Overland Part 54

"Where did you come from? from another vessel?" she asked, stretching out her arms to him again.

"I was here," he said, taking and kissing her hands; "I was here, watching over you. But there is no time to lose. Let me carry you."

"They must be saved," returned Clara, pointing to the staterooms. "Garcia and Coronado are there."

Should he try to deliver those enemies from death? He did not hesitate a moment about it, but bursting open the doors of the two rooms he shouted, "On deck with you! Into the boats! We are sinking!"

Next he set Clara down, pa.s.sed his left arm around her waist, clung to things with his right hand, dragged her up the companionway to the quarter-deck, and lashed her to the weather shrouds, with her feet on the wooden leader. Not a word was spoken during the five minutes occupied by this short journey. Even while Clara was crossing the deck a frothing comber deluged her to her waist, and Thurstane had all he could do to keep her from being flung into the lee scuppers. But once he had her fast and temporarily safe, he made a great effort to smile cheerfully, and said, "Never fear; I won't leave you."

"Oh! to meet to die!" she sobbed, for the strength of the water and the rage of the surrounding sea had frightened her. "Oh, it is cruel!"

Presently she smothered her crying, and implored, "Come up here and tie yourself by my side; I want to hold your hand."

He wondered whether she loved him again, now that she saw him; and in spite of the chilling seas and the death at hand, he thrilled warm at the thought. He was about to obey her when Coronado and Garcia appeared, pale as two ghosts, clinging to each other, tottering and helpless. Thurstane went to them, got the old man lashed to one of the backstays, and helped Coronado to secure himself to another. Garcia was jabbering prayers and crying aloud like a scared child, his jaws shaking as if in a palsy.

Coronado, although seeming resolved to bear himself like an hidalgo and maintain a grim silence, his face was wilted and seamed with anxiety, as if he had become an old man in the night. It was rather a fine sight to see him looking into the face of the storm with an air of defying death and all that it might bring; and perhaps he would have been helpful, and would have shown himself one of the bravest of the brave, had he not been prostrated by sickness. As it was, he took little interest in the fate of others, hardly noticing Thurstane as he resumed his post beside Clara, and only addressing the girl with one word: "Patience!"

Clara and Thurstane, side by side and hand in hand, were also for the most part silent, now looking around them upon their fate, and then at each other for strength to bear it.

Meantime part of the crew had tried the pumps, and been washed away from them twice by seas, floating helplessly about the main deck, and clutching at rigging to save themselves, but nevertheless discovering that the brig was filling but slowly, and would have full time to strike before she could founder.

"'Vast there!" called the captain; "'vast the pumps! All hands stand by to launch the boats!"

"Long boat's stove!" shouted the mate, putting his hands to his mouth so as to be heard through the gale.

"All hands aft!" was the next order. "Stand by to launch the quarter-boats!"

So the entire remaining crew--two mates and eight men, including the steward--splashed and clambered on to the quarter-deck and took station by the boat-falls, hanging on as they could.

"Can I do anything?" asked Thurstane.

"Not yet," answered the captain; "you are doing what's right; take care of the lady."

"What are the chances?" the lieutenant ventured now to inquire.

With fate upon him, and seemingly irresistible, the skipper had dropped his grim air of conflict and become gentle, almost resigned. His voice was friendly, sympathetic, and quite calm, as he stepped up by Thurstane's side and said, "We shall have a tough time of it. The land is only about ten miles away. At this rate we shall strike it inside of three hours. I don't see how it can be helped."

"Where shall we strike?"

"Smack into the Bay of Monterey, between the town and Point Pinos.'

"Can I do anything?"

"Do just what you've got in hand. Take care of the lady. See that she gets into the biggest boat--if we try the boats."

Clara overheard, gave the skipper a kind look, and said, "Thank you, captain."

"You're fit to be capm of a liner, miss," returned the sailor. "You're one of the best sort."

For some time longer, while waiting for the final catastrophe, nothing was done but to hold fast and gaze. The voyagers were like condemned men who are preceded, followed, accompanied, jostled, and hurried to the place of death by a vindictive people. The giants of the sea were coming in mult.i.tudes to this execution which they had ordained; all the windward ocean was full of rising and falling billows, which seemed to trample one another down in their savage haste. There was no mercy in the formless faces which grimaced around the doomed ones, nor in the tempestuous voices which deafened them with threatenings and insult. The breakers seemed to signal to each other; they were cruelly eloquent with menacing gestures.

There was but one sentence among them, and that sentence was a thousand times repeated, and it was always DEATH.

To paint the shifting sublimity of the tempest is as difficult as it was to paint the steadfast sublimity of the Great Canon. The waves were in furious movement, continual change, and almost incessant death. They destroyed themselves and each other by their violence. Scarcely did one become eminent before it was torn to pieces by its comrades, or perished of its own rage. They were like barbarous hordes, exterminating one another or falling into dissolution, while devastating everything in their course.

There was a frantic revelry, an indescribable pandemonium of transformations. Lofty plumes of foam fell into h.o.a.ry, flattened sheets; curling and howling cataracts became suddenly deep hollows. The indigo slopes were marbled with white, but not one of these mottlings retained the same shape for an instant; it was broad, deep, and creamy when the eye first beheld it; in the next breath it was waving, shallow, and narrow; in the next it was gone. A thousand eddies, whirls, and ebullitions of all magnitudes appeared only to disappear. Great and little jets of froth struggled from the agitated centres toward the surface, and never reached it. Every one of the hundred waves which made up each billow rapidly tossed and wallowed itself to death.

Yet there was no diminution in the spectacle, no relaxation in the combat.

In the place of what vanished there was immediately something else. Out of the quick grave of one surge rose the white plume of another. Marbling followed marbling, and cataract overstrode cataract. Even to their bases the oceanic ranges and peaks were full of power, activity, and, as it were, explosions. It seemed as if endless mult.i.tudes of transformations boiled up through them from their abodes in sea-deep caves. There was no exhausting this reproductiveness of form and power. At every glance a thousand worlds of waters had perished, and a thousand worlds of waters had been created. And all these worlds, the new even more than the old, were full of malignity toward the wreck, and bent on its destruction.

The wind, though invisible, was not less wonderful. It surpa.s.sed the ocean in strength, for it chased, gashed, and deformed the ocean. It inflicted upon it countless wounds, slashing fresh ones as fast as others healed. It not only tore off the h.o.a.ry scalps of the billows and flung them through the air, but it wrenched out and hurled large ma.s.ses of water, scattering them in rain and mist, the blood of the sea. Now and then it made all the air dense with spray, causing the Pacific to resemble the Sahara in a simoom. At other times it levelled the tops of scores of waves at once, crushing and kneading them by the immense force that lay in its swiftness.

It would not be looked in the face; it blinded the eyes that strove to search it; it seemed to flap and beat them with harsh, churlish wings; it was as full of insult as the billows. Its cry was not mult.i.tudinous like that of the sea, but one and incessant and invariable, a long scream that almost hissed. On reaching the wreck, however, this shriek became hoa.r.s.e with rage, and howled as it shook the rigging. It used the shrouds and stays of the still upright mainmast as an aeolian harp from which to draw horrible music. It made the tense ropes tremble and thrill, and tortured the spars until they wailed a death-song. Its force as felt by the shipwrecked ones was astonishing; it beat them about as if it were a sea, and bruised them against the shrouds and bulwarks; it a.s.serted its mastery over them with the long-drawn cruelty of a tiger.

Just around the wreck the tumult of both wind and sea was of course more horrible than anywhere else. These enemies were infuriated by the sluggishness of the disabled hulk; they treated it as Indians treat a captive who cannot keep up with their march; they belabored it with blows and insulted it with howls. The brig, constantly tossed and dropped and shoved, was never still for an instant. It rolled heavily and somewhat slowly, but with perpetual jerks and jars, shuddering at every concussion.

Its only regularity of movement lay in this, that the force of the wind and direction of the waves kept it larboard side on, drifting steadily toward the land.

One moment it was on a lofty crest, seeming as if it would be hurled into air. The next it was rolling in the trough of the sea, between a wave which hoa.r.s.ely threatened to engulf it, and another which rushed seething and hissing from beneath the keel. The deck stood mostly at a steep angle, the weather bulwarks being at a considerable elevation, and the lee ones dipping the surges. Against this helpless and partially water-logged ma.s.s the combers rushed incessantly, hiding it every few seconds with sheets of spray, and often sweeping it with deluges. Around the stern and bow the rush of bubbling, roaring whirls was uninterrupted.

The motion was sickly and dismaying, like the throes of one who is dying.

It could not be trusted; it dropped away under the feet traitorously; then, by an insolent surprise, it violently stopped or lifted. It was made the more uncertain and distressing by the swaying of the water which had entered the hull. Sometimes, too, the under boiling of a crushed billow caused a great lurch to windward; and after each of these struggles came a reel to leeward which threatened to turn the wreck bottom up; the breakers meantime leaping aboard with loud stampings as if resolved to beat through the deck.

During hours of this tossing and plunging, this tearing of the wind and battering of the sea, no one was lost. The sailors were cl.u.s.tered around the boats, some clinging to the davits and others lashed to belaying pins, exhausted by long labor, want of sleep, and constant soakings, but ready to fight for life to the last. Coronado and Garcia were still fast to the backstays, the former a good deal wilted by his hardships, and the latter whimpering. Thurstane had literally seized up Clara to the outside of the weather shrouds, so that, although she was terribly jammed by the wind, she could not be carried away by it, while she was above the heaviest pounding of the seas. His own position was alongside of her, secured in like manner by ends of cordage.

Sometimes he held her hand, and sometimes her waist. She could lean her shoulder against his, and she did so nearly all the while. Her eyes were fixed as often on his face as on the breakers which threatened her life.

The few words that she spoke were more likely to be confessions of love than of terror. Now and then, when a billow of unusual size had slipped harmlessly by, he gratefully and almost joyously drew her close to him, uttering a few syllables of cheer. She thanked him by sending all her affectionate heart through her eyes into his.

Although there had been no explanations as to the past, they understood each other's present feelings. It could not be, he was sure, that she clung to him thus and looked at him thus merely because she wanted him to save her life. She had been detached from him by others, he said; she had been drawn away from thinking of him during his absence; she had been brought to judge, perhaps wisely, that she ought not to marry a poor man; but now that she saw him again she loved him as of old, and, standing at death's door, she felt at liberty to confess it. Thus did he translate to himself a past that had no existence. He still believed that she had dismissed him, and that she had done it with cruel harshness. But he could not resent her conduct; he believed what he did and forgave her; he believed it, and loved her.

There were moments when it was delightful for them to be as they were. As they held fast to each other, though drenched and exhausted and in mortal peril, they had a sensation as if they were warm. The hearts were beating hotly clean through the wet frames and the dripping clothing.

"Oh, my love!" was a phrase which Clara repeated many times with an air of deep content.

Once she said, "My love, I never thought to die so easily. How horrible it would have been without you!"

Again she murmured, "I have prayed many, many times to have you. I did not know how the answer would come. But this is it."

"My darling, I have had visions about you," was another of these confessions. "When I had been praying for you nearly all one night, there was a great light came into the room. It was some promise for you. I knew it was then; something told me so. Oh, how happy I was!"

Presently she added, "My dear love, we shall be just as happy as that. We shall live in great light together. G.o.d will be pleased to see plainly how we love each other."

Her only complaints were a patient "Isn't it hard?" when a new billow had covered her from head to foot, crushed her pitilessly against the shrouds, and nearly smothered her.

The next words would perhaps be, "I am so sorry for you, my darling. I wish for your sake that you had not come. But oh, how you help me!"

"I am glad to be here," firmly and honestly and pa.s.sionately responded the young man, raising her wet hand and covering it with kisses. "But you shall not die."

He was bearing like a man and she like a woman. He was resolved to fight his battle to the last; she was weak, resigned, gentle, and ready for heaven.

The land, even to its minor features, was now distinctly visible, not more than a mile to leeward. As they rose on the billows they could distinguish the long beach, the gra.s.sy slopes, and wooded knolls beyond it, the green lawn on which stood the village of Monterey, the whitewashed walls and red-tiled roofs of the houses, and the groups of people who were watching the oncoming tragedy.