Armadale (26 page)

His voice had produced no apparent effect on his friend; but, at the light touch of his hand, in passing, Midwinter started, and moved out slowly from the shadow of the bulwark. ‘Come along!' cried Allan, suspending his singing for a moment, and glancing back. Still, without a word of answer, the other followed. Thrice he stopped before he reached the stern end of the wreck: the first time, to throw aside his hat, and push back his hair from his forehead and temples; the second time, reeling giddily, to hold for a moment by a ring-bolt close at hand; the last time (though Allan was plainly visible a few yards a-head), to look stealthily behind him, with the furtive scrutiny of a man who believes that other footsteps are following him in the dark. ‘Not yet!' he whispered to himself, with eyes that searched the empty air. ‘I shall see him astern, with his hand on the lock of the cabin door.'

The stern end of the wreck was clear of the ship-breaker's lumber,
accumulated in the other parts of the vessel. Here, the one object that rose visible on the smooth surface of the deck, was the low wooden structure which held the cabin door, and roofed in the cabin stairs. The wheel-house had been removed, the binnacle had been removed; but the cabin entrance, and all that belonged to it, had been left untouched. The scuttle was on, and the door was closed.

On gaining the after-part of the vessel, Allan walked straight to the stern, and looked out to sea over the taffrail. No such thing as a boat was in view anywhere on the quiet moon-brightened waters. Knowing Midwinter's sight to be better than his own, he called out, ‘Come up here, and see if there's a fisherman within hail of us.' Hearing no reply, he looked back. Midwinter had followed him as far as the cabin, and had stopped there. He called again, in a louder voice, and beckoned impatiently. Midwinter had heard the call, for he looked up – but still he never stirred from his place. There he stood, as if he had reached the utmost limits of the ship and could go no further.

Allan went back and joined him. It was not easy to discover what he was looking at, for he kept his face turned away from the moonlight; but it seemed as if his eyes were fixed, with a strange expression of inquiry, on the cabin door. ‘What is there to look at there?' Allan asked. ‘Let's see if it's locked.' As he took a step forward to open the door, Midwinter's hand seized him suddenly by the coat-collar and forced him back. The moment after, the hand relaxed, without losing its grasp, and trembled violently, like the hand of a man completely unnerved.

‘Am I to consider myself in custody?' asked Allan, half astonished and half amused. ‘Why, in the name of wonder, do you keep staring at the cabin door? Any suspicious noises below? It's no use disturbing the rats – if that's what you mean – we haven't got a dog with us. Men? Living men they can't be; for they would have heard us and come on deck. Dead men? Quite impossible! No ship's crew could be drowned in a landlocked place like this, unless the vessel broke up under them – and here's the vessel as steady as a church to speak for herself. Man alive, how your hand trembles! What is there to scare you in that rotten old cabin? What are you shaking and shivering about? Any company of the supernatural sort on board? Mercy preserve us! (as the old women say,) do you see a ghost?'

‘
I see two!
' answered the other, driven headlong into speech and action by a maddening temptation to reveal the truth. ‘Two!' he repeated, his breath bursting from him in deep, heavy gasps, as he tried vainly to force back the horrible words. ‘The ghost of a man like you,
drowning in the cabin! And the ghost of a man like me, turning the lock of the door on him!'

Once more, young Armadale's hearty laughter rang out loud and long through the stillness of the night.

‘Turning the lock of the door, is he?' said Allan, as soon as his merriment left him breath enough to speak. ‘That's a devilish unhandsome action, Master Midwinter, on the part of your ghost. The least I can do, after that, is to let mine out of the cabin, and give him the run of the ship.'

With no more than a momentary exertion of his superior strength, he freed himself easily from Midwinter's hold. ‘Below there!' he called out gaily, as he laid his strong hand on the crazy lock, and tore open the cabin door. ‘Ghost of Allan Armadale, come on deck!' In his terrible ignorance of the truth, he put his head into the doorway, and looked down, laughing, at the place where his murdered father had died. ‘Pah!' he exclaimed, stepping back suddenly, with a shudder of disgust. ‘The air is foul already – and the cabin is full of water.'

It was true. The sunken rocks on which the vessel lay wrecked had burst their way through her lower timbers astern, and the water had welled up through the rifted wood. Here, where the deed had been done, the fatal parallel between past and present was complete. What the cabin had been in the time of the fathers, that the cabin was now in the time of the sons.

Allan pushed the door to again with his foot, a little surprised at the sudden silence which appeared to have fallen on his friend, from the moment when he had laid his hand on the cabin lock. When he turned to look, the reason of the silence was instantly revealed. Midwinter had dropped on the deck. He lay senseless before the cabin door; his face turned up, white and still, to the moonlight, like the face of a dead man.

In a moment, Allan was at his side. He looked uselessly round the lonely limits of the wreck, as he lifted Midwinter's head on his knee, for a chance of help, where all chance was ruthlessly cut off. ‘What am I to do?' he said to himself, in the first impulse of alarm. ‘Not a drop of water near, but the foul water in the cabin.' A sudden recollection crossed his memory; the florid colour rushed back over his face; and he drew from his pocket a wicker-covered flask. ‘God bless the doctor for giving me this before we sailed!' he broke out fervently, as he poured down Midwinter's throat some drops of the raw whiskey which the flask contained. The stimulant acted instantly on the sensitive system of the swooning man. He sighed faintly, and slowly opened his eyes. ‘Have I been dreaming?' he asked, looking up vacantly in Allan's face. His eyes
wandered higher, and encountered the dismantled masts of the wreck rising weird and black against the night sky. He shuddered at the sight of them, and hid his face on Allan's knee. ‘No dream!' he murmured to himself, mournfully. ‘Oh me, no dream!'

‘You have been over-tired all day,' said Allan; ‘and this infernal adventure of ours has upset you. Take some more whiskey – it's sure to do you good. Can you sit by yourself, if I put you against the bulwark, so?'

‘Why by myself? Why do you leave me?' asked Midwinter.

Allan pointed to the mizen shrouds of the wreck, which were still left standing. ‘You are not well enough to rough it here till the workmen come off in the morning,' he said. ‘We must find our way on shore at once, if we can. I am going up to get a good view all round, and see if there's a house within hail of us.'

Even in the moment that passed while those few words were spoken, Midwinter's eyes wandered back distrustfully to the fatal cabin door. ‘Don't go near it!' he whispered. ‘Don't try to open it, for God's sake!'

‘No, no,' returned Allan, humouring him. ‘When I come down from the rigging, I'll come back here.' He said the words a little constrainedly; noticing, for the first time while he now spoke, an underlying distress in Midwinter's face, which grieved and perplexed him. ‘You're not angry with me?' he said, in his simple, sweet-tempered way. ‘All this is my fault, I know – and I was a brute and a fool to laugh at you, when I ought to have seen you were ill. I am so sorry, Midwinter. Don't be angry with me!'

Midwinter slowly raised his head. His eyes rested with a mournful interest, long and tenderly on Allan's anxious face.

‘Angry?' he repeated, in his lowest, gentlest tones. ‘Angry with
you
? – Oh, my poor boy, were you to blame for being kind to me when I was ill in the old west-country inn? And was I to blame for feeling your kindness thankfully? Was it our fault that we never doubted each other, and never knew that we were travelling together blindfold on the way that was to lead us here? The cruel time is coming, Allan, when we shall rue the day we ever met. Shake hands, brother, on the edge of the precipice – shake hands while we are brothers still?'
¹

Allan turned away quickly, convinced that his mind had not yet recovered the shock of the fainting fit. ‘Don't forget the whiskey!' he said cheerfully, as he sprang into the rigging, and mounted to the mizen-top.

It was past two; the moon was waning; and the darkness that comes before dawn was beginning to gather round the wreck. Behind Allan, as
he now stood looking out from the elevation of the mizen-top, spread the broad and lonely sea. Before him, were the low, black, lurking rocks, and the broken waters of the Channel, pouring white and angry into the vast calm of the westward ocean beyond. On the right hand, heaved back grandly from the waterside, were the rocks and precipices, with their little table-lands of grass between; the sloping downs, and upward-rolling heath solitudes of the Isle of Man. On the left hand, rose the craggy sides of the Islet of the Calf – here, rent wildly into deep black chasms; there, lying low under long sweeping acclivities of grass and heath. No sound rose, no light was visible, on either shore. The black lines of the topmost masts of the wreck looked shadowy and faint in the darkening mystery of the sky; the land-breeze had dropped; the small shoreward waves fell noiseless: far or near, no sound was audible but the cheerless bubbling of the broken water ahead, pouring through the awful hush of silence in which earth and ocean waited for the coming day.

Even Allan's careless nature felt the solemn influence of the time. The sound of his own voice startled him, when he looked down and hailed his friend on deck.

‘I think I see one house,' he said. ‘Hereaway, on the mainland to the right.' He looked again, to make sure, at a dim little patch of white, with faint white lines behind it, nestling low in a grassy hollow, on the main island. ‘It looks like a stone house and enclosure,' he resumed. ‘I'll hail it, on the chance.' He passed his arm round a rope to steady himself; made a speaking-trumpet of his hands – and suddenly dropped them again without uttering a sound. ‘It's so awfully quiet,' he whispered to himself. ‘I'm half afraid to call out.' He looked down again on deck. ‘I shan't startle you, Midwinter – shall I?' he said, with an uneasy laugh. He looked once more at the faint white object in the grassy hollow. ‘It won't do to have come up here for nothing,' he thought – and made a speaking-trumpet of his hands again. This time he gave the hail with the whole power of his lungs. ‘On shore there!' he shouted, turning his face to the main island. ‘Ahoy-hoy-hoy!'

The last echoes of his voice died away and were lost. No sound answered him but the cheerless bubbling of the broken water ahead.

He looked down again at his friend, and saw the dark figure of Midwinter rise erect, and pace the deck backwards and forwards – never disappearing out of sight of the cabin, when it retired towards the bows of the wreck; and never passing beyond the cabin, when it returned towards the stern. ‘He is impatient to get away,' thought
Allan; ‘I'll try again.' He hailed the land once more; and, taught by previous experience, pitched his voice in its highest key.

This time, another sound than the sound of the bubbling water answered him. The lowing of frightened cattle rose from the building in the grassy hollow, and travelled far and drearily through the stillness of the morning air. Allan waited and listened. If the building was a farmhouse, the disturbance among the beasts would rouse the men. If it was only a cattle-stable, nothing more would happen. The lowing of the frightened brutes rose and fell drearily; the minutes passed – and nothing happened.

‘Once more!' said Allan, looking down at the restless figure pacing beneath him. For the third time he hailed the land. For the third time he waited and listened.

In a pause of silence among the cattle, he heard behind him, on the opposite shore of the channel – faint and far among the solitudes of the Islet of the Calf – a sharp, sudden sound, like the distant clash of a heavy doorbolt drawn back. Turning at once in the new direction, he strained his eyes to look for a house. The last faint rays of the waning moonlight trembled here and there on the higher rocks, and on the steeper pinnacles of ground – but great strips of darkness lay dense and black over all the land between; and in that darkness the house, if house there were, was lost to view.

‘I have roused somebody at last,' Allan called out encouragingly to Midwinter, still walking to and fro on the deck, strangely indifferent to all that was passing above and beyond him. ‘Look out for the answering hail!' And with his face set towards the Islet, Allan shouted for help.

The shout was not answered, but mimicked with a shrill, shrieking derision – with wilder and wilder cries, rising out of the deep distant darkness, and mingling horribly the expression of a human voice with the sound of a brute's. A sudden suspicion crossed Allan's mind, which made his head swim and turned his hand cold as it held the rigging. In breathless silence he looked towards the quarter from which the first mimicry of his cry for help had come. After a moment's pause the shrieks were renewed, and the sound of them came nearer. Suddenly a figure, which seemed the figure of a man, leapt up black on a pinnacle of rock, and capered and shrieked in the waning gleam of the moonlight. The screams of a terrified woman mingled with the cries of the capering creature on the rock. A red spark flashed out in the darkness from a light kindled in an invisible window. The hoarse shouting of a man's voice in anger, was heard through the noise. A second black figure leapt up on the rock, struggled with the first figure, and disappeared with it
in the darkness. The cries grew fainter and fainter – the screams of the woman were stilled – the hoarse voice of the man was heard again for a moment, hailing the wreck in words made unintelligible by the distance, but in tones plainly expressive of rage and fear combined. Another moment, and the clang of the door-bolt was heard again; the red spark of light was quenched in darkness; and all the islet lay quiet in the shadows once more. The lowing of the cattle on the mainland ceased – rose again – stopped. Then, cold and cheerless as ever, the eternal bubbling of the broken water welled up through the great gap of silence – the one sound left, as the mysterious stillness of the hour fell like a mantle from the heavens, and closed over the wreck.