The Pilot: A Tale of the Sea Part 38

"G.o.d's will be done with me," he cried. "I saw the first timber of the Ariel laid, and shall live just long enough to see it turn out of her bottom; after which I wish to live no longer."

But his shipmates were swept far beyond the sounds of his voice, before half these words were uttered. All command of the boat was rendered impossible, by the numbers it contained, as well as the raging of the surf; and, as it rose on the white crest of a wave, Tom saw his beloved little craft for the last time. It fell into a trough of the sea, and in a few moments more its fragments were ground into splinters on the adjacent rocks. The c.o.c.kswain still remained where he had cast off the rope, and beheld the numerous heads and arms that appeared rising, at short intervals, on the waves; some making powerful and well-directed efforts to gain the sands, that were becoming visible as the tide fell, and others wildly tossed in the frantic movements of helpless despair.

The honest old seaman gave a cry of joy, as he saw Barnstable issue from the surf, bearing the form of Merry in safety to the sands, where, one by one, several seamen soon appeared also, dripping and exhausted. Many others of the crew were carried, in a similar manner, to places of safety; though, as Tom returned to his seat on the bowsprit, he could not conceal from his reluctant eyes the lifeless forms that were, in other spots, driven against the rocks with a fury that soon left them but few of the outward vestiges of humanity.

Dillon and the c.o.c.kswain were now the sole occupants of their dreadful station. The former stood in a kind of stupid despair, a witness of the scene we have related; but as his curdled blood began again to flow more warmly through his heart, he crept close to the side of Tom, with that sort of selfish feeling that makes even hopeless misery more tolerable, when endured in partic.i.p.ation with another.

"When the tide falls," he said, in a voice that betrayed the agony of fear, though his words expressed the renewal of hope, "we shall be able to walk to land."

"There was One and only One to whose feet the waters were the same as a dry dock," returned the c.o.c.kswain; "and none but such as have his power will ever be able to walk from these rocks to the sands." The old seaman paused, and turning his eyes, which exhibited a mingled expression of disgust and compa.s.sion, on his companion, he added, with reverence: "Had you thought more of Him in fair weather, your case would be less to be pitied in this tempest."

"Do you still think there is much danger?" asked Dillon.

"To them that have reason to fear death. Listen! do you hear that hollow noise beneath ye?"

"'Tis the wind driving by the vessel!"

"'Tis the poor thing herself," said the affected c.o.c.kswain, "giving her last groans. The water is breaking up her decks, and, in a few minutes more, the handsomest model that ever cut a wave will be like the chips that fell from her timbers in framing!"

"Why then did you remain here!" cried Dillon, wildly.

"To die in my coffin, if it should be the will of G.o.d," returned Tom.

"These waves, to me, are what the land is to you; I was born on them, and I have always meant that they should be my grave."

"But I--I," shrieked Dillon, "I am not ready to die!--I cannot die!--I will not die!"

"Poor wretch!" muttered his companion; "you must go, like the rest of us; when the death-watch is called, none can skulk from the muster."

"I can swim," Dillon continued, rushing with frantic eagerness to the side of the wreck. "Is there no billet of wood, no rope, that I can take with me?"

"None; everything has been cut away, or carried off by the sea. If ye are about to strive for your life, take with ye a stout heart and a clean conscience, and trust the rest to G.o.d!"

"G.o.d!" echoed Dillon, in the madness of his frenzy; "I know no G.o.d!

there is no G.o.d that knows me!"

"Peace!" said the deep tones of the c.o.c.kswain, in a voice that seemed to speak in the elements; "blasphemer, peace!"

The heavy groaning, produced by the water in the timbers of the Ariel, at that moment added its impulse to the raging feelings of Dillon, and he cast himself headlong into the sea.

The water, thrown by the rolling of the surf on the beach, was necessarily returned to the ocean, in eddies, in different places favorable to such an action of the element. Into the edge of one of these countercurrents, that was produced by the very rocks on which the schooner lay, and which the watermen call the "undertow," Dillon had, unknowingly, thrown his person; and when the waves had driven him a short distance from the wreck, he was met by a stream that his most desperate efforts could not overcome. He was a light and powerful swimmer, and the struggle was hard and protracted. With the sh.o.r.e immediately before his eyes, and at no great distance, he was led, as by a false phantom, to continue his efforts, although they did not advance him a foot. The old seaman, who at first had watched his motions with careless indifference, understood the danger of his situation at a glance; and, forgetful of his own fate, he shouted aloud, in a voice that was driven over the struggling victim to the ears of his shipmates on the sands:

"Sheer to port, and clear the undertow! Sheer to the southward!"

Dillon heard the sounds, but his faculties were too much obscured by terror to distinguish their object; he, however, blindly yielded to the call, and gradually changed his direction, until his face was once more turned towards the vessel. The current swept him diagonally by the rocks, and he was forced into an eddy, where he had nothing to contend against but the waves, whose violence was much broken by the wreck. In this state, he continued still to struggle, but with a force that was too much weakened to overcome the resistance he met. Tom looked around him for a rope, but all had gone over with the spars, or been swept away by the waves. At this moment of disappointment, his eyes met those of the desperate Dillon. Calm and inured to horrors as was the veteran seaman, he involuntarily pa.s.sed his hand before his brow, to exclude the look of despair he encountered; and when, a moment afterwards, he removed the rigid member, he beheld the sinking form of the victim as it gradually settled in the ocean, still struggling, with regular but impotent strokes of the arms and feet, to gain the wreck, and to preserve an existence that had been so much abused in its hour of allotted probation.

"He will soon know his G.o.d, and learn that his G.o.d knows him!" murmured the c.o.c.kswain to himself. As he yet spoke, the wreck of the Ariel yielded to an overwhelming sea, and, after an universal shudder, her timbers and planks gave way, and were swept towards the cliffs, bearing the body of the simple-hearted c.o.c.kswain among the ruins.

CHAPTER XXV.

"Let us think of them that sleep Full many a fathom deep, By the wild and stormy steep, Elsinore!"

_Campbell_.

Long and dreary did the hours appear to Barnstable, before the falling tide had so far receded as to leave the sands entirely exposed to his search for the bodies of his lost shipmates. Several had been rescued from the wild fury of the waves themselves; and one by one, as the melancholy conviction that life had ceased was forced on the survivors, they had been decently interred in graves dug on the very margin of that element on which they had pa.s.sed their lives. But still the form longest known and most beloved was missing, and the lieutenant paced the broad s.p.a.ce that was now left between the foot of the cliffs and the raging ocean, with hurried strides and a feverish eye, watching and following those fragments of the wreck that the sea still continued to cast on the beach. Living and dead, he now found that of those who had lately been in the Ariel, only two were missing. Of the former he could muster but twelve, besides Merry and himself, and his men had already interred more than half that number of the latter, which, together, embraced all who had trusted their lives to the frail keeping of the whale-boat.

"Tell me not, boy, of the impossibility of his being safe," said Barnstable, in deep agitation, which he in vain struggled to conceal from the anxious youth, who thought it unnecessary to follow the uneasy motions of his commander, as he strode along the sands. "How often have men been found floating on pieces of wreck, days after the loss of their vessel? and you can see, with your own eyes, that the falling water has swept the planks this distance; ay, a good half-league from where she struck. Does the lookout from the top of the cliffs make no signal of seeing him yet?"

"None, sir, none; we shall never see him again. The men say that he always thought it sinful to desert a wreck, and that he did not even strike out once for his life, though he has been known to swim an hour, when a whale has stove his boat. G.o.d knows, sir," added the boy, hastily dashing a tear from his eye, by a stolen movement of his hand, "I loved Tom Coffin better than any foremast man in either vessel. You seldom came aboard the frigate but we had him in the steerage among us reefers, to hear his long yarns, and share our cheer. We all loved him, Mr.

Barnstable; but love cannot bring the dead to life again."

"I know it, I know it," said Barnstable, with a huskiness in his voice that betrayed the depth of his emotion. "I am not so foolish as to believe in impossibilities; but while there is a hope of his living, I will never abandon poor Tom Coffin to such a dreadful fate. Think, boy, he may, at this moment, be looking at us, and praying to his Maker that he would turn our eyes upon him; ay, praying to his G.o.d, for Tom often prayed, though he did it in his watch, standing, and in silence."

"If he had clung to life so strongly," returned the midshipman, "he would have struggled harder to preserve it."

Barnstable stopped short in his hurried walk, and fastened a look of opening conviction on his companion; but, as he was about to speak in reply, the shouts of the seamen reached his ears, and, turning, they saw the whole party running along the beach, and motioning, with violent gestures, to an intermediate point in the ocean. The lieutenant and Merry hurried back, and, as they approached the men, they distinctly observed a human figure, borne along by the waves, at moments seeming to rise above them, and already floating in the last of the breakers. They had hardly ascertained so much, when a heavy swell carried the inanimate body far upon the sands, where it was left by the retiring waters.

"'Tis my c.o.c.kswain!" cried Barnstable, rushing to the spot. He stopped suddenly, however, as he came within view of the features, and it was some little time before he appeared to have collected his faculties sufficiently to add, in tones of deep horror: "What wretch is this, boy!

His form is unmutilated, and yet observe the eyes! they seem as if the sockets would not contain them, and they gaze as wildly as if their owner yet had life--the hands are open and spread, as though they would still buffet the waves!"

"The Jonah! the Jonah!" shouted the seamen, with savage exultation, as they successively approached the corpse; "away with his carrion into the sea again! give him to the sharks! let him tell his lies in the claws of the lobsters!"

Barnstable had turned away from the revolting sight, in disgust; but when he discovered these indications of impotent revenge in the remnant of his crew, he said, in that voice which all respected and still obeyed:

"Stand back! back with ye, fellows! Would you disgrace your manhood and seamanship, by wreaking your vengeance on him whom G.o.d has already in judgment!" A silent, but significant, gesture towards the earth succeeded his words, and he walked slowly away.

"Bury him in the sands, boys," said Merry, when his commander was at some little distance; "the next tide will unearth him."

The seamen obeyed his orders, while the midshipman rejoined his commander, who continued to pace along the beach, occasionally halting to throw his uneasy glances over the water, and then hurrying onward, at a rate that caused his youthful companion to exert his greatest power to maintain the post he had taken at his side. Every effort to discover the lost c.o.c.kswain was, however, after two hours' more search, abandoned as fruitless; and with reason, for the sea was never known to give up the body of the man who might be emphatically called its own dead.

"There goes the sun, already dropping behind the cliffs," said the lieutenant, throwing himself on a rock; "and the hour will soon arrive to set the dog-watches; but we have nothing left to watch over, boy; the surf and rocks have not even left us a whole plank that we may lay our heads on for the night."

"The men have gathered many articles on yon beach, sir," returned the lad; "they have found arms to defend ourselves with, and food to give us strength to use them."

"And who shall be our enemy?" asked Barnstable, bitterly; "shall we shoulder our dozen pikes, and carry England by boarding?"

"We may not lay the whole island under contribution," continued the boy, anxiously, watching the expression of his commander's eye; "but we may still keep ourselves in work until the cutter returns from the frigate.

I hope, sir, you do not think our case so desperate, as to intend yielding as prisoners."

"Prisoners!" exclaimed the lieutenant; "no, no, lad, it has not got to that, yet! England has been able to wreck my craft, I must concede; but she has, as yet, obtained no other advantage over us. She was a precious model, Merry! the cleanest run, and the neatest entrance, that art ever united on the stem and stern of the same vessel! Do you remember the time, younker, when I gave the frigate my top-sails, in beating out of the Chesapeake? I could always do it, in smooth water, with a whole-sail breeze. But she was a frail thing! a frail thing, boy, and could bear but little."

"A mortar-ketch would have thumped to pieces where she lay," returned the midshipman.

"Ay, it was asking too much of her, to expect she could hold together on a bed of rocks. Merry, I loved her; dearly did I love her; she was my first command, and I knew and loved every timber and bolt in her beautiful frame!"

"I believe it is as natural, sir, for a seaman to love the wood and iron in which he has floated over the depths of the ocean for so many days and nights," rejoined the boy, "as it is for a father to love the members of his own family."