So we plodded on for a quarter of an hour or more, seeing nothing. I could but remember what agonies the unfortunate victims of this mischance must be suffering, if by any terrible hap they were swinging near us on those hungry seas, seeing help and safety at hand, and yet without a hope of rescue save by utter chance. And I thanked God for the wet deck below me that I had been cursing but a short hour back.
“I suppose the oil caught fire?” I asked Waller, as a slight lull gave one a chance to make oneself heard. “I shouldn’t have thought any ship could have flared like that in this sea.”
“She’s no whaler, my lord,” returned the skipper decidedly; “I can’t quite make out her build. More like a liner, only no liner would be down this far south. She had big engines, judging by her funnels. Looked for all the world like one of the old Black Cross Line.”
“The Black Cross Line!” I repeated wondering; “why, that’s a funny thing. Some friends of mine have gone cruising in one of their steamers round ——” and then the frightful horror of it took me by the throat, and I could have shrieked aloud. The Black Cross Line! The Madagascar was one of their boats, yacht-fitted for cruising. Oh! the thing was impossible. It was some coincidence that fate had raised up to frighten me. Waller just spoke in the haphazard way men do when they make comparisons. Of course, he had served on some vessel of the fleet, and his thoughts strayed back to it. And yet—and yet—no ordinary liner would be sailing these seas. And the Madagascar was expected in these latitudes. My God! it was a thing too wanton for even my luck to have conceived and brought about. No fate could be so devilish as to drag me out these weary thousands of miles to see my love’s agony of death in these desolate southern seas. No; no God that ruled the universe could allow it. I wrestled with the cold reason that insisted that these things could be, and that it was stretching the limits of mere coincidence to say they were not.
Into my tortures of despair a hail from Janson broke, and he swung the leaping flash-light from before our bow like a lightning streak. It streamed, a path of light across the billows, to port, and centered there on a tumbling, reeling object, buffeted by the bluster of the breakers, half hidden by the curtain of the spin-drift. Together Waller and I tore at the wheel, and slewed the ship towards it. Slowly, ever so languidly, the bows came round, and began to edge across to where the disc of light hovered unblinkingly. The dark object leaped up ever and anon, poised upon the dancing surge, only to drop back as if engulfed absolutely in the dark abyss behind the roll of the breaker. A white object fluttered, as we could see between these intermittent eclipses, streaming out against the yellow light glaringly. Round this, as we drew near, we could distinguish a huddle of misty outlines, animate or inanimate we could not tell.
We circled heavily to windward, and Waller roared his orders to the crew. The oil-bags were hung outboard, and as they dribbled lingeringly across the surface of the foam, the tossing died down as by magic. Half-a-dozen seamen clustered at the side, and with uplifted hands, swayed coils of rope above their heads. The engines slowed as the engine-room bells clanged, and we half stayed. Then with the blow of a great roller upon our lifting keel we staggered on again.
Still nearer we floundered, drifting broadside on, to the round yellow patch wherein the dim mass still danced uncertainly. Nearer still, and we hovered over it, reeling under the thunderous blows that the windward waves hammered upon us, and rolling nigh bulwarks under into the oily calm to leeward. Nearer again, and the ropes lashed out like whip-cords across the interval from the waiting crew, and were caught and hauled at desperately by the eager wretches aboard the pitching boat. Nearer now, almost under the churn of our wash, and the searchlight stared down unquivering into every crevice of its wild confusion, swathing each face in its glare. And white and set, silhouetted haggardly against the blackness of the outer night, the face of my love—my own dear love—looked up into my unbelieving eyes.
OUT ... OF THAT BLACK YEASTY WHIRLPOOL CAME MY LOVE.
Page [103].
I heard an exclamation from Waller as I flung myself from the wheel, and heard him grip his breath as he braced himself to meet the plunge of the ship alone. I was but human, and who was I to stand unmoved beside him there when the light of my eyes was swayed in the grasp of death before me? I took a leap on to the wet and slanting deck, and fell upon my hands, but rose beside the bulwark unhurt and panting. Then a hail from the boat reached across to us above the raving of the wind, and I saw our men tug frantically at a rope that tautened suddenly. A dark body came swiftly flying up to the bulwarks as the men hauled, and with eager hands we seized it, fending it from the jumping list of the timbers. A single glance showed me Lady Delahay’s face, sunken and shriveled with fifty new lines of haunting fear. Another hail, another strenuous pull, and Violet fell into the arms that Gerry held out to receive her. And then—ay, then, and till I go out into the eternal beyond, the memory of it will be vivid in my inmost soul—out of the swirl and uproar of that black, yeasty whirlpool came my love into my embrace, and lay upon my breast.