WE SAIL AWAY
It did not take me long to recover my breath. The swim had, indeed,
comparatively speaking, been a short one; there was no tide that I had
been in any degree sensible of; and I had lost nothing but breath,
thanks to my eagerness, to the riotous tumult of spirits that had nerved
my limbs with steel and rendered me unconscious of fatigue. I crawled up
the ladder and peered over the rail. The gloom lay heavy upon the
quarter-deck and waist, and objects were hard to distinguish. All was
motionless, however, there and on the forecastle; but I could now
discern two figures walking on the poop on the port side. The
spanker-boom and mizzen-mast and the several fittings of skylight and
companion, and so on, had concealed them from my observation whilst I
swam, approaching the ship as I had on the starboard side. Their shapes
showed tolerably clear against the stars that sparkled over the rail and
betwixt the squares of the rigging, and I stood staring with no more of
me showing over the line of bulwarks than my head till they had come to
the rail that protected the break of the poop, and I then made out that
one of them was Miss Temple.
This convinced me that the other must be Wetherly, for it was not to be
imagined that the girl would seek refuge from even a more frightful
loneliness than hers was in the society of young Forrest.
At that instant I heard a long wild halloa dimly coming through the
steady breeze from the shore. The cry was followed by another and yet
another, and then it seemed to me that it was re-echoed from off the
water some distance ahead of us. I sprang in a bound on to the deck, and
in a breath had armed myself with an iron belaying-pin; and now if that
man were Forrest with whom Miss Temple was, I was ready for him! In a
moment I had gained the poop. The cries ashore had brought the pair to a
dead halt, and they stood listening. Now that I was on the poop I
perceived by the build of the figure of the man that it was Wetherly,
and rushed up to him. The girl recoiled with a loud shriek on seeing me,
as well she might; for, having partially undressed myself, I was clothed
from top to toe in white; I was dripping wet besides, which moulded my
attire to my figure and limbs as though I had been cast in plaster of
Paris, and my sudden apparition was as if I had shaped myself out of the
air.
‘Is that you, Wetherly?’ I cried.
‘Great God, mum, it’s Mr. Dugdale!’ he roared.
The girl uttered another shriek, came in a bound to me and flung her
arms round my neck.
Now the halloaing ashore was incessant, and the wild cries sounding
through the wind were as though the island had been suddenly invaded by
an army of frenzied cannibals.
‘My dearest!’ I cried, letting forth my heart in that moment of being
clasped and clung to by her whom I had long loved and was risking my
life to save, ‘it is I indeed! But release me now, my darling girl. We
must get the barque under weigh instantly. Wetherly, where is Forrest?’
‘Dead, sir.’
‘_Dead!_’ I cried.
‘Shot dead by Miss Temple’s hand, sir,’ he exclaimed.
The girl let fall her arms from my neck, essayed to speak, struggled a
little with her breath, and fell against me in a dead swoon.
‘Your coat, Wetherly,’ I shouted; ‘off with it, man, and make a pillow
for the lady’s head. Quick! If the long-boat sculls ashore and the crew
enter her before we can slip, we are both of us dead men.’
He instantly pulled off his jacket; and tenderly, but swiftly, I laid
the girl down, first freeing the collar of her dress and no more, for
there was time for no more.
‘Jump for the cabin lamp, Wetherly,’ I cried; ‘don’t stop to ask any
questions. We must knock out a shackle, and let the chain go overboard.
That is what is now to be done.’
He rushed off the poop, I in his wake. The lamp was dimly burning, but
it enabled us to find what we wanted in the carpenter’s chest: and
whilst I held the light to a shackle that was just forward of the
windlass barrel, he let drive, and the cable went with a roar through
the iron hawse-pipe.
‘We must now get the topsail on her and blow away,’ I cried.
The conviction that the men would view him as my confederate and have
his life if they got aboard, put an incredible activity into his limbs,
which were habitually slow of motion. My having swum to the ship made
his sailorly mind comprehend without a syllable of explanation from me
how I had contrived the matter. We fled to where the topsail clewlines
were belayed, and let them go, and then hand over hand dragged home the
sheets, which, being of chain, travelled through the sheave-holes very
readily. This done, I sped as fast as my feet would carry me to the
poop, and finding the helm amidships, waited to see how the wind sat
with regard to the position of the ship, meanwhile bawling at the top of
my lungs to Wetherly to let go the maintopsail clewlines and bring the
clews home as far as his strength would enable him.
The light breeze was off the starboard quarter. I at once starboarded
the helm, and, to my infinite delight, found the barque responsive to
the turn of the spokes, proving that, snail-like as might be her
progress, she at least had steerage way upon her. This brought the land
upon the starboard beam. I then steadied the helm, quite sure that the
craft would steer herself for a few minutes.
As I ran forward I witnessed Miss Temple in the act of sitting upright.
I sprang to her side and lifted her to her feet, and held her for
perhaps a minute with her face upon my shoulder until she should have
recovered her self.
‘Sit on this skylight,’ I exclaimed, ‘until you feel equal to assisting
us, and then come to our help, for we greatly need you.’
She understood me, but was too weak and dazed as yet to be of use. The
shouts from the shore were incessant. The men had heard the chain cable
as it rattled through the hawse-pipe, and I judged they were yelling to
the ship, as though hailing Forrest; but they were too far distant for
their syllables to reach us. I spent a breathless moment in sweeping the
sea towards the mouth of the lagoon, and on a sudden saw the boat like a
drop of ink on the star-touched shadow of the water; but I heard no
sounds of her being sculled—which would be the fellow’s only chance of
getting ashore—nor could I catch the least sign of his figure.
My immediate business now was to get the foretopsail mast-headed as best
we could. There was a little winch just abaft the mainmast. Shouting out
my intentions to Wetherly, I bent on the first length of rope I met with
to the hauling part of the topsail halliards and brought it to the
winch, where I took some turns with it. As I did this, Miss Temple
descended the poop ladder.
‘Have you strength to hold on to this rope?’ I cried to her.
‘Oh, yes,’ she answered.
I put it into her hand, bidding her do no more than keep a light strain
upon it, that it might not slip; and in a moment the little winch was
rattling with the chirruping of its pawls going straight up in the air
like an endless cocking of muskets to Wetherly’s and my vigorous arms.
By this means we contrived to hoist the foretopsail, though not, as will
be supposed, to a ‘taut leech,’ as sailors call it. Yet the cloths
showed a wide surface to the wind, and already the nimble frame of the
little barque, yielding to the summer pressure aloft, was sliding along
very nearly as fast as the men could have urged the heavy long-boat
through the water, supposing them to have recovered her and to be in
pursuit. Whilst Wetherly manœuvred with the maintopsail halliards in
readiness for hoisting the yard, I once again hurried aft to the wheel,
to make sure of the course of the barque. She was drifting dead before
the small breeze with her head at about east-by-north, and already had
brought the island veering upon the quarter, lying down there in a lump
of blackness in the starlit gloom, with just the gleam of the bit of
northern coral sea-board glancing off the dusk of the shelving reef.
From time to time I could hear the fellows shouting, but their voices
were now sounding thin, weak, and remote. The star-flakes in the black
water astern trembled to the mild passage of the wind; and sparks of the
sea-fire, like golden seed, churned up in our wake mingled with those
delicate crystal reflections. With an eager passionate prayer upon my
lip that this steady draught would hold, I regained the main-deck; and
all being ready, Wetherly and I revolved the winch, Miss Temple holding
on as before, and the yards slowly mounted till we could ‘heave and
pawl’ no further.
‘Now, Wetherly,’ I shouted, ‘jump aloft and loose that foresail. Pass
your knife through the gaskets. Don’t wait to cast them adrift.’
Then catching up the girl’s hand, which I pressed to my lips before
speaking, I asked her to accompany me to the wheel, that she might hold
the helm steady and keep the barque straight before the wind.
‘There is no time,’ I exclaimed as I hastened aft with her, ‘to utter
more than the few syllables necessary to effect our escape. We must heap
all the canvas we can manage to spread upon the ship. We must contrive
to blow away out of sight of that island before the breeze fails, or the
men will be giving chase in the long-boat.’
She grasped the spokes in silence. The binnacle lamp was unlighted, and
the card lay in gloom. I bade her take note of a star that stood like a
jewel at the extreme end of the starboard main-yard arm, and swiftly
directed her how to move the wheel, if that star swung from the end of
the spar, so as to bring it back again to its place. I then sprang to
the main-rigging, and climbed with the activity of one to whom the loss
of a minute may mean life or death, to the height of the topgallant
yard, the sail of which I loosed, and then came hand over hand down to
the deck by the stay. The barque was but a toy of a ship at the best,
and after the pyramidal heights reared by the Indiaman, her tops and
crosstrees looked but a leap from the deck. I had sheeted home the
topgallant-sail before Wetherly had let fall the foresail. I summoned
him to the halliards, and when the sail was set, we let go the fore clew
garnets and hauled the sheet aft. Then we hoisted the foretopmast
staysail and other light fore and aft sails; and in order to get as much
weight out of the wind as there blew in it, we braced the yards somewhat
forward, that the fore and aft canvas might draw. When this was done, I
raced aft to the wheel and put it down.
No sooner did the little barque feel the air off her beam than she
gently sloped her spars to it with a small spitting of froth at her
cutwater, and in a few minutes she was gliding along like a yacht,
reeling off a fair six knots with water smooth as ice to travel over,
small as was the amount of canvas we had made shift to spread. But I
could do no more. My strength had failed me, and I was incapable of
further exertions. It was not the fatigue of the swim merely, nor my
red-hot haste and maddened labours since I had boarded the barque; the
frightful hours of expectation, of anticipation, of hopes and fears, and
of waiting, that I had passed upon the accursed island since sundown
were now heavily telling upon me.
‘Hold the wheel, will you, Wetherly,’ said I. ‘I am pretty nearly spent.
I must rest a bit. Thanks be to God, we are safe now, I believe;’ and so
saying, I sunk wearily upon the stern gratings.
Miss Temple went hastily to the cabin, carrying with her the lamp with
which Wetherly had kindled the mesh in the binnacle. In a few minutes
she returned with a tumbler of brandy-and-water, which she put to my
lips. I swallowed the contents greedily, for I was not only parched with
thirst, but my nerves sorely needed the stimulant. I took her hand and
brought her to sit by my side, and continued to caress her hand,
scarcely equal for more just then than a few rapturous exclamations over
our deliverance, the delight I felt in being with her again, the joy in
believing that I should now be able to redeem my promise and restore her
in safety to her mother. Her replies were mere murmurs. Indeed, her own
emotions were overwhelming. I could hear her sobbing; then see her by
the starlight smiling; but she kept her eyes fixed on my face; soaked as
I still was to the skin with salt water, she leaned against me, as
though she needed the assurance of actual contact to convince her that I
was with her once more.
But by this time the island had melted into the scintillant dusk of the
sky. Nothing showed but the liquid sweep of the indigo line of horizon.
Another hour of such sailing as this would convey us out of all
possibility of reach of the long-boat, supposing the men should recover
her; for she was without mast or sail; the utmost exertion of the rowers
could scarcely get more than three or three and a half miles an hour out
of her; then again I had shifted the barque’s course, and would shift it
again presently.
‘Tell me now about Forrest?’ I exclaimed, breaking a silence of fatigue
and emotion that had lasted some few minutes.
I felt the shudder that ran through my companion in the clasp of her
hand.
‘Did I understand that you shot him?’
‘It is too dreadful to speak of,’ she said in a low voice.
‘It was like this, sir,’ exclaimed Wetherly. ‘Forrest and me had agreed
to keep a four hours’ lookout. He was to stand from eight to twelve. I
lay down on the fo’c’sle, believing the lady safe below, where she’d
been pretty nigh ever since you and the men went ashore. I was awoke by
a noise that sounded to me like the report of a gun. It was then about
six bells, sir. I thought I’d just walk aft to see if all was right with
the lady. Audacious as I knew that there fellow Forrest to be, speaking
of him as a fo’c’sle hand, and capable of any sort of hinsolence and
mutiny and the likes of that, I had no fear of him whilst he was left
alone to keep a lookout with the hentertainment of thinking about the
money him and his mates was to dig up. Well, as I reached the
quarter-deck the lady came out of the cabin. The light was burning dim,
just as you found it when you came aboard. She held a pistol in her
hand, and she says to me quite coolly: “A man came into my cabin just
now. I heard him trying the handle of my door, and I took up this
pistol, and when he walked in, I said: “Who are you? What do you want?”
he answered; and I pointed my pistol at him and fired. I believe I have
killed him. Will you go and see?” I thought she was walking in her
sleep, so quiet she talked. I went to her cabin, and saw Forrest lying
upon the deck. I turned him over, and he was stone dead; shot through
the heart, I reckon. I dragged his body into your cabin, where it’s
a-lying now. The lady then asked to keep company with me on the poop;
and so it was you found us a-walking together, sir.’
‘Brave Louise!’ I murmured, moved to the utterance of her Christian
name, though this was the first time I had ever given it her, close and
ceaseless as our association had been. Yet an instant’s reluctance,
regret, or bashfulness followed my pronunciation of it—even at such a
moment as that!—to the memory that arose in me with the velocity of
thought of the proud eyes, the haughty coldness of the lofty,
disdainful, elegant Miss Temple of the _Countess Ida_.
But what she had done was a thing not to be referred to again now. I
felt the piteousness of her distress, shame, and horror in her silence:
by-and-by she would be able to speak of it collectedly, if there were
need indeed to recur to it at all.
‘No fear of the boat overhauling us, now, I think, Wetherly?’ I
exclaimed.
‘Lord, no, sir; without e’er a sail to spread either. That swim of yourn
was a bold venture, Mr. Dugdale. Ye must ha’ managed the job in
first-rate style. Wasn’t no lookout kept?’
His questions led me into telling the story. Miss Temple listened
eagerly, our hands remaining locked; again and again she broke into an
exclamation with some cry of alarm, some ejaculation of sympathy. ‘You
called me brave just now,’ she said; ‘but how is your behaviour to be
expressed?’
‘D’ye think there’s any chance of the men recovering that boat?’
inquired Wetherly. ‘The chaps told me when they came aboard to furl the
canvas that there was nothen to eat or drink upon the island saving what
they’d taken. If they should lose the boat, it must go hard with them,
sir.’
‘They will not lose their boat unless the fellow who was in charge of
her lay dead drunk in her bottom: an improbability; for I saw him walk
on steady legs to her. My one chance lay in his being asleep. Make your
mind easy: he was awakened long ago by the yells of the men, and by this
time the boat lies snug at the beach of the lagoon. But why should you
have any feeling for the brutes? They would have cut your throat had
they succeeded in boarding us. What happened when you were asleep should
be indication enough for you of the character of the ruffians, a pretty
good warrant of the sort of treatment we might have expected at their
hands later on, gold or no gold.’
‘Mr. Dugdale,’ he answered, ‘all I can say is I’m thankful to the Lord
to be where I am. I shall be desperate glad, I shall, when this here
woyage is over. I should only just like to see my way to getting enough
out of it to set up for myself ashore, for this here’s been a job as has
properly sickened me of the sea, and so I don’t mind telling ye, sir.’
‘There’ll be the salvage of this craft,’ said I; ‘you can have my share,
and I’m sure Miss Temple will give you hers.’
‘Oh, certainly,’ she exclaimed.
‘Then there’ll be your own share,’ I went on. ‘We have to carry the ship
in safety to a port first of all. If we can’t pick up hands as we go
along, we three will have to manage as best we can. I don’t doubt we
shall contrive it; and then you will easily see your way to a few
hundreds.’
I saw him grin broadly by the mingled light of the binnacle and
star-shine. It was proper to fill him with hope, and to present to his
limited understanding some thing definite to work upon. There had been
nothing in his behaviour to render me much obliged to him. He had chosen
neutral ground in this business, with a little inclination to the safer
side: and though he had ventured upon several promises, I had never
secretly regarded him as a man who would prove heroically useful at a
pinch. However, he was absolutely essential to our safety now, and it
was politic that I should seem grateful; though, to be sure, there was
always the instinct of self-preservation to keep him straight; by which
I mean that he was as eager to end this extraordinary ramble as I was.
He asked me several questions about the gold, and talked as if he
believed that the men might yet meet with it; but my answers seemed to
convince him after a little, and I saw him wagging his head whilst he
exclaimed: ‘It was at the foot of a clump of trees, I know; I clearly
recollect the yarn as Wilkins gave it, and his memory couldn’t have gone
wrong, for he arrived fresh with it from the cabin. If they’ve dug at
the roots of all the trees abreast of the beach, as you say, sir, and
the money ain’t there, then good-night! It’s the hallucination I always
said it was; and for my part give me two pound of honest salvage afore
two hundred thousand pound of lunatic dreamings.’
The breeze seemed to freshen as we drew away. The barque was now heeling
prettily, throwing the water in a white curl of sea off her weather bow,
and her wake ran far into the liquid gloom astern, into which I would
again and again send a glance, governed yet by an agitation of spirits
and an animation of alarm which my judgment pronounced ridiculous. I
cannot express the caressing character of Miss Temple’s manner as she
continued seated close beside me. The astonishment, the rapture, the
wildly contending sensations and emotions which had possessed her were
now giving way to a mood of happiness, of triumphant hope, that put an
indescribable note of tender elation and grateful, joyous sweetness into
her words. If I had yet to wonder whether she loved me, I might feel
sure that my return to her, that my presence, filled her with emotions
which came very near to the passion of love.
But I was wet through; and now that we were safe, the vessel sliding
with swiftness through the clear shadow of the night, and my shipmate
Louise tranquil in the full realisation of our sudden and complete
deliverance, I could find leisure to feel a little chilly. So, leaving
her with a promise that I should shortly return, and telling Wetherly to
keep the barque steady as she was going, I picked up the cabin lamp,
that was still feebly burning upon the deck, and descended the companion
steps. I paused to look around me upon the familiar interior in which
Miss Temple and I had passed so many hours of distress and wretchedness
with an exclamation of gratitude to God for his merciful preservation of
us, and then went to my cabin to habit myself in such dry garments as I
might find in Captain Braine’s locker. I opened the door, but recoiled
with an involuntary cry. I had forgotten Forrest! and there lay the dead
body of the man right in front of me. Twice, now, had that little square
of carpet been stained by human blood. I was horribly shocked by the
spectacle of the corpse; but it was necessary that I should change my
clothes, and I had to undergo the torture of being watched by those
half-closed ghastly eyes, to which twenty expressions of life were
imparted by the stirring of the dim flame in the lantern whilst I sought
for and attired myself in dry apparel. This done, I made a brighter
flame, and then held the light to the dead face, that I might be sure
the villain had no life in him. No gibbeted body that had been swinging
in chains for a month could be deader. I entered the cuddy, hung up the
lamp, and went on deck.
‘Miss Temple,’ I exclaimed, ‘will you kindly hold the wheel for a few
minutes?’
She rose and grasped the spokes. Wetherly understood me, and followed me
below in silence.
‘We must toss the body overboard,’ said I; ‘there can be no luck for the
ship with such an object as that as a part of her freight, and Miss
Temple must be helped to forget the horror of the night that’s going.’
Between us we picked up the corpse, very quickly conveyed it through the
companion hatch, went forward with it where the darkness lay heavy, and
dropped it over the bulwarks.
‘That’s how they would have served you, sir,’ said Wetherly.
‘And you,’ said I.
‘Yes, my God, I know it!’ he answered in a voice of agitation.
We returned to the wheel, which Wetherly took from Miss Temple, who
seated herself with me just behind it on the gratings, and there we held
a council. Our business must be to get to a port as soon as possible.
Should we head away for the Islands of the Low Archipelago, bearing
north-west with a chance of falling in with a vessel cruising amongst
them who would lend us two or three men to help us in navigating the
barque, or should we steer a due east course for Valparaiso, that lay
about two thousand six hundred miles distant?
Our resolution was rapidly formed. The islands might yield us no help;
there was also the risk of running ashore upon the hundred reefs of that
then little known navigation; abundance of the natives of the groups
were man-eaters, and we certainly had not delivered ourselves from the
perils we ran through enforced association with the carpenter and his
crew merely to ingloriously terminate our adventures by serving to
appease the appetite of a little population of blacks.
No; it must be Valparaiso. There we should find a city with every
species of convenience: a consul to advise and assist us; shops where
Miss Temple could make all necessary purchases; a choice of large ships
for the passage home. The ocean we were traversing was the Pacific, and
the time of year in it summer; there was nothing greatly to alarm us
then in the contemplation of the possibility of our having to work the
barque to the South American coast without more help than the three of
us could provide. It would be necessary to keep the vessel under easy
canvas, that we might always be equal to the occasion of a sudden change
of weather, and that, to be sure, would protract the run. But a few
weeks more or less of old ocean would be as nothing to us now that we
were masters of our lives and liberty, now that we should know every day
was bringing us something nearer to our distant home, that all the
horrors with which our future had but a few hours before been crowded
were gone. As we conversed, talking with exultation of our escape,
arranging for keeping watches, planning about the cooking of the food,
and concerting twenty other measures of a like sort, the day broke; the
stars died out in the east; the pale green of dawn went lifting like a
delicate smoke into the shadow of the zenith; the light broadened fast,
and the sun soared into a flashing day of cloudless heaven and of
dark-blue ocean wrinkled by the breeze. With a telescope in my hand I
sprang on to the grating and slowly circled the sea-line with the
lenses. The water brimmed bare to the sky on all sides.
‘We are alone,’ said I, dismounting and taking Miss Temple by the hand
whilst I looked fondly into her face. ‘When we were on the wreck, it was
our misery to hunt the ocean with our gaze and find ourselves alone; and
now, though we are still at sea, loneliness is delightful—for it is
escape, freedom, the promise of home.’
Her eyes filled with tears.