"Yes, lives was lost; and always will be lost in sea-going ships, where the skipper does his duty. There was a sight more lost at Trafalgar, owing to every man doing his duty. Lives lost, ye lubber? And why not mine? Because their time was come and mine wasn't. For I'll tell you one thing, Joe Wylie—if she takes fire and runs before the wind till she is as black as coal, and belching flame through all her port-holes, and then explodes, and goes aloft in ten thousand pieces no bigger than my hat, or your knowledge of navigation, Hudson is the last man to leave her. Duty! If she goes on her beam-ends and founders, Hudson sees the last of her, and reports it to his employers. Duty! If she goes grinding on Scilly, Hudson is the last man to leave her bones. Duty! Some day perhaps I shall be swamped myself along with the craft. I have escaped till now, owing to not being insured; but if ever my time should come, and you should get clear, promise me, Joe, to see the owners, and tell 'em Hudson did his duty."
Here a few tears quenched his noble ardor for a moment. But he soon recovered, and said, with some little heat, "You have got the bottle again. I never saw such a fellow to get hold of the bottle. Come, here's 'Duty to our employers!' And now I'll tell you how we managed with theCarysbrook,and theAmelia."
This promise was followed by fresh narratives; in particular, of a vessel he had run upon the Florida reef at night, where wreckers had been retained in advance to look out for signals, and come on board and quarrel on pretense and set fire to the vessel, insured at thrice her value.
Hudson got quite excited with the memory of these exploits, and told each successive feat louder and louder.
But now it was Wylie's turn. "Well," said he, very gravely, "all this was child's play."
There was a pause that marked Hudson's astonishment. Then he broke out, "Child's play, ye lubber! If you had been there your gills would have been as white as your Sunday shirt; and a d—d deal whiter."
"Come, be civil," said Wylie, "I tell you all the ways you have told me are too suspicious. Our governor is a highflyer. He pays like a prince, and, in return, he must not be blown on, if it is ever so little. 'Wylie,' says he, 'a breath of suspicion would kill me.' 'Make it so much,' says I, 'and that breath shall never blow on you. No, no, skipper; none of those ways will do for us; they have all been worked twice too often. It must be done in fair weather, and in a way— Fill your glass and I'll fill mine— Capital rum this. You talk of my gills turning white; before long we shall see whose keeps their color best, mine or yours, my boy."
There was a silence, during which Hudson was probably asking himself what Wylie meant; for presently he broke out in a loud but somewhat quivering voice: "Why, you mad, drunken devil of a ship's carpenter, red-hot from hell, I see what you are at, now; you are going—"
"Hush!" cried Wylie, alarmed in his turn. "Is this the sort of thing to bellow out for the watch to hear? Whisper, now."
This was followed by the earnest mutterings of two voices. In vain did the listener send his very soul into his ear to hear. He could catch no single word. Yet he could tell, by the very tones of the speakers, that the dialogue was one of mystery and importance.
Here was a situation at once irritating and alarming; but there was no help for it. The best thing, now, seemed to be to withdraw unobserved, and wait for another opportunity. He did so; and he had not long retired, when the mate came out staggering and flushed with liquor, and that was a thing that had never occurred before. He left the cabin door open and went into his own room.
Soon after sounds issued from the cabin—peculiar sounds, something between grunting and snoring.
Mr. Hazel came and entered the cabin. There he found the captain of theProserpinein a position very unfavorable to longevity. His legs were crooked over the seat of his chair, and his head was on the ground. His handkerchief was tight round his neck, and the man himself dead drunk, and purple in the face.
Mr. Hazel instantly undid his stock, on which the gallant seaman muttered inarticulately. He then took his feet off the chair and laid them on the ground, and put the empty bottle under the animal's neck.
But he had no sooner done all this than he had a serious misgiving. Would not this man's death have been a blessing? Might not his life prove fatal?
The thought infuriated him, and he gave the prostrate figure a heavy kick that almost turned it over, and the words, "Duty to employers," gurgled out of its mouth directly.
It really seemed as if these sounds were independent of the mind, and resided at the tip of Hudson's tongue, so that a thorough good kick could, at any time, shake them out of his inanimate body.
Thus do things ludicrous and things terrible mingle in the real world; only to those who are in the arena, the ludicrous passes unnoticed, being overshadowed by its terrible neighbor.
And so it was with Hazel. He saw nothing absurd in all this; and in that prostrate, insensible hog, commanding the ship, forsooth, and carrying all their lives in his hands, he saw the mysterious and alarming only; saw them so, and felt them, that he lay awake all night thinking what he should do, and early next day he went into the mate's cabin, and said to him: "Mr. Wylie, in any other ship I should speak to the captain, and not to the mate; but here that would be no use, for you are the master, and he is your servant."
"Don't tell him so, sir, for he doesn't think small beer of himself."
"I shall waste no more words on him. It is to you I speak, and you know I speak the truth. Here is a ship, in which, for certain reasons known to yourself, the captain is under the mate."
"Well, sir," said Wylie good-humoredly, "it is no use trying to deceive a gentleman like you. Our skipper is an excellent seaman, but he has got a fault." Then Wylie imitated, with his hand, the action of a person filling his glass.
"And you are here to keep him sober, eh?"
Wylie nodded.
"Then why do you ply him with liquor?"
"I don't, sir."
"You do. I have seen you do it a dozen times. And last night you took rum into his room, and made him so drunk, he would have died where he lay if I had not loosed his handkerchief."
"I am sorry to hear that, sir; but he was sober when I left him. The fool must have got to the bottle the moment I was gone."
"But that bottle you put in his way; I saw you. And what was your object? To deaden his conscience with liquor, his and your own, while you made him your fiendish proposal. Man, man, do you believe in God, and in a judgment to come for the deeds done in the body, that you can plan in cold blood to destroy a vessel with nineteen souls on board, besides the live stock, the innocent animals that God pitied and spared when he raised his hand in wrath over Nineveh of old?"
While the clergyman was speaking, with flashing eyes and commanding voice, the seaman turned ashy pale, and drew his shoulders together like a cat preparing to defend her life.
"I plan to destroy a vessel, sir! You never heard me say such a word; and don't you hint such a thing in the ship, or you will get yourself into trouble."
"That depends on you."
"How so, sir?"
"I have long suspected you."
"You need not tell me that, sir."
"But I have not communicated my suspicions. And now that they are certainties, I come first to you. In one word, will you forego your intention, since it is found out?"
"How can I forego what never was in my head?" said Wylie. "Cast away the ship! Why, there's no land within two thousand miles. Founder a vessel in the Pacific! Do you think my life is not as sweet to me as yours is to you?"
Wylie eyed him keenly to see the effect of these words, and, by a puzzled expression that came over his face, saw at once he had assumed a more exact knowledge than he really possessed.
Hazel replied that he had said nothing about foundering the ship; but there were many ways of destroying one. "For instance," said he, "I know how theNeptunewas destroyed—and so do you; how theRoseand theAntelopewere cast away—and so do you."
At this enumeration Wylie lost his color and self-possession for a moment; he saw Hazel had been listening. Hazel followed up his blow. "Promise me now, by all you hold sacred, to forego this villainy; and I hold my tongue. Attempt to defy me, or to throw dust in my eyes, and I go instantly among the crew, and denounce both you and Hudson to them."
"Good Heavens!" cried Wylie, in unfeigned terror. "Why, the men would mutiny on the spot."
"I can't help that," said Hazel, firmly; and took a step toward the door.
"Stop a bit," said the mate. "Don't be in such a 'nation hurry; for, if you do, it will be bad for me, but worse for you." The above was said so gravely and with such evident sincerity that Mr. Hazel was struck and showed it. Wylie followed up that trifling advantage. "Sit down a minute, sir, if you please, and listen to me. You never saw a mutiny on board ship, I'll be bound. It is a worse thing than any gale that ever blew; begins fair enough, sometimes; but how does it end? In breaking into the spirit-room and drinking to madness, plundering the ship, ravishing the women, and cutting a throat or so for certain. You don't seem so fond of the picture as you was of the idea. And then they might turn a deaf ear to you after all. Ship is well found in all stores; provisions served out freely; men in good humor; and I have got their ear. And now I'll tell you why it won't suit your little game to blacken me to the crew, upon the bare chance of a mutiny." He paused for a moment, then resumed in a lower tone, and revealed himself the extraordinary man he was.
"You see, sir," said he, "when a man is very ready to suspect me, I always suspect him. Now you was uncommon ready to suspect me. You didn't wait till you came on board; you began the game ashore. Oh, what, that makes you open one eye, does it? You thought I didn't know you again. Knew you, my man, the moment you came aboard. I never forget a face; and disguises don't pass on me."
It was now Hazel's turn to look anxious and discomposed.
"So, then, the moment I saw you suspected me I was down upon you. Well, you come aboard under false colors. We didn't want a chap like you in the ship; but you would come. 'What is the bloke after?' says I, and watches. You was so intent suspecting me of this, that, and t'other, that you unguarded yourself, and that is common too. I'm blowed if it isn't the lady you are after. With all my heart; only she might do better, and I don't see how she could do worse, unless she went to Old Nick for a mate. Now, I'll tell you what it is, my man. I've been in trouble myself, and don't want to be hard on a poor devil, just because he sails under an alias, and lies as near the wind as he can, to weather on the beaks and the bobbies. But one good turn deserves another. Keep your dirty suspicions to yourself; for if you dare to open your lips to the men, in five minutes, or less than that, you shall be in irons and confined to your cabin; and we'll put you ashore at the first port that flies the British flag, and hand you over to the authorities, till one of her Majesty's cruisers sends in a boat for you."
At this threat Mr. Hazel hung his head in confusion and dismay.
"Come, get out of my cabin, Parson Alias," shouted the mate; "and belay your foul tongue in this ship, and don't make an enemy of Joe Wylie, a man that will eat you up else, and spit you out again, and never brag. Sheer off, I say, and be d—d to you."
Mr. Hazel, with a pale face and sick heart, looked aghast at this dangerous man, who could be fox or tiger, as the occasion demanded.
Surprised, alarmed, outwitted and out-menaced, he retired with disordered countenance and uneven steps and hid himself in his own cabin.
The more he weighed the whole situation, the more clearly did he see that he was utterly powerless in the hands of Wylie. A skipper is an emperor; and Hudson had the power to iron him, and set him on shore at the nearest port. The right to do it was another matter; but even on that head Wylie could furnish a plausible excuse for the act. Retribution, if it came at all, would not be severe, and would be three or four years coming. And who fears it much, when it, is so dilatory, and so weak, and so doubtful into the bargain?
He succumbed in silence for two days; and then, in spite of Wylie's threat, he made one timid attempt to approach the subject with Welch and Cooper; but a sailor came up instantly, and sent them forward to reef topsails. And, whenever he tried to enter into conversation with the pair, some sailor or other was sure to come up and listen.
Then he saw that he was spotted; or, as we say nowadays, picketed.
He was at his wit's end.
He tried his last throw. He wrote a few lines to Miss Rolleston, requesting an interview. Aware of the difficulties he had to encounter here, he stilled his heart by main force, and wrote in terms carefully measured. He begged her to believe he had no design to intrude upon her, without absolute necessity, and for her own good. Respect for her own wishes forbade this, and also his self-respect.
"But," said he, "I have made a terrible discovery. The mate and the captain certainly intend to cast away this ship. No doubt they will try and not sacrifice their own lives and ours; but risk them they must, in the very nature of things. Before troubling you, I have tried all I could, in the way of persuasion and menace; but am defeated. So now it rests with you. You alone can save us all. I will tell you how, if you will restrain your repugnance, and accord me a short interview. Need I say that no other subject shall be introduced by me? In England, should we ever reach it, I may perhaps try to take measures to regain your good opinion; but here, I am aware, that is impossible; and I shall make no attempt in that direction, upon my honor."
To this came a prompt and feminine reply.
"The ship is Mr. Arthur Wardlaw's. The captain and the mate are able men, appointed by him. Your suspicions of these poor men are calumnies, and of a piece with your other monstrous slanders.
"I really must insist on your holding no further communications of any sort with one to whom your character is revealed and odious.
H. R."
This letter benumbed his heart at first. A letter? It was a blow; a blow from her he loved, and she hated him!
His long-suffering love gave way at last. What folly and cruelty combined! He could no longer make allowances for the spite of a woman whose lover had been traduced. Rage and despair seized him; he bit his nails and tore his hair with fury, and prayed Heaven to help him hate her as she deserved, "the blind, insolent idiot!" Yes, these bitter words actually came out of his mouth, in a torrent of injury.
But to note down all he said in his rage would be useless; and might mislead, for this was a gust of fury; and, while it lasted, the long-suffering man was no longer himself.
As a proof how little this state of mind was natural to him, it stirred up all the bile in his body, and brought on a severe attack of yellow jaundice, accompanied by the settled dejection that marks that disorder.
Meantime theProserpineglided on, with a fair wind, and a contented crew. She was well found in stores, and they were served out ungrudgingly.
Every face on board beamed with jollity, except poor Hazel's. He crept about, yellow as a guinea; a very scarecrow.
The surgeon, a humane man, urged him to drink sherry, and take strong exercise.
But persons afflicted with that distressing malady are obstinately set against those things which tend to cure it; this is a feature of the disease. Mr. Hazel was no exception. And then his heart had received so many blows it had no power left to resist the depressing effect of his disorder. He took no exercise; he ate little food. He lay, listless and dejected, about the deck, and let disease do what it pleased with him.
The surgeon shook his head and told Hudson the parson was booked.
"And good riddance of bad rubbish!" was that worthy's gracious comment.
The ship now encountered an adverse gale, and for three whole days was under close-reefed topsails; she was always a wet ship under stress of weather, and she took in a good deal of water on this occasion. On the fourth day it fell calm, and Captain Hudson, having examined the well and found three feet of water, ordered the men to the pumps.
After working through one watch the well was sounded again, and the water was so much reduced that the gangs were taken off; and the ship being now becalmed and the weather lovely, the men were allowed to dance upon deck to the boatswain's fiddle.
While this pastime went on, the sun, large and red, reached the horizon, and diffused a roseate light over the entire ocean.
Not one of the current descriptions of heaven approached the actual grandeur and beauty of the blue sky, flecked with ruby and gold, and its liquid mirror that lay below, calm, dimpled and glorified by that translucent, rosy tint.
While the eye was yet charmed with this enchanting bridal of the sea and sky, and the ear amused with the merry fiddle and the nimble feet that tapped the sounding deck so deftly at every note, Cooper, who had been sounding the well, ran forward all of a sudden and flung a thunderbolt in the midst.
"A LEAK!"
THE fiddle ended in mid-tune, and the men crowded aft with anxious faces.
The captain sounded the well and found three feet and a half water in it. He ordered all hands to the pumps.
They turned to with a good heart, and pumped, watch and watch, till daybreak.
Their exertions counteracted the leak, but did no more; the water in the well was neither more nor less, perceptibly.
This was a relief to their minds, so far; but the situation was a very serious one. Suppose foul weather should come, and the vessel ship water from above as well!
Now all those who were not on the pumps set to work to find out the leak and stop it if possible. With candles in their hands they crept about the ribs of the ship, narrowly inspecting every corner, and applying their ears to every suspected place, if haply they might hear the water coming in. The place where Hazel had found Wylie at work was examined along with the rest; but neither there nor anywhere else could the leak be discovered. Yet the water was still coming in and required unremitting labor to keep it under. It was then suggested by Wylie, and the opinion gradually gained ground, that some of the seams had opened in the late gale and were letting in the water by small but numerous, apertures.
Faces began to look cloudy; and Hazel, throwing off his lethargy, took his spell at the main pump with the rest.
When his gang was relieved he went away, bathed in perspiration, and, leaning over the well, sounded it.
While thus employed, the mate came behind him, with his cat-like step, and said, "See what has come on us with your forebodings! It is the unluckiest thing in the world to talk about losing a ship when she is at sea."
"You are a more dangerous man on board a ship than I am," was Hazel's prompt reply.
The well gave an increase of three inches. Mr. Hazel now showed excellent qualities. He worked like a horse; and, finding the mate skulking, he reproached him before the men, and, stripping himself naked to the waist, invited him to do a man's duty. The mate, thus challenged, complied with a scowl.
They labored for their lives, and the quantity of water they discharged from the ship was astonishing; not less than hundred and ten tons every hour.
They gained upon the leak—only two inches; but, in the struggle for life, this was an immense victory. It was the turn of the tide.
A slight breeze sprung up from the southwest, and the captain ordered the men from the buckets to make all sail on the ship, the pumps still going.
When this was done, he altered the ship's course and put her right before the wind, steering for the island of Juan Fernandez, distant eleven hundred miles or thereabouts.
Probably it was the best thing he could do, in that awful waste of water. But its effect on the seamen was bad. It was like giving in. They got a little disheartened and flurried; and the cold, passionless water seized the advantage. It is possible, too, that the motion of the ship through the sea aided the leak.
TheProserpineglided through the water all night, like some terror-stricken creature, and the incessant pumps seemed to be her poor heart, beating loud with breathless fear.
At daybreak she had gone a hundred and twenty miles. But this was balanced by a new and alarming feature. The water from the pumps no longer came up pure, but mixed with what appeared to be blood.
This got redder and redder, and struck terror into the more superstitious of the crew.
Even Cooper, whose heart was stout, leaned over the bulwarks and eyed the red stream, gushing into the sea from the lee scuppers, and said aloud, "Ay, bleed to death, ye bitch! We shan't be long behind ye."
Hazel inquired, and found the ship had a quantity of dye-wood among her cargo. He told the men this, and tried to keep up their hearts by his words and his example.
He succeeded with some; but others shook their heads. And by and by, even while he was working double tides for them as well as for himself, ominous murmurs met his ear. "Parson aboard!" "Man aboard, with t'other world in his face!" And there were sinister glances to match.
He told this, with some alarm, to Welch and Cooper. They promised to stand by him; and Welch told him it was all the mate's doings; he had gone among the men and poisoned them.
The wounded vessel, with her ever-beating heart, had run three hundred miles on the new tack. She had almost ceased to bleed; but what was as bad, or worse, small fragments of her cargo and stores came up with the water, and their miscellaneous character showed how deeply the sea had now penetrated.
This, and their great fatigue, began to demoralize the sailors. The pumps and buckets were still plied, but it was no longer with the uniform manner of brave and hopeful men. Some stuck doggedly to their work, but others got flurried and ran from one thing to another. Now and then a man would stop and burst out crying; then to work again in a desperate way. One or two lost heart altogether, and had to be driven. Finally, one or two succumbed under the unremitting labor. Despair crept over others. Their features began to change, so much so that several countenances were hardly recognizable, and each, looking in the other's troubled face, saw his own fate pictured there.
Six feet water in the hold!
The captain, who had been sober beyond his time, now got dead drunk.
The mate took the command. On hearing this, Welch and Cooper left the pumps. Wylie ordered them back. They refused, and coolly lighted their pipes. A violent altercation took place, which was brought to a close by Welch.
"It is no use pumping the ship," said he. "She is doomed. D'ye think we are blind, my mate and me? You got the long-boat ready for yourself before ever the leak was sprung. Now get the cutter ready for my mate and me."
At these simple words Wylie lost color, and walked aft without a word.
Next day there were seven feet water in the hold, and quantities of bread coming up through the pumps.
Wylie ordered the men from the pumps to the boats. The long-boat was provisioned and lowered. While she was towing astern, the cutter was prepared, and the ship left to fill.
All this time Miss Rolleston had been kept in the dark, not as to the danger, but as to its extent. Great was her surprise when Mr. Hazel entered her cabin and cast an ineffable look of pity on her.
She looked up surprised, and then angry. "How dare you?" she began.
He waved his hand in a sorrowful but commanding way. "Oh, this is no time for prejudice or temper. The ship is sinking. We are going into the boats. Pray make preparations. Here is a list I have written of the things you ought to take. We may be weeks at sea in an open boat." Then, seeing her dumfounded, he caught up her carpet-bag and threw her workbox into it for a beginning. He then laid hands upon some of her preserved meats and marmalade and carried them off to his own cabin.
His mind then flew back to his reading, and passed in rapid review all the wants that men had endured in open boats.
He got hold of Welch and told him to be sure and see there was plenty of spare canvas on board, and sailing needles, scissors, etc. Also three bags of biscuit, and, above all, a cask of water.
He himself ran all about the ship, including the mate's cabin, in search of certain tools he thought would be wanted.
Then to his own cabin, to fill his carpet-bag.
There was little time to spare; the ship was low in the water, and the men abandoning her. He flung the things into his bag, fastened and locked it, strapped up his blankets for her use, flung on his pea-jacket, and turned the handle of his door to run out.
The door did not open!
He pushed it. It did not yield!
He rushed at it. It was fast!
He uttered a cry of rage and flung himself at it.
Horror! It was immovable!
THE fearful, the sickening truth burst on him in all its awful significance.
Some miscreant or madman had locked the door, and so fastened him to the sinking ship, at a time when, in the bustle, the alarm, the selfishness, all would be apt to forget him and leave him to his death.
He tried the door in every way, he hammered at it; he shouted, he raged, he screamed. In vain. Unfortunately the door of this cabin was of very unusual strength and thickness.
Then he took up one of those great augers he had found in the mate's cabin, and bored a hole in the door; through this hole he fired his pistol, and then screamed for help. "I am shut up in the cabin. I shall be drowned. Oh, for Christ's sake, save me! save me!" and a cold sweat of terror poured down his whole body.
What is that?
The soft rustle of a woman's dress.
Oh, how he thanked God for that music, and the hope it gave him!
It comes toward him; it stops, the key is turned, the dress rustles away, swift as a winged bird; he dashes at the door; it flies open.
Nobody was near. He recovered his courage in part, fetched out his bag and his tools, and ran across to the starboard side. There he found the captain lowering Miss Rolleston, with due care, into the cutter, and the young lady crying; not at being shipwrecked, if you please, but at being deserted by her maid. Jane Holt, at this trying moment, had deserted her mistress for her husband. This was natural; but, as is the rule with persons of that class, she had done this in the silliest and cruelest way. Had she given half an hour's notice of her intention, Donovan might have been on board the cutter with her and her mistress. But no; being a liar and a fool, she must hide her husband to the last moment, and then desert her mistress. The captain, then, was comforting Miss Rolleston, and telling her she should have her maid with her eventually, when Hazel came. He handed down his own bag, and threw the blankets into the stern-sheets. Then went down himself, and sat on the midship thwart.
"Shove off," said the captain; and they fell astern.
But Cooper, with a boat-hook, hooked on to the long-boat; and the dying ship towed them both.
Five minutes more elapsed, and the captain did not come down, so Wylie hailed him.
There was no answer. Hudson had gone into the mate's cabin. Wylie waited a minute, then hailed again. "Hy! on deck there!"
"Hullo!" cried the captain, at last.
"Why didn't you come in the cutter?"
The captain crossed his arms and leaned over the stern.
"Don't you know that Hiram Hudson is always the last to leave a sinking ship?"
"Well, youarethe last," said Wylie. "So now come on board the long-boat at once. I dare not tow in her wake much longer, to be sucked in when she goes down."
"Come on board your craft and desert my own?" said Hudson, disdainfully. "Know my duty to m' employers better."
These words alarmed the mate. "Curse it all!" he cried; "the fool has been and got some more rum. Fifty guineas to the man that will shin up the tow-rope and throw that madman into the sea; then we can pick him up. He swims like a cork."
A sailor instantly darted forward to the rope. But, unfortunately, Hudson heard this proposal, and it enraged him. He got to his cutlass. The sailor drew the boat under the ship's stern, but the drunken skipper flourished his cutlass furiously over his head. "Board me! ye pirates! the first that lays a finger on my bulwarks, off goes his hand at the wrist." Suiting the action to the word, he hacked at the tow-rope so vigorously that it gave way, and the boats fell astern.
Helen Rolleston uttered a shriek of dismay and pity. "Oh, save him!" she cried.
"Make sail!" cried Cooper; and, in a few seconds, they got all her canvas set upon the cutter.
It seemed a hopeless chase for these shells to sail after that dying monster with her cloud of canvas all drawing, alow and aloft.
But it did not prove so. The gentle breeze was an advantage to light craft, and the dyingProserpinewas full of water, and could only crawl.
After a few moments of great anxiety the boats crept up, the cutter on her port and the long-boat on her starboard quarter.
Wylie ran forward, and, hailing Hudson, implored him, in the friendliest tones, to give himself a chance. Then tried him by his vanity, "Come, and command the boats, old fellow. How can we navigate them on the Pacific withoutyou?"
Hudson was now leaning over the taffrail utterly drunk. He made no reply to the mate, but merely waved his cutlass feebly in one hand, and his bottle in the other, and gurgled out, "Duty to m' employers."
Then Cooper, without a word, double reefed the cutter's mainsail and told Welch to keep as close to the ship's quarter as he dare. Wylie instinctively did the same, and the three craft crawled on in solemn and deadly silence, for nearly twenty minutes.
The wounded ship seemed to receive a death-blow. She stopped dead, and shook.
The next moment she pitched gently forward, and her bows went under the water, while her after-part rose into the air, and revealed to those in the cutter two splintered holes in her run, just below the water-line.
The next moment her stern settled down; the sea yawned horribly, the great waves of her own making rushed over her upper deck, and the lofty masts and sails, remaining erect, went down with sad majesty into the deep. And nothing remained but the bubbling and foaming of the voracious water, that had swallowed up the good ship, and her cargo, and her drunken master.
All stood up in the boats, ready to save him. But either his cutlass sunk him, or the suction of so great a body drew him down. He was seen no more in this world.
A loud sigh broke from every living bosom that witnessed that terrible catastrophe.
It was beyond words; and none were uttered, except by Cooper, who spoke so seldom; yet now three words of terrible import burst from him, and, uttered in his loud, deep voice, rang like the sunk ship's knell over the still bubbling water.
"SCUTTLED—BY GOD!"
"HOLD your tongue," said Welch, with an oath.
Mr. Hazel looked at Miss Rolleston, and she at him. It was a momentary glance, and her eyes sank directly, and filled with patient tears.
For the first few minutes after theProserpinewent down the survivors sat benumbed, as if awaiting their turn to be ingulfed.
They seemed so little, and theProserpineso big; yet she was swallowed before their eyes, like a crumb. They lost, for a few moments, all idea of escaping.
But, true it is, that, "while there's life there's hope"; and, as soon as their hearts began to beat again, their eyes roved round the horizon and their elastic minds recoiled against despair.
This was rendered easier by the wonderful beauty of the weather. There were men there who had got down from a sinking ship into boats heaving and tossing against her side in a gale of wind, and yet been saved; and here all was calm and delightful. To be sure, in those other shipwrecks land had been near, and their greatest peril was over when once the boats got clear of the distressed ship without capsizing. Here was no immediate peril; but certain death menaced them, at an uncertain distance.
Their situation was briefly this. Should it come on to blow a gale, these open boats, small and loaded, could not hope to live. Therefore they had two chances for life, and no more. They must either make land—or be picked up at sea—before the weather changed.
But how? The nearest known land was the group of islands called Juan Fernandez, and they lay somewhere to leeward, but distant at least nine hundred miles; and, should they prefer the other chance, then they must beat three hundred miles and more to windward; for Hudson, underrating the leak, as is supposed, had run theProserpinefully that distance out of the track of trade.
Now the ocean is a highway—in law; but, in fact, it contains a few highways and millions of byways; and, once a cockleshell gets into those byways, small indeed is its chance of being seen and picked up by any sea-going vessel.
Wylie, who was leading, lowered his sail, and hesitated between the two courses we have indicated. However, on the cutter coming up with him, he ordered Cooper to keep her head northeast, and so run all night. He then made all the sail he could, in the same direction, and soon outsailed the cutter. When the sun went down, he was about a mile ahead of her.
Just before sunset Mr. Hazel made a discovery that annoyed him very much. He found that Welch had put only one bag of biscuit, a ham, a keg of spirit and a small barrel of water on board the cutter.
He remonstrated with him sharply. Welch replied that it was all right; the cutter being small, he had put the rest of her provisions on board the long-boat.
"On board the long-boat!" said Hazel, with a look of wonder. "You have actually made our lives depend upon that scoundrel Wylie again. You deserve to be flung into the sea. You have no forethought yourself, yet you will not be guided by those that have it."
Welch hung his head a little at these reproaches. However, he replied, rather sullenly, that it was only for one night; they could signal the long-boat in the morning and get the other bags and the cask out of her. But Mr. Hazel was not to be appeased. "The morning! Why, she sails three feet to our two. How do you know he won't run away from us? I never expect to get within ten miles of him again. We know him; and he knows we know him."
Cooper got up and patted Mr. Hazel on the shoulder soothingly. "Boat-hook aft," said he to Welch.
He then, by an ingenious use of the boat-hook and some of the spare canvas, contrived to set out a studding-sail on the other side of the mast.
Hazel thanked him warmly. "But, oh, Cooper! Cooper!" said he, "I'd give all I have in the world if that bread and water were on board the cutter instead of the long-boat."
The cutter had now two wings instead of one; the water bubbling loud under her bows marked her increased speed, and all fear of being greatly outsailed by her consort began to subside.
A slight sea-fret came on and obscured the sea in part; but they had a good lantern and compass, and steered the course exactly all night, according to Wylie's orders, changing the helmsman every four hours.
Mr. Hazel, without a word, put a rug round Miss Rolleston's shoulders, and another round her feet.
"Oh, not both, sir, please," said she.
"Am I to be disobeyed by everybody?" said he.
Then she submitted in silence, and in a certain obsequious way that was quite new and well calculated to disarm anger.
Sooner or later all slept, except the helmsman.
At daybreak Mr. Hazel was wakened by a loud hail from a man in the bows.
All the sleepers started up.
"Long-boat not in sight!"
It was too true. The ocean was blank. Not a sail, large or small, in sight.
Many voices spoke at once.
"He has carried on till he has capsized her."
"He has given us the slip."
Unwilling to believe so great a calamity, every eye peered and stared all over the sea. In vain. Not a streak that could be a boat's hull, not a speck that could be a sail.
The little cutter was alone upon the ocean. Alone, with scarcely two days' provisions, nine hundred miles from land, and four hundred miles to leeward of the nearest sea-road.
Hazel, seeing his worst forebodings realized, sat down in moody, bitter, and boding silence.
Of the other men some raged and cursed. Some wept aloud.
The lady, more patient, put her hands together and prayed to Him who made the sea and all that therein is. Yet her case was the cruelest. For she was by nature more timid than the men, yet she must share their desperate peril. And then to be alone with all these men, and one of them had told her he loved her, and hated the man she was betrothed to! Shame tortured this delicate creature, as well as fear. Happy for her that of late, and only of late, she had learned to pray in earnest."Qui precari novit, premi potest, non potest opprimi."
It was now a race between starvation and drowning, and either way death stared them in the face.
THE long-boat was, at this moment, a hundred miles to windward of the cutter.
The fact is that Wylie, the evening before, had been secretly perplexed as to the best course. He had decided to run for the island; but he was not easy under his own decision; and, at night, he got more and more discontented with it. Finally, at nine o'clock P.M., he suddenly gave the order to luff, and tack; and by daybreak he was very near the place where theProserpinewent down, whereas the cutter, having run before the wind all night, was, at least, a hundred miles to leeward of him.
Not to deceive the reader, or let him, for a moment, think we do business in monsters, we will weigh this act of Wylie's justly.
It was just a piece of iron egotism. He preferred, for himself, the chance of being picked up by a vessel. He thought it was about a hair's breadth better than running for an island, as to whose bearing he was not very clear, after all.
But he was not sure he was taking the best or safest course. The cutter might be saved, after all, and the long-boat lost.
Meantime he was not sorry of an excuse to shake off the cutter. She contained one man at least who knew he had scuttled theProserpine;and therefore it was all-important to him to get to London before her and receive the three thousand pounds which was to be his reward for that abominable act.
But the way to get to London before Mr. Hazel, or else to the bottom of the Pacific before him, was to get back into the searoad at all hazards.
He was not aware that the cutter's water and biscuit were on board his boat; nor did he discover this till noon next day. And, on making this fearful discovery, he showed himself human. He cried out, with an oath, "What have I done? I have damned myself to all eternity!"
He then ordered the boat to be put before the wind again; but the men scowled, and not one stirred a finger; and he saw the futility of this, and did not persist, but groaned aloud, and then sat staring wildly. Finally, like a true sailor, he got to the rum, and stupefied his agitated conscience for a time.
While he lay drunk at the bottom of the boat his sailors carried out his last instructions, beating southward right in the wind's eye.
Five days they beat to windward, and never saw a sail. Then it fell dead calm; and so remained for three days more.
The men began to suffer greatly from cramps, owing to their number and confined position. During the calm they rowed all day, and with this and a light westerly breeze that sprung up, they got into the sea-road again. But, having now sailed three hundred and fifty miles to the southward, they found a great change in the temperature. The nights were so cold that they were fain to huddle together, to keep a little warmth in their bodies.
On the fifteenth day of their voyage it began to rain and blow, and then they were never a whole minute out of peril. Hand forever on the sheet, eye on the waves, to ease her at the right moment; and with all this care the spray eternally flying half way over her mast, and often a body of water making a clean breach over her, and the men bailing night and day with their very hats, or she could not have lived an hour.
At last, when they were almost dead with wet, cold, fatigue and danger, a vessel came in sight and crept slowly up, about two miles to windward of the distressed boat. With the heave of the waters they could see little more than her sails; but they ran up a bright bandanna handkerchief to their masthead; and the ship made them out. She hoisted Dutch colors, and—continued her course.
Then the poor abandoned creatures wept and raved, and cursed in their frenzy, glaring after that cruel, shameless man who could do such an act, yet hoist a color, and show of what nation he was the native—and the disgrace.
But one of them said not a word. This was Wylie. He sat shivering, and remembered how he had abandoned the cutter, and all on board. Loud sighs broke from his laboring breast; but not a word. Yet one word was ever present to his mind; and seemed written in fire on the night of clouds, and howled in his ears by the wind—Retribution!
And now came a dirty night—to men on ships; a fearful night to men in boats. The sky black, the sea on fire with crested billows, that broke over them every minute; their light was washed out; their provisions drenched and spoiled; bail as they would, the boat was always filling. Up to their knees in water; cold as ice, blinded with spray, deafened with roaring billows, they tossed and tumbled in a fiery foaming hell of waters, and still, though despairing, clung to their lives, and bailed with their hats unceasingly.
Day broke, and the first sight it revealed to them was a brig to windward staggering along, and pitching under close-reefed topsails.
They started up, and waved their hats, and cried aloud. But the wind carried their voices to leeward, and the brig staggered on.
They ran up their little signal of distress; but still the ship staggered on.
Then the miserable men shook hands all round, and gave themselves up for lost.
But, at this moment, the brig hoisted a vivid flag all stripes and stars, and altered her course a point or two.
She crossed the boat's track a mile ahead, and her people looked over the bulwarks, and waved their hats to encourage those tossed and desperate men.
Having thus given them the weather-gage, the brig hove to for them.
They ran down to her and crept under her lee; down came ropes to them, held by friendly hands, and friendly faces shone down at them. Eager grasps seized each as he went up the ship's side, and so, in a very short time, they sent the woman up, and the rest being all sailors and clever as cats, they were safe on board the whaling brigMaria,Captain Slocum, of Nantucket, U. S.
Their log, compass and instruments were also saved.
The boat was cast adrift, and was soon after seen bottom upward on the crest of a wave.
The good Samaritan in command of theMariasupplied them with dry clothes out of the ship's stores, good food, and medical attendance, which was much needed, their legs and feet being in a deplorable condition, and their own surgeon crippled. A southeasterly gale induced the American skipper to give Cape Horn a wide berth, and theMariasoon found herself three degrees south of that perilous coast. There she encountered field-ice. In this labyrinth they dodged and worried for eighteen days, until a sudden chop in the wind gave the captain a chance, of which he promptly availed himself; and in forty hours they sighted Terra del Fuego.
During this time the rescued crew, having recovered from the effects of their hardships, fell into the work of the ship, and took their turns with the Yankee seamen. The brig was short-handed; but now, trimmed and handled by a full crew with theProserpine'smen, who were first-class seamen, and worked with a will, because work was no longer a duty, she exhibited a speed the captain had almost forgotten was in the craft. Now speed at sea means economy, for every day added to a voyage is so much off the profits. Slocum was part owner of the vessel, and shrewdly alive to the value of the seamen. When about three hundred miles south of Buenos Ayres, Wylie proposed that they should be landed there, from whence they might be transshipped to a vessel bound for home.
This was objected to by Slocum, on the ground that, by such a deviation from his course, he must lose three days, and the port dues at Buenos Ayres were heavy.
Wylie undertook that the house of Wardlaw & Son should indemnify the brig for all expenses and losses incurred.
Still the American hesitated; at last he honestly told Wylie he wished to keep the men; he liked them, they liked him. He had sounded them, and they had no objection to join his ship and sign articles for a three years' whaling voyage, provided they did not thereby forfeit the wages to which they would be entitled on reaching Liverpool. Wylie went forward and asked the men if they would take service with the Yankee captain. All but three expressed their desire to do so; these three had families in England, and refused. The mate gave the others a release, and an order on Wardlaw & Co. for their full wages for the voyage; then they signed articles with Captain Slocum, and entered the American Mercantile Navy.
Two days after this they sighted the high lands at the mouth of the Rio de la Plata at 10 P.M., and lay to for a pilot. After three hours' delay they were boarded by a pilot-boat, and then began to creep into the port. The night was very dark, and a thin white fog lay on the water.
Wylie was sitting on the taffrail and conversing with Slocum, when the lookout forward sung out, "Sail ho!"
Another voice almost simultaneously yelled out of the fog, "Port your helm!"
Suddenly out of the mist, and close aboard theMaria,appeared the hull and canvas of a large ship. The brig was crossing her course, and her great bowsprit barely missed the brig's mainsail. It stood for a moment over Wylie's head. He looked up, and there was the figure-head of the ship looming almost within his reach. It was a colossal green woman; one arm extended grasped a golden harp, the other was pressed to her head in the attitude of holding back her wild and flowing hair. The face seemed to glare down upon the two men. In another moment the monster, gliding on, just missing the brig, was lost in the fog.
"That was a narrow squeak," said Slocum.
Wylie made no answer, but looked into the darkness after the vessel.
He had recognized her figure-head.