Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 68, No 420, October 1850
For so long as I had kept at sea, and a good many different latitudes I had been into – yet I must say I never in my life before saw such a strange sight as broke on us the instant we put our heads out of the booby-hatch, fresh from the lamp-light in the cabin. Indeed, I can't but own to my first feeling being fright; for what it was I couldn't understand, unless we were got into a quarter of the world where things weren't natural. There were a few stray clouds in the sky, scattered away ahead, and clearing eastward to settle along before the breeze; all aloft of us, high over the sharp dark edge of the sails and gaffs, the air seemed to open away out pale and glimmering like a reflection in the ice; all round you caught a glimpse of the stars weakening and weakening toward the horizon. But the water itself – that was the sight that bewildered one! On every side the whole sea lay spread out smooth, and as white as snow – you couldn't fancy how wide it might stretch away astern or on our lee-beam, for not a mark of horizon was to be seen, save on the northwest, where you made it out, owing to the sky there being actually darker than the sea – but all the time the wide face of it was of a dead ghastly paleness, washing with a swell like milk to our black counter as we forged ahead. It wasn't that it shone in the least like blue water at night in the ordinary tropics – by Jove! that would have been a comfort – but you'd have thought there was a winding-sheet laid over all, or we were standing across a level country covered with snow – only when I stood up, and watched the bows, there was a faint hissing sparkle to be seen in the ripple's edge, that first brought me to myself. The Lascars had woke up where they lay about the caboose, and were cowering together for sheer terror; the men standing, each one in his place, and looking; while Jones, who had relieved the midshipman, leant by himself with his head on the capstan, as if to keep out the sight of it all: the schooner's whole dusky length, in fact, with every black figure on her decks, and her shape up to the lightest stick or rope of her aloft, appearing strange enough, in the midst of the broad white glare, to daunt any one that wasn't acquainted with the thing. "Mr Jones," said I quickly, on going up to him, "what the devil is this? I'll be hanged if I didn't begin to believe in witchcraft or something. Where are we getting to?" "Nothing, nothing, sir," said he, lifting his head; "'tis natural enough; only the milk sea, as they call it – the white water, sir, that comes down twice a-year hereabouts from God knows where – you only see it so at – at night!" "Oh, then, according to that," I said, "we shan't be long of sighting your island. I suppose?" "No," said he, "if the breeze freshens at all, keeping our present course, the mast-head ought to hail it in two or three hours; but God knows, Lieutenant Collins, natural though the sight is, there's something a man can't get rid of, especially if" – He stood up, walked to the side, and kept facing the whole breadth of the awful-looking sea, as it were till it seemed to blind him. "I tell you what, sir," said he slowly, "if that water had any use, a priest would say, 'twas sent to wash that same island clean of what's been done on it; but it couldn't, Mr Collins, it couldn't, till the day of judgment!" He leant over till his dark face and his shoulders, to my notion, made the milk-white surge that stole up to the schooner's bends take a whiter look. "If that water could wash me, now," muttered he, "ay, if it could only take the soul out of me, curse me, but I'd go down, down this moment to the bottom!" With that he gave a sudden move that made me catch him by the arm. "No, no, Mr Collins," said he, turning round; "the truth is, I mean to go through with it: by G – , I'll let it carry me where I'm bound for! D – n it, wasn't I born without asking my leave, and I'll kick the bucket the same way, if it was on a blasted dunghill!" "Come, come, Mr Jones," said I, in a soothing sort of way, "go below for a little, and sleep; when we hail the land, I'll have you called." "I'd rather not, sir," said Jones, quietly; "the truth is, it strikes me there's something strange in my happening to be aboard here, at this particular season, too; and see that same island, now, I must! It's fate, Lieutenant Collins," added he; "and I must say, I think it's the more likely something may turn out there. Either you'll see that ship, or the men, or else I'll be there myself, in some way or other!"
Now there was something in all this that began at moments quite to bewilder one, the more excited the state was it put you in. There was nothing for it but to push on, and see what might come of it. Indeed, the weather favoured us better on our present course than on any other; and I felt, if I didn't keep active, I should go distracted. 'Twas almost as if what Jones said had a truth in it, and a sort of a power beyond one were drawing the schooner the way she steered; while, at the same time, there was every little while somewhat new in the extraordinary looks of things to hold you anxious. Even a flying touch of a squall we had about midnight didn't the least do away with the whiteness of the water all around: on the contrary, as the dark cloud crept down upon us, widening on both sides like smoke, the face of the sea seemed to whiten and whiten, casting up a ghastly gleam across the cloud, with its ripples frothing and creaming: till, not knowing how things might go hereabouts, you almost expected the first rush of the wind to send it all in a flame to our mastheads. Then up she rose on a surge like a snow-drift, and off we drove heeling over to it, gaffs lowered and canvass down, everything lost sight of, save the white sea heaving up against the mist; while the clear-coloured plash of it through our weather bulwarks showed it was water sure enough. The squall went off to leeward, however, the rain hissing like ink into the swell it left, and spotting it all over till the last drops seemed to sink in millions of separate sparkles as far as you could see. The schooner rose from one heave to another to an even keel on the smooth length of it, hoisting her spanking gaffs, hauling aft the sheets, and slipping ahead once more to a breeze fed by the rain. As the sky cleared, the dead white glare the water sent up into it was such, you didn't know the one from the other toward the horizon; and in the midst there was only the smooth faint surface, brushing whiter with the breeze, as if it was nothing else kept it from going out of sight; with a few streaky clouds turning themselves out like wool in a confused rift of the air aloft; the schooner walking in it without ever a glimpse of a shadow on one side or another; while, as for seeing a sail on the horizon, you might as well have looked for a shred of paper. It wasn't light, neither, nor was it haze; nothing but a dead colour off the very sea's face – for the schooner rose and plunged without letting you see a hair's-breadth of her draught below the water-line. Every man rubbed his eyes, as if it were all some kind of a dream, and none the less when suddenly we were right upon a long patch of black stripes winding away through the white, like so many sea-serpents, come up to breathe, with both ends of them lost in the faintness. Nobody stirred, or said, "Look-out;" stripe after stripe she went slipping through them as if they'd been ghosts, without a word or an extra turn of the wheel. I daresay, if we had commenced to rise in the air, every man would have held on like grim death, but he wouldn't have wondered much; 'twas just, "whatever might happen to please them as had the managing of it," which was Jacob's observation when we talked of it after.
Mr Snelling was the only one that ventured to pass a joke; when Jones, who I thought was out of hearing, looked at the reefer with such a fierce glance, and so scornful at the same time, that I couldn't help connecting what happened the very next moment with it – for without the slightest warning, both of us were flung to leeward, and Snelling pitched into the scuppers, as a huge rolling ridge of the white water came down upon our beam; while the schooner broached to in the wind, floundering on the swell with her sails aback. Had the breeze been stronger, I think it would have fairly swamped us with the sternway she had; and heave after heave swelled glaring and weltering out of the pale blind sky, till our decks swam with light in the dusk under the bulwarks, and about the dark mouths of the hatchways. Just as suddenly the rollers seemed to sink in the smooth of the sea, and at last we payed off with the breeze as before, at the cost of a good fright and a famous ducking. Two or three times in the course of the middle watch did this happen, except that we were taken less by surprise, and had the hatches closed, with every rope ready to let go; the breeze strengthening all the time, and the same sort of look continuing all round and aloft.25
About four o'clock or so, the appearance of the sky near where the horizon ought to be, right ahead, struck Westwood and me as stranger than ever; owing to a long lump of shadow, as it were, lying northward like the shape of a bow or the round back of a fish miles long, though it softened off at one end into the hollow of the air, and the gleam of the white water broke past the other like the streaks of the northern lights in a frosty night toward the Pole, save for the thin shadowy tint of it, and the stars shining plainly through. I'd have fancied it was high land; when suddenly the half-moon was seen to ooze like a yellow spot out of the shapeless sort of steam to eastward, like a thing nobody knew, shedding a faint brown glimmer far below where you hadn't seen there was water at all. The bank of shadow softened away towards her, till in little more than five minutes the dark rippling line of the sea was made out, drawn across the dusk as if it had been the wide mouth of a frith in the polar ice, opening far on our weather-bow. A soft blue shimmering tint stole out on it by contrast, leaving the milk-white glare still spread everywhere else, astern, ahead, and on our lee-beam, into the sightless sky: 'twas the old blue water we caught sight of once more, with the natural night and the stars hanging over it; and the look-out aloft reported blue water stretching wide off to the nor'ard. There was one full hurrah from the seamen in the bows, and they ran of themselves naturally enough to the ropes, standing by to haul the schooner on a wind – to head up for the old salt sea, no doubt.
"Lieutenant Collins," said Jones, in a low voice, "do you mean to steer for that island, sir?" "Yes," I said, "certainly, Mr Jones – I shall see this matter out, whatever the upshot may be!" "Then keep on, sir," said he, firmly, "keep in the white water – 'tis your only plan to near it safely, sir!" This I didn't well understand; but, by Jove! there was so much out of the common way hereabouts, that I had made up my mind to follow his advice. Another hail from aloft, at length – "Something black on our lee-bow, sir – right in the eye of the white it is, sir!" We were now running fast down in the direction where there was least possibility of seeing ahead at all, although, in fact, the little moonshine we had evidently began to make this puzzling hue of the surface less distinct – turning it of a queer ashy drab, more and more like the brown we noticed by day-time; while the light seemed as it were to scoop out the hollow of the sky aloft, when a dark spot or two could be observed from the deck, dotting the milky space over one bow – you couldn't say whether in the air or the water, as they hung blackening and growing together before us through below the foot of the jib. Larger and larger it loomed as we stood before the breeze, till there was no doubt we had the bulk of a small low island not far to windward of us, a couple of points or thereabouts on our larboard bow when she fell off a little – lying with the ragged outline of it rising to a top near one end, its shape stretched black and distinct in the midst of the pale sea; while the white water was to be seen taking close along the edge of the island, showing every rock and point of it in the shadow from the moon, till it seemed to turn away all of a sudden like a current into the broad dreamy glimmer that still lay south-eastward. On the other side of the island you saw the dark sea-ripples flickering to the faint moonlight, and some two or three more patches of flat land just tipping the horizon, with the thin cocoa-nut trees on them like reeds against the stars and the dusk; while the one nearest us was sufficiently marked out to have saved me the trouble even of the look I gave Jones, which he answered by another. "You have seven or eight fathoms water here, sir," added he; "and as soon as she rounds the point yonder, we can shoal it by degrees to any anchorage you like, as long as we keep in the white water – but we must hold to it!" It was accordingly found so with the lead, and ere long, having kept past the point, the same milky hue could be noticed as it were jagging off through the darker water, and winding away hither and thither all round the other side, till you lost it. However, here we brailed up and hauled down everything, letting go an anchor, little more than half a mile from a small sloping beach, where the strange water actually surged up through the shadow of the land, in one glittering sheet like new-fallen snow, while the back-wash seethed down into it all along the edge in perfect fire. Nothing stirred on it, apparently; not a sound came from it, save the low wash of the surf on that lonely bare beach; and you only made out that part of the island was covered with trees, with the ground rising to a flat-topped hummock toward one end. So being pretty wearied by this time, impatient though I was for a clearer view of matters, most of us turned in, leaving the deck to a strong anchor watch, in charge of Jones – especially as it was towards morning, and the breeze blowing fresh over the island through our ropes. But if ever a man walked the deck overhead in a fashion to keep you awake, it was Jones that morning: faster and faster he went, till you'd have thought he ran; then there was a stop, when you felt him thinking, and off he posted again. No wonder, by George! I had ugly dreams!
I could scarce believe it wasn't one still, when, having been called half-an-hour after daybreak, I first saw the change in the appearance of things all about us. The horizon lay round as clear as heart could wish – not a speck in sight save the little dingy islets at a distance; the broad blue ocean sparkling far away on one side, and the water to windward, in the direction we had come, showing the same brownish tint we had seen the day before, while it took the island before us in its bight, and turned off eastward with the breeze till it spread against the open sky. The top of the land was high enough to shut out the sea-line, and, being low water at the time, it was plain enough now why Jones wished to keep the white streaks over-night; for, where the dingy-coloured ripples melted on the other side toward the blue, you could see by the spots of foam, and the greenish breaks here and there in the surface, that all that coast of the island was one network of shoals and reefs, stretching out you didn't know how wide. White-water Island, in fact, was merely the head of them – the milky stream that had so startled us just washing round the deep end of it, and edging fair along the side of the reefs, with a few creeks sent in amongst them, as it were, like feelers, ere it flowed the other way: we couldn't otherwise have got so near as we were. But the island itself was the sight to fasten you, as the lovely green of it shone out in the morning sun, covering the most part of it close over, and tipping up beyond the bare break where it was steepest, with a clump of tall cocoas shooting every here-and-there out of the thick bush; indeed, there was apparently a sort of split lengthways, through the midst, where, upon only walking to the schooner's bow, one could see the bright greenwood sinking down to a hollow out of sight, under the clear gush of the breeze off a dark blue patch of the sea that hung beyond it like a wedge. As the tide made over the long reefs, till the last line of surf on them vanished, it went up the little sandy cove opposite us with a plash on the beach that you could hear: the place was just what a sailor may have had a notion of all his life, without exactly seeing it till then; and though, as yet, one had but a rough guess of its size, why, it couldn't be less than a couple of miles from end to end, with more than that breadth, perhaps, at the low side toward the reefs. Not a soul amongst the man-o'-war'smen, I daresay, as they pressed together in the schooner's bows to see into it, but would have taken his traps that moment, if I'd told him, and gone ashore on the chance of passing his days there; so it wasn't hard to conceive, from the state it seemed to put their rough sunburnt faces in, honest as they looked, how a similar fancy would work with Master Harry Foster, even if it tried his virtue a little.
I had no more doubt in my own mind, by this time, of it's being the fellow's intended "hermitage," than I had of it's being the same White-water Island I had heard of myself, or the spot which Jones seemed to know so well: 'twas likely the foremast-man had got inkling of it somewhat in the way I did; and lying, as it happened to do, between no less than three channels which the Indiaman might take, after dodging us in this fashion round the long cluster of the Maldives, she couldn't make north-westward again for the open sea, without setting Foster and his mates pretty well upon their trip. Indeed, if she were to eastward of the chain at present, as I was greatly inclined to believe, the course of the breeze made it impossible for her to do otherwise; but there was one thing always kept lurking about my mind, like a cover to something far worse that I didn't venture to dwell upon – namely, that Captain Finch might get wind of their purpose, and drive them on another tack by knocking it on the head, either at the time or beforehand, without the courage to settle them. Nothing in the world would have pleased me better than to pounce upon ugly Harry, at his first breakfast ashore here; but the bare horizon, and the quiet look of the island since ever we hove in sight of it, showed this wasn't to be. At any rate, however, I was bent on seeing how the land lay, and what sort of a place it was; so accordingly, as soon as the hands had got breakfast, Westwood and I at once pulled ashore with a boat's-crew well armed, to overhaul it. We found the sandy beach covered, for a good way up, with a frothy slime that, no doubt, came from the water on that side, with ever so many different kinds of blubber, sea-jelly, star-fish, and shell; while the rocky edge round to windward was hung with weed that made the blocks below it seem to rise out of every surge, like green-headed white-bearded mermen bathing. Glad enough we were to get out of the queer sulphury smell all this stuff gave out in the heat – letting the men take every one his own way into the bushes, which they enjoyed like as many schoolboys, and making, ourselves, right for the highest point. Here we saw over, through the cocoa-nut trees and wild trailing-plants below, down upon a broad bushy level toward the reefs. It was far the widest way of the island; indeed making it apparently several miles to go round the different points; and as the men were to hold right to windward, and meet again after beating the entire ground, Westwood and I struck fair through amongst the tangle of wood, to see the flat below. We roused out a good many small birds and parroquets, and several goats could be noticed looking at us off the grassy bits of crag above the trees, though they didn't seem to know what we were. As for most of the wood, it was mainly such bushes and brush as thrive without water, with a bright green flush of grass and plants after the rain at the monsoon, the prickly pear creeping over the sandy parts, till we came on a track where some spring or other apparently oozed down from the height, soaking in little rank spots amongst the ground leaves, with here and there a small rusty plash about the grass-blades, as if there were tar or iron in it. Here there were taller trees of different kinds on both sides, dwindling off into the lower bush, while, to my surprise, some of them were such as you'd never have expected to meet with on an island of the size, or so far off the land – bananas, mangoes, a shaddock or two, and a few more, common enough in India; though here they must evidently have been planted, the cocoas being the only sort natural to the place – and of them there were plenty below. Suddenly it led down into a shady hollow, out of sight of the sea altogether, where we came on what seemed to have been a perfect garden some time or other; there were two or three large broad-leaved shaddock trees, and one or two others, with a heap of rubbish in the midst of the wild Indian corn and long grass; some broken bamboo stakes standing, besides a piece of plank scattered here and there about the bushes. Right under the shade of the trees was a hole like the mouth of a draw-well, more than brimful at the time with the water from the spring; for, owing to the late rains, it made a pool close by the side, and went trickling away down amongst the brushwood. Every twig and leaf grew straight up or out, save in a narrow track toward the rising ground – no doubt made by the goats, as we noticed the prints of their hoofs on the wet mud. 'Twas evident no human being had been there for heaven knew how long; since, by the care that had been taken with the place, it was probably the only spring in the island – perhaps for leagues and leagues round, indeed. Trees, branches, green grass, and all – they had such a still moveless air under the heat and light, in the lee of the high ground, with just a blue spot or two of the sea seen high up through the sharp shaddock leaves, and the cool-looking plash of water below them, that Westwood and I sat down to wait till we heard the men. Still there was a terribly distinct, particular cast about the whole spot, which, taken together with the ruin and confusion, as well as the notion of Foster and his shipmates actually plotting to come there, gave one almost an idea of the whole story beforehand, dim as that was: the longer you looked, the more horrid it seemed. Neither natives nor single man could have brought the different trees to the island, or contrived a tank-well of the kind, seeing it was apparently deep enough to supply a ship's casks; while, at the same time, I couldn't help thinking some one had lived there since it was made, or perhaps much used. By the space taken up with the hut that had been there, and the little change in the wild state of things, most likely it was by himself he had been, and for no short time. It looked, however, as if he had been carried off in the end, otherwise his bones would have been hereabouts; probably savages, as Westwood and I concluded from the scatter they had made of his premises. For my own part, I wondered whether Jones mightn't have been the man, in which case most of that disturbed mind he showed lately might come of remembering the dreary desolate feelings one must have, living long on a desert island. No doubt they had "marooned" him for something or other, such as not being a bloody enough captain; and I could as easily fancy one having a spice of madness in him, after years ashore here, as in Captain Wallis after a French prison. Still it startled one to see one's face in the black of the well; and we couldn't make up our minds to drink out of it. Even the pool at its side had a queer taste, I thought – but that may have been all a notion. All at once, by the edge of this same pool, Westwood pointed out two or three marks that surprised us both, being quite different from what the goats could have made; and on observing closer, they were made out to be more like the paws of a wild beast stamped in the mud. "By Jove!" I said, "no wolves on the island, surely!" "All of them seem to stick to the pool in preference to the well, at any rate," said Tom; "they appear to have the same crotchet with ourselves, Ned!" "Strange!" said I, "what the devil can it be?" Westwood eyed the prints over and over. "What do you think of – a dog?" he asked. "Good heavens!" exclaimed I, looking down – "yes!" and there we sat gazing at the thing, and musing over it with somehow or other a curious creeping of the blood, for my part, that I can't describe the reason of. At last we heard the men hallooing to each other on the level beneath, when we hurried down, and coasted round till we came upon the boat again, where the coxswain was amusing himself gathering shells for home – and we pulled back to the schooner.
My first resolve after this was to keep before the breeze again, try to get sight of the ship, and tell Finch out and out, as I ought to have done at once, what was afoot amongst his crew; or else to let Sir Charles Hyde know of it, and make him a bold offer of a passage to Calcutta. However, I soon saw this wouldn't do; and a regular puzzle I found myself in, betwixt inclining to stick to the island and catch Foster if he came, and wishing to know how the Indiaman stood on her course if he didn't. Jones must have read my thoughts as I leant upon the capstan, looking from White-water Island to the horizon and back again; for he stepped aft and said in a low voice, "Lieutenant Collins, there's one thing I didn't tell you about that island before, because, as I said, I wasn't at first sure it was the one the men meant; it may help to decide you, sir," said he gravely. "Ah?" I said. "In that island," he went on, his ordinarily dark face as pale as death, "there is enough gold at this moment to buy half an English county – ay, and better than gold, seeing that only one man knows the spot where it is, and he would rather sail round the world without a shirt to his back than touch one filing of the – hell's dross!" I looked at Jones in perfect amaze as he added, "You may fancy now, Mr Collins, whether if a man of the kind happened to get wind of this, he would not stir heaven and earth to reach the place? But, rather than that gold should come into living hands," said he fiercely, "I would wait for them by myself – ay, alone – alone," and a shudder seemed to run through him as he gave another glance to the island. For my part, I drew a long breath. What he mentioned had all at once relieved my mind wonderfully; for if this was Master Foster's cue, as I now saw it must have been the whole voyage over, why, he would be just as sure not to spread the thing widely, as he would be to get here some time, if he could. On second thoughts, it wasn't so plain how the rest of the crew might work with it, on the least inkling; but inclined as I naturally was to look upon the best side of the matter, you needn't wonder at my making up my mind as I did. The short and the long of it was that, in an hour more, Jones and myself, with Jacobs and four other good hands – and, somewhat to my annoyance, Mr Rollock, who persisted in coming – were pulling back for the island; while the schooner, under care of Westwood and Snelling, was hauled on a wind to stand up across the Nine Degrees Channel, which the Indiaman would no doubt take as the safest course for western India, if all went well, and supposing I had reckoned correctly why we missed her so long. In that case, three or four days at most couldn't fail to bring her up; and on first sighting her at the horizon, they could easily enough strip the schooner to her sticks, keeping her stern on so as to let the ship pass without noticing the loom of so small a craft; whereas if they didn't see her at all, in that time, they were to bear up before the wind again for the island. Of all things, and every circumstance being considered, I agreed with Westwood it was best not to come across her again, if we could help it.
For our own part, in the boat, we were fully provisioned and armed for all the time we could need, not to speak of what the island itself afforded; and after watching the schooner stand heeling off to sea, round the deep end of it, we cruised close along, not for the beach this time, but seeking for a cove in the rocks where the boat could be hauled up out of sight, and safe from the surf at high water. This we weren't very long of finding behind some blocks that broke the force of the surge, where the wild green trailers from above crept almost down to the seaweed; and after helping them a little to hide her perfectly, the whole of us scrambled ashore. The first thing was to post a look-out on the highest point, the sharp little peak next to the reef-side, overlooking the spring and the level ground between: on the other side of the long green valley, full of bush in the midst, was the flat-topped rise towards the brown water, from which I and the Planter watched the schooner softening for an hour or two, till she reached the blue sea-gleam, and lessened to a speck. By that time, the men had pitched a little canvass tent on the slope opposite to us, over the hollow – Jones evidently being anxious to keep clear of the spot, which somebody else had picked out beforehand: in fact the highest ground was betwixt us and it; and on coming down through the thicket to our quarters, after a stroll in which Rollock shot a couple of rose-coloured parroquets, declaring them to be splendid eating, we found Jones had had to send over the other way for water.