Under False Pretences: A Novel

by Adeline Sergeant

For a strange thing happened. Strange, at least, it seemed to him; but he understood it afterwards. The ship was really resting upon a ledge of the rock on which she had struck: there was little to be seen in the darkness except a white line of breakers and a mass of something beyond—was it land? The ship gave a sudden outward lurch. There went up a cry to Heaven—a last cry from most of the souls on board the ill-fated Arizona—and then came the end. The vessel fell over the edge of the rocky shelf into deep water and went down like a stone.

Percival was a good swimmer, and struck out vigorously, without any expectation, however, of being able to maintain himself in the water for more than a very short time. Escape from the tangled rigging and floating pieces of the wreck was a difficult matter; but the water was very calm inside the reef, and not at all cold. He tried to save a woman as she was swept past him: for a time he supported a child, but the effort to save it was useless. The little creature's head struck against some portion of the wreck and it was killed on the spot. Percival let the little dead face sink away from him into the water and swam further from the point where it went down.

"There must be others saved as well as myself," he thought, when he was able to think at all coherently. "At least, let me keep myself up till daylight. One may see some way of escape then." It had been three o'clock when the ship struck. He had remembered to look at his watch when he was first aroused. Would his strength last out till morning?

If his safety had depended entirely on his swimming powers he would have been, indeed in evil case. But long before the first faint streak of dawn appeared, it seemed to him that he was coming in contact with something solid—that there was something hard and firm beneath him which he could touch from time to time. The truth came to him at last. The tide was going down; and as it went down, it would leave a portion of the reef within his reach. There might be some unwashed point to which he could climb as soon as daylight came. At any rate, as the waters ebbed, he found that he could cling to the rock, and then, that he could even stand upon it, although the waves broke over him at every moment, and sometimes nearly washed him from his hold.

Never was daylight more anxiously awaited. It came at last; a faint, grey light in the east, a climbing flush of rose-colour, a host of crimson wavelets on a golden sea. And, as soon as the darkness disappeared, Percival found that his conjecture was a correct one. He was not alone. There were others beside himself who had won their way to even safer positions than his own. Portions of the reef on which the ship had struck were now to be plainly seen above the sea-level; it was plain that they were rarely touched by the salt water, for there was an attempt at vegetation in one or two places. And beyond the reef Percival saw land, and land that it would be easy enough to reach.

He turned to look for the remains of the Arizona, but there was little to be seen. The tops of her masts were visible only in the deep water near the reef. Spars, barrels, articles of furniture, could here and there be distinguished; nothing of value nor of interest. Percival determined to try for the shore. But first he would see whether he could help the other men whom he had discerned at a little distance from him on a higher portion of the reef.

He crept out to them, feeling his way cautiously, and not sure whether he might not be swept off his feet by the force of the waves. To his surprise, when he reached the two men, he found that they were two of the survivors from the wreck of the Falcon. One of them was Thomas Jackson, and the other was Mackay, the steerage passenger.

"It's plain you weren't born to be drowned," said Percival, addressing Jackson, familiarly.

"No, sir, it don't seem like it," returned the man. "There's one or two more that have saved themselves by swimming, too, I fancy. We'd better make land while we can, sir."

"Your friend's not able to help himself much, is he?" said Percival, with a sharp glance at the bearded face of the steerage passenger.