"I can lay hold of a buoy, an" jump overboard."
"It"ll be moy job, I tell ye!" pa.s.sionately cried Jacob.
"Oh, hark to those poor creatures!" exclaimed Helga.
"Quick!" cried I. "Abraham has told us what to do. There would be no need for this horrible haste but for those imprisoned men! Hear them!
Hear them!"
It was a wild and dreadful chorus of lamentation, mingled with such wailings as might rise in the stillness following a scene of battle. The noise was scarcely human. It seemed to proceed from famished or wounded jackals and hyenas. But to liberate them--every man armed as he was with a sheath-knife deadly as a creese in those dingy fists--every man infuriate--it was not to be dreamt of!
As swiftly as we could ply our legs and arms, we victualled the starboard quarter-boat. Provisions were to our hands; we threw them in plentifully--remains of cooked meat, biscuit, cheese, and the like; we took from each boat the breaker that belonged to her, filled them both with water, and stowed them. The sail belonging to the boat lay snugged in a yellow waterproof cover along the mast; there were oars in her--all other furniture, indeed, that properly belonged to her--rowlocks, rudder, yoke; and the boatmen, old hands at such work as this, nimbly but carefully saw that the plug was in its place.
All the time that we worked there was rising out of the forecastle hatch the dreadful noise of lamentation, of cries, of entreaties. It was a sound to goad us into red-hot haste, and we laboured as though we were eight instead of four.
"Now, Mr. Tregarthen," cried Abraham, "if we ain"t to be pursued by them savages on our liberating of "em, we must cut them there falls." And he pointed to the tackles which suspended the other boat at the port davits.
"Do so!" said I.
He sprang on to the rail, and pa.s.sed his knife through the ends of the falls. This effectually put an end to all chance of the fellows chasing us in _that_ boat.
"There"ll be plenty o" time for them to get the long-boat out," shouted Abraham, running across the deck to us. "They"re seamen, and there"s Nakier to tell "em what to do."
"Rot "em for firing the ship!" cried Jacob. "I don"t believe she _is_ on fire. They"ve made a smoke to scare us out of her!"
"Is everything ready?" I exclaimed.
"Hugh!" cried Helga, clasping her hands, "I have forgotten my little parcel--the picture and the Bible!"
She was about to fetch them.
"I can be quicker than you," I cried, and, rushing to the hatch, jumped down it, gained the cabin she had occupied in Captain Bunting"s time, and s.n.a.t.c.hed up the little parcel that lay in the bunk. There was no smoke down here. I sniffed shrewdly, but could catch not the least savour of burning. "It is the fore part of the ship that is on fire," I thought. As I ran to regain the hatch, it somehow entered my mind to recollect that while looking for a lead-pencil in the chief mate"s berth, on the previous day, I had found a small bag of sovereigns and shillings, the unhappy man"s savings--all, perhaps, that he possessed in the world--the n.o.ble fruits of Heaven knows how many years of hard suffering and bitter labour! I was without a halfpenny in my pocket, and entered the cabin to take this money, which I might hope to be able to repay to some next-of-kin of the poor fellow, should I ever get to hear of such a person, and which in any case would be more serviceable in my pocket than at the bottom of the sea, whither it was now tending. Having secured the money, which would be very useful to Helga and me, should we live to reach a port, I hastened on to the p.o.o.p, heart-sickened by the dull noise of the ceaseless crying forward.
"Now," said I, "let us lower away, in the name of mercy, if only to free those wretches, half of whom may be already suffocated."
Helga and I got into the boat, and Abraham and his mate smartly slackened away the tackles. In a few moments we were water-borne, with the blocks released--for there was little left for me to learn in those days of the handling and management of a boat--and myself standing in the bow, holding on by the end of the painter, which I had pa.s.sed through a mizzen-channel plate. Abraham came down hand over hand by one of the tackles, and dropped into the boat, instantly falling to work to step the mast and clear away the sail.
"Below there!" roared Jacob; "look out for these duds!" and down came first his boots, then his cap, then his coat, and then his waistcoat.
"I"ll jump overboard from this "ere quarter!" he bawled. "Stand by to pick me up!"
The released helm had suffered the barque to come up into the wind, and she lay aback with a very slow leewardly trend. The breeze held the water briskly rippling, but the plain of the ocean was wonderfully smooth, with a faint, scarce noticeable swell lightly breathing in it.
"Mr. Tregarthen," exclaimed Abraham, "you"ll pull a stouter oar than Miss Nielsen. Supposin" the lady stands by that there painter?"
"Right!" I exclaimed, and on the girl entering the bows Abraham and I seized an oar apiece in readiness for Jacob"s leap.
We lay close alongside, so that nothing was visible save the length of the ship"s black side and her overhanging yardarms, and the thick lines of her shrouds rising to the lower mastheads. It was a breathless time.
I had no fear for Jacob; I guessed that the imprisoned wretches would be too dazed by the glaring sunshine and by the fresh air and by their deliverance from the stifling, smoke-thickened gloom of the forecastle to catch him even should they pursue him ere he jumped. Nevertheless, those moments of waiting, of expectation, of suspense, strung the nerves to the tension of fiddle-strings, and sensation was sharpened into anguish.
Not more than three minutes elapsed--yet it seemed an hour. Then in a hoa.r.s.e roar right over our heads sounded a shout:
"Look out, now!"
"Let go!" shrieked Abraham.
Helga dropped the line that held the boat.
"Back astarn, now!"
The fellow poled the boat off, while I put my whole strength into the oar I gripped. I caught a glimpse of Jacob poising and stooping with his arms outstretched and his finger-ends together; his body whizzed through the air, his arms and head striking the water as clean as a knife; then uprose his purple face at a distance of three boat"s lengths. A thrust of the oar brought us alongside of him, and, while I grabbed him by the neck to help him inboard, Abraham was hoisting the sail, with Helga at the yoke-lines, quietly waiting for the sheet to be hauled aft.
"Bravely done, Jacob!" cried I. "There"s a bottle of brandy in the stern-sheets. Take a pull at it! The sun will speedily dry you."
"Where"s the Malays?" exclaimed Abraham.
"Didn"t stop to see," answered Jacob. "I chucked the stretchers off and sung down "Ye can come up," and then bolted."
"There"s Nakier!" cried Helga.
"And there"s Punmeamootty!" I called.
I was astounded by observing the figures of these two fellows quietly gazing at us from the forecastle. Almost immediately after they had appeared others joined them, and before our boat had fairly got way upon her I counted the whole eleven of them. They stood in a body with Nakier in the thick of them surveying us as coolly as though their ship were at anchor, and all were well, and we were objects of curiosity merely.
"Why, what"s the matter with "em?" cried Abraham. "Are they waiting for us to sing out to tell "em what to do?"
He had scarcely spoken the words when a loud shout of laughter broke from the dingy little mob, accompanied by much ironical flourishing of hands, while Nakier, springing on to the rail, pulled his hat off and repeatedly bowed to us. We were too much astounded to do more than gape at them. A minute later Nakier sprang back again on to the forecastle and piped out some orders in his melodious voice, in which, a.s.suredly, the most attentive ear could have detected nothing of the weakness that I had noticed in his cries to us through the half-closed hatch.
Instantly the men distributed themselves, one of them running to the wheel; and while we continued to gaze, mute with amazement, the foretopsail-yard was swung, the barque"s head slowly fell off, the yards were then again braced up, and, behold! the little vessel, with her head at about south, was softly breaking the waters, with the after-yards swinging as they were squared by the braces to the north-east wind.
There was small need to go on staring and gaping for any length of time to discover that we were the victims of an out-and-away shrewder, cleverer, subtler stratagem than we had practised upon those dark-skins.
I could not perceive any smoke rising from the forecastle. The fellows had been much too clever to accept the risk of suffocation as a condition of their escape. Abraham had a.s.sured me that the bulkhead which divided the forepeak from the main hold was as strong as any timber wall could well be; but there was either some damage, some rent, some imperfection in the bulkhead, which provided access to the hold, or the crew, jobbing with Asiatic patience at the plank with their sharp knives, had penetrated it, having had all last night and all this day to do the work in.
A very little thing will make a very great deal of smoke. The burning of a small blanket might suffice to fill the hold of a much bigger ship than that barque with a smell of fire strong enough and rolls of vapour dense enough to fill her crew with consternation and drive them to the boats. While the fellows kept the hatch of the forepeak closed the smoke could hardly filter through into the forecastle. I can but conjecture how they managed; but the triumphant evidence of their cleverness lay clear to our gaze in the spectacle of the barque slowly drawing away into the morning blue of the south and west.
When the two boatmen saw how it was, I thought they would have jumped overboard in their pa.s.sion. Abraham, as usual, flung his cap into the bottom of the boat and roared at the receding figure of the ship as though she were hard by, and the men aboard attentively listening to him. Jacob, soaking wet, his black hair plastered upon his brow, and his face as purple now with temper as it had before been when he rose half strangled out of the water, chimed in, and together they shouted.
Then turning upon me, Abraham bawled out that he would follow them.
"This here"s a fast boat," he vociferated. "Here be oars to help her canvas. Think them coloured scaramouches is agoing to rob me of my salwage? Is it to be _all_ bad luck?--fust the _Airly Marn_, and now,"
cried he, wildly pointing at the barque, "a job that might ha" been worth three or four hundred pound a man? And to be tricked by such creatures! to be made to feel sorry by their howling and wailing! to watch "em a-sailing away with what"s properly moine and Jacob"s, and yourn! Whoy, there"s money enough for a fust-cla.s.s marriage and the loife of a gentleman afterwards, in a single share of the salwage that them beasts has robbed us of!"
And so he went on; and when he paused for breath Jacob fell a-shouting in a like strain.
Meanwhile Helga, at the helm with a composed face, was making the boat hug the wind, and the little fabric, bowed down by the spread of lug till the line of her gunwale was within a hand"s-breadth of the water, was buzzing along at a speed that was fast dwindling the heap of square canvas astern into a toy-like s.p.a.ce of white. At last Abraham and his mate fell silent; they seated themselves, looking with dogged faces over their folded arms at the diminishing barque.
For my part, long before the two honest fellows had made an end of their temper I had ceased to think of the Malays and the trick they had put upon us. Here we were now in a little open boat--three men and a girl--in the heart of a s.p.a.cious field of sea, with nothing in sight, and no land nearer to us than the Great Canary, which lay many leagues distant, and for which the north-east wind would not suffer us to head on a direct course. Here was a situation heavy and significant enough to fill the mind, and leave no room for other thoughts. And yet I do not know that I was in the least degree apprehensive. The having the barque"s forecastle filled with a crew of fellows whose first business would have been to slaughter us three men on their breaking out had weighed intolerably upon my spirits. It was a dreadful danger, a horrible obligation now pa.s.sed, and my heart felt comparatively light, forlorn and perilous as our situation still was. Then, again, I found a sort of support in the experiences I had pa.s.sed through on the raft and in the lugger. The mind is always sensible of a shock on leaving the secure high deck of a ship, and looking abroad upon the vast, pitiless breast of old Ocean from the low elevation of a boat"s side. I have heard of this sort of transition paralyzing the stoutest-hearted of a shipwrecked crew; for in no other situation does death seem to come nearer to one, floating close alongside, as it were, and chilling the hottest air of the tropics to the taste and quality of a frosty blast; and in no other situation does human helplessness find a like accentuation, so illimitable are the reaches of the materialized eternity upon which the tiny structure rests, the very stars by night looking wan and faintly glittering, as though the foundered gaze had rendered their familiar and noted distances measureless compared to their height from a ship"s deck or from solid earth.
But, as I have it in my mind to say, our experiences on the raft and the open lugger were so recent that it was impossible to feel all this vastness and nearness of the deep and the unutterable solitude of our tiny speck of fabric in the midst of it, as though one came fresh from days of bulwarked heights and broad white decks to the situation. Helga surrendered the helm to Abraham, and the boat blew nimbly along over that summer stretch of sea; Abraham steering with a mortified face; Jacob leaning upon the weather gunwale with his chin upon his arms, sullenly gazing into vacancy; and Helga and I a little way forward, talking in a low voice over the past. What new adventure was this we had entered upon? Should we come off with our lives, after all? The tigress ocean had shown herself in many moods since I had found myself within reach of her claws. She was slumbering now. The dusky lid of night was closing upon the huge open trembling blue eye. Should we have escaped her before she roused in wrath?
The sun was now low upon the horizon, and the sky was a flashing scarlet to the zenith, and of a violet dimness eastward, where a streak or two of delicate cloud caught the western glory, and lay like some bits of chiselling in bronze in those tender depths.