The Castaways

by Harry Collingwood

“A very wise precaution,” I commented. “But this increases our difficulties somewhat: I greatly doubt whether mother and child will be able to make the passage together. Madame will scarcely have the strength to hold herself and the baby safely at the same time; the little one might be washed out of her arms and lost.”

“Oh, monsieur, what shall I do?” wailed the poor, terrified creature. “Have we to cross by that rope?”

“I fear there is no other way,” I replied gently.

“I can never do it! I can never do it!” she ejaculated despairingly. “The sea will drag me and my little Mimi off, and we shall be drowned!”

“Under the circumstances, monsieur, there seems to be only one thing for it,” said I; “you must go first, carrying the child, and as soon as you are safe, I will follow with madame. Is that arrangement to your liking?”

The man intimated that it was; and forthwith we commenced the preparations necessary to secure for the poor little wailing mite of humanity a chance of surviving the fearful journey. And a fearful journey it certainly was, even for a strong man; how much more so, then, for a weak, terrified woman, or a helpless child, less than a year old?

The arrangement was this: The City of Cawnpore’s to wing-hawser was now stretched between the two vessels, one end being made fast to the barque’s mizenmast, while the other end led in over the City of Cawnpore’s bows, through a warping chock, and was secured somewhere inboard, probably to the windlass bitts—it would have been much more convenient had the hawser been made fast to the foremast, about fifteen or twenty feet from the deck; but a very heavy intermittent strain was being thrown upon it, and I imagined that Dacre did not care to run the risk of springing so important a spar. The effect of this was that the City of Cawnpore, with both topsails thrown flat aback, was now actually riding by her hawser to the barque, as to a sea anchor, the deeply-submerged hull of the French craft offering sufficient resistance to the drift of the City of Cawnpore to keep the hawser taut, except at the rather frequent intervals when the heave of the sea flung the barque far enough to leeward to temporarily slacken it. And it was by means of this hawser—at one moment taut as a bar, and, at the next, sagging slack enough to dip into the water—that the Frenchmen were to be hauled from their ship to ours.

Meanwhile, the work of securing the hawser aboard the City of Cawnpore, and the clearing away of the travelling-gear, had been going briskly forward, and at the moment when the Frenchman and I came to an understanding I saw the slung bosun’s chair hove over the City’s bows and come sliding along the hawser toward us. The French skipper saw it, too; and tenderly taking the child from the arms of his almost swooning wife, he carefully wrapped it in his jacket, which he removed for the purpose, and then, with my assistance, securely lashed the bundle to his body. The bosun’s chair had by this time arrived at the barque’s taffrail, and was awaiting its first freight; so, as there was no time to lose, I hustled the poor fellow away from his wife, assisted him into the chair, saw that he had a good grip with both hands, and waved for Murgatroyd to haul away, which he instantly did. I next turned to the lady, and begged her to once more shelter herself temporarily in the tarpaulin, my object being to spare her the sight of the terrible passage of her husband and child over and through that narrow stretch of ravening sea. But, as it happened, there was no need for my solicitude; she cast one glance at the swaying, dangling figure of her husband, and then, with a wild, wailing shriek, flung herself upon her knees, with her hands clasped over her eyes.

And truly a terrible sight it was for a woman to contemplate, especially with the knowledge that she would presently be obliged to herself undertake the dreadful journey. The sea was running so high that, close to each other as we were, when the crest of a wave interposed between us and the City of Cawnpore the latter was hidden half-way to the height of her tops; and the headlong fury with which each wave came sweeping down upon us, foam-capped, and with arching crest, was alone enough to strike terror to the stoutest heart. That, however, was not the worst of it; for although Murgatroyd might safely be trusted to exercise the utmost judgment in the manipulation of the hauling-line, there were moments when—the two craft being upon the opposite slopes of a huge surge, with the hawser strained taut from one to the other—any luckless individual who might be so unfortunate as to be caught half-way between the two vessels would be momentarily buried some thirty feet deep in the heart of the rushing hill of water, and about equally exposed to the two dangers of suffocation or of being swept off beyond the reach of rescue, and drowned out of hand. This double danger overtook the unfortunate French skipper and his baby, but they got through all right, the child escaping suffocation mainly in consequence of the careful and secure manner in which she had been enveloped in her father’s coat.

Then came madame’s turn. It was impossible to so effectually enwrap her as had been the case with the child, but I did the best I could with a strip of the tarpaulin over her head and shoulders, well secured round her body with a length of the main-topgallant brace, and then, lashing her firmly to my own body, I took my place in the bosun’s chair, wrapping my arms tightly round my quaking companion, and then taking a firm grip upon the lanyards of the chair. The next instant I was whirled off the barque’s taffrail, and found myself dangling close over the seething white water between the two vessels. Then, while I was in the very act of shouting a few encouraging words through the tarpaulin to my companion, I heard the roaring crash of a heavy sea as it struck and swept over the unfortunate barque from stem to stern, and the next instant I felt the water envelop me and whirl and drag me hither and thither with a strength that it seemed impossible to resist; then as suddenly I found myself in the air again, with the great wave-crest rushing and roaring away from me toward the ship, the topmast-heads only of which were visible above the foaming ridge of water that had just swept past me. In another second or two, however, the end of her flying-jib-boom reared itself high above the seething wave-crest, her sharp bows, smothered in spray, quickly followed, and then the entire hull of the ship hung balanced for an instant upon the top of the wave ere her bows dipped, revealing the full length of her deck crowded with people, every one of them with their faces turned in my direction. A few more jerks and swings, every one of which seemed imbued with a devilish desire to unseat and hurl myself and my companion to destruction, and we were hauled safely up on to the rail of the City of Cawnpore—to an accompaniment of triumphant cheers from the spectators—and quickly released.