CHAPTER II

THE FRENCH LUGGER

My pipe was out; the quarter-deck bulwarks hid the sea, and so I mounted the poop ladder to take a look round before turning in. Away to port, or _larboard_, as we then called it, was a full-rigged ship rolling up Channel under all plain sail, with such a smother of white yeast clouding her bows, and racing aft into the long line of her wake, which went glaring over the dark throbbing waters, that it made one think of the base of a waterspout writhing upwards to meet the descending tube of vapour. She was the first object that took my eye, and I hurriedly crossed the deck to view her. Mr. Prance, the chief mate, stood at the rail watching her.

‘A noble sight!’ said I.

‘Yes, sir, an English frigate. A fifty-one gun vessel, apparently. Upon my word, nothing statelier ever swam, or ever again will swim, than ships of that kind. Look at the line of her batteries--black and white like the keys of a pianoforte! What squareness of yard, sir! Her main-royal should be as big as our topgallant-sail.’

He sent a look aloft at the reeling, fabric over our heads, with a thoughtful drag, at a short growth of beard that curled upwards from his chin like the fore-thatch of a sou’-wester. The noble ship went floating out into the darkness astern, and her pale heights died upon the gloom like a burst of steam dissolving in the wind.

‘What is that out yonder upon the starboard bow there, Mr. Prance?’ said I.

He peered awhile, and said: ‘Some craft reaching like ourselves--standing as we head--a lumpish thing, anyhow. What a blot she makes, seeing that she has no height of spar!’

‘We are overhauling her,’ said I.

‘Ay,’ he answered, keeping his eyes fixed upon her. ‘Doesn’t she seem a bit uncertain, though?’ he muttered, as if thinking aloud.

I had wonderfully good sight in those days, and after straining my eyes awhile against the heap of scarce determinable shadow which the craft made, I exclaimed: ‘She’ll be a French lugger, or I’m greatly mistaken.’

‘I believe you are right, sir,’ answered the mate.

He drew a little away from me, as a hint, perhaps, that he desired to address his attention to the vessel on the bow, and suddenly putting his hand to his mouth, he hailed the forecastle in a sharp clear note. An answer was returned swift as the tone of a bell to the blow of its tongue.

‘Show a light forward! Smartly now! That chap ahead seems asleep.’

There were no side-lights in those days. Some long years were to elapse before the Shipping Act enforced the use of a night signal more to the point than a short flourish of the binnacle lamp over the side. In a few moments a large globular lantern in the grip of a seaman, whose figure showed like a sketch in phosphorus to the illumination of the flame, was rested upon the forecastle rail, with the night beyond him looking the blacker for the rising and falling point of fire. The hint seemed to be taken by the fellow ahead, and the mate walked aft to the binnacle, into which he stood looking, afterwards going to the rail, at which he lingered, staring forwards.

I crossed over to leeward to watch the milk-like race of waters along the side. The foam made a sort of twilight of its own in the air. Under the foot of the mainsail that was arched transversely across the deck, the wind stormed with a note of hurricane out of the huge concavity of the cloths, and made the rushing snow giddy with the whipping of it, till the eye reeled again to the sight of the yeasty boiling. Never did any ship raise such a smother about her as the _Countess Ida_. Our speed was scarce a full five miles, and yet, looking over to leeward, when the huge fabric came heeling down to her channels to the scud of a sea and to the weight of the wind in her canvas, you would have supposed her thundering through it a whole ten knots at least.

On a sudden there was a loud and fearful cry forward. ‘Port your hellum! port your hellum!’ I could hear a voice roaring out with a meaning as of life or death in the startling vehemence of the utterance.

‘Starboard! starboard!’ shouted Mr. Prance, who was still standing aft: ‘over with it, men, for God’s sake, before we’re into her!’

Next instant there was a dull shock throughout the ship; a thrill that ran through her planks into the very soles of one’s feet, while there arose shrieks and shouts as from three-score throats under the bows, and a most lamentable and terrifying noise of wood-splintering, of canvas tearing, of liberated sails flogging the wind. I bounded to the weather-rail, and saw a large hull of some eighty tons wholly dismasted--a wild scene of wreck and ruin to the flash of the moon at that moment shining down out of a clear space of sky--gliding past into our wake. The dark object seemed filled with men, and the yells left me in no doubt that she was a Frenchman--a large three-masted lugger, as I had supposed her.

In an instant our ship was in an uproar. There is nothing in language to express the noise and excitement. To begin with, our helm having been put down, we had come round into the wind, and lay pitching heavily with sails slatting and thundering, yards creaking, rigging straining. The sailors rushed to and fro. All discipline for the moment seemed to have gone overboard. The captain had come tumbling up on deck, and was calling orders to the mate, who re-echoed them in loud bawlings to the quarter-deck and forecastle. Lanterns were got up and shown over the rail, and by the light of them you saw the figures of the seamen speeding from rope to rope and hauling upon the gear, their gruff, harsh chorusings rising high above the terrified chatter of the passengers--many of whom had rushed up on deck barely clothed--high also above the storming and shrilling of the wind, the deep notes of angry waters warring at our bows, and the distracting shaking and beating of the sails.

But a few orders delivered by Mr. Prance, whose tongue was as a trumpet in a moment like this, acted upon the ship as the sympathetic hand of a horseman upon a restive terrified thoroughbred.

‘Haul up the mainsail--fore clew garnets--back maintopsail yard--tail on to the weather-braces and round in handsomely. Mr. Cocker (this was addressed to the second-mate, who had tumbled up with the rest of the watch below on feeling the thump the _Countess Ida_ had given herself, and on hearing the uproar that followed)--burn a flare--smartly, if you please! Also get blue lights and rockets up.’

I ran aft to see if the vessel that we had wrecked was anywhere about. The moon was shining brilliantly down upon the sea at that time, and the swollen Channel waters were lifting their black heights into creaming peaks in an atmosphere of delicate silver haze, that yet suffered the eye to penetrate to the dark confines of the horizon. The wake of the planet was a long throbbing line of angry broken splendour in the south; but the tail of it seemed to stream fair to the point of sea into which the lugger had veered, and I was confident that if she were afloat I should see her.

‘Who is that to leeward there?’ called the captain from the other side of the wheel in a tone of worry and irritation.

‘Mr. Dugdale,’ I replied.

‘Oh, beg pardon, I’m sure,’ he exclaimed; ‘do you see anything of the vessel that we’ve run down?’

‘Nothing,’ I responded.

‘She must have foundered,’ said he; ‘yet though I listened, I heard no cries after the wreck had once fairly settled away from us.’

Here the mate came aft hastily, and with a touch of his cap, reported that the well had been sounded, and that all was right with the ship.

‘Very well, sir,’ said the captain. ‘I shall keep all fast with my boats. The calamity can’t be helped. I’m not going to increase it by sacrificing my men’s lives. The poor devils will have had a boat of their own, I suppose. Show blue lights, will ye, Mr. Prance, and send a rocket up from time to time.’

They were burning a flare over the quarter-deck rail at that moment--some turpentine arrangement, that threw out a long flickering flame and a great coil of smoke from the yawning mouth of the tin funnel that contained the mixture. It was like watching the ship by sheet-lightning to see a large part of her amidships and her mainmast and the pale lights of the mainsail hanging from the yard in the grip of the gear--to see all this come and go as the flame leapt and faded. There was a crowd of terrified passengers on the poop, some of them ladies, hugging themselves in dressing-gowns and shawls; and out of the heart of the little mob rose the saw-like notes of Colonel Bannister.

‘These collisions,’ I heard him cry, ‘never _can_ take place if a proper look-out be kept. It is preposterous to argue. I’d compel the oldest seaman who contradicted me to eat his words. Why, have I been making the voyage to India four times----’ But the rest of his observations were drowned in cries of astonishment and alarm from the ladies as a rocket, discharged close to them, went hissing and shearing up athwart the howling wind in a stream of fire, breaking on high into a blood-red ball, that floated swiftly landwards, like an electric meteor, ghastly against the moonshine, with a wide crimson atmosphere about it that tinctured the very scud. A moment after a blue light was burnt over the side from the head of the poop ladder, whereat there was a general recoil and more shrill exclamations from the ladies. In fact, these wild mystical lights as it were coming on top of the fancy of men drowning astern, and colouring the ship with unearthly glares, and flinging a wonderful complexion of horror upon the night for a wide space round about the pitching and groaning Indiaman, put such an element of mystery and fear into the scene that though I was by no means a new hand at such sea-shows, I will own to shuddering again and yet again as I overhung the side of the poop, striving to discern any object that might resemble a boat in the foam-whitened gloom into which the lugger had slided.

‘What has happened? Everybody is so excited that one can’t get at the real story.’

I turned quickly, and saw the tall figure of a lady at my side. She was habited in a cloak, the hood of which was over her head, and darkened her face almost to the concealment of it, saving her eyes, which shone large, liquid, with a clear red spot in the depths, from the reflection of the flare at the quarter-deck bulwark.

I briefly explained, lifting my cap as I gave her her name--Miss Temple--for I had particularly remarked her as she came aboard at Gravesend, and asked who she was, though I had seen nothing more of her down to that moment. I ended my account pointing to the quarter of the sea where the lugger had disappeared.

‘Thanks for the story,’ she exclaimed, with a sudden note of haughtiness in her voice, while she kept her eyes, of the rich blackness of the tropic night-sky, fixed firm and gleaming upon me, as though she had addressed me in error, and wanted to make sure of me. She moved as though she would walk off, paused, and said: ‘Poor creatures! I hope they will be saved. Is our ship injured, do you know?’

‘I believe not,’ said I a little coldly. ‘There may be a rope or two broken forward perhaps, but there is nothing but the French lugger to be sorry for.’

‘My aunt, Mrs. Radcliffe,’ said she, ‘has been rendered somewhat hysterical by the commotion on deck. She is too ill to leave her bed. I think I may reassure her?’

‘Oh yes,’ I exclaimed. ‘But yonder, abreast of the wheel there, is the captain to confirm my words.’

She gave me a bow, or rather a curtsey of those days, and walked aft to address the captain, as I supposed. Instead, she descended the companion hatch, and I lost sight of her.

A disdainful lady, thought I, but a rare beauty too!--marvellous eyes, anyhow, to behold by such an illumination as this of rockets and blue lights, and flying moonshine, and the yellow glimmer of flare-tins.

All this while the ship lay hove-to, her maintopsail to the mast, the folds of her hanging mainsail sending a low thunder into the wind as it shook its cloths, the seas breaking in stormy noises from her bow; but _now_ there fell a dead silence upon the people along her decks: nothing broke this hush upon the life of the vessel, save the occasional harsh hissing rush of a rocket piercing the restless noises of the sea and the whistling of the wind in the rigging. The bulwark rail was lined with sailors, eagerly looking towards the tail of the misty wake of the moon, into which the black surges went shouldering and changing into troubled hills of dull silver. The captain and two of the mates stood aft, intently watching the water, often putting themselves into strained hearkening postures, their hands to their ears. Most of the lady passengers went below, but not to bed, for you could catch a sight of them through the skylight seated at the table talking swiftly, often directing anxious glances at the window-glass through which you could see them. There was one majestic old lady amongst them with grey hair that looked to be powdered, a hawk’s-bill nose, an immense bosom, that started immediately from under her chin. The lamplight flashed in diamonds in her ears, and in rubies and in stones of value and beauty upon her fingers. She was Colonel Bannister’s wife, and was apparently not wanting in her husband’s fiery energy and capacity of taking peppery views of things, if I might judge by her vehement nods, and the glances she shot around her from her grey eyes. It was a cabin picture I caught but a glimpse of as I crossed the deck to take a look to leeward, but one, somehow, that sunk into my memory, maybe because of the magic-lantern-like look of the interior, with its brilliant lamps and many-coloured attire of the ladies in their shawls, dressing-gowns, and what not--standing out upon the eye amidst the wild dark frame of the seething clamorous night.

All at once there was a loud cry. I rushed back to the weather rail.

‘There’s a boat heading for us, sir--see her, sir? Away yonder, this side o’ the tumble of the moon’s reflection!’

‘Ay, there she is! It’ll be the lugger’s boat. God, how she dives!’

Twenty shadowy arms pointed in the direction which had been indicated by the gruff grumbling cries of the sailors. The second mate, Mr. Cocker, came hastily forward to the break of the poop.

‘Stand by, some of you,’ he shouted, ‘to heave them the end of a line. Make ready with bowlines to help them over the side.’

I could see the boat clearly now as she rose to the height of a sea, her black wet side sparkling out an instant to the moonlight ere she sank out of sight past the ivory white head of the surge sweeping under her. She seemed to be deep with men; but I could count only two oars. She was rushed down upon us by the impulse of the sea and wind, and I felt my heart stand still as she drove bow on into us, whirling round alongside in a manner to make you look for the wreck of her in staves washing away under our counter. She was full of people, with women amongst them--poor creatures, in great white caps and long golden earrings, the men for the most part in huge fishermen’s boots, and tasselled caps and jerseys that might have been of any colour in that light. One could just make these features out, but no more, for the contents of the boat as it rose soaring and falling alongside were but a dark huddle of human shapes, writhing and twisting like a mass of worms in a pot, vociferating to us in the scarce intelligible _patois_ of Gravelines or Calais or Boulogne.

There was no magic in the commands even of British officers to British sailors to put the least element of calm into the business. It was not only that at one moment the boat alongside seemed to be hove up to the Indiaman’s covering-board and that at the next she was rushing down into a chasm that laid bare many feet of the big ship’s yellow sheathing: there was the dreadful expectation of the whole of the human freight being overset and drowning alongside in a breath; there were the heart-rending shouts of the distracted people; there was the total inability of captain and mates to make themselves understood. How it was managed I will not pretend to explain. By some means the boat was dragged to the gangway, grinding and thumping herself horribly against the Indiaman’s rolling, stooping, massive side; then bowlines and ropes in plenty were dangled over or flung into her; and through the unshipped gangway, illuminated by half-a-dozen lanterns, and crowded by a hustling mob of sailors and passengers, one after another, the women and the men--most of the men coming first!--were dragged inboards, some of them falling flat upon the deck, some dropping on their knees and crossing themselves; a few of the women weeping passionately, one of them sobbing in dreadful paroxysms, the others mute as statues, as though terror and the presence of death had frozen the lifeblood in them and arrested the very beating of their hearts. Two of them fell into the sea; but they had lines about them and were dragged up half dead. They were all of them dripping wet, the men’s sea-boots full of water; whilst the soaked gowns of the women flooded the deck on which they stood, as though several buckets of brine had been capsized there.

Old Keeling’s pity for them would not go to the length of introducing the wretched creatures into the cuddy, to spoil the ship’s fine carpets and stain and ruin the coverings of the couches. They were accordingly brought together in the recess under the break of the poop, where at all events they were sheltered. Hot spirits and water were given to them along with bread and meat, and this supper the unhappy creatures ate by the light of the dimly burning lanterns held by the sailors.

There never was an odder wilder sight than the picture the poor half-drowned creatures made. Some of the women scarcely once intermitted their sobs and lamentations, save when they silenced their throats by a mouthful of food or drink. They were very ugly, dark as coffee; and their black wet hair streaming like sea-weed upon their shoulders and brows from under their soaked caps made them look like witches. The men talked hoarsely and eagerly with many passionate gestures, which suggested fierce denunciation. The mate coming down to the booby hatch around which these people were squatting, eating, drinking, moaning, and jabbering without the least regard to the crowd of curious eyes which inspected them from the quarter-deck--the mate, I say, coming down, stood looking a minute at them, and then sent a glance round, and seeing me, asked if I spoke French.

‘Yes,’ said I, ‘but not such French as those people are talking.’

‘We have three passengers,’ said he, ‘who, I am told, are scholars in that language; but the steward informs me they’re too sea-sick to come on deck. Just ask these people in such French as you have, if their captain’s amongst them.’

As he said this, a little old man seated on the hatch-coaming, with a red nightcap on, immense earrings, and a face of leather puckered into a thousand wrinkles like the grin of a monkey, looked up at Mr. Prance, and nodding with frightful energy whilst he struck his bosom with his clenched fist, cried out: ‘Yash, yash, me capitaine.’

‘Ha!’ said the mate, ‘do you speak English, then?’

‘Yash, yash,’ he roared: ‘me speakee Angleesh.’

Happily he knew enough to save me the labour of interpreting; and _labour_ it would have been with a vengeance, since, though it was perfectly certain none amongst them, saving the little monkey-faced man, comprehended a syllable of the mate’s questions, every time the small withered chap answered--which he did with extraordinary convulsions and a vast variety of frantic gesticulations--all the rest of them broke into speech, the women joining in, and there was such a hubbub of tongues that not an inch of idea could I have got out of the distracting row. However, in course of time the leathery manikin who called himself captain made Mr. Prance understand that the lugger belonged to Boulogne; that she had the survivors of another lugger on board, making some thirty-four souls in all, men and women, at the time of the collision, of which seventeen or eighteen were drowned. After he had given Mr. Prance these figures, he turned to the others and said something in a shrill, fierce, rapid voice, whereat the women fell to shrieking and weeping, whilst many of the men tore their hair, some going the length of knocking their heads against the cuddy front. It was a sight to sicken the heart, the more, I think, for the unutterable element of grotesque farce imported into that dismal tragedy by their countenances, postures, and behaviour; and having heard and seen enough, I slipped away on to the poop, with a chill coming into my very soul to the thought of the drowned bodies out yonder when my eye went to the sea weltering black to the troubled line of moonshine, and heaving in ashen luminous billows in that chill path of light.

But long before this, our rockets, blue-lights, and flares had been seen; and a moment or two after I had gained the poop I spied the figure of Captain Keeling with a few male passengers at his side standing at the rail watching a powerful cutter thrashing through it to us close-hauled, with the water boiling to her leaps, and her big mainsail to midway high dark with the saturation of the flying brine. In less than twenty minutes she was rising and falling buoyant as a seabird abreast of us, with a shadowy figure at her lee rail bawling with lungs of brass to know what was wrong.

‘I have run down a French lugger,’ shouted Captain Keeling, ‘and have half her people on board, and must put them ashore at once, for I wish to proceed.’

‘Right y’are,’ came from the cutter; but with a note of irritation and disappointment in the cry, as I could not but fancy.

Then followed some wonderful manœuvring. There was only one way of transshipping the miserable French people, and that was by a yard-arm whip and a big basket. Hands sprang aloft to prepare the necessary tackle; Prance meanwhile, from the head of the poop ladder, thundered the intentions of the Indiaman through a speaking-trumpet to the cutter. I could see old Keeling stamp from time to time with impatience as he broke away from the questions of the passengers, one of whom was Colonel Bannister, into a sharp walk full of grief and irritability. Meanwhile they had shifted their helm aboard the cutter and got way upon the fine little craft. I saw her take the weight of the wind and heel down to the line of her gunwale, then break a dark sea into boiling milk, leaping the liquid acclivity, as a horse takes a tall gate, burying herself nose under with the downwards launching rush, then soaring again to the height of the next billow with full way upon her. She came tearing and hissing through it as though her coppered forefoot were of red-hot metal, and when abreast of our lee quarter, put her helm down, and swept with marvellous grace and precision to alongside of us, clear of our shearing spars, and there she lay.

It was hard upon midnight when the last basket-load had been lowered on to her deck. There was no hitch; all went well; a line attached to the basket enabled the cutter’s people to haul it fair to their decks; but the terror of the unfortunate Frenchmen was painful to see. The women got into the basket bravely; but many of the men blankly refused to enter, and had to be stowed in it by force, our Jacks holding on till the order to ‘sway away’ was given, when up would go poor Crapaud shrieking vengeance upon us all, and calling upon the Virgin and saints for help. In its way it was like a little engagement with an enemy. Some of the Frenchmen drew knives, and had to be knocked down.

Then, when the last of them was swayed over the side and lowered--‘Are you all right?’ shouted Captain Keeling to the cutter.

‘All right,’ responded a deep voice, hoarse with rum and weather. ‘I suppose your owners’ll make the job worth something to us?’

‘Ay, ay,’ answered the captain. ‘Round with your topsail yard, Mr. Prance. Lively now! this business has cost us half a night as it is.’

In a few minutes the great yards on the main were swung slowly to the drag of the braces with loud heave-yeos from the sailors, and the ship, feeling the weight of the wind in the vast dim hollow of the topsail, leaned with a new impulse of life in her frame and drove half an acre of foam ahead of her. We had resumed our voyage; and with a sense of supreme weariness in me following the excitement of the hours, and chilled to the marrow by my long spell on deck and incessant loiterings in the keen night-wind, I entered the saloon, called for a tumbler of grog, and made my way to my berth.