When the gray light came, and the darkness ebbed away, Dan still sat on the hatches, haggard and pale. Davy lay on the deck a pace or two aside.
A gentle breeze was rising in the southwest. The boat had drifted many miles, and was now almost due west off Peeltown, and some five miles out to sea. The men came up from below. The cold white face by the hatchway looked up at them, and at heaven.
"We must put it away now," said Billy Quilleash.
"Ay, it"s past the turn of the ebb," said Crennell.
Not another word was spoken. A man went below and brought up an old sail, and two heavy iron weights, used for holding down the nets, were also fetched from the hold. There was no singing out, no talking.
Silently they took up what lay there cold and stiff, and wrapped it in canvas, putting one of the weights at the head and another at the feet.
Then one of the men--it was old Billy himself, because he had been a rigger in his young days--sat down with a sail-maker"s needle and string, and began to st.i.tch up the body in the sail.
"Will the string hold?" asked one.
"It will last him this voyage out--it"s a short one," said old Billy.
Awe and silence sat on the crew. When all was made ready, the men brought from below a bank-board used for shooting the nets. They lifted the body on to it, and then with the scudding-pole they raised one end of the board on to the gunwale. It was a solemn and awful sight.
Overhead the heavy clouds of night were still rolling before the dawn.
Dan sat on the hatches with his head in his hands and his haggard face toward the deck. None spoke to him. A kind of awe had fallen on the men in their dealings with him. They left him alone. Davy Fayle had got up and was leaning against the mitch-board. All hands else gathered round the bank-board and lifted their caps. Then old Quilleash went down on one knee and laid his right hand on the body, while two men raised the other end of the board. "_Dy bishee jeeah shin_--G.o.d prosper you,"
murmured the old fisherman.
"G.o.d prosper you," echoed the others, and the body of Ewan slid down into the wide waste of waters.
And then there occurred one of those awful incidents which mariners say have been known only thrice in all the strange history of the sea.
Scarcely had the water covered up the body, when there was a low rumble under the wave-circles in which it had disappeared. It was the noise of the iron weights slipping from their places at the foot and at the head.
The st.i.tching was giving away, and the weights were tearing open the canvas in which the body was wrapped. In another minute these weights had rolled out of the canvas and sunk into the sea. Then a terrible thing happened. The body, free of the weights that were to sink it, rose to the surface. The torn canvas, not yet thoroughly saturated, opened out, and spread like a sail in the breeze that had risen again. The tide was not yet strong, for the ebb had only just begun, and the body, floating on the top of the water like a boat began to drive athwart the hawse of the fishing-boat straight for the land. Nor was the marvel ended yet. Almost instantly a great luminous line arose and stretched from the boat"s quarter toward the island, white as a moon"s waterway, but with no moon to make it. Flashing along the sea"s surface for several seconds, it seemed to be the finger of G.o.d marking the body"s path on the waters. Old mariners, who can interpret aright the signs of sea and sky, will understand this phenomenon if they have marked closely what has been said of the varying weather of this fearful night.
To the crew of the "Ben-my-Chree" all that had happened bore but one awful explanation. The men stood and stared into each other"s faces in speechless dismay. They strained their eyes to watch the body until--the strange light being gone--it became a speck in the twilight of the dawn and could be seen no more. It was as though an avenging angel had torn the murdered man from their grasp. But the worst thought was behind, and it was this: the body of Ewan Mylrea would wash ash.o.r.e, the murder would become known, and they themselves, who had thought only to hide the crime of Dan Mylrea, would now, in the eyes of the law, become partic.i.p.ators in that crime or accessories to it.
Dan saw it all, and in a moment he was another man. He read that incident by another light. It was G.o.d"s sign to the guilty man, saying, "Blood will have blood." The body would not be buried; the crime would not be hidden. The penalty must be paid. Then in an instant Dan thrust behind him all his vague fears, and all his paralyzing terrors.
Atonement! atonement! atonement! G.o.d himself demanded it. Dan leaped to his feet and cried: "Come, my lads, we must go back--heave hearty and away."
It was the first time Dan had spoken that night, and his voice was awful in the men"s ears.
CHAPTER XXIII
ALONE ON A WIDE, WIDE SEA
The wind strengthened, and the men hoisted sail and began to beat into the island. The breeze filled the canvas, and for half an hour the jib lay over the side, while the fishing-boat scudded along like a startled bird. The sun rose over the land, a thin gauze obscuring it. The red light flashed and died away, and fanned the air as if the wind itself were the sunshine. The men"s haggard faces caught at moments a lurid glow from it. In the west a ma.s.s of bluish cloud rested a little while on the horizon, and then pa.s.sed into a nimbus of gray rain-cloud that floated above it. Such was the dawn and sunrise of a fateful day.
Dan stood at the helm. When the speck that had glided along the waters like a spectre boat could be no more seen, he gazed in silence toward the eastern light and the green sh.o.r.es of morning. Then he had a sweet half-hour"s blessed respite from terrible thoughts. He saw calmly what he had done, and in what a temper of blind pa.s.sion he had done it.
"Surely G.o.d is merciful," he thought, and his mind turned to Mona. It relieved him to think of her. She intertwined herself with his yearning hope of pardon and peace. She became part of his scheme of penitence.
His love for her was to redeem him in the Father"s eye. He was to take it to the foot of G.o.d"s white throne, and when his guilt came up for judgment, he was to lay it meekly there, and look up into the good Father"s face.
The crew had now recovered from their first consternation, and were no longer obeying Dan"s orders mechanically. They had come aboard with no clear purpose before them, except that of saving their friend; but nature is nature, and a pitiful thing at the best, and now every man began to be mainly concerned about saving himself. One after one they slunk away forward and sat on the thwart, and there they took counsel together. The wind was full on their starboard beam, the mainsail and yawl were bellied out, and the boat was driving straight for home. But through the men"s half-bewildered heads there ran like a cold blast of wind the thought that home could be home no longer. The voices of girls, the prattle of children, the welcome of wife, the glowing hearth--these could be theirs no more. Davy Fayle stayed aft with Dan, but the men fetched him forward and began to question him.
""Tarprit all this mysterious trouble to us," they said.
Davy held down his head and made no answer.
"You were with him--what"s it he"s afther doin"?"
Still no answer from the lad.
"Out with it, you cursed young imp," said old Billy.
"d.a.m.n his fool"s face, why doesn"t he spake?"
"It"s the mastha"s saycret, and I wunnit tell it," said Davy.
"You wunnit, you idiot waistrel?"
"No, I wunnit," said Davy, stoutly.
"Look here, ye beachcomber, snappin" yer fingers at yer old uncle that"s after bringin" you up, you pauper--what was it goin" doin" in the shed yander?"
"It"s his saycret," repeated Davy.
Old Billy took Davy by the neck as if he had been a sack with an open mouth, and brought down his other hand with a heavy slap on the lad"s shoulder.
"Gerr out, you young devil," he said.
Davy took the blow quietly, but he stirred not an inch, and he turned on his uncle with great wide eyes.
"Gerr out, scollop eyes;" and old Billy lifted his hand again.
"Aisy, aisy," said Crennell, interposing; and then, while Davy went back aft, the men compared notes again.
"It"s plain to see," said Ned Teare, "it"s been a quarrel and maybe a fight, and he"s had a piece more than the better, as is only natheral, and him a big strapping chap as strong as a black ox and as straight as the backbone of a herring, and he"s been in hidlins, and now he"s afther takin" a second thought, and goin" back and chance it."
This reading of the mystery commended itself to all.
"It"s aisy for him to lay high like that," said Ned again. "If I was the old Bishop"s son I"d hould my luff too, and no hidlins neither. But we"ve got ourselves in for it, so we have, and we"re the common sort, so we are, and there"s never no sailin" close to the wind for the like of us."
And to this view of the situation there were many gruff a.s.sents. They had come out to sea innocently enough and by a kindly impulse, but they had thereby cast in their lot with the guilty man; and the guilty man had favor in high places, but they had none. Then their tousled heads went together again.
"What for shouldn"t we lay high, too?" whispered one, which, with other whispers, was as much as to say, why should they not take the high hand and mutiny, and put Dan into irons, and turn the boat"s head and stand out to sea? Then it would be anywhere, anywhere, away from the crime of one, and the guilt of all.
"Hould hard," said old Billy Quilleash, "I"ll spake to himself."
Dan, at the tiller, had seen when the men went forward, and he had also seen when some of them cast sidelong looks over their shoulders in his direction. He knew--he thought he knew--the thought wherewith their brave hearts were busy. They were thinking--so thought Dan--that if he meant to throw himself away they must prevent him. But they should see that he could make atonement. Atonement? Empty solace, pitiful unction for a soul in its abas.e.m.e.nt, but all that remained to him--all, all.
Old Quilleash went aft, sidled up to the helm, and began to speak in a stammering way, splicing a bit of rope while he spoke, and never lifting his eyes to Dan"s face.
"What for shouldn"t we gerr away to Shetlands?" he said.