Foul Play - Dion Boucicault (the best books to read txt) 📗

“it is nothing. Your poor girl was coming home in that cursed ship to marry my son. Yes, he lies ill for love of her; God help him and me too; but you most of all. Don’t, general; don’t! We have got work to do; we must be brave, sir; brave, I say, and compose ourselves. Ah, my friend, you and I are of one age; and this is a heavy blow for us. And we are friends no more; it has made us brothers. She was to be my child as well as yours; well, now she is my child, and our hearts they bleed together.” At this, the truth must be told, the two stout old men embraced one another like two women, and cried together a little.

 

But that was soon over with such men as these. They sat together and plunged into the details of the expedition, and they talked themselves into hope.

In a week the Springbok steamed down the Channel on an errand inspired by love, not reason; to cross one mighty ocean, and grope for a lost daughter in another.

 

CHAPTER XIX.

 

WE return to the cutter and her living freight.

After an anxious but brief consultation, it was agreed that their best chance was to traverse as many miles of water as possible while the wind was fair; by this means they would increase their small chance of being picked up, and also of falling in with land, and would, at all events, sail into a lovely climate, where intense cold was unknown and gales of wind uncommon. Mr. Hazel advised them to choose a skipper, and give him absolute power, especially over the provisions. They assented to this. He then recommended Cooper for that post. But they had not fathomed the sterling virtues of that taciturn seaman; so they offered the command to Welch, instead.

“Me put myself over Sam Cooper!” said he; “not likely.”

Then their choice fell upon Michael Morgan. The other sailors’ names were Prince, Fenner and Mackintosh.

Mr. Hazel urged Morgan to put the crew and passengers on short allowance at once, viz., two biscuits a day, and four tablespoonfuls of water. But Morgan was a common sailor; he could not see clearly very far ahead; and, moreover, his own appetite counteracted this advice; he dealt out a pound of biscuit and an ounce of ham to each person, night and morning, and a pint of water in course of the day.

Mr. Hazel declined his share of the ham, and begged Miss Rolleston so earnestly not to touch it, that she yielded a silent compliance.

On the fourth day the sailors were all in good spirits, though the provisions were now very low. They even sang and spun yarns. This was partly owing to the beauty of the weather.

On the fifth day Morgan announced that he could only serve out one biscuit per day. And this sudden decline caused some dissatisfaction and alarm.

Next day the water ran so low that only a teaspoonful was served out night and morning.

There were murmurs and forebodings.

In all heavy trials and extremities some man or other reveals great qualities, that were latent in him, ay, hidden from himself. And this general observation was verified on the present occasion, as it had been in the Indian mutiny and many other crises. Hazel came out.

He encouraged the men out of his multifarious stores of learning. He related at length stories of wrecks and sufferings at sea; which, though they had long been in print, were most of them new to these poor fellows. He told them, among the rest, what the men of the Bona Dea, waterlogged at sea, had suffered—twelve days without any food but a rat and a kitten—yet had all survived. He gave them some details of the Wager, the Grosvenor, the Corbin, the Medusa; but, above all, a most minute account of the Bounty, and Bligh’s wonderful voyage in an open boat, short of provisions. He moralized on this, And showed his fellow-sufferers it was discipline and self-denial from the first that had enabled those hungry specters to survive, and to traverse two thousand eight hundred miles of water, in those very seas; and that in spite of hunger, thirst, disease and rough weather.

By these means he diverted their minds in some degree from their own calamity, and taught them the lesson they most needed.

The poor fellows listened with more interest than you could have thought possible under the pressure of bodily distress. And Helen Rolleston’s hazel eye dwelled on the narrator with unceasing wonder.

Yes, learning and fortitude, strengthened by those great examples learning furnishes, maintained a superiority, even in the middle of the Pacific; and not the rough sailors only, but the lady who had rejected and scorned his love, hung upon the brave student’s words. She was compelled to look up with wonder to the man she had hated and despised in her hours of ease.

On the sixth day the provisions failed entirely. Not a crust of bread; not a drop of water.

At 4 P. M. several flying-fish, driven into the air by the dolphins and catfish, fell into the sea again near the boat, and one struck the sail sharply, and fell into the boat. It was divided, and devoured raw, in a moment.

The next morning the wind fell, and, by noon, the ocean became like glass.

The horrors of a storm have been often painted; but who has described, or can describe, the horrors of a calm, to a boatload of hungry, thirsty creatures, whose only chances of salvation or relief are wind and rain?

The beautiful, remorseless sky was one vault of purple, with a great flaming jewel in the center, whose vertical rays struck, and parched, and scorched the living sufferers; and blistered and baked the boat itself, so that it hurt their hot hands to touch it. The beautiful, remorseless ocean was one sheet of glass, that glared in their bloodshot eyes, and reflected the intolerable heat of heaven upon these poor wretches, who were gnawed to death with hunger; and their raging thirst was fiercer still.

Toward afternoon of the eighth day, Mackintosh dipped a vessel in the sea, with the manifest intention of drinking the salt water.

“Stop him!” cried Hazel, in great agitation; and the others seized him and overpowered him. He cursed them with such horrible curses that Miss Rolleston put her fingers in her ears, and shuddered from head to foot. Even this was new to her, to hear foul language.

A calm voice rose in the midst and said: “Let us pray.”

There was a dead silence, and Mr. Hazel kneeled down and prayed loud and fervently; and, while he prayed, the furious cries subsided for a while, and deep groans only were heard. He prayed for food, for rain, for wind, for patience.

The men were not so far gone but they could just manage to say “Amen.”

He rose from his knees and gathered the pale faces of the men together in one glance; and saw that intense expression of agony which physical pain can mold with men’s features. And then he strained his eyes over the brassy horizon; but no cloud, no veil of vapor was visible.

<CENTER>“Water, water everywhere, but never a drop to drink.”</CENTER>

“We must be mad,” he cried, “to die of thirst with all this water round us.”

His invention being stimulated by this idea, and his own dire need, he eagerly scanned everything in the boat, and his eyes soon lighted on two objects disconnected in themselves, but it struck him he could use them in combination. These were a common glass bottle, and Miss Rolleston’s life-preserving jacket, that served her for a couch. He drew this garment over his knees and considered it attentively; then untwisted the brass nozzle through which the jacket was inflated, and so left a tube, some nine inches in length, hanging down from the neck of the garment.

He now applied his breath to the tube, and the jacket swelling rapidly proved that the whole receptacle was air-tight.

He then allowed the air to escape. Next, he took the bottle and filled it with water from the sea; then he inserted, with some difficulty and great care, the neck of the bottle into the orifice of the tube. This done, he detached the wire of the brass nozzle, and whipped the tube firmly round the neck of the bottle. “Now, light a fire,” he cried; “no matter what it costs.”

The forethwart was chopped up, and a fire soon spluttered and sparkled, for ten eager hands were feeding it. The bottle was then suspended over it, and, in due course, the salt water boiled and threw off vapor, and the belly of the jacket began to heave and stir. Hazel then threw cold water upon the outside to keep it cool, and, while the men eagerly watched the bubbling bottle and swelling bag, his spirits rose, and he took occasion to explain that what was now going on under their eyes was, after all, only one of the great processes of Nature, done upon a small scale. “The clouds,” said he, “are but vapors drawn from the sea by the heat of the sun. These clouds are composed of fresh water, and so the steam we are now raising from salt water will be fresh. We can’t make whisky, or brew beer, lads; but, thank Heaven, we can brew water; and it is worth all other liquors ten times told.”

A wild “Hurrah!” greeted these words. But every novel experiment seems doomed to fail, or meet with some disaster. The water in the bottle had been reduced too low by vaporism, and the bottle burst suddenly, with a loud report. That report was followed by a piteous wail.

Hazel turned pale at this fatal blow. But recovering himself, he said, “That is unfortunate; but it was a good servant while it lasted. Give me the baler; and, Miss Rolleston, can you lend me a thimble?”

The tube of the life-preserver was held over the baler, and out trickled a small quantity of pure water, two thimblefuls apiece. Even that, as it passed over their swelling tongues and parched swallows was a heavenly relief. But, alas, the supply was then exhausted.

Next day hunger seemed uppermost and the men gnawed and chewed their tobacco-pouches. And two caps that had been dressed with the hair on were divided for food.

None was given to Mr. Hazel or Miss Rolleston; and this, to do the poor creatures justice, was the first instance of injustice or partiality the sailors had shown.

The lady, though tormented with hunger, was more magnanimous; she offered to divide the contents of her little medicine chest; and the globules were all devoured in a moment.

And now their tortures were aggravated by the sight of abundance. They drifted over coral rocks, at a considerable depth, but the water was so exquisitely clear that they saw five fathoms down. They discerned small fish drifting over the bottom; they looked like a driving cloud, so vast was their number; and every now and then there was a scurry among them, and porpoises and dog-fish broke in and feasted on them. All this they saw, yet could not catch one of those billions for their lives. Thus they were tantalized as well as starved.

The next day was like the last, with this difference, that the sufferers could no longer endure their torments in silence.

The lady moaned constantly. The sailors groaned, lamented, and cursed.

The sun baked and blistered, and the water glared.

The sails being useless, the sailors rigged them as an awning, and salt water was constantly thrown over them.

Mr. Hazel took a baler and drenched his