Chapter Twenty Three.
Nearly a Catastrophe!
SLept till long after daybreak, did they?
Why, it was getting on for noon when Mr McCarthy roused the crew from their unusually long caulk amongst the blankets in the corner of the tent reserved for them with his cheery call of “All hands ahoy! Tumble up there! tumble up!” coupled with the information that the sun was “scorching their eyes out”—which latter observation, it may be casually remarked, was a slight stretch of his imagination, considering the feeble power of the solar orb at that time of the year on the snow-covered wastes of Kerguelen Land!
Still, late or early as they might be in rising, the first point to which everybody turned their gaze on getting out into the open, was the little spot on the horizon to seaward where they had left the ship, where she had been last seen on the previous afternoon just as the evening was beginning to close in. Since they had quitted her, however, the wind had been blowing pretty stiffly all night, although it had calmed down again towards the morning; while the last thing they had heard, ere they had sunk into the sound dreamless sleep all had enjoyed through the complete exhaustion of their frames, had been the roaring noise of the breakers thundering against the base of the cliffs beyond their sheltering fiord. So, it was with but very faint hopes of perceiving the remains of the poor old Nancy Bell’s hull still fixed on the treacherous reef of her destruction, that they looked wistfully out into the offing!
But, lo and behold! in spite of all their forebodings, there in the distance they could yet dimly descry the stern section of the ill-fated vessel still intact, as far as they could judge with the naked eye, amidst the rocks; and about it the waves played and circled and the surf showered its spray. Above the wreck, too, there still fluttered feebly the flag which Mr Meldrum had attached to the stump of the mizzen-mast, as if defying the powers of the wind and the waters to destroy the gallant old ship and her belongings, strive how they might in all their majesty!
Every heart felt glad at the sight.
“It does me ra-al good, mister, it dew!” said Mr Lathrope to the first mate, who was intently watching the object of general interest, as if he could not take his eyes off it. “When I riz just neow, I felt kinder lonesome, a thinking we’d parted company with the old crittur fur ever and wouldn’t never see her no more; but thar she is still as perky as ever, in spite of last night’s gale, which I thought would ha’ blown all her timbers to Jericho!”
“Ah, sorr!” replied Mr McCarthy with a heavy sigh and a troubled look in his usually merry twinkling grey eyes, “you’ll never say another ship the likes of her again! If you’ll belave me, Mister Lathrope, sorr, she’d sail ten knots on a bowline; and I’d like to know where you’d bate that now?”
“I’ll not deny she had her good pints,” said the American sympathisingly; “but I guess the poor thing’ll soon be bruk up.”
“Yes, son, more’s the pity,” responded the other; “sure an’ I wish we had her safe ashore here and we’d save ivory plank of her.”
“It wouldn’t be a bad notion,” observed Mr Meldrum, who just then came up to where the two were talking, “to take another trip out to the ship in the jolly-boat and see whether we could not land some more things that might be of use to us?”
“Sure the hould’s gutted now enthirely,” said the Irish mate sadly, “and the divil a hap’orth we’d get by going. Look at the say that’s running, too; and considther the long pull out there and back again—not that I wouldn’t be afther going, sorr, if you were to say the word!”
“Oh, no, never mind,” replied Mr Meldrum. “There’s not the slightest necessity for it, for I believe we brought away all the provisions that were left in her, and we’d find little enough now! I only thought we might secure some more of the timber work, as there doesn’t seem to be a particle of wood on the island.”
“We’d better wait till she breaks up, sorr,” said Mr McCarthy; “sure and it’ll float in thin to us, widout the throuble of fetching it.”
“All right!” answered the other. So the contemplated last trip to the stranded vessel would have been abandoned, had not Florry at that moment rushed up to her father.
“Oh, poor puss!” she exclaimed, half-crying and almost breathless with excitement as she clung to his arm and looked up into his face entreatingly.
“Puss!” repeated Mr Meldrum in astonishment; “what puss?”
“The—the—poor pussy cat we used to play with in the cabin,” sobbed Florry. “It was shut up by the stewardess, and has been left behind in the ship!”
“Yes, sir,” said Mary Llewellyn, who with Kate had followed Florry. “I clean forgot the creature in the flurry of coming away. I locked it in the pantry, as it seemed frightened and was scurrying about the cuddy; and when we went on deck, I didn’t think to take it out, so there it’ll be starved to death, or drownded!”
“It was my fault as well,” interposed Kate, looking quite as unhappy as her sister and the stewardess. “I told Mary to lock it up.”
“Be jabers!” ejaculated the first mate, “it’ll never do to lave it there. Sure and we’d be onlucky altogether if a cat came to harm in the old ship! I didn’t know it was aboord at all, at all. Sure an’ there’s no knowing but what all our misfortunes have been brought about by the same baste, bad cess to it?”
“Oh, Mr McCarthy!” exclaimed Kate, “how can you believe that?”
“Sure, and I mane it,” answered the Irishman promptly, as if he put the greatest faith in the superstition.
“Well,” said Mr Meldrum, “I’m sorry for the poor animal; but it will have to stop there now! The sea is very rough, and I would hardly like to risk men’s lives to save a cat!”
“I’ll go back for it, sir,” volunteered Frank Harness with a look at Kate, which said as plainly as looks could speak that he was ready to do a good deal more than that to please her. “You were speaking just now of sending off the jolly-boat to fetch what we could from the wreck; so we can bring the poor cat on shore at the same time.”
“Yes, I certainly did suggest that just now,” said Mr Meldrum; “but, as Mr McCarthy pointed out, there is a good deal of sea on, and—”
“Sure, but I said, sorr, I’d go if you liked,” interrupted the first mate eagerly, not wishing to be behindhand when Frank had offered; “and, faix, I’m ready at once.”
“Let the durned animile slide,” put in Mr Lathrope. “It ain’t worth a cent, much less such a tall price as yar life.”
“No, we won’t,” said Mr McCarthy, all anxiety now to start. “Who’ll volunteer to go back to the wreck and save the cat!” he called out aloud.
“I will,” and “I,” and “I,” cried out several of the seamen, laughing and passing all sorts of chaff about the expedition; and soon there were more than enough offers to man the jolly-boat twice over if all had been taken who offered.
Ben Boltrope was one of the first to stand out; but Mr Meldrum at once motioned him back.
“You must not go,” said he. “I shall want your carpentering aid very soon, and can’t spare you.” It was the same with some others amongst the hands, Mr Meldrum picking them out as they stepped forwards.
Before long, however, a crew was selected; when, the jolly-boat being run down into the water by the aid of a dozen other willing hands, besides her own special crew, she was soon on her way back to the scene of the wreck of the Nancy Bell—McCarthy steering her, and Frank Harness, who would not relinquish his privilege of going in her after having been the first to volunteer, pulling the stroke-oar, no idlers being wanted on board. Kate looked at him and waved her hand in adieu as the boat topped the heavy rolling waves and got well out into the offing; and, after that, Frank did not mind what exertion he had to go through.
It was a long pull and an arduous one, although, in spite of Mr McCarthy’s warning to the contrary, there was nothing dangerous in the accomplishment of the feat. The first mate had probably felt a little lazy when he endeavoured to set Mr Meldrum at first against the expedition, for after a couple of hours’ hard work, having the tide to contend with most of the way, they easily managed to approach the reef and bring up the boat under the vessel’s stern, where the side ropes and slung chair, which they had omitted to remove on board the raft remained just as they had left them, swinging about to and fro as the wind brushed by, causing them to oscillate with its breath.
On climbing up to the deck, they found the poop pretty much the same, but the forward portion of the ship had all broken to pieces, hardly a timber being left, save part of the forefoot or cut-water, which had got jammed in between the rocks along with the anchor-stock, the heavy mass of iron belonging to which must have fallen down below the surface when the topgallant forecastle was washed away.
Going down into the cuddy, Frank could hardly at first believe that its former tenants had quitted it for good and all, for the cabin doors were thrown wide open, and dresses and other articles of feminine attire scattered about—one special shawl of Kate’s, which he readily recognised as the one she had on her shoulders the night they had watched the stars together in the South Atlantic, being placed over the back of the captain’s chair at the head of the table, as if the owner had just put it down for a minute and was coming back to fetch it. He at once took charge of this, besides collecting sundry other little articles which he thought Kate might want; but he was soon interrupted in his quest of feminine treasure-hunting by a mewing and scratching at the door of the steward’s pantry, which made him recollect all at once what had been the ostensible object of his mission on board the vessel.
“Gracious goodness!” he exclaimed, speaking to himself, for Mr McCarthy was busy raking amongst his clothes in his own cabin, also oblivious to the fate of the poor feline for whom they had come aboard the ship. “I almost forgot the cat after all. Puss, Pussy, poor Puss!” and he wrenched open the pantry door, setting the animal free.
If ever mortal cat purred in its life, or endeavoured to express its pleasure and satisfaction by walking round and rubbing itself against a person, raising and putting down its fore-feet alternately, with the toes extended, as if practising the goose step or working on some feline treadmill, why that cat did then. The poor animal could not speak, of course, but it really seemed to utter some inarticulate sounds that must have been in cat language a paean of joy and praise and thanks at its deliverance; and, finally, in a paroxysm of affection and endearment, it turned itself head over heels on the cabin floor in front of Frank.
“Poor Puss; poor little thing!” said the young sailor, taking it up in his arms. “I believe I would have come back for you even if it hadn’t been to oblige Kate—my darling!” and he kissed the fur of the animal as he held it in his arms, as if he considered it for the time being her deputy.
Judging by several well-picked bones that could be noticed lying on the deck of the pantry, Frank assured himself that Puss had not been starved since she had been locked up; and, indeed, she could not have been in any serious want, as there was a freshly-cut ham on one of the shelves and a round of spiced beef, which she had not touched, both of which Frank took the liberty of appropriating for the benefit of those on shore.
Then, still in company with Puss, who would not leave his side, he imitated the example of the first mate, and selected a coat or two and a change of clothes from out of his own sea-chest. He did not forget the others either, but gathered together various garments which he saw lying about in the captain’s cabin and that of Mr Meldrum, thinking that both might perhaps be glad of them bye and bye.
Beyond what Frank had found in the pantry, however, neither he nor Mr McCarthy could discover any provisions, or other things that might be useful on shore, save the unbroken half of the cuddy skylight. This they carefully lowered down into the jolly-boat, for the glass framing would come in handy for the windows of any house they built—Mr Meldrum having hinted on the previous evening of some more substantial structure being necessary than the tent, which had been only put up for temporary accommodation on their first landing on the island.
The several articles that had been collected being now put on board the jolly-boat, in addition to the accommodation chair, which was cut from the slings, at McCarthy’s especial request, and lowered down on board—“jest to plaze the meejor,” as he said, alluding to Mrs Negus’s weakness for sitting in high places during the voyage. Frank then descended with the cat in his arms and took a seat in the stern-sheets, the first mate very good-naturedly pulling the stroke-oar on the return journey in his place; and, all these little matters being thus arranged, Pussy’s rescuers started again for the shore. The tide, luckily, was with them all the way; so they accomplished the distance back to the beach inside the fiord in very nearly half the time they had taken in rowing out to the ship—getting everything ashore and the jolly-boat hauled up safely beyond high-water mark with none of the trouble they had anticipated on setting out, the wind and sea having both calmed down in the interim.
Kate’s thanks to Frank need not be alluded to:— they were simply inexpressible; but, if Puss is described to have been pleased when she was first released from captivity and an untimely end on board the shipwrecked vessel, what can be said for her raptures now that she was landed on terra firma—which she probably had never expected to see again—especially when she recognised the bevy of old friends amongst whom she found herself alive once more.
“I guess,” said Mr Lathrope, as he watched her affectionate antics, “the stoopid old cuss will purr herself to potato parings, and rub all her darned fur inter a door-mat with joy!”