Chapter Thirty One.
The Wreck of the Brig.
“Himmel!” exclaimed Fritz, rising up from the bench on which he was sitting and clutching on to the side of the hut for support, being still very feeble and hardly able to stand upright. “There must be a ship out there approaching the island. If she should get too close inshore, she is doomed!”
But, Eric did not answer him. The lad had already rushed down to the beach; and, climbing on to a projecting boulder, was peering into the offing, endeavouring to make out the vessel whose signal gun had been heard in the distance.
The darkness, however, was too great. The heavens were overcast with thick, drifting clouds, while the sea below was as black as ink—except where the breakers at the base of the cliffs broke in masses of foam that gave out a sort of phosphorescent light for the moment, lighting up the outlines of the headlands during the brief interval, only for them to be swallowed up the next instant in the sombre gloom that enwrapped the bay and surrounding scene. Eric, consequently, could see nothing beyond the wall of heaving water which the rollers presented as they thundered on the shingle, dragging back the pebbles in their back-wash with a rattling noise, as if the spirits of the deep were playing with dice in the depths below under the waves!
At his back, the lad could see the bonfire still blazing, casting the foreground in all the deeper shadow from its flickering light; and, never did he regret anything more in his life than the sudden impulse which had led him into so dangerous a freak, as that of lighting the bonfire.
Who knew what further terrible peril that treacherous fire might not lead to, besides the mischief it had already done?
Bye-and-bye, there came the sound of another gun from the sea. The report sounded nearer this time; still, Eric could see nothing in sight on the horizon when some break in the clouds allowed him a momentary glimpse of the angry ocean—nothing but the huge billows chasing each other in towards the land and the seething foam at the base of the crags, on which they broke themselves in impotent fury when they found their further course arrested by the rocky ramparts of the island.
Nor could the lad hear anything beyond the crash of the breakers and splash of the eddying water, which sometimes washed up to his feet, as he stood on the boulder gazing out vainly to sea, the sound of the breaking billows being mingled with the shriek of the wind as it whistled by overhead.
Nothing but the tumult of the sea, stirred into frenzy by the storm-blast of angry Aeolus!
After a time, Eric suddenly recollected that his brother could not move far from the hut and must be wondering what had become of him; and, recognising as well the fact that he was powerless alone to do anything where he was, even if a ship should be in danger, he returned towards the cottage to rejoin Fritz, his path up the valley being lit up quite clearly by the expiring bonfire, which still flamed out every now and then, as the wind fanned it in its mad rush up the gorge, stirring out the embers into an occasional flash of brilliancy.
Fritz, usually so calm, was in a terribly anxious state when his brother reached him.
“Well, have you seen anything?” he asked impatiently.
“No,” said Eric sorrowfully. “There’s nothing to be seen.”
“But you heard another cannon, did you not?”
“Oh yes, and it seemed closer in.”
“So I thought, too,” said the other, whom the sound of the heavy guns, from his old experience in war, appeared to affect like a stimulant. “Can’t we do anything? It is terrible to stand idly here and allow our fellow-creatures to perish, without trying to save them!”
“What could we do?” asked Eric helplessly, all the buoyancy gone out of him. He seemed to be quite another lad.
“You couldn’t launch the boat without me, eh?”
“No,” answered Eric; “I couldn’t move it off the beach with all my strength—I tried just now.”
Fritz ground his teeth in rage at his invalid condition.
“It serves me right to be crippled in this fashion!” he cried. “It all results from my making such a fool of myself the other day, after that goat on the plateau. I ought to have known better.”
“You need not vex yourself, brother, about that,” said Eric. “If there were twenty of us to get the boat into the water, instead of two, she could not live in the heavy sea that is now running. She would be swamped by the first roller that came in upon us, for the wind is blowing dead on shore!”
“That may be,” replied Fritz; “still, I should like to do something, even if I knew it would be useless!”
“So should I,” said Eric, disconsolately.
In silence, the two continued to pace up and down the little platform they had levelled in front of their hut, trying to pierce the darkness that now entirely obscured the sea, the north-easter having brought up a thick fog in its train, perhaps from the far-distant African coast, which shut out everything on that side; although, the light of the bonfire still illumined the cliff encircling the valley where they had pitched their homestead, disclosing the inmost recesses of this, so that they could see from where they stood, the wood, which the conflagration had spared, as well as their garden and the tussock-grass rookery of the penguins beyond, not a feature of the landscape being hid.
Again came the booming, melancholy sound of the minute guns from sea, making the brothers more impatient than ever; and, at that moment, the fog suddenly lifted, being rapidly wafted away to leeward over the island, enabling the two anxious watchers to see a bit of bright sky overhead, with a twinkling star or two looking down on the raging ocean, now exposed to their gaze—all covered with rolling breakers and seething foam as far as the eye could reach, to the furthest confines of the horizon beyond the bay.
Still, they could perceive nothing of the ship that had been firing the signals of distress, till, all at once, another gun was heard; and the flash, which caught their glance at the same moment as the report reached them, now enabled them to notice her imminent peril. This, the people on board could only then have noticed for the first time, the fog having previously concealed their danger; for they distinctly heard, above the noise of the sea and wind, a hoarse shout of agonised, frantic alarm, wafted shorewards by the wind in one of its wild gusts.
The vessel was coming up under close-reefed topsails, bow on to the headland on the western side of the bay; and, almost at the very instant the brothers saw her, she struck with a crash on the rocks, the surf rushing up the steep face of the cliff and falling back on the deck of the ill-fated craft in sheets of spray like soapsuds.
Fritz and Eric clasped their hands in mute supplication to heaven; but, at the same moment, the spars of the vessel—she was a brig, they could see—fell over her side with a crash. There was a grinding and rending of timbers; and then, one enormous wave, as of three billows rolled into one, poured over her in a cataract.
One concentrated shriek of horror and agony came from the seething whirlpool of broken water, and, all was over; for, when the foam had washed away with the retreating wave, not a single vestige could be seen of the hapless craft!
She had sunk below the sea with those on board.
“Oh, brother, it is awful!” cried Eric.
Fritz could not answer. His throat was filled with a great gulping lump which prevented him from drawing his breath; while his eyes were suffused with tears that no unmanly feelings had called forth.
Eric was starting off again down to the beach, to see whether any one had escaped from the wreck and been swept into the bay, in which case he might have been of use in trying to drag them from the clutch of the cruel waves, when Fritz called him back.
“Don’t leave me behind, brother,” he cried out passionately. “Wheel me down, in the barrow, so that I may help, too!”
The lad stopped in a instant, comprehending his brother’s request; and, flying back, in and out of the hut as if he had been galvanised, he quickly placed the old door on top of the wheelbarrow as a sort of platform, with a mattress on top. He then lifted Fritz on the superstructure as if he were a child, the excitement having given him tenfold strength; and, wheeling the barrow down at a run, the two arrived on the beach almost sooner than a boat could have pulled ashore from the point where the catastrophe to the vessel had occurred.
But, although it was now light enough to scan the surface of the restless sea for some distance out, no struggling form could be seen battling with the waves; nor was there a single fragment of the wreck noticeable, tossing about on the billows that still rolled in thunderingly on the beach, marking out the contour of the bay with a line of white surf, which shone out in contrast to the glittering black sand that was ever and anon displayed as the back-wash of the waves swept out again in a downward curve preparatory to the billows hurling themselves in shore once more with renewed force.
“Poor chaps, they must all have gone down!” said Eric, half crying. He had made sure that some one would have escaped, if only for him to rescue at the last moment—perhaps just when the sinking swimmer might require a helping hand to drag him from the clutches of the grasping billows that sought to overwhelm him as he was getting beyond their reach!
“There’s no doubt of that,” echoed Fritz, who had got off his platform on the wheelbarrow with much more agility than he had been capable of a short time before. “The sea has swallowed up those who were not dashed to pieces on the headland! I hardly know which fate was the least preferable of the two?”
“I do hope that the bonfire did not lead to their misfortune,” said Eric presently. “If so, I should consider myself to be the cause of their death!”
“No, I don’t think it was, laddie,” replied Fritz, to cheer him, the lad being greatly distressed at the thought of having occasioned the catastrophe. “You see, the ship must have been coming from the other side of the headland, whose height would shut all view of our valley entirely from the sea.”
“Well, I only hope so,” replied Eric, only half consoled. “I’m afraid, however, the people on board took the flame of the burning grass to be some beacon to warn them.”
“In that case, they would have kept away from it, of course,” said Fritz decidedly; “so, no blame can be attached to you. The wind, you see, was blowing a gale from the north-east; and, probably, they were driving on before it, never thinking they were near Inaccessible Island, nor believing that there was such a place anywhere within miles of them, or land at all, for that matter, till they should reach the South American coast!”
“Perhaps so,” rejoined Eric, in a brighter tone; “but then, again, they might have thought the light to be a ship on fire, and, in going out of their way to lend assistance, they possibly met with their doom, eh?”
“Ah, that would be sad to believe,” said Fritz. “However, I don’t think we should worry ourselves over the dispensations of providence. Poor fellows, whoever they are, or whatever they were about at the time of the disaster, I’m sorry for them from the bottom of my heart!”
“And so am I,” chimed in his brother. “But now, old fellow,” added Eric, “it is time for you to be getting back indoors, with your poor back and wounded leg.”
“Yes, I shan’t be sorry to lie down now; for, I’ve exerted myself more than I should have done. Oh,” continued Fritz, as the lad helped him on to the wheelbarrow platform, again preparing to return to the hut, “I shall never forget the sight of that doomed vessel dashing against the rocks. I fancy I can now see the whole hideous panorama before my eyes again, just as we saw it when the mist cleared away, disclosing all the horrors of the scene!”
“I shan’t forget it either, brother,” said Eric, as he commenced to wheel back Fritz homeward, neither uttering another word on the way.
Both went to bed sadly enough; for, the calamity that had just occurred before their eyes made them more depressed than they had ever been before—aye, even in the solitude of their first night alone on the island.
Next morning, the gale had blown itself out, the wind having toned down to a gentle breeze; while the sea was smiling in the sunshine, so innocently that it seemed impossible it could have been lashed into the fury it exhibited the previous night. There it was, rippling and prattling away on the beach in the most light-hearted fashion, oblivious, apparently, of all thought of evil!
All trace of the wreck, too, had disappeared, nothing being subsequently cast ashore but one single plank, on which the hieroglyphic letters, “PF Bordeaux,” were carved rudely with a chisel; so, the mystery of the brig’s name and destination remained unsolved to the brothers, as it probably will continue a mystery, until that day when the ocean gives up its secrets and yields up its dead to life!