CHAPTER XIII. THEY MEET
It was moonlight on the sea, and the full-rigged ship York lay with her canvas aback, silently heaving upon the swell. But by the eye of a sailor a certain moisture would have been visible in the silver suffusion, and he might hardly have needed to look at the glass to guess that this calm scene of ocean night would in a few hours show a changed face. The time was shortly after ten.
The lamp in the cabin was unlighted, but the moon shone upon the skylight, and the darkness was whitened by it, and all features of the interior were visible. Hardy lay stretched upon the cabin deck, and within an arm's reach of him rested the great Newfoundland dog, secured by a chain to the leg of the table. The picture was wonderful for its human stillness: you heard no tramp of foot, no call of voice. The very sails slept against the masts, and nothing was audible but the complaint of a bulkhead or some strong fastening as the ship sluggishly took the run of the fold.
All of a sudden Hardy opened his eyes, and having opened them he kept them open, staring with just that look of bewilderment and astonishment which had been in Julia's dawning gaze. He tried to raise his head and thought it was a cannon-ball, but the dog had noticed the motion, and instantly alert with joy barked in deep-throated notes, with endless wagging of the tail.
This tremendous noise close in his ear was as galvanism to the dead frog. Hardy sat up and looked at the dog and then looked round him, and feeling all the sensations of a man drugged with liquor, believed, without being able to remember, that he had fallen down drunk. This is the sensation of the man who is fortunate enough to awake from the stupefaction of laudanum.
"Good God! What is this?" Hardy muttered, and he squeezed his brow with his hands as you would wring a swab to drain the wet out of it:
Then slowly memory began to operate, whilst the dog was straining to reach him and caress him. "My God!" he thought after a passage of reflection, "the madman poisoned us when we drank his health!" And then it all came to him. He rose to his feet, but his legs trembled and he could hardly stand. "Where is Julia?" and next, "Where is the captain?"
The dog began to bark with something of fury, and Hardy with trembling hands removed the collar from the brute's neck. The noble animal sprang upon Hardy in affectionate caress and nearly felled him with its weight, then dashed into the captain's cabin, the door of which swung ajar, and Hardy followed. He could hardly see, it was so dark here, and he felt the captain's bunk and wandered round on staggering legs, feeling. His throat was as hot as the bowl of a lighted pipe, and it felt the hotter when he heard the dog in the cabin lapping at some water in the dish that was meant for its use. He went to the swing-tray, where there was water, and drank a full draught, which greatly helped him both in wits and body, then entered Julia's cabin and felt the bunk and found she was not there. "What has he done?" he thought, and with heavy limbs he made his way on deck.
The light was brilliant enough after the cabin gloom, and he could see clearly. He stood in the hatch, holding by the companion-hood.
Abreast of him lay, in convulsed posture, the figure of the second mate, Candy. He turned his head and saw the shape of a man lying prostrate beside the wheel. He took note by the aid of the moon that the wheel was lashed, then his eyes travelled to a pair of empty davits, and he staggered to them and looked down. He could trace the black lines of the falls, and saw the blocks as the ship swayed, kindling fire in the dark water.
He was a sailor, and at once understood it all. A groan escaped his lips whilst he thought, "He has gone away in the boat with Julia to seek his son. How am I to recover her?" And the horror of her situation—alone in an open boat with a madman—penetrated his heart, and seemed to petrify him. He could just distinguish two or three dark figures overhanging the forecastle rail, and a couple of sailors lay motionless upon the deck a little way abaft the galley.
The dog had bounded up out of the cabin, and was wandering around sniffing at one silent figure and another: no doubt he was in quest of his master. Then it occurred to Hardy to remember that the grog had been served out at noon. Suppose he had got away at two.
What sort of breeze was then blowing?
He reflected and remembered.
He would sail dead away and right before it, for he had no destination, and was sure to shape the crow's course. "Grant her four miles an hour, and this is ten o'clock," he thought, pulling out his watch and holding it to the moon. "The boat may have covered thirty miles of sea. They may have been fallen in with and rescued, for Julia would shriek her story, and the captain might believe that Johnny was aboard. But how shall I know? How shall I know? I must take it that the boat is still afloat, and Julia must be saved."
He considered the direction of the wind, and made up his mind to the course that must be steered; but now as to the crew. He went to Candy and, kneeling, shook him, put his hand to his face, put his ear to his mouth, and easily saw that he was dead. The discovery thrilled through him like the cut of a sword on the shoulder. He walked to the figure beside the wheel, and in a little while could not doubt that the man, too, was dead. It was not because he was a doctor's son that he needed to be informed of the action of a heavy dose of laudanum, or some poisonous drug of that sort, upon the movements of a weak heart. But there were live men forward, and with sluggish motions of his limbs he went that way.
He stooped over the two figures abaft the galley, and detected life in them. He then stepped on to the forecastle, and the first man he spoke to was the boatswain, who was resting his head in his arm upon the rail. He now saw there were three others near him, and two were sitting on the coamings of the forescuttle.
"The captain was mad and has drugged us," said Hardy. "He has taken the lady with him, and I want to give chase. Where are the rest of the men?"
"As the Lord is God," answered the boatswain, "don't my precious head know it's been drugged. Talk o' Shanghaing! But I never knowed it from the hand of a skipper nor worse than this."
"I want to trim sail, and make a start to rescue the lady," said Hardy.
"You'll not get the men to move if there was twenty ladies to be rescooed," responded the boatswain, who spoke as if he was drunk.
"I ha'n't got strength to lift a sprat to my mouth if I was starving," said one of the men, who leaned with folded arms as though at any moment the three of them would sink exhausted to the deck.
It drove Hardy crazy with a consuming desire to start in chase to see their helplessness and to feel his own. But what was he to do! Here were four men, and two sitting on the coamings of the scuttle, and two alive, though prostrate, near the galley—eight men, and more perhaps below in the forecastle.
So he went to the hatch and asked the two men how they felt. They answered with curses, swearing they'd have hove the captain overboard before he should ha' poisoned them.
"He was mad," said Hardy. "I knew it, and wondered you didn't see it and ask me to act. He has poisoned me and stolen my sweetheart away to her destruction, but we'll chase the beggar the moment we are able."
They growled out something and he looked down the scuttle. A sailor had lighted the slush lamp; some man, perhaps, who was less ill than the others on recovery, or who had the best sense then about. Hardy descended and stood under the hatch, looking round him. I would not like to say how many men were here, because I do not know what the owner of the ship chose to think her complement. Hardy might have counted eight or ten men, in bunks, hammocks, or seated on their sea-chests. The faces he saw were ghastly, as though this ocean-parlour were plague-stricken. He went from one to another to see if all were alive, and they all proved so. The swing of the flame flung shadows like contortions on the visible faces. It was hot down here, and Hardy felt sick with the drug, whose effects were not yet expended. Some breathed deep: the human respiration threaded the subdued moan of water.
"What's been done to us?" said a man sitting on a chest.
"We've all been drugged by a lunatic who's carried off my sweetheart," answered Hardy. "There's to be a shift of weather, and the ship's under all plain sail and aback, and the helm lashed. Any of you here able to come on deck and swing the yards and take the wheel?"
The devil a one! So Hardy climbed with leaden limbs through the square hole and walked slowly aft, and sat down on the skylight.
The Newfoundland came out of a shadow and lay at his feet. A fair light, with power of painting jetty strokes that slided upon the pale planks, flowed from the moon. But the broken orb was hazy, and the mate's eyes saw the darkness of wind gathering in vapour in the west or thereabouts. So the breeze that had been steady all day was to harden sooner or later out of its quarter, and the ship under all plain sail lay aback to it. But Hardy felt too weak to move the wheel, even if by so doing he could have helped the ship; nor, though she could have swung to fill her breasts with canvas, which would have been impossible, he'd have let her lie as she was because, with the yards trimmed as they stood, he couldn't have shaped a course for the direction which he believed the madman had taken.
He sat and thought and waited. It was miserable to see the dead figure of Candy lying there, and miserable when he turned his head to see the dead figure of the sailor beside the wheel. What an unparalleled act! How deep and cunning beyond all credibility, and yet as true as the misty radiance floating in shimmering folds upon the dark and silent heave! His brain was every minute clearing, and he realised more intently as the time slipped by that, if yonder shadow meant heavy weather, the girl was lost, unless a passing ship had picked them up; but how would Hardy know?
In about half an hour one of the figures at the forecastle rail came slowly aft. He stopped and bent over the two forms lying abaft the galley. Hardy heard him speak to them, and he could just catch the murmur of their replies. They had therefore come to, and no doubt would be sitting up and moving about shortly.
The figure that had left the forecastle rail came along, and Hardy saw it was the boatswain. The man went to the body of Candy, and looking round said, in a hollow voice:
"Is he dead?"
"Ay, stone dead; and so is yonder," replied Hardy.
"What took him to do it?" asked the boatswain, coming to Hardy's side.
"Why does a madman tear up his clothes?" replied Hardy. "How are those fellows in the waist there?"
"They're reviving," answered the boatswain. "He must ha' put plenty in. Dommed if ever I was treated like this before by the capt'n of a ship. Tell you what, sir, there's weather comin' along," and he cast the eye of an experienced sailor up aloft at the canvas and then at the moon, at which he shook his head.
Yes, her broken face had taken a glutinous reddish look as though she was a smear of pink currant jam, and her light was gone out of the sea. There was no more wind, but it was thickening westwards, and you might look for a slap of squall any moment, the shriek of the shot of the storm gun sweeping betwixt shroud and mast, and the ship lay aback under all plain sail, and there was no longer light of moonshine on her canvas.
"Just see if we can't get men enough to brace these yards square," said Hardy. "We can let go and clew up and wait till the men are strong enough to stow the canvas; but if we lie like this something may come to whip the masts out of her."
But it was a full half-hour before hands enough could be collected, and they all seemed as though freshly awakened from the crimp's debauch; their knees shook, their heads lolled, they lifted their arms as though they were operated upon by slow machinery. Yet the business, in a fashion, was contrived. They clewed up the royals and topgallantsails, they hauled up the mainsail, they let go some jib and staysail halliards, and they brailed the mizzen to the mast. The least dead of the poor fellows took the helm, and the ship with her head to the eastward, with much flap of canvas aloft, bowed slowly over the black run of swell. Her pace was very slow because the wind was light, and all the canvas she showed to it were two topsails and her forecourse.
This was as Hardy desired, because the moon was slowly vanishing like a dimming stain of bloody ooze, and it promised a black night. If he had held the ship moving under all her wings she would have passed the boat if she had not run her down, for it was his conviction, heaven inspired, that the madman had blown away straight before it, and how prophetically right he was in that we all know, and yet for some hours it remained very quiet, though black as the inside of a coal sack. Again this was as Hardy could have prayed for, as this raven serenity promised security to the boat, and if it lasted till daybreak she might be in sight.
The mate and another man placed the two bodies on the quarter-deck side by side under the bulwarks, clear of the gear, and hid them under a tarpaulin. It would not have been proper nor decent to have buried them out of hand, for though Hardy had no doubt that they were dead, he yet felt that time should be given to prove it; and so the two figures lay motionless under the tarpaulin.
The stars and moon went out and it blew very faint with a deepening of the blackness overhead, so that you looked for lightning. About three o'clock some of the men had come out of the forecastle, and by Hardy's commands the galley fire was lighted and strong coffee brewed. This wonderfully refreshed the men, and Hardy then asked them if they thought they were strong enough to go aloft and furl the lighter canvas, as he could not tell at what moment heavy weather might set in. The poor fellows managed it somehow, but were long over it. Then as many as were equal furled the mainsail, at which hour it was hard upon daybreak. In the blackness of those small hours it was impossible to guess the character of the sky, and in which direction the soot of it was trending. But all of a sudden the wind freshened with a long, melancholy wail, as though 'twas the spirit of the night that was dying, the troubled water ran in fitful flashes, and the ship broke the brine into white foam about her. The mate talked with the boatswain beside the quarter-deck skylight: they were both almost recovered, and you could hear reviving life in voices about the deck.
"I have no doubt," said Hardy, "that the captain blew away straight from the ship's side, because you see he had no destination in his mind."
"Not onlikely," answered the boatswain.
"Suppose I'm right," continued Hardy, "then I reckon we're not abreast of her yet; but if I pass the boat before the light comes and it proves thick, as I fancy you'll find it, we shall miss her for good, and I want my sweetheart badly."
"That's quite natural," said the boatswain. "We're walkin' now and the breeze freshens, and if you think you are right, sir, in steering as we go, then what d'ye say to hauling up the foresail and lowering the maintopsail-yard on the cap, and manning the reef-tackles?"
"Get it done," said Hardy.
It was easily done, for it was not a furling job. A bit of sea was beginning to run; it smacked the ship under the counter, and flooded the wake with light. Hardy walked up and down the deck, mad with desire for daybreak. He was steering by a theory of a madman's action, and he might be wrong, and if he was wrong—but even if he was right, how would the boat fare in the sea that was now running with a madman at the yoke, and the full sail and tearing sheet gripped by the hand of madness?
These were considerations scarce endurable to the man, and for ever he was sending searching glances ahead for the ghastly hue of the dawn. The day broke at last, and it was a day of gloom and mist and a narrow horizon; the sky was a dome of apparently motionless vapour, and each surge ere it broke arched in an edge of flint, and the whole surface was an olive-green decorated by lines of foam.
As yet there was no great weight in the wind, but the sailor's eyes saw that more was to be expected. Hardy went to his cabin for a glass of his own. He slung it over his shoulder, and regaining the deck sprang aloft to the height of the mizzen-top, from which altitude, with the glass set firmly against the topmast-rigging, he searched the sea. As the lenses made the circuit there leapt into the field of the telescope the apparition of a little brig unmistakenly derelict, with loose canvas hollowing like a kite against the masts. He examined her intently, and then muttering, "They may be aboard that vessel. It is a chance. The madman may have taken refuge, or thought his son was there," he threw the strap of the telescope over his head, and noting the brig's bearing, descended.
He walked rapidly aft to the compass, and found that the brig was in sight from the quarter-deck. She bore a little to the west of south. The Newfoundland, seeing Hardy looking, spied the brig and barked his report of a sail in sight.
"Lads!" shouted Hardy, running a little way forward, "there is a brig on the quarter. We'll see if she can give us any news, although abandoned. Starboard mainbrace, starboard foretopsail-brace smartly as possible, my lads. Starboard your helm!"
And slowly, for the helm was wearily worked and the braces were dragged by languid hands, the yards came round, and then the maintopsail was mastheaded, and the ship with the wind right abeam crushed the flint-like surge into froth, and forged ahead for the abandoned vessel.
It was time to make for her if she was to be visited at all, for the horizon was narrowing and narrowing with the thickness of rain, and soon within the distance of a mile the brig would have vanished. Hardy's glass was full of powerful lenses—its magnifying power was double that of the ship's telescope; when he now put it to his eye he instantly saw a figure just this side of the brig's main-rigging waving something white.
His heart brightened. He looked again. She was a woman, and alone! The boatswain was coming aft as Hardy looked forward.
"There's a figure aboard that brig," he shouted. "It's a woman, and she's waving a handkerchief."
"She'll be yourn," said the boatswain, and as surprise did not immediately follow perception, he added, "Well, I'm damned!"
"Stand by to back the maintopsail!" roared Hardy, who was delirious with excitement. "Let some hands lay aft and clear away the starboard quarter-boat ready for lowering. I'd board her if twice this sea was running. I knew I was right. I knew he'd head straight away. I knew I'd find her by shaping the madman's course."
"Suppose it isn't her?" said the boatswain.
"To hell with your supposings!" yelled Hardy. "In any case it's a woman, and she must be taken off."
The men came aft and got ready the boat and stood aft, prepared for the command to back the maintopsail. Again Hardy levelled the glass. The girl—for we know who it was—had ceased to flutter her handkerchief; but the wind, full of wet, bewildered the eye, and the mate would make no more of it than this: the figure was a woman.
He headed the York so as to heave to to windward of the brig, and a little while before the topsail-yard was backed Hardy had seen and mentally kissed the poor girl's face in the lens, and frantic with joy was waving his cap to her, whilst she, guessing who it would be that motioned thus, tossed her handkerchief again and again.
The ship was brought to a stand, and Hardy shouted, "I am coming to fetch you."
She waved her hand. There was an ugly bit of sea between for a boat, choppy, with deep sucking hollows, and plenty of spiteful foam to whiten over the low gunwales.
"Who'll volunteer?" said Hardy. "Three will do."
"Blast me," said one of them, "if I don't feel as I should be in the road in a boat."
"You're likely," said Hardy, pointing to another—"and you, and you. Three will do, and it shall be two pound a man, which God knows I wouldn't offer for a deed of duty, only you're lowered by the captain's drug."
"Right y' are, sir," said Jim, who got in the boat and was followed by Tom and Joe.
The mate sprang into the stern-sheets and shipped the rudder.
"Lower away handsomely!" he shouted, "and drop the hauling part that we may overhaul the falls."
Unfortunately the blocks were without patent clip hooks, and the moment the boat was water-borne the fore-bottom of her was nearly wrenched out by her fall into the hollow ere the languid bow oar could release the block. But it was done, and they got away.
She nearly filled three times in her passage. The drag of the oars was not strong enough; they wanted the long and steady sweep of their old power to rescue the boat from the arch of foam astern. Yet they managed to get alongside, and with the swift leap of the sailor Hardy gained the main-chains, and in a minute was standing on the main-deck, with Julia sobbing in his arms.
"Where is the captain?" were almost the first words Hardy addressed to her.
"He drowned himself," she answered, speaking sobbingly with tumult of passion. "He made me sit there beside him"—she pointed to the deck-house front—"and watch for the coming of the boy. The bell was struck—it was strangely struck. He thought it was his child, and he ran forward and climbed upon those pieces of timber as though his little son was beckoning, and then he cried out he was coming and sprang overboard, and I fainted. Oh, since I returned to consciousness what a time it has been! And yet—and yet I felt you were near and would come."
As she spoke the wind howled with a sudden note of raving in the rigging, and deep as the brig was her loose canvas was inswept till it depressed her by a couple of strakes, and you might have thought she was settling, and with this sudden blast came on a heavy squall of rain, which thickened the air till the ship that was on the quarter loomed a surging and streaming phantom. At the same moment cries were heard over the side. Hardy rushed to the rail, and what did he see?
The boat was stove and full! One man had disappeared, and the two others were floating a fathom or two beyond her locked in each other's embrace.
Hardy sprang to the brig's quarter, crying, "O God! O my God!" as he ran.
He slipped some bights of running gear off a pin, and yelling "Look out for the end of this line!" he hove.
One could not swim, and clung to the other who could, and there was no virtue in a rope's end though flung by an angel of God to save them. For one moment the line was close; the desperate heave of the half-drowned fabric dragged it fathoms out of reach. The pitiless seas broke over them, and with agony of mind, and a heart almost in halves, Hardy saw them vanish.
The girl stood beside him with uplifted arms, frozen by horror into the marble rigidity of a statue. It was going to blow a gale. The black scowl of the sky had the menace of storm in its fixity. No yellow curl of scud, no faintness here or there relieved that grim, austere, down-look. The day might have been closing, so dusky it was with the flying sheets of rain and the white haze torn out of the foaming brow by the rending hand of the wind. The seas swung fast and fierce, and serpentine pillars of white water leapt on high from the brig's side, and fled in shrieking clouds of sparkles to leeward.
"We shall lose the ship," said Hardy, with the coolness of desperation. "We could not launch that boat," and he pointed to the small, chubby fabric that lay stowed near the foremast; "and if we could she would not live a minute. What became of your boat?"
"I looked for her," she answered, "and saw her floating yonder in the moonlight. The captain fastened her rope to something and it slipped."
"Come out of the wet," said he. "We can do no good here. They'll keep the ship hove to, and the weather may clear by noon."
They entered the deck-house, and Hardy began to explore it, and in the two little cabins aft he found all the information he required about this abandoned brig. The log-book was dated down to two days earlier, and the entries were by a hand that spelt in the speech of Newcastle-on-Tyne. She was the Betsy, of Sunderland. The sea began to flow into her on a sudden to some gape or yarn of butt-end; you can't tell how it is until you dry-dock them. She would have gone down in an hour, despite her pump, but for the timber on which she floated. By the entries it was clear the crew had stuck to her for two days. Hardy then guessed that, growing weary of waiting for a ship, they had gone away in the boat. In one cabin he found a telescope and an old-fashioned quadrant, some wearing apparel, and a tall hat such as an old skipper might wear, bronzed by weather, and instantly suggesting to an active imagination a round, purple face, streaks of white whisker, a chocolate-coloured shawl round the throat, and a nose of the colour of a bottle of rum in the sun.
The old fagot was beginning to tumble about, the water foamed on the deck, and the launch of the surge at the staggering bow would strike a whole sheet of spume over the forestay, and then it fell in cataractal thunder. Hardy shut the deck-house door. He was something more than uneasy. Their alarming situation drove all thought of the wonder of it out of his head. If it came on harder and a heavy sea ran, would this old sieve hold together? would the deck-house cling to the deck? What would they do aboard the York? Candy was dead and she was without a navigator. The boatswain was a good practical seaman, and in him lay Hardy's hope. The boatswain was not the man to abandon the mate and the girl if he could help it. But suppose the ship was blown away so that when the weather cleared the brig was not in sight, what would, or rather, what could, the boatswain do? He had not the navigator's art, and might not therefore know how to pick the brig up. Their condition was frightful; the lazarette was awash; he could not seek food in flooded timber. He sat down beside the girl.
"I cannot realise that you are with me," she said.
Her dress was damp, and raindrops sparkled upon her face and hair. He drew out his handkerchief, which lay dry in his pocket, and softly passed it over her face and hair. She was loving him with her eyes. Never did human passion make the eyes of a woman more beautiful.
"You must be starving," he said.
"No, the captain brought some food and water."
"Tell me where it is," he cried, starting to his feet.
She told him where the breaker was and the glass, and the parcel of provisions. He rushed out. The contents of the breaker could not be hurt by the flying brine and rain; and mercifully the provisions had been so placed that the breaker and the planks between which the captain had placed them kept them dry.
Hardy ran into the deck-house with the food, put the glass in his pocket, and returned again with the breaker, from which only two or three drinks had been drawn.
"Thank God for this!" said he, and he felt almost happy.
She had but little knowledge of the sea, and could not interpret their condition to the full of its tragic significance. Her heart was almost joyous because her sweetheart was at her side; though death was hovering over that reeling fabric, its shadow was not upon her spirit. She was rescued by the man she loved from the horrors of loneliness on the wide sea, from imaginations which had been excited in her by those two mysterious strokes on the bell, and by her horrible association with a madman. The brig reeled and groaned to the sweep of the strong wind in the canvas, which was like to stream from the yards in hairs of cloth if the weather hardened. Again and again Hardy left the girl's side to step on deck and see how it was. The sky was a yellowish thickness down to within a mile, out of which the flying comber flashed, and the scene was a giddy pantomime of racing seas. This old bucket of brig was taking it gallantly over her bows. Hardy went forward to see if the only boat survived, and found her sitting secure, seized to eye-bolts, and ready for turning over and launching by tackles when the weather permitted.
This comforted him, and he stepped into the little caboose which some lee sea might hurl into the scuppers at any moment. Here, to his great delight, in a drawer he found some twenty or thirty ship's biscuits, a bottle half-full of rum, and a large piece of boiled pork on a tin dish; he also found a black-handled knife and fork on a shelf where stood a row of china plates, one of which he took down.
With this booty, half pocketed and half in arms, he returned to the deck-house, at whose door the girl had stood waiting for him, and spite of the flying brine, and the sickly reel of the half-foundered brig, and the thunder of the wind aloft, and their own dreadful situation, the vision of Bax's farm rose before his mind's eye as he saw her standing in that door in the old incomparable posture, the straw hat slightly cocked, the head a little on one side, the left hand on the hip.