The Crack of Doom
in the saddle, struck the pony with her hand, and raced him at the
chasm. He cleared it with little to spare. Edith's took it next with
less. Then my turn came. Before I could shake up my tired horse,
Mademoiselle Veret said quickly:
"Monsieur has done enough. He will now permit me to alight. This time
the horse cannot jump over with both."
"He shall jump over with both, Mademoiselle, or he shall jump in," I
answered. "Don't look down when we are crossing."
The horse just got over, but he came to his knees, and we fell forward
over his shoulder. The girl's head struck full on a slab of rock, and a
faint moan was all that told me she was alive as I arose half stunned to
my feet. My first thought was for the horse, for on him all depended. He
was uninjured, apparently, but hardly able to stand from the shock and
the stress of fatigue.
Edith Metford had dismounted and caught him; she was holding the bridle
in her left hand, and winced as if in pain when I accidentally brushed
against her right shoulder. I tied the horse to a young palm, and
begged the girl to ride on. She obeyed me reluctantly. Natalie had to
assist her to remount, so she must have been injured. When I saw her
safely in her saddle, I ran back to Mademoiselle Veret.
The chasm was fast widening. From either side great fragments were
breaking off and falling in with a roar of loose rocks crashing
together, till far down the sound was dulled into a hollow boom. This
ended in low guttural, which growled up from an abysmal depth.
Mademoiselle Veret, or her dead body, lay now on the very edge of the
seam, and I had to harden my heart before I could bring myself to
venture close to it. But I had given my word, and there were no
conditions in the promise when I made it.
I was spared the ordeal. Just as I stepped forward, the slab of rock on
which the girl lay broke off in front of me, and, tipping up, overturned
itself into the chasm. Far below I could see the shimmer of the girl's
dress as her body went plunging down into that awful pit. And
remembering her generous courage and offer of self-sacrifice, I felt
tears rise in my eyes. But there was no time for tears.
I leaped on the bay, and got him into something approaching a gallop,
shouting at the others to keep on, for they were now returning. When I
came up with them, Edith Metford said with a shiver:
"The girl?"
"Is at the bottom of the pit. Ride on."
We gained the shore at last; and our presence there produced the
explanation of the absence of the natives on the pathway to the sea.
They were there before us. Lying prostrate on the beach in hundreds,
they raised their bodies partly from the sands, like a resurrection of
the already dead, and there then rang out upon the night air a sound
such as my ears had never before heard in my life, such as, I pray God,
they may never listen to again. I do not know what that dreadful
death-wail meant in words, only that it touched the lowest depths of
human horror. All along the beach that fearful chorus of the damned
wailed forth, and echoed back from rock and cliff. The cry for mercy
could not be mistaken--the supplication blended with despair. They were
praying to us--their evil spirits, for this wrong had been wrought them
by our advent, if not by ourselves.
I cannot dwell upon the scene. I could not describe it. I would not if I
could.
The steamer was still in her berth; her head was pointed seawards. Loud
orders rang over the water. The roar of the chain running out through
the hawse-hole and the heavy splash could not be mistaken. Anderson had
slipped his cable. Then the chime of the telegraph on the bridge was
followed almost instantly by the first smashing stroke of the propeller.
The _Esmeralda_ was under weigh!
CHAPTER XIX.
THE CATASTROPHE.
The _Esmeralda_ was putting out to sea when I thought of a last
expedient to draw the attention of her captain. Filling my revolver with
cartridges which I had loose in my pockets, I fired all the chambers as
fast as I could snap the trigger.
My signals were heard, and Anderson proved true to his bargain. He
immediately reversed his engines, and, when he had backed in as close as
he thought safe, sent a boat ashore for us. We got into it without any
obstruction from the cowering natives, who only shrank from us in
horror, now that their prayers had failed to move us. The moment our
boat was made fast to the steamer's davit ropes and we were pulled out
of the water, "full speed ahead" was rung from the bridge. We were
raised to the deck while the vessel was getting up speed.
I crawled up the ladder to the bridge feebly, for I was becoming stiff
from the bruises of the fall from my horse. Anderson received me coldly,
and listened indifferently to my thanks. An agreement such as ours
hardly prepared me for his loyalty.
"Oh, as to that," he interrupted, "when I make a bargain my word is my
bond. On this occasion I am inclined to think the indenture will be a
final one."
His bargain was a hard one, but, having made it, he abided faithfully by
its conditions. He was honest, therefore, in his own way.
"How far can you get out in fifteen minutes?" I asked.
"We may make six or seven knots. But what is the good of that? There
will be an earthquake on that island on a liberal scale--on such a scale
that this ship would have very little chance in the wave that will
follow us if we were fifty miles at sea."
"You have taken every precaution, of course--"
Anderson here looked at me contemptuously, and, with an air of sarcastic
admiration, he said:
"You have guessed it at the first try. That is precisely what I have
done."
"Pshaw! don't take offence at trifles at a time like this," I said
testily. "If you knew as much about that earthquake as I do, you would
be in no humour for bandying phrases."
"Might I ask how much you do know about it? You could not have foreseen
the trouble more clearly if you had made it yourself."
"I did not make it myself, but I know the means which the man who did
employed, and but for me that earthquake would have wrecked this earth."
Anderson made no direct answer to this, but he said earnestly:
"You will now go below, sir. You are done up. Roberts will take you to
the doctor."
"I am not done up, and I mean to see it out," I retorted doggedly. My
nervous system was completely unhinged, and a fit of stupid obstinacy
came on me which rendered any interference with my actions intolerable.
"Then you cannot see it out upon my bridge," Anderson said. The
determined tone in which he spoke only added to my impotent wrath.
"Very well, I will return to the deck, and if any of your men should
attempt to interfere with me he will do so at his peril." With that, I
slung my revolver round so as to have it ready to my hand. I was beside
myself. My conduct was already bad enough, but I made it worse before I
left the bridge.
"And if you, Anderson, disobey my orders--my orders, do you hear?--an
explosion such as took place in the middle of the English channel shall
take place in the middle of this ship."
"For God's sake leave the bridge. I want my wits about me, and I have no
intention of earning another exhibition of your devilries."
"Then be careful not to trouble me again." Thus after having passed
through much danger with a spirit not unbecoming--as I hope--an English
gentleman, I acted, when the worst was passed, like a peevish schoolboy.
I am ashamed of my conduct in this small matter, and trust it will pass
without much notice in the narrative of events of greater moment.
On deck, Natalie Brande, Edith Metford, and Percival were standing
together, their eyes fixed on the island. Edith's face was deathly
white, even in the ruddy glow which was now over land and sea. When I
saw her pallor, my evil temper passed away.
"It would be impossible for you to be quite well," I said to her
anxiously; "but has anything happened since I left you? You are very
pale."
"Oh no," she answered, "I'm all right; a little faint after that ride. I
shall be better soon."
Natalie turned her weird eyes on me and said in the hollow voice we had
heard once before--when she spoke to us on the island--"That is her way
of telling you that your horse broke her right arm when she caught him
for you. She held him, you remember, with her left hand. The doctor has
set the limb. She will not suffer long."
"Heaven help us, this awful night," Edith cried. "How do you know that,
Natalie?"
"I know much now, but I shall know more soon." After this she would not
speak again.
With every pound of steam on that the _Esmeralda's_ boilers would bear
without bursting, we were now plunging through the great rollers of the
Arafura Sea. Everything had indeed been done to put the vessel in trim.
She was cleared for action, so to speak. And a gallant fight she made
when the issue was knit. When the hour of midnight must be near at
hand, I looked at my watch. It was one minute to twelve o'clock.
Thirty seconds more!
The stupendous corona of flame which hung over the island was pierced by
long lines of smoke that stretched far above the glare and clutched with
sooty fingers at the stars, now fitfully coming back to view at our
distance. The rumbling of internal thunder waxed louder.
Fifteen seconds now!
Fearful peals rent the atmosphere. Vast tongues of flame protruded
heavenward. The elements must be melting in that fervent heat. The
blazing bowels of the earth were pouring forth.
Twelve, midnight!
A reverberation thundered out which shook the solid earth, and a roaring
hell-breath of flame and smoke belched up so awful in its dread
magnificence that every man who saw it and lived to tell his story might
justly have claimed to have seen perdition. In that hurricane of
incandescent matter the island was blotted out for ever from the map of
this world.
Notwithstanding the speed of the _Esmeralda_ she was a sloth when
compared with the speed of the wave from such an earthquake. From the
glare of the illumination to perfect darkness the contrast was sudden
and extreme. But the blackness of the ocean was soon whitened by the
snowy plumes of the avalanche of water which was now racing us, far
astern as yet, but gaining fast. I, who had no business about the ship
requiring my presence in any special part, decided to wait on deck and
lash myself to the forward, which would be practically the lee-side of a
deckhouse. Edith Metford we prevailed on to go below, that she might not
run the risk of further injury to her fractured arm. As she left us she
whispered to me, "So Natalie will be with you at the end, and I--" a sob
stopped her. And it came into my mind at that moment that this girl had
acted very nobly, and that I had hardly appreciated her and all that she
had done for me.
Natalie refused to leave the deck. I lashed her securely beside me.
Together we awaited the end. When the roar of the following wave came
close, so close that the voices of the officers of the ship could be no
longer heard, Natalie spoke. The hollow sound was no longer in her
voice. Her own soft sweet tones had come back.
"Arthur," she asked, "is this the end?"
"I fear it is," I answered, speaking close to her ear so that she might
hear.
"Then we have little time, and I have something which I must say, which
you must promise me to remember when--when--I am no longer with you."
"You will be always with me while we live. I think I deserve that at
last."
"Yes, you deserve that and more. I will be with you while I live, but
that will not be for long."
I was about to interrupt her when she put her soft little hand upon my
lips and said:
"Listen, there is very little time. It is all a mistake. I mean Herbert