THE ABORTIVE ATTEMPT
Shout to them in the pauses of the storm,
And tell them there is hope.
* * * It is too late;
No help of human hand can reach them there;
One hour will hush their cries. —Maturin.
All sat mute,
Pondering the danger with deep thoughts. —Milton.
At this sight, the three persons on the wreck, who, when first seen, had
seemed as inanimate as stone, started up, and while the females clasped
their hands, their companion began to wave a handkerchief as a signal.
In a lull of the gale, Major Gordon shouted to them, making an impromptu
speaking-trumpet of his hands. Only a faint sound, however, came back,
proving that the strangers had replied; its purport was
undistinguishable.
“They can’t hear a word you say,” remarked Mullen, coming up.
“But they saw you were speaking to them, by your actions. If we
can’t hear them,” he pertinently added, “with the wind towards us,
how can they hear us?”
“Hark!” answered Major Gordon, “I thought I made out a word or two
then. Didn’t he say that all on board were lost except themselves?”
“Likely enough. But see, he’s got a speaking-trumpet.”
As he spoke, Captain Powell raised that instrument to his mouth, and
shouted, in broken intervals, that all on board had been lost except
three; that they had no boats, nor anybody to man them if they had; and
that the ladies could never reach shore alive, if they jumped overboard,
even lashed to a spar. He concluded by saying—
“Haven’t you a whale-boat?”
Again Major Gordon attempted to make himself audible. But though he
shouted again and again, and with a Stentor’s voice, it was evident
that his accents were not heard on the wreck. Two or three of the others
made a similar essay, but with no better success.
“We can’t hear a word,” shouted Captain Powell. “The ship
won’t hold together much longer. Get a whale-boat, for the love of
God, or we are lost.”
“Alas!” said Major Gordon, turning to Mullen, “there’s no such
thing within ten miles—is there?” “No,” interrupted Mullen,
shaking his head.
“But something must be done. I think a strong man might swim out to
the wreck with a rope.” “Swim out with a rope!”
“Yes!”
“What good would that do?”
“If,” replied the Major, “we had a line out to the ship, it might
be used to draw a cable from her ashore; and if there was a cable hauled
taut, I’m sure I could rig a sort of sliding hammock, by which to land
the ladies: for the hammock could be made to travel to and fro by lines
attached to either end.”
Mullen regarded the speaker in mute admiration for a full minute before
he spoke.
“I always said,” he replied, at last, “that it was everything to
be a scollard. Now I might have puzzled over this matter for a week, yet
never have thought of such a way as that. It would do, sartainly, if we
only had the line out.”
“If I had a mortar here, and tools, I could fix it so as to throw a
line over the wreck at once.”
“A musket wouldn’t do,” said Mullen, musingly; “even one with so
big a bore as a ‘Queen Anne.’ I’ve a capital one in the boat.”
“It couldn’t throw a line strong enough. The strain of the cable,
when the latter came to be dragged through the water, would snap it
immediately.”
“More’s the pity,” answered Mullen, as if reluctantly abandoning a
scheme, which he would have liked to have seen tried for its novelty, at
least, “for I see we’ll have to give the thing up.”
“Give it up!” cried the Major.
“Yes!”
“Can’t a man swim off, as I proposed?”
Mullen shook his head.
“I’m not so sure,” stoutly said Major Gordon.
“It would be tempting death.”
The men had been eagerly listening to this conversation. The scheme of
Major Gordon, to judge by the expression of their faces, had filled them
with not less admiration than it had Mullen. The Major now turned to
each countenance in succession, to see if any listener thought more
favorably than Mullen of the feasibility of swimming off with a line.
But the scrutiny was in vain.
“Think of the women,” he said, addressing the group, and hoping yet
to move some one. “Have you no wives or daughters? Have none of you
mothers? There is one lady there whose gray hairs ought to remind you of
a mother. Would you stand idly here if your own was in such extremity?
Have none of you sisters? That young, delicate-looking creature there
should appeal to your hearts.”
As he spoke, he pointed vehemently to the wreck; but no one moved.
Suddenly, he began to disencumber himself of his superfluous clothing.
“I, at least,” he said, “will not see them perish without an
effort to save them. A strong man, I am sure, might swim out, by taking
advantage of the breakers. He can’t run any great risk, either; for,
if he fails, he can be drawn ashore again by the rope. Run, some one, to
the boat, and bring the halyards. I will tie one end about my waist; the
other can be held fast here; if we splice it, we can make it long
enough.” By this time he had thrown off his coat and waistcoat, and
was proceeding to disencumber himself of his boots, when suddenly one of
the men spoke up. It was Newell, the one whom Mullen had asked to
volunteer. He was a youth about nineteen, powerfully built, and
deep-chested like a bull, who had been watching his leader and listening
to his words, with a face whose agitated working showed the tumult in
his heart. His honest nature could now endure it no longer.
“Stop that,” he cried, stepping forward, and laying his hand on
Major Gordon’s arm. “You’re not agoing. I say, you’re not
agoing, sir,” he added, determinedly, “for I’m going myself.”
And he began doggedly to strip at the words. “I’m the best swimmer
here, and therefore the properest man to undertake the job. I can do it,
when you’d drown.”
“But—” began Major Gordon.
“Look here, Major,” interposed the youth, fiercely. “Don’t you
think other men’s got feelings as well as you? Don’t you ‘spose I
can pity ‘em,” and he jerked his finger over his shoulder in the
direction of the wreck, “as much as some others? I only waited till I
saw you were in real earnest; for it’s more than an even chance the
man drowns that tries it, and that’s enough to make any one hold back
a bit; but since you’re fixed to go, I’ll go instead.”
“I have a right to throw away my own life, but not to ask you to throw
away yours,” said Major Gordon, putting his hand on the youth, as if
to stop his further disrobing. “No, I shall go.”
The youth looked fiercely on the speaker, as if he would have liked to
knock him down, provided their relations in life had been more equal;
but he contented himself with shaking off the Major’s hand, and
continuing, with rude directness—
“My life’s my own, and yours is your country’s. If I drown,
there’s no one to cry over it, not even my poor old mother; for she
died last winter, God pity her, after the refugees robbed her.” And he
brushed a tear hastily from his eye.
“Let him go, Major,” said Mullen, “for he will go, now that he’s
said it; and he’s the most fitting, too, by odds. Charley Newell can,
after all, swim like a duck, and knows these breakers from a child; I
doubt if the porpoises can tumble about as safely in them as he can. I
had forgotten him, or I wouldn’t have said it was so mad a thing to
try to swim off. He’ll do it, if man can do it. Here come the ropes
from the boat. At the worst we won’t let him drown. We can haul him
in, hand over hand, at the first sign of his giving out.”
The youth had, by this time, stripped himself of every article of
clothing not absolutely necessary, and now stood before the group the
model of a modern Hercules. Major Gordon, as he looked at the brawny
arms, and the volume of muscle knotted on the ample chest, could not but
acknowledge that his opponent, even without his greater skill in the
surf, would be able to contend twice as long in the waters as himself,
from sheer superiority of muscle. He, therefore, ceased to object to the
substitution. What would have been duty, if no other person had
volunteered, became fool-hardiness when a more suitable one offered.
“Go, then,” he said, fervently clasping the youth’s hand, “and
God be with you. I shall not forget your heroism.”
“I’ll do it, if it’s in the sinoos of a man,” said he, returning
the grasp, till the Major’s fingers crunched as if in a vice. And
measuring the distance between the beach and the wreck with his eye, he
continued— “Many’s the time I’ve swum ten times as far for fun,
and though never in quite such a surf, yet often in one a’most as
bad.”
By this time his comrades were engaged in fixing one end of the rope
around his waist. He felt of it, to see that it held firm, and hitching
himself up, he said, with an attempt at jocularity not unusual at such
times with men of his class—
“It’s rather a long tail for a man to go to sea with, and beat’s a
Chinaman’s dead hollow; but I guess a fellow can manage it. So here
goes.”
As he spoke, he ran gayly down into the undertow. For an instant, his
comrades looked upon him in silence, but when he turned, on the very
edge of the surf, to wave a last farewell, they broke simultaneously
into a cheer.
The youth did not wait till the huzza subsided, but, watching his
opportunity, plunged into a wave that was just then about to break, and
while the tons of water, overwhelming him, rushed roaring and churning
up the sands, vanished from sight.
For what seemed an age, the spectators watched and waited, in vain, for
his reappearance.
“He is gone already,” said Major Gordon, drawing a deep breath,
after this interval. “No, there he is. He comes up buoyant as a cork.
See how he takes that second roller!”
It would have excited even the most phlegmatic had they witnessed the
gallant manner in which the youth battled his way against that terrible
sea. For, during a time, he actually seemed to be about effecting his
purpose. It is true that, when forced by temporary exhaustion to ride
the incoming billows, he was often swept almost ashore again: but by a
few skillful plunges he would regain the ground which he had lost, and
even more. Now an intervening billow, towering far towards the sky,
would hide him completely from the gaze of his anxious comrades; and
often his disappearance would be so prolonged, that the spectators would
tremble again for his safety. Now, just when all gave him up for lost,
he would shoot into sight once more, rising on the side of another
approaching billow, and shaking, as he rose, the water from his hair,
like a Newfoundland emerging after a dive. One moment his form would be
seen, standing out in bold relief against the polished side of a wave,
and the next it would be half concealed amid a whirlwind of foam that
rushed over the crest of the breaker.
At one time nearly half the distance between the shore and wreck had
been conquered. The worst was apparently over.
“He’ll do it,” cried Mullen, excitedly. “What a brave fellow he
is! I never could have believed it, if I hadn’t seen it with my own
eyes.”
“Ah!” suddenly interrupted Major Gordon, as a tremendous billow was
seen approaching the swimmer, and forgetting that his warning could not
be heard, and would have been useless if it could, he shouted— “Look
out, look out!”
For one instant it came on, heaping its mass of waters up continually
higher, towering and towering until the spectators fairly ran cold with
horror. Then, curling majestically over, away up against the sky, it
poured downwards like some huge cataract in one vast mountain of foam, a
pistol shot out beyond where the waves usually broke. The swimmer had
seen it coming, and had plunged through it with steadfast courage, but
apparently in vain; for the shattered waters rolled past him, yet he
remained still invisible. Another gigantic wave was seen rising close in
the wake of its predecessor, yet he did not emerge. The minutes appeared
hours. Then the second wave broke and came on, racing after the other,
covering the sea with its whitened fragments.
“It’s the rope that’s dragging him down,” cried Mullen.
“He could have done it alone, but the weight of the line, and the
strain on it shorewards, are too much for him. He’ll drown, if we
don’t pull him in, and that at once.”
“Hold,” cried Major Gordon, authoritatively, as several sprang to
aid Mullen with the rope. “There he comes again. Don’t you see him?
He’s alive and safe. But he’s lost way terribly,” he added, “in
those two surges.”
“He’s alive, sir,” replied Mullen, “but his strength’s gone.
You can see that by the way he swims. He’ll never do it now, sir. The
seas are coming in, too, as if they knew what he’s after, and were not
going to lose their prey out yonder. What monsters! Every one of ‘em
rollers, and chasing each other as if they were wild Indians. The very
beach shakes as they break. He swims bravely, but it’s no use. I can
see he blows hard. Ha! he goes under; his arms fly up over his head.
Pull now, my lads,” he shouted quickly, “pull away, or your comrade
will be dead before you get him in.”
Mullen had not exaggerated the peril. It was apparent that the prisoner
had struggled long after every rational prospect of success was gone;
and that he had succumbed at last only by overtasked nature giving way
all at once. Major Gordon, who had watched the struggle for the last
five minutes, as if his own life depended on the issue, cheered the men
by his example, and taking his station in the very midst of the
breakers, stood there, hauling in on the line, and watching for the
first indication of the exhausted swimmer.
It required but little more time than we have taken to describe all
this, when the apparently lifeless form of Newell made its appearance.
Major Gordon grasped it eagerly, but being prostrated at that moment by
a breaker, would have been drowned himself, if the two had not been
dragged ashore together by those on the beach. He recovered his feet
even then with difficulty, and quite breathless; but the swimmer was
seemingly dead.
“Turn him over on his face,” cried Mullen, quickly. “Lift up his
feet. Now rub him with sand. Every moment is precious.”
But these, as well as the other restorative measures usually adopted on
such occasions, utterly failed. The spirit seemed to have fled forever
from the bruised and beaten body.
“It can’t be,” said Major Gordon, kneeling in an agony by the
prostrate form. “But for me, too, he had not died. Charley! Charley!
look up!”
Whether the mortal anguish with which these words were spoken had power
to stop the spirit when about to wing its flight, or whether nature was
already resuscitating, the eyes opened faintly, at this crisis, with a
shudder, closed, opened again, and then steadily regarded the kneeling
officer, while a faint smile stole over his face.
“He’s coming to,” said Mullen, in a voice tremulous with joyful
emotion. “You know us, Charley, don’t you? There’s no fear, Major;
he’ll do well enough now.”
In five minutes, indeed, he was able to sit up on the sand, though still
too weak to speak, except a word or two at a time.
“He’s worth a dozen dead men,” said Mullen, gayly, at this, the
spirits of the party recovering with a rebound.
“It most fotched you that time,” said a negro, who was among the
volunteers, as he paused from rubbing. “I thought you a gone coon,
Charley, when I saw you rolled over and over, like a kitten that’s got
a dab from its mammy’s paw. But you dodged the devil; them that’s
born to be hanged can’t be drowned. Ha! ha!” and as the recovered
mariner made a weak, playful attempt to strike him, the dapper little
fellow fell over in the sand, in convulsions of laughter at what he
thought his wit.