CHAPTER VI

A TERRIBLE NIGHT

I may have slept for an hour or two; but for the light of the lamp, I believe, I should not have closed my eyes in rest, so unendurable would my spirits have found the heavy burthen of the darkness of the night. I opened my eyes. The lamp burned dimly. The vessel was rolling somewhat briskly, and I seemed to hear a louder noise of wind than I had noticed before falling asleep. The creaking throughout the cabin was ceaseless and distracting. The rudder jarred heavily upon its hinges, and every time a billow smote it I felt a shock as though the brig had struck on a rock.

On a sudden I heard a cry. It came faint and weak to my ears through the deck and through the door; but I heard it, and I caught the note of horror in it, and never shall I forget that cry! Whenever I recall it I think of the wailing scream of some strange wild tropic beast, wounded to the death and faltering to the edge of a river, and there sending its death cry into the quiet Indian night.

The sound was re-echoed over my head, followed by a hasty rush of feet. A few moments later there was a terrific blow. The concussion was as though the brig had blown up. I heard the rending and smashing and splintering noises of falling masts and of bulwarks crushed. The brig heeled over and over, and yet over; one might have supposed that some mighty hand had grasped her side and was slowly swaying and pressing her upside down. Fortunately for me the wild and inexpressible slope of the vessel to one side laid me against the wall to which my sleeping-shelf was fixed, and so I could not fall out. Had it been the other way about I must certainly have been flung from my bed, when, in all probability, I should have broken a limb if not my neck.

Whilst the brig was in the act of heeling over, something heavy immediately outside my berth gave way, struck the door, which, opening outwards, was not burst, though the blow it received might well have demolished the whole of the wooden wall in which the door was hung. I tried to get out of the sleeping-shelf, but the slope continued so sharp that I could not stir. There were many noises, but my cabin was situated in the stern of the brig, and the confused sounds reached my ears dully. When the vessel leaned over immediately after she had been struck, the cargo in the hold gave way, raising an instant’s thunder of rattling and clattering, and shaking the whole structure to its heart. I strained my ears for human voices, but caught but a dim far-away shout or two. I could not get out of my sleeping-shelf, and, believing that the brig was sinking, I screamed to the young Frenchman, who I supposed was in the next cabin, but got no answer. I screamed again and yet again, but no reply was returned.

What had happened? Ignorant as I was of the sea, how could I imagine what had happened? Was Captain Regnier wholly wrong in his calculations, and had he run his brig ashore? The sea was leaping angrily over the sloping side in which the little porthole of my cabin was fixed. It broke over the window as though the hull of the brig had been an immovable rock, and every billow roared and hissed as it fell back after its furious leap shattered and boiling. Presently the vessel regained a somewhat upright posture, but her movements were terribly staggering. She rose and fell, and rolled from side to side convulsively. She appeared to be labouring in the heart of an angry sea that was ridging towards her from all points of the compass.

I was almost out of my mind with terror, and the moment the decreased slope of the brig enabled me to stir, I sprang from my shelf, and hastily putting on the few articles of raiment which I had removed, and clothing myself in mate Hénin’s cloak, I made for the door, too terrified to appreciate the blessing of having a light to see by or to guess what my sensations would have been had the berth been in darkness. I grasped the handle of the door, but the door would not open. I pushed it with all my might, but it would not stir an inch. I looked to see if, when I turned the handle, the latch shot back. Yes! the latch shot back, and if it depended upon the handle, the door was to be easily opened. Something pressed against it outside, something that would not yield by the fraction of an inch though I pushed with the strength of frenzy.

I continued to push and to scream until I was seized with faintness; my arms sank to my side and my knees gave way. Oh! am I to be left to drown, locked up in this berth? I cried to myself, and I reeled to the arm-chair and sat down in it incapable of standing.

The noise caused by the lashing of the sea just outside and the sounds of cargo rolling about in the hold overwhelmed all that I might else have heard sounding from above. Whilst I sat panting and half-swooning a man cried out at my door.

‘Oh, help me! help me!’ I shrieked, and new strength coming to me with the sound of his voice, I staggered to my feet.

‘Oh my God!’ cried the voice of Alphonse in French, ‘I cannot move this cask. Help! help!’

Then I could hear the voice of Captain Regnier roaring in the distance as though he had put his head into the hatchway and was crying to his nephew through it.

‘Oh, Alphonse, release me, save me, I cannot open the door!’ I shrieked.

He answered in a voice of agony, but what he said I could not catch, and this was followed by a sound of furious wrestling outside. Another wild and frantic cry from Captain Regnier rang through the cabin, and now the words uttered at the top of his powerful voice reached me. They were, ‘If you do not come instantly we must leave you behind to perish.’ Again I caught a noise of desperate wrestling. It ceased.

‘Oh, Alphonse, do not leave me!’ I screamed. ‘Do not leave me to be drowned in this dreadful berth!’ and I strained my ears but I heard nothing to tell me that the young Frenchman was outside; nevertheless I stood listening, supporting my tottering and swaying figure by holding to the handle of the door, for though I had heard his uncle call to him to hasten on deck or he would be left to perish, I could not believe that he would leave me to drown--that Alphonse would abandon me to a dreadful fate though all the others should quit the brig. I thought to myself, he has rushed on deck to remonstrate with Captain Regnier; he is now imploring his uncle and the others to descend and help him to remove the cask and liberate me, for I had heard him exclaim that the door was blocked by a cask, and I recollected that one immense cask or barrel had stood under the ladder which conducted to the deck; and remembering this I supposed that when the brig had violently leaned over, the cask had torn itself from its fastenings and been hurled by the slant of the deck against the door of my berth, where it lay jammed, immovably holding the door.

I stood listening, I say, but the minutes passed and I heard nothing--nothing, I mean, that resembled a human voice or the movements of men; otherwise there was no lack of sounds--horrible, dismal, affrighting noises, a ceaseless thumping as of wreckage pounding against the sides of the brig, a muffled, most melancholy whistling and wailing of wind, a constant rattle and roar of cargo in the hold, a frequent shock of sea smiting the window of my cabin and filling the air with a sharp hissing and boiling, as of the foot of a great cataract.

But when, after waiting and listening, I began to understand that Alphonse had fled with the rest, that there was nobody in the brig to come to my assistance, that I was imprisoned in a cell from which I could not break out and which might be slowly settling under water even as I stood, then was I maddened by an agony of fear and horror. I uttered shriek after shriek; I dashed at the door with my shoulder; I wept, and cowering to the chair sank upon it; then I shrieked again, and falling on my knees upon the chair I buried my face and lay motionless.

I lay motionless, and after many minutes had passed I lifted up my head and gazed round the cabin, and a feeling of calmness suddenly settled upon my spirits. Whence came that feeling of calmness? Not surely from any faint hope that my life would yet be preserved, because I had not the least doubt that the vessel was sinking and that the final plunge must happen at the next moment or the next. The feeling of calmness came from the Spirit of God. From what other source could it proceed? But it never occurred to me that the Spirit of God was present in that little berth; it never occurred to me to pray to Him for succour, or, seeing that I was convinced I was a dying woman, to pray to Him to make my last struggles easy and to forgive me for my past, whatever it might hold--for hidden as that past was, it was human, and must therefore need forgiveness. It could not occur to me to pray, because I was without memory and my mind was unable to suggest the thought of God. But as though I had prayed and as though my prayer had been answered my mind grew tranquil.

I arose and seated myself afresh in the chair, and clasping my hands and leaning back my head I fixed my eyes on the lamp for the comfort of the companionship of the little flame in it. My intelligence was horribly active, but the singular tranquillity within me was not to be disturbed by the most dreadful of the imaginations which arose. I remember that I calmly figured the moment when the brig would sink, and I imagined a noise of thunder as the water roared in through the hatchways; and then I had a fancy of the water taking a long while to drain into the stoutly-enclosed berth, and of my sitting and watching the flood slowly rising, washing in foam from side to side to the rolling of the brig, but steadily rising nevertheless. All this I figured, and many more frightful pictures passed before my inner vision. Yet I continued calm and sat waiting for my end, supported by a strength that had come to me without a prayer.

The hours passed and the brig still lived, and still did I remain seated awaiting the moment that I believed inevitable. No stupor was upon me: I took heed of what was passing. I remarked that the brig rolled more gently, that the seas lashed my cabin windows less spitefully, that the dreary pounding as of wreckage smiting the side penetrated the fabric with a more softened note.

At last, turning my eyes in the direction of the window, I observed that the gleaming ebony of it had changed into a faint green, and it glimmered now as it had glimmered on that morning when I first opened my eyes on board the brig. I knew that the storm had broken; but if the vessel had been deserted by her crew, what would daylight signify to me, who was locked up in a little berth, the sole living creature on board a wreck--as I _knew_ the brig to be--which passing vessels would glance at without visiting, and which could not much longer remain afloat?

I watched the disk of glass change from dim green into clear yellow, and whilst I continued to gaze, I heard a sound resembling the voice of a man outside. Before I could make sure that it had been a human voice, I heard it again. It was the voice of a man calling to another. My strength returned to me as though I had been electrified, and springing to my feet I rushed to the door and beat upon it. I smote the door with all my strength with both hands clenched, and shrieked ‘Help! help! Save me! Release me!’ in notes preternaturally shrill with the maddening excitement of the tremendous hope and the desperate fears which possessed me. In a moment the door was thumped outside, and a man called out:

‘All right! we’ll see to you--we’ll release you;’ and then I heard him shout in a roar that was even louder than the bull-like tones of Captain Regnier, ‘Wilkins, there’s a woman locked up here. For God’s sake bear a hand and jump on deck, and bring a couple of hands out of the boat to clear away this cask. Here’s a cask that’s gone adrift and has got slewed, and it is jammed betwixt the door and the ladder.’ The man then thumped again upon the door, and cried to me, ‘Are you alone?’

‘Yes, I’m alone,’ I answered.

‘Keep up your heart; we’ll soon have you out of it,’ he cried. ‘How long have you been locked up here? I cannot hear you. What! all night? Oh, my God! and a woman too, and alone!’

A distant voice sounded in a sort of halloa.

‘This way,’ cried the man outside my door. ‘Bear a hand, my lads; here’s a poor woman been locked up in this drowning brig all night.’

This was followed by some hearty English heave-ho’s! and then a voice cried out, ‘Jump for a handspike, Bill!’ and several strange exclamations ensued, such as ‘Heave, and raise the dead!’ ‘All together, now!’ ‘Another heave and the waggon’s started!’

I heard a crash--the rolling of some heavy body--a strong English oath--and the door flew open.

Four men stood in the doorway in a group staring into the berth. One of them standing a little forward was a fine, tall, sailorly-looking young man of a ruddy complexion. He wore small whiskers, and was dressed plainly in a suit of pilot cloth with brass buttons, and around his naval cap were two thin bands of brass. The other three were ‘common sailors,’ as they are called, rough and sturdy fellows, any one of whom would have been a match for the whole of the four or five poor, half-starved French seamen who had formed the working part of the crew of the brig.

The young man with the brass upon his cap stared at me for some moments, as though dumbfounded with astonishment and pity.

‘Well, well!’ he cried, ‘to think that if I’d been content to merely sing out to know whether anyone was aboard, I should have overlooked you!’

‘Regular French job it seems, to leave a poor lady locked up alone down here arter this fashion,’ exclaimed one of the sailors in a deep growling voice. ‘Couldn’t they have found time to have shoved that there cask out of the road of the door?’

The excitement of desperate emotions that had rendered my voice shrill beyond recognition of my own hearing had passed. The strange tranquillity which had visited my spirits during the night and possessed them throughout the awful hours had returned to me. Without agitation I extended my hand to the young officer, as I took him to be, and said to him in a quiet voice:

‘Take me away. I have been locked up here all night.’

He took my hand and brought me into the living-room of the little brig.

‘There is no hurry,’ said he; ‘this craft is going to make a good staunch derelict. I am here to find out if there is life to be saved. One of you men open the door of that berth there and overhaul it.’

My knees trembled and I sat down. The young mate ran his eye over the cabin, and, as though directed by peculiar oceanic instinct, walked to the locker in which Captain Regnier had been wont to keep a little stock of spirits and wine for present use, lifted the lid of the locker, and took out a bottle which he uncorked and applied to his nose.

‘This will do,’ said he. ‘Simmonds, I noticed the scuttle-butt abreast of the main hatchway. Bring the dipper full of water here.’

This was done. The young officer mixed a glass of white spirits--gin or Hollands--and I drank. Then searching the locker afresh he found a biscuit which he handed to me. ‘This will serve you,’ he exclaimed, ‘until we get you aboard, and then we will give you something warm and nourishing.’ I ate a little of the biscuit, but it was dry as saw-dust and I swallowed with difficulty.

The three sailors stood at the table gazing at me, and their rough weather-darkened faces were full of sympathy and wonder. There was nothing to surprise me in their astonishment. My right brow and the upper part of my nose were still wrapped up with sticking plaister. Over my head was drawn the hood of mate Hénin’s cloak, and the skirts of this ample garment enveloped me. My snow-white hair was disordered, and tresses of it fell past my ears on to my shoulders. And then I might also suppose that the agony of the night had wrought in my countenance and made of my face even a stranger mask than that which had looked out upon me from the handglass which the young Frenchman had held before it.

‘Can you tell me,’ asked the young officer, ‘how many people were in this brig last night?’

I reflected and gave him the number.

‘There is no doubt,’ said he, earnestly looking about him and making a step to peer into the berth which had been occupied by Alphonse, and which one of the sailors had already examined, ‘that all hands of the _men_ took the boat and made off after the collision, leaving you, the only woman aboard, to sink or swim.’

‘One of the Frenchmen tried to save me,’ I answered; ‘he had a good heart and would not have abandoned me, but he could not remove the cask, and his uncle, the captain, called to him to make haste and come on deck or they would leave him behind.’

‘There are some berths yonder, aren’t there?’ said he, pointing to the forward wall where the sliding door with the ring was.

A seaman took the ring and slided the door open, and the three sailors passed through.

‘Pray,’ said the young officer, examining me with curiosity, ‘might you have been the captain’s wife?’

‘No.’

He looked at my left hand. ‘It was not to be expected,’ he continued. ‘I don’t love the French, but I believe they don’t make bad husbands. Were you a passenger in this vessel?’

I fixed my eyes upon the deck.

‘Where was the brig bound to, can you tell me?’

‘To Toulon.’

‘From where?’

‘From Boulogne-sur-Mer.’

He ran his eyes over me again but was interrupted in what he was about to say by the emergence of the three sailors.

‘There’s nothin’ living to be seen,’ said one of them.

‘What _is_ to be seen?’ said the young mate.

‘Vy, sir, in both cabins nautical instruments, charts, vearing apparel, Vellington boots, bedding, and de likes of such things as them.’

‘We have rummaged the brig,’ said the young officer; ‘there’s nothing left alive in her but this poor woman. Get the boat alongside, men. Are you strong enough,’ said he, turning to me, ‘to ascend those steps without aid?’

‘I fear not,’ I answered.

On this he put his arm around me and fairly carried me up the steps on to the deck.

When I was on deck I looked round. Many large clouds floated under the sky, and their shadows darkened the face of the ocean; but in the east was a corner of misty sun with an atmosphere of rose betwixt it and the sea-line, and a delicate pink glittered on the brows of the swell as the dusky green folds rolled to the risen luminary. The brig was a complete wreck. I could not believe that I was on board the same vessel that had rescued me. There was a great rift in her deck high above the water, though she sometimes rolled the black chasm dangerously close to the sea. Many feet of her bulwarks on the left-hand side were smashed into splinters. Her top-masts were broken, and they were washing at her side, held by lengths of rope which resembled eels of inordinate length crawling overboard. The white boat that used to stand in the fore part of the deck was gone, and the sort of sentry-box in which the food had been cooked was beaten into pieces. The hull was indeed the most perfect figure of a wreck that the imagination could conceive.

‘A pretty collision, certainly!’ said the young mate; ‘but these dirty old coasting foreigners never will show a light.’

At the distance of about a quarter of a mile was a large ship. She was a far more beautiful vessel than the ship which had passed the brig, admirably graceful, swelling and swanlike as I had thought her. She was a long black ship, her sides as glossy as the hide of a well curried Arabian steed. So mirror-like was her length that the light that was upon the water trembled in cloudy flames in her sides. There was a radiant device of gold under the white bowsprit, and a line of gilt ran under the bulwarks from the radiant device to her stern, that likewise flamed with decorations in gilt. Her masts were white, and she had several white boats hanging at the extremities of curved iron bars at her sides. Some of the sails were pointed one way and some another, that one set might neutralise the impulse of the rest, and the noble and swelling and queenly ship lay without progress, softly leaning and gently bowing upon the swell whilst her spaces of canvas of a cream white softness showed like a large summer cloud against the shadowed sky of the horizon. She was close enough to enable me to distinguish a few figures moving about her, both in her fore and in her after parts.

‘Oh! what is that ship?’ I cried eagerly, the instant I saw her.

‘She is the _Deal Castle_,’ answered the young officer. ‘She is the vessel that was in collision with this brig last night. After the collision we hove to, for there was nothing to be seen, and therefore nothing to be done. It was blowing fresh. We burnt a flare and sent up rockets, but nothing came of them. If the Frenchmen after launching their boat were not drowned they must have been blown away to a distance that lost them the sight of our rockets. Probably they were picked up in the small hours. There was nothing to be seen of their boat at daybreak this morning from yonder mastheads.’

He stepped to the side of the brig where the bulwarks were crushed, looked over, and then turning to me called out: ‘Come along, if you please.’

I approached him, and looking down saw a large handsome white boat with five sailors in her, rising and falling at the side of the wreck.

‘Stand by to catch hold of the lady,’ exclaimed the young officer, and he lifted me over the edge of the wreck into the powerful grasp of a couple of sailors who received and seated me. In a few moments he had placed himself at the helm, and the seamen were rowing the boat to the ship.

I turned my eyes to view the receding brig. How miserable, how forlorn she looked! The great gap in her side resembled a frightful wound, and the _pouring_ look of the black rigging streaming overboard made the ropes look like her life-blood draining from her heart into the ocean. I thought of the little berth in the hinder part of her, of the lantern that might still be dimly burning, of the disk of glass changing with soul-killing slowness from ebony into dim green, and from dim green into the yellow of daylight, and a sick shudder ran through my frame and I averted my head, and for a little while held my eyes closed.

‘I should think,’ said the young mate, clearly guessing what was passing in my mind, ‘that your escape will be the narrowest on record.’

‘I shall remember that I owe my life to you,’ I answered, keeping my gaze downwards bent; for now the morning light had grown strong, and I could not bear that my face should be seen. I hung my head and raised my hand to the hood of the cloak, but the hood was as far forward as it would sit. However, the distance to be measured was short; the boat was swept along by the vigorous strokes of the seamen, and the young officer was too busy in manœuvring to run alongside the leaning and heaving ship to address or to heed me.

I perceived a group of some eight or ten people standing at the open rail which protected the edge of the raised deck in the sternmost portion of the ship. Their gaze was intently fixed upon us as we approached. Some of them were ladies. Along the line of the ship’s bulwarks were many heads watching us. A tall man in a frock coat with brass buttons, detaching himself from the group in the after part, called to the young officer, who replied; but their speech was in the language of the sea, and I did not understand it. But even as we approached, a ladder was dropped over the ship’s side; the young officer mounted, and then extended his hands to assist me up the steps, and very quickly I was transferred from the boat on to the deck of the ship.

I was left for some minutes alone; for, after the young mate had helped me to climb on board, he descended a ladder that conducted to the raised deck, on which were several ladies and gentlemen, and, touching his cap to the tall man in the uniform frock coat, he entered into conversation, both of them looking towards me as they talked. A large number of persons of both sexes--sixty or seventy in all, I dare say--thronged that part of the deck where I had entered the ship, and whilst I stood alone they gathered close about me, staring and whispering. They were of the emigrant class, the bulk of them rudely and poorly attired. A tawny-coloured woman, with braided black hair and eyes of an Egyptian duskiness, after staring at me awhile, exclaimed, ‘Delicate Jesus, what a face! Shall I tell the sweet lady’s fortune? And, gorgeous angels! look how her head is bound up.’

‘Hold yer tongue!’ cried a huge red-headed Irish woman, who had been surveying me with her arms akimbo. ‘Pace ye hay-then!’ she exclaimed, letting fall her arms and talking with her hands clasped in a posture of supplication, ‘can’t ye tell who she is? She’s a sister of mercy, and I know the order she belongs to. Sister, d’ye spake English? If you spake nothing but French, then give me your blessin’ in French. Pull out the blessed crucifix from the pocket in which you have hidden it that ye mightn’t lose it in the dreadful shipwreck, and bless me. I haven’t heard a prayer since I’ve been on board. Oh! sake the place for a howly minute only of his sainted riverence, Father Murphy, me confessor that I shall never see again--oh, that I shall never see again!--and bless me.’

She spoke loudly, but in the most wailing voice that can be imagined, and when she ceased there was a sort of thrusting and shoving of a number of men and women to get near me, as though, poor souls! they desired to participate with the tall, red-haired virago in the prayer she had asked me to pronounce.

But whilst I stood surveying the rough and eager faces with alarm, the young mate came from the upper deck and said, ‘Will you please step this way?’

I followed him into the saloon--a long, narrow, brilliant interior with several tables ranged down the centre of it. A number of stewards were engaged in preparing the tables for breakfast. There were two or three skylights, like domes, overhead, and there were many mirrors and plated lamps, and globes in which gold and silver fish were swimming, and rows of pots containing ferns. It was like passing from a cottage into a castle to exchange the living room of the little French brig for the comfort and splendour of the saloon of this noble ship.