An Ocean Tragedy

by William Clark Russell

I felt the girl shuddering and trembling on my breast.

‘Darling,’ I cried, ‘take heart! Daylight has yet to tell us the whole story. How sudden! How shocking! Cutbill, you have lungs; for God’s sake, hail the darkness, that we may know if others are living!’

He did so; a faint halloo, sounding some distance from the right, replied. He shouted again and an answer was again returned, this time in another voice; it was feebler, but it proved at all events that there were others besides ourselves who had survived the destruction of the yacht. What the hour was I did not know. The night wore away with intolerable and killing slowness, the wind decreased, the sea moderated, the boiling of the surf that had been fierce for a long while took a subdued note, and the wind blew over us free of spray. Till daybreak I was cradling Laura on my arm. Frequently she would sit up to lighten the burthen of her form, but as often as she did so, again would she bring her head to my breast. What the dawn was to reveal I could not imagine, yet I felt so much happiness in the thought of Laura’s life being spared and in having her at my side, that I waited the disclosures of daybreak without dread.

At last there came a sifting of grey light into the east. By this time there was no more than a gentle wind blowing; but the sky had continued of an impenetrable blackness all night, and when day broke I witnessed the reason of the oppressive obscurity in a surface of leaden cloud that lay stretched all over the face of the heavens without the least break visible in it anywhere.

It was natural that the moment light enough stole into the atmosphere to see by, my first look should be at the girl by my side. Her head was uncovered; I in slipping on the lifebuoy, or Cutbill in removing it from her, had bared her hair, and the beautiful gold of it lay like a cloud upon her back and shoulders. It was as dry as were our clothes; the heat of the island had indeed served us as an oven. She was deadly pale, hollow-eyed, with a shadow as of the reflection of a spring leaf under each eye; her lips blanched, her countenance piteous with its expression of fear. Her dress had been torn by the wreckage: more shipwrecked than she no girlish figure could ever have looked, yet her beauty stole through all like a spirit breathing in her, and I could not release her without first pressing her to my heart and kissing her hand and fondling it, whilst I thanked God that she was alive and that we were together.

The yacht had broken in half from a few feet abaft of where her foremast had stood. All the after part of her had disappeared; nothing remained but the bows with the black planks winding round, jagged, twisted, broken; an incredible ruin! The putty-coloured shore that looked to the eye to trend with something of the smoothness of pumice-stone to the wash of the surf was dark with wreckage. I saw several figures lying prone amongst this litter of ribs and planks and cases and the like; there were others again recumbent higher up—five of them I counted—a few hundred paces distant, two of whom, as the three of us sat casting our eyes about us, slowly rose to their legs to survey the scene. One of these was Finn, the other one of the crew of the ‘Bride.’

I exclaimed, pointing to the furthest of the three figures who continued recumbent, ‘Isn’t that a woman?’

Cutbill stared; Laura, whose eyes were keen, said, ‘Yes. Is it Henrietta or my maid?’

Finn perceived us and held up his hand, and made as if to come to us; but on a sudden he pressed his side, halted, and then slowly seated himself. I gazed eagerly around me for signs of further life. It was now clear daylight, with a thinning of the leaden sky in the east that promised a sight of the sun presently with assurance of a clear sky a little later on. It was to be easily seen now that this island which had brought about the destruction of the ‘Bride’ was a volcanic upheaval created in the moment of the prodigious blaze of light we had viewed in the north. It was of the form of an oyster-shell, going with a rounded slope to amidships from one margin to another, and was everywhere of a very pale sulphur colour. It was within a mile in circumference, and therefore, but a very short walk in breadth, and at its highest point rose to between twelve and fifteen feet above the sea. There stood, however, on the very apex of it, if I may so term the central point of its rounded back, a vast lump of rock, as I took it to be. But my eye ran over it incuriously. We were making towards Finn and the others when I glanced at it, and my mind was so full that I gave the thing no heed.

It was necessary to walk with extreme caution. The island was like a sponge, as I have before said, punctured with holes big and little, some large as wells and apparently deep. But for these holes walking would have been easy, for everywhere between the surface was as smooth as if it had been polished. In many parts a sort of vapour-like steam crawled into the air. Now that the wind was gone you felt the heat of this amazing formation striking up into the atmosphere, and I confess my heart fell sick in me on considering how it should be when the sun shone forth in power and mingled the sting of its glory with the oven-like temperature of this fire-created island.