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NEW BOOKS AT EVERY LIBRARY.
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LONDON: CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY.
HEART OF OAK
VOL. II.
PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
LONDON
HEART OF OAK
A THREE-STRANDED YARN
BY
W. CLARK RUSSELL
AUTHOR OF
'THE WRECK OF THE GROSVENOR' 'THE PHANTOM DEATH'
'THE CONVICT SHIP' ETC.
[Illustration: Decoration]
IN THREE VOLUMES--VOL. II.
LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY
1895
CONTENTS
OF
THE SECOND VOLUME
CHAPTER PAGE
XI. THE CREW LEAVE 1
XII. MR. SELBY TAKES UP THE STORY 41
XIII. THE HULL 69
XIV. STILL ADRIFT 92
XV. THE ICE IN THE SOUTH 120
XVI. THE AURORA AUSTRALIS 145
XVII. THE THICK OF IT 169
XVIII. IMPRISONED 192
XIX. MR. MOORE CONTINUES THE STORY 221
HEART OF OAK
CHAPTER XI
THE CREW LEAVE
The sail shone like a peak of ice against a belly of soft snow-cloud
right ahead--that is, ahead as the hull's bows lay. I should have
supposed it ice, but for the captain, who stood close beside the
companion holding the ship's glass: he said, 'There she is, miss.'
'Is she coming this way?' cried I, shivering with cold and passion.
'I can't tell as yet. She's only just been sighted. Bear a hand with
the first empty tar barrel you can get hold of,' he bawled, moving
forwards, and he continued to shout, but I could not gather the
instructions he delivered.
Presently Mrs. Burke joined me, and then Mr. Owen swathed to the
nostrils.
'It's almost too good to credit,' he exclaimed! 'Can they be mistaken?
Is it ice? If it should prove a ship!'
He went sliding and staggering towards some men in the waist, and stood
questioning them, heedless of the captain.
With the promptitude of seamen the crew collected a lot of stuff for
making a smoke; they stacked a large heap of material near the gangway
and set fire to it, and in about ten minutes a thick body of blue smoke
was rolling over the rail, and clouding upwards with many a sparkling
ruddy gleam shooting up tongue-shaped or arrow-like into the throat of
the sooty pouring.
It was wide daylight and the antarctic day young, but the clouds rimmed
the horizon with the shadow of night, and the crimson light of the
flare promised as swift an intelligence of our forlorn condition as
the smoke. The seamen continued to feed the fire; and all the while
Captain Burke was stretching his telescope at the distant gleam; the
men again and again turning their eyes from it to him with looks
growing dark with impatience and consuming anxiety. Mr. Owen had
fetched his binocular glass and strained his eyes through them without
intermission. Mrs. Burke and I standing in the companion, which was
the one sheltered part of that long stretch of frozen deck and smashed
bulwarks, gazed without speech.
Suddenly a sailor, one who had been most active in feeding the fire,
sprang on to the rail: he grasped a spear-shaped projection of ice,
which broke short off and he fell on his back; he sprang again with an
oath, and after looking, turned to others who were standing near the
fire and roared:
'Mates, she's leaving us, by God!'
'She takes us for a whaler trying out. There's no good in smoke as a
signal down here,' said a sailor.
'It's our chance,' bawled the fellow who had sprung and fallen, now
throwing himself back on to the deck. 'There mayn't come another for
weeks. What's to happen then? Are we to drive about in this fired ocean
till we ends as froze-up corpses? I'm for following her.'
'Take her bearings, bo'sun, while she's in sight,' shouted a seaman,
and the huge sailor, as obedient as though the captain had given the
command, rolled aft and put the sharp of his hand upon the compass bowl.
'Captain Burke,' exclaimed one of the seamen, in a voice startling with
its sudden savage note of revolt, 'we've had enough of this. There's
nothen that's a-going to be of any use to us in them booms.' He pointed
behind him with his thumb. 'There's our chance. We'll run ourselves
into her sight and she'll pick us up.'
'Hold your jaw, you Johnson!' said Captain Burke, who was as white
as the deck in the face, though his eyes showed dangerously, like a
madman's who watches his chance to leap upon you.
'Hold _my_ jaw?' growled the seaman, a hairy scowling man in a yellow
sou'-wester, dropping his head into an insolent butting posture.
'Why, so I will arter I've told yer that when them masts went we was
quit of your blistered articles, and here's one as ain't for stopping
one bloomin' minute longer to mess and muck about with jury-masts,
pennorths of parasol to be blowed over the bows as soon as they're up.
Mates,' he yelled, 'I'm after that ship whilst there's time. Who's for
coming?'
As though there had been something quickening and thrilling as
magnetism in the sailor's shout, the whole of the men made a jump for
the boat, one of the first being the boatswain who was coming aft from
the compass when the seaman bawled the invitation.
The smoke of the flare had flittered down into a curl of pale blue
vapour, which blew over the rail feather-shaped to the sea. The captain
stood this side of it, watching the men in a staring idle way whilst
they went to work at the boat with gleaming knives, hacking and cutting
at her fastenings--he seemed as though deprived of his reason--then he
roared out:
'Leave that boat alone. Don't touch that boat. She belongs to the ship.
She's my property. Overboard and swim for that vessel there if she's
your chance, you dogs! But leave that boat alone.'
A few turned their heads to look at him and then went on passing their
knives through the lashings, clearing away the booms and so forth.
'Stop him!' shrieked Mrs. Burke. 'Help, Mr. Owen! What can he do?
What's the use of it? They'll kill him!' and I too screamed when I saw
the captain rush upon the nearest of the men regardless of their naked
knives; he struck out right and left, flooring two, but a third--none
of them I observed offering to hit him back--crooked his leg at the
poor man's heels, and he fell, fetching the iron-hard snow-coated plank
a thump that left him motionless.
Mrs. Burke rushed to his side. The boatswain cried out:
'He's no right to stop us, mum. It's our lives we're working for and
thinking of. You and him and the lady'll come along too. Now, mates,
whilst there's daylight, for God's sake!'
Mr. Owen crossed to the captain's side and assisted Mrs. Burke to drag
him aft. His figure slipped over the frozen snow as though he was
lifeless, but they had not dragged him a dozen paces in the direction
of the companion-hatch when he cried out and struggled. Mr. Owen let
go; with the help of his wife he got on his feet.
'Get me some brandy,' said he.
I heard him and made with what speed I might for the cabin, my face
bloodless and my heart beating as fast as a watch ticks. That brief
scene of conflict, like to one of those terrible mutinies I had read
of in sea tales, had been shocking to witness, on top as it was of our
helpless and awful situation, and all the anguish of expectation and
fear which had filled the past few days. I was sick and nearly fainted.
I sat down to catch my breath and press my temples. Before I found
strength to rise, Mrs. Burke descended, followed by her husband.
He seated himself at the table, upon which he lay his right arm and
buried his face in it. She coaxed him after a little into taking some
brandy, and then observing my state she got me to take a sip.
Meanwhile overhead I heard the crew busy with the long-boat; her keel
thundered as they ran her to the side for launching. Their movements
were full of feverish bustle; in truth they were working for life or
death; they meant to catch the ship and there remained but a very few
hours of daylight.
'Does your head pain you, Edward?'
'No,' he answered, and strained his hearing to catch what was passing
above.
'Will they let us know when they're ready to take us?' I cried.
'Take us!' the captain exclaimed, with a sudden anger in his whole
manner as he turned towards me. 'They may take you, but I stop here.'
'No, no, Miss Marie,' cried my poor old nurse, 'they must not take you
without me, and my place is by my husband's side wherever he is. Think
if they should miss the ship, which is more than likely: they'll be in
an open boat in this frozen ocean! Fancy being in an open boat in such
weather as that of the night before last! You would not live to see
to-morrow's dawn. And how should their going concern us? If they fall
in with the ship they'll report we are here and the vessel may return.
If they miss her they are in an exposed open boat, and we are in a dry,
comfortable hull, with a good warm cabin to sit in, and no worse off
than if all the crew were aboard. For what can they do? If the ship
comes, she'll come whether the crew are on board or not.'
'But are the three of us to be left alone?' I exclaimed.
'The dogs could have helped me,' muttered the captain. 'We blew
northwards yesterday and to-day we sighted a sail. They are villains to
steal my boat, the only remaining boat. But I am too few for them--I am
too few for them.' He clasped his hands upon the back of his head as
though he was in pain there.
Just then four or five seamen came tumbling down the companion-ladder:
one held a lighted lantern. This man exclaimed:
'Capt'n, the boat's alongside, and all's ready.'
'What are you doing down here?' thundered the captain.
'The victuals we want are in the lazarette,' answered the man. 'No good
lifting the main-hatch and overhauling the cargo when all we need's
handy here.'
Even whilst he spoke the rest had pulled up a little square hatch
cover with an iron ring in it; it fitted a large manhole a few paces
abaft the companion-ladder; this hatch conducted to a part of the
after-hold called the lazarette, a sort of store-room in which the
cabin provisions and wines with other commodities were stowed.
Captain Burke jumped from his seat; his wife fell upon him shrieking,
and with her arms about his neck forced him to sit, beseeching him to
have patience, to let the men have their way, to attempt no violence
or they would kill him. He trembled with rage and weakness and grief,
but he understood his powerlessness--which was merciful, for there was
an angry stubbornness in the hurry and motions of the men which was as
good as advising their captain, with a curse and a threat wrapped up in
the hint, not to meddle with them, not to offer to hinder them if he
valued his life.
Very promptly the lot emerged from the lazarette, bearing cases and
sacks, hams, cheeses, and so forth. They no doubt guessed they'd come
to want plenty of provisions should they miss the ship they were
after. They ran headlong up the ladder, none heeding us, but not above
two minutes afterwards the boatswain's burly figure showed in the
companion-way, and he bawled down:
'Capt'n Burke, we're all ready, and there isn't a second to lose. Ain't
you going to join us along with the ladies?'
He received no reply.
He repeated the question, roaring it out in a bull-like bellowing, and
then came a step or two down the ladder to stretch his neck that he
might see us. I cried out:
'Are we to be left alone?' for I cannot express the horror that chilled
me when I thought of the sailors leaving us to save themselves,
insomuch that they might be on board another ship sailing towards the
sun ere the Southern Cross was trembling in the south that night,
whilst the three of us who stayed--two of them women--might go on
rolling about in a wrecked and crusted hull till she grew sodden and
sank, or split against an iceberg.
'Come you along with us, miss, if the captain and his wife won't leave
the vessel!' cried the boatswain.
'No!' shrieked Mrs. Burke. 'Would you expose a delicate young lady in
these seas in an open boat? Fools are you yourselves to go. You'll be
heard of no more.'
The boatswain without another word withdrew his great developed bulk
from the hatch, but he was instantly replaced by another figure, and
Mr. Owen's voice, shrill with excitement and hurry, cried down:
'Mrs. Burke, Miss Otway, aren't you coming? They'll be putting off
without you if you pause.'
'He does not ask my husband to join them,' screamed Mrs. Burke, 'the
wretch! does he think I would leave my husband?'
Mr. Owen came swiftly down into the cabin and talked like a man in
delirium.
'You have no right to keep this young lady with you. Captain Burke
sticks to his hull from sordid motives. That's his look-out. Life's
more precious than cargo. Miss Otway was entrusted to my care. I insist
upon her being permitted to accompany us. Her father looks to me for
her well-being. She is eager to go with us and you will not suffer it.'
Thus he raved on.
'Leave this cabin,' cried the captain, springing up. His face was full
of blood, his blue eyes blazed; he had already been worked up into
madness, and I was certain by his insane manner of starting from his
chair, if the doctor did not go instantly the captain would destroy him.
But it was at that moment that the boatswain bawled on deck. 'Come
up!' were the words I caught, sounding through the companion-hatch in
a muffled note of thunder. 'Up with them who's going.' More was said
which I did not hear.
'By keeping her, you are murdering her, and her blood is on your head!'
cried Mr. Owen like a woman in a frenzy of passion, and rushed up the
ladder.
'Don't believe him,' exclaimed Mrs. Burke, grasping my hand, with a
wild, short, passionate laugh that had the note of an hysteric sob.
'You shall see the boat presently. You shall see it out upon the
water. You will judge then who would kill you. Oh, not I, not I, my
flower; not I, your poor old nurse!'
I clasped her round the neck and sobbed. When I looked up Captain Burke
had left the cabin.
We were apparelled for the deck, and finding the captain gone, we
followed, and though scarcely five minutes had elapsed since the
boatswain bawled, already the long-boat was some ship's lengths
distant, bowed almost to the line of her lee rail by a great square of
white canvas, shaded here and there where the moisture had not dried
out of it. She looked full of people as she rose to the head of the
folds, ripping through it with the icy breeze fresh off her bow, till
the lift of the foam sparkled in a fountain-like arch right athwart her
forward, and her speed raised two humps of froth on either quarter,
and shot a long milk-white glance of wake, bright as a meteor's line
of light, far astern of her, lifting and falling on the swell, and
defined to its extremity even amidst the smoke and snap of the running
seas.
Captain Burke with one hand grasping the edge of the companion stood
watching her. When we came up his first words were, after a brief pause:
'They'll overhaul the ship if they can only get a sight of her. Look
how she sails, and how finely she is handled.'
'She may be the means of saving us,' cried Mrs. Burke. 'What use were
they on board of us? But they're useful there. They'll be sighted and
rescued, and we shall be hunted after.'
But I did not want her nor her husband after I had watched the boat
a little to tell me that, unless they quickly encountered succour,
their situation, crowded together in a small exposed space, would be
terrible. Also, since Mrs. Burke would not have left her husband, I
should have been the only woman in her. I cannot say how the mere
sight of her as she swept onwards, dwindling as you gazed into a mere
toy, regularly sinking out of sight till nothing showed but a gleaming
curve of her topmast cloths, wan and slender as a distant sea-fowl's
pinion, then taking the slope till she leaned, poised and foaming for
a breathless instant, upon the flying summit: I cannot tell you, I
say, how solemnly and awfully that mere toy, full of human beings,
emphasised to my perception the vastness and the loneliness of this
cold, green, heaving breast of ocean.
Captain Burke took the telescope out of the companion and swept the sea
for some little distance on either hand the boat's bows, pausing on the
lee side of the fabric where, my sight being good, I spied a point like
a light tipping the sea-line against some dark clouds there whenever
the hull soared.
'That's the ship,' said he, pointing. 'They may catch her! Why, had I
thought of it--but who's going to make proposals to mutineers?--the
scoundrels have stolen my only boat. How do they know in leaving us
what's to become of us without a boat?'
'Had you thought of what?' said his wife.
'I'd have given them a handful of rockets.'
We stood watching the boat till the white spot she became was one with
the breaking seas. The hull looked indescribably forlorn. The sense of
all life, saving us three, having gone out of her, brought a deeper
spirit of desolation into her labouring shape. Oh, the heart-sickness
that came into you out of her dismal regular rolling in the trough!
The swell lifted her, the seas burst upon her weather side as against
a rock, broke into smoke, and smote the hollow they sprang from with
the loud hissing of a hail squall. There was a constant dreary gleam of
ice as the fabric swayed, pallid glares along her side, blue glancings
from the long barbs at the catheads; the frozen snow the whole length
of the deck had a shrewd keen sparkle. In places along the working line
of the sea hung motionless the faint marble of bergs; but long before
the boat was lost to view the feather-tip of sail she was pursuing had
vanished.
Captain Burke carefully and closely swept the horizon, then replaced
the telescope.
'A few hours often make a mighty difference at sea,' said he. 'By this
time tomorrow we may be towing northwards.'
'Have the men gone away without a compass?' said Mrs. Burke.
'The bo'sun owned a compass that was a curiosity of casting and
graving: I remember he showed it to the mate. They'll have taken that
with them. And now,' said he, speaking with more cheerfulness than I
had observed in him for some days, 'let us go below and get something
to eat. There's fuel enough to keep the stove going for a long spell.
The hull's as staunch as she was on the day we sailed. Any moment
you may see something that will look like ice climbing the sea into a
whaler's breast of topsail and stump topgallant masts. So call things
at their worst, miss,' said he, 'for then we may believe that their
mending's at hand.'
Mrs. Burke and I went below; the captain remained on deck. Between
us we dressed the dinner table. She did not want me to help her. She
said it was her duty and joy to wait upon me. 'To think of Miss Marie
Otway,' she exclaimed, 'laying a table-cloth and putting knives and
forks upon the table that a plain merchant-skipper and his wife may
dine.'
I kissed and went on helping her; any sort of occupation was welcome:
for, argue as the captain and Mrs. Burke might, the abandonment of
the wreck by the whole of the sailors had raised a horror in me, and
filled my heart with deep secret distress and dread; so that, whenever
I thought of our situation, it was with a shudder at the emptiness of
the rolling broken hull.
I believe the hour was not far from two o'clock. Already the gloom
of the early antarctic night was in the cabin, but the lamp swung in
flashes through the shadow, and you could only have told that the gloom
was gathering when you looked at the portholes. We sat beside the stove
waiting for Captain Burke; by-and-bye his wife grew uneasy, and went on
deck to seek him and call him down to dinner.
I was then alone, and sat very cold and wretched. I had been alone in
this cabin before--that is, since the masts had gone; but then there
had been the tread of feet overhead, the knowledge of a plentiful,
hearty life in the ship. Now all was as hushed as the tomb in that way.
After I had been waiting four or five minutes, I saw two small points
of light in the gloom where a locker ended, and where some few feet
of ship's wall ran clear. I stared, suspecting an illusion, and then
believed it was phosphorus or something jewelled with light by decay as
rotten timber is. But on a sudden the two shining spots came stealing
out into the whiskers and ribbed shape of a huge lean, grey rat. I
jumped up with a shriek and the thing vanished.
My nerves gave way, and, marvelling at Captain and Mrs. Burke's
absence, I went on deck to look for them, trembling with disgust and
terror.
The daylight was small, but the snow along the decks made a whiteness
in the air, so that perhaps even in the darkest hour you would be able
to detect anything in motion betwixt the rails. Here and there about
the leaden rolling ocean broke sudden glares of froth. The shadow had
blended the sea-circle with sky, and nothing was visible save a smoky
thickness of vapour breaking up to windward where it soared, and ashy
in places with rain or snow. I stood in the hatch and looked along the
deck and saw nobody. This so frightened me that I shrieked out Mrs.
Burke's name. Nothing answered. I trembled with dread and the bitter
cold of the wind, and crossing the deck that I might have something
to hold by, went forward, occasionally screaming out the name of Mrs.
Burke, but never getting an answer.
The galley door was open: nobody was in it. I was half fainting with
terror; I could not imagine what had become of my companions. Was
I alone in the ship? Oh, never could I make you understand what my
feelings were whilst I stood running my eyes first forward and then
aft, straining along the ghostly slanting glimmer of the decks for a
sight of one or another of my friends, hearing nothing but a strange
moaning noise of wind in the sky, and the long rolling thunder of
moving mountains of water, the early night darkening fast down all
round, the closing in upon the ghastly, weary, tumbling hull, lifting
its bowsprit and splintered stumps of masts in postures of agony
defined as existence itself could make them!
I had just sucked in my breath to send forth another scream, when I saw
a figure in the little hatch called the forescuttle, which led into the
forecastle.
'Who is that?' I cried.
'Is that you, Miss Marie?' called the voice of Mrs. Burke, and she rose
through the hatch.
'I thought you were lost. I thought I was alone,' I cried, beginning to
sob with a sudden passion of hysteric relief.
'My husband went down into the forepeak to get some coal,' said she,
not perceiving that I cried. 'He asked me to help him by pulling up
some buckets as he filled them. We are not quite done, but do not stay
on deck, my dear. We shall be with you in a very few minutes now.'
On this I returned to the cabin, but much shaken, and so low-spirited,
I had never before felt more miserable.
I entered the cabin with eyes a-search for the rat, and could not sit
still beside the stove for thinking of the beast, for at every moment
I was coining the lights of its eyes, the gaunt crouched shape of it,
out of some shadow here or there; and if I saw it not in imagination,
I figured it as under my chair. However, soon after I had returned,
the captain and Mrs. Burke entered the cabin, the captain bearing two
buckets and his wife one, full of coals.
'Now,' he exclaimed, 'for a little wash after that job!' and he took
a kettle of water off the stove and carried it to his cabin. His wife
followed him.
They came back soon and we sat down at the table. Whilst we ate Mrs.
Burke explained how her husband had attached a block to a beam in the
forecastle and rove a rope through it with a hook at one end, and how,
standing in the forecastle, she had hauled up the buckets as he filled
them deep down in the forepeak.
I told them of the horrible rat I had seen.
'Don't let it scare you, miss,' said the captain. 'Rats at sea haven't
the viciousness of the beasts ashore. They'll drown themselves in a
man's savings of molasses. They'll creep into his bunk and nibble his
toe-nails. That's about the worst that I can recollect. They may be
destructive to ships and cargo, but they've got their instincts, and
know when on the ocean they're dependent on sailors.'
He doubtless said this to hearten me. Mrs. Burke changed the subject by
speaking of the melancholy appearance of the forecastle. The hammocks
swung, she said, as though every one held a man; the sailors' chests
were scattered about, there was a smell of tobacco in the place as
though the sailors had scarcely extinguished their pipes. The captain
had put out the forecastle lamp. It was alight when they entered.
Not that it would have set fire to the ship. It was sputtering and
smelling, with a thick coil of slush rank smoke spreading in a little
cloud under the deck out of a small greasy flame.
'The silence is shocking,' she said to her husband. 'I looked to see
the heads of men peering at me over the edges of the hammocks.'
'There may be heads of men nearer than we think,' said he. 'I'll
give ourselves a chance this night.' He looked up at the clock under
the skylight and seemed to calculate, and then said, 'The boat went
swiftly. She may have run into the ken of the ship--some box-ended
waggon of a south seaman, no doubt, slow as a baulk of timber working
to windward on a two-knot tide.'
'What will you do?' said his wife.
'I'll send up a rocket occasionally. If she picks up our people she
might stand down to look for us--she might. I'll do more,' he added
after a pause. 'I'll give them a flare or anything else that may be a
bright light to see us by--a lantern on the stump of the foremast, or,
better still, under the bowsprit where it'll dance.'
'Can a hull like this remain long afloat?' said I.
'Ay, miss.'
'I thought when a vessel was dismasted she became a wreck, and went
quickly to pieces.'
'Over and over,' said he, 'you may have heard, you must have read, of
derelicts, whose log-books showed they'd been washing about for months,
sliding north and south, east and west through the summers and winters
of the ocean. A well-built ship is so hard to knock to pieces that
when she's abandoned she's as dangerous to navigation as an uncharted
rock. Again and again they talk of sending gunboats to blow derelicts
to pieces and clear the road. They're hard to extinguish, even with
gunpowder, as hard to expel as a madman's fancies. This craft is safe,
believe me, and will provide us with a secure sea-home until we're
fallen in with, which may be tomorrow.'
This sort of talk did me a world of good, and I began to cheer up and
feel something like my old self. I was now used to the motion of the
hulk, at least in such a sea as then ran, though a landsman coming on
board for the first time would have been instantly thrown, so swift,
abrupt, and shooting were the rolls. This afternoon we did not notice
any particular weight in the race and lift of the swell and sea; there
had been a dumbness in the looks of the weather throughout the day,
though a fresh wind blew with a flaying, razor-like edge of frost in
it. Captain Burke said he expected a quiet night; that is, no more wind
than had blown through the day. He built up a good fire for us, and got
his wife to boil some coffee, whilst he fetched a number of rockets to
carry on deck.
With the wish to amuse me he asked if I would like to see a rocket
fired, and whilst Mrs. Burke made some coffee I followed him above.
Night was upon the sea, and its shadow was as a wall for the ice spears
along our rails to brandish their gleams upon. The captain fitted a
candle-shaped thing into a rocket in the bulwarks near the wheel and
fired it, and the rocket sprang high in a line of sparkles, leaving a
red ball of flame floating close against the clouds, which reflected
the radiance as though to a touch of sunset. I watched the red ball
float down the wind and expire.
'We'll send up a second for luck,' said the captain.
This was a white light and the dazzle of the flash was lightning-like:
a thin long wake of the brilliance dimly glanced, serpentine, off the
peaks and slants of the heaving waters and the sky opened as to a
star. But the night was the darker for that light when it went.
'Now, who's to tell,' said Captain Burke, 'what eye has seen those
rockets? Never give up heart at sea, miss. We'll go below for a cup of
hot coffee, and then the brightest burning lantern aboard shall be made
fast in some place where it can be seen.'
I returned to the cabin with a little spirit of elation working in
me, a strange possession in the presence of that reeling shadow of
frosted hull and the blackness winding round about, pallid here and
there with the wild dim light of froth. It was occasioned, no doubt,
by the sending up of the rockets, by some faint hope or fancy of their
being seen, with a half-formed vision of the ship the crew that day had
pursued staggering down towards us then, a pale shaft aslant, gaunt
with lean canvas breasting slowly, with many eyes on the look-out.
The three of us sat drinking coffee, and our talk ran in the way of our
deliverance. The captain named our chances.
'Yes,' cried I, 'but if a ship should refuse to tow you, you will not
surely remain on board this hull and keep us with you! Sooner----'
I broke off.
'Sooner what, miss?' said he, rounding his face upon me, crimson on one
side of it with the fire.
'Sooner than that we should remain here in the hope of saving the
property you possess in the hull, I would give you under my hand an
undertaking that my father will make good the amount of your loss.'
'We'll see you safe; we'll see you safe,' he exclaimed with a slow
smile. 'Anyhow, you're better here than in the long-boat where you'd be
if Mr. Owen could have had his way.'
'Ay, if they're not aboard a ship they are cold now, I warrant, those
poor men in that open boat,' exclaimed Mrs. Burke. 'And if the breeze
should come on to freshen so as to fling spray over them, that must be
the freezing part. Not to be able to get up and walk, and to feel the
brine raining upon your back and hardening into a mask of ice about
your neck!'
The captain got up, but as I did not watch him, I know not whether he
went on deck or to a cabin. When he returned he held a large ship's
lantern, a globe of white glass framed with metal. He fetched some oil
from the pantry, carefully trimmed and then lighted the lantern.
'This will handsomely jewel the bowsprit,' said he. 'She'll make a
starry dance of it there, toss it as proudly as though it were a gem on
her brow, and she was still clothed in her last week's beauty of white
wings. Heigh-ho! 'Tis no time for fine fancies. Sit ye here, miss;
I'll not have you again expose yourself above; but, wife, you can rig
yourself up so as to give me a ten minutes' hand on deck. I may want to
seize a block to the bowsprit and run this light out.'
She clothed herself for the bitter cold, and bidding me not be afraid
though a hundred rats should come and stare, she went up the steps
after her husband in the almost noontide light of the lantern that
swung in his hand.
The emotion of light-heartedness was ended; it had been but as the
gleam of a star in black water on a cloudy night--the sky was folded
up, my heart was dark again, I found no light nor life of hope in
it. They say that hope springs eternal; I vow to God then I felt as
hopeless as if my end was at hand whilst I sat alone when they had gone
to show a light on the hull. I closed my eyes that I might not see the
rat should it come, and so, sitting with the glow of the fire upon my
face, I beheld a vision of my house: it rose upon my darkened gaze; I
saw the wintry scene of Channel waters, the glance of foam through the
flying clouds of snow; I saw myself walking with my sweetheart upon the
stretch of sands, pausing to gaze at the beauty of the forming breaker
and to hearken to the cries of the skyful of blown gulls. I saw my
father; but what I chiefly remembered was the sensation of bitter cold
which had sunk chill to heart and marrow, when I entered for the first
time the cabin I was now occupying.
I shivered and buried my face and rocked myself, my eyes still sealed.
I may have lost thought of time in musing; I started, looked round,
and found by the hour that they had been on deck nigh twenty minutes.
I thought this was a long time for Captain Burke to keep his wife
exposed, and still I concluded that the job of securing a lantern to
the bowsprit might run into time aboard a dancing, jumping, slippery
hulk; so I continued to wait, all the while straining my ears, till
hearing was made an anguish of by the constant cheats of sound.
I could bear it no longer. They had been absent half an hour and five
minutes. I did not expect to hear their footfalls through the frozen
snow on the planks; nor would their voices reach me if they remained
forward; but why did not they come? I waited another ten minutes, then
went on deck.
I looked, and was almost paralysed with terror; had I been an instant
sooner, an instant later, it could not have been; but my eye went
to it as I rose through the hatch at the breathless moment of its
happening--and this was it: low over the sea in some quarter I could
not name hung the moon, red as the sun in fog; she had just broken
out through a mass of heavy black vapour; a ragged edge as of scud
was floating off her upper limb like a last lingering shadow of
eclipse, as I looked; and right athwart the orb, centering it, was
the body of a bird, doubtless an albatross; and the instant picture
was that of some wondrous, gigantic, glowing shield hanging over the
sea, and approaching the hull on the back of a huge seafowl. But in a
heart's beat the deception went: the bird whose distance created that
marvellous illusive perspective curved in its flight and winged out of
the illuminated circle and was gone, and in the next breath a lift of
black stuff like the dingy smouldering of a candle-wick overspread the
moon and hid her.
I looked along the deck, and as before, so now, I beheld nothing
moving. I tried to reason with my terrors by supposing that the captain
had again gone below to shovel up more coal, and that his wife waited
in the forecastle to help him. But whilst I looked and strained my ears
I heard a moan; again and yet again it came; I could not be mistaken.
I went forward and heard the moaning whilst I advanced, and when I was
close to the galley I saw a figure on the forecastle and heard the
moaning again.
I stepped close, my heart almost stopped, my blood almost frozen. The
white of the deck made a light of its own, as I have told you, and
I saw Mrs. Burke lying on her side. She lay close to the fluke of
an anchor that was stowed upon the forecastle on the starboard, or
right-hand side. She moaned and continued to moan; I dropped on my
knees, and grasping her hand cried, with my face close to hers to see
if her eyes were open, for her moaning was that of a dying person: 'It
is I. What has happened? Are you ill? Where's your husband?'
She answered feebly, moaning at every other word:
'He has fallen overboard. He went on to the bowsprit with a lantern and
slipped. Oh, God, my heart breaks, my heart breaks! I ran and fell and
I cannot rise. I have lost him--oh, my heart!'
I cried in a passion of horror and terror, 'Captain Burke drowned!' and
then, figuring him battling for life alongside, I sprang to my feet
and went to the rail and looked over. But there was nothing to be seen
save an inky cloudiness of moving waters, shaping and dissolving, and a
dim light of foam when the ship's bows pitched, and there was no other
sound but that of the washing of brine pouring along the side, and a
noise of wind overhead.
I went back to Mrs. Burke and knelt by her again, and cried:
'Cannot you rise that I may help you to get to the cabin?'
She moaned, but did not speak.
Then my heart gave way wholly, and as I knelt by her side I clasped my
hands, and looked up into the darkness, and cried out of my loneliness:
'What shall I do? What shall I do?'