Foe-Farrell Part 32

But--here's the puzzle--strange to say, at that time, and for a long while, these two pa.s.sions did not conflict or even contend at all, as neither did they help. I couldn't hate Farrell any worse than I did already. If I'd hated him just a little less, I might have killed him, to get him out of the way. But I give you my word, I never thought of shortening the chase in that way. Farrell, you may say, had become necessary to me: by this time I couldn't think of living without him. . . . Now I know what's crossing your mind. I might have piled up the torture on Farrell, and at the same time have played on that other pa.s.sion, by setting myself to debauch Santa.

No, I'm not complaining. You shall have as bad to condemn before I've done, so you needn't apologise. But, as it happens, I wasn't that sort of blackguard. Moreover, it wouldn't have worked, anyhow.

Santa was as good as her name--

"No, d.a.m.n it! I will clear myself of _that_! . . . You'll understand that I loved the woman, and--well, in the old days, as you'll do me the justice to remember, I hated men who played loose among women.

As for 'making love' to Santa--oh, I can't explain to you, who never saw her, how utterly that was beyond question on either side. . . .

Almost white she was, with the blood of the Incas in her--blood of Castile, too, belike--and yet all of a woman, with funny rustic ways that turned at any moment to royal. . . . And she loved Farrell--my G.o.d!

"I wonder now if she guessed--guessed at the time, I mean. They say that women always guess; which in these matters is as good as knowing. . . . But I'm holding up my story."

"The _Eurotas_ went down in something like 36, south lat.i.tude, longitude 105 and a half west. That's as near as I make it: that is to say, some three or four hundred miles from any known land save Easter Island, which lay well away north and to windward, for we were down where the main winds set between W. and N. That's as close as I can give it to you. In seafaring matters I leave seamen to their own job, and don't worry about reckonings and day's runs. It's their business to take me, mine to trust their skill. You will own, Roddy, that if fools had only kept their noses out of _my_ job in life, I shouldn't be having to tell you this story.

"Anyhow, Macnaughten--that was the skipper's name--took all the ship's instruments with him on board his own boat, which was the last to quit.

"He was a good man, and I couldn't but admire his behaviour, first and last. The _Eurotas_ went down within half an hour of the first explosion; which had surprised us pa.s.sengers on deck as we were chatting and watching the sunset. The sea was calm as a pond, with a bank of cloud to northward, all edged with gold on its western fringes.

"I think this calm, resting over sea and sky, may have helped us through the catastrophe. The only irritation I felt was at the slowness of it all, between the moment we knew we were lost and the moment when the vessel went down. Yet every moment between was used to a nicety, almost as if Captain Macnaughten had been preparing for the test. He commanded us, crew and pa.s.sengers alike.

Four stokers had been killed below: another and the engineer officer badly hurt. These two were fetched up while some of us lowered the accommodation-ladder and others swung out the boats on the davits.

These two sick men were carried down to the first of the three boats launched. Four women pa.s.sengers followed; three married, one a spinster. The three husbands were ordered down after them.

"The _Eurotas_, as I've told you, was a new ship, well found to the last life-buoy. The directors of the Company had lunched on board before she sailed and drunk to her health, having seen that everything answered to advertis.e.m.e.nt. The boats were staunch, newly painted and smart: the crew as well-picked a lot as the Board could find. So far as I can recall those hurrying minutes, I remember them as being almost intolerably slow. I cannot say how many of them it took before we realised for a certainty that the ship was going down.

But I know that as, by order, I went down the ladder to the second boat, I had a sense of irritation at the long time it was taking and the methodical way the skipper was getting out stores and water-breakers and having them hefted down.

"Another thing I must tell you. As I went down the ladder--the ship's bows already beginning to dip steeply--I had a sense of being in no _time_ at all, but in eternity. There around us, spread and placid, stretched the emptiest waste of the Pacific, with G.o.d's sun deserting the sky above it, sinking almost as fast as the ship was sinking.

"Santa had wrapped her mantilla over her head. She went down the ladder before me, following Farrell. Our boat was white-painted on thwarts and stern-sheets. . . . I was keeping my foothold with difficulty, loaded with a water-breaker. . . . A man took it from me, all in silence. I gripped Farrell's hand and hoiked him on board. There was a great silence hanging, as it seemed, about those last moments.

"We pushed off a little way. The third and last boat was lowered down, and we saw the last half-dozen, with the captain at their heels, tumbling down in a stampede.

"The _Eurotas_ took her plunge just as we heard them unhook from the davit-blocks."

NIGHT THE SIXTEENTH.

CAPTAIN MACNAUGHTEN.

(Foe's Narrative Continued.)

"I once read a novel called _One Traveller Returns_. That's all I remember of it--the t.i.tle.

"Well, I am that traveller: and if ever I write down the story of the _Eurotas_, and in particular of what was suffered on board her boat No. 2, I have no doubt that nine readers out of ten will forget the details just as soon and just as completely. There is a horrible sameness about these narratives, Roddy; and the truer they are (as I've proved) the nearer they resemble one another. Monotonous they are--these drawn-out agonies--as the sea itself upon which they are enacted. From time to time you sit up half-awake out of your stupor, and then you know that something is going to happen, and also that it is something you've read about somewhere, something that you've _lived_ through (or so it seems) in dreams, or in a previous existence. You hardly know which; and you don't care, much.

It's going to be horrible, you know: it's going to be all the more horrible, in its way, for being conventional. You want to get it over and pa.s.s on to the next stereotyped nightmare. That's the feeling.

"So I'm going to confine my tale pretty closely to myself and what pulled me through. . . . But before I get to this I must tell you of two shocks that fell on me before I came to it, and seemed to promise that the books were all wrong and not half vivid enough. I dare say that quite a number of survivors have tried to paint the sense of loneliness that swooped on them in the first few seconds after their ship had slid down. But I'll swear I had read nothing to prepare me for it. . . . It's not a ship--it's a continent--that vanishes.

The little hole it has made in the water calls to the whole ocean to cover it, and the ocean widens out its horizon by ten times all around, at once pouring in and spreading itself to isolate you ten times farther from help. . . . n.o.body who hasn't been through this and felt it for himself can understand how promptly and easily-- without help of quenching their thirst in salt water--men go mad, in open boats, at sea.

"But I believe the shock of loneliness at sunrise was even more hideous. One is prepared for it, in a way; otherwise it would, I am sure, be far more hideous. Santa confessed to me, on the second day, that she had felt--and, she believed, could feel--nothing more dreadful. As she put it, 'You see, my friend, when the sky lightens at length, you have a.s.surance of G.o.d, and that G.o.d is help.

Then, when He sends up no help, but a great staring sun to watch your misery, hour by hour, G.o.d turns to devil and you only long for night--when, at least, the dew falls.'

"Between sunset and sunrise, however, I was kept fairly busy.

For the _Eurotas_ had scarcely been twenty minutes under water, and night had barely fallen, before the captain's boat ranged up to us.

She carried a lantern in her bows, and I had found one and was lighting it after his example.

"'Names on board!' he demanded. We gave them through Grimalson, the second mate, who was in charge. He said no more for about half a minute, during which time no doubt he was running through the list in his head. Then, 'That's all right,' he announced cheerily.

'You'll set watches, Mr. Grimalson, and keep her in easy hail.

The weather will certainly hold fine for a bit, and early to-morrow I'll be alongside again with instructions. Plumb south our course lies, for the present. I'll tell you why, later. You have a sail?"

"'Ay, sir,' answered Grimalson.

"'Right. But don't hoist it unless I signal. . . . Yes, yes, not a draught at present. But if a breeze should get up, don't hoist sail without instructions. We keep together--that's the main point.

Just pull along easy--I'll set the pace--and keep in my wake, course due south. Those that aren't pulling will act wise to trust in G.o.d and get some sleep. . . . Is that Doctor Foe there forra'd, with the lantern?'

"'Ay, sir,' I answered up.

"'Then as soon as you've fixed it, sir, I'll ask you to jump aboard and along with us for to-night. I've poor Jock Abercrombie here-- fetched him and Swainson out of No. 1 boat'--These were the two injured men: Abercrombie, our Chief Engineer, by far the worst burnt--'I doubt if he'll last till morning: but we've been friends from boys, Jock and me, and if you can do aught, sir, to make his pa.s.sing easier--'

"I asked him to wait while I fetched my medicine-chest, and was transhipped with it into the captain's boat. They had laid Abercrombie in the stern-sheets, with the stoker Swainson beside him.

Abercrombie's plight was hopeless; flesh of chest and arms all red-raw from the scorching, and the man palpably dying from shock.

"'I had him into my boat, sir,' Macnaughten explained gravely, 'because we'd shipped the ladies--all but Mrs. Farrell--in No. 1, and I don't want 'em to be distressed more than necessary. . . . A man can't think of everything all in five minutes, but I got him out of it, soon as I could. There's no hope, think you?'

"'Between you and me, none,' said I, sinking my voice.

"'That's what I reckoned,' said the skipper, with just a nod of his head. He had taken the tiller and sent all the crew, saving four men rowing, forward whilst I examined the patients. 'Jock wouldn't be one to let out a groan if he knew there were women by to be scared by it. . . . Also, Doctor, if he's dying, I'd like to be handy by, if you understand. I got him this berth. We were friends, always.'

"I found some cotton-wool and a tin of vaseline, and coated the poor man's hurts as well as I could. Then, as he still groaned, though more feebly, I got out my phial of morphia and a needle. As I held the bottle against a sort of binnacle-light by which Macnaughten sat steering, I caught his eyes staring down on me, quiet and solemn.

I tell you, that man was a man, Roddy.

"'Yes, I know, Doctor,' he said quietly. 'You're calculating how much there is of it, and how you may have to use it before we're through. . . . What about Swainson?'

"'He'll pull around,' said I. 'The vaseline will ease three-fourths of his trouble within ten minutes.'

"'Keep your voice low,' said the skipper, 'as I'm keeping mine.'

He bent forward, pretending to consult the compa.s.s. 'I've sent all these fellows forward, though they put her down by the head so that it's like steering a monkey by the tail. . . . Now I reckon that you'll be wishful to go back to-morrow, or as soon as may be, and join your party. That's so?'

"'That's so,' said I, as I finished the injection and turned to deal with the stoker.

"'Well, I'd like to have you here aboard,' said the skipper.

'But so's best. We want some brains in No. 2 boat; and, between ourselves, Grimalson hasn't the brains of a hare. He's a second-cousin-twice-removed of one of our directors. He's no seaman at all; and his navigation's all a pretence. . . . I suppose, now, _you_ can't navigate?'

"'Good Lord, no, sir!' said I. 'I just understand the principles of it--that's all.'

"'It's a d.a.m.ned sight more than Grimalson understands, I'll bet,'

responded Captain Macnaughten, studying the binnacle and speaking as though we were discussing the weather and the crops. 'You may push your finger into that man anywhere, he's that soft and boggy--no better'n slush--_and_ pink. . . . Don't you despise a pink-coloured man? Still, I want you to understand, Doctor, that he's the superior officer on No. 2, for the time being.'

"'I understand,' said I, looking up from my business of unguenting the stoker, who was not badly burnt.