CHAPTER II.
Eiz-ood-Deen returned to his father’s house stunned with the shock he had received at the Parsee cemetery. It struck his mind with the fiery quickness and impetuosity of the thunderbolt that the fond girl had been murdered—murdered because she loved him—murdered for his sake. This was a dreadful reflexion. There was no interfering with the domestic habits of the Guebres. They were governed by their own laws, with which the native authorities at Surat presumed not to interfere; he had, therefore, no means of instituting an inquiry into the death of his beloved. He was the most wretched of men. The blast of desolation had swept over his heart, and he looked upon himself as a seared and blighted thing, which the sun of joy could no longer warm into blossoming life. He was now as anxious to depart from Surat, as he had once been to remain.
The only thing that pained him at quitting the scene of his misery was the thought of leaving unrevenged the death of that tender girl whom he had so fondly loved. But how was he to prove that she had been sent out of the world by violence? Besides, had he not been guilty of an act of deep moral obliquity incarrying on a clandestine intercourse with the daughter of a different tribe, corrupting her father’s servants, and meditating her final abduction? He felt upon what tottering ground he trod, and therefore soon abandoned all thoughts of revenge. His father could not account for his agitation; attributing it, however, to those capricious sallies of youth which are frequently the mere sudden eruptions of passion arising from trifling disappointment, he did not take the trouble to inquire very minutely into the cause, but occupied himself about preparing for his voyage. As the transfer of property to any great distance was impracticable, he turned a large portion of his wealth into jewels, which were less difficult to be disposed of, could be easily secreted, and occupied little room. These preparations engaged him for some days, during the whole of which period Eiz-ood-Deen was a prey to the severest grief. He scarcely uttered a word. His father now imagined that his sorrow arose simply from the circumstance of his being about to quit a spot endeared to him by the strong and linking associations of youth, but felt no doubt that when the first ebullitions after departure should subside, new scenes and new objects would soon absorb his attention, and win him from his partialities to the scenes of his boyhood.
Having made the necessary preparations, the old man purchased a vessel, which he manned with Hindoo sailors, for the best of all possible reasons, because no other were to be had. The vessel was a large clumsy boat, carrying about sixty tons, with no deck, save a kind of poop, under which there was one small cabin. She was manned by fifteen native seaman. Everything being put on board, the merchant Sam, with his son Eiz-ood-Deen, set sail from Surat with a favourable breeze. The old man’s heart bounded as he quitted those shores which had been the place of his exile for years, and although he had filled his coffers with money in this strange land, his predilection for that of his birth had never been once stifled; it was still glowing. He was anxious to lay his bones among those of his forefathers, and he tried to rouse the spirits of his son to the same level of gratification with his own; but the image of death was too vividlyimpressed upon the mind of Eiz-ood-Deen to be so readily effaced. He could not banish it. It seemed as if a fiery hand had seared it upon his brain with an impress so deep and glowing that the finger of death only could obliterate the tracing. His heart sickened when he reverted to the repelling reality.
“Nay, my son,” said the glad father, “you seem as if you grieved at a parent’s joy. Why this gloom? Is there no other country upon the globe’s wide surface which can yield us as glad a home as that which we have quitted. Why do you repine? What have you relinquished? Were we not living among communities which despised our religion, and held us unfit to be admitted to the privileges of social intercourse? Were we not rather tolerated than welcomed by those idolators whom our religion has taught us to despise?”
“Then why, my father, have you made their country your home for so many years? They admitted the exile among them, and surely those people are not to be despised who received him whom his own countrymen had abandoned. But you mistake the cause of my sorrow. I grieve not at quitting the land of my father’s exile; on the contrary, I rejoice at it: but there are griefs which weigh heavy on my heart, and never shall I remember the city which we have quitted but with a pang that must lacerate my bosom.”
The merchant was astonished. Absorbed in the pursuits of trade, he had allowed his son to have so much his own way, that he knew little or nothing of his pursuits, and had been altogether ignorant of his acquaintance with the beautiful Parsee; he was, therefore, not a little surprised when Eiz-ood-Deen related to him his attachment towards the Guebre’s daughter and the lamentable issue of it.
“Alas! my boy,” said the old man, “there is little doubt but your suspicions respecting the end of that poor girl are correct. The strictness of the Guebres in maintaining the purity of their women is so severe that even the slightest suspicion subjects them to certain death. The power of inflicting summary punishment upon offenders of this kind is in the hands of the parent, and pardonseldom passes from the domestic tribunal for those sins to which death is awarded. The poisoned bowl has sent that innocent victim to the land of shadows, where our spirits shall everlastingly wail or rejoice.”
The son concurred in the probability of this having been the fact, as he recollected the swollen and blackened state of the corpse. The conversation becoming painful, he relapsed into his former mood of silent abstraction.
It happened that among the property which the merchant had put on board the vessel was a large royal tiger, so fierce that it was placed in an iron cage, secured at the stern. The merchant had purchased it some short time before he quitted Surat, intending to present it to the King of Ghizny, who, as he had ascertained, possessed an extensive menagerie, and was particularly fond of collecting wild beasts. The tiger had been caught in a trap, and never, therefore, having been tamed, was excessively ferocious.
They had been but a few days on their voyage, when the weather began to assume a threatening aspect. The sun was overcast, and the heat became almost suffocating. Not a breath of air stirred. The water had a gentle swell, and was as smooth as a mirror; but there was a dull greenish tint on the surface, which looked like a skin in the human body tinged with the morbid hue of disease. Not a ripple agitated the lazy mass, which undulated with a slow sluggish movement as if its natural principle of motion were impeded. The vessel laboured through the glassy but ponderous waters with a lumbering uneasy roll, that rendered it difficult to maintain an easy position either within or without the cabin.
The haze thickened and lay upon the sea, which it shrouded with a thin vapoury veil, through which, when the clouds rolled from before his orb, the sun occasionally glared with a fiery and portentous glow. The Hindoo sailors were silent and looked grave, seating themselves by the ribs of the vessel and looking into the sky with a foreboding gloom that did not much tend to cheer the heart of the venerable merchant. They appeared, however, to take no precautions against the approach of a hurricane.
The boat had been under easy sail the whole day, and she was now left almost to take her own course. The navigators began to chew opium and to lie listlessly upon their rugs, as if anxious to put themselves in a state of enviable oblivion as fast as possible. The man at the helm fastened it in a certain position, and followed the example of his companions. Soon after noon the wind freshened; the sun more frequently looked from behind his curtain of dusky vapours, scattering through the mist a red ochreous glow upon the sluggish waters. Clouds, deepening in intensity as they gathered, rose rapidly from the horizon, and overspread the heavens with their rolling masses, which seemed to hang over the sea like a pall.
The sun at length went down in darkness. Some of the clouds upon the horizon, as he sank behind them, were tinged with a dull fiery tint, resembling the hue of hot iron immediately after the first red heat has subsided. The wind was now blowing a gale, and the wrack flew over the heavens as if the winged messengers of the skies were hurrying to collect the elements for the work of devastation. The vessel was old and leaky; her seams opened to the assaulting billows, which had now cast off their sluggishness, and hissed and foamed around her with a fierce activity of motion that darkened the countenances of the native seamen, and appalled the two passengers. The merchant looked upon the troubled heavens, and his heart sickened. The fearful presentiment of death passed over his excited mind with the fierce rush of the whirlwind. He dropped upon his knees: his prayer was incoherent; it was broken by the frightful images presented to his mind. The son was less agitated. His late sorrows had softened the terrors of the scene, and the memory of that hapless girl who had died—and perhaps a death of agony—for his sake, who now appeared about to follow her to the last home of the blessed, subdued his alarms. He soon grew calm. In proportion as the peril increased, he braced his mind to meet the coming shock, but the poor old merchant was fearfully excited. He had looked forward still to years of enjoyment in his native land, to which he was attached by a link as strong as human sympathy could forge. Hecontinued to pray, but his aspirations seemed not to rise beyond his lips: they were stifled in the terrors which gave them their first impulse, but crushed them in the soul as they struggled to get free.
With the darkness the hurricane rose to a climax. The booming waves, gleaming with that pale phosphorescent light which seems to make the gloom of a tempestuous night only more hideous, broke over the vessel’s bow, heaving into her undecked hull a body of sparkling water that threatened every moment to swamp her. Still she rushed onward through the foaming ocean, leaping over the billows with a sort of convulsive energy that shook every timber in her frame, and opened her seams to the assailing element. The tiger roared, dashing from one side to the other of his cage, which he threatened every instant to shake in pieces. His howlings were continued with scarcely any intermission, and added another feature of terror to the storm.
The Hindoo sailors were perfectly passive. The vast quantities of opium they had swallowed stupefied them so completely that they appeared utterly unconscious of the surrounding peril. The vessel was allowed to take her own course, and she was urged towards the shore. The rudder was torn from her stern, and she lay like a huge log upon the convulsed bosom of the ocean. Not a hope of escape remained. She was nearly filled and on her beam ends. She rocked and heaved under the lashings of the storm, like a creature in the throes of death. Her sails were rent, and fluttered in the gale in thin strips, clattering amid the roar of the tempest to the answering groans of the masts, that bent and quivered like the tall thin stalk of the young bamboo.
Midnight passed, but the storm did not abate. The air was loaded with pitchy masses of rolling vapour, which hung so low that the vessel’s masts almost seemed to pierce them as she rose upon the circling crests of the billows; they spread like a pall over the Heavens. There was no light but what arose from the sea, and the intense darkness rendered the aspect of the tempest still more terrific. During the whole night it continued without intermission. The dawn revealed a wide expanse of waters agitated into frightful commotion; the wind howling through the airwith a vehemence that seemed at once to shake the earth and convulse the sea; the Heavens overspread with an interminable tract of deep blue vapour which the eye could not penetrate. The vessel now began to reel and stagger under the weight of water which she had frequently shipped from the heavy seas that had dashed over her. She laboured with difficulty through the rolling surges.
It was evident that she could not wear out the storm. Every moment she rose less buoyantly. Her rudder gone, she was tossed at the mercy of the billows. The merchant wrung his hands in agony; tears streamed down his cheeks, and his eyes were fixed upon the convulsed ocean with an expression of horror. Eiz-ood-Deen, on the contrary, gazed with a sullen calmness on the terrifying scene. He spoke not; he put up no prayer to Heaven; no silent aspiration rose from his heart to his lips, but he looked with a stern apathy at the death which he every moment expected.
A sudden reel of the vessel now brought her up against a wave which dashed with a terrific shock over her bow, that made her whole frame vibrate. The shock was so great that it forced up the lid of the tiger’s cage, and left the terrified animal to its freedom. Alarmed at the tremendous concussion, it leaped from its prison, and, bounding forward, seated itself upon the roof of the cabin; but the vessel taking a sudden lurch, and at the same moment another huge billow dashing over its bows, with a loud roar of terror the affrighted beast sprang into the deep. The crisis had now come. Another wave struck the vessel on her quarter, a lengthened crash followed, her seams divided, and, after one heavy roll, she went down with a hiss and a gurgle, as the yawning vortex opened before her, that mingled fearfully with the shrieks of her despairing crew while they were drawn into the abyss which closed over them, the clamorous elements singing their requiem as they sank into one common grave.
A spar had separated from the vessel as she went down, and floated free upon the waters. The merchant and his son had both leaped into the sea, and after a few desperate struggles each grasped the spar, but the old man’s exhaustion prevented him from holding it securely. The water bore him from his hold, andthe agonized son saw him struggle in vain to reach it. Quitting the spar, he swam towards his father. The merchant threw out his arms with desperate energy to keep himself above the surface, but every wave covered him. He shrieked, the water filled his mouth; again he shrieked, again the fierce waters stopped his cry, another and another struggle—there was a stifled moan. At length his arms fell, his senses faded, he became still.
At this moment the son reached him, but too late. He had begun to sink. There was no object on the surface. The spar rolled again near Eiz-ood-Deen, and he grasped it with the clutch of desperation. He was nearly exhausted, but with an instinctive desire of life, which they only can apprehend who have beheld death before them in an array of horror, he lashed himself to the spar with his turban, hoping that, should the storm abate, he might be rescued from his peril by some vessel, or cast on shore; for though the density of the mist prevented the eye seeing objects beyond a few yards, yet he felt satisfied that he could not be far from the coast. Perilous as his situation was, hope did not desert him; and he who had looked at the approach of death with indifference while there appeared a reasonable chance of escape, now shunned it with a fierce instinct of preservation, when its triumph seemed almost reduced to a certainty. He had not been long lashed to the spar when, through the uproar of the tempest, he heard a strange noise behind him, and turning his head, to his consternation beheld the tiger making its way towards him through the raging waters. It snorted and panted with its exertions; still it raised its noble head amid the waves, rising above them with a buoyancy beautiful to behold, in spite of the painful apprehensions with which it was accompanied. In a few moments the tiger reached the spar, and placed its fore paws upon it, close by the side of the merchant’s son. It offered him no violence, but, looking wildly in his face, seemed to eye him with an expression of sympathy, as if acknowledging a fellowship of suffering. Emboldened by the forbearance of the noble animal, Eiz-ood-Deen laid his hand gently upon its head. The tiger depressed its ears, gave a loud kind of purr, and crept closer to the side of its companion.
Though frequently covered by the billows, Eiz-ood-Deen had lashed himself to the spar too securely to be shaken off, and the strong claws of the tiger kept it from a similar contingency. After being tossed about for upwards of three hours, at the imminent peril of his life, the merchant’s son and his feline associate were dashed on shore near the mouth of the Indus.