Four Bells: A Tale of the Caribbean

by Ralph Delahaye Paine

The ship was deserted. This he ascertained in a minute or two. Running to the side, he was thankful to find the second boat well away without mishap. They were yelling to him to jump. Just then a tall wave flashed and toppled across the deck. It washed him from his feet, rolled him over and over, and flung him against a skylight. The breath was knocked out of him. He felt the ship lurch and quiver in the last throes. A rending concussion tore her apart. Clouds of steam gushed through gratings and hatches. The stern rose until it stood almost on end as the Valkyrie plunged under the sea.

Whirling like a chip, Richard Cary was sucked down with her. He was unable to help himself. Some convulsion of water spewed him to the surface in an eddy of foam and vapor. He was too feeble to swim or to cry out. Instinctively he kept himself afloat. All sense of direction was lost. He did not know where the boats were. The sea was much rougher than had appeared from the deck. It battered and strangled him. It bore him down into dark, seething valleys of water and tossed him up again.

A broken piece of timber scraped his shoulder. He thrust an arm over it and so eased his exertions. He tried to shout, but his voice was weak and broken. Frequently the water submerged him. Suffocation constricted his lungs. The strength had been hammered out of him. Once he caught a glimpse of the masthead light of the steamer which had sunk the Valkyrie, as though she were groping about to find the survivors.

He took it for granted that his own boats were searching for him. So black and windy was the sea that it was very possible to miss him. They would expect to be guided by his strong voice calling to them. He was drifting away from the spot where the ship had gone down. His energies were so benumbed that the loudest sound he could make was like the cry of a gull, unheard above the hissing clamor of the seas that broke over his head.

For perhaps an hour Richard Cary clung to the drifting piece of timber. Once or twice he fancied he saw the shape of a boat, but it was well to windward of him and his voice was blown away. Finding a man afloat in such a night as this was merest chance. Loyal as his shipmates were, they were men accustomed to the hazards of the sea and it would be concluded that he had been drowned with his ship. It was a miracle, as he well knew, that he had been cast up alive.

He did not see the masthead light again. Probably the Italian freighter had picked up the boats and resumed her voyage. All hope of rescue was gone. Unless the sea quieted, he could not struggle much longer. Daylight was far away. Ramon Bazán and his ship, both gone, and now it was Richard Cary’s turn. But they were old and worn-out. They had lived their lives. He had been so strong in the sense of invincibility, so secure in the supremacy of youth and strength. Life and youth, love and strength and ambition, the sea extinguishes them all.

Tenaciously enduring, refusing to surrender until the last gasp, he heard the galleon bell! It was tolling for him. He was too far gone to wonder. It seemed not in the least fantastic that the bell should be tolling his requiem, even though it had gone to the bottom of the sea. At first faint and far away, it was growing louder. A phantom bell that tolled in mockery! Its grave reverberations rose above the commotion of the waves to signal the passing of the soul of Richard Cary.

It tormented him to listen to the bell that had been drowned fathoms down. Why could it not let him go in peace? He rallied from his stupor. A phantom bell? He wildly denied and denounced it.

He became conscious of a curious illusion that the bell was drifting past him. Could he be wrong? Was it calling to him with a voice of help and guidance instead of mockery? It had saved him from death on Cocos Island. Was this another intervention?

He released his hold of the piece of timber and swam in the trough of the sea, gaining strength for this last effort. What difference if he hastened the end by this much? The bell tolled in the air above his head. It was so near that it could not elude him, he babbled.