he had really come to my side.... Oh, Mr. Royle,
his spirit is with us!"
Though my mind was of too prosaic a turn to catch at any significance
in a dream, yet there was a strange, deep, solemn tenderness in her
voice and manner as she related this vision, that impressed me. It made
my heart leap to hear her own sweet lips pronounce her faith in me,
and my natural hopes and longings for life gathered a new light and
enthusiasm from her own belief in our future salvation.
"Shipwrecked persons have been saved by a dream before now," I replied,
gravely. "Many years ago a vessel called the _Mary_ went ashore on some
rocks to the southward of one of the Channel Islands. A few of the
crew managed to gain the rocks, where they existed ten or twelve days
without water or any kind of food save limpets, which only increased
their thirst without relieving their hunger. A vessel bound out of
Guernsey passed the rocks at a distance too far away to observe the
signals of distress made by the perishing men. But the son of the
captain had twice dreamed that there were persons dying on those rocks,
and so importuned his father to stand close to them that the man with
great reluctance consented. In this way, and by a dream, those sailors
were saved. Though I do not, as a rule, believe in dreams, I believe
this story to be true, and I believe in your dream."
She remained silent, but the ship presently giving a sudden lurch, she
put her hand on my arm to steady herself, and kept it there. Had I
dared I should have bent my head and kissed the little hand. She could
not know how much she made me love her by such actions as this.
"The boatswain has told me," she said, after a short silence, "that you
want to save the ship. I asked him why? Are you angry with me for being
curious?"
"Not in the least. What did he answer?"
"He said that you thought the owners would recompense you for your
fidelity, and promote you in their service."
"Now how could he know this? I have never spoken such thoughts to him."
"It would not be difficult to guess such a wish."
"Well, I don't know that I have any right to expect promotion or
recompense of any kind from owners who send their ship to sea so badly
provisioned that the men mutiny."
"But if the water gains upon the ship you will not be able to save her?"
"No, she must sink."
"What will you do then?"
"Put you on shore or on board another ship," I replied, laughing at my
own evasion, for I knew what she meant.
"Oh, of course, if we do not reach the shore we shall none of us be
able to do anything," she said, dropping her head, for she stood close
enough to the binnacle light to enable me to see her movements and
almost catch the expression on her face. "I mean what will you do when
we get ashore?"
"I must try to get another ship."
"To command?"
"Oh dear no! as second mate, if they'll have me."
"If command of a ship were given you would you accept it?"
"If I could, but I can't."
She asked quickly, "Why not?"
"Because I have not passed an examination as master."
She was silent again, and I caught myself listening eagerly to the
sound of the pumping going on on the main-deck and wondering at my own
levity in the face of our danger. But I could not help forgetting a
very great deal when she was at my side.
All at once it flashed upon me that her father owned several ships, and
that her questions were preliminary to her offering me the command of
one of them.
I give you my honour that all recollection of who and what she was,
of her station on shore, of her wealth as the old man's heiress, had
as absolutely gone out of my mind as if the knowledge had never been
imparted. What she was to me--what love and the wonderful association
of danger and death had endeared her to me as--was what she was as she
stood by my side, a sweet and gentle woman whom my heart was drawing
closer and closer to every hour, whose life I would have died to
preserve, whose danger made my own life a larger necessity to me than I
should have felt it.
A momentary emotion of disappointment, a resentment whereof I knew not
the meaning, through lacking the leisure or the skill to analyse it,
made me turn and say--
"Would you like me to command one of your ships, Miss Robertson?"
"Yes," she answered, promptly.
"As a recompense for my humane efforts to preserve you from drowning?"
She withdrew her hand from my arm and inclined her head to look me full
in the face.
"Mr. Royle, I never thought you would speak to me like that."
"I want no recompense for what I have done, Miss Robertson."
"I have not offered you any recompense."
"Let me feel," I said, "that you understand it is possible for an
English sailor to do his duty without asking or expecting any manner of
reward. The Humane Society's medals are not for him."
"Why are you angry with me?" she exclaimed, sinking her head, and
speaking with a little sob in her voice.
I was stirred to the heart by her broken tones, and answered--
"I am not angry. I could not be angry with you. I wish you to feel that
what I have done, that whatever I may do is ... is...."
I faltered and stopped--an ignominious break down! though I think it
concealed the true secret of my resentment.
I covered my confusion by taking her hand, and resting it on my arm
again.
"Do you mean," she said, "that all you have done has been for my sake
only--out of humanity--that you would do as much for anybody else?"
"No," said I, boldly.
Again she withdrew her hand and remained silent, and I made up my mind
not to interrupt her thoughts.
After a few moments she went to the ship's side, and stood there;
sometimes looking at the stars, and sometimes at the water that
stretched away into the gloom in heavy breaking seas.
The wind was singing shrilly up aloft, but the sounds of the pumping
ceased on a sudden.
I awaited the approach of the boatswain with inexpressible anxiety.
After an interval I saw his figure come up the poop ladder.
"Pumps suck!" he roared out.
"Hurrah!" I shouted. "Down with you for grog all round," for the other
two were following the boatswain. But they all came aft first and stood
near the wheel, blowing like whales, and Miss Robertson joined the
group.
"If it's no worse than this, bo'sun," I exclaimed, "she'll do."
"Aye, she'll do, sir; but it's hard work. My arms feel as though they
wos tied up in knots."
"So do mine," said the steward.
"Shall I take the wheel?" asked Cornish.
"No; go and get some grog and turn in, all of you. I am as fresh as a
lark, and will stay here till twelve o'clock," I replied.
The steward at once shuffled below.
"Boatswain, ask Mr. Royle to let me take the wheel," said Miss
Robertson. "He has been talking to me for the last half-hour and
sometimes held the wheel with one hand. I am sure I can hold it."
"As you won't go below, Miss Robertson, you shall steer; but I will
stop by you," I said.
"That will be of no use!" she exclaimed.
Cornish smothered a laugh and walked away.
"Now, bo'sun, down with you," I cried. "I'll have you up again shortly
to sound the well. But half an hour's sleep is something. If you get
knocked up, I lose half the ship's company--two-thirds of it."
"All right, sir," he replied, with a prodigious yawn. "You an' the lady
'll know how to settle this here business of steering."
And off he went.
"You see how obedient these men are, Miss Robertson. Why will you not
obey orders, and get some sleep?"
"I have offended you, Mr. Royle, and I am very, very sorry."
"Let us make peace then," I said, holding out my hand.
She took it; but when I had got her hand, I would not let it go for
some moments.
She was leaving the deck in silence when she came back and said--
"If we should have to leave this ship suddenly, I should not like--it
would make me unhappy for ever to think of poor papa left in her."
She spoke, poor girl, with a great effort.
I answered immediately--
"Any wish you may express shall be carried out."
"He would go down in this ship without a prayer said for him," she
exclaimed, sobbing.
"Will you leave this with me? I promise you that no tenderness, no
reverence, no sincere sorrow shall be wanting."
"Mr. Royle, you are a dear good friend to me. God knows how lonely I
should have been without you--and yet--I made you angry."
"Do not say that. What I do I do for your safety--for your ultimate
happiness--so that when we say farewell to each other on shore, I
may feel that the trust which God gave me in you was honourably and
faithfully discharged. I desire, if our lives are spared, that this
memory may follow me when all this scene is changed, and we behold it
again only in our dreams. I should have told you my meaning just now,
but one cannot always express one's thoughts."
"You have told me your meaning, and I shall not forget it. God bless
you!" she exclaimed, in her calm, earnest voice, and went slowly down
into the cuddy.