Overland: A Novel

by John William De Forest

It would not be looked in the face; it blinded the eyes that strove to search it; it seemed to flap and beat them with harsh, churlish wings; it was as full of insult as the billows. Its cry was not multitudinous like that of the sea, but one and incessant and invariable, a long scream that almost hissed. On reaching the wreck, however, this shriek became hoarse with rage, and howled as it shook the rigging. It used the shrouds and stays of the still upright mainmast as an aeolian harp from which to draw horrible music. It made the tense ropes tremble and thrill, and tortured the spars until they wailed a death-song. Its force as felt by the shipwrecked ones was astonishing; it beat them about as if it were a sea, and bruised them against the shrouds and bulwarks; it asserted its mastery over them with the long-drawn cruelty of a tiger.

Just around the wreck the tumult of both wind and sea was of course more horrible than anywhere else. These enemies were infuriated by the sluggishness of the disabled hulk; they treated it as Indians treat a captive who cannot keep up with their march; they belabored it with blows and insulted it with howls. The brig, constantly tossed and dropped and shoved, was never still for an instant. It rolled heavily and somewhat slowly, but with perpetual jerks and jars, shuddering at every concussion. Its only regularity of movement lay in this, that the force of the wind and direction of the waves kept it larboard side on, drifting steadily toward the land.

One moment it was on a lofty crest, seeming as if it would be hurled into air. The next it was rolling in the trough of the sea, between a wave which hoarsely threatened to engulf it, and another which rushed seething and hissing from beneath the keel. The deck stood mostly at a steep angle, the weather bulwarks being at a considerable elevation, and the lee ones dipping the surges. Against this helpless and partially water-logged mass the combers rushed incessantly, hiding it every few seconds with sheets of spray, and often sweeping it with deluges. Around the stern and bow the rush of bubbling, roaring whirls was uninterrupted.

The motion was sickly and dismaying, like the throes of one who is dying. It could not be trusted; it dropped away under the feet traitorously; then, by an insolent surprise, it violently stopped or lifted. It was made the more uncertain and distressing by the swaying of the water which had entered the hull. Sometimes, too, the under boiling of a crushed billow caused a great lurch to windward; and after each of these struggles came a reel to leeward which threatened to turn the wreck bottom up; the breakers meantime leaping aboard with loud stampings as if resolved to beat through the deck.

During hours of this tossing and plunging, this tearing of the wind and battering of the sea, no one was lost. The sailors were clustered around the boats, some clinging to the davits and others lashed to belaying pins, exhausted by long labor, want of sleep, and constant soakings, but ready to fight for life to the last. Coronado and Garcia were still fast to the backstays, the former a good deal wilted by his hardships, and the latter whimpering. Thurstane had literally seized up Clara to the outside of the weather shrouds, so that, although she was terribly jammed by the wind, she could not be carried away by it, while she was above the heaviest pounding of the seas. His own position was alongside of her, secured in like manner by ends of cordage.

Sometimes he held her hand, and sometimes her waist. She could lean her shoulder against his, and she did so nearly all the while. Her eyes were fixed as often on his face as on the breakers which threatened her life. The few words that she spoke were more likely to be confessions of love than of terror. Now and then, when a billow of unusual size had slipped harmlessly by, he gratefully and almost joyously drew her close to him, uttering a few syllables of cheer. She thanked him by sending all her affectionate heart through her eyes into his.

Although there had been no explanations as to the past, they understood each other's present feelings. It could not be, he was sure, that she clung to him thus and looked at him thus merely because she wanted him to save her life. She had been detached from him by others, he said; she had been drawn away from thinking of him during his absence; she had been brought to judge, perhaps wisely, that she ought not to marry a poor man; but now that she saw him again she loved him as of old, and, standing at death's door, she felt at liberty to confess it. Thus did he translate to himself a past that had no existence. He still believed that she had dismissed him, and that she had done it with cruel harshness. But he could not resent her conduct; he believed what he did and forgave her; he believed it, and loved her.

There were moments when it was delightful for them to be as they were. As they held fast to each other, though drenched and exhausted and in mortal peril, they had a sensation as if they were warm. The hearts were beating hotly clean through the wet frames and the dripping clothing.

"Oh, my love!" was a phrase which Clara repeated many times with an air of deep content.

Once she said, "My love, I never thought to die so easily. How horrible it would have been without you!"