[208]
‘BARTON’S JACKAROO.’
‘Bother!’ exclaimed Mr Barton, the Manager of Tarnpirr, as he finished reading one of his letters on a certain evening.
‘What’s the matter, papa?’ asked his daughter, Daisy, pausing with the teapot in her hand.
‘Oh, nothing much, my dear,’ he replied; only we are to have company. The firm is sending up the 444th cousin of an Irish Earl to learn sheep-farming, and I suppose I’ve got the contract to break him in. That’s all.’
‘I wish your mother could be at home, Daisy,’ he continued. ‘I never did care much about these colonial-experience fellows. They generally give a lot of trouble, especially when they’re well connected. There, read the precious letter for yourself. Pity we couldn’t put him into the hut, instead of making him one of ourselves—eh, Daisy?’
The girl laughed as she read aloud,—
‘Mr Fortescue is highly connected; and as he not only brings introductions from the London office, but [209] also possesses an interest in several properties out here, we hope you will do your best to make him comfortable, and to give him that insight into the business that he seems desirous of acquiring at first hand.’
‘Why, daddy!’ she exclaimed, ‘you ought to think yourself honoured—“highly connected,” not merely “well,” remember—by such a charge! As for myself, I am all anxiety to see him.’
‘I don’t think anything of the sort, then, Daisy,’ said her father. ‘And if I could afford to do so, I should like to tell them that I consider it a piece of impertinence on their part to ask me to receive a perfect stranger, knowing how I am situated alone with you, how small the place is, and how roughly we live. But one can’t ride the high horse on a hundred and fifty pounds a year!’
And the Manager of Tarnpirr sighed, and stared thoughtfully into his cup.
In the general sense of the word, Daisy Barton was not a pretty girl, inasmuch as she possessed not one regular feature. But it was such a calm, quiet, pleasant face, out of which dark blue eyes looked so tenderly and honestly at you, that one forgot to search for details in the charm of the whole. Add to this, one of the neatest, trimmest, most loveable little figures imaginable, and you may have some faint idea of the pleasant picture she made as she sat thinking which of the two spare rooms should be got ready for the new inmate. Mrs Barton was never at the station. [210] She was a confirmed invalid, and resided permanently in a far southern town. Daisy and an old Irishwoman kept house.
In due course the ‘highly connected’ one arrived, bringing with him as much luggage as sufficed to fill the extra room.
He was a tall, good-looking Englishman, and he gazed around at the small bare house with its strip of burnt-up, dusty garden, and background of sombre eucalypti; at the squalid ‘hut;’ the sluggish, dirty river; and the barren forlornness of everything, with a look on his face that caused Mr Barton to chuckle, and think to himself that the new-comer’s stay would be short. The manager had expected a youngster, not a grown man of five or six and twenty, and he was rather puzzled.
This self-possessed, languid sort of gentleman, with well-cut features, long moustache, and slow, pleasant-sounding, if rather drawling, speech, wasn’t by any means the sort of creature that Mr Barton was accustomed to associate with the term ‘jackaroo,’ and its natural corollary, ‘licking into shape.’
‘A fellow with lots of money, I expect,’ he said to Daisy that night after their guest, pleading fatigue, had retired. ‘One of those chaps who just come out to have a look around, and then off home again with wonderful stories about the wild Australian Bush.’
‘Yaas; shouldn’t wondah, now, Mistah Barton, if you ah not quaite correct,’ laughed Daisy, mischievously. [211] ‘Oh, papa, do all the folk in England talk as if they were clean knocked up?’
‘Only the highly-connected ones, my dear,’ replied her father, smiling. ‘It’s considered quite fashionable, too, amongst our own upper ten. He’ll lose it after he’s been bushed a few times. I shouldn’t imagine from his looks, however, that he’s got much backbone. He’ll be away again presently—too rough a life.’
And, in fact, poor Fortescue at first often did get bushed.
Luckily for him, perhaps, a camp of blacks settled at Tarnpirr shortly after his arrival, and these made a regular income by hunting for and bringing him back. And he was very considerate.
Once, when he had been missing for three days, and Mr Barton and Daisy were half out of their minds with fright, he made the blacks who were bearing him home, tattered and hungry, and faint from exposure, go ahead for clean clothes and soap and water before he would put in an appearance. This incident only confirmed Mr Barton the more in his idea that he had to do with a man lacking strength of character—a dandy willing to sacrifice everything to personal outward show. His daughter thought quite otherwise.
However, in time, ‘Barton’s Jackaroo,’ as he was called throughout the district of the lower rivers, became a favourite, not only at Tarnpirr, but on the neighbouring runs. Even old Bridget admitted that [212] ‘he was a good sort ov a cratur, barrin’ the want ov a bit more life wid him.’
But he was always calm and self-possessed; and the Manager was accustomed to swear that a bush fire at his heels wouldn’t make him quicken his pace by a step.
And once Daisy, in a moment of irritation, confided to her father that she felt inclined to stick a needle into his jackaroo for the sake of discovering whether that provoking air of leisurely languor was natural or assumed.
‘He’s got no backbone, my dear,’ said the Manager, laughing. ‘But try him by all means. I’ll bet you ten to one he only says what he did last week, when that old ram made a drive at him in the yard, and knocked him down and jumped on him.’
‘And what did he say to that?’ asked Daisy eagerly.
‘Well,’ replied Mr Barton, laughing again, ‘when he’d cleaned the mud out of his eyes and mouth, he looked surprised and said “Haw!”’
‘Oh,’ said Daisy, disappointedly. ‘But what ought he to have said to show that he had a backbone, papa?’
‘Well,’ replied her father vaguely, ‘you know, Daisy—er—um—well, that is—um—a great many people, my dear, your father amongst them, perhaps, would be apt to say a good deal on such an occasion.’
‘I have a better opinion than ever of Mr Fortescue,’ cried Daisy indignantly at this. ‘Because he keeps his [213] temper, and doesn’t go on like Long Jim or Ben the Bullocky when any little thing happens, he’s got no pluck or resolution! I own he exasperates one sometimes with his calm, dawdling ways. But if he were pushed, I shouldn’t be surprised to find more in him than he gets credit for after all!’
‘Umph!’ said Mr Barton glancing kindly, but with rather a troubled face, at the flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes upturned to his own. And as he rode over the run that day the burden of his thoughts was that the sooner his serene-tempered jackaroo got tired of the Bush the better it would be for all of them.
. . . . . . . . . .
‘Ned, if the river ain’t a-risin’, an’ risin’ precious quick, too, call me a Dutchman! ’Arf-an-hour ago the water warn’t near them bullocks, and now it’s right agin their ’eels!’
‘Well,’ replied his mate, glancing towards the brown stream slowly spreading over the flat, ‘we’re safe enough. I’ll forgive it if it comes over this. Tell you what, though, you might catch the pony an’ canter up to the station, an’ tell ole Barton as there’s some water a-comin’. He might have some stock he’d like to git out o’ the road. An’ you might’s well git a lump o’ meat while you’re there.’
So Ned, of the travelling bullock team, went with the news to Tarnpirr, lower down.
But Mr Barton that very morning had been to Warrooga township, and the telegraph people had said no word of floods or heavy rain at the head of the river. [214] Around Tarnpirr and district the weather had been dry for weeks, so the Manager was not in the least uneasy.
‘It’s only a bit of a fresh, Brown,’ said he. ‘It’ll soon go down again. Thanks all the same, though. Meat? Yes, of course. And now you’d better go over to the kitchen and get your dinner.’
‘Boss reckons it’s nothin’,’ said Ned, returning that evening. ‘No rain fall’d up above.’
‘We wouldn’t need shift anyhow,’ replied the other, preparing to cook the meat given them by Mr Barton, who little dreamt how welcome it would be to some people later on. ‘We’re a lot higher here than they are at the station. I saw “Barton’s Jackaroo” just now, out ridin’ with Miss Daisy. He’s a rum stick, he is.’
‘But ain’t she a little star!’ exclaimed Ned enthusiastically.
‘She are; all that!’ replied his mate. ‘Finest gall on the rivers. Too good by sights for any new-chum.’
And so the pair sat and yarned and watched the treacherous water of what was to become the biggest flood since ’64 stealthily eating its way up amongst the long grass of the sandridge, sneaking quietly into little hollows, then pretending to creep back again, then with a rush advancing a miniature wave further than ever. Sat and talked and watched the brown expanse broaden until the tall oaks that bordered the banks were whipping the fierce current with their slender tops, sole mark now to show where lay mid-stream.
[215]
‘It’s a darned big lump of a fresh!’ quoth Ned doubtfully.
‘It’ll be down afore mornin’,’ replied his mate. ‘And anyhow it can’t do us real bad, seein’ what we’ve got in the loadin’. But there’s no danger ’ere on this ridge.’
So they turned in under their tarpaulins, and never heard how the water hissed at midnight as it crept, little by little, advancing, receding, but always gaining, into their carefully covered-up fire.
. . . . . . . . . .
In the snug sitting-room at Tarnpirr, with lamps burning brightly, and curtains drawn against the lowering dusk, sat Herbert Fortescue and Daisy Barton, their heads pretty close together over a chessboard.
‘I’m going across to the Back Ridge out-station this afternoon,’ had said Mr Barton. ‘I sha’n’t be home before to-morrow; I want to see how Macpherson’s getting on with those weaners. Needn’t bother about the river. It’s only a fresh, or Warrooga would have sent us word.’
Alas for dependence on Warrooga with its absent trooper, and absent-minded operator, who was warned, just after Manager Barton left him, that masses of water were coming down three rivers towards Tarnpirr!
Had he but taken horse and galloped out the few miles, or sent, things might have happened very differently, and this story would never have been written. But as it was—
‘There!’ exclaimed Daisy, ‘my king is in trouble [216] again. I feel out of sorts to-night. It’s very close. Shall we go on to the verandah?’
‘With pleasure,’ said the young man rising. ‘But it’s as dark as pitch outside. Give me your hand, please, for fear you stumble.’
Hesitating for a moment, their eyes met, and with deepening colour she placed her hand in his, and they went out through the long window into the night. It was very quiet, and the darkness felt woolly and warm. No light glimmered anywhere, and the only sound was the cry of a solitary mopoke coming from amongst the spectral boles of the box trees.
‘The men are in bed, I suppose,’ said Daisy, glancing towards their hut.
‘They are away on the run,’ replied Fortescue, ‘drawing fencing stuff for the new line. But it’s a wonder we don’t see the blacks’ fire.’
As they stood leaning against the garden fence a soft continuous ripple, mingled with a sound like the sighing of wind through tall belars fell on their ears.
‘It’s only the river,’ said Daisy, ‘I’ve often heard it making that mournful noise when it’s rising over its banks. Shall we walk as far as the camp?’
It was a rough track, and more than once, but for the sustaining arm of her companion, Daisy would have come to grief over log or tussock.
But they got there at last, guided by a few dim sparks from expiring fires.
‘Why, it’s deserted,’ exclaimed Daisy, as they found [217] themselves amongst the empty gunyahs. ‘They’re gone, dogs and all.’
‘Off on some hunting expedition, I expect,’ replied Fortescue, laughing. ‘They look at me in a comically disgusted manner of late since I left off getting bushed so regularly.’
It was too dark to see the water, but they stood for a long time listening to the swish of it as it ran full-lipped from one steep high bank to the other, telling with eerie mutterings and whisperings, and curious little complaining noises, and low hoarse threatenings of what it would presently do, and the mischief it would work, but in language all untranslatable by its hearers.
‘What a sweet little lady it is,’ said Fortescue to himself as, later, he sat on the edge of his bed staring straight before him into a pair of tender, steadfast eyes conjured out of the darkness. ‘I wonder if she does? I’m nearly sure of it, thank heaven! Why, she is worth coming here and roughing it like this, and being called “Barton’s Jackaroo” twenty times over for!’ and he laughed gently. ‘Fancy a prize like that hidden away amongst these solitudes. I wonder what her father will say? Anyhow, I won’t put it off any longer. I’ll ask him to-morrow.’
With which resolution he laid down and went to sleep, still thinking on Daisy Barton.
He awoke with a start, and lay listening to noises in his room, the remnants, as he imagined, of some grotesque dream.
Gurglings there were, and agonised squeakings and [218] scrapings, with, now and then, ploppings and splashings as of many small swimmers. Then something cold, wet and hairy, crawled over his hand.
Shaking it off with an exclamation, he jumped out of bed, and with the shock of it, stood stock still for two minutes up to his knees in water.
Then, striking a match, he saw that his room was awash, and that all sorts of articles were floating about it, drawn hither and thither by the current which swelled and eddied between the old slabs. Up a corner of blanket, touching the water, swarmed a great host of ants, tarantulas, beetles and crickets, whilst drowning mice, lizards, and heaven knows what else, swam wildly round and round and gratefully hailed his bare legs as a harbour of refuge. Hastily rubbing them off, and getting into some wet clothes, he opened the window and looked out. A wan moon shed a feeble light upon one vast sea of turgid water. Nothing in sight but water—water, and the tops of the trees quivering above the flood! No wonder the river talked to itself last night! The scene was enough to make even a man with a backbone quail and feel a bit nervous.
As for Barton’s Jackaroo, his first astonishment over, he forgot himself so far as first to whistle, and then to swear, but very softly and tentatively, as one trying an experiment.
You see, this was a different matter altogether to being butted of rams, or even being badly bushed without a drink for three days and three nights.
[219]
Brushing off his sleeve the head of a column of sugar-ants
that had effected a lodgment via the window-sill, he
waded into the sitting-room and lit the lamp. Then,
making for Daisy’s room, he called and tapped until
she answered.
‘It’s me—Fortescue. Don’t be alarmed, Daisy—Miss Barton,’ said he. ‘The water’s in the house. Get up and dress, and come out as quickly as possible.’
As he finished speaking a wild yell rang through the place, and Bridget’s voice from near by exclaimed, punctuated by screams,—
‘Howly Mother av Moses! Ow! Blessid Vargin an’ all the saints purtect us! Ow! the divvle be wid me! but it’s drowned I am this minnit! an’ the wather up me legs, an’ niver a soul comin’ next anigh me! Och! wirras-thru! it’s a lost woman I am, wid all the mices and bastes atin’ away at me! Ow! ow! ow!’
With difficulty suppressing a desire to laugh, Fortescue shouted to her to get her clothes on and join him. One little cry of dismay he heard from Daisy as she lit her candle, and then he returned to the dining-room.
Here he was startled to notice a burst of dull moonlight coming in through the front of the house where already were gaps caused by the slabs being displaced and carried away by the water.
Clearly the building, old and rotten, was going to pieces.
Presently Daisy, pale, but silent and composed, entered. Taking her in his arms, he placed her on a [220] sideboard, grieving the while to see how the water poured from her clothes.
‘I am afraid the whole house will go, Daisy,’ he said. ‘It’s shaky and decayed. I was thinking of making a stage on the wall-plates up there. But I’m sure now that our only hope is in a raft of some kind.’
At this moment in floundered Bridget, clasping a large bottle to her breast, and muttering at every stride objurgations, entreaties, and fag-ends of prayers.
‘Ochone!’ she cried, ‘may the saints an’ the Howly Mother av all hould us in their kapin’ this night!’ Then, uncorking the bottle, ‘Sure, Misthur Fortyskeu, sorr, if ye are a haythen, ye might have a thry for purgathory itself. It’s better nor the other place, so it is. Here’s the howly wather, avick, that Father Dennis give me lasht chapel at Warrooga—if ye’ll let me sprinkle a weeshy dhrop—’
‘Come, come, Bridget; stop that nonsense!’ exclaimed Fortescue sternly, as he knocked down slabs and pulled them inside. ‘Isn’t there water enough about, without any more. Take the candle and get me some ropes—clothes-lines, saddlestraps, anything you can find!’
Bridget opened her mouth with astonishment. She had never been spoken to in such manner before. Then putting down her precious bottle, she waddled off.
Presently Daisy slipped into the water, saying,—
‘I can’t sit there and watch you working away by yourself,’ and she helped to hold the slabs, whilst he and Bridget secured them with lashings.
[221]
Four, ten feet long, tied at the ends, and upon them
cross-pieces, and upon these the long dining-room table.
This was the raft; and while Fortescue tied and knotted
and fastened, he talked of how he had once been cast
away in a yacht, and had then learned many things.
And the pair, listening to his cheery voice, took courage,
albeit the water now was waist high.
The seasoned pine timber floated like a cork, and to his satisfaction Fortescue found that with their combined weight it was still well out of the water. He was just considering whether it might be possible to secure a few valuables and important papers, when an ominous creaking caught his ear, and the house began to quiver bodily.
Hurriedly jumping on board and seizing a long thin slab, he pushed off. And what a wild sight it was outside, as the frail craft shot clear of everything into the flood!
The water ran like brown oil, swift but waveless, bearing with it logs, great trees, posts and rails, planks, heaps of straw, débris of every description, whilst into the still, warm air ascended a stern hum like the sound of some mighty engine. It was like the sound of the river purring with satisfaction at the fulfilling of its last night’s promises.
Looking back, they saw through the open front the lamp, like some welcoming beacon, burning steadily across the waters. Even as they gazed, there was a faint crash heard, and the light disappeared. The house had gone, and in another moment its fragments drifted by [222] them. Round and round they swept, now threatened by some huge uptorn tree whose bristling roots came nigh transfixing them, now nearly dashed against the topmost limbs of a standing one, taking all Fortescue’s strength and skill to avoid a collision.
Presently they saw, on either hand, long strings of sheep swimming down the current with plaintive bleatings to their death; heard, too, shrill neighings and bellowings of drowning cattle and horses.
Round and round they swept, although they knew it not, towards the raging central current, where disaster was inevitable; whilst Daisy sat with white face, mute, and almost hopeless, and Bridget crouched, one arm around a table leg, mumbling over her beads; and Barton’s Jackaroo, the man without a backbone, toiled steadily and watchfully, still finding time, at intervals, to throw a word of cheer to his helpless companions.
Crash! and a log overtaking them and hitting them end-on, sent the raft spinning; whilst to his dismay Fortescue felt the slabs begin to loose and spread. Decidedly, a few more knocks like that, and they would all find themselves in the water.
‘I’m afraid, Herbert, it’s going to pieces,’ whispered Daisy, who had crept close to where he knelt.
It was the first time she had ever used that name when addressing him, and her voice sounded so inexpressibly sweet that, without even glancing at Bridget, he turned and took the girl in his arms and kissed her, a caress which she, thinking her end at hand, and loving him, returned.
[223]
Smash! and they are amongst the stout upper
branches of what must be a giant tree. But, in place
of pushing off, Fortescue hugs and pulls, and calls upon
the women to help him, which they do until the raft
is moored, so to speak, hard and fast between forks
and branches, the only ones visible now over all that
brown, bare waste of water with silver patches of moonlight
here and there upon it.
It was a grateful thing to be at rest, even so precariously, after all the twisting and twirling they had come through; and Bridget, rising stiffly and shaking herself, with the fear of present death gone out of her soul, said,—
‘Praise the saints! Sure, Misther Fortyskeu, sorr, we oughter to be thankful for gettin’ this far wid clane shkins, so we ought! Sorra a one ov me ’ll go any furder if I can help it! Is the wather raisin’ yet, does ye think, sorr?’
‘I’m afraid it is, Bridget,’ said Fortescue, as he sat on a stout limb supporting Daisy beside him. ‘I hope, though, it won’t rise over the top of this tree.’ But, disquieted by the idea, he presently got into the water and tightened the lashings of the raft as well as he was able.
It was a long, dreary night, especially after the moon went down. Fortunately it was warm and fine. Indeed, throughout that trying time of flood, curiously enough, not a single point of rain fell in that region. They talked of many things, these two, nestling snugly in a great fork of the giant apple-tree, but their chief [224] subject was the old, old story; whilst Bridget, just below them, alternately invoked heavenly succour and lamented earthly losses.
‘Twinty wan poun’ notes undther me head in the bolsther, an’ me too hurried an’ flurried to remimber ’em! Sure, it’s clane roond I am afther this noight, bad cess to it! But for Father Dennis’s wather—may glory be his bed whin his toime comes—it’s at the bottom wid the sheep and craturs I’d be afore now, so it is! May the saints above sind the blessed light an’ the masther wid a ship to us! Ochone! Miss Daisy, me darlin’, I knows it’s hard on ye too. An’ for ye too, sorr—God forgive me thinkin’ ye wasn’t quite so smart as ye moight be!’
And so she rambled on, unheeded by the lovers perched in the big fork above her.
Dawn at last, bright and clear, with presently a brilliant sun.
To his relief, Fortescue saw by the marks on the tree that the water was falling. By noon the raft was suspended high and dry. But still a lamentable procession of sheep and household débris, with an occasional horse or bullock, hurried along the swift central stream, at whose very verge a merciful Providence had arrested the raft. Presently Fortescue was lucky enough to secure a pumpkin out of the dozens floating about, and the three divided and ate it with an appetite. Slowly the shadows lengthened. Other tree tops, dishevelled and dirty with driftage, began to appear around them. The water was falling rapidly. But were they to pass [225] another night there? Fortescue began to fear so, and was even setting about the construction of a platform out of the raft, when a loud ‘Coo-ee-e-e!’ made him start. ‘Coo-ee-e-e!’ in answer; and then a small boat pulled by two men came through the branches of the big tree.
‘Hoorar!’ shouted one. ‘We was afraid it was all up with yees! But where’s the Boss?’
‘My father went to the out-station yesterday,’ replied Daisy.
‘Oh, then he’s right enough,’ said the man. ‘Bet your life, miss, he ain’t very far away this minute! He’s seed, afore now, what the “bit of a fresh” turned to. Hand us down the lady fust, guv’nor.’
But old Bridget, being lowest, and in a hurry, suddenly let herself drop fairly on the speaker’s shoulders, fetching him down, and nearly capsizing the boat. Then, to his infinite astonishment, she got her arms round his neck and hugged him, and would have served his mate the same way, but he sprang into the tree and avoided her.
‘Where are your waggons?’ asked Fortescue, as at last they pulled off.
‘Ten foot under water, by this,’ replied the carrier, ‘seein’ it was up to the naves afore we left. We knowed nothin’ till we feels it in our blankets. Then up we jumps, and, behold you, we’re on a hiland about twenty foot round, an’ the flood a-roarin’ like billyho. As luck ’ll ’ave it, Tom, there, has this boat in his loadin’, takin’ her to a storekeeper at Overflow—I [226] expect he’s a-thinkin’ on her just now. So we hiked her out, paddles an’ all, gits some tucker, an’ steers for Tarnpirr, knowin’ as you was a lot lower ’n we, an’ no boat. Well, when we sees nothin’ but water where the house shud ha’ been, we reckoned you’d all been swep’ away, so comes along on chance, cooeyin’ pretty often. By jakers, guv’nor, if you hadn’t ’appened to have savee enough to chuck that thing together, you’d all a’ been gone goosers sure enough! I don’t b’lieve there’s one single solitary ’oof left on the run, not exceptin’ our bullocks an’ saddle ’orses.’
The castaways now made a much-needed meal off damper and some of the Tarnpirr mutton, and voted it a wonderful improvement on raw pumpkin, even with love for its sauce.
Before they had pulled a mile towards Warrooga, they met Mr Barton with some residents in the police boat. He had been nearly frantic with anxiety since, on returning home, he encountered the water, and, galloping back, had with great difficulty reached the township.
. . . . . . . . . .
‘What’s the use?’ replied Mr Barton despondently, when, that same evening, Fortescue asked him for Daisy. ‘I’m a ruined man, and, like most such, selfish, and I want to keep my little girl. So far as I can gather, there’s not an animal of any description left alive on Tarnpirr. Pastoral firms make no allowances; they’ll say I ought to have cleared everything off before the flood came, and they’ll sack me at a minute’s notice. [227] Of course, if the people here had done as they should, I might have saved most of the sheep, if not all. No; I don’t like to disappoint you, after having behaved so nobly and pluckily—and I must say now that I never did you justice—but I think, Mr Fortescue, you’d better choose a wife elsewhere; I do, indeed.’
Seeing that Barton was irritable, and rather inclined to hug his misfortune, Fortescue, perhaps wisely, said no more just then, and apparently took his dismissal with a good grace.
But later, before starting for the capital, Daisy and he had a long talk, during which a conspiracy was hatched.
Mr Barton bade his jackaroo a kindly good-bye; and if he felt any surprise at the non-renewal of his suit, he never showed it.
He was expecting, with almost feverish impatience, a letter from the firm in answer to his own report, with details of the disaster at Tarnpirr. And when at length it arrived, after what seemed a long delay, and he found that, instead of the reproaches and curt dismissal he was prepared for, it contained sympathy and an appointment to a large station on the Darling Downs, words were wanting to express his utter astonishment, and his deep contrition for the bad opinion he had formed of his employers.
‘Never mind, Daisy,’ he cried. ‘They say the owner will be there himself to receive us on our arrival. I can thank him then in person.’
‘Dear me, how nice that will be!’ replied Daisy, demurely.
[228]
‘And, only fancy,’ he went on, ‘they request us to
take our servant—that’s Bridget, of course—with us!
I’m to find out, too, if those carriers lost much, and, if
so, to compensate them.’
‘How very good and thoughtful they must be,’ answered Daisy—but this time with moist eyes.
I will not insult the reader’s penetration by asking him to guess who the owner of that Downs station was.
It will be sufficient to remark that Mr and Mrs Fortescue have only just returned from their wedding trip to the Continent; and that it will be very long indeed ere they forget that memorable night in ’90 upon which the waters came to Tarnpirr, and caused ‘Barton’s Jackaroo’ to show what he was made of.
[229]
TOLD IN THE ‘CORONA’S’ CABIN.
————
ON THREE EVENINGS.
————
The First Evening.
In the south-east trades, and the big ship moving steadily through the water with every sail full. Not a quiver of the tightly-strained canvas, not the rattle of a reef-point, broke the stillness aloft.
A glorious evening in the South Atlantic, with the sun setting, as is often his wont in those latitudes, in a bed of crimson, gold and amethyst. The passengers, who had been watching the many-hued passing of the day-king, went below as the cool night breeze began to whistle with a shriller note through the top-hamper and the water to swish more loudly along the sides, and fall back with a louder plop. Very comfortable, snug, and home-like the Corona’s cabin looked. It was a cabin, remember, not a ‘saloon.’
There was nothing of the modern curse of varnish and veneer about it. Everything was handsome, also substantial, from the dark mahogany casing of [230] the mizzen-mast to the highly polished, solid panelling of rosewood, relieved with only a narrow gold beading. The cabin might aptly have been termed a study in brown and gold, so predominant was this combination. Even the curtains in front of each berth door were of brown damask, with gold fringe. The general effect, if a little sombre, was good.
Especially good it seemed this evening to the passengers as they came trooping in with talk and laughter; especially snug and home-like, with its three big swinging moderator lamps, its long table covered with odds and ends of female work, books, papers, etc., etc., its piano, and its comfortable couches scattered here and there.
The Corona’s great beam had been utilised to some purpose, and, thus, her cabin was not, like the saloons of so many sailing ships, a sort of stage drawing-room, all white paint, gilding, glass, spindle-shanked chairs, and turn-over-at-a-touch tables.
The company suited the cabin. There were only a dozen or so of them, mostly middle-aged married folk, who had left their grown-up families in Australia whilst they took a trip ‘Home,’ and were now returning to their adopted country. Amongst them, however, were two or three single ladies of uncertain ages, bound to the Land of the Golden Fleece in search of fortune, even if it should only come in the shape of a husband. There was, also, Miss Amy Hillier, an Australian heiress in her own right, returning to [231] her native land with an uncle and an aunt. This is another man’s story; so that I am not going to take up space by a description of Amy Hillier’s charms; suffice it to say here that she was young and pretty, and as good as she was young and pretty.
Wonderful to relate, the company of passengers fitted each other. Each seemed to have discovered in another his or her affinity, and, up to this, there had been none of the usual backbitings, heart-burnings, and malicious tittle-tattle usually so inseparable from a sea voyage in a sailing ship.
Miss Hillier had seated herself at the piano, and was playing something from Lohengrin, when a remarkable-looking man, entering the cabin, doffed his gold-banded cap, and made his way to her side.
Strongly, yet gracefully built, upright as the royal pole, active in all his movements, one would have taken him to be scarce arrived at middle-age, but for the fact that his thick, closely-cropped hair shone a dead white under the lamplight. His features were regular and good, albeit they wore, in general, a rather serious expression. Altogether, it was a strong, pleasant face, full of energy, confidence, and the power to command.
As he rested one hand on the corner of the instrument, it might be noticed that, from wrist to finger tips, it was covered by the white cicatrices of long-healed scars. In spite, however, of his grey hair and disfigured hands, Captain Marion, of the Corona, [232] Australian liner, was called by many people a handsome man.
‘Sing me my favourite, please,’ asked the Captain presently.
‘On condition,’ was the reply, ‘that you will tell us a story in return.’
‘It’s a bargain,’ said the Captain. ‘I’ll relate the legend of Vanderdecken, the Flying Dutchman. Thoroughly appropriate it will be, too, as we are just entering his domains.’
‘We don’t want to hear about the Flying Dutchman,’ answered the girl promptly.
‘Well, then,’ continued the Captain, ‘what do you say if I tell you how I was cast away in ’69, on the coast of—’
‘No, no, Captain Marion,’ interrupted she, smiling shyly up at him, ‘we don’t want that either.’
‘Ah, I see!’ exclaimed the Captain, after a pause, ‘a conspiracy! Well,’ he went on, after a still longer hesitation, ‘I don’t care much about it. The telling, I mean, of how I got this’ (touching his hair) ‘and these’ (spreading out his hands), ‘for, of course, that is what you wish to hear. It reminds me of a time I would rather not recall.
‘No, Miss Hillier’—for the girl had risen in dismay and almost tears at her thoughtlessness, and was attempting to apologise incoherently enough—‘it doesn’t matter a bit. Besides, I somehow feel in the vein for story-telling this evening; and as well that as anything else. With some passengers, I find that I [233] have to put a stopper on their curiosity rather abruptly. But’ (with a grave smile and a bow to the group) ‘it being a rare thing, indeed, to meet so well-assorted and pleasant a party as we are this trip, I’ll spin you the yarn, such as it is. And now, Miss Hillier, my song.’
‘What would you like—the same as usual, I suppose—“The Silent Land?”’
‘Yes,’ answered the Captain; ‘your rendering puts a new interpretation on Salis’ words for me, and I seem to bear with me more strongly than ever the promise, as I listen, that he
. . . . . . . . . .
‘It is,’ commenced Captain Marion, the song finished, and taking his accustomed seat, whilst the others gathered round him—‘It is nearly fourteen years ago that the strange, and what many may deem improbable, adventure happened which I am about to relate. I was then about twenty-two years of age, an able-bodied seaman on board a ship called the Bucephalus, belonging to Liverpool. It was my first voyage before the mast, for, although I had duly served my apprenticeship with the firm who owned her, and also passed my exam. as second mate, there was no vacancy just then open. They, indeed, offered me a post as third; but, knowing that I should be none the worse for a month or two in the fok’s’le, I [234] preferred to ship as an A.B. The Bucephalus was an Eastern trader, and on this trip was bound for Singapore and China. All went well with us until we entered the Straits of Sunda. Then, one afternoon, the ship lying in a dead calm off one of the many lovely islands which abound in those narrow seas, the passengers, chiefly military officers with their families, asked the captain to let them have a boat and a run ashore.
‘He was a good-natured man, and consented. Luckily for me, as it afterwards proved, the gig, a very old boat, was full of lumber, fruit, fowls, etc., procured at Anjer, and so the life-boat, a stanch, nearly new craft, was put into the water instead.
‘At the last moment some one suggested that a cup of tea might be acceptable on the island. Not tea alone, but provisions for an ample meal were at once handed in, together with a keg of fresh water. This also was, as you will discover presently, another lucky or—ought I not to say?—providential, chance for me.
‘With myself, three more seamen, and eight or nine ladies and gentlemen, we pushed off towards the verdant, cone-shaped island. Landing without any difficulty on a shell-strewn beach which ran up between two lofty and abrupt headlands, all hands, except myself and an elderly seaman known as Tom, jumped ashore and went climbing and scampering about like so many schoolboys out for a holiday. For my part, I had been on scores of similar islands, or imagined I had, and felt no particular wish to explore this one. Neither, apparently, did my companion. So, hauling [235] off a little from the shore, we threw the grapnel overboard and prepared to take things easy, each in his own fashion, he with a pipe, and I with a book lent me by one of the cabin passengers.
‘We made a rough sort of awning with the boat’s sail, and I lay in the stern-sheets, my companion between the midship thwarts, under its grateful shelter. It was a drowsy afternoon and a very hot one. To our ears the shouts and laughter of those ashore came at intervals, gradually growing fainter as they made their way towards the summit of the mountain, for such one might say the island was.
‘Presently, looking up from my book, I saw that old Tom was fast asleep, his pipe still in his mouth. Very shortly afterwards I dozed, and heard the book drop from my hand on to the grating without making any effort to recover it. I fell asleep in the broad sunlit day, between ship and land, in the motionless boat, with the voices of my kind still in my ears, and awoke in thickest darkness, moving swiftly along in utter silence, save for, at times, an oily gurgle of water under the bows. Not that I realised even so much all at once. It took me some time. I thought I must be still dreaming, and lay there staring into the blackness with unbelieving eyes. Then I pinched myself and struck my hands sharply against the thwarts. But it was of no use. I could not convince myself that I was not the victim of some ghastly nightmare. Then the idea came into my mind that, although awake, I had suddenly become blind; that Tom had gone ashore [236] for a stroll, and that the boat, drifting, had been carried out to sea by some current. Under the influence of this notion, I leaped to my feet, only to be at once struck down again, as if by a hand of iron. Although not completely stunned, I was, for a few minutes, quite bewildered. I could feel, too, that my head was bleeding freely. Sitting cautiously up, I called “Tom!” I listened intently, but nothing was audible save the faint gurgling sound of the water. I called repeatedly, but there was no answer. Suddenly I recollected that in my pocket was a large metal box full of matches—long wax vestas.
‘Striking one, I held it aloft and gazed eagerly about me. I thanked God that I was not blind. But, so far as I could see, I was alone.
‘On each side, and a foot or so above my head, barely visible in the feeble glimmer, were swiftly passing walls of dripping rock, covered, in many places, with huge clusters of shiny weeds. So amazed was I at my perfectly inexplicable situation that I stared until the match burned my fingers and dropped into the water, whilst I fell back quite overcome by astonishment and fright.
‘Then, after a bit, I struck more matches. But things were just the same. Always the rocky weed-grown sides, sometimes within touch, at others seeming to widen out; always the rocky, dripping roof, sometimes at my head, at others out of sight; always the darkness, the hurrying boat, and the water like liquid pitch.
[237]
‘Unable to see thoroughly over the boat, I presently
crawled for’ard, feeling, as I went, under the
sail which had fallen over the thwarts. As I feared,
I found no one.
‘Groping about, I picked up Tom’s pipe. And then I feared the worst for him.
‘The darkness was horrible. It was so thick that one seemed to swallow mouthfuls of it. The atmosphere was close and muggy, with a smell reminding me strongly of a tannery. Although lightly clad, I was bathed in perspiration as I half sat, half crouched, at the boat’s stern, straining my eyes ahead, and now and again lighting one of my matches. Time nor distance had any meaning for me, now; and I have no idea how long I had been voyaging in this unnatural fashion, when there fell on my ears the loud threatening roar of many waters. Commending my soul to God, I laid myself in the boat’s bottom. The next minute she seemed to stand nearly upright and then shoot downward like a flash, whilst thick spray flew in showers over me, and the imprisoned waters roared and howled with deafening clamour adown the narrow chasm, so narrow that more than once, in her headlong course, I heard splinters fly from the boat’s timbers, whilst masses of dank weeds detached by the blows fell upon me.
‘I now,’ continued the Captain, after a pause, during which he glanced from the ‘tell-tale’ compass overhead to the attentive, wondering faces of [238] his audience—‘I now gave myself up for lost, or, at least, imagined that I did so. But the love of life is strong indeed within us; so that when after shooting this subterranean cataract, or whatever it might have been, I found my boat once more steadily gliding along, ever with the same dull gurgle of cleft water at her bows, a faint ray of hope took the place of despairing calm. I was young, remember; healthy, too, powerful and agile beyond the common, and I felt it would be hard indeed to die like a rat in that black hole. What accentuated the hope I speak of was the fact that the lessening roar of the torrent I had just passed sounded as if directly overhead. In vain I told myself that it was but a deceptive echo. Hope would have her say, and buoyed me up, though ever so little, with the idea, incredible as it seemed, that this horrible underground river had doubled back beneath itself, and was making for the sea once more. It has well been said that drowning men will clutch at straws! This one, indeed, was soon to fail me; for presently, to my utter despair, the noise of tumultuous waters ahead gave warning of another cataract—another, or the same one, for, what with the din and the darkness, I became quite confused. The passage was a repetition of the last one, only, if anything, rougher; and, crushed in spirit, all courage flown, I sank back, listening to the rush of the falling water dying away overhead again. Was I, I wondered, descending to even [239] lower depths of earth’s bowels in this fashion, or merely driven to and fro at the caprice of some remorseless current in what was to prove my tomb! I believe that, for a time, under the stress of ideas like this, my mind wandered; for I have a vague remembrance of singing comic songs, of shouting defiance to fate, the darkness, and things generally; behaving, in fact, like the lunatic I must have become. Whether I descended any more rapids or not I cannot say. I have no recollection whatever of the last part of my strange journey. When, however, I came to my sober senses again I was at the end of it. The boat was motionless, and I was standing upright in her.’
At this point in the Captain’s story, and while the interest of his hearers was at its height, the chief officer came quietly in, and, catching his superior’s eye, as quietly made his way out again.
Now, four bells struck, and the Captain exclaimed, ‘What, ten o’clock already! My yarn has somewhat spun itself out, and I’m afraid the rest must keep for another evening.’
At this there was quite a chorus of remonstrance. ‘It was cruel to have excited their curiosity and leave it unsatisfied,’ was the general verdict.
‘No sleep for me to-night,’ said Miss Hillier; ‘I shall be wandering through that horrid place in my thoughts, and puzzling my brain to discover how you got out, unless I know the sequel.’
‘It grieves me to think of your disturbed rest,’ [240] replied the Captain, with a bow and a quizzical smile, ‘although honoured by the cause of it. I am afraid, however, I must refuse even you. I saw heavy weather just now in Mr Santley’s eye; and the ship, you know, before all.’
Then the sound of ropes thrown heavily on deck was heard, together with tramp of feet and shouting, the ship heeled over, and the Captain went out, and was not again seen that night by his passengers.
The Second Evening.
Close-reefed top-sails, with a wild, high sea, met on ‘rounding the corner,’ did not prevent the Corona’s passengers from putting in an appearance the next evening to hear the continuation of the Captain’s story.
‘Well,’ he remarked, as he took his seat, ‘this yarn of mine seems to bring us luck, judging by the way we exchanged our trades last night for this rattling westerly breeze that is now taking us round the Cape so nicely. I think I left off my story,’ continued the Captain, ‘as the boat came to a stop in her travels, through the darkness.’
‘I had recovered from my temporary fit of madness, and was standing up. I was trembling violently, and my limbs felt cramped and stiff. I fancy I must have been a long time on the journey, for I was sick and [241] faint, principally from want of food. The air, though still heavy and warm, was not so oppressive as it had been. But the former silence was broken by the most unearthly noises imaginable, sobbings, deep cavernous groans, and hoarse whistlings resounded on every side. For a long time I did not stir. I just stood listening with all my ears, and expecting every moment that something awful was going to take place.
‘After a while, slightly reassured, and feeling the boat’s bows scraping some hard substance, I crept into them, and putting out my hand, and groping about alongside, felt a mass of smooth honeycombed stone. Striking a match, the possession of which, in my confused state of mind, I had almost forgotten, I got hold of the painter and took a couple of turns around a projecting ledge of rock.
‘Then I scooped up a handful of water and tasted it. It was as bitter as gall, also quite lukewarm. Happily that in the breaker was unspoiled. Rummaging about, I found the case of eatables also intact; and, sitting there in profound darkness, made a meal of cheese and white biscuits, listening between the mouthfuls to the mysterious noises, whose origin, however, I was now enabled pretty well to guess at.
‘It was very warm, and the tannery smell more powerful than ever. A sensation of surrounding vastness and space, however, was with me as opposed to the confined cramped feeling of being in a narrow channel, such as I suppose myself to have emerged from. Now, I could stand upright and thrust an oar [242] out and upwards without touching anything; and, shouting aloud, the sound went echoing and thundering away over the surface of the water with reverberations lasting for minutes.
‘I can take you into that place,’ continued the Captain impressively, ‘and tell you about it as far as my poor words will serve. But I cannot tell you my feelings. At times I almost imagined that I was in Hades, and that the ceaseless noises about me were the cries and groans of lost souls therein. At others, a wild, forlorn hope would seize me, that it might all turn out to be only a horrible dream, and that I should presently awake to see God’s dear sun shining brightly on the gallant ship and the green island once more. It had all happened with such startling rapidity, the transformation had been so utter and complete, that to this day I wonder I did not become a raving madman, and so perish miserably down there in the depths. But God in His infinite mercy took pity upon me, and brought me at the last out of such a prison as it is given to few men to see, much less escape from.
‘Like the majority of seafarers, I, in those days, seldom troubled my head about what is vaguely called “religion.”
‘The careful and pious teachings of my childhood had been forgotten almost wholly. But, in that awesome place, in solitude and misery, bound with darkness of Scripture, “that might be felt,” many things came back to me; and, kneeling down, I clasped my hands and [243] prayed fervently that I might be saved out of the valley of the shadow of death which encompassed me. Feeling better and stronger, I took my sheath-knife, and with it cut away at one of the oars until I had quite a respectable pile of chips. Placing this on the rock alongside, I set it on fire, and soon had the satisfaction of seeing it blaze cheerfully up and, for a few yards, dispel the darkness. I kept adding fuel from the same source, with the addition of a couple of stretchers, until I had a really good-sized fire. By its light I saw that I was on a flat rock some twenty feet in circumference. Round about were other islets, shaped most fantastically. One, close to, resembled a gigantic horseshoe; another towered up, the perfect similitude of a church spire, into the darkness. At their bases were holes, into and through which the water, flowing and ebbing, produced the sounds that at first had so alarmed me. Look as I might, I could not distinguish the way I had come in, although I thought I could hear the steady pouring of a volume of water not far away. Breaking off a lump of the stone on which I sat, I examined it closely, and felt pretty certain that it was lava. I had seen such before at Mauna Loa, in the Sandwich Islands.
‘Was I then in the womb of a volcano, extinct just at present, doubtless; but, perhaps, even now, taking in water preparatory to generating steam and becoming active? Somewhere in my reading I had dropped across an article on seismology, and one of the theories put forward came to mind as above.
‘The idea made my flesh creep!
[244]
‘I seemed to feel the air, the water, and my lump of
lava getting hotter and hotter.
‘Hopeless as my case appeared, and almost resigned to face the end as I had become, even so, I did by no means relish a private view of the preliminaries to a volcanic eruption.
‘Strangely inconsistent, you will say, but so it was. When face to face, even with the last scene of all, it seems there can yet be something of which one may be afraid.
‘Meanwhile, my beacon blazed up brightly, and, peering around, I presently made out a pile of stuff apparently floating against the base of one of the nearest islets.
‘Taking a flaring fire-stick, I got into the boat and sculled over to it. It was a heap of driftwood. Lowering my torch to examine the stuff more closely, I nearly pitched overboard, as, out of the reddish-black water within the ragged patch of light, a white, dead face gazed up at me with wide-open, staring eyes. I recognised it at once as that of my old shipmate. Tom, on awaking, had evidently been knocked out of the boat and drowned, as so nearly happened to myself. The current had as evidently carried him here with me.
‘I leaned over the gunwale as if fascinated. What would I not have given for his living companionship now!
‘Lifting, at last, one of the stiff arms, I shook the unresponsive hand in silent farewell, and paddled back [245] towards the flame that marked my islet, actually feeling envious of the quiet corpse. Misfortune makes us sadly selfish, and so little had my thoughts ran on the fate of my comrade that the shock of his appearance thus was a heavy one.
‘I took it as a bad omen, and what spirit I had nearly left me.
‘After sitting motionless on my rock for a very long time, with my head bowed on my knees, and nearly letting my fire go out, I shook myself together a little, threw more chips on, and examined my stores.
‘All told, with cheese, biscuits, several tins of potted meat and preserves, I reckoned there was enough, on meagre allowance, to last me for a week. Water about the same.
‘More than once I felt tempted to throw the lot overboard and follow it.
‘But youth and health and strength are indeed wondrous things, and a man possessed of them will do and dare much before giving up entirely, no matter how drear the outlook, how sharp the arrows of fate which transfix him!
‘Feeling weary and fagged, I lay down in the boat and slept, I suppose, for hours very soundly.
‘The awaking was bad—worse even than the first time.
‘One thing comforted me somewhat. I found that by the constant endeavour to use my eyes in the darkness I was becoming able to discern at least the dim outlines of objects.
[246]
‘Renewing the fire with a lot of driftwood I picked
up at the further side of my islet, I proceeded to carry
out a plan I had formed. Taking the gratings out of
the stern-sheets, I arranged them firmly in the bows.
Then, breaking off projecting lumps and knobs of lava,
I beat them smaller with an iron pin, which I fortunately
found in the boat, and spread them thickly over
the gratings, thus forming a sort of stage. Upon this I
built a substantial fire. I was, you see, bound on a
voyage of exploration.
‘There might, possibly, be some avenue to freedom out of this subterranean sea other than the one I had entered it from, exit by which was, of course, hopeless.
‘It was, I argued, useless to stay on the rock. I could not be much worse off, no matter where I got to.
‘How I yearned and hungered for light no tongue could tell. It seemed so hard to wander in the gloom for a brief night of existence. And then, the end! Do you, any of you, wonder at my hair turning grey?
‘As I scraped the last embers off the islet on to the tin dish used as a baler, in order to throw them on the new fire, the light fell full upon the corpse, which, to all appearance, had just floated alongside.
‘My nerves were evidently getting unstrung by what I had gone through, for, letting the dish fall, I shouted with terror, and, jumping into the boat, pushed wildly away from the poor body. To my unutterable dismay [247] it followed me, with one arm extended and raised slightly, as if in deprecation of my desertion of it.
‘I have thought at times,’ remarked the Captain parenthetically, ‘of what a picture the scene would make—the boat floating in a patch of crimson water, with the fire flaring into the blackness on her bows, myself standing up grasping an oar, and gazing intently at the nearly nude body as it came closer and closer, and everywhere around the thick darkness.
‘I think that in another moment I should have leapt overboard, so great was my fright, but that I happened to catch sight of a piece of rope leading from the boat to the body.
‘Getting hold of it, I pulled, and the corpse came also. Then I understood. On my leaving it the first time a portion of the sail halliards, which had been towing overhead, had got foul of the body, and, unperceived, I had brought it back to my islet with me.
‘My presence of mind returned, and, not caring to run the risk of more surprises of the sort, I again landed, and pulled the body on to the islet.
‘There must have been some preserving agent in that water, for, despite the heat, there was no sign of decomposition, and the features were as fresh as in life.
‘Sculling gently along, with my fire blazing bravely and comfortingly at the bow, I set off into the unknown.
[248]
‘For a time my attention was thoroughly taken up in
trying to avoid the numerous lava islets, whose presence
I could scarcely detect until right upon them. Indeed,
once or twice we bumped heavily enough to send
showers of hot ashes hissing into the water.
‘At last, after a long spell of this kind of blind navigation, I seemed to get clearer of these provoking islets. The noises also, to which I was becoming quite accustomed, nearly ceased.
‘As I sculled warily along, I listened with all my ears for some indication of a return current. It was my one hope, and it kept every sense on the alert.
‘But the water within the radius of my so limited vision was quiet and still as in a covered reservoir—much more so, now, indeed, than at my old resting-place. This fact I accounted for by the emptying near there of the underground, possibly under-sea river, which had brought me into such an awful fix.
‘Presently the boat bumped more violently than ever, and by the flame-light which shot up from the disturbed fire, I saw, rising far aloft, a solid wall of rock. No lava islet this, but the end of all—the boundary, in this direction, of my prison.
‘To right and left stretched the same grim barrier, dropping sheer down into the still black water. With a sinking heart I turned the boat’s head along the wall to my right hand, keeping a little distance out, moving very slowly, with just a turn or two of the oar, sufficient only to keep way on her.
[249]
‘It may have been minutes, or it may have been
hours, when, straight ahead, over the somewhat feeble
light of my fire, which had proved, after all, more
help by way of company than use, I imagined the
darkness looked thinner. Inspired by the mere idea,
I sculled vigorously along, at the risk of complete
wreck from some sunken rock, and in a short time
the boat shot into an oblong-shaped streak of light—light,
that is, comparatively, for it was as dim as
starlight; although, so acclimatised, if I may use the
term, had my eyes become to the denser medium,
that by its aid I could see clearly every article in
the boat.
‘I will not trouble you with a description of my feelings, nor of all the extravagancies I committed in the first flush of delighted hope that had visited me. I seemed to be once more in touch with the upper world through that column of dim greyness ascending through the darkness, and so weak as hardly to be able to conquer it.’
Here the Captain paused. He had told his story well; seldom at a loss for a word, and with now and again, but rarely, an appropriate gesture.
So successful had he been in gaining the attention of his listeners, that, when he ceased, they sat quite silent, gazing at him fixedly, and for some minutes no one spoke.
Then four bells, which struck on deck during a lull in the roar of the gale, came with such sudden [250] distinctness to their ears, as to make some of the ladies start and utter timid little ejaculations.
The spell broken, a chorus of tongues clamoured out. Miss Hillier alone was silent. Then some dear foolish female affinity said, ‘Why, Amy, love, you’ve been crying!’ This the girl, with flaming cheeks denied, only the next minute to affirm, quite inconsequently, that if she had wept (which she was certain she had not), was not such a tale enough to make one, with any heart at all, shed tears?
The Third Evening.
East by S-½-South, under fore and main courses and upper and lower top-sails, sped the Corona with the wind on her quarter. Aft, rose great water-hills, darkly green, with white crests, seeming, as each followed each, to hang momentarily suspended over the stern and threaten to overwhelm everything; then, as the good ship rose just in the nick of time, breaking with a long surge in sheets of milky foam away for’ard.
The sun was setting sullenly behind a dense cloud-bank. An albatross or two flew screaming from one wave-crest to another right in the wake. It was a typical evening in the Southern Ocean, the long wash of whose seas reach from the foot of Cape Leuwin to the rugged cliffs of Fuego.
[251]
‘Well,’ continued the Captain, without any preface,
as he took his seat facing the waiting and expectant
little party.
‘Well, stare as I might aloft, I could not discover to where this Jacob’s ladder led. You see, at its best, it was only a column of dusky twilight, and the further end, from where I stood, was lost to view. As I gazed, it appeared to be gradually fading away. I rubbed my eyes; and when I again looked, all around was blacker than the blackest midnight, except where my fire still burned. For a while, I was puzzled to account for the disappearance of the light. Then the thought struck me that it might be caused by the fall of night in the upper world. Was I, I wondered, as I turned sadly to my fire, ever again to look upon the bright day, the sun, the moon, the stars, and all the wonders of that fair earth now grown so dear to me? Truly was I one of those unhappy men who, as the Psalmist says, “sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, being bound in affliction and iron.”
‘Close to the pillar of light, just on its outside edge, I had noticed a long, slender, almost perpendicular pinnacle of lava towering upwards like the spire of a church.
‘At the base of this I securely moored my boat. Then, thinking that a cup of tea would cheer me up a little, I brewed one, and made a good meal. After this, lying down, I pondered many things, gazing always aloft.
[252]
‘Once I imagined I saw a star; but it disappeared
before I could make sure.
‘The one question uppermost in my mind was whether or not the glimmer would reappear when the morning broke above, or had it been an illusion? One thing encouraged me to hope for the best. It was perceptibly cooler, a grateful change from the warm mugginess I had encountered everywhere else. I had, by this, contracted a habit of talking aloud, and I presently caught myself saying that I would climb the lava pinnacle in the morning and try to get a better look-out.
‘“In the morning.”
‘The utter vanity of the so familiar phrase as it fell on my ears struck me with all the force of some terrible shock, whilst the cold deadening thought seized upon me that, for me, in this world, there was to be no more morning. Through darkness was I to make the last journey towards that dread bourne whence no traveller returns? The slow death in the darkness, drifting about on the bitter waters of that secret sea—that was the thought that my soul revolted from. And strange thoughts, horrible thoughts, a man thinks placed as I was. At times his reason leaves him, his whole soul rises in impious revolt, and the devil rages freely therein, as if already his victim’s bed were made in hell.
‘But, thanks be to God!’ exclaimed the Captain, fervently, ‘that the recollections of that hideous time—of the fits of doubt and despair and terror and [253] madness, of which I have said but little to you—grow dimmer and weaker with the years, leaving only in enduring relief the memory of a great mercy!
‘It pleased me, though, unproved as it was, that notion of being able to distinguish between night and daylight. The very fact, pure conjecture though it might be, of having the power to say, “Night has come,” seemed to bring peace to my wearied eyes; so that I presently lay down and slept dreamlessly, and on awakening found again, to my intense joy, that mild, soft haze falling upon me.
‘Scarcely giving myself time to snatch a mouthful of biscuit and a draught of cold tea, I jumped ashore and commenced the ascent of the tapering mass of rock. It was, as I have said, nearly perpendicular, and there was no lack of foot and hand-holds—projections sharp as razors, formed by the drippings of the once molten lava. Thanks to my trained vision and the help afforded by the close proximity of the light, I could see dimly. Higher up, the projecting spurs and knobs grew scarcer, and the surface more smooth and slippery. It was terrible work. At home I had had some practice as a cragsman, and this stood to me well now. As I climbed, sometimes vertically, at others spirally, wherever I could feel the firmest hold, the atmosphere grew palpably clearer, and this infused new strength into my aching limbs as I crawled upwards, now hanging by one bleeding hand over the abyss beneath me, now with both hands breathlessly embracing some sharp spur that cut into [254] my flesh, whilst my feet groped convulsively for precarious support.
‘When just about spent, I unexpectedly came to the top. I found only room enough there to sit down and pant. A wild hope had filled my breast that this rocky ladder would lead me to liberty—a hope growing stronger with every upward step. As I looked around, these hopes fell, and the old leaden weight of despair seemed to settle once more upon my soul. Slanting away from me on every side, stretched the rugged acclivities of a vast amphitheatre, converging again towards its summit, where the blue sky was distinctly visible. Picture to yourselves an hour-glass with a long tunnel-like waist. Place a straw, the end of which rests on the bottom of the lower section of the glass and reaches up through the tunnel until just on a level with the sloping-upward portion of the top section, but touching it nowhere. Now place a minute insect on the very tip of the straw, and you have my situation as nearly as I can explain it to you. And there I crouched on my lava straw, stretching out unavailing hands to those scarred cliffs of liberty, betwixt me and which spread that dark abyss, with the mournful waters of the bitter sea at its foot. The distance between where I sat on the top of the pinnacle and the sloping walls of the crater all round must have been about twenty five feet. I think it was afterwards measured as that. A hundred plans darted swiftly into my mind for crossing this little space, which meant so much to me, only to be as quickly dismissed as impracticable.
[255]
‘Although still very far from day, it was yet light
enough to let me see that the sides of the crater,
nearly equi-distant around my perch, were cut and
ploughed into deep furrows, and that, once there, I
should have comparatively little trouble in reaching
upper air.
‘Would it be possible, I wondered, to splice what remained of the oars together, and thus make some kind of a bridge along which to creep? But the idea of again facing such a climb with such an unwieldy burden made me shudder. Also, I doubted much if there was length enough to reach across, supposing I ever got them to where I was. This one amongst many other plans. All at once, as I sat gazing alternately at the far, far away patch of blue overhead, and the dark rocks opposite, there flashed across my thoughts the recollection of the boat’s grapnel. I had seen nothing of it. But it might still be hanging under her bows. Attached to the stern-post by a short length of chain shackled to a ring-bolt, it would have taken a heavy shock to shift it. If I could but get a line across and, by help of the grapnel, firmly secured to the opposite side, I felt I was saved. Tearing up the light dungaree jumper I was wearing, and which, with the remainder of my clothing, was little else but a rag, I bound pieces around my stiff and wounded hands and feet, and commenced the descent. It was an awful journey, worse than the coming up. Then, my skin was whole, at the start, anyhow; now, the cuts and tears re-opened and bled and stung more than ever. At one [256] time, indeed, I felt that I must give up and let go. But the thought of the grapnel appeared to endue me with fresh strength, whilst, in my mind’s eye, I kept steadfastly the memory of that dear glimpse of blue sky. At length, looking down and pausing for a moment, I saw a flicker of light. It was from the dying embers of my fire, and, in a few minutes, I was in the boat. Although nearly utterly exhausted, crawling for’ard, I felt for the chain. It was there; and pulling it rapidly in, what was my delight to find the little grapnel still at its end. Replenishing my fire, I made some tea, preparatory to having something to eat, for I knew I should want all my strength presently. In hauling at the chain my hands had got wet, and, to my surprise, the bleeding had ceased, and the pain almost departed. I immediately bathed my feet, and felt wonderfully relieved thereby. Now, I had my tea, and then considered whether it might not be wiser to pass the night where I was, and take a full day for my attempt. God knows how eager I was for the moment of trial to arrive! Still, I chose the prudent side, and sat and watched the hazy column turn first to a dull green, then to ashen grey, then go out suddenly, and so I knew, certainly now, that the day was over on the earth.
‘As the darkness, thick and impenetrable, closed me in, I lay down thinking to sleep a little, but my rest was disturbed and broken. Always, as I dozed off, I was clambering painfully up that terrible rock, with bleeding hands and feet, staggering under huge burdens of rope and iron. Once I dreamt that my shipmate’s [257] body had floated off the islet, and was, even now, with white clammy fingers, striving to lift itself into the boat, whilst the ghastly face peered at me over the side. This effectually awoke me; but so strong was the impression, that I seized a fire-stick, and, making it blaze up, searched sharply around. I had my trouble for my pains. But further attempt at sleep for me was out of the question.
‘My dawn, such as it was, came at last. I had already detached the grapnel from its chain, and unrove the halliards from the mast. These last I wound round and round my body, fully thirty feet of line, small “Europe” rope, but tough and strong. The disposal of my precious grapnel, which, luckily, was one of the smallest of its kind, only used, as we had used it, for a temporary holdfast, bothered me a good deal.
‘Finally, I placed my head between two of the flukes, one of which then rested on each shoulder, whilst the stock hung down my back, swinging loosely. To make sure of the flukes not slipping, I passed a piece of line from one to the other, and knotted it securely.
‘It was a most uncomfortable fixture altogether, a tight fit for my neck into the bargain, but I could think of no other way.
‘I’m not going to inflict upon you a detailed description of how I reached the top—I believe it must have been fully five hundred feet—carrying that half-hundred weight of iron, to say nothing of the rope. [258] Indeed, I hardly know myself. However, get there I did; but, as you may guess, in a very evil plight.
‘I recollect, when still some thirty feet from the top, unable to bear any longer the horrible chafing of the flukes, which had broken through the skin, and were grinding against the bone, that I rested, or, rather, balanced myself on a sharp ledge, whilst casting the grapnel adrift from my shoulders, and unwinding the rope from my body. Then, making one end of the line fast to the ring in the stock, I fastened the other round my waist, the grapnel all this time resting loosely on the rock.
‘Leaving it there, and paying out the line cautiously into the void below me, away I went again, bracing myself at every step to withstand the awful jerk should the grapnel slip off, and tighten the rope with the momentum of its fall. If such a thing had happened, and the chances were many, my fate was certain—a few scrambling clutches and annihilation. But where it went I had made up my mind to go also.
‘It was my only and last hope, that bit of crooked four-clawed iron! Death was in every step I took, and I believe that it was in those last few feet that my hair turned its colour, so terrible was the suspense and expectation.
‘But God was very good to me, and I reached the summit with a couple of feet of line to spare. Dragging the grapnel up, I crouched down on the little flat, table-like top, and fairly sobbed with pain and exhaustion.
[259]
‘To my alarm, I felt myself growing weaker instead
of stronger from my rest. The fact was that, with
the awful cutting about I had received, I had lost
a good deal of blood. Many of the deeper cuts
on my hands and arms were bleeding still. Evidently
there was no time to lose. Standing up, feeling
sick and dizzy, I coiled down my line for a fair
throw, and, grasping it some three feet or so above
the grapnel, swung it to and fro until I thought impetus
enough was attained, then hove with all my remaining
strength.
‘I shut my eyes, expecting to hear every second the sound of iron clanging far beneath against the sides of the pinnacle. When I opened them again, the line was hanging in a slack bight across the chasm. The little anchor had fallen directly into one of the deep furrows, but perilously close to the edge. With trembling fingers I hauled the line in. Tighter, tighter, tighter still, then with all the force I could command. Would it support the weight of my body, or would it come?
‘Without staying to argue the question, I made it fast afresh to a round nob, the only one on the place. Then, saying a short prayer, and taking a last glance at the blue sky, I let myself slip gently off the rock, hanging with my hands on the thin, hempen line.
‘It sagged terribly. I could plainly hear my heart knocking and thumping against my ribs. It sagged and “gave” still more. Imagining that I heard the noise of the grapnel scraping and dragging, I looked [260] upon myself as lost. But I still continued to drag myself across. It was a long, terrible agony, and, more than once, I thought I should have to let go. My hands almost refused to close upon the rope. But I still, almost as in a dream, worked myself along. Once I caught myself wondering if I should fall into or near the boat, and whether the dead man would be there to receive me. Then a horrible fancy seized me that I was making no progress, but that my hands were glued to the rope with blood—ever in the same spot. Then suddenly, in my now mechanical motions, my head hit with great violence against rock. This effectually aroused me. I was at the threshold of liberty—the edge of the crater, where it sloped quickly away below.
‘I hung there whilst one might count twenty, looking up. I was three feet beneath the rim. The rope had given that much.
‘I don’t remember in the least pulling myself up and over that overhanging ledge. When my senses returned, I was lying in the furrow alongside the grapnel, and a rush of cold water was sweeping under me. How long I had been there I have no notion. Certainly a great many hours. The rain was pouring down in tropical torrents; thunder pealed above me, and the lightning flashed and darted in vain endeavour to pierce the lower abyss.
‘After many fruitless attempts, I staggered to my feet. I felt so dreadfully weak and faint that I thought I was about to die. But a glance aloft gave me fresh [261] heart. The dark clouds of the thunderstorm were passing over, and full upon my nearly naked body fell the warm rays of the glorious sun. I almost at that moment, Parsee-like, worshipped him.
‘Painfully, stumbling at every step, I crawled upwards, with many a rest and draught of the rain water, caught in rocky hollows, until, after a weary time, and feeling as one risen from the tomb, I emerged into the full light of day once more.
‘Naked, bleeding, bruised, but free, I stood on the topmost peak of that fateful island. At first everything swam before my vision. Trees, the ocean, the far horizon, reeled and shook, advanced and receded to my dazzled eyes. The sun was low in the heavens. As things gradually assumed their natural appearance, I became conscious of a great ship lying at anchor, of a cluster of white tents not a hundred yards away from me.
‘But of these things, for a space, I took no heed. Sun, air, water and sky held my regards in ecstasy. I drank the beauty and the newness of them in till my soul was saturated with the tender loveliness of that nature to which I had been for so long a stranger. Then, and not till then, I tottered towards the clump of tents lying just below me.
‘Men were there, carpenters apparently, hammering at a tall wooden structure. Other men—men-o’-war seamen by their rig—were arriving and departing with burdens.
‘I was close upon them before they saw me. Some [262] shrank back. One, I recollect, picked up a rifle and brought it to his shoulder. A man with a gold epaulette on his coat struck it up and spoke to the sailor in English.
‘Presently I was taken into a tent, a doctor appeared from somewhere, and, whilst he dressed my wounds, they gave me a cordial, and I told my story with what seemed to me like the voice of a stranger. I don’t remember much afterwards until I awoke, swinging in a hammock under a shady tree close to the tents.
‘I was a mass of bandages, but sensible, though terribly weak.
‘“You’ve had a narrow escape of brain fever, my lad,” said the doctor. “But we’ve pulled you through all right. Lucky we happened to be here, though, wasn’t it? A nice time you must have had down there. We found your rope; but our men didn’t care about venturing any further, as steam was beginning to come up.”
‘“Four days,” replied the doctor, in answer to my question, “it is since you appeared on the scene and scared the camp.
‘“The Bucephalus? Yes, curiously enough, we met her just entering Singapore Harbour. That’s ten days ago. She spoke us, and asked us to keep a look-out for her boat with two seamen. We have one of them, at all events. I suppose the other poor beggar will be thrown up presently.”
‘I looked at him. “Yes,” he continued, “the old [263] volcano is showing every indication of renewed activity. We came here to observe the transit of Venus, but shall have probably to pack up and form another station if those symptoms don’t subside. See there!”
‘Looking in the direction of his outstretched finger, I saw several tall puffs of what seemed like white smoke issuing from the depths of the crater.
‘The observers were loth to shift their quarters; but, when some red-hot cinders from below set one of the tents on fire, they accepted the hint.
‘Still in my hammock, I was presently carried down the mountain and on board H.M.S. Hygeia, where, with careful and skilled attention, I soon recovered.’
The Captain ceased speaking. For a time nothing was heard except the steady blast of the ‘Roaring Forties’ overhead.
Asked a passenger presently,—
‘And did the volcano really explode after all?’
‘It did, indeed,’ replied Captain Marion; ‘but not for a month afterwards, and then so fiercely as to scatter death and destruction throughout those narrow seas, grinding the island of Krakatoa itself into cosmic dust—visible, according to scientists, nearly all over the world.’
. . . . . . . . . .
Here ends the story proper as compiled from the notes taken by one of the passengers and jotted down in his cabin of a night as the Captain finished each section of his narrative.
Lower down on the last pages of these notes is [264] gummed, however, a printed paragraph, cut from a Sydney daily newspaper, which runs as follows:—
Marion—Hillier.—On the 29th ultimo, at St James’s Church of England, Sydney, by the Rev. R. Garnsey, George Wreford Marion, master in the British Mercantile Marine, to Amy Margaret, daughter of the late John Hillier, Esq., of Pevensey, Miller’s Point, Sydney, and Eurella and Whydah stations, Riverina, N.S.W.