CHAPTER XVIII

ADRIFT

There was a small deck-house standing abaft the jagged ends of the stump of the mainmast, a low-pitched, somewhat narrow, and rather long structure, with a door facing the wheel, or where the wheel had stood, and a couple of small windows on either hand, the glass of which was entirely gone.

‘The lonely watchman of this wreck is still at home, doubtless waiting to receive us,’ said the lieutenant, pointing to the little building. ‘Shall we pay him a visit?’

‘Oh yes; let us see everything that there may be to look at,’ answered Colledge, who had not yet recovered his breath, but who was working hard, I could see, to regain his late air of vivacity, though he was pale, and shot several uneasy glances around him as he spoke.

‘I would rather not look,’ said Miss Temple; ‘it will make me dream.’

‘You will have nothing to talk about, then,’ said Colledge.

‘It is the most natural object in the world,’ exclaimed the lieutenant; ‘if he could be stuffed, preserving the posture he is in, and exhibited in London, thousands would assemble to view him.’

I left them to persuade Miss Temple if they could, and walking aft, opened the door, and peeped in. It was just a plain, immensely strong, roughly furnished deck erection, with a small hatch close against the entrance, conducting, as I supposed, to the cabin beneath. On either side went a row of lockers; in the centre was a short narrow table, supported by stanchions; and at this table sat the figure of a man. He was in an attitude of writing; his right hand grasped a long feather pen; his left elbow was on the table, and his cheek was supported by his hand. He was dressed in white jean breeches, the ends of which were stuffed into a pair of yellow leather half-boots. There was a large belt round his waist, clasped by some ornament resembling a two-headed eagle, of a shining metal, probably silver. His shirt was a pale red flannel, over which was a jacket cut in the Spanish fashion; his hair was long, and flowed in black ringlets upon his back. His hat was a large sombrero, and I had to walk abreast of him to see his face. I was prepared to witness a ghastly sight. Instead, I beheld a countenance of singular beauty. It was as if the hand of death had moulded some faultless human countenance out of white wax. The lids of the eyes drooped, and the gaze seemed rooted upon the table, as though the man lay rapt and motionless in some sweet and perfect dream. His small moustache was like a touch of delicate pencilling. He looked to have been a person of some three or four and twenty years of age.

As I stood surveying the figure, the interior was shadowed. Miss Temple and the others stood in the doorway. The lieutenant and Colledge entered; the girl would not approach.

‘Here, Miss Temple,’ said I, ‘is the handsomest man I have ever seen.’

‘Can he be dead?’ exclaimed Colledge in a subdued voice of awe.

‘He’ll never be deader,’ said the lieutenant, peering curiously into the face of the corpse. ‘_Handsome_, do you consider him, sir? Well, we all have our tastes, to be sure. He looks like a woman masquerading.’

‘Who was he, I wonder?’ asked Miss Temple in a low tone, standing in a half-shrinking attitude at the door.

‘Very hard to say,’ said I. ‘Too young for the captain, I should think. Probably the mate.’

‘A pirate, anyway,’ said the lieutenant.

‘Hark!’ cried Miss Temple; ‘this ship is tolling his knell.’

The mellow chime floated past the ear. The effect was extraordinary, so clear was the note as it rang through the soft sounds of the weltering waters; so ghostly, wild, and unreal, too, the character it gathered from the presence of that silent, stirless penman.

‘I say, we’ve seen enough of him, I think,’ exclaimed Colledge.

‘Shall we bury him?’ said I.

‘Oh no, sir,’ exclaimed the lieutenant; ‘this sheer hulk is his coffin. Leave the dead to bury their dead. Now for a glimpse of the cabin.’

Miss Temple entered with some reluctance; the lieutenant handed her through the hatch down the short ladder, and Colledge and I followed. We found ourselves in a moderately-sized state-room of the width of the little vessel, with bulkheads at either end, each containing a couple of cabins. There was a small skylight overhead, all the glass of it shattered, but light enough fell through to enable us to see easily. Colledge had plucked up heart, and now bustled about somewhat manfully, opening the cabin doors, starting as if he saw horrible sights, cracking jokes as in the boat, and calling to Miss Temple to look here and look there, and so on.

‘Hallo!’ cried the lieutenant, putting his head into one of the cabins at the fore-end of the state-room; ‘I missed this room when I overhauled her. What have we here? A pantry is it, or a larder?’

I looked over his shoulder, and by the faint light sifting through the bull’s-eye in the deck, made out the contents of what was apparently a storeroom. There were several shelves containing crockery, cheeses, hams, and other articles of food. Under the lower shelf, heaped upon the deck, were stowed several dozens of bottles in straw.

‘The corsairs,’ said the lieutenant, ‘will always be memorable for the excellence of their tipple. What is this, now?’

He picked up a bottle, knocked off the head, and taking a little tin drinking-vessel from a shelf, half filled it, then smelled, and tasted.

‘An exquisite Burgundy,’ he cried. ‘Try it, Mr. Dugdale.’

It was indeed a very choice sound wine. The lieutenant half filled a pannikin for Colledge, who emptied it with a sigh of enjoyment. ‘What would my father give for such stuff as this!’ said he.

The lieutenant found a wine-glass, which he carefully cleansed with the liquor, and then filling it, he asked Miss Temple to drink to the confusion of all pirates. She laughed, and declined.

‘Oh, you must sip it, if you please,’ cried Colledge, ‘if only to heighten the romance of this adventure. Think of the additional colour your story will get out of this incident of drinking perdition to the corsairs in wine of their own!’

She was about to answer, when the hull rolled heavily. The lieutenant slipped; the wine-glass fell to the deck, and was shivered; Colledge, grasping me to steady himself, threw me off my balance, and the pair of us went rolling to the bottles. The young fellow scrambled on to his legs with a loud laugh.

‘I believe this vessel is tipsy,’ said he.

‘Do you mark the increase in the weight of the swell?’ I exclaimed as I regained my legs.

The roll of the vessel the other way had been severe, and now she was dipping her sides regularly with an oscillation extravagant enough to render standing very inconvenient.

‘We must be off, I think,’ said the lieutenant.

‘Miss Temple hasn’t drunk confusion to the pirates,’ exclaimed Colledge with the persistency of brains flushed with wine.

‘I would rather not do so,’ she answered, her fine face looking curiously pale in that dull light, whilst she glanced restlessly towards the state cabin. She pulled out a little watch. ‘It is certainly time to return to the Indiaman,’ she added.

‘Oh, but don’t let us leave all this noble drink to go down to the bottom of the sea,’ cried Colledge. ‘Is there nothing that we can pack some of the bottles in? If we could only manage to get away with a couple of dozen--twelve for ourselves and twelve for my cousin?’--and with red face and bright eyes he went staggering with the heave of the hull to the shelves and stood holding on, looking about him.

‘It might be managed, I think,’ said the lieutenant, who seemed all anxiety to oblige him.

‘I wish to be gone,’ exclaimed Miss Temple with a strong hint of the imperiousness that had been familiar to me in the Indiaman in the air with which she looked at and addressed the lieutenant. ‘What is the meaning of this increased rolling? I shall not be able to enter the boat.’

‘No fear of that, madam,’ answered the lieutenant; ‘a dismasted egg-shell like this will roll to the weakest heave. A trifle more swell has certainly set in, but it is nothing.’

I was not so sure of that. What he was pleased to describe as a trifling increase was to my mind, and very distinctly too, a heightening and broadening of the undulations, of which the significance was rendered strong by the suddenness of the thing. It meant wind close at hand, I could swear.

‘I’ll go on deck and see how things are,’ said I.

‘Take me with you, Mr. Dugdale,’ exclaimed Miss Temple.

‘You will suffer me to assist you?’ said the lieutenant.

‘Oh, I say, _don’t_ leave all this wine here,’ cried Colledge. ‘Mr.--I mean Lieutenant--upon my word, I must apologise for not having asked your name--can’t we manage to find some old basket’----

‘What is that down in the corner there, Mr. Colledge?’ said the lieutenant, laughing.

‘Pray, take me on deck, Mr. Dugdale?’ exclaimed Miss Temple haughtily and with temper, and she came to my side and passed her arm through mine.

The swaying of the light hull without top-hamper to steady her so hindered one’s movements by the staggering lurches it flung one into, that it cost me no small effort to steer a fair course with Miss Temple hanging to me, to the cabin steps. I helped her up the ladder, and felt in her arm the shudder that swept through her as she sent a single swift glance at the dead figure at the table.

The moment I emerged I cried out: ‘My God! see there! Why, if we are not quick’---- And putting my head into the doorway again, I roared down the hatch: ‘For heaven’s sake, come on deck, or we shall lose both ships!’

Indeed, all away in the north-west was a white blankness of vapour bearing right down upon the hull, with a long and heavy swell rolling out of it, the heads of which as they came washing from under the base of the thickness were dark with wind. The sky overhead was of a sort of watery ashen colour, going down to the eastern sea-line in a weak, dim blue, so obscure with the complexion of the approaching vaporous mass that the corvette on the left hand and the Indiaman on the right appeared as little more than pallid smudges, with a kind of looming out of their dull, distorted proportions that made them show as though they hung upon the very verge of the ocean. I told Miss Temple to hold to the side of the deck-house to steady herself, and rushed to the quarter. The cutter lay there to the scope of her painter, rising and falling in a manner bewildering to see to one who knew that she had to be entered from these perilously sloping decks. The moment my head was seen, one of the sailors bawled out: ‘The Indiaman’s fired two guns, sir.’

‘Why the deuce,’ I shouted in a passion, ‘didn’t one of you jump aboard to report what was coming? Haul alongside, for God’s sake.’

At this moment the lieutenant appeared, followed by Colledge. He took one look, and came in a bound to the sheer edge of the deck, where the remains of the line of crushed bulwarks stood like fangs. ‘Lively now!’ he cried; ‘hand over hand with it.’

‘We shall be smothered out of sight in a few minutes,’ I exclaimed; ‘shall we be acting wisely in quitting this hull? We may lose both ships in that weather there, and what will there be to do then?’

‘Don’t frighten the lady, sir,’ he answered, turning upon me with a frown. ‘Miss Temple, there is nothing to be alarmed at. We shall get you into the boat simply enough, and the vapour will speedily clear. I know these waters.’

Colledge stood gazing round him, looking horribly frightened. The boat was dragged alongside: one moment she was above the level of the naked edge of the deck; the next she was sliding away out of sight into the hollow, with the wreck rolling heavily off from her.

‘Now, Miss Temple,’ cried the lieutenant. ‘Help me to steady the lady, Mr. Dugdale. Stand by, two of you men there, to receive her.’

Miss Temple set her lips, and her eyes were on fire with anger and fear. ‘I shall not be able to enter that boat,’ said she.

‘Oh, madam, be persuaded,’ cried the lieutenant, speaking irritably out of his clear perception of the danger of delay and of the peril of passing her into the cutter. ‘Mr. Dugdale, take Miss Temple’s arm.’

She shrank back, with a firmer grip of the deck-house, against which she had set her shoulder to steady herself. ‘You will kill me!’ she cried.

‘Mr. Dugdale,’ exclaimed the lieutenant wildly, ‘for God’s sake, jump into the boat, that Miss Temple may see how easily it is to be done. I must be the last to leave.’

‘Let Mr. Colledge jump first,’ said I. ‘I may probably be more useful to you and the lady than he.’

‘Jump, Mr. Colledge!’ cried the lieutenant.

The young fellow went to the edge of the deck. ‘I shall break my neck,’ he shouted; ‘I shall fall into the sea; I shall be drowned.’

‘No, sir! no, sir!’ roared one of the seamen; ‘jump as the boat lifts; we’ll catch you.’

‘_Now!_’ cried the lieutenant.

Colledge sprang; down sank the boat out of sight; then up she soared again with Colledge safe in the embrace of one of the most powerful of the sailors.

‘Here it comes!’ said I.

As the words left my lips, the wind, with a long fierce howl, swept over the deck of the hull, and a moment later the fog was boiling all about us. It was like a mighty burst of steam; and in a breath the ocean vanished, and there was nothing to see but the wool-white blankness and a space of thirty or forty feet of water beyond the wreck. All on a sudden, the lieutenant, who had gone to the edge of the deck, perhaps to see how it was with Colledge, or to bawl some further directions to the seamen, staggered to a deep and swinging heel of the hull and went overboard. It happened in a second. My instant impression was that he had jumped for the boat; but I knew better when I heard the men roaring out.

‘For heaven’s sake, Miss Temple,’ I cried, ‘keep a firm hold, and do not attempt to stir, or the angle of the decks will certainly rush you over the side.’

So saying, I staggered to the quarter where there were some eight or ten feet of bulwarks still standing, and looked over. The men had let go the painter of their boat, and were shouting instructions to one another as some of them flung their oars over into the rowlocks, whilst others overhung the gunwale eagerly with pale faces and looks of consternation and dread, searching the round volumes of the swell, which the wind was now whipping into yeast, for any signs of their officer.

‘Keep alongside!’ I bellowed; ‘he will rise near.’

But the fellows were distracted, unnerved, and there was nobody to give them orders. The howling of the wind, the sudden leaping down upon them of this blindness of white vapour, the violent upheavals and sinkings of the cutter upon the run of the liquid hills, heavily increased the distraction raised in them by their lieutenant’s disappearance. They had three oars out, possessed, I suppose, by some mad fancy of merely paddling whilst they stared round the water; and even whilst I watched them, and whilst I yelled to them to get their six oars over, and to pull for their lives to alongside the wreck, the boat, yielding to the full weight of the blast and to the long irresistible heavings of the swell, faded out of sight in the flying thickness; and ere I could fully realise what had occurred, the narrow space of foam-freckled pouring waters showed blank to where the flying vapour seemed to hang like a wall of white smoke.

I continued to stare, occasionally bringing my eyes away from the spot where the boat had vanished to the water alongside; but the lieutenant had sunk. There could be no doubt that the poor fellow on rising from his first dive had struck the bends of the hull as she rolled heavily over to the trough where he had vanished, and so had been drowned, struck down again into the depths, to rise no more. I could not realise the truth. I felt as if I had fallen crazy, and was imagining dreadful horrors. It was but a minute or two before that he had turned to me with a frown--it was but a little while before that he was full of jokes and laughter in the cabin--and now he lay a dead man, sinking and yet sinking under our heaving and plunging keel, dead as the figure yonder in that little cabin, of whom he had spoken jestingly so lately that the words and tone of his voice were still in my ear!

‘Where is the boat, Mr. Dugdale?’

I turned slowly round and looked at the girl with an air of stupefaction, then stared again into the blankness, and with shuddering heart swept my eyes over the water alongside, brimming in humpbacked rounds to the very line of the deck, and sweeping away into the near thickness with a spitting and seething and flashing of foam off each long slant to the fierce shrill smiting of the wind.

‘Has the boat left us, Mr. Dugdale?’

With a desperate effort I rallied myself, and watching for my chances betwixt the wild slopings of the deck, I reached the deck-house, and held on by the girl’s side.

‘The boat has been blown away. The men fell imbecile, I do believe, when they saw their officer drop overboard. What madmen to let go the painter, to manœuvre with three oars in a heavy cutter in the teeth of such a wind as this, and on the top of that swell!’

‘Did they recover the lieutenant?’ she asked.

‘No.’

‘Oh, Mr. Dugdale,’ she shrieked, ‘do you tell me he is drowned?’

‘Yes--yes--he is drowned,’ I answered, scarce able to articulate for the sudden fit of horror that came upon me again.

‘Drowned!’ she exclaimed. ‘Oh no--not so suddenly! He may be struggling close against the vessel now’--she moved as if to go to the side to look. I grasped her arm.

‘Do not stir,’ I cried; ‘the slope of the deck will carry you overboard. It is all open to the water abreast of us.’

‘Shocking! It is unendurable! Drowned so swiftly! And the boat--the boat, Mr. Dugdale?’

The cruel distress in her voice, the anguish of mind expressed in her parted lips, her heaving breast, her strained, brilliant, wide-open staring looks about her, obliged me to recollect myself by forcing me to understand my obligations as a man.

‘Miss Temple, this fog may prove but a passing thickness. There is a clear sky over it, and when the vapour settles away, the sea will open to its confines. The Indiaman knows we are here. We were watched, too, from the corvette, no doubt, and she must regain her boat besides. The cutter is a powerful little fabric, and there is nothing as yet in this weather or in that sea to hurt her. It is a hard experience for you; but it will prove a brief one only, I am sure. Let me assist you to a seat in this deck-house. Your having to hold on here is fatiguing and dangerous.’

‘I could not enter whilst that man is there,’ she exclaimed. ‘Oh, hark to that bell!’ she cried hysterically; ‘it is tolling for _us_ now!’

‘You must be sheltered,’ I exclaimed; ‘and that body must come out of it. Will you sit on the deck? You will be safer so.’

She sank down; and to still further secure her, I went sliding and clawing like a monkey to the quarter, where, with my knife, I severed an end of rope--a piece of gear belayed to a pin--with which I returned to her side. I passed the line round her waist, and firmly attached the ends to one of several iron uprights which supported the structure; and begging her to compose her mind, and not to doubt of our deliverance within the next two or three hours, I entered the little building.

It was a loathsome job; but the girl must be sheltered, and it was not to be borne that she should have such a companion as that corpse, when there was the great graveyard of the sea within an easy drag to receive the body. Yet I must own to coming to a stand with a long look at the silent figure before I could muster up stomach enough to lay hands upon him. Indeed, as I now fixed my eyes on the body, I wondered whether he could be really dead, so startlingly lifelike was his posture, so pensive his air, so vital the aspect of him to the minutest feature, down to the pen betwixt his fingers, and the reposeful position of his small wax-white hand upon the table. How could I tell but that he might be in some sort of trance, and that my heaving him overboard would be the same as murdering him? However, after a spell of staring, I shook off these alarms and conjectures, and grasping him by the arm, got him upon the deck; and presently I had him abreast of that part of the brig’s side where the bulwarks were gone; and trembling as violently as though I were about to drown a living being, I waited for a roll of the hull, then gave the body a heave, and away it went, striking the swell in a diving attitude, and floating off and down into it, as if it swam.

This done, I crept back to Miss Temple and squatted beside her.