Part 30 (1/2)
There was scarce a breath of wind now, and she rolled so I thought she would have turned turtle.
”Get out a sweep,” Jabez said, ”and bring her head round.”
We had scarcely done so ere the first squall from behind struck us, and in five minutes we were running back as fast as we had come. The wind was at first south, but settled round to southeast. We got up a little more sail now, and made a s.h.i.+ft to keep her to the west, for with this wind we should have been ash.o.r.e long before morning if we had run straight before it. The sea had been heavy--it was tremendous now; and, light and seaworthy as the _Jane_ was, we had to keep baling as the sea broke into her. Over and over again I thought that it was all over with us as the great waves towered above our stern, but they slipped under us as we went driving on at twelve or fourteen knots an hour. I stood up by the side of Jabez, and asked him what he thought of it.
”I can't keep her off the wind,” he said; ”we must run, and by midnight we shall be among the Scillys. Then it's a toss-up.”
Jabez's calculations could not have been far out, for it was just midnight, as far as I could tell, when we saw a flash right ahead.
”That's a s.h.i.+p on one of the Scillys,” Jabez said. ”I wish I knew which it was.”
He tried to bring her a little more up into the wind, but she nearly lay over onto her beam-ends, and Jabez let her go ahead again. We saw one more flash, and then a broad faint light. The s.h.i.+p was burning a blue light. She was not a mile ahead now, and we could see she was a large vessel. I had often been to the Scillys before, and knew them as well as I did our coast, but I could not see the land. It was as Jabez had said--a toss-up. If we just missed one of them we might manage to bring up under its lee; but if we ran dead into one or other of them the _Jane_ would break up like an egg-sh.e.l.l.
We were rapidly running down upon the wreck when the glare of a fire on sh.o.r.e shone up. It was a great blaze, and we could faintly see the land and a white cottage some hundred yards from the sh.o.r.e.
”I know it,” Jabez shouted; ”we are close to the end of the island; we may miss it yet. Hoist the mainsail a bit.”
I leapt up with another to seize the halyards, when a great wave struck us; she gave a roll, and the next moment I was in the water.
After the first wild efforts I felt calm like. I knew the sh.o.r.e was but half a mile ahead, and that the wind would set me dead upon it. I loosened my tarpaulin coat and shook it off, and I found that with mother's belt I could keep easily enough afloat, though I was half drowned with the waves as they swept in from behind me. My mother's dream cheered me up, for, according to that, it did not seem as I was to be drowned, whatever was to come afterwards. I drifted past the wreck within a hundred yards or so. They were still burning blue lights; but the sea made a clean sweep over her, and I saw that in a very few minutes she would go to pieces. Many times as the seas broke over me I quite gave up hope of reaching sh.o.r.e; but I was a fair swimmer, and the bottles buoyed me up, and I struggled on.
I could see the fire on sh.o.r.e, but the surf that broke against the rocks showed a certain death if I made for it, and I tried hard to work to the left, where I could see no breaking surf. It seemed to me that the fire was built close to the end of the island. As I came close I found that this was so. I drifted past the point of land not fifty feet off, where the waves were sending their spray a hundred feet up; then I made a great struggle, and got in under the lee of the point. There was a little bay with a shelving sh.o.r.e, and here I made a s.h.i.+ft to land. Five minutes to rest, and then I made my way towards the fire. There was no one there, and I went to the edge of the rocks.
Here four or five men with ropes were standing, trying to secure some of the casks, chests, and wreckage from the s.h.i.+p. The surf was full of floating objects, but nothing could stand the shock of a crash against those rocks. The water was deep alongside, and the waves, as they struck, flew up in spray, which made standing almost impossible.
The men came round me when they saw me. There was no hearing one speak in the noise of the storm; so I made signs I had landed behind the point, and that if they came with their ropes to the point they might get something as it floated past. They went off, and I sat down by the fire, wrung my clothes as well as I could,--I thought nothing of the wet, for one is wet through half the time in a fis.h.i.+ng-boat,--took off mother's belt, and found one of the bottles had broke as I got ash.o.r.e; but luckily it was the one which was quite empty. I got the cork out of the other, and had a drink of brandy, and then felt pretty right again. I had good hopes the boat was all right, for she would get round the point easy, and Jabez would bring her up under the lee of the island. I thought I would go and see if I could help the others, and perhaps save someone drifting from the wreck; but I did not think there was very much chance, for she lay some little distance to the right, and I hardly thought a swimmer could keep off the sh.o.r.e.
Just as I was going to move I saw two of them coming back. They had a body between them, and they put it down a little distance from the fire. I was on the other side, and they had forgotten all about me.
They stooped over the figure, and I could not see what they were doing. I got up and went over, and they gave a start when they saw me.
”Is he alive?” says I. ”Dunno,” one of 'em growled; and I could see pretty well that if I had not been there it would have gone hard with the chap. He was a foreign, Jewish-looking fellow, and had around him one of the s.h.i.+p's life-buoys. There were lots of rings on his fingers, and he had a belt round his waist that looked pretty well stuffed out.
I put my hand to his heart, and found he still breathed; and then I poured a few drops of brandy which remained in my bottle down his throat.
While I was doing this the two men had talked to each other aside.