My Shipmate Louise: The Romance of a Wreck, Volume 3 (of 3) — A Closer Reading

How shall I express it? An air of uneasy exultation, as of a mind proud of the achievement of a resolution at which the secret instincts tremble. For a moment I hung in the wind, strongly reluctant to box myself up alone, unarmed as I was, with a man whose insanity, to call it so, seemed stronger in him at this moment than I had ever before observed it. But the carpenter had now gained the poop; and the captain, on seeing him, instantly walked to the companion, down which he went to midway the ladder, and there stood waiting for me to follow him.

Tut, thought I, surely I am more than his match in strength, and I am on my guard! As I put my foot on the ladder—the captain descending on seeing me coming—I paused to lean over the cover and say to Miss Temple:

‘If you will remain on deck, I shall be able to get away from him if he should prove tedious, by telling him that I have you to look after.’

‘What do you imagine he wishes to say?’ she exclaimed with a face of alarm that came very near to consternation.

I could only answer with a helpless shrug of the shoulders, and the next minute I had entered Captain Braine’s cabin.

‘Pray sit you down,’ said he. He pulled off his straw hat and sent it wheeling through the air into a corner, as though it were a boomerang, and fell to drying his perspiring face upon a large pocket-handkerchief; then folding his arms tightly across his breast, and crooking his right knee whilst he dropped his chin somewhat, he stood gazing at me under the shadow of his very heavy eyebrows with a steadfastness I could only compare to the stare of a cat’s eye.

‘Well, Captain Braine,’ said I in an off-hand way, though I watched him with the narrowness of a man who goes in fear, ‘what now is it that I am to hear from you? Do you propose to ask me more questions on navigation and seamanship?’

‘Mr. Dugdale,’ he exclaimed, speaking very slowly, though the excitement that worked in him rendered his voice deep and unusually clear and loud, ‘I have come to the conclusion that you are a gentleman very well able to sarve me, and by sarving me to sarve yourself. I’ve been a-turning of it over in all hours of the day and a good many hours in the night, too, since the moment when ye first stepped over the side, and I’ve resolved to take ye into my confidence.’

He nodded, and stood looking at me without speech for a few moments; then seated himself near me and leaned forwards with a forefinger upon his thumb in a posture of computing.

‘It was in the year 1831,’ he began, ‘that I was third-mate aboard of a ship called the _Ocean Monarch_. We sailed from London with a cargo of mixed goods, bound to the port of Callao. Nothing happened till we was well round to the west’ards of Cape Horn, when the ship was set afire by the live cinders of the cabin stove burning through the deck. The cargo was of an inflammable kind. In less than two hours the vessel was in a blaze from stem to starn, by which time we had got the boats over, and lay at a distance waiting for her to disappear. There was two boats, the long-boat and a jolly-boat. The long-boat was a middling big consarn, and most of the men went in her along with the captain, a man named Matthews, and the second mate, a foreign chap named Falck. In our boat was the chief mate, Mr. Ruddiman, myself, two sailors, and a couple of young apprentices. We was badly stocked with water and food; and after the _Ocean Monarch_ had foundered, Captain Matthews sings out to Mr. Ruddiman to keep company. But it wasn’t to be done. The long-boat ran away from us, and then she hove-to and took us in tow; but there came on a bit of a sea, and the line parted, and next morning we was alone.’

‘I am closely following you,’ said I, fancying I perceived in his face a suspicion of inattention in me, and wondering what on earth his story was going to lead to. He stood up, and folding his arms in the first attitude he had adopted, proceeded, his voice deep and clear.

‘It came on to blow hard from the south’ard and east’ard, and we had to up hellum and run before the seas for our lives. This went on for three or four days, till Mr. Ruddiman reckoned that we was blowed pretty nigh half-way across to the Marquesas. It then fell a stark calm, and we lay roasting under a broiling sun with no fresh water in the boat, and nothing to eat but a handful of mouldy fragments of biscuit in the bottom of a bag that had been soaked with spray o’er and o’er again. One of the apprentices went mad, and jumped overboard, and was drownded. We was too weak to help him; besides, ne’er a one of us but thought him well off in that cool water, leaving thirst and hunger behind him, and sinking into a deep sleep, as it might be. Then the other apprentice was took bad, and died in a fit of retching, and we put him over the side. When daylight broke on the morning following that job, we saw one of the sailors dead in the bottom of the boat. T’other was the sicklier man of the two, yet he hung out, sir, and lived for three days. We kept his body.’

His deep tones ceased, and he stared at me. Just a story of a bad shipwreck, thought I, so far.

‘There came a light breeze from the east’ard,’ he continued after a little pause; ‘but neither Mr. Ruddiman nor me had the strength of a kitten in our arms, and we let the boat drive, waiting for death. I thought it had come that same afternoon, and on top of the sensation followed a fit, I allow, for I recollect no more, till on opening my eyes I found myself in a hammock in the ’tweendecks of a little ship. The craft was a small Spanish vessel, called the _Rosario_. She had floated into sight of our boat, and there was just enough strength left in Mr. Ruddiman to enable him to flourish his handkerchief so as they might see the boat had something alive in her. Ne’er a soul aboard spoke a syllable of English, and neither Mr. Ruddiman nor me understood a word of Spanish. We couldn’t even get to larn where the brigantine was bound to, or where she hailed from. We conversed with the crew in signs all the same as though we had been cast away among savages. We was both hearty men in those days, and it wasn’t long afore we had picked up what we had let fall during our ramble in the boat. Well, the course the vessel made was something to the south’ard o’ west, and I took it we were heading for an Australian port; but though I’d make motions, and draw with a piece of chalk on the deck, I’d never get more’n a stare, and a shake of the head and a grin, and a shrug of the shoulders, for an answer. In fact, it was like being sent adrift along with a company of monkeys.’

He dried his face again, took his seat as before, and leaned towards me in his former computing posture with his eyes glued to my face. The singularity of their habitual expression was now greatly heightened by a look of wildness, which I attributed in a measure to the emotions kindled in him by this recital of past and dreadful sufferings. I sat as though engrossed by his story; but I had an eye for every movement in him as well as for his face.

‘It came on to blow a gale of wind one night after we had been aboard the brigantine about a fortnight. They were a poor lot of sailors in the vessel, and so many as to be in one another’s road. They got the little ship in the trough, somehow, under more sail than she could stand up to; the main-topmast went; it brought down the fore-topmast, which wrecked the bowsprit and jib-boom. The Spaniards ran about like madmen, some of them crossing themselves, and praying about the decks; others bawling in a manner to terrify all hands, though I can’t tell ye what was said; the ship was in a horrible mess with wreckage, which nobody attempted to clear away. It blew very hard, and the seas were bursting in smoke over the brigantine, that lay unmanageable. At last the boatswain of her, holding a sounding-rod in his hand, yelled out something, and there was a rush for the boats stowed amidships. They were so crazy with fear they hardly knew how to swing ’em over the side. Ruddiman says to me: “I shall stick to the ship. If those boats are not swamped, they’ll blow away, and her people’ll starve, and our late job in that line is quite enough for me.” I said I would stick by the ship, too, and we stood watching whilst the Spaniards got their boats over. It was luck, and not management, that set the little craft afloat. The captain roaring out, made signs to us to come; but we, pointing to the sea, made motions to signify that they would be capsized and shook our heads. They were mad with fright, and weren’t going to stay to argue, and in twos and threes at a time they sprang into the boats like rats; and whether they took food and water with them I can’t tell ye; but this I know, that within twenty minutes of the Spanish bo’sun’s singing out, the two boats had disappeared, and Mr. Ruddiman and me were alone.’

He rose as he said this, and fell to pacing the cabin floor in silence, with his head drooped, and his arms hanging up and down like pump handles.

‘A very interesting story, captain, so far as it goes,’ said I, shifting a bit on my seat, as though I supposed that the end was not far off now. ‘Of course you were taken off by some passing vessel?’

He made no reply to this, nor, indeed, seemed to heed me. After several turns, he stopped, and looked me in the face, and continued to stare with a knitted brow, as though he were returning to his first resolution to communicate his secret with an effort that fell little short of mental anguish. He came slowly to his chair, and started afresh.

‘We sounded the well, and presently discovered that the water she was taking in drained through the decks, and that she was tight enough in her bottom; and we reckoned that if we could get her out of the trough, she’d live buoyant; so we searched for the carpenter’s chest, and found it, and let fly at the raffle with a chopper apiece, and after a bit, cleared the vessel of the wrecked spars and muddle, and got her to look up to it, and she made middling good weather, breasting it prettily under a tarpaulin seized in the weather main rigging. The gale blew itself out after twenty-four hours, and the wind shifted into the east’ards. We let drop the foresail; there was no more canvas on her to set, with the head of the mast gone, and with it the peak halliards and the sail in rags. Our notion was to head for the Sandwich Islands, for we stood by so doing to fall in with a whaler, and failing help of that sort there was civilisation over at Hawaii; but t’others of the Polynesian rocks were mostly cannibal islands, we believed, and we were for giving them a wide berth. Yet we could do nothing but blow before it. _That_ you’ll understand, Mr. Dugdale?’

‘It came on thick,’ he continued, speaking with intensity and in an utterance deep, clear, and loud, ‘with a bit of a swell from the east’ards and a fresh wind singing over it. I was at the hellum in the afternoon, and Ruddiman lay asleep close against the companion hatch. I was drowsy for want of rest, and there was sleep enough in my eyes to make me see very ill. Suddenly looking ahead, I caught sight of a sort of whitish shadow, and even whilst I was staring at it, wondering whether it was vapour or white water, it took shape as a low coral island with clumps of trees here and there and a small rise of greenish land amidships of it. I put the hellum hard over, and called to Ruddiman, who jumps up and takes a look. “A dead lee-shore, Braine,” says he; “what’s to be done? There’s no clawing off under this canvas.” What _was_ to be done? The land lay in a stretch of reef right along our beam, with the brigantine’s head falling off again to the drag of the foresail, spite of the hellum being hard down. In less than twenty minutes she struck, was took by the swell, and drove hard aground, and lay fixed on her bilge with her deck aslope to the beach that was within an easy jump from the rail.’

He broke off, and went in a restless, feverish way to the table and unlocked and drew out a drawer, looked at something within, then shut the drawer with a convulsive movement of the arm and turned the key. I was now heartily wishing he would make an end. Down to this, the tale was just a commonplace narrative of marine suffering, scarcely reclaimed from insipidity by the singularity of the figure that recited it. But that was not quite it. I was under a constant fear of the next piece of behaviour he might exhibit, and my alarm was considerably increased by the air of mystery with which he had examined the drawer and hurriedly closed it, as though to satisfy himself that the weapon he had lodged there was still in its place. Having locked the drawer, he stood thinking a little, then taking up his Bible from the table, he approached me with it.

‘Mr. Dugdale,’ he exclaimed, ‘before I can go on, I must have ye kiss this here book to an oath. Take it!’ he cried with a sudden fierceness; ‘hold it, and now follow me.’

‘Stop a minute,’ I said; ‘you are telling me a story that I have really no particular desire to hear. You have no right to exact an oath from me upon a matter that I cannot possibly be in the smallest decree interested in.’

‘It’s to come,’ said he in a raven note; ‘ye shall be interested afore long. Take the oath, sir,’ he added with a dark look.

‘But what oath, man, what oath is it that I am to take?’

‘That as the Lord is now a-listening to ye, you will never divulge to mortal creature the secret I’m agoing to tell ye, so help you God: and if you break your oath, may ye be struck dead at the moment of it, and your soul chased to the very gates of hell. So help ye God, again!’

I looked at him with astonishment and fear. No pen could express his manner as he pronounced these words—the dull fire that entered his eyes and seemed to enlarge them yet, the solemn note his deep and trembling, yet distinctly clear voice took—his mien of command that had the force of a menace in it as he stood upreared before me, his nostrils wide, his face a dingy sallow, one arm thrusting the little volume at me, the other hanging at his side with the fingers clenched.

‘I dare not take that oath,’ said I, after a little spell of thinking, with every nerve in me tight-strung, so to speak, in readiness to defend myself should he attack me. ‘Miss Temple will certainly inquire what our talk has been about; I will not undertake to be silent to her, sir. Keep your secret. It is not too late. Your narrative is one of shipwreck, and so far there is nothing in it to betray.’

‘Stop!’ he exclaimed; ‘you may tell the lady. There need be no objection. I see how it lies betwixt you and her, and I’m not so onreasonable as to reckon she’ll never be able to coax it out of ye. No. Your interests’ll be hers, and of course she goes along with us. ’Tis my crew I’m thinking of.’

I was horribly puzzled. At the same time curiosity was growing in me; and with the swiftness of thought I reflected that whether I had his secret or not it would be all the same; he was most assuredly a madman in this direction, anyhow, if not in others; and it could be nothing more than some insane fancy which he had it in his head to impart, and which might be worth hearing if only for the sake of recalling it as an incident of this adventure when Miss Temple and I should have got away from the barque.

‘Mr. Dugdale, you will swear, sir,’ he exclaimed.

‘Very well,’ said I; ‘but put it a little more mildly, please. Leave out the gates of hell, for instance; or see—suffer me to swear in my own way. Give me that book.’

I observed that his hand was trembling violently as I took the volume from him.

‘I swear,’ I said, ‘to keep secret from all mortal persons in this world, saving Miss Temple, whatever it is your intention now to tell me. So help me God,’ and I put the book to my lips. ‘That oath excludes your crew,’ I added, ‘and I hope you’re satisfied?’

His face took a little complexion of life, and he almost smiled.

‘It’ll do—oh yes, it’ll do,’ he exclaimed. ‘I knew I could count upon you. Now then for it.’

He resumed his seat, and leaning towards me with his unwinking eyes fixed upon my face as usual, he proceeded thus.

CHAPTER XXX THE CAPTAIN MAKES A PROPOSAL