Part 27 (1/2)
”In the which event,” he said with great deliberation, ”we shall certainly be given over to those devils, to be clapped up in their filthy dungeons, or else sent to New Spain, to work in the mines there.
You spoke of a release a little since; there is but one release from this pa.s.s.”
We conversed in this strain from time to time; but ordinarily kept silence. By the running out of a cable, we knew that we were come into that harbour the seaman spoke of, and momently looked for the trap above in the deck to be opened, and ourselves to be haled out to our dooms. A curious sense of unreality came over me in this interval, yet joined to a minute perception of all that pa.s.sed, as though I could actually see the same with my eyes. For I seemed to detect the departure of our Captain, that went ash.o.r.e; I heard the rattle of the oars against the pins as he was rowed off. Later, I understood that he was returned again, and with him another, whose step upon the deck was firm and stately. His spurs jangled as he moved. ”It is the Governor of this Port,” I said to myself, ”and they debate of treason together.”
The most of the crew hung about amids.h.i.+ps; the princ.i.p.al persons being upon the quarterdeck, and there remaining a great while. Some little movement as of men dissatisfied, I noted later; and then there was the business of the Governor's leaving us, I supposed to consult with others, his lieutenants, upon the quay.
Presently I was startled by the firing of a cannon, which made our s.h.i.+p to reel as she would have split, and there was trampling and shouted words of command. Spurrier's bargain had failed.
”They had best have left it,” said my uncle with a sneering laugh, when he saw how things had gone. ”A greedy boastful knave as Spurrier is, none will be matched with. I know this Governor well, if this place we be come to be, as I think, Puerto Real. 'Twas his brother I slew, Don Florida. He would inquire after him, like enough, and wherefore he had not returned into Spain, to which Spurrier would answer him astray and then lie to mend it; a paltry bungler as he is! I might have played this hand through, Denis, had I chosen. But being no traitor I would not. Well, let them look to their stakes!”
It may appear a strange thing, but 'tis true, that our old animosity had quite sunk between us and although we used no particular courtesy in our scanted speech, yet my uncle and I nevertheless found (I believe) an equal pleasure in our enforced companions.h.i.+p. In the presence of almost certain death, whether men fear or contemn it, there is in the mere thought of it a compelling quality that directs the mind to it only; and where two minds be thus constrained to the same point, along whatever paths they may have moved, there is of necessity a kind of sympathy betwixt them, and a resolution of their differences in that common attent.
Succeeding upon that firing of the great gun there was an immediate confusion wherein we in our dungeon were wholly forgot. A cannon from the fort answered our challenge a while after, but by its faintness 'twas easy to suppose we had got a good way out of the harbour and thus were free from any present danger from a land attack. But whether there were in the roads gathered any vessels of war that might do us harm upon the sea we could not conjecture, though it appeared not altogether likely, or at the least that they were not at all points prepared upon the sudden to give chase. Our main fear lay in the probability that, the alarm being given, messengers would be dispatched to all points of the coast, with particulars given of the rank and appearance of our s.h.i.+p, in order that, attempting to sail through the Straits into the Mediterranean or to slip away again northward, we should be made to answer for our gunnery salute in such sort as would hardly please us.
But however these considerations affected his two censors in the hold, Captain Spurrier was evidently nothing moved thereby, who warped his s.h.i.+p as it were along the very sh.o.r.e with a most insensate impudency until he had her within the narrow waters about Gibraltar, where a man could have slung a stone upon our decks, so nearly did we venture ourselves into the enemy's power. Nay, a general madness seemed to have grown to possess the whole crew, so disappointed were they of the outcome of their late negotiations and proffers of treachery; and no folly that presented itself to them, but they took it as a drunken man takes water, feverishly. Thus our cannon were continually being shot off, not of offence but for the mere show of bravery it put upon us; and so likewise of defence, there was no order taken nor was any especial guard kept, so far as we could tell who knew not the watches, but yet could distinguish well enough the sounds of cups clinking and of quarrelling and curses. Indeed I doubt whether, at any hour of this our frenzied voyage, had a c.o.c.k-boat of resolute men put out to intercept us, we should not have been made prize of, before we were aware that opposition was so much as offered.
In the meanwhile we in our chains were, as I say, left undisturbed; and as hour after hour went by the hunger we suffered increased so that I think another day of such absolute privation, and of the burning thirst that went with it, would have ended our business altogether. Yet it was to this incredible affliction we owed our resolution to get free, come what would thereafter.
I must have fallen into some raving speech, that served to make manifest to my uncle the abject condition I was in, for before I knew of it, he had dragged himself over to me, and with his skeleton fingers had loosened the band at my throat and chafed my hands together between his own.
”Oh, let me die,” I cried fiercely.
”You are like to,” said he, without the least resentment; ”but if you will take the advice I shall give, you will either notably increase your chances of it, or else will get what is hardly less to be desired, I mean food.”
Too faint to demand what he intended by that, I lay still, careless whether he made his purpose clear or not.
”Seeing that we cannot get off our irons,” he went on, ”we must eat or die, bound. Now I believe that it is night and most of the crew drunk.
If it be so, we shall get food enough and perhaps our freedom too. If it be not so, you shall have your will presently and die; for it is you who must go above, Denis, seeing I cannot do so, that have my ankle broke with this cursed chain.”
I got upon my feet, all confused as I was and sick with famine; but his greater courage moved me to obey him in this if I could, though I expected but little good of it.
”They will hear my chains,” I said.
”I will m.u.f.fle them,” he replied, and tore off three or four strips of his silken coat that he yet wore, and with them wrapped up the links in such sort as I should move along without noise, though still heavily.
After that I left him, going up the ladder to the trap in the roof of the hold, which none had troubled to make fast, knowing, or at least believing, that we were safe enough in our shackles, without further precaution taken.
It was indeed night, as my uncle had supposed; and such a night as seemeth to lift a man out of his present estate, so limited and beat upon by misfortunes, and to touch his lips with a savour of things divine. There is a liberation in the wide s.p.a.ces of the night, and a glory unrevealed by any day.
I stood awhile where I was upon the deck, simply breathing in the cool air and taking no thought for my safety. A gunner lay beside his gun, asleep with his head upon the carriage; I could have touched him with my outstretched arm....
I looked about me. We were riding at anchor in a little bay that from the aspect of the stars I took to be upon the Moorish side of the Straits: an opinion that became certainty when I gradually made out the form of that huge rock of Gibraltar to the northward and the mountainous promontory which lieth thereabout. There was no wind at all, which something excused the slack seamans.h.i.+p that was used amongst us, and in this princ.i.p.ally showed, that our sails were but some of them furled up, although we rode at anchor; and the rest of them hung flat upon the yards. The moon had not risen, or was already set, but there was that soft diffused pallor of the stars by which, after awhile, I could see very well. In the general negligence the s.h.i.+p's lanterns were left unlit, but the gunner had one beside him, and also (what imported me more to find) a few broken morsels of bread. To carry these and the lantern down to the hold was my next concern, and was happily effected; but I judged my enterprise incomplete until I had got wine, or at least water, to wash it down, for even less to be supported than our hunger was our horrible scorching thirst.
Now, how I should have fared in my quest of that commodity I know not, seeing I did not proceed further in it than just so far as the prostrate gunner, whose leg in pa.s.sing I chanced to touch and so woke him. He raised himself on his elbow, grumbling that he was o'er-watched, and would stand sentinel no more for all the Moors in Barbary. Upon the impulse I fell upon and grappled with him, managing the chain betwixt my wrists so that I had his neck in a loop of it, upon which I pulled until his eyes and mouth were wide and the blood pouring from his nose. Gradually I slackened my hold to let him breathe, for he was pretty far gone.
”You must knock off my irons,” I whispered, ”or else I will strangle you outright,” and made as if to begin again.
He was beyond speech, but made signs he would do it, and implored me with his eyes to desist. Then he made me to understand that his tools were abaft in the gunroom, so that I was fain to follow him thither, or rather to go beside him with my arms about his neck like a dear friend.