CHAPTER XXVIII.

CAST AWAY.

Not a moment was lost in getting the longboat over the side, and with a heavy splash, by which it was nearly swamped, we got it afloat.

Ned Carlton and Probart the carpenter sprang in, to fend off and keep it from being stove or dashed to pieces by the sea, against the brig's side.

By the wild weird glare that rose in frightful columns from the main and fore hatchways, we had plenty of light, as it shone far over the huge billows of that dark and tempestuous sea, to which we were about to commit our fortunes; and now a pale and half-dressed figure approached us.

It was Marc Hislop, whom the terrible odor had roused from his berth in the cabin; and he now came forward, supporting his feeble steps by clutching the shrouds and belaying-pins.

I rushed below and brought up a blanket and great coat to wrap him in, and he was promptly swung over into the boat, where Carlton received and supported him.

Three bags of bread, with a tarpaulin to cover them, two kegs of rum, four casks of water, with oars, sails, and blankets, were thrown pell-mell into the boat. A hatchet and a bundle of spun-yarn completed our stores.

The compasses were considered now to be useless, or were omitted, I forget which.

The wind still amounted to a gale, though less violent, and it fanned the growing flames, so that the fated brig burned fast. The lightning still flashed, but at the horizon, and the thunder was heard to grumble above the hiss of the sea; yet we heeded them not, though they added to the terror and the grandeur of the scene; and, most providentially for us, the fury of the storm was past.

Tattooed Tom was the last man who left the brig, and the moment he was in the boat, he exclaimed, with a loud voice, that rang above the roaring of the flames, which now gushed through every hatchway and aperture, above the howling of the wind and the breaking of the frothy sea,--

"Shove off!--out oars, there, to starboard--pull round her stern--pull with a will to windward--keep the boat's bow to the break of the sea!"

We pulled silently and vigorously, and soon got clear of the brig, through the four stern windows of which four lines of light glared redly on the ocean.

All our strength was required to achieve this, for the brig, being the larger body, attracted the boat toward her. However, we got safely to windward, which was absolutely necessary, for to leeward there fell hissing into the sea a torrent of sparks and burning brands from the rigging, which was all in flames now.

Resting upon our oars, or only using them to keep the boat's head to the break of the sea, and to prevent her being swamped--an operation during which they were as often flourished in the air as in the ocean, when we rose on the crest of one vast heaving wave, or sank into the dark vale of water between two--resting thus, we gazed in silence and with aching hearts at the destruction of our home upon the sea.

We could _feel_ the heat of the conflagration even to windward. In a quarter of an hour she was enveloped from stem to stern in a sheet of fire, that rose skyward in the form of a pyramid. By this time every vestige of her spars, sails, and rigging had disappeared.

The entire deck had been consumed; the bulwarks and moulded plank-sheer rapidly followed, and through the flames that roared fiercely from the hollow of her hull, we could see the black timberheads standing upward like a row of fangs.

Rents appeared next in her sides, as the flames burst through the inner and outer sheathing, and with a hissing sound as they met the waves of the briny sea. Then a salt steam rose, and its strange odor, with that of the burning wood, was wafted at times toward us.

At last she gave a sudden heel to starboard, and with a sound unlike any thing I ever heard before--a deluge of water extinguishing a mighty fire--the waves rushed tumultuously in on all sides. She vanished from our sight in mist and obscurity, and a heavy darkness suddenly replaced the glare that for a time had lit up the heaving sea, dazzling our eyes and sickening our hearts.

"All's over now," said Tom Lambourne, as he grasped the tiller with a firm hand, after carefully wrapping a blanket round poor Hislop, who drooped beside him in the stern-sheets.

"Which way shall we pull?" asked the bow-man, as we paused with our oars in the rowlocks.

"It matters little, mates," cried Tom, in a loud voice, with his left hand at the side of his mouth, to send what he said forward above the roar of the wind and sea. "We must be many hundred miles from Brazil, the nearest land, and we can do nothing now but keep our boat alive by baling and steering till daybreak. Now, Master Hislop," he added, lowering his voice, "how do you feel, sir?"

"I feel that I am quite in your way, my lads--a useless hand aboard, to consume your food and water, replied Hislop, faintly.

"Why, sir," said Probart, the stroke-oarsman, "you don't think we could have left you to burn in the poor old brig?"

"No, not exactly; still, I am of no use to you, and I feel----"

"What, sir, what?" asked Tom, anxiously.

"Heart sick and despairing," moaned Hislop letting his chin drop on his breast.

"Don't talk so, sir," said Lambourne, stoutly; "despair never found a place in the heart of a British sailor!"

"You are right, Tom; and perhaps I'll gather headway, and get to windward yet."

"Of course you will," replied Tom, cheerfully; "but here's a sea coming--together, lads--pull together!"

Despair might well have found a place in all our breasts at that awful crisis; but Tom's bluff and cheerful way prevented our hearts from sinking, though the hours of that awful night seemed dark and long.

Well, without compass, chart, or quadrant, there we were, ten in number, in an open boat, tossing upon a dark and stormy sea, enveloped in clouds, with the red lightning gleaming through their ragged openings, or at the far and flat horizon--ignorant of where we were, where to steer for, or what to do, and full of terrible anticipations for the _future_!

We were silent and sleepless.

My heart was full of horror, grief, and vague alarm, when I thought of my home--the quiet, the happy, and peaceful old Rectory, with all who loved me there, and whom I might never see again.

The hot tears that started to my eyes mingled with the cold spray that drenched my cheeks, and there seemed but one consolation for me, that my father, my affectionate and gentle mother and sisters, dear Dot and little Sybil, could never know all I had endured, or how I perished by hunger or drowning, if such were to be my fate.

All the stories I had heard or read of shipwrecked men--their sufferings, their endurance of gnawing hunger and burning thirst, their cannibalism, their mortal struggles with their dearest friends for the _last_ morsel of food, for the _last_ drop of water, and how the weak perished that the strong might live--crowded upon my memory to augment the real terrors of our situation.

So suddenly had this final catastrophe come upon us that we had considerable difficulty in assuring ourselves of its reality, and that it was not a dream--a dream, alas! from which there might be no awaking.

So hour after hour passed darkly, slowly, and silently on.

The turbulence of the wind and waves abated, the lightning passed away, the scud ceased to whirl, the vapors were divided in heaven, and a faint light that stole tremulously upward from the horizon served to indicate the east and the dawn of the coming day.