Volume III Part 20 (1/2)

'There ain't nothing in sight,' said Jacob, resuming his seat after a long look round; 'we shall have to go through the night.'

'Well, I've been out in worse weather than this,' exclaimed Abraham.

'Pity the breeze doesn't draw more north or south,' said I. 'The boat sails finely. A straight course for Teneriffe would soon be giving us a sight of the Peak.'

'Ye and the lady'll ha' seen enough, I allow, by this toime to make ye both want to get home,' said Abraham. 'Is there e'er a seafaring man who could tell of such a procession of smothering jobs all atreading on each other's heels? Fust, the loss of the _Hayneen_' [meaning the _Anine_], 'then the raft, then the foundering of the _Airly Marn_, then the feeding of Mussulmen with pork, then the skipper--as was a proper gentleman, tew--afalling in love, and afterwards being murdered; then that there fire, and now this here boat--and all for what? Not a blooming penny to come out of the whole boiling!' And his temper giving way, down went his cap again, and he jumped to his feet with a thirsty look astern; but fortunately by this time the barque was out of sight, otherwise there is no doubt we should have been regaled with another half-hour of 'longsh.o.r.e lamentation and invective.

The breeze held steady, and the boat swept through it as though she were in tow of a steamer. The sun sank, the western hectic perished, and over our heads was spread the high night of hovering silver with much meteoric dust sailing amid the luminaries; and in the south-east stood the moon, in whose light the fabric of the boat and her canvas looked as though formed of ivory. We had brought a bull's-eye lamp with us, and this we lighted that we might tell how to steer by a small compa.s.s which Abraham had taken from the Captain's cabin. We made as fair a meal as our little stock of provisions would yield, sitting in the moons.h.i.+ne eating and talking, dwelling much upon the incidents of the day, especially on the subtlety of the Malays, with occasional speculation on what yet lay before us; and again and again one after another of us would rise to see if there was anything in sight in the pale hazy blending of the ocean-rim with the sky, which the moon as it soared flooded with her light.

To recount the pa.s.sage of those hours would be merely to retrace our steps in this narrative. It was a tedious course of dozing, of watching, of whispering. At times I would start with the conviction that it was a s.h.i.+p's light my eyes had fastened upon out in the silvery obscure; but never did it prove more than a star or some phosph.o.r.escent sparkling in the eye itself, as often happens in a gaze that is much strained and long vigilant.

It was some time before five o'clock in the morning that I was startled from what was more a trance of weariness than of restful slumber, by a shout.

'Here's something coming at last!' cried the hoa.r.s.e voice of Abraham.

The moon was gone, but the starlight made the dark very clear and fine, and no sooner had I directed my eyes astern than I spied a steamer's lights. The triangle of red, green, and white seemed directly in our wake, and so light was the breeze, and so still the surface of the ocean, that the pulsing of the engines, with the respiratory splas.h.i.+ng of the water from the exhaust-pipe, penetrated the ear as distinctly as the tick of a watch held close.

'Flash the bull's-eye, Jacob,' shouted Abraham, 'or she'll be a-cutting of us down.'

The fellow sprang into the stern-sheets and flourished the light.

'Now sing out altogether, when I count three,' cried Abraham again.

's.h.i.+p ahoy!--to make one word of it. Now then!--wan, tew, _three_!' We united our voices in a hurricane yell of 's.h.i.+p ahoy!'

'Again!'

Once more we delivered the shout with such a note in it as could only come from lungs made tempestuous by fear and desire of preservation. Six or seven times did we thus hail that approaching lump of shadow, defined by its triangle of sparks, and in the intervals of our cries Jacob vehemently flourished the bull's-eye lamp.

Suddenly the green light disappeared.

'Ha! She sees us!' exclaimed Abraham.

The sound of pulsing ceased, and then, with a swiftness due to the atmospheric illusion of the gloom, but that, nevertheless, seemed incredible in a vessel whose engines had stopped, the great ma.s.s of shadow came shaping and forming itself out within her own length of us into the aspect of a large brig-rigged steamer, dark as the tomb along the length of her hull, but with a stream of lamplight touching her bridge, from which came a clear strong hail:

'Boat ahoy! What is wrong with you?'

'We're adrift, and want ye to pick us up!' roared Abraham. 'Stand by to give us the end of a line!'

Within five minutes the boat, with sail down and mast unstepped, was alongside the motionless steamer, and ten minutes later she was veering astern and the four of us, with such few articles as we had to hand up, safe aboard, the engines champing, the bow-wave seething, and the commander of the vessel asking us for our story.

CHAPTER VIII.

HOME.

On the morning of Sat.u.r.day, the 18th of November, the brig-rigged steamer _Mosquito_, from the west coast of Africa for London, stopped her engines and came to a stand off the port of Falmouth, to put Helga and me ash.o.r.e at that town, by the aid of a little West-country smack which had been spoken and now lay alongside.

The English coast should have been abreast of us days earlier than this; but very shortly after the _Mosquito_ had picked us up something went wrong in the engine-room; our pa.s.sage to Madeira was so slow as to be little more than a dull and tedious crawling over the waters; and we were delayed for some considerable time at Funchal, while the chief engineer and his a.s.sistants got the engines into a condition to drive the great metal hull to her destination.

But now the two bold headlands of the fair coast of Falmouth--the tenderest, most gem-like bit of scenery, I do honestly believe, not that England only, but that this whole great world of rich and varied pictures has to show--lay plain in our eyes. Streaks of snow upon the heights shone like virgin silver in the crisp brilliant November sun of that wintry Channel morning, and betwixt the headlands the hills beyond showed in ma.s.ses of a milk-white softness poised cloud-like in the keen blue distance, as though by watching you would see them soar.