CHAPTER XXVIII MR. MOORE ENDS HIS STORY
I took her by the hands and looked her in the face, and brought her to my heart, and a sob shook me as I kissed her. For some moments she merely pronounced my name, straining from my grasp to look at me. There was something wild in the light of her soft eyes then. Maybe the passions and sensations which in a sudden surprise of meeting would have forced us into transports had abated; we had long both known that we were near to each other, she that I had come to rescue her, I that she was alive on that wreck up there. But for all that, and as long as they were bringing the man from the wreck, it remained a sort of unreality, a mission too marvellous to have been fulfilled, a hope too daring, too defiant of death itself and all the terrors of this barbarous, savage scene, to have been humanly possible.
A wonder, too, lay in her beauty and healthful looks. My imaginations of her state, now as lying in her coffin at Cape Town, now as dead of the cold in that same wreck we had brought her from, had coloured to me a ghastly portrait of my memory of her; or, even when figuring her alive in the hull, I conceived her bloodless, gaunt, sunk-eyed, a sad, heart-sickening spectre of herself. Instead I found her fairer, healthier, plumper by a hundredfold than she had shown when she left England. She was dressed in furs: her hat was a turban of sealskin; her hair was a little wild, but its dishevelment was a grace.
When at last I began to speak to her, it was in mere ejaculation, a babble of joy and devotion—that I should have got her;—that I should be holding her after months of fearing and of believing that she was dead; that God should have directed me through thousands of leagues of sea to this lonely scene of ice; and so on, and so on; whilst her speech was little more than exclamation too. For, put yourself in our place and judge how it would go with your heart, and tongue, till use had softened amazement and incredulity, sobering the flow of feeling into a gentle language of passion and pleasure.
Meanwhile they were bringing the man to the boat. The cask travelled safely to the bows: he sprang out with the assistance of a man's hand, and then stood on a thwart looking about him for a minute with a face of ecstasy.
Now it was I grew a bit rational, and said to Marie:
'Who is he?'
'Mr. Selby. His conduct has been noble. Oh, Archie, his manly treatment of me, his patient care, the encouragement, the encouragement!'
'Jump on to the ice there, two of you, and get that anchor,' sung out Mr. Bland.
'Where's Captain Burke?' I said.
'He was drowned months ago—months ago.'
'And his wife?'
'I found her frozen to death and dragged her into the ship's kitchen and watched beside her, and then I was alone in that wreck in a heavy, rolling ocean for a week till he came,' and she looked towards Selby, 'sent by God, for without him—alone up there—oh, think, Archie!'
As she said this she put her hands together and her face whitened like the ice; her eyes rolled their pupils out of sight, and with a little moan she fainted.
I held and pillowed her, groping for and finding a flask of brandy in my pockets. She continued in a dead faint until, the anchor having been got, the boats were clear of the bay close in with the brig.
Selby sat in the bows. I never addressed him: I could think of nothing but the lifeless figure I clasped. She came to just as we drew alongside the vessel, and my gratitude, when she fetched a breath, and opened her eyes, was scarcely less than that I had felt when I knew she was on board the wreck. In truth, so fixed was her trance, I had believed her dead.
She was helped over the side by Cliffe and others. The brig showed a low side when the gangway was unshipped, and Marie was handed on deck easily and without risk. I followed. She was very weak, yet could walk leaning on my arm, and thus supporting her I took her into the cabin. Then it was I strained her to my heart again, kissing her, blessing her, thanking God for suffering me to discover and rescue her.
It would be idle to set down what now passed between us in this first half-hour of our being alone. Our hurry of speech, the tender interruption of caresses was as a printed page broken into sentences without sequence. Looks will give continuity to meaning when the tongue is still, but how to describe those passages of eloquent silence?
We had both of us a thousand things to ask and answer, and often we'd break off to gaze at each other, scarce realising even yet that we were together, and that the end of my heaven-directed quest was come. By the time we had settled down into sober talk, sitting hand in hand in front of the glowing brass stove, whilst the boy in obedience to my orders was preparing the table for dinner, it was about five o'clock; they had got way upon the brig; she was heeling over, and I guessed that Cliffe was pressing her, getting every inch of northing that was to be clawed out of the bow surge whilst it was daylight. The afternoon was glowing with more than tropic splendour; indeed, never had I observed such mellow richness of glory under the line, or north or south of 23° as I had noticed in this Antarctic sunshine whilst in the bay. But however delivered—whispered at times—sometimes interrupted by tears, by sudden impassioned embraces, as though nothing even now could be true but the presence and reality of the long months of her imprisonment; but however brokenly uttered, I say her story was known, and her relation persuaded me that in the person of Mr. Selby lived one of the finest characters that ever graced the manliest of all the callings. My love, my joy—though my spirits seemed to know no other passions whilst I held her and looked at her—did not extinguish in me for long whilst we conversed the cold dark dread that lurked in the thought of her having been locked up with Selby for months. But whilst I listened the jealous fear, the gloomy dislike for the extraordinary association vanished. My heart grew hot with admiration and gratitude. She told me of her joy at the sight of him, when, after being alone for a week in the dismasted hull of the 'Lady Emma' with no other companion on board than the dead body of Mrs. Burke, she groped her way from her berth to the cabin and found him lying asleep on a locker. She told me how he had comforted her and raised her spirits by every hope that a sailor could invent. She instanced many fine subtle, delicate traits of conduct; I was impressed by the refinement and native exquisite breeding of the man whilst I listened to her. I witnessed the gentleman, the nobleman of nature's own handiwork, in all she told me of him. Without his inspiring companionship her spirits would have sunk, her heart must have broken. He fetched and carried, cooked, and toiled for her comfort; he devised a dozen schemes to divert her. Every day he promised that a ship would come to take them off. He never lost heart. Often he would sing with a sailor's notion of brightening her melancholy.
No one intruded upon us, saving the boy; but our talk was not to be overheard by him, sitting as we did close together beside the fire. And all the while I was admiring the improved sweetness of her looks, the plumpness of her cheeks and throat, the firmer, clearer tones of her voice, and what shone to my sight as a soft gay light of health in her eyes.
'Is it the ice,' said I, 'that has worked this miracle of change in you? Or were you looking even better than you now do before your shipwreck?'
'I cannot tell how I look,' she answered. 'What I have suffered I know.'
She talked of the Burkes, and wept when she spoke of her old nurse. She said she believed Captain Burke committed suicide; his end was sudden; he did not need to go upon the bowsprit to hang up the lantern—a height of foremast stood; he went on a dangerous errand, she thought, meaning to die, and his getting his wife to accompany him into the bows might have signified no more than lunatic cunning.
Whilst we conversed the boy came down and asked if he should put dinner upon the table. We had forgotten time in talking and I jumped up and took Marie to my berth, which was to be resigned to her. I then went on deck to make Mr. Selby's acquaintance and to bring him into the cabin to dinner.
The wind was on the beam, a steady pouring breeze, and the heeling brig was washing onwards, but warily and under little canvas; I had been misled by the angle of the deck. The ice rode lofty and glaring about us on all sides in huge groups; and masses of the stuff littered the ocean directly in our path; the utmost vigilance was needful.
I stood a moment in the companion-way, looking at the island we were leaving astern. It was already some miles distant, and the wreck invisible. The far inland mountain hung solemn and sublime in the blue air with the majestic loneliness of it. You thought of it as lifting its height at the extreme end of the world, and the melting of its shimmering peak into the silver azure was such a blending as made the shadow seem as high as the heavens themselves.
Cliffe stood in earnest talk with Selby. I regarded the man awhile before he saw me. He was dressed in the plain clothes of his calling; doubtless he made good his wants out of Captain Burke's wardrobe; he was rather short and very broad-shouldered; his hair was black, and of a true cast-away man's length, falling and curling in plenty down upon his back as though it had been a woman's; he was of a sallow complexion and newly bearded as though used to shave when all was well.
When I went to him with my hands outstretched, he faced me with a smile, and then it was I saw a wonderful spirit of goodness and kindness in his countenance. I had never before witnessed a man's nature so plainly pictured in his looks. I will not admit that I was prejudiced in his favour by what Marie had told me and found a soul of candour and good humour where perhaps I should otherwise have seen nothing but an average sailorly countenance. No matter what the causes which should have brought this man and me acquainted; let me have met him how, when, where you will, one glance would have persuaded me that he was a heart of oak. You saw a manly simplicity and gentleness in every line. His eyes looked at you full, yet gently, with a charming, winning frankness; his smile was a grace, there was something sweet in it: and yet he was by no means good looking. His face was overcharged by the length of its aquiline nose. His mouth, too, was out of proportion, his eyes were something too deep set and close together to please; nevertheless when he turned, smiling to receive me, I found a beauty in his looks that was far above all gift of flesh.
I held him by both hands, but in what terms I thanked him for his goodness to Miss Otway I'll not set down, because they must needs look cold and insufficient, when in reality the tribute lay in that part that cannot be communicated on paper, I mean in the tone of voice, the expression of countenance, the clinging pressure of the hands.
He said, 'It's been a bad time for her, sir. The beginning was the hardest. That week when she was alone, washing about here, much where we now are, in the winter time when it was nearly all night, and nobody else aboard but the corpse of Mrs. Burke, would have killed a lady of less spirit.'
I broke in by asking him to step below with me. Cliffe said he would remain on deck and watch the brig. I took notice that as in making for the island, so now, a keen look-out was being kept. Hands were stationed in the bows and on the foreyard; the rigging lay ready for instant use. Two men were at the wheel.
Selby stopped and looked at the island astern. The whole soul of the man seemed to rush into his face as he gazed, colouring it with memory and a passion of gratitude and pathetic joy. He breathed deep and said. 'Thank God, I've seen the end of it! Seven months is it, sir? The sufferings of the sea will make a year of a week. It seems as long as a lifetime.'
He sighed again, or rather fetched a breath as of relief and ease of heart, and followed me into the cabin.
Whilst we waited for Marie, he explained how it came about that the hull was shelved forty feet above the wash.
He said when she first took the ice she was beaten a considerable distance by blow upon blow of foamless swell, rolling into the shelter out of the heavy weather beyond; she lay on her bilge. He could not express the misery they suffered from the angle her posture sloped her into; till, early one night, a noise of thunder roared through the cabin as though the whole island was splitting to pieces; shock followed shock. These volcanic throes went on for hours. He expected every moment that the hull would be crushed to powder. Sometimes they felt the fabric under their feet swept upwards. It was pitch dark on deck; nothing was to be seen; but the uproar of splitting ice was at moments deafening. He said he could compare it to nothing but to being in a boat betwixt two line-of-battle ships when they were firing their whole broadside artillery at each other.
It might have been about four o'clock when the hellish commotion ceased as abruptly as it had commenced; at this hour the hull was, as she had been for some time, resting on an almost level keel. At break of day he went on deck, and was amazed to find the sea lying open, but at a considerable distance below; the great ice peninsula whose bay had been the salvation of the hull had broken away and become a majestic island, nodding stately upon a high sea about a quarter of a mile distant. The wreck rested upon a wide ledge with a sheer fall of ice, smooth as though chiselled, to the wash of the surf. How it had befallen he could not tell. Perception had lain entirely in sensation and bearing.
When Marie came out of her berth I was struck afresh by her improved looks. I turned to Selby and said:
'This lady sailed for her health. Such distresses, such trials of mind and body as she has suffered, should pinch the face as fire wastes wax, and she looks so much better that her father will scarcely know her!'
'I told Mr. Moore,' she said, 'that I don't know how I may look, but that I am alive and with him again,' said she, stealing her hand into mine, 'is wholly owing to you.' Then raising her voice, heated into a higher clearness by emotion, she exclaimed, 'In the presence and hearing of my betrothed, I thank you with my heart of hearts for all your goodness to me, for your hundred acts of noble unselfishness, for the splendid courage and faith which supported us both through the awful time that is now ended.'
He bowed to her in silence.
'Mr. Selby,' said I, grasping him by the hand, then putting my other upon his, and so holding him, 'Miss Otway has spoken her gratitude; my own I have already attempted to express. The profession of the sea has produced some splendid characters; but it seems to me that you are one of the finest compliments that nature ever paid to your calling.'
'I thank you for your kind words, sir,' he said, with colour and embarrassment, 'and for yours, Miss Otway. I felt very sorry for you when I found you alone on that dismasted hulk, and I swore to myself I would so act that, come what might, if you were spared, you should be able to say of me, He was a man.'
I could have hugged him!
We seated ourselves and all our talk ran upon the hull, and upon my own adventures. I particularly noticed Selby's respectful manner to Marie. That was as satisfying to every instinct within me as though I had shared their imprisonment. It was not a thing he just put on; it sat with the unconscious ease of an old and fixed habit. I heard it in his voice, I marked it in his manner of attention when she spoke; in twenty subtle ways it was expressed as something abiding; it was, in short, the man's, the seaman's, and the gentleman's recognition of her claims as a woman and of her station; I knew it had been with him from the beginning, and I loved him from that moment with a heart unshadowed by the faintest anxiety or misgiving.
I asked him how they had managed for food.
'The hold was full of good things, sir,' he answered. 'We did not stint ourselves, Miss Otway,' said he, smiling.
'Mr. Selby cooks charmingly,' said Marie. 'I shall never forget the delicious dishes of broth you used to make for me.'
'The ship's cargo,' said he, 'consisted of a quantity of articles of potted food with drink enough in stout, brandy, and whiskey to fill the half of London with uproar and murder.'
'We had biscuits as big as bricks,' said Marie. 'I used to make bread and milk with them.'
'Milk!' I ejaculated.
'Preserved milk, sir,' said Selby. 'I found some hundredweights of the stuff.'
'But your fuel?' said I.
'There was about twelve ton of coal in the forepeak when we got on the ice,' he answered. 'I never reckoned upon a long stay, the young lady was to be kept warm, and I was a bit extravagant at the start. Then as the days passed and nothing came along, I began to stint, with the result that I've left about half the stock behind.'
'Did nothing heave in sight?'
'Oh, yes, sir; but never close in. I must have consumed half the cargo of theatrical scenery, and pounds worth of patent fuel and India-rubber in burning flares at night and making smokes by day. I reckon the smoke was taken for something in the volcanic line. For a long time the ice hid us from the sea. The island whose rupture threw us aloft drifted away and gave us a clear view for a bit, but others came cruising along with the stream of the tide, if it was not the wind that brought them, and one moored itself right abreast—grounded, I allow—it stuck so long.
'The whaler that reported you,' said I, 'was close in enough to get a good sight of the wreck.'
'I did not see her,' he answered. 'I must have been below when she passed.'
'It was cruelly cold, Archie,' said Marie. 'Weeks would pass without my going on deck. Oh, how I loathed the sight of those cliffs of ice! And then the ceaseless boiling of the surf.'
'I caulked the cabin into a middling warm living room,' said Selby, 'yet the cold would creep through. Water that had been boiled and left to stand on the table within the sphere of the heat of the stove, as I could have sworn, would take a mask of ice. I cleared the cabin to give Miss Otway walking room. The exercise helped her. It gave her a little spirit as well as warmth. I didn't care to see her sit drooping hour after hour beside that little stove.'
'At such times you sang?' said I.
'Well, coming below after taking a look round, and seeing her like that, I'd tune up my pipes, certainly,' he answered. 'It was unpleasant to have to keep on answering her question with a "No, there's nothing in sight."'
Thus ran our talk, and again and again whilst we conversed, I'd see Marie stealing looks around her of delight and amazement, and often when our gaze met, an expression of solemn joy would light up her face. For months she had lived in the cabin of a motionless ship; now the life of the ocean was in the fabric, whose deck her foot rested on. She was as one who had been called from the grave to renew life, and love, and health. It was a miracle, and I saw the marvelling of her spirit in her eyes whenever she looked at me.
'I'll go and take a look round,' said Selby. 'I hope Captain Cliffe will make me useful.'
He rose, respectfully bowed to us, and went on deck.
I drew Marie to the stove and sat beside her. From time to time as we talked, we heard the sharp warning cries of the look-out men on deck re-echoed by Cliffe and the mate aft, accompanied sometimes by a hurried tread of feet when the braces were handled. But we were together, too happy, too much engrossed, to heed what passed above. Through the hum of our talk—our continuous talk—for how much had we to tell each other?—ran the shrill sound of salt water seething; the boy came below to take some dinner on deck to Captain Cliffe. He then cleared the table, and Marie and I were alone again. The sunshine blazed red upon the skylight, faded slowly, the glass grew grey, then blackened, and a star flashed in a cabin window as a reel of the brier brought the bright spark with a leap into the orifice.
'I remember,' Marie said, 'when I found Mrs. Burke lying dead on the deck of the hull, that I fell upon my knees in the agony of my distress and terror, and cried out that I was alone, asking what I should do—what I should do? And now I am with you,' she cried, throwing her arms round my neck and sobbing slightly. 'But what a time has lain between!'
* * * * *
At this point Mr. Moore ends his narrative; he doubtless considered that the interest of his strand of the story ceased at the rescue of his sweetheart.
It had been arranged that the brig should return to the Cape of Good Hope, whatever might be the issue of her search; the little vessel, with ceaseless vigilance, was navigated clear of the ice into open waters, and under warmer skies, and thanks to strong westerly winds which chased her day after day, she anchored in Table Bay in a little more than three weeks from the hour of hoisting in her boats and making sail from Coronation Island. The lovers' reception at Cape Town was a memorable incident, and is still talked of by old people there. They stayed until Miss Otway had provided herself with a wardrobe, then embarked in a Union steamer and safely arrived at Southampton on the morning of May 1, 1861.
Mr. Selby was presented by Sir Mortimer Otway and the banking firm of Moore, Son & Duncan, with an interest in a ship of thirteen hundred and forty tons, amounting to half her value, and four months after his arrival in England, he sailed in command of her on her second voyage to Bombay.
THE END
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