By the time that my task was finished the sun had sunk to within a hand’s breadth of the western horizon, while the wind had dwindled away until it had become the faintest zephyr, scarcely to be distinguished save by the slight ruffling of the water here and there where it touched, it being so nearly a flat calm that already great oily-looking patches of gleaming smoothness had appeared and were spreading momentarily through the faint blue ripplings that still betrayed a movement in the air. As for me, I was utterly exhausted with my long day’s toil under the roasting sun; every bone in my body was aching; I was in a burning fever, and was sick with the smart of my raw and bleeding hands. The old feeling of callousness and indifference to my fate was once more upon me, and as I gazed at the crazy-looking raft which I had constructed with such a lavish expenditure of painful toil, I smiled in grim irony of myself that I should have done so much to preserve that life which now seemed of such little worth, and which promised soon to become an unendurable burden to me. A reaction from the excitement that had sustained me during my labours had set in, and I am persuaded that had any further exertion been necessary for the preservation of my life I should not have undertaken it.
Meanwhile the felucca had sunk nearly to her covering-board, and might be expected to founder at any moment. I climbed laboriously upon the top of the closed skylight and took a last, long look round to ascertain whether anything had drifted into my range of view while I had been engaged upon the raft, but there was nothing; the horizon was bare throughout its entire circumference; so I climbed down again, and, staggering to the raft, flung myself down upon it, with my bundle of provision as a pillow, and patiently awaited the evanishment of the felucca.
Poor little craft! what a forlorn, weather-beaten, sea-washed wreck she looked, as she lay there wallowing wearily and—as it seemed to me—painfully upon the long, creeping, glassy undulations of the swell! How different from the trim, sturdy little hooker that had sailed seaward so confidently and saucily out of Kingston harbour a few years—no, not years, it must be months, or—was it only days—a few days ago? It seemed more like years than days to me, and yet—why, of course it could only be days. Heaven, how my head ached! how my brain seemed to throb and boil within my skull! and surely it was not blood—it must be fire that was coursing through my veins and causing my body to glow like white-hot steel! A big, glassy mound of swell came creeping along toward the felucca, and, as she rolled toward it, curled in over her covering-board and poured in a heavy torrent across her deck, swirling round my raft and shifting it a foot or two nearer the side; and as it swept past I dabbled one of my hands in it, and was dully surprised that the contact did not cause the water to hiss and boil! Another mountain of water came brimming over the deck of the shuddering craft and shifted the raft so far that it fairly overhung the covering-board, so that when the felucca rolled in the opposite direction the end of the raft not only dipped in the water but actually lifted and floated, the heave of the water sucking it perhaps another foot off the deck. The next two or three undulations passed harmlessly by,—the swing and roll of the felucca was such that she just happened to meet them at the right moment, though lagging a little at the last,—and then came another great liquid hill, towering high above the horizon, until the sinking sun was utterly obscured. On it swept toward the felucca, which had now slewed so that she faced the coming swell nearly stem-on, the water in her meanwhile rushing forward as she sank down into the trough until her stem-head was completely buried. Now she was meeting the breast of the on-coming swell, her bows still pinned down by the rush of water in her interior, and now the glistening green wave was upon her, sweeping aft along and athwart her deck, mounting over the coamings of the main hatchway and pouring down the opening in a smooth, hissing, four-sided cataract, snatching up the raft in its embrace and shooting it half a dozen fathoms clear of the doomed craft, and rushing along the deck until even the companion and the skylight were submerged. By that time the hull was full, the curious rectangular hollow in the surface of the water that marked the position of the main hatchway was filled, the hull was completely hidden save for a splintered stanchion that projected above water here and there. Then, as the wave passed, the bows of the felucca emerged, gleaming and dripping with snowy, foaming cascades, that poured off the uncovered portion of the deck. Higher and higher rose the bows out of the water, until some ten feet in length of the felucca was revealed, the deck gradually sloping until it assumed an almost perpendicular inclination, when slowly, silently, and glidingly, without a sob or gurgle of escaping air, the wreck slid backward and downward until it vanished beneath the waters, now gleaming in gold and crimson with the last rays of the setting sun. A few seconds later the great luminary also vanished, a sudden grey pallor overspread the ocean, and I found myself alone indeed, swaying upon that vast, heaving expanse, with nothing between me and death save the clumsy structure that I had so laboriously put together, and which now looked so insignificantly small that I caught myself wondering why my weight did not sink it.
But it did not; on the contrary, the raft proved to be surprisingly buoyant, riding over the great, glassy, round-backed hills of swell as dry as a bone, with a gentle, swaying movement that somehow seemed to soothe my fever-racked frame, so that the condition of semi-delirium that had possessed me just before the felucca foundered passed away and left me sufficiently self-possessed to recognise the necessity for eating and drinking, if I was to survive and get the better of my misfortunes. So I carefully opened my bundle and extracted from it a small quantity of sun-dried biscuit—which, thanks to the curiously gentle manner in which the raft had been launched, had received no further wetting—and proceeded to make such a meal as I could, washing it down with a sparing draught of wine. But although the biscuit had dried superficially, it was still wet and pasty in the middle, and horribly nauseous to the palate, so that I made but a poor meal; after which I stretched myself at full length upon the raft, and endeavoured to find relief in sleep. But, exhausted though I was, sleep would not come to me; on the contrary, my memory and imagination rapidly became painfully excited. I thought of Dominguez, and wondered whether he and his companions had escaped the hurricane; then I thought of Morillo and his fiendish hatred of me; and so my thoughts and fancies chased one another until they became all mingled together in an inextricable jumble; and through it all I heard myself singing, shouting, laughing, arguing upon impossible subjects with wholly imaginary persons, and performing I know not what other mad vagaries, until finally, I suppose, I must have become so utterly exhausted as to have subsided into a restless, feverish sleep.
Chapter Seventeen.
Captain Lemaitre.
Consciousness returned to me with the sensation of soft, delicate light impinging upon my closed eyelids, and I opened my eyes upon the picture of a sky of deepest, richest, purest blue, studded with wool-like tufts of fleecy cloud, opalescent with daintiest tints of primrose and pink as they sailed overhead with a slow and gentle movement out from the north-east. The eastern horizon was all aglow with ruddy orange light, up through which soared broad, fan-like rays of white radiance—the spokes of Phoebus’ chariot wheels—that, through a scale of countless subtle changes of tincture, gradually merged into the marvellously soft richness of the prismatic sky. A gentle breeze, warm and sweet as a woman’s breath, lightly ruffled the surface of the sea, that heaved in long, low hills of deep and brilliant liquid sapphire around me; and here and there a sea-bird wheeled and swept with plaintive cries, and slanting, motionless pinions, in long, easy, graceful curves over the slowly undulating swell.
I sat up and looked about me vaguely and wonderingly, for the moment forgetful of the circumstances that had placed me in so novel a situation, and at the instant a glowing point of golden fire flashed into view upon the eastern horizon, as the upper rim of the sun hove above the undulating rim of the sea; and in a moment the rippling blue of the laughing water was laced with a long, broadening wake of gleaming, dancing, liquid gold, as the great palpitating disc of the god of day left his ocean couch, and entered upon his journey through the heavens.