Part 4 (1/2)
”Who sees with equal eye, as Lord of all, A hero perish, or a sparrow fall.”
Language cannot express the desolation of that thought.
Then the scene changed once more. We were again on board the s.h.i.+p, and in the power of the enraged mutineers, about to suffer whatever their vengeance might impel them to inflict. Poor Spot was swinging, a livid corpse, at one of the yard-arms. Browne was bound to the main-mast, while Luerson and his fiendish crew were exhausting their ingenuity in torturing him. The peculiar expression of his mild, open countenance, distorted by pain, went to my heart, and the sound of that familiar and friendly voice, now hoa.r.s.e and broken, and quivering with agony, thrilled me with horror. As he besought his tormentors to kill him at once, I thought that I kneeled to Luerson, and seconded the entreaty-- the greatest favour that could be hoped from him. The rest of us were doomed to walk the plank. Morton was stern and silent; Max pale and sorrowful; his arm was round my neck, and he murmured that life was sweet, and that it was a hard and terrible thing to die--to die so!
Arthur, calm and collected, cheered and encouraged us; and his face seemed like the face of an angel, as he spoke sweetly and solemnly, of the goodness and the love of G.o.d, and bade us put our whole trust and hope in Christ our Saviour. His earnest words and serene look, soothed and strengthened us; we also became calm and almost resigned. There was no abject fear, no useless cries, or supplications to our foes for mercy; but the solemn sense of the awfulness of death, was mingled with a sweet and sustaining faith in G.o.d, and Christ, and Immortality. Hand in hand, like brothers, we were preparing to take the fearful plunge-- when I started and awoke.
Even the recollection of our real situation was insufficient to impair the deep sense of relief which I experienced. My first impulse was to thank G.o.d that these were but dreams; and if I had obeyed the next, I should have embraced heartily each of my slumbering companions; for in the first confusion of thought and feeling, my emotions were very much what they would naturally have been, had the scenes of visionary terror, in which we seemed to have just partic.i.p.ated together, been real.
Morton was at his post, and I spoke to him, scarcely knowing or caring what I said. All I wanted, was to hear his voice, to revive the sense of companions.h.i.+p, and so escape the painful impressions which even yet clung to me.
He said that he had just commenced his watch, Arthur having called him but a few moments before. The night was still lowering and overcast, but there was less wind and sea than when I first laid down. I proposed to relieve him at once, but he felt no greater inclination to sleep than myself and we watched together until morning. The two or three hours immediately before dawn seemed terribly long. Just as the first grey light appeared in the east, Arthur joined us. A dense volume of vapour which rested upon the water, and contributed to the obscurity in which we were enveloped, now gathered slowly into ma.s.ses, and floated upward as the day advanced, gradually clearing the prospect; and we kept looking out for the island, in the momentary expectation of seeing it loom up before us through the mist. But when, as the light increased, and the fog rolled away, the boundaries of our vision rapidly enlarged, and still no land could be seen, we began to feel seriously alarmed. A short period of intense and painful anxiety followed, during which we continued alternately gazing, and waiting for more light, and again straining our aching eyes in every direction, and still in vain.
At last it became evident that we had in some manner drifted completely away from the island. The appalling conviction could no longer be resisted. There we were, lost and helpless, on the open ocean, in our chip of a boat, without provisions for a single day, or, to speak more definitely, without a morsel of bread or a drop of water.
CHAPTER FIVE.
THE CONSULTATION.
OUT OF SIGHT OF LAND--SLENDER RESOURCES--WHAT'S TO BE DONE?
”How rapidly, how rapidly, we ride along the sea!
The morning is all suns.h.i.+ne, the wind is blowing free; The billows are all sparkling, and bounding in the light, Like creatures in whose sunny veins, the blood is running bright.”
Morton alone still refused to relinquish the hope, that by broad daylight, we should yet be able to make out the island. He persisted in p.r.o.nouncing it wholly incredible that we had made during the night, a distance sufficient to sink the land, which was but three or four miles off at the utmost, when we were overtaken by darkness; he could not understand, he said, how such a thing was possible.
Arthur accounted for it, by supposing that we had got into the track of one of the ocean currents that exist in those seas, especially among the islands, many of which run at the rate of from two to three miles an hour.
This seemed the more probable, from the fact, that we were to the west of the island, when we lost sight of it, and that the great equatorial current, which traverses the Pacific and Indian oceans, has a prevailing westerly course, though among the more extensive groups and cl.u.s.ters of islands, it is so often deflected hither and thither, by the obstacles which it encounters, or turned upon itself, in eddies or counter-currents, that no certain calculations can be made respecting it. Morton, however, did not consider this supposition sufficient to explain the difficulty.
”I should judge,” said he, ”that in a clear day, such an island might be seen fifteen or twenty miles, and we cannot have drifted so great a distance.”
”It might perhaps be seen,” said Arthur, ”as far as that, from the mast-head of a s.h.i.+p, or even from her deck, but not from a small boat hardly raised above the surface of the water. At our present level, eight or ten miles would be enough to sink it completely.”
At length, when it was broad day, and from the appearance of the eastern sky, the sun was just about to rise, Morton stepped the mast and climbed to the top, in the hope that from that additional elevation, slight as it was, he might catch a glimpse of land. There was by this time light enough, as he admitted, to see any thing that could be seen at all, and after making a deliberate survey of our whole horizon, he was fully convinced that we had drifted completely away from the island. ”I give it up,” he said, as he slid down the mast, ”we are at sea, beyond all question.”
Presently Max awoke. He cast a quick, surprised look around, and at first seemed greatly shocked. He speedily recovered himself, however, and after another, and closer, scrutiny of the horizon, thought that he detected an appearance like that of land in the south. For a moment there was again the flutter of excited hope, as every eye was turned eagerly in that direction; but it soon subsided. A brief examination satisfied us all, that what we saw, was but a low bank of clouds lying against the sky.
”This really begins to look serious,” said I; ”what are we to do?”
”It strikes me,” replied Morton, ”that we are pretty much relieved from the necessity of considering that question; our only part for the present seems to be a pa.s.sive one.”
”I can't fully persuade myself that this is real,” said Max; ”it half seems like an ugly dream, from which we should awake by-and-by, and draw a long breath at the relief of finding it no more than a dream.”
”We are miserably provisioned for a sea voyage,” said Morton; ”but I believe the breaker is half full of water; without that we should indeed be badly off.”
”There is not a drop in it,” said Arthur, shaking his head, and he lifted the breaker and shook it lightly--it was quite empty.
He now proceeded to force open the locker, in the hope of finding them something that might be serviceable to us; but its entire contents consisted of a coil of fine rope, some pieces of rope-yarn, an empty quart-bottle, and an old and battered hatchet-head.