The Girl Crusoes Part 6

Elizabeth silently took the sculls, the other two crouched in the bottom of the boat, which drew slowly away from the ill-fated ship.

After a little Tommy sprang up.

"Stop rowing, Bess," she cried. "It's no use going on in the dark.

Keep close to the ship, so that we can see Uncle when he puts off on the raft."

Elizabeth rested on her oars. There was reason in what Tommy had said.

For a time the girls could see the trembling masts of the ship in the moonlight, and dark figures moving about the deck; but presently the moon was obscured; some minutes pa.s.sed before it again emerged from the clouds; and then, when the girls looked for the _Elizabeth_, there was not a trace of her to be seen.

The two younger girls were now sitting up in the boat, facing their sister. They looked with wild eyes into the darkness. The same terrible thought oppressed them all: had the barque gone down already?

Had there been time for the construction of a raft? They dared not speak, lest their spoken fears should overwhelm them. Elizabeth sculled now in this direction, now in that, in the hope that it was merely distance that had removed the ship from sight. Now and again she rested on her oars and listened; but there was no sound in the breathless stillness, and she dipped her oars again; inaction was unbearable. So the three miserable girls waited for the dawn.

It came at last with almost startling suddenness. At one moment all the sky was indigo with gleaming spots; the next, the myriad spangles had disappeared, and the blue was covered with a curtain of grey. But daybreak did not bring with it the expected relief from suspense--a light mist hung upon the surface of the sea--a tantalizing filmy screen which the eye could not penetrate. The boat floated idly; again the girls eagerly strained their ears for sounds of voices, or creaking tackle, or working oars; but they heard nothing except the slow rippling of the sea against the side of the dinghy.

"Pull, Bess," cried Tommy frantically. "We can't have come far. Row about; we must find the ship."

Elizabeth, though hope was dead within her, rowed this way and that, but everywhere was the encircling mist; there was no sign of vessel, raft or land.

"We had better wait until the sun is up," she said at last. "It will scatter the mist, and then we can at least see our way."

The air was growing warmer, with a damp clammy heat; but the girls shivered as they sat silent in the gently rocking boat. The grey mist turned to a golden dust, and presently the sun burst through, putting the thinning vapour to flight. Now the girls eagerly scanned the horizon as it widened, but neither hull nor sail stood out of the immense tract of blue. Tommy rose in the boat, to see if she could then descry any dark patch upon the surface which might be a raft; but there was nothing. Her lips quivered as the meaning of this vast blankness forced itself upon her mind. For a few moments she stood with her back to her sisters; then turning suddenly, she said, with a laugh that was not very different from a sob--

"'There were three sailors of Bristol City.' I say, how should I do for the part of Little Billee?"

This sudden touch of comedy relieved the tension, as Tommy intended.

The other girls smiled feebly, and Tommy, saying to herself, "I must talk, talk, or we shall all go mad," went on--

"Could I have a swim, do you think?" She flung off her macintosh.

"It's getting hot."

"Oh, you mustn't think of it," said Mary; "these waters are full of sharks."

"Well, then, let's have another breakfast. What have they given us?"

While Elizabeth was examining the provisions placed in the boat Tommy leant over the side and dashed handfuls of water over her face.

"There! Now I feel better," she said. "What is there, Bess?"

There were tins of biscuits, sardines, and condensed milk, a bottle of coffee extract, three tin cups, a spirit lamp, a small tin kettle, a tea-caddy half full, a small box of sugar, a large plum cake, some boiled bacon, and two gallon jars containing water.

"I am not hungry at present," said Elizabeth.

"Neither am I, but one must do something," said Tommy; "a cup of water and a slice of cake for me."

They all took a draught of water, but only Tommy made any pretence of eating.

"Now, Bess," said Tommy as she gulped down her crumbs of cake, "we'll take turns to row. Uncle----" Her voice broke; she cleared her throat and continued--"Uncle said there must be land somewhere near, and he'll think us awful slackers if he gets there first."

"We can't tell which way to go," said Mary.

"Of course we can't, but we must choose a direction and stick to it, or we shall go round in a circle like a dog chasing its tail.

'O' a' the airts the wind can blaw I dearly lo'e the West.'

Let's make for the west, and take our chance."

This suggestion was adopted. Elizabeth admired her small sister's pluck in being so determinedly cheerful. They turned their faces to the sun, and for some time rowed steadily westward, each girl taking a spell at the oars. But as the day grew older the heat became intolerable and exertion painful, so they decided to rest until the evening. None of them any longer expected to see the raft, though none confessed it; all they hoped for was to find land. They were very much cramped in the little boat, but none grumbled about the discomforts.

By and by it occurred to Elizabeth to rig up their macintoshes as a sort of awning, supporting it on the oars and the boat-hook, and this sheltered them from the worst effects of the sun. They made another spare meal in the afternoon, and when the sun was between south and west they resumed their rowing. So far there had not been a sign of land; but Uncle Ben had certainly said that the ship had struck on a reef, and where there were reefs dry land could hardly be far away.

This hope buoyed them up through the hot day.

The sun went down below the horizon with the suddenness general in the Southern Ocean. Once more darkness was upon them. With the return of night came a sense of forlornness and desolation of spirit. They fell silent, each brooding on the sad fate which had overtaken their uncle and them. The night was cold; enveloped in their wraps and macintoshes they huddled together for warmth, letting the boat drift at the mercy of the sea. Their broken sleep on the previous night, and their exertions and anxieties during the day, had told upon them, and after some hours the two younger girls fell asleep. Elizabeth dared not surrender herself to slumber. Who could tell what might happen? As the eldest, she felt a motherly responsibility for the others, though she had to confess to herself how utterly helpless she was if danger came. She sat with her elbows on her knees, thinking, brooding.

Everything had happened so suddenly that she was only just beginning to realize the immensity of the disaster. A c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.l of a boat, that would capsize if the sea were the least bit rough; the wide ocean all around; three girls, healthy enough, but not inured to hardship; the possibility of drifting for days or weeks, never touching land or coming within the track of a ship; food dwindling day by day; the horrors of thirst: these dreadful images flashed in turn upon Elizabeth's mental vision and made her shudder.

"Why didn't we stay with Uncle?" she thought; and then the remembrance of the dear old man, and their happy days on board, and her conviction that the vessel had gone down before the raft could be made, smote Elizabeth's heart with grief, and for the first time the tears rolled down her cheeks, unchecked.

She wept till her head ached, and she felt dazed. At last, utterly worn out, she dozed into an uneasy and fitful sleep, still supporting her head on her hands. She woke every few minutes, blamed herself for not keeping a better watch, then slumbered again. She was startled into wakefulness by the rays of the early morning sun. Lifting herself stiffly, and carefully, so as not to disturb the two girls at her feet, she looked around, and was alarmed as she caught sight of a ring of white within a few hundred yards of the starboard side of the boat. At the first glance she recognized the foam of breakers dashing over a reef.

"Girls!" she cried, "wake up! Quick!" She released herself from them, seized the sculls, and pulled energetically away from the threatened danger. Tommy threw off her macintosh and stood up in the boat.

"Land!" she cried. "Look, Mary, beyond the breakers there. Woods!

Oh! I could scream for joy."

"Look out for a landing-place," said Elizabeth, as she rowed slowly parallel with the reef.

"What if there are savages?" murmured Mary.

"Oh, we'll soothe their savage b.r.e.a.s.t.s," cried Tommy confidently. "I don't care if there are so long as my feet are on dry land again. Can you see the raft?"

There was no sign of a raft; nothing was in sight but the foam-swept reef, the cliffs, and the dark background of woods behind.

A pull of half-a-mile brought the dinghy clear of the breakers, and the girls saw the sea dashing up the face of the high weather-worn cliffs.

There appeared to be no beach, no possible landing-place. Mary, the bookworm of the family, began to fear that the land was only one of those precipitous crags of which she had read, inaccessible from the sea. But in a few minutes they discerned to their joy a gap in the cliffs, and a sandy cove that promised an easy landing-place.

To this Elizabeth turned the dinghy's head. A shark glided by as they neared the sh.o.r.e, but was almost unnoticed in their excitement. Tommy gave a cheer as the boat grated on the sand. In a moment she was out; her sisters followed more deliberately; then the three together, exerting all their strength, dragged the boat toilsomely up the beach.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE THREE TOGETHER DRAGGED THE BOAT UP THE BEACH."]

CHAPTER VI

THE ISLAND BEAUTIFUL

Hot and panting from their exertions, the girls threw themselves down on the sand, and for a time remembered nothing but their escape from what had seemed certain death. But presently Tommy sprang up, and, shading her eyes against the sun's fierce glare, looked long and anxiously seaward. An irregular white line marked the reef, but beyond that the ocean stretched out into the distance, without a spot upon its glistening surface. Her sisters joined her, and, with their arms clasped about each other, they searched the horizon for the raft and Uncle Ben. None of them spoke: each was afraid to utter her foreboding thought.

Then they turned and gazed at the green woodland that rose almost from the brink of the sea. It was a perfect day, and the land to which they had come might well be a paradise of the South Seas such as they had read about. But they were too anxious to be aware of its beauties.

Mary caught Elizabeth by the arm.

"Are there people?" she said in a whisper.