Chapter XVII: 'farewell, My Rival'

Had Bella known more about a ship and its intricacies she would have understood that, notwithstanding some one had undoubtedly gone overboard, the sailor, whoever he was, could not by any possibility have been one of those who had gone to help in squaring the yards. Instead, she would have been aware that such an accident could only have happened to some seaman who had either gone aloft or out on to the jib-boom. And, in fact, the latter was the case; the unfortunate fellow, a man named Brown, falling off the boom while endeavouring to set the flying jib, and being struck a moment later by the frame timbers forward as he fell. Yet the unhappy sailor seemed still to have some life left in him, as those who rushed to the port side could see, since, as he was passed by the ship, he was observed to rise to the surface--his head all shiny with blood--and to strike out manfully. But what could that avail, since, by the time the _Emperor_ could be brought to the wind and a life-buoy thrown overboard, he was half a mile astern? To lower the boats in time to save him would also have been an impossibility, even if it could have been done at all; and, moreover, the swift-coming instantaneous darkness of the equator was at hand, so that the man himself was, by now, almost invisible.

'Steer her course again,' Charke called out, therefore, to the man who was at the wheel, in a voice in which regret for the unfortunate sailor was mingled with a tone denoting some other sentiment that, perhaps, none would have been able to understand, even though they had been swift to observe it, as, in their excitement, none were. Then, at once, in a few moments, the _Emperor of the Moon_ was again heading towards where the Seychelles lay.

What was that other sentiment which now pervaded the breast of this strong, masterful sailor; this man who had worked untiringly for hour after hour on stretch, and who seemed to rise triumphant over Nature's command that both sleep and meals should be properly partaken of? The man who had not changed his clothes for three days, nor even had them off his back when he sought a quarter of an hour's rest here or ten minutes there? What was this sentiment? Nothing but a certainty that this was the last voyage the ship was ever to make--a feeling of intense conviction, which had been growing upon him for some time, that all in the ship were doomed. For he, at least, could see--_he_ was not blind yet--and, more than all else on board, perhaps, could feel; and his sight showed him things over the water, in the density of the atmosphere, even in the appearance of the brassy heavens above, which told him that, ere long, the slight whispering breeze which blew would be changed into a hurricane howling across the ocean. His feelings, his nerves, the moisture of his skin corroborated, also, what his sight proclaimed.

'It will come,' he muttered to himself, as now he paced the after-deck, with his eyes never off the light sail that the ship was carrying. 'It will come soon, and then we are done for, even though I get every inch of canvas off her first. This man's death leaves me and three other sailors as the only persons to work the ship. It is strange if, even under bare poles, we continue to swim.'

Then, as he turned his head towards where Bella (who had soon recovered from her faintness) was now standing talking with her uncle and her lover, he muttered another sentence to himself--a sentence which, should a romancist or a dramatist inspire one of his characters with it, would, perhaps, be deemed unnatural, yet which this man of iron will and fierce determination muttered to himself as calmly as he would have given an order to one of his few remaining sailors.

'If it blows, as I believe it will, twenty-four hours will see the end of us all. She--oh, my God! she will be dead--but so will he and so shall I. Well, there's consolation in that. If I can't have her, no more can he. That thought makes the end mighty cheap.'

Here he strode towards those three standing by the break of the poop, and touching his cap to Bella--he was, as she had observed, a gentleman, and in all that became the outward semblance of a gentleman he never failed--he said quietly to the poor, blind captain standing by her side with his fingers resting lightly on her arm:

'We must get in all the sail, sir, now. There is a change coming; I know it--feel it. The glass, too, stands very low, and since we cannot work the ship in a storm, short-handed as we are, we had better commence at once. It will be pitch dark in ten minutes and there is no moon.'

'Good God!' exclaimed Pooley, 'what is to happen next? The glass low, you say? Well, that means a change of some sort, though not necessarily bad weather. What are these feelings you speak of, Charke?'

'The feelings of a sailor,' he replied. 'You know them as well as I do. Ha!' he exclaimed, 'there's lightning in the south. No time to be lost.'

Then he seized the boatswain's whistle, which he had hung round his neck and used since the man himself had become disabled, and blew it as a signal to his three remaining hands to be ready for his orders.

'Now then,' he cried, 'up with you and stow the few sails that there are. What do you say?'--to one who muttered something--'tired--been working all day? Why, damn you! haven't I been working too.' Charke rarely swore, but he was impelled to do so now, especially as he had moved out of Bella's hearing. 'Do you see that lightning down there in the south? Do you want the ship to be blown over and go to the bottom in her? Here, you stop at the wheel,' addressing the man who was already at it, 'we others can do it somehow. Follow me'; and away he went to the topsail yard, selecting the most arduous part of the business for himself. While he muttered to himself as he did so: 'Now, if I should go, too--fall off the yard--they are doomed beyond all help. Nothing then can save him.' Which thought caused a strange, weird kind of smile to be on his face as he sprang up the ratlins.

And, stirred to action by his own indomitable energy, the men did set about the work and managed it somehow, the sails being stowed in a very unshipshape fashion (or what would have been an unshipshape fashion if the proper quantity of sailors had been there to do the job) and in such a manner that the first gust of the coming tempest would be as likely as not to blow them clean off their lashings. Still, it was done at last, and not too soon either, since, ere they had concluded their work, the lightning was flashing incessantly and huge drops of rain were falling.

'It's a south-easterly wind,' said Gilbert to Bella, turning his cheek towards it. 'Where will it blow us to now?'

Charke thought he knew, as he listened to the remarks, since he had returned to their vicinity after coming down from the topsail-yard, but he uttered never a word. Even now he loved the girl by their side too much to frighten her more than was necessary. Yet, had he said that he knew that, short of a miracle, it must be the bottom of the ocean--as was the case--she would probably not have heard him, since, at this moment, with a devilish shriek, the gale was upon them. Upon them and almost pooping the ship as it struck her right aft, and then driving her forward in the churned sea with a horrible, sickening motion, while, since she was fairly deeply laden, she recovered herself from the avalanche of water but slowly. An avalanche that, sweeping over the poop with a roar and a swish, took Bella and Gilbert off their feet and hurled them forward staggering, and buffeted against each other.

'Below--go below, all of you!' roared Charke to them, and also to Pooley, who had himself been sent sliding along the deck and was now hanging on to a belaying-pin, even as he called out to know where Bella was. 'Below, I say! We must close the hatches, or she will have the sea in her. Below, quick!' and, rushing towards Bella, he led her to the after-companion, dragging Gilbert with his other hand and returning for Pooley. And now the tropical lightning--that violet-hued lightning which is so beautiful and also so sure a sign of awful turbulence in the elements--played incessantly on the ill-starred _Emperor of the Moon_; the seas were mountains at one moment, valleys at another. The ship, too, was rolling so that it seemed as if everything on her deck must be pitched off her into the sea--as was indeed the case with many of the smaller things which went to form the raffle lying all about--and each time that she went over to port or starboard she took tons of water over her side. Then, a still more gigantic wave caught her on her port-bow, and absolutely threw her up, it rolling directly afterwards under her counter and letting her drop directly afterwards into the trough, while over her poop, again, came that which seemed to be not a wave but the whole Indian Ocean itself.

Amidst it all Charke still stood at the wheel, holding on to it as perhaps few solitary men had ever held on to a wheel in such a sea before; his arms actually bars of iron, yet appearing to him as though deprived of all sense and feeling. He stood there silent, determined, resolved, awaiting death, knowing that it must come and not dismayed--because it must come to that other, too, that man below in the saloon who loved and was beloved by Bella. Then, suddenly, he knew that he was not to die there alone at his post while his rival expired in his sweetheart's arms, or she in his; he knew--he discovered that not to him alone was to belong all the bravery and the resolution.

Creeping up from below, thanking God that the hatch had not yet been closed, feeling his way by his hands and gradually reaching the wheel--buffeted here and there; knocked down once, then up again--Gilbert Bampfyld crept to his side, and, an instant later, was fingering and, next, gripping the spokes.

'Let me help you!' he roared, so as to be heard, while feeling as he did so which way the other man who already had hold of the wheel was exerting his force. 'Blind as I am, I can do that. Who are you?'

'Stephen Charke,' the other answered, also shrieking his name. 'Help, if you like. But it is useless. We are going.'

'I know it,' Gilbert answered. 'Well! we will go down standing.'

And Charke, still endeavouring to hold up the ship, still to protract life from one moment to another, muttering inwardly: 'Curse him! he is a man. One worthy of her.' Then, unceasingly, he continued his work, wrenching, striving, endeavouring in every way to save the ship from being pooped or flung over as the waves took her and cast her up like a ball, or hurled her down like a falling house into the gaping, hellish troughs that lay below, yawning for their victim.

But still the lightning played upon the doomed craft, illuminating her from stem to stern, showing the fore top-gallant mast gone and the jib-boom carried away, broken off short, three feet from the bowsprit head. Also it showed something else--something that, had he had time to think of aught but preventing the ship from falling off the course he was endeavouring to steer, might have struck a feeling of wild horror to his uncanny breast.

For some of the blind, stricken men forward had crept by now out of the forecastle and other places where they had herded, and were crawling about the foredeck, holding on to whatever they could clutch--belaying-pins, the fife-rail, the racks, even the ring-bolts. Amongst them, too, was the tiger-cub, an almost unrecognisable lump, except for the topaz gleam which his eyes emitted: a gleam that, as a sea, which was in truth a cataract, washed it from the foremast almost to where he stood, appeared to Charke malignant, devilish, threatening. And he heard those unhappy men's voices, cursing, blaspheming, praying: roaring that they feared no death which they could see, but that they wanted to go neither to heaven nor hell enveloped in utter darkness.

'No Jack who ever sailed,' they screamed, 'feared a death that he could face, but we fear this. And if we had but our sight, maybe there'd be no death at all!'

'Ay, but there would, though,' muttered Charke to himself--'there would. Ha! by God, look there,' he cried aloud, forgetting that the only man who could hear his words was blind. The ship had given another hideous plunge--had wrenched herself as a giant might give a wrench in endeavouring to free himself from the chains that bound him--then down! down! down! she went into the hollows of the ocean, so that up above her on either side were nothing but vast walls of sea. Walls that would, that must close together, Charke understood, fifty feet above their heads, leaving the ship beneath them. And then he turned to the other man by his side, saying calmly: 'Now is the time! You love Bella Waldron. So do I. And neither of us will ever set eyes on her again. Farewell--my rival!'