CHAPTER XX

I SEARCH THE WRECK

All night long it blew a strong wind, but shortly before daybreak it fined down on a sudden into a light air out of the south-west, leaving a troubled rolling sea behind it. It was still very thick all round the horizon, so that from the door of the deck-house my gaze scarcely penetrated a distance of two miles. It was no longer fog, however, but cloud, sullen, low-lying, here and there shaping out; a familiar tropical dawn in the parallels, though it made one think too of the smothers you fall in with on the edge of the Gulf Stream.

I stepped on deck to wait for the light to break, and Miss Temple came to the door to look also. The hull still rolled violently, but without the dangerous friskiness of the jumps, recoils, and staggering recoveries of the night when there was a sharp sea running as well as a long heaving swell. My heart was in my gaze as the dim faintness came sifting into the darkness of the east. In a few minutes it was a grey morn, the sea an ugly lead, and the horizon all round of the aspect of a drizzling November day in the English Channel. We both swept the water with our sight, again and again looking, straining our vision into the dim distances; but to no purpose.

‘Do you see anything?’ exclaimed Miss Temple.

‘No,’ I answered, ‘there is nothing in sight.’

‘Oh, my heart will break!’ she cried.

‘We must wait awhile,’ said I: ‘this sort of weather has a trick of clearing rapidly, and it may be all bright sky and wide shining surface of ocean long before noon; then we shall see the ships, and they will see us. But this is a low level. Something may heave into view from the height of that mast. I shall not be long gone. Be careful to hold on firmly, Miss Temple; nay, oblige me by sitting in the deck-house. Should you relax your grasp, a sudden roll may carry you overboard.’

In silence, and with a face of despair, she took her seat on a locker, and very warily I made my way forwards. We had taken but a brief view of the hull when we boarded her, and the appearance of her towards the bows was new to me. There were twenty signs of her having been swept again and again by the seas. No doubt, her hatches had been uncovered, that her people might rummage her before going away in her boats; and the covers, for all I could tell, might have been rolled overboard by some of her violent workings. Yet it was certain that she must have been swept when her hatches were covered, or the lieutenant would not have found her with a dry hold. But I had been long enough at sea to know that it is the improbable conjecture that oftenest fits the fact of a marine disaster.

I took a view of the foremast, to make sure that all was sound with it, and then sprang into the shrouds and gained the top. Some few feet of the splintered topmast still stood, and under the platform at which I had arrived the foreyard swang drearily to its overhauled braces hanging in bights. There was no more to see here than from the deck. The thick atmosphere receded nothing to this elevation, and would have been as impenetrable had I climbed a thousand feet. It was like being in the heart of an amphitheatre of sulky shadows. The water rolled foamless, and there was little more air to be felt than was made by the sickeningly monotonous swing of the solitary spar from whose summit I explored the ocean limits in all directions, frowning to the heart-breaking intensity of my stare. By heaven, then, thought I, we _are_ alone! and if we are to be picked up by either of the ships, it will not be to-day nor maybe to-morrow!

I glanced down at the deck of the hull, and observed that the sides of the fore-hatch were black with extinguished fire. The head-rail was gone to port, and from the eyes of her to the deck-house aft the fabric had a fearfully wrecked look, with its mutilated bulwark stanchions, its yawning hatchways, its dislocated capstan, and other details of a like kind, all helping to a horrible wildness of appearance to one who viewed, as I did, from an eminence, the crazy, fire-blackened, dismasted old basket, that wallowed as though every head of swell that rolled at her must overwhelm and drown her hollow interior.

I again sent my eyes in another passionate search, then descended. As I sprang from the shrouds on to the deck, my eye was taken by the brig’s bell, that dangled from a frame close against the foremast. Dreading lest some increase in the swell should start it off into ringing in some dismal hour of gloom and heighten Miss Temple’s misery and terror, I unhooked the tongue of it, and threw it down, and rejoined my companion, whose white face put the piteous question of her heart to me in silence.

‘No,’ said I, swaying in front of her as I held on to the door; ‘there is nothing to be seen.’

‘Oh it is hard! it is hard!’ she cried. ‘If one could only recall a few hours--be able to go back to yesterday! I do not fear death: but to die thus--to drown in that dreadful sea--no one to be able to tell how I perished.’ She sobbed, but with dry eyes.

There was no reasoning with such a fit of despair as this, nor was it possible for me to say anything out of which she might extract a grain of comfort, seeing that I could but speak conjecturally, and with no other perception than was to be shaped by the faint light of my own hopes. My heart was deeply moved by her misery. Her beauty showed wan, and was inexpressibly appealing with its air of misery. The effects of the long and fearful vigils of the night that was gone were cruelly visible in her. There was a violet shadow under her eyes, her lips were pale, her lids drooped, her hair hung in some little disorder about her brow and ears; her very dress seemed significant of shipwreck, mocking the eye with what the grim usage of the sea had already transformed into mere ironical finery. Yet there was too much of the nature she had familiarised me to on board the Indiaman still expressed in the natural haughty set of her lips, even charged as they were with the anguish that worked in her, to win me to any attempt of tender reassurance. I watched her dumbly, though my soul was melted into pity. Presently she looked at me.

‘I suppose there is nothing to be done, Mr. Dugdale?’

‘Indeed, then,’ said I, ‘there is a deal to be done. First of all, you must cheer up your heart, which you will find easy if you can credit me when I tell you that this hull is perfectly buoyant; that though the weather is thick and gloomy, the sun, as he gains power, is certain to open out the ocean to us; that there are two ships close at hand searching for us; that there are provisions enough below to enable us to support life for days and perhaps weeks; and that, even if the Indiaman or the corvette fail to fall in with us, we are sure to be sighted by one of the numerous vessels which are daily traversing this great ocean highway. What, then, are we to do but compose our minds, exert our patience, keep a bright lookout, be provided with means for signalling our distress, and meanwhile not to suffer our unfortunate condition to starve us? And that reminds me to overhaul the pantry for something better than biscuit to break our fast with.’

A softness I should have thought impossible to the spirited fires of her eyes when all was well with her entered her gaze for a moment as it rested upon me, and a faint smile flickered upon and vanished off her lips; but she did not speak, and I dropped through the hatch to ascertain if the pantry could yield us something more nourishing than ship’s bread.

The sullenness of the day without lay in gloom below. I was forced to return for a candle, with which I entered the little cabin that I had visited on the previous day; but when I came to make a search I could find nothing more to eat than cheese, biscuit, and marmalade. There was a number of raw hams, but the galley was gone, and there was no means to cook them. There were two casks of flour, a sack of some kind of dried beans, and a small barrel of moist sugar. These matters had probably been overlooked when the crew hurriedly removed themselves from the brig. No doubt, at the time of jettisoning such commodities as the hold might have stored, they had broken out as much food and water as they could take with them. There was more than a bottle of wine in the deck-house; down here, stowed away in straw and secured by a batten, were some three or four scores of full bottles, all, I supposed, holding the same generous liquor contained in the first of them we had tasted. But there was no fresh water. I sought with diligence, but to no purpose. Possibly the people might have left some casks of it in the hold; but that was a search I would not at present undertake.

I took some cheese and marmalade and another handful of biscuits, along with a knife and a couple of tin dishes. As I passed through the cabin, the light of the candle I held glanced upon a stand of small-arms fixed just abaft the short flight of the hatch-ladder. There were some thirty to forty muskets of an old-fashioned make, even for those days, and on either hand of them, swinging in tiers or rows from nails or hooks in the bulkhead, were a quantity of cutlasses, half-pikes, tomahawks, and other items of the grim machinery of murder. I placed the food upon the deck-house table.

‘A shabby repast, Miss Temple,’ said I, ‘but we may easily support life on such fare until we are rescued.’

She ate some biscuit and marmalade, and drank a little wine; but she incessantly sent her gaze through the windows or the open door, and sighed frequently in tremulous respirations, and sometimes there would enter a singular look of bewilderment into the expression of her eyes, as though her mind at such moments failed her, and did but imperfectly understand our situation. I would then fear that the horror which possessed her might end in breaking down her spirits, and even dement her, indeed. Already her eyes were languid with grief and want of rest, and such strength and life as they still possessed seemed weakened yet by the shadowing of the long fringes. I endeavoured to win her away from her thoughts by talking to her.

I possessed a pocket-book, which supplied me with pencil and paper, and I drew a diagram of the two ships’ and the wreck’s position, as I was best able to conceive it, and made arrows to figure the direction of the wind, and marked distances in figures, and enlarged freely and heartily upon our prospects, pointing with my pencil to the paper whilst I talked. This interested her. She came round to the locker on which I sat, and placed herself beside me, and leaned her face near to mine, supporting her head by her elbow whilst she gazed with eyes riveted to the paper, listening thirstily. I had never had her so close to me before saving that day when we swung together on to the hencoop, but then it was a constrained situation, and she had let me suspect that it was very distasteful to her. It was far otherwise now. She was near me of her own will; I felt her warm breath on my cheek; the subtle fragrance of her presence was in the air I respired. I talked eagerly to conceal the emotions she excited, and I felt the blood hot in my face when I had made an end with my diagram, and drew a little away to restore the book to my pocket.

She now seemed able and willing to converse, but she did not offer to leave my side.

‘Suppose the ships are unable to find us, Mr. Dugdale?’

‘Some other vessel is certain to fall in with us.’

‘But she may be bound to a part of the world very remote from India or England.’

‘True,’ said I; ‘but as she jogs along she may encounter a vessel proceeding to England, into which we shall be easily able to tranship ourselves.’

‘How tedious! We may have to wander for months about the ocean!’

‘It is always step by step, Miss Temple, in this life. Let us begin at the beginning, and quit this wreck, at any rate.’

‘All my luggage is in the Indiaman. How I am to manage I cannot conceive,’ said she, running her eyes over her dress, and lifting her hand to her hat.

‘Pray let no such consideration as dress trouble you. The experience will gain in romance from our necessities, and we shall be able to read “Robinson Crusoe” with new enjoyment.’

She faintly smiled, with just a hint of peevishness in the curl of her lip.

‘If this be romance, Mr. Dugdale, may my days henceforth, if God be merciful enough to preserve us, be steeped in the dullest prose.’

‘I wonder where Colledge and the cutter’s crew are?’ said I.

‘I do not think,’ she exclaimed, ‘if Mr. Colledge were in your place he would show your spirit.’

‘He was a great favourite of yours, Miss Temple.’

‘Not great. I rather liked him. I knew some of his connections. He was an amiable person. I did not know that he was engaged to be married.’

I was astonished that she should have said this, but I was eager to encourage her to talk, and in our state of misery it would signify but little what topic we lighted upon.

‘Did he inform you he was engaged?’ said I.

‘No. I perceived it in his looks when his cousin asked him the question. Did he ever tell you who the young lady was?’ she added listlessly, and though she spoke of the thing it was easy to see that she was without interest in it.

I could not tell a lie, and silence would have been injurious to my wishes for her. Besides, she had guessed the truth by no help from me, and then, again, our situation rendered the subject exquisitely trifling and insignificant.

‘Yes,’ I replied; ‘we were cabin fellows, and intimate. He showed me the girl’s portrait--a plump, pretty little woman. Her name is Fanny Crawley, daughter of one of the numberless Sir Johns or Sir Thomases of this age.’

She was looking through the cabin door at the sea, and scarcely seemed to hear or to heed me. Am I strictly honourable in this? thought I. Pshaw! it was no moment to consider the rights and wrongs of such a thing. Her discovery had freed me from all obligation of secrecy, and what I had supplied she would have easily been able to ascertain for herself on her return home, if, indeed, home was ever to be viewed again by either of us.

‘What horrible weather!’ she exclaimed, bringing her eyes to my face; ‘there is no wind, and the sea rolls like liquid lead. When you were at sea, were you ever in a situation of danger such as this?’

‘This is an uneasy time,’ said I; ‘but do not call it a situation of danger yet. I am going shortly to overhaul the wreck. I must keep her afloat until we are taken off her.’

‘How long were you at sea, Mr. Dugdale?’

‘Two years.’

‘Is your father a sailor?’

‘No; my father is dead. He was captain in the 38th Regiment of Foot, and was killed at Burmah.’

There was a kind of dawning of interest in her eyes, an expression I had not noticed when she talked of Colledge and his engagement.

‘My father was in the army, too,’ said she; ‘but he saw very little service. Is your mother living?’

‘She is.’

She sighed bitterly, and hid her face whilst she exclaimed:

‘Oh, my poor mother! my poor mother! How little she knows! And she was so reluctant to let me leave her.’ She sighed again deeply, and let her hands fall, and then sank into silence.

I quitted the deck-house to take another look round. Just then rain began to fall, and the sea became shrouded with the discharge. So oil smooth now was the swell that each drop as it fell pitted the lead-coloured rounds with a black point, and the water alongside looked to be spotted with ink. As I had met with no fresh water in the little room that I call the pantry, and as there might be none in the hold, or none that with my single pair of hands I should be able to come at, I resolved to take advantage of the wet that was pouring down, and dived into the cabin to search for any vessel that would catch and hold it. The flour and sugar casks in the pantry would not do. I peered into the other berths, but could see nothing to answer the purpose. It was of the first consequence, however, to us that we should possess a store of drinking water to mix with our wine, for we were in the tropics; the atmosphere was heavy with heat, even under a shrouded heaven; it was easy to figure what the temperature would rise to when the sun should shine forth; and the mere fancy of days of stagnation and of vertical suns, of this hull roasting; under the central broiling eye, of the breathless sea, stretching in feverish breathings into the dim, blue distance, unbroken by any tip of sail, and no fresh water to drink, was horribly oppressive, and rendered me half crazy to find some contrivance to catch the rain, which might at any moment cease. The thought of the lockers in the deck-house occurred to me. I mounted the ladder and searched them, and to my unspeakable joy, found in the locker upon which Miss Temple had been seated during the night, four canvas buckets, apparently brand new, as I might judge, from the cloth and from the rope handles. The rain fell heavily, and the water gushed in streams from the roof of the deck-house at many points of it. In a very short time the buckets were filled, but they were of a permeable substance, and it was necessary to decant them as soon as possible. There was no difficulty in doing this, for there were several empty bottles in the shelves below along with a couple of large jars, some tin pannikins, and so forth. These I brought up, washed them in the rain, and then filled them, and in this manner contrived to store away a good number of gallons, not to mention the contents of the buckets, which I left hanging outside to fill up afresh, meaning to use them first, and taking my chance of loss through the water soaking through them.

All this, that is to be described in a few lines of writing, signified a lengthy occupation, that broke well into the day. Miss Temple watched my labours with interest, and begged to be of service; but she could be of little use to me, nor would I suffer her to expose herself to the wet.

‘Will not this rain fill the hull,’ she exclaimed, ‘and sink her?’

‘It would need to keep on raining for a long while to do that,’ said I, laughing. ‘I am going below to inspect the forepart of her, and to ascertain, if possible, what her hold contains. Will you accompany me? The hull rolls steadily; you will not find walking inconvenient, and it is very necessary that you should occupy your mind.’

‘I should like to do so,’ she answered; ‘but ought not one of us to stay here in case the sea should clear and show us the ships?’

‘Alas!’ said I, ‘there is no wind, and the ships probably lie as motionless as we. This weather will not speedily clear, I believe. We shall not be long below, and any sort of exertion is better than sitting here in loneliness and musing upon the inevitable, and adding the misery of thought to the distress of our situation.’

‘Yes, you are right,’ she exclaimed, rising. ‘You give me some heart, Mr. Dugdale, yet I do not know why. There is nothing that you can say to encourage me to hope.’

To this I made no reply, but took her hand, and assisted her to descend the ladder. She came to a stand at the foot of it, as though terrified by the gloom.

‘It is dreadful,’ she exclaimed in a low voice, ‘to think that only a few short hours ago the poor lieutenant whose heart was beating high with thoughts of returning home, should have been laughing and joking--here! I can hear his voice still; I can hear Mr. Colledge’s laughter. Hark! What noises are those?’

‘Rats!’ I exclaimed.

The squeaking was shrill and fierce and close to. I lighted a candle, she meanwhile coming to my side, her elbow rubbing mine, as though she would have my hand within an instant’s reach of her own. The squeaking continued. It sounded as though there were some score of rats worrying something, or fighting among themselves.

‘Hold this candle for a moment,’ said I, and I advanced to the bulkhead and grasped a cutlass, and then peeped into the little passage that divided the after cabins. The rats were somewhere along it, but it was too dark to see; so laying the cutlass aside, I took down a musket and sent the heavy weapon javelin-fashion sheer into the thick of the hideous noise. A huge rat as big as a kitten rushed over my feet; Miss Temple uttered a shriek, and let fall the candle.

‘Do not be alarmed!’ I shouted; ‘the beasts know their way below;’ and seeing the pallid outline of the candle upon the deck I picked it up and relighted it.

‘Oh, Mr. Dugdale,’ she cried, in a voice that trembled with disgust and fear, ‘what am I to do? I dare not be here, and I dare not be above, alone. What is more shocking and terrifying than a rat?’

I told her that rats were much more afraid of us than we could possibly be of them; but, commiserating her alarm, I offered to escort her to the deck-house.

‘But you will not leave me there,’ she exclaimed.

‘It is very necessary,’ said I, ‘that I should examine the state of the hull.’

‘Then I will stay with you,’ said she. ‘I cannot endure to be alone.’

She gathered up her dress, holding the folds of it with one hand, whilst she passed the other through my arm. I could feel her shuddering as she clung to me. Her eyes were large with fright and aversion, and they sparkled to the candle-flame as she rolled them over the deck. At the extremity of the passage that separated the foremost berths from the pantry stood what I believed a bulkhead; but on bringing the candle to it I discovered that it was a door of very heavy scantling that slided in grooves with a stout iron handle for pulling it by. It travelled very easily, as something that had been repeatedly used. The moment it was open there was plenty of daylight, for the open square of the main hatch yawned close by overhead, of dimensions considerable enough to illuminate every part of this interior. I stood viewing with wonder a scene of extraordinary confusion. There were no hammocks, but all about the decks, in higgledly-piggledly heaps and clusters, were mats of some sort of West Indian reeds, rugs and blankets, bolster-shaped bags, a few sea-chests, most of them capsized, with their lids open, and a surprising intermixture of hook-pots, tin-dishes, sea-boots, oilskins, empty broken cases, staves of casks, tackles, and a raffle of gear and other things of which my mind does not preserve the recollection. Several large rats, on my swinging the door along its grooves, darted from out of the various heaps and shot with incredible velocity down through the large hatch that conducted into the hold, and that lay on a line with the hatch above.

‘By all that’s---- Well, well! here’s been excitement, surely,’ said I. ‘Was ever panical terror more incomparably suggested? But this brig was full of men, and there was manifestly a tremendous scramble at the last. Would not anyone think that there had been a fierce fight down here?’

‘Do you think there are any dead bodies under those things?’ exclaimed Miss Temple in a hollow whisper.

‘See!’ cried I; ‘lest there should be more rats about, suppose I contrive some advantage for you over the beasts;’ and so saying I dragged one of the largest of the sea-chests to the bulkhead and helped her to get upon it.

This seemed to make her easier. Filled as my mind was with conflicting emotions excited by the extraordinary scene of hurry and disorder which I surveyed, I could yet find leisure to glance at and deeply admire her fine, commanding figure, as she stood with inimitable, unconscious grace, swaying upon the chest to the regular rolling of the hull. It was a picture of a sort to live as long as the memory lasted. There she stood, draped in the elegancies of her white apparel, her full, dark eyes large and vital again in the shadow of her rich hat, under which her face showed colourless and faultless in lineament as some incomparable achievement of the sculptor’s art: her beauty and dignity heightened in a manner not to be expressed or explained by the character of the scene round about--the uncovered square of hatch through which the rain was falling, the wild disorder of the deck, the rude beams and coarse sides of the interior.

I approached the edge of the hatchway and looked down. Little more was to be seen than ballast, on the top of which lay a couple of dismounted guns, apparently twelve-pounders. A short distance forward in the gloom were the outlines of some casks and cases. The hull was dry, as the lieutenant had said. Water there undoubtedly must have been, washing to and fro under the ballast and down in the run, but too inconsiderable in quantity to give me the least uneasiness. One glance below sufficed to assure me that the fabric of the wreck was tight.

I considered a little whether it might not be possible to so protect the yawning hatches as to provide against any violent inroads of water should this dirty shadow of weather that overhung the wreck in wet end in wind; but there were no tarpaulins to be seen, no spare planks or anything of a like kind which could be converted into a cover, nothing but mats and rugs, which were not to be put to any sort of use in the direction I had in my mind.

I left Miss Temple standing on the chest, darting alarmed glances at the huddled heaps which littered the decks, and walked forward to a doorway in a stout partition that bulkheaded off a short space of forecastle from these ’tweendecks. There was an open forescuttle here that made plenty of light. This was the interior that had been burnt out, as the lieutenant had told me, to the condition of a charred shell. The deck and sides were as black as a hat, and the place showed as if it had been constructed of charcoal. A strong smell as of fire still lingered. Whatever had been here in the shape of sea-furniture was burnt, or removed by the people. I picked up a small handspike, and entering the cindery apartment, beat here and there against the semi-calcined planks, almost expecting to find the handspike shoot through; but black as the timber looked it yielded a hearty echo to my thumps, and I returned to Miss Temple satisfied that the hull was still very staunch, and, but for her uncovered hatches, as seaworthy as ever she had been at any time since her launch.

Whilst turning over some of the mats and wearing apparel on the deck with my foot I spied a large cube of something yellow, and, picking it up and examining it, I was very happy to discover that it was tobacco. I made more of this than had I found a purse of a hundred guineas, for, though I had my pipe in my pocket, I was without anything to smoke, and I cannot express how hungrily during the night I had yearned for the exceeding solace of a few whiffs, and with what melancholy I had viewed the prospect of having to wait until we were rescued before I should obtain a cigar or a pipe of tobacco.

‘What have you there, Mr. Dugdale?’ cried Miss Temple.

‘A little matter that, coming on top of the discovery that this hull is as good as a cork under our feet, helps very greatly towards reestablishing my peace of mind--a lump of very beautiful tobacco,’ and I smelt it fondly again.

‘Oh, Mr. Dugdale, I thought it was a dead rat,’ she exclaimed. ‘What are all those mats?’

‘The privateersmen used them to sleep on, I expect. The quantity of them tells us how heavily manned this old waggon went.’

‘There is no wind, Mr. Dugdale. The rain falls in perfectly straight lines. Let us return to the deck-house.’

I took her hand and helped her to dismount. She gathered her dress about her as before, and passed with trepidation through the darksome cabin, holding tightly by my arm, and then, with a wearied despairful air, seated herself upon a locker and leaned her chin in her hand, biting her under lip whilst she gazed vacantly through the little window at the sullen raining gloom of the sky.