Chapter Twenty Eight.
The Rusted Pistol.
Down—down into the far depths, the weight of a world of water pressing ever down; suffocation, the bursting of myriad stars in a black, roaring sky; then upward, as though hurled by some giant catapult—and—air once more!
Wagram found himself instinctively battling for life amid the tumultuous eddyings that met and swirled above the spot where the hapless Baleka had taken her last plunge.
It was dark—darker than it had been, for the sea mist had deepened, shutting out the stars, shutting out everything around, shutting out in turn the sight of an exhausted man battling for life with the whole immensity of a vast ocean, keeping afloat by mere mechanical instinctive effort.
It seemed ages since he was sucked down by the sinking ship; in reality, it was hardly a minute. Providentially he had returned on deck before the last plunge, and, seeing that it was now or never, had leaped into the water, and struck out for all he knew how. Thus he had not come within the inner vortex, and so had risen to the surface in due course. He had refrained from shouting when he took his leap, lest one of the boats should return to his rescue and be sucked under herself.
Now he lifted up his voice, but the result was a hoarse whisper. Semi-suffocation, sea water, and exhaustion had done their work, and he was speechless. The boats would certainly lie around in the faint, forlorn hope that he might have got clear of the wreck. One hail might reach them, yet he was speechless. Aid was at hand—yet, O God! he must drown like a dog in the midst of the black, oily, midnight sea.
Then he felt contact with something, and instinctively he grasped it. It was a deck-chair, a large, closely-woven wicker chair; and, though it would not support his weight, at any rate it would serve to lighten it, to ease the strain upon his sole unaided efforts. He looked around for more substantial wreckage, but the mist and the darkness combined rendered it impossible to have descried even a boat, had such been within a few yards of him. But even for this miserable support he felt thankful.
Yet who may imagine the horror of those awful hours to the waif floating there in the silent, midnight sea—the solitude, the hopelessness, the consciousness that every hour was but prolonging his agony? The tropical water was warm, or numbness would have supervened, and claimed its victim long before the day should dawn upon the face of the deep; and, realising this too, again he felt thankful.
But now came the terror of another thought. The tropical waters, if warm, abounded in sharks. The unutterable horror of it! Here he was as completely at the mercy of the ravenous monsters as a worm thrown into a stream is at the mercy of the first fish that comes along. Death was one thing—such a loathsome and agonising form of it as this was another. Against it—in spite of his faith, which was great—all that was human in the man cried out in dread and recoil.
So the dark hours wore on, and as they did so a merciful lethargy came upon his mind and imaginings; and, with his frail support, but the smallest and most mechanical of efforts sufficed to keep him afloat on the salt, buoyant surface of the tropical sea.
Day dawned—yet what hope did it bring? Soon the fire rays of a furious tropical sun would beat down upon his unprotected head, burning his brain into molten pitch. With the dawning the mist had thinned, and though it still lay in hot, steamy folds yet a greater area of the surface was visible. And now to the waif was vouchsafed the first gleam of a great hope. Athwart the shadowy dimness an object was visible—an object long, low, and substantial. A ship!
Again he essayed his voice. This time his efforts were able to compass a feeble raucous shout. Help at last! Rescue! Oh, he would make them hear this time.
The sight sent new life through him. Mustering all his strength he struck out, yet not abandoning his frail support, ever with hopeful gaze strained upon that blessed ark of refuge—and then—and then—
The mist curtain rolled back farther, and it was as though some demon had been mocking him. There lay the ship, but she was nigh flush with the surface as she lay log-like upon the water, still and lifeless. Two jagged stumps of masts arose from her, and tattered fragments of rusty ratlines scraped her rusty sides. The unutterable stillness of her was the unearthly eloquent silence of a dead ship upon a dead sea. It was the Red Derelict again.
How had they come together once more? But a few hours ago he and others had gazed with curiosity upon this dead hulk from the deck of the bounding powerful steamship pulsating with life as she swept past. Now the live steamship was gone for ever to the utmost extremity of the far depths; but the dead hulk rode on, riding, as it were, throughout eternity upon a dead sea.
For the first few moments of this revelation the revulsion of feeling was so great, so overwhelming to the despairing waif, that he was tempted to cast away his frail support, and, abandoning all further effort, let himself sink for ever. One brief struggle, then rest—at least, so he trusted, so he ventured to hope. But to that some mysteriously conscious voice of good counsel seemed to reply that the gift of life was not to be voluntarily relinquished even then, that he had been brought back from the very depths of the sea, that a means of support, frail though it was, had been literally thrust into his hand, and now here was an even more substantial form of temporary safety. He remembered, too, how this wreck had been drifting for years, and was occasionally sighted by passing vessels; who could tell but what it might be the means of safety for himself, desperate and, humanly speaking, hopeless, as his plight now was? He decided that he would get on board the derelict; and no sooner had he come to this decision than he saw that the sooner he should carry it into effect the better, and that for reasons very weighty, very imminent indeed.
A dark, glistening object was moving above the surface, and well he knew what it represented. It was the dorsal fin of a shark.
As yet it was some little way off, moving slowly, and not coming in his direction. This was something; but as he strained every effort now to reach the derelict it seemed that even that weird refuge was a Heaven-sent one. But it seemed, too, that the hulk was receding from him as fast as he was approaching it. He remembered the captain’s dictum as to the strange action of currents. What if a current were moving it faster than he could move? He looked round. The glistening fin seemed almost stationary, but—it was nearer. Yes; he felt sure it looked larger.
Often from the deck of a ship he had looked down upon the grim monsters of the deep with an interest enhanced by a sense of absolute security. Now, here he was, floating helplessly in their natural element. Small wonder that his whole being should recoil, his flesh creep at the realisation of his utter helplessness.
There was no mistake about it now. The thing was coming straight towards him, and—the hulk was quite twenty yards away. What, too, if there were more of them?
Nearer, nearer, came that cruel glide, and still he could make but slow headway. He would have abandoned the deck-chair, and so got along faster, but for an inspiration that, perhaps, the strange appearance of it might scare the sea-tiger, suggesting possibly to its instinct the idea of a trap. The beast was very near now.
Wagram began splashing mightily, at the same time uttering as loud a shout as he could compass—and that was not very loud. It seemed to answer, though. The gliding triangular fin became motionless; then, as if the great fish had altered its course, it turned broadside on, as though concluding to manoeuvre a little further before closing.
Now the hulk was almost within grasp. Two or three strokes, and the waif was about to seize the taffrail, when he was conscious of a swirl beneath him. Rising from under the keel of the derelict came into view a monstrous shape. It stamped itself upon his brain—the gleaming white belly, the snake-like writhe of the tail, the great open mouth with its rows of awful teeth, and then—those teeth closed with a snap upon the deck-chair, which Wagram had, with rare quickness and presence of mind, thrust down where his legs had been when the rush was made, and, before the sound of the crunching of wood and wicker was stilled, by a mighty effort he had hoisted himself on board the hulk.
It was a near thing. He stood for a moment chest-deep on the submerged main deck, then clambered up to the poop and looked forth. The dark, glistening fin which had first alarmed him was still moving lazily at about the same distance off; but immediately beneath, the fragments of the deck-chair and the lashings and soundings of the monster that had tried to seize him made him vividly realise the awful peril from which he had escaped. It seemed as if the evil beast had indeed bitten off more than it could chew, for it darted to and fro, and sank and rose again in quite an abnormal way, as though seriously uneasy within.
The first feeling produced in Wagram by the sight was one of intense thankfulness, and yet his position was still desperate enough in all conscience. Here he was, on board a waterlogged hulk in mid-ocean without a scrap of food or a drop of water. He had a brandy flask which he had filled and put in his pocket with an eye to emergencies on the occasion of the first alarm, but that was all. Still, he would not by any means abandon hope. The idea uppermost in his mind was less that he had escaped so far than that he had been preserved—and if he had been preserved it was with some good reason. So far, too, he felt neither hunger nor thirst—his immunity from the latter perhaps due to his prolonged submersion. The poop deck was dry—in fact, very dry—and if he wanted to reach the forecastle he had only to wade along the main deck.
He glanced around seaward. The mist had completely disappeared, and from sky-line to sky-line the sea was open—open and blank; not a speck, not a sail. The hope which had sprung up within him that when the mist lifted some or all of the Baleka’s boats might be in sight was dispelled. He was alone.
Turning, he glanced down. Some loose rusty iron lay at his feet, remnants of the old rigging. This he was turning idly over when an object attracted his attention. Stooping, he picked it up. It was a pistol, a five-chambered revolver, but the woodwork of the stock had all but rotted away, and even as he held it something came off it and fell on the deck. Picking this up he examined it, then nearly dropped it again. The thing was of metal, and had come loose from the rotting wood. It, like the rest of the metal, was red with rust; but now, as Wagram stood staring at it, he thought he must be dreaming. It was a nameplate which had been let into the stock of the weapon, and through the rust there stood forth two letters—“E.W.”
Half dazed, he stared at the thing; rubbed his eyes, and stared again. Then he examined the pistol itself. No; there could be no mistake about it. The weapon had belonged to his brother. He ought to know it, if anybody ought, for it had been a present from himself when Everard had first left home years ago, and he himself had specially designed the fashioning of the initials on the nameplate—“E.W.” It was a five-chambered weapon, too, and five-shooters were not so common as six. And now—and now here it was, here it came into his hands again, on board a battered and abandoned hulk which seafaring authority had pronounced to have been afloat in its battered and derelict condition for years. What mystery—what awful mystery of the deep lay behind this?
For long he stood gazing at the relic in his hand. It had been a powerful weapon, one of large and heavy calibre. Did its presence here bear silent witness to an unseen and buried tragedy; to a grim fight for life here on this ghostly craft before she had been abandoned to her endless driftings? What ghastly remnants of such might even then be lying below within her hull, perhaps even of the man to search for whom he had travelled over half the world—sepulchred for ever beneath the water which precluded any further exploration of the fabric? Again, was it for this that he himself had been so wonderfully preserved—that he might light upon this long-forgotten object to serve as a clue in his further search? Who might say?
Now a great drowsiness came over him—the drowsiness of exhaustion—and, almost without knowing it, he sank down upon the deck. One thing he did half instinctively, half mechanically, and well was it for him he did so. That was to divest himself of his coat, and with it shelter his head from the fierce sun rays. Then he fell into a profound sleep—the slumber of exhaustion.
The red sun sank like a great globe in the smoky offing of the tropical sky. The intense heat of the day was about to give place to the dews of night, which, however, served to abate but little of the sultriness; though relief from the burning rays was something to be thankful for, thought those in the boats. But before the rush of night should settle down with its accustomed rapidity an incident was in store for them. A dark object lay outlined against the lurid sky-line. Quickly, eagerly glasses were brought to bear. Those who had not got glasses hung no less eagerly on the result. A ship?
But more than a smothered curse broke from those who saw.
“It’s only that derelict again,” burst from young Ransome, the fourth officer, wearily. “Only that derelict—that damned Red Derelict. We’ve seen enough of her.”
And the boats of the Baleka, with their castaway freight, held on their course, running before a light breeze which had sprung up with sunset, leaving behind them the Red Derelict with its one human passenger—the missing one from among themselves who had thrown away his own life to save that of a child who was already safe. And he lay, still fast asleep, with his coat over his head, drifting away with the grim hulk—away, away, over the pathless plain of the vast lonely sea.