The Seafarers

CHAPTER XVIII

'SHE WILL NEVER KNOW'

'How in Heaven's name has she ever done it?' muttered Charke to himself, three minutes later, as, dripping like a dog dragged out of a pond, he still stood by the wheel while holding on like a vice to the spokes. And still both he and Gilbert had each got their legs twisted in the radii to prevent them from slipping, since now the ship lay over frightfully to starboard and did not recover herself at all. 'Ah, well,' he continued, 'it does not matter much how. Another five minutes and over she goes-turtle. It is a hundred to one she has six feet of water below.'

How had she done it? That was the wonder, the marvel; the more especially a wonder if, as Charke thought, she had six feet of water in her, since twice that amount would have taken her to the bottom even though she lay in the most tranquil waters of the universe. It was impossible she would have risen again, if overloaded thus. Yet, water in her or not, she had accomplished a marvellous feat for any craft that ever left the shipbuilder's yard. For, from down below in those awful depths, with, on either side of her, and glistening all around her in the glare of the lightning like the sides of a crevasse, those walls of sea, she had still risen above them and had (a moment or so after they seemed to be closing in on her and shutting her out for ever from the world above) been once more poised on the crest of a huge billow. She had done it, and now lay listing over on to her starboard side, as some great wounded creature might do whose right ribs had all been broken in by the blows of a pole-axe. But still she travelled through the water in the darkness of the night; for now the lightning was ceasing and, also, she carried no lighted lantern since there were none to attend to such things-while, even though there had been, the beating of the gale would soon have extinguished them. She travelled swiftly, too, cutting her way through billow and wave, taking in huge seas aft which swept her decks-yet going still. But with some of those spectral forms, those blind groping men, departed for ever; swept down the sloping deck by tons of water, down and over into the ocean. And of the few, the three who had still their sight, one lay with a broken neck at the foot of the foredeck companion-way, having been flung down the hatch-way head foremost; the other two were drunk. They had broken into the steward's room, where there were none to control them, and had found some bottles of beer, as well as one of brandy and one of rum-and this was the result!

At that moment the wheel spun round in Gilbert's hands, dragging him with it in its revolution, so that he thought he would have to let go or be thrown in a somersault over into the sea; then, as he forced it back, he heard Charke's voice bellowing at him:

'Can you hold her up for five minutes? I can grasp the spokes no more; I am done. I would not have let go like that, God knows I wouldn't, but I have lost all sensation in my arms and hands. I will lead Fagg out. Perhaps he can help.'

'I may hold her steady,' Gilbert answered, 'but no more. What can a blind, stricken man do?'

'It is enough,' Charke said. 'Sight would not aid you to do more, and, after all, it is of no use. We but prolong life for nothing. Yet, here goes.'

He made his way below, falling, sliding down the companion-ladder, tumbling along in the darkness to where he judged the door of Fagg's cabin was; he fell over things that had been hurled out of the steward's pantry on the port side-broken dishes, plates, tin utensils, potatoes peeled ready for cooking, and a joint of meat-he felt all these with his feet and benumbed hands, and found a bottle, too, which his smell told him was rum. Then he tore the cork out of it with his teeth and drained a tumblerful of the raw spirits. That gave him fresh life and energy; the blood coursed and danced through his veins again, his fingers began to feel, his arms to strengthen. Sliding back the door of Fagg's cabin he called him by name, and, receiving no answer, felt in the berth to see if he was there, while, even as he discovered that the bed was empty, he trod on an upturned face, and then stooped down and felt it and the head, and found the latter all broken. Whereby he understood what had happened to the unfortunate young officer, and knew that he had either been hurled out of his bed against a bulkhead, or, being out of it, had been dashed to death.

He would have gone back now to relieve Gilbert, and was turning to do so when his eye caught the glimmer of a light down the narrow gangway leading to the saloon, and he knew at once that somehow those within had managed to get the bracket-lamp over the table lit. Whereon he went towards that saloon, intent on seeing how those who were in it-especially one in it-were preparing to meet their end. Were they bearing up bravely? Was she-was that girl who maddened him, that girl, through his unrequited love for whom, he knew, he felt, that all his better qualities had been driven out of him-preparing to meet her death nobly, valiantly?

The sight he saw might have struck horror to a bolder, a better man than he. A sight more fitting to meet the eyes of one who gazed into a catacomb or charnel-house than into what had been, not long before, a pretty, bright saloon. Mrs. Pooley lay flat upon her back, moaning feebly, her stout body rolling backwards and forwards with every swing of the ship and every plunge it made. The captain was on his face, and above him lay half the debris of the shattered, sea-wrecked cabin.

But Bella! She frightened, startled him!

'The others may be dead,' he whispered, 'but she, surely she is alive. God! how her eyes stare, yet-yet how lovely she is still.'

The girl was sitting upright upon the saloon sofa, her hands gripping the head of it as though, all unconscious as she appeared to be, she still knew that she must do that to save herself from being flung down, and her lips moved faintly. Then he wrenched the bottle of rum from out of his pocket, he having put it there with a view to administering some to Gilbert when he regained the deck, rival though he was, and moistened her lips with it.

'Miss Waldron-Bella,' he whispered, allowing himself in those last moments the luxury of calling her by the name that he had whispered so often softly to himself. 'Bella! for God's sake, say something. Tell me that you are not dying.'

And she did whisper something-a word that he heard above all the roar of the hurricane thundering aloft, above the awful concussions of the ship's sides as again and again the tons of water struck at her, heavily, savagely, and as, also, she struck at them in her maimed progress; above even the rattle of ship's furniture rolling about, and the sickening thumps of the unlashed piano as it beat against the stem of the mizzen-mast. She whispered a word or so.

'Gilbert,' those white, cold lips muttered; 'Gilbert, my darling, we are dying together. Clasp me to your arms now. Hold me in them to the end.'

With a moan, not a curse! – a curse would not have availed or eased him now-he started back in that dim cabin, hurling the bottle from him as he did so. His rival! his rival! again, even now! His name the last word on her lips, his image the last thing present to her in the hour of death. Then he fled from the cabin back again to his post, back to the wheel to which he swore he would lash himself, and so go down thinking of nothing but his duty. There was, his fevered mind told him, nothing but that-but his duty-left. As he went along he noticed, distraught though he was, that the vessel was making a kind of rotatory movement under him; that she seemed, indeed, to be gliding round and round in a circle although beaten back more than once by the awful force beneath her.

'He has left the wheel!' he cried, his swift and accurate seaman's knowledge and intelligence telling him at once what had happened. 'Is he mad-or dead?'

And clutching, grasping at everything that offered a hold to him, he forced himself back to where the wheel stood, only to find when there that Gilbert was lying senseless by it. Senseless but not dead, as one thrust of Charke's hand under the other's wet clothes, towards the region of the heart, told him very well. An instant later he had resumed his hold on the spokes, and was endeavouring to put the ship on her course before the howling winds, to keep her straight on into the dark, impenetrable depth of blackness ahead of her.

Again the marvel was that she did not go over, or did not suddenly sink beneath the weight of water that was pouring in on all sides-sink like a stone. And he began to tell himself now that, as she had borne up so long, as the storm could, by no possibility, become worse and must, at last, abate, there was still a hope. A hope of what? That he and Bella might both be saved; be saved, and saved alone, together. 'She is alive and I am alive. The others are dead, or dying. Oh, God! if she and I are spared-'

But that sentence was never finished!

For, as he partly uttered it there came an awful crash, a crash that hurled him back, then flung him over and over on the poop-a grinding, horrible concussion, followed by the most terrible thumps and by the sudden cessation of the ship's passage. And, a moment later, the vessel heeled over, though still beating and thumping heavily, so that now the water poured into her forwards, and, gradually, her fore-part was entirely immersed. But still the pounding and the awful grating continued, while growing worse and worse.

'She has struck,' he muttered to himself. 'Struck on a reef or a rock. The end has truly come.'

In a moment he had picked himself up from the poop-deck, and, difficult as it was to move with the vessel beating backwards and forwards, had dragged himself down to the saloon-down to where Bella was, the woman whom he would save or die with.

The lamp had gone out with the concussion. All was in darkness, and, above the roar of the tempest outside, he could hear the furniture beating about the saloon as the ship swayed and wrenched. Yet he went on towards where he had left her ten minutes before; on towards the sofa on which she had been sitting almost unconscious.

She was not there he found, but, instead, lying insensible at the foot of the sofa. Insensible, he knew, because, to his words, his summons, she returned no answer. Then, in a moment, he had seized her in his arms, had lifted her up, and, with her head upon his shoulder, was groping his way with unsteady, stumbling feet towards the gangway.

Her head upon his shoulder now, her hair brushing his face now, in this moment, in the hour of destruction-for one, for both of them! Her head upon his shoulder! And he a mortal man! It was beyond endurance; more than he could bear! Acknowledging this, recognising it, he slightly moved, with the hand which was around those shoulders, that face so close to him, that face so close, so cold and chill-and kissed her long and passionately.

'She will never know,' he muttered, 'never know. Yet-yet it has made death sweeter. Death! the death that will be ours ere many more moments have passed.'

Yet, near as that death was, so near as to be beyond all doubt, as much beyond all doubt as that the rocking, shivering ship was breaking up fast, he felt his way towards where he knew the life-buoys were, and rapidly fitted one on to each of them; while, as he did so, he murmured again and again:

'If any are saved it can only be she and I. Yet even of that there is no hope.'

CHAPTER XIX

'I ALMOST DREADED THIS MAN ONCE'

The Indian Ocean lay beneath the purple-scarlet rays of the setting sun as calmly and as peacefully as though, across its treacherous bosom, nothing more violent than a cat's-paw had ever swept. Indeed, so calm and peaceful was the spaceless sheet of cobalt that, almost, one might have thought he gazed upon some quiet tarn, or inland lake, shut in and warded off from any breeze that might blow or any tempest that could ever roar. Only-he who should stand upon the pebbly beach of a little island upon whose white stones the surf hissed gently as it receded slowly and faintly-as though it were asleep and languid-would have known that, for thousands of miles ahead of him, there was nothing to oppose the tempests of the east and south, or prevent them from lashing that now calm and placid ocean into madness, or from exerting their powers of awful destruction.

A little island set in that glittering, sapphire sea, with, all around its circumference of five miles, a belt of white bleached stone and sand, and with, inland and running up from the belt, green grassy slopes, in which grew tall palm trees, vast bushes or tufts of bananas, orange and lemon trees, mangoes and yams. There, too, were grassy dells through which limpid streams of pure cool water ran until they mingled with the salt ocean; there the wild turtle-dove cooed from guava and tamarind tree, the quails and guinea-fowls ran about upon the white silvery sands; while, to complete all these natural advantages, neither mosquito nor sandfly existed.

A little island girt by coral reefs-the ocean's teeth, strong, fierce, and jagged; teeth that can rip the copper sheathing off a belated vessel as easily as a man can rip the skin from off the island's pink and golden bananas; teeth that can thrust themselves a dozen or twenty feet into the bowels of forlorn and castaway barks and tear them all to pieces as the tusk of the 'must' elephant tears the bowels of its victims. A little island, one of a thousand in that sometimes smiling, sometimes devilish, sea-such as are in the Chagos Archipelago, or the Seychelles, or the Cormoras, and, like so many of those islands, untrod, unvisited by man. Unvisited because, where all are equally and bounteously supplied by Nature, there is no need for any ship to draw near this solitary speck that is guarded from all approach by those belts of coral, and also because, to this small island, there is no natural harbour should rough winds blow.

Now-as still the setting sun went swiftly down amidst its regal panoply of purple and violet and crimson, while, above those hues, its rays shot forth great fleaks and flames of amber gold-it was not uninhabited, not desolate of all human life. Upon a grassy slope a man lay, his head bound up with linen bands; one of his hands being swathed, too, in similar wrappings. And his eyes were closed as though he were sleeping-or dead. To her who gazed on him it seemed almost as if it must be the latter-the greater, the more everlasting sleep, that had fallen on him.

For there were two in this island now; she who thus looked down on the prostrate man being a woman clad in a long dress, which once had been of a soft, delicate white fabric, but, now, was stained and smeared with many splashes and marks, and was rough and crumpled with hard usage and by the effects of seawater. Her hair, too, was all dishevelled, uncombed and unbrushed; tossed up in a great mass upon her head; bound with a piece of ordinary tape. And still she was as beautiful as she had ever been; beautiful in this negligence which was the result of shipwreck and of battling with tempest, of cruel buffetings from merciless waves and jagged rocks-beautiful, though on her face and in her eyes was now the sombre beauty of a despair and misery too deep for words. For he whom she loved, he whose wife she was to have been, was not upon that island with them, and had no more been heard of since, in the arms of Stephen Charke, she had been plunged into the sea and, in those arms, borne to safety and to life.

She gazed down on him now, in the last glimmering beams of the golden light that shot athwart the island, while regarding him with some expression in her glance which caused that glance to be not altogether a reflex of her own misery and despair. An expression that seemed to denote a supreme pity, an almost divine regret for him who lay before, and beneath, her, in pain and suffering.

'How brave-how strong he was!' she murmured inwardly, her lips not moving. 'How he fought with that storm-fought with Death to save me and himself! No!' she broke off, still uttering her meditations to her own heart alone-'why do him such injustice even in my thoughts? It was not to save us both, but me alone. There was but one desire in his soul-to save me!'

She turned and went to a small heap of fruit that she had gathered earlier in the day, and selected one of the great pink bananas-pink with a lustrous beauty which those who only see them when they arrive in northern climes could never believe they have once possessed-then she took a scooped-out cocoanut shell, and, going to a little babbling rill that ran through the grassy defile, filled it with water. After which she returned to where the other lay, and, kneeling by his side, gazed on him again.

'My God!' she whispered. 'I almost dreaded him once. Feared him for I knew not what. Feared him! Him! And he has been my saviour.'

He seemed to know that she was by his side and near him; for, even as she murmured these words to herself, Stephen Charke opened his eyes-a faint smile appearing in them-and gazed into hers.

'You are better?' she asked, as she gave him the shell with the water in it, which he was not too weak to be able to take and raise to his lips, while she tore off the rind of the banana. 'Your forehead,' she went on, while putting her hand upon it calmly, as a sister might, 'is cooler. Are you still in pain?'

'No,' he answered. 'No-only very weak. Are-are-any more saved from that?' and he directed his glance to where, two hundred yards off from the island, lay something protruding above the water which looked like the rounded back of a whale, but was, in truth, the torn and lacerated keel of the Emperor of the Moon. In her last struggles-in her last convulsions as the gale had hurled her on to the coral reef-she had turned almost completely over.

'No,' she replied, her face an awful picture of despair and anguish. 'None are saved but you and I. Oh!' and she buried that face in her hands and wept aloud, piteously, heartbrokenly.

'God rest their souls,' he said solemnly. 'God pity them! Why I, too, should have been spared except to save you, I do not know. I might as well have gone down with them.'

'No! no!' she cried. 'No, Mr. Charke. You must be spared for better days, for greater things. Oh,' she exclaimed, 'how bravely you battled with it all! Uncle told us,' she went on through her tears, 'when we were below and before I became insensible, that your efforts were superhuman; that, if the ship could be saved, it would be by you alone. And,' she continued, 'how you saved me I do not know. Only-only-I wish I had gone with him, with Gilbert.'

'Nay,' he said-'nay. Do not say that. And-and-I ask you to believe that, had it been possible, I would have saved him too. But it was impossible. Impossible to so much as slip a life-buoy over his shoulders. The end was at hand, the ship broken in half. It was impossible,' he repeated earnestly.

'How,' she asked, as she sat by his side gazing out across the calm, waveless sea through the fast-coming tropic night, and watching the great stars-almost as big as northern moons-sparkling, incandescent like, in the blue heavens above-'how did you do it? I remember nothing till I found myself lying there,' and she pointed down to the white sand, from which there came, through the sultry night, the gentle hiss of the sea, 'and saw you lying near me, and dead, as I thought.'