Chapter Fourteen.
We Leave the Doomed Ship—Pursued by Savages.
I was in the saloon at the time, and everything seemed to fall together, as it were. It felt as if the ship’s bottom were dashed in and upwards, and when I struck a light—for the lamp had been extinguished, though it did not leave the gymbals—all was chaos in our once cosy wee saloon. Piano, chairs, books, ornaments, all mixed up together. I hastened to help Mrs Coates to her feet, and called to the steward to gather up the burning coals off the deck, else with the spilt oil we should be on fire.
No need, for a green sea came tumbling down the companion, and surged foaming in at the doorway, till we stood ankle deep in water. Another and another followed. The wind roared with redoubled violence. Then louder than the wind and the voice of the sea, came the crash of a falling mast. The squall appeared to have done its worst now, and though the seas continued to break against and over us, it was more in sheets of spray than in green water. We had gone on shore stem foremost, and were firmly wedged between two low bush-clad cliffs.
Now slowly, almost imperceptibly, the wind went down, and the musgo rolled away, and when morning broke cold and drearily over the sea and hills, the sky was comparatively clear, our position could be clearly defined and our danger could be faced.
Three poor fellows had fallen under the wreck, and were either killed at once or quickly drowned. A few others were wounded or bruised, and all were shaken.
The boats to the number of three—whalers they were—remained intact.
We were in a kind of wooded cove, with hills rising high at each side save on the sea-board, and far away above us was a region of ice and snow, with a cataract tumbling its waters apparently out of the very sky itself.
When the sun rose at last, dismal as was our plight, I could not help admiring, nay, even marvelling at, the beauty of the scenery around us. It was grand beyond compare.
We were in no immediate danger. We appeared to have been lifted in on the top of an immense wave, and deposited between the cliffs and on a hard flat bottom, from which we could not slide. There were timbers from her lower sides floating about us even now that told their own sad tale.
The ship was doomed, but we who were spared had much, very much, to be thankful for.
The captain consulted with Ritchie, who was carpenter on board, besides holding some other rating. He was not only the oldest on board, but by far the most experienced. It was resolved at once to put ourselves in a state of preparation, for the savages would assuredly find us out before long.
Then we went to prayers.
I need hardly say they were solemn and heart-felt.
There was no time to be lost now, however. We must get ready at once to leave the wreck, and in boats make the best of our way eastward towards Sandy Point. Whether we could do so in peace and safety remained to be seen.
We were in the hands of an all-seeing Providence; we could but say “Thy will be done,” and leave the rest to Him.
“We had better bury the dead on shore, Ritchie?” said the captain.
He really was asking a question for information. He seemed to quite defer to Ritchie.
“I wouldn’t do that, sir. These canoe Indians are cannibals, and they’ll have ’em up and eat them as sure as one belayin’ pin’s like another. No, sir, it’ll be just as quick to tack ’em up and give ’em a sailor’s grave.”
“You see to that then, Ritchie. Will you take charge of the boat, Mr Jack? Thank you.”
The broken and buried corpses of the poor fellows were speedily sewn in hammocks, which were heavily weighted with iron, and taken out to sea as far as we dared to go; and then, while the solemn burial service was read by Ritchie, one by one they were dropped overboard, and sank into the murky water with sullen booming plash. As he closed the book, Ritchie looked round him on all sides, but there was no sign of savages to be seen, neither smoke on shore nor canoe at sea. Nor was there any sound to break the stillness except the plaintive cry of a sea-bird; and yet who could tell what eyes of Indians the forest might not hide?
On our return we found our comrades all very busy indeed.
Poor Mrs Coates, looking very pale and resigned, sat on the companion. Woman-like, even in this dire strait she had not forgotten to bring a basket with her, and Leila clutched another. Both were warmly clad, and both wore guanaco mantles, the very garments we had purchased at Sandy Point.
Captain Coates put another question to Ritchie:
“Should we or should we not fire the ship, Mr Ritchie, think you?”
“For the matter o’ that,” replied Ritchie, “I’d as soon feed snakes in the woods as put any good thing in the way o’ these cannibal fiends, but I think, sir, leaving the ship for them will be our salvation. You ask my opinion, sir, and I give it. The wind is changing round already. It’s a way the winds have here, where the Pacific and the Atlantic seem to me to fight for mastery like. We needn’t be in a hurry then to leave the ship till they come.”
“You feel sure they’ll come?”
“Ah! never doubt ’em, sir. When they see we’re leaving the ship, they won’t chase us till they’ve cleared the wreck. My advice is, have up the ’baccy for ’em all ready, and the rum too. Let them look for everything else.”
“You seem obliging to them.”
“There’s a method in my obligingness, sir. Let’s leave the rum in different jars about, and cut the ’baccy all in bits and scatter it over the decks. Wolves, sir, fighting over a dead horse’ll be nothing to the scramble they’ll have for the ’baccy and rum.”
The boats were now lowered and laden with the ship’s valuables. Each boat was well provisioned, and supplied with water and rum, and also armed.
The men were twenty and two, all told, giving about five to each of two whalers, and seven to the largest whaler or cutter, as she was sometimes called. The captain himself took charge of this, his wife and Leila as passengers; Peter took command of the second boat, and I of the third, in my boat Ritchie being rifleman. Jill, it is needless to say, came with me, his elder brother. Ah! that five minutes of difference in our ages made me the man, you see, and Jill the child, and I would not have had it otherwise for all the world.
The day wore on. Noon passed, yet never a sign of Indian was seen. So we did what all right-thinking Englishmen would have done under the circumstances. We dined.
We made both ladies swallow a ration of rum. Poor Mrs Coates’ eyes watered, and Leila became a little hysterical and finally cried.
The wind went round and round, till at last it was fair.
Everything looked so propitious. But why did not the savages appear?
“I have it, sir,” said Ritchie. “They’re waiting to attack us at night, and I now propose we start. They’re hidden somewhere, depend upon it.”
Ritchie was right, and no sooner had we got fairly into the offing, than out their canoes swarmed after us.
“Keep well together in a line,” cried the captain, “and stand by to give them a volley.”
Ritchie stood up in his boat, and shouted at the foremost boat in broken Spanish. He tried to tell them that the tobacco was in the ship.
But on they came. Mrs Coates and Leila were made to lie down in the boat, and only just in time, for a shower of arrows flew over us next minute.
“Fire!”
Half a dozen rifles rang out in the still air, dusky forms sprang up in the canoes and fell to rise no more. Again and again our guns spread death in their ranks, and the nearer they came the hotter they had it.
We had spears in the boats, boarding pikes and axes. Would we have to use them? For a moment it seemed likely. All sail was set, and almost every hand was free for a tulzie that, if it came, would indeed be a terrible one.
One more telling volley. Would they now draw off? Yes, for over the water from the wreck came a mingled shout and yell. The canoes at once were stopped. Greed did what our guns had failed to accomplish. Murder and revenge are sweet to a savage, but tobacco and rum are sweeter still.
In ten minutes time we and our dusky foes were far apart indeed, the savages having a grand canoe race back to the wreck, we dancing away over the waves and heading straight for the east.
“Thank Heaven,” said Ritchie, fervidly, “they’re gone.”
“Do you think we could have beaten them off, Ritchie?” I asked.
“One can never tell how things will go in a hand-to-hand fight. Not as ever I’ve been in many, but, bless your innocent soul, lad, I’ve come through so much. I came to close quarters once on the African shore with a crowd o’ canoes just like that. I could have sworn we’d have beaten them off easy. And so we might have done, if our boats had continued on an even keel. But that wasn’t their game. No, they threw themselves like wild cats on one gunwale, and over we went. They had us in the water; and by the time a boat shoved off from the Wasp and came to our assistance, there was hardly a man among us left to tell tales.”
“That was fearful!”
“Ye see—haul aft the main sheet a bit—you see, sir, mostly all savages has their own ways o’ fightin’, their own tactics as you might say. Drat ’em all, I say.”
“You don’t believe in the noble savage?” said Jill.
“Not same’s they make ’em nowadays, sir. ’Cause why, we white men have spiled them. And now we want to kill ’em all off the face o’ the earth. It’s just like an ignorant old party having a dog for a pet. He’s everything at first, and the very cat takes liberties with him, till one day he snaps. It’s only natural, but what does the ignorant old party do?—why puts him in a bag and drowns him. It’s the same wi’ the savage: the white man has spoiled him, and now he thinks he’d better get rid of him entirely. Well, young gentlemen, by your leave I’ll have a smoke. You’ve got the compass all right, Mr Jill? Thank ye. ’Cause if the weather changes for the worst, then—”
“Hush, hush. Why you are a pessimist!”
“I don’t know that ship. But never mind. You don’t smoke?”
“N-no,” said Jill, “not yet.”
“Let me catch him at it,” I said.
“What have ye got under the sail, sir?”
“Why, the dogs,” said Jill, laughing. “You didn’t think I was going to leave them, did you? Look here.” He lifted the corner of the sail as he spoke, and there, sure enough, were Ossian the noble Scottish deerhound, and Bruce the collie.
“Mind,” continued Jill, “both o’ these would have done a little fighting if the worst had come to the worst.”
The wind held steadily from the west and by north, and blew stiff after a time, but the boats sailed dry—neither were far distant from the other—and everything was as comfortable as could be expected under the sad circumstances.
“If there doesn’t come any more north in it than this,” said Ritchie, with a glance skyward, “it’ll do. But, you see, we ought to be heading up Famine Reach now.”
“What a name!” said Jill.
“Ay, and there is a sad and terrible story to it too, that some day I may perhaps tell you.”
The afternoon wore slowly away, neither Jill nor I saying much; Ritchie, with his old-world yarns, doing nearly all the talking, and indeed it was a treat to listen to him. There was nothing of the nature of what are called sailor’s yarns about Ritchie’s talk, but an air of truthfulness in every sentence. Many a time by the galley fire in the dear lost Salamander, when asked by some of the men to “spin ’em a yarn,” Ritchie would reply—
“If I thinks on anything as has really happened, I’ll tell that. Mind ye, men,” he would add, “I’m going on for fifty. That ain’t a spring chicken, and I’ve knocked about so much and seen such a deal, that if I tells all the truth an’ nobbut the truth, why I’ll be seventy afore I’m finished. By that time I reckon it’ll be time to clear up decks to enter the eternal port.”
Now, being senior officer, I really was in charge of the boat, still I determined to take advice in everything from Ritchie, as in duty bound, he being my superior by far and away both in age and experience, and I may add in wisdom.
So, when near sundown, I asked him if the men should eat, he shook his head and said—“Not yet awhile.”
I did not feel easy in my mind at the answer, nor at his presently relapsing into silence, pulling harder at his pipe than usual without seeming to enjoy it, and casting so many half-uneasy glances skywards.
I feared that we were not yet out of danger. Jill had gone to sleep in the bottom of the boat, and somehow this also made me nervous and uneasy. I drew the sail over him with the exception of his face, and there he lay snug enough to all appearance, his head pillowed on the collie’s shoulder. I could not help wondering to myself where he was in his dreams. At home, I could have wagered two to one—two turnips to a leg of mutton, for instance.
Presently his features became pained, set and rigid, and his hands were clutched in the sail, while he moaned or half screamed like one in a nightmare.
Ritchie noticed it too.
“Call his name. Call his name, sir. That’s allers the way to bring ’em out of it.”
Well, desperate diseases need desperate remedies, so I did call his name—in full too.
“Rupert Domville Ffoljambe-Foley Jillard Jones” I shouted, so loud that the other boats must have thought I was hailing them.
Jill sat bolt upright, looking bewildered.
Ossian and Bruce jumped up and barked.
The men all laughed, and no wonder.
“Well,” said Ritchie, “blow me teetotally tight if ever in all my born days I ’eard sich a name as that ’afore. Why ’twould wake old Rip himself. After that I think the men better have ’alf a biscuit and a bite o’ bacon. It’ll do ’em good—after that.”