CHAPTER XIX

NIGHT

The wind blew hard, and the vapour swept past in a horizontal pouring, masses of it coming on a sudden in a blinding thickness till you could not see half the wreck’s length; then the silver-tinted volumes would brighten for a breath or two, and show the steel-coloured sea heaving its freckled and foamless folds into the vaporous faintness a few hundred feet off; then the mist would boil down and over us once more until it was like being in a room filled with steam.

‘The cabin is empty,’ said I--the girl being on the port side, I had taken care to drag the body to starboard--‘there are seats, and you will be sheltered there. This is damping stuff.’

‘Not yet,’ she answered. ‘I am as safe here. I hate the thought of having anything to screen the sea from me. I want to look--at any moment the Indiaman or the man-of-war may come close to us.’

‘Be it so,’ said I. ‘Heavens, how rapidly has all this happened! One of the cutter’s men shouted to me that the Indiaman had fired two guns. Why did they not report this to us? Did they believe the swell would not let them get aboard? They saw--of course they saw--this fog bearing down; why did not the madmen let us know of it?’

‘What will my aunt think?’

‘Why, she will be in a terrible fright. But it will not last. We shall be picked up presently. I would rather be here than in the cutter. If they are wise, they will ride to their oars; if they row or allow the wind and seas to drive them, they are bound to lose both ships, the night being at hand; and then God help them!’

‘Oh, it was an evil moment,’ she cried, ‘when we sighted the corvette!’

‘It was an evil moment,’ I exclaimed bitterly and wrathfully, ‘when Mr. Colledge, who had undoubtedly taken too much wine on board the _Magicienne_, suggested that we should kill an hour on this hull. Where,’ I cried passionately, ‘could the unhappy lieutenant’s wits have been? He laughed at me for indicating the appearance I witnessed in the north-west. Was there nothing in the weight of this swell to convince him that there must be mischief not far off?’

‘What will my aunt think?’ she repeated, as though she scarcely heeded my words, whilst she brought her hands, brilliant with rings, together and stared into the thickness with her eyes on fire with fear and amazement and the score of wild emotions which filled her.

Though I held my peace on the subject, the wind, that was blowing with the spite of an ugly squall, was exciting an alarm in me that rose above all other considerations of our situation. The hatches lay open and there was nothing to be seen of their covers about the decks. If this weather continued, a high sea must presently follow, in which case there could be nothing to save the wreck from filling and foundering. The lieutenant had assured us that she was dry; but it was certain that she had been badly wrenched by the lightning stroke that had dismasted and apparently set her on fire forward, and by the furious gale that had chased her afterwards; and though she may have been tight when the lieutenant overhauled her, this constant working in the strong swell might at any instant cause her to start a butt or open a seam, and then what should I be able to do? Both pumps were smashed level to the deck; there was no boat; there was nothing discoverable fore and aft which I could launch and secure my companion and myself to. It was with inexpressible anxiety, therefore, that I would send my gaze from time to time to windward, in the hope of observing a thinning in the thickness there, or any the faintest imaginable sign to elate me with the belief that the worst of the fog was on us, that we were now feeling the worst of the wind, and that the ocean would be clearing soon.

The time passed. I looked at my watch after we had been sitting a little, and found it six o’clock. The sun would be setting in something more than an hour, and a bitter black night was bound to follow if the vapour had not cleared when daylight ended. There was now a smart sea running, but the swell had flattened something, I thought. The hull was horribly frisky, leaning at desperate angles from side to side, and often recovering herself with a jerk that must have flung us to the deck had we not been seated. But she was extraordinarily light, and floated very tall, and though there would sometimes come a blow of salt water against the bow that flashed across the deck in a mass of foam and green crystals, yet she soared so nimbly to the height of every surge that she took in amazingly little water. Indeed, it was not long before I felt myself infinitely comforted by her behaviour, convinced that it would have to breeze up with much more spite than the wind now had to put us in jeopardy from a filling hold.

Shortly before the hour of sundown, I induced Miss Temple to occupy the deck-house. She entered with a great deal of reluctance, and seated herself in a corner that was the furthest away from where the body had been. It had not been very easy to converse outside. The ceaseless roaring and washing noises of the water, with the alarming thumps and leapings of froth at the bow, and the sounds of the rushing wind sweeping in gusty cries over the mutilated rails of the hull as she was hove up full into it, and then sinking into a sort of humming moaning as the wreck drove down the liquid acclivity into the swift comparative stillness of the trough: all this was distracting and terrifying, and speech had been difficult. But the interior of the deck-house was a shelter to the ear and voice. I seated myself opposite the girl, giving her as wide, respectful a berth as the narrow cabin permitted. The shadow of the evening lay already sullen in the white mist that seemed to boil upon the wind, though at that hour it was not so thick but that the gaze might be able to penetrate a distance of a quarter of a mile. Miss Temple was deadly pale. Even her lips had lost their delicate rosy tint, and sat blanched in their compression. Her eyes looked preternaturally large, and there was an expression of passionate desperation in them, as one might figure of some proud, high-spirited creature driven at bay, and rounding upon the pursuer with a gaze charged with despair and wrath and the misery of some heart-breaking resolution.

‘I believe I shall go mad,’ she said, ‘if this fog does not cease. I feel as though I were now insane, and that what we are suffering is the imagination of madness.’

‘It is a frightful time of suspense,’ I answered; ‘we must have patience: there is no other medicine for this sort of affliction.’

‘I could stab myself,’ she cried, ‘for being in this position. There is the Indiaman close at hand; I see her saloon cheerful with lamplight, the tables glittering, the passengers seated, talking and laughing, without a thought of us by this time.’ I shook my head. She continued: ‘I think of the security, the comfort of that ship, which I never once reflected on when in her. And now contrast this!’

She rolled her wonderful eyes over the narrow compartment in a shuddering way that was eloquent with abhorrence.

‘Why am I here? It is my own fault. I could stab myself for my folly.’

It made one think of some beautiful wild creature newly caged to watch her.

‘It is bad enough,’ said I; ‘but it might be much worse. Think of yourself in that open boat--on this high sea, and amidst this blinding vapour: no water, no food, the blackness of the night coming down, and a thousand leagues of ocean all around you.’

‘Is not the cutter safer than this horrible wreck?’ she cried. ‘If the morning exposes the ships to the people in her, they can row; but what can we do?’

‘If the morning exposes the ships,’ said I, ‘they’ll see us, and very joyfully attempt to fetch us--that is to sail to us.’

She turned to look through a window the glass of which was gone, and through which the wind was shrilling as though it blew into a cylinder. It was fast darkening. In these latitudes twilight is brief, and in such weather as this there would be none. It was little more now than sombre blank greyness outside, with a sight of the steel-coloured swell, over whose humps the seas were rushing in foam, shouldering and vanishing into the thickness. But there was no increase in the wind, and the run of the surge did not gain in weight.

I watched the girl while she looked through the window. It is not in language to convey the tragic irony that was put into our situation by her sparkling holiday attire. Her dress was of some white material, of a silken or lustrous nature, that most perfectly fitted the beauties of her person. Her hat was some rich combination of richly plumed straw. She had removed her gloves on descending into the cabin of the hull when we boarded her, and many rings of splendour and value flashed on her fingers in a very armour of jewels and gold. There were gems in her ears, and a heavy chain of gold round her neck, terminating in a whole cluster of trinkets at her girdle, in which was sheathed a watch of the size of her thumb-nail. Think of this glittering figure, this stately, most perfect shape of womanhood in the gloom of the strong, rude interior of the deck-house, with its few rough details of fittings in the shape of a table and lockers, nothing to see through the window but the rough deck spreading naked to its splinters of bulwark, with the angry foam of waters beyond, and a near sky of fast blackening vapour!

‘What are we to do?’ she exclaimed, resuming her former attitude and fixing her large desperate eyes upon me.

‘We must wait,’ said I.

‘You have been a sailor, Mr. Dugdale; tell me what you think?’

‘Well, first of all, we must be prepared to spend the night on this wreck’---- She flashed her hands to her face and held them there, and I waited for her to look at me again. ‘This weather,’ I proceeded, ‘is not likely to last very long. The dawn will probably exhibit a clear sky. If the ships are not in sight’--she drew in her breath with an hysterical ‘Oh’--‘they will still have the bearings of the wreck, and search for us. Were there but a single vessel to hunt after the hull, we might still feel perfectly safe; but there are two, and one of them is an English man-of-war.’

‘But will Sir Edward Panton know that we are here?’

‘No doubt. He or others will have seen the cutter deviate for the wreck instead of pulling for the Indiaman.’

‘But they may think we are in the boat; and if she is not recovered, they will search for her, and not trouble themselves about the wreck.’

‘We must be hopeful, and we must be patient,’ said I.

It was now rapidly growing dark. The white waters showed ghastly over the edge of the bare deck to each convulsive jerking roll of the hull, and my companion’s white face was little more than a glimmer in the gloom of the corner in which she sat. The thought of the long black hours which lay before us was intolerable. I looked about me for a lamp, but there was nothing of the kind, nor hook nor bracket to prove that a lamp or lantern was ever used in this small abode. I told Miss Temple that I would go below and search for something wherewith to make a light.

‘Will you be long?’ she asked.

‘I’ll make haste,’ said I.

‘Yes, if you please, Mr. Dugdale,’ she exclaimed.

I had in my pocket the old-fashioned arrangement of tinder-box and sulphur matches, being, indeed, too confirmed a smoker to stir very far without that convenience. The mere descent of the steps was a horrible labour, owing to the extravagant leaps and rolls of the mere shell of wreck, and my progress was scarcely more than inch by inch, forced to hold on as I was with the tenacity of the grip of a parrot’s beak. The straining noises in the cabin might have easily led me to suppose that the hull was going to pieces. Every blow of the sea trembled through her down here as though the fabric forward were breaking up, and I recollect swinging by a stanchion for some minute or two, overwhelmed with the consternation excited in me by the sounds, and by a sudden recollection of the lieutenant’s words that the brig in her forecastle had been burnt out. But I had promised Miss Temple to be speedy; and the thought of her sitting lonely above in terror and despair brought my mind back to its bearings.

It was almost pitch-dark, but remembering the situation of the pantry in which the lieutenant had cracked the bottle of wine, I dropped on my hands and knees, not daring to trust my feet, and crawled towards it. When I guessed by groping that I was near the door, I kindled a match and entered the pantry; and after consuming about half-a-dozen matches, I met with a tin box that was full of long wax candles, which looked to me very much like a sample of booty, as it was scarcely to be supposed that a vessel of the class of the _Aspirante_ would lay in stores of that quality. I hunted for a candlestick, and found a small empty pickle bottle, which would very well answer the purpose of holding the candle. This I squeezed under my waistcoat, and filled my coat-pockets with a couple of bottles of wine, a handful of ship’s biscuit, and a little tin drinking-vessel; and then putting the box of candles under my arm, I fell again upon my hands and knees, crawled to the cabin ladder, and joined the deck-house so wearied by the posture I had been forced to adopt and by the convulsive motions of the deck, which had put an aching as of rheumatism into every bone, that I was forced to sit and remain quiet for some minutes.

The wind swept in through the denuded windows; but the structure, as I have before said, was long in proportion to its width, and at the fore-end the atmosphere was quiet enough for a candle to burn in. I secured the empty pickle bottle to a stanchion with my handkerchief, and placed the lighted candle in it; and the square of the bottle held the flame at a sufficient distance from the stanchion to provide against all risk of fire. The light seemed to raise some little heart in Miss Temple.

‘You are brave,’ she exclaimed, with a glance at the black square of the hatch, ‘to descend into that dreadful dungeon. There may be dead bodies there.’

‘I am not afraid of dead bodies,’ said I. ‘I wish there were nothing more harmful in this world than dead men. Here are two bottles of wine and some biscuit. You will be the better for a little refreshment.’

I knocked off the head of a bottle and handed her a draught. She looked at the rough drinking-vessel for a little, and then said with a painful smile: ‘A desperate change, Mr. Dugdale, from the table of the Indiaman! Will this wine hurt me?’

‘I will drink first, to reassure you, if you please,’ said I.

‘No,’ she exclaimed; ‘I must not be too cowardly;’ and she drank.

I took a good drain myself, and found it the same noble wine that the poor lieutenant had tasted.

‘Try one of these biscuits, Miss Temple,’ said I; ‘they are but coarse eating for you, I fear; they are the bread that poor Jack is fed on.’

She took one and nibbled at it.

‘Ha!’ said I, ‘this is an ocean experience indeed. This is being shipwrecked. You will have a deal more to talk about when you get home than Colledge could have dreamt of in proposing this excursion for that purpose. Can you bite that biscuit?’

‘Yes,’ she answered.

‘It is rather flinty,’ said I, munching. ‘There should be something more relishable than this to be come at below. I will make another hunt.’

‘No, if you please,’ she cried vehemently; ‘do not leave me, Mr. Dugdale.’

‘Ay, but food apart, since we must needs remain here through the night, I must endeavour to find something soft for you to lie upon. You cannot rest upon that hard locker.’

‘Oh, I do not want to rest,’ she exclaimed. ‘Do you think I could sleep? I shall sit as I am, and pray for the light to come and for a sight of the ships.’

I made no answer, though it was on the tip of my tongue to say I was sorry for her sake that it was I, and not Colledge, whom she was adrift with. It was an impulse coming through some sudden hot recollection of her treatment of me on board the _Countess Ida_; but I bit my lip, and was grateful for my silence a moment after, when I saw her fine eyes swimming with tears.

‘Pray have hope,’ I exclaimed. ‘I am sure after a bit you will find plenty of courage in your heart to confront this little passage, hard as it is. I will do what I can. I would you had a better sailor than I by your side; but what can be done by me shall be done, and the worst is a long way off yet, I am certain.’

She put her hands upon the table and hid her face in them. I lifted the lid of the locker I was using as a seat, to stow away the bottles in a safe place; for, talk as I might, it was only God could know whether it might not end in a single drop of the liquor becoming more precious to us than twenty times the value of the cargo of the Indiaman. There were some wearing apparel, a few small coils of ratline-stuff, and other odds and ends in the locker, but nothing noticeable. I then clawed my way to the deck-house door to take a look round. It was black as fog and darkness could make it. Close alongside, the foam glanced dimly, with now and again a flash of phosphoric light in some dark coil down whose slope the hull was sliding; but there was nothing else to see. The wind still blew fresh, but there was no recognisable increase in it since the hour of its first coming down upon the wreck. It made a most dismal and melancholy noise of howling in the sky, as it swept through the dark obscurity, splitting upon the foremast and the shrouds which supported the spar, in a low-toned long-drawn shriek, which had something of the sound of a human note as it pierced through the hissing and seething round about, and through the strange, low, dull thunder made by the shouldering of liquid folds coming together as they ran, and by the hurl of the surge as it rounded and dissolved into foam.

There could be very little doubt that the drift of a light empty shell of a wreck with a yard and mast and shrouds forward for the wind to catch hold of would be considerable in such weather as this. Helped by the beat of the seas, she might easily blow dead to leeward, in the trough as she was, at the rate of some three to four miles in the hour, so that daybreak would find her forty or fifty miles distant from the spot where we had boarded her. However, I comforted myself with the reflection that the commanders of the two ships would have a clear perception of such a drift as I calculated, and allow for it in the search they would surely make for the hull. I had but one fear: that the cutter had been seen leaving the wreck, for there was an interval at least of a minute or two between her dropping astern and manœuvring with her three oars and her envelopment by the fog. If, then, she had been sighted, the inference would inevitably be that Miss Temple, Colledge, and myself were in her; and so the hunt would be for the cutter, without reference to the hull, with every prospect of the search carrying the ships miles below the verge of our horizon.

Meanwhile, as I stood in that doorway looking into the blackness over the sides, I bent my ear anxiously forward; but though there were constant shocks of the sea smiting the bow, I never caught the noise of water falling in weight enough upon the deck to alarm me. The leap of the surge seemed to be always forward of the fore-shrouds, and the ducking and tossing of the fabric was so nimble, and the pouring of the blast so steadfast, that nearly all the water that sprang to the blow of the bow was carried overboard by the wind. This was about as comforting an assurance as could come to me; for I tell you it was enough to turn one’s heart into lead to look into that starless wall of blackness close against the ship, to see nothing but the pallid glimmer of froth, to hearken to the noises in the air, to feel the sickening and dizzy heavings of the sea, and then realise that this hull had been struck by lightning, that the forepart of her was burnt into a thin case of charred timbers, and that all three hatches in her, together with the skylight, lay open and yawning like the mouths of wells to the first rush of sea that should tumble over the side.

I will not feign to remember how that night passed. The tall wax candle burnt bravely and lasted long; but the guttering of it to the circlings of the air in the extremity of the cabin obliged me to light another before the night was spent. It a little encouraged Miss Temple to be able to see. God knows how it might have been with her had we been obliged to sit in that blackness. Once the candle was blown out, and when I had succeeded in lighting it afresh, after a few minutes of groping and hunting and manœuvring with my tinder-box, I looked at the girl, and knew by the horror that shone in her eyes, and the marble hardness in the aspect of her parted lips, as though her mouth were some carved expression of fear, how heart-subduing had that short spell of blackness proved. From time to time she would ask for a little wine, which she sipped as though thirsty, but she swallowed a few drops only, as if she feared that the wine, by heating her, would increase her thirst; yet when I spoke of going below to seek for some fresh water, she begged me not to leave her.

‘It is the memory of the body that sat at this table which makes loneliness insupportable to me, Mr. Dugdale,’ she exclaimed. ‘I seemed to see the dreadful object when the candle went out. I thought I had more spirit. I am but a very weak woman, after all.’

‘I do not think so,’ said I; ‘you are bearing this frightful trial very nobly. How would it be with some girls I know? They would be swooning away; they would be exhausting themselves in cries; they would be tearing themselves to pieces in hysterics. And how is it with me? Sometimes I am frightened to death, but not with fears of darkness or of the dead. I am certain we shall be rescued; this hull is making excellent weather of it; there is food and drink below, yet I am filled with consternation and grief. Why should it be otherwise? We are creatures of nerves, and this is an experience to test the courage of a saint.’

Well, we would exchange a few sentences after this pattern, and then fall silent for a whole hour at a time. She never closed her eyes throughout the night. Whenever I glanced at her, I met her gaze brilliant with emotion. The change was so sudden that I found it impossible to fully realise it. When I thought of Miss Temple aboard the _Countess Ida_, her haughtiness, her character of almost insolent reserve, how she had hardly found it in her to address me with an accent of courtesy, her ungracious treatment of me after the service I had done her in rescuing her from a perilous situation: I say when I recalled all this and a deal more, and then viewed her as she sat opposite, crouching in a corner, supporting herself by grasping the table with her heavily ringed fingers, the high-born delicate beauty of her lineaments showing like some cameo in ivory, and reflected that she and I were absolutely alone, that it might come to her owing her life to me, or that we might be doomed to miserably perish together--this girl, this unapproachable young lady, at whom I had been wont to stare furtively with fascinated eyes on board the Indiaman for long spells at a stretch--I could not bring my mind to credit the reality of our situation.