The Coward: A Novel of Society and the Field in 1863

by Henry Morford

"Why, we are in danger, I suppose—serious danger!" was the reply. "Do you not feel the change in the motion of the boat? We are in the trough of the sea, without steam, and as near as I can make out through the mist, driving on the Irish coast with more rapidity than we bargained for!"

"Heavens!" was the very natural exclamation in reply, as the American managed with some difficulty to throw on the one or two articles of clothing of which he had divested himself.

"I suppose that it is a bad job," the journalist continued, "and what just now makes me feel peculiarly bad about it is the fact that I was the means of inducing you to come on board, and that if any thing serious should happen—"

"Hush! not a word of that!" said the lawyer, appreciating fully that chivalrous generosity which after conferring a great favor could take blame to itself for any peril growing out of that favor. "Hush! You have treated me, Mr. Fitzmaurice, with great kindness, and I hope you will believe me man enough not to misunderstand our relative positions in any thing that may occur."

Fitzmaurice, who seemed to be relieved by the words, but who certainly was laboring under an amount of depression not incident alone to any peril in which he stood personally involved,—grasped his hand with something more than the ordinary pressure of brief acquaintance. The motion of the boat, alternately a roll and then a heavy plunge, had now become absolutely fearful, intermingled with occasional repetitions of that crashing blow which had started the American from his slumber; but holding fast of each other and of various substantial objects that fell in their course, the two young men reached the companion way and the deck, the journalist detailing meanwhile, in hasty and broken words, what he knew of the extent of the difficulty in which they were involved.

Up to fifteen or twenty minutes before, the little Emerald, a capital sea-boat but possessed of but a single engine (which description of single engine boats, by the way, should never be allowed to make voyages by open sea, except under the especial pilotage of one Malthus), had been making good weather, though the blow had increased to a gale and the waves of the Irish Channel increased to such size that they seemed to be opposed to the Union and determined to make an eternal severance of the two islands. Fitzmaurice had himself awoke about an hour before, and gone upon deck because unable to sleep longer; and he had consequently become aware, a little before the American in his berth did so, of an accident to the vessel. One moment of cessation of the plunging roll with which she had been ploughing ahead of the waves breaking on her larboard quarter—a moment of almost perfect stillness, as if the little vessel lay moored in some quiet haven—then a sudden veering round and that terrible crash and shock of the waves under the counter, the wheel, and along the whole side, which told that she was lying helpless in the trough of the sea, a marine Samson as thoroughly disabled as if she had been shorn of all her strength at once by the shears of one of the Fates. A word from one of the officers, the moment afterwards, had told him of some disarrangement of the engine, consequent on the severe strain of the heavy sea upon the boat; and he had then been left to study out for himself the amount of peril that might be involved, and to observe the coolness with which officers and men devoted themselves to a task which might or might not be successful—which might terminate at any moment in one of those terrible seas breaching the little vessel and foundering her as if she had indeed been nothing but a yawl-boat! It was at this stage that he had come down and wakened his friend of a few hours, feeling some responsibility for his safety (as well as a presentiment with regard to him which he by no means expressed in words), and leaving the Queen's messenger to pursue his dreamless sleep until it should end in Kingstown harbor or at the bottom of "Davy Jones' locker."

By the time all this had been expressed in one tenth the number of words here employed, they had reached the deck, and certainly the prospect there was any thing but one calculated to reassure either. The Emerald was rolling wheel-houses under, in the trough of the sea, but so far mysteriously relieving herself through the scuppers as it seemed impossible that she should do. Two men were at the wheel, but they stood necessarily idle. Forward were half a dozen men, holding on to keep from going overboard at the first lurch. Even above the roar of the storm could be heard the sharp clink of hammers coming up from the engine-room and each sounding yet one pulse-beat of Hope. The south-easter was howling with demoniac fury, wailing through the rigging as if singing requiems for them all in advance, and driving before it the thin mists that shut away any idea of the sky. By the light on deck and on the troubled expanse of water eastward it was evident that day was breaking; and it was through a knowledge of that fact and of the rate of speed at which they had been steaming and driving partially before the wind all night, that Fitzmaurice had made his calculation expressed below, that they must be close on the Irish coast, a lee-shore, in such a blow, of no pleasant character.

Such was the situation—a deplorable one, as any one can readily perceive who has ever seen its precise parallel; yet not entirely a hopeless one, for they might not be so close upon the coast as had been feared, and the engine might yet be thrown again into gear before the little vessel foundered and in time to claw off from the danger lying to leeward. Fitzmaurice had seen the position before: the American saw it at once through his own eyes and from the explanations given him by the journalist. The moment was not favorable for conversation, in that perilous motion, that roar of wind and wave and that suspense of mind; and the two young men held none except in a few words almost shouted to each other, but stood far aft on the larboard quarter, waiting calmly as two men with human instincts could be expected to wait for—what Heaven only knew! The face of the Anglo-Irishman was almost thoughtlessly calm, in spite of the anxiety which he had so plainly expressed: that of the American was dark, his lips set and his brow contracted, but there was no sign of shrinking and no indication of that basest passion, fear! Who could believe that the man standing there in the gray light of morning and awaiting without one apparent tremor of the muscles what might be an immediate and a painful death, bore a name that had been so lately dishonored by the most abject cowardice?

Suddenly there was a cry which has blanched many a cheek and made many a lip tremble since Noah made his first sea-voyage in the Ark: "Land on the starboard quarter!" followed by another and yet more startling call: "Breakers to leeward!"

Fitzmaurice and the American both turned instantly in the direction indicated, as was inevitable; and then they saw that the warning cry from the look-out was not the result of any illusion. The daylight was rapidly broadening, the mist had for the moment driven away leeward; and apparently not more than a mile away rose a huge dark headland assuming the proportions of a mountain, while at its base and in the exact direction towards which the doomed vessel was drifting, the sea was breaking in wreaths of white foam over ledges of rock which seemed to be already so near that they must go grinding and crashing upon them before the lapse of five minutes. They felt that the water shoaled, too, for the plunging roll of the disabled steamer grew every moment more terrible, and just as the cry was given she was breached at the waist by a sea from which she did not immediately clear herself. It only needed an eye that had ever scanned peril by sea and shore, to know at that moment that the Emerald and all on board were as certainly doomed, in all human probability, as if the one had been already broken up and scattered along the coast in fragments and the others made food for fishes along the rocks of Ireland's Eye!