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

that voyage.

“Joe Wylie scuttled her and destroyed her people.

“D—n his eyes!”

 

Mr. Hazel was shocked at this finale; but he knew what sailors are, and how little meaning there is in their set phrases. However, as a clergyman, he could not allow these to be Cooper’s last words; so he said earnestly, “Yes, but, my poor fellow, you said you forgave all your enemies. We all need forgiveness, you know.”

“That is true, sir.”

“And you forgive this Wylie, do you not?”

“Oh, Lord, yes,” said Cooper, faintly. “I forgive the lubber; d—n him!”

Having said these words with some difficulty, he became lethargic, and so remained for two hours. Indeed, he spoke but once more, and that was to Welch; though they were all about him then. “Messmate,” said he, in a voice that was now faint and broken, “you and I must sail together on this new voyage. I’m going out of port first; but” (in a whisper of inconceivable tenderness and simple cunning) “I’ll lie to outside the harbor till you come out, my boy.” Then he paused a moment. Then he added softly, “For I love you, Tom.”

These sweet words were the last of that rugged, silent sailor, who never threw a word away, and whose rough breast inclosed a friendship as of the ancient world, tender, true and everlasting: that sweetened his life and ennobled his death. As he deserved mourners, so he had true ones.

His last words went home to the afflicted hearts that heard them, and the lady and gentleman, whose lives he had saved at cost of his own, wept aloud over their departed friend. But his messmate’s eye was dry. When all was over, he just turned to the mourners and said gravely, “Thank ye, sir; thank ye kindly, ma’am.” And then he covered the body decently with the spare canvas, and lay quietly, down with his own head pillowed upon those loved remains.

Toward afternoon, seals were observed sporting on the waters; but no attempt was made to capture them. Indeed, Miss Rolleston had quite enough to do to sail the boat with Mr. Hazel’s assistance.

The night passed, and the morning brought nothing new; except that they fell in with sea-weed in such quantities the boat could hardly get through it.

Mr. Hazel examined this sea-weed carefully and brought several kinds upon deck. Among the varieties was one like thin green strips of spinach, very tender and succulent. His botanical researches included sea-weed, and he recognized this as one of the edible rock-weeds.

There was very little of it comparatively, but he took great pains, and, in two hours’ time, had gathered as much as might fill a good-sized slop-basin.

He washed it in fresh water, and then asked Miss Rolleston for a pocket-handkerchief. This he tied so as to make a bag, and contrived to boil it with the few chips of fuel that remained on board.

After he had boiled it ten minutes, there was no more fuel, except a bowl or two, and the boat-hook, one pair of oars, and the midship and stern thwarts.

He tasted it, and found it glutinous and delicious; he gave Miss Rolleston some, and then fed Welch with the rest. He, poor fellow, enjoyed this sea spinach greatly; he could no longer swallow meat.

While Hazel was feeding him, a flight of ducks passed over their heads, high in the air.

Welch pointed up at them.

“Ah!” said Helen, “if we had but their wings!”

Presently a bird was seen coming in the same direction, but flying very low; it wabbled along toward them very slowly, and at last, to their great surprise, came flapping and tried to settle on the gunwale of the boat. Welch, with that instinct of slaughter which belongs to men, struck the boat-hook into the bird’s back, and it was soon dispatched. It proved to be one of that very flock of ducks that had passed over their heads, and a crab was found fastened to its leg. It is supposed that the bird, to break its long flight, had rested on some reef, and perhaps been too busy fishing; and caught this Tartar.

Hazel pounced upon it. “Heaven has sent this for you, because you cannot eat turtle.” But the next moment he blushed and recovered his reason. “See,” said he, referring to her own words, “this poor bird had wings, yet death overtook her.”

He sacrificed a bowl for fuel, and boiled the duck and the crab in one pot, and Miss Rolleston ate demurely but plentifully of both. Of the crab’s shell he made a little drinking-vessel for Miss Rolleston.

Cooper remained without funeral rites all this time; the reason was that Welch lay with his head pillowed upon his dead friend, and Hazel had not the heart to disturb him.

But it was the survivors’ duty to commit him to the deep, and so Hazel sat down by Welch, and asked him kindly whether he would not wish the services of the Church to be read over his departed friend.

“In course, sir,” said Welch. But the next moment he took Hazel’s meaning, and said hurriedly, “No, no; I can’t let Sam be buried in the sea. Ye see, sir, Sam and I, we are used to one another, and I can’t abide to part with him, alive or dead.”

“Ah!” said Hazel, “the best friends must part when death takes one.”

“Ay, ay, when t’other lives. But, Lord bless you, sir! I shan’t be long astarn of my messmate here; can’t you see that?”

“Heaven forbid!” said Hazel, surprised and alarmed. “Why, you are not wounded mortally, as Cooper was. Have a good heart, man, and we three will all see old England yet.”

“Well, sir,” said Welch, coolly, “I’ll tell ye. Me and my shipmate, Prince, was a cutting at one another with our knives a smart time (and I do properly wonder, when I think of that day’s work, for I liked the man well enough, but rum atop of starvation plays hell with seafaring men), well, sir, as I was a saying, he let more blood out of me than I could afford to lose under the circumstances. And, ye see, I can’t make fresh blood, because my throat is so swelled by the drought I can’t swallow much meat, so I’m safe to lose the number of my mess; and, another thing, my heart isn’t altogether set toward living. Sam, here, he give me an order; what, didn’t ye hear him? ‘I’ll lie to outside the bar,’ says he, ‘till you come out.’ He expects me to come out in his wake. Don’t ye, Sam—that was?” and he laid his hand gently on the remains. “Now, sir, I shall ax the lady and you a favor. I want to lie alongside Sam. But if you bury him in the sea, and me ashore, why, d—n my eyes if I shan’t be a thousand years or so before I can find my own messmate. Etarnity is a ‘nation big place, I’m told, a hundred times as big as both oceans. No, sir; you’ll make land, by Sam’s reckoning, tomorrow or next day, wind and tide permitting. I’ll take care of Sam’s hull till then, and we’ll lie together till the angel blows that there trumpet; and then we’ll go aloft together, and, as soon as ever we have made our scrape to our betters, we’ll both speak a good word for you and the lady, a very pretty lady she is, and a good-hearted, and the best plucked one I ever did see in any distressed craft; now don’t ye cry, miss, don’t ye cry, your trouble is pretty near over; he said you was not a hundred miles from land. I don’t know how he knew that, he was always a better seaman than I be; but say it he did, and that is enough, for he was a man as never told a lie, nor wasted a word.”

Welch could utter no more just then; for the glands of his throat were swollen, and he spoke with considerable difficulty.

What could Hazel reply? The judgment is sometimes ashamed to contradict the heart with cold reasons.

He only said, with a sigh, that he saw no signs of land, and believed they had gone on a wrong course, and were in the heart of the Pacific.

Welch made no answer, but a look of good-natured contempt. The idea of this parson contradicting Sam Cooper!

The sun broke, and revealed the illimitable ocean; themselves a tiny speck on it.

Mr. Hazel whispered Miss Rolleston that Cooper must be buried to-day.

At ten P.M. they passed through more sea-weed; but this time they had to eat the sea spinach raw, and there was very little of it.

At noon the sea was green in places.

Welch told them this was a sign they were nearing land.

At four P.M. a bird, about the size and color of a woodpecker, settled on the boat’s mast.

Their glittering eyes fastened on it; and Welch said, “Come, there’s a supper for you as you can eat it.”

“No, poor thing!” said Helen Rolleston.

“You are right,” said Hazel, with a certain effort of self-restraint. “Let our sufferings make us gentle, not savage. That poor bird is lost like us upon this ocean. It is a land-bird.”

“How do you know?”

“Water-birds have webbed feet—to swim with.” The bird, having rested, flew to the northwest.

Helen, by one of those inspired impulses her sex have, altered the boat’s course directly, and followed the bird.

 

Half an hour before sunset, Helen Rolleston, whose vision was very keen, said she saw something at the verge of the horizon, like a hair standing upright.

Hazel looked, but could not see anything.

In ten minutes more, Helen Rolleston pointed it out again; and then Hazel did see a vertical line, more like a ship’s mast than anything else one could expect to see there.

Their eyes were now strained to make it out, and, as the boat advanced, it became more and more palpable, though it was hard to say exactly what it was.

Five minutes before the sun set, the air being clearer than ever, it stood out clean against the-sky. A tree—a lofty, solitary tree; with a tall stem, like a column, and branches only at the top.

A palmtree—in the middle of the Pacific.

 

CHAPTER XXIV.

 

AND but for the land-bird which rested on their mast, and for their own mercy in sparing it, they would have passed to the eastward, and never seen that giant palmtree in mid-ocean.

“Oh, let us put out all our sails, and fly to it!” cried Helen.

Welch smiled and said, “No, miss, ye mustn’t. Lord love ye; what! run on to a land ye don’t know, happy go lucky, in the dark, like that? Lay her head for the tree, and welcome, but you must lower the mainsel and treblereef the foresel; and so creep on a couple of knots an hour, and, by daybreak, you’ll find the island close under your lee. Then you can look out for a safe landing-place.”

“The island, Mr. Welch!” said Helen.

“There is no island, or I should have seen it.”

“Oh, the island was hull down. Why, you don’t think as palmtrees grow in the water? You do as I say, or you’ll get wrecked on some thundering reef or other.”

Upon this Mr. Hazel and Miss Rolleston set to work, and, with considerable difficulty lowered the mainsail, and treblereefed the foresail.

“That is right,” said Welch. “Tomorrow you’ll land in safety, and bury my messmate and me.”

“Oh, no!” cried Helen Rolleston. “We must bury him, but we mean to cure you.” They obeyed Welch’s instructions, and so crept on all night; and, so well had