CHAPTER XLIWE SAIL AWAY
It did not take me long to recover my breath. The swim had, indeed, comparatively speaking, been a short one; there was no tide that I had been in any degree sensible of; and I had lost nothing but breath, thanks to my eagerness, to the riotous tumult of spirits that had nerved my limbs with steel and rendered me unconscious of fatigue. I crawled up the ladder and peered over the rail. The gloom lay heavy upon the quarter-deck and waist, and objects were hard to distinguish. All was motionless, however, there and on the forecastle; but I could now discern two figures walking on the poop on the port side. The spanker-boom and mizzen-mast and the several fittings of skylight and companion, and so on, had concealed them from my observation whilst I swam, approaching the ship as I had on the starboard side. Their shapesshowed tolerably clear against the stars that sparkled over the rail and betwixt the squares of the rigging, and I stood staring with no more of me showing over the line of bulwarks than my head till they had come to the rail that protected the break of the poop, and I then made out that one of them was Miss Temple.
This convinced me that the other must be Wetherly, for it was not to be imagined that the girl would seek refuge from even a more frightful loneliness than hers was in the society of young Forrest.
At that instant I heard a long wild halloa dimly coming through the steady breeze from the shore. The cry was followed by another and yet another, and then it seemed to me that it was re-echoed from off the water some distance ahead of us. I sprang in a bound on to the deck, and in a breath had armed myself with an iron belaying-pin; and now if that man were Forrest with whom Miss Temple was, I was ready for him! In a moment I had gained the poop. The cries ashore had brought the pair to a dead halt, and they stood listening. Now that I was on the poop I perceived by the build of the figure of theman that it was Wetherly, and rushed up to him. The girl recoiled with a loud shriek on seeing me, as well she might; for, having partially undressed myself, I was clothed from top to toe in white; I was dripping wet besides, which moulded my attire to my figure and limbs as though I had been cast in plaster of Paris, and my sudden apparition was as if I had shaped myself out of the air.
‘Is that you, Wetherly?’ I cried.
‘Great God, mum, it’s Mr. Dugdale!’ he roared.
The girl uttered another shriek, came in a bound to me and flung her arms round my neck.
Now the halloaing ashore was incessant, and the wild cries sounding through the wind were as though the island had been suddenly invaded by an army of frenzied cannibals.
‘My dearest!’ I cried, letting forth my heart in that moment of being clasped and clung to by her whom I had long loved and was risking my life to save, ‘it is I indeed! But release me now, my darling girl. We must get the barque under weigh instantly. Wetherly, where is Forrest?’
‘Dead, sir.’
‘Dead!’ I cried.
‘Shot dead by Miss Temple’s hand, sir,’ he exclaimed.
The girl let fall her arms from my neck, essayed to speak, struggled a little with her breath, and fell against me in a dead swoon.
‘Your coat, Wetherly,’ I shouted; ‘off with it, man, and make a pillow for the lady’s head. Quick! If the long-boat sculls ashore and the crew enter her before we can slip, we are both of us dead men.’
He instantly pulled off his jacket; and tenderly, but swiftly, I laid the girl down, first freeing the collar of her dress and no more, for there was time for no more.
‘Jump for the cabin lamp, Wetherly,’ I cried; ‘don’t stop to ask any questions. We must knock out a shackle, and let the chain go overboard. That is what is now to be done.’
He rushed off the poop, I in his wake. The lamp was dimly burning, but it enabled us to find what we wanted in the carpenter’s chest: and whilst I held the light to a shackle that was just forward of the windlass barrel, he let drive, and the cable went with a roar through the iron hawse-pipe.
‘We must now get the topsail on her and blow away,’ I cried.
The conviction that the men would view him as my confederate and have his life if they got aboard, put an incredible activity into his limbs, which were habitually slow of motion. My having swum to the ship made his sailorly mind comprehend without a syllable of explanation from me how I had contrived the matter. We fled to where the topsail clewlines were belayed, and let them go, and then hand over hand dragged home the sheets, which, being of chain, travelled through the sheave-holes very readily. This done, I sped as fast as my feet would carry me to the poop, and finding the helm amidships, waited to see how the wind sat with regard to the position of the ship, meanwhile bawling at the top of my lungs to Wetherly to let go the maintopsail clewlines and bring the clews home as far as his strength would enable him.
The light breeze was off the starboard quarter. I at once starboarded the helm, and, to my infinite delight, found the barque responsive to the turn of the spokes, proving that, snail-like as might be her progress, sheat least had steerage way upon her. This brought the land upon the starboard beam. I then steadied the helm, quite sure that the craft would steer herself for a few minutes.
As I ran forward I witnessed Miss Temple in the act of sitting upright. I sprang to her side and lifted her to her feet, and held her for perhaps a minute with her face upon my shoulder until she should have recovered her self.
‘Sit on this skylight,’ I exclaimed, ‘until you feel equal to assisting us, and then come to our help, for we greatly need you.’
She understood me, but was too weak and dazed as yet to be of use. The shouts from the shore were incessant. The men had heard the chain cable as it rattled through the hawse-pipe, and I judged they were yelling to the ship, as though hailing Forrest; but they were too far distant for their syllables to reach us. I spent a breathless moment in sweeping the sea towards the mouth of the lagoon, and on a sudden saw the boat like a drop of ink on the star-touched shadow of the water; but I heard no sounds of her being sculled—which would be the fellow’s onlychance of getting ashore—nor could I catch the least sign of his figure.
My immediate business now was to get the foretopsail mast-headed as best we could. There was a little winch just abaft the mainmast. Shouting out my intentions to Wetherly, I bent on the first length of rope I met with to the hauling part of the topsail halliards and brought it to the winch, where I took some turns with it. As I did this, Miss Temple descended the poop ladder.
‘Have you strength to hold on to this rope?’ I cried to her.
‘Oh, yes,’ she answered.
I put it into her hand, bidding her do no more than keep a light strain upon it, that it might not slip; and in a moment the little winch was rattling with the chirruping of its pawls going straight up in the air like an endless cocking of muskets to Wetherly’s and my vigorous arms.
By this means we contrived to hoist the foretopsail, though not, as will be supposed, to a ‘taut leech,’ as sailors call it. Yet the cloths showed a wide surface to the wind, and already the nimble frame of the little barque, yielding to the summer pressure aloft, wassliding along very nearly as fast as the men could have urged the heavy long-boat through the water, supposing them to have recovered her and to be in pursuit. Whilst Wetherly manœuvred with the maintopsail halliards in readiness for hoisting the yard, I once again hurried aft to the wheel, to make sure of the course of the barque. She was drifting dead before the small breeze with her head at about east-by-north, and already had brought the island veering upon the quarter, lying down there in a lump of blackness in the starlit gloom, with just the gleam of the bit of northern coral sea-board glancing off the dusk of the shelving reef. From time to time I could hear the fellows shouting, but their voices were now sounding thin, weak, and remote. The star-flakes in the black water astern trembled to the mild passage of the wind; and sparks of the sea-fire, like golden seed, churned up in our wake mingled with those delicate crystal reflections. With an eager passionate prayer upon my lip that this steady draught would hold, I regained the main-deck; and all being ready, Wetherly and I revolved the winch, Miss Temple holding on as before, and the yards slowlymounted till we could ‘heave and pawl’ no further.
‘Now, Wetherly,’ I shouted, ‘jump aloft and loose that foresail. Pass your knife through the gaskets. Don’t wait to cast them adrift.’
Then catching up the girl’s hand, which I pressed to my lips before speaking, I asked her to accompany me to the wheel, that she might hold the helm steady and keep the barque straight before the wind.
‘There is no time,’ I exclaimed as I hastened aft with her, ‘to utter more than the few syllables necessary to effect our escape. We must heap all the canvas we can manage to spread upon the ship. We must contrive to blow away out of sight of that island before the breeze fails, or the men will be giving chase in the long-boat.’
She grasped the spokes in silence. The binnacle lamp was unlighted, and the card lay in gloom. I bade her take note of a star that stood like a jewel at the extreme end of the starboard main-yard arm, and swiftly directed her how to move the wheel, if that star swung from the end of the spar, so as to bring it back again to its place. I then sprang to themain-rigging, and climbed with the activity of one to whom the loss of a minute may mean life or death, to the height of the topgallant yard, the sail of which I loosed, and then came hand over hand down to the deck by the stay. The barque was but a toy of a ship at the best, and after the pyramidal heights reared by the Indiaman, her tops and crosstrees looked but a leap from the deck. I had sheeted home the topgallant-sail before Wetherly had let fall the foresail. I summoned him to the halliards, and when the sail was set, we let go the fore clew garnets and hauled the sheet aft. Then we hoisted the foretopmast staysail and other light fore and aft sails; and in order to get as much weight out of the wind as there blew in it, we braced the yards somewhat forward, that the fore and aft canvas might draw. When this was done, I raced aft to the wheel and put it down.
No sooner did the little barque feel the air off her beam than she gently sloped her spars to it with a small spitting of froth at her cutwater, and in a few minutes she was gliding along like a yacht, reeling off a fair six knots with water smooth as ice to travel over, smallas was the amount of canvas we had made shift to spread. But I could do no more. My strength had failed me, and I was incapable of further exertions. It was not the fatigue of the swim merely, nor my red-hot haste and maddened labours since I had boarded the barque; the frightful hours of expectation, of anticipation, of hopes and fears, and of waiting, that I had passed upon the accursed island since sundown were now heavily telling upon me.
‘Hold the wheel, will you, Wetherly,’ said I. ‘I am pretty nearly spent. I must rest a bit. Thanks be to God, we are safe now, I believe;’ and so saying, I sunk wearily upon the stern gratings.
Miss Temple went hastily to the cabin, carrying with her the lamp with which Wetherly had kindled the mesh in the binnacle. In a few minutes she returned with a tumbler of brandy-and-water, which she put to my lips. I swallowed the contents greedily, for I was not only parched with thirst, but my nerves sorely needed the stimulant. I took her hand and brought her to sit by my side, and continued to caress her hand, scarcely equal for more just then than a few rapturousexclamations over our deliverance, the delight I felt in being with her again, the joy in believing that I should now be able to redeem my promise and restore her in safety to her mother. Her replies were mere murmurs. Indeed, her own emotions were overwhelming. I could hear her sobbing; then see her by the starlight smiling; but she kept her eyes fixed on my face; soaked as I still was to the skin with salt water, she leaned against me, as though she needed the assurance of actual contact to convince her that I was with her once more.
But by this time the island had melted into the scintillant dusk of the sky. Nothing showed but the liquid sweep of the indigo line of horizon. Another hour of such sailing as this would convey us out of all possibility of reach of the long-boat, supposing the men should recover her; for she was without mast or sail; the utmost exertion of the rowers could scarcely get more than three or three and a half miles an hour out of her; then again I had shifted the barque’s course, and would shift it again presently.
‘Tell me now about Forrest?’ I exclaimed,breaking a silence of fatigue and emotion that had lasted some few minutes.
I felt the shudder that ran through my companion in the clasp of her hand.
‘Did I understand that you shot him?’
‘It is too dreadful to speak of,’ she said in a low voice.
‘It was like this, sir,’ exclaimed Wetherly. ‘Forrest and me had agreed to keep a four hours’ lookout. He was to stand from eight to twelve. I lay down on the fo’c’sle, believing the lady safe below, where she’d been pretty nigh ever since you and the men went ashore. I was awoke by a noise that sounded to me like the report of a gun. It was then about six bells, sir. I thought I’d just walk aft to see if all was right with the lady. Audacious as I knew that there fellow Forrest to be, speaking of him as a fo’c’sle hand, and capable of any sort of hinsolence and mutiny and the likes of that, I had no fear of him whilst he was left alone to keep a lookout with the hentertainment of thinking about the money him and his mates was to dig up. Well, as I reached the quarter-deck the lady came out of the cabin. The light was burning dim, just as you found it when you cameaboard. She held a pistol in her hand, and she says to me quite coolly: “A man came into my cabin just now. I heard him trying the handle of my door, and I took up this pistol, and when he walked in, I said: “Who are you? What do you want?” he answered; and I pointed my pistol at him and fired. I believe I have killed him. Will you go and see?” I thought she was walking in her sleep, so quiet she talked. I went to her cabin, and saw Forrest lying upon the deck. I turned him over, and he was stone dead; shot through the heart, I reckon. I dragged his body into your cabin, where it’s a-lying now. The lady then asked to keep company with me on the poop; and so it was you found us a-walking together, sir.’
‘Brave Louise!’ I murmured, moved to the utterance of her Christian name, though this was the first time I had ever given it her, close and ceaseless as our association had been. Yet an instant’s reluctance, regret, or bashfulness followed my pronunciation of it—even at such a moment as that!—to the memory that arose in me with the velocity of thought of the proud eyes, the haughty coldnessof the lofty, disdainful, elegant Miss Temple of theCountess Ida.
But what she had done was a thing not to be referred to again now. I felt the piteousness of her distress, shame, and horror in her silence: by-and-by she would be able to speak of it collectedly, if there were need indeed to recur to it at all.
‘No fear of the boat overhauling us, now, I think, Wetherly?’ I exclaimed.
‘Lord, no, sir; without e’er a sail to spread either. That swim of yourn was a bold venture, Mr. Dugdale. Ye must ha’ managed the job in first-rate style. Wasn’t no lookout kept?’
His questions led me into telling the story. Miss Temple listened eagerly, our hands remaining locked; again and again she broke into an exclamation with some cry of alarm, some ejaculation of sympathy. ‘You called me brave just now,’ she said; ‘but how is your behaviour to be expressed?’
‘D’ye think there’s any chance of the men recovering that boat?’ inquired Wetherly. ‘The chaps told me when they came aboard to furl the canvas that there was nothen to eat or drink upon the island saving whatthey’d taken. If they should lose the boat, it must go hard with them, sir.’
‘They will not lose their boat unless the fellow who was in charge of her lay dead drunk in her bottom: an improbability; for I saw him walk on steady legs to her. My one chance lay in his being asleep. Make your mind easy: he was awakened long ago by the yells of the men, and by this time the boat lies snug at the beach of the lagoon. But why should you have any feeling for the brutes? They would have cut your throat had they succeeded in boarding us. What happened when you were asleep should be indication enough for you of the character of the ruffians, a pretty good warrant of the sort of treatment we might have expected at their hands later on, gold or no gold.’
‘Mr. Dugdale,’ he answered, ‘all I can say is I’m thankful to the Lord to be where I am. I shall be desperate glad, I shall, when this here woyage is over. I should only just like to see my way to getting enough out of it to set up for myself ashore, for this here’s been a job as has properly sickened me of the sea, and so I don’t mind telling ye, sir.’
‘There’ll be the salvage of this craft,’said I; ‘you can have my share, and I’m sure Miss Temple will give you hers.’
‘Oh, certainly,’ she exclaimed.
‘Then there’ll be your own share,’ I went on. ‘We have to carry the ship in safety to a port first of all. If we can’t pick up hands as we go along, we three will have to manage as best we can. I don’t doubt we shall contrive it; and then you will easily see your way to a few hundreds.’
I saw him grin broadly by the mingled light of the binnacle and star-shine. It was proper to fill him with hope, and to present to his limited understanding some thing definite to work upon. There had been nothing in his behaviour to render me much obliged to him. He had chosen neutral ground in this business, with a little inclination to the safer side: and though he had ventured upon several promises, I had never secretly regarded him as a man who would prove heroically useful at a pinch. However, he was absolutely essential to our safety now, and it was politic that I should seem grateful; though, to be sure, there was always the instinct of self-preservation to keep him straight; by which I mean that he was aseager to end this extraordinary ramble as I was.
He asked me several questions about the gold, and talked as if he believed that the men might yet meet with it; but my answers seemed to convince him after a little, and I saw him wagging his head whilst he exclaimed: ‘It was at the foot of a clump of trees, I know; I clearly recollect the yarn as Wilkins gave it, and his memory couldn’t have gone wrong, for he arrived fresh with it from the cabin. If they’ve dug at the roots of all the trees abreast of the beach, as you say, sir, and the money ain’t there, then good-night! It’s the hallucination I always said it was; and for my part give me two pound of honest salvage afore two hundred thousand pound of lunatic dreamings.’
The breeze seemed to freshen as we drew away. The barque was now heeling prettily, throwing the water in a white curl of sea off her weather bow, and her wake ran far into the liquid gloom astern, into which I would again and again send a glance, governed yet by an agitation of spirits and an animation of alarm which my judgment pronounced ridiculous. I cannot express the caressing characterof Miss Temple’s manner as she continued seated close beside me. The astonishment, the rapture, the wildly contending sensations and emotions which had possessed her were now giving way to a mood of happiness, of triumphant hope, that put an indescribable note of tender elation and grateful, joyous sweetness into her words. If I had yet to wonder whether she loved me, I might feel sure that my return to her, that my presence, filled her with emotions which came very near to the passion of love.
But I was wet through; and now that we were safe, the vessel sliding with swiftness through the clear shadow of the night, and my shipmate Louise tranquil in the full realisation of our sudden and complete deliverance, I could find leisure to feel a little chilly. So, leaving her with a promise that I should shortly return, and telling Wetherly to keep the barque steady as she was going, I picked up the cabin lamp, that was still feebly burning upon the deck, and descended the companion steps. I paused to look around me upon the familiar interior in which Miss Temple and I had passed so many hours of distress and wretchedness with an exclamation of gratitudeto God for his merciful preservation of us, and then went to my cabin to habit myself in such dry garments as I might find in Captain Braine’s locker. I opened the door, but recoiled with an involuntary cry. I had forgotten Forrest! and there lay the dead body of the man right in front of me. Twice, now, had that little square of carpet been stained by human blood. I was horribly shocked by the spectacle of the corpse; but it was necessary that I should change my clothes, and I had to undergo the torture of being watched by those half-closed ghastly eyes, to which twenty expressions of life were imparted by the stirring of the dim flame in the lantern whilst I sought for and attired myself in dry apparel. This done, I made a brighter flame, and then held the light to the dead face, that I might be sure the villain had no life in him. No gibbeted body that had been swinging in chains for a month could be deader. I entered the cuddy, hung up the lamp, and went on deck.
‘Miss Temple,’ I exclaimed, ‘will you kindly hold the wheel for a few minutes?’
She rose and grasped the spokes.Wetherly understood me, and followed me below in silence.
‘We must toss the body overboard,’ said I; ‘there can be no luck for the ship with such an object as that as a part of her freight, and Miss Temple must be helped to forget the horror of the night that’s going.’
Between us we picked up the corpse, very quickly conveyed it through the companion hatch, went forward with it where the darkness lay heavy, and dropped it over the bulwarks.
‘That’s how they would have served you, sir,’ said Wetherly.
‘And you,’ said I.
‘Yes, my God, I know it!’ he answered in a voice of agitation.
We returned to the wheel, which Wetherly took from Miss Temple, who seated herself with me just behind it on the gratings, and there we held a council. Our business must be to get to a port as soon as possible. Should we head away for the Islands of the Low Archipelago, bearing north-west with a chance of falling in with a vessel cruising amongst them who would lend us two or three men to help us in navigating thebarque, or should we steer a due east course for Valparaiso, that lay about two thousand six hundred miles distant?
Our resolution was rapidly formed. The islands might yield us no help; there was also the risk of running ashore upon the hundred reefs of that then little known navigation; abundance of the natives of the groups were man-eaters, and we certainly had not delivered ourselves from the perils we ran through enforced association with the carpenter and his crew merely to ingloriously terminate our adventures by serving to appease the appetite of a little population of blacks.
No; it must be Valparaiso. There we should find a city with every species of convenience: a consul to advise and assist us; shops where Miss Temple could make all necessary purchases; a choice of large ships for the passage home. The ocean we were traversing was the Pacific, and the time of year in it summer; there was nothing greatly to alarm us then in the contemplation of the possibility of our having to work the barque to the South American coast without more help than the three of us could provide. It would be necessary to keep the vessel undereasy canvas, that we might always be equal to the occasion of a sudden change of weather, and that, to be sure, would protract the run. But a few weeks more or less of old ocean would be as nothing to us now that we were masters of our lives and liberty, now that we should know every day was bringing us something nearer to our distant home, that all the horrors with which our future had but a few hours before been crowded were gone. As we conversed, talking with exultation of our escape, arranging for keeping watches, planning about the cooking of the food, and concerting twenty other measures of a like sort, the day broke; the stars died out in the east; the pale green of dawn went lifting like a delicate smoke into the shadow of the zenith; the light broadened fast, and the sun soared into a flashing day of cloudless heaven and of dark-blue ocean wrinkled by the breeze. With a telescope in my hand I sprang on to the grating and slowly circled the sea-line with the lenses. The water brimmed bare to the sky on all sides.
‘We are alone,’ said I, dismounting and taking Miss Temple by the hand whilst I looked fondly into her face. ‘When we wereon the wreck, it was our misery to hunt the ocean with our gaze and find ourselves alone; and now, though we are still at sea, loneliness is delightful—for it is escape, freedom, the promise of home.’
Her eyes filled with tears.