In a few minutes the liberated boat, feeling the action of the wind, slowly floated off.
At every instant I was prepared to hear a shout from the shore or from the fellow who was supposed to be at watch in the boat. Yet it soon grew plain that my utmost hopes were to be confirmed by the heavy rum-influenced slumber that had overtaken the watchman, and that lay in lead upon the closed lids of the wearied sailors upon the grass. My heart was loud in my ears as I crouched watching. Presently the boat had slipped to some considerable distance from the shore, and was sliding seawards out to the wide yawn of the lagoon broadside to the ripples and the breeze. Then, pulling off my coat and waistcoat, and shoes and smallclothes, I crawled down on to the clear gleam of the beach, waded into the water, and struck out for the barque.
I was a fairly good swimmer; of old the exercise had been one of delight to me. The water was cool, but not chilling; I seemed to find a buoyancy in me, too, as from excess of brine in the dark surface, through which I gently pushed at first, lest I should raise a light of phosphorescence about me. At intervals I would pause, faintly moving my arms that I might keep myself afloat, and hearkening in a very agony of expectation. But all continued silent ashore. Now and again I caught sight of the boat as she went drifting seawards; but the shadow of the night lay thick upon the breast of the sea, and the small structure was sunk in it in a blending that eluded the gaze.
When I considered I had swum far enough to render any such sea-glow as my movements would kindle about me invisible from the island, I put my whole strength into my arms and legs and swam with a vigour that speedily began to tell. The dim heap of faintness which the barque had made grew definable with the stealing out of its proportions. The outline of the hull shaped itself; then I could see the clear line of the yards and spars ruling the starry sky with the vaporous-like folds of the topsails hanging. I felt no fatigue, no cold; the silence on the land filled me with a spirit of exultation, and the animation of that emotion acted upon me like a cordial of enduring virtue. Gradually and surely I neared the barque; the swim was but a short one in reality, and I needed no rest, though rest I could easily have obtained by floating on my back for a while. Within twenty minutes from my first cautious taking of the water, my hand was upon the lowest rung of the rope gangway ladder that lay over the side.
I held by it a little, to take breath and to listen. I had seen no figures on the vessel as I approached: but I knew that Forrest was on board, that the very piratical cast of the rogue’s character would render him alert and perceptive; that the moment he spied me he would guess a stratagem, and be upon me; and that it was my business to be before him, or to be prepared for his first spring, armed, as I knew him to be, with the sailor’s invariable weapon, the sheath-knife.
CHAPTER XLI
WE SAIL AWAY
It did not take me long to recover my breath. The swim had, indeed, comparatively speaking, been a short one; there was no tide that I had been in any degree sensible of; and I had lost nothing but breath, thanks to my eagerness, to the riotous tumult of spirits that had nerved my limbs with steel and rendered me unconscious of fatigue. I crawled up the ladder and peered over the rail. The gloom lay heavy upon the quarter-deck and waist, and objects were hard to distinguish. All was motionless, however, there and on the forecastle; but I could now discern two figures walking on the poop on the port side. The spanker-boom and mizzen-mast and the several fittings of skylight and companion, and so on, had concealed them from my observation whilst I swam, approaching the ship as I had on the starboard side. Their shapes showed tolerably clear against the stars that sparkled over the rail and betwixt the squares of the rigging, and I stood staring with no more of me showing over the line of bulwarks than my head till they had come to the rail that protected the break of the poop, and I then made out that one of them was Miss Temple.
This convinced me that the other must be Wetherly, for it was not to be imagined that the girl would seek refuge from even a more frightful loneliness than hers was in the society of young Forrest.
At that instant I heard a long wild halloa dimly coming through the steady breeze from the shore. The cry was followed by another and yet another, and then it seemed to me that it was re-echoed from off the water some distance ahead of us. I sprang in a bound on to the deck, and in a breath had armed myself with an iron belaying-pin; and now if that man were Forrest with whom Miss Temple was, I was ready for him! In a moment I had gained the poop. The cries ashore had brought the pair to a dead halt, and they stood listening. Now that I was on the poop I perceived by the build of the figure of the man that it was Wetherly, and rushed up to him. The girl recoiled with a loud shriek on seeing me, as well she might; for, having partially undressed myself, I was clothed from top to toe in white; I was dripping wet besides, which moulded my attire to my figure and limbs as though I had been cast in plaster of Paris, and my sudden apparition was as if I had shaped myself out of the air.
‘Is that you, Wetherly?’ I cried.