CHAPTER XVII
'FAREWELL, MY RIVAL'
Had Bella known more about a ship and its intricacies she would have understood that, notwithstanding some one had undoubtedly gone overboard, the sailor, whoever he was, could not by any possibility have been one of those who had gone to help in squaring the yards. Instead, she would have been aware that such an accident could only have happened to some seaman who had either gone aloft or out on to the jib-boom. And, in fact, the latter was the case; the unfortunate fellow, a man named Brown, falling off the boom while endeavouring to set the flying jib, and being struck a moment later by the frame timbers forward as he fell. Yet the unhappy sailor seemed still to have some life left in him, as those who rushed to the port side could see, since, as he was passed by the ship, he was observed to rise to the surface-his head all shiny with blood-and to strike out manfully. But what could that avail, since, by the time the Emperor could be brought to the wind and a life-buoy thrown overboard, he was half a mile astern? To lower the boats in time to save him would also have been an impossibility, even if it could have been done at all; and, moreover, the swift-coming instantaneous darkness of the equator was at hand, so that the man himself was, by now, almost invisible.
'Steer her course again,' Charke called out, therefore, to the man who was at the wheel, in a voice in which regret for the unfortunate sailor was mingled with a tone denoting some other sentiment that, perhaps, none would have been able to understand, even though they had been swift to observe it, as, in their excitement, none were. Then, at once, in a few moments, the Emperor of the Moon was again heading towards where the Seychelles lay.
What was that other sentiment which now pervaded the breast of this strong, masterful sailor; this man who had worked untiringly for hour after hour on stretch, and who seemed to rise triumphant over Nature's command that both sleep and meals should be properly partaken of? The man who had not changed his clothes for three days, nor even had them off his back when he sought a quarter of an hour's rest here or ten minutes there? What was this sentiment? Nothing but a certainty that this was the last voyage the ship was ever to make-a feeling of intense conviction, which had been growing upon him for some time, that all in the ship were doomed. For he, at least, could see-he was not blind yet-and, more than all else on board, perhaps, could feel; and his sight showed him things over the water, in the density of the atmosphere, even in the appearance of the brassy heavens above, which told him that, ere long, the slight whispering breeze which blew would be changed into a hurricane howling across the ocean. His feelings, his nerves, the moisture of his skin corroborated, also, what his sight proclaimed.
'It will come,' he muttered to himself, as now he paced the after-deck, with his eyes never off the light sail that the ship was carrying. 'It will come soon, and then we are done for, even though I get every inch of canvas off her first. This man's death leaves me and three other sailors as the only persons to work the ship. It is strange if, even under bare poles, we continue to swim.'
Then, as he turned his head towards where Bella (who had soon recovered from her faintness) was now standing talking with her uncle and her lover, he muttered another sentence to himself-a sentence which, should a romancist or a dramatist inspire one of his characters with it, would, perhaps, be deemed unnatural, yet which this man of iron will and fierce determination muttered to himself as calmly as he would have given an order to one of his few remaining sailors.
'If it blows, as I believe it will, twenty-four hours will see the end of us all. She-oh, my God! she will be dead-but so will he and so shall I. Well, there's consolation in that. If I can't have her, no more can he. That thought makes the end mighty cheap.'
Here he strode towards those three standing by the break of the poop, and touching his cap to Bella-he was, as she had observed, a gentleman, and in all that became the outward semblance of a gentleman he never failed-he said quietly to the poor, blind captain standing by her side with his fingers resting lightly on her arm:
'We must get in all the sail, sir, now. There is a change coming; I know it-feel it. The glass, too, stands very low, and since we cannot work the ship in a storm, short-handed as we are, we had better commence at once. It will be pitch dark in ten minutes and there is no moon.'
'Good God!' exclaimed Pooley, 'what is to happen next? The glass low, you say? Well, that means a change of some sort, though not necessarily bad weather. What are these feelings you speak of, Charke?'
'The feelings of a sailor,' he replied. 'You know them as well as I do. Ha!' he exclaimed, 'there's lightning in the south. No time to be lost.'
Then he seized the boatswain's whistle, which he had hung round his neck and used since the man himself had become disabled, and blew it as a signal to his three remaining hands to be ready for his orders.
'Now then,' he cried, 'up with you and stow the few sails that there are. What do you say?'-to one who muttered something-'tired-been working all day? Why, damn you! haven't I been working too.' Charke rarely swore, but he was impelled to do so now, especially as he had moved out of Bella's hearing. 'Do you see that lightning down there in the south? Do you want the ship to be blown over and go to the bottom in her? Here, you stop at the wheel,' addressing the man who was already at it, 'we others can do it somehow. Follow me'; and away he went to the topsail yard, selecting the most arduous part of the business for himself. While he muttered to himself as he did so: 'Now, if I should go, too-fall off the yard-they are doomed beyond all help. Nothing then can save him.' Which thought caused a strange, weird kind of smile to be on his face as he sprang up the ratlins.
And, stirred to action by his own indomitable energy, the men did set about the work and managed it somehow, the sails being stowed in a very unshipshape fashion (or what would have been an unshipshape fashion if the proper quantity of sailors had been there to do the job) and in such a manner that the first gust of the coming tempest would be as likely as not to blow them clean off their lashings. Still, it was done at last, and not too soon either, since, ere they had concluded their work, the lightning was flashing incessantly and huge drops of rain were falling.
'It's a south-easterly wind,' said Gilbert to Bella, turning his cheek towards it. 'Where will it blow us to now?'
Charke thought he knew, as he listened to the remarks, since he had returned to their vicinity after coming down from the topsail-yard, but he uttered never a word. Even now he loved the girl by their side too much to frighten her more than was necessary. Yet, had he said that he knew that, short of a miracle, it must be the bottom of the ocean-as was the case-she would probably not have heard him, since, at this moment, with a devilish shriek, the gale was upon them. Upon them and almost pooping the ship as it struck her right aft, and then driving her forward in the churned sea with a horrible, sickening motion, while, since she was fairly deeply laden, she recovered herself from the avalanche of water but slowly. An avalanche that, sweeping over the poop with a roar and a swish, took Bella and Gilbert off their feet and hurled them forward staggering, and buffeted against each other.
'Below-go below, all of you!' roared Charke to them, and also to Pooley, who had himself been sent sliding along the deck and was now hanging on to a belaying-pin, even as he called out to know where Bella was. 'Below, I say! We must close the hatches, or she will have the sea in her. Below, quick!' and, rushing towards Bella, he led her to the after-companion, dragging Gilbert with his other hand and returning for Pooley. And now the tropical lightning-that violet-hued lightning which is so beautiful and also so sure a sign of awful turbulence in the elements-played incessantly on the ill-starred Emperor of the Moon; the seas were mountains at one moment, valleys at another. The ship, too, was rolling so that it seemed as if everything on her deck must be pitched off her into the sea-as was indeed the case with many of the smaller things which went to form the raffle lying all about-and each time that she went over to port or starboard she took tons of water over her side. Then, a still more gigantic wave caught her on her port-bow, and absolutely threw her up, it rolling directly afterwards under her counter and letting her drop directly afterwards into the trough, while over her poop, again, came that which seemed to be not a wave but the whole Indian Ocean itself.
Amidst it all Charke still stood at the wheel, holding on to it as perhaps few solitary men had ever held on to a wheel in such a sea before; his arms actually bars of iron, yet appearing to him as though deprived of all sense and feeling. He stood there silent, determined, resolved, awaiting death, knowing that it must come and not dismayed-because it must come to that other, too, that man below in the saloon who loved and was beloved by Bella. Then, suddenly, he knew that he was not to die there alone at his post while his rival expired in his sweetheart's arms, or she in his; he knew-he discovered that not to him alone was to belong all the bravery and the resolution.
Creeping up from below, thanking God that the hatch had not yet been closed, feeling his way by his hands and gradually reaching the wheel-buffeted here and there; knocked down once, then up again-Gilbert Bampfyld crept to his side, and, an instant later, was fingering and, next, gripping the spokes.
'Let me help you!' he roared, so as to be heard, while feeling as he did so which way the other man who already had hold of the wheel was exerting his force. 'Blind as I am, I can do that. Who are you?'
'Stephen Charke,' the other answered, also shrieking his name. 'Help, if you like. But it is useless. We are going.'
'I know it,' Gilbert answered. 'Well! we will go down standing.'
And Charke, still endeavouring to hold up the ship, still to protract life from one moment to another, muttering inwardly: 'Curse him! he is a man. One worthy of her.' Then, unceasingly, he continued his work, wrenching, striving, endeavouring in every way to save the ship from being pooped or flung over as the waves took her and cast her up like a ball, or hurled her down like a falling house into the gaping, hellish troughs that lay below, yawning for their victim.
But still the lightning played upon the doomed craft, illuminating her from stem to stern, showing the fore top-gallant mast gone and the jib-boom carried away, broken off short, three feet from the bowsprit head. Also it showed something else-something that, had he had time to think of aught but preventing the ship from falling off the course he was endeavouring to steer, might have struck a feeling of wild horror to his uncanny breast.
For some of the blind, stricken men forward had crept by now out of the forecastle and other places where they had herded, and were crawling about the foredeck, holding on to whatever they could clutch-belaying-pins, the fife-rail, the racks, even the ring-bolts. Amongst them, too, was the tiger-cub, an almost unrecognisable lump, except for the topaz gleam which his eyes emitted: a gleam that, as a sea, which was in truth a cataract, washed it from the foremast almost to where he stood, appeared to Charke malignant, devilish, threatening. And he heard those unhappy men's voices, cursing, blaspheming, praying: roaring that they feared no death which they could see, but that they wanted to go neither to heaven nor hell enveloped in utter darkness.
'No Jack who ever sailed,' they screamed, 'feared a death that he could face, but we fear this. And if we had but our sight, maybe there'd be no death at all!'
'Ay, but there would, though,' muttered Charke to himself-'there would. Ha! by God, look there,' he cried aloud, forgetting that the only man who could hear his words was blind. The ship had given another hideous plunge-had wrenched herself as a giant might give a wrench in endeavouring to free himself from the chains that bound him-then down! down! down! she went into the hollows of the ocean, so that up above her on either side were nothing but vast walls of sea. Walls that would, that must close together, Charke understood, fifty feet above their heads, leaving the ship beneath them. And then he turned to the other man by his side, saying calmly: 'Now is the time! You love Bella Waldron. So do I. And neither of us will ever set eyes on her again. Farewell-my rival!'
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.'