It was whilst he stood thus vainly striving to recover his self-control—a growing conviction of the impossibility of escape meanwhile forcing itself with momentarily increasing intensity upon him—that a huge moving mass suddenly swung into view round a projection on his left, and a simultaneous cry of surprise from his two waiting and wondering companions told that they too had caught sight of it. It was the Flying Fish slowly drifting round the mountain, stern on, and that too so closely that her propeller actually touched the rocky projection, some thirty feet off, as she passed it. The force of the contact, though very gentle, was sufficient to give her a slight outward impulse; and though she continued to drift round toward the rock to which the adventurers were clinging, it appeared as though she would pass it at such a distance as would just preclude the possibility of their reaching her.
“We must shout,” exclaimed Mildmay, finding his voice all at once; “we must shout to George. Perhaps our cries may reach him and bring him on deck, in which event we shall be able to tell him what to do.”
And shout they did, simultaneously, and at the full power of their lungs; but it was of no avail—George and the cook were both at that moment in the innermost recesses of the ship busily engaged on their respective avocations, and in all likelihood profoundly ignorant of the state of affairs. At all events there was no response, and the ship went drifting slowly past. She was floating almost level with the little party clinging there desperately to the face of the naked rock, the boss of her propeller being at just about the same height as the colonel’s head. As she drove almost imperceptibly along it seemed to Mildmay that she was also being drawn inward toward the face of the rock; and he began to ask himself whether an active man might not, after all, be able to overleap the intervening space and grasp one of the propeller-blades. The craft was so tantalisingly close that it seemed to him almost a cowardly thing to let this chance pass; yet, when he glanced downward at the darkening abyss over which he hung, he shudderingly confessed to himself that the leap was an impossibility, and that they must retreat upward with all speed to gain some comparatively secure spot upon which to pass the night now gathering about them. He was about to put this thought into words, and to propose an immediate upward movement, when he turned to take (as he believed) a last parting glance at the Flying Fish, now immediately behind him. In doing so his fingers slipped and lost their grip upon the rock, and before he could recover his hold he found himself going over backwards. He felt that he was lost; but, with the instinct of self-preservation, turned quickly on his feet, and as they too were slipping off the minute projections on which he had been supporting himself, he made a vigorous desperate spring outward from the face of the rock, reaching forward into space toward the curved end of the propeller-blade which he saw in front of him. Despair must have leant him extra strength when making that last awful leap, for, though the distance was fully twenty feet, he actually reached and succeeded in grasping the end of the blade. To swing himself up astride upon it was the work of a moment; and then he paused to rest and recover from this last shock to his nervous system. Not for long, however; he knew that his companions must be nearly exhausted, and that their lives now probably depended solely on his activity and the celerity with which he might be able to go to their rescue; so he pulled himself together, shouted to them the encouraging news of his success, and then devoted himself in earnest to the difficult and perilous task of reaching the deck of the ship. He had hardly begun this task before he realised that it was one which would tax his strength, energy, and ingenuity to their utmost extent. The propeller-blade upon which he was perched happened to be at the very lowest point of its revolution; and his first task must be to reach the boss, which was about seventeen feet above his head. The peculiar shape of the blades rendered it impossible for him to achieve this by climbing up the edge of any one of them; his only chance consisted in working his way from one to the other. The blade to his right seemed to him the most easily accessible, and he forthwith set about the work of reaching it. To do this he had to climb about ten feet up the fore edge of the blade upon which he was perched, and to anyone but a sailor this would have been an impossibility. Even to Mildmay it proved a most difficult as well as hazardous feat; but after a couple of failures success crowned his efforts, and he found himself high enough to reach the point of the next blade. This was so far away, however, that he could only touch it with his finger-tips, and in order to grasp it—even with one hand—he found that he would be obliged to overbalance himself so much that, if he missed, a fall must inevitably result. The risk had to be taken, however; and he took it, fortunately with success. This left him swinging by one hand from the point of the propeller-blade; but in another second he had grasped it with his other hand, and, after a struggle or two, managed to get fairly astride the edge. His next task was to work himself in along the edge until he was abreast the after edge of the blade he had just left, when he had to reach over to the utmost stretch of his arms, grasp the blade, and in that awkward position scramble to his feet. This he also managed, when a further comparatively easy climb enabled him to reach the boss. He now found himself standing on the boss and leaning against the smooth elliptical stern of the vessel. His next task was to climb up over this smooth rounded surface and so make his way along the upper surface of the hull to the superstructure, when he would soon find means to reach the deck. This also, though a task of immense difficulty, he actually accomplished; finally reaching the deck in so prostrate a condition that he fell insensible before he could gain the pilot-house.
His fit of insensibility, however, did not last long—the latent consciousness of responsibility effectually prevented that; and he was soon able to rise and stagger to the pilot-house. Once there, he forthwith made his way below and availed himself of the stimulus afforded by a glass of neat brandy, after which he felt equal to the task which yet lay before him. Having swallowed the brandy, he at once returned to the deck and shifted the rope-ladder over to the larboard gangway. He then looked about him to ascertain the whereabouts of the ship, which he found to be about half a mile distant from the spot where he had left his friends, and gradually drifting further away under the influence of a gentle night-breeze which had just sprung up—thus proving indubitably that, had he not reached the craft when he did, she would probably have been lost to them all for ever. Having attached the ladder securely, Mildmay next entered the pilot-house, and—night having by this time completely fallen—turned on the electric lights; after which he set the engines in motion and returned to the side of the mountain in search of the two companions he had left clinging in so dangerous a situation. These were found just as he had left them, and were speedily taken on board—they too being completely overcome by the revulsion of feeling following upon their rescue.
A glass of brandy each quickly revived them, however, and then they devoted their united energies to a search for the baronet. With some little difficulty the scene of the accident was discovered; and a minute or two later Sir Reginald was observed, not dead, as they had feared to find him, but sitting up on the snow-bank upon which he had fallen, a prisoner to the spot, from the fact that there was no possible way of retreat from it either upward or downward; but in other respects very little the worse for his terrible fall, the snow, happily, proving so deep that it served as a cushion or buffer, allowing the baronet to escape with only a few somewhat severe bruises. The adventure being thus happily terminated, the ship was quickly navigated to the berth she had occupied on the preceding night; and the party then sat down to dinner, over which meal they came to the conclusion that they had had enough mountain-climbing that day to suffice them for the remainder of their lives.
Chapter Twenty Four.
The Foundering of the “Mercury.”
The nerves of the adventurers were so shaken by the vicissitudes of their day’s adventure that they found it impossible to obtain sound and refreshing sleep that night, notwithstanding their terrible fatigue; their slumbers were broken by horrible dreams, and further disturbed by the cries of wild beasts of various descriptions which kept the forest in a perfect uproar the whole night long. So great, indeed, was the disturbance from the latter cause, that, on comparing notes over the breakfast table next morning, the party came to the conclusion that they must be in a district literally swarming with big game, and that it might be worth their while to spend a few days there hunting. This they did; with such success that their stay was prolonged for nearly a month, by which time they had collected such a quantity of skins, horns, tusks, skulls, and other trophies of the chase that even they, inveterate sportsmen as they were, acknowledged themselves satisfied. The professor, meanwhile, had devoted himself enthusiastically to the forming of a collection of rare birds, beetles, and butterflies, in which pursuit he had been fully as successful as his companions in theirs; so that when the time came for them to leave this delightful spot they did so in the highest possible state of health and spirits; the remembrance of their ugly adventure on Everest disturbing them no more than would the memory of a troublesome dream.