Chapter Seventeen.
A Hopeless Quest.
“Sentry, let go the life-buoy!” cried out Commander Nesbitt at once to the marine guard on duty on the poop, as the shout reached his ears; and then, facing round again forward, he said, “Bosun’s mate, call away the lifeboat crew!”
On the order being given, the marine had instantly pulled the trigger releasing the slip by which the patent buoy was suspended over the stern, whereupon it dropped into the sea below; the same mechanism igniting the port fire with which it was charged, although it was not yet dark, as the friction-tube had been put in a short while previously when the watch was relieved at Eight Bells, it being the rule on board for the gunner’s mate to do this every day before sunset and take out the percussion-tube again in the morning at daybreak when the hands turned out to wash and scrub decks.
So, no sooner had the buoy touched the water than it floated away, flaming in our wake; the lurid blue light casting a spectral glare on the phosphorescent foam of the broken wave crests that contrasted weirdly with the last expiring gleams of the setting sun, now nearly hidden by the pall-like black cloud, which had gradually risen along the horizon and stretched itself across the whole western sky, creeping up steadily towards the zenith and shutting out little by little the last bit of blue.
At the sound of the boatswain’s pipe, too, the cutter’s crew had begun to muster on the poop, the leading hands unloosing the gripes with which the boat was secured and the coxswain attending to the tiller; while two or three of the men had already put on their cork jackets and taken their seats on the thwarts, ready for lowering away, the little craft being swung out from the davits to leeward.
Excitement there was, of course, amongst us all, everybody looking eager enough, as was natural; but I noticed that, while the commander’s orders were executed with the utmost promptitude, there was no reckless hurry and confusion.
The most perfect order and discipline prevailed, everything being done systematically, although the accident had occurred so suddenly and unexpectedly; ay, and despite the fact that every soul on board, from Captain Farmer, who had come out of his cabin again immediately on hearing the lifeboat’s crew called away, down to the youngest cadet and powder-monkey, was willing and anxious to do his best to save our unfortunate shipmate, without one of us knowing as yet who the poor fellow was whose life was thus imperilled.
No; nor, indeed, did we learn his name until after the topsails had been double-reefed and hoisted again and the ship hove-to with her maintopsail to the mast—which was accomplished in less time, I believe, than was ever known before, the operation not taking more than three minutes from first to last!
Then it was that we heard who had been lost overboard.
“It’s poor Popplethorne,” said Charley Gilham, the third lieutenant, who had rushed up to the poop from amidships, where he had been stationed, to take command of the lifeboat. “He fell from the upper rigging as he was climbing up into the foretop. The sail ballooned out; and then, slatting against the yard as the brace was hauled in, the clewline caught him unexpectedly, tripping him up and knocked him out of the rigging headlong into the sea!”
“Poor young fellow!” said Captain Farmer. “Do you think he was hurt at all, or fell clear of the ship?”
“I’m afraid not, sir,” replied Mr Gilham, sorrowfully, as he grasped the after falls and sprang into the cutter. “One of the foretopmen, who witnessed the accident, says that he appeared to cannon off something below, bounding out from the ship’s side before striking the water, when he sank like a stone.”
“I’m afraid, then, there’s no hope of picking him up,” said the captain. “Are you all ready, Gilham?”
“All ready, sir.”
“Lower away, then,” cried Captain Farmer. “We can but try to save him!”
With that, down went the boat into the water alongside, in such a speedy fashion that the after falls slipping too quickly through the lieutenant’s fingers peeled off the skin from the palms of his hands: though Mr Gilham was quite unconscious of the injury he had received until he returned on board, his attention being absorbed in the attempt to save the unhappy midshipman by endeavouring to reach the spot where he had gone down, by this time half-a-mile or so astern.
Meanwhile, the commander had stationed lookout men on the crossjack yard and mizzen top, as well as in the weather rigging, to seek for any trace of the poor fellow.
The captain and a dozen of the officers or more were also on the alert, scanning the broken surface of the choppy sea surrounding us; but, alas, it was all in vain, no dark speck was to be seen anywhere in the distance resembling the head of the poor fellow trying to keep himself afloat, although the signal staff of the life-buoy could be made out distinctly from the deck, without the assistance of its flaming fuse, which the shades of evening rendered all the more visible as daylight waned.
Beyond this and the boat, which was cruising about beyond the buoy, away to leeward, roving hither and thither on its vain quest, there was nothing in sight of us on board the ship, either from the hammock nettings or mast-head.
No, nothing but the restless, rolling billows, tossing up their white caps in triumph over the victim who had fallen a sacrifice to Neptune; and the breaking waves, that seemed to chuckle with malicious glee while the remorseless deep below seemed to give vent every now and again to a hoarse roar of triumph!
“Signalman, hoist the cutter’s recall,” said Captain Farmer, presently; after an age of waiting and looking out, as it appeared to me, during which not a word was spoken by anyone. “There is no use searching any more now. If he were afloat, they would have found him long since!”
“Alas! I’m afraid there’s no hope,” replied the commander. “He will never be seen again, sir, I think, till the sea gives up its dead!”
“No, poor fellow. May he rest in peace.”
Captain Farmer raised his cap reverently as he said this; the commander doing the like and adding in his deep voice—
“Amen to that, sir.”
The signalman had run up B flag for the cutter’s return; but, as no notice was apparently taken of the signal, the captain ordered one of the bow guns to be fired.
Even then, however, the boat did not at once obey this imperative command, rowing off, indeed, in the opposite direction still, as if those in charge of her had noticed some object in the water, which we could not observe from the ship.
A minute or two later, we could see the cutter come to a stop; when, by the aid of the telescope, Larkyns, who was standing by the side of Captain Farmer, said he was sure he saw them pick up something and that they had now turned and were making for the ship.
All of us grew excited again on hearing this news, hoping for the best; and as the cutter came closer, the captain, who could not restrain his impatience, hailed her!
“Boat, ahoy!” he sang out. “Have you got him?”
Charley Gilham, who was sitting in the sternsheets, with his head bent down, looked up on hearing the captain’s call.
“No, sir,” he hailed back. “Only his cap!”
The boat came alongside in silence, and the falls were hooked on; when, it was hoisted up to the davits slowly, the men hauling in a sort of spiritless way, as if saddened by the painful episode, while even the boatswain’s pipe seemed to whistle in a subdued tone in the minor key!
On reaching the deck, the lieutenant came up to the captain with poor Popplethorne’s cap, turning it over as he presented it to him to draw his attention to it.
It was torn and bloody on one side.
“The topman was right, sir, you see,” he said to Captain Farmer. “He must have struck some part of the ship heavily when he fell from aloft before going overboard.”
“Yes,” replied the captain. “I see.”
Just then, Mr Jellaby, who had gone forward in the meantime to see if there were any traces there of the accident, returned aft, looking more serious than I had ever seen him before.
“His head struck against one of the flukes of the sheet-anchor, sir,” he reported to Captain Farmer who had sent him on the errand. “The bill of it, just abaft the fore-rigging to port, is now spattered with the poor little chap’s brains. I wonder nobody observed it before, sir.”
“He would, therefore, have been killed instantly and did not suffer any pain,” said the captain. “Poor young fellow, poor young fellow! He was a most promising lad and always smart at his duty!”
“Trim sails!” cried out the commander at this juncture, in a voice husky with emotion; as if anxious to hide his feelings, now that the captain had pronounced his requiem to the memory of our late shipmate. “Brace up the mainyard!”
At once our sails filled, when the ship was put upon her course again; and, the watch being then set, we all went below, the boatswain piping the hands down to supper, for it was nearly Three Bells and more than an hour after the usual time for that meal.
Naturally everybody in the gunroom was full of the accident, the fellows all thinking more of poor Dick Popplethorne when dead, for the moment at least, than they had ever done while he was living; and I, myself, could not help remembering the strange coincidence of his laughing over Mr Jellaby’s yarn about the marine as we were sailing down Channel only a few days before and being especially merry over the young sentry’s mistake in calling out “Dead boy” when the bell struck.
Poor chap, he was a dead boy now, indeed; although, he had been alive and as hearty and jolly as any of us that very afternoon down there at dinner in the mess.
It was almost incredible to recollect this! “I have just calculated,” observed Mr Stormcock amidst the general talk about our late messmate, as if stating a most important fact, “that the youngster fell overboard in latitude 48 degrees north, pretty nearly, and longitude 8 degrees 10 minutes west—a trifle to the westward of where we met that confounded Frenchman.”
“I don’t see how that information can be of any use to his friends, Stormcock,” said Mr Fortescue Jones, with a coarse laugh. “We can’t very well put up a tombstone over him in the Bay of Biscay.”
“For shame, sir!” exclaimed little Tom Mills, who was huddled up crying in a corner of the gunroom, Dick Popplethorne having been an old home friend. “Don’t make fun of the po–poor fellow now he’s dead!”
“That’s right, youngster,” put in Mr Stormcock. “Stick up for your friend. I didn’t mean anything against him for a moment, for I always found him a good sort of chap; though, I can’t say I had very much to do with him.”
“Well, for my part, I won’t say I’m sorry he has lost the number of his mess,” said that brute Andrews. “He was as big a bully as Larkyns, and I don’t owe him any good will, I can tell you.”
“You cowardly cur!” exclaimed Tom Mills, his face flaming up, though the tears were still coursing down his cheeks. “You know you wouldn’t say that if Larkyns were here now.”
“Wouldn’t I, cry babby?”
Tom did not reply to this in words; but he sent a telescope, that lay at the end of one of the tables near him, flying across the gunroom, catching Andrews a crack on his uplifted arm.
This saved his head, fortunately for him, Tom’s shot being a vicious one and well aimed!
“What do you mean by that?” said the ill-natured brute. “Do you want to fight?”
“Not with you,” rejoined Tommy, whose anger had conquered his grief, speaking with much dignity. “I only fight with gentlemen, and you’re a snob! No gentleman would speak ill of those unable to defend themselves, or say a thing behind a fellow’s back which he would not have the pluck to do when he was present. Andrews, you’re a cad and a coward!”
“Stow that, youngster!” interposed Mr Stormcock, as little Tommy rose up and made towards the cad, who, however, showed no inclination to resent the insult offered him. “I won’t allow any quarrelling in the mess! If you want to fight, my boys, you must go into the steerage.”
Andrews, I noticed, did not offer to stir, however, in response to this suggestion of the master’s mate, which he would certainly have done if he had been possessed of an ounce of courage in his nature.
Tom and I both agreed on this when talking over the matter subsequently; so, seeing what a chicken-hearted fellow he was, my cocky little chum sat down again and began tucking into his tea, Andrews getting up presently and sneaking away when he thought the coast clear.
Mr Stormcock proved to be a false prophet with regard to the foul weather that evening; for, when I went up on deck again to have a look round before turning in, although it was still blowing fresh from the westwards, the black cloud that had previously covered the sky had partly cleared away, leaving only a few fleecy flying masses in its stead.
Between them the moon fitfully shone occasionally and an odd star or two peeped out here and there; while our good ship was bowling along under her topgallants, which had been set again by the commander over the double-reefed topsails, with her courses and jib and spanker, and the foretopmast staysail, continuing under the same canvas during the night, without hauling a sheet or tautening a brace, the wind hardly shifting half-a-point all the while.
We made such progress, too, towards the spot where the French ship reported having passed the wreck of which we were in search, that, at Six Bells in the morning watch, the lookout man forward, who had been specially ordered to keep a good watch to windward, hailed the deck.
“Sail in sight, sir!” he sang out, just as the hands were in the middle of their breakfast. “She’s hull down on the weather bow!”