Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 68, No 420, October 1850
I woke up in the tent perhaps an hour before midnight, as I judged on looking through the opening at the stars that shone in the dark sky through the north-east end of the valley above the sea. At the other end, being higher, you just saw the scattered heads of the bushes against a pale floating glimmer of air, with a pale streak of horizon. Behind us was the height where we had the look-out, and in front the flat top of the crag drawn somehow or other as distinct as possible upon the faint starlight in that quarter, roughening away down on both sides into the brushwood and dwarf cocoa-nut trees. With the stillness of the place all round, the bare sight of that particular point gave me a dreamy, desolate, ghastly sort of feeling, beyond aught I ever saw in my life before: it was choking hot and heavy inside, and seemingly throughout the hollow, though a good deal of dew began to fall, glistening on the dark-green bushes nearest us, and standing in drops on the fern-like cocoa leaves which Jacobs and the other men had roofed themselves with. They were sound asleep; and the glimpse of the soles of their shoes and their knees, sticking out of the shadow you saw their rough faces in, with the sight of their cutlass-hilts, served to give one a still wilder notion of the place. One felt scarce sure of being able to wake them, in case of anything turning up; and, at any rate, a dread came over you of its being possibly somewhat unnatural enough to make the thing useless. On the other hand, the Planter kept up such a confounded snoring inside the canvass close by me, that although there was no doubt of his being alive, the sound of it put stranger thoughts into your head: sometimes his breath would be jogging on like that of a tolerably ordinary mortal, then get by degrees perfectly quiet; and then all of a sudden go rising and rising, faster and faster, as if some terrible dream had hold of him, or there was some devilish monster hard in chase of his soul, till out it broke into a fearful snort that made your very heart jump – whereupon he'd lie as if he were finished, then go through the whole story again. I can't tell you how that cursed noise troubled me; 'twas no use shoving and speaking to him, and all the time the old boy was evidently quite comfortable, by something he said at last about "indigo being up." The best I could do was to get out and leave him to himself: in fact, where Jones had gone at the time I didn't know, till suddenly I caught sight of his dark figure standing on the rise at the back of our post, and went up to him. Jones was certainly a strange mixture, for here had he been all round the low side of the island by himself, yet I found him leaning bareheaded on the barrel of his musket, listening like a deer: he assured me solemnly he thought he had heard voices for the last hour on the other side, where he hadn't been, and asked me if I would go with him to see. Then down came our look-out from the peak, rolling through the bushes like a sea-cow, to report his not having seen anything, and to say they'd forgot to relieve him aloft; so rousing up Jacobs, I sent them both back together, while Jones and I held the opposite way for the other height. The moment we got to it, there was the same faint blotted-out horizon as we had had all astern of us the night before, the same strange unnatural paleness cast off the face of the sea, making it look black by contrast to north-eastward and east, against the blue shadow with the bright stars in it, where the sea rippled as usual; while the keenest glare in the middle seemed to stream right to the breast of the island, like the reflection of daylight down a long break in the ice – only it was dead and ghastly to behold. The white water washed round under the black edge of the rocks before us, to the bare sloping beach, where it came up fairly like a wide plash of milk, glimmering and sparkling back amongst the little sea-creatures you fancied you saw moving and crawling out or in; till it ran along by where the reefs were, and turned off to the dim sky again. Everything else was still, and Jones drew a breath like one relieved. "Nothing after all, I think, sir!" said he: but to my mind there was something a long sight more awful in the look of that unaccountable white water bearing down like snow upon the island, as it were, with the wrinkles and eddies to be seen faintly in it here and there back toward the glaring breadth of it, and the floating streaks in the sky above. Especially when he told me he thought it was owing to millions upon millions of living things in it, that made the same show there at two different seasons in the year, for a week or so at a time – the appearance of it getting less distinct every night. However, I had begun to grow uneasy again about the Indiaman, and the schooner too, as well as doubtful of the fellows coming to the island it all; on the contrary, as I said to Jones, if they saw the schooner, and Westwood didn't manage as I told him, why both she, the ship, and ourselves might possibly get the finishing-stroke altogether. "The more I think of it," said I, "the more cursedly foolish it seems to be here instead of aboard!" "Why it is, Mr Collins, I don't know," replied Jones, "yet I feel as sure these men will land here as if I heard them in the woods: and if I wasn't aware how one crime breeds another, for my part I shouldn't be here at present, sir. Many a night afloat has the thought of this place weighed on me, lest there was something new doing in it: but what's buried here I'm resolved no man shall stir up, if I can help it, sir!" A little after, as we got up and went down to the beach, all of a sudden – like a thing he couldn't avoid – Jones began to give me some snatches of what had happened here some years before, which, according to him, he had got from a shipmate of his that died; and I must say it made the blood creep in me to listen to it.
At the beginning of the war, he said, the island had been a nest of regular pirates, who had taken pains to make it, from a mere muddy head of a reef with some cocoas upon it, probably into a resort on occasions – especially as even the wild Maldive natives to southward had somehow a dislike to it. The whole gang being taken by some cruiser or other at sea, however, too far off to leave any clue to their harbourage hereabouts, they were all hanged, and the place lost sight of; till a good many years after, a country Arab craft, bound for Dacca up the Ganges, was driven in a gale upon the reefs some way off, without seeing the island at all till the sea went down, and she was going to pieces. There were only two Europeans aboard, both having turned Mussulmen, and the youngest of them was mate. There was a passenger, a native Indian merchant, and his servants, with, as was believed, his harem below in the after cabins, for nobody ever had seen them; but the Arab rais of the vessel, and several more, being washed off when she struck, the other Mussulmen took to the only boat they had, and got ashore, laving the two Englishmen with the passenger. Next day the two men had contrived a raft of the spars, whereupon the Hindoo at last brought up his three women, veiled from head to foot, and the whole got safe to the island. Here all the Mahometans herded together amongst themselves, forcing the two Englishmen to keep on the other side of the island, as they had no firearms; while the old Hindoo merchant and his native servant got a tent pitched on the highest point for the women, where they were no more seen than before, and a flag hoisted on a stick all the time for a signal to ships – poor simple devil! as Jones said with a laugh. Every day he offered the Arab crew more of the gold and jewels he had with him, to make for India and get him brought off; till at last some of the Arabs came round to the mate and his companion, wanting them to take the boat and go instead, otherwise they would kill both of them at once. The two men accordingly had provisions given them, and hoisted sail on the boat before the breeze to eastward: they had almost dropped the island, when all at once the one in the boat's bows stepped aft to him that had the tiller, and said it struck him the Arabs couldn't mean well to the Hindoo and his wives, in trying to get clear of others. All his companion did, Jones said, was to ask if he was man enough to go back, face them boldly, and offer to take the passenger and his harem too, when some craft or other might come back for the Arabs, since they weren't seamen enough to venture first in the boat. "I tell you what," said the first, "try the two largest breakers of water there!" The water for use next after the open one was tasted – and it was salt. "Will you stand by me?" the second man said, after a while. The other had a dog with him of his own, that had swam ashore from the vessel after the raft he landed upon, and it was sleeping in the boat's bow at the moment, near him; the dog lifted its head as they spoke, eyed the two, and lay down again with a low sort of growl. "Ay," answered the other, "to the last I will – as long as you stick by me!" They hauled over the sheet, laid the boat sharp on a wind, and as soon as it was dusk began to pull back toward the island, where they got ashore in the dark before morning.
Here Jones stopped, turned suddenly round to the glare of the white water plashing upon the beach, and said no more. "Why, Jones," said I, "is that all you've to tell? – what came of them? For God's sake, yes – what was the upshot?" "'Tis enough to show how one bad thing breeds another, as I said, sir," answered he. "Probably in the end, though – at any rate I only fancy the rest – 'tis a horrible dream to me, for a – a – squall came on when that shipmate of mine got so far, and we had to reef topsails. He went overboard off the yard that very night," said Jones wildly. "The man must have been there," said I in a pointed way, "to give all the particulars —he was the mate, himself, Mr Jones!" He made no answer, but kept gazing out to sea. "And how long was this ago?" I asked. "Oh," answered he, "years enough ago, no doubt, sir, for both of us to be children, if you were born, Mr Collins" – and he turned his face to me as ghastly as the water toward the horizon he was looking at before, – "at least I hope to God it was so – the man was a poor creature, sir, bless you, and d – d old, as it seems to me – twice my own age at the time, Lieutenant Collins! At all events, though," he went on, rambling in a strange way that made me think he was going out of his mind, "he remembered well enough the first time he saw the white water coming down upon the island. He was hunting —hunting– through the bushes and up and down, and came up upon the crag." "Hunting?" I said. "Yes, you didn't know how it lived, or where it kept, but every night it was on the look-out there. There was no one else, save the girl sleeping over beyond in the hut; and the man almost fancied the water of the sea was coming down to the rocks and the beach, like the Almighty himself, to show he was clear of all that had happened – if he could but have finished that brute, testifying like the very devil, he'd have been happy, he felt! Harkye," said he, sinking his voice to a whisper, "when he went back at daylight, the woman was dying – she had born a – what was as innocent as she was, poor, sweet, young heathen!" And if I hadn't guessed pretty well before that Jones was the man he'd been speaking of, his glittering eye, and his stride from the beach would have showed it; apparently he forgot everything besides at that moment, till you'd have thought his mind gloated on this piece of his history. "The woman!" I couldn't help saying, "what woman? Had the rest left you in the boat, then?"
Jones looked upon me fiercely, then turned away; when all on a sudden such a long unearthly quaver of a cry came down through the stillness, from somewhere aloft in the island, that at first I didn't know what to think, unless one of our look-out men had met with an accident, and tumbled down. 'Twas so dark where they were, however, there was no seeing them. Without looking for himself, Jones faced me, shivering all over. "What is that, Mr Collins?" whispered he, catching my arm with a clutch like death, "is there anything yonder – behind – behind – sir?" On the flat head of the crag north-westward, black against the pale glimmer over the very spot where we had stood half-an-hour before, to my utter horror, there was some creature or other sitting as if it looked toward the sea; and just then another wild, quivering, eddying sound came evidently enough from it, like a thing that would never end. It wasn't a human voice that! – my very brain spun with it, as I glanced to Jones. "Good heavens!" I said, "what? But by Jove! now I think of it; yes – 'tis the howl of a dog– nothing else!" "Eight – ten years!" said Jones, hoarsely, "without food, too, and enough in that well to have poisoned whole gangs of men for twenty years —can it be an earthly being, sir?" The stare he gave me at the moment was more frightful than aught else, but I mentioned what Westwood and I had observed the day before. Before I well knew what he meant, Jones was stealing swiftly up the rising ground to the shoulder of it. I saw him get suddenly on a level with the creature, his musket aiming for it – there was a flash and a shot that left the height as bare as before – and next minute, with a short whimpering howl, the animal flew down the hill, while I heard Jones crashing through the bushes after it, till he was lost in the dark. Such a terrible notion it gave me of his strange story being true, whereas before I had almost fancied it partly a craze of his, from having lived here alone – that for a moment or two it seemed to my mind we were still in the midst of it. I hurried back to our post, and close upon morning Jones came over and lay down by himself without a word, haggard and covered with sweat.
All next day the horizon on every side was clear of a single speck; no signs either of ship or schooner, till I began to wish we were out of it, hoping the Seringapatam had, after all, kept the old course for Bombay, in spite of us. I found Jones had warned the men not to get our water out of the tank; it being poisoned in a way fit to last for years, as the pirates knew how to do. For our parts, we had to amuse ourselves the best way we could, waiting for the schooner to come down again for us, which was the only thing I looked for now. That night the white appearance of the water to north and windward seemed a good deal gone, save where it hung like a haze in the direction it took off the island: the stars shone out, and in two or three nights more I found from Jones there would be nothing of it, which I hoped I should have to take on his word.
At daybreak, however, our look-out could all of a sudden be seen hoisting the signal for a sail in sight, and waving his hat for us to come. No sooner had we hurried up, accordingly, than a sail could be made out in the south-east, hull down; and the schooner not being likely thereaway, a certain flutter in me at once set it down for the Indiaman at last, on her way far past the island for the open channel. Being broad daylight, too, with a fresh breeze blowing, we saw that Foster and his party, if they carried out their scheme, would have to wait till she was a long way to windward at night-time, in order to get clear off. In fact, I had every one kept down off the height, lest the ship's glasses might possibly notice something; while, at the same time, we hadn't even a fire kindled to cook our victuals. I was watching her over the brow of the hill, through the telescope, when she evidently stood round on the other tack to get up to windward, which brought her gradually nearer. She was a large ship, under full canvass; and at last she rose her hull to the white streak below the bulwarks, till I began to think they intended passing the island to eastward to make the channel. I went down for Jones, and asked him how far the reefs actually ran out, when he told me there would probably be signs enough of them in such a strong, breeze; besides, as he reminded me, if she was the Indiaman, it was the captain himself that had a chart of them; in which, from the particular nature of it – being an old buccaneering chart, as he thought – they would be laid down quite plainly. Indeed, when we both returned to the height, there were lines of surf to be noticed here and there, more than three miles out; and seeing her by that time so distinctly, a new uneasiness began to enter my head. There were no signals we could make, even if they didn't serve the other way; and, to tell the truth, I didn't much like the idea of being found there. Still, it was terrible to see her getting nearer and nearer, without the power of doing the least thing to warn her off; spreading and heightening before you, till you counted her sails, and saw the light betwixt them, with the breeze always strengthening off that side the island, and of course making it the safer for her to pass it to leeward. The blue surges rose longer to the foam at their crests, till one's eye got confused between them and the spots of surf rippling greenish over the tongues of reef; in fact, it wasn't far off being low-water at the time, and the whole was to be seen better from the height than elsewhere, stretched out like a floor that the breeze was sweeping across, raising a white dust where the blue melted into the light-brown tint of the sea to leeward. The breeze came so fresh that she even hauled down her sky-sails and fore-royal, falling off to go to leeward of the island. At the same moment, I made out with the glass that she was actually the Seringapatam, and also, that she'd got a leadsman at work in the chains. Five minutes more, and she'd have gone time enough into the distinct brown-coloured swells, to stand past the deep end: without help from the glass, I saw the sun sparkle in the spray from her black bows; she made a sliding forge ahead with her whole beam on to us; when, next moment, as if she had taken a sudden yaw and broached to in the wind, she came fairly end-on, showing the three piles of canvass in one. A wild boding of the truth crept on me as I sprang on the peak, waving my arms, and stamping like a lunatic, as if they could hear me. The next instant she had fallen a little over, her foretop-mast and main-to'gallant-mast gone out of their places at the shock, and the heavy blue swells running to her highest side in a perfect heap of foam; while the spray rose in white jets across her weather bulwarks at every burst of them. The Indiaman had struck on a rib of reef, or else a spit of sand, near the very edge of the whole bank: had it been only high water – as I had reason to believe afterwards – she'd have gone clear over it. As soon as the first horror of the thing was a little past, I looked, without a word, to Jones, and he to me. "The fellows have come at last, certainly!" said he, in a serious enough tone. "Mr Collins," he added, "the moment I set foot on ground here, I felt sure something would come of it!" – "Get the men down at once, sir," I said, "and let's pull out to the ship!" – "Why, sir," answered he, "the breeze is likely to keep for some time as it is, and if she's completely gone, they'll be able to bring all hands safe ashore. If you take my advice, Mr Collins, you'll hold all fast, and show no signs of our being here at all, in case of having something or other to manage yet that may cost us harder!" It didn't need much thought to see this, in fact; and in place of going down, ten minutes after we were all close amongst the bushes on the slope, watching the wreck. What was at the bottom of all this I didn't know; whether Captain Finch had really got wind of Foster's scheme, and been playing with some hellish notion his heart failed him to carry out, or how it was; but what he was to make of this was the question.
Well, toward afternoon, the wreck seemed pretty much in the same state, though by that time they had evidently given her up, for the boats were beginning to be hoisted out to leeward. We couldn't see what went on there, till one of them suddenly appeared, pulling out for the island, about three miles off; then the large launch after it. There were ladies' dresses to be made out in both, their cloaks and shawls fluttering bright to the breeze as the boats dipped in the short swells; and they were full an hour ere they got out of our sight, near the broad beach, on the level side, where the tide was ebbing fast again, making it a hard matter to pull the distance. Two more boats came off the ship, filled full of casks and other matters, save the crews; the rest of the passengers and men no doubt waiting for the launch and jolly-boat to go back and take them ashore – for, soon after, they both could be seen rounding the point on their way out. On coming within hail of the fresh boats, however, they apparently gave in, since we could see the two of them, to our great surprise, strike round, and make for the beach again with their shipmates, spite of signals from the wreck, and shots even fired after them. The breeze by that time flagged, leaving less of a sea against the ship's hull in the dead-water from the other reefs, and she had fallen over again to leeward – a proof of her sticking fast where she struck, without much fear of parting very soon in such weather; but the sun was going down, and this being the first sign of foul play we had observed, 'twas plain at all events we should have to look sharp about us. We kept close up the height, bolted our cold junk and biscuit, washing down with a stiff caulker, and looked every man to his tools. To my great satisfaction, the Planter, who had watched everything seemingly in pure bewilderment, woke up out of it when he knew how matters stood, and handled his double-barrel as cool as a cucumber, putting in two bullets above the small shot he had got for the birds, and ramming down with the air of a man summing up a couple of bills against a rascally debtor. For my own part, I must say I was longer of coming to feel it wasn't some sort of a dream, owing to Jones' broken story; till the thought of who was to all likelihood on the very island below, with the rest of the ladies, amongst a set of all sorts of foremast-men thrown loose from command – half of them, probably, ruffians, with some hand in the matter – it came on me like fire at one's vitals. Meantime we sat there patiently enough for want of knowing what was to do first, or which way we had best keep to avoid bringing matters to a head, worse than they yet were.
The night came out of the dusk a fine starlight to seaward beyond the reefs where the Indiaman lay, the high side of the island glooming back against the deep blue glistening sky, till you didn't see how large it might be; while the white water hung glimmering off to leeward from the rocks. The ship's crew had kindled a fire on the long strand near the boats, and we heard their noise getting louder and louder above the sound of the sea plashing upon it – evidently through their making free with liquor. Jones being no doubt well acquainted with every part of the ground, he proposed to go over and see how things stood, and where the passengers might be: at the same time, as Mr Rollock was more likely to come conveniently to speech of them, both for explaining our being here and putting them on their guard, he agreed to go too.
One or other of them was to hurry back as quickly as possible, while the men and myself waited in readiness for whatever might turn up. Hour after hour passed, however, till I was quite out of patience, not to say uneasy beyond description. All was still, save below toward the water's edge – the seamen's voices at times mixing with the washing hum of the surge on the sand, then rising over it in the chorus of a forecastle song, or a sudden bit of a quarrelsome uproar; notwithstanding which they began apparently to settle down to sleep. At last the Planter came skirting round the hill through the trees, quite out of breath, to say they had discovered the spot where the ladies had no doubt been taken by their friends, as Captain Finch himself, with one of the ship's officers, and two or three cadets, were walking about on the watch, all of them armed. To judge by this, and the fact of the other gentlemen being still apparently on the wreck, Finch mistrusted his men. However, the Planter thought it better not to risk a hasty shot through him by going nearer; and, to tell the truth, I thought it better myself to wait till daylight, when we should see if the rest got ashore; or possibly, as I wished to heaven were the case, the schooner might heave in sight. "Where is Mr Jones, though?" asked I: on which I found he had gone over for the first time toward the well for some water, as he told Mr Rollock. Indeed, the passengers were settled near the thick of the wood on this side of the watering-place, none of the Indiaman's people seeming to know as yet there was such a thing on the island.
We each of us held our breath, and listened to hear Jones come back. I was just on the point of leading my party that way, when I caught the sound of some one panting, as it were, up the ridge from the shore, and next moment saw, to my great surprise, it was the creature Jones had such a horror of – the dog that had run wild on the island, snuffing with his nose to the ground as if he were in chase of something; while the straw hats and tarpaulins of half-a-dozen fellows with ship's muskets and cutlasses followed him over the hill, not thirty paces above us. I signed to Jacobs to keep quiet, as they halted together, looking at the dog; and, from what I could catch of their words, they had noticed it ever since sundown, sitting at the foot of the hill watching what went on, till the animal ran toward them as if they were friends, every now and then turning and making for the heights with a bark and a whimper, as it did at present. One of the men was Foster. "I tell ye what it is," said he, "there's some fellow on the island already, 'mates. If we ketch him, why, we'll have it out of him – then down with it quietly to the shore, and go off in the long-boat, seeing as how this blasted fool of a skipper of ours has spoiled our pleasure!" The dog turned again, wagged his tail, and put his nose to the ground. I thought at first he'd bring them right upon us, when suddenly he broke off with a yelp exactly into the track Jones had taken with Mr Rollock on leaving us. The sailors kept away in his wake, down through the bushes into the thick dusk of the trees; upon which the Planter and I started to our feet at once, and held cautiously after them, the five man-o'-warsmen following at our heels, Indian file.
Jones, however, had either heard the dog, or got an inkling of the thing, and he had taken a long round so as to join us from behind: the Indiaman's men keeping on for a quarter of an hour or so, when they brought up again, seemingly doubtful whether to follow the creature or not; and we dropped like one man into the shadow, till they made sail once more. Soon after the Planter pointed to the trees where the passengers were, and, on a sign from me, the whole of us edged down to the spot, till we were standing within sight of the half-finished fire, where the Judge's kitmagar was sitting asleep, tailor-fashion, with his flat turban sunk to his breast. One of the cadets stood down the slope a little, betwixt that and the beach where the crew were, leaning sleepily on his gun, and nodding; while in the midst was a sort of shed, run up with branches and cocoa-nut leaves, where you could see a glimpse of the different ladies' dresses, young and old, asleep on the ground. The starlight fell right down into the opening, and showed the glistening edges of the leaves, with the sea broad out beyond the cocoas at the foot of the rising ground; so bidding Jones look out sharp, I stepped carefully through. My eye lighted at once on Sir Charles Hyde lying in one nook of the shelter, wrapped up in his pilot-coat – the first time in the old gentleman's life for a good while, I daresay, that he had passed his night on the ground, especially with such a lot of berths taken up beside him. Still he was sound enough at the time, to judge by his breathing, trifle as it was to the Planter's; and close by him was his daughter, with her cloak drawn half over her head in the shadow – her hair confused about her cheek as it pressed white into the bundle of red bunting she had for a pillow, and one hand keeping the cloak fast at the neck, as if she dreamt of a stiff breeze. The sight went to my heart, and so did the notion of waking her; but I heard sounds below on the beach, as if the rest of the crew missed their shipmates, probably getting jealous after their booze, and not unlikely to seek them up the island; so the more it struck me there was no time to be lost in coming to an understanding. According, I stooped down quietly and touched her on the shoulder. Violet Hyde opened her eyes at once, and looked at me; but whether it was the starlight showing my uniform, or her fancying it was still the Indiaman in the Atlantic, in place of crying out, why, there was almost a smile on her lips as she saw me from the ground. Next moment, however, she drew her hand across her eyelids, sat up with the help of the other arm, and gazed on me in a bewildered way, naming me at the same time below her breath. "Yes, Miss Hyde!" I said hastily; and a few words served to give her a notion of the case, as well as to advise her to wake up the Judge, with the rest of the ladies, and be ready to move the moment we came back. My first thought was to take Foster's own plan, and secure the long-boat, if we could only get betwixt the Indiaman's crew and the water; or even try our own, on the opposite side of the island, and carry off the other boats to the wreck; after which we might keep off till the schooner appeared, as she couldn't be long of doing in this weather.