The Secret of the Sands Part 11

He had knocked about the world a good deal, and had the knack of not only a quick observation, but also of being able to clearly and accurately recall what he had seen, and the impressions thereby produced upon himself.

He was expatiating, on this occasion, on the charms of nature, of which he was an enthusiastic admirer, the subject having been suggested by the beauty of the sunset which we had both been watching, and I was thoroughly enjoying the rugged eloquence with which the scene had inspired him, when we were startled by a long, low, wailing cry which rang out upon the still air, apparently not half a dozen fathoms from us, making our blood curdle and our hair stiffen with, horror at its unearthly and thrilling cadence.

We looked earnestly and eagerly in the direction from which the cry had seemed to proceed, but nothing was visible in that or, indeed, in any other direction.

The sun had set, and the grey of evening was deepening over the gla.s.sy surface of the water; but there was still light enough reflected from the sky to have enabled us to see any object within sight almost as distinctly as in broad day, but not an object of any description could we see, not even a solitary albatross.

We had carefully scanned, as far as was possible, the entire visible surface of the ocean, and had turned inquiringly towards each other, when once more rang out that mysterious cry, this time apparently close under our stern.

We turned, unutterably horror-stricken, in that direction, but there was _nothing_. Seamen are, as a rule, as brave as lions; but anything mysterious and unaccountable completely cowes them, and such, I confess, was now the case with us.

The cry was too sharp and loud to have proceeded from any distance; and there was no visible explanation of it. It was not repeated a third time, I am happy to say; and I wish never to hear anything like it again. What it was, or whence it came, we never knew, and I was, and am to this day, utterly unable to account for it. I have since been informed that such sounds have occasionally been heard at sea by others as well as ourselves, but never with the result of any discovery as to their origin.

During the next three days we had nothing but light variable winds, and calms.

On the morning of the fourth day, at daybreak, we made a sail directly ahead. At this time we had a nice little breeze, and were going about six knots.

As we neared her, we noticed that she was hove-to, her courses brailed up, and her topgallant yards on the caps. When close to her, it struck us that something must be the matter on board, for not a soul could we see about her decks. The vessel herself too--a full-rigged ship of about fourteen hundred tons--struck us as being unusually deep in the water. There being no sea on, we decided to run alongside and board her, thinking she might possibly prove derelict. We did so, accordingly, rounding to under her stern, and ranging up alongside on her lee quarter; having first, however, taken in our gaff-topsail and lowered our topmast, so as not to foul her rigging.

As we came gently alongside, an exclamation escaped Bob, who was standing forward, ready to heave a line on board or jump up the side with it, according to circ.u.mstances.

"Here's been some cursed foul play here, by the look of it, Harry,"

exclaimed he; "mutiny and murder, I should judge, by this," pointing to the scuppers of the ship, from which blood had evidently been flowing, large semi-coagulated gouts still adhering to the sides of the vessel, and about the mouths of the scupper-holes. The vessel being, as I have said, very low in the water, we had no difficulty whatever in boarding her; both, springing up the side at the same moment, each with the end of a line in our hands.

Good heavens! what a sight met our horrified gaze as we leaped down upon the ship's deck!

Some three or four and twenty corpses lay there, with the blood still slowly oozing in a few instances from wounds in various parts of their bodies.

The wounds were mostly inflicted by cutla.s.ses and pistol-shots; but two of the bodies, apparently those of officers, had the heads almost severed from the trunks, the gashes having been evidently inflicted by a keener weapon than a ship's cutla.s.s. These bodies had the arms lashed tightly behind the back.

Too horror-stricken to speak a word, I walked aft, Bob following me, and entered the cabin, which was on deck, and from which I thought I heard a groan issuing. On entering, the first object I saw was the body of a young man, about four and twenty years of age, lying close across the doorway, and covered with wounds. His left arm was almost completely cut through; a long gash had laid his forehead open from above the right temple to the left eyebrow; a pistol-bullet had entered his forehead nearly fair between the eyes; and blood had evidently flowed copiously from his right breast. This body lay across three others, dressed in the usual attire of seamen.

On a sofa, which stretched entirely across the after-part of the cabin, lay the body of a young and most beautiful girl, her night-dress torn to shreds, and her fair skin disfigured by deep blue marks, and smeared with blood, indicating but too clearly that she had been the victim of most atrocious outrages.

And lastly, under the cabin-table, lay another body, from which, whilst we stood gazing in speechless horror at these evidences of diabolical atrocity, a faint groan issued.

Bob a.s.sisted me to draw the sufferer from under the table; and we then saw that he was an old man, grey-haired, and dressed in fine blue cloth garnished with gilt b.u.t.tons, and a stripe of gold lace round the cuffs of the jacket; no doubt the master of the vessel Bob drew the corpse of the young girl somewhat aside, spreading the table-cover over the body reverently, to hide the naked limbs; and then, between us, we placed the wounded man on the sofa.

The cabin had, notwithstanding the ghastly appearance it presented, been the scene of a wild carouse, for the table was covered with gla.s.ses and wine and spirit bottles, and broken bottles and gla.s.ses littered the floor. I searched among the contents of the table until I found a bottle only partly empty, and from this I poured out a gla.s.s of its contents, which proved to be port, and managed with considerable difficulty to get a small quant.i.ty of the wine down the wounded man's throat. The skylight was open, and the air coming down through it in a cool gentle breeze, a.s.sisted the wine in restoring him to consciousness.

He opened his eyes, and gazed round him vacantly for a moment or so, and then memory returned, and he burst violently into tears. We soothed him as well as we could, a.s.suring him that we were friends, and that we would not leave him; and in a minute or two he recovered strength and composure enough to speak.

"Thank you, gentlemen, thank you," said he, "but my time here is very short, and your well-meant efforts for my relief are not only useless, but they also increase my suffering. You are, I presume, from some ship which has come up with us since those fiends left. Kindly prop me up a little higher on the sofa, gentlemen, if you please, and I will endeavour to tell you what has happened before I pa.s.s away."

We did so; and as we were making his position as easy as we could for him, his eye fell upon the body of the young girl, and once more his tears burst forth, mingled with prayers for her, and the most bitter curses upon her destroyers.

He raised one hand to his face as though to brush his tears away, and we then noticed for the first time--horror upon horror!--that his fingers had all been cut, or rather _hacked_ out, at the knuckle-joints, the wounds still slowly bleeding.

He saw our looks of compa.s.sion, and said, as if in reply:

"Ah, gentlemen, willingly would I have submitted to be torn limb from limb by the demons, had they but spared my poor Rose--my darling, my only daughter."

After another short pause, he began:

"It was about midnight, last night, that we noticed a sail ahead of us, which was duly reported. There was not very much wind at the time, and she did not near us until about six bells. As she closed with us, her movements became so suspicious that I ordered the arm-chest on deck, called all hands, and served out the pistols and cutla.s.ses to them.

"Our suspicions were very shortly confirmed, for when she was within a cable's length of us she sheered suddenly alongside, and about fifty men leaped from her on to our deck. Our poor fellows gave them a warm reception; but they were all quickly cut down, and in about three minutes the pirates had the ship. They immediately began to plunder her, and a band of the most ruffianly of them, headed by their captain, made for the cabin. Seeing that all was lost, my son--his body lies at the door there--and I rushed in here, to make a desperate stand in defence of my daughter.

"The poor fellow killed three of them, whilst I severely wounded others; but he was shot down, and I fell, exhausted with the wounds I had already received. My poor girl was soon discovered and dragged from her berth.

"The chief then questioned me as to our cargo, where we were from, and so on; and believing that treasure was concealed somewhere in the ship, he mutilated me thus," holding up his fingerless hands, "to force me to reveal its hiding-place. We had none, but he would not be convinced; and finding bodily torture of no avail to extract from me the information it was not in my power to give, the monster--oh, gentlemen!

my poor, poor girl, my innocent, my gentle Rose--I _cannot_ say it.

"Thank G.o.d! she soon died--of shame and a broken heart, doubtless; for even _they_ seemed unwilling to stain their weapons with her blood.

Would that they _had_; would that _I_ had been able so to steel my heart as to have slain her, rather than that I should have seen what I did; for they first bound me, and then placed me so that I could see all. As soon as they found that she was dead, they ransacked the cabin, turned out the lockers, and drank and sang, until the mate, I suppose, of the pirate came in and reported that everything of value was transferred to the brig; when the leader--whom I once or twice heard addressed as Johnson"--Bob and I started and looked at each other expressively--"ordered the ship to be scuttled, and for all hands but those employed on the work to return to the brig. They then left the cabin; and, about half an hour afterwards, I believe, they left the ship. She cannot--float ver--very much--longer; but I shall--shall be-- gone before--"

His voice had been gradually growing weaker and weaker as he approached the end of his narrative, and now failed altogether. I tore open the front of his shirt to ascertain if his heart still beat, and now saw that he had received, in addition to other wounds, a shot through the chest.

There was no blood; but he, no doubt, bled internally. I could detect not the faintest flutter of the heart, so we laid him gently down on the sofa. As we did so, a small stream of blood trickled out of his mouth, he sighed heavily, and his jaw dropped.

Seeing that he was dead, we left the cabin, and stepped out once more into the bright sunshine. We noticed that, even during the short time we had been on board, the vessel had settled considerably in the water.

It was evidently quite time we were off; but we first went all round the deck, examining carefully each body, to see if either exhibited the least sign of life; but all were utterly beyond the reach of our help.

We accordingly cast off, and returned on board the _Water Lily_, making all the sail we could, to get as speedily as possible away from the scene of such diabolical atrocities.

We were about four miles distant from the ship, when we observed her roll once or twice slowly and heavily; her stern rose, and, her bows disappearing beneath the water, she gradually became almost perpendicular, when she paused for a moment and then sank gently out of sight.

The moment that Johnson's name was mentioned, the same idea flashed into both our minds; that this was the same man, and probably the same ship, of which we had so lately heard. The captain spoke of the pirate vessel as a brig; and we felt no manner of doubt that she was the _Albatross_.

So then these men, the men who had showed such base treachery to my father, were still at large, and in full prosecution of their villainous designs. And not only so, but they were in the same quarter of the globe as ourselves, and manifestly at no very great distance.

We felt no difficulty whatever now in attaching a very different and much more sinister significance to the charred fragments of wreck we had lately pa.s.sed. Our little craft would of course be but a poor prize to these rascals; but since they seemed so to luxuriate in cruelty it behoved us to give them as wide a berth as possible.

The presence of this craft, and that, too, in our immediate vicinity, was a source of the greatest anxiety to us; so much so, that we took in our gaff-topsail, and housed our topmast, to show but a low spread of canvas; and one or other of us remained posted at the mast-head all day, on the look-out, so as, if possible, to sight her before being seen ourselves, should it happen that we were both proceeding in the same direction, or on such courses as would bring us together.

We maintained this ceaseless watch for the pirate brig for four days, when, judging from the experience we had already obtained of our sailing powers in fine weather as compared with those of other vessels that we had fallen in with, we came to the conclusion that all immediate danger of a _rencontre_ with her was past; and we accordingly relaxed our vigilance, and allowed ourselves some rest, which, by this time, we greatly needed.

About noon on the seventh day after boarding the ship scuttled by the pirates (the name of which I forgot to mention was the _Ma.s.sachusetts_, of New York), land appeared ahead. It was the Falkland group of barren and desolate islands in the vicinity of Cape Horn. As we had been expecting, the wind now drew round from the westward, fresh, though not so much so as to prevent our showing a jib-headed gaff-topsail to it.

Under this sail the little _Water Lily_ made most excellent way; going a good eight knots through the water, close-hauled, and against a very respectable head sea. As the day drew on, the wind freshened; and, though we carried on as long as we dared, wishing to get round the dreaded Cape as quickly as possible, we were obliged at sunset to take our topsail in, in order to save our topmast.

By breakfast-time next morning it became necessary to further reduce our canvas, and we accordingly took down a reef in our mainsail. The question now arose whether it would be better to go round outside of everything, or to attempt the Straits of Magellan. We hove the little craft to, and went below and carefully examined the chart; discussing, as we did so, the comparative advantages and disadvantages of the two routes.

Bob had experience of both; and he seemed to feel that in the present state of the weather, and with the wind as it was, we were likely to make a quicker pa.s.sage by going on to the southward, and pa.s.sing round the Horn, I was of the same opinion, by no means liking the intricacies of the navigation of the Straits, or the violent tides which our sailing directions told us swept through them.

We accordingly filled away again, carrying on, notwithstanding the still freshening breeze, until the little _Water Lily_ seemed alternately to threaten diving to the bottom with us or taking flight altogether into the air. We were nearly blinded by the copious showers of spray which flew over us, and our mainsail was wet to its very peak; yet it was a real pleasure to see the ease and lightness with which the boat skimmed over the now formidable and angry sea.

About four bells in the morning watch, we pa.s.sed within three miles of the easternmost end of Staten Island. An hour later, the breeze freshened upon us so fiercely that we saw it would be dangerous to trifle with it any longer; so we hauled down our mainsail and stowed it; and bent and set the trysail in its place, single-reefed. This change proved a very great relief to the little craft, the sway and leverage of the heavy main-boom having made her plunge tremendously; whereas, now, she went along without shipping a drop of water beyond the spray which she of course still continued to throw over herself.

It was whilst we were busy shifting our after canvas that the little _Lily_ experienced perhaps one of the most narrow escapes of the whole voyage. We were too much occupied with our work to keep a very bright look-out; indeed, we considered that, beyond the state of the weather, there was nothing to demand our attention.