CHAPTER XVII.

THE SHIP IN THE CAVE.

Greaves read Spanish, but spoke it ill. He was a North-countryman, and was without musical accents for soft or swelling or voweled tongues. On seating the lady, he looked at her and pronounced some words in her speech. My ear told me they were barbarous. They might have been Welsh or Erse.

“This man,” said I, pointing to one of the Spanish seamen who stood near, “understands English.”

Greaves was about to address the sailor; he broke off, and beckoned to Bol. The lumbering Dutchman came pitching aft like one of the bum-bowed boats of his own country over a swell.

“Station a man on the fore royal yard, Bol,” said Greaves, “to instantly report anything that may heave into view.”

“Ay, ay, sir.”

The Dutchman went forward again, and a minute later the sailor named Meehan ran patting aloft.

“Fielding, should a sail be reported when I am ashore,” said Greaves, speaking as though the lady and the Spanish seamen were not present, “fill on your topsail and stand away under easy canvas in a direction opposite to what the stranger may be taking. Keep your eye on her, and haul in again for the island as she settles away. Nothing must observe us hanging about here until we have got what we have come to take. I do not think it likely that anything will heave into view. I give you these directions while they are present to my mind.”

I replied in the customary affirmative of the sea.

“Now for our friends,” he exclaimed; “I will give them ten minutes to make sure of them.” He looked at his watch, and turned to the Spanish sailors. “Which of you speaks English?”

“Me--Antonio. I speak a little English,” answered the sailor.

“Have you enough English to make me understand how it comes to pass that you are on this island? You may use a few Spanish words.”

The Spaniard told this story. Their ship was _La Diana_. They had sailed from Acapulco--the date of their departure escapes me. Their ship was bound to Cadiz. She was a rich ship, and a vessel of six hundred tons. A few passengers went in the cabin, and her company of working hands, from captain to boy, numbered thirty-eight souls. They steered straight south down the meridian of 100° W., and all went well till they were in about 3° S. of the equator, when a hurricane struck the ship. Neither I nor Greaves could clearly understand from the man’s recital what then happened. The memory of suffering and horror worked him into passion. He talked in Spanish, forgot that he was talking to us, addressed the lady, who frequently sighed and moaned and lifted her eyes to heaven, while the other Spanish sailor, holding his clenched fists a little forward of his hips, shook them, nodding his head with a miserable, convulsed grin of temper, and horror, and tears.

We gathered that the ship’s masts were swept out of her, that most of the seamen made off in the boats, that the captain ordered Antonio and his companion, whose name was Jorge, together with other seamen, to enter a boat to receive the passengers. This we understood. Then it seemed that though Jorge and Antonio got into the boat that lay lifting and beating alongside, threatening to scatter in staves at every moment, others of the crew did not follow. A lady was handed down--“the Señorita Aurora de la Cueva,” said Antonio, with a nod of his head in the direction of the young lady--and scarcely had the two fellows grasped her when the boat’s line parted and the fabric blew away.

What followed was just the old-world, well-worn story of a couple of days and a couple of nights of suffering in an open boat. Often has this form of misery been described; and a changeless condition of ocean life it must ever be, let the marine transformations of the coming ages be what they may. They fell in with Greaves’ island. A heave of swell was running from the west; the two fellows were half dead with thirst and with the fear of dying. Spineless creatures they looked. If _they_ were examples of the fellows who fought us at St. Vincent and Trafalgar, what was there in the victories of our beef-fed pigtails to brag about? They aimed for a head of reef to spring ashore, dragging the lady with them, heedless of their boat, the wretches, thinking only of a drink of water, and the boat went to pieces while they staggered inland.

Here Antonio swore horribly in Spanish. He smote his hands together, squinted fiercely at Jorge, and abused him with a torrent of words. The other hung his head and occasionally shrugged his shoulders. The lady kept her fine eyes fastened upon me. Her face worked slightly in sympathy with the speech of Antonio when he spoke in Spanish, and occasionally she sighed and moaned low; but her eyes rarely left my face. Never before had I been honored by the intent regard of eyes so liquid, so beautiful, so full of fire, eyes whose lightest glance, when all was well with the owner, could hardly fail to be impassioned.

“Who is this lady?” said Greaves, breaking in upon Antonio.

The man again pronounced her name.

Greaves said: “She was a passenger?”

“With her mother, my captain. Both were proceeding to Cadiz for Madrid.”

“With her mother! Then she is separated from her mother by the shipwreck?”

“The boat would have received the mother, but the line parted.”

“Did the people you left behind perish, think you?”

Antonio replied with a shrug.

“You have been four days on the island, I understand, and there is water in abundance?”

“There is good water among those trees,” said the Spaniard, pointing.

“And what food have you met with?”

He succeeded, with much difficulty, in making us understand that they had lived upon terrapin, crabs, and iguanas.

“Did you get fire for dressing your food?”

Antonio put his hand in his pocket and produced a little burning-glass.

“Fielding,” said Greaves, “I am going ashore. Look to the brig and see to the lady. Take her below; let Jimmy put meat and wine upon the table. There’s a spare berth for her, and by and by we will make her comfortable and keep her so till we can dispose of her. I wish she were not here, though.” He made a face. “Go along forward, Antonio, with your companion. D’ye see that big man there? His name is Yan Bol. Ask him to feed you. Hold!”

Antonio and his mate faced about.

“Did you go on board the ship in the cave?”

“What ship, señor?”

“There is a ship in that cave,” said Greaves, pointing. “Did you go on board of her?”

The man placed the sharp of his hand against his brow and looked at the island.

“I know no ship--I know no cave, señor,” said he.

“Go forward and ask that big Dutchman to feed you,” exclaimed Greaves.

“When you think of it,” he continued, addressing me as the men walked forward, “they would not be able to see the cave when on the island. It is clear that they did not notice the ship when they landed on the reef; they were too thirsty, poor devils.”

“And how could they board the ship without a boat, sir?” said I.

“True,” he answered. “I see too much, Fielding. I put on glasses and they magnify my meat, but they don’t cheat my appetite. See to the lady.”

He called to Bol to put a couple of lanterns into the boat and to send the crew of the cutter aft, and walked to the gangway. In a few minutes he was making for the island.

“Hail the masthead, Bol,” cried I, “and ascertain if all is clear round the horizon.”

The answer fell from the lofty height in thin syllables--there was nothing in sight. I beckoned to the lad Jimmy, who was standing by the caboose, and bade him furnish the cabin table with the best meal he could put upon it and to look alive. I then turned to the lady, and, with my hat in my hand, exclaimed:

“Will you let me take you below?”

She viewed me anxiously. Her fine eyes made a passion of even a trifling emotion in her. She did not understand, and so I had to fall to Robinson Crusoe’s old trick of gesticulating. Heavens, how doth ignorance of another’s tongue seal the lips! You are as one who walks dumb through many lands. Had this poor lady had power of speech in English, or could I have understood her Spanish, how would she have given vent to her full breast? I could see in her lips, in her eyes, in the movement of her features, how grievously was her heart in labor. Yes; in her face worked the anguish of enforced silence. I pointed to the cabin, made signs of eating, extended my hand to take hers, on which she rose, gave me a low bow, put her hand in mine, and I led her through the companion way.

Jimmy had not yet arrived with the meal. Still holding her hand, to deliver myself from the absurdity of gesticulating, I conducted her to a berth on the starboard side in the fore-part of the living room, opened the door, and sought, with a flourish of my fist, to make her understand that it was at her disposal.

“_Yrá ó harâ muy bien_”--It will do very well--said she.

I afterward understood this to be her remark; _then_ it was darker than Hebrew. In fact, I thought she referred to the emptiness of the berth. The bunk was without bedding; and that bare bunk and a little naked, unequipped semicircle of wooden washstand, screwed into the bulkhead, formed all the visible furniture of the interior.

I knew a few words in French, and tried her with a “_Parlez-vous Français_, señorita?”

“_Nó, caballero_,” she answered.

I made a step into the berth, and motioned toward the bunk and the washstand, in the hope that she would be able to collect from my contortions that her comfort would be presently seen to. She inclined her head and slightly smiled, and the flash of her teeth was like sunshine betwixt her lips. Again I presented my hand, and she gave me hers; and I led her into the cabin where Jimmy was now busy. Galloon sat upon his chair, watching the lad lay the cloth. He pricked his ears and growled at the Spanish lady. I shook my fist at him, and his eyes languished, though his ears remained pricked. The lady exclaimed in Spanish, and fearlessly walked round to the dog and patted him. Galloon wagged his tail, but his ears remained elevated, as though one end of him was in doubt while the other end was satisfied. I again noticed the beauty of the lady’s hand, as she laid it on the dog, and the sparkling of the rings upon her fingers. Jimmy breathed fast and grinned much, and could scarcely proceed in his work for staring. I abused him for a lazy cub and bade him bear a hand.

The meal was spread. I motioned the lady into the chair occupied by Greaves, with further gesticulations desired her to help herself, and poured out a bumper of claret, of which wine Greaves had laid in a handsome stock, whether at Tulp’s cost or not I could not say. I was greatly impressed by the self-control and dignity of this lady Aurora, as I understood one of her names to be. Hungry I could not question she was. Tempted, I might also feel sure she would be, by the food before her after four days of such living as the island beach and the grove of trees provided. Yet she helped herself to but a little at a time, first crossing herself with great devotion before lifting her fork, then eating with the well-bred leisureliness you would have looked to see in her at her mother’s table. But the silence grew momentarily more oppressive.

“Jimmy,” said I, “go forward and bring that Spanish sailor, Antonio, aft with you, unless he’s still eating.”

At the expiration of five minutes Antonio followed Jimmy into the cabin.

“Have you had plenty to eat?” said I.

His earrings danced while he nodded--he wore earrings like those you see on a French fishwife--his blood-stained, dark eyes searched the cabin.

“A very good ship--very kind men,” said he. “When do you sail, señor?”

“I have not sent for you to question me,” said I. “I desire you to interpret my speech to this lady. Tell her----” and, in few, I bade him inform her that instructions would be given for her cabin to be comfortably equipped, and that whatever the brig could supply was at her service.

She smiled and bowed to me on this being interpreted, and then addressed Antonio, who, however, found himself at a loss, and was obliged to act to make me understand. He feigned to wash his face, and unnecessarily passed his fingers through the length of his hair, and then, finding words, made me understand that the lady was weary, that she had slept but little, and then on the hard ground, and that she would be thankful to lie down and sleep. Thereupon I told Jimmy to convey my bedding to her bunk, also to place one or two toilet conveniences of my own in her cabin; and, after waiting to see my instructions carried out, I bowed low and sprang on deck, with my mind full of the dollars ashore, wondering likewise what Greaves’ report would be, whether the dollars were still in the ship’s hold, and when he meant to go to work to discharge the vessel of her silver.

My first look was at the weather. It was boundless azure down to the lens-like brim of the sea--not a feather-sized wing of cloud--and a light air of wind with just enough of weight in it to hold the backed topsail steady to the mast. I looked at the island; the boat had entered the cave and was lost in the shadow. I picked up the glass, and leveled it; the dark lines of rigging and spar were faintly discernible, but the boat was deep in the dusk and not to be seen. It was the ugliest rock of island I had ever viewed, swart, sterile--save where the trees stood--gloomy, menacing with its suggestion of arrested fires. A few terrapin, or land tortoises, crawled upon the beach. Many birds, most of them white as shapes of marble, wheeled and hovered over the further extremity of the land with frequent stoopings and dartings, like our gulls over a herring shoal. I swept every foot of the visible surface of land with a telescope, but witnessed no signs of life of any sort. Nevertheless, the two long arms of the reef strangely civilized the beach and the face of cliff where the cave was, by their likeness to artificial piers. They formed a very perfect, spacious harbor in which, during a heedless moment or two, I caught myself looking for a cluster of rowboats, for some group of shipping, for cranes and capstans, for men walking, as though, forsooth, I gazed at the piers of a dock!

How it had come to pass that a big ship of seven or eight hundred tons should have backed and neatly threaded an eye of cave, and fixed herself within, Greaves had, doubtless, correctly explained. The commander of her had stumbled upon this island in thick weather; or he may have found the island aboard of him on a sudden in a black night. He had a reason for bringing up in the shelter of that harbor, and when his anchors were down it came on to blow dead in-shore. The ship dragged. Her stern made a straight course for the opening in the cave. Would they seek to give her a sheer to divert her from that entry? No. For there might be safety in that cave, but outside it was certain destruction. To touch was to go to pieces against such a steep-to front of cliff as that. But many are the conundrums submitted by the ocean, and victoriously insoluble are they for the most part. You may theorize as you will. Nothing is certain but this:

There was a ship!

While I waited for the return of Greaves, I called to Bol to get a cast of the deep-sea lead. There was no bottom at eighty fathoms. I had expected from the appearance of the island to find a great depth of water to the very wash of the surf. No need, therefore, to bother with our ground tackle. And so much the better! Nothing like having your ship under control when the land is aboard. With an offing of a mile it would be easy to “ratch” clear any point of the island, even should it come on to blow with hurricane power; then it would be up-helm and a brief run for it, and a heave-to till the weather mended.

The two Spanish sailors sat, Lascar fashion, against the caboose. They sucked alternately at a short pipe which one of them had probably borrowed. When the lead-line was coiled away, Yan Bol rolled up to me and said in his voice of thunder, but very civilly:

“Dot vhas a scare.”

“What was a scare?” said I.

He leveled a massive forefinger at the two Spaniards. I nodded. “Der captain vhas some time gone,” said he. “I hope no man vhas before her.”

“And that’s my hope.”

“How many cases of dollars might der be, Mr. Fielding?”

“I don’t know.”

He looked as if he did not believe me, and said, “Vell, der more, der better for Mynheer Tulp und oders.” He paused upon this word, _oders_. I gazed at the island. “Der more der better, certainly,” continued he, “yet dey vhas not so plentiful but dot efery dollar might be shipped before dark. Tell me dey vhas plentiful some more dan dot, and, by Cott, Mr. Fielding, der crew’s share vhas as a flea upon der dog dot scratch her.”

“My name is Fielding, not Greaves, Yan Bol,” said I.

“Oh, yaw, dot vhas right. But I likes to tink aloud sometimes, Mr. Fielding.”

“Are not you satisfied?” cried I, suddenly rounding upon him and looking him full in the face.

“Perfectly satisfied, Mr. Fielding.”

“Then why, by that devil who always seems to be busy in ship’s forecastles, come you to me now with your growlings and your questions and your dots, and your Cotts and your dollars, Yan Bol.”

“Growlings--questions! I likes to know vhen we get der dollars on board und make sail, dot vhas all.”

“Strike a light with your eyes and keep a lookout for yourself, and hail the fore royal yard, will ye, and receive the man’s report.”

He went forward, and his roar swept straight aloft like a blast from the mouth of the cannon. There was nothing in sight at sea, the man called down. I looked toward the island and saw the boat at that moment stealing out of the cave. I mused on Bol while the boat swept across the satin calm surface of the natural harbor, the oars swinging like lines of flame in the men’s hands. Was Bol going to give trouble? It was late in the day to ask that question. It would be impossible to rid the ship of him on this side the Horn, and by the time it came to t’other side----

The boat arrived, and Greaves rose in the stern sheets; he rose, but he was supported too. A sailor grasped him by either arm, and he was helped with difficulty over the side of the brig. I was at the gangway to receive him, and assisted by seizing his hands as the men helped him to climb. He was pale as milk, and his mouth was drawn with pain.

“What is the matter?” I asked.

“I have had a fall,” he said, speaking with a labored breath. “I tripped and drove my whole weight against the sharp edge of a case in the lazarette of the ship yonder. I wish I may not have broken a rib. Help me, Fielding.”

I took him by the arm, and Jimmy, who stood near, grasped him in obedience to my gesture by the other arm, and together we got him into the cabin and to his berth. He asked for brandy-and-water and drank a tumblerful, and then requested me to help him to strip, that he might see if he had broken any bones. He had hurt himself over the right hip, and the skin was somewhat darkened there, but the ribs were unbroken. He felt over himself anxiously, occasionally groaning, and said:

“No, my good angel be praised, the bones are sound. I am in torment from the pain of the blow. That must be it, and it will pass--it will pass.”

“I would recommend you to lie perfectly still.”

“No; I must be on deck. I can sit and keep watch and look about me while you go ashore.”

I helped him to dress, and he seemed unable to speak for pain while he put his arms and body in motion. He then asked for another glass of brandy-and-water and sat, saying he would rest and talk to me for ten minutes.

“Are you in pain when you are still?” said I.

“No. I was too eager, and consequently careless, pressed forward, tripped, and should have set fire to the ship had I swooned, for I was alone and the fall flung the lighted lantern from me, and the candle lay naked and burning among the cases.”

“Lord, how suddenly will a trifle become a frightful thing at sea!” said I.

“Where is the Spanish lady, Fielding?”

“In her berth, and perhaps asleep, sir.”

“Well,” said he, after a pause, “the dollars are there.”

“I am glad to hear it, sir,” said I, feeling the blood in my cheek, for I own that the news worked as a sort of transport in me.

“This cursed accident will hinder me from superintending the unlading of the vessel. You must undertake that job.”

“You can trust me, captain.”

“Up to the hilt I do. Open that drawer, and hand me the pocket-book you’ll see.” His extending his hand to receive the book made him wince. “There are a hundred and forty cases,” said he. “You will take slings and tackles to hoist the cases out and lower them over the side into the boat. Be careful not to overload your boat. The money may be safely transhipped in three journeys; so divide one hundred and forty by three and your quotient is your lading for each trip.”

“Ay, ay, sir.”

“Be careful with your fire. I split open some of the boxes, as I told you, to make sure of their contents. Take tools and nails and battens with you for securing the riven cases. Be yourself in the lazarette while this is doing.”

“Right, sir. Where will you have the cases stowed aboard us?”

“Oh, in the lazarette. I was prevented by my fall,” he exclaimed, “from examining the rest of the cargo. Do you that when the money is transhipped. I will act on your report if the weather allows. But should there come a change when we have got the money, then damn your cocoa and tin--we’ll be off.”

“Shall I remain in the ship during the trips, or take charge of the boat?”

“Take charge of the boat, but see all your men in first.”

I faintly smiled, for here was a direction that was a little particular, methought.

“Help me on deck, now, Fielding, and then go to work.”

I thought to myself: “It is no time, this, to speak of Yan Bol. The matter must stand.”

He leaned upon me, and, with pain and difficulty, gained the deck. All the men but one had come out of the boat, and the ship’s company, saving that man and Jimmy and the fellows at the wheel and masthead, were assembled in the gangway. They hung together in a little crowd. Impatience burnt like fire in them--impatience and expectation and anxiety, now complicated by the injury their captain had met with. When we made our appearance they stared and shuffled, one and all, as though they were mutineers, scarce masking a madness of bloody intention, and about to make a rush aft to its execution. Is not the insanity that drink will run into the veins and brains a sweet little cherub compared with the demon that enters the soul of man out of the coin of gold or silver?

“Captain,” cried Yan Bol, “I shpeaks for all handts. You vhas not hurt much, all handts hope?”

“Not much, my lads--not much, I thank you,” answered Greaves, whom I had helped to seat in the chair Jimmy had placed for him, and who, while he remained motionless, seemed free from pain.

“Captain,” again cried Yan Bol, in tones like to the noise of breakers heard in the hollow of cliffs, “again I shpeaks for all handts. Vhas der dollars safe?”

“Yes,” answered Greaves.

The men roared out a cheer--a roaring cheer it was. It seemed to be repeated on the island a mile off, as though there was a crew ashore there.

I now began to sing out the instructions which Greaves had given me. Pieces of planking for nailing over the cases were flung into the boat; lines for slings, tackles, tools, lanterns, and the like were handed down. The crew took their seats, and we shoved off, followed by a cheer from the fellows who remained behind. There went with me six men--two Dutch, the others my countrymen. The drift of the brig, though very inconsiderable, owing to the lightness of the breeze and the apparent absolute tidelessness of the sea, had veered the island a trifle southerly, and the brig lay on a line with the edge of the cliff where the cave was. The cave was, therefore, hidden from me. I stared with great curiosity at the island as we neared it, making for the head of the westerly reef to round into the lake-like expanse within. A more hideous heap of rock shows not its head above the water. The cliffs of it, where they run to any noticeable altitude, come down to the sea in twisted masses. You would have thought the process of this island’s formation had been arrested at some instant when the red-hot mass of it was writhing and pouring into the ocean over the edges of its own heaped-up stuff. No iceberg ever submitted a more fanciful sky-line; but its toad-like hue, its several hideous complexions, made it a loathly sight. The spirit shrinks from this bit of creation as from some disgusting creature.

The cave was situated in the highest front of this island. The height of this front was above two hundred feet; how much above that elevation I know not. It was smooth and sheer, pumice-hued like the beach that swept from it into the northeast; so smooth and sheer was it that you would have said it had been split in twain from a like mass that had fallen and vanished. Assuredly some enormous convulsion had gone to the manufacture of that prodigious fissure or cave.

We pulled through the opening of the reefs, and I headed straight for the cave. So strong was my excitement that it felt like a sort of illness. I breathed with labor; the sweat lay like oil in the palms of my hands, though my hands were cold. It was not now the thoughts of the money. My excitement was no dollar madness then. I was oppressed, to a degree I find incommunicable, by the marvelous picture, as I was now beholding it for the first time, of the big ship clothed in the dusk of the mighty tomb into which she had backed and where she had brought up. I had had no leisure for the sight during my first excursion; had but glanced at it, my head being then full of the shipwrecked people we were bringing off, and of fancies of what might be lurking on shore. But now, our approach being leisurely, the expanse of water to be measured considerable, I could gaze, wonder, realize, until emotion grew overwhelming and became a sensation of sickness in me.

Were you to split a big stone open and find a live toad in it you would marvel. Hundreds would assemble to view the wonder, and a poor man might get money by exhibiting it; but how many much stranger things than a live toad imprisoned in a stone would I, as a sailor, exact the relation and sight of, ere admitting that half the sum of that marvel of a great ship at rest in a huge cave was approached?

At first sight the fabric looked like a piece of nature’s handiwork as it lay in the gloom of the interior it had miraculously penetrated. It looked, I say, as though the volcanic spasm, which had shorn the lofty cliff into its bald front and wrought the prodigious fissure, had contrived the hundred fragments and ruins of rocks, the splinters, the serpentine lengths, the massive bulks, the pillar-shaped fragments into the aspect of a ship, building the wonder in a sudden roar of earthquake, and leaving it a faultless similitude.

“Oars!” cried I.

We floated forward with the arrested blades poised over the water. It was burning hot; the sun stood nearly overhead, and the surface of this strange natural harbor shone like new tin, tingling in fibers and needles of white fire back again into the light that it reflected. We were within a musket-shot of the entrance of the cave.

“On which side did you board, men?”

“To starboard, sir.”

“Give way gently, and, bow there, stand by with your boathook.”