Chapter Six.
The derelict.
The mere possibility that rescue might actually be at hand acted as a tonic upon me, imparting renewed life and hope, and clearing away the more than half-delirious fancies that had clouded and bemuddled my brain; thus enabling me once more to think and act rationally. I pulled myself resolutely together, collected my wandering wits, and peered long and anxiously at the shadowy shape that had, as it were, crystallised out of the surrounding darkness; then I looked away from it toward other points of the horizon to see whether it repeated itself elsewhere. No; it was peculiar to one definite spot; and I no longer had any doubt but that there was a certain tangible something, which could only be a ship, and that I must quickly determine upon the steps necessary to intercept her.
The first thing was to ascertain in what direction she was steering. When I first discovered her she was dead to windward, and since then she had drawn aft a trifle, being now about two points before my weather beam. She could not have overtaken me, because in that case she would have passed so close as to have all but run over the boat, and I could not have failed to see her; and the fact that she had slowly and imperceptibly grown up out of the darkness argued that she was not sailing away from me. Nor could she be sailing toward me, because in that case she would have grown in size and distinctness much more rapidly than she had done. Nor, strangely enough, did she seem to be crossing my course in either direction, the slight change in her bearings being accounted for by the progress of the boat. Possibly she might be hove-to; although it was difficult to imagine why she should be so, unless she had lost a man overboard. But if that were the case she would be showing lights as a guide to her boat, which ought not to be very far away. And why so deadly silent? I could not understand it. But as these ideas flitted through my mind I came to the conclusion that the correct thing to do was to close with her as quickly as possible by making short tacks toward her. So I put down my helm and hove the boat round upon the starboard tack, bringing the vague, black shadow about two points on the weather bow. The flapping of the sails while the boat was in stays awoke my companion, who sat up and, in a weak and husky voice, asked me what was the matter.
“Nothing,” I answered; “at least nothing of an alarming nature. The fact is that I fancy I can see something, away out there on the weather bow, and I have tacked the boat for the purpose of investigating the object more closely.”
“Whereabout is this object of which you speak?” she asked.
I pointed it out to her, and she almost immediately saw it. “Do you imagine it to be a ship, Mr Conyers?” she inquired.
“I know not what else it can be,” said I. “But,” I added, “we must not be too sanguine of help or rescue just yet. There are one or two points in connection with that object that make me doubtful as to its being a ship.”
“What are they?” she quickly demanded.
I told her that one was the apparent immobility of the object; the other being the fact that no lights were being displayed. And I explained that the two together seemed incompatible with the supposition that the object ahead was a ship, repeating to her, indeed, the arguments that had flitted through my own mind only a few minutes before.
Yet with every fathom that the boat advanced, the shadow grew more palpable, expanded, and approximated more closely to the appearance of a vessel hove-to under bare poles. And at length, after several anxious minutes of alternating hope and doubt, there arrived a moment when doubt became no longer possible, for the shadow had finally resolved itself into the silhouette of a brig under bare poles; even the thin lines of the masts—which, by the way, looked stumpy, as though her topgallant-masts were gone—were perceptible to my practised eye.
Without pausing to puzzle out a possible reason for the singular condition of the vessel, I hastily resigned the yoke-lines to Miss Onslow and, springing upon the mast thwart, proceeded to hail the brig at the full power of my lungs, my delight at once more seeing a vessel so close at hand being coupled with a deadly anxiety lest she should suddenly make sail and get away from me. But to all my hailing there came no reply, nor was a light shown, or any other indication vouchsafed that my cries had been heard, even though I continued them until the boat was actually crossing the stern of the stranger at a distance of barely fifty fathoms. There was only one inference to be drawn from this strange silence, namely, that the brig was derelict, a surmise that was borne out by the fact that her boats appeared to be gone. Yet I could not detect any sign that anything was wrong with her; she was not sitting particularly deep in the water—so far as I could judge in the darkness—nor did her spars appear to be damaged, except that, as I have already mentioned, her topgallant-masts seemed to have been carried away; there appeared, therefore, to be no reason why we should not venture alongside; and accordingly, as soon as we had stood on far enough to fetch her on the next tack, I hove the boat round and—the brig happening to lie broadside-on to the sea—ran her alongside to leeward, dousing my sails as we came up abreast the stranger’s lee quarter. As we shot up alongside I found that the vessel was certainly deeper in the water than I had at first imagined her to be, yet not deeper than might be accounted for by her carrying a heavy cargo; her covering-board seemed to be about eighteen inches above the water, and I therefore had no difficulty in clambering in over her bulwarks from the gunwale of the boat, of course taking care to carry the end of the boat’s painter on board with me. Making this securely fast to a cleat in the bulwarks, I glanced fore and aft to see whether I could discover any indication of the presence of human beings on board; but the deck appeared to be deserted; no gleam of light showed either forward or aft; and no sound broke the silence save the wash of the water along the bends, the choking gurgle of the scuppers, and the monotonous jerk-jerk of the spanker-boom at its sheet with the roll of the ship. Under these circumstances I considered that my companion might safely venture aboard, and I accordingly assisted her up the side and in on deck, afterwards dropping the boat astern and carefully securing her by her painter. This done, I conducted Miss Onslow aft to the cabin companion—which was fitted with seat-lockers on each side—begged her to be seated for a short time while I investigated further; and forthwith plunged below.
Arrived at the foot of the companion ladder, I found myself confronted by a bulkhead running athwart the ship, and in this I presently found the handle of a door. Turning this, I found myself—as I had expected—in the cabin, which was of course pitch dark, the panes of the skylight just dimly showing, overhead, with the merest suggestion of a certain faintly—gleaming something hanging from the beams, and swinging with the roll of the ship, which I presently identified as the extinguished cabin lamp. Groping cautiously with my hands, I presently encountered a table, uncovered, working round which I next came to some lockers upholstered in horsehair—as I gathered from the touch; and while I was groping about on these lockers my hands suddenly encountered what seemed to be a tablecloth, with a few knives and forks, some broken crockery, and a few other matters entangled in its folds, the whole suggesting the idea that the cabin had been the scene of a furious struggle, during which the table, laid for a meal, had been swept of everything upon it. Leaving all this quite undisturbed—in the belief that when I could see just how it all lay I might obtain a clue to the mystery at present connected with the ship—I continued my researches, with the result that I made out the cabin to occupy the extreme after-end of the vessel, with possibly a small sail-room, or something of that kind, abaft it, and that it took up the whole width of that part of the hull; that is to say, there were no staterooms between it and the ship’s side, as is sometimes the case. Continuing to grope my way round the cabin, I presently arrived once more at the bulkhead, wherein, on the starboard side, I found another door, giving access to a stateroom, as I soon discovered by finding the bunk, with the bedding still in it, and apparently quite ready for an occupant. It did not take me long to arrive at the conclusion that I was in the skipper’s stateroom; for I found that underneath the bunk was a chest of drawers; while in one corner was a wash-basin, etcetera, and in the other what seemed to be a small bookcase. Having progressed thus far, I had hopes of soon finding that of which I was in search, namely, a box of matches. Being a sailor, and well acquainted with sailors’ ways, I knew exactly where would be the most likely place to find what I wanted, and, clambering up on the bunk, I felt for the shelf that I knew ought to be at the head of it. Yes, there it was; but as I felt along it I was disappointed to find that there was nothing on it. But was there not? I had not examined the entire length of it when I too hastily jumped to the conclusion that it was empty; as my hand travelled over into the far corner it suddenly encountered quite a little store of things, all heaped together—a clasp knife, a pipe, a piece of stick tobacco, and a few other odd articles, among which was a box about half full of matches!
They proved to be rather damp, and I had to strike a full half-dozen or more before I succeeded in persuading one to ignite, and while thus employed I was struck for the first time by the coincidence between the condition of affairs on the skipper’s shelf and that in the cabin—every loose article had in each case found its way right over to starboard, as far as it could go! What did that point to? Why, obviously, that at some time or another the brig had heeled so heavily to starboard that every movable thing had fetched away by the run and gone over to that side, and had never been replaced! I gathered from this that the brig had been suddenly hove over upon her beam-ends, and that her crew, seized with panic, and no doubt under the impression that she was capsizing, had made a rush for the boats and abandoned her, being, as likely as not, blown so far to leeward by the squall that hove the brig over, that they lost sight of her altogether, and imagined that she had foundered. And by and by, when the squall had blown itself out, the brig, with perhaps her canvas blown away, had simply righted again, and had been drifting about ever since. How long ago that might have happened, I could not at the moment guess, but I thought that possibly with the return of daylight I might be able to discover indications enough to furnish me with a clue.
While thinking thus I had succeeded in finding and lighting a small lamp, hung in gimbals from the fore bulkhead, and by its illumination I saw that the stateroom was a nice, clean, cosy little apartment, such as Miss Onslow might occupy without discomfort; and, waiting only to light the cabin lamp—the globe of which was smashed in on its starboard side, as though it had been dashed violently against the deck above—I hurried up the ladder, and invited the young lady to descend. I led her straight to the skipper’s stateroom, and urged her to lie down while I proceeded to search for some food, but she declined to take any rest until we had both partaken of a good meal; so I established her comfortably on the sofa-lockers, and proceeded forthwith in search of the pantry.
I found this, as I had expected, in a corresponding position, on the opposite side of the ship to the cabin which I already designated in my own mind as Miss Onslow’s; and in it were several tins of preserved meats and soups, a bottle of pickles, some vinegar, a jar of salt, a bottle of pepper, a cask about three-quarters full of potatoes, part of a string of onions, a barrel nearly full of fine cabin biscuit, or “bread,” as it is called at sea, a small canister of tea, another of coffee, a jar of brown sugar, and, in fact, a very fair assortment of such commodities as are usually to be found in an ordinary ship’s pantry. I observed, by the way, that such articles as were labelled bore the names of American manufacturers, and I deduced from that fact the impression that the brig was Yankee, an impression that was subsequently confirmed.
I took a biscuit out of the barrel, broke it in two, and handed one piece to Miss Onslow, nibbling at the other myself while I further prosecuted my researches. I did this because the biscuit was hard and dry, and, starving as we were, there was not much likelihood of our eating so much of it as to prove injurious; moreover it would have the effect of taking the sharp edge off our hunger, and enabling us to eat cautiously and in moderation of the more appetising food that I intended to place upon the table as quickly as possible.
My next task was to explore the galley, which I found to be very nicely fitted up with what appeared to be an excellent cooking-stove and a generous supply of implements, the whole of which had, like the articles in the cabin, found their way right over to the starboard side; moreover the top of the stove was rusted in such a way as to suggest that the water from the coppers had been capsized over it—everything, in short, tending to confirm my original impression that the brig had been on her beam-ends. I looked into the coppers, and found them empty. Then I went to the scuttle-butt, but it also was so nearly empty that I did not care to use the small remainder of water in it. There were no more casks on deck, so I concluded that the ship’s stock of water was kept below, most probably in tanks. And the thought of the latter reminded me that I had seen a small copper pump in the steward’s pantry, so I returned there to get it. Then, with it in one hand, and a lantern in the other, I searched about on deck until I had found the small screw plug that fitted into the tank pipe; and presently I had at my disposal a bucket of sweet fresh water, which I poured into the coppers. I then lighted the galley fire—finding plenty of coal for my immediate wants in the locker—and proceeded to prepare a couple of tins of the preserved soup that I had found in the pantry. Then, while this was cooking, I returned to the cabin to lay the table, but found that Miss Onslow had forestalled me, having cleared away the wreck off the starboard locker, restored the tablecloth to its proper position, and rearranged such portions of the table equipage as had not been smashed in the capsizal. The poor girl looked dreadfully white and thin and weary, but I noticed that during my absence she had found time to take off her hat and to roughly rearrange her hair! Her eyes looked red, as though she had been crying; so, with the view of toning her up a little, I went to work rummaging in the sofa-lockers, and presently found a few bottles of port wine, the neck of one of which I promptly knocked off, and insisted upon her taking a glass there and then. She obeyed me with a sweet submissiveness that was in extraordinary contrast with her demeanour aboard the City of Cawnpore; but a flash of her old spirit returned when she had swallowed the wine, as, handing me the glass, she said:
“There! I have done as you bade me. And now I insist upon your taking some also; for you look positively ghastly, and so ill that, unless you take great care of yourself, you will break down altogether!”
I took the wine, and then hurried away back to the galley, where I remained until the soup was ready. Of this we made a moderate meal, and then, without attempting to clear the table, I gently conducted my companion to the skipper’s stateroom, closed the door upon her, and flung myself, just as I was, upon the sofa-lockers of the main cabin, where I instantly fell into a sleep that was absolute oblivion.
I was awakened next morning by a beam of brilliant sunshine flashing intermittently athwart my closed eyelids to the lazy roll of the ship, and, springing to my feet and peering out through the nearest port, I saw that the wind had died away to a flat calm, and that the water was oil-smooth, with very little swell running. I felt greatly refreshed by my sleep—brief though it had been—for it was the first spell of really sound slumber that our precarious situation, and the anxiety attendant upon it, had permitted me to take since the loss of the City of Cawnpore; and, prompted thereto by the hilarity resulting from rest and the cessation of anxiety, I started whistling softly as I gazed out through the port. A moment later Miss Onslow’s cabin-door opened for the space of half an inch, and the young lady thus addressed me through the chink:
“Good-morning, Mr Conyers; I am glad to hear you whistling; it shows that your rest has done you good.”
“Thank you, yes,” I answered; “I am feeling quite my old self again this morning. Were you able to get any rest?”
“Yes indeed,” was the reply. “I was so tired that I scarcely remember lying down; and I have not been awake more than five minutes. What a lovely morning it is! I wonder whether I might venture to trouble you to get me a little water to wash in; there is none in here.”
“Certainly,” I said. “I will fetch you a bucketful at once, and place it at your door, after which I intend to have a bath myself on deck.”
“A bath?” she exclaimed, in a tone of unmistakable anxiety. “You surely do not mean that you are going to bathe in the sea? Oh, please do not, Mr Conyers, I beg you; it is far too dangerous; for I am sure there must be sharks here.”
“I think it exceedingly probable, and therefore I shall not risk going overboard,” I answered. “No; my bath will be taken on the fore deck, in a wash-deck tub, if I can find one.”
“Thank you,” she returned. “And while you are so engaged I will lay the table for breakfast; I still feel most atrociously hungry!”
I answered that I was glad to hear it, now that we were once more in possession of provisions; and then hurried off up on deck to procure the water asked for; after which I went forward, found a wash-deck tub, filled it from over the side, and treated myself to a salt-water bath, the refreshment of which was like a renewal of life to me.
Then, having dressed, I lighted the galley fire, filled and put on a kettle, had a wash in fresh water, and made my way aft to the cabin, where I found Miss Onslow, looking wonderfully fresh and bright after her night’s rest, busily engaged in arranging the cabin table for breakfast. Then came the question: What were we to have? I had a strong fancy for a rasher of bacon, which delicacy seemed also to commend itself to my companion. I therefore looked about for the lazarette hatch, which I discovered underneath a mat at the foot of the companion ladder, and was soon overhauling the contents of the storehouse. The craft proved to be abundantly stocked with excellent provisions, among which I discovered an open cask nearly full of smoked hams, one of which I at once appropriated; and half an hour later found the Indian judge’s daughter and myself seated before a most appetising breakfast.
And, as we ate, we talked—talked of what we were now to do. My companion seemed to be under the impression that the discovery of this derelict brig would in some way alter all our arrangements; but I had no difficulty in demonstrating to her that our object—the making of our way to some civilised port from which we could make a fresh start for Calcutta—still remained the same, the only difference being that whereas on the previous day we had possessed only an open boat, and were starving, we now had a vessel under our feet that, if staunch, would prove far safer and more comfortable than the boat, while we also possessed food in abundance. But, as I pointed out to her, there was a certain price to pay for these advantages, namely, the greatly-increased labour of handling the brig, as compared with the boat; and I thought it advisable to make the young lady understand at once that I should from time to time require her assistance. But I presently discovered that there was no need for me to dwell upon this point; she quickly informed me that she had already planned for herself the performance of what might be called the “domestic” part of the work, such as the preparation of meals, and so on; while she also expressed her perfect readiness to steer, when required, or in any other way assist me, so far as she could. And here I could not avoid being impressed afresh with the extraordinary change that misfortune had wrought in this girl; for whereas while on board the City of Cawnpore she had maintained a demeanour of haughty and repellent reserve that was almost insolent, she now exhibited a gentle submissiveness and amiability of manner, with a quiet, steadfast courage under circumstances, of peculiar and terrible hardship and privation for a gently-nurtured woman, that, conjoined with her exceptional beauty of face and form, exercised a fascination upon me so potent that I frequently found it exceedingly difficult to maintain that equable coolness and strict friendliness of behaviour demanded by the exigencies of our peculiar situation. All of which, however, is merely parenthetical.
Breakfast over, a busy day awaited me. I had used my eyes to good purpose, even while taking my morning tub; and had observed, among other things, that the brig’s canvas was not furled; it had simply been blown clear and clean out of the boltropes. When the accident befell her she had been under courses and single-reefed topsails, spanker, fore-topmast staysail, and jib, for there the boltropes still were, with small fluttering rags of canvas still adhering to them, here and there. There was no difficulty whatever in arriving at a correct conclusion as to what had happened,—the aspect of the ship told the story as plainly as her own crew could have related it. The thing had happened after nightfall—that part of the story was made clear by the litter that had been shot off the cabin table, and which showed that the skipper and one of the mates had been at supper at the time. The single-reefed topsails indicated that it had previously been blowing strong, and I took it that the night had settled down so dark and cloudy that the officer of the watch had failed to note the approach of the squall until too late. The topsail halliards had been let go fore and aft when the squall swooped down upon them, but before it was possible to do anything further the brig had been hove down upon her beam-ends, a panic had seized the crew, they had made a mad rush for the boats, under the conviction that the vessel was capsizing, and they had either been swamped, or had been driven out of sight to leeward, before the brig had righted again. There was no doubt that the squall had been of exceptional violence, for not only were all the sails blown away, but both topgallant-masts were gone at the caps—not only broken off but actually torn away, the rigging that held them having parted.
It would be strange indeed if a vessel, having passed through such an ordeal as this, should not show signs of having been more or less strained, and I was quite prepared to find that she had a considerable amount of water in her. And this anticipation was so far confirmed that, upon sounding the well, I found close upon three and a half feet of water in the hold. This was bad enough, still it was hardly as bad as I had expected; and now, the next thing to find out was whether she was still leaking, or whether what she contained had all drained into her during the time when she lay hove down on her beam-ends. This could be done by patiently waiting some few hours, and then sounding the well again. Or it could be done equally effectively by pumping the hooker dry, and then seeing whether any more water drained into her. It was vitally necessary to restore her to her normal condition of buoyancy as speedily as might be, in view of a possible recurrence of bad weather. But the same contingency rendered it almost, if not quite, as necessary to bend and set a sufficient amount of canvas to put the ship under control; and the first question to be settled was: Which should I first undertake? I considered the matter for a minute or two, and came to the conclusion that the pumping out of that three and a half feet of water would leave my hands in such a blistered and raw condition that they would be practically useless for such work as bending sails; so I determined to undertake the latter job first, especially as there was of course the chance that the weather might continue fine after the springing up of a breeze, in which event, if the brig were under canvas, she would be making headway during the operation of pumping her out.
I was under the impression that on the preceding night I had detected the presence of what might prove to be a sail-locker abaft the after bulkhead of the cabin, so I now descended with the object of further investigating. My surmise proved well founded, for when I opened the door in the bulkhead there lay a whole pile of sails before me, each sail neatly stopped, and many of them apparently quite new. I had come to the conclusion that I would bend the fore-topmast staysail first, and after a great deal of laborious work in turning over the various bundles of canvas I came to what I was searching for, but not until I had previously encountered new fore and main-topsails, which I managed, with considerable difficulty, to drag on deck.
The bending of the staysail was no very serious matter; it simply meant letting go the halliards, dragging upon the downhaul, cutting the boltrope away from the hanks, passing the new seizings, hoisting the sail foot by foot until I had got all the seizings finished, bending the sheets afresh, and there we were.
But to bend a topsail, single-handed, was a much more difficult job. I decided to bend the main-topsail first; and by the time that I had completed my task the day was done and it was growing so dark that I could scarcely see to finish off properly. Nevertheless I was very well content with my day’s work, for I now had canvas enough on the brig to place her under command whenever the breeze might choose to come.
Meanwhile Miss Onslow had been no less busy than myself, in another way. She had started by making herself complete mistress of the brig’s resources, looked at from a housekeeper’s point of view; and in course of the process had discovered—what I had already suspected, but had not found time to verify—that outside the cabin, and alongside the companion ladder, was another stateroom, that, judging from its appearance and contents, had belonged to the mate. This cabin she had overhauled, making an inventory of its contents—which she handed to me—and had then tidied it up and made it ready for my occupation. Moreover, she had taken possession of the galley, and had prepared a good, substantial, and appetising dinner in a style that, if not quite equal to that of a professional cook, betrayed at least an aptitude that was as creditable as it was opportune. She had also found time to do something—I had not the remotest idea what—to her dress that had gone a considerable way toward renovating its appearance and obliterating the disfigurement caused by the action of the sea water upon it; while in other ways she had spruced-up her appearance to an extent that excited my fervent but carefully-concealed admiration.
At sunset that night it was still stark calm, and the sky had a fine, clear, settled aspect that, combined with a slight disposition to rise on the part of the brig’s barometer, led me to anticipate that the calm was destined to endure for a few hours longer. For this I was devoutly thankful, for I had been toiling like a slave all day, fully exposed to the scorching rays of a cloudless sun, and I was fatigued to the verge of exhaustion; it was a great comfort, therefore, to feel that I should not be called upon to look after the ship all night, but might safely indulge in a few hours’ sleep. That I might do so with the greater confidence, I routed out a tarpaulin from below, and with it rigged up a tent on the wheel grating, as a shelter from the heavy dew; bringing up the bed from the mate’s bunk, and turning in on deck. This arrangement ensured that in the event of a breeze springing up during the night I should instantly become aware of it, and be ready to promptly take such measures as might appear necessary.