WE BRING UP IN A BAY.
I could not at that time know what part of the South African coast was
this we had made, but I have since learnt that it lies a few miles
to the eastward of the meridian of twenty-two degrees, and about an
hundred and sixty miles from Cape Agulhas. When it first came into
sight, as I have said, it was but a faint, long-drawn shade in the
light blue of the sky over the horizon, with such a fairy tincture of
flanking eminence beyond that the whole was as delicately tender as the
visionary shore of a dream.
But before the dinner-hour had come round we had stolen nearly two
leagues closer to it, and the coast lay plain enough and very brave
with colours, the green of several dyes, the mountain sky-lines of an
exquisite clearness of cutting in the radiant atmosphere and against
the hard azure brilliance of the heavens, and the tracts of white sand
low down as lustrous as the foam of a dissolving surge.
Soon after the land had hove into view, Imogene joined me. She had kept
her feelings under whilst near Vanderdecken. Now, by my side, she stood
with twenty emotions working in her, her nostrils quivering, her lips
pale, the colour coming and going in her cheeks, the bright light that
a passing hope flashed into her eyes dying out to the tearful shadowing
of some bitter fear.
I said to her, very softly, and keeping my face as expressionless as my
inward agitation would permit--for Vanderdecken and his mates conferred
together near us, sometimes stopping close, sometimes pacing--"If this
pace holds our anchor should be down by dusk."
"What will they do?" she asked.
"I have been asking that question of myself," I replied. "Were they
human--of this earth--I could foretell their movements. No sooner were
they come to an anchor than they would turn to and get the guns and
cargo over to one side, that by listing the ship they might bring the
leak out of water and save themselves this starving job of pumping. But
we have to base conjecture upon men who are neither dead nor alive, who
are Dutchmen besides, I mean of a dull and apathetic habit, and they
may wait for daylight and so obtain rest, of which they should get as
much as they want with the reliefs they are able to send to the pump."
"What should best fit your project, Geoffrey?"
"Oh," said I, under my breath, "if we are to escape we shall need a
deserted deck and a sleeping ship."
"If this should come about to-night will you make the venture?"
"I cannot tell. Put it thus: if they shift the cargo after coming to
an anchor with the idea of raising the leak clear, the work may occupy
them all night. So all night long the ship will be alive and busy, and
there will be no chance for me."
"But the ship will also be alive if they continue to ply the pump,
which must be done if she is not to sink."
"Yes," said I, "so I may have to wait till to-morrow night."
She cried, with a quick blanching of her face that cruelly proved her
stock of strength but slender, "If they careen the ship to-night they
will be able to repair the leak in the morning, and be ready to sail
before the evening."
"I do not fear that."
"Yet it might happen, Geoffrey! They will put you on shore before
sailing----" She stopped, bringing her hands together with a passionate
clasp.
"I do not fear that," said I again. "Much will depend on where the
leak is. If it be low down they may not be able to come at it without
discharging cargo, which, seeing that they have but those two boats
yonder to work with, and that they will have to make tents ashore and
protect themselves against the natives--if any there here be--should
keep them on the move for a long month. No, dearest, I do not fear
that they will get away by to-morrow night--not if they were ten times
as numerous and as nimble; nor is it probable that Vanderdecken would
suffer me to be marooned till the ship is ready to start. My one
anxiety is just now the weather. There is tranquility in that dark blue
sky over us; the wind weakens as we approach the land, and there is
promise of a calm night. May God help me to achieve my purpose before
another twelve hours have rolled by."
She looked at me with eagerness and alarm. "To-night!" she cried. "If
this ship lies here for days, as you imagine, how, when we are ashore,
dare we hope to escape the strenuous search Vanderdecken is certain
to make for us?" I smiled; she continued, with a feverish whisper:
"Consider, dearest! If we are captured--he will have your life! God
knows into what barbarities his rage may drive him!"
"Dearest," said I, gently, "let us first get out of the ship."
And here we broke off, for our whispering had lasted long enough. Soon
after this we went below to dinner. At the start we none of us spoke,
our behaviour and perhaps our appearance answering very exactly to the
poet's description of a party in a parlour who sat--
"All silent and all damned!"
Outside, the sun shone gloriously, and the blue air had the purity
of polished glass; but only a small portion of light found admission
through the small windows in the cabin front, and we ate and gazed
upon one another in a sullen atmosphere as gloomy as the expression
on Vanderdecken's face. At this moment I see him plain, as on that
day; his beard falling to his waist, his head slightly bowed, and his
glance travelling in a gaze that would often stop and become fixed, his
skin bleak and high and drawn with pallor. He was attired in a sort of
blouse of dark-green cloth, confined about his waist by a yellow belt
fastened by a small metal clasp, that would have given him a romantic
and buccaneering look but for the austere majesty and fateful character
of his appearance, which inevitably neutralised every suggestion that
did not accord with the solemn, horrible mystery of his being.
We sat for some time, as I have said, as silent as the dead; but on
reflecting that there was nothing, in reason, I could say likely to
procure me a harder fate than that already designed by these men, I
determined to ask a question or two, and said: "Has your carpenter
ascertained in what part of the ship the leak is, mynheer?"
He turned his eyes round upon me slowly. He was indeed stately in all
he did. I never beheld him glance quickly nor start, and the only time
in which his dignity fell, torn in rags from him, was that night when
he acted over the scene of the Curse in his sleep.
He answered, "Yes."
"Is it far down?" said Imogene.
"The ship will need heeling to four strakes," he replied.
I dropped my knife on to the deck for the excuse to pick it up that I
might hide the delight in my face. A list of four strakes would prove
but a very small matter to bring about, and my fears that the vessel
would linger for days, perhaps for a month, on this coast vanished.
"I hope," said I, "it may not prove worse than a started butt-end."
"It is that, and no more," said he.
"How much more would you have, Herr Fenton?" exclaimed Van Vogelaar, in
his ugliest manner. "Dost suppose our pump can deliver half the great
South Sea with every stroke?"
"It should take us four days of easy working," said I, "to careen,
repair, and start afresh snugly stowed."
"You are in a hurry to get home, sir, no doubt?" exclaimed Van Vogelaar.
"Sir," said I, "I am addressing the captain."
"Skipper!" cried the man; "Herr Fenton is in a hurry to get home! We
should put him in the way of making a speedy passage."
"I expect to return in this ship," said I, speaking with my eyes
on Vanderdecken. "I am well satisfied. Nothing stauncher floats.
Consider, mynheer, how nobly she has acted in the gales we have
encountered. It would please me to entreat you to use such poor skill
as I have as a mariner in helping your men; but your courtesy is
magnanimous--of the form that is to be met in highest perfection in the
Hollander of lineage--and I will not risk my own civility by further
requests."
He motioned with his hand, contenting himself with whatever answer
the gesture signified. I perceived there was no further information
to be obtained from him--from Van Vogelaar nothing but sneers and
insults--and so held my peace. Yet I had learnt something.
When, after dining, I went on deck, the land looked as near again as
it had when I went below. This was owing to the amazing transparency
and purity of the atmosphere, insomuch that every twenty fathoms the
ship measured was like adding a fresh lens to a perspective glass. Yet
it was not until four o'clock that the coast lay so clear as to render
every detail of it a visible thing, and then the sight was helped by
the sun being on the larboard side and showering his glory aslant,
which, mingling with the golden splendour rising out of his wake in
the sea, put an extraordinary shining into the atmosphere, but without
the lustrous haze that had been rising when he was right over the land
and kindling the water under our bows. 'Twas a picture of a bay with a
shelving beach thickly green with bushes and trees, in and out of which
there winded lengths and lines of exceeding white sand that trembled to
the sunshine with the shivering metallic sheen of frosted silver. The
sea went blue as the sky to the shore and tumbled into foam, in some
places leaping up in creamy dartings, in others making a small crystal
smoke with its boiling, elsewhere lapping tenderly and expiring in
ripples. The azure heights beyond, which had seemed to closely flank
the coast when first beheld, drew inland with our approach, marking
their remoteness by the retention of their lovely atmospheric delicacy
of colour, and their height by the lengths of vapour that clung to
their mighty slopes at various altitudes, like fragments of great
silken veils or cloths of pale gold which had been rent whilst blowing
along. The seaboard went in a rugged line east and west by the compass,
sometimes coming very low down, sometimes soaring into great forelands,
plentifully covered with wild growths, as you saw by the several dyes
of green that coated it, and in one place--about a league from the
bay--a pale blue smoke rising up denoted a bush-fire, and, as it was
easy to suppose, the presence of natives.
The sky was catching a tinge of brassy hardness from the westering sun,
and the complexion of it where the mountain heights were somehow made
you think of measureless miles of hot and cloudy sand glowing yellowly
up into that feverish reflection. The weak swell that lifted us rolled
in wind-wrinkled folds into the bay, which yawned unsheltered to the
south. I knew from experience that it needs no great wind on this
coast to raise a monstrous sea, and it was with unspeakable eagerness
and anxiety that I directed my eyes from the land to the sky overhead
and on our quarters. But the promise of tranquility seemed to deepen
with the drawing down of the sun. It was sheer sapphire in the south,
melting eastwards into violet, and the sea that way was like an English
lake, and to the left of the sun there floated a few purple clouds,
which I watched some time with attention but could not tell that they
moved, though a breeze was still about us, humming pleasantly aloft,
keeping our old sails rounded, and sending the aged structure gliding
at four knots an hour as quietly through it as a seagull paddling in
the level water of an harbour.
But for the tedious clanging of the pump and the fountain-sounds of
its discharge, the stillness on board would have been as deep as the
hush upon the land. Still, lovely as was that afternoon, I very well
remember wishing it had been a month earlier or later than this. We
were in the stormy time of the year in these parts, though it was
summer at home, and a violent change might quickly come. If it came,
Vanderdecken would have to put to sea, leak or no leak, for it was
not to be supposed that mere hemp could partake of the Curse; and the
cables which I saw some of the crew getting up out of the hold and
bending to the anchors at the bows were assuredly not going to hold
this lump of a craft, high out of water and as thick as a tower aloft,
for twenty solid minutes in a seaway and in the eye of a stout wind.
Therefore it was, when I was alone with Imogene, the coast being then
about a league distant and the sun low, that I said to her: "Dearest,
I have made up my mind to make a desperate effort to get away with you
to-night."
"I am ready," she answered, instantly; "you need but tell me what to
do."
"We must make use of this noble weather," I continued; "it is a fickle
season, a change may come in half-a-dozen hours and force Vanderdecken
to sea with his pump going. Imogene, it must not find us aboard."
"No."
"There will be no moon till eleven; we must be away before she rises,
for she will glow brightly in that sky."
"Dearest, I am ready," she repeated. "But, Geoffrey, risk nothing on
the mere chance that the weather will change. You might imperil your
life by haste--and to-morrow night may be as reposeful as this that
approaches, and with a later moon too!"
"Yes, but do not bid me risk nothing!" I exclaimed. "We must risk
everything--our chances aboard and our chances out of the ship--or you
are as good as chained to this vessel for life."
She smiled her acquiescence. I looked at her with passionate inquiry,
but never did a braver and more resolved heart gaze at a lover from
a maiden's eyes. I found the fearlessness of her devotion the more
admirable for the dread she had expressed concerning the perils of the
coast, and for her speaking thus to me with the land close to and all
its wildness and melancholy visible to her, together with the distant
smoke, towards which I had seen her glance again and again, and whose
meaning she perfectly understood.
The ship swam slowly forwards. The coast dried the wind out of the
atmosphere, but so much the better, for there was enough to carry
us in, and then it could not die too soon to serve my turn. All was
ready with the anchors forward, and the men hung about in pallid gangs
waiting for orders to take sail off the ship. The vitality of the
wondrous craft seemed to lie in the pump and its automatic plyers, so
deep was the silence among the crew and so still their postures; but
now and again the heavy courses would swing into the masts to the soft
bowing of the fabric and raise a feeble thunder-note like to the sound
of bowls rolling over hollow ground. The red light in the west lay
upon the head of the shaggy line of coast, and the far-off mountains
that had been blue went up in a dim purple to the sky; the crimson
haze seemed to float over the rugged brink and roll down the slope to
the shore, so that the scene was bathed in a most exquisite delicate
light--all features touched with red; a bronze as of English autumn
upon the green; the white sand gleaming rosily, and great spaces of
reddish rubble-like ground glowing dark as blood. But the loneliness!
I figured myself ashore there--the ship gone--Imogene gone! I stood in
fancy upon the beach looking out on this bare sea; an aged, perhaps
worthless firelock by my side, a few cartridges, a week's store of
provisions! The moan of the surf was in my ear; every creaking and
rustling of the wind in the near bushes startled me. To right and left
rolled the coast for endless leagues, and the vast plain of sea, whose
multitudinous crying found echoes in a thousand caverns, east and west,
and in the reverberating heart of giant cliffs, whose walls were best
measured in parallels and meridians, went down into the heavens where
the uttermost ends of the earth were.
Yet, hideous as was the prospect of that shore when I thought of myself
marooned upon it, its horrors shrunk into mere perils, such as courage,
patience and resolution might overcome, when my imagination put my
darling by my side, and with her hand in mine, I looked round me upon
the vast scene of solitude. In her weakness I found my strength; in
her devotion my armour. Great God! How precious to man is Thy gift of
woman's love! But for Imogene where would have been my purpose and
determination? I have but to recall the condition of my spirits when I
looked at the shore and thought of myself as alone there to know.
The sun had been sunk an hour, the twilight had melted into darkness,
and the sky was full of stars, when the Death Ship floated in a
breathless manner to abreast of the eastern bluff or foreland of the
bay, and with an air as faint as the sigh of a spirit expiring upon the
black drapery of her higher canvas, she slided the blotting head of
coast on to her quarter, and came to a dead stand within half-a-mile of
the beach.
I heard Vanderdecken tell Arents to drop the lead over the side. This
was done. The captain exclaimed: "What trend hath she?"
"None, sir. The line is up and down like an iron bar."
"Clew up the topsails and topgallant-sails. Up with the courses. See
all ready to let go the anchors, Van Vogelaar."
These orders were re-echoed. In a moment the decks were alive with
dusky shapes of moving men; one after another the sails dissolved
against the stars like clouds, amid the hoarse rumbling of blocks, the
whistling of running ropes, the rattle of descending yards.
"Are you all ready forward?" cried Vanderdecken, his rich voice going
in notes of deep-throated music up into the gloom.
"All ready!" answered Van Vogelaar from the forecastle.
"Then let go the anchor!"
The heavy splash of a great weight of iron was followed by a hot
seething sound of cable torn through the hawse-pipe; the water boiled
to the launching blow from the bow and spread out in a surface of dim
green fire.
I watched to see if the vessel would swing: but there was no air,
neither was there tide or current to slue her, and she hung in a shadow
like that of a thunder-cloud over her own anchor, her mastheads very
softly beating time to the slow lift and fall of the light swell.
"Keep all fast with the larboard anchor!" exclaimed Vanderdecken.
"Overhaul the cable to the fifty fathom scope. Aloft men and stow the
canvas. Carpenter!"
A hoarse voice answered, "Sir?"
"Sound the well and let me know what water there is."
In a few minutes a lantern flickered like an _ignis fatuus_ and threw
out the sombre shapes of men as its gleam passed over the decks which
rippled in faint sheets of phosphoric light. He who bore it was the
carpenter. When he came to the pump he handed it to a seaman whilst
he dropped the sounding-rod down the well. The light was yellow, and
the figures of the fellows who were pumping and the stooping form of
the carpenter stood out of the gloom like an illuminated painting in a
crypt. A foot or two of water gushing from the pump sparkled freely to
where the darkness cut it off. Against the glittering lights in the sky
you saw the ink-like outlines of men dangling upon the yards, rolling
up the canvas. I watched the carpenter pore upon the rod to mark the
height to which the wet rose; he then came on to the poop and spoke to
Vanderdecken in a voice too low for me to catch what he said.
Imogene had left me ten minutes before, and I stood alone in the
deeper shade made in the gloom upon the poop by the mizzen-rigging.
The beating of my heart was painful with anxiety. From one moment to
another I could not tell what the next order might be, and if ever I
seemed to feel a breath of air upon my hot temples, I trembled with the
fear that it was the forerunner of a breeze. As it stood, 'twas such a
night to escape in that my deepest faith in God's mercy had never durst
raise my hopes to the height of its beauty and stillness.
On the opposite side of the poop slowly walked Vanderdecken; in the
starlight such of his skin as showed was as white as wax; he sometimes
looked aloft at the men there, sometimes around at the ocean, sometimes
coming to a stand to mark the gradual swinging of the ship that was
now influenced by some early trickling of tide or by the motions of
the small heaving in the sea, or by some ghostly whisperings of air
overhead.
Ten minutes passed. Though the ship was full of business, not a sound
broke from the men, and the hush you felt upon the dark line of shore
would have been upon the vessel but for the clanking jerks of the
pump-brake and the noise of flowing water.
A figure came up the poop-ladder and softly approached. It was Imogene.
I lightly called and she came to my side in the shadow.
"What are they doing?" she asked.
"They are furling the sails; nothing more as yet," I answered.
"Will they endeavour to lift the leak out of water to-night?"
"Dearest, I am waiting to see what they mean to do."
"I will ask Vanderdecken," said she, "he always answers my questions."
I seized her hand. "No! He may suspect I sent you. Let us walk
carelessly here and there. Lurking in the shadow might give an air of
conspiracy to the prattle of infants to the suspicions of such a mind
as his."
We moved towards the taffrail--the helm was lashed and abandoned--and
then quietly to and fro, speaking under our breath.
"Geoffrey, we may find no water to drink when we get on shore; have you
provided for that?" she said.
I started. I had thought of all things, as I fancied; yet I had
overlooked the most essential of our certain needs.
"No, I have not provided for that," I exclaimed. "How now to manage?"
"I thought of it just now in my cabin. There is a pitcher there and the
sight of it put it into my head to ask if you had included water in
your stock of provisions. It holds about two gallons. It has a narrow
neck and may be easily corked. But how can we convey it ashore. My
weight and the bags and it would sink a bigger frame than the one that
is to float me."
I said: "Is there fresh water in it?"
"It is nearly full. Prins keeps it replenished."
I said: "Are bottles to be had?"
She reflected and answered: "There are jars in which wine is kept, but
I do not know where to find them."
'Twas my turn to think. I then cried: "There is a silver flagon in the
box under the table; that which Prins took away last week and brought
back filled with sherry for Vanderdecken. Can you get it?"
"Yes."
"We may not need it; if so we will leave it. Vanderdecken shall not say
that we have plundered him though we must risk a graver charge even
than that if there be occasion. Dearest, convey that flagon to your
cabin. Fill it with fresh water in readiness. We shall find fresh water
sweeter than the richest wine. Also contrive to have the pitcher filled
to the brim. Prins will do that and suspect nothing. You will invent a
reason, and when it is filled cork it as securely as possible and bind
the head with stout rag that what you use as a cork may not fall out."
She said she would go and see about it at once.
"A moment," I whispered. "Is the window of your quarter-gallery open?"
"No; but I will open it."
"Do so; stand at it till you hear me cough. Then grasp a rope that I
will let hang against the window and coil it away as you pull it in."
She understood me with the readiness of a sailor's child and a sailor's
sweetheart, and left me. The mizzen-yard was lowered; the sail had been
stowed some time. Rove through a small block at the end of the yard was
a length of thin line termed signal halliards used for the showing of
colours. I waited till Vanderdecken came to a stand at the head of the
ladder that was, of course, at the forward end of the poop, and then
with a mariner's swiftness overhauled the halliards through the block,
catching the end as it fell that it might not strike the deck, and
threw it over the quarter, coughing distinctly as I did so. I felt her
pull it; I paid it out cautiously, narrowly watching Vanderdecken till
the whole length was gone, then sauntered forward to where the shadow
of the mizzen-rigging blackened the air.
I had not stood there a minute when Vanderdecken cried out, "Van
Vogelaar!" The mate answered from the forecastle.
"Let a hand remain on the main-topsail yard to receive a tackle for
hoisting out both boats."
I turned my back, putting both my hands to my face in an ecstatic burst
of gratitude to the great God of Heaven for this signal mercy. 'Twas
what I had been hoping and waiting for, with a heart sickened by doubt
and fear. The order was given, and had I been suddenly transported
with Imogene into a ship bound for England my soul could not have
swelled up with keener exultation!