Kitabı oku: «His Unknown Wife», sayfa 7
CHAPTER VII
THE WRECK
Up to the last the ship’s path was dogged by misfortune. She approached Hanover Island at a point where the sea was comparatively open; hence, the tremendous waves rolling in from the Pacific were not only unchecked by island breakwaters, but their volume and force were actually increased by the gradual upward trend of the rock floor.
Still, undaunted by conditions which suggested the plight of a doomed craft being hurried to the lip of a cataract, keen eyes searched the frowning coast-line for one of the many estuaries which pierced the land, some merely the mouths of short-lived rivers, others again carrying the ocean currents to the very base of the Andes.
At last an opening did seem to present itself. The great rock walls, springing sheer from sea level to a height of a thousand feet or more, fell apart, and, so far as might be judged, a wide and deep channel flowed inland.
It was at this crisis, when life or death for all on board might depend on the veriest trifle, that the captain had to decide whether or not to let go both anchors and endeavor to ride out the gale.
He was an experienced and cool-headed sailor. He knew quite well that the odds were heavy against an anchor holding in such ground, or, if it held, against any cable standing the strain of a six-thousand-ton ship in that terrific sea. But, as Maseden learned subsequently, he sought advice.
The first and second officers were consulted in turn, and each confirmed their chief’s opinion that the only practicable course was to run into the passage which still offered a comparatively clear way ahead.
So the Southern Cross sped on.
The second officer came forward with some of the crew to superintend the dropping of the anchor. The fourth officer took charge of the aft anchor. All other members of the crew stood by the boats.
Maseden, feeling oddly remote and unclassed among men of his own race, followed the second officer to the forecastle deck. There, at least, he could stare his fill at the inferno of rock and broken water which the vessel was approaching, though even his landsman’s eyes saw that she was in a waterway of considerable width, while each mile now traversed must tend to diminish the seas and bring a secure anchorage within the bounds of possibility.
No one paid heed to him. Among these stolid sailor-men he was a “Dago,” a somewhat dandified specimen of the swaggering vaqueros they had met at times in the drinking dens of South American ports. He was minded to have speech with the second officer, and proclaim once and for all that he was of the same kith and kin; but the impulse was stayed by a glance at the set, resolute face, intent only on obeying a signal from the captain. It was no time for confidences. He questioned even if the sailor would have answered.
A touch on a lever would set a winch spinning as the anchor leaped to its task. The man charged with carrying out that duty without hitch or delay could spare thought for nothing else.
One of the deck-hands, stationed near the chocks, chanced to be the very Spaniard whose life had been endangered by the falling block on the day after the ship left Cartagena. The ship’s carpenter was ill, and the Spaniard was carpenter’s mate.
Maseden caught his eye, and the man smiled wanly.
“You did me a good turn the other day, señor,” he said. “Let me repay you now.”
“But how?” came the surprised inquiry.
“Underneath my bunk, the lowest one on the left in number seven berth, you will find my kit-bag. Beneath some clothes is a bottle of good old brandy. Get it, and drink it quickly.”
“Why?”
“You will put a pint of honest liquor to good use, and in ten minutes you won’t care what happens.”
“I have no desire to die drunk,” said Maseden quietly.
The Spaniard shrugged his shoulders.
“You’ll never have a better excuse for swallowing excellent cognac,” he grinned.
“Shut up, you two!” growled the officer.
He had not understood a word of their talk. He simply voiced the eminently American notion that anything said in the Spanish language could not be of the least importance just then.
Oddly enough, Maseden was angered by being thus outcasted, as it were. He was tempted to retort, but happily checked the words on his lips. Nerves were apt to be on a raw edge in such conditions, he remembered. Even the stern-faced ship’s officer, awaiting a command which would settle the fate of the Southern Cross once and for all, might well resent the magpie chattering of a couple of Spaniards.
Maseden turned for an instant to look at the bridge. The captain stood there, apparently the most unmoved person on board. The sails, tugging fiercely at their rings and bolts, still kept the ship under control, notwithstanding the ten-knot tidal current which carried her onward irresistibly. The foresail was bellied out to port, so the captain remained on the starboard side of the bridge, whence he had an uninterrupted view ahead.
Suddenly two cloaked figures emerged from the obscurity of the smoking-room and hurried to the transverse rail which guarded the fore part of the promenade deck. With them came some men, among whom Maseden recognized Sturgess; while another man, who caught the arm of one of the girls in a helpless sort of way, was probably Mr. Gray.
Evidently there was no concealing the ship’s peril from the passengers now. Everyone wore a life-belt, and was clothed to resist the cold. A plausible explanation of this general flocking out on to the deck was that they had discerned the cleft in the rocky heights through a blurred window, and refused to remain any longer in the sheltered uncertainty of the smoking-room.
At this period there was little or no difficulty in keeping one’s feet. The great hull of the Southern Cross swung easily on an even keel with the onrush of the sea-river. The ship was not fighting now, but yielding – a complacent leviathan held captive by a most puissant and ruthless enemy.
During the few seconds Maseden stared at the veiled women. One of those two – which one he could not tell – was his wife. It was the maddest, most fantastic thing he had ever heard of. In a spirit of sheer deviltry he waved a greeting. One of the girls raised a hand to her face – perhaps to her lips.
What did it matter? In all human probability that was their eternal farewell. He waved again, and turned resolutely to scan the frowning headlands now rapidly closing in on both sides of the vessel’s path.
About that time a new and disturbing sound reached his ears. Hitherto there had been nothing but the unceasing chant of the gale, the thud and swish of the seas, the steady plaint of the ship, and an occasional crash like a volley of musketry when the crest was torn off some giant roller and flung against poop or superstructure. But now there came a crashing, booming noise, irregular, yet almost continuous, and ever growing louder and more insistent; a noise almost exactly similar to distant gun-fire and the snarling explosions of heavy projectiles.
It was the noise of the bitterest and longest war ever waged. Those old enemies, sea and land, were engaged in deadly combat, and, as ever, the sea was winning.
Even while the Southern Cross swung past an overhanging fortress of rock, a mighty bastion crumbled into ruin. It was singular to watch a cloud of dust mingle with the spindrift – to note how the next breaker climbed higher in assault over the vantage ground provided by the successful sap.
A disconcerting feature of the ship’s hurried transit into this unchartered territory was the clearness with which all things were visible above a height of some twelve feet from the surface of the sea; whereas, below that level, the clouds of spray and flying scud formed an almost impenetrable wall.
Taking his eyes from the everchanging panorama, Maseden looked over the side. The foam-flecked water was black but fairly transparent. In its depths he was astounded by the sight of writhing, sinister shapes like the arms of innumerable devil-fish.
At first he experienced a shock of surprise so close akin to horror that he felt the chill of it, as though one of these fearsome tentacles were already twined around his shrinking body. Then he realized that he had been startled by some gigantic species of seaweed. The ship was crossing a submarine forest. Down there in the depths on this January day in the southern hemisphere some mysterious form of plant life was enjoying its leafy June.
But science had no joys for him in that hour. Better the outlook on crag and clearing sky than a furtive glimpse of the limbs and foliage of that monstrous growth.
All at once a cry from the look-out in the bows sent a quiver through every hearer.
“Rock ahead!”
After a pause, measured by seconds, but seeming like as many minutes, the same voice shouted:
“Channel opens to starboard!”
The ship answered the helm. She swept past a jagged little islet so closely that a sailor could have cast a coil of rope ashore.
Forthwith another sound mingled with the crash of the breakers. The rock had been bored right through by the waves, and the gale set up a note in the tunnel such as no organ-builder ever dreamed of.
That mighty chord pursued the Southern Cross for nearly half a mile. It was a melancholy and depressing wail. Maseden, whose faculties were supernaturally alert, noticed that the South American sailor’s face had turned a sickly green. The man was paralyzed with fright. His right hand fumbled in a weak attempt to cross himself.
Out of the tail of his eye the second officer caught the gesture.
“Pull yourself together, you swab!” he said bitingly. “What the hell good will you be if you give way like that?”
The Spaniard grasped the sense of command in the words rather than their meaning. He was no coward. He even contrived to grin. It was a tonic to be cursed by an American, even though the pierced rock howled like a lost soul!
Still the Southern Cross drove on. The tidal stream was, if anything, swifter than ever, but the size of the waves had diminished sensibly. The walls of the straits had closed in to within a half-mile span. There could not be the slightest doubt that the vessel was actually passing through one of the waterways which connect the Pacific with Smyth’s Channel.
Maseden, after scanning the interior highlands for the hundredth time, glanced again at the second officer. The grimness of the clean-cut, stern face had somewhat relaxed. Quite unconsciously the sailor’s expression showed that hope had replaced calm-visaged despair. Given an unhindered run of another mile, the ship could at least drop anchor with some prospect of success.
The strength of the tide would diminish in less than an hour, and it might be possible to maneuver in the slack water for a comparatively safe berth. Next day, if the weather moderated as promised by the barometer, the steam pinnace could spy out the land in front.
Smyth’s Channel was not so far away – perhaps fifty miles. Once there, the Southern Cross could repair damage and proceed under her own steam to Punta Arenas.
A gleam of yellow light irradiated the surface mist, which had grown markedly denser. The clouds were parting, and the sun was vouchsafing some thin rays from the northwest.
The mere sight was cheering. The blood ran warmer in the veins. It was as though the ship’s company, after days and nights of cold and starvation, had been miraculously supplied with food and hot liquids.
Then the golden radiance died away, and simultaneously came the cry:
“Reef ahead!”
There was no need for further warning by the men in the bows. The Southern Cross had hardly traveled her own length before every person in the fore part of the ship, together with the occupants of bridge and promenade deck, became aware that a seemingly impassable barrier lay right across the channel. At the same time the line of cliffs fell away to the southward.
Beyond the reef, then, lay a wide stretch of land-locked water; its unexpected existence explained the frantic haste of the tidal current. It was cruel luck that nature should have thrown one of her defensive works across that bottle-neck entrance. A few cables’ lengths away was safety; here, unavoidable – sullen and rigid as death himself – were the rock fangs.
At the supreme moment the second officer never turned his head. His eyes were riveted on the motionless figure standing on the starboard side of the bridge.
The captain raised his hand; the sails flapped loudly in the wind; both anchors splashed overboard with hoarse rattling of chains. The after anchor failed, but the forward one held at a depth of ten fathoms.
The second officer was quick to note the sudden strain, and eased it – once, twice, three times. But it was now or never. The ship was swinging in the stream, and her stern-post would just clear the fringe of the reef if the anchor made good its grip.
The Southern Cross had gone round, with a heavy lurch to port, caused by the tremendous pressure of wind and wave, and was almost stationary when the cable parted. The thick chain flew back with all the impetus of six thousand tons in motion behind it.
Missing Maseden by a hair’s breadth, it struck the foretop, and the spar snapped like a carrot. It fell forward, and the identical block which had nearly brought about the death of the South American sailor now caught his rescuer on the side of the head.
In the same instant a heavy stay dragged Maseden bodily over the fore-rail and he pitched headlong to the deck, where, however, the actual fall was broken by the stout canvas of the sail.
A woman screamed, but he could not hear, being knocked insensible.
“All hands amidships!” shouted the captain, and there was a race for the ladders. One man, however, the Spaniard, stooped over the young American’s body. His eyes were streaming with tears.
“Good-by, friend!” he sobbed. “Maybe this is a better way than that opened by my bottle of brandy!”
He was sure that the vaquero who swore like an Americano had been killed, because blood was flowing freely from a scalp wound; but he lifted Maseden’s inert form, and, without any valid reason behind the action, placed him in his bunk, as the cabin door stood open.
Then he ran after the others.
Poor fellow! He little dreamed that he was repaying a thousand-fold the few extra days of life the good-looking vaquero had given him.
Almost immediately the ship struck. There was a fearsome crash of rending plates and torn ribs, the great vessel reeled over, struck again and bumped clear of the outer reef.
Now, too late, the after anchor lodged in a sunken crevice; the cable did not yield, because the vessel was sucked into a sort of backwash and driven, bow on, close to an apparently unscalable cliff.
She settled rapidly. As it happened a submerged rock smashed her keel-plate beneath the engine-room, and the engines, together with the stout framework to which the superstructure was bolted amidships, became anchored there, offering a new obstacle to the onward race of the seas pouring over the reef.
Every boat was either smashed instantaneously or wrenched bodily from its davits. Two-thirds of the hull fell away almost at once, the forecastle tilting towards the cliff, and the poop being swept into deep water.
With the after part went at least half the ship’s company, their last cries of despair being smothered by the continuous roar of the wind and the thunder of the waves. The bridge, with the rooms immediately below, remained fairly upright, but the smoking-room, and officers’ quarters close to it, were swept by water breast high.
Some one – who it was will never be known – had ordered the passengers to run into the smoking-room when the forward cable parted. Now, with the magnificent courage invariably shown by American sailors even when the gates of death gape wide before their eyes, the first and second officers contrived to hoist the two girls to the chart-room behind the bridge.
Sturgess, behaving with great gallantry, helped the women first, and then their father, who was floating in the room, to reach the only available gangway. Others followed, but the difficulty of rescue – if such a sorrowful transition might be called a rescue – was enhanced by the noise and sudden darkness.
Ever the central citadel of the Southern Cross was sinking lower. Ever the leaping waves and their clouds of spray tended more and more to shut out the light.
Seven people were plucked from immediate death in this fashion. All told, officers, crew and passengers, the survivors of seventy-four souls numbered twelve.
There was a thirteenth, because Maseden was lying high and dry in his bunk. But of him they took no count.
They gathered in the chart-room. Those who still retained their senses tried to revive the more fortunate ones to whom was vouchsafed a merciful oblivion of their common plight. Even in the temporary haven of the chart-room the conditions quickly savored of utter misery. The windows were blown away. The doors were jammed open by the warping of the deck. Wind, waves and sheets of spray seemed to vie with demoniac energy as to which could be most cruel and deadly. The ceaseless warping and working of what was left of the ship presaged complete collapse at any moment, and the din of the reef was stupefying.
Still, the captain did not abate one jot of his cool demeanor. He eyed the sea, the rocks, the remains of his ship and the beetling crags from which he was cut off by sixty feet of raging water.
Then he deliberately turned his back on it all. Going to a locker, he produced a screwdriver and began methodically drawing the screws of the door-hinges.
The chief officer thought that the other man’s brain had yielded to the stress.
“What are you doing, sir?” he said, placing a hand gently on his friend’s shoulder.
“We haven’t a ten-million to one chance of remaining here till the gale gives out,” was the calm answer, “but we may as well rig up some sort of protection from the weather. There are four lockers and four doors. Let’s block up those broken windows as well as we can.”
A curiously admiring light shone in the chief officer’s eyes. He said nothing, but helped. Soon a corner was completely walled. They decided it was better to have one section thoroughly shielded than the whole only partially.
They made a quick job of it. The girls, Mr. Gray, and two men recovering consciousness were allotted to the angle.
Then the captain opened one of the three bottles of claret stored in a locker, and portioned out the contents among the survivors.
There was no need to measure the share of a heavily-built Spaniard who was reputed to be a wealthy rancher from the Argentine. His spine was broken when the ship lurched over the reef. He was found dead when they tried to move him to the sheltered corner.
And now a pall of darkness spread swiftly over the face of the waters. The tide fell, but the ship sank with it. She no longer rocked and shook under the blows of the waves. It seemed as though she knew herself crippled beyond all hope of succor, and only awaited another tide to meet annihilation.
Wind and sea were more furious than ever. In all likelihood, the gale would blow itself out next day. But long before dawn the rising tide would have made short work of what was left of the Southern Cross.
Never was a small company of Christian people in a more hopeless position. Every boat was gone. They had no food. They were wet to the skin, and pierced with bitter cold. Even the hardy captain’s teeth chattered as he took a pipe from his pocket, rolled some tobacco between the palms of his hands, and said smilingly to those near him:
“This is one of the occasions when a water-tight pipe-lighter is a real treasure. Who’d like a smoke? You must find your own pipes. I can supply some ’baccy and a light!”
CHAPTER VIII
ONE CHANCE IN A MILLION
Maseden was badly hurt and quite stunned. Of that there could be no manner of doubt. He was blissfully unaware of the destruction of the ship, and did not regain his senses until long after the captain and some few of the men gathered in the dismantled chart-room had indulged in what was to prove their last pipeful of tobacco.
Even when a species of ordered perception was restored he was wholly unable during an hour or more to collect his wits sufficiently to understand just what had happened.
Certain phenomena were vaguely disturbing; that was all. He knew, for instance, that the Southern Cross was wrecked, because the deck was tilted permanently at an alarming angle. As the downward slope was forward, however, and his bunk lay across it and on the forward side of the door the physical outcome was by no means unpleasant, since his body was wedged comfortably between the mattress and the bulkhead.
He was dry and warm. The weather-proof garments of the pampas were admirably adapted to resist exposure, while the pitch of the deck, aided by the conformation of the bows, diminished the striking power of the waves and carried the spray and broken water clean over the remains of the forecastle.
Maseden’s position resembled that of a man ensconced in a dry niche of a cave behind a waterfall. So long as he did not move and the cavern held intact he was safe and comfortable. Happily, a long time elapsed between the first glimmer of consciousness and the moment when the knowledge was borne in on him that he was actually beset by immediate and most deadly peril.
He imagined that the ship had been cast ashore after he met with some rather serious accident, that some kind Samaritan had tucked him into his own berth, and that, in due course, some one would look in on him with a cheery inquiry as to how he was faring. His answer would have been that his head ached abominably, that his mouth and throat were on fire, and that a long drink of cold water was the one thing needed to send him to sleep and speedy recovery.
He did not realize that when he dropped face downward into the folds of the sail he had swallowed a quantity of salt water lodged there instantly by the pelting seas. It was not until he moved, and yielded to a fit of vomiting, which relieved the pain in his head and cleared his faculties, that the dreadful truth began to dawn in his mind.
Once, however, the process of clear reasoning set in, it developed rapidly. He noticed, in the first instance, that the angle of the deck was becoming steeper. It was strange, he thought, that although the light was failing, no one came near. His ears, too, told him that seas were still hammering furiously on every side.
Finally, a marked movement of the forecastle as it slipped over a smooth rock race, owing to the increase of dead weight brought about by the falling tide, induced a species of alarmed curiosity which proved a most potent tonic. At one moment feeling hardly able to move, the next he was scrambling out of the bunk and climbing crab-like through the doorway.
Then he saw that the forecastle deck had been torn away in line with the forward bulkhead of the fore hold. With some difficulty, being still physically weak and shaken, he raised head and shoulders above this jagged edge and peered over.
Then he understood. The ship was in pieces on the reef. Two bits of her still remained; the forecastle, a stubborn wedge nearly always the last part of a steel-built vessel to collapse, and the bridge, with its backing of the chart house. All else had gone – the funnels had fallen an hour earlier.
Even the steel plates and stout wood work of the superstructure had melted away from the six strong ribs to which the sunken engines were bolted, leaving the bridge and chart house in air.
Already, too, one of the six pillars which had proved the salvation of that forlorn aerie had yielded to the strain and snapped. In the half-light it was difficult to discern just what support was given to the squat rectangle of the chart-house; Maseden had to look long and steadily through the flying scud before he gathered the exact facts.
The upper deck of the forecastle shut off any glimpse of the cliffs. All he could see was the reef, much more visible now, but still partially submerged by every sea; beyond it, a howling wilderness of broken water, and in the midst of this depressing picture, the ghost-like chart-house and bridge.
But he recalled vividly enough the sight of an awesome precipice close at hand before something had hit him and robbed him of senses. If the ship, or what was left of her, was lodged on the reef towards which she was being driven at the time of his mishap, the shore could not be far distant.
Within a foot of where he lay on the deck, clinging to it as a man might save himself from falling off the steeply-pitched roof of a house, was the big bole of the foremast, on which the rings of the sails formed a sort of ladder. He pulled himself up, stretched his body along the mast in the opposite direction, and made out the uneven summit of the cliff above the straight line of the upper deck.
He was exposed to the weather here, but the waves were not breaking across the forecastle now, and the spray and biting wind tended rather to dissipate the feeling of lassitude which had proved quite overpowering while he remained in the bunk. He raised himself cautiously another foot or so, and the rugged wall of the precipice loomed so close that at first he fancied the wreck was touching it.
The broken topmast, however, swaying in the wind, and still held to its more solid support by a couple of wire stays, pointed drunkenly at the cliff, and the pulley dangling from it was occasionally dashed by the gale against an overhanging ledge.
Even while Maseden was arriving at a pretty accurate estimate of the way in which he had been injured – because he now recalled the parting of the anchor cable – the forecastle moved again, the wet and frowning wall became even more visible, and although an awesome gap intervened, the swaying, pointed spar seemed to offer a fantastic glimpse of a means of escape.
As yet, the truck, or top of the mast, was fully sixteen feet distant from the face of the cliff. But it had been twenty feet or more distant a moment ago, and that last movement of the hull had lessened the width of the chasm.
What if the spar jammed? Could a man obtain foothold on that slimy rock surface?
He thought it possible. A deep crevice seemed to promise some vague prospect of upward progress to one who could climb, and to whom any risk was preferable to the certain fate which must attend remaining on the wreck during the coming tide.
But, notwithstanding his partial recovery, he still felt very feeble and quite unequal to more exertion. As nothing in the way of an attempt to save his life was possible until the broken topmast was lodged firmly against the cliff, he wondered whether he would find some sort of food in the forecastle.
It was improbable, of course. Meals were brought from the cook’s galley amidships, and utensils only were stored in the lockers of the dingy saloon in which he and many of the sailors used to eat.
Still, spurred by the necessity of doing something to take his mind off the fearsome alternative should the forecastle topple over sideways, or even remain in its present position, he turned his back on the cliff. With never a glance at the bridge, he regained the sloping deck, lowered himself to the doorway of his own cabin, and peered into the gloom in the effort to determine how best and where to begin his search.
At first his heart sank, because the saloon was awash. Then he remembered the Spanish sailor’s queer offer of a bottle of brandy, stored in a kit-bag in number seven berth, “the lowest bunk on the left.”
Number seven! Had he not seen the man at odd times entering or leaving the second cabin on the port side? At any rate, there was no harm in trying.
Crawling farther into the darkness, he walked on what was normally the cross bulkhead of the saloon, groped to a doorway, found a kit-bag in the stated position, opened it, and came upon a bottle of brandy!
He drank a little. Luckily it was not the raw spirit beloved of such men as its late owner, but sound, mellow liquor, which the Spaniard had probably bought as a medicine.
Be that as it may, the brandy exercised the magical effect which good cognac always produces in those wise enough not to vitiate the blood with alcohol when in robust health. For the first time since he was struck down, Maseden felt himself capable of putting forth physical effort involving sustained muscular exertion.
He returned to his own cabin, secured the poncho, or cloak, and wrapped the bottle in it. Rummaging round in the dark, he laid hands on a strap, with which he buckled the folded poncho tightly to his shoulders. Then reviewing the prospects which awaited an unfortunate castaway on that inhospitable coast, he endeavored to get at his own trunk.
Therein, however, he failed. The iron frame of the bunk had buckled, and the trunk was held as in a vise.
Realizing that he had very little time before the light in the interior of the forecastle would vanish altogether, he hurried back to the Spaniard’s berth and hauled out the kit-bag. He had an uncomfortable feeling that he was robbing the dead, but if it were practicable to land any sort of stores the effort should be made.
He had not a moment to spare for further search. The forecastle slipped again, and he experienced no little difficulty in regaining his perch on the solid stump of the foremast, on which, so nearly had it approached the horizontal, he could sit quite easily.
The dangling spar, he estimated, was now about eight feet from the cliff. Would it catch the rock wall while any glimmer of light remained, or would some new movement of the wreck divert its progress? He could only hope for the best and be ready to seize the opportunity when, if ever, it presented itself.
To his thinking, the gale was moderating; but he dared not indulge in the smallest hope that the forecastle would live through the next tide. The heavy swell of the Pacific after a westerly storm would create a worse sea on the reef than that already experienced. Probably the breakers would be more destructive immediately after than during the gale.
