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Cormorant Crag; A Tale of the Smuggling Days, a novel by George Manville Fenn |
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Chapter 31. The Perils Of The Scraw |
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_ CHAPTER THIRTY ONE. THE PERILS OF THE SCRAW In the hurry and confusion the boys crouched in the bottom of the boat for some minutes, gazing at the lugger, and seeing lanthorn after lanthorn dancing about. Then one descended like a glowworm apparently on to the surface of the water, and they knew that a boat had been lowered and that there would be pursuit. And all the time they felt that without effort on their part they were being borne rapidly along as fast as any one could chase them; but they were in a boat familiar to them, and furnished with oars and sails if they could only reach the open water. Then a despondent feeling came over them as they realised that they were surrounded by towering rocks, and as they crouched lower they fully expected from moment to moment to hear a grinding sound, and feel a sharp check as a plank was ripped out by some sharp granite fang, and then hear once more the rippling of the water as it rushed into the boat. And this in the darkness; for the bright stars above and the phosphorescent atoms with which the black waters were dotted did not relieve the deep gloom produced by the overhanging cliffs. "Hurt, Vince?" whispered Mike at last. "Yes, ever so." "Oh! Want a handkerchief to bind it up?" cried Mike, in horror. "Well, it does bleed--feels wet--but it don't matter much." "But it does," said Mike excitedly. "Where did it hit you?" "On the shin; but it didn't hit me--I hit it." "What! The bullet?" "Go along! don't joke now. I came down against an oar. Oh, I see: you thought he hit me when he fired." "Of course." "Pooh! he couldn't aim straight in the dark. I'm all right. But I say: there's water in the boat. Not much, but I can hear it gurgling in. Why, Mike," he cried excitedly, after a few moments' search, "here's a little round hole close down by the keel. There, I've stopped it up with a finger; it's where his bullet must have gone through. Got your handkerchief?" "Yes." "Tear off a piece, to make a plug about twice as big as a physic-bottle cork." There was the sound of tearing, and then Mike handed the piece of cotton, which was carefully thrust into the clean, round hole, effectually plugging it; after which Vince proposed that they should each take an oar. "Can't row," said Mike shortly. "No, but we may want to fend her off from a rock. Hullo! where are the lanthorns now? I can't see either the lugger or the boat." Mike looked back, but nothing was visible. "We've come round some rock," said Vince. "We shall see them again directly." But the minutes glided on, and they saw no light--all was black around as ever, but the loud, hissing gurgle of the water told that they were being borne along by some furious current; and at last came that which they had been expecting--a heavy bump, as the prow struck against a rock-face so heavily that they were both jerked forward on to their hands, while the boat was jarred from stem to stern. They listened with a feeling of expectant awe for the noise of water rushing in; but none came, and a little feeling about was sufficient test to prove that there was no more than had come in through the bullet hole. But while they were waiting there came another heavy blow, and their state of helplessness added to their misery. "Oh, if it was only light!" groaned Mike. "Yes, we could use the oars or hook to fend her off." Bump went the boat again, and they caught at the side to save themselves, conscious now, in the thick darkness, that they were being whirled round and round in some great whirlpool-like eddy, which dealt with the boat as if it were a cork. "Don't seem as if we can do anything," said Vince at last, as the boat swept along, with the water lapping and gurgling about them just as if it were full of hungry tongues anticipating the feast to come as soon as they were sucked down. "No," said Mike, "it doesn't seem as if we can do anything." "'Cept one thing, Mike," said Vince in a low deep tone, which did not sound like his own voice. "What?" "Say our prayers--for the last time." And in the midst of that intense darkness, black as ebony on either side, while above and below there were still the bright glittering and softened streaks of light, there was an interval of solemn silence. Vince was the first to break that silence, and there was something quite cheerful in his tones now as he said,-- "Shake hands, Mikey: I'm sorry you and I haven't always been good friends. I have often been a regular beast to you." Mike grasped the extended hands in a firm grip with both of his, as he said, in a choking voice,-- "Not half so bad as I've been to you, Cinder. I've got such a hasty temper sometimes." "Get out!" cried Vince sharply. "There, I'm better now. I'm afraid we're going to be drowned, Ladle, but I feel as if we ought to be doing something to try and save ourselves. It's being so cowardly to sit still here. They wouldn't like it at home." "But what can we do? I'm ready." "So am I; but it's so dark. I say, though, we must be going round and round in a sort of hole." "Then we shall be drawn right down somewhere into the earth." "Not that! I tell you what, it's like one of those great pot-holes in the big passage, only a hundred times as big; and the water's sweeping the boulders round, and grinding it out and carrying us along with it. Look here, we shall be kept on going round and round here, if we don't get smashed, till daylight; and then old Jarks'll come and find us, and we shall be worse off than ever. I say, though, don't you think we could do something with the boat-hook?" "What?" "Wait till we bump against the rocks again, and then try and hold on." "If you did the water would come over the stern." "I don't know. Well, look here: I'll try. If it does I'll let go directly." Taking hold of the boat-hook Vince knelt down right forward, thrust the iron-armed pole over the bows, and holding it like a lance in rest he waited, but not for long. Very soon after the iron point touched against stone, and he was thrown backward, nearly losing the pole, while the boat was sent surging along on one side for a few moments, bumped on the other side, then back again as if she were being sent from side to side, and directly after the keel came upon a rock which seemed to slope up like a great boulder standing in their way. There for a brief moment or two it was balanced, and made a plunge forward like a dive, the water came with a rush over the bows, and surged back to where Mike was kneeling, and then they were rushing onward again more swiftly than ever. For a few moments the pair were too breathless to speak, but Vince recovered from the confusion caused by the shock and the rapidly following exciting incidents, and he shouted aloud,-- "Bale, Mike, bale! It's all right: we're out of that whirlpool, and we're going along again." "You've got the baler forward," said Mike huskily. "Eh? So I have in the locker here. I say, how deep do you make the water? There's hardly any here." "Only a few inches." "Then we're all right yet; but we may as well have that out." He felt for the locker, and drew out the old tin pot, crept aft to where his companion knelt, and, after lifting the board which covered in the keel depression, he began to toss out the water rapidly, and soon lowered it so that the pot began to scrape on the bottom, while Mike listened with a feeling of envy attacking him, for he felt that it must be a relief to be doing something instead of kneeling there listening and wondering whether the pursuing boat was anywhere near. "There!" said Vince at last, in a triumphant tone; "that's different to baling when you feel that the water is coming in as fast as you throw it out. I haven't got it all, but as much as I can without making a noise." He replaced the bottom board and then returned the pot to the locker, and Mike moved a little forward now to meet him half-way. "Think we're going as fast now as ever?" whispered Mike. "Eh? I don't know. I was too busy to think about it. No, not quite, and--I say, are we going right?" "Right?" "Well, I mean as we were. We seemed to be going south, as far as I could make out by the stars; and now we're going north." "Nonsense! impossible!" "Look, then! I'm sure we had our backs to the pole star, and that meant going south, and out to sea; but now we've got our faces due north." "Yes," said Mike, after a few moments' pause; "that's right: we're going north." "Well, that isn't out to sea." "No," replied Mike thoughtfully. "And running along at such a rate as we are, we ought to have been ever so far away by this time, instead of rushing along here deep down among the rocks, as if we were in a narrow channel. I can't make it out: can you?" Mike remained thoughtful and silent again for a time, and then said wearily,-- "No; I can't understand it. It gives me the headache to think; and being whirled along like this is so confusing. My thoughts go rushing along like the water." "Don't talk so loud, Mike," said Vince, after a pause, "or we shall be heard. But we must have left them a long way behind, or else they've covered over their lanthorn so as to come upon us by surprise." "Think they are near us, then?" "Must be, because the tide would carry them along as fast as it does us; and they have the advantage of knowing the way. Oh! I do wish we could get out in the open sea; and then, once we were clear of the rocks, we'd show them what the boat could do. It would puzzle them to--" He was going to say "catch us then," but he stopped short, gazing upward, out of the black chasm in which they were, at the stars. "What is it? See the light?" whispered Mike. "No: I was trying to make out our course. The passage has wound off to the right, and we're going east." "Of course it would zigzag and turn about," said Mike wearily; "but we're in deeper water here, for we don't seem to go near any small rocks." "No; but we're going by plenty of big ones on the left. The current runs close to them, I'm sure, though it's ever so much wider now. I believe I could almost have touched either side with the boat-hook a bit ago; now I can only touch one side." "It's more ripply, too, now, isn't it?" "Ever so much: seems to boil up all about us, and you can't see the bright specks sailing about so fast. The top of the water was as smooth as glass when we were in the great lugger." "That's a sign we are near the sea, then," said Mike, with more confidence in his tones. "Yes, and I don't like it," said Vince thoughtfully. "Why?" "Because I've been thinking that there must be another way out; and knowing all about it, as they do, they'll be waiting at the mouth of this horrible zigzag place along which we're dodging all this time, and catch us after all." "Oh, Cinder!" cried Mike passionately, "don't say that: it would be too hard. It may be too dark for them to see us if we lie close and don't make a sound. And look," he said joyfully: "we really are close to the sea now, for we're going due south." "Due south it is," assented Vince, as if he were standing at a wheel steering. "Yes, I suppose you're right, for I can hear the sound of surf. Listen." "Yes, I can hear," replied Mike; "but it sounds smothered-like." "Rocks between us, perhaps. Now then: only whispers, mind!--close to the ear. Don't let's lose our chance of getting away by telling them where we are. I say!" "Yes." "If there was a boat anywhere near us, could you see it?" Mike turned his eyes to right and left before answering: "Sure I couldn't on that side, and I don't think I could on this." "That's what I felt, and if we're lucky we'll escape them after all. Now then, silence, and let's get the oars across and each take his place on the thwarts, ready to row hard if we are seen." Each from long practice felt for the thole-pins and placed them in their proper holes; then, softly taking up their oars, they laid them right across the boat, with handle standing out on one side, blade on the other, and waited in silence, with the boat gliding on. At the end of about a quarter of an hour, during which minute by minute they had expected to be swept out into open water where the great Atlantic tide was rolling along by the solitary island, Mike whispered,-- "I say, the boat has turned quite round more than once. Doesn't that account for the stars seeming different?" "No, because we can tell we are sometimes going forward and sometimes back." "But look! we're going north now." "Yes, I know we are," said Vince; "and I'm beginning to know how it is." "Well, tell me. It's so horrible to be puzzled like this." Vince was silent. "Why don't you speak?" "Because I was thinking. Ladle, old chap, we've gone through too much, what with the seals' cave, and being caught and then put down in that stifling hole over the gunpowder. We're both off our heads--in a sort of fever." "I'm not," said Mike shortly. "You are, or else you wouldn't talk such stuff." "I talk such stuff, as you call it, because my father's a doctor, and I've heard him tell my mother about what queer fancies people have when their heads are wrong." "Two people couldn't be queer in the same way and with the same things. What's the good of talking like that?" "Very well: you tell me how it is. I can't understand it, and the more I try the more puzzled I am. It's horrible, that's what it is, and I feel sometimes as if we had been carried away by the tide to nowhere, or the place where the tides come and go in the hollows of the earth." "We shall be out at sea directly, and then we shall be all right." "No, we shan't be out at sea directly, and we shan't be all right; for we've got into some horrible great whirlpool." "What!" cried Mike excitedly. "A whirlpool?" "Yes, that's it; and we're going round and round, and that's why it is that we are sometimes looking south and sometimes north." "But you don't think--if it is as you say--that at last we shall be sucked down some awful pit in the middle?" "I don't know," said Vince. "I can't think properly now. I feel just as if my head was all shut up, and that nothing would come out of it. I say, Mike!" There was no reply, for Mike was gazing wildly up at the stars, trying to convince himself of the truth or falsity of his companion's words; but he only crouched lower at last, with a feeling of despair creeping over him, and then he turned angrily, as Vince began to speak again, in a low, dreamy voice. "That's it," he said: "we are going round and round. I wish we'd had some more of old Jarks' dinner, and then gone to sleep quietly in our bunks. We couldn't have been so badly off as we are now." "Then why did you propose for us to escape?" "Because I thought we ought to try," said Vince sharply, as he suddenly changed his tone. "There, it's of no use to talk, Mike. We're in for it, and I'm not going to give up like a coward. I don't know where we are, and you don't; but we're in one of those whirls that go round and round when the tide's running up or down, and we can't be any worse off than we are now, for there are no rocks, seemingly." "But the middle--the hole." "They don't have any hole. Why, you know, old Joe sailed us right across one out yonder by the Grosse Chaine, and we went into the little one off Shag Rock. It's one like that we're in, and I daresay if it was daylight we could see how to get out of it by a few tugs at the oars, same as we got out of that one when we went round and round before. Oh, we shall be all right." Mike did not speak, for the words seemed to give him no comfort. "Do you hear, Ladle?" continued Vince. "If we had been likely to upset, it would have been all over with us long ago; but we go on sailing round as steadily as can be, and I feel sure that we shall get out all right. What do you say to lying down and having a nap?" "Lie down? Here? Go to sleep?" cried Mike in horror. "I couldn't." "I could," said Vince. "I'm so tired that I don't think I could keep awake, even if I knew old Jarks was likely to come and threaten me with a pistol. But, I say, Ladle, that wretch shot at us twice. Why, he might have hit one of us. Won't he have to be punished when we get away and tell all about him?" "Yes, I suppose so--if ever we do get away," said Mike sadly. Then they relapsed into silence, both watching the stars to convince themselves that they were going round and round, making the circuit of some wide place surrounded by the towering rocks, which made the sea look so intensely black. At last, thoroughly convinced, the strain of thinking became too great, the motion of the boat and the constant gliding along in that horrible monotonous whirl began to affect Mike as it had affected Vince, and, in spite of his energetic struggles to rouse himself from it, was now attacking him more strongly than ever. They were surrounded by dangers, the least of which was that of the pursuing boat with the exasperated captain; for so surely as the boat grazed upon a rock just below the surface she would capsize. But all this was as nothing to the mentally and bodily exhausted lads. Nature was all-powerful, and by degrees the head of first one then of the other drooped, and sleep, deep and sudden, fell upon them. But the sleep was not then profound. The mind still acted like the flickering of a candle in its socket, and urged them to start up wakeful and determined once more. And this happened again and again, the sufferers telling themselves that it would be madness to go to sleep. But, madness or no, Nature said they must; and almost simultaneously, after seating themselves in the bottom of the boat, so as to prop themselves in the corners between the thwart and side, they glided lower and lower, and at last lay prone in the most profound of slumber, totally unconscious of everything but the great need which would renew with fresh vigour their exhausted frames. _ |
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