The Blue Lagoon: A Romance
This apparent movement was caused by a spiral haze of smoke so vague
that one could only tell of its existence from the mirage-like tremor
of the mast round which it curled.
“My God!” cried Le Farge, as he sprang from the poop and rushed forward.
Lestrange followed him slowly, stopping every moment to clutch the
bulwark rail and pant for breath. He heard the shrill bird-like notes
of the bosun’s pipe. He saw the hands emerging from the forecastle,
like bees out of a hive; he watched them surrounding the main-hatch. He
watched the tarpaulin and locking-bars removed. He saw the hatch
opened, and a burst of smoke—black, villainous smoke—ascend to the
sky, solid as a plume in the windless air.
Lestrange was a man of a highly nervous temperament, and it is just
this sort of man who keeps his head in an emergency, whilst your
level-headed, phlegmatic individual loses his balance. His first
thought was of the children, his second of the boats.
In the battering off Cape Horn the _Northumberland_ lost several of her
boats. There were left the long-boat, a quarter-boat, and the dinghy.
He heard Le Farge’s voice ordering the hatch to be closed and the pumps
manned, so as to flood the hold; and, knowing that he could do nothing
on deck, he made as swiftly as he could for the saloon companion-way.
Mrs Stannard was just coming out of the children’s cabin.
“Are the children lying down, Mrs Stannard?” asked Lestrange, almost
breathless from the excitement and exertion of the last few minutes.
The woman glanced at him with frightened eyes. He looked like the very
herald of disaster.
“For if they are, and you have undressed them, then you must put their
clothes on again. The ship is on fire, Mrs Stannard.”
“Good God, sir!”
“Listen!” said Lestrange.
From a distance, thin, and dreary as the crying of sea-gulls on a
desolate beach, came the clanking of the pumps.
CHAPTER IV
AND LIKE A DREAM DISSOLVED
Before the woman had time to speak a thunderous step was heard on the
companion stairs, and Le Farge broke into the saloon. The man’s face
was injected with blood, his eyes were fixed and glassy like the eyes
of a drunkard, and the veins stood on his temples like twisted cords.
“Get those children ready!” he shouted, as he rushed into his own
cabin. “Get you all ready—boats are being swung out and victualled.
H--l! where are those papers?”
They heard him furiously searching and collecting things in his
cabin—the ship’s papers, accounts, things the master mariner clings to
as he clings to his life; and as he searched, and found, and packed, he
kept bellowing orders for the children to be got on deck. Half mad he
seemed, and half mad he was with the knowledge of the terrible thing
that was stowed amidst the cargo.
Up on deck the crew, under the direction of the first mate, were
working in an orderly manner, and with a will, utterly unconscious of
there being anything beneath their feet but an ordinary cargo on fire.
The covers had been stripped from the boats, kegs of water and bags of
biscuit placed in them. The dinghy, smallest of the boats and most
easily got away, was hanging at the port quarter-boat davits flush with
the bulwarks; and Paddy Button was in the act of stowing a keg of water
in her, when Le Farge broke on to the deck, followed by the stewardess
carrying Emmeline, and Mr Lestrange leading Dick. The dinghy was rather
a larger boat than the ordinary ships’ dinghy, and possessed a small
mast and long sail. Two sailors stood ready to man the falls, and Paddy
Button was just turning to trundle forward again when the captain
seized him.
“Into the dinghy with you,” he cried, “and row these children and the
passenger out a mile from the ship—two miles—three miles—make an
offing.”
“Sure, Captain dear, I’ve left me fiddle in the——”
Le Farge dropped the bundle of things he was holding under his left
arm, seized the old sailor and rushed him against the bulwarks, as if
he meant to fling him into the sea _through_ the bulwarks.
Next moment Mr Button was in the boat. Emmeline was handed to him, pale
of face and wide-eyed, and clasping something wrapped in a little
shawl; then Dick, and then Mr Lestrange was helped over.
“No room for more!” cried Le Farge. “Your place will be in the
long-boat, Mrs Stannard, if we have to leave the ship. Lower away,
lower away!”
The boat sank towards the smooth blue sea, kissed it and was afloat.
Now Mr Button, before joining the ship at Boston, had spent a good
while lingering by the quay, having no money wherewith to enjoy himself
in a tavern. He had seen something of the lading of the _Northumberland_,
and heard more from a stevedore. No sooner had he cast off the falls
and seized the oars, than his knowledge awoke in his mind, living and
lurid. He gave a whoop that brought the two sailors leaning over the
side.
“Bullies!”
“Ay, ay!”
“Run for your lives—I’ve just rimimbered—there’s two bar’ls of
blastin’ powther in the hould!”
Then he bent to his oars, as no man ever bent before.
Lestrange, sitting in the stern-sheets clasping Emmeline and Dick,
saw nothing for a moment after hearing these words. The children,
who knew nothing of blasting powder or its effects, though half
frightened by all the bustle and excitement, were still amused
and pleased at finding themselves in the little boat so close to
the blue pretty sea.
Dick put his finger over the side, so that it made a ripple in the
water (the most delightful experience of childhood). Emmeline, with one
hand clasped in her uncle’s, watched Mr Button with a grave sort of
half pleasure.
He certainly was a sight worth watching. His soul was filled with
tragedy and terror. His Celtic imagination heard the ship blowing up,
saw himself and the little dinghy blown to pieces—nay, saw himself in
hell, being toasted by “divils.”
But tragedy and terror could find no room for expression on his
fortunate or unfortunate face. He puffed and he blew, bulging his
cheeks out at the sky as he tugged at the oars, making a hundred and
one grimaces—all the outcome of agony of mind, but none expressing it.
Behind lay the ship, a picture not without its lighter side. The
long-boat and the quarter-boat, lowered with a rush and seaborne by the
mercy of Providence, were floating by the side of the _Northumberland_.
From the ship men were casting themselves overboard like water-rats,
swimming in the water like ducks, scrambling on board the boats anyhow.
From the half-opened main-hatch the black smoke, mixed now with sparks,
rose steadily and swiftly and spitefully, as if driven through the
half-closed teeth of a dragon.
A mile away beyond the _Northumberland_ stood the fog bank. It looked
solid, like a vast country that had suddenly and strangely built itself
on the sea—a country where no birds sang and no trees grew. A country
with white, precipitous cliffs, solid to look at as the cliffs of Dover.
“I’m spint!” suddenly gasped the oarsman, resting the oar handles under
the crook of his knees, and bending down as if he was preparing to butt
at the passengers in the stern-sheets. “Blow up or blow down, I’m
spint—don’t ax me, I’m spint!”
Mr Lestrange, white as a ghost, but recovered somewhat from his first
horror, gave the Spent One time to recover himself and turned to look
at the ship. She seemed a great distance off, and the boats, well away
from her, were making at a furious pace towards the dinghy. Dick was
still playing with the water, but Emmeline’s eyes were entirely
occupied with Paddy Button. New things were always of vast interest to
her contemplative mind, and these evolutions of her old friend were
eminently new.
She had seen him swilling the decks, she had seen him dancing a jig,
she had seen him going round the main deck on all fours with Dick on
his back, but she had never seen him going on like this before.
She perceived now that he was exhausted, and in trouble about
something, and, putting her hand in the pocket of her dress, she
searched for something that she knew was there. She produced a
Tangerine orange, and leaning forward she touched the Spent One’s head
with it.
Mr Button raised his head, stared vacantly for a second, saw the
proffered orange, and at the sight of it the thought of “the childer”
and their innocence, himself and the blasting powder, cleared his
dazzled wits, and he took to the sculls again.
“Daddy,” said Dick, who had been looking astern, “there’s clouds near
the ship.”
In an incredibly short space of time the solid cliffs of fog had
broken. The faint wind that had banked it had pierced it, and was now
making pictures and devices of it, most wonderful and weird to see.
Horsemen of the mist rode on the water, and were dissolved; billows
rolled on the sea, yet were not of the sea; blankets and spirals of
vapour ascended to high heaven. And all with a terrible languor of
movement. Vast and lazy and sinister, yet steadfast of purpose as Fate
or Death, the fog advanced, taking the world for its own.
Against this grey and indescribably sombre background stood the
smouldering ship with the breeze already shivering in her sails, and
the smoke from her main-hatch blowing and beckoning as if to the
retreating boats.
“Why’s the ship smoking like that?” asked Dick. “And look at those
boats coming—when are we going back, daddy?”
“Uncle,” said Emmeline, putting her hand in his, as she gazed towards
the ship and beyond it, “I’m ’fraid.”
“What frightens you, Emmy?” he asked, drawing her to him.
“Shapes,” replied Emmeline, nestling up to his side.
“Oh, Glory be to God!” gasped the old sailor, suddenly resting on his
oars. “Will yiz look at the fog that’s comin’—”
“I think we had better wait here for the boats,” said Mr Lestrange; “we
are far enough now to be safe if—anything happens.”
“Ay, ay,” replied the oarsman, whose wits had returned. “Blow up or
blow down, she won’t hit us from here.”
“Daddy,” said Dick, “when are we going back? I want my tea.”
“We aren’t going back, my child,” replied his father. “The ship’s on
fire; we are waiting for another ship.”
“Where’s the other ship?” asked the child, looking round at the horizon
that was clear.
“We can’t see it yet,” replied the unhappy man, “but it will come.”
The long-boat and the quarter-boat were slowly approaching. They looked
like beetles crawling over the water, and after them across the
glittering surface came a dullness that took the sparkle from the
sea—a dullness that swept and spread like an eclipse shadow.
Now the wind struck the dinghy. It was like a wind from fairyland,
almost imperceptible, chill, and dimming the sun. A wind from Lilliput.
As it struck the dinghy, the fog took the distant ship.
It was a most extraordinary sight, for in less than thirty seconds the
ship of wood became a ship of gauze, a tracery—flickered, and was gone
forever from the sight of man.
CHAPTER V
VOICES HEARD IN THE MIST
The sun became fainter still, and vanished. Though the air round the
dinghy seemed quite clear, the on-coming boats were hazy and dim, and
that part of the horizon that had been fairly clear was now blotted out.
The long-boat was leading by a good way. When she was within hailing
distance the captain’s voice came.
“Dinghy ahoy!”
“Ahoy!”
“Fetch alongside here!”
The long-boat ceased rowing to wait for the quarter-boat that was
slowly creeping up. She was a heavy boat to pull at all times, and now
she was overloaded.
The wrath of Captain Le Farge with Paddy Button for the way he had
stampeded the crew was profound, but he had not time to give vent to it.
“Here, get aboard us, Mr Lestrange!” said he, when the dinghy was
alongside; “we have room for one. Mrs Stannard is in the quarter-boat,