Chapter XVIII: 'she Will Never Know'

'How in Heaven's name has she ever done it?' muttered Charke to himself, three minutes later, as, dripping like a dog dragged out of a pond, he still stood by the wheel while holding on like a vice to the spokes. And still both he and Gilbert had each got their legs twisted in the radii to prevent them from slipping, since now the ship lay over frightfully to starboard and did not recover herself at all. 'Ah, well,' he continued, 'it does not matter much how. Another five minutes and over she goes--turtle. It is a hundred to one she has six feet of water below.'

How had she done it? That was the wonder, the marvel; the more especially a wonder if, as Charke thought, she had six feet of water in her, since twice that amount would have taken her to the bottom even though she lay in the most tranquil waters of the universe. It was impossible she would have risen again, if overloaded thus. Yet, water in her or not, she had accomplished a marvellous feat for any craft that ever left the shipbuilder's yard. For, from down below in those awful depths, with, on either side of her, and glistening all around her in the glare of the lightning like the sides of a crevasse, those walls of sea, she had still risen above them and had (a moment or so after they seemed to be closing in on her and shutting her out for ever from the world above) been once more poised on the crest of a huge billow. She had done it, and now lay listing over on to her starboard side, as some great wounded creature might do whose right ribs had all been broken in by the blows of a pole-axe. But still she travelled through the water in the darkness of the night; for now the lightning was ceasing and, also, she carried no lighted lantern since there were none to attend to such things--while, even though there had been, the beating of the gale would soon have extinguished them. She travelled swiftly, too, cutting her way through billow and wave, taking in huge seas aft which swept her decks--yet going still. But with some of those spectral forms, those blind groping men, departed for ever; swept down the sloping deck by tons of water, down and over into the ocean. And of the few, the three who had still their sight, one lay with a broken neck at the foot of the foredeck companion-way, having been flung down the hatch-way head foremost; the other two were drunk. They had broken into the steward's room, where there were none to control them, and had found some bottles of beer, as well as one of brandy and one of rum--and this was the result!

At that moment the wheel spun round in Gilbert's hands, dragging him with it in its revolution, so that he thought he would have to let go or be thrown in a somersault over into the sea; then, as he forced it back, he heard Charke's voice bellowing at him:

'Can you hold her up for five minutes? I can grasp the spokes no more; I am done. I would not have let go like that, God knows I wouldn't, but I have lost all sensation in my arms and hands. I will lead Fagg out. Perhaps he can help.'

'I may hold her steady,' Gilbert answered, 'but no more. What can a blind, stricken man do?'

'It is enough,' Charke said. 'Sight would not aid you to do more, and, after all, it is of no use. We but prolong life for nothing. Yet, here goes.'

He made his way below, falling, sliding down the companion-ladder, tumbling along in the darkness to where he judged the door of Fagg's cabin was; he fell over things that had been hurled out of the steward's pantry on the port side--broken dishes, plates, tin utensils, potatoes peeled ready for cooking, and a joint of meat--he felt all these with his feet and benumbed hands, and found a bottle, too, which his smell told him was rum. Then he tore the cork out of it with his teeth and drained a tumblerful of the raw spirits. That gave him fresh life and energy; the blood coursed and danced through his veins again, his fingers began to feel, his arms to strengthen. Sliding back the door of Fagg's cabin he called him by name, and, receiving no answer, felt in the berth to see if he was there, while, even as he discovered that the bed was empty, he trod on an upturned face, and then stooped down and felt it and the head, and found the latter all broken. Whereby he understood what had happened to the unfortunate young officer, and knew that he had either been hurled out of his bed against a bulkhead, or, being out of it, had been dashed to death.

He would have gone back now to relieve Gilbert, and was turning to do so when his eye caught the glimmer of a light down the narrow gangway leading to the saloon, and he knew at once that somehow those within had managed to get the bracket-lamp over the table lit. Whereon he went towards that saloon, intent on seeing how those who were in it--especially _one_ in it--were preparing to meet their end. Were they bearing up bravely? Was she--was that girl who maddened him, that girl, through his unrequited love for whom, he knew, he felt, that all his better qualities had been driven out of him--preparing to meet her death nobly, valiantly?

The sight he saw might have struck horror to a bolder, a better man than he. A sight more fitting to meet the eyes of one who gazed into a catacomb or charnel-house than into what had been, not long before, a pretty, bright saloon. Mrs. Pooley lay flat upon her back, moaning feebly, her stout body rolling backwards and forwards with every swing of the ship and every plunge it made. The captain was on his face, and above him lay half the debris of the shattered, sea-wrecked cabin.

But Bella! She frightened, startled him!

'The others may be dead,' he whispered, 'but she, surely she is alive. God! how her eyes stare, yet--yet how lovely she is still.'

The girl was sitting upright upon the saloon sofa, her hands gripping the head of it as though, all unconscious as she appeared to be, she still knew that she must do that to save herself from being flung down, and her lips moved faintly. Then he wrenched the bottle of rum from out of his pocket, he having put it there with a view to administering some to Gilbert when he regained the deck, rival though he was, and moistened her lips with it.

'Miss Waldron--Bella,' he whispered, allowing himself in those last moments the luxury of calling her by the name that he had whispered so often softly to himself. 'Bella! for God's sake, say something. Tell me that you are not dying.'

And she did whisper something--a word that he heard above all the roar of the hurricane thundering aloft, above the awful concussions of the ship's sides as again and again the tons of water struck at her, heavily, savagely, and as, also, she struck at them in her maimed progress; above even the rattle of ship's furniture rolling about, and the sickening thumps of the unlashed piano as it beat against the stem of the mizzen-mast. She whispered a word or so.

'Gilbert,' those white, cold lips muttered; 'Gilbert, my darling, we are dying together. Clasp me to your arms now. Hold me in them to the end.'

With a moan, not a curse!--a curse would not have availed or eased him now--he started back in that dim cabin, hurling the bottle from him as he did so. His rival! his rival! again, even now! His name the last word on her lips, his image the last thing present to her in the hour of death. Then he fled from the cabin back again to his post, back to the wheel to which he swore he would lash himself, and so go down thinking of nothing but his duty. There was, his fevered mind told him, nothing but that--but his duty--left. As he went along he noticed, distraught though he was, that the vessel was making a kind of rotatory movement under him; that she seemed, indeed, to be gliding round and round in a circle although beaten back more than once by the awful force beneath her.

'He has left the wheel!' he cried, his swift and accurate seaman's knowledge and intelligence telling him at once what had happened. 'Is he mad--or dead?'

And clutching, grasping at everything that offered a hold to him, he forced himself back to where the wheel stood, only to find when there that Gilbert was lying senseless by it. Senseless but not dead, as one thrust of Charke's hand under the other's wet clothes, towards the region of the heart, told him very well. An instant later he had resumed his hold on the spokes, and was endeavouring to put the ship on her course before the howling winds, to keep her straight on into the dark, impenetrable depth of blackness ahead of her.

Again the marvel was that she did not go over, or did not suddenly sink beneath the weight of water that was pouring in on all sides--sink like a stone. And he began to tell himself now that, as she had borne up so long, as the storm could, by no possibility, become worse and must, at last, abate, there was still a hope. A hope of what? That he and Bella might both be saved; be saved, and saved alone, together. 'She is alive and I am alive. The others are dead, or dying. Oh, God! if she and I are spared----'

But that sentence was never finished!

For, as he partly uttered it there came an awful crash, a crash that hurled him back, then flung him over and over on the poop--a grinding, horrible concussion, followed by the most terrible thumps and by the sudden cessation of the ship's passage. And, a moment later, the vessel heeled over, though still beating and thumping heavily, so that now the water poured into her forwards, and, gradually, her fore-part was entirely immersed. But still the pounding and the awful grating continued, while growing worse and worse.

'She has struck,' he muttered to himself. 'Struck on a reef or a rock. The end has truly come.'

In a moment he had picked himself up from the poop-deck, and, difficult as it was to move with the vessel beating backwards and forwards, had dragged himself down to the saloon--down to where Bella was, the woman whom he would save or die with.

The lamp had gone out with the concussion. All was in darkness, and, above the roar of the tempest outside, he could hear the furniture beating about the saloon as the ship swayed and wrenched. Yet he went on towards where he had left her ten minutes before; on towards the sofa on which she had been sitting almost unconscious.

She was not there he found, but, instead, lying insensible at the foot of the sofa. Insensible, he knew, because, to his words, his summons, she returned no answer. Then, in a moment, he had seized her in his arms, had lifted her up, and, with her head upon his shoulder, was groping his way with unsteady, stumbling feet towards the gangway.

Her head upon his shoulder now, her hair brushing his face now, in this moment, in the hour of destruction--for one, for both of them! Her head upon his shoulder! And he a mortal man! It was beyond endurance; more than he could bear! Acknowledging this, recognising it, he slightly moved, with the hand which was around those shoulders, that face so close to him, that face so close, so cold and chill--and kissed her long and passionately.

'She will never know,' he muttered, 'never know. Yet--yet it has made death sweeter. Death! the death that will be ours ere many more moments have passed.'

Yet, near as that death was, so near as to be beyond all doubt, as much beyond all doubt as that the rocking, shivering ship was breaking up fast, he felt his way towards where he knew the life-buoys were, and rapidly fitted one on to each of them; while, as he did so, he murmured again and again:

'If any are saved it can only be she and I. Yet even of that there is no hope.'