Читать книгу In the Secret Sea - William Edward Cule - Страница 3
ОглавлениеTHE SEA GIVES ME A SURPRISE
On the night before we sighted Honeycomb Island, my uncle, Captain James, held fast to his post on the bridge almost from dark till dawn. He took rest for an hour between three and four, and it was during this time, while the first mate occupied his place, that a singular incident occurred. One of the watch, a man named Jenkins, gave a false alarm by reporting a light on the starboard bow. No one else saw it, and under cross-examination Jenkins admitted that he might have made a mistake; so the Captain was not disturbed, and the matter became something of a sea-joke.
“When a man has been staring into darkness for two hours he is quite likely to see stars,” said Ralph Oliver next day, when I was with him in the charthouse. “He said he had seen a kind of glare in the sky. It came and went in about half a second, or perhaps less; so there wasn’t much time for making notes.”
“Perhaps he was a little bit tipsy?” I suggested.
“Well, he’s not one of our total abstainers,” said the third officer, with a bit of a smile, “and he’d just had his special storm ration.”
At this time the John Duncan was creeping steadily down the eastern side of the island, to seek her refuge on the southern coast. The towering heights of the Honeycomb were wreathed in great banks of mist, and though we were all glad to see land, there was a grim loneliness about this desolate place that seemed to chill every heart on board. Above, heavy banks of mist and cloud upon a stark line of uneven rocks a thousand feet high; below, a troubled sea that beat unceasingly upon an iron rampart with a dull, monotonous roar and a broad white bar of foam and spray.
“For cheerlessness this is hard to beat,” said Ralph Oliver grimly. “But it’s a case of any port in a storm. Gibbon says that he’ll get the engines right if he can have twelve hours at a quiet anchorage. Just see for yourself what the Navigator says.”
The Atlantic Navigator was lying open on the table, as Captain James had left it. One paragraph had been marked in pencil, and I read it aloud:
“The Honeycomb (Lat. 35 S., Long. 25.42 W.) is apparently so called from the curious appearance of some of the cliffs. The coast is precipitous, rising everywhere to a height of 1,000-2,000 feet. The only practicable landing is on the S.W., where there is a sheltered cove and a good supply of fresh water from a cascade. The island measures some five miles by four. The cliffs are often enveloped in cloud. There is no vegetation, and there is a complete absence of animal life. Even the sea-birds appear to avoid the spot. The British gunboat Lizard was cast away here in 1899 and every soul lost.”
“No,” said Oliver, “it isn’t a cheerful prospect. But no doubt the place will serve our turn.”
His face bore that strained look which marked every face on board, from the Captain’s to that of the cabin boy. Nor was it anything to wonder at. On the fourteenth of the month the John Duncan, churning her way laboriously from Monte Video towards Table Bay, had found the North-West trade wind rise to a gale of unusual violence for those latitudes at this season. The wide waste of grey sea had darkened with wind and rain into a vast, murky battlefield, where mountains of water raced incessantly after us. On the second day there was no sun, only that grim battlefield in a twilight of rain and sleet and howling wind; and on the third day it was the same scene, only darker and still more hopeless. But through it all the sturdy old John Duncan had held on her way, labouring heavily but gallantly, rolling and slobbering indeed, but still shaking her grimy old hull free from the wash of those hostile seas. No man came on deck without oilskins, no man left it without being soaked, chilled to the marrow, and sore in every fibre; but this was in the seaman’s day’s work, and all was well as long as the fires could be kept going. My uncle, Captain James, was a hard man, but there was no better seaman in the Seven Seas.
It was on the third day that disaster came—the shock of a mighty sea on our port quarter, the shudder and struggle of the old boat as she strove to recover, the sound of grinding iron, and then the failure of her pulse. The propeller had jammed, and the steam steering gear had been thrown out of use. For some minutes the John Duncan had rolled helplessly, with giant billows climbing over her; then she had turned her head from the fight and was driving straight before the storm.
That wild flight had lasted for two days and nights, but she had come through without the loss of a man; and now the winds had gone down, and a strange sun, pale and shamefaced, had for a time looked down upon us through the clouds. Moreover, the engineers had never ceased their efforts to repair the damage, and some part had been made good. The engines were working again, though only feebly, and the damaged propeller had once more begun to churn the waters. The confident strength was gone, but the old ship was alive once more and could turn her head eastwards. Battered from stem to stern, she waddled along at something like four knots.
It was then that the officers had come to a decision as to their course of action. The nearest inhabited land was Tristan d’Acunha, but even if the John Duncan could fight the wind for two hundred and fifty miles, it would be impossible to find harbourage there. The Honeycomb was not inhabited, and it was a bit out of our course; but it was a hundred miles nearer by the Captain’s reckoning, and it had a sheltered harbour. So the ship’s course had been set due south, and now we were nearing our destination.
We skirted the eastern coast at a distance of two miles, going very slowly; and all the way ran that gaunt wall of sheer rock and that foaming fringe of breakers. But when we had turned the south-eastern point the rock took us into its shelter, and the moan gave place to comparative quiet. So, still keeping at a respectful distance, our old ship felt her way along the great wall towards the breach which marked the entrance to Sandy Bay; and it was when we were within half a mile of our anchorage, full in view of that grim, stony gateway to rest and safety, that the John Duncan came to a pause.
Then our little motor launch was lowered, and the first officer, with three men, went off to explore. The coast was clear for all that anyone knew to the contrary, but Captain James was not the man to take unnecessary risks. Since so much time had been lost already, an extra hour could well be spared.
From the starboard rail we watched the progress of the boat over that half mile of grey water to the gloomy shadow of the rock. Johnny Tawell, my fellow-apprentice, had no hesitation about expressing his opinion.
“What a sickening view!” he said. “Did you ever see anything like it? ‘Honeycomb,’ indeed! Is there anything sweet about it? What do you say to ‘The Isle of Ghosts,’ or ‘Dead Man’s Isle’? Of course, it doesn’t matter about ghosts or dead men being there. We just want to suit the look of the rotten place.”
“Then they’ll do,” I said. “But, anyhow, I’ll be precious glad to get ashore.”
“Yes,” agreed Johnny, in his melancholy drawl. “I never thought, when I came to sea, that I should be so glad to get off it.”
“All the same, when we’ve been on that shore a little while we’ll be jolly glad to get to sea again, I guess,” was my cheerless reply; and Johnny sighed.
“It’s always the same,” he said. “I wanted a desert island—I’ve always wanted one. Now I’ve got it—and it’s like this!”
“You wanted a coral island,” I said. “Golden sand, green grass, turtles—and wild fruit growing everywhere.”
“Yes,” said Johnny sadly, “and some nice, kind, simple savages who would make me their king.”
Then I laughed; and Johnny gave me a jaundiced look sideways as he went on:
“And this is the kind of luck I get—the shore as bad as this old tub of a ship. If there’s any luck going, it’s other chaps that get it. The Captain is their uncle, and the third mate plays the part of big brother—and so on. And if there’s any sort of luck to be got on this old rock, I’ll bet it’ll be the Little Favourite that gets it all. There won’t be a streak left for anybody else.”
It was difficult to talk to Johnny Tawell for five minutes without discovering the jealous vein in him, but I never troubled to quarrel with him now. Once he had provoked me to a fight, and I had licked him thoroughly to the satisfaction of everybody but myself; for when I had come to think of it, the fellow couldn’t help the jaundice in his disposition any more than I could help my freckled skin and celestial nose. So from the hour of that first fight I had managed to bear with his weakness, leaving him to sulk alone when I could bear him no longer. I followed the same course now.
“Well, don’t cry,” I said comfortingly. “Perhaps you’ll be king some day after all.” And with that I moved away to continue my watch from another part of the rail. The boat had just disappeared through the great rocky gateway, and I wanted to get the first glimpse of it when it should come out again.
But while I waited I was full of thoughts, for Johnny’s melancholy moan had touched a chord of memory. I had had the same dreams myself in earlier days, and had seen myself the hero of scores of pirate cruises, sea battles, and adventures on mysterious islands. In our more peaceful moments Johnny and I had exchanged confidences, and had found that common bond between us. Indeed, it was just the influence of such thoughts and dreams that had determined me to go to sea, much to the sorrow of my sister Ruth, whom I had left to fight her battle alone after she had almost worn her heart out in “bringing me up.” But since that time I had learnt the truth about the sea, and knew, or thought I knew, that the days of romance were gone for ever. The reality was just as Johnny had said—grey, grim, and disheartening, like the prospect around us now. No, there was no romance; the sea had nothing to give but hard work, and hard knocks, and hard tack, even if you were the nephew of the Captain! And I sighed wearily as I stared away at that mighty rock whose shelter we were about to seek. Certainly, there was no romance about that!
Presently I was roused by someone remarking that the first officer was taking his time about his job. He had nothing to do but cast an eye around Sandy Bay and then come back, and there wasn’t likely to be any house of call on that shore, anyway! Then I saw that there was a little surprise even on my uncle’s bronzed and patient face, as he stood on the bridge with the second officer. Five minutes later, however, there was a general stir of relief, for the boat came slowly out from the rocky passage; and, as had been arranged, the first officer was showing a white handkerchief as a signal that all was well.
A minute later the John Duncan was once more under way. At her slowest pace, with jealous care, she crept inshorewards, while the boat came speeding out to meet her. Five minutes later the first officer ran smartly up the ladder. When he reached the deck the Captain spoke to him from the bridge:
“All right, Mr. Smerdon?”
“Yes, sir, all right. Plenty of room and still water. We couldn’t want a better place.... But that’s not all. We are not the first callers. There’s another boat in the bay.”
Every ear was attentive. “Another boat in the bay”—hundreds of miles from anywhere!
“It’s a small American steamer, sir—the Maud Muller of New Orleans. It was this discovery that delayed us. But wait one minute, sir, and I’ll tell you all about it.”
He turned to give necessary instructions to his boat’s crew, and then ran up the ladder to the bridge. A moment more and the officers were talking busily, and the first shock of surprise had passed. But the whole ship was discussing the news in subdued but very natural excitement. It was the touch of the unexpected.
And I was excited, too. As if in answer to my musings of disenchantment, the sea had suddenly given me a bit of a surprise. Little could I guess how much more she was going to do before she had finished with me!
