Part 12

Benion and Allen lost no time in going on shore. They stepped from the boat into a crowd of the hangers-on of the gold-field,--surely the strangest seething of humanity that the modern world can show! There were men of every nation and shade of colour, of every grade of society, of every creed and occupation, all flung together with the burning fever of gold-hunting hot upon them. And there were besides the ministers to their pleasures, their necessities, and their vices: storekeepers, without stores to sell; faro-bank keepers; saloon-keepers, cleared of their stock-in-trade; and the ministers to yet lower vices. Hundreds of new arrivals, unprovided with the few stores necessary to support life, and unable to buy at the famine prices of the place, were still awaiting the arrival of a ship.

As soon as it became known that Benion had brought stores he was set upon by the storekeepers and liquor-sellers, but he had made a stern resolve to retail everything himself and let no middleman profit from him. But the Reindeer might be in at any moment to compete with him, so that, after fixing upon a site for his tent, he sent part of his cargo ashore that very afternoon, and ensconced Allen as storeman.

So Allen bartered goods for gold-dust; and as their hoard increased, the friendship that is born of hardships endured in common grew between them.

II.

The wind that had been blowing fresh all day from the south-east had by evening freshened into a gale, and the schooner was running before it with reefed mainsail. As the sun sank red among the storm-clouds, and lit the western horizon with a lurid glare, something more solid than a cloud interrupted the unbroken line. The man at the wheel saw it, and called the attention of the mate whose watch it was.

“Land ahead, sir!”

“That be hanged for a yarn! There’s no land within two hundred miles of us, and what there is ain’t in that quarter.”

“What is the nearest land?” asked Benion.

“The Fijis. The old man took sights this morning and reckoned we’d pass to the nor’rard of the Fijis some time to-morrow if the wind held. They’re marked in the charts as high land, and we ought to see them thirty miles off or more.” Then shading his eyes with his hand, he gazed at the spot on the fast darkening horizon that looked now more than ever like a cloud.

“Why, you must have the jimmies if you call that land!” he said over his shoulder. “Keep her up half a point.” He glanced at the compass-card, spat over the lee-rail, and went forward.

In a few moments the white foam-flakes turned to grey, faded and vanished, and night fell like a great black cloth flung over the troubled sea. With the darkness the wind seemed to get stronger, the seas bigger, and the vessel more frail and helpless. She was advancing by a series of bounds as each great roller overtook and lifted her stern, poised and flung her forward, and then surged roaring past her, leaving her as it were stranded in the gulf between it and the next, whose swelling base the stern began again to climb.

At eight o’clock the captain came on deck, glanced aloft and to windward, and ordered the look-out to be doubled. Benion was sitting on the main-hatch smoking, and emitting a shower of sparks from his pipe with each gust of wind.

“Anywhere near land, cap?” he shouted.

“No; but we ought to sight it to-morrow, and in these coral waters one likes to keep a good look-out. You never know when you may hit upon a new reef.”

The ship tore through the seas for half-an-hour, when there was a shout from the look-out, “Breakers ahead!”

The captain dashed to the wheel and put the helm down, and the schooner came up into the wind, shivering with the shock of the great seas as they struck her and washed the decks from stem to stern. The wind was howling through the rigging, cracking the sails like whip-lashes, now that the ship was no longer running before it, but a practised ear could hear a distant roar, distinct from that of the wind and seas, that broke on the ship. Both watches were hauling in the sheets and reefing, and then the schooner’s head was payed off a little so as to clear the shore, if shore it was. Benion and Allen were straining their eyes to leeward in the hope of seeing the danger, but they could distinguish nothing from the dark waste of grey water.

“This sort of thing makes me wish that we hadn’t put all our eggs in one basket,” said Benion. “If we had fetched up on that reef and got off it alive, we shouldn’t have a penny in the world.”

“We ought to have insured the box and shipped it to New York in one of the steamers,” replied Allen.

“It seemed such sheer folly to pay the insurance rates that Carter asked, I thought it was better to take the risk of shipwreck. If the gold is lost we shall probably go to the bottom with it. If we get home with it safe we can take it easy all our days. It’s a fair risk.”

The mate meanwhile had climbed into the top and presently reported that he could see breakers, but that they had cleared the corner of the reef, and might now stand away a little. The ship’s head fell off until the wind was again on the quarter, and she was running free. The two men were soaked to the skin with the spray when the vessel was close-hauled, but Benion would not go below to change, feeling that if this were land the captain was at least two hundred miles out of his reckoning, and they might go ashore at any moment. But several hours passed without more alarms, and he at last fell asleep on the hatch in his wet clothes. It was a troubled half sleep, in which every sound entered into his dreams mingled with the monotonous roar of the seas. Suddenly some one in his dream shouted “Land ahead!” There was a rush of booted feet past him; he started up, and saw a dark mass looming above the ship.

As she came up into the wind a sea struck her forward and stopped her dead, the next seemed to hurl her sideways, and before she could get way on she fell with a reeling shock upon the reef, rolled sideways amid the boiling surf, and each successive wave fell upon her with a hungry yell and swept her from stem to stern, hammering and grinding the wounded hull upon the sharp coral.

At the first shock Benion fell against the starboard bulwarks, and before he could grasp the slippery rail a great sea swept the deck and washed him to leeward into the darkness. Dazed and without power of reasoning, he allowed himself to drift, instinctively keeping his body upright in the water.

Allen meanwhile was still on the doomed ship. He was asleep when she struck, and the shock flung him out of his bunk against the opposite bulk-head. Bruised and stunned as he was, he realised what had happened. The floor of the cabin was at a sharp angle, and the bilge timbers groaned and cracked as each pitiless sea lifted the ship and dashed her on the reef with a grinding crash. To steady himself against the shocks he planted his foot against a box over which the water was washing. It was Benion’s strong box, that had slid from its lashings under the bunk. What were life worth, he thought, to either of them if this were lost? It were better to die trying to save their fortune than to battle for life, leaving this to certain destruction in the wreck. He grasped it by the iron handle and dragged it up the companion, using all his strength, for it was heavy, and the ladder slanted at a sharp angle. Holding on by the brass rail, he looked out upon the slippery decks. The top-mast, with all its ruin of yards, ropes, and blocks, swung heavily by the wire-rigging and thrashed the deck at every heave of the hull, and several of the crew were hacking at the foremast with an axe. Nearer to him, in the waist of the ship, three men seemed to be making a raft by lashing some spare planks and spars together. Suddenly, with a splitting noise, the foremast with all its wreckage went overboard, and the schooner partly righted herself. As each sea lifted her she gradually came up head to wind, for both anchors had been let go; and she lay there for a space without lifting to the seas, for she was now waterlogged. The crest of every sea swept the decks; but Allen, though blinded and suffocated by the spray, still held firmly to the cabin-trunk, which protected him from the waves. But a huge sea, gathering volume in the shallow water, swept roaring down upon them, and trembling over the bows, carried everything before it. The whole cabin-trunk gave way with the wrench, and Allen suddenly found himself up to his neck in the water, away from the ship, but still clinging to the brass rail of the cabin-trunk, and still holding the iron handle of Benion’s box in his right hand. The water splashing in his face impeded both breath and vision, but he thought he could see the dim outline of the ship to windward. The water was almost calm around him, for he was floating inside the reef, but there was sufficient “send” in the waves to set him steadily inshore. At last the cabin-trunk grounded, rose again for the next wave, struck more heavily, and remained immovable, while the waves surged powerlessly round it. The water was only waist-deep, and Allen, still grasping the precious box, stumbled over the rough coral until he found himself on dry sand, dripping and chilled to the bone by the wind, warm though it was. A dark wall of bush close to him recalled grim stories of cannibal natives. If he was in danger, the first thing to be done was to hide the box. Full of this one thought, he dragged it by the handle through the soft sand into the shadow of the trees. The ground was carpeted with the leaves of some trailing vine, that caught his feet and would have thrown him had he not recovered himself against the trunk of a tree. He felt it with his hands. It was gnarled and knotted, and of so great a girth that his extended arms would not reach the half of its circumference. This would be a landmark, he thought, for it must be larger than its fellows. He knelt down and plunged his hands into the sand at the root, tearing up the vines, and scooping out a hole large enough to hold the box; but when he began to lower it into the hole the corners caught the loose sand and half-filled the hole. A third of the box remained above ground, but he dared not delay, for a nervous terror of interruption had seized him. Through the roar of the wind he fancied that he heard other sounds. He shovelled the loose sand against the sides of the box, and, tearing up the vines within his reach, he piled them above it. Then he stood up with a strange feeling of safety and self-reliance. Come what might, if he and Benion escaped, their money was safe. But where was Benion? He remembered for the first time that he had not seen him since the evening. What if he was the only man left alive? It was a new thought, terrible at first until he remembered the box buried at his feet. If Benion were dead, then all would be his lawfully and without blame. What possibilities would life then have? He had often dreamed on the diggings of what it would be to be rich, but the possibility of riches for him had never seemed near until this moment. He knew the disloyalty of the thought, for close upon its heels came a half-formed wish that Benion might be dead. Gratitude had not died out before this great temptation, for he could be grateful to his benefactor’s memory if he could no longer show gratitude to him in the flesh.

While he stood irresolute he heard a distant shout. Not doubting that it came from one of his comrades, he started along the shore in the direction of the sound. In two hundred yards he came to a rocky bluff from which great boulders had fallen upon the sand, forming a barrier right down to the sea at low tide. Through these the sea was dashing furiously, and it was so dark that he dared go no farther. He sat down in a recess hollowed out of the cliff-foot by the sea at high tide, and sheltered from the wind: his exhaustion conquered, and he fell asleep in his wet clothes as he was.

When he awoke the eastern sky was grey, and broad golden streaks shot up from the horizon. The wind had moderated, but great masses of flying scud told what the night had been. He was stiff and chilled from his wet clothes, but he crawled out from his shelter, and found himself face to face with a man, dripping, cold, and miserable as himself. It was Jansen, one of the sailors, a Norwegian, one of those Allen had seen trying to make a raft. He too had spent the night lying on the shore, and he believed that besides themselves none were left alive. While they were talking the sun rose, and straightway their prospects assumed a less gloomy hue. The wreck was hidden from them by a curve of the shore heavily timbered. They ran to this and saw the schooner dismasted, lying helpless on her side. Every sea washed over her, and she seemed to be breaking up. Landwards the forest was a mere fringe, clothing the foot of great basaltic cliffs that rose sheer to a plateau which they could not see. Every crevice of the limestone had been seized upon by enterprising tree-ferns and banian-trees, and only where the face was so smooth as to afford no clinging-place was the rock naked.

The two men wandered aimlessly along the narrow strip of sand left between the high tide and the trees, and upon rounding a projecting tree, came suddenly upon a thin column of smoke rising from the outer edge of the bush. Their first instinct was to take cover behind a tree, for they had the fear of cannibals ever before their eyes, but Allen caught sight of a figure crouching among the undergrowth. Cannibal savages do not wear blouses and trousers, nor even red beards, and to whom could such a beard belong but Macevoy, A.B.? They found a group of their shipmates crouching half-naked round a fire of drift-wood, destined, when the smoke should subside, to dry their clothes.

“Jansen and Allen! That makes fourteen. There are only five missing now. Could Castles swim, do any of you know?” asked the boatswain.

“Castles went to the bottom, if he had any swimming to do,” growled Macevoy.

The men had got ashore at different times during the night,--some clinging to spars and oars, and others, washed off before they could seize anything, had swum until they drifted into shallow water. Five only were missing--Benion, the cook, and three seamen; but they might have landed on a different part of the beach. The captain now proposed that two parties should follow the beach in opposite directions, to look for the missing men and to find fresh water, while the rest collected wood for a raft on which to bring off provisions from the wreck before she broke up, for they were desperately hungry. Allen chose to stay with the main body, who soon collected enough fallen timber for a raft, and lashed the logs together with the thick creepers that hung in festoons from every tree. When it was finished the tide had ebbed too far for launching it, and they could therefore do nothing more until the afternoon. They were about to disperse in search of food when one of the search-parties returned carrying a body between them.

“Who is it?” shouted the captain.

“Benion,” answered the leading man.

Allen felt a thrill of guilty anticipation. Then he was dead after all, and the gold would be his! The party came up and laid their burden gently down. He was still alive. They had found him lying, helpless and half-stunned, on the beach with a sprained ankle, and only strength enough to crawl out of reach of the high tide.

By mid-day they knew all there was to know about their island. It was pear-shaped, and barely a mile in diameter,--a mere lump of limestone pushed up from the ocean-bed, with a fringe of coral at its base. The cliffs were unbroken save in one place, where some old earthquake had split a jagged fissure in the rock almost down to the sea-level. This little gorge, choked with vegetation, would have contained water had the island been larger; but as it was, they could only find a little moisture oozing from the cliff-face. Some of them climbed the gorge to the plateau above, and saw the narrow light-green circle of the reef edged with foam: saw an island near them, and two or three others so far away that they blended with the clouds, but saw no sign of man, nor any hope of rescue but by their own efforts.

As soon as Benion was brought in, Allen was possessed with a fear of being left alone with him. When the raft was launched, he joined the two men told off to go to the wreck. It was evening before they returned, with scarcely any stores, towing the largest of the ship’s boats, staved and broken, but not beyond repair. At night over the fire they took counsel. To stay for more than a week at this place would mean starvation. The island must be one of the Fiji group, which the captain had supposed to be two hundred miles to the southward. Some of them had heard that there were white men there; and the party that had climbed the cliff had seen the outline of a large island down the wind. There was only one course open to them--to repair the broken boat and set sail. Benion beckoned to Allen from the ivi-tree under which he was lying. The men were some feet away, and they could talk undisturbed.

“Did you bring off the box on the raft?” he asked, eagerly.

“No,” replied Allen; “the cabin was full of water.” Benion started up, forgetting his injury until the pain reminded him. “Good God!” he cried, “it must be there--under my bunk. No one in the ship knew of it but you, and it couldn’t float away. I’ll find it myself to-morrow, even if I smash my ankle looking for it. You seem to take it very calmly,” he added, fiercely; “have you forgotten that your share is in it as well as mine?”

“Forgotten! No; but I am too pleased at having saved my skin to think about it yet.”

“Your skin!” retorted Benion, contemptuously. “What good will your _skin_ be to you if you have nothing to put on or into it? If that box is lost, I would to God I might lie where it lies!”

His distress was so great that Allen felt an almost invincible desire to tell him the truth. But why should he tell him now, in his present state of excitement? How could he explain away the lie that had come so readily to his lips? In his excitement Benion would suspect that he meant to steal the money, and then good-bye to any future hope of assistance. Why, Benion might repudiate all his verbal promises of partnership, and he had no writing to show. And had he not worked harder than Benion at the diggings?--been a hewer of wood and a drawer of water while his partner sat at ease? How was he to be recompensed for all this? And his share was to be so little, while with both shares he might live a new life in some country where they would never meet.

“Was the box fixed under your bunk?” he asked quickly, seeing the other’s eyes fixed inquiringly upon him.

“Lashed, do you mean? No. I had it out yesterday, and forgot to lash it again.”

“Then it must have slid out,” replied Allen. “The schooner is lying on her side, and your bunk is now where the ceiling used to be. Don’t be afraid. I’ll go off to-morrow and have another hunt for it.”

But during the night the wind rose again, and at high tide a heavy sea was thundering on the reef where the poor schooner lay in the darkness. The dawn showed a flying scud from the south-east, and a grey ocean streaked with foam. Spray was driving over the wreck, blurring her outline, but it could be seen that she lay lower in the water. The men busied themselves in repairing the boat, and collecting firewood. Some of them scoured the reef at low water, catching small fish and sea-slugs from the pools. Benion dragged himself to a spot whence he could see the wreck, and lay there gazing at her with fierce anxiety, and shuddering as each great sea struck and enveloped her in white foam, as if he felt the blows on his own body. He would not touch food, nor answer any one that spoke to him, and the men left him alone at last, significantly touching their foreheads. “Left ’is wits aboard by the looks of ’im, and wants to hail them to come ashore,” was their diagnosis of the case. Allen came in late from fishing on the lee side of the island, and busied himself at the fire that was farthest from his partner.

The gale lasted all the next day, and brought up drenching rain-squalls; but at midnight it suddenly died away, the stars came out, and from every branch above the sleeping men the crickets burst into song, to the tenor of the little wavelets sucking back the shingle, and the bass of the great ocean-rollers breaking on the outer reef.

The men were astir before daylight to get the raft afloat at high tide. But when the sun rose, and they looked for the dark outline of the stranded schooner, they saw nothing to interrupt the broad golden pathway but a strong eddy in the breaking swell, as if a rock lay beneath the surface. The schooner was gone. Torn, battered, and smashed into match-wood--only her bones lay jammed on the reef; the rest of her was strewn broadcast along the beach where the tide had left it,--broken planks, spars, blocks, casks, chests, and rope half buried in the sand. Benion had one last hope--his box might be among the wreckage in spite of its weight. In his despair he forgot the pain of his sprained ankle, and half hobbled, half crawled after the men who had gone out to collect the stores worth saving. Kneeling on the sand at high-water mark, he eagerly scanned each man’s burden as he passed, asking them whether they had seen an iron-bound box.

“You’ll have to go to the reef for that,” said one; “iron don’t float.”

With the few tools they had saved from the wreck the repairs of the boat made rapid progress. Three days passed, and though they had been on half rations, their little stock of bread unspoilt by the salt water was running short. At the most it would last them five days, and they must allow three for the voyage to the westward. On the third day, therefore, the last plank was roughly nailed into its place, and caulked with strips torn from their clothing, a rough sail was contrived from the schooner’s jib, and provisions and water were prepared for their start upon the morrow.

Benion had had alternate fits of deep dejection and impotent fury since the destruction of the schooner. He spoke to no one, and would not eat his ration of biscuit though he drank his water greedily. At times he would start up, kneeling on the sand and shaking his fist at the sky and sea, shouting blasphemies learned at the diggings but forgotten till now; at others he lay for hours, face downwards, on the sand, pillowing his head upon his arm. The men thought him mad and avoided him, and Allen was glad of any excuse for keeping away from him. But on the day before the projected start he had shown no violence, but had lain motionless on the ground hour after hour. They discussed him over the fire at night.

“A chap as won’t eat, and has the jimmies, ain’t long for this world,” said the boatswain, summing up.