"Keep cool. We"ll find her," urged Wagram. "She may be on deck. Go up there and see. I"ll search here meanwhile."
But the frantic woman refused. She dashed into each cabin along the pa.s.sage, searching everywhere, screaming aloud the little one"s name.
"Go up--go up," repeated Wagram. "I"ll bring her to you if she"s below, but she can"t be."
The noise above--the trampling and the hauling--increased. The lowering of the boats had already begun.
"I won"t," she screamed. "Oh, my Lily--my little one! Where are you?
Oh, G.o.d--where are you?"
She turned to dash along the pa.s.sage. As she did so the ship gave a sudden lurch, flinging open a cabin door with some violence. It came in full contact with the forehead of the frenzied woman, and sent her stunned into Wagram"s arms.
"Better so," he said to himself as he lifted her.
The last boat was lowered and ready--in the settling state of the ship, not far below her taffrail. As she lay alongside a man rushed up from the companion-way bearing a limp, unconscious figure.
"It"s Mrs Colville," said Wagram quickly as he handed over his burden.
"Her child"s lost below; I"m going to look for it."
"Into the boat with you, sir," ordered the captain decisively. "Not a moment to lose."
But Wagram"s answer was to make a dart for the companion-way. He disappeared within it.
"Shove off!" cried the captain. "I"m not going to sacrifice a lot of lives for that of one splendid fool. Shove off!"
"Ay, ay, sir." And at the words, with sudden and cat-like rapidity, two of the boat"s crew sprang upon the captain, who was standing at the rail, and in a trice he was tumbled into the boat, and still securely held while quick, long pulling strokes increased her distance from the sinking ship.
"No, you don"t, sir," said the men, restraining with difficulty their commander"s furious struggles. "The old hooker can go down without you for once. Get back to her? No, you don"t. For shame, sir. You"ve got a missis and kiddies waiting at Southampton, remember."
The captain fumed and swore, and called them every kind of d.a.m.ned mutineer, and worse--in fact, a great deal worse--so much worse that they had to remind him respectfully that the boats containing the women and children must be within easy earshot. Why should he go down with his ship, they pointed out to him, instead of remaining above water to command another? Not the last man to leave her did he say? Well, that couldn"t be helped--if a pa.s.senger were such a lunatic as to go below just as she was taking her last plunge.
There was no bombast about Captain Lawes" intention. While there was a man on board he would not have left her, and in this case he would not have, even though that man, being a pa.s.senger, had ignored his authority. But his crew had taken the matter into their own hands.
The steamy sea murk was thickening, and came rolling in from seaward in damp, hot miasmatic puffs. But the settling hull of the _Baleka_ was still discernible with tolerable plainness. To her many a hail was sent _but--front_ her, to their straining ears, none was returned.
"I think, sir," said young Ransome, the fourth officer, slyly, "that I didn"t quite deserve all you--well, all I got for saying that infernal _Red Derelict_ was unlucky to sight."
"You d.a.m.ned, impudent, mutinous young dog!" growled the exasperated and captive skipper. "Shut your blasted head. As it is, I"ll log you for mutiny and insubordination and general incompetence. I"ll bust you, out of this service at any rate. See if I don"t, my man."
The fourth grinned to himself, and said nothing. He was not greatly concerned. He knew his skipper well enough, you see.
"She"s goin"! There she goes!" sang out one of the men.
All eyes were bent on the ship. Her row of lights gave a great heave up, then rapidly disappeared. A heavy, booming cavernous plunge, and then a great volume of white water shot upward in the dimness.
The _Baleka_ had disappeared; but the lives of those on board her were saved so far--all but one.
All but one, we repeat, for the other life which that one had been sacrificed to save was safe too, for at that moment the missing child was being transferred from the boat into which it had been handed in the scurry to the one which contained its still unconscious mother.
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT.
THE RUSTED PISTOL.
Down--down into the far depths, the weight of a world of water pressing ever down; suffocation, the bursting of myriad stars in a black, roaring sky; then upward, as though hurled by some giant catapult--and--air once more!
Wagram found himself instinctively battling for life amid the tumultuous eddyings that met and swirled above the spot where the hapless _Baleka_ had taken her last plunge.
It was dark--darker than it had been, for the sea mist had deepened, shutting out the stars, shutting out everything around, shutting out in turn the sight of an exhausted man battling for life with the whole immensity of a vast ocean, keeping afloat by mere mechanical instinctive effort.
It seemed ages since he was sucked down by the sinking ship; in reality, it was hardly a minute. Providentially he had returned on deck before the last plunge, and, seeing that it was now or never, had leaped into the water, and struck out for all he knew how. Thus he had not come within the inner vortex, and so had risen to the surface in due course.
He had refrained from shouting when he took his leap, lest one of the boats should return to his rescue and be sucked under herself.
Now he lifted up his voice, but the result was a hoa.r.s.e whisper.
Semi-suffocation, sea water, and exhaustion had done their work, and he was speechless. The boats would certainly lie around in the faint, forlorn hope that he might have got clear of the wreck. One hail might reach them, yet he was speechless. Aid was at hand--yet, O G.o.d! he must drown like a dog in the midst of the black, oily, midnight sea.
Then he felt contact with something, and instinctively he grasped it.
It was a deck-chair, a large, closely-woven wicker chair; and, though it would not support his weight, at any rate it would serve to lighten it, to ease the strain upon his sole unaided efforts. He looked around for more substantial wreckage, but the mist and the darkness combined rendered it impossible to have descried even a boat, had such been within a few yards of him. But even for this miserable support he felt thankful.
Yet who may imagine the horror of those awful hours to the waif floating there in the silent, midnight sea--the solitude, the hopelessness, the consciousness that every hour was but prolonging his agony? The tropical water was warm, or numbness would have supervened, and claimed its victim long before the day should dawn upon the face of the deep; and, realising this too, again he felt thankful.
But now came the terror of another thought. The tropical waters, if warm, abounded in sharks. The unutterable horror of it! Here he was as completely at the mercy of the ravenous monsters as a worm thrown into a stream is at the mercy of the first fish that comes along. Death was one thing--such a loathsome and agonising form of it as this was another. Against it--in spite of his faith, which was great--all that was human in the man cried out in dread and recoil.
So the dark hours wore on, and as they did so a merciful lethargy came upon his mind and imaginings; and, with his frail support, but the smallest and most mechanical of efforts sufficed to keep him afloat on the salt, buoyant surface of the tropical sea.
Day dawned--yet what hope did it bring? Soon the fire rays of a furious tropical sun would beat down upon his unprotected head, burning his brain into molten pitch. With the dawning the mist had thinned, and though it still lay in hot, steamy folds yet a greater area of the surface was visible. And now to the waif was vouchsafed the first gleam of a great hope. Athwart the shadowy dimness an object was visible--an object long, low, and substantial. A ship!
Again he essayed his voice. This time his efforts were able to compa.s.s a feeble raucous shout. Help at last! Rescue! Oh, he _would_ make them hear this time.
The sight sent new life through him. Mustering all his strength he struck out, yet not abandoning his frail support, ever with hopeful gaze strained upon that blessed ark of refuge--and then--and then--
The mist curtain rolled back farther, and it was as though some demon had been mocking him. There lay the ship, but she was nigh flush with the surface as she lay log-like upon the water, still and lifeless. Two jagged stumps of masts arose from her, and tattered fragments of rusty ratlines sc.r.a.ped her rusty sides. The unutterable stillness of her was the unearthly eloquent silence of a dead ship upon a dead sea. _It was the Red Derelict again_.
How had they come together once more? But a few hours ago he and others had gazed with curiosity upon this dead hulk from the deck of the bounding powerful steamship pulsating with life as she swept past. Now the live steamship was gone for ever to the utmost extremity of the far depths; but the dead hulk rode on, riding, as it were, throughout eternity upon a dead sea.
For the first few moments of this revelation the revulsion of feeling was so great, so overwhelming to the despairing waif, that he was tempted to cast away his frail support, and, abandoning all further effort, let himself sink for ever. One brief struggle, then rest--at least, so he trusted, so he ventured to hope. But to that some mysteriously conscious voice of good counsel seemed to reply that the gift of life was not to be voluntarily relinquished even then, that he had been brought back from the very depths of the sea, that a means of support, frail though it was, had been literally thrust into his hand, and now here was an even more substantial form of temporary safety. He remembered, too, how this wreck had been drifting for years, and was occasionally sighted by pa.s.sing vessels; who could tell but what it might be the means of safety for himself, desperate and, humanly speaking, hopeless, as his plight now was? He decided that he would get on board the derelict; and no sooner had he come to this decision than he saw that the sooner he should carry it into effect the better, and that for reasons very weighty, very imminent indeed.
A dark, glistening object was moving above the surface, and well he knew what it represented. It was the dorsal fin of a shark.
As yet it was some little way off, moving slowly, and not coming in his direction. This was something; but as he strained every effort now to reach the derelict it seemed that even that weird refuge was a Heaven-sent one. But it seemed, too, that the hulk was receding from him as fast as he was approaching it. He remembered the captain"s dictum as to the strange action of currents. What if a current were moving it faster than he could move? He looked round. The glistening fin seemed almost stationary, but--it was nearer. Yes; he felt sure it looked larger.
Often from the deck of a ship he had looked down upon the grim monsters of the deep with an interest enhanced by a sense of absolute security.
Now, here he was, floating helplessly in their natural element. Small wonder that his whole being should recoil, his flesh creep at the realisation of his utter helplessness.
There was no mistake about it now. The thing was coming straight towards him, and--the hulk was quite twenty yards away. What, too, if there were more of them?
Nearer, nearer, came that cruel glide, and still he could make but slow headway. He would have abandoned the deck-chair, and so got along faster, but for an inspiration that, perhaps, the strange appearance of it might scare the sea-tiger, suggesting possibly to its instinct the idea of a trap. The beast was very near now.