Chapter VIII: He Sees the Equator (2)

I couldn’t have guessed what weight there was in this ocean
swell till I felt the volume of it from the low seat of the
ship’s quarter-boat. The _Ruby_ looked to be rolling on it as
heavily again as she seemed to have been when I was on her
deck, and the beat of her canvas against the mast rang in
volleys through the air like the explosion of batteries up
there. The wreck came and went as we sank and soared, and I
caught the second mate eying her somewhat anxiously as though
theorizing to himself upon the safest dodge to board her.
She was farther off than I should have deemed possible, so
deceptive is distance at sea, and though the five seamen pulled
cheerily, the job of measuring the interval between the two
craft, what with the voluminous heave of the swell running at
us, and what with the roasting sunshine that lay like a sense
of paralysis in one’s back bone, proved very tedious to my
impatience to come at the hulk and explore her. As we swept
round under her stern, supposing that her starboard side would
be clear of wreckage, I glanced at the _Ruby_ and saw that they
were clewing up her royals, and hauling down her flying jib
with hands on the cross-jack-yard rolling the sail up. There
were spars and a litter of trailing gear on either side the
hulk; every roll was a spiteful snapping at the ropes with a
drag of the floating sticks which sometimes made the water foam.

“We must board her astern,” said the mate “and stand by for a
handsome dip of the counter.”

Our approach was very cautious; indeed it was necessary to
manœuvre very gingerly indeed. We got on to the quarter, and
watching his chance the bow oarsman cleverly sprang through
the crushed rail as the deck buoyantly swang down to the heave
of the boat, carrying the end of the painter with him; the
mate followed, and I after a tolerably long interval, wanting
perhaps the nerve and certainly the practised limbs of the
sailors. In truth I may as well say here that I should have
stuck to the boat and waited for the mate’s report but for
the dislike of being laughed at when I returned. I very well
knew I should not be spared, least of all by those amongst the
passengers who would have forfeited fifty pounds rather than
quitted the ship.

The hull had a desperately wrecked look inboards with the
mess of ropes, staves, jagged ends, crushed rails, rents
manifesting the fury of the hurricane. I swept a glance along
in expectation of beholding a dead body, or, if you will, some
scarcely living though yet breathing man; but nothing of the
kind was to be seen. The mate hung his head over the companion
hatch from which the cover had been clean razed and peered
down, then shouted and listened. But no other sound followed
than the long moan and huge washing sob of the swell brimming
to the wash-streak with a dim sort of choking, gurgling noise
as of water streaming from side to side in the hold.

“Hardly worth while exploring those moist bowels, I think,
sir,” said the mate.

“Oh, yes,” said I, “if we don’t take a peep under deck what
will there be to tell? This is a quest of the ladies’ making,
remember, and it must be a complete thing or ‘stand by’ as you
sailors say.”

“Right you are, sir,” said he, “and so here goes,” and with
that he put his foot upon the companion ladder and dropped into
the cabin.

I followed at his heels, and both of us came to a stand at the
bottom of the steps whilst we stared round. There was plenty of
light to see by streaming down through the skylight aperture
and the hatch. The cabin was a plain, snuff-coloured room with
a few sleeping berths running forward, a rough table somewhat
hacked and cut about as if with the slicing of tobacco, a row
of lockers on either hand, a stand of firearms right aft and
some twenty cutlasses curiously stowed in a sort of brackets
under the ceiling or upper deck. Hot as it was above, the
cabin struck chill as though it were an old well. Indeed you
saw that it had been soused over and over again by the seas
which had swept the vessel, and there was a briny, seaweedy
flavour in the atmosphere of it that made you think of a cave
deep down in a sea-fronting cliff. We looked into the sleeping
berths going forward to where a moveable bulkhead stopped the
road. It was not easy to walk; the increasing weight of the
swell was defined by the heavy though comparatively buoyant
rolling of the hull. The deck went in slopes like the roof of
a house from side to side with now and again an ugly jerk that
more than once came near to throwing me when a sudden yawn
forced the dismasted fabric into a swift recovery.

“There’s nobody aft here, anyway,” said the mate; “no use
troubling ourselves to look for her papers, I think, sir.”

“No; but this is only one end of the ship,” I answered. “There
may be a discovery to make forward. Can’t we unship that
bulkhead there, and so get into the ’tween-decks?”

We laid hold of the frame, and after peering a bit, for this
part of the cabin lay in gloom, we found that it stood in
grooves, and without much trouble we slided it open, and the
interior to as far as a bulkhead that walled off a bit of
forecastle lay clear before us in the daylight shining through
the main-hatch. Here were a number of hammocks dangling from
the deck, and some score or more of seamen’s chests and bags
in heaps, some of them split open, with quantities of rough
wearing apparel scattered about, in so much that I never
could have imagined a scene of wilder disorder, nor one more
suggestive of hurry and panical consternation and delirious
headlong behaviour.

“Nobody here, sir,” said the mate.

“No,” I answered; “I suppose her people left her in their
boats, and that one of the wretches who were forced to remain
behind wrote the letter we received the other night.”

“At sea,” said the mate, “there is no imagining how matters
come about. I allow that the three men have been taken off
by some passing vessel. Anyway, we’ve done our bit, and the
capt’n, I expect, ’ll be waiting for us. Thunder! how she
rolls,” he cried, as a very heavy lurch sent us both reeling
towards the side of the craft.

“Hark!” cried I, “we are hailed from the deck.”

“Below there!” shouted a voice in the companion hatch. “They’ve
fired a gun aboard the Indiaman, sir, and have run the ensign
up half-mast high. The weather looks mighty queer, sir.”

“Ha!” cried the mate; “come along, Mr. Catesby.”

We walked cautiously and with difficulty aft, gained the
companion ladder and ascended. My instant glance went to
the _Ruby_. She had furled her mainsail and fore and mizzen
topgallant-sails, hauled down her lighter staysails and big
standing jib, and as I glanced at her a gun winked in a
quarter-deck port, and the small thunder of it rolled sulkily
up against the wind. In fact, whilst we were below, the breeze
had chopped clean round and the _Ruby_ was to leeward of the
wreck, with a very heavy swell rolling along its former course,
the wind dead the other way, beginning to whiten the ridges on
each huge round-backed fold, and a white thickness—a flying
squall of vapour it looked to me, with a seething and creaming
line of water along the base of it as though it was something
solid that was coming along—sweeping within half-a-mile of
the wreck right down upon us. The mate sent a look at it and
uttered a cry.

“Haul the boat alongside,” he shouted to the fellows in her.
“Handsomely now, lads. Stand by to jump into her,” he cried to
the seaman who had been the first to spring on board the wreck
with the end of the line.

They brought the boat humming and buzzing to the counter;
the sailor standing on the taffrail plumped into her like a
cannon-shot; ’twas wonderful he didn’t scuttle her. The mate
whipping the painter off the pin or whatever it was that it
had been belayed to, held it by a turn whilst he bawled to
me to watch my chance and jump. But the wreck lying dead in
the trough was rolling in a quite frenzied way, like a see-saw
desperately worked. Her movements, combined with the soaring
and falling of the boat, were absolutely confounding. I would
gather myself together for a spring and then, before I could
make it, the boat was sliding as it might seem to me twenty or
thirty feet deep and away.

“Jump, for God’s sake, sir!” cried the mate.

“I don’t mean to break my neck,” I answered, irritable with the
nervous flurry that had come to me with a sudden abominable
sense of incapacity and helplessness.

As I spoke the words, sweep! came the white smother off the sea
over us with a spiteful yell of wind of a weight that smote
the cheek a blow which might have forced the strongest to turn
his back. The hissing, and seething, and crackling of the
spume of the first of the squall was all about us in a breath,
and, in the beat of a heart, the _Ruby_, and the ocean all her
way vanished in the wild and terrifying eclipse of the thick,
silvery, howling, steam-like mist.

“By ——, I have done it _now_!” cried the mate.

The end of the painter had been dragged from his hand or he had
let it fall! And the wind catching the boat blew her over the
swell like the shadow of a cloud. The seamen threw their oars
over and headed for us, their faces pale as those of madmen.

“They’ll never stem this weather,” cried the mate; “follow me,
Mr. Catesby, or we are dead men.”

He tore off his coat, kicked off his boots and went overboard
without another word.

_Follow him!_ To the bottom, indeed! but nowhere else, for I
could not swim a stroke. But that was not quite it. Had I had
my senses I might have grasped the first piece of wreckage I
could put my hand upon and gone after him with it to paddle
and hold on to till I was picked up. But all this business
coming upon us so suddenly, along with the sudden blinding of
me by the vapour, the distracting yelling of the wind and the
sickening bewilderment caused by the wreck’s violent rolling,
seemed to have driven my wits clean out of my head. The boat
was scarcely more than a smudge in the thickness, vanishing and
showing as she swept up and rushed down the liquid acclivities,
held with her bow towards the hulk by the desperately-plied
oars of the rowers. The mate was borne down rapidly towards
her. I could just see three of the sailors leaning over the
side to drag him out of the water; the next instant the little
fabric had vanished in the thickness, helplessly and with
horrible rapidity blown out of sight the moment the men ceased
rowing to rescue their officer.

I do not know how long all this may have occupied; a few
minutes maybe sufficed for the whole of the tragic passage. I
stood staring and staring, incredulous of the truth of what had
befallen me, and then with an inexpressible sickness of heart I
flung myself down upon the deck under the lee of a little space
of bulwark, too dizzy and weak with the horror that possessed
me to maintain my footing on that wildly swaying platform.

I had met in my travels with but one specimen of such weather
as this; it was off the Cape of Good Hope to the westward; the
ship was under topmast and topgallant studding sails, when,
without an interval of so much as twenty seconds of calm, she
was taken right aback by a wind that came with the temper of
half a gale in it, whilst as if by magic a fog, white and dense
as wool, was boiling and shrieking all about her.

For some time my consternation was so heavy that I sat
mechanically staring into that part of the thickness where the
boat had disappeared, without giving the least heed to the sea
or to the wreck. It was _then_ blowing in earnest, the ocean
still densely shrouded with flying vapour, and an ugly bit of a
sea racing over the swell that rolled its volumes to windward.
A smart shock and fall of water on to the forecastle startled
me into sudden perception of a real and imminent danger. The
fore-scuttle was closed, but the main and companion hatchways
yawned open to the weather; there were no bulwarks worth
talking of to increase the wreck’s height of side, and to
hinder the free tumbling of the surge on to the decks, so if
the wind increased and the sea grew heavier, the hulk must
inevitably fill and go down like a thunderbolt!

It would be idle to try to express the thoughts which filled
me. I was like one stunned: now casting an eye at the sea to
observe if the billows were increasing, now with a heart of
lead watching the water frothing upon the deck, as the hull
heaved from one side to the other; then straining my sight
with a mad passion of eagerness into the vapour that shut off
all view of the ocean to within a cable’s length of me. There
was nothing to be done. Even could I have met with tarpaulins,
there was no sailor’s skill in me to spread and secure them
over the open hatches. However, when an hour had passed in this
way, I took notice of a small failure of the wind, though there
was no lightening of the impenetrable mist. The folds of the
swell had diminished, and the sea was running steadily; the
hull with her broadside dead in the trough, rose and fell with
regularity, and though at long intervals the surge struck her
bow, and blew in crystals over the head, or tumbled in scores
of bucketfuls upon the deck, nothing more than spray wetted the
after-part of her.

It was now six o’clock in the evening. In two hours’ time the
night would have come down, and if the weather did not clear,
the blackness would be that of the tomb. What would the _Ruby_
do? Remain hove-to and wait for moonlight or for daybreak to
seek for me? A fragment of comfort I found in remembering that
the wreck’s position would be known to Captain Bow and his
mates, so that their search for me, if they searched at all,
ought not to prove fruitless; though to be sure much would
depend upon the drift of the hulk. Presently, fearing that
there might be no water or provisions on board, I was seized
with a sudden thirst, bred by the mere apprehension that I
might come to want a drink. There was still light enough to
enable me to search the interior, and now I suppose something
of my manhood must have returned to me, for I made up my mind
to waste no moment of the precious remaining time of day in
imaginations of horror and of death and in dreams of desperate
despondency. I went on my hands and knees to the hatch, lest
if I stood up I should be knocked down by the abrupt rolling
of the craft, and entered the cabin. On deck all was naked and
sea-swept from the taffrail to the “eyes,” and if there were
aught of drink or of food to be had it must be sought below. I
recollected that one of the forward berths or cabins, which the
second mate and I had looked into, had shown in the gloom as a
sort of pantry; that is to say, in peering over my companion’s
shoulders, I had caught a glimpse of crockery on shelves, the
outlines of jars and so forth. But the inspection had been very
swift, scarce more than a glance. I made for this cabin now,
very well remembering that it was the last of a row of three
or four on the starboard side. I opened the door, and secured
it by its hook to the bulkhead that I might see, and after
rummaging a little I found a cask of ship’s bread, a small cask
(like a harness cask) a quarter full of raw pickled pork, a
jar of vinegar, two large jars of red wine, and best of all,
a small barrel about half full of fresh water, slung against
the bulkhead, with a little wooden tap fixed in it, for the
convenience as I supposed of drawing for cabin use. There were
other articles of food, such as flour, pickles, dried fruit,
and so on; the catalogue would be tedious, nor does my memory
carry it.

I poured some wine into a tin pannikin, and found it a very
palatable, sound claret. I mixed me a draught with cold
water, and ate a biscuit with a little slice of some kind of
salt sausage, of which there lay a lump in a dish, and found
myself extraordinarily refreshed. I cannot tell you indeed
how comforted I was by this discovery of provisions and fresh
water, for now I guessed that if the weather did not drown the
wreck, I might be able to support life on board of her until
the _Ruby_ took me off, which I counted upon happening that
night if the moon shone, or most certainly next morning at
latest. My heart however sank afresh when I regained the deck.
The sudden change from the life, the cheerfulness, the security
of the Indiaman, to _this_—“Oh, my God! my God!” I remember
exclaiming as I sank down under the lee of the fragment of
bulwark, with a wild look around into the thickness and along
the spray-darkened planks of the heaving and groaning derelict.
The loneliness of it! no sounds save the dismal crying of
the wind sweeping on high through the atmosphere, and the
ceaseless seething and hissing of the dark-green frothing seas
swiftly chasing one another out of sight past the wall of
vapour that circled the wreck, with the blank and blinding mist
itself to tighten as with a sensible ligature into unbearable
concentration the dreadful sense of solitude in my soul.

Slowly the wind softened down, very gradually the seas sank,
and their worrying note of snarling melted into a gentler tone
of fountain-like creaming. But the vapour still filled the air,
and so thick did it hang that, though by my watch I knew it to
be the hour of sundown, I was unable to detect the least tinge
of hectic anywhere, no faintest revelation of the fiery scarlet
light which I knew must be suffusing the clear heavens down
to the easternmost confines above this maddening blindness of
mist.

Then came the blackness of the night. So unspeakably deep a
dye it was that you would have thought every luminary above
had been extinguished, and that the earth hung motionless in
the sunless opacity of chaos out of which it had been called
into being. The hours passed. I held my seat on the deck with
my back against a bulwark stanchion. It was a warm night with
a character as of the heat of steam owing to the moisture
that loaded and thickened the atmosphere. Sometimes I dozed,
repeatedly starting from a snatch of uneasy slumber to open
my eyes with ever-recurring horror and astonishment upon the
blackness. Gleams of the sea-fire shot out fitfully at times
from the sides of the wreck, and there was nothing else for the
sight to rest upon. At midnight it was blowing a small breeze
of wind and the sea running gently—at midnight I mean as I
could best reckon; but the darkness remained unchanged, and I
might know that the fog was still thick about me by no dimmest
spectre of moon or star showing.

I then slept, and soundly too, for two or three hours, and when
I awoke it was daylight, the sea clear to the horizon, the sky
a soft liquid blue with masses of white vaporous cloud hanging
under it like giant bursts of steam, and the sun shining
with a sort of misty splendour some degree or two above the
sea-line. There was a pleasant air blowing out of the north,
with power to wrinkle the water and no more. My limbs were so
cramped that for a long while I was incapable of rising; when
at last my legs had recovered their power I stood erect and
swept the ocean with my eyes. But the light blue surface went
in undulations naked to the bend of the heavens on all sides.
I looked and looked again, but to no purpose. I strained my
sight till an intolerable torment in my eyeballs forced me to
close my lids. There was nothing in view. I very well remember
falling on my knees and grovelling upon the deck in the anguish
of my spirit. I had so surely counted on daylight exhibiting
the _Ruby_ somewhere within the circle which enclosed me that
the disappointment which came out of the bald vacancy of the
ocean struck me down like a blow from a hammer. Presently I
lifted up my head and regained my feet, and feeling thirsty
moved with a tread of lead to the yawning hatch, sending the
most passionate, yearning glances seaward as I walked, and
halting again and again to the vision of some imagination of
break in the continuity of the gleaming girdle—some delicate
shoulder of remote cloud, some imaginary speck which dissolved
upon the blue air whilst my gaze was on it.

I mixed some wine and water, and made a light repast off
biscuit and a piece of Dutch cheese that was on the shelf. I
then thought I would look into the cabins for a chair to sit
upon on deck, for a mattress to lie upon, for something also
that might make me a little awning, and pushed open the door
of the berth immediately facing the pantry, as I may call
it. The wreck was rolling very lightly, and her decks were
now as easy to step as the Indiaman’s. This berth contained
a bunk and bedding, a sailor’s chest, some clothes hanging
against the bulkhead, but nothing to serve my turn. The next
was similarly furnished, saving that here I took notice that a
small quantity of wearing apparel lay about as though scattered
in a hurry, and that the lid of a great box, painted a dark
green with the letter D in white upon it, had been split open
as though the contents were to be rifled, or as though the lock
had resisted and there had been no time to coax it save by a
chopper. I passed into a third cabin. This had some comfort of
equipment in the shape of shelves and a chest of drawers, and
had doubtless been the commander’s. There was a very handsome
telescope on brackets, a few books, a quadrant, a large silver
timepiece, a small compass and one or two other matters of a
like sort upon a little table fitted by hinges in a corner;
there were three chests in a row with a litter of boots and
shoes, a soft hat or two, a large handsome cloak costly with
fur, and so forth, strewed about the deck.

I was looking with wonder at these articles when my eye
was taken by something bright near the smallest of the
three chests. I picked it up; it was an English sovereign.
Others lay about as though a handful had been clutched and
dropped—here being the same manifestations of terrified hurry
as, it seemed to me, I witnessed in the other cabins. The lid
of the small chest was split in halves, and the chopper that
had seemingly been wielded rested against the side of the
box. A massive padlock was still in the staples. I lifted the
half of the lid and was greatly astonished by the sight of
a quantity of gold pieces lying in divisions of a tray that
fitted the upper part of the chest. Each division contained
coins of various nations. They were all gold pieces—English,
Portuguese, Brazilian and coins of the United States. I prised
open the padlocked part of the lid and seized the tray to lift
it that I might observe what lay underneath. But the weight of
gold in it was so great that I had to exert my utmost strength
to raise one end of the tray on to the edge of the box; which
done, I was able to slide it along till the bottom of the box
was revealed.

The sight of the gold had filled me with expectations of
beholding some amazing treasure under the tray. What I there
saw was a heap of rough, brick-shaped stuff of a dull, rusty,
reddish tint. I grasped a lump, and though I had never seen
gold in that form before, I was satisfied by the extraordinary
weight of the piece I held that all those coarse, rough,
dull-coloured bricks were of the most precious of metals. I
slided the tray back to its place and let fall the two halves
of the lid with another look around me for any article that
might be useful to me on deck. The excitement kindled by the
spectacle of the gold rapidly died away. I dully mused on it,
so to speak, whilst my eye roamed, languidly speculating about
it, with a strange indifference in my thoughts, concluding
that it represented the privateersman’s sorted plunder; that
in all likelihood when the rush had been made to the boats one
or more had split open this chest to fill their pockets, but
had been obliged to fly for their lives ere they could find
time for more than a scrambling clutch at the tray. But it was
the contents no doubt of this chest—if indeed this chest held
all the treasure of the buccaneer—that was indicated by the
writer of the letter in the concluding line of it, the closing
words of which had been found illegible by the young fellow who
translated the missive.

I put the telescope under my arm and passed into the cabin,
and found a small chair near the arms rack, and near it upon
the deck lay a great cotton umbrella, grimy and wet with the
saturation of the cabin. I took it up thankfully and carried it
with the chair up the steps. There was a great plenty of ropes’
ends knocking bout. I cut a piece and unlaid the strands, and
securing the umbrella to a stanchion, sat down on the chair
under it; and indeed without some such shelter the deck would
have been insupportable, for low as the sun still was in the
east, his fires were already roasting, and I well knew what
sort of temperature was to be expected as he floated higher,
leaving my form with a small blotch of southern shadow only
yoked to it.

I passed the morning in sweeping the horizon with the
telescope. It was a noble glass—a piece of plunder, with an
inscription that represented it as a gift from the officers of
a vessel to her commander; I forget the names, but recollect
they were English. The placidity of the day dreadfully
disheartened me. There was but little weight in the languid
air to heave the _Ruby_ or any other vessel into view. The sea
under the sun was like brand new tin for the dazzle of it, and
as the morning advanced the heavy, vaporous clouds of daybreak
melted out into curls and wisps like to the crescent moon, with
a clear sky rising a pale blue from the horizon to overhead to
where it swam into the brassy glory which flooded the central
heavens. Weary of sitting, and exhausted by looking, I put down
the glass and went to the main hatch with the idea of making
out what water there was in the hold. The pumps were gone and
the wells of them sank like black shafts into the deck. But
whatever there was of water in the hulk lay so low that I
could not catch so much as a gleam of it. There was some light
cargo in the hold—light as I reckoned by the sit of the wreck
upon the water; chiefly white wooden cases, with here and there
canvas bales; but whatever might have been the commodities
there was not much of them, at least amidships, down into which
I stood peering.

I then walked on to the forecastle and lifted the hatch-cover.
This interior looked to have been used by the people of _La
Mulette_ as a sort of sail-locker. The bulkhead extended but a
very short distance abaft the hatch, and the deck was stowed
with rolls of sails, coils of spare rigging, hawsers, tackle
and so forth. I put my head into the aperture and took a long
and careful survey of the interior, for the mate and I had not
explored this part of the brig, and it was possible, I thought,
I might find the bodies of the three survivors here. But there
was nothing whatever to be witnessed in that way; so I closed
the hatch again and went aft.

The day passed, the light breeze lingered, but it brought
nothing into sight. I would think as I sent my glance along the
naked, sea-swept, desolate deck, gaunt and skeleton-like, with
its ragged exhibition of splintered plank and crushed bulwark,
that had there been a mast left in the hull I might from the
summit of it be able to see the _Ruby_, whose topmast cloths
lay sunk behind the horizon to the eyes which I levelled from
the low side of the wreck. “Oh!” I would cry aloud, “if I could
but be sure that she was near me though hidden!” Maddening as
the expectation might have been which the sight of her afar
would have raised in me, yet the mere having her in view,
no matter how dim, deceptive a speck she proved, would have
taken a deal of the bitterness, the heart-subduing feeling of
hopelessness out of the wild and awful sense of desolation that
possessed me.

The sun sank; with the telescope trembling in my hands I
made a slow, painful circle of the ocean whilst the western
magnificence lay upon it, and then let fall the glass and fell
into the chair, and with bowed head and tightly-folded arms,
and eyes closed to mitigate by the shadowing of the lids the
anguish of the fires which despair had kindled in them—for
my heart was parched, no relief of tears came to me—I waited
for the darkness of a second night to settle down upon the
wreck. But on this day the gloom fell with the brilliance of
stars, and some time after eight the moon rose, a moist, purple
shield, at whose coming the light draught of wind died out
and the ocean flattened into a breathless, polished surface.
When presently the moon had soared and whitened, the sea
looked as wide again as it was to the showering of her light,
brimming the atmosphere with a delicate silver haze; indeed
there went a shadowing round about its confines to the shaft
of moonlight on the water that made it seem hollow where the
wreck lay, and it was like floating in the vastness of the
firmament that bent over it to glance over the side of the hull
and see the mirror-like breast studded with reflections of the
larger stars, and to follow the shadow of the deep, curled at
the extremities as it seemed, to the tropic astral dust that
twinkled there like dew trembling to the breath of a summer
night wind.

I had brought up some blankets from below and these I made
a kind of mattress of under the shelter of the umbrella. It
was about ten o’clock, I think, when I threw myself down
upon them. A pleasant breeze was then blowing directly along
the wake of moonlight, and the water was rippling like the
murmurs of a brook against the sides of the pale, silent,
gently-rolling hull. I lay awake for a long time listening
to this cool, refreshing, tinkling sound of running ripples,
with a mind somewhat weakened by my distress. Indeed, many
thoughts wearing a complexion of delirium passed through my
head with several phantasies which must have frightened me as
a menace of madness had my wits been equal to the significance
of them. For example, I can recall seeing, as I believed, the
_Ruby_ floating up towards the wreck out of the western gloom,
luminous as a snow-clad iceberg, with the soft splendour of
the moonshine on her canvas; I recollect this, I say, and that
I laughed quietly at the thought of her approach, as though
I would ridicule myself for the fears which had been upon me
throughout the day; then of jumping up in a sudden transport
and passion of delight; when the vision instantly vanished;
whereupon a violent fit of trembling seized me, and I sank down
again upon the blankets groaning. But the agitation did not
linger; some fresh deception of the brain would occur and win
my attention to it.

This went on till I fell asleep. Meanwhile the breeze continued
to blow steadily, and the rippling of water along the bends was
like the sound of the falling of large raindrops.

I awoke, and turning my head towards the fore-part of the
wreck, I spied the figure of a man erect and motionless on the
forecastle. The moon was low in the west; I might guess by
her position that daybreak was not far off. By her red light
I saw the man. I sat erect and swept a glance round; there
was no ship near me, no smudge upon the gloom to indicate a
vessel at a distance. Father of heaven! I thought, what _is_
it? Could yonder shadowy form be one of the three sailors who
had been left on the wreck? Surely I had closely searched the
hull; there was nothing living aboard of her but myself. The
sweat-drops broke from my brow as I sat motionless with my
eyes fixed upon the figure that showed with an inexpressible
ghostliness of outline in the waning moonlight. On a sudden
there arose another figure alongside of him, seemingly out of
the hard planks of the deck; then a third; and there the three
of them stood apparently gazing intently aft at me, but without
a stir in their frames, that I could witness. Three of them!

I rose to my feet and essayed to speak, but could deliver no
more than a whisper. I tried again, and this time my voice
sounded.

“In the name of God, who, and what are you?”

“Ha!” cried one of them. He said something to his companions,
in words which were unintelligible to me, then approached,
followed by the others, all three of them moving slowly, with a
wavering gait, as though giddy.

“Som drink for Christu’s sake!” said the man who had called Ha!
pointing his finger at his mouth, and speaking in a tone that
made one think of his throat as something rough, like a file.
By this time it was clear to me they were no ghosts. I imagined
them negroes, so dark their faces looked in the dim west rays
and failing starlight. Whence they had sprung, in what manner
they had arrived, I could not imagine; but it was not for me to
stand speculating about them in the face of the husky appeal
for drink.

There was a parcel of candles in the pantry—as I term it. I
had a flint and steel in my pocket, and followed by the men, I
led the way below, bidding them stand awhile till I obtained
a light; and after groping and feeling about with my hands,
I found the paper of candles, lighted one, and then called
to the men. They arrived. I pointed to the jars, saying in
English, there was wine in them; and then to the slung cask
of water, and then to the food on the shelves. They instantly
grasped each one of them a pannikin, and mixed a full draught
and swallowed it, with a strange trembling sigh of relief and
delight. They then fell upon the biscuit and sausage, eating
like famished wolves, both fists full, and cramming their
mouths. They were not very much more distinguishable by the
feeble light of the candle than on deck; however, I was able
to see they were not blacks. The man who had addressed me
was of a deep Chinese yellow, with lineaments of an African
pattern, a wide flat nose, huge lips, eyes like little shells
of polished ebony glued on porcelain. His hair was the negro’s,
a black wiry wool. He wore a short moustache, the fibres like
the teeth of a comb, and there was a tuft of black wool upon
his chin. Small gold earrings, a greasy old Scotch cap, a
shirt like a dungaree jumper, and loose trousers thrust into a
pair of half Wellingtons, completed the attire of the ugliest,
most villainous-looking creature I had ever set eyes on. His
companions were long-haired, chocolate-browed Portuguese, or
Spaniards—_Dagos_ as the sailors call them; I noticed a small
gold crucifix sparkling upon the mossy breast of one of them.
Their feet were naked, indeed their attire consisted of no more
than a pair of duck or canvas breeches, and an open shirt,
and a cap. They continued to feed heartily, and several times
helped themselves to the wine, though before doing so, the
yellow-faced man would regularly point to the jar with a nod,
as though asking leave.

“You Englis, sah?” he exclaimed, when he had made an end of
eating. I said yes. “How long you been hear, sah?”

I told him. He understood me perfectly though I spoke at
length, relating in fact my adventure. I then inquired who he
and his companions were, and his story was to the following
effect: That he was the boatswain, and the other two, able
seamen, of a Portuguese ship called the _Mary Joseph_, bound
to Singapore or to some Malay port. The vessel had been set
on fire by one of the crew, an Englishman, who was skulking
drunkenly below after broaching a cask of rum. They had three
boats which they had hoisted out; most of the people got away
in the long boat, six men were in the second boat, he and his
two comrades got into the jolly-boat. They had with them four
bottles of water, and a small bag of ship’s bread, and nothing
more. They parted company with the other boats in the night,
and had been four days adrift, sailing northwards by the sun
as they reckoned, under a bit of a lug, and keeping an eager
look-out though they sighted nothing; until a little before
sundown that evening, they spied the speck of this wreck, and
made for it, but so scant was the wind, and so weak their
arms that it had taken them nearly all night to measure the
distance, which would be a few miles only. They got their boat
under the bow—she was lying there now, he said—and stepped
on board one after the other. This explained to me their
apparition. Of course I had not seen the boat or heard her as
she approached, and to me, lying aft, the three men rising over
the bows looked as though, like ghostly essences, they had
shaped themselves on the forecastle out through the solid plank.

I addressed the others, but the yellow man told me that their
language was a jargon of base Portuguese, of which I should be
able to understand no more than here and there a word, even
though I had been bred and educated in Lisbon.

“We mosh see to dah boat,” he exclaimed, and spoke to his
mates, apparently to that effect.

I extinguished the candle, and followed them on deck. It was
closer upon daybreak than I had supposed. Already the grey was
in the east, like a light filtering through ash-coloured silk,
with the sea-line black as a sweep of India ink against it
and the moon a lumpish, distorted mass of faint dingy crimson,
dying out in a sort of mistiness westwards, like the snuff of a
rushlight in its own smoke. Even whilst the three fellows were
manœuvring with the boat over the bow, the tropic day filled
the heavens in a bound, and it was broad morning all at once,
with a segment of sun levelling a long line of trembling silver
from the horizon down to mid-ocean. My first glance was for the
_Ruby_, but the sea lay bare in every quarter. The fellows came
dragging their boat aft; I looked over and saw that the fabric
was of a canoe-pattern, with a queer upcurled bow, and a stern
as square as the amid-ship section of the boat; four thwarts,
short oars with oval-shaped blades, and a small mast with a
square of lugsail lying with its yard in the bottom of the boat

The yellow man pointing to her exclaimed in a hoarse, throaty,
African guttural, “It is good ve keep hor. Dis wreck hov no
’atch; she sink, and vidout hor,” nodding at the boat again,
“were ve be?”

I said yes, by all means let us secure the boat. He exclaimed
that for the present she would lie safely astern, and with that
they took a turn with the line that held her and she rested
quietly on the sea clear of the quarter.

Forthwith the three fellows began to explore the hull. The
yellow man or boatswain, as I must henceforth call him, said
no more to me than this as he pointed to the yawning hatches:
“You are gen’elman,” with an ugly smile intended no doubt for
a stroke of courtesy as he ran his eye over me: “ve are common
sailor. Ve vill see to stop dem hole. More fresh vataire to
drink ve need. Possib more bee-low. Also tobacco.” And thus
saying he cried out to the others in their own dialect, and the
three of them went to the main hatchway and disappeared down it.

I lifted the telescope and ran it over the sea, then sighed
as with a breaking heart I laid the glass down again upon the
deck. A strong sense of dismay filled me whilst I sat musing
upon the men who were now coolly rummaging the vessel below.
The rascality which lay in every line of the ugly yellow
ruffian’s face, coupled with the stealthy, glittering glances,
the greasy, snaky hair, the dark piratic countenances of the
others might well have accounted for the apprehension, the
actual consternation indeed which fell upon me whilst I thought
of them. But that was not all. The recollection of the gold
rushed upon me as a memory that had clean gone out of my mind,
but that had suddenly flashed back upon me to communicate a
sinister significance to the presence of the three Portuguese
seamen. I can clearly understand now that my brain, as I had
said, had been weakened by the honor of my situation, and
by the long madness of expectation which had held it on fire
whilst I searched the sea and waited for the _Ruby_ to appear.
So that, instead of accepting these three foreign sailors as
a kind of godsend with whose assistance I might be enabled to
doctor up the wreck so as to fit her to float until help came,
not to speak of them as companions in misery, human creatures
to talk to, beings whose society would extinguish out of this
dreadful situation the intolerable element of solitude—I say
instead of viewing these men thus, as might have happened,
I believe, had I been my old self, a profound fear of and
aversion from them seized me, and such was the state of my
nerves at that time, I call to mind that I looked at the boat
which hung astern with a sort of hurry in me to leap into her,
cast her adrift, and sail away.

With an effort I mastered my agitation, constantly directing
glances at the sea with a frequent prayer upon my lip that if
not the _Ruby_, then at least some ship to rescue me would
heave into view before sundown that night.

The men were a long while below. I stepped softly to the
companion hatch, and bent my ear down it that I might know if
they had made their way through the ’tween decks bulkhead into
the cabin. The chink of money was very distinct, but that was
all. Presently, however, I heard them talking in low voices,
but their tongue was Hebrew to me, and I went back to my chair,
looking yet again around the sea-line. I think they had been
at least an hour below when they arrived on deck, emerging
through the main hatch. They then walked forward without taking
any notice of me, and disappeared through the fore-scuttle,
whence, after a while, they arose bearing amongst them several
tarpaulins which they had come across. I took it that there
was a carpenter’s chest down there, for the yellow boatswain
flourished a hammer in one hand, and a box of what proved to
be round-headed nails in the other. They carefully secured
the hatch with a couple of these tarpaulins, then came to
the quarter-deck, and similarly roofed the skylight and the
companion hatch, saving that they left free a corner flap to
admit of our passage up and down.

“Dis is sailor vork,” said the boatswain, giving me a nod,
whilst his face shone like a yellow sou’-wester in a squall
of wet with the sweat that flooded his repulsive visage. “Dah
vataire keep out now, sah.”

“It is well done,” said I, softening my voice to disguise the
emotion of disgust and aversion which possessed me at sight of
the ugly, treacherous, askant sort of stare he fastened upon me
whilst he spoke. “Have you breakfasted?”

He came close to me before answering; the other two meanwhile
remaining at the hatch and looking towards me.

“Ay,” he then said, “dere ish plenty biscuit, plenty vataire,
plenty beef,” indicating with a grimy thumb a portion of the
hold that lay under the cabin floor. “Dere ish plenty gold
too,” he added in a hoarse, theatrical sort of whisper, with a
sudden gleam of his little horrible eyes which to my fancy was
as much like the blue flash off some keen and polished blade of
poniard as anything I can figure to liken it to.

“Yes,” said I carelessly, “plenty I believe. But I must break
my own fast now. We shall need fresh water before the day’s
out, and, praised be the saints, there is plenty of it, you
say.”

With that I went to the hatch, turned the flap of the tarpaulin
and descended, eyed narrowly by the two fellows who stood
beside it, and as I gained the interior I heard them say
something to the boatswain, who responded with an off-hand
sort of _ya_, _ya_! as though he would quiet a misgiving in
them. I made a hurried meal of some wine, biscuit and cheese,
and noticing as I passed on my way to the cabin again that
the door of the berth in which the chest of gold stood was
shut, I tried the handle and found it locked. The key was
withdrawn. Smothering a curse upon the hour that had brought
these creatures to the wreck, I lighted a cigar (of which I
had a leather case half-full in my pocket), more for the easy
look of it than for any need I felt for tobacco just then, and
went in a lounge to the shelter of my umbrella. The boatswain
was examining the telescope when I arrived. He instantly put
it down on perceiving me and went forward to where his mates
were. They peered first over one side, pointing and talking,
and arguing with amazing volubility and with astonishing
contortions; they then crossed to the other side, and looked
over and fell into the same kind of hot, eager talk and
gesticulations. It was easy to guess that they spoke about the
spars which floated, held by their gear, against the wreck.
After a bit they came to an agreement, disappeared in the
forecastle and returned with tackles and coils of rope. One
of them went over the side, and after a while there they were
hauling upon purchases and slowly bringing the spar out of
water, the boatswain talking and bawling with furious energy
the whole while. I went forward to help them, and the yellow
ruffian nodded when I seized hold of the rope they were pulling
at, and cried with a hoarse roar of laughter, “Yash, yash. Ve
make a mast, ve make a yart, and ve put up sail, and ve steer
to our own countree and be reech men.”

Dagos as they were, they had some trick of seamanship amongst
them. There was stump enough left of the foremast to secure the
heel of a spar to, and by four o’clock that afternoon, with a
break of but a single half-hour for a meal and a smoke (they
had found plenty of pipes and tobacco in the seamen’s chests
between decks), they had rigged up and stayed a jury-mast and
crossed it with a yard manufactured from a boom of the wreckage
to larboard; which, light as the breeze was, yet furnished them
with spread of sail enough to give the sheer-hulk steerage way.

I had lent them a hand and done my landsman’s best, and had
gone aft to rest myself and to sweep the sea with the telescope
for the hundredth time that day. The three men were below
getting some supper. The hull was stirring through the water
at a snail’s pace to a weak, hot wind blowing right over her
taffrail out of the south-east. The helm was amidships, and
her short length of oil-smooth wake showed her going straight
without steering. I could distinctly hear the men conversing
in the cabin. I reckoned because they knew their lingo was
unintelligible to me that they talked out. There was a fiery
eagerness in the tones they sometimes delivered themselves in,
but earnestly as I listened I could catch no meaning but that
of their imprecations, which readily enough took my ear owing
to a certain resemblance between them and Spanish and Italian
oaths. A short interval of silence followed. All three then
came on deck, one of them carrying a jar and another a canvas
bag. I instantly observed that every man of them had girded
a cutlass to his side. They seemed to avoid my gaze as they
walked to the pin to which the line that connected the boat was
belayed, and hauled her alongside. I threw away my cigar and
stood up. The first idea that occurred to me was, they were
going to victual the boat, sway the chest of gold into her and
sail away from me; and I cannot express with what devotion I
prayed to my Maker that this might prove so. I looked from one
to the other of them. Once I caught a side-long glance from the
boatswain; otherwise they went to this business as though I
were not present, talking in rough, hurried whispers, with an
occasional exclamation from the yellow ruffian, that was like
saying, “Make haste!” When the boat was alongside one of them
dropped into her, and received the jar and bag from the other.
He then returned, and the moment he was inboards the boatswain,
rounding upon me, drew his cutlass and pointed to the boat.

“Be pleashed to get in and go away!” he exclaimed.

“Go away!” I echoed, too much thunderstruck by the villain’s
order to feel or witness the horror of the fate designed for
me. “What have I done that you should——?”

He interrupted me with a roar. “Go quick!” he cried, lifting
his weapon as though to strike, “or I kill you!”