THE FOUR CASTAWAYS.
"Lord have mercy on us!" escaped the lips of all.
It would seem that, by the strength and violence of the sea, the
entire quarter-deck abaft the mizzen-mast, with a portion of its
bulwarks, the taffrail, some parts of the stern windows and quarter
galleries, had been torn from the ship, and this crazy fragment was
all that intervened between our four friends and eternity.
Being level with the sea it could not be capsized, which, at least,
was one good property.
Lashed to such parts of it as were available, the poor victims clung
there in desperation and silence, waiting, and praying in their
hearts that the storm would abate; and now, as if its errand had been
done, its object accomplished in the total destruction of the
unfortunate _Princess_, the gusty wind began to lull gradually,
though the agitated sea rolled high and black as ever.
As the common saying has it, the waves "ran mountains high;" but it
must be borne in mind, that few waves rise more than ten feet above
the general level of the water, which, when ten more are given for
the trough of the sea, makes the whole height from base to crest
twenty feet--sufficiently high to be terrible in aspect and effect.
Over the raft of the _Princess_ (for it was little better) those vast
hills of water made a thundering breach every instant, or came
surging up through the apertures, from whence the companion and
skylight had been torn away.
The taffrail was strong, and it was chiefly to it that Bartelot,
Morley, Morrison, and Gawthrop lashed themselves, for gradually all
that remained of the bulwarks were torn away, and the stump of the
mizzenmast was soon worked or sucked out by the sea.
There was an appalling sense of loneliness, of dread and desolation,
and of too probable death being near at hand, though, perhaps, all
the more terrible, if it were protracted.
So the fearful night wore on; the black scud was passing away, the
stars shone out, and the four castaways began to hope that morning
was at hand. Yet, ruthlessly, wave after wave came rolling over
them, each with its high and monstrous head, curling white with snowy
foam, though its sides were black and inky. Then there would be a
roar as of thunder when each burst over the fragment of wreck,
engulfing and half choking the poor dripping wretches who clung to it
in silence and despair.
But now, as dawn, began to spread rapidly over the east, the sea went
down, and the wind also; the waves ceased to roll over the broken
deck, which floated steadily, and as it rose upheaved on each
successive swell, the occupants cast around them, eager glances from
their bloodshot eyes, in the hope of descrying a sail.
Dawn came thoroughly in--a cloudy morning, but no sunshine. Ere long
they could see the whole horizon; but there no vestige of a sail was
visible, and now they looked blankly in each other's pallid faces.
"My poor crew!" said Bartelot, with a thick sob in his throat, but
the exclamation had escaped him many times before; "second-mate,
carpenter, sail-maker, steward, cook, boys, and all--all gone but us,
Morley. Sad--deplorable, is it not?"
"Do not grieve for what is irreparable," said Morrison.
"If I saw you, Bill Morrison, my friend Ashton, and my old shipmate
Noah, all safe, I don't care if I were shark-meat this minute," he
resumed, bitterly.
"Don't say so, Bartelot, my old boy," replied Morley, with an
affectation of spirit he was far from feeling: "you have behaved
bravely, and done all that man could do to save your ship. Take
courage; you have buoyed me up many a day, when my heart had sunk to
zero. Let me try to cheer you in turn."
"Cheer!" Tom repeated, shaking his head sadly, and still more
bitterly, as he surveyed their home upon the waters.
"Oh, Heaven! to think of this being a bit of the old _Princess_ we
all loved so well!" groaned Morrison, looking almost affectionately
on the frail planks over which the sea rippled at every heave.
"Aye, sir," chimed in Noah; "it are odd, but it was a bit of that
same blessed deck, as was holystoned and prayer-booked, swabbed and
squilgeed of a morning till it were white as snow--whiter a'most than
the deck of her Majesty's yacht. I've poured half the sea over that
deck, I have, when the head-pump was rigged for'ard of a morning, and
now what is it, but only a bit of drift-wood, and we a clinging to
it, like four wet barnacles? Lor' help us!"
"And bless our poor shipmates!" added Bartelot, pointing upwards.
"They are all gone, sir--found sailors' graves, every one of them,"
said Morrison; "the ship would fill, and go down the moment she
parted aft."
"But you've done your duty, sir," said Noah; "and can clear yourself
of the ship's loss before any naval court in any part of the world.
I only wish we were all afore one this blessed minute, instead o'
drifting about here, without compass, biscuit, or 'bacca."
Now came the oppressive reflection that they were without food and
without water.
Morley had read very recently the "Paul Huet" of Eugene Sue, and the
more true story on which his romance is founded--the awful wreck of
the _Medusa_, French frigate, and thus the horrors which her crew
endured upon the raft came vividly and painfully before him now.
The saline property of the atmosphere, their long and repeated
immersions in the ocean, the quantities of its water they had been
compelled to swallow when the drenching waves broke over them, soon
excited thirst. This longing was increased by heat, when the sun
came forth; but as yet they had no desire for food.
All their energies were bent on watching the horizon around them, but
no sail appeared; so the wreck continued to float listlessly about,
without making way apparently in any direction.
A boat they might have rowed in the direction of the Cape of Good
Hope, and though they might have failed to reach the coast, while
minus food and water, they would always have increased their chances
of being picked up by a passing ship, homeward or outward bound; but
on the wreck they were helpless, as if upon a desert rock fixed amid
the sea.
The first day passed slowly, wearily on, and the sun verged westward
in his course.
Now night descended on the sea. There was no moon, but the stars
shone clearly and sharply.
Worn by emotion, by toil, suffering, and lack of sleep, they trusted
to the security of their lashings, and strove to find rest, or
oblivion, in slumber; but a half-wakeful doze was all they could
achieve. Each body lay, to all appearance, torpid; but the anxious
soul slept not, so each had his own keen active thoughts and dreams.
Tom Bartelot conjured up a certain pretty little English face, whose
smiling blue eyes were associated with many a summer evening walk
among the sylvan scenery of Richmond Park, in the gardens of Kew, and
visits to Hampton Court.
Morrison's heart was in his old mother's cottage, where he first saw
the light, by the broad waters of the Dee, that roll from the hills
of Crathie and Braemar in "the bonnie north country;" for he had
intended, at the close of another voyage, to go home to Scotland,
with all his earnings and wages, to spend them with her, and for her
only; but all that seemed hopeless now, though the hum of the sea in
his ears, as it rippled against the wreck, suggested the surf that in
boyhood he had seen breaking over the Black Dog of Belhelvie.*
* A rock on the Aberdeenshire coast, so named from its appearance at
low water.
Poor old Gawthrop, with his grizzled whiskers, and lips baked in dry
salt, dreamt of neither father, mother, nor love--for all who loved
old Noah were dead long ago; but he had a vision of a stiff jorum of
"Boatswain's grog--just half and half,"
such as he used to get in the _Haurora_, of fifty guns; while Morley
Ashton thought, and dreamed, and murmured to himself of Ethel Basset.
"Absence makes the heart grow fonder."
He had now been long absent from Ethel, and been long mourned by her
as one who was lost to her for ever, and numbered with the dead. And
now death menaced him again!
He had been saved from destruction by his friend--saved from a death
by starvation, or despair, at Acton Chine; but only to perish with
him here amid the lonely waters of the South Atlantic; for this time
it seemed that he was too surely doomed to die--an idea rendered all
the more bitter by a conviction that Ethel would never, and could
never, know the dark story of his disappearance, for no mortal lips
could tell her save those of Hawkshaw.
Morley felt that he might perish now; that she would never learn the
true character of his rival; of his own awful escape from Acton
Chine; of his journey to Rio de Janeiro; of his sufferings on the
raft, till relieved by death; of how he had been tossed hither and
thither by fortune's unrelenting hate, and how deeply and devotedly
he loved her.
By this last misfortune, the wreck, more than all the others, he
might, by dying, leave her to become the wife of Hawkshaw, the
would-be assassin!
So another night passed over, and the raft, or wreck, still floated
darkly, silently there; and now those who were thereon had ceased to
speak, even in whispers.
Another day dawned--a day of glorious sunshine; but no food, no
water, no hope came with it; for not a sail was in sight, and their
eyes ached with weariness in searching the faint blue watery line
that marked where the sky and ocean met.
They were becoming very feeble now, and the cravings of nature were
maddening.
Their hair was encrusted by salt, as white as hoar-frost, their lips
were baked, their tongues parched. Already they had become gaunt and
white, hollow-cheeked, and old-looking, with eyes bloodshot and wild.
Their feet and legs were sore and sodden by long immersion in the
brine, and their whole bodies were rendered stiff and weary by the
wet ropes which lashed them to the taffrail--a means of security
which they dared not unloose or relinquish for a moment.
Ere long they were in a species of delirium.
Hunger brought its own fantastic and exciting suggestions of
well-cooked viands, of hearty homely dishes, steaming and savoury,
roasts and stews, puddings and pies; but thirst, agonising thirst,
suggested ideas of cool rivers, amid which snows were dissolving; of
lonely mountain tarns, where the brown trout sported under the
broad-leaved water-docks, and where the wild bird swam; of glassy
meres, of crystal rills, that murmured under old oak trees, or shady
drooping willows, with dark green sprays, and water-lilies that
dipped therein; of iced champagne, that effervesced in crystal
goblets; of sparkling hock and seltzer-water; of jolly London stout,
all brown, with its creamy froth; of every impossible luxury that
they had not, and never more might feel upon their cracked lips and
dry, hard, arid tongues!
A dead bird!--it was a huge albatross, with wings outspread--floated
slowly past them on the glassy oil-like sea, thus indicating a
current that ran eastward.
They were all too weak to attempt to swim for it; so, wolfishly, with
haggard eyes and longing appetites they watched the wretched carrion
for hours, until it floated out of sight.
Then three nautilus shells, with purple sails outspread, passed near
them, and, to Morley's excited vision, they seemed like large Roman
galleys, or fairy barges; at a vast distance--such craft as he had
read of in legends of the Rhine, in fairy tales, and knightly ballads.
And now came Mother Carey's chickens, hopping and tripping about the
wreck, and on the ripples round it--merrily and happily, like brown
sparrows in a farmyard at home.
About the setting of the sun, they were roused from their
listlessness by the sudden apparition of a large vessel,
barque-rigged--that is, with the fore and mainmasts of a ship and a
mizzen like a schooner's mainmast, with a long spanker-boom--bearing
down towards them.
There was a fine breeze blowing; she had all her canvas set, and ran
on a taut bowline.
"A ship! a sail! a sail!" they exclaimed together.
"Now, blessed be Heaven!" said Tom, "we are saved at last!
Hurrah--hurrah!"
She was painted a kind of yellowish white; her side chains and
hawse-holes, and all her iron work, looked red and rusty, as if she
had been long in tropical waters.
With almost inarticulate lips they sought to hail her, and waved
their hands in frantic glee as she came on, with the white foam
curling under her bluff bows, where the old copper was green, and
covered with barnacles. Her side was lined with the faces of her
crew, who seemed to be in earnest conference, and some of whom
gesticulated violently.
She seemed to be foreign by her build and rig, as well as by the
scarlet and blue shirts and fur caps of her men.
Now she was close to them, and the white flag, with the black eagle
of Prussia, was hoisted at her gaff peak; now she would certainly be
hove in the wind, with a mainsail laid aback, and have a boat lowered
to relieve them.
So close was she, that the wheel revolved to keep her away a point or
two, lest she might run the frail wreck under with her bluff bows, as
she sheered past.
Tom hailed in English "to relieve them from misery--to save them, for
the love of mercy and of God!"
He spoke imploringly, for a sudden doubt had chilled his heart.
Hoarsely the hail was responded to in German, and the barque passed
on--on, without lifting tack or sheet, without lowering a boat, or
tossing a single biscuit, to those four men who were all but dying on
the wreck! The Prussian--she was the _Einicheit_, of Dantzic--stood
away on her course, and left Bartelot and his three friends in an
agony of disappointment and despair that bordered on madness!*
* For the infamous conduct of this Prussian crew to a Scottish ship
in distress, see any paper of May 26, 1864.
With such terrible emotions in their hearts, as no pen could portray,
they saw her slowly diminish in distance, and vanish into the yellow
haze that overspread the evening sea. Then once more night descended
on the world of waters, and again they were alone--more alone, they
felt, than ever, for even their fellow-beings had abandoned them.
During all that night Morley Ashton was delirious.
Dreams and thoughts of Acton Chase and woods, that rustled their
green leaves in the soft west wind; of golden fields, of bearded
grain, that waved like yellow billows beneath its breath; of the
voices of the larks that soared aloft into the blue sky, and of the
cushat dove that cooed to its mate in the leafy dingle; the ring of
the village chimes, and of children's merry voices--came strongly to
memory, with the comforts of the land he never more might
tread--English home he never more might see.
Anon, strange monsters seemed to come out of the starlit bosom of the
glassy deep, to bob and dance, to glare and jabber, with faces green,
white, lilac, and rose-coloured; and all as if to mock their misery.
These, however, were only seaweed and foambells, or floating blubber,
to which the water gave unusual size and phosphorescent light, while
the sufferers' giddy brains and weakened eyesight lent them wild and
fantastic forms.
Poor Tom Bartelot must have been quite deranged; for more than once
Morley heard him singing what seemed to be a scrap of his old
drinking song, and his voice sunk into a childish quaver at the
couplet:
"Oh, deign, ye kind powers, with this wish to comply,
May I always be drinking yet always be dry."
Then he suddenly changed his note to a kind of hoarse wail, as he
sang:
"King Death was a rare old fellow,
He sat where no sun could shine;
He lifted his hand so yellow,
And pledged us in coal-black wine."
He soon after became senseless, and hung, as if asleep, drooping,
alas! it might be, dead, in the lashings that secured him to the
taffrail.
Towards the morning of that terrible night, Morley felt life ebbing
within him, and, as it ebbed, he had a last wild dream--wild, indeed;
but too delicious to be true.
A long, long time seemed to elapse, but another day had dawned, and a
ship--the false, cruel Prussian barque of yesterday--had returned in
quest of them. She lay to, a boat came off, he heard the rattle of
the fall tackles, and the splash of the water. They were, he
thought, rescued; he felt the lashing that bound his swollen limbs
cut by a seaman's jack-knife, and now kind faces and kind hands were
around him, and gentle voices were murmuring in his ear.
Cool wine and grateful cordials seemed to be poured between his
parched lips, and then to be suddenly withheld when he would have
imbibed more.
Oh, the madness of this tantalising and most feverish dream, for
Ethel Basset seemed to be there!
Ethel, with her sweetly feminine and dear affectionate face, was
bending over him; her lips were close to his, her kiss was on his
cheek; but he could neither respond nor speak, for Hawkshaw's visage,
pale and wrathful, was between them, with knitted brows and glaring
eyes, as he had seen it last, when he fell beneath his hand at Acton
Chine.
Then he seemed to sleep, to die; for he felt and remembered no more.