The Iron Pirate/Chapter 13
CHAPTER XIII.
ASTERN OF THE "LABRADOR.
Complete unconsciousness is a blessing, I think, which comes rarely to us. Sleep, they say, is akin to death; yet I have often questioned if there be an absolute void of existence in sleep; and I am sure that in few cases where a blow robs us of sense does the brain cease to be active or to bring dreams in its working. I have been struck down unconscious twice in my life; but in each instance I have suffered much during the after-days from that trouble of mind which is akin to the feverish dream of an exhausted system. Horrid sights does the brain then bear to us; terrible situations; weird phantoms known to the opium-eater; wild struggles with unnatural enemies; wrestlings even for existence itself. All these I knew during the days that followed my rash visit to the drinking den. How long I lay, or where, I know not to this hour; but my dreams were very terrible, and there was a fever at my head which the ice of a great lake scarce could have cooled. Often I would know that I had consciousness, and yet I could not move hand or foot, so that the terror moved me to frenzies of agony, though my lips were sealed, and I felt myself passing to death. Or I would live again through the night when Martin Hall died, and from the boat where I watched the holocaust, I climbed to the shrouds of the cutter, and stood with my poor friend in the very shelter of the spreading flames. Or I struggled with Black, having hunted him to his own quarter-deck, and there with great force of men I sought to lay hands on him; but he escaped me with a mocking laugh, and when I looked again the deck was empty.
For short moments the delirium must have left me. Once I opened my eyes, and knew that the sun shone upon me, and that the breeze which cooled my forehead blew from the sea; but my fatigue was so great that I fell asleep in the next instant, and enjoyed pure rest during many hours. When I regained consciousness for the second time, it was because rain beat upon my face, a drizzling warm rain of late summer, and there was spray from a fresh sea. For some minutes I set myself to ask where I was; but I knew that I was bound at the left hand and at my feet, and, to my unutterable astonishment, when I raised my head, I saw that I lay in an open boat which was moving very slowly, but my feet were towards the stern of it, and, as my head lay below the level of the gunwale, I could see nothing of the power which moved the boat or of the scene about us.
It was a long time before my throbbing head let me put together a chain of thought to account for my position. The scene at the drinking den would not at first come back to me, think as I would; but when it did, the clue which was lacking came with it. There could be no doubt that I had walked into a trap, and that the hag who had struck me had been in the pay of Paolo and his crew. These men must have taken me as I lay, and so brought me to this boat; but what time had intervened, or where I was, I knew no better than the dead. Only this was sure, that I was in the hands of one of the greatest scoundrels living, and that, if his past were any precedent, my hours of life would be few.
I cannot tell you why it was, but, strange to say, this reflection did not give me very great alarm at the moment. Perhaps I suffered too much from bodily weakness, and would have welcomed any release, even death; perhaps I was buoyed up with that eternal hope which bears its most generous blossom in the springtime of life. In either case, I put away the thought of danger, and set to the task of conning my position a little more closely. The boat in which I lay was painted white, and was of elegant build. She had all the fine lines of a yacht's jolly-boat; and when I raised my head I could see that her fittings had been put in only at great expense. She was not a large boat, but the centre seat had been removed from her to let me lie on a tarpaulin which covered her keel, and the stern seat had been used to bind my feet. A second tarpaulin, folded twice, had been propped under my head, but my left hand was bound close to the boat thwart, and there was a rope doubled round my right forearm so that I could not raise myself an inch, though my right hand was free. The meaning of this apparent neglect I soon learnt. There was a flask on the edge of the tarpaulin which supported my head, and by it half a dozen rather fine captain's biscuits. I had a prodigious thirst on me, and I drank from the flask; but found it to contain weak brandy, and would willingly have exchanged thrice its contents for a long draught of pure water. But the biscuits I could not touch; and I began to be chilled with the rain which fell copiously, and with the sea which sent spray in fountains upon my body.
Up to this time, I had heard no sound of human voices, but the silence was broken at last by a shout, and the boat ceased to move.
"All hands, make sail!" cried someone, apparently above me; and after that I heard the "yo-heave" of the men hauling, as I judged, at a main-sail. The second order, "Sheets home!" proved to me that I was behind a sailing ship, perhaps a yacht which these men had secured, as they got La France—and burnt her. I shuddered at the second thought, and my head began to burn again despite the wet. Did they mean to leave me there until the end of it, when the cold and my wound should do their work? Had they forgotten me? Had they any reason for keeping me alive? My questions were in part answered by a sudden shout from the deck of the ship.
"Ho, Bill, is the young un gone?"
"No, my hearty, he's gone about!"
"Getting his spirits damped, I reckon."
"Some, you bet."
And then I heard a voice I knew, the voice of the Irishman, "Four-Eyes."
"Is it the boi ye're mindin', bedad?"
"Ay, sir, he's moved a point."
"The poor divil. Throw him a sheet, one av yer; it's meself that's not bringing the guv'ner a dead body when he wants a live one, be Saint Pathrick!"
They tried to throw me a sheet as the man had ordered, but we had begun to move rapidly again, and I heard it fall in the water by my head. Though there was more hailing, the thud of the choppy sea against the boat forbade any more hearing, and the sheet never reached me. Yet the men had told me something with their words, and I pondered long on the remark of the Irishman, that the "guv'ner" wanted me alive. It explained much; and it put beyond doubt the reason why I had not been killed in the drinking den. It was quite clear that my life was safe from these men until they reached their chief; but where he was I had no notion, except he were on the nameless ship; and, if that were so, to the nameless ship I was going—that ship of horror and of mystery. Nor could I remember anything in what I knew of Captain Black to lead me to the hope that such a voyage was other than one to death, and perhaps to that which might be worse than death itself.
When this strange procession had lasted about an hour, the rain ceased and the sun shone again with renewed power, drying my clothes upon me and giving me prodigious thirst. I struggled to reach the flask, and in doing so I found that the ropes binding my right arm were tied with common hitches, such as any sailor could force; and my experience as a yachtsman let me get free of them with very little trouble. I did not sit up at once, for I feared to be seen from the decks; but I turned my head to look at the boat which towed me, and saw that she was a barque-rigged yacht after the American fashion; her name Labrador being conspicuous across her stern. My boat, which was no larger than I had thought, was towed by a double hawser; but no man watched me from the poop, and I lay down again reassured. The hope of escape was already in my head, for I judged that we could not be far out from New York, although no land was visible on the horizon. It occurred to me that if they would only let me be until night I could get my left hand and my feet free; and, as the hawser was passed through a ring at the bow, I needed but a knife to complete the business. But I had no knife, for a search in my pockets proved that I had been relieved of all my valuables and trifles; and I knew that another way must be found, and that ingenuity alone would help me. So I sat thinking; and all the long afternoon—I knew it was afternoon, as I saw the sun sinking in the horizon and heard the bells, moreover—I examined such devices as came to me, only to reject them and to seek for others.
Towards the second bell in the second "dog" there was a change in the monotony of the scene. I heard an order to heave the barque to, and presently I made haste to put the ropes back in their places and to await the happening. I felt all motion cease, and then someone hauling at the hawser, so that the jolly-boat was pulled against the side of the bigger ship; and, looking up, I saw half-a-dozen of Black's gang watching me from the quarter-deck. Then a ladder was put over the bulwark, and Four-Eyes himself cried out not in an unkindly tone
"Gi-me the soop, bhoys, and let's get it in him; begorra, the divil 'll have him afore the skipper if it's no mate you're givin' him!"
He came down the ladder with a great can of steaming stuff; and the sea having fallen away with the sun to a dead calm, he stepped off the ladder to the stern seat, and then bent over me. But I saw this only, that he had a knife in his belt; and I made up my mind in a moment to get it from him.
"The young 'un from Paris," he cried, as he took a long look at me, "and near to axin' for a priest, by the houly saints; but I was tellin' ye to stop where ye was, and it's no thanks ye were giving me. Bedad, and a pretty place ye're going to, sorr, at your own wish—the divil knows what's the end av it—but sup a bit, for it's fastin' ye are by the luk av ye, and long gone at that!"
Kindly words he gave me; and he held to the rope with one hand while he put the can of hot stuff to my lips with the other. I drank half of it with great gulps, feeling the warmth spread through my body to my very toes as the broth went down; and a great hope consoled me, for I had his knife, having snatched it from him when first he stooped, and it lay in the tarpaulin beneath me. The good luck of the theft made me quick to empty the pot of gravy; and when I had returned the can, Four-Eyes went over the side again, and the yacht moved onward lazily in the softest of breezes from the west. But my boat lay behind her again; and I did not stir from my restful position until it was full dark; though the going down of the sun had left a clear night and a zenith richly set with a shimmer of stars, which did not give any great promise to my thoughts of coming freedom.
When I deemed that I had waited long enough, and had assured myself that the later night would not be more auspicious for the attempt, I cut away the remaining ropes at my feet, and crouched unbound in the boat. There was good watch upon the ship, I knew, for I could hear the "All's well!" as the bells were struck, and the passing of the orders from the poop to the fo'castle. This did not deter me; and, being determined to stake all rather than face the terrors of the nameless ship, I crawled to the bow, and began to cut the strands of the hawser one by one. The rope was very thick and hard, and the knife which I had stolen was blunt, so that the work was prodigiously slow and difficult; and when I had been at it for half an hour or more, I was interrupted in a way that sent my heart almost into my mouth. There was a man standing on the poop of the Labrador, and he seemed to be watching my occupation. I threw myself flat instantly, and listened to his hail.
"Ahoy, there, young 'un, are you getting a chill?" cried a bluff voice, which I did not recognise; but presently the man Four-Eyes hailed also, and I heard him say—
"If it's dead ye are, will ye be sending word up to us?" and, seeing the mood, I bawled with all my strength—
"I'm all right; but I'll call out for some more of that soup of yours just now."
They gave a great shout, and one of them said—
"You ken calcerlate ez you will be gettin' it all nice en' hot when you meet the old 'un in the mornin'"; and the crew roared with laughter at the sally, and disappeared one by one from the poop. Then I whipped out my knife again, and with a few vigorous strokes I cut the rope clean through, and felt my boat go swirling away on the backwash. It was a moment of supreme excitement, and I lay quite flat, waiting to hear if I were missed; but I heard no sound, and looking round presently, I saw the yacht away a mile, and I knew that I was a free man.
The delight of the enterprise would have been intense if my unexpected success had not allowed me to forget one thing when I had made my hasty plans. There were no oars in the boat. The terrible truth came to me as I fixed the seat and prepared to put greater distance between the Labrador and myself. But one look round convinced me that the position was hopeless. With the exception of the tarpaulins, the seats, and the tiller, the boat was unfurnished. As I thought of these things, and remembered that I was some hundreds of miles from land, that I had a couple of biscuits for food, and a half a flask of brandy and water for drink, I experienced a terror greater than any I have known; and so weak was I with sickness and so low with the disappointment of it, that I put my head between my hands and sobbed like a great child who had known a childish sorrow. Only when the tears had dried upon my face, and there was that after-sense of resignation which follows a nervous outbreak, did I upbraid myself for a weakling, and set to think out plans for my release. I had no compass, but, taking the north through the "pointers," I tried to make out the course in which I was drifting; yet this, I must confess, was a hopeless task. I thought that the boat was being carried by a steady current; yet whether the current set towards the land or away from it, I could not tell.
When a couple of hours had passed, and I could see the yacht no longer, I took a new consolation in the thought that I must, after all, be in the track of steamers bound out from, or to, New York; and in this hope I covered myself in the tarpaulins and lay down again to shield myself from the wind which blew with much sharpness as the night grew. I did not sleep, but lay half-dazed for an hour or more, and was roused only at a curious light which flashed above me in the sky. Its first aspect led me to the conclusion that I saw a reflection of the Aurora; but the second flash altered the opinion. The light was clearly focussed, being a volume of intensely bright, white rays which passed right above me with slow and guided motion, and then stopped altogether, almost fixed upon the jolly-boat. I knew then what it was, and I sat up to see the great beams of a man-of-war's search-light, showing an arc of the water almost as clear as by the sun's power. The vessel itself I could not make out; but I feared at once that fate had sent me straight to the nameless ship; and that the very misfortune I had thought to have undone was brought home to me. Yet I could not take one step to defend myself, and must perforce drift on, to what end I knew not.
The light shone in all its brightness for some five minutes; then it died away suddenly, and on the spot whence it had come I could just distinguish the dark hull of a steamer. To my vast consolation, she had two funnels and three masts, and I remembered that Black's boat had but one funnel and two masts, so that good fortune seemed to have come to me at last. Over-delighted with the discovery, I stood up at my risk in the jolly-boat and waved my arms wildly; when, as if in answer, the search-light flashed out again and bathed me in its refulgent beams. Some moments, long moments to me, passed in feverish conjecture; and then in the pathway of the light I saw in all distinctness the outline of a long-boat, fully manned, and she was coming straight to me. There could be no more doubt of it; I had passed through much suffering, but it was all child's play to the "might have been"; and in the reaction I laughed aloud like an hysterical woman, and blushed to remember those great tears which had rolled over my face not an hour gone. And all the time I never took my eyes from the boat; but feasted on it as a beggar-child feasts in imagination on the gauds of a groaning table. Its progress seemed slow, wofully slow; the men in it made me no manner of signal, never gave an answer to my erratic hand-waving; but, what was of more consequence, they came in a bee-line towards me, and the radiating light never moved once whilst they rowed. In the end, I myself broke the silence, shouting lustily to them, but getting no answer until I had repeated the call thrice. The fourth cry, loud and in something desperate, brought the response so eagerly awaited; but when I recognised the voice of him who then hailed me I fell down again in my boat with a heart-stricken burst of sorrow, for the voice was the Irishman's, and Four-Eyes spoke—
"Avast hailin', young 'un," he cried; "we ain't agoin' to part along o' your society no more, don't you be frettin'."
They dragged me into their boat, and taking my own in tow, they rowed rapidly to the distant steamer, on whose deck I stood presently; but not without profound fear, for I knew that at last I was a prisoner on the nameless ship.