CHAPTER VIII. LOST!
And now for another week of this ship's adventure. There is little to record. As she drove to the south and west the breeze freshened by strokes, and the foam, white as daylight, seethed with a leeward roll to the channels, whose plates flashed jewelled fountains from her side.
It was noble sailing with a buckling stu'nsail boom, and every taut weather-shroud and backstay spirited the sea-whitening keel with sweet, clear songs of rejoicing. All the crew loved little Johnny, and the great Newfoundland, placid, stately, and benign, was ever at his side, courting the boy, with looks of love, to play. Always in this fine weather the sunny-haired lad, in the miniature clothes of the bluejacket, would of a dog-watch take his drum upon the forecastle, and roll out a good rattling accompaniment to the cheerful piping of the whistle. Then the sailors would dance whilst the ship's stem rent the water into sweat, and the bow-sea rolled away in glory, and the western heavens grew majestical with sunset.
And all this time no man spoke a hint as to the captain's state of mind, because, as I have said, the sailor has no eyes for the human nature of the quarter-deck until it should become as visible and demonstrative as a windmill in a wind.
This Captain Layard was not; his moods and motions were of too subtle a sort to be interpretable by the forecastle gaze, and all the strange unconscious discoveries of himself he limited to Hardy, scarcely ever speaking to the second mate unless to give him an order. But even when he talked to Hardy, no man could have sworn that he was madder than most dreamers are. It was only, as Hardy thought, that his talk was so cursedly inconsequential. He reminded him of a diver who if you look to port comes up to starboard, whose spot of emergence is always somewhere else.
One day, at the end of the time just spoken of, the ship was stretching her length along a wide blue sea enriched with running knolls, shadowed by themselves into deepest violet, aflash with sudden meltings of foam which whitened the windward picture, and ran with smooth curves from the leeward yeast that rushed into the water from the side.
The captain was below. It was about ten o'clock in the morning. There was now a sting in the light of the sun, as he floated upwards in an almost tropic glory, undimmed by the flight of little clouds which hinted at the Trade. Our friend the chief mate, Hardy, was walking up and down the weather-side of the quarter-deck. A sailor stood at the wheel trim for his trick; he was a British seaman, his easy floating figure and swift look to windward, aloft, and into the compass bowl put thoughts into one's head of the time when men like him wore pigtails down their backs and fired the fury of hell, as the Spaniard said to Nelson, into the gunports and sides of the audacious enemy.
There was music on that quarter-deck, for Johnny, who was admiral of that ship, the captain being very much under him, had sent for the whistle, and the sailor had come at once, bringing his music with him. He was seated upon the skylight, and was piping that cheerful song, "A Wet Sheet and a Flowing Sea," all over the ship to the delight of the watch on deck, who worked the nimbler for it; and Johnny made martial music of that sea-song with his drum.
The ship rushed along with festive lifts and falls and triumphant choruses in her weather-rigging as the swing of the sea brought her masts to windward, and all was beauty and sunlight, and white phantoms of little sailing clouds, and swelling canvas yearning to the azure recess at which the ship, like some goddess of the sea, was pointing with her spear of jibboom.
Presently the boy grew tired; the piper went forward, and as the captain's servant came along Johnny gave him his drum and sticks to carry below. The great Newfoundland was lying at its length beside the skylight, and Johnny sat upon him, and lifting his ear talked into it, and the dog grunted in affectionate reply. But little boys soon tire of anything save sweets, and Johnny joined Hardy, and they walked together. The lad had a very inquisitive mind, and was constantly wanting to know. He began to question Hardy about the ship. What is the good of that little sail right on top up there? Why didn't they give each mast one great sail? Wouldn't that save trouble? Couldn't they let it down, and tie it up, as they did that middle sail there, when the weather grew nasty? Wouldn't Hardy be glad to get home? How old was he? Was he glad to be so old? Wouldn't he rather be eight? After much interrogative conversation of this sort he felt tired, and strayed from Hardy's side and walked about the quarter-deck, looking around him as though he wished to pick up something which he could throw at the sea.
Going right aft, abaft the man at the wheel, his arch, sweet, wondering eyes were taken by the sight of some Mother Carey's chickens; also the splendid, dazzling stream of wake that was rushing off in snake-like undulations attracted him. A stretch of ash-white grating protected the wheel-chains and the relieving gear. It stood a little way under the taffrail and was not very high above the deck, and the tiller worked under it.
Unnoticed by Hardy, Johnny got upon this grating to watch the sea-birds, also to obtain a view of the place where that giddy, boiling, meteoric river of foam began. A sea-bird is a thing of beauty, which is a joy to a little boy upon whom the shades of the prison-house have not yet begun to close; and the dazzle of spinning foam hurling seawards is also a beauty and a wonder and a miracle, as are many other things in this pleasant world of flowers and valleys and streams; for I have seen a little child pick a daisy and view it with greater transport than could even be felt by a beautiful young woman bending with beaming eyes over the bracelet of diamonds with which her lover has just clasped her wrist.
Johnny fell upon his knees and crawled upon the grating to the taffrail, the flat surface of which he kneeled upon, peering over and down betwixt the gig and the taffrail to see the place where the white water began under the counter. The poor little fellow overbalanced himself, and Hardy, whose eye was upon him in that instant, saw him vanish.
"O my God!" he shrieked. "Man overboard!" he shouted. "Hard down! hard down!"
And whilst the wheel went grinding up to windward, and whilst the sails aloft were beginning to thunder to the weather sweep of the rushing bows, Hardy, tearing off his coat and waistcoat and shoes, leaped from the quarter into the boiling yeast and struck out.
Scarcely had he shot overboard when the great dog Sailor, springing up with a swift movement of his head around, leapt like a darting flame on to the rail from which Hardy had plunged, and jumped. There was plenty of foam in the sea, and it was almost blinding Hardy, who swam strongly; but it did not blind the dog, who saw the mate but not the child, and made for him. A sea swept Hardy to its summit, and he perceived the child some three or four cables' length distant; a head of foam rolled over that sun-bright speck and it disappeared, and as Hardy sank into the trough the dog, that stemmed the brine like some swiftly-urged boat, caught him by the collar and forced him round in the direction of the ship, whose main-yards were now aback and one of whose lee quarter boats was rapidly descending, with the captain on the grating, waving his arms in frantic and heart-subduing pantomime.
"Sailor!" roared Hardy, struggling with his whole force to round the noble creature's head in the direction where he had seen the bright point vanish. "O God! doggie, dear doggie! Johnny is overboard, and drowning! Go for him, Sailor! go for him, Sailor!"
And buoyed by the magnificent swimmer whose teeth were in his collar, he stiffened his breast and pointed. But the Newfoundland, who had not seen Johnny fall, had leapt to save the life of Hardy, and with bitter, blighting despair in his heart the gallant young fellow felt the beautiful animal at his side urging him irresistibly up one slope and down another in the direction of the ship, with its dreadful figure of human anguish gesticulating and shouting on the grating.
The hearts that bent the blades rowed with love of the boy and a maddening passion to save him. They came to Hardy first and dragged him and the dog over the gunwale, and a man standing up in the stern-sheets steered the boat for the place where the little fellow had last been seen from the deck of the ship. But they rowed in vain. Sodden with brine, and half blinded by the tears of a manly sailor's heart, the mate strained his vision over the running seas, and knew, O God! and knew that Johnny had sunk for ever.
"Oh, what a pity!" said one of the men.
"The dog could have saved him," exclaimed another.
"No, he was gone before the dog could have reached the place," said Hardy, and he sank upon a thwart and covered his face.
The Newfoundland laid his massive jaws upon his knee in caress and in encouragement, knowing he was saved, and loving him as those majestic creatures love the life they have torn from the grasp of death. The men, with the lifted blades of their oars sparkling in the sun, gazed silently around, but Johnny was gone. The tall seas seethed, and the boat fell away with their melting heads and rose buoyant to the height of the next slant, but Johnny was gone, and after they had lingered half an hour the men, to the command of Hardy, turned the boat's head toward the ship, and rowed away from that sun-lighted scene of ocean grave which already the hand of viewless love had strewn with flowers and garlands of foam.
Captain Layard was standing with tightly folded arms beside the skylight when Hardy arrived on board, and approached him, shuddering with grief and with the exhaustion that attends even a brief spell of battling with the rolling seas of the ocean. The unhappy father's face was utterly unintelligible in expression. And still a critical eye, with good capacity for subtle penetration, would in this time of sudden and awful bereavement have witnessed in that poor man's face the dangerous condition of his soul.
The men who were hoisting the boat pulled with askant looks full of respect and rough sympathy, and the boat rose in silence, so touched were the sailors' hearts by this sudden loss of the bright-haired little darling of the ship. The Newfoundland, shaking a shower from his coat, came to the captain, seemed to know that grief was in him, and looked up at him.
"Where is my little Johnny?" said the captain to Hardy, in a firm, sharp tone.
Hardy could not answer him.
"There is no good in telling me that he's not on board this ship," said the captain, letting fall his arms and swaying in a strange way with the leeward and weather rolls of the arrested vessel. "Where is he hidden?"
He stepped to the companion and shouted down, "Johnny, Johnny, my darling! Come up with your drum! The men want music! Come up with your drum, my Johnny!"
The sailors belayed the falls of the boat and secured her, and slowly walked forward, never a one of them speaking. The captain went below, calling "Johnny." Mr. Candy came up to Hardy. Both he and the watch below had rushed on deck to that dreadful cry at sea of "Man overboard!" and to that sudden change you feel in a ship when the yards of the main are swung aback. All the concern that a man with white eyelashes and pale hair and a skin like a cut of roasted veal can look was in Candy's face as he said:
"This blow has turned the captain's head, sir."
"I cannot speak to you," Hardy answered.
"Let me fetch you some brandy, sir," said the second mate. Hardy raised his arm. Candy walked to the quarter and stood staring at the sea where the child had sunk. The Newfoundland dog was growing uneasy. You saw by the creature's motion of head and by other signs that he knew something was wrong. Twice he growled low and walked round the skylight smelling the planks, then coming to the companionway he listened and sprang down the steps.
Hardy stood waiting for the captain. It was not for him to order the topsail-yard to be swung until the captain spoke. All the seamen were forward standing in groups waiting for the command, and the boatswain, in the face of the general grief, could find nothing for them to do until the quarter-deck started them.
It filled Hardy with anguish, though he was only a mate in the British Merchant Service, the one unrecognised condition of our national life, spite of the pleading of its heroic traditions and the claims of its English seamen of to-day, upon the admiration of their country, to think of the poor, desolate, brain-afflicted father below, seeking in his madness his beloved little boy. He knew that this man had tenderly loved the mother of that child and mourned her loss with a sailor's heart, and that the bright and spirited lad, whom God had summoned, had been his constant companion since his wife's death, the light of his life, the flower whose fragrance had sweetened the loneliness of command.
He stood waiting, soaked to the flesh. Suddenly the captain appeared.
"Johnny is not below," he said. "He's somewhere in the ship. When did you see him last, Mr. Hardy?"
And still Hardy could not answer him. The Newfoundland had followed his master, and the whole frame and benign eyes of the noble creature, to whom and to whose like man denies a soul, yielded preternatural token of loss and disquiet that was human in eloquence.
The captain did not seem to heed Hardy's silence and manner. He looked with great eagerness and a certain wildness along the decks, and then putting his hand to the side of his mouth, with his face turned forward, where the men stood watching him, he shouted in an imperious voice as though he would frighten an answer from the concealed child:
"Johnny!—It is strange," said he, in a low voice, turning and looking at Hardy, "Is he aloft?" And he turned his eyes up and scrutinised the rigging, the tops, the crosstrees, the yards, stepping to the rail so as to obtain a view past the leaches of the canvas.
"Shall I order those yards to be swung, sir, and way got upon the ship?" said Hardy, speaking with difficulty.
"I want Johnny," was the captain's answer, and he walked slowly forward, looking to right and left of him, as though the little lad must be in hiding somewhere, flat beside a forward coaming or behind a hencoop, or under the long-boat, for his figure had been small, and he could have concealed himself within the flakes of the halliards coiled down upon a pin.
The men drew back, scattered in a kind of dissolving way, gazed with sheepish looks of sympathy, one rugged man with damp eyes, for he too had lost a son beloved with the rough love of a heart unhardened by salt and toil.
"Has any man among you," said the captain, bringing his head out of the galley door—for the child had been a frequent guest of the cooks of the ships he had sailed in: they would make him jam tarts and little cakes, and his prattle to the fellows was as cheering to them as the song of a canary—"has any man among you," he said, "seen my little boy?"
"I don't think you'll find him forward, sir," answered the boatswain. "Jim, jump below and see if he's in the fok'sle."
The sailors exchanged looks which seemed to suggest that they thought it kind and wise in the boatswain to humour the captain, whose mind, to them, appeared a little shaken and made uncertain by the shock of his loss.
"No, I'll trust no man's eyes but mine," exclaimed the captain, with a lofty expression of face, and, going to the scuttle, which is the little hatch through which the seamen drop into their parlour, he put his legs over and descended.
One man only was in this forecastle. He was the young seaman who had played the whistle whilst Johnny beat the drum. He started up at the sight of the captain, amazed by a visit that was unparalleled in his experience or recollection of forecastle story. His face showed marks of unaffected distress, and indeed this rude but sympathetic heart had been seated for some minutes prior to the captain's entrance, with bowed head resting in his wart-toughened palms, thinking of the child and his sudden death.
It was a strange, gloomy interior. The swing of the lamp kept the shadows on the wing, and oilskins and coats swayed upon the ship's wall to the solemn plunge of the bows, and you heard the roar of the smitten and recoiling surge in a low thunder, like the sound of a railway train striking through the soil into a vault. Some bunks went curving into the gloom past the light which fell through the hatch, and a few hammocks stretched their pale, bale-like lengths under the upper deck. Here, too, were sea-chests—a few only—and odds and ends of sea-boots, and the raffle of the sailor's ocean home.
"Where's my son? Is he down here?" exclaimed the captain, haggard, and with something dreadful in his looks in that light, uttering the words as peremptorily as ever he delivered an order on the quarter-deck.
The young fellow gazed aghast at him in silence.
The captain, who did not seem to heed whether he was answered or not, went to the bunks and examined them one by one, knelt and looked under them, felt the sagged canvas of the hammocks. Oh, it was pitiful!
"He's not here," he exclaimed, turning to the young sailor. "Have you got your whistle handy? Pull it out and pipe. The music will bring him with his drum."
The young man went to his bunk and took the whistle from the head of it. His face was full of awe and wonder; it was a bit of psychology, a trick or two above all his art of seamanship.
"What shall I play, sir?" he asked, in a shaking voice, with a glance up through the scuttle at the men gathered near and listening.
"What's his favourite tune?" said the captain.
The young fellow reflected, and answered, "'Sally come up,' sir. It runs well with the drum."
"Play it," said the captain.
The young fellow put the whistle to his lips and blew. The contrast between the merry air, shrilling in the forecastle and out through the hatch into the bright wind, and the captain's half-triumphant face of expectancy would have melted a heart of steel. The poor man stepped under the little hatch and shouted up, "On deck there!"
"Sir," answered the boatswain, showing himself.
"Can this whistle be heard aft?"
"Yes, sir."
"Watch a bit, and report if he's coming."
The young seaman, who was nearly heartbroken with his obligation of playing, continued to pipe, and you beheld a vision of dancing sailors, and swelling canvas reverberating the rattle of the drum.
The captain waited under the hatch, his poor face charged with ardent expectation. He might have overheard a gruff voice say, "It oughtn't to be allowed to go on. He'd get all right if he'd go to his cabin, where it 'ud come to him." But he paid no heed.
Suddenly the whistling ceased, and the young fellow, flinging his whistle into his bunk, cried, "It's choking me, sir."
The captain looked at him, and saying, "Where is Johnny?" climbed through the hatch and, without a word to the sailors, walked slowly aft.
The whole ship seemed to tremble throughout her frame with every lift and fall, as though like something alive she was now startled by this strange delay, and the foretopmast studdingsail curved with the weight of the wind from its boom, and no doubt, in the language of sailcloth, cursed the maintopsail for stopping its eager drag.
Hardy stood beside the second mate, to leeward, on the quarter-deck, and watched the captain coming aft. The great dog in a leap gained his master's side and marched with him, looking with beautiful sagacity up into the poor man's face. The captain walked with his eyes fixed upon the sky, just over the sea-line astern, but if speculation were in his gaze it was not interpretable; he saw, or seemed to see, something beyond the blue haze of distance, and thus he watched it, without speaking to the two mates, or turning his eyes upon them, until he came to the companion-hatch, down whose steps he went, followed by the dog.
Noon was near and an observation must be taken. Hardy, whose clothes were plastered by water upon him, said to Candy:
"We must get an observation and swing the yards. This blow has thrown his mind off its balance, and he might not thank us later if we should go on as though he were responsible."
"I agree with you, sir," said Candy.
Hardy called to the boatswain, who came quickly.
"You know the law of the sea as well as I do," said the mate, "and I don't want you and the men to believe that I have taken charge of the ship even for five minutes because I mean to get way upon her."
"She wants it," said the boatswain, looking forward along the ship as though she were a horse.
"I must get an observation," continued Hardy, "and you and the men will judge that the captain would wish me to do what he himself would do if his terrible loss had left him capable of doing anything."
"It don't need reasoning about, sir," said the boatswain.
"Hands lay aft and swing the maintopsail-yard!" shouted Hardy. "Lee mainbrace! Mr. Candy, will you step below for your sextant? Kindly bring mine."
Candy went below. The men came running aft. But the shadow of death was upon the ship, bright, boundless, and streaming with the life of the wind as were heaven and ocean, and the sailors dragged the great yards round in silence. The ship heeled over a little more to the full swell of her canvas, and as Hardy took his sextant from Candy she was bursting the blue surge into white glory, and the leeward foam was passing fast and faster.