Sea and Shore Part 9

There was a moment's pause, and movement of eye and hand, and then he spoke again, very softly:

"Yes, and much more that can never be fulfilled, for already the cabin is in flames, the companion-way is closed, and the fire in the hold is making fearful headway. I have heard the seamen have sworn to secure the boats; you are strong and resolute--be prepared for the very worst."

Then, speaking in his usual tone, he added: "Since the banner of Spain pa.s.sed near enough to show us the rampant lions and castles on its crimson shield, and yet made no sign, I have had little hope of rescue from a ship. It was ominous!"

"Not intended, then," I said, eagerly. "Oh, I am glad of this, at least, for the honor of human nature."

"A strange consideration at such a time! You are a study to me, Miss Harz; yours is not apathy, like mine, but true courage, even in this death-struggle, and I will save you if I can, for you have a n.o.ble soul!"

All further dialogue was cut short by the wild shout that rose from the crowd, the delusive cry of "A sail, a sail!" and Dunmore rushed with the rest to descry its myth-like form, if possible. It was some moments before hope again died down to a flat level of despair.

Too remote for signal or trumpet was that distant, white-winged vessel gliding securely on its path of peace, unconscious of the extremity of the mighty steamer it distinguished dimly, no doubt, by the aid of telescopes.

However this might have been, for the second time on that day of direst exigency, a ship went by, observed yet un.o.bserving.

Fainter and fainter grew the accents of the fierce, fanatical preacher; his excitement forsook him as the danger became more and more imminent.

The crowd broke into groups. Pale, stern men, with rigid features, who had been employed aiding in the construction of the rafts, returned now to the sides of their wives and children.

Through a vista on the deck I discerned Miss Lamarque, sitting quietly with her youngest nursling in her arms, beside her brother. His children and slaves were gathered around her knees. Dunmore was giving her my message, I could not doubt, from the glances she cast in my direction, as he stood near by. I knew that he would soon turn to come again, but my resolution was fixed.

Captain Ambrose, with a face grown old in half a day, gray, abstracted, wretched, pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed me several times, telescope in hand.

Ralph Maxwell on the round-house kept constant watch, his att.i.tude dauntless, his face uplifted and keen, field-gla.s.s in hand. His West-Point training stood him in good stead now. Captain Falconer, a naval officer, had returned to the side of Miss Oscanyan, the woman he had loved hopelessly for years, and, before the scene closed between us forever, I saw him clasp her to his bosom; so that trying hour had for some high spirits is crowning consolations, its solace and reward, and, whatever else was in store, the martyrdom of love was over.

An eager hand caught my shawl. "He is coming back, coming to persuade you to leave us," said the young girl; "but you have promised not to part from us, and I feel that G.o.d will remember us if we remain together firm and fast, we three."

Then the pale widow spoke in turn: "Let me stay beside you too," she entreated; "it makes me feel stronger, I am so desolate--" and she bowed her head and wept.

I would have said in the strange, calm bitterness that possessed my soul: "What value has life to you and your deformed one? Poor, widowed, sickly, and despised, why should you wish to live? Why enc.u.mber me?"

But thoughts like these were not for human utterance now, and we sat together, hand locked in hand for a time, waiting for the end, as men may wait in years to come, when the earth is gray with sin, for the coming of the fiery comet that they know is destined to consume them.

For was not this ship our world, penned in as we were on every side, and separated from all else by an ocean inexorable and illimitable as s.p.a.ce, and were not we likewise looking forward to a fiery doom--our finite, perhaps final, day of judgment?

I could understand then, for the first time, how condemned criminals feel--well, strong, yet dying! I knew how Walter La Vigne, the self-doomed, had felt, and some pa.s.sages of Madame Roland's appeal rose visibly before me, as if written on the air rather than in my memory. I had read the book at Beauseincourt, and it had powerfully impressed me; and this, I remember, was the pa.s.sage that swept across my brain:

"And thou whom I dare not name, wouldst thou mourn to see me preceding thee to a place where we can love one another without wrong--where nothing will prevent our union--where all pernicious prejudices, all arbitrary exclusions, all hateful pa.s.sions, and all tyranny, are silent?

I shall wait for thee, then, and rest!"

So centred were my dying thoughts on Wentworth--so calmly did I await the great change that men call sudden death!

All this time--a time much briefer than that I have taken in recounting my sensations--the glorious summer's sun, the sun of morning, was bathing the sea; the ship, with beauty, and a soft, fresh breeze, was fanning every pallid brow with a caressing, silken wing, that seemed to mock its wretchedness.

I thought not once of Christian Garth. I had ceased to strain my eyes for a distant sail, to seek to compromise with my fate or make conditions with my Creator. Dunmore was forgotten. I was composed to die--not resigned. These things are different; a bitter patience possessed me that I felt would sustain me to the end, but I was not satisfied that my doom was just or opportune.

"Farewell, sweet, young, vigorous life!" I moaned aloud. "Farewell, Miriam! It will not be thou, but a phantom, that shall arise from dead ashes! Farewell, dear hand, that hast served me long and well!" and I kissed my own right hand. I had not known until that moment how truly I loved myself. "Sister, lover, farewell! Mother, father, receive me!

Gentle Constance, reach forth thy guiding hand and lead me to my parents! Wentworth, remember me! Saviour, my soul is thine!"

I bowed my head. I had no more to say. Unwilling I was to die--afraid I was not; for, as I sat there, my whole life swept before me, as it is said to do before the eyes of the drowning, and rapidly as one may sweep the gamut on a piano with one introverted finger, and I saw myself as though I had been another. I had done nothing to make me afraid to meet my G.o.d; so, with closed eyes, I lingered in the shadow, conscious of nothing save exceeding calm, when the grasp of my gentle friend of the moment aroused me to a sense of what was occurring, and I saw, with horror indescribable, the fierce flames leaping from the deck, heard the hoa.r.s.e shouts, beheld the lurid surging of an agonized and despairing mult.i.tude! But above all rang the clear, trumpet-tones of Captain Ambrose, soon to sink in death:

"To the boats--to the boats! but save the women first--the children--as ye are Christian men! So help ye, mighty G.o.d!"

I heard later how signally this n.o.ble charge was disregarded; how utterly self triumphed over generosity and duty; and how, in enforcing the example all should have followed, Captain Ambrose lost his valiant, valuable life. But this was thought nothing of then, and I sat patiently down to perish!

CHAPTER IV.

It was sunset when I first felt able to sit up beneath the awning of sails which provident hands had stretched above the central platform reserved for the occupancy of the women and children, spread thick with mattresses on the raft, and look about me understandingly.

We were riding smoothly over the long, low, level billows of that summer sea, sustained beyond their reach on what seemed a rude barn-floor, composed as this was of the masts, booms, and yards, roughly lashed together by tarred ropes, no longer needed on the destined ship, and which had been a.s.signed by the captain for that purpose to Christian Garth.

A mast was erected in the front of this hastily-constructed raft, on three sides of which were breastworks, with strong, loose ropes attached, so that those who clung to this refuge might support themselves with comparative safety, or rather have a chance for life, when our "floating grave" should hang suspended perpendicularly on the steep side of a mountain-billow, or drift beneath it.

Just below, and surrounding the small, elevated platform on which I found myself when I revived, stretched on a slender mattress by the side of my feeble widow and her moaning child, were rows of barrels, firmly fastened by cleats, so as insure, to some degree, not only the preservation of our food and water, but to form a sort of bulwark of protection for those who occupied the central portion of the raft.

The young girl, of whom I have spoken as having attached herself to me during the last moments of my stay on shipboard, and an old negro woman, whose crooning hymns made a strange accompaniment to the dashing waters, and whose stolid tranquillity seemed to reproach my anguish, were our only companions on the sort of dais a.s.signed to his female pa.s.sengers by Christian Garth.

The man himself, to whom we owed our deliverance, stood near his primitive mast, tr.i.m.m.i.n.g his sail carefully, and looking out with his far-reaching, sagacious ken over the waste of waters, into which the blood-red, full-orbed sun seemed dipping, suddenly, as for his night-bath.

A few of the common pa.s.sengers of the Kosciusko, and a knot of the seamen, comprising not more than twenty souls, composed the groups, scattered about the roughly yet securely lashed raft, silent and observant all, as men who face their doom are apt to be.

I looked in vain for one familiar face, and for a moment regretted that I had been withheld, as by some spell, for whose weird influence I could never sufficiently account, from having cast my destiny with theirs, who were so much nearer to me in station and congeniality of spirit than those around me. With Miss Lamarque's hand locked in mine, I should have vied with her, I felt, in cheerful courage; and the knightly calmness of Dunmore might have sustained my drooping, fainting soul. These were my peers, and, _with_ them, I should have been better content to be tried.

But the white squall, which had in no way affected us (so small and partial was the sphere of its influence), had sufficed to separate ours irretrievably from our companion-raft, and the squadron of boats that had promised not to forsake as. And now the eye of agony was strained in vain over the weltering waste, for a vestige of those refugees from the Kosciusko--buried, perhaps, a thousand fathoms deep, by their sudden visitors, beneath the waves of that deadly Atlantic sea.

Tears rained over my face as I thought of this probability, and, hopeless as I was of rescue, the almost certain fate of my companion-voyagers fell over me like a pall. "Better, perhaps--far better had it been"--I thought so then--"had we all perished together in that terrific sheet of flame that rose up like a dividing barrier between us at the last. Fit emblem of the final day of doom. Our trials were but begun. What more remained? G.o.d in heaven only knew!"

And rapidly, and in panoramic succession, all the fearful adventures of raft and boat that I had ever read of, or heard related, pa.s.sed across my mind, ending with that latest, and perhaps the most fearful of all--the wreck of the Medusa!

The night came down serene and beautiful. As the sun disappeared in ocean, up rose the full-orbed moon--crimson and magnified by surrounding vapors--that to the practised eye portended future tempest, calm as the ocean and the heavens then seemed.

The constellations, singularly distinct and splendid, had the power to fix and fascinate my vision--never felt before--as they shone above me, clear and crystalline as enthroned in s.p.a.ce--judges, and spectators, cold and pitiless as it seemed to me, in the strangeness and forlornness of my condition--Arcturus, and the Ursas, great and little, and Lyra, and the Corona Borealis, Berenice, and Hydra, and Ca.s.siopea's chair; these and many more. I marked them all with a calm scrutiny that belongs to terror in some phases. The stars seemed mocking eyes that night--smiling and safe in heaven--the moon, a cold and cruel enemy with her vapory train, so grandly sailing across the cloudless heaven--so careless of our fate--the wreck of a ruined world as many deem her--veiling in light her inward desolation.

A faint and vapory comet lurked on the horizon--like a ghastly messenger--scarcely discernible to the human eyes, yet vaguely ominous and suggestive--a spirit-ship it might be--watching in silence to hear away the souls of those lost at sea!

There was deep stillness--unbroken, save by the lapping and plashing waters. Even the crooning hymns of the old negro woman had died away; and the moans of the suffering child, and the sobs of the weary mother, and the eager exclamations of Ada Greene (for such I learned was the name of my young companion), were, for a season, lost alike in sleep.

Food had been distributed--prayer had been offered--all seemed favorable so far to our preservation. We were on the track of voyage--the pathway of ships--and the sea was tranquil as a summer lake; up to this point, the arm of G.o.d had been extended over us almost visibly. Would He forsake us now? I questioned thus, and yet I could not, dare not, hope as others hoped!

The morning came; I woke, aroused by Salva's song, from troubled sleep; and, as I rose to a sitting posture, a troop of sea-birds that had been swooping overhead, fled with a fiend-like screaming.

The mother and child were already consuming their scant allowance of food. Ada Greene was standing self-poised, swaying like a slender reed with the motion of the raft, so as never to lose her balance, like a young acrobat, with her folded arms, her floating hair, and fair Aurora face, uplifted to the day.

Over the raft were scattered groups of men taking their morning meal; but, as before, the stalwart form of Christian Garth was at the helm, or rather, mast and rudder merged in one, which he controlled with calm, sagacious power.