Читать книгу Short Stories Volume 4 - John Arthur Barry - Страница 6

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The Maritana, a steel sailer, of 1500 tons, bound from Algoa Bay, in ballast, to Newcastle, New South Wales, had crept safely through Bass Strait, and, rounding Cape Howe, was now, under very short canvas, making up the coast to her destination in the teeth of a strong northerly. The captain and his officers were all strangers in Australian waters, and kept their ship much closer into the land than she had any business to be, considering the state of the weather. At sundown on this especial day the wind all at once shifted to south-east, and blew stronger than ever in thick, blinding squalls of rain; whilst the Maritana, under three lower topsails, and flying light, jigged and reeled unsteadily through the blackness. The skipper had been able to get no observations at noon; but from the glimpses he caught of the coastline, imagined himself to be abreast of Jervis Bay. About, midnight a far-off light was sighted that the mate and he agreed must be at the entrance to Port Jackson. Afraid of over-running Newcastle if he kept on at this rate, he, after awhile, hove his ship to under the lower main topsail, reckoning, at the time, that he must be fully thirty miles from the land. It was blowing now harder than ever; one watch had gone below, and the other was sheltering aft from the sheets of spindrift that, high as she bulked, flew thickly over the ship from the fo'c's'le-head to taffrail. The skipper was on deck attempting anxiously, but in vain, to peer through the heavy darkness in the direction he knew the land to lie. He was far from easy in his mind at being so close to a strange coast on such a night; and once or twice he started as he thought he heard the ominous noise made by waves on a rock-bound shore. Then, satisfied that it was only the rush of the seas alongside, and the hungry moaning of the wind amongst the naked spars and gear aloft, he resumed his unsteady pacing up and down the short poop. All at once, and just as he had determined to go below and take a short rest, there came a sudden shock, that made the Maritana tremble, as she heeled over slightly, broadside on, and remained motionless whilst great seas swept across her lofty rail. The next minute, however, she bumped again and again, the whole length of her, and then seemed to slip over into deeper water. Conceiving that he had safely cleared some hidden reef, and was in soundings, the captain ordered an anchor to be let go. But the cable snapped like thread, and the ship, forced along by the sledge-hammer blows of the big seas, soon took the ground again, finally becoming motionless, apparently in the very midst of a roaring mass of breakers, which, though invisible in the darkness, could be heard to right and left in booming thunder.

The Maritana had already slewed round some what, so as to be nearly bows on to the shore; her decks were untenable, and the crew had climbed into the rigging, expecting every minute that the vessel would go to pieces; and here deafened and bewildered by the dreadful crushing chorus around them, they hung on, striving to pierce the dense gloom ahead, that to their imagination concealed a range of lofty and perpendicular cliffs, at the foot of which their vessel lay grinding her plates to bits. But as the night wore on, the Maritana seemed to become comfortable, also more upright, and beyond a shiver when, now and again, an unusually heavy sea hit her, was almost motionless. And when morning at last broke, the castaways saw to their utter astonishment that the ship was on a small sandy beach not two hundred yards in length, but from each extremity ran out lines of grim reefs, over whose black and jagged teeth the surf still ran in masses of foaming madness.

Just across the upper margin of the beach, cuddled into a sheltered hollow, lay a little hamlet that as the hot summer sun rose reflected his rays cheerfully from its roofs of galvanised iron. To make matters, if possible, still more grotesque to those who had been so long waiting in the Valley of the Shadow, there presently rushed past, quite close at hand, a pulling locomotive, drawing a train of cars, whose windows were blocked with heads as the passengers stared in wonder at the no less surprised seamen. Never perhaps was such a shipwreck, for, except a smashed boat and some missing odds and ends from off her decks, the Maritana was absolutely intact alow and aloft; also, to add to the completeness of the thing, her crew, at low water, got out a ladder and dropped dry-footed on to the beach, and were welcomed by the people of the township to hot breakfast at their homes, and long cool drinks at hotels in which to toast their wonderful luck in having hit Australia in one of her few soft spots, when a few yards to the right or left must have meant instant annihilation. And all this, which is the first miracle, is matter of history.

The Maritana was "abandoned to the under writers," who, however, did nothing, because of some legal impedimente to be first overcome. Thus there was presented the extraordinary spectacle of a full-rigged ship, with only her lower maintopsail set, and, but for her rusty, weather worn sides, looking to all intents and purposes as much a-taunto as when she left the docks, settling in her sandy bed and staring at the town with a comical look of surprise; nearly dry at low water; at high with the waves curling white to the beach rods in front of her bows.

* * * * * *

From far inland stations, right away in the furthest back blocks, nomads were flocking to the Capital. The winter was approaching, and the Government had started relief works. Two shillings per day, the merest pretence of work, and "whips" of the best tucker was incomparably better than "humping bluey" for worse than nothing, and more often than not an empty belly into the bargain. So they came in shoals to shovel sand, and haunt the foreshores of the harbour, a, for the most part, dirty, frowsy, battered, Falstaffian army, lightly burdened by swags, empty in pocket, as in reputation; the offscourings of the great Bush. Thus it happened that one cold, damp evening, no less than six nomads, making city-ward in companies of three, foregathered on a scrubby knoll overlooking the Marltana. Nor, amongst the six could they muster food enough for one; neither money to buy any; neither as much tobacco as would fill a pipe. They had already vainly attempted to exploit the township. The people there, however, had of late lost many things at the hands of exactly similar vagrom men; therefore would have none of them: also a trooper had sternly moved them on, and intimated that he "meant to keep an eye on the push."

Thus they sat on their meagre swags, tired, hungry, and footsore, and each in turn cursed the township, the constable, the country, and the "Gover'ment," more particularly the "Gover'ment." Then, all at once, one, struck by a sudden bright idea, exclaimed, "Mates, it's goin' to rain 'eavy afore sundown. Le's tackle that there ship. She'll keep us dry. An' I don't believe as there's a soul on board of 'er. I only seen one bloke, an' he come away an hour ago."

"Righto!" replied the others with one voice, as, following their leader, who was known as "Billy the Mouse," they plunged along through the sand, and, presently, one at a time, ascended the rope ladder that hung down the Maritana's starboard side. It was now raining; the tide was coming in fast; had, indeed, wetted the last man to his knees. The decks were slippery with salt slime, the gear blackened with damp and disuse, and hanginig in bights; deck-houses and deck furniture rusty and forlorn. Instinctively the nomads made for the saloon. The watchman had locked the doors before going ashore, and it took them some time to get in. But, once there, they found warmth and comfort, and food and drink. Then, lighting a fire in the cabin stove, they feasted on white biscuits and cheese and tinned things, washed down with bottled beer and rum; whilst outside the wind rose, and the sea began to slap the Maritana's steel cheeks with great resounding slaps, and the solitary sail, alternately filled as its unbraced yards caught the breeze, or collapsed aback in shocks that sounded like muffled explosions to the ears of the merry nomads around the saloon table.

But they took no heed of anything. Seldom, indeed, had their luck fallen in such pleasant quarters. And they laughed, and ate, and drank, sprawling on the comfortable settees; and they sung strange bush songs about squatters and sheep, and the "Wallaby," and they smoked long Trichinopoly cheroots, of which someone had found a bundle, and enjoyed themselves very thoroughly. An unkempt company with matted hair and beards, and clothes long lived in by night and day; grimy, sour-smelling, unshorn men, answering only to "Billy," and "Jimmie," and "Tom" and "Jack," qualified mostly by some expressive adjective. Men who, in their own vernacular, had "no come from and no go to;" who were at home when their hats were on; by turns "sundowners," of the inland bush, and loafers around the restaurants, and wharves, and parks of the capital.

Meanwhile, the wind rose to a gale, blowing steadily from the south-west; also it was, as it chanced, the time of the highest of the spring tides. And the Maritana, loosened in her soft bed by the working together of wind and wave, moved uneasily, as the water, rushing down through the sandcracks, got under her keel, and so lifted her, little by little, that, at last, her bows floated. Then the twisting of them raised the stern, until, with one final wrench, she shook herself free altogether, and gradually coming round before wind and sea, and drifting within a yard of a sharp-toothed rock, went tossing like a cork away into the South Pacific, carrying with her, locked fast in a drunken sleep, the most curious crew that ever sailed salt water.

* * * * * *

THE SECOND MIRACLE.

"Snowy" Jack was the first one amongst the nomads to come to himself. An old man with a hooked nose and little blue eyes, cunning and pig-like; bald but for a fringe of dirty grey hairs; a long beard, white but for long streaks as of iron-rust; face leathery, tanned, full of deep wrinkles and furrows, strangers to soap from their birth almost. Sitting up, he stared bewildered around the saloon. The swinging lamp burned with a sickly yellow glare in the dawn that entered through the broken door and the poop skylight. On the floor, rolled to and fro with each sharp, jerking motion of the vessel, lay "Billy the Mouse," and "Boko Jimmy," and "Rusty Frank," and all the rest of them. Painfully, and with a deadly feeling off sickness, Snowy got on his feet, and staggered outside, and gazed in speechless amazement at the endless expanse of grey, foam-tipped rollers; at the leaden sky that met them; at the Maritana nosing about as she scudded before the gale, coming to and falling off with half the compass to spare on each side, and taking green seas in turn to port and starboard and over the quarter, neither able to run fast enough to escape them, nor to lie close enough to the wind to make any weather at all of it.

The sun had been up some time, but was hidden behind the bank of clouds. Snowy cast his bleared gaze towards where he thought the land should be, but nothing met it save the same grey waste of heaving furrows. He felt ill, but he crawled back into the saloon, and with volleys of oaths aroused his companions. "The blanky cow of a ship's been and runned away with us! Git up ye loafin' swine an' come an' look fer the land, an' let's try an' pull 'er 'ead round fer Hostralier agin." And they came out and wallowed about in the scuppers, shockingly sick; and called upon God to strike them blind and paralytic—a ghastly, grimy, sodden company that the Maritana flung hither and thither as if ashamed of, and drenched, and spurned contemptuously about her decks.

Towards evening, wind and sea going down somewhat, they made shift to pull themselves together, and drink rum, and hold council on their plight. With one consent they put the whole fault on the Mouse—the ferrety-eyed, undersized, tallow-faced little man who had first proposed taking refuge on board.

"S'elp me," he protested, shrilly, "I thought the blanky thing was a fixchure! Stop 'er! 'Ow kin I stop 'er enny more than you kin? Strike me pink, I'd sooner be on a 'ot track with a hempty water bag an' no tucker than in sich a bloomin' mess as this!"

"Well," said Boko Jimmy, a long, lean, cadaverous loafer, with one malignant eye (whence his nickname), and a dirty hole where the other should have been, "pulled up she's got to be, some'ow. 'Ere we are hout on the wild an' foamin' hocean, an' gittin' further away every minnit. Aint none of us sailors enuff to know 'ow to stop the blanky beast a-tearin' an' a-tossin' hoff with us like she's a-doin', an seems like to keep on a-doin' ov till we're all starved inter skillitons?"

But the others only stared vacantly at the bewildering maze of lofty spars and gear, and shook their heads. None of them knew anything about the matter, or, indeed, about much else except the best stations on far back bush tracks at which to get "a feed," or the best bends along inland rivers in which to camp and catch fish. They were all men over fifty, and for many years had scarcely ever, and then only under pressure of direst circumstance, done any harder work than cut a few burrs. So, at last, resigning themselves to the inevitable, they, never dreaming even of setting a watch for passing ships, returned to the cabin, and slept and ate, and drank and smoked, and played euchre with tattered, grimy packs of cards they produced from their swags, whilst the Maritana drifted, for the most part, aimlessly about; but, owing to a northerly current, making, on the whole, despite all changes of wind, an average north by east course, sometimes nearly in sight of the coast, at others well out. And, curiously enough, neither could a couple of tugs that had been dispatched in search of the missing ship see anything of her; nor, for a long time, did any traces whatever of her turn up; therefore it was generally supposed that she had gone down on that night of storm during which she broke away. Meanwhile, the nomads having eaten out the cabin supplies and drunk all the rum and beer, were reduced to salt pork and beef and very hard and often weevily biscuits, fare that after their first feastings, they resented. Otherwise, they had become in a measure familiarised with their situation, and had explored every nook and cranny they could gain access to. The maintopsail sheets having, somehow, been let go, the sail, one stormy night, blew to ribbons, the remnants adding not a little to the forlorn appearance of the masterless ship. After a while, the weather became fine and hot, and the six lounged and slept about the warm decks till the pitch in the seams stuck to their decayed clothes, and abstracted fragments every time they rose. Tobacco was getting scarce and precious, and they stole it from each other during the night, and then fought and nagged savagely; and old Snowy, and the Mouse, and Boko, being the strongest, thumped the other three out of the saloon, and forced them to take shelter in the forward house, or crew's quarters; made them, also, do what cooking there was, and generally fetch and carry for them. And all of them grew, day by day, frowsier, and hairier, and dirtier, and more greasy, and altogether so squalid and malodorous, as to perceptibly taint the Pacific breeze.

At length an Island trader, heading towards the coast for a land fall, sighted the derelict, and bore down on her. Backing his foreyards close along side, the skipper of the Dancing Jane and his crew stared in amazement at the six scarecrows, who peered down at him over the Maritana's lofty rail; at the ship herself, rusty, weather stained, listed to port, her sails lumping loosely in the relaxed gaskets; shreds of her topsail waving forlornly; and from her hawse-pipe a remnant of chain cable banging with every roll against her bows.

"What's the matter?" hailed the skipper, his first astonishment over, and finding nothing better to say.

"Matter enuff," replied Boko surlily, as he glared with malevolent eye; "this blanky thing bolted wiuh iva weeks ago. We've got nawthin' but blarsted salt tucker an' biscuits with blanky grubs in 'em. We're about full up, we are; an' want to get back to the bush ov Hostralia agin; which, if it ain't much chop, at least knows enuff to keep itself still. If yer can find the track back agin, boss, yer'd best take us with yous. We'll jist chuck our swags together an' climb down if yer'll come closer."

"Hold on!" exclaimed the skipper hurriedly, "I ain't taking any passengers just now. You've got provisions and water, haven't you? Yes, well I'll report you when I get in, and they'll send a steamer to you."

"Oh, cuss that game!" exclaimed old Snowy, wagging his head angrily; "jer think we ain't 'ad 'bout a fair thing o' this blanky salt picnic? 'Ow do you know as a storm won't sink us afore you gits to land. A pritty nice sort o' Crischun you are to gammon you ain't got room! Le's git on your boat, an' we'll chanst all that."

But the captain of the Dancing Jane hesitated. "It's the rummiest yarn I ever heard," said he to the mate. "D—d suspicious all round! It's my belief there's something wrong. I don't like the looks o' the crowd, either. Nor the stink o' em."

"It's all a lie from start to finish," said the mate. "Did one ever hear the like! A ship goin' ashore in that fashion without stranding a rope yarn; and then o' six Bushies gettin' on her, an' her gettin' off in the night, an' sailin' away with 'em. Let 'em rip, sir. I can see mischief in the beggars' faces. They're escaped gaol-birds, that's what they are, or looks is very deceivin'."

"By jingo, I believe you've guessed it, Brown," replied the skipper. "Round with the fore-yards, lads." And as the nomads saw the Jane slipping off, and realised that she was leaving them, they ran forward on to the fo'castle-head, and rained such torrents of threats and blasphemy on her crew as made mate and skipper more than ever sure that the former's diagnosis was the correct one.

A couple of nights after this it came on to blow great guns from the eastward, with a sea to match; and before the two the Maritana drove with swept decks straight for the coast she had kept away from so long and so luckily. She hit it at midnight, stern first, and, this time, on solid rock near Port Hacking. Her stern struck on the reef, her three masts went crashing over the side, her plates cracked and broke like iron pots, deckhouses and galley went like feathers; while the nomads, all together now, crouched and shivered in a corner of thc saloon, dumb with terror at the fearful racket around them—the din of the smashing ship and the combined rushing and roaring of the wind and the great seas that swept over her. Still the after part held together; and when morning broke, and the Six made shift to crawl up the companion, they found that, whilst all the rest of her had entirely disappeared, the poop had been hove right up on the roof, and wedged firmly there. Almost overhead, and hardly a hundred yards away, towered lofty cliffs, with a little beach beneath them; and, at low water they saw to their joy that they would be able to walk ashore, almost as dry as, weeks ago, they had walked on board. Sure enough, at mid day, they rolled up their swags and clambered down the Maritana's side, and across the slippery rocks, until they reached the bench, where, with one accord, facing towards the poor remnant that had made their salvation, they solemnly cursed it and all ships, and the sea, and all men that used them; and then, turning their backs upon the storm-washed shore, they straggled slowly inland, with bowed shoulders—six thankless, worthless, dingy souls, all unwitting of the second miracle.