MY SHIPMATE LOUISE
VOL. III.
NEW NOVELS AT ALL LIBRARIES.
A FELLOW OF TRINITY. By ALAN ST. AUBYN and WALT WHEELER. 3 vols.
THE WORD AND THE WILL. By JAMES PAYN. 3 vols.
AUNT ABIGAIL DYKES. By GEORGE RANDOLPH. 1 vol.
A WARD OF THE GOLDEN GATE. By BRET HARTE. 1 vol.
RUFFINO. By OUIDA. 1 vol.
London: CHATTO & WINDUS, Piccadilly, W.
MY SHIPMATE LOUISE
The Romance of a Wreck
BY
W. CLARK RUSSELL
[Illustration]
IN THREE VOLUMES
VOL. III.
London
CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY
1890
PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
LONDON
CONTENTS
OF
THE THIRD VOLUME
CHAPTER PAGE
XXIX. THE CAPTAIN BEGINS A STORY 1
XXX. THE CAPTAIN MAKES A PROPOSAL 21
XXXI. THE FORM OF AGREEMENT 45
XXXII. A TRAGEDY 67
XXXIII. THE CARPENTER CALLS A COUNCIL 90
XXXIV. I ASSENT 116
XXXV. MY CAPTAINCY 140
XXXVI. I CONVERSE WITH WETHERLY 164
XXXVII. CAPE HORN 184
XXXVIII. LAND! 208
XXXIX. THE ISLAND 233
XL. I ESCAPE 256
XLI. WE SAIL AWAY 278
XLII. CONCLUSION 302
MY SHIPMATE LOUISE
CHAPTER XXIX
THE CAPTAIN BEGINS A STORY
For a couple of days nothing that need find a place in this narrative
happened. On the afternoon of the third day of our being aboard the
barque we sighted a sail, hull down, to windward. I climbed into the
main-top and examined her through the glass, and found her a brig, very
loftily rigged, her canvas soaring into moonsails, a sight I had never
before witnessed at sea, even in those days when ships went more heavily
draped than they do in these. She was heading our course, perhaps making
a slightly more weatherly navigation, and full blown as she looked to
be—a large, soft cloud of canvas in the lenses of the telescope—we
passed her at the rate of two feet to her one; and some time before
sunset we had sunk her to her royals on the quarter.
Miss Temple wanted me to ask Captain Braine to run the _Lady Blanche_
into speaking distance of the brig, that we might ascertain where she
was bound to and get on board of her. ‘For she may be sailing,’ she
said, ‘to some South American port that will be, comparatively speaking,
close at hand, where we shall be easily able to find a ship to convey us
home.’ But after thinking a little, I decided to keep quiet. It would
not sound very graciously to request Captain Braine to tranship us into
an outward-bound vessel: nor would it be wise to put him to the trouble
of deviating from his course merely, perhaps, to ascertain that the brig
was bound round the Horn to parts more distant than the Mauritius.
Besides, I had no wish to court a blunt refusal from Captain Braine to
put his vessel within hailing distance of another until a real
opportunity to get to England should present itself by some
homeward-bound ship passing close; when, of course, I should take my
chance of his assent or refusal. So I suffered the brig to veer away out
of sight without speaking to the captain about her, or even appearing to
again heed her after I had come down from aloft.
It was a terribly dull, anxious, weary time; I am speaking of those two
uneventful days. The hot breeze had drawn abeam, and blew feverishly
under a cloudless sky that was a dazzle of brass all about the sun from
morn till evening. We showed royals and a foretopmast-studdingsail to
it, and drove along over the smooth plain with half a fathom’s height of
foam at the cutwater, and a spin and hurry of snow alongside that made
the eyes which watched it reel. I entered the day’s work and the
necessary observations, and so forth, in the log-book in compliance with
the captain’s request. He was delighted with my handwriting, sat
contemplating it with his unwinking gaze for some considerable time, as
though it were a picture, and then, drawing a deep breath, exclaimed:
‘There’s no question but that eddication’s a first-class article. Look
at your writing alongside of mine, and at mine alongside of Chicken’s.
Chicken and me was brought up in the same college—a ship’s forecastle,
and so far from standing amazed at my own fist and that there spelling,
I’m only astonished that I’m able to read or write at all.”
However, though he broke forth thus, he fell silent, and remained so
afterwards, became, indeed, extraordinarily meditative, and at mealtimes
scarcely opened his lips, though his stare grew more deliberate in
proportion as his reserve increased, until it came at last to his never
taking his eyes off one or the other of us. Again and again Miss Temple
would say to me that she was certain he had something on his mind, and
she looked frightened as she theorized upon his secret. Sometimes, when
on deck, I would observe him standing at the rail, gazing seaward, and
talking to himself, frequently snapping his fingers, whipping round, as
though suddenly conscious that he had talked aloud, then starting off in
a short, restless, unsteady walk, coming to an abrupt halt to again
mutter and to snap his fingers with the air of one laboring to form a
resolution.
It was on the afternoon of the second day of those two about which I
have spoken, and it was drawing on to six o’clock, four bells of the
first dog-watch. The captain had been on deck since four, and for the
last twenty minutes he had been standing a little to the right of the
fellow who was steering, eyeing me with an intentness that had a long
time before become embarrassing, and I may say distressing. Whenever I
turned my head towards him, I found his gaze fixed upon me. Miss Temple
and I were seated too near him to admit of our commenting upon the
singular regard that he was bestowing upon me. She contrived to whisper,
however, that she was certain his secret, whatever it was, was slowly
rising from the depths of his soul to the surface of his mind.
‘I seem to find a change in the man’s face,’ she said under her breath.
‘Let us walk, Mr. Dugdale. Such scrutiny as that is unbearable.’
As she spoke, four bells were struck forward. Mr. Lush, who was leaning
against his windlass end, knocked the ashes out of his pipe and slowly
came aft to relieve the deck. I rose to walk with Miss Temple as she had
proposed. Captain Braine called my name. He met me as I approached him,
and said: ‘I want to have a talk with you in my cabin.’
There was something in his manner that alarmed me. How shall I express
it? An air of uneasy exultation, as of a mind proud of the achievement
of a resolution at which the secret instincts tremble. For a moment I
hung in the wind, strongly reluctant to box myself up alone, unarmed as
I was, with a man whose insanity, to call it so, seemed stronger in him
at this moment than I had ever before observed it. But the carpenter had
now gained the poop; and the captain, on seeing him, instantly walked to
the companion, down which he went to midway the ladder, and there stood
waiting for me to follow him.
Tut, thought I, surely I am more than his match in strength, and I am on
my guard! As I put my foot on the ladder—the captain descending on
seeing me coming—I paused to lean over the cover and say to Miss Temple:
‘If you will remain on deck, I shall be able to get away from him if he
should prove tedious, by telling him that I have you to look after.’
‘What do you imagine he wishes to say?’ she exclaimed with a face of
alarm that came very near to consternation.
I could only answer with a helpless shrug of the shoulders, and the next
minute I had entered Captain Braine’s cabin.
‘Pray sit you down,’ said he. He pulled off his straw hat and sent it
wheeling through the air into a corner, as though it were a boomerang,
and fell to drying his perspiring face upon a large pocket-handkerchief;
then folding his arms tightly across his breast, and crooking his right
knee whilst he dropped his chin somewhat, he stood gazing at me under
the shadow of his very heavy eyebrows with a steadfastness I could only
compare to the stare of a cat’s eye.
‘Well, Captain Braine,’ said I in an off-hand way, though I watched him
with the narrowness of a man who goes in fear, ‘what now is it that I am
to hear from you? Do you propose to ask me more questions on navigation
and seamanship?’
‘Mr. Dugdale,’ he exclaimed, speaking very slowly, though the excitement
that worked in him rendered his voice deep and unusually clear and loud,
‘I have come to the conclusion that you are a gentleman very well able
to sarve me, and by sarving me to sarve yourself. I’ve been a-turning of
it over in all hours of the day and a good many hours in the night, too,
since the moment when ye first stepped over the side, and I’ve resolved
to take ye into my confidence.’
He nodded, and stood looking at me without speech for a few moments;
then seated himself near me and leaned forwards with a forefinger upon
his thumb in a posture of computing.
‘It was in the year 1831,’ he began, ‘that I was third-mate aboard of a
ship called the _Ocean Monarch_. We sailed from London with a cargo of
mixed goods, bound to the port of Callao. Nothing happened till we was
well round to the west’ards of Cape Horn, when the ship was set afire by
the live cinders of the cabin stove burning through the deck. The cargo
was of an inflammable kind. In less than two hours the vessel was in a
blaze from stem to starn, by which time we had got the boats over, and
lay at a distance waiting for her to disappear. There was two boats, the
long-boat and a jolly-boat. The long-boat was a middling big consarn,
and most of the men went in her along with the captain, a man named
Matthews, and the second mate, a foreign chap named Falck. In our boat
was the chief mate, Mr. Ruddiman, myself, two sailors, and a couple of
young apprentices. We was badly stocked with water and food; and after
the _Ocean Monarch_ had foundered, Captain Matthews sings out to Mr.
Ruddiman to keep company. But it wasn’t to be done. The long-boat ran
away from us, and then she hove-to and took us in tow; but there came on
a bit of a sea, and the line parted, and next morning we was alone.’
He paused.
‘I am closely following you,’ said I, fancying I perceived in his face a
suspicion of inattention in me, and wondering what on earth his story
was going to lead to. He stood up, and folding his arms in the first
attitude he had adopted, proceeded, his voice deep and clear.
‘It came on to blow hard from the south’ard and east’ard, and we had to
up hellum and run before the seas for our lives. This went on for three
or four days, till Mr. Ruddiman reckoned that we was blowed pretty nigh
half-way across to the Marquesas. It then fell a stark calm, and we lay
roasting under a broiling sun with no fresh water in the boat, and
nothing to eat but a handful of mouldy fragments of biscuit in the
bottom of a bag that had been soaked with spray o’er and o’er again. One
of the apprentices went mad, and jumped overboard, and was drownded. We
was too weak to help him; besides, ne’er a one of us but thought him
well off in that cool water, leaving thirst and hunger behind him, and
sinking into a deep sleep, as it might be. Then the other apprentice was
took bad, and died in a fit of retching, and we put him over the side.
When daylight broke on the morning following that job, we saw one of the
sailors dead in the bottom of the boat. T’other was the sicklier man of
the two, yet he hung out, sir, and lived for three days. We kept his
body.’
His deep tones ceased, and he stared at me. Just a story of a bad
shipwreck, thought I, so far.
‘There came a light breeze from the east’ard,’ he continued after a
little pause; ‘but neither Mr. Ruddiman nor me had the strength of a
kitten in our arms, and we let the boat drive, waiting for death. I
thought it had come that same afternoon, and on top of the sensation
followed a fit, I allow, for I recollect no more, till on opening my
eyes I found myself in a hammock in the ’tweendecks of a little ship.
The craft was a small Spanish vessel, called the _Rosario_. She had
floated into sight of our boat, and there was just enough strength left
in Mr. Ruddiman to enable him to flourish his handkerchief so as they
might see the boat had something alive in her. Ne’er a soul aboard spoke
a syllable of English, and neither Mr. Ruddiman nor me understood a word
of Spanish. We couldn’t even get to larn where the brigantine was bound
to, or where she hailed from. We conversed with the crew in signs all
the same as though we had been cast away among savages. We was both
hearty men in those days, and it wasn’t long afore we had picked up what
we had let fall during our ramble in the boat. Well, the course the
vessel made was something to the south’ard o’ west, and I took it we
were heading for an Australian port; but though I’d make motions, and
draw with a piece of chalk on the deck, I’d never get more’n a stare,
and a shake of the head and a grin, and a shrug of the shoulders, for an
answer. In fact, it was like being sent adrift along with a company of
monkeys.’
He dried his face again, took his seat as before, and leaned towards me
in his former computing posture with his eyes glued to my face. The
singularity of their habitual expression was now greatly heightened by a
look of wildness, which I attributed in a measure to the emotions
kindled in him by this recital of past and dreadful sufferings. I sat as
though engrossed by his story; but I had an eye for every movement in
him as well as for his face.
‘It came on to blow a gale of wind one night after we had been aboard
the brigantine about a fortnight. They were a poor lot of sailors in the
vessel, and so many as to be in one another’s road. They got the little
ship in the trough, somehow, under more sail than she could stand up to;
the main-topmast went; it brought down the fore-topmast, which wrecked
the bowsprit and jib-boom. The Spaniards ran about like madmen, some of
them crossing themselves, and praying about the decks; others bawling in
a manner to terrify all hands, though I can’t tell ye what was said; the
ship was in a horrible mess with wreckage, which nobody attempted to
clear away. It blew very hard, and the seas were bursting in smoke over
the brigantine, that lay unmanageable. At last the boatswain of her,
holding a sounding-rod in his hand, yelled out something, and there was
a rush for the boats stowed amidships. They were so crazy with fear they
hardly knew how to swing ’em over the side. Ruddiman says to me: “I
shall stick to the ship. If those boats are not swamped, they’ll blow
away, and her people’ll starve, and our late job in that line is quite
enough for me.” I said I would stick by the ship, too, and we stood
watching whilst the Spaniards got their boats over. It was luck, and not
management, that set the little craft afloat. The captain roaring out,
made signs to us to come; but we, pointing to the sea, made motions to
signify that they would be capsized and shook our heads. They were mad
with fright, and weren’t going to stay to argue, and in twos and threes
at a time they sprang into the boats like rats; and whether they took
food and water with them I can’t tell ye; but this I know, that within
twenty minutes of the Spanish bo’sun’s singing out, the two boats had
disappeared, and Mr. Ruddiman and me were alone.’
He rose as he said this, and fell to pacing the cabin floor in silence,
with his head drooped, and his arms hanging up and down like pump
handles.
‘A very interesting story, captain, so far as it goes,’ said I, shifting
a bit on my seat, as though I supposed that the end was not far off now.
‘Of course you were taken off by some passing vessel?’
He made no reply to this, nor, indeed, seemed to heed me. After several
turns, he stopped, and looked me in the face, and continued to stare
with a knitted brow, as though he were returning to his first resolution
to communicate his secret with an effort that fell little short of
mental anguish. He came slowly to his chair, and started afresh.
‘We sounded the well, and presently discovered that the water she was
taking in drained through the decks, and that she was tight enough in
her bottom; and we reckoned that if we could get her out of the trough,
she’d live buoyant; so we searched for the carpenter’s chest, and found
it, and let fly at the raffle with a chopper apiece, and after a bit,
cleared the vessel of the wrecked spars and muddle, and got her to look
up to it, and she made middling good weather, breasting it prettily
under a tarpaulin seized in the weather main rigging. The gale blew
itself out after twenty-four hours, and the wind shifted into the
east’ards. We let drop the foresail; there was no more canvas on her to
set, with the head of the mast gone, and with it the peak halliards and
the sail in rags. Our notion was to head for the Sandwich Islands, for
we stood by so doing to fall in with a whaler, and failing help of that
sort there was civilisation over at Hawaii; but t’others of the
Polynesian rocks were mostly cannibal islands, we believed, and we were
for giving them a wide berth. Yet we could do nothing but blow before
it. _That_ you’ll understand, Mr. Dugdale?’
‘Quite,’ said I.
‘It came on thick,’ he continued, speaking with intensity and in an
utterance deep, clear, and loud, ‘with a bit of a swell from the
east’ards and a fresh wind singing over it. I was at the hellum in the
afternoon, and Ruddiman lay asleep close against the companion hatch. I
was drowsy for want of rest, and there was sleep enough in my eyes to
make me see very ill. Suddenly looking ahead, I caught sight of a sort
of whitish shadow, and even whilst I was staring at it, wondering
whether it was vapour or white water, it took shape as a low coral
island with clumps of trees here and there and a small rise of greenish
land amidships of it. I put the hellum hard over, and called to
Ruddiman, who jumps up and takes a look. “A dead lee-shore, Braine,”
says he; “what’s to be done? There’s no clawing off under this canvas.”
What _was_ to be done? The land lay in a stretch of reef right along our
beam, with the brigantine’s head falling off again to the drag of the
foresail, spite of the hellum being hard down. In less than twenty
minutes she struck, was took by the swell, and drove hard aground, and
lay fixed on her bilge with her deck aslope to the beach that was within
an easy jump from the rail.’
He broke off, and went in a restless, feverish way to the table and
unlocked and drew out a drawer, looked at something within, then shut
the drawer with a convulsive movement of the arm and turned the key. I
was now heartily wishing he would make an end. Down to this, the tale
was just a commonplace narrative of marine suffering, scarcely reclaimed
from insipidity by the singularity of the figure that recited it. But
that was not quite it. I was under a constant fear of the next piece of
behaviour he might exhibit, and my alarm was considerably increased by
the air of mystery with which he had examined the drawer and hurriedly
closed it, as though to satisfy himself that the weapon he had lodged
there was still in its place. Having locked the drawer, he stood
thinking a little, then taking up his Bible from the table, he
approached me with it.
‘Mr. Dugdale,’ he exclaimed, ‘before I can go on, I must have ye kiss
this here book to an oath. Take it!’ he cried with a sudden fierceness;
‘hold it, and now follow me.’
‘Stop a minute,’ I said; ‘you are telling me a story that I have really
no particular desire to hear. You have no right to exact an oath from me
upon a matter that I cannot possibly be in the smallest decree
interested in.’
‘It’s to come,’ said he in a raven note; ‘ye shall be interested afore
long. Take the oath, sir,’ he added with a dark look.
‘But what oath, man, what oath is it that I am to take?’
‘That as the Lord is now a-listening to ye, you will never divulge to
mortal creature the secret I’m agoing to tell ye, so help you God: and
if you break your oath, may ye be struck dead at the moment of it, and
your soul chased to the very gates of hell. So help ye God, again!’
I looked at him with astonishment and fear. No pen could express his
manner as he pronounced these words—the dull fire that entered his eyes
and seemed to enlarge them yet, the solemn note his deep and trembling,
yet distinctly clear voice took—his mien of command that had the force
of a menace in it as he stood upreared before me, his nostrils wide, his
face a dingy sallow, one arm thrusting the little volume at me, the
other hanging at his side with the fingers clenched.
‘I dare not take that oath,’ said I, after a little spell of thinking,
with every nerve in me tight-strung, so to speak, in readiness to defend
myself should he attack me. ‘Miss Temple will certainly inquire what our
talk has been about; I will not undertake to be silent to her, sir. Keep
your secret. It is not too late. Your narrative is one of shipwreck, and
so far there is nothing in it to betray.’
With that I rose.
‘Stop!’ he exclaimed; ‘you may tell the lady. There need be no
objection. I see how it lies betwixt you and her, and I’m not so
onreasonable as to reckon she’ll never be able to coax it out of ye. No.
Your interests’ll be hers, and of course she goes along with us. ’Tis my
crew I’m thinking of.’
I was horribly puzzled. At the same time curiosity was growing in me;
and with the swiftness of thought I reflected that whether I had his
secret or not it would be all the same; he was most assuredly a madman
in this direction, anyhow, if not in others; and it could be nothing
more than some insane fancy which he had it in his head to impart, and
which might be worth hearing if only for the sake of recalling it as an
incident of this adventure when Miss Temple and I should have got away
from the barque.
‘Mr. Dugdale, you will swear, sir,’ he exclaimed.
‘Very well,’ said I; ‘but put it a little more mildly, please. Leave out
the gates of hell, for instance; or see—suffer me to swear in my own
way. Give me that book.’
I observed that his hand was trembling violently as I took the volume
from him.
‘I swear,’ I said, ‘to keep secret from all mortal persons in this
world, saving Miss Temple, whatever it is your intention now to tell me.
So help me God,’ and I put the book to my lips. ‘That oath excludes your
crew,’ I added, ‘and I hope you’re satisfied?’
His face took a little complexion of life, and he almost smiled.
‘It’ll do—oh yes, it’ll do,’ he exclaimed. ‘I knew I could count upon
you. Now then for it.’
He resumed his seat, and leaning towards me with his unwinking eyes
fixed upon my face as usual, he proceeded thus.