Allen meanwhile was still on the doomed ship. He was asleep when she struck, and the shock flung him out of his bunk against the opposite bulk-head. Bruised and stunned as he was, he realised what had happened. The floor of the cabin was at a sharp angle, and the bilge timbers groaned and cracked as each pitiless sea lifted the ship and dashed her on the reef with a grinding crash. To steady himself against the shocks he planted his foot against a box over which the water was washing. It was Benion’s strong box, that had slid from its lashings under the bunk. What were life worth, he thought, to either of them if this were lost? It were better to die trying to save their fortune than to battle for life, leaving this to certain destruction in the wreck. He grasped it by the iron handle and dragged it up the companion, using all his strength, for it was heavy, and the ladder slanted at a sharp angle. Holding on by the brass rail, he looked out upon the slippery decks. The top-mast, with all its ruin of yards, ropes, and blocks, swung heavily by the wire-rigging and thrashed the deck at every heave of the hull, and several of the crew were hacking at the foremast with an axe. Nearer to him, in the waist of the ship, three men seemed to be making a raft by lashing some spare planks and spars together. Suddenly, with a splitting noise, the foremast with all its wreckage went overboard, and the schooner partly righted herself. As each sea lifted her she gradually came up head to wind, for both anchors had been let go; and she lay there for a space without lifting to the seas, for she was now waterlogged. The crest of every sea swept the decks; but Allen, though blinded and suffocated by the spray, still held firmly to the cabin-trunk, which protected him from the waves. But a huge sea, gathering volume in the shallow water, swept roaring down upon them, and trembling over the bows, carried everything before it. The whole cabin-trunk gave way with the wrench, and Allen suddenly found himself up to his neck in the water, away from the ship, but still clinging to the brass rail of the cabin-trunk, and still holding the iron handle of Benion’s box in his right hand. The water splashing in his face impeded both breath and vision, but he thought he could see the dim outline of the ship to windward. The water was almost calm around him, for he was floating inside the reef, but there was sufficient “send” in the waves to set him steadily inshore. At last the cabin-trunk grounded, rose again for the next wave, struck more heavily, and remained immovable, while the waves surged powerlessly round it. The water was only waist-deep, and Allen, still grasping the precious box, stumbled over the rough coral until he found himself on dry sand, dripping and chilled to the bone by the wind, warm though it was. A dark wall of bush close to him recalled grim stories of cannibal natives. If he was in danger, the first thing to be done was to hide the box. Full of this one thought, he dragged it by the handle through the soft sand into the shadow of the trees. The ground was carpeted with the leaves of some trailing vine, that caught his feet and would have thrown him had he not recovered himself against the trunk of a tree. He felt it with his hands. It was gnarled and knotted, and of so great a girth that his extended arms would not reach the half of its circumference. This would be a landmark, he thought, for it must be larger than its fellows. He knelt down and plunged his hands into the sand at the root, tearing up the vines, and scooping out a hole large enough to hold the box; but when he began to lower it into the hole the corners caught the loose sand and half-filled the hole. A third of the box remained above ground, but he dared not delay, for a nervous terror of interruption had seized him. Through the roar of the wind he fancied that he heard other sounds. He shovelled the loose sand against the sides of the box, and, tearing up the vines within his reach, he piled them above it. Then he stood up with a strange feeling of safety and self-reliance. Come what might, if he and Benion escaped, their money was safe. But where was Benion? He remembered for the first time that he had not seen him since the evening. What if he was the only man left alive? It was a new thought, terrible at first until he remembered the box buried at his feet. If Benion were dead, then all would be his lawfully and without blame. What possibilities would life then have? He had often dreamed on the diggings of what it would be to be rich, but the possibility of riches for him had never seemed near until this moment. He knew the disloyalty of the thought, for close upon its heels came a half-formed wish that Benion might be dead. Gratitude had not died out before this great temptation, for he could be grateful to his benefactor’s memory if he could no longer show gratitude to him in the flesh.
While he stood irresolute he heard a distant shout. Not doubting that it came from one of his comrades, he started along the shore in the direction of the sound. In two hundred yards he came to a rocky bluff from which great boulders had fallen upon the sand, forming a barrier right down to the sea at low tide. Through these the sea was dashing furiously, and it was so dark that he dared go no farther. He sat down in a recess hollowed out of the cliff-foot by the sea at high tide, and sheltered from the wind: his exhaustion conquered, and he fell asleep in his wet clothes as he was.
When he awoke the eastern sky was grey, and broad golden streaks shot up from the horizon. The wind had moderated, but great masses of flying scud told what the night had been. He was stiff and chilled from his wet clothes, but he crawled out from his shelter, and found himself face to face with a man, dripping, cold, and miserable as himself. It was Jansen, one of the sailors, a Norwegian, one of those Allen had seen trying to make a raft. He too had spent the night lying on the shore, and he believed that besides themselves none were left alive. While they were talking the sun rose, and straightway their prospects assumed a less gloomy hue. The wreck was hidden from them by a curve of the shore heavily timbered. They ran to this and saw the schooner dismasted, lying helpless on her side. Every sea washed over her, and she seemed to be breaking up. Landwards the forest was a mere fringe, clothing the foot of great basaltic cliffs that rose sheer to a plateau which they could not see. Every crevice of the limestone had been seized upon by enterprising tree-ferns and banian-trees, and only where the face was so smooth as to afford no clinging-place was the rock naked.
The two men wandered aimlessly along the narrow strip of sand left between the high tide and the trees, and upon rounding a projecting tree, came suddenly upon a thin column of smoke rising from the outer edge of the bush. Their first instinct was to take cover behind a tree, for they had the fear of cannibals ever before their eyes, but Allen caught sight of a figure crouching among the undergrowth. Cannibal savages do not wear blouses and trousers, nor even red beards, and to whom could such a beard belong but Macevoy, A.B.? They found a group of their shipmates crouching half-naked round a fire of drift-wood, destined, when the smoke should subside, to dry their clothes.
“Jansen and Allen! That makes fourteen. There are only five missing now. Could Castles swim, do any of you know?” asked the boatswain.
“Castles went to the bottom, if he had any swimming to do,” growled Macevoy.
The men had got ashore at different times during the night,—some clinging to spars and oars, and others, washed off before they could seize anything, had swum until they drifted into shallow water. Five only were missing—Benion, the cook, and three seamen; but they might have landed on a different part of the beach. The captain now proposed that two parties should follow the beach in opposite directions, to look for the missing men and to find fresh water, while the rest collected wood for a raft on which to bring off provisions from the wreck before she broke up, for they were desperately hungry. Allen chose to stay with the main body, who soon collected enough fallen timber for a raft, and lashed the logs together with the thick creepers that hung in festoons from every tree. When it was finished the tide had ebbed too far for launching it, and they could therefore do nothing more until the afternoon. They were about to disperse in search of food when one of the search-parties returned carrying a body between them.
“Who is it?” shouted the captain.
“Benion,” answered the leading man.
Allen felt a thrill of guilty anticipation. Then he was dead after all, and the gold would be his! The party came up and laid their burden gently down. He was still alive. They had found him lying, helpless and half-stunned, on the beach with a sprained ankle, and only strength enough to crawl out of reach of the high tide.