Chapter Twenty.

The end of the voyage.

Suddenly the surface of the water darkened away toward the north-west, showing that a breeze was coming along from that direction, and we sprang to the port braces, rounding them in a foot or two to meet it, and hauling taut and making fast the starboard. We worked quickly, not yet knowing quite what was at the back of the coming breeze; but it proved to be only a trifle after all, creeping down toward us very gradually, and scarcely careening the ship when at length it reached her. But, trifling though it was, it was none the less welcome to us all; for it was inexpressibly refreshing once more to feel a wind fanning our fevered faces, stirring our hair, raising a pleasant tinkling sound of water under the bows and along the bends, and stilling the eternal and distracting flap of canvas aloft after the long period of breathless calm through which we had sweltered. Moreover, the ship was once more moving through the water, with her jibboom pointing in the right direction, and every mile that she now travelled was so much to the good, increasing our chances of getting across the Line and making our escape from the awful region of equatorial calms which constitute such a ghastly bugbear to those who go down to the sea in sailing-ships. Our self-congratulations proved, however, to be premature, for the breeze lasted only about half an hour when it died away again, leaving us as completely becalmed as before. But during that half-hour we had succeeded in covering quite two miles; while the schooner, evidently strong-handed, had snatched at the opportunity afforded her and, hastily setting her mainsail and jibs once more, had managed to creep up to within a short mile of us before the breeze died away, leaving both craft once more boxing the compass.

But we were by no means discouraged, for we had only to glance round us at the great lowering cloud-masses, that seemed to have descended almost to the level of our mastheads, to know that there would be plenty more wind before we again beheld blue sky. And, if appearances went for anything, we should not have very much longer to wait for it, for the blackness overhead was working like yeast, and the outfly might come at any moment. Yet another half-hour passed, and nothing happened. Then, while we all stood gazing and waiting, the canopy of cloud that arched above us was rent asunder by a steel-bright flash of lightning so intensely vivid that we were all completely blinded for a few seconds, and the next instant there followed a crash of thunder that would have drowned the combined broadsides of a thousand line-of-battle ships, and the tremendous concussion of which caused the poor old Mercury to quiver and tremble from stem to stern.

“Now look out for the rain!” shouted Gurney exultantly, as he sprang to close the skylight covers. “Jump below, Gracie dear,” he continued, “or get under cover before the rain comes and washes you overboard!”

But the rain did not come, at least not just then; but, as though that first flash had been a signal-gun, the whole of the visible heavens seemed to break at the same moment into lightning flashes, and for a full quarter of an hour there was such a terrific lancing of lightning, such a crashing and roaring and rumbling of thunder, that one might almost have thought the navies of the world had foregathered up aloft there and with one accord had set about the task of annihilating each other. During the whole of this time not a solitary drop of rain fell, and not enough stirring of air occurred to extinguish the flame of a candle; we had nothing to do but simply to stand there, dazzled and deafened, and watch, as far as we might, this wonderful, awe-inspiring manifestation of the conflicting forces of nature.

It happened that the schooner lay right in the wake of the most violent part of the storm; we therefore had her full in view as we stood and watched. Her people were at this time busily engaged in restowing their mainsail and jibs, apparently convinced that the ultimate outcome of all this elemental disturbance must be an outfly of wind against which it would be well to be fully prepared. They had got their mainsail down, and some eight or ten hands were stretched along the length of the boom, tightly rolling up the great folds of canvas, while four more were laid out on the jibboom furling the jibs, when the storm seemed to reach its height, and a great vivid flash of lightning, like a sword of blue-green fire, lighting up the whole scene with its ghastly glare, fell, as it appeared to us, full upon the little craft, and the next instant, as the accompanying peal of thunder crashed and boomed in our ears, we all distinctly saw a flash, as of fire, leap up aboard her, accompanied by a great puff of whitish smoke. It was only momentary, and had the appearance of an explosion; but it was perfectly apparent that something more or less serious had happened to the little vessel. After an appreciable pause on the part of her crew, as though they were collecting their faculties in the face of some sudden disaster, they broke at once into a state of feverish activity, rushing hither and thither about her decks like men who are attempting to do half a dozen separate and distinct things at the same moment. Then came another flash of flame on board her; and all in a moment, as it seemed to us, the whole after part of her burst into a fierce blaze!

“Why, Gurney!” I exclaimed, turning to where the man stood with his sweetheart: “that last flash of lightning seems to have set the schooner on fire.”

“Yes,” he answered; “and she is blazing like a tar barrel. If the rain doesn’t come within the next two or three minutes they will have their work cut out to extinguish the flames.”

“Ay,” cut in Saunders, “you are right there, George. Look how she flares up. Why, she must be as dry as tinder. Ah! there they go with their buckets. But what is the use of buckets against a blaze like that; why don’t they get their hose along and start their head-pump? They’ll never put out that fire by balin’ up water from over the side.”

“No,” assented Gurney, “nor by means of a hose and head-pump either. Nothing but a good downpour of rain will do them any good now, and the rain seems to be holding off. Scissors! that ought to fetch it down”—as another terrific flash of lightning illuminated the whole scene from horizon to horizon.

But it did not; the lightning—fierce, vivid, and baleful—continued to flash, the thunder rolled and crashed and reverberated in one continuous deafening uproar; but the rain held off for a good five minutes longer, during which the fire aboard the schooner gained apace and spread with amazing rapidity. When at length the heavens opened, and the overladen clouds began to discharge their contents, it was not by any means the kind of tropical deluge that might have reasonably been expected, but simply a sudden brisk shower lasting less than a minute, and then ceasing abruptly. It was neither copious enough nor of sufficient duration to be of any appreciable service to the crew of the schooner, and indeed it did not perceptibly check the progress of the flames. To the onlookers aboard the Mercury it seemed that the other craft was irretrievably doomed; and such also seemed to be the opinion of her own crew, for they were presently seen to be frantically busy over the clearing away of the longboat, which was stowed on top of the main hatch, and the safety of which was now threatened by the rapidly advancing flames.

“Do you think that they will succeed in extinguishing the fire, George?” asked Grace Hartley, as she clung to her lover’s arm and gazed with wide-open eyes of anxiety at the progress of the conflagration.

“No,” answered Gurney unhesitatingly; “to be quite candid with you, dear, I do not. Whatever may be the cargo that the schooner carries, it is evidently of a highly combustible character, and now seems to be fairly ignited. The fire gains ground even as we stand and gaze; and if the crew could not conquer it at the outset, they are not likely to do so now. What think you, Mr Troubridge?”

“I quite agree with you,” I answered. “That schooner—”

“Then,” interrupted Grace passionately, with an impatient stamp of her foot on the deck, “if you really think that, what are we all standing here idly for? Why are we not doing something to help those poor fellows who are in danger of perishing in the flames?”

“Because, my dear, there is no need, as yet, at all events,” answered Gurney. “You see,” he continued, “they are clearing away their own boat; and if they can only contrive to get her into the water before she is irretrievably damaged they will be all right. They have but to cross that narrow space of water to reach us and safety. But as for us, we can do nothing. It would need two of us to take one of our quarter boats alongside that schooner in time to be of any service to those people; and with the weather as it is at this moment it would be the height of madness for us to make the attempt. For, suppose that this thunderstorm were to end in a heavy squall of wind—as it may at any moment—catching the boat, with Saunders and me in her, halfway or thereabout between the two vessels, what would be the result? Why, that we should be equally unable to reach the schooner or return to the Mercury. We should all part company; and the chances are that none of us would ever again meet in this world! No, no, I suppose we should all be willing to risk a great deal to help our fellow-creatures in extremity; but we must not lightly undertake an adventure that may be fatal to us, while of very problematical advantage to the others. Ah! see, there is the answer to your appeal, Gracie! They have cleared away the longboat, and now they are hoisting her out, none too soon either; for if my eyes do not deceive me, one gang have to sluice her with water to prevent her taking fire while the others are getting her over the side.”

It was even as Gurney had said; the flames had spread with such astounding rapidity that the schooner’s crew only saved the boat by the very skin of their teeth. But presently she splashed safely into the water alongside, and as she did so the schooner’s people seemed to pour over that vessel’s low rail in a body, scarcely giving themselves time to unhook the tackles before they flung out their oars and shoved off. Indeed, there was very urgent need for haste; for not only was the entire after part of the schooner ablaze by this time—the flames shooting straight up in the breathless air as high as the little vessel’s main truck—but within the last minute or so there had occurred that abrupt cessation which, in the case of tropical thunderstorms, is so frequently the precursor of a sudden and brief but exceedingly violent squall of wind. And if that threatened squall should burst its bonds and come shrieking and howling in fury across the surface of the sea, scourging it into a mad turmoil of foaming, leaping water and blinding spindrift, while the burnt-out crew of the schooner were making their passage across to the Mercury, it might be very bad for them; for even should they be fortunate enough to avoid capsizal, it might be exceedingly difficult, if not altogether impossible, for the ship, smitten and bowed down by the might of the tempest, to pause and pick them up.

Of course, as we fully expected, the boat headed straight for the Mercury; and the only question now was whether she would reach us before the brooding tempest broke loose and involved us all in its clutches. I glanced anxiously round the horizon, and was not reassured by what I saw; for the aspect of the heavens had rapidly grown so threatening that it looked as though the outburst must inevitably come within the next minute or two, while, strive as they might, the strangers could not get alongside us in less than ten minutes at the least. And we could do absolutely nothing to help them, for at this moment there was not the faintest perceptible movement of the atmosphere, and both craft lay as motionless as logs in a timber pond. I looked aloft at the vane at our masthead; it might have been made of cast iron for all the movement that it betrayed; I wetted my finger and held it up, turning it this way and that in the hope of detecting a draught, however slight; but there was nothing. A glance at the blazing hull of the schooner showed that the flames were shooting heavenward as straight as the flame of a candle burning in a vault. No, there was nothing to be done except to get a number of rope’s-ends ready to fling into the boat the moment that she came alongside, should she succeed in doing so; and this we did, flinging the coils of braces and what not off the pins to the deck in readiness to cast at the moment when perhaps a second more or less might make all the difference between life and death to some fourteen or fifteen of our fellow-creatures.

That the occupants of the boat were as fully alive as ourselves to the critical nature of the situation was clear from the desperate energy with which they toiled at the six oars they had thrown out, the stout ash blades bending almost to breaking point at each stroke and sending a long trail of tiny froth-flecked swirls seething and driving astern, as the men sprang and bent their backs to their work, while the water buzzed and foamed under the craft’s bluff bows. They were racing for their lives, and knew it! Fathom by fathom the heavy boat surged ahead over the oil-smooth surface of the black water, with the scowling sky writhing overhead, as though the spirit of the storm were struggling to burst its bonds and leap upon them. They were already so near at hand that we could hear their cries as they shouted encouragement to each other, when a sudden puff of air from the north-west swept over the ship, causing the topsails and staysail to momentarily fill, with a report like a musket-shot, with a quick jar and creaking of trusses, parrals, and block sheaves, before the canvas again collapsed to the masts with a rustling sound that to our overstrained senses seemed preternaturally loud.

“It is coming now; look there, over the starboard quarter!” shouted Gurney, pointing; and, putting his hands to his mouth, he yelled to those in the approaching boat: “Pull, men; pull for your lives, or you’ll miss us yet!”

I looked in the direction indicated, and, sure enough, it was as Gurney had said. The sky in that quarter was black as night, and beneath it was the long line of white foam that marked the progress of the approaching squall. It was racing down upon us with incredible speed, and, near as the boat was, it was evident that the squall must strike us before she could get alongside. And, once in the grip of that raving fury of wind, no earthly power could save those unfortunates, who were now fighting like maniacs to reach the ark of safety that floated so near—yet not near enough! Something must be done, some risk must be taken to help them. That we should, without effort of any sort, suffer ourselves to be cruelly snatched away far beyond the reach of those desperately struggling men, leaving them to miserably perish, was unthinkable!

“Back the fore topsail!” I yelled, springing down the poop ladder to the main deck and feverishly casting off the fore braces; “it is the only thing that we can do; we may lose our topmasts, but we must risk that. With our fore topsail aback we may perhaps be able to edge down upon and pick them up, otherwise we shall never set eyes upon them again.”

Working like demons, each of us seeming to be possessed, for the moment, of the strength of a dozen men, we got the head yards braced round and the braces made fast before the squall reached us; and then I sprang aft to the wheel, while Gurney and Saunders, snatching up as many loose coils of rope as they could grasp, stood by to drop them into the boat. As I reached the wheel and wrenched it hard a-starboard, the squall, with an indescribable fury of sound, struck us—fortunately well over the starboard quarter. With a report like a cannon-shot and a creaking and groaning of overstrained spars and timbers the Mercury buried her bows in the boiling sea and gathered way, paying off square before the wind as she did so. I let her go well off, until the longboat was broad on our starboard bow; then, putting the helm hard down, I brought the ship close to the wind, thus throwing her fore topsail aback, and, by the mercy of Providence, judging my distance with such nicety that the next moment the longboat, by this time full to her thwarts and utterly helpless, was scraping along under the shelter of our lee side, while the ship, suddenly arrested by her backed topsail, careened until her lee rail was level with the foam. Gurney and Saunders hove their rope’s-ends fair into the boat; but there was no need for them, the ship was bowed so steeply that the occupants were able to seize her rail and scramble inboard unaided. In as many seconds fourteen strange men had transferred themselves from the sinking longboat to our decks, while the boat, rasping astern along the ship’s side, capsized and turned bottom-up as she drove clear. Gurney flourished his hand to me as a sign that all was well, and then, as I once more put the helm up and allowed the ship to go off before the wind, he seized some three or four of the dazed strangers and invoked their aid to square the foreyard.

It was with a mighty sigh of relief that I presently resigned the wheel to Saunders and went forward to greet and welcome the rescued men; for, by the skin of our teeth we had saved them all in the very nick of time, and that, too, without parting so much as a ropeyarn. Furthermore, by an extraordinary stroke of fortune—good for us, although bad for them—we had, in the most unexpected manner, secured the services of enough hands to enable us to work the ship without being constantly worried as to the quantity of sail that we might safely venture to set. Therefore we were now in a position to avail ourselves to the utmost extent of every kind of weather, and could hope to bring our remarkable voyage to a speedy conclusion.

As I joined the group of strangers clustered about Gurney, down on the main deck, it was easy to determine, even before I came within sound of their tongues, that they were British—Australians, that is to say, for they one and all bore the well-marked characteristics of that sturdy, independent, self-reliant race. Gurney at once took it upon himself to perform the ceremony of introduction.

“This, mates,” said he, indicating me, “is our skipper, Mr Troubridge. He is but a youngster, as you may see for yourselves; but you may take my word for it that, so long as he commands, everything will go right with us. Our story is a long one, and a queer one—too long and too queer to be spun just now, so it must wait; but you will all be glad to know that we are bound for the port that you hail from; so, please God, it will not be long before you see your sweethearts and wives once more. This, Mr Troubridge, is Mr Thomson, chief mate of the schooner Seamew, blazing out yonder; and the rest are the remainder of her crew, whose names I have not yet had time to learn.”

“Welcome aboard the Mercury, Mr Thomson, and men of the Seamew!” said I. “I am heartily glad that, since it was your lot to meet with misfortune, we happened to be near enough at hand to pick you up. But what of your captain; where is he?”

“I am sorry to say, Mr Troubridge,” answered Thomson, “that Captain Peters and Mr Girdlestone, our second mate, were both struck dead by the flash of lightning that set the schooner afire; and we were obliged to leave ’em aboard to burn with her, since we had no time to do anything else. The Seamew was Cap’n Peters’ own property; and we were out after sandalwood, of which the schooner was more’n half-full when this misfortune happened to her. We fought the flames as long as we could, in the hope of savin’ her; but we never had a chance from the very first, for she was old, and as dry as the inside of a tinder-box, and she burned like a pine splinter. We hung on to her so long that we had to leave all our belongings aboard her, comin’ away with just what we stood up in, and we cut it so fine that if we’d delayed another minute we’d all be in Davy’s locker now.”

“Ay,” said I, “there is very little doubt of that, I think. However, a miss is as good as a mile, they say, and you are all here, except your unfortunate captain and second mate, so you must make yourselves as comfortable as you can until we arrive in Sydney. I am afraid I shall have to ask you to work your passages, for we are very short-handed, as you will have seen; but no doubt when we arrive—”

“Oh, that’s all right, sir!” cut in Thomson; “of course we’ll work our passages, and glad of the chance to do so. It’s a lucky thing for us that you were near enough to pick us up.”

So the matter was arranged, Gurney and Thomson each heading a watch of six men, while the cook and the steward of the Seamew respectively took charge of the Mercury’s galley and pantry, and Saunders promptly escaped from the cabin to the more congenial atmosphere of the forecastle, where he entertained the men, during the remainder of the voyage, with stories of our adventures, first on the island, and afterwards on the reef. But a timely hint from Gurney, terse and strong, kept his lips closed upon the subject of the pearls, of the existence of which on board not a man of the schooner’s crew ever became aware.

There is but little more that need be said in order to bring this story of a very remarkable and adventurous voyage to a close. The schooner continued to blaze fiercely—the flames fanned to ever-increasing fury by the strength of the wind—for about half an hour after we had run past her, when we suddenly lost sight of her; Thomson’s opinion being that by that time her upper works had been completely consumed, and that the sea had gained access to her interior, sending her charred remains to the bottom. True, the tail of the squall brought along a smart shower of rain that lasted about ten minutes, but it was over again before she disappeared, so that the alternative theory of Brady, her boatswain, that the rain extinguished the flames, found little acceptance with us. In any case it was not worth while returning to seek her, for, even had she been found, she could but have been a mere burnt-out shell, of no value to anyone. The squall blew itself out in about twenty minutes; but the wind continued to blow strongly all through the night, and it was not until sunrise on the following morning that the weather moderated sufficiently to induce Gurney to send the hands aloft to turn out the reefs and make sail. When I went on deck, however, at seven bells, it was glorious weather; the sky clear, save for a few light fleecy clouds drifting solemnly along out of the north-west, a moderate sea running, and the ship bowling gaily along under all plain sail and her starboard studding sails—a sight which I had not gazed upon for many a long day. We crossed the Equator during the forenoon of that day and, meeting with favourable weather for the remainder of the voyage, entered Port Jackson, without further adventure, some three weeks later, coming to an anchor close to Garden Island.

The arrival of the Mercury, so long overdue that she had been given up as lost, created quite a little local sensation, which was vastly increased when the history of the voyage was made public, to such an extent, indeed, that a Government ship was dispatched to the island with authority to arrest Wilde, Polson, and Tudsbery upon a charge of piracy, and bring them to Sydney for trial. The business of the ship, and the fact that Gurney, Saunders, Grace Hartley, and I would be required as witnesses at the trial, detained us all at Sydney until the return of the corvette from the island, some two months later.

The news which she brought back sent a thrill of horror throughout the colony. It was to the effect that upon her arrival at the spot, the latitude and longitude of which I had given, a small islet had been discovered which, upon examination, proved to be the crater of a volcano that had evidently been very recently in a state of violent activity; but no traces of life were to be found upon it, nor had the islet any resemblance to the extensive and beautiful island which we had described. The weather, however, proving favourable, the captain of the corvette had anchored his ship for several days close to the islet, and had caused an extensive series of soundings to be taken all round it, which, upon being plotted to a large scale, were of such a character as to leave no doubt that the islet was indeed the summit of the peak of Wilde’s island, and that the latter had most probably been engulfed, with its inhabitants, by the same cataclysm that had imprisoned the Mercury among the meshes of the pearl reef! Our escape, therefore, from the common destruction that had overtaken the rest had been an exceedingly narrow one, the margin of safety amounting, in fact, to less than three days; for there can be no question that, had the Mercury been at her moorings in the Basin, or even within a few miles of the island, when the catastrophe occurred, she could never have survived it.

The consignees of the Mercury’s original cargo—the names and addresses of whom were mentioned in the ship’s manifest, found by me, with the rest of the ship’s papers, in the captain’s desk—were of course only too glad to accept the cargo of sandalwood brought from the island, in lieu of the much less valuable merchandise originally consigned to them, and they at once chartered the ship to carry the wood to Canton, one of the partners—a Mr Henderson—going with it in the capacity of supercargo to dispose of it, upon arrival. There was not much difficulty in engaging another master, officers, and crew for the ship; and I subsequently learned that she arrived safely, that the cargo was speedily disposed of, tea purchased with the proceeds, and the ship dispatched with it to England, where she duly arrived; the net result of the adventure being a big profit for the fortunate consignees. These gentlemen were Scotchmen, and although persons of that nationality have the reputation of keeping a very tight hand upon the bawbees, I am bound to say that they treated Gurney, Saunders, and myself with a liberality, not to say generosity, that left nothing to be desired, although of course we had no claim on them. The result being that not only were we able to maintain ourselves most comfortably in Sydney while awaiting the return of the corvette from the island, but also to return afterwards to England as first-class passengers. That is to say, Gurney, Grace Hartley, and I did so; but Saunders remained in the colony and eventually became a prosperous and exceedingly wealthy sheep farmer. As for Gurney, he lost no time in making Grace Hartley his wife, I officiating as best man on the occasion.

We all three went home together in the cuddy of the same ship, and upon our arrival it was my happy privilege to be the means of opening the negotiations with his father—Sir George Burnley, baronet, of Chudleigh Grange, Devon—that resulted in a complete and permanent reconciliation between the two. Gurney—or Burnley, to give him his correct name—had learned his lesson while passing through the fires of adversity. He had learned, in the school of experience—that best of all schools—that the so-called pleasures of sin endure but for a very brief season and are inevitably followed by misery, suffering, shame, and self-contempt beyond all power of words to express; and he had the resolution and strength to pull himself together and become once more a man, in the best and highest sense of the term, before it was too late and mental, moral, and physical ruin, complete and irretrievable, had overtaken him. He had the joy of seeing his father’s belief and pride in him fully restored, and of making that father’s declining years easy, pleasant, and happy. Now he reigns in that father’s stead, honoured, respected, and beloved by all, and the pride and joy of his wife and children.

As for me, my pearls, when at length I had succeeded in converting them into money, produced so unexpectedly magnificent a fortune that not only was I enabled by its means to obtain a commanding interest in the corporation which owned the Gold Star line of sailing clippers, but also very materially to assist in converting that line from sail to steam. This was, of course, a very gradual process; and by the time that it was complete I was not only out of my apprenticeship but had worked my way up to the position of chief mate. Two voyages in this capacity sufficed to qualify me for the position of master; and now, in the time of my ripened experience, I hold the proud position of Commodore of the fleet, and have the pleasure of walking the bridge as commander of one of the finest passenger steamers that trade between England and the Australian ports.