Overland Part 55

"Are you not going to launch the boats?" shouted Thurstane after a glance at the awful line of frothing breakers which careered back and forth athwart the beach.

"They are both stove," returned the captain calmly. "We must go ash.o.r.e as we are."

CHAPTER XLI.

When Thurstane heard, or rather guessed from the captain's gestures, that the boats were stove, he called, "Are we to do nothing?"

The captain shouted something in reply, but although he put his hands to his mouth for a speaking trumpet, his words were inaudible, and he would not have been understood had he not pointed aloft.

Thurstane looked upward, and saw for the first time that the main topmast had broken off and been cut clear, probably hours ago when he was in the cabin searching for Clara. The top still remained, however, and twisted through its openings was one end of a hawser, the other end floating off to leeward two hundred yards in advance of the wreck. Fastened to the hawser by a large loop was a sling of cordage, from which a long halyard trailed sh.o.r.eward, while another connected it with the top. All this had been done behind his back and without his knowledge, so deafening and absorbing was the tempest. He saw at once what was meant and what he would have to do. When the brig struck he must carry Clara into the top, secure her in the sling, and send her ash.o.r.e. Doubtless the crowd on the beach would know enough to make the hawser fast and pull on the halyard.

The captain shouted again, and this time he could be understood: "When she strikes hold hard."

"Did you hear him?" Thurstane asked, turning to Clara.

"Yes," she nodded, and smiled in his face, though faintly like one dying.

He pa.s.sed one arm around the middle stay of the shrouds and around her waist, pa.s.sed the other in front of her, covering her chest; and so, with every muscle set, he waited.

Surrounded, pursued, pushed, and hammered by the billows, the wreck drifted, rising and falling, starting and wallowing toward the awful line where the breakers plunged over the undertow and dashed themselves to death on the resounding sh.o.r.e. There was a wide debatable ground between land and water. One moment it belonged to earth, the next lofty curling surges foamed howling over it; then the undertow was flying back in savage torrents. Would the hawser reach across this flux and reflux of death?

Would the mast hold against the grounding shock? Would the sling work?

They lurched nearer; the shock was close at hand; every one set teeth and tightened grip. Lifted on a monstrous billow, which was itself lifted by the undertow and the shelving of the beach, the hulk seemed as if it were held aloft by some demon in order that it might be dashed to pieces. But the wave lost its hold, swept under the keel, staggered wildly up the slope, broke in a huge white deafening roll, and rushed backward in torrents. The brig was between two forces; it struck once, but not heavily; then, raised by the incoming surge, it struck again; there was an awful consciousness and uproar of beating and grinding; the next instant it was on its beam ends and covered with cataracts.

Every one aboard was submerged. Thurstane and Clara were overwhelmed by such a ma.s.s of water that they thought themselves at the bottom of the sea. Two men who had not mounted the rigging, but tried to cling to the boat davits, were hurled adrift and sent to agonize in the undertow. The brig trembled as if it were on the point of breaking up and dissolving in the horrible, furious yeast of breakers. Even to the people on sh.o.r.e the moment and the spectacle were sublime and tremendous beyond description.

The vessel and the people on board disappeared for a time from their sight under jets and cascades of surf. The spray rose in a dense sheet as high as the maintopmast would have been had it stood upright.

When Thurstane came out of his state of temporary drowning, he was conscious of two sailors clambering by him toward the top, and heard a shout in his ears of "Cast loose."

It was the captain. He had sprung alongside of Clara, and was already unwinding her lashings. Thrice before the job was done they were buried in surf, and during the third trial they had to hold on with their hands, the two men clasping the girl desperately and pressing her against the rigging. It was a wonder that she and all of them were not disabled, for the jamming of the water was enough to break bones.

They got her up a few ratlines; then came another surge, during which they gripped hard; then there was a second ascent, and so on. The climbing was the easier and the holding on the more difficult, because the mast was depressed to a low angle, its summit being hardly ten feet higher than its base. Even in the top there was a desperate struggle with the sea, and even after Clara was in the sling she was half drowned by the surf.

Meantime the people on sh.o.r.e had made fast the hawser to a tree and manned the halyard. Not a word was uttered by Clara or Thurstane when they parted, for she was speechless with exhaustion and he with anxiety and terror. The moment he let go of her he had to grip a loop of top-hamper and hold on with all his might to save himself from being pitched into the water by a fresh jerk of the mast and a fresh inundation of flying surge.

When he could look at her again she was far out on the hawser, rising and falling in quick, violent, perilous swings, caught at by the toppling breakers and howled at by the undertow. Another deluge blinded him; as soon as he could he gazed sh.o.r.eward again, and shrieked with joy; she was being carefully lifted from the sling; she was saved--if she was not dead.

When the apparatus was hauled back to the top the captain said to Thurstane, "Your turn now."

The young man hesitated, glanced around for Coronado and Garcia, and replied, "Those first."

It was not merely humanity, and not at all good-will toward these two men, which held him back from saving his life first; it was mainly that motto of n.o.bility, that phrase which has such a mighty influence in the army, "_An officer and a gentleman_." He believed that he would disgrace his profession and himself if he should quit the wreck while any civilian remained upon it.

Coronado, leaving his uncle to the care of a sailor, had already climbed the shrouds, and was now crawling through the lubber hole into the top.

For once his hardihood was beaten; he was pale, tremulous and obviously in extreme terror; he clutched at the sling the moment he was pointed to it.

With the utmost care, and without even a look of reproach, Thurstane helped secure him in the loops and launched him on his journey. Next came the turn of Garcia. The old man seemed already dead. He was livid, his lips blue, his hands helpless, his voice gone, his eyes glazed and set. It was necessary to knot him into the sling as tightly as if he were a corpse; and when he reached sh.o.r.e it could be seen that he was borne off like a dead weight.

"Now then," said the captain to Thurstane. "We can't go till you do.

Pa.s.sengers first."

Exhausted by his drenchings, and by a kind of labor to which he was not accustomed, the lieutenant obeyed this order, took his place in the sling, nodded good-by to the brave sailors, and was hurled out of the top by a plunge of surf, as a criminal is pushed from the cart by the hangman.

No idea has been given, and no complete idea can be given, of the difficulties, sufferings, and perils of this transit sh.o.r.eward. Owing to the rising and falling of the mast, the hawser now tautened with a jerk which flung the voyager up against it or even over it, and now drooped in a large bight which let him down into the seethe of water and foam that had just rushed over the vessel, forcing it down on its beam ends.

Thurstane was four or five times tossed and as often submerged. The waves, the wind, and the wreck played with him successively or all together. It was an outrage and a torment which surpa.s.sed some of the tortures of the Inquisition. First came a quick and breathless plunge; then he was imbedded in the rushing, swirling waters, drumming in his ears and stifling his breath; then he was dragged swiftly upward, the sling turning him out of it. It seemed to him that the breath would depart from his body before the transit was over. When at last he landed and was detached from the cordage, he was so bruised, so nearly drowned, so every way exhausted, that he could not stand. He lay for quite a while motionless, his head swimming, his legs and arms twitching convulsively, every joint and muscle sore, catching his breath with painful gasps, almost fainting, and feeling much as if he were dying.

He had meant to help save the captain and sailors. But there was no more work in him, and he just had strength to walk up to the village, a citizen holding him by either arm. As soon as he could speak so as to be understood, he asked, first in English and then in Spanish, "How is the lady?"

"She is insensible," was the reply--a reply of unmeant cruelty.

Remembering how he had suffered, Thurstane feared lest Clara had received her death-stroke in the slings, and he tottered forward eagerly, saying, "Take me to her."

Arrived at the house where she lay, he insisted upon seeing her, and had his way. He was led into a room; he did not see and could never remember what sort of a room it was; but there she was in bed, her face pale and her eyes closed; he thought she was dead, and he nearly fell. But a pitying womanly voice murmured to him, "She lives," with other words that he did not understand, or could not afterward recall. Trusting that this unconsciousness was a sleep, he suffered himself to be drawn away by helping hands, and presently was himself in a bed, not knowing how he got there.

Meantime the tragedy of the wreck was being acted out. The sling broke once, the sailor who was in it falling into the undertow, and perishing there in spite of a rush of the townspeople. One of the two men who were washed overboard at the first shock was also drowned. The rest escaped, including the heroic captain, who was the last to come ash.o.r.e.

When Thurstane was again permitted to see Clara, it was, to his great astonishment, the morning of the following day. He had slept like the dead; if any one had sought to awaken him, it would have been almost impossible; there was no strength left in body or spirt but for sleep.

Clara's story had been much the same: insensibility, then swoons, then slumber; twelve hours of utter unconsciousness. On waking the first words of each were to ask for the other. Thurstane put on his scarcely dried uniform and hurried to the girl's room. She received him at the door, for she had heard his step although it was on tiptoe, and she knew his knock although as light as the beating of a bird's wing.

It was another of those interviews which cannot be described, and perhaps should not be. They were uninterrupted, for the ladies of the house had learned from Clara that this was her betrothed, and they had woman's sense of the sacredness of such meetings. Presents came, and were not sent in: Coronado called and was not admitted. The two were alone for two hours, and the two hours pa.s.sed like two minutes. Of course all the ugly past was explained.

"A letter dismissing you!" exclaimed Clara with tears. "Oh! how could you think that I would write such a letter? Never--never! Oh, I never could.

My hand should drop off first. I should die in trying to write such wickedness. What! don't you know me better? Don't you know that I am true to you? Oh, how could you believe it of me? My darling, how could you?"

"Forgive me," begged the humbled young fellow, trembling with joy in his humility. "It was weak and wicked in me. I deserved to be punished as I have been. And, oh, I did not deserve this happiness. But, my little girl, how could I help being deceived? There was your handwriting and your signature."

"Ah! I know who it was," broke out Clara. "It has been he all through. He shall pay for this, and for all," she added, her Spanish blood rising in her cheeks, and her soft eyes sparkling angrily for a minute.

"I have saved his life for the last time," returned Thurstane. "I have spared it for the last time. Hereafter--"

"My darling, my darling!" begged Clara, alarmed by his blackening brow.

"Oh, my darling, I don't love to see you angry. Just now, when we have just been spared to each other, don't let us be angry. I spoke angrily first. Forgive me."

"Let him keep out of my way," muttered Thurstane, only in part pacified.

"Yes," answered Clara, thinking that she would herself send Coronado off, so that there might be no duel between him and this dear one.

Presently the lover added one thing which he had felt all the time ought to have been said at first.

"The letter--it was right. Although _he_ wrote it, it was right. I have no claim to marry a rich woman, and you have no right to marry a poor man."

He uttered this in profound misery, and yet with a firm resolution. Clara turned pale and stared at him with anxious eyes, her lips parted as though to speak, but saying nothing. Knowing his fastidious sense of honor, she guessed the full force with which this scruple weighed upon him, and she did not know how to drag it off his soul.

"You are worth a million," he went on, in a broken-hearted sort of voice which to us may seem laughable, but which brought the tears into Clara's eyes.

The next instant she brightened; she knew, or thought she knew, that she was not worth a million; so she smiled like a sunburst and caught him gayly by the wrists.