Five seconds—ten seconds—twenty—thirty—a minute; why did they not come? Was it possible that they had not heard him? He applied his mouth to the joint between the door and its jamb, and again shouted, “Talbot! Talbot! Talbot!” until his voice cracked with the strain he put upon it. Still no answer, no sound save the wail of the wind, the wash of the water, and the creaking of the ship’s timbers. “Good God! were they really gone? Was he, after all, actually left there to die alone?” He seized the handle of the door and tugged at it, fiercely, desperately, with the strength of a madman; but the stout lock stood firm, defying his utmost efforts. Then he suddenly remembered that the captain’s cabin was situated on the other side of the ship, with one door opening into the saloon and the other out on deck. With a single bound and a wild cry he crossed the saloon, and laying his hand upon the handle of the door of the captain’s cabin, turned it; the door swang open. Another bound and he was at the outer door; was it locked? No; a twist of the handle, and he stepped out on deck, with the water surging and splashing over his feet. But what cared he then for such a trifle; he was not even conscious of it. Swiftly his gaze swept round the decks: they were empty. In an instant he was at the gangway and peering over the side. No boats there; nothing but the empty tackles of the quarter-boats alternately swinging in the air and trailing in the water with the roll of the ship. “Where were the boats? Ha! towing astern, of course, it would simply mean destruction to them if they attempted to remain alongside in so heavy a sea.” In frantic haste he scrambled up the poop-ladder and rushed aft.
The boats were gone!
“Then it was an absolute fact that he was left there alone and powerless, doomed to watch with a horrible fascination the steady relentless approach of the Grim Enemy in his most terrible form, and to suffer the while in imaginative anticipation all the agonies of a thousand fiery deaths. Oh, God! it was too much. Mercy! mercy!” And with a demoniac yell he stood clutching and tugging at his hair with both hands, his teeth clenched, his eyes fixed and almost bursting from their sockets, foam bubbling from his lips—a raving madman!
This terrible state of distraction endured for nearly an hour, and then a species of numbness seized upon his faculties, his anxiety vanished, and he found his thoughts straying away and fixing themselves upon the veriest trivialities, conjuring up again before his mental vision acts and words which had never recurred to him since the day on which they had been done or said, mischievous practical jokes played off upon some unlucky school-fellow, mess-room jests and tattle, and a thousand other absurdities, at which he laughed aloud. Then disconnected words and phrases rushed helter-skelter through his seething brain, having no meaning, yet causing him the keenest annoyance, because he believed he had heard them before, and was anxious to connect them with the circumstances of their utterance. There was one in particular which especially tormented him. “Go for a cruise on your own account; go for a cruise on your own account,” his brain reiterated with merciless pertinacity. What did it mean? Where had he heard those words before, and who had uttered them? He felt absolutely certain that at some time or other he had heard that phrase spoken, and that it had some intimate connection with himself, that it somehow concerned him vitally. “There was something else, too, said at the same time—something about—about—what was it? Something about—ah! yes—spars and a raft—‘spars—raft—go for a cruise on your own account.’ What could it mean?” Finally a gleam of reason returned to his clouded mind, and he realised dimly that it was of the utmost importance that he should construct a raft and “go for a cruise on his own account.”
Having at last grasped this idea, he rose from the seat upon which he had flung himself, and upon which he seemed to himself to have been sitting as long as ever he could remember, and proceeded to carry it out. Sauntering leisurely off the poop, he descended to the waist of the ship, repeating eagerly over and over again the words “spars—raft,” lest he should forget them. There were several spare spars of various sizes, ranging from topmasts down to studding-sail booms, lashed to the deck on each side of the main-hatchway, and these he deliberately set to work to cast adrift. With considerable difficulty he at length succeeded in accomplishing this task, the result being that the spars were set rolling athwart the deck with the roll of the ship. Nothing daunted by this, however, he dashed recklessly in among them, and escaping, heaven knows how, from the incessant danger of fractured limbs, managed to drag out, one after the other, and launch overboard several of the lighter spars. Having commenced the work, he now toiled persistently on, allowing himself neither pause nor rest until he had disposed of every spar which his unaided strength would allow him to move. Then, panting, breathless, and reeking with perspiration, he walked to the side and peered over. The spars were nowhere to be seen; in his madness it had never occurred to him to secure them with ropes, and they had consequently drifted astern, and were of course tossing, some of them miles away, in the wake of the ship.
Somehow the loss of the spars caused him no distress; indeed, as a matter of fact, he had again forgotten all about the raft, and had continued to labour on, merely because it had not occurred to him to stop. Now that he had stopped, however, he began to be conscious not only of fatigue, but also of hunger, for he had tasted no food for nearly twenty-four hours, and had been working hard all through the night; so he made his way by instinct into the saloon and thence to the steward’s pantry, where he found an abundance of food, which he attacked ravenously. He then, after satisfying his hunger, bent his steps in the direction of his own state-room, and, entering, flung himself upon the bed, and soon sank into an uneasy and restless sleep.
Meanwhile the wind had been steadily dropping, the sea going down at the same time, and when, just before sunset, the glorious orb burst through and dispersed the curtain of storm-tattered clouds which had for so long a time overspread the sky, his golden rays fell upon the Princess Royal, now no longer rolling gunwale-under, but swinging with a slow stately motion over the long swell, and still drifting lazily to the eastward; her bows heading now this way, now that; her fore-mast burned through and towing over the side; and the flames in complete possession of her as far aft as the main-mast.
Walford’s sleep, if such it could be called, lasted all through the night and until just before the dawn. Then the overpowering heat and smoke, the loud crackling roar of the flames, and the fierce ruddy light streaming into the saloon and through the open state-room door aroused him. Sitting up in his berth, he looked around him in a bewildered way, passing his hand impatiently over his brow repeatedly, as if striving to recall distinctly the remembrance of something vaguely haunting his memory, but ever eluding his mental grasp. Glancing vacantly around him, the red glare of the flames fascinated his gaze, and he turned to watch the leaping, flickering flashes of light as they came and went with the sway and roll of the ship.
“Red,” he began to mutter, “red as blood. Blood? Who said that I had been the cause of bloodshed? Who dares to say that it is my hand which has splashed those walls—that floor—with such hideous stains? Ha! see how they leap and dance, rise and fall; the place is full of them. Horrible! horrible! Are they there to taunt me, to reproach me, to accuse me? I say I did not do it; I am not to blame. How could I know that—that—what was it? Let me think. ‘His blood is upon your hands.’ Whose hands? Not mine, I swear; I could not do it; I have not the nerve, the courage for it. ‘His blood is upon your hands.’ Who said that? It was not said to me. But stay—was I to blame—was it my fault? Ugh! what a terrible thing it was to see him standing there with the rope round his neck, to know that they were going to take away his life for a fault which perhaps he would never have committed but for me, and to feel that I had not the courage to intercede in his behalf; to stand there quaking with fear whilst he was driven to his death. No, no; I did not drive him to it; it was they; and I had no control over them—but—but—ah! I never tried to save him. Yes, yes, I am coming. Is that you, Thomson? Are you calling me?”
He sprang out of his berth, and, making his way through the captain’s cabin, passed out on deck. The first faint rays of the approaching dawn were lighting up the eastern horizon; but he saw them not; they were effectually hidden from his sight by the dazzling brightness of the flames and the dense clouds of smoke which went rolling heavily to leeward before the now scanty wind. The fire had made steady progress during the night, the hull forward being burned down nearly to the waters’ edge; while aft, the flames had extended to the after hatchway, and the main-mast, burnt through at its heel, had gone by the board and fallen forward into the fiercest of the fire, where it was rapidly consuming. Luckily for the wretched Walford, the ship was once more dead before the wind, and the flames were fanned forward; had her head been in the opposite direction, his retreat would have been effectually cut off. As it was, the heat was so intense that he instinctively avoided it by springing up the poop-ladder and making his way as far aft as possible.