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Foul Play, a novel by Charles Reade |
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Chapter 13 |
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_ CHAPTER XIII THE long-boat was, at this moment, a hundred miles to windward of the cutter. The fact is that Wylie, the evening before, had been secretly perplexed as to the best course. He had decided to run for the island; but he was not easy under his own decision; and, at night, he got more and more discontented with it. Finally, at nine o'clock P.M., he suddenly gave the order to luff, and tack; and by daybreak he was very near the place where the _Proserpine_ went down, whereas the cutter, having run before the wind all night, was, at least, a hundred miles to leeward of him. Not to deceive the reader, or let him, for a moment, think we do business in monsters, we will weigh this act of Wylie's justly. It was just a piece of iron egotism. He preferred, for himself, the chance of being picked up by a vessel. He thought it was about a hair's breadth better than running for an island, as to whose bearing he was not very clear, after all. But he was not sure he was taking the best or safest course. The cutter might be saved, after all, and the long-boat lost. Meantime he was not sorry of an excuse to shake off the cutter. She contained one man at least who knew he had scuttled the _Proserpine;_ and therefore it was all-important to him to get to London before her and receive the three thousand pounds which was to be his reward for that abominable act. But the way to get to London before Mr. Hazel, or else to the bottom of the Pacific before him, was to get back into the searoad at all hazards. He was not aware that the cutter's water and biscuit were on board his boat; nor did he discover this till noon next day. And, on making this fearful discovery, he showed himself human. He cried out, with an oath, "What have I done? I have damned myself to all eternity!" He then ordered the boat to be put before the wind again; but the men scowled, and not one stirred a finger; and he saw the futility of this, and did not persist, but groaned aloud, and then sat staring wildly. Finally, like a true sailor, he got to the rum, and stupefied his agitated conscience for a time. While he lay drunk at the bottom of the boat his sailors carried out his last instructions, beating southward right in the wind's eye. Five days they beat to windward, and never saw a sail. Then it fell dead calm; and so remained for three days more. The men began to suffer greatly from cramps, owing to their number and confined position. During the calm they rowed all day, and with this and a light westerly breeze that sprung up, they got into the sea-road again. But, having now sailed three hundred and fifty miles to the southward, they found a great change in the temperature. The nights were so cold that they were fain to huddle together, to keep a little warmth in their bodies. On the fifteenth day of their voyage it began to rain and blow, and then they were never a whole minute out of peril. Hand forever on the sheet, eye on the waves, to ease her at the right moment; and with all this care the spray eternally flying half way over her mast, and often a body of water making a clean breach over her, and the men bailing night and day with their very hats, or she could not have lived an hour. At last, when they were almost dead with wet, cold, fatigue and danger, a vessel came in sight and crept slowly up, about two miles to windward of the distressed boat. With the heave of the waters they could see little more than her sails; but they ran up a bright bandanna handkerchief to their masthead; and the ship made them out. She hoisted Dutch colors, and--continued her course. Then the poor abandoned creatures wept and raved, and cursed in their frenzy, glaring after that cruel, shameless man who could do such an act, yet hoist a color, and show of what nation he was the native--and the disgrace. But one of them said not a word. This was Wylie. He sat shivering, and remembered how he had abandoned the cutter, and all on board. Loud sighs broke from his laboring breast; but not a word. Yet one word was ever present to his mind; and seemed written in fire on the night of clouds, and howled in his ears by the wind--Retribution! And now came a dirty night--to men on ships; a fearful night to men in boats. The sky black, the sea on fire with crested billows, that broke over them every minute; their light was washed out; their provisions drenched and spoiled; bail as they would, the boat was always filling. Up to their knees in water; cold as ice, blinded with spray, deafened with roaring billows, they tossed and tumbled in a fiery foaming hell of waters, and still, though despairing, clung to their lives, and bailed with their hats unceasingly. Day broke, and the first sight it revealed to them was a brig to windward staggering along, and pitching under close-reefed topsails. They started up, and waved their hats, and cried aloud. But the wind carried their voices to leeward, and the brig staggered on. They ran up their little signal of distress; but still the ship staggered on. Then the miserable men shook hands all round, and gave themselves up for lost. But, at this moment, the brig hoisted a vivid flag all stripes and stars, and altered her course a point or two. She crossed the boat's track a mile ahead, and her people looked over the bulwarks, and waved their hats to encourage those tossed and desperate men. Having thus given them the weather-gage, the brig hove to for them. They ran down to her and crept under her lee; down came ropes to them, held by friendly hands, and friendly faces shone down at them. Eager grasps seized each as he went up the ship's side, and so, in a very short time, they sent the woman up, and the rest being all sailors and clever as cats, they were safe on board the whaling brig _Maria,_ Captain Slocum, of Nantucket, U. S. Their log, compass and instruments were also saved. The boat was cast adrift, and was soon after seen bottom upward on the crest of a wave. The good Samaritan in command of the _Maria_ supplied them with dry clothes out of the ship's stores, good food, and medical attendance, which was much needed, their legs and feet being in a deplorable condition, and their own surgeon crippled. A southeasterly gale induced the American skipper to give Cape Horn a wide berth, and the _Maria_ soon found herself three degrees south of that perilous coast. There she encountered field-ice. In this labyrinth they dodged and worried for eighteen days, until a sudden chop in the wind gave the captain a chance, of which he promptly availed himself; and in forty hours they sighted Terra del Fuego. During this time the rescued crew, having recovered from the effects of their hardships, fell into the work of the ship, and took their turns with the Yankee seamen. The brig was short-handed; but now, trimmed and handled by a full crew with the _Proserpine's_ men, who were first-class seamen, and worked with a will, because work was no longer a duty, she exhibited a speed the captain had almost forgotten was in the craft. Now speed at sea means economy, for every day added to a voyage is so much off the profits. Slocum was part owner of the vessel, and shrewdly alive to the value of the seamen. When about three hundred miles south of Buenos Ayres, Wylie proposed that they should be landed there, from whence they might be transshipped to a vessel bound for home. This was objected to by Slocum, on the ground that, by such a deviation from his course, he must lose three days, and the port dues at Buenos Ayres were heavy. Wylie undertook that the house of Wardlaw & Son should indemnify the brig for all expenses and losses incurred. Still the American hesitated; at last he honestly told Wylie he wished to keep the men; he liked them, they liked him. He had sounded them, and they had no objection to join his ship and sign articles for a three years' whaling voyage, provided they did not thereby forfeit the wages to which they would be entitled on reaching Liverpool. Wylie went forward and asked the men if they would take service with the Yankee captain. All but three expressed their desire to do so; these three had families in England, and refused. The mate gave the others a release, and an order on Wardlaw & Co. for their full wages for the voyage; then they signed articles with Captain Slocum, and entered the American Mercantile Navy. Two days after this they sighted the high lands at the mouth of the Rio de la Plata at 10 P.M., and lay to for a pilot. After three hours' delay they were boarded by a pilot-boat, and then began to creep into the port. The night was very dark, and a thin white fog lay on the water. Wylie was sitting on the taffrail and conversing with Slocum, when the lookout forward sung out, "Sail ho!" Another voice almost simultaneously yelled out of the fog, "Port your helm!" Suddenly out of the mist, and close aboard the _Maria,_ appeared the hull and canvas of a large ship. The brig was crossing her course, and her great bowsprit barely missed the brig's mainsail. It stood for a moment over Wylie's head. He looked up, and there was the figure-head of the ship looming almost within his reach. It was a colossal green woman; one arm extended grasped a golden harp, the other was pressed to her head in the attitude of holding back her wild and flowing hair. The face seemed to glare down upon the two men. In another moment the monster, gliding on, just missing the brig, was lost in the fog. "That was a narrow squeak," said Slocum. Wylie made no answer, but looked into the darkness after the vessel. He had recognized her figure-head.
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