Kitabı oku: «The King's Own», sayfa 30
“Well, Mr Hardsett, it’s my firm opinion, that when the hands are turned up for punishment in the next world, we shall be sarved out according to our desarts. Now, that’s my belief; and I shan’t change it for yours, Mr Hardsett, for I thinks mine the more comfortable of the two.”
“It won’t do, Robinson, you must have faith.”
“So I have, in God’s mercy, boatswain.”
“That won’t do. Yours is not the true faith.”
“Mayhap not, but I hope to ride it out with it nevertheless, for I have it well backed with hope; and if I still drive,” — said Robinson, musing a short time — “why, I have charity as a sheet-anchor, to bring me up again. It’s long odds but our bodies will soon be knocked to shivers in those breakers, and we shall then know who’s right, and who’s wrong. I see small chance of our saving ourselves, unless indeed we could walk on the sea, and there was but one that ever did that.”
“Had the apostle had faith, he would not have sunk,” rejoined the boatswain.
“Have you then more faith than the apostle?”
“I have, thanks be to Jehovah, the true faith,” cried the boatswain, raising his eyes and hands to heaven.
“Then walk on shore,” said the captain of the forecastle, looking him steadfastly in the face.
Stimulated by the request, which appeared to put his courage as a man, and his faith as a Christian, to the test, and, at the moment, fanatic even to insanity, the boatswain rose, and casting off the ropes which he had wound round his body, was about to comply with Robinson’s request.
A few moments more, and the raging sea would have received him, had not our hero, in conjunction with the captain of the forecastle, held him down with all his power. “We doubt not your faith, Mr Hardsett,” said Seymour, “but the time of miracles is past. It would be self-murder. He who raised the storm, will, in his own good time, save us, if he thinks fit.”
Price, who had listened to the conversation, and had watched the motions of the boatswain, who was casting off the lashings which had secured him, had, unperceived, done the same, and now jumped upon his legs, and collared the astonished boatswain, roaring out —
“Zounds, show me what thou’lt do!
Woul’t weep? woul’t fight? woul’t fast? woul’t tear thyself?”
“Why, he’s mad!” exclaimed the terrified boatswain, who was not far off the point himself.
“Mad!” resumed Price.
“Not a soul
But felt a fever of the mad, and play’d
Some tricks of desperation.
“The king’s son, Ferdinand,
With hair upstarting (then like reeds, not hair),
Was the first man that leaped; cried, Hell is empty,
And all the devils are here!”
As the maniac finished the last words, before they could be aware of his intention, he made a spring from the deck over the bulwark, and disappeared under the wave. The boatswain, who had been diverted from his fanatical attempt by the unexpected attack of Price, more than by the remonstrances of his companions, resumed his position, folding his arms, and casting his eyes to heaven. The captain of the forecastle was silent, and so was our hero — the thoughts of the two were upon the same subject — eternity.
Eternity — the only theme that confuses, humbles, and alarms the proud intellect of man. What is it? The human mind can grasp any defined space, any defined time, however vast; but this is beyond time, and too great for the limited conception of man. It had no beginning and can have no end. It cannot be multiplied, it cannot be divided, it cannot be added unto — you may attempt to subtract from it, but it is useless. Take millions and millions of years from it, take all the time that can enter into the compass of your imagination, it is still whole and undiminished as before — all calculation is lost. Think on — the brain becomes heated, and oppressed with a sensation of weight too powerful for it to bear; reason totters in her seat, and you rise with the conviction of the impossibility of the creature attempting to fathom the Creator — humiliated with the sense of your own nothingness, and impressed with the tremendous majesty of the Deity.
Time is Man — Eternity is God!
Chapter Fifty Five.
Thou art perfect, then, that our ship hath touched upon the deserts of Bohemia?
Ay, my lord and fear we have landed in ill time.
Winter’s Tale.
About midnight the moon burst through the clouds, which gradually rolled away to the western horizon, as if they had been furled by some invisible spirits in the air. The wind, after several feeble gusts, like the last breathings of some expiring creature unwilling to loosen the “silver cord,” subsided to a calm. It then shifted round to the eastward. The waves relaxed in their force until they did little more than play upon the side of the wreck, so lately the object of their fury. The dark shadows of the rocks were no longer relieved by the white foam of the surf, which had raged among them with such violence. Before morning all was calm, and the survivors, as they shrunk and shivered in their wet garments, encouraged each other with the prospect of a speedy termination to their sufferings on the reappearance of daylight. The sun rose in splendour, and seemed, as he darted his searching rays through the cloudless expanse, to exclaim in his pride, “Behold how I bring light and heat, joy and salvation, to you, late despairing creatures!” The rocks of the reef above water, which had previously been a source of horror, and had been contemplated as the sure engines of their destruction, were now joyfully reckoned as so many resting-spots for those who were about to attempt to reach the land.
The most daring and expert swimmers launched themselves into the water, and made for the nearest cluster of rocks, with difficulty gaining a footing on them, after clinging by the dark and slippery sea-weed which covered their tops, like shaggy hair on the heads of so many emerging giants. The waving of the hands of the party who had succeeded in gaining the rocks, encouraged a second to follow; while others, who could not swim, were busily employed in searching for the means of supporting themselves in the water, and floating themselves on shore. Self, that had predominated, now lost its ground. Those who had allowed their shipmates to perish in attempting to gain the same place of security as themselves, without an effort in their favour, or one sigh for their unlucky fate, now that hope was revived almost to a certainty of deliverance, showed as much interest in the preservation of others lying in a state of exhaustion, as they did for their own. The remaining officers recovered their authority, which had been disregarded, and the shattered fragment of the Aspasia reassumed their rights of discipline and obedience to the last. In a few hours, sick, disabled, and wounded were all safely landed, and the raft which had been constructed returned to the wreck, to bring on shore whatever might be useful.
Our hero, who was the only officer who had been saved, with the exception of the boatswain, had taken upon himself the command, and occupied himself with the arrangements necessary for the shelter and sustenance of his men. A range of barren hills, abruptly rising from the iron-bound coast, covered with large fragments and detached pieces of rock, without any symptom of cultivation, or any domesticated animal in sight which might imply that human aid was not far distant, met the eye of Seymour, as he directed it to every point, in hopes of succour for his wounded and exhausted companions. One of the men, whom he had sent to reconnoitre, returned in a few minutes, stating, that behind a jutting rock, which he pointed to with his finger, not two hundred yards distant, he had discovered a hut, or what in Ireland is termed a shealing, and that there appeared to be a bridle road from it leading over the mountain. To this shelter our hero determined to remove his disabled men, and in company with the boatswain and the man who had returned with the intelligence, set off to examine the spot. Passing the rock, he perceived that the hut, which bore every sign, from its smokeless chimney and air of negligence and decay, to have been some time deserted, stood upon a piece of ground, about an acre in extent, which had once been cultivated, but was now luxuriant with a spontaneous crop of weeds and thistles. He approached the entrance, and as the rude door creaked upon its hinges when he threw it open, was saluted by a faint voice, which cried, “Qui va là?”
“Why there’s Irishmen inside,” observed the sailor.
“Frenchmen rather, I should imagine,” replied our hero, as he entered and discovered seven or eight of the unfortunate survivors of the French line-of-battle ship, who had crawled there, bruised, cut, and apparently in the last state of exhaustion.
“Bonjour, camarade,” said one of them, with difficulty raising himself on his elbow — “As-tu d’eau-de-vie?”
“I am afraid not,” replied Seymour, looking with compassion on the group, all of which had their eyes directed towards him, although, from their wounds and bruises, they were not able to turn their bodies. “We are shipwrecked as well as you.”
“What! did you belong to that cursed frigate?”
“We did,” replied Seymour, “and there are but few of us alive to tell the tale.”
“Vive la France!” cried the Frenchman; “puisqu’elle n’a pas échappée — je n’ai plus des regrets.”
“Viva, viva!” repeated the rest of the French party, in faint accents.
“Et moi, je meurs content!” murmured one, who, in a few seconds afterwards expired.
“Are you the only survivors?” demanded Seymour.
“All that are left,” replied the spokesman of the party, “out of eight hundred and fifty men. Sacristie — as-tu d’eau-de-vie?”
“I hardly know what we have — something has been saved from the wreck,” replied Seymour, “and shall cheerfully be shared with you with all the assistance we can afford. We were enemies, but we are now brothers in affliction. I must quit you to bring up our wounded men; there is sufficient room, I perceive, for all of us. Adieu, pour le moment!”
“Savez-vous que c’est un brave garçon ce lieutenant-là?” observed the Frenchman to his companions, as Seymour and his party quitted the hut.
Seymour returned to the beach, and, collecting his men, found the survivors to consist of forty-four seamen and marines, the boatswain and himself. Of these, fifteen were helpless, from wounds and fractured limbs. The articles which had been collected were a variety of spars and fragments of wood, some of the small sails which had been triced up in the rigging, one or two casks of beef and pork, and a puncheon of rum, which had miraculously steered its course between the breakers, and had been landed without injury. The sails which had been spread out to dry, were first carried up to form a bed for the sick and wounded, who, in the space of an hour, were all made as comfortable as circumstances would admit, a general bed having been made on the floor of the hut, upon which they and the wounded Frenchmen shared the sails between them. The spars and fragments were then brought up, and a fire made in the long deserted hearth, while another was lighted outside for the men to dry their clothes. The cask of rum was rolled up to the door, and a portion, mixed with the water from a rill that trickled down the sides of the adjacent mountain, served out to the exhausted parties. The seamen, stripping off their clothes, and spreading them out to dry before the fire which had been made outside, collected into the hut to shield their naked bodies from the inclemency of the weather.
The spirits, which had been supplied with caution to the survivors of the French vessel, had been eagerly seized by the one who had first addressed our hero, and in half an hour he seemed to be quite revived. He rose, and after trying his limbs, by moving slowly to and fro, gradually recovered the entire use of them; and by the time that the circulation of his blood had been thoroughly restored by a second dose of spirits, appeared to have little to complain of. He was a powerful, well-looking man, with a large head, covered with a profusion of shaggy hair. Seymour looked at him earnestly, and thought he could not well be mistaken, long as it was since they had been in company.
“Excuse me — but I think we once met at Cherbourg. Is not your name Debriseau?”
“Sacristie!” replied the Frenchman, seizing himself by the hair, “je suis connu! And who are you?”
“Oh! now I’m sure it’s you,” replied Seymour, laughing — “that’s your old trick — do you not recollect the boy that Captain McElvina took off the wreck?”
“Ah mon ami — Seymour, I believe — midshipman, I believe,” cried Debriseau. “Est-ce donc vous? Mais, mon Dieu, que c’est drôle” (again pulling his hair as he grinded his teeth) “Un diable de rencontre!”
“And how is it that you have been on board of a French man-of-war?”
“How! oh, I was unlucky after McElvina went away, and I thought, on reflection, notwithstanding his arguments, that it was a dishonest sort of concern. Being pretty well acquainted with the coasts, I shipped on board as pilot.”
“But, Debriseau, are you not a native of Guernsey, which is part of the British dominions?”
“Bah! it’s all one, mon ami; we islanders are like the bat in the fable — beast or bird, as it suits us — we belong to either country. For my own part, I have a strong national affection for both.”
The conversation was here interrupted by the entrance of the boatswain, who had remained outside, in charge of the cask of rum, upon which he had seated himself occupied with his Bible. “Here’s assistance coming, Mr Seymour. There’s at least twenty or thirty men descending the hill.”
“Hurrah for old Ireland! they are the boys that will look after a friend in distress,” shouted Conolly, one of the seamen, who thus eulogised his own countrymen, as he hung naked over the fire.
Chapter Fifty Six.
With dauntless hardihood
And brandish’d blade rush on him,
And shed the luscious liquor on the ground,
...though he and his cursed crew
Fierce sign of battle make, and menace high.
Milton.
The information received from Mr Hardsett induced our hero to break off his conversation with Debriseau, and he immediately quitted the hut. A party of men, wild in their appearance and demeanour, were bounding down through the rocks, flourishing their bludgeons over their heads, with loud shouts. They soon arrived within a few yards of the shealing, and, to the astonishment of Seymour and the boatswain, who, with a dozen more, had resumed their clothes, seemed to eye them with hostile, rather than with friendly glances. Their intentions were, however, soon manifested by their pouncing upon the habiliments of the seamen which were spread out to dry, holding them rolled up under one arm, while they flourished their shillelahs in defiance with the other.
“Avast there, my lads!” cried the boatswain “why are you meddling with those clothes?”
A shout, with confused answers in Irish, was the incomprehensible reply.
“Conolly,” cried Seymour, “you can speak to them. Ask them what they mean?”
Conolly addressed them in Irish, when an exchange of a few sentences took place.
“Bloody end to the rapparees!” said Conolly, turning to our hero. “It’s helping themselves they’re a’ter, instead of helping us. They say all that comes on shore from a wreck is their own by right, and that they’ll have it. They asked me what was in the cask, and I told them it was the cratur, sure enough, and they say that they must have it, and everything else, and that if we don’t give it up peaceably, they’ll take the lives of us.”
Seymour, who was aware that the surrender of the means of intoxication would probably lead to worse results, turned to his men, who had assembled outside of the hut, and had armed themselves with spars and fragments of the wreck on the first appearance of hostility, and directed them to roll the cask of rum into the hut, and prepare to act on the defensive. The English seamen, indignant at such violation of the laws of hospitality, and at the loss of their clothes, immediately complied with his instructions, and, with their blood boiling, were with difficulty restrained from commencing the attack.
A shaggy-headed monster, apparently the leader of the hostile party, again addressed Conolly in his own language.
“It’s to know whether ye’ll give up the cask quietly, or have a fight for it. The devil a pair of trousers will they give back, not even my own, though I’m an Irishman, and a Galway man to boot. By Jesus, Mr Seymour, it’s to be hoped ye’ll not give up the cratur without a bit of a row.”
“No,” replied Seymour. “Tell them that they shall not have it, and that they shall be punished for the theft they have already committed.”
“You’re to come and take it,” roared Conolly, in Irish, to the opposing party.
“Now, my lads,” cried Seymour, “you must fight hard for it — they will show little mercy, if they gain the day.”
The boatswain returned his Bible to his breast, and seizing the mast of the frigate’s jolly-boat, which had been thrown up with the other spars, poised it with both hands on a level with his head, so as to use the foot of it as a battering-ram, and stalked before his men.
The Irish closed with loud yells, and the affray commenced with a desperation seldom to be witnessed. Many were the wounds given and received, and several of either party were levelled in the dust. The numbers were about even; but the weapons of the Irish were of a better description, each man being provided with his own shillelah of hard wood, which he had been accustomed to wield. But the boatswain did great execution, as he launched forward his mast, and prostrated an Irishman every time, with his cool and well-directed aim. After a few minutes’ contention, the Englishmen were beaten back to the shealing, where they rallied, and continued to stand at bay. Seymour, anxious at all events that the Irish should not obtain the liquor, directed Robinson, the captain of the forecastle, to go into the hut, take the bung out of the cask, and start the contents. This order was obeyed, while the contest was continued outside, till McDermot, the leader of the Irish, called off his men, that they might recover their breath for a renewal of the attack.
“If it’s the liquor you want,” cried Conolly to them, by the direction of Seymour, “you must be quick about it. There it’s all running away through the doors of the shealing.”
This announcement had, however, the contrary effect to that which Seymour intended it should produce. Enraged at the loss of the spirits, and hoping to gain possession of the cask before it was all out, the Irish returned with renewed violence to the assault, and drove the English to the other side of the shealing, obtaining possession of the door, which they burst into, to secure their prey. About eight or ten had entered, and had seized upon the cask, which was not more than half emptied, when the liquor, which had run out under the door of the hut, communicated, in its course, with the fire that had been kindled outside. With the rapidity of lightning the flame ran up the stream that continued to flow, igniting the whole of the spirits in the cask, which blew up with a tremendous explosion, darting the fiery liquid over the whole interior, and communicating the flame to the thatch, and every part of the building, which was instantaneously in ardent combustion. The shrieks of the poor disabled wretches, stretched on the sails, to which the fire had communicated, and who were now lying in a molten sea of flame like that described in Pandemonium by Milton — the yells of the Irish inside of the hut, vainly attempting to regain the door, as they writhed in their flaming apparel, which, like the shirt of Nessus, ate into their flesh — the burning thatch which had been precipitated in the air, and now descended in fiery flakes upon the parties outside, who stood aghast at the dreadful and unexpected catastrophe, — the volumes of black and suffocating smoke which poured out from every quarter, formed a scene of horror to which no pen can do adequate justice. But all was soon over. The shrieks and yells had yielded to suffocation, and the flames, in their fury, had devoured everything with such rapidity, that they subsided for the want of further aliment. In a few minutes, nothing remained but the smoking walls, and the blackened corpses which they encircled.
Ill-fated wretches! ye had escaped the lightning’s blast — ye had been rescued from the swallowing wave — and little thought that you would encounter an enemy more cruel still — your fellow-creature — man.
The first emotions of Seymour and his party, as soon as they had recovered from the horror which had been excited by the catastrophe, were those of pity and commiseration; but their reign was short —
“Revenge impatient rose, And threw his blood-stain’d sword in thunder down.”
The smoking ruins formed the altar at which he received their vows, and stimulated them to the sacrifice of further victims. Nor did he fail to inspire the breasts of the other party, indignant at the loss of their companions, and disappointed at the destruction of what they so ardently coveted.
Debriseau, who had played no idle game in the previous skirmish, was the first who rushed to the attack. Crying out, with all the theatrical air of a Frenchman, which never deserts him, even in the agony of grief, “Mes braves compagnons, vous serez vengés!” he flew at McDermot, the leader of the Irish savages.
A brand of half-consumed wood, with which he aimed at McDermot’s head, broke across the bludgeon which was raised to ward the blow. Debriseau closed; and, clasping his arms round his neck, tore him with his strong teeth with the power and ferocity of a tiger, and they rolled together in the dust, covered with the blood which poured in streams, and struggling for mastery and life. An American, one of the Aspasia’s crew, now closed in the same way with another of the Irish desperadoes, and as they fell together, twirling the side-locks on the temples of his antagonist round his fingers to obtain a fulcrum to his lever, he inserted his thumbs into the sockets of his eyes, forced out the balls of vision, and left him in agony and in darkness.
“The sword of the Lord!” roared the boatswain, as he fractured the skull of a third with the mast of the boat, which, with herculean force, he now whirled round his head.
“Fight, Aspasias, you fight for your lives,” cried Seymour, who was everywhere in advance, darting the still burning end of the large spar into the faces of his antagonists, who recoiled with suffocation and pain. It was, indeed, a struggle for life; the rage of each had mounted to delirium. The English sailors, stimulated by the passions of the moment, felt neither pain nor fatigue from their previous sufferings. The want of weapons had been supplied by their clasp knives, to which the Irish had also resorted, and deadly wounds were given and received.
McDermot, the Irish leader, had just gained the mastery of Debriseau, bestriding his body and strangling him, with his fingers so fixed in his throat that they seemed deeply to have entered into the flesh. The Guernsey man was black in the face, and his eyes starting from their sockets: in a few minutes he would have been no more, when the mast in the hands of the boatswain descended upon the Irishman’s head, and dashed out his brains. At the same moment, one of the Irishmen darted his knife into the side of Seymour, who fell, streaming with his own blood. The fate of their officer, which excited the attention of the seamen, and the fall of McDermot, on the opposite side, to whose assistance the Irish immediately hastened, added to the suspension of their powers from want of breath, produced a temporary cessation of hostilities. Dragging away their killed and wounded, the panting antagonists retreated to the distance of a few yards from each other, tired, but not satisfied with their revenge, and fully intending to resume the strife as soon as they had recovered the power. But a very few seconds had elapsed, when they were interrupted by a third party; and the clattering of horses’ hoofs was immediately followed by the appearance of a female on horseback, who, galloping past the Irishmen, reined up her steed, throwing him on his haunches, in his full career, in the space between the late contending parties.
“’Tis the daughter of the House!” exclaimed the Irishmen, in consternation.
There wanted no such contrast as the scene described to add lustre to her beauty, or to enhance her charms. Fair as the snow-drift, her cheeks mantling with the roseate blush of exercise and animation — her glossy hair, partly uncurled, and still played with by the amorous breeze, hanging in long ringlets down her neck — her eye, which alternately beamed with pity or flashed with indignation, as it was directed to one side or the other — her symmetry of form, which the close riding-dress displayed — her graceful movements, as she occasionally restrained her grey palfrey, who fretted to resume his speed, all combined with her sudden and unexpected appearance to induce the boatswain and his men to consider her as superhuman.
“She’s an angel of light!” muttered the boatswain to himself.
She turned to the Irish, and, in an energetic tone, addressed them in their own dialect. What she had said was unknown to the English party, but the effect which her language produced was immediate. Their weapons were thrown aside, and they hung down their heads in confusion. They made an attempt to walk away, but a few words from her induced them to remain.
The fair equestrian was now joined by two more, whose pace had not been so rapid; and the boatswain, who had been contemplating her with astonishment, as she was addressing the Irish, now that she was about to turn towards him, recollected that some of his men were not exactly in a costume to meet a lady’s eye. He raised his call to his mouth, and, with a sonorous whistle, cried out, “All you without trousers behind shealing, hoy!” an order immediately obeyed by the men who had been deprived of their habiliments.
Conolly, who had understood the conversation which had taken place, called out in Irish, at the same time as he walked round behind the walls, “I think ye’ll be after giving us our duds now, ye dirty spalpeens, so bring ’um wid you quick;” a request which was immediately complied with, the clothes being collected by two of the Irish, and taken to the men who had retired behind the walls of the shealing.
Mr Hardsett was not long in replying to her interrogations, and in giving her an outline of the tragical events which had occurred, while the ladies, trembling with pity and emotion, listened to the painful narrative.
“Are you the only officer then of the frigate that is left?”
“No, madam,” replied the boatswain, “the third-lieutenant is here; but there he lies, poor fellow, desperately wounded by these men, from whom we expected to have had relief.”
“What was the name of your frigate?”
“The Aspasia, Captain M — .”
“O heaven!” cried the girl, catching at the collar of the boatswain’s coat in her trepidation.
“And the wounded officer’s name?”
“Seymour.”
A cry of anguish and horror escaped from all the party as the beautiful interrogatress tottered in her seat, and then fell off into the arms of the boatswain.
In a few seconds, recovering herself, she regained her feet. “Quick, quick — lead me to him.”
Supported by Hardsett, she tottered to the spot where Seymour lay, with his eyes closed, faint and exhausted with loss of blood, attended by Robinson and Debriseau.
She knelt down by his side, and taking his hand, which she pressed between her own, called him by his name.
Seymour started at the sound of the voice, opened his eyes, and in the beauteous form which was reclining over him, beheld his dear, dear Emily.
