Kitabı oku: «The Ruined Cities of Zululand», sayfa 20

“‘It shall not be said that we, the last remnants of the faithful in this land, put our hands to the plough and turned back,’ exclaimed Robert Pugh of Penrhyn. ‘Philip Wynn, fall in our men. Forward, gentlemen.’”

“Is that the star you mean, Enrico?” asked Isabel, interrupting the tale, as she pointed to the westward; “it does not set, and seems larger than it was. Can it be on land?”

Midnight, the hour fixed for the outbreak, had long passed, and all was as yet quiet on board. The voices of the speakers ceased as both concentrated their gaze on what seemed a red star, for Hughes did not like to wake the sleepers for nothing.

A form moved at the far end of the raft. It was the man Gough, who raised himself gently on his elbow, listening cautiously. Hearing no noise save the swish of the waves, he pushed one or two of the men who, wrapped in their coats, were fast asleep, and then throwing the covering from him, he rose. The starlight gleamed from the blade of his long knife as he stole his way round the cases which formed the sea wall of the cabin. Step by step he advanced, but just as he rounded them, Hughes rose, his back turned towards the man.

“I will wake the captain, Isabel. I know not what it is.”

With a loud curse, the ruffian raised his arm, and the blow fell, with such force, that it precipitated Hughes, who was wholly off his guard, into the sea.

With a loud shriek, which aroused every one on the raft, Isabel rushed forward. Seizing her with his iron grasp by the hair, the murderer’s knife once more gleamed in the starlight, when a straightforward blow from Morris the carpenter struck him full between the eyes, knocking him overboard; while shriek after shriek from Isabel rang out on the air.

The men had now formed, and came on with their knives gleaming in the starlight, and a savage determination on their faces.

“Lay down your arms, my lads,” shouted Weber; “your plot is known, and we are armed.”

For a second the crew seemed disposed to obey the voice whose tones of command had so often rang in their ears.

“Come on, my lads,” shouted a burly sailor; “follow Jack Smith, and we’ll soon have the gold.”

A wild shout rang out, a pistol shot, and the speaker, struck right on the bridge of the nose by a ball from the captain’s pistol, gave a fearful scream as he spun round in his intense agony; dropping the knife, he uttered a volley of hideous imprecations, then came an appalling yell, and he fell dead.

The men were startled, two of their leaders were gone, while opposed to them, and fully armed, stood the captain and his party.

Isabel lay senseless on the planking of the cabin, and the seamen held a hurried consultation together.

Meanwhile, in the sea, a fierce struggle had been going on. His left arm pierced by the knife, which had sought his heart, but in the darkness missed its aim, Hughes had risen to the surface after his first plunge, the body of his antagonist Gough falling on him as he did so, both instantly grappling.

The soldier’s arm was powerless, as with a savage shout, and deep guttural oath, Gough pinned his enemy by the throat; dashing back his head against the rough planking of the raft, while with his clenched fist he dealt him blow after blow.

Clutching wildly and impotently at his aggressor, Hughes felt his strength failing. Soon his head was below the water again, he struggled to the surface, his senses were rapidly leaving him, and the fierce exulting shout of his enemy rang vaguely in his ears. Down came the sledge-hammer blows on his defenceless head, the man Gough fighting like a fiend, roaring in his fury, and biting like a wild beast at his foe, as he once more tore away his victim’s hold and pressed his head below the raft. The water gurgled in his ears, the savage shout mixed with the noise of the waves as he went down, when suddenly the grip on his throat ceased, his antagonist’s eyes rolled wildly; with a yell of agony, he seemed to leap half his height from out of the wave, and then all around it became reddened with his blood.

A violent struggle followed, making the sea boil for a moment, as a monstrous shark disappeared with its prey, and the strong arm of the carpenter seizing the drowning man by the collar, drew him from the ocean crimsoned with the blood of his antagonist, and cast him, stunned and senseless, on to the planking of the raft.

The Rescue

Isabel, recovered from the state of insensibility into which she had fallen, on seeing all at once the quiet of the night turned into a scene of murder and of bloodshed, had taken refuge in the cabin. She paid no attention to what was going on around her, but sat on a pile of sails, rocking herself to and fro, and moaning as she did so. Several balls passed through the canvas screen, but she paid no attention to them. She had seen her husband, the last friend left her, stabbed as she believed to the heart, and thrown into the sea. What was the result of the fight now to her, and yet, as she saw even in her misery the helpless body drawn from the ocean, and cast on to the raft, she rose, and threw herself beside it, sobbing bitterly in her anguish of heart.

A few minutes’ pause had ensued after the fearful death scream of the mutineer, Smith, had rung forth on the night air, for the seamen consulted together, and the result was soon seen.

On they came with a fierce shout, but this time, taught by experience, they divided into two parties; one, attacking the captain and his men in front, received their fire and were soon beaten back, losing one of their number, the uncertain light alone saving them. The second, under cover of the diversion, dashed into the cabin, and rifled the arm-chest, which they broke open.

“Now, my lads, it’s our turn,” shouted one of the men as he loaded and fired, hitting the carpenter Morris, who fell uttering a deep groan.

Three of Captain Weber’s small party were hors de combat. The carpenter was fast bleeding to death. Hughes was lying senseless on the planking of the raft, while Adams, whose wound had broken out again, was in a helpless condition. The ultimate result of the struggle seemed no longer doubtful.

“It’s but a question of time, Lowe,” said the captain. “I’ve always been kind to the lubbers. Let the scoundrels have the gold—I’ll tell them so.”

“Let me go among them, sir.”

“No; it is my duty, and Andrew Weber is not the man to shirk it.”

Holding up his hand, and putting down the revolver he had in his grasp, he walked quietly towards the end of the raft where the men were gathered together.

He saw at once what he had not known before, namely, that through some negligence they had got at the cases of spirit, and had been drinking heavily, and he felt all hope was gone. Had they been sober an appeal to their better sense might have availed—as it was he knew it to be useless; still there was no other chance left.

“My lads, we’ve been too long together to be murdering each other this way. I’ve never done you wrong. Tell me what ye want,” he said.

“We want the gold, you old porpoise, and we’ll have it; and we want the raft, and we will have that, too,” was the reply.

“I don’t care about the gold, Phillips,” replied the old seaman. “It’s all that remains to me, and I had hoped to fit out another craft with it; but the moan’s soon made. Take it.”

“Too late! Too late, damn ye!” howled the drunken seaman. “Back to your quarter-deck, or take the consequences. I say, aft there, look out for squalls!”

“Phillips, do you remember when I took you on board at Saint Helena? You were half starved, and in rags. If I go back, we will fight it out to the last man. All you can get is the gold, and I say ye may have it.”

“Your quarter-deck speeches won’t do here, my hearty. Back to your people, I say!” The man’s eyes were blazing with drink and fury.

Captain Weber was turning away. “Phillips,” he said, as he did so, “you have a wife and children over yonder—what do you think they will say when they hear of your being hung as a mutineer?”

The taunt was too much for him. With a howl of rage, the drunken sailor raised his pistol, and the muzzle was within a foot of the old seaman’s head, as he pulled the trigger. Standing tall and erect, with a smile of withering scorn on his features as the report rang out, Captain Weber seemed for a moment unhurt; then, with a reel like that of a drunken man, he fell, close to the spot where Hughes lay, Isabel kneeling beside him. The ball had struck him on the temple, and he was dead before he touched the planks, his head hanging over the side, and his long white hair washing to and fro in the sea as the raft rose on the swell.

Uttering a wild savage shout, the drunken sailor sprang over the corpse, followed by his comrades in crime. The rubicon of blood was indeed past. Another instant, and the scanty band, now greatly reduced in numbers, would be swept from the raft. The shouts and execrations of the seamen, maddened as they were with fiery spirit, rang over the calm, quiet sea, as, swinging his clubbed musket round his head, Mr Lowe, now the senior officer present, met the mutineers half way. Phillips, with a deep oath, again fired, as the mate struck the ruffian with all the power rage could give to a muscular arm, knocking him off the raft with the force of the blow. Once more the swish of the water was heard, as the sea around boiled into foam. The senseless body was tossed to and fro like a cork, half a dozen huge fins appearing above the water. Suddenly it was drawn down, reappeared, and then the wave was red with blood, as the sharks tore their prey piecemeal.

“Come on, ye ruffians, and meet your doom!” yelled the triumphant mate; but hardly had the words passed his lips when a dull heavy report came booming over the ocean.

A deep dead silence ensued, then a wild cheer burst from the mate’s breast.

“Hurrah!” he shouted. “We are saved, my lads,—saved at last!” as he drew back from his exposed situation, and joined the rest.

A distant flash was now seen, and then once more the boom of the gun came over the ocean, this time replied to by the successive reports of the guns and pistols of the mate’s little party, fired one after another into the air, sending each a spirt of flame into the darkness of the night, while far away a small fiery star rose and fell to the motion of the waves, the same which had so engaged Hughes’s attention at the moment he received the treacherous blow from the mutineer Gough. It was a whaler’s light.

The men, now frightened and partially sobered, attempted no further violence. They seemed thoroughly cowed, saying not a word, even when the mate walked unarmed among them, and commenced throwing overboard deliberately, one after another, bottle after bottle of the fiery spirit they had stolen, and which had caused all the mischief. Without it, the pernicious counsels of the man Gough, and his almost as black hearted ally, Phillips, had never been listened to.

“I say, Mr Lowe, you’ll let us poor beggars down mild, won’t you? It was that damned rum did it all,” said one of the now humbled seamen.

The mate spoke never a word, but pointed silently to the body of the captain, as it lay on the planking, the long white hair moving in the wash of the sea, and the blood slowly welling from the shattered forehead. It was a ghastly sight, as the faint starlight revealed it to the sobered crew.

“It was that lubber Gough,” muttered the man; “Phillips and he have gone to Davy Jones. I say, Mr Lowe, you’ll log it down to them, not to us; we were all three sheets in the wind.”

“It’s not for me to decide,” replied the mate; “you’ll all have justice, and that looks to me like a rope rove through a block at the fore-yard arm. What had he done to you that he should lie there, you damned mutinous scoundrels?”

“I say, my lads,” replied the still half-drunken man, “what’s the use of this kind of thing? If as how we are to blame for the skipper’s death, when we was as drunk as lords—if so be as we are to be yard-armed for what Gough and Phillips did, why let’s go overboard, says I.”

“I say, Mr Lowe,” humbly interposed another and more sober man, “we had nothing to do with this here matter. Them two bloody-minded villains promised us rum and gold. We deserve all we’ll get, but you’ll not be down on us too hard, will ye?”

“No, I’ll not,” replied the officer. “Collect the arms, Forest, and return them to the chest.”

“Ay, ay, sir,” answered the man, obeying at once.

Every half-hour a gun from the whaler boomed over the sea, telling of her presence; but it was evident that not understanding the firing, her crew thought it safer to wait for daylight.

Isabel seemed stupefied with grief. Her senses were stunned by this last crowning misfortune. The missionary had now joined her, and by the feeble light had soon found that life was not quite extinct in his friend’s battered frame.

With the help of two of the mutineers, Hughes had been carried into the cabin, and laid on the spare sails; some weak brandy-and-water had been given him, and the blood washed from the pale face and clotted hair.

“It comes too late,” muttered Isabel, as she bent over her husband’s body. “It comes too late. What to me is yonder ship? Father and husband, father and husband gone!” she moaned.

“Hush!” said the missionary, as he sponged away the blood with a handkerchief; “hush! he is not dead, only half drowned, and stunned.”

The sailor Gough had, in his drunken fury, beaten his antagonist’s head against the jagged ends of the spars. The yielding water had softened the shock, but as the two leaned over him, and the grey dawn stole across the ocean, his head presented a terrible spectacle. They poured more spirit and water down his throat, and gradually the colour came back to his face. He opened his eyes, looking wildly around, and as he did so, the light of returning consciousness came back to them.

At this moment, the boom of the whaler’s forecastle gun was again heard, as her men, who had in the darkness of the night seen only the flash of the pistols, now caught sight of the raft, her head yards being at once braced round, and her bows brought as near the wind as possible. The sound struck the injured man’s ear.

“It is help, it is safety,” whispered Isabel. “Enrico, it is a ship!”

The soldier’s eyes closed, his lips moved, and the blood mounted slowly to his cheeks. “My Isabel, my beloved!” he murmured. A flood of tears poured from Isabel’s eyes as she threw herself into his arms; and the missionary left the cabin, drawing down the sail as he did so over the opening.

The raft did not show such proofs of the deadly fight which had taken place on board of her as might have been imagined. The dead body of the old captain was carefully placed amidships, near his boxes of gold dust; that of the carpenter, Morris, beside it, for he too was dead. Adams, whose splinter wound had broken out once more with the excitement of the fray, was looked to. The mutineers who had fallen had been disposed of by the sharks, whose large fins could yet be seen from, time to time, as they moved slowly round and round the raft, seeking for more prey.

“We might have knowed what ’ud come on it,” said one of the now humble seamen, as he dashed a bucket of water over a large red patch of blood; “I never seed them chaps, but I knowed as Davy Jones a wanted some on us.”

And so the morning dawned over the ocean, and the diminished crew on board the raft; the wind still light from the westward, and the sail yet dragging her almost imperceptibly through the water. Slowly the first streaks of light spread over the waste of ocean, as the haggard, worn-out men, pale from excitement and from the effects of drink, looked out eagerly for the ship, which they knew was near them.

“There she is, right to leeward,” said one of the seamen; and as the light every moment became more intense, there she lay sure enough.

“A full-rigged ship hove-to under two topsails, fore-topmast-staysail, and driver,” said Mr Lowe.

“Look, she sees us,” cried Wyzinski, as the main-topsail yard was rounded in, the sail filled, and the ship gathered way—the Union Jack being run up to the gaff, and a white puff of smoke from her bows preceding the thud of the gun.

The studding sail was gently raised, and Hughes, leaning on Isabel’s arm, joined the group. A few buckets of cold sea water had done wonders for him, though his head was still swollen and contused, and as he sat down on the spot where his tale had been so terribly broken off, the sun’s higher limb emerged from the waste of waters to the eastward, and tipped the waves of the Indian Ocean with its rays.

“There is hope dawning on us at last, Isabel,” said he, pointing first to the rising sun, then to the white canvas of the ship, as the first beams shone on it.

“There goes her foresail and mainsail. By Jove!” exclaimed Mr Lowe, “she must be strong handed, for they’re away aloft.”

Sail after sail was shown on board the ship until she was standing on close hauled, with everything set to her royals.

“There’s down with the helm!” muttered one of the men, as the ship’s bows came sweeping up to the wind, her canvas shivering, then filling once more as her yards swung round, and she stood on the other tack.

“Ay, ay,” replied the man Forest, “she’ll work dead to windward, and then bear down on us. Why the devil didn’t she find herself here away yesterday?”

“What a store of memories the last few weeks have given us, Enrico,” remarked Isabel, as she tore a strip of canvas to make a sling for the wounded arm, which was becoming painful.

“So it ever is with our lives,” answered Hughes, as the arm was made as comfortable as possible. “Shadowy memories of sunshine and storm, ever driving over the mirror in which we see the past; but the future, dearest,” and he pointed towards the pyramid of white canvas, “the future will be our own.”

“May God grant it, for we have been cruelly tried,” answered Isabel.

Slipping slowly through the water, the whaler did exactly as the man Forest predicted.

She was a dull sailer, and the time seemed long and weary to those who watched her on board the raft with intense anxiety. So precarious had been their late position, so changeable the events of their life, that they could not believe in safety until they should actually feel its existence.

The whaler was now dead to windward, and the raft still going slowly through the water before the breeze. The two bodies, namely, those of Captain Weber and the carpenter Morris, lay side by side amidships.

“Take the sail off her, my lads,” said the mate, and he was obeyed with ready alacrity, the canvas being stripped from the stump of a mast, and thrown over the two corpses.

Paying round, the whaler wore, and slowly handling her loftier canvas, her huge hull came rolling along, heading straight for the raft, her crew shortening sail as they came on.

Slowly she neared it, and a score or more of men might be seen clustering in her rigging, or gazing over her bulwarks at the strange sight presented by the spars drifting along on the waves of the ocean.

“Raft, ahoy!” shouted a man, who was holding on in the mizen rigging of the ship, “what raft is that?”

“The wreck of the brig ‘Halcyon,’ lost in the late gale,” replied the mate, using his two hands as a trumpet.

“What was the meaning of the firing?” again shouted Captain Hawkins, master of the whaler the “Dolphin,” still misdoubting, for in those days pirates were not unknown off the coast of Madagascar.

“Mutiny and murder,” returned the mate, at the top of his voice, for all reply.

“Avast, there! Mr Lowe,” grumbled Forest. “Remember what ye promised us, sir.”

“I’ll heave-to and send a boat,” was the shout that came across the waters, and the next moment the necessary orders were given, and so close were the ship and raft, that the words of command were heard distinctly on board the latter, as the “Dolphin” came to the wind, and under her two topsails, jib, and spanker, lay hove-to. A boat was lowered, and half an hour later the mate of the “Halcyon” was telling his sad tale in the cabin of the “Dolphin.” Her late crew were in irons forward, her passengers cared for, the ship working her way for Port Natal, and the deserted raft, stripped to the spars themselves, floating miles astern.

The evil time at last seemed to have ended, for that afternoon the westerly breeze died away, and the “Dolphin,” with a fair wind, lay her course, dropping her anchor in the almost land-locked harbour, without an accident, landing her passengers and prisoners, and sailing again on her whaling voyage.

Six weeks had elapsed since her departure. The Bishop of Cape Town, who had chanced to be at Durban at the time, had, at the missionary’s request, again performed the marriage ceremony, which had so hastily been solemnised on board the sinking brig. The remains of the tough British seaman, Captain Weber, had been buried with all honour in the cemetery of the town, and the same slab covered him, his carpenter Morris, and old Adams. Mr Lowe, in charge of the gold dust, had left for England, as second officer of the barque “The Flying Fish,” which had put into Port Natal disabled by the gale which had so ill-treated the unfortunate “Halcyon.”

One afternoon, about six weeks after the sailing of the “Dolphin,” a small party of three stood on the beach at Port Natal.

A large steamer, with the blue peter flying at the fore, the union jack at her mizen peak, and a cloud of dense black smoke rising from her funnel, could be seen off the bar, while a boat, manned by four powerful men, rose and fell on the rollers close by the beach.

“Even at this last moment, Wyzinski, it is not too late. There are plenty of empty berths on board the ‘Saxon.’”

Hughes seemed greatly moved, and the missionary’s usually impassive face showed signs of deep emotion, which, it was evident, he suppressed with difficulty.

“No, old friend. No, it must not be,” he replied, his thin lips quivering as he spoke. “The work we have begun together, I will finish if I live. The ‘Ruined Cities of Zulu Land’ exist, and the dangers we have gone through have but opened out the way. Noti’s life lost on the banks of the Golden River, Luji’s sacrificed to save ours on the plains of Manica, must not have been given in vain.”

A deep silence ensued as Isabel, leaning on her husband’s arm, looked pensively over the sea. The sound of the steam-whistle was heard, warning the loiterers on the beach that their time was short.

“I go from this to depose on oath as to our discoveries,” continued the enthusiastic speaker. “I am sure of a welcome at Chantilly, and that shall be my starting point.”

“Well, well,” returned Hughes, sorrowfully, “you won’t forget the presents for Masheesh. How he wanted to come with us, poor fellow.”

“There goes a gun from the ‘Saxon,’ sir,” said the coxswain in charge of the boat, as the report of a light piece came to their ears, and a wisp of white smoke rose curling over the point.

“Good-bye, Wyzinski, good-bye,” said Hughes, as he grasped the other’s hand. “May God bless you! And remember, while we have a home it’s yours. You must eventually tire of your wanderings.”

“Shall I?” returned the other, as a slight smile curled his lip, though the unbidden tears were standing in his eyes, kept back only by his iron will “Hark my words: you will tire first of a life of inaction.” And the missionary touched Isabel’s cheek with his lips as he handed her into the boat.

One more grasp of the hand as the two men stood looking into each other’s eyes; one more deep “good-bye!” and Hughes sat by her side.

“Give way, my lads! give way, with a will!” exclaimed the coxswain, as the sound of a second gun came booming over the point.

“You will tire of the water-melons, Hughes,” shouted the missionary, as the boat shot away from land, “and when you do so, think of the Ruined Cities of Zulu Land, and your old comrade working alone.”

A wave of the hand came back for all reply, as Hughes passed his arm round Isabel’s slender waist.

With the calm serenity which so characterised the man, the missionary turned, and, instead of remaining to watch the boat, walked firmly though slowly away, never once faltering. The tears were still standing in his eyes, but no one marked them, as he moved with his firm springy step through the busy streets of Durban. The smoke of the mail steamer “Saxon” was yet to be seen, a black inky spot on the horizon, as he took his way from the town, bound for the banks of the Nonoti. He reached Chantilly in safety, and passed on thence, after a short halt, to the station at Santa Lucia Bay, there to organise a party destined to win once more from the forest growth the Ruined Cities of Zulu Land.