Chương Chương 13 · THE LOSS OF THE BRIG

. THE LOSS OF THE BRIG

It was already late at night, and as dark as it ever would be at that

season of the year (and that is to say, it was still pretty bright),

when Hoseason clapped his head into the round-house door.

“Here,” said he, “come out and see if ye can pilot.”

“Is this one of your tricks?” asked Alan.

“Do I look like tricks?” cries the captain. “I have other things to

think of--my brig’s in danger!”

By the concerned look of his face, and, above all, by the sharp tones in

which he spoke of his brig, it was plain to both of us he was in deadly

earnest; and so Alan and I, with no great fear of treachery, stepped on

deck.

The sky was clear; it blew hard, and was bitter cold; a great deal of

daylight lingered; and the moon, which was nearly full, shone brightly.

The brig was close hauled, so as to round the southwest corner of the

Island of Mull, the hills of which (and Ben More above them all, with a

wisp of mist upon the top of it) lay full upon the lar-board bow. Though

it was no good point of sailing for the _Covenant_, she tore through

the seas at a great rate, pitching and straining, and pursued by the

westerly swell.

Altogether it was no such ill night to keep the seas in; and I had begun

to wonder what it was that sat so heavily upon the captain, when the

brig rising suddenly on the top of a high swell, he pointed and cried to

us to look. Away on the lee bow, a thing like a fountain rose out of the

moonlit sea, and immediately after we heard a low sound of roaring.

“What do ye call that?” asked the captain, gloomily.

“The sea breaking on a reef,” said Alan. “And now ye ken where it is;

and what better would ye have?”

“Ay,” said Hoseason, “if it was the only one.”

And sure enough, just as he spoke there came a second fountain farther

to the south.

“There!” said Hoseason. “Ye see for yourself. If I had kent of these

reefs, if I had had a chart, or if Shuan had been spared, it’s not sixty

guineas, no, nor six hundred, would have made me risk my brig in sic a

stoneyard! But you, sir, that was to pilot us, have ye never a word?”

“I’m thinking,” said Alan, “these’ll be what they call the Torran

Rocks.”

“Are there many of them?” says the captain.

“Truly, sir, I am nae pilot,” said Alan; “but it sticks in my mind there

are ten miles of them.”

Mr. Riach and the captain looked at each other.

“There’s a way through them, I suppose?” said the captain.

“Doubtless,” said Alan, “but where? But it somehow runs in my mind once

more that it is clearer under the land.”

“So?” said Hoseason. “We’ll have to haul our wind then, Mr. Riach; we’ll

have to come as near in about the end of Mull as we can take her, sir;

and even then we’ll have the land to kep the wind off us, and that

stoneyard on our lee. Well, we’re in for it now, and may as well crack

on.”

With that he gave an order to the steersman, and sent Riach to the

foretop. There were only five men on deck, counting the officers; these

being all that were fit (or, at least, both fit and willing) for their

work. So, as I say, it fell to Mr. Riach to go aloft, and he sat there

looking out and hailing the deck with news of all he saw.

“The sea to the south is thick,” he cried; and then, after a while, “it

does seem clearer in by the land.”

“Well, sir,” said Hoseason to Alan, “we’ll try your way of it. But I

think I might as well trust to a blind fiddler. Pray God you’re right.”

“Pray God I am!” says Alan to me. “But where did I hear it? Well, well,

it will be as it must.”

As we got nearer to the turn of the land the reefs began to be sown here

and there on our very path; and Mr. Riach sometimes cried down to us to

change the course. Sometimes, indeed, none too soon; for one reef was

so close on the brig’s weather board that when a sea burst upon it the

lighter sprays fell upon her deck and wetted us like rain.

The brightness of the night showed us these perils as clearly as by day,

which was, perhaps, the more alarming. It showed me, too, the face of

the captain as he stood by the steersman, now on one foot, now on the

other, and sometimes blowing in his hands, but still listening and

looking and as steady as steel. Neither he nor Mr. Riach had shown

well in the fighting; but I saw they were brave in their own trade, and

admired them all the more because I found Alan very white.

“Ochone, David,” says he, “this is no the kind of death I fancy!”

“What, Alan!” I cried, “you’re not afraid?”

“No,” said he, wetting his lips, “but you’ll allow, yourself, it’s a

cold ending.”

By this time, now and then sheering to one side or the other to avoid a

reef, but still hugging the wind and the land, we had got round Iona and

begun to come alongside Mull. The tide at the tail of the land ran very

strong, and threw the brig about. Two hands were put to the helm, and

Hoseason himself would sometimes lend a help; and it was strange to

see three strong men throw their weight upon the tiller, and it (like a

living thing) struggle against and drive them back. This would have

been the greater danger had not the sea been for some while free of

obstacles. Mr. Riach, besides, announced from the top that he saw clear

water ahead.

“Ye were right,” said Hoseason to Alan. “Ye have saved the brig, sir.

I’ll mind that when we come to clear accounts.” And I believe he not

only meant what he said, but would have done it; so high a place did the

_Covenant_ hold in his affections.

But this is matter only for conjecture, things having gone otherwise

than he forecast.

“Keep her away a point,” sings out Mr. Riach. “Reef to windward!”

And just at the same time the tide caught the brig, and threw the wind

out of her sails. She came round into the wind like a top, and the next

moment struck the reef with such a dunch as threw us all flat upon the

deck, and came near to shake Mr. Riach from his place upon the mast.

I was on my feet in a minute. The reef on which we had struck was close

in under the southwest end of Mull, off a little isle they call Earraid,

which lay low and black upon the larboard. Sometimes the swell broke

clean over us; sometimes it only ground the poor brig upon the reef, so

that we could hear her beat herself to pieces; and what with the great

noise of the sails, and the singing of the wind, and the flying of the

spray in the moonlight, and the sense of danger, I think my head must

have been partly turned, for I could scarcely understand the things I

saw.

Presently I observed Mr. Riach and the seamen busy round the skiff, and,

still in the same blank, ran over to assist them; and as soon as I set

my hand to work, my mind came clear again. It was no very easy task, for

the skiff lay amidships and was full of hamper, and the breaking of the

heavier seas continually forced us to give over and hold on; but we all

wrought like horses while we could.

Meanwhile such of the wounded as could move came clambering out of the

fore-scuttle and began to help; while the rest that lay helpless in

their bunks harrowed me with screaming and begging to be saved.

The captain took no part. It seemed he was struck stupid. He stood

holding by the shrouds, talking to himself and groaning out aloud

whenever the ship hammered on the rock. His brig was like wife and

child to him; he had looked on, day by day, at the mishandling of poor

Ransome; but when it came to the brig, he seemed to suffer along with

her.

All the time of our working at the boat, I remember only one other

thing: that I asked Alan, looking across at the shore, what country it

was; and he answered, it was the worst possible for him, for it was a

land of the Campbells.

We had one of the wounded men told off to keep a watch upon the seas and

cry us warning. Well, we had the boat about ready to be launched, when

this man sang out pretty shrill: “For God’s sake, hold on!” We knew

by his tone that it was something more than ordinary; and sure enough,

there followed a sea so huge that it lifted the brig right up and canted

her over on her beam. Whether the cry came too late, or my hold was too

weak, I know not; but at the sudden tilting of the ship I was cast clean

over the bulwarks into the sea.

I went down, and drank my fill, and then came up, and got a blink of the

moon, and then down again. They say a man sinks a third time for good. I

cannot be made like other folk, then; for I would not like to write how

often I went down, or how often I came up again. All the while, I was

being hurled along, and beaten upon and choked, and then swallowed

whole; and the thing was so distracting to my wits, that I was neither

sorry nor afraid.

Presently, I found I was holding to a spar, which helped me somewhat.

And then all of a sudden I was in quiet water, and began to come to

myself.

It was the spare yard I had got hold of, and I was amazed to see how far

I had travelled from the brig. I hailed her, indeed; but it was plain

she was already out of cry. She was still holding together; but whether

or not they had yet launched the boat, I was too far off and too low

down to see.

While I was hailing the brig, I spied a tract of water lying between

us where no great waves came, but which yet boiled white all over and

bristled in the moon with rings and bubbles. Sometimes the whole tract

swung to one side, like the tail of a live serpent; sometimes, for a

glimpse, it would all disappear and then boil up again. What it was I

had no guess, which for the time increased my fear of it; but I now know

it must have been the roost or tide race, which had carried me away so

fast and tumbled me about so cruelly, and at last, as if tired of that

play, had flung out me and the spare yard upon its landward margin.

I now lay quite becalmed, and began to feel that a man can die of cold

as well as of drowning. The shores of Earraid were close in; I could see

in the moonlight the dots of heather and the sparkling of the mica in

the rocks.

“Well,” thought I to myself, “if I cannot get as far as that, it’s

strange!”

I had no skill of swimming, Essen Water being small in our

neighbourhood; but when I laid hold upon the yard with both arms, and

kicked out with both feet, I soon begun to find that I was moving. Hard

work it was, and mortally slow; but in about an hour of kicking

and splashing, I had got well in between the points of a sandy bay

surrounded by low hills.

The sea was here quite quiet; there was no sound of any surf; the moon

shone clear; and I thought in my heart I had never seen a place so

desert and desolate. But it was dry land; and when at last it grew so

shallow that I could leave the yard and wade ashore upon my feet, I

cannot tell if I was more tired or more grateful. Both, at least, I was:

tired as I never was before that night; and grateful to God as I trust I

have been often, though never with more cause.