NIGHT
The wind blew hard, and the vapour swept past in a horizontal pouring,
masses of it coming on a sudden in a blinding thickness till you could
not see half the wreck’s length; then the silver-tinted volumes would
brighten for a breath or two, and show the steel-coloured sea heaving
its freckled and foamless folds into the vaporous faintness a few
hundred feet off; then the mist would boil down and over us once more
until it was like being in a room filled with steam.
‘The cabin is empty,’ said I--the girl being on the port side, I had
taken care to drag the body to starboard--‘there are seats, and you
will be sheltered there. This is damping stuff.’
‘Not yet,’ she answered. ‘I am as safe here. I hate the thought of
having anything to screen the sea from me. I want to look--at any
moment the Indiaman or the man-of-war may come close to us.’
‘Be it so,’ said I. ‘Heavens, how rapidly has all this happened! One of
the cutter’s men shouted to me that the Indiaman had fired two guns.
Why did they not report this to us? Did they believe the swell would
not let them get aboard? They saw--of course they saw--this fog bearing
down; why did not the madmen let us know of it?’
‘What will my aunt think?’
‘Why, she will be in a terrible fright. But it will not last. We shall
be picked up presently. I would rather be here than in the cutter. If
they are wise, they will ride to their oars; if they row or allow the
wind and seas to drive them, they are bound to lose both ships, the
night being at hand; and then God help them!’
‘Oh, it was an evil moment,’ she cried, ‘when we sighted the corvette!’
‘It was an evil moment,’ I exclaimed bitterly and wrathfully, ‘when
Mr. Colledge, who had undoubtedly taken too much wine on board the
_Magicienne_, suggested that we should kill an hour on this hull.
Where,’ I cried passionately, ‘could the unhappy lieutenant’s wits
have been? He laughed at me for indicating the appearance I witnessed
in the north-west. Was there nothing in the weight of this swell to
convince him that there must be mischief not far off?’
‘What will my aunt think?’ she repeated, as though she scarcely heeded
my words, whilst she brought her hands, brilliant with rings, together
and stared into the thickness with her eyes on fire with fear and
amazement and the score of wild emotions which filled her.
Though I held my peace on the subject, the wind, that was blowing with
the spite of an ugly squall, was exciting an alarm in me that rose
above all other considerations of our situation. The hatches lay open
and there was nothing to be seen of their covers about the decks. If
this weather continued, a high sea must presently follow, in which case
there could be nothing to save the wreck from filling and foundering.
The lieutenant had assured us that she was dry; but it was certain that
she had been badly wrenched by the lightning stroke that had dismasted
and apparently set her on fire forward, and by the furious gale that
had chased her afterwards; and though she may have been tight when
the lieutenant overhauled her, this constant working in the strong
swell might at any instant cause her to start a butt or open a seam,
and then what should I be able to do? Both pumps were smashed level
to the deck; there was no boat; there was nothing discoverable fore
and aft which I could launch and secure my companion and myself to. It
was with inexpressible anxiety, therefore, that I would send my gaze
from time to time to windward, in the hope of observing a thinning in
the thickness there, or any the faintest imaginable sign to elate me
with the belief that the worst of the fog was on us, that we were now
feeling the worst of the wind, and that the ocean would be clearing
soon.
The time passed. I looked at my watch after we had been sitting a
little, and found it six o’clock. The sun would be setting in something
more than an hour, and a bitter black night was bound to follow if the
vapour had not cleared when daylight ended. There was now a smart sea
running, but the swell had flattened something, I thought. The hull was
horribly frisky, leaning at desperate angles from side to side, and
often recovering herself with a jerk that must have flung us to the
deck had we not been seated. But she was extraordinarily light, and
floated very tall, and though there would sometimes come a blow of salt
water against the bow that flashed across the deck in a mass of foam
and green crystals, yet she soared so nimbly to the height of every
surge that she took in amazingly little water. Indeed, it was not long
before I felt myself infinitely comforted by her behaviour, convinced
that it would have to breeze up with much more spite than the wind now
had to put us in jeopardy from a filling hold.
Shortly before the hour of sundown, I induced Miss Temple to occupy
the deck-house. She entered with a great deal of reluctance, and
seated herself in a corner that was the furthest away from where the
body had been. It had not been very easy to converse outside. The
ceaseless roaring and washing noises of the water, with the alarming
thumps and leapings of froth at the bow, and the sounds of the rushing
wind sweeping in gusty cries over the mutilated rails of the hull as
she was hove up full into it, and then sinking into a sort of humming
moaning as the wreck drove down the liquid acclivity into the swift
comparative stillness of the trough: all this was distracting and
terrifying, and speech had been difficult. But the interior of the
deck-house was a shelter to the ear and voice. I seated myself opposite
the girl, giving her as wide, respectful a berth as the narrow cabin
permitted. The shadow of the evening lay already sullen in the white
mist that seemed to boil upon the wind, though at that hour it was not
so thick but that the gaze might be able to penetrate a distance of
a quarter of a mile. Miss Temple was deadly pale. Even her lips had
lost their delicate rosy tint, and sat blanched in their compression.
Her eyes looked preternaturally large, and there was an expression of
passionate desperation in them, as one might figure of some proud,
high-spirited creature driven at bay, and rounding upon the pursuer
with a gaze charged with despair and wrath and the misery of some
heart-breaking resolution.
‘I believe I shall go mad,’ she said, ‘if this fog does not cease. I
feel as though I were now insane, and that what we are suffering is the
imagination of madness.’
‘It is a frightful time of suspense,’ I answered; ‘we must have
patience: there is no other medicine for this sort of affliction.’
‘I could stab myself,’ she cried, ‘for being in this position. There is
the Indiaman close at hand; I see her saloon cheerful with lamplight,
the tables glittering, the passengers seated, talking and laughing,
without a thought of us by this time.’ I shook my head. She continued:
‘I think of the security, the comfort of that ship, which I never once
reflected on when in her. And now contrast this!’
She rolled her wonderful eyes over the narrow compartment in a
shuddering way that was eloquent with abhorrence.
‘Why am I here? It is my own fault. I could stab myself for my folly.’
It made one think of some beautiful wild creature newly caged to watch
her.
‘It is bad enough,’ said I; ‘but it might be much worse. Think of
yourself in that open boat--on this high sea, and amidst this blinding
vapour: no water, no food, the blackness of the night coming down, and
a thousand leagues of ocean all around you.’
‘Is not the cutter safer than this horrible wreck?’ she cried. ‘If the
morning exposes the ships to the people in her, they can row; but what
can we do?’
‘If the morning exposes the ships,’ said I, ‘they’ll see us, and very
joyfully attempt to fetch us--that is to sail to us.’
She turned to look through a window the glass of which was gone, and
through which the wind was shrilling as though it blew into a cylinder.
It was fast darkening. In these latitudes twilight is brief, and in
such weather as this there would be none. It was little more now than
sombre blank greyness outside, with a sight of the steel-coloured
swell, over whose humps the seas were rushing in foam, shouldering and
vanishing into the thickness. But there was no increase in the wind,
and the run of the surge did not gain in weight.
I watched the girl while she looked through the window. It is not in
language to convey the tragic irony that was put into our situation by
her sparkling holiday attire. Her dress was of some white material, of
a silken or lustrous nature, that most perfectly fitted the beauties of
her person. Her hat was some rich combination of richly plumed straw.
She had removed her gloves on descending into the cabin of the hull
when we boarded her, and many rings of splendour and value flashed on
her fingers in a very armour of jewels and gold. There were gems in her
ears, and a heavy chain of gold round her neck, terminating in a whole
cluster of trinkets at her girdle, in which was sheathed a watch of the
size of her thumb-nail. Think of this glittering figure, this stately,
most perfect shape of womanhood in the gloom of the strong, rude
interior of the deck-house, with its few rough details of fittings in
the shape of a table and lockers, nothing to see through the window but
the rough deck spreading naked to its splinters of bulwark, with the
angry foam of waters beyond, and a near sky of fast blackening vapour!
‘What are we to do?’ she exclaimed, resuming her former attitude and
fixing her large desperate eyes upon me.
‘We must wait,’ said I.
‘You have been a sailor, Mr. Dugdale; tell me what you think?’
‘Well, first of all, we must be prepared to spend the night on this
wreck’---- She flashed her hands to her face and held them there, and I
waited for her to look at me again. ‘This weather,’ I proceeded, ‘is
not likely to last very long. The dawn will probably exhibit a clear
sky. If the ships are not in sight’--she drew in her breath with an
hysterical ‘Oh’--‘they will still have the bearings of the wreck, and
search for us. Were there but a single vessel to hunt after the hull,
we might still feel perfectly safe; but there are two, and one of them
is an English man-of-war.’
‘But will Sir Edward Panton know that we are here?’
‘No doubt. He or others will have seen the cutter deviate for the wreck
instead of pulling for the Indiaman.’
‘But they may think we are in the boat; and if she is not recovered,
they will search for her, and not trouble themselves about the wreck.’
‘We must be hopeful, and we must be patient,’ said I.
It was now rapidly growing dark. The white waters showed ghastly over
the edge of the bare deck to each convulsive jerking roll of the hull,
and my companion’s white face was little more than a glimmer in the
gloom of the corner in which she sat. The thought of the long black
hours which lay before us was intolerable. I looked about me for a
lamp, but there was nothing of the kind, nor hook nor bracket to prove
that a lamp or lantern was ever used in this small abode. I told Miss
Temple that I would go below and search for something wherewith to make
a light.
‘Will you be long?’ she asked.
‘I’ll make haste,’ said I.
‘Yes, if you please, Mr. Dugdale,’ she exclaimed.
I had in my pocket the old-fashioned arrangement of tinder-box and
sulphur matches, being, indeed, too confirmed a smoker to stir very far
without that convenience. The mere descent of the steps was a horrible
labour, owing to the extravagant leaps and rolls of the mere shell of
wreck, and my progress was scarcely more than inch by inch, forced to
hold on as I was with the tenacity of the grip of a parrot’s beak. The
straining noises in the cabin might have easily led me to suppose that
the hull was going to pieces. Every blow of the sea trembled through
her down here as though the fabric forward were breaking up, and I
recollect swinging by a stanchion for some minute or two, overwhelmed
with the consternation excited in me by the sounds, and by a sudden
recollection of the lieutenant’s words that the brig in her forecastle
had been burnt out. But I had promised Miss Temple to be speedy; and
the thought of her sitting lonely above in terror and despair brought
my mind back to its bearings.
It was almost pitch-dark, but remembering the situation of the pantry
in which the lieutenant had cracked the bottle of wine, I dropped on my
hands and knees, not daring to trust my feet, and crawled towards it.
When I guessed by groping that I was near the door, I kindled a match
and entered the pantry; and after consuming about half-a-dozen matches,
I met with a tin box that was full of long wax candles, which looked to
me very much like a sample of booty, as it was scarcely to be supposed
that a vessel of the class of the _Aspirante_ would lay in stores of
that quality. I hunted for a candlestick, and found a small empty
pickle bottle, which would very well answer the purpose of holding the
candle. This I squeezed under my waistcoat, and filled my coat-pockets
with a couple of bottles of wine, a handful of ship’s biscuit, and a
little tin drinking-vessel; and then putting the box of candles under
my arm, I fell again upon my hands and knees, crawled to the cabin
ladder, and joined the deck-house so wearied by the posture I had been
forced to adopt and by the convulsive motions of the deck, which had
put an aching as of rheumatism into every bone, that I was forced to
sit and remain quiet for some minutes.
The wind swept in through the denuded windows; but the structure, as
I have before said, was long in proportion to its width, and at the
fore-end the atmosphere was quiet enough for a candle to burn in. I
secured the empty pickle bottle to a stanchion with my handkerchief,
and placed the lighted candle in it; and the square of the bottle
held the flame at a sufficient distance from the stanchion to provide
against all risk of fire. The light seemed to raise some little heart
in Miss Temple.
‘You are brave,’ she exclaimed, with a glance at the black square of
the hatch, ‘to descend into that dreadful dungeon. There may be dead
bodies there.’
‘I am not afraid of dead bodies,’ said I. ‘I wish there were nothing
more harmful in this world than dead men. Here are two bottles of wine
and some biscuit. You will be the better for a little refreshment.’
I knocked off the head of a bottle and handed her a draught. She
looked at the rough drinking-vessel for a little, and then said with a
painful smile: ‘A desperate change, Mr. Dugdale, from the table of the
Indiaman! Will this wine hurt me?’
‘I will drink first, to reassure you, if you please,’ said I.
‘No,’ she exclaimed; ‘I must not be too cowardly;’ and she drank.
I took a good drain myself, and found it the same noble wine that the
poor lieutenant had tasted.
‘Try one of these biscuits, Miss Temple,’ said I; ‘they are but coarse
eating for you, I fear; they are the bread that poor Jack is fed on.’
She took one and nibbled at it.
‘Ha!’ said I, ‘this is an ocean experience indeed. This is being
shipwrecked. You will have a deal more to talk about when you get home
than Colledge could have dreamt of in proposing this excursion for that
purpose. Can you bite that biscuit?’
‘Yes,’ she answered.
‘It is rather flinty,’ said I, munching. ‘There should be something
more relishable than this to be come at below. I will make another
hunt.’
‘No, if you please,’ she cried vehemently; ‘do not leave me, Mr.
Dugdale.’
‘Ay, but food apart, since we must needs remain here through the night,
I must endeavour to find something soft for you to lie upon. You cannot
rest upon that hard locker.’
‘Oh, I do not want to rest,’ she exclaimed. ‘Do you think I could
sleep? I shall sit as I am, and pray for the light to come and for a
sight of the ships.’
I made no answer, though it was on the tip of my tongue to say I was
sorry for her sake that it was I, and not Colledge, whom she was adrift
with. It was an impulse coming through some sudden hot recollection of
her treatment of me on board the _Countess Ida_; but I bit my lip, and
was grateful for my silence a moment after, when I saw her fine eyes
swimming with tears.
‘Pray have hope,’ I exclaimed. ‘I am sure after a bit you will find
plenty of courage in your heart to confront this little passage, hard
as it is. I will do what I can. I would you had a better sailor than I
by your side; but what can be done by me shall be done, and the worst
is a long way off yet, I am certain.’
She put her hands upon the table and hid her face in them. I lifted the
lid of the locker I was using as a seat, to stow away the bottles in a
safe place; for, talk as I might, it was only God could know whether it
might not end in a single drop of the liquor becoming more precious to
us than twenty times the value of the cargo of the Indiaman. There were
some wearing apparel, a few small coils of ratline-stuff, and other
odds and ends in the locker, but nothing noticeable. I then clawed my
way to the deck-house door to take a look round. It was black as fog
and darkness could make it. Close alongside, the foam glanced dimly,
with now and again a flash of phosphoric light in some dark coil down
whose slope the hull was sliding; but there was nothing else to see.
The wind still blew fresh, but there was no recognisable increase in
it since the hour of its first coming down upon the wreck. It made a
most dismal and melancholy noise of howling in the sky, as it swept
through the dark obscurity, splitting upon the foremast and the shrouds
which supported the spar, in a low-toned long-drawn shriek, which
had something of the sound of a human note as it pierced through the
hissing and seething round about, and through the strange, low, dull
thunder made by the shouldering of liquid folds coming together as they
ran, and by the hurl of the surge as it rounded and dissolved into foam.
There could be very little doubt that the drift of a light empty shell
of a wreck with a yard and mast and shrouds forward for the wind to
catch hold of would be considerable in such weather as this. Helped
by the beat of the seas, she might easily blow dead to leeward, in
the trough as she was, at the rate of some three to four miles in the
hour, so that daybreak would find her forty or fifty miles distant
from the spot where we had boarded her. However, I comforted myself
with the reflection that the commanders of the two ships would have
a clear perception of such a drift as I calculated, and allow for
it in the search they would surely make for the hull. I had but one
fear: that the cutter had been seen leaving the wreck, for there was
an interval at least of a minute or two between her dropping astern
and manœuvring with her three oars and her envelopment by the fog. If,
then, she had been sighted, the inference would inevitably be that Miss
Temple, Colledge, and myself were in her; and so the hunt would be for
the cutter, without reference to the hull, with every prospect of the
search carrying the ships miles below the verge of our horizon.
Meanwhile, as I stood in that doorway looking into the blackness over
the sides, I bent my ear anxiously forward; but though there were
constant shocks of the sea smiting the bow, I never caught the noise
of water falling in weight enough upon the deck to alarm me. The leap
of the surge seemed to be always forward of the fore-shrouds, and the
ducking and tossing of the fabric was so nimble, and the pouring of
the blast so steadfast, that nearly all the water that sprang to the
blow of the bow was carried overboard by the wind. This was about as
comforting an assurance as could come to me; for I tell you it was
enough to turn one’s heart into lead to look into that starless wall of
blackness close against the ship, to see nothing but the pallid glimmer
of froth, to hearken to the noises in the air, to feel the sickening
and dizzy heavings of the sea, and then realise that this hull had been
struck by lightning, that the forepart of her was burnt into a thin
case of charred timbers, and that all three hatches in her, together
with the skylight, lay open and yawning like the mouths of wells to the
first rush of sea that should tumble over the side.
I will not feign to remember how that night passed. The tall wax candle
burnt bravely and lasted long; but the guttering of it to the circlings
of the air in the extremity of the cabin obliged me to light another
before the night was spent. It a little encouraged Miss Temple to be
able to see. God knows how it might have been with her had we been
obliged to sit in that blackness. Once the candle was blown out, and
when I had succeeded in lighting it afresh, after a few minutes of
groping and hunting and manœuvring with my tinder-box, I looked at the
girl, and knew by the horror that shone in her eyes, and the marble
hardness in the aspect of her parted lips, as though her mouth were
some carved expression of fear, how heart-subduing had that short spell
of blackness proved. From time to time she would ask for a little wine,
which she sipped as though thirsty, but she swallowed a few drops only,
as if she feared that the wine, by heating her, would increase her
thirst; yet when I spoke of going below to seek for some fresh water,
she begged me not to leave her.
‘It is the memory of the body that sat at this table which makes
loneliness insupportable to me, Mr. Dugdale,’ she exclaimed. ‘I seemed
to see the dreadful object when the candle went out. I thought I had
more spirit. I am but a very weak woman, after all.’
‘I do not think so,’ said I; ‘you are bearing this frightful trial
very nobly. How would it be with some girls I know? They would be
swooning away; they would be exhausting themselves in cries; they would
be tearing themselves to pieces in hysterics. And how is it with me?
Sometimes I am frightened to death, but not with fears of darkness or
of the dead. I am certain we shall be rescued; this hull is making
excellent weather of it; there is food and drink below, yet I am filled
with consternation and grief. Why should it be otherwise? We are
creatures of nerves, and this is an experience to test the courage of a
saint.’
Well, we would exchange a few sentences after this pattern, and then
fall silent for a whole hour at a time. She never closed her eyes
throughout the night. Whenever I glanced at her, I met her gaze
brilliant with emotion. The change was so sudden that I found it
impossible to fully realise it. When I thought of Miss Temple aboard
the _Countess Ida_, her haughtiness, her character of almost insolent
reserve, how she had hardly found it in her to address me with an
accent of courtesy, her ungracious treatment of me after the service
I had done her in rescuing her from a perilous situation: I say when
I recalled all this and a deal more, and then viewed her as she sat
opposite, crouching in a corner, supporting herself by grasping the
table with her heavily ringed fingers, the high-born delicate beauty of
her lineaments showing like some cameo in ivory, and reflected that she
and I were absolutely alone, that it might come to her owing her life
to me, or that we might be doomed to miserably perish together--this
girl, this unapproachable young lady, at whom I had been wont to stare
furtively with fascinated eyes on board the Indiaman for long spells
at a stretch--I could not bring my mind to credit the reality of our
situation.