Story 3—Chapter III.
A Struggle for Life.
Half-drowned by the avalanche of water which had swept him overboard, and just catching one faint glimpse of the hull of the ship through eyes that were blinded with the spray, as it swept away from him and left him struggling with the waves, although holding on still to the top of the wheelhouse which he had clutched in desperation as he was carried away, Davy thought he was dreaming when he heard the voice of his friend shouting out, as if in the distance, miles and miles away, “Hold on, Dave, I’m coming!”
“Nonsense,” he reasoned with himself, amidst the pitiless lash of the billows, and the keenness of the wind that seemed to take the skin off his face and pierce through his wet clothing as he was one minute soused down into the water and then raised aloft again on his temporary raft exposed to the full force of the blast. “Nonsense! I’m drowning, I suppose, and this is one of those pleasant dreams which people say come to one at the last.”
It was no dream, however.
After a little while, although it seemed ages to David, the voice sounded nearer.
“Hold on, Dave, old boy. I’m quite close to you now, and will reach you in a minute!”
“I can’t be dreaming,” thought David again, getting a bit over the feeling of suffocation which had at first oppressed him. “Jonathan’s voice sounds too real for that, and I can see that I am adrift on the ocean, and resting on something. Oh, how my leg hurts me! I’ll give a hail, and see whether it is Jonathan’s voice or not that I hear. It must be him!”
“Ahoy, help, ahoy!” he sang out as loudly as he could; but he was already weak, his voice came only in a faint whisper to Jonathan, who imagined he must be sinking and he would be too late.
“Keep up, Dave, for goodness’ sake,” screamed out the latter in agony, making desperate exertions to reach him. “Don’t give way! Hold on a second longer and you’ll be safe!”
Although he was such a slight, delicate-looking little fellow, hardly doing justice in his appearance to his sixteen years, if there was one accomplishment in which Johnny Liston was a proficient, it was swimming. Living in the neighbourhood of Kensington Gardens, he had made a habit of going into the Serpentine every morning during the summer months, and sticking at it as long as the weather permitted, although he did not go to the lengths of some intrepid bathers, and have the ice broken for him in winter; and by constant practice, and imitating the best swimmers amongst whom he bathed, he had learned so much that he could compete even with professionals for speed and endurance, and made the best amateur time on record for so young a lad.
His practice now stood him in good stead; and he had, besides, an additional advantage, for having learned to swim in fresh water, and indeed never having essayed his powers in the sea, the unaccustomed buoyancy of the waves, which he now experienced for the first time, gave him a confidence and an ease which seemed surprising to him; he felt that he did not require the slightest exertion to keep afloat, even without the life-buoy, as he tested by letting go of it for a short time, and with it he was certain he could almost rival Captain Webb and swim for hours.
Of course it was rough work for a novice, paddling in such broken water; but after a few strokes he got used to it, and, by dint of diving under the swelling bosom of some of the more threatening crests, and floating over the tops of the others whose ridges were yet perfect, he made his way pretty rapidly towards the spot where he had espied David floating off.
The wind and the set of the sea were both against him, but the answering hail of the middy assured him he was proceeding in the right direction, and would be soon by his lost friend’s side.
Another stroke or two, and as Johnny Liston rose on the crest of a huge mountain of water, which took him up almost to the sky, he saw below him the broken timbers of the bulwarks rolling about in the trough of the sea, and he thought they formed part of the wreckage on which David had been supporting himself, and that he had seen him on them.
His heart sank within him like lead, for no one was floating on the broken bulwarks now. Poor Dave must have gone.
Just at that moment, however, the middy’s faint hail rang again clearly out above the noise of the wind and the sea, to assure him he was still above the surface, and restore his drooping energies.
“Ahoy! Help! Ahoy!”
He did not require to hail again, for, the next moment overtopping another billow, his friend Jonathan shot up alongside of him, and grasped him by the shoulder.
“Oh, Dave,” he exclaimed. “Thank God I’ve got you safe. I thought I would never have found you.”
David had partly clambered up on the top of the wheelhouse, and lay stretched out with his legs in the water.
He raised his head and turned his face as Jonathan got hold of him.
His emotion was too great for many words.
“And you jumped overboard to save me?” was all he said.
But his look was enough.
Johnny Liston had been swimming with one arm only thrust through the life-buoy, as he had been obliged to quit his hold of it each time he dived beneath the crest of a wave.
He now took it off, holding on to the wheelhouse-top, which sank down into the water on one side under the double weight of the two lads, elevating the other end in the air.
“Here, put this on, Dave,” he said. “I brought it for you, and a precious job I have had to reach you with it.”
“But you, Jonathan—I beg your pardon, old chap, I didn’t mean to call you so. I know you don’t like it.”
“Never mind, Dave. If you think of me as Jonathan you may as well call me so. I shan’t mind you doing so any longer I rather like it, old fellow, now, for our friendship will be like that of David and Jonathan that we read of in the Bible; you know it says that ‘the soul of Jonathan was knit unto the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.’ That’s just how I feel.”
“What a chap you are to think of that now,” said David admiringly, “with both of us bobbing about in the middle of the ocean, and the ship out of sight. But I won’t have the life-buoy; what will you do without it?”
“Bless you, I can swim like a fish, Dave, and it was more a nuisance to me than a help; but, we can both hold on to it, you know, if it comes to the worst. How’s your leg, Dave? I thought it was broken when you got it twisted in the wheel that time.”
“Oh, it’s all right,” said David, kicking it out vigorously as he spoke. “The bone isn’t quite broken, but it’s very sore, and I suppose I’d have to lay up for it if I wasn’t here;” and he grinned ruefully.
“Do you think the ship will pick us up?” said the other presently, losing some of his self-possession now that he had come up with David, and the motive for forgetting self and personal danger was wanting.
He was naturally timid unless nerved up by necessity.
“Oh, yes,” said David, whose spirits rose with the occasion, and who in the presence of his friend forgot all the peril. “Captain Markham won’t desert us, never fear; but you can’t pull up a ship like a horse, you know, Jonathan, and it will take some time for the Sea Rover to tack about before she can fetch us. I wish, however, old chap, we had a little better raft than this to support us; the wheelhouse-top is hardly big enough for two, even with the buoy, which, though it can keep us afloat, won’t raise us out of the water as we want.”
“Why, I passed some wreckage a few yards off before I reached you,” said his friend.
“Did you?” said David. “That must have been the gangway and part of the bulwarks that came away with me. I wish we had the lot here.”
“Do you?” said Jonathan, as we must now call him, “then I’ll soon fetch them,” striking out as he spoke.
“Take care,” said David; “and pray take the buoy with you.”
But, the sea saved Jonathan the trouble of leaving his friend, for the very pieces of timber of which he had spoken made their appearance at that moment, floating down towards them from the summit of a wave, in whose valley they were; and Jonathan swam beyond them and pushed them before him till they were alongside the wheelhouse-top.
There was plenty of material to form a substantial raft with the addition of what they already had; and as Jonathan drew up the heavy mass alongside, David gave a shout of joy.
“Why,” he exclaimed, “here is the cleat of the signal halliards come away with a piece of the taffrail, and we’ll have enough rope to form all the lashings we want. Isn’t that lucky?”
The young middy was handy enough in sailors’ ways through his two years’ experience of the sea; and—Jonathan aiding him under his direction—in a short time the loose timbers were lashed firmly together as a framework, with the roof of the wheelhouse fastened on the top, forming altogether a substantial platform, on which the two boys found themselves elevated a clear foot or more out of the water, and free from the cold wash of the waves, which was beginning to turn them blue.
“There,” exclaimed David, “now we’re comfortable, and can wait in patience till the ship overhauls us; she can’t be long now.”
Watching with eager eyes they saw the Sea Rover coming towards them, after a long, long while, as it seemed to them; but ere she had reached them, in spite of their shouts and hand-wavings, which they fancied must have been seen and heard on board, she went round on the other tack, and disappeared from their view, to their bitter disappointment and grief.
It was David now who was hopeful still. Jonathan seemed to have lost all that courage which had inspired him to leap into the sea to his friend’s rescue, and was trembling with fear and hopeless despair.
The next time the Sea Rover came in sight, she was further off, and appeared to be sailing away from them, although they could see her tack about in the distance several times, as if searching for them still.
Then it gradually got darker, and night came on, enveloping them in a curtain of hazy mist that seemed to rest on the water, through which they could see far off the blue lights that were burnt on board the ship to show their whereabouts, although they were useless to them, as they could not reach her.
Even David began to lose hope now, but he still encouraged his companion.
“They’ll not desert us, old fellow,” he said, with a heartiness which he by no means felt. “The captain will lie-to, and will pick us up in the morning.”
Jonathan was not attending to his words, however. He was shivering and shaking as if he had the ague, and David could hear his teeth chatter together with the cold, although the wind had gone down somewhat, and the sea no longer broke over them.
It was so dark that the two lads could scarcely see each other as they lay on top of the frail structure that separated them from the deep, clasping each other’s hands.
Presently, in the fitful phosphorescent light of the water, some dark object seemed to float up alongside; and Jonathan gave vent to a scream of horror, that rang through the silence of the night.
“Oh, what is that?” he exclaimed.
And if David had not clutched him, he would have plunged headlong from the raft into the sea in his fright and agonised terror.