Part 37 (2/2)
”We have no hope left us, but to anchor; our ground tackle may yet bring her up.”
Tom turned to his commander, and replied, solemnly, and with that a.s.surance of manner that long experience only can give a man in moments of great danger:
”If our sheet-cable was bent to our heaviest anchor, this sea would bring it home, though nothing but her launch was riding by it. A northeaster in the German Ocean must and will blow itself out; nor shall we get the crown of the gale until the sun falls over the land. Then, indeed, it may lull; for the winds do often seem to reverence the glory of the heavens too much to blow their might in its very face!”
”We must do our duty to ourselves and the country,” returned Barnstable.
”Go, get the two bowers spliced, and have a kedge bent to a hawser: we'll back our two anchors together, and veer to the better end of two hundred and forty fathoms; it may yet bring her up. See all clear there for anchoring and cutting away the mast! we'll leave the wind nothing but a naked hull to whistle over.”
”Ay, if there was nothing but the wind, we might yet live to see the sun sink behind them hills,” said the c.o.c.kswain; ”but what hemp can stand the strain of a craft that is buried, half the time, to her foremast in the water?”
The order was, however, executed by the crew, with a sort of desperate submission to the will of their commander; and when the preparations were completed, the anchors and kedge were dropped to the bottom, and the instant that the Ariel tended to the wind, the axe was applied to the little that was left of her long, raking masts. The crash of the falling spars, as they came, in succession, across the decks of the vessel, appeared to produce no sensation amid that scene of complicated danger; but the seamen proceeded in silence to their hopeless duty of clearing the wrecks. Every eye followed the floating timbers, as the waves swept them away from the vessel, with a sort of feverish curiosity, to witness the effect produced by their collision with those rocks that lay so fearfully near them; but long before the spars entered the wide border of foam, they were hid from view by the furious element in which they floated. It was now felt by the whole crew of the Ariel, that their last means of safety had been adopted; and, at each desperate and headlong plunge the vessel took into the bosom of the seas that rolled upon her forecastle, the anxious seamen thought that they could perceive the yielding of the iron that yet clung to the bottom, or could hear the violent surge of the parting strands of the cable, that still held them to their anchors. While the minds of the sailors were agitated with the faint hopes that had been excited by the movements of their schooner, Dillon had been permitted to wander about the deck unnoticed: his rolling eyes, hard breathing, and clenched hands excited no observation among the men, whose thoughts were yet dwelling on the means of safety. But now, when, with a sort of frenzied desperation, he would follow the retiring waters along the decks, and venture his person nigh the group that had collected around and on the gun of the c.o.c.kswain, glances of fierce or of sullen vengeance were cast at him, that conveyed threats of a nature that he was too much agitated to understand.
”If ye are tired of this world, though your time, like my own, is probably but short in it,” said Tom to him, as he pa.s.sed the c.o.c.kswain in one of his turns, ”you can go forward among the men; but if ye have need of the moments to foot up the reck'ning of your doings among men, afore ye're brought to face your Maker, and hear the log-book of Heaven, I would advise you to keep as nigh as possible to Captain Barnstable or myself.”
”Will you promise to save me if the vessel is wrecked?” exclaimed Dillon, catching at the first sounds of friendly interest that had reached his ears since he had been recaptured; ”Oh! If you will, I can secure your future ease, yes, wealth, for the remainder of your days!”
”Your promises have been too ill kept afore this, for the peace of your soul,” returned the c.o.c.kswain, without bitterness, though sternly; ”but it is not in me to strike even a whale that is already spouting blood.”
The intercessions of Dillon were interrupted by a dreadful cry, that arose among the men forward, and which sounded with increased horror, amid the roarings of the tempest. The schooner rose on the breast of a wave at the same instant, and, falling off with her broadside to the sea, she drove in towards the cliffs, like a bubble on the rapids of a cataract.
”Our ground-tackle has parted,” said Tom, with his resigned patience of manner undisturbed; ”she shall die as easy as man can make her!”--While he yet spoke, he seized the tiller, and gave to the vessel such a direction as would be most likely to cause her to strike the rocks with her bows foremost.
There was, for one moment, an expression of exquisite anguish betrayed in the dark countenance of Barnstable; but, at the next, it pa.s.sed away, and he spoke cheerfully to his men:
”Be steady, my lads, be calm; there is yet a hope of life for _you_--our light draught will let us run in close to the cliffs, and it is still falling water--see your boats clear, and be steady.”
The crew of the whale-boat, aroused by this speech from a sort of stupor, sprang into their light vessel, which was quickly lowered into the sea, and kept riding on the foam, free from the sides of the schooner, by the powerful exertions of the men. The cry for the c.o.c.kswain was earnest and repeated, but Tom shook his head, without replying, still grasping the tiller, and keeping his eyes steadily bent on the chaos of waters into which they were driving. The launch, the largest boat of the two, was cut loose from the ”gripes,” and the bustle and exertion of the moment rendered the crew insensible to the horror of the scene that surrounded them. But the loud hoa.r.s.e call of the c.o.c.kswain, to ”look out--secure yourselves!” suspended even their efforts, and at that instant the Ariel settled on a wave that melted from under her, heavily on the rocks. The shock was so violent, as to throw all who disregarded the warning cry from their feet, and the universal quiver that pervaded the vessel was like the last shudder of animated nature. For a time long enough to breathe, the least experienced among the men supposed the danger to be past; but a wave of great height followed the one that had deserted them, and raising the vessel again, threw her roughly still farther on the bed of rocks, and at the same time its crest broke over her quarter, sweeping the length of her decks with a fury that was almost resistless. The shuddering seamen beheld their loosened boat driven from their grasp, and dashed against the base of the cliffs, where no fragment of her wreck could be traced, at the receding of the waters. But the pa.s.sing billow had thrown the vessel into a position which, in some measure, protected her decks from the violence of those that succeeded it.
”Go, my boys, go,” said Barnstable, as the moment of dreadful uncertainty pa.s.sed; ”you have still the whale-boat, and she, at least, will take you nigh the sh.o.r.e. Go into her, my boys. G.o.d bless you, G.o.d bless you all! You have been faithful and honest fellows, and I believe he will not yet desert you; go, my friends, while there is a lull.”
The seamen threw themselves, in a ma.s.s, into the light vessel, which nearly sank under the unusual burden; but when they looked around them, Barnstable and Merry, Dillon and the c.o.c.kswain, were yet to be seen on the decks of the Ariel. The former was pacing, in deep and perhaps bitter melancholy, the wet planks of the schooner, while the boy hung, unheeded, on his arm, uttering disregarded pet.i.tions to his commander to desert the wreck. Dillon approached the side where the boat lay, again and again, but the threatening countenances of the seamen as often drove him back in despair. Tom had seated himself on the heel of the bowsprit, where he continued, in an att.i.tude of quiet resignation, returning no other answers to the loud and repeated calls of his s.h.i.+pmates, than by waving his hand towards the sh.o.r.e.
”Now hear me,” said the boy, urging his request, to tears; ”if not for my sake, or for your own sake, Mr. Barnstable, or for the hope of G.o.d's mercy, go into the boat, for the love of my cousin Katherine.”
The young lieutenant paused in his troubled walk, and for a moment he cast a glance of hesitation at the cliffs; but, at the next instant, his eyes fell on the ruin of his vessel, and he answered:
”Never, boy, never; if my hour has come, I will not shrink from my fate.”
”Listen to the men, dear sir; the boat will be swamped, alongside the wreck, and their cry is, that without you they will not let her go.”
Barnstable motioned to the boat, to bid the boy enter it, and turned away in silence.
”Well,” said Merry, with firmness, ”if it be right that a lieutenant shall stay by the wreck, it must also be right for a mids.h.i.+pman; shove off; neither Mr. Barnstable nor myself will quit the vessel.”
”Boy, your life has been entrusted to my keeping, and at my hands will it be required,” said his commander, lifting the struggling youth, and tossing him into the arms of the seamen. ”Away with ye, and G.o.d be with you; there is more weight in you now than can go safe to land.”
Still the seamen hesitated, for they perceived the c.o.c.kswain moving, with a steady tread, along the deck, and they hoped he had relented, and would yet persuade the lieutenant to join his crew. But Tom, imitating the example of his commander, seized the latter suddenly in his powerful grasp, and threw him over the bulwarks with an irresistible force. At the same moment he cast the fast of the boat from the pin that held it, and, lifting his broad hands high into the air, his voice was heard in the tempest:
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