Chapter XV: “next Instant the Ship Was Struck and Staved.”

“If this breeze keeps,” said Captain Barnaby Blunt--“if this breeze keeps up, we should sight Chatham to-morrow.”

“Oh, indeed!” said Tom.

“Yes. We are here now, I reckon,” continued Blunt, sticking a pin in the chart that was spread out on the cabin table.

Something called the worthy Yank on deck just then, and Tom closed his book.

“I say, Brandy, little boy.”

“I’se a-listenin’, sah, propah.”

“Do you know where the ship is going to, and what she is going to do? Funny now, but I’ve never looked at the chart yet. I think I’ve eaten the lotus leaf.”

“‘Spects you has, sah. I don’t know nuffin neider, sah. I’m jes’ like yourse’f, sah.”

“Well, I’ve been so happy and so--so--half asleep all the time; but now I’ll have a peep at the chart. Here we are--Guayaquil Gulf. Why, what a zig-zag course the tub has taken. Oh! here we are--Galapagos! Whatever are we going to do here? Ah! well, time will tell, and it’s nothing to me much.”

The day passed dreamily away, like all the other days; and night fell, and with it the wind. Before turning in Tom went on deck. Such a night of inky darkness and mysterious silence he could not remember ever experiencing. The blackness brooded over the sea--it was almost palpable, and the silence seemed to enter one’s very soul. Hardly a sound in board, no sound at all out yonder in the beyond. The men’s voices forward round the bow when they did speak sounded loud and strange. Tom even felt relieved when a sail flapped or a bolt creaked to some almost imperceptible roll of the ship. There was never a star in the sky to-night, and a mist that was not a mist appeared to completely envelop the ship.

Pebbles came aft quietly to where he could dimly see Tom’s figure in a ray of light streaming from the poop cabin.

He took Tom’s hand.

“Come with me,” he said, “and listen.”

He led Tom forward through the darkness to the bows.

“We’ve heard it again,” said one of the men in a half-suppressed whisper. “Listen! Away out yonder. It is coming this way; but what is it?”

They leant over the bows, “peering,” “keening” into the mysterious darkness.

The sound was like some great living monster steering through the water, breathing heavily with every stroke--sighing I had almost said--ceasing sometimes, to be heard closer to the ship the next minute.

Pebbles still held Tom’s hand, as if in his anxiety he had forgotten to let it go; and Tom could feel that hand tremble.

“Look! look! Oh--h!”

The “Oh--h!” was a simultaneous cry of fear from the men. Tom felt like one in a dream. For there in the sea, higher far than the bulwarks, blacker even than the blackness of night, was a shape!

Next instant the ship was struck and staved. Every timber of her shook and shivered from stem to stern, and some loose belaying-pins leapt clear of their holes and fell rattling on deck.

All was shouting and confusion on board now. The captain rushed out of his cabin, the mate ran aft; but no one could tell what had happened.

“She has run on a snag rock?” cried the captain.

“We cannot say, sir; but we saw--”

The carpenter, lantern in hand, appeared from below.

“She is making water at a tremendous rate, sir. Shouldn’t think she’d float an hour.”

Blunt went away with him to see for himself. When he came up again he entered the cabin, where Tom was standing by the table looking white and scared; for he was yet little more than an invalid.

“Well,” said the captain, “this is about the suddentest thing, I guess, I ever came across. It’s a sudden thing, sirr, and it’s a very solemn thing too. Mister Talisker, it’s a good thing your clothes is on.”

“Has it come to that?” said Tom.

“Well, sirr, it hasn’t come to the hen-coop quite; but it’s come to boats. Now, I always said the _’Liza Ann_ was the safest ship out; but I didn’t reckon on snags in deep water. Pebbles!”

“I’m here, sir.”

“Well, tell the hands to lay aft here. I guess we’ll have time for prayers.”

“She’s going fast, sir.”

“We’ll have time for prayers, I tell you.”

“Very good, sir.”

Tom had never known so cool a sailor as this. With the sound of the water rushing into the sinking, reeling ship, he nevertheless found time--nay, but made time, to kneel there and pray long and fervently for protection to Him who rules on sea as well as on earth, and whose hand and eye are everywhere, in the blackness of night as well as in the sunshine.

The men’s response of “Amen” was deep and solemn. Half a minute of dead silence, then all rose from their knees.

“Now, Pebbles!” roared Captain Blunt, “bustle about. Load up the dinghy and the jolly-boat. Put in everything we’re likely to want--arms, ammunition, water, food. Mr. Talisker, you’ll go in the dinghy with Ginger Brandy and Smith.”

“Ay, ay, sir.”

“Well, see after your own affairs. Don’t forget lights, for keep together we must.”

There were no signs of weakness about Tom now. He appeared to have grown suddenly strong and well.

Smith was a sort of hobble-de-hoy sailor--a lad of seventeen, with plenty of strength, but not much brains to command action. Ginger Brandy, the other half of Tom’s crew, was far more useful; so he gave the nigger charge of the white man. This was reversing the order of nature some might think, but it worked very well indeed on the present occasion.

Tom showed good generalship. He first had a run below to see how fast the water was gaining. It certainly was coming in at a very rapid rate. But she would last an hour, Tom thought; so he at once set to work to provision his boat.

The dinghy was not over twelve feet long, but she was broad in beam and with a good free-board. So Tom had her lowered, and swung a lantern over the side where she was that its light might shine right into her. Then under his directions the lads began to load up.

“You’ll have her too deep, I reckon,” said Captain Blunt as he passed.

“Thank you,” replied Tom, “but I do not think so; for you see if it comes on to blow we can lighten her by pitching the least necessary things overboard.”

The jolly-boat was ready first, and lay waiting till Tom and his crew embarked. Both boats had stepped their masts, ready for the least puff of wind; and both had compasses and a ready-made chart each.

“Good-bye!” cried pious Blunt. “Keep our light in sight; keep yours hanging on your mast as we have ours. Fire a rifle if ye want assistance. May the Lord be with you! Now, men, three farewell cheers for the dear old _’Liza Ann_.”

What sorrowful cheers they were, and how strangely they sounded in the pitchy darkness!

“Pull round the bows, lads, in close. I just want to put my hand on her once more. Now give way.”

These are the last words Tom heard the Yankee skipper speak, and presently the jolly-boat was swallowed up in the blackness. All except her twinkling light--and by this the dinghy was steered.

Everything went well till morning. Then with the sun, that leapt up like a ball of fire and changed the waters to a pool of crimson, came a breeze of wind. Oars were taken in and a little sail set. Tom hoped it would not increase, for he desired to save all her stores if possible.

About noon that day the jolly-boat was distant nearly a league, about two points on the weather-bow. She was signalling to the dinghy, and presently she took in sail. Tom increased his, rightly judging that Captain Blunt wished him to come closer.

The dinghy leaned over now in a most uncomfortable way. Tom, still determined if possible to save his precious cargo, made his men sit well to the weather-side, and thus they managed to keep her lee-gunwale out of the water as they tried to get closer to the jolly-boat. The latter was seen to lower sail altogether, and Tom could not make out what the matter was. He understood soon, however; for down the wind at that moment he descried rolling along a dark wall of fog. In a few minutes the jolly-boat was engulphed, and soon after the dinghy.

All that day the fog lasted; but now and then Tom could hear the ring of a rifle, and steered by that. Towards evening the wind had increased in force, and he heard no more firing. The jolly-boat would doubtless lie to, however,--so Tom thought; and by next day, when the fog cleared, he should see the boat again. The fog did not clear next day, however, nor for many days; and when the sun shone at last there was no sail in sight!

There was no help for it; they must make the nearest land, and doubtless the other boat would do the same.

And now ensued a painful and weary time.

The wind had died down entirely. It seemed as though it would never blow again. The sea all round was like molten glass, a long rolling swell coming in from the north-west--a swell that was delusive in the extreme, causing them to believe they were making progress to the south, although the current was dead against them. The sun’s rays, beating straight down from the heavens and reflected from the waters, were doubly fierce, and there was no awning for protection.

Two days passed like this; then poor Smith sickened and died. Tom had given him the last drop of water that remained in the boat. So between them Ginger Brandy and he gently lifted the body up and dropped it astern, and the scene that followed was horrible to witness. Before their eyes the corpse was torn in pieces by those tigers of the sea--the hammer-headed sharks. There must have been at least a dozen at that dreadful feast, yet next minute several were floating alongside, and casting sidelong glances up at the rowers with their hungry, eager, and awful eyes.

On and on and on they rowed, resting often on their oars and gazing round them in the vain hope of descrying a sail.

A bird alighted in the water on the forenoon of next day. A strange weird-looking gull, the like of which Tom had never seen before. It was so tame that Brandy easily knocked it dead with his oar, and they sucked its blood and devoured the flesh raw and warm. Horrid meal though this appears to have been, it revived them better than anything else save water could have done. Of food there was abundance in the boat; it was water alone they craved for. That same evening it rained a little. They caught the water in their jackets and eagerly drank it.

Another long dark black starless night; but in the morning the clouds were dissolved, and the sun shone more fiercely than ever.

No rain, no mist even.

They dipped biscuits in the sea and sucked them, but the thirst grew more intense.

Tom suffered worst; his agony was fearful. With eyes and brow that felt bursting with pain, and swollen and parched tongue, he sat at the oar and rowed feebly and mechanically.

Birds came now in larger numbers, but none came near enough to be caught.

Surely they were nearing land! But nothing was in sight from where they sat. Only the burning sky, only the heaving sea!

A bright-eyed butterfly flew on board one day, and the negro boy shouted for joy. But Tom heeded it not; he was past heeding anything. Pain was gone though. He felt nothing. His very mind seemed to have fled. He remembered looking down at his own hands holding the oars, and wondering to whom they belonged. The birds screaming around the boat became spirits with human voices and kept saying things to him, and awful-looking black lizards swam in the water near.

Then through the mist and haze that had gathered before his eyes he could dimly see the negro lad approach nearer. The boy took someone’s oars gently out of his hand, and laid someone down in the bottom of the boat. But who was the someone, Tom wondered. It could not be himself, for he felt nothing.

Then all was a blank.

When he opened his eyes again he was no longer in the boat. The boy was pouring something down his throat. It revived him, and he sat up.

He pointed to some immense lizards--the same he had seen in the sea. They were lying together on some igneous rocks in the sunlight, as large as young alligators but ten times more ugly--broad in head with spreading legs, squalid, hideous, fearsome.

Tom tried to speak as he pointed to them, but could only utter a series of unintelligible vowel-sounds with the back of his throat.

But poor little Brandy understood him.

“Yes, sah, dey are dere all right. You not dream at all, sah. I see dem.”

Then the boy took a stick and forced them off the rock; though some of them turned round as if to bite, and others caught the stick in their hands in a way that curdles one’s blood to think of.

Tom lay back now and slept again.

It must have been near morning when he awoke, feeling almost well.

He was quite covered with a piece of sail, and lay on a bed of soft dry sea-weed.

For a few moments he could remember nothing, and sadly wondered where he was. But memory soon returned. The stars were shining brightly above. By its light he could see the foam of the wavelets that sang dolefully on the beach. He could see, too, the rocks and boulders near the water. As he gazed on these, to his horror and surprise some of them moved away inland slowly with a harsh and rattling noise.

“Surely I am on an island of enchantment,” thought poor Tom, “or I cannot be awake!”

“Ginger Brandy!” he cried as well as he could.

“I’se heah, sah. Tank de Lawd, marster, you hab got your voice once mo’, sah!”

“Brandy, I saw the rocks move slowly away. Was I dreaming?”

“No, sah. Nevah feah, sah. Dem not rocks; dey are to’toises, as big as elerphants. I ride on one to-day all ’long de beach. Dey are puffikly ha’mless, sah. Don’t you be ’larmed. I’se fit ’nuff to look arter you. Sleep, sah, sleep; de sun rise soon.”

As the boy spoke a gush of bird-melody came from a neighbouring bush, so entrancingly sweet but so wondrously strange, that Tom at once placed his head again on his pillow of sea-weed to listen.

Sleep the most refreshing ever he had enjoyed in his life succeeded; but all through his slumbers rang the bird-song, mingling with his dreams like chimes from elfin-land.