"Here Jones stopped, turned suddenly round to the glare of the white water plashing upon the beach, and said no more. 'Why, Jones,' said I, 'is that all you've to tell? What came of them? For God's sake, yes—what was the upshot?' ''Tis enough to show how one bad thing breeds another, as I said, sir,' answered he. 'Probably in the end, though—at any rate I only fancy the rest—'tis a horrible dream to me, for a—a—squall came on when that shipmate of mine got so far, and we had to reef topsails. He went overboard off the yard that very night,' said Jones wildly.
"'The man must have been there,' said I, in a pointed way, 'to give all the particulars—he was the mate himself, Mr Jones!' He made no answer, but kept gazing out to sea. 'And how long was this ago?' I asked. 'Oh,' answered he, 'years enough ago, no doubt, sir, for both of us to be children, if you were born, Mr Collins'—and he turned his face to me as ghastly as the water toward the horizon he was looking at before—'at least I hope to God it was so—the man was a poor creature, sir, bless you, and old, as it seems to me—twice my own age at the time, Lieutenant Collins! At all events, though,' he went on, rambling in a strange way that made me think he was going out of his mind, 'he remembered well enough the first time he saw the white water coming down upon the island. He was hunting—hunting—through the bushes and up and down, and came up upon the crag.' 'Hunting?' I said. 'Yes, you didn't know how it lived, or where it kept, but every night it was on the look-out there. There was no one else, save the girl sleeping over beyond in the hut, and the man almost fancied the water of the sea was coming down to the rocks and the beach, like the Almighty himself, to show He was clear of all that had happened—if he could but have finished that brute, testifying like the very devil, he'd have been happy, he felt! Harkye,' said he, sinking his voice to a whisper, 'when he went back at daylight the woman was dying—she had borne a—what was as innocent as she was, poor, sweet, young heathen!'
"And if I hadn't guessed pretty well before that Jones was the man he'd been speaking of, his glittering eye and his stride from the beach would have shown it; apparently he forgot everything besides at that moment, till you'd have thought his mind gloated on this piece of his history. 'The woman!' I couldn't help saying, 'what woman? Had the rest left you in the boat, then?'
"Jones looked upon me fiercely, then turned away; when all of a sudden such a long unearthly quaver of a cry came down through the stillness, from somewhere aloft in the island, that at first I didn't know what to think, unless one of our look-out men had met with an accident, and tumbled down. 'Twas so dark where they were, however, there was no seeing them. Without looking for himself, Jones faced me, shivering all over. 'What is that, Mr Collins?' whispered he, catching my arm with a clutch like death; 'is there anything yonder—behind—behind—sir?' On the flat head of the crag north-westward, black against the pale glimmer over the very spot where we had stood half-an-hour before, to my utter horror, there was some creature or other sitting as if it looked toward the sea; and just then another wild, quivering, eddying sound came evidently enough from it, like a thing that would never end. It wasn't a human voice, that! my brain spun with it, as I glanced to Jones. 'Good heavens!' I said, 'what? But, by Jove! now I think of it; yes—'tis the howl of a dog—nothing else!' 'Eight—ten years!' said Jones, hoarsely, 'without food, too, and enough in that well to have poisoned whole gangs of men for twenty years—can it be an earthly being, sir?' The stare he gave me at the moment was more frightful than aught else, but I mentioned what Westwood and I had observed the day before.
"Before I well knew what he meant, Jones was stealing swiftly up the rising ground to the shoulder of it. I saw him get suddenly on a level with the creature, his musket aiming for it—there was a flash and a shot that left the height as bare as before—and next minute, with a short whimpering howl, the animal flew down the hill, while I heard Jones crashing through the bushes after it, till he was lost in the dark. Such a terrible notion it gave me of his strange story being true, whereas before I had almost fancied it partly a craze of his, from having lived here alone—that for a moment or two it seemed to my mind we were still in the midst of it. I hurried back to our post, and close upon morning Jones came over and lay down by himself, without a word, haggard and covered with sweat
"All next day the horizon on every side was clear of a single speck; no signs either of ship or schooner, till I began to wish we were out of it, hoping the Seringapatam had, after all, kept the old course for Bombay, in spite of us. I found Jones had warned the men not to get our water out of the tank; it being poisoned in a way fit to last for years, as the pirates knew how to do. For our parts, we had to amuse ourselves the best way we could, waiting for the schooner to come down again for us, which was the only thing I looked for now. That night the white appearance of the water to north and windward seemed a good deal gone, save where it hung like a haze in the direction it took off the island: the stars shone out, and in two or three nights more I found from Jones there would be nothing of it, which I hoped I should have to take on his word.
"At daybreak, however, our look-out could all of a sudden be seen hoisting the signal for a sail in sight, and waving his hat for us to come. No sooner had we hurried up, accordingly, than a sail could be made out in the south-east, hull down; and the schooner not being likely thereaway, a certain flutter in me at once set it down for the Indiaman at last, on her way far past the island for the open channel. Being broad daylight, too, with a fresh breeze blowing, we saw that Foster and his party, if they carried out their scheme, would have to wait till she was a long way to windward at night-time, in order to get clear off. In fact, I had everyone kept down off the height, lest the ship's glasses might possibly notice something; while, at the same time, we hadn't even a fire kindled to cook our victuals. I was watching her over the brow of the hill, through the telescope, when she evidently stood round on the other tack to get up to windward, which brought her gradually nearer. She was a large ship, under full canvas; and at last she rose her hull to the white streak below the bulwarks, till I began to think they intended passing the island to eastward to make the channel. I went down for Jones, and asked him how far the reefs actually ran out, when he told me there would probably be signs enough of them in such a strong breeze; besides, as he reminded me, if she was the Indiaman, it was the captain himself that had a chart of them; in which, from the particular nature of it—being an old buccaneering chart, as he thought—they would be laid down quite plainly.
"Indeed, when we both returned to the height, there were lines of surf to be noticed here and there, more than three miles out; and seeing her by that time so distinctly, a new uneasiness began to enter my head. There were no signals we could make, even if they didn't serve the other way; and, to tell the truth, I didn't much like the idea of being found there. Still, it was terrible to see her getting nearer and nearer, without the power of doing the least thing to warn her off; spreading and heightening before you, till you counted her sails, and saw the light betwixt them, with the breeze always strengthening off that side the island, and of course making it the safer for her to pass it to leeward. The blue surges rose longer to the foam at their crests, till one's eye got confused between them and the spots of surf rippling greenish over the tongues of reef; in fact, it wasn't far off being low-water at the time, and the whole was to be seen better from the height than elsewhere, stretched out like a floor that the breeze was sweeping across, raising a white dust where the blue melted into the light-brown tint of the sea to leeward. The breeze came so fresh that she even hauled down her sky-sails and fore-royal, railing off to go to leeward of the island. At the same moment, I made out with the glass that she was actually the Seringapatam, and also that she'd got a leadsman at work in the chains. Five minutes more, and she'd have gone time enough into the distinct brown-coloured swells to stand past the deep end: without help from the glass, I saw the sun sparkle in the spray from her black bows; she made a sliding forge ahead with her whole beam on to us; when, next moment, as if she had taken a sudden yaw and broached-to in the wind, she came fairly end on, showing the three piles of canvas in one. A wild boding of the truth crept on me as I sprang on the peak, waving my arms and stamping like a lunatic, as if they could hear me.
"The next instant she had fallen a little over, her foretopmast and main-to'gallantmast gone out of their places at the shock, and the heavy blue swells running to her highest side in a perfect heap of foam; while the spray rose in white jets across her weather bulwarks at every burst of them. The Indiaman had struck on a rib of reef, or else a spit of sand, near the very edge of the whole bank: had it been only high-water—as I had reason to believe afterwards—she'd have gone clear over it. As soon as the first horror of the thing was a little past, I looked, without a word, to Jones, and he to me. 'The fellows have come at last, certainly!' said he, in a serious enough tone. 'Mr Collins,' he added, 'the moment I set foot on ground here, I felt sure something would come out of it!' 'Get the men down at once, sir,' I said, 'and let's pull out to the ship!' 'Why, sir,' answered he, 'the breeze is likely to keep for some time as it is, and if she's completely gone, they'll be able to bring all hands safe ashore. If you take my advice, Mr Collins, you'll hold all fast, and show no signs of our being here at all, in case of having something or other to manage yet that may cost us harder!' It didn't need much thought to see this, in fact; and in place of going down, ten minutes after we were all close amongst the bushes on the slope, watching the wreck. What was at the bottom of all this I didn't know; whether Captain Finch had really got wind of Foster's scheme, and been playing with some hellish notion his heart failed him to carry out, or how it was; but what he was to make of this was the question.
"Well, toward afternoon, the wreck seemed pretty much in the same state, though by that time they had evidently given her up, for the boats were beginning to be hoisted out to leeward. We couldn't see what went on there, till one of them suddenly appeared, pulling out for the island, about three miles off; then the large launch after it. There were ladies' dresses to be made out in both, their cloaks and shawls fluttering bright to the breeze as the boats dipped in the short swells; and they were full an hour ere they got out of our sight, near the broad beach, on the level side, where the tide was ebbing fast again, making it a hard matter to pull the distance. Two more boats came off the ship, filled full of casks and other matters, save the crews; the rest of the passengers and men no doubt waiting for the launch and jolly-boat to go back and take them ashore—for, soon after, they both could be seen rounding the point on their way out. On coming within hail of the fresh boats, however, they apparently gave in, since we could see the two of them, to our great surprise, strike round, and make for the beach again with their shipmates, spite of signals from the wreck, and shots even fired after them. The breeze by that time flagged, leaving less of a sea against the ship's hull in the dead water from the other reefs, and she had fallen over again to leeward—a proof of her sticking fast where she struck, without much fear of parting very soon in such weather; but the sun was going down, and this being the first sign of foul play we had observed, it was plain at all events we should have to look sharp about us. We kept close up the height, bolted our cold junk and biscuit, washing down with a stiff caulker, and looked every man to his tools.