The Sea Wolves/Chapter 16

interval of waiting seemed interminable. The four in the boat, holding to the jutting pinnacle of rock with difficulty, could hear the lapping of the water in the wreck and the rush of the tide as it swept through the gullies of the reef. But they feared to speak, scarce dared to breathe fully, were oblivious of the hazard of their own situation, terrible only in the unusual stillness of the sea.

Yet Burke did not come, and gradually there crept upon them the chill of a great fear—the fear that the gold was swept out to the depths of the bay, and that their all-venturing emprise had brought them nothing but beggary and peril. Even Fisher, upon whose mind suspicion of half the truth had long weighed, forgot in that weird and passionate excitement, which the gain or loss of bullion ever excites, the impulses which had troubled him. The spell of expectation was too strong for them, the import of the moment too engrossing.

Now Burke was not in the wrecked cabin for more than five minutes, the anxiety of the men waiting having led them to magnify the moments ridiculously; and when he came on deck again, Kenner, who stood in the prow of the life-boat, could no longer restrain himself.

"Burke!" he shouted, "for God's sake, speak!—have ye found anything?"

To this shout of a question Burke gave no answer, but he beckoned them with his hand to come aboard; and Messenger and Kenner, leaving the other two to hold the boat against the rush of the tide, sprang up to the deck, and stood with him. The American was quivering with fear, but the Prince showed no emotion, though he said as he came to the broken booby-hatch—

"I'm supposing that it's worth our while to go below;" and with that he swung himself down the rope that Burke had hitched aft, and entered the saloon. But Kenner continued to stand upon the slippery deck, while the nerves of his face twitched, and he could not keep his hands still. A moment later Messenger clambered up as he descended, and burst into a hearty fit of sniggering laughter—the nervous result of the unspeakable strain,

"Good Heaven!" said Kenner, as he saw him, "can none of ye speak? Is the money there, or is it not? By gosh, my heart's going right round like a windmill! Man, it's more than I can bear!"

The Prince ceased to laugh, observing the other's strong distress, and gave him his hand.

"Kenner," said he, "come and look for yourself. So far as I can see every shilling of the bullion is just where I left it!"

"What!" cried Kenner; and with that he rolled over upon the deck in a faint, so that if Burke had not held him, he would have gone down into the sea. He was then a man worn with the want of food and with exposure; and although his dizziness passed away as he fell, they put him back into the life-boat, making that fast to the taffrail, and called the nigger aboard the yacht to help them. It was not a moment for words, and no man spoke; but the three went at once to the saloon and began their labour while night shielded them.

To the complete understanding of this remarkable preservation of the bullion the position of the yacht upon the reef is the key. She had run upon a small group of rocky islets standing, as the Admiralty chart shows, more than a mile from the tongue of land near Cape Celstigos. Her prow being caught in the claw-like grip of scissor-like projections of rock, the stern had swung round until it had rested upon a cup-shaped ridge which had raised it above the immediate wear of the sea, and left it exposed completely at the ebb, and scarce covered at the top of the tide. This being the position of the yacht as she struck, she had subsequently broken in two; but the stern of her, with its bulkhead intact, had sunk into the cup, and suffered little hurt beyond the ripping of the bottom and the flood of the water. Naturally, the heavy kegs of gold had stood unharmed; and as the grey light of the summer's night came down through the broken skylight those who looked saw the whole of the bullion stacked as they had left it; though one keg had burst, and ingots of gold shone with wondrous lustre among the wreckage upon the floor.

If this was the case with the gold, elsewhere in the fetid saloon the destruction was complete. The whole place reeked of damp and foulness; the fine upholstery was slime-hid and dripping; there was water gushing upon the floors. It was pitiable to see gaudy travelling bags with oozy mud upon them, and the little library of books washed to pulp; but for that the men had no eyes. They had already begun to work, and the damp of perspiration rolled off them as they hauled the kegs on deck, and passed them quickly to the rolling boat below. Nor did they cease or speak to one another until the longboat was drawing dangerously low in the water; and it was evident that repeated journeys would be necessary to save from the sea the rich freight it held for them. Then, in their common perplexity, they stayed their hands and faced the question.

"I tell you my opinion right here," cried Burke, who was the first to perceive the trouble. "If you put another keg on that ship, she'll go under—look at her now!"

"I've just thought it," said Messenger; "and there's ourselves to go aboard yet. When do you look for day?"

"I'm looking for it now," said Kenner; "you can't gainsay that there's light from the sun yonder."

He pointed to the higher headlands to the east of them, now beginning to shape in a cold steely light that passed slowly from hill to hill, and showed mist rising from the valleys. Dawn had come upon them as they worked, and as day spread upon the sea they began to realize that their haphazard method had not befriended them.

"It seems to me," said Messenger, as he sat upon the hatch and looked all around him despairingly, "that we haven't got the sense of a fly among us! This cargo won't be stored under three journeys, and the first is not to be made now. We should have run ashore with the dark."

"I guess that's so!" cried Burke, squirting the juice of his tobacco, which he had dried, over the taffrail; "there's no moving from here until night, and we're up in luck if there's none of 'em sight us from the shore afore then. What we've got to do now is to make her snug, and there ain't time to lose. If the sea rises, you'll be swimming agen."

In truth, their loitering had placed them in no pleasant situation. The sea was then still enough, a misty white fog rolling up from it with the sun; and it beat placidly with a long swell upon the outer reef, while a full sweet breeze came off the land, but with no strength. Their difficulty was to get a suitable anchorage with such a heavily laden craft, but they brought the boat, after some hazardous manœuvring, to the shoreward side of the crags, and there lay right under the rock-cradle upon which the poop of the yacht rested. It was agreed that one man should squat upon the higher rock through the tide to watch the coming of boats; and Fisher, being the more nimble, went first to this duty, while the others got at the biscuit and the rum for lack of any other breakfast.

For the space of an hour the situation in which the men found themselves was not unpleasant. There was a gentle warmth upon the sea and a soothing lap of the tide which conduced to rest. Fisher, who had diversified his watch by searching in the lockers of the saloon, had found there two boxes of cigars comparatively free of damp, and several bottles of liquor, with some cases of preserved fruits, which he passed down to the life-boat, while he himself made no poor meal, though he would willingly have bartered the whole of the yellow Chartreuse for a cup of sound coffee. The better fare, however, conduced to general content, and when Burke had asked to be roused on the approach of any ship whatsoever, the four in the boat slept soundly, as men wasted with excitement and with fear.

During the early hours of the morning Fisher, who had perched himself upon a cranny high up in the reef, watched the rolling tide and the empty face of the bay. Flowing slowly, yet with fiercer swish of water in the gullies, the sea rose about the needles of black rock, beginning to flow again upon the bullion, and to wash in the reeking saloon. The sun now shot a brilliant spread of dazzling light upon the distant woods and hills, and showed the hulls of fishing-boats away to the westward, where they came from Santa Marta, though he who saw them was in ignorance of this. Once, perhaps in the third hour of the morning watch, a small passenger steamer passed within a couple of miles of the reef; but Fisher crouched low upon his ledge as she went, and she made no sign that she had observed any thing. Then for a full hour more nothing but the dark shapes of far-distant luggers occupied the sea; and so it stood until the turn of the others had almost come. At this time, however, Fisher, suddenly standing right upon the pinnacle to get a better sweep of the sea, observed many miles distant, but unmistakable, the shape of a larger ship than any he had yet seen, and, wanting trust in himself to be sure of her description, he at once called to Burke.

"What is it?" said the latter, awaking drowsily at his call. "By thunder! I thought I'd a dozen Spaniards atop of me. Is it ez you see anything?"

"There's a ship steering in from N. by W.," said Fisher. "I think you'd better look at her."

The boat had now risen above the main ledge of rock, and Burke clambered up there with difficulty. When he had looked a moment at the distant ship, he gave a low whistle, and called up Messenger.

"What do you make of that?" he asked. "By the look of her she's British, and coming near in the bay if she can."

Messenger looked long and anxiously before he answered.

"I believe you're right," said he at last; "she's the cut of the Eclipse and she certainly seems to be coming in here. It's a tight place to face, but the first thing to do is to lie low; they could sight us through a glass now, and we must just hang on by our eyebrows. Down you go, Burke, while I think it out."

They both went down at his words, sitting hunched around the crag with their legs in the water; but first they shouted to Kenner in the boat to bring her as close under the rock as safety would permit, and they sent Fisher, to whom the new excitement was as meat and drink, back to the ship to help with the oars.

"Now," said Messenger, "the thing begins to shape itself. If they're coming here because news of our being ashore has got abroad, they'll steer straight for the reef, and we'll simply have to walk aboard them. On the other hand, they may be cruising round. Burke, is it to be stay or go?"

"Ez for me," said Burke, "I don't see where she's got tidings of us—leastwise, by this time. I should stay. If you go ashore now, what does it mean? Why, it means ez you'll have all the folk from five mile round come to look at you. At the worst, you can run it agen the ship's boat if she puts one out."

"Of course we can," cried Messenger. "And if we get a mile start, we can take the odds on shore; but we're going to have a bad ten minutes."

"But it's stay, I reckon," said Burke; "and a wash throw'd in with it. I'm up to my hips in salt!"

He spoke with no exaggeration; and for the next hour the pair of them, with their legs down into the sea, sat motionless, while a cruiser of the Melampus type—but whose name they could not read—steamed slowly across the bay. It was infinitely fortunate for them that the tide was nearly at its height when the ship passed by the reef, for the high water almost hid the wreck of the yacht, and the other stood away at least three miles from the shore; yet was every cable's length she made an agony to them.

When they had watched thus for half-an-hour, questioning each other as anxious men will, the cruiser ceased to steam opposite to the headland, and they observed that  she was signalling; but now she moved again, and although the fear-stricken men scarce dared to speak of hope to each other, she ultimately steamed out of the bay, and was lost upon the eastern horizon.