Kitabı oku: «A Veldt Official: A Novel of Circumstance», sayfa 18
Mona made no reply; she could not at first. The wild ecstasy of joy with which she listened to this revelation was too great – for she believed every word of it, only wondering how she could ever have believed anything to the contrary. It resolved itself into a mere accidental affair, a tussle – a fight for life. Moreover, she could hardly realise it. The thing had happened so far away, so long ago, that the recital of it seemed more like a book narrative, a story at second hand, than the confession of a terrible deed of blood at the lips of him who had perpetrated it. There were a few moments of silence as they stood gazing at each other’s faces in the darkness. Then came a startling interruption. A whirring rush through the air, and something fell – plashed down upon them where they stood. One of the heavy showers hanging about in pillar-like clouds was overhead, and now it fell. To the shrill whistle of the boatswain’s pipe a squad of sailors came tumbling aft, springing like monkeys on to the taffrail, casting loose the lashings of the awning. Down it came with a rush, the roaring, hissing, tropical rain, each spout as it struck the dark, oily surface of the sea throwing up rings and globes of phosphorescent light till it seemed that the whole expanse was one mass of wreathing, glimmering tongues of flame – a scene of weird and marvellous beauty.
Even in the moment it took these two to reach the shelter of the companion, so vehement was the downpour that they were not a little wet. They had the deck to themselves, however, for in anticipation of something of the kind, most of the passengers preferred the dry comfort of the smoking-room or saloon. From the latter came up now snatches of talk and laughter, but it was late, and most were already for turning in. Still these two lingered, looking forth upon the sea hissing into flame with the discharge of the cloud-torrent.
How would that interview have ended but for this inopportune interruption? Were the very heavens fighting against them? thought Mona, with a sick pain at her heart. But still the fountains of the skies roared down, streaming over the decks, carried in seething torrents along the scuppers. Not again could they venture forth to-night. Long before the state of the deck would allow of it, even if the rain cleared off, it would be too late.
“I must go below,” she said at last. “They are putting out the lights already. Good-night. I shall see you again in the morning.”
This was obviously a superfluous statement; yet there was a meaning in the words as she uttered them – a volume of meaning – gratulation that such was the case, that the ice was broken, that the past was healed, or nearly so – ah! a world of meaning. Then they clasped hands; the first time since they had met on board. Was there a lingering, clinging pressure in that grasp – on the part of one – on the part of both? It may have been so.
Mona went down to her cabin, of which, the crowded state of the ship notwithstanding, she by favour enjoyed sole possession. There, alone, her mind went over all that had passed between them during that all too short interview. Why had that miserable interruption been allowed? It was too bad, it was heart-breaking, she thought resentfully, as she dried the wet, curly rings in her hair where that first detestable rain-splash had left them. Then a strange, eerie sense of apprehension came upon her, just such a feeling as had tormented her that night at Quaggasfontein, a heavy foreboding of evil, combined with present and personal fear. Then it had proved a true one – but now? Her nerves were all unstrung. Her reflection as she saw it in the glass was haggard and heavy-eyed. There was a weird ghostliness about the phosphorescent water lapping so softly without, and stifling as the tropical heat was, she felt almost tempted to close the scuttle, as her fancy pictured nameless horrors – cold, slimy tentacles entering through the aperture, feeling their way around the cabin in the darkness. And throughout all these nerve-tormenting apprehensions mingled the dull, aching sense of loss.
To such a pitch was she wrought up, that there was left but one way of ensuring the sleep she needed. Out came that phial again. – No hesitation this time; the process had acquired a certain familiarity. Holding the bottle to the light, she measured out the drops, adding somewhat to the usual portion. The effect was well-nigh instantaneous. A sudden drowsiness came over her. Still wrapped in her dressing-gown, she sank down, already half-unconscious, upon the outside of the bed, and slept – slept hard and dreamlessly.
Chapter Thirty Two.
Within the Shadow
By some strange, mysterious influence, Mona’s forebodings were shared by her late companion. After the latter had parted with her, the rain having ceased, he betook himself to the silent decks to think, and then it was, in the weird gloom lighted only by the twinkle of the binnacle light and the corpse-candle ghastliness of the phosphorescent surface, that the presentiment came upon him. So strong was it indeed, as to move him to do a strange thing. He went down to his cabin, of which he, too, was the sole tenant. Arrived there he produced from his baggage a large pewter flask which would contain perhaps something over a pint. Into this he carefully measured a modicum of brandy, filling up the whole with water. This done, he took a few hard biscuits from a case, and two or three skins of concentrated soup, each about three inches long by an inch and a half in diameter. These he enveloped tightly in a very thin, light, waterproof substance, placing the whole just inside his portmanteau again. He did not even laugh at himself for taking this strange and somewhat ominous precaution. He had been in far too unexpected and particularly “tight” places to laugh at any precaution. The only thing that did cause him the ghost of a smile was, in imagination, the faces of his fellow-passengers could they only have seen what he was doing.
This done, he took his way to the captain’s cabin. It was only his shaken nerves, he told himself, as he picked his way across the wet and slippery decks. He had put a pretty stiff strain upon them of late, and now they were paying him out. That was all. Still he did not laugh at himself on account of the precautions he had been taking, nor would he do so even in the safe and cheerful light of to-morrow morning.
“Hallo, Musgrave,” cried Cheyne, “I had about given you up for to-night. Thought you had turned in. However, roll up, man. Better late than never.” And diving into a locker, he produced a bottle from his private store, for the bar was long since closed for the night. “Turton was up here just now, but had to go down and settle some row that had broken out among his lambs. Those are passengers I don’t care about.”
This was in allusion to a number of soldiers who had been sent on board the Scythian at the last moment, in charge of a captain and subaltern; and a mutinous, unruly crowd they were.
“Those time-expired men are the devil of a nuisance, Musgrave,” went on Cheyne. “Why on earth can’t they send them home in a troopship, or charter a vessel on purpose, instead of saddling them on to us? Crowded up, too, with ordinary passengers as we are.”
“But they’re not all time-expired men, eh?”
“Not much. About a third of ’em are lunatics or prisoners under sentence, or bad hats generally.”
“Been up to anything fresh then?” said Roden, blowing out a cloud.
“Nothing in particular; but they are always more or less unruly. The last people I want to see on board ship are a lot of soldiers, especially time-expired ones.”
“How many of them are there, skipper? Couple of hundred, eh?”
“Less five. If that lunatic, who jumped overboard yesterday morning at bath parade, had gone down it would have made yet another less. We were delayed about twenty minutes or more, and when the boat came up with him the beggar tried all he knew to swim away from it. I was watching him through the glass, expecting every minute to see him risen by a shark, but no. If he’d been a sane man and a useful member of society, something of the kind would have happened; but being of no earthly good to himself or anybody else, it didn’t.”
“Quite so. Two hundred, less five, I think you said. Crowded up too, fore and aft, with passengers. What would happen if we came to sudden and unexpected smash? In the matter of the boats I mean.”
“What sort of croaking vein are you in, Musgrave? Well, in such a case it would be a mortal tight fit, I don’t mind telling you. We fulfil all the requirements of the Board of Trade in the matter of boat carrying, but if we have a couple of hundred damned soldiers crammed on board at the last moment, what are we to do? Why, just drive ahead and trust to luck; and that’s what brings us through far oftener than you landsmen ever dream.”
The talk veered round to other topics, and presently one of the quartermasters came in to report that the weather was thickening into a regular fogbank.
“I’ll go up on the bridge a bit, Musgrave,” said the captain. “It isn’t often we get fogs so near the Line. But the weather has been beastly this voyage, as hot and steamy as I’ve ever known it; and there are a lot of waterspouts about too.”
They bade each other good-night, and already as Roden left the cabin, the more measured throb of the propeller told that the vessel had slowed down to half-speed. Then the hoarse, rasping screech of the foghorn rent the night as the ship drove slowly through the smother, whose steamy folds blotted out the stars. Again and again the voice of the foghorn was lifted, uttering its hideous, vibrating whoop – causing the sleeping passengers below to start up wide awake in confused doubt as to whether the end of the world had come, and a hazy uncertainty as to whether they themselves were just arriving at Waterloo station or at the Judgment Seat. There was one, however, whom the unendurably distracting sound did not awaken; who slept on – heavily, tranquilly, dreamlessly.
Roden, though intending to go below, still remained on deck, held by a kind of fascination, as the ship glided slowly through the silent fleecy smother. Then again the jarring blast of the foghorn rolled out, and – on Heaven! Was it an echo – louder, more appalling than the sound itself? For, as he gazed, there leaped forth something out of the mist. In that rapidly flashing moment of time was photographed upon his brain a massive hull, the loom of a huge funnel, a towering cut-water – a human figure, wild with horror, upon the extremity of the latter. Then came a shock which flung him, bruised, partly stunned, to the deck.
Keeping his presence of mind amid the awful and appalling crash, he managed to save his head from injury; then, before he could rise, came another shock more jarring, more shivering than the first, and with it the blasting screech of escaping steam. He saw a heavy body, flung from the bridge, fall head downwards. He heard the grinding, crunching sound of that cut-water shearing through strong iron plates; the frantic shrieks and yells now arising beneath, which even the deafening demoniacal blast from the steampipe could not drown. Then, his confused senses whirling round, he saw the great hull – the towering cut-water which had crashed into them right amidships, recede and vanish into the mist. The Scythian floated once more alone upon the fog-enshrouded waters, and it needed no abnormal instinct of prescience to tell that very soon she would float no longer.
And now there followed the most indescribable scene of terror and confusion ever witnessed in the annals of ocean tragedy. The saloon passengers, already alarmed and uneasy by the repeated blasts of the foghorn, came pouring up the companion; crowding, crushing past each other in their furious panic. The second-class passengers, too, from the tore part of the ship, tore aft, crying that the water was already flooding their cabins. Each fed the other’s fears; till the decks were alive with what seemed nothing less than a surging crowd of shrieking, fighting maniacs. And then, to complete the chaotic unwieldy horror of the situation, the time-expired men made a rush for the boats, and casting two of them loose before they could be prevented, poured over the side into them with the result of capsizing both.
Not all behaved thus. There were several cool heads among them, but in such a minority as to be utterly powerless to sway that screeching, frantic mob. And when it was discovered that the captain was lying atone dead, having been hurled to the deck by the shock when about to descend from the bridge, and the chief officer so injured as to be unconscious and beyond recovery, why then, all hope of quelling the panic was over. In vain the remaining ship’s officers strove to guard the boats with revolvers. The weapons were knocked from their grasp, and themselves trampled under foot or hustled overboard. The stalwart quartermasters were dragged from their footing and the seamen so separated among the dense, impenetrable crowd, that cohesion was impossible; under such circumstances, even to some of the ship’s company a little of the demoralisation communicated itself. In like manner the two officers in charge of the troops were helpless, and the efforts of all were further impeded by the masses of screaming, praying, fainting women, dashing themselves about the decks in the frenzy of their panic.
Not many minutes had gone by since the first crash, not many minutes of this shocking scene, and already the beat of the propeller had ceased. The great gasping hole which was letting out the ship’s life was letting in her deadly enemy, the sea. The fires in the engine-room were already out. There was a horrible stillness now as of the fabric settling more and more beneath their feet.
Throughout the indescribable horror of this hideous panic Roden Musgrave kept his head. It was nothing to him that the whole of this shrieking, demoralised horde should perish, provided he could save one life. One life! but where was the owner of that life? Himself jammed against the bulwarks by the swaying frantic crowd, it required his utmost efforts to prevent the breath from being crushed out of him; but while thus occupied, never for a moment did he lose sight of the ruling idea. His eyes scanned the scared faces and wildly rushing forms, but that which he sought was not there. He heard the furious tumult of oaths and curses and beast-like yells, where men, brutalised in the face of death, yielding to the unbridled selfishness and cowardice of their real nature, fought wildly for the boats, trampling down and hurling aside women and children indiscriminately, and, in short, all weaker than themselves. The great crowded passenger ship had become a floating hell of all the evil sides of human nature. All this and more did he hear; and still with a wild despair at his heart, he strained his eyes through the smother, now so thick that they could hardly see the width of the ship. But she for whom he sought was not there.
“Oh, Mr Musgrave, for Christ’s sake get us a place in one of the boats!” gasped an imploring voice. He turned, and beheld a lady with whom he had been on fairly friendly terms. Her two little ones, pretty, engaging children, were clinging to her hands.
“Where is Miss Ridsdale?” he asked, stone deaf to her appeal. “Her cabin is next to yours.”
“She’s in yonder boat. I saw her lowered into it. Quick, quick! Take me there. She is there, I tell you.”
“Are you sure?”
“Quite, quite. Oh, lose no time!” wringing her hands piteously.
“Come, then!”
With a deft rapidity that was marvellous under the circumstances, he forced a way through the swaying crowd, now very much thinned out. The boat she had pointed to was worked by some of the ship’s company, who, cool-headed, had left the panic to take care of itself, and were devoting their efforts to rescuing such of the women and children as they could. The boat was lying by, already loaded down to the water’s edge.
“Here’s another passenger for you, Smithers,” sang out Roden, recognising one of the quartermasters. “Now, Mrs Mainwaring, down you go! I’ll hand down the little ones.”
But she refused, until the children were first taken off. Then she followed.
“Is Miss Ridsdale there, Smithers?” he cried.
“Very sorry, sir, but we can’t take you off. No more room for any males.”
“I didn’t ask you to take me off. Is Miss Ridsdale with you?” And just then, a recumbent figure in the after-part of the boat caught his eye in the misty gloom. Yes, that was Mona. He was satisfied.
“Stay, stay!” shrieked Mrs Mainwaring, the lady whom he had just rescued. “Take him with you, if you are men. There is room for one more. All the women are safe in the other boats – I saw them! We were nearly the last. Come, Mr Musgrave!”
The old quartermaster looked doubtful, then yielded.
“Jump, sir, jump! We haven’t a moment to lose. That’s it. Give way, my lads.”
The heavily laden boat laboured ponderously from the side of the big ship. The sound of hoarse shouting through the misty smother, the shrieks of hysterical women, the splash of the oars, the raucous, suffocating cry of a drowning wretch, sinking back exhausted here and there, made a weird and appalling situation, such as those now in it would remember their lives long – if their lives were spared them. And, settling down more and more, black, and hardly distinguishable in outline, lay the huge, helpless hull of what a few minutes back was a mighty steamship, and any moment might witness the final plunge. Already most of the boats were out of sight of each other, almost out of hail, having made all the offing they could from the foundering ship. But of the great steamer which had crashed into them there was visible no sign, no, nor even audible. Had she left them to perish, or had she herself foundered instantaneously? Surely this awful hubbub was audible for miles. Surely if she were above water, her people could not leave them thus to die. Still – of her no sign.
“Put back, Smithers,” said Roden. “Miss Ridsdale is not in the boat.”
A storm of murmurs arose.
“She is in some other boat, then. It’s too late to put back.”
“She is not. She’s still on board the ship. Would you leave a woman to drown? Put back.”
The storm of discontent redoubled. Here were many women and children. If the boat got back, she would certainly be drawn down in the vortex of the sinking ship. It was better that one should perish than many. Besides, how did anybody know that that one was still on board?
Well, one did know, but how he knew was another matter. For, as sure as though he had heard her voice crying to his ears, did Roden Musgrave then know that Mona was still on board the doomed hull, left to die alone.
“Very well. Do as you like!” he answered; “I am going back.” And before any could prevent him, he had flung himself into the sea, and was striking out, with long, easy, vigorous strokes, for the ill-fated Scythian.
“We’ll stand by for you,” sang out old Smithers. “But be quick, sir.”
Roden seized the rope-ladder by which the boat’s load had been lowered, and soon regained the now silent and deserted deck. But, as he did so, a panic shout went up from those in the boat. The hull, now very low down in the water, was seen to lurch, and to heave. The cry went up that the ship was already sinking, and all hands, straining with a will at the oars, thought of nothing for the next few minutes but to poll as far as possible outside that dangerous and fatal vortex.
And, thus abandoned, Roden Musgrave stood upon the deck of the doomed ship – alone.
Chapter Thirty Three.
Alone on a Wide, Wide Sea
There was something inexpressibly weird and spectral in the aspect of the deserted saloon as Roden made his way through it. The few lamps left burning for night purposes flared in the gloom, the rolled-up carpeting, the round-backed table-chairs, the bottles and glasses in swinging racks, each had a ghastly and eloquent expression of its own, each seemed to show something of dumb protest against being left to its fate by man, whom it had served so faithfully, to sink down and rot among the far and slimy depths of the black night of waters. And upon the dead silence of the deserted ship came, ever and anon, rushings and gurgles, and ghostly cavernous boomings, as the water rose higher and higher within the doomed hull.
Roden’s heart sprang to his throat as he felt a sudden and sickening tremor in the planking beneath his feet. Was the vessel already heaving up for her final plunge? Still cool-headed, his nerve as steady as iron, he would not suffer himself to be flurried out of one single precaution. He went straight to his own cabin, and, unlocking his portmanteau, took out the slender stores which by such marvellous prescience he had put up ready the evening before. If they were picked up by one of the boats, he intended to keep this secretly for Mona’s use, should the worst befall. The boats were provisioned to a certain extent, but provision might run short. Others might starve – perish; she should not. Then he reached for the cork lifebelt usually stowed above his bunk. It was gone. All the lifebelts in the cabin had been removed.
Not many seconds had these precautions taken, nor did it take many more to reach Mona’s cabin. Standing on no ceremony he turned the handle. The door was locked.
“Mona! Mona! Are you there? In God’s name open! Open – quick!” he cried, shaking the handle furiously in his despair. But there came no reply.
“Mona – open! It is I! There is danger! Open – quick!” he almost screamed, at the same time raining a succession of blows upon the door. This time he heard a confused murmur and a sound of movement. Then the bolt of the door was shot back.
She stood before him in some clinging white garment. Even at that awful and critical moment he recognised it as the dressing-gown she had worn that night at Quaggasfontein, when she had come in to soothe him in his pain. In the faint and feeble light from the saloon lamps he could see that her eyes were unnaturally large as she confronted him, but dull and heavy. The drug had left its mark upon them.
“What is the matter? Where are we?” she said in a drowsy murmur, staring in amazement at him and his wet and dripping condition. Without a word he stepped past her into the cabin, and snatching the cork lifebelt stowed above her bed buckled it around her.
“Come,” he said. “No – just as you are!” noting a movement to turn back. “We have not a moment to lose. Quick – trust yourself to me.”
As they passed through the saloon, she with his arm around her, still drowsy and half stupefied, which perhaps was the best state she could have been in in such an appalling emergency, the quivering tremor of the deck had increased, and louder sounded the hollow booming of the water. There was a list which nearly threw them off their feet. A wash of water swept the scuttles, then the ship lurched slowly over to starboard, and again the scuttles were under the brine. Surely they were going – going. It would be awful, shut up there to drown like rats in a hole, awful – awful; the same death up on deck in the free open air seemed easy, pleasant, by comparison. Yet as he held her closely to him, supporting her with his right arm while with his left he groped and steadied his way – both their ways – ascending the companion stairs, Roden Musgrave was conscious that even death in this fashion held no bitterness for him. No, there was a strange, fierce, delirious sweetness in the situation, which he would not have exchanged at that moment for life and safety. When her absence was overlooked, when she had been left to die, he alone had thrown away safety, life; he alone had returned to die with her. And he had his reward. Were they entering paradise together? It seemed like it at that moment, when they were about to die together, she in his arms. In such lightning flashes of thought did his mind whirl in the brief minute which had elapsed since the opening of her cabin door.
In close, dank, airless folds, the heavy mist still lay around – dark, impenetrable as a curtain. The night air, however, and the weird eloquence of the utter solitude, the disordered deck, the great towering funnel, the ruined deckhouses, the serpentine lapping of the water, roused Mona from her semi-lethargy.
“Where are they all?” she said, a start of terror shaking her frame as she looked around and began to realise her position.
“Gone! I only am left; and I am going to save you, if I can: if not, to die with you; and death will be sweet.”
Something of all that had been passing through his mind passed through Mona’s now. She pressed her lips to his, clasping him convulsively.
“You came back to die with me? Oh, my love! my love!”
She was quite calm as the whole truth struck upon her. Love seemed utterly to dispel all terrors of death. But Roden did not intend that it should come to that if he could help it. Keenly and carefully he had been looking around. Every life-buoy had disappeared, snatched off by the panic-stricken crowd. The deck cabins, though yawning and seamed, were so firmly stanchioned that he could not drag out so much as a plank. The skylights were unloosed. There was nothing. Again the deck beneath them gave that convulsive, shivering lurch.
“Mona, darling,” he whispered, “act now with that splendid courage you showed before. I will not leave go of you, but don’t clutch me or struggle. We shall go down, but we shall come up again. Now – come.”
But before he could gain the side of the ship with her there was an angry, seething swirl – and there leaped out of the gloom and mist in front huge wreaths, white and spectral, and hissing like snakes. Then with this appalling spectacle their footing gave way, and it seemed as if they were being whirled up into the very heavens. The after-part of the great hull reared itself aloft, and with a roaring, thunderous plunge, the Scythian disappeared from mortal sight for ever.
Down, down, into the farther depths – down, down, ever down, with a vibrating and jarring and crashing as of the destruction of ten million worlds. The weight of ten million worlds seemed upon these two, as, socked down in the vortex of the foundering ship, the swiftly flashing brain realised the terrific, the soul-curdling barrier that lay between them and the upper air. Down, down – ever down – down through those roaring, jarring realms of space and of darkness, of black and rayless night.
Never for the fraction of an instant did Roden relax his grasp; never in that swift, sickening engulfment, while dragged down and down to the black depths of creation; never, as the starry fires of suffocation dared and scintillated before his strained and bursting eyeballs. Never would he; for even the last awful struggle of dissolution should but rivet the embrace tighter. Then the engulfment, the suction, seemed to slacken. A vigorous effort, and he felt himself rising; yes, distinctly rising. Ha! air! light! yet not light. With a rush as of a bird through the air, he – they – soared up from that vast ocean depth, gaining the upper air once more.
Then in nameless fear he put his ear to her lips. Was she still living – or had she succumbed to that long suffocating immersion? A faint sigh escaped her breast; but that little sound caused his heart to leap with a wild and thrilling ecstasy. She lived – lived still. And then, drawing her closer to him as they floated, he kissed those lips, cold with semi-unconsciousness, wet with the salt brine of ocean; and it seemed to him that the kiss was returned. Did ever the world see stranger love passage, – these two alone, floating in the night mist; alone on the vast expanse of a silent ocean, nothing between them and death but the cork lifebelt of the one, and the far from inexhaustible swimming powers of the other?
Would any of the boats be hanging about the scene of the wreck? Not likely. Those which had escaped the havoc wrought by the first rush were crowded to the water’s edge. The panic-stricken castaways would sheer off as far as possible, eager to pat all the distance they could between themselves and the vortex of the foundering ship. Yet there was just the chance, and to this end, as soon as he had recovered breath Roden sent up a long, loud, penetrating call. His voice rang eerily out, rendering the slimy stillness more dead, more oppressive than before. But – no answer.
This he had expected. The hopelessness of their position was with him throughout. It was useless exhausting his forces in swimming hither or thither; wherefore he employed just enough movement to enable him to keep himself, and Mona, comfortably afloat. Again he raised his voice in a louder, clearer call.
Stay! What was that? Echo? Echo from the vastness of the liquid solitude? No. It was not an echo.
There floated out through the mist a fainter, shriller cry. Roden’s pulses beat like a hammer, and a rush of blood surged to his head. The boats had waited around, then? They would be picked up, saved – for the present. Again he shouted, long and loudly.
And now a strange, awesome, wonderful thing befell. Through the enshrouding mist there darted a nebulous expanding ray, as from the disc of some mighty lantern, and upon the curtain of vapour was silhouetted, black and gigantic, the horizontal form of a coffin; and rising from it and falling back again, the head and shoulders of a man, of huge proportions, black as night. Heavens! what appalling shade of darkness was this, haunting the drear, horrible, inky surface of that slimy sea?
The Thing bore down upon them, was almost over them. Roden, convinced that this new horror was a mere illusion begotten of the mist and his own exhausted state, closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again it had vanished.
But in its place was something else. Brighter and brighter shone the nebulous ray, and now, parting the mist folds a half-moon looked down; looked down on these two heads, mere tiny specks upon the vast ocean surface – down, too, upon that other thing. And seeing what it was, the revulsion of hope which shot through their two hearts was terrible.
