The Coxswain's Bride by Robert Michael Ballantyne (top 20 books to read .TXT) 📕

as bad as ever."

"I knows it, Joe, an' the more need to look sharp."

Returning to the ship, our coxswain made his report, and recommended urgent haste. But the captain required no urging, for by that time the ship's main deck was level with the water, and the seas were making a clean breach over the stern. The passengers and crew crowded towards the port gangway where the large boat was being brought round to receive the women and children first. This was such a familiar scene to the two lifeboat men that they kept cool and self-possessed from the mere force of habit. Seeing this, the captain ordered Mitford to get into the boat first, and help to stow the others, for it would be a tight pack, he said, to stow them all. Dr Hayward was ordered to assist. Ned Jarring volunteered to help to fend the boat off during the operation, and, without waiting for permission, jumped into her.

Mitford had consigned his wife to the care of his friend Massey, who at once undertook the duty by tying a kerchief round Peggy's head to keep her hair out of her eyes, after which he did the same for Nellie. Both women were perfectly quiet and submissive--the first owing to fear and exhaustion, the last from native courage, which enabled her to rise to the occasion. Massey then stripped off all his own clothes, except shirt and trousers, so as to be ready for swimming, and, catching up a rope, advanced towards his wife, intending to fasten it round her waist.

"Peggy first, Bob; I'll wait for _you_," said his wife.

"Look sharp!" cried the captain.

Bob turned at once to Peggy, and in a few seconds she was lowered into the boat. Mrs Hayward followed. Then Massey insisted on his wife going, and the obedient Nellie submitted, but, owing to a lurch of the ship at the moment, she missed the boat, and dropped into the water. One of the men attempted to pull her in, but could not, and, as all the others were engaged at the moment in trying to fend off the rocks, Massey at once jumped into the sea, and helped to get his wife into the boat.

At that moment there arose a cry that the ship was sinking, and a wild rush was made for the long-boat, which had also been successfully launched. Of course it was instantly overcrowded, for all discipline was now at an end. Before anything else could be done the _Lapwing_ sank in sixteen fathoms of water, carrying the long-boat and all the people in her along with it, but those in the other boat had shoved off at the first wild cry, and hauling on the anchored cable, just escaped being sucked down by the sinking ship.

Bob Massey clung to the boat's gunwale, and thus escaped. Rowing back instantly, however, to the spot where the ship had gone down, they sought eagerly for swimmers. Only three were discovered and rescued, but the others--seventy souls in all--found a watery grave in the dark cavern of that unknown land.


STORY ONE, CHAPTER 7.

So rapidly did the final catastrophe take place that it was difficult for the rescued party at first to credit the evidence of their senses. On the spot where the _Lapwing_ had been beating her sides against the cruel walls of the cavern, and where so many hearts had been throbbing wildly between hope and fear, no living creature remained; nothing but a few feet of the shattered masts appearing now and then above the surging waves, was left to tell of the terrible tragedy that had been enacted there.

For upwards of an hour the party in the boat hovered about the place, not so much with the hope of rescuing any of their shipmates as on account of the difficulty of tearing themselves away from the fatal spot. Perhaps the natural tendency of man to hope against hope had something to do with it. Then they passed silently out of the cavern and rowed slowly along the base of the tremendous cliffs.

At length the feeling of self-preservation began to assert itself, and Bob Massey was the first to break silence with the question--

"Does any one know if there's anything to eat aboard?"

"We'd better see to that," observed Dr Hayward, who was steering.

Bob Massey pulled in his oar, and, without remark, began to search the boat. It was found that all the food they had brought away consisted of nine tins of preserved meat and three pieces of pork, a supply which would not go far among ten persons.

The ten survivors were Dr Hayward and his wife; Massey and Nellie; Joe Slag; John Mitford and his wife Peggy; Terrence O'Connor, the assistant cook; Tomlin, one of the cabin passengers; and Ned Jarring. All the rest, as we have said, had perished with the ill-fated _Lapwing_.

Little was said at first, for the hopelessness of their condition seemed so obvious that the men shrank from expressing their gloomy fears to the women who sat huddled together, wet and cold, in the bottom of the boat.

As we have said, as far as the eye could see in any direction, the frowning cliffs rose perpendicularly out of deep water. There was not even a strip of sand or a bay into which they could run in case of the wind increasing.

"There is nothing for it but to push on till we come to an inlet, or break of some sort in the cliffs, by which we may land," said Hayward, speaking encouragingly to the women. "God helping us, we are sure to find some such place ere long."

"Don't look very like it," muttered Black Ned, gloomily.

"We can see how it looks about as well as you can," retorted John Mitford, indignantly. "If ye can't say somethin' to cheer the women, there's no need for to look blue an' tell us what a mere babby could see for itself."

This remark, coming as it did from lugubrious Mitford, caused Terrence O'Connor to smile.

"True for ye," he said, "we can see what's fornint us, but even Black Ned can't see round the corner."

"Besides, there may be a flat shore on the other side o' the island," added Bob Massey in a cheerful tone; "I've often noticed islands o' this build, and when they're so high on one side they usually are low on the opposite side; so we'll only have to pull round--an' mayhap there are people on it--who knows?"

"Ay, natives pr'aps," growled Jarring, "an' cannibals who are fond of eatin' white folk--specially women!"

"Shut up your black muzzle, or I'll heave ye overboard!" said Mitford, fiercely, for like many easy-going, quiet men, he was unusually savage when fairly roused.

Whatever Black Ned may have felt, he gave no expression to his thoughts or feelings by word or look, but continued calmly to pull his oar.

All that day, and all that night, however, the party pulled steadily along the shore without finding an opening in the cliffs or any part which could be scaled by man. During this period their plight was miserable in the extreme, for the weather at the time was bitterly cold; they were drenched through and through with spray, which broke so frequently over the side as to necessitate constant baling, and, to make matters worse, towards evening of the second day snow began to fall and continued to do so the greater part of the night. Fortunately, before dark they came to some small rocky islets, on which they could not land as the waves washed over them, but in the lee of which they cast anchor, and thus were enabled to ride out a furious gale, which sprang up at sunset and did not subside till morning.

It need scarcely be said that the men did all that lay in their power to shelter the poor women, who had exhibited great fortitude and uncomplaining endurance all that weary time; but little could be done for them, for there was not even a bit of sail to put over them as a protection.

"Nellie, dear," said Massey, when the boat was brought up under the lee of the rocks, "d'ee feel _very_ cold?"

"Not very," replied his wife, raising her head. "I'm strong, thank God, and can stand it; but Peggy here is shudderin' awful bad. I believe she'll die if somethin' isn't done for her."

"I think if she could only ring the water out of her clothes," whispered Mrs Hayward to her husband, "it might do her some good, but--"

"I know that, Eva: it would do you all good, and we must have it done somehow--"

An exclamation in the bow of the boat at that moment attracted attention. It was John Mitford, who, having taken off his own coat, and wrapped it round his shivering wife, had gone to the bow to rummage in a locker there, and had found a tarpaulin. Massey had overhauled the locker for food before him, but the tarpaulin had been so well folded, and laid so flat in the bottom, that it had escaped his notice.

Retiring aft with this god-send, the lugubrious man speedily, with the assistance of his comrades, covered over the centre of the boat so completely that a small chamber was formed, into which the women could retire. It was not high enough, indeed, to stand in, but it formed a sufficient shelter from wind and spray.

"Now, Peggy, my dear," said her husband when it was finished, "get in there--off wi' your things an' wring 'em out."

"Th-thank you, J-John," replied Peggy, whose teeth chattered like castanets, "but 'ow am I t-to d-dry 'em? For wet c-clo'es won't dry wi-without a fire. At least I n-never 'eard of--"

The remainder of her remarks were lost to male ears as the tarpaulin dropped around her after Eva Hayward and Nellie had led, or half-lifted, her under its sheltering folds. How they managed to manipulate the shivering Peggy it is not our province to tell, but there can be no doubt that the treatment of her two friends in misfortune was the cause of her emerging from under the tarpaulin the following morning alive and comparatively well, though still far from dry.

The aspect of things had changed greatly for the better when the unfortunates resumed their voyage. The wind had abated, the sea, although still heaving, was smooth. The snow had ceased, and the sun arose in a cloudless sky, so that when poor Mrs Mitford raised her dishevelled head and felt the sun's cheering rays she exclaimed, with a sigh of relief: "La! if the sun ain't blazin' 'ot! An' I'm so 'ungry. Dear, dear, 'ave you bin rowin' all night, John? 'Ow tired you must be; an' your 'ands blistered, though you are pretty tough in the 'ands, but you couldn't 'old a candle to Bob Massey at that--Yes, yes, Nellie, I 'ear you, but la! what does it matter 'ow your 'air an' things is deranged w'en you're wrecked at sea and--"

The abrupt disappearance of the dishevelled head at that moment suggested the idea that Mrs Mitford had either fallen backward suddenly or been pulled under cover by her companions.

"She's all right, anyhow," said O'Connor, adjusting his oar.

"She's always all right," remarked Mitford in a funereal tone, which, however, was