‘It came on to blow a gale of wind one night after we had been aboard the brigantine about a fortnight. They were a poor lot of sailors in the vessel, and so many as to be in one another’s road. They got the little ship in the trough, somehow, under more sail than she could stand up to; the main-topmast went; it brought down the fore-topmast, which wrecked the bowsprit and jib-boom. The Spaniards ran about like madmen, some of them crossing themselves, and praying about the decks; others bawling in a manner to terrify all hands, though I can’t tell ye what was said; the ship was in a horrible mess with wreckage, which nobody attempted to clear away. It blew very hard, and the seas were bursting in smoke over the brigantine, that lay unmanageable. At last the boatswain of her, holding a sounding-rod in his hand, yelled out something, and there was a rush for the boats stowed amidships. They were so crazy with fear they hardly knew how to swing ’em over the side. Ruddiman says to me: “I shall stick to the ship. If those boats are not swamped, they’ll blow away, and her people’ll starve, and our late job in that line is quite enough for me.” I said I would stick by the ship, too, and we stood watching whilst the Spaniards got their boats over. It was luck, and not management, that set the little craft afloat. The captain roaring out, made signs to us to come; but we, pointing to the sea, made motions to signify that they would be capsized and shook our heads. They were mad with fright, and weren’t going to stay to argue, and in twos and threes at a time they sprang into the boats like rats; and whether they took food and water with them I can’t tell ye; but this I know, that within twenty minutes of the Spanish bo’sun’s singing out, the two boats had disappeared, and Mr. Ruddiman and me were alone.’
He rose as he said this, and fell to pacing the cabin floor in silence, with his head drooped, and his arms hanging up and down like pump handles.
‘A very interesting story, captain, so far as it goes,’ said I, shifting a bit on my seat, as though I supposed that the end was not far off now. ‘Of course you were taken off by some passing vessel?’
He made no reply to this, nor, indeed, seemed to heed me. After several turns, he stopped, and looked me in the face, and continued to stare with a knitted brow, as though he were returning to his first resolution to communicate his secret with an effort that fell little short of mental anguish. He came slowly to his chair, and started afresh.
‘We sounded the well, and presently discovered that the water she was taking in drained through the decks, and that she was tight enough in her bottom; and we reckoned that if we could get her out of the trough, she’d live buoyant; so we searched for the carpenter’s chest, and found it, and let fly at the raffle with a chopper apiece, and after a bit, cleared the vessel of the wrecked spars and muddle, and got her to look up to it, and she made middling good weather, breasting it prettily under a tarpaulin seized in the weather main rigging. The gale blew itself out after twenty-four hours, and the wind shifted into the east’ards. We let drop the foresail; there was no more canvas on her to set, with the head of the mast gone, and with it the peak halliards and the sail in rags. Our notion was to head for the Sandwich Islands, for we stood by so doing to fall in with a whaler, and failing help of that sort there was civilisation over at Hawaii; but t’others of the Polynesian rocks were mostly cannibal islands, we believed, and we were for giving them a wide berth. Yet we could do nothing but blow before it. That you’ll understand, Mr. Dugdale?’
‘Quite,’ said I.
‘It came on thick,’ he continued, speaking with intensity and in an utterance deep, clear, and loud, ‘with a bit of a swell from the east’ards and a fresh wind singing over it. I was at the hellum in the afternoon, and Ruddiman lay asleep close against the companion hatch. I was drowsy for want of rest, and there was sleep enough in my eyes to make me see very ill. Suddenly looking ahead, I caught sight of a sort of whitish shadow, and even whilst I was staring at it, wondering whether it was vapour or white water, it took shape as a low coral island with clumps of trees here and there and a small rise of greenish land amidships of it. I put the hellum hard over, and called to Ruddiman, who jumps up and takes a look. “A dead lee-shore, Braine,” says he; “what’s to be done? There’s no clawing off under this canvas.” What was to be done? The land lay in a stretch of reef right along our beam, with the brigantine’s head falling off again to the drag of the foresail, spite of the hellum being hard down. In less than twenty minutes she struck, was took by the swell, and drove hard aground, and lay fixed on her bilge with her deck aslope to the beach that was within an easy jump from the rail.’
He broke off, and went in a restless, feverish way to the table and unlocked and drew out a drawer, looked at something within, then shut the drawer with a convulsive movement of the arm and turned the key. I was now heartily wishing he would make an end. Down to this, the tale was just a commonplace narrative of marine suffering, scarcely reclaimed from insipidity by the singularity of the figure that recited it. But that was not quite it. I was under a constant fear of the next piece of behaviour he might exhibit, and my alarm was considerably increased by the air of mystery with which he had examined the drawer and hurriedly closed it, as though to satisfy himself that the weapon he had lodged there was still in its place. Having locked the drawer, he stood thinking a little, then taking up his Bible from the table, he approached me with it.
‘Mr. Dugdale,’ he exclaimed, ‘before I can go on, I must have ye kiss this here book to an oath. Take it!’ he cried with a sudden fierceness; ‘hold it, and now follow me.’
‘Stop a minute,’ I said; ‘you are telling me a story that I have really no particular desire to hear. You have no right to exact an oath from me upon a matter that I cannot possibly be in the smallest decree interested in.’