A Veldt Official Part 38

Here was a new and truly appalling peril. Strange that up till then this form of it had hardly occurred to him. Infested as the tropical seas are with these horrible creatures, yet from the swiftly moving steamer none had hitherto been sighted. In all the excitement of getting clear of the sinking ship, in the hour of effort and of action, his whole mind had been centred on the means of keeping themselves afloat, and once afloat, of the wherewithal to sustain life as long as possible. Now the imminence of this hideous peril was forcibly thrust upon him. He momentarily expected to feel the sudden crunch of one of these voracious monsters "rising" him from the depths beneath.

He looked at the wet, gliding fin. It was moving _away_ from their frail floating refuge, _increasing_ the s.p.a.ce between. This conveyed but small comfort. He had known sharks swim round and round a ship for hours, ever keeping at a respectful distance, ever appearing to be moving in the contrary direction; yet somehow there they were ever about the same distance ahead. This one was not going to leave them: no such luck. Besides, where there was one there were more.

"Mona, dear. I think I will get up on the hatch again, and rest a little," he said, wishing to spare her the alarm, the consternation, of his terrible discovery.

She reached out a hand to him with a murmur of welcome. He climbed to his former position, for he, too, was growing very weak, and he wanted to rest and think. And as he did so, his eyes fell upon another glistening fin, seeming to appear on the very spot where he had seen the first. Great Heaven! there were two of them.

And the result of his thinking was that Roden Musgrave, himself no stranger to peril, came to the conclusion that if ever living mortal had found himself in a situation of more unique and ghastly horror, why, then he had never heard of it. The raft, submerged by their double weight, might afford a sufficient depth of water for the sharks, growing bold, to s.n.a.t.c.h them from it, or possibly to capsize it. On the other hand, were he to resume his swimming he might be seized at any moment, and certainly would be sooner or later.

Suddenly he became conscious of a shock, a slight momentary jarring, as though their precarious support had b.u.mped, had touched a sunken reef; yet not, for there was a most distinct feeling that the impact was that of something living. Quickly, but carefully he looked forth, just in time to catch a glimpse of a long, hideous, ill-defined shape changing from white to dull ugly green, as it turned over with serpentine writhe and sank out of sight in the opal depths.

Mona saw it too, and a low cry of horror escaped her. She started up, shivering with fear, her eyes wild and dilated. The hatch listed dangerously on its balance. Then in a tone of unutterable terror which curdled her listener's blood, she cried,

"Look! look! It is coming again!"

It was. Emboldened by their apparent helplessness, the tiger of the sea was bent upon making another attempt to obtain his prey. The grisly snout, the cruel eye, the white belly, the long glutinous tail, every detail of the sea-demon stood clear, as it rushed straight through the water with an unswerving velocity, which should throw it right upon the hatch. But, with lightning swiftness, it sank, and, as it pa.s.sed underneath, again that shock was felt, this time with increased violence. Then, as they looked forth, behold several of those gliding, glistening, triangular fins, cleaving without effort in their stealthy, creeping way through the mirror-like surface. Here, indeed, with only a few square feet of submerged planking between them and destruction in the most hideous and horrible of forms, they realised their utter helplessness. The ravening monsters closed in nearer and nearer.

And now as the very lowest depths of despair seemed reached, hope dawned once more, faintly enkindled, but still, hope. Low down upon the far horizon hung a dark vaporous cloud. It grew, waxing larger and larger.

The smoke of a steamship.

Both had seen it, both with their heads on a level with the surface of the sea. Then came another jarring shock, followed immediately by another, and a rushing swirl as the tigers of the deep, now growing bold in their impatience, as though divining that their prey would soon be s.n.a.t.c.hed from them, darted to and fro, striving to capsize the cranky support.

"We are saved! But--will they see us? Will they see us?" gasped Mona, in agony, straining her eyes upon the now rapidly advancing object. The latter became plainer and plainer every moment, and resolved itself into the masts and yards, then the funnel and hull, of a large steamship.

And the course she was steering could not fail to bring her very near.

But the heads of two people do not const.i.tute a very prominent object of attention on the surface of the wide sea, even at a short distance. The vessel drew nearer and nearer, till she was almost abeam. But not nearly so close as they had at first expected.

By now they were in the midst of a perfect shoal of the ravenous monsters; black fins glistening above the surface; dull, tumbling, snaky shapes, writhing, turning over beneath it; the glint of a ravening eye; the gap of a frightful month, armed with its bristling rows of pointed teeth. The sea boiled and babbled with the rush of the hideous beasts.

Scarcely a minute went by without bringing with it the shock of their onslaught. And the ship was pa.s.sing--pa.s.sing.

Then both these castaways, lifting up their voices, sent up a long, loud ringing shout. But what avail was that in the great immensity of s.p.a.ce?

Why, the clanging of the engines, even the chatter of the pa.s.sengers on board the pa.s.sing vessel, would be enough to drown it.

But the cry on Mona's part ended in a wild, quavering shriek of terror.

There was a shock greater than any that had hitherto occurred, and a most horrible crunch of something. The hatch rocked terribly, trembling upon the very verge of capsizal. A huge shark had risen, and turning over had seized a portion of Mona's robe which trailed out beyond the edge, at the same time crunching splinters out of the hard wood; and it was the lash of his tail as he discovered the empty nature of his find, and sounded again into the depths, which had come so near capsizing the hatch. Well indeed might Mona scream and nearly lose her mind with horror, as she realised what would have happened but for her being secured to the ring-bolt. Nature would bear no more. She was half fainting.

Her companion saw it all too; realised what had happened as thoroughly as she did; more, he realised what would happen, failing one alternative. With the rapidity of mind which was characteristic of him, that alternative had already presented itself, and it was a ghastly one.

This was it. _One of they two must abandon the hatch, abandon it altogether_.

The quiet, easy death of the deep waters, the death by drowning, he would have welcomed, did they but share it together. But now? The picture of her, rent limb from limb by these tigers of the sea! Horror!

That put another face on the affair. The ship was already pa.s.sing.

With two on the hatch, the latter was submerged, and their heads presented no point of attraction. But with only one upon it, it would float flush with the surface, and its dark, oblong shape would stand a far greater chance of being sighted from the pa.s.sing steamer. Further, it would be almost secure from capsizing.

"Kiss me, Mona! Mine in death!"

They lay close together on the hatch. Shuddering, shrinking still with the horror of that last terrible fright, she clung to him, and thus-- their lips washed by the phosph.o.r.escent brine of the tropical ocean, in the extreme moment of their peril--they kissed. Gently, but forcibly, parting her grasp, Roden raised his head, and sent forth over the waste of waters a long, piercing, pealing shout. Then, sliding from the raft, he sank.

The hatch, relieved of his weight, rose immediately, floating square upon the surface, the dark wood framing its white burden in its midst.

But the moments vent by, and still no hideous stain rose to empurple the green translucent plain of liquid light. Had the dauntless resolution of his sacrifice carried him down into immeasurable depths, whither even the ravening sea-tigers did not penetrate? It seemed so. "Love! love!

where are you?" whispered Mona, her exhausted voice wild with alarm.

And then such a curdling, piercing shriek rang out over the immensity of s.p.a.ce as even to surpa.s.s that call for help uttered with the last breath of a dying man. "Love! love! you have given your life for mine! O G.o.d!

O G.o.d! take mine, for it is worthless to me now!"

CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE.

CONCLUSION.

"We therefore commit her body to the deep..."

The voice of the captain of the _Launceston Castle_ takes on more than the ordinary solemnity which almost invariably comes into the voice of the nonprofessional reader of that most solemn office, the Burial of the Dead at Sea. The demeanour, too, of his audience--officers, crew, pa.s.sengers alike--is more than ordinarily solemn, while many of the female portion of it are sobbing aloud. There is something so pathetic, so heart-rending in this last stage of a terrible drama of the sea--the only survivor of a terrible tragedy being thus cast up in their midst: this royally beautiful form, a n.o.ble embodiment of youth and health and grace, found floating, lashed to the ring-bolts of a ship's hatch; alone in the immensity of ocean; rescued from the deep, only to return immediately to the deep again. For Mona is dead. Her overwhelming agony of grief, combined with her recent terrors and exhaustion, had done its work; and no sooner had they safely lifted her to the deck of the _Launceston Castle_ than the spirit fled, leaving a name trembling upon the lips of its forsaken tenement, and that name they who stood by could hear.

Yet it was a name which, coupled with many a pa.s.sionate adjuration, had been heard already and many times by some. When the hatch, lightened of its double weight, rose above the surface, its dark oblong at once attracted the eyes of the look-out on board the _Launceston Castle_, outward bound. At the same time the wild, pealing cry of agony and despair came faintly yet distinctly to horror-stricken ears.

The officer in charge of the boat which took off the frenzied, delirious castaway from her frail support, was able to glean, amid those most awesome revelations of a wandering mind, not only the heart-rending outlines of a life's drama and a deliberate and exalted act of self-sacrifice, but a very fair inkling of the nature and magnitude of the hideous catastrophe which had befallen; and as a direct result the ship was enabled, within a day or so, to pick up two boatloads of the survivors of the ill-fated _Scythian_.

And now the flag drooping at half-mast, the propeller of the _Launceston Castle_, slowed down almost to stopping point, beating drearily in the depths as though in sombre and measured dirge, amid the sobs of women and the husky and suspicious clearing of male throats, the grizzled captain, his book trembling in his bronzed, knotted grasp, p.r.o.nounces the commendatory words:

"'We therefore commit her body to the deep--to be turned into corruption--looking for the resurrection of the body--when the Sea shall give up her dead...'"

There is a hollow, splashless plunge. All is over.

Far down into the dim, waveless, rayless depths, Mona has gone. And there, where he who gave his life for her, and gave it in vain, has already gone, she will rest--they both will rest--until the Sea shall give up her dead.

The End.