Читать книгу Dick Rodney; or, The Adventures of an Eton Boy - James Grant - Страница 6

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I had been asleep nearly four hours, when a fall on the cabin floor, as I slipped from the table, awoke me.

Stiff, cold, and benumbed, I started up, confused to find myself in the dark, and at first I knew not where.

I reeled, and fell twice or thrice in efforts to keep my feet for now the schooner was rolling from side to side—rolling and afloat!

"Home—let me hasten home," was my first thought. I scrambled up the companion ladder and reached the deck, to find water around me on every side, while the schooner being without ballast and light as a cork, lay almost on her beam ends, as she was careened by a heavy breeze that blew from the shore, the lights of which, probably Erlesmere, I could see about three miles distant.

A deadly terror filled my heart!

To swim so far was impossible; I dared not leave the schooner, even with a spar or any thing else that would float, as the wind and sea were evidently rising together, and to remain on board was almost as dangerous and hopeless. I had the risk of drowning by her capsizing, or lying on her beam ends in the water, and so foundering and going down.

A plank might start in her sheathing—she might even then be filling by some uncaulked leak! I had no idea of the state of her hold, and from many reasons feared she might sink before daybreak, and before my perilous situation could be discovered from the shore.

The waves were black as ink; the sky was moonless overhead, but the pale, white stars winked and twinkled, and were reflected in the trough of the ocean. Now, I could perceive foam cresting the tops of the waves, and knew that the breeze was increasing to a gale—a gale that was blowing from the land.

This added to my despair, for the lights I had seen soon disappeared, and the dark outline of the coast seemed to sink lower and to blend with the sea. Clutching the weather rigging, I could scarcely keep my feet, so slippery was the now wetted deck, and so cold and benumbed were my hands and arms by the chill atmosphere of the ocean, and by the salt spray which ever and anon flew over me in bitter briny showers.

I shouted, but the mocking wind bore my voice away to seaward. With despairing eyes I swept the dusky water, in the hope of seeing a vessel, a fishing boat, or the light of a steamer near; but gazed, with haggard glance, in vain.

I had no hope now but to wait for dawn of day; and when it came, where might I and the empty schooner be? Fortunately, her topmasts were struck, her fore-yard was lowered, and all her gear made tolerably snug. Her canvas, however, was only in the brails, and a portion of the fore-and-aft foresail having got loose, it was swelled out by the blast, and kept her head partially before the wind, thus accelerating the rate at which she was borne from the land, and being without trimming or ballast, she danced over the waves, as I have said, like a cork, but in momentary danger of capsizing and foundering. As dawn drew near, the cold increased so much, that though at the risk of being passed unseen by some coaster, I was fain to creep on my hands and knees to the companion hatch, and descend into the cabin.

It was darker now than ever, for the lamp had gone out.

The memory of the captain's weird story made me shudder. His words, "I was lying in the larboard berth—there, on the cabin floor, I struck the figure down," seemed ever in my ears, and the pale, spectral face he had portrayed, with the moonbeams streaming on its ghastly features and glazing eyes, were ever before me in the dark filling my young heart with a chilling horror.

"Oh to be ashore!" I exclaimed passionately, with clasped hands; "ashore, and free from this floating prison!"

I thought of my gentle and loving mother, and my soul seemed to die within me. The schooner would be missed by daybreak—the alarm would be given; her alarm would rapidly become irrepressible anxiety, which would soon turn to a despair that nothing could alleviate.

Sounds like thunder, or like tremendous blows, at times made me start. These were caused by billets of wood, mallets, or pieces of pig-iron, pitching about in the hold of the schooner, as she rolled, and lurched, and righted herself, to roll and lurch again.

For a time I cowered miserably in the dark cabin, until my childish fears overmatched reason, and I crept once more upon deck.

A regular gale was blowing now, and the schooner careened fearfully beneath it on her starboard side, while the bellying of that portion of the fore-and-aft foresail which had got loose aided in hurrying her faster out to sea.

The light of the coming day was spread in dull gray over the sky, imparting the same cold tint to the whitening waves. Land was still visible, but it seemed like a dark bank at the horizon. I supposed it to be about ten miles distant, but what part of the coast, or how far from Erlesmere, I knew not.

Now I began to be assailed by that illness, which terror and anxiety had hitherto but partially repressed—a violent sea-sickness in all its horror. Afraid of being washed from the deck over which the waves were breaking now, once more I crept in wretchedness below.

Before descending, I cast a despairing glance at the loosening sail which still caught the wind it was a source of increasing danger which dared not attempt to remedy, even had I strength to have done so, for the wet deck was now sloping like the roof of a house, and I would assuredly have fallen into the sea to leeward. After several feeble efforts, I succeeded in partially closing the companion hatch, for warmth and security, and descending, threw myself on the cabin floor, sick and despairing.

The lurching of the vessel, the closeness of the atmosphere, and general odor of the cabin, overpowered me at last; I became fearfully ill, and from being so, lapsed into unconsciousness, after enduring all the wretchedness induced by that ailment of the ocean. For the top of my head seemed about to fly off, its sides to be crushed in; there was a singing in my ears, an ache in my eyeballs; and then came that awful sinking of the pulses, of the body, of the soul itself, which thousands have endured in cases of aggravated sea-sickness, but none have been able to depict.

In short, after a paroxysm of illness and tears, I became totally unconscious of the peril and horror of my situation, and found a refuge in sleep.