Part 17 (2/2)
For a few minutes after the disappearance of the moon Blyth was able, or fancied he was able, still to distinguish the canvas of the chase looming up vaguely like a dark shapeless shadow upon the horizon; but either the sky grew darker in that quarter or the weather thickened, for he was soon obliged to admit that he could see it no longer. But that circ.u.mstance gave him not the least concern; he had set his course by a star, and he knew that so long as he continued to steer for it, so long would the course of the raft converge toward that of the stranger. He _was_ concerned, however, to notice later on that not only was the weather thickening overhead, necessitating a frequent changing of the star by which he was following his course, but also that the wind was becoming unsteady; sometimes falling away to such an extent as to cause the raft's sail to flap heavily as she rolled over the ridges of the swell, and anon breezing up quite fresh again, but with a change of perhaps a couple of points in its direction, the change generally being of such a character as to bring the wind forward more on his starboard beam. Gradually the haze so thickened overhead that such stars as were not already obscured grew dim and soon disappeared altogether, leaving the solitary man dependent only upon the somewhat fickle wind for a guide by which to steer his course; for though he had a compa.s.s on board the raft, he had no binnacle, and no lamps by which to illuminate the compa.s.s card. It is true the island was still in sight, some four miles astern, but the night had grown so dark and the atmosphere so thick that the land merely loomed like a vast undefined blot of darkness against the black horizon, being so indistinct indeed that only the practised eye of a seamen could have detected its presence at all; it was therefore useless as an object to steer by, even to so keen-eyed an old sea-dog as Captain Blyth.
It had by this time began to dawn upon the skipper that his adventure was likely to prove of a far more serious character than he had at all contemplated; and he was earnestly debating within himself the question whether his wisest course would not, after all, be to abandon the chase and make the best of his way back to the island, when the breeze once more freshened up so strongly, and that too dead aft, that it made everything on board the raft surge again as she gathered way and skimmed off before it. And Blyth, calculating that even if the chase were sailing away from instead of toward him it would shorten his distance from her at least a couple of miles before she caught it, grimly held on his course, determined to risk everything rather than lose so good a chance; his chief fear now being that the sheet would part under the tremendous strain brought to bear upon it by the immense sail. The raft, as has been elsewhere stated, was of very peculiar construction, her shape and build being such as to peculiarly favour speed, especially when running dead before the wind; and, light as she now was, she skimmed away before the fierce squall at a rate which made Blyth's heart bound with exultation as he looked first to one side and then the other and noted the furious speed with which the phosph.o.r.escent foam from under her bows was left behind. There was now no longer any thought of turning back, for, be it said, Captain Blyth--good honest soul--was a devout believer in Providence; and he had by this time arrived at a firm conviction, first, that it was by the special intervention of Providence that he had been led to undertake his fis.h.i.+ng excursion that night, and next, that the freshening up of a dead fair wind just when it did was a second special intervention of Providence to prevent his giving up the chase. And so he held on everything, and the raft rushed away dead before the wind through the pitchy darkness, the mast creaking ominously in its step every now and then, and the tautly-strained gear aloft surging from time to time in an equally ominous manner; whilst the sea rose rapidly--showing that the solitary voyager was fast drawing out from under the sheltering lee of the island astern--and the foaming wavecrests, vividly phosph.o.r.escent, momentarily towered higher and more threateningly, and hissed louder and more angrily in the luminous wake of the flying craft.
The squall lasted a full hour, when the wind died away even more suddenly than it had arisen, and the raft was left tumbling about with little more than steerage-way upon her. The skipper had no means of ascertaining the time, it being too intensely dark to permit of his reading the face of his watch even when it was held close to his eyes, though he made two or three unsuccessful attempts to do so; but, anxious and impatient as he was for the dawn, he knew that it must be at least another hour, perhaps nearer two, before he could reasonably expect its appearance. Two hours more of sickening suspense! One hundred and twenty minutes! With the weather in such a threatening state what might not happen in the interval! If he could only have obtained an occasional glimpse of the compa.s.s, or if the night had been less opaquely dark he would not have cared so much. For in the one case he would have been enabled not only to keep a mental reckoning of his own course, but also that of the chase as well, and to follow her attentively no matter how capricious the breeze; whilst in the other case he might have stood some chance of catching a momentary glimpse of her. As his reflections took this turn he stooped and looked ahead under the foot of the sail; looked more intently; rubbed his eyes, and looked again. What was it he saw? A light--lights? Yes, surely; it must be so, or were those faint luminous specks merely illusory and a result of the over-straining of his visual organs due to the intensity of his gaze into the gloom? No; those feebly glimmering points of light were stationary; they maintained the same fixed distance from each other, and he could count them--one, two, three--half a dozen of them at least, if not more, he could not be certain, for they were so very faint. What could it mean? Was there a whole fleet of s.h.i.+ps down there to leeward? That there was _something_ was an absolute certainty; and as it seemed an impossibility that it could be anything else it was only reasonable to conclude that it must be a s.h.i.+p or s.h.i.+ps. At all events there could be no question as to the course he ought to follow; it would be worse than folly to continue in pursuit of an invisible s.h.i.+p with those lights in comparatively plain view only a couple of points on his lee-bow. So the skipper bore away until the faint luminous spots opened out just clear of the heel of the long yard--which, it will be remembered, was bowsed down close to the deck--and there he resolutely kept them, the wind having by this time fallen so light that it was necessary for him to make frequent sweeps with the steering-oar in order to keep the raft's head pointed in the required direction.
Suddenly, a greenish spectral radiance beamed down upon him from above; and, quickly casting a startled glance aloft, Blyth shudderingly beheld a ball of lambent greenish light quivering upon the upper extremity of the long tapering yard and swaying to and fro with the roll of the raft, much as the flame of a candle would have done under similar circ.u.mstances. Clinging lightly to the end of the yard, it alternately elongated and flattened as the spar swayed to and fro, now and then rolling a few inches down the yard as though about to travel down to the deck, but as often returning to the extremity of the yard again.
Presently another and similar luminous ball gleamed into shape at the mast-head, swaying and wavering about the end of the spar like its companion. They were _corposants_, and whilst they conveyed to the skipper the only additional warning needed of the impending elemental strife, they also at once explained the mystery of the lights to leeward for which he was steering. They also were undoubtedly corposants glimmering from the spars of the strange sail of which he was in pursuit, and which, from her present proximity, must have been steering to the eastward, and consequently toward him, instead of to the westward and away from him, as he had feared.
Blyth believed she certainly could not be more than a mile distant, his conviction being that the feeble, sickly lights of the ghostly corposants could not penetrate further than that distance in so thick an atmosphere, and it now became of the utmost importance--nay, it might even be a matter of life or death for him--to reach the stranger before the hurricane should burst upon them. He looked over the side to ascertain the speed of the raft through the water, and his heart quailed as he observed that, save for an occasional tiny phosph.o.r.escent spark on the surface or a faintly luminous halo lower down in the black depths slowly drifting by, there was nothing to indicate that she had any motion whatever. Her speed was not more than half a knot per hour; and the stranger was probably a mile distant--two hours away at the raft's then rate of progress! Something must be done, and quickly, too; for out of the darkness round about him there now floated weird, whispering sighs, faint, dismal moanings, and now and then a sudden momentary rush as of invisible wings, telling that the storm-fiend was marshalling his forces and about to make his swoop. What was to be done? There were only two oars on board the raft--the steering-oars--and they were so firmly secured that it would be next to impossible to cast them adrift and use them as means of propulsion, even if one man's strength were sufficient to handle them both simultaneously. Moreover, if a little puff of wind should come, as is sometimes the case, before the great burst of the hurricane, they would, one or both, be wanted where they were. Perhaps hailing might be of use. At all events, he would try.
And, placing his hollowed hands on each side of his mouth to form a speaking trumpet the skipper drew a deep inspiration or two, hailed with the utmost strength of his lungs; ”s.h.i.+p ahoy-oy!”
And then listened.
No response. Nothing save the faint murmurings and railings of the gathering gale.
”_s.h.i.+p ahoy-oy_!”
Hark! what was that? Did he, indeed, hear a faint answering halloo from away yonder in the direction of those weird lights, or was it merely that the wish was father to the thought?
”Sh-i-ip A--hoy-oy-oy!”
”_Halloo_!”
Quite unmistakable this time; and the skipper, in a perfect frenzy of excitement, repeats his hail time after time, waiting only long enough to receive the answer before hailing again. Presently a bright star suddenly appears under the faintly gleaming corposants. It is a s.h.i.+p's lantern held up over the rail. A minute later a tiny spark appears close to the lantern, immediately bursting into a keen bluish glare from which a cloud of white smoke arises and flakes of blue-white flame drop now and then as a port-fire is burnt. By its brilliant though ghostly radiance the skipper can see, less than half a mile distant, a brig under nothing but close-reefed main-topsail and fore-topmast staysail-- evidently fully prepared for the worst that can come to her in the shape of weather--with a little group of figures gathered about the port-fire, and a smaller group, consisting of two men only, abaft the main-rigging, all peering eagerly in his direction.
He sees one of the figures raise his arms; and presently there comes floating across the inky water:
”Halloo, there! Who hails?”
The skipper again raises his hands to his mouth, draws a mighty inspiration, and replies, as the readiest means of bringing succour to him:
”s.h.i.+pwrecked m-a-an. Broad--on--your--port--b-ea-eam!”
The figure who had hailed waves his hand to show that he has heard; and just at that moment the port-fire burns out. Another is quickly ignited, however; and as the blue-white glare once more illumines the brig Blyth sees that there is but one man now on the forecastle--the man who holds aloft the port-fire--and that the rest are gathered aft, busy about the davit-tackles by which a boat is suspended on the larboard quarter.
At this moment the whole firmament from zenith to horizon is rent asunder, and for a single instant the entire universe seems to have been set on fire by the fierce blaze of the lightning which flashes from the rent, whilst the accompanying thunder crash is so deafening that even the skipper, seasoned as he is, quails beneath the shock of it. For a single instant the sea and everything upon it, from horizon to horizon, is illumined by a light brighter than that of day; and in that single instant Blyth sees not only the brig, enveloped in a perfect network of fire, but also the huge piles of cloud overhead, twisted and distorted into a hundred fantastic shapes by the forces at work within them, and the black glistening water, carved into countless hollows and ridges by the agitation of its surface; the whole apparently motionless as if modelled in metal. Then comes the blackness of darkness, so thick and impenetrable that the half-stunned skipper, scarcely conscious of where he is, dares not move by so much as a single footstep lest he should step overboard. The next moment down comes the rain, not in drops, not even in sheets of water, but in a perfectly overwhelming deluge of such density and volume that Blyth, bowing to his knees beneath it, gasps and chokes like a drowning man.
But he speedily recovers his senses--he had need to, for he will soon want them all--and, staggering to his feet, makes toward the mast, which with the yard and dripping sail is now distinctly outlined against the milky background of sea, milky by reason of the phosph.o.r.escence of its surface being lashed into luminosity by the pouring rain. He grasps the halliard of the sail, and with feverish haste proceeds to cast it adrift from its belaying-pin, murmuring the while:
”Now G.o.d be merciful to me, a sinner: for I am too late. The time for rescue is past!”
With utmost haste, yet with all the coolness and skill of a finished seaman, he lowers the sail on deck and proceeds to secure it as well as he can, for he knows only too well what the next act in the drama will be; he knows, too, that those on board the brig--invisible now--are as well versed as himself, and are at this moment far too busily engaged in preparing for the stroke of the hurricane to have a thought to spare for him.
Now the rain stops as suddenly as it began, and an awful silence ensues, scarcely broken even by the lap of the water alongside, for the terrific downpour has completely beaten down the swell, and, save for an occasional gentle heave, the raft lies motionless.
Now stand by! Summon all your nerve and all your courage to your aid, skipper, for you never stood half so sorely in need of them as you do now. And, above all, lift up your heart to G.o.d in fervent prayer, be it ever so brief. Call upon Him whilst you have time; for time, so far as you are concerned, may soon be merged in eternity!
Listen! What is that low murmur in the air which so rapidly increases in volume until it becomes a deep, hoa.r.s.e, bellowing roar? The sound is broad on your starboard beam, skipper! Aft to your steering-oar for your life, man; sweep her head round quick, in readiness to run before it! That is well; round with her; again; another stroke. _Now_ stand by! here it comes! Seize that rope's-end and hold on for your life!
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