“D——n me, Tom, I say, what sort of a devil’s drawing-room have we here?” muttered another, as he stood turning over a mop of oakum with his toe; “and what sort of a damnable smell is this?” snuffing at a box of composition.
“The devil’s own smell—brimstone, by ——!” cried a fourth, shaking a cloud of sulphur from his fingers; and one fellow rummaging through the troughs pulled up a bundle of reeds and tossed them out on the floor, exclaiming, “Nothing but rush-lights in these here lockers, Master Hiram—rush-lights and mouldings of white biscuit, as I take it—light diet that, I may say, sir, for a ship’s company.” Just then some lumber getting loose, rolled out of an upper berth among them, and three or four smart cuts were made at it before they saw what it was. I had taken them as a hint to lie quiet a little longer, when their leader started suddenly, and, after standing for a moment at the heel of the mizen-mast, gave a strong shudder, and ordered the men out of the cabin. “Off, off to the forecastle every man of you!—off, I say, and send Captain Forrest here.” The men withdrew, muttering exclamations of amazement as he drove them out on deck, whence he presently returned, accompanied by the other. He locked and bolted the door after him, and led his companion up to the mast, then throwing the light full on it, asked in a whisper, that thrilled through me where I lay, “Do you know that?” “What?” “That splinter of steel buried in the wood.” The elder Forrest, without one word of reply, snatched up the lantern and ran round the cabin, holding the light over his head, and gazing at everything with a strong expression of astonishment; then stuck the lantern down upon a barrel-head, slapped his hands against his thighs, and exclaimed, “Hah!—Now may I be damned if it is not the old Phœnix come back again!—but Hiram, I say, by Heaven I cannot understand this—she is not the same boat, and yet she is—I thought I knew her deck although it is strangely altered—but what is the matter with you?” for the younger one stood pale and trembling, and here grasped him convulsively by the arm.
“What ails you, Hiram? I say,—I hope you are not afraid?”
“Yes, by ——” (with a slow and solemn asseveration), “I am afraid, Adam Forrest!” the other answered, gasping; “I am afraid, for I saw him there as plainly as I see you, clinging round the mast as he did that night, when he held on till you shore through his wrist with your cutlass, and snapped it an inch deep in the solid wood below! and if I go in there” (pointing to the after-cabin without even raising his averted face),—“if I go in there, I will see the others!—Come on deck—I am sick.”
“Stay where you are—you must not expose yourself to the men,—tut, tut!—What! after all we have seen together, to let a trick of your fancy get the better of your manhood in this disgraceful way!—Why,” and he mused for a moment, “it is odd enough too, that she should come here without hands, and all to give us a second crop off her old timbers; but egad, I have it! I’ll lay my life Tom has been overhauling her in the Channel, and has sent the old bird adrift, well knowing to whose door the Race would bring her!—Ah! poor Tom! many an ugly job he has brought me through; however, they say that Gull thing that I got him the command of is a switching fast sailer, and if he has but a stanch crew, he may make a good thing of it yet—that is, if he can only keep from getting more than moderately drunk. But come along till we see what this after-cabin has got for us. We have our letters of marque now, and need not be ashamed to show our faces under that authority to man or devil!—Come,” and he dragged his reluctant associate almost close to the spot where I lay, in another and still more dreadful relapse of horror. The young man leaned against a timber, with his head sunk upon his breast, and shuddered violently.
“Adam,” said he at length, “we have never thriven in anything since the night we had that business in this abominable den of blood. You and I then were, or ought to have been, country gentlemen, and he was no more than a careless sailor at worst; but with all the money we got in Bordeaux for the fruits of our villany, we are three miserable adventurers to-day, if the damning cargo she carries has not sunk the Gull already—Mother of God defend me! there is young Manson!” I can no more account for it now, than I could help it then, but the truth is, I had risen at this mention of the Gull in a sort of reckless frenzy, for I had no control over either my words or actions, and started out on the floor before them, a very ghastly and hideous spectacle; for I was pale and haggard with fear and desperation, and my face was bloody from a scratch I had got in the dark. The eyes of the repentant sinner fastened on me as I rose, and his terror was full as horribly depicted on his countenance, as that of his already punished associate had been on his; he fell flat on his face, and even the hardened ruffian at his side leaped back with a shout of horror as I rose before him with my hands held up, and a storm of denunciation that I could not control bursting from my lips. What I said I did not even then know, but it soon betrayed my mortal nature, and Forrest, with a blow of his fist, struck me back whence I had risen, then drew a pistol and came close up to me to make sure. I prayed for mercy now as wildly as I had before denounced vengeance, and in the extremity of my terror shut my eyes and clung to the very boards. A flash first came through my closed eyelids, and then a rushing and flapping burst of flame like interminable lightning. The pistol had burned priming, but even that had been enough to set fire to an open can of turpentine that was upset from a locker above by the thrust he had made after me with the weapon. The liquid starting into fire and smoke over the exploding gunpowder, flowed down in a waving river of flame, and spreading on the resined floors, and catching the loose combustibles all round, raised such a chaos of fire, smoke, hissing, sputtering, and suffocation, that I had only power to feel myself unwounded, and with my coat over my head, to pitch myself bodily against the port below me. I literally sank through a little pool of flame, but I burst open the port as I had expected, and found myself the next moment in the sea. It was now low water, and the stream that I had feared would sweep me among the breakers was totally subsided; but I could see nothing clearly for the first minute, only a dazzling and flashing of light through the spray, that swept over my head from the broken water on the rocks. The first thing I saw distinctly was a trail of flame writhing like a tail round the stern of the ship, as if the great black hulk had been lashing herself into the furious fit, that in another minute burst out from every vent and funnel in spouting and roaring jets of fire, that blazed up into the rigging as high as the lower masts, and pierced the night for miles round, with a splendour strong as the light of the sun at noonday. I got upon the nearest of the rocks (by the fall of the water they now rose much nearer than they had before seemed to do), and rising out of reach of the surf, contemplated a spectacle the grandest and most appalling I ever witnessed. The ship had run aground upon the landward side of a tongue of sand, that stretched (like half the string of a bent bow) partly across a curve of the coast, thus intercepting whatever the current from the opposite side might sweep into the bay; and there settling on a rapidly shelving bank, had fallen over as the water left her, till her masts and rigging lay almost across the narrow channel between. On shore an overhanging precipice rose right opposite, and close under her lee—so close that her rigging sloped up to within a stone’s-throw of the jutting rock. Between the base of this rock and the water’s edge, there was a stripe of greensward, evidently artificial, forming a platform of perhaps thirty yards across, which widened away at one side into a lawn with haycocks and shrubbery, while there was a good deal of planting visible up the back of the ravine. An old-fashioned straggling house stood almost under the precipice, facing the platform on one side, and the lawn on the other. Its steep roof of grey slate, and slender chimneys, made a gaunt and spectral show in the ruddy glare, contrasted with the black mass of rock behind, and the boiling flashes of the surf tossed up almost to its fantastic porch in front. I looked at the ship—the fore-hatchway had torn up with a tremendous burst, and the massy planks and bars of wrought-iron were scattered on either side; but the black tarpaulin rose like a canopy over the body of flame that followed, and was dissipated into smoke and ashes, without ever coming down. And now the breeze tossing that blaze about through the rigging in rolling and heavy volume, like a great tongue, it roared at every wallowing flap, and licked up square-sails, stay-sails, and studding-sails, as though they had been so much tinder, while the port-chambers successively exploding, thundered and flashed down either broadside, then vomited out their voluminous, flaring streamers of fire, that curled and climbed up into the conflagration till consumed amid the general flame. All the water out of the ship’s shadow blazed to the blazing pile; but wherever her hull momentarily intercepted its light, the sea seemed to heave more heavily, and with a lurid glow like blood. The boat’s crew had now pushed off from the quarter; I saw all on board save the two miserable beings I had left in the flames of the cabin: but the men had scarce pulled the boat’s length from the vessel’s side, when a figure leaped up on the quarter rail from deck—he looked as if he had risen out of hell; for his head was singed bald, and his face and hands were all livid, swollen, and bloody, from the scorching. It was the elder Forrest. He was tossing his arms and howling. The men pulled back, the boat shot into the shadow of the ship, and in the sudden difference of light I lost them for an instant; but the great flame of the forecastle took a sweep to windward, and showed them again, close under the quarter. All their faces glowed like copper, as they turned them up to the crimsoned figure wavering above, for Forrest had now seized a rope, that dangled still unconsumed from the mizen-yard arm, and was swinging to and fro, as the scorching flame behind him swayed forward or collapsed; but their faces fell, and a cry of horror burst from them all as it gave way, and the wretch, after balancing a moment on his narrow footing, fell back into the fire;—there was a puff of smoke and ashes, a long heaving roll of the flame, a shriek that rung shrilly over everything, and the seamen, silent and horrified, pushed off again, and made for the shore. And now the whole rigging was in a light flame, and the dance of sparks to leeward, where it eddied round the chimneys and gables of the old house, looked like a great spangled mantle shaken out in the sky. Beneath, smoke was curling in white eddies from every door and window, and the fate of the doomed dwelling seemed fixed, to burn first, while anything remained in it that would burn, and then to be swept from its foundations by the final explosion, out of reach of which I had all this time been painfully making my way, sometimes clambering over the rocks high and dry, and sometimes swimming. I gained the dry land at last, about three hundred yards astern of the vessel, and rounding the shoulder of a hill, lay down among the grass in the sudden pitchy darkness behind it, till my eyes had a little recovered from the effects of the excessive light, and I was able to see my way into the country. I was between two steep hills; that behind me was lurid in the dim reflection of the sky, but a ruddier haze than ever the sunset had thrown over it, glowed across the track of air above, and bore a crown of fire to the top of the higher hill opposite, on which every stock and stone showed like iron at a forging heat. Through this red region I had to pass to reach the inland. Pursuing a horse-track that led over it, I gained the limits of darkness again, without once turning to look at the scene behind—I had beheld enough. Suddenly I heard the sound of hoofs in the valley beyond, and turning, beheld a riderless horse toss up his mane like a fiery crest over the illuminated mountain, then plunge into the darkness between. I laid hold of the reins as he rushed past me, determined to use the opportunity of escape; and having checked him with some difficulty, threw myself into the saddle and gave him head. He bore me down the open hill like the wind; but when I got among the precipices below, through which the road was intricately carried, I was reluctantly obliged to draw up a little for fear of accidents. I was unwilling to do this, as well from the desire of making my escape to as great a distance as possible from the explosion, as from the conviction, growing every moment stronger, that I heard some one on horseback in pursuit. Now, I had no doubt that the animal I rode had thrown another rider immediately before being caught by me; and I thought it most probable, that whoever was now pursuing, had been in company with him when his horse had first run off. Be that as it might, I had had enough of Forrest-Race and its inhabitants, to make me determined, if I must be overtaken, to conceal myself by the road-side, and let my pursuer look after the runaway at his leisure. However, I tried to make the most of my chances in the mean time, and pushed on as rapidly as prudence would allow; but in ten minutes more, I found I had no prospect of escape; I heard the clatter of the horse, and once or twice the cries of the rider behind, and was just preparing to dismount, and looking back to try what I could see, when there shot up a column of fire, a hundred feet and more over the top of the highest mountain, and hill and valley, road, rock, and river, leaped out into astonishing splendour before me. Every object, for three or four seconds, was apparent in steady and intense light. I saw the perilous road down which I had come, and wondered how my horse had kept his footing at all; but my wonder was considerably greater when, about half a furlong behind, I saw my pursuer, as plainly as I ever saw my own mother, to be a woman—dressed, at least, in a female habit, and light as Diana, while she sat her rearing and plunging hunter through the wild tumult of his terror. But, before I could take a second look, down stooped the night again in tenfold power of darkness, while there burst through the shaken sky such a concussion, as with its tremendous and stunning violence beat the poor animal I bestrode, and myself along with him, flat down upon the ground, among the rebounding echoes and black darkness. I escaped from the fall unhurt, and the horse stood still and trembling, till I remounted, for I now was no longer desirous of escaping my pursuer. I was hardly in the saddle again, when I heard a sweet voice at my side—“Now, Heaven have mercy on us,—this is a fearful night!—How could you leave me in this way, George?—Ah! you could not help it, poor fellow—but did I not see you thrown after the grey ran off?—Why do you not answer, George—are you hurt?”
“In the name of God, Ellen Fane, what do you do here?” I exclaimed, in a voice that I could hardly think my own. She screamed aloud, for it was indeed she, and checked her horse till he almost went on his haunches; I seized him by the bridle to keep him from backing over the precipice.
“Keep off—keep off,” she cried. “Oh, have mercy on me if you are a man or a Christian, for I am a helpless girl, and in danger of my life!—Oh, only help me to get to Truro, and I will pray for you—indeed I will—as long as this miserable existence lasts!”
I was agitated by contending emotions—innumerable—indescribable; but I made a struggle to compose myself, and implored her not to be alarmed. “And, oh, Ellen, Ellen!” I cried, “do you not yet know me?”