Chapter XXIV: Ralph's Sufferings

Low down in the northwestern horizon was a faint speck of white. Everywhere else the blue of the sky and ocean was unrelieved. The "mares' tails" of clouds had disappeared and the sea was a gently heaving plain of glass.

"A sail!" exclaimed the boy. "It must be a sail."

He hurriedly set up his mast again and hastened back to the tiller. But there was no wind; the canvas hung limp, while the sun was broiling the paint on the little forward deck.

"I don't suppose they can see me," thought he dejectedly. "It must be only their topsails that I see, and so small a boat as this would be invisible. Perhaps if they had a glass at the mast head, they might find me. Oh, if I only had a wind!"

Reflection, however, convinced him that a breeze would be as apt to carry the strange vessel off as to bring it nearer, so he was fain to sit still and idly watch the tiny dot of white, which meant so much, yet might do so little.

The isolation of his position pressed upon him harder than ever. He felt, for a time, that if that elusive bit of white should disappear he would certainly break down. The heat and glare in the air added to his misery, and he took another drink from the keg, despite his previous abstemious resolve.

"I just can't help drinking," he said to himself in justification of his act. "I reckon it's the wound makes me burn so."

For a long while matters remained much the same, except that his hunger increased and his general state of discomfort grew to a point that rendered his exposure to the sun's rays unbearable. He would have taken his sail and made some sort of awning but for the faint hope that it might be seen.

He crawled under the bow, where the deck sheltered the upper half of his person, and found some relief. From time to time he crept out and, standing on the thwarts, watched the unchanging speck of white, with longings which at times were almost akin to despair.

Towards the middle of the afternoon, after a longer stay beneath the deck than usual, he heard a slight thump against the side of the boat. Scrambling up, he saw that a light breeze had arisen, sending little ripples over the sea.

The wind was fair towards the distant sail, and Ralph again stepped his mast and trimmed his sheet, while his heart beat fast. If he could only get near enough to the stranger to be recognized!

But his progress was slow and many times the distant spot would disappear momentarily, sending painful thrills through his veins. Then, when it was visible once more, the sense of relief was almost as hard to bear, so greatly were his nerves wrought up.

After a time it seemed to him that the sail was growing larger. At first he doubted, then became assured of that fact.

He rose and shouted in sheer exultation. For a time the white spot increased in size until he felt that he would certainly be seen a moment or two later. But that longed-for moment did not come.

At last he perceived that the stranger was sailing at right angles to his own course, which would naturally expose to his view a larger expanse of sail. Would he be able to forge far enough ahead to be recognized?

The period of suspense was almost an agony; nor was the after conviction that the ship was slowly but surely leaving him, as she passed on her course, much more painful by comparison. But as long as she was in sight Ralph sailed on.

He could not voluntarily give up even the last glimpse of what appeared to be the only link connecting him with his fellow creatures. But as the dot of white was finally lost to view, he sank to the boat's bottom in despair, letting the sail flap listlessly and the tiller swing unguided.

"It is no use," he faltered, as his eyes momentarily filled under a sinking feeling of utter loneliness. "I might as well give up."

But pain is at times a great reviver. As hope dwindled, the irritation of his wound and the gnawing of his stomach forced their discomfort upon his attention. He drank again, and later on, again, with a persistent disregard of future consequences which only the overwhelming disconsolation of his situation could have inspired.

The wind stiffened and at last he was obliged to take down his sail, out of sheer lack of energy to continue his battle with fate. He lay down under the bow for a long time.

The pitching of the yawl increased. Finally a larger sea than usual sent nearly a barrel of water over the deck, that streamed down upon his legs. Fear roused him to action once more.

He began bailing frantically with his hat, and soon had the boat dry again. As he remained aft, no more seas were shipped, though the wind was increasing, and by certain signs he felt that rougher weather might be imminent. Clouds were rising, and though he did not like their appearance, it was some relief when they shaded him from the now declining heat of the sun.

As night approached, the wild waste of waters looked terribly stern and forbidding. Occasionally a distant breaking of some white capped wave would send his heart into his mouth, only to sink again despairingly.

Just at sunset the great luminary peered gloriously forth. Torturing as was its power at midday, now it seemed to Ralph as if a friend were bidding him farewell. When the last of its golden surface had vanished, he felt as if that friend had departed, never to return, at least to him.

For hours he sat after that, while a gloom as of death settled over the ocean, broken only by the plash of waves and the constant creaking of the yawl as it rolled and pitched in the trough of the sea.

Once a shower of rain, accompanied by a slight flurry of wind, set him to trembling, as he remembered the fury of the squalls in those latitudes. He felt that his frail shallop would never live through one.

Though in the tropics, he became chilly as the night advanced, while the pain of hunger was but partially eased by the drafts of water of which he still partook from time to time. He finally lay down in the stern and wrapped himself in the sail.

The pitching and rolling soon sent him to sleep, in a merciful relief to the gnawing sense of misery that now never left his mind while awake.

A ship's yawl, being both broad and deep, is one of the safest of small boats in a seaway. Therefore Ralph passed the hours in temporary security while unconscious. Unless a gale should rise, there was little danger of his craft's swamping, nor, except from hunger, was his physical situation any worse than during the day.

The most appalling thing connected with such a position was the feelings which it must necessarily arouse, and until day Ralph was exempted from these.

When he rubbed his eyes at dawn he lay there dreading to rise. The loneliness of the sea renewed its terrors at once, and he feared to look upon a scene of which he was the sole living element.

"I'm getting to be a regular baby," he said aloud. "I wonder what grandfather would say could he see me now. I am at least away from that old feud, if I never was before."

This allusion led him into a reverie upon the strangeness of the fate that had led him half across the world in order to free himself from a senseless quarrel, and to be pursued by it to an extent that had left him free from its influence only when he was facing death in his present forlorn condition.

He had been sent to Shard, whom he should have avoided as a relative of the Vaughn faction. Shard had sent him to Gary, while Gary, five thousand miles away, was wreaking upon the boy all the hatred inspired by the haters of his family far back in the Southern mountains.

At last he raised his head and peered out upon the watery waste. As his gaze swept from one side to the other an exclamation of amazement dropped from his lips and he sprang to his feet.

Scarcely a quarter of a mile away was the Wanderer, with her sails all spread and flapping idly from side to side as she rolled gently upon the dead swell of the sea. The wind had died away and the slaver lay between the yawl and the eastern dawn, a dim yet recognizable bulk. Her dark, graceful proportions were not to be mistaken.

"This beats the nation!" was Ralph's next ejaculation. "This is what one might call pure luck. Now if I only had a pair of oars."

Not having any, he tried his sail, but found the attempt useless, and he was compelled to sit there thrilling with impatience to be aboard once more. Finally, as he was about to rise and shout, he noticed something white being waved from one of the stern windows.

While he was puzzling his brain over the meaning of this, a line of black heads appeared above the bulwarks, and sundry black, naked forms ran up the rigging. At the same time a chorus of barbaric yells rang out, that chilled the boy's blood, even at that distance.

"I wonder if the blacks have got possession of the ship at last," and with the thought his heart sank as he realized the certain death to all in case such a thing had taken place. "If this be so, they have undoubtedly killed every white aboard."

Ralph's situation now became doubly trying. To venture to board the schooner might prove his destruction. To remain in the yawl was to court a lingering and terrible death.

Already the pangs of hunger were almost unendurable. He drank from the keg, then measured the contents with a splinter. It was half empty. Twenty-four more hours of this and then----

"Come what will," he resolved, "I shall try to board the vessel. One may as well die one way as another."

After some reflection he took apart his mast and used the six foot strips as oars, finding that he made a little progress, though the task was fatiguing and the movement exasperatingly slow.

Meanwhile the noise on the Wanderer grew hideous. The idle, untrimmed manner in which the sails swung, was a fearful indication that the untrained negroes were masters. When within two hundred yards he took a careful survey. The whole deck and the lower rigging were alive with blacks shouting, gesticulating, acting more like lunatics than sane beings.

Something at the stern window again attracted his notice. It was a handkerchief being waved. He answered the signal by waving his hat. Then to Ralph's surprise and delight a white face was cautiously protruded.

"I'll help that man off or die for it," was his next thought as he bent once more to the task of rowing.

Had not the ocean been calm he would have made no headway. As it was, when he drew up some thirty yards from the schooner's stern, he was for the moment completely exhausted.

Turning round, he recognized with joy the pale blood-stained face at the window.

"In heaven's name!" cried the boy. "What has happened? Are any more of you alive?"