The Castaways of the Flag (3 page)

           
"Very
true," James Wolston answered, "but the
Landlord
did not fail
her passengers. They were able to save her cargo, while we shall never have
anything from the
Flag's
cargo."

           
The
conversation was interrupted. A voice that rang with pain was heard:

           
"Drink!
Give me something to drink!"

           
"It's
Captain Gould," one of the passengers said. "He is eaten up with
fever. Luckily there is plenty of water, and –"

           
"That's
my job," said the boatswain. "Do one of you take the tiller. I know
where the can is, and a few mouthfuls will give the captain ease."

           
And John
Block left his seat aft and went forward into the bows of the boat.

           
The three
other passengers remained in silence, awaiting his return.

           
After being
away for two or three minutes John Block came back to his post.

           
"Well?"
someone enquired.

           
"Someone
got there before me," John Block answered. "One of our good angels
was with the patient already, pouring a little fresh water between his lips,
and bathing his forehead that was wet with sweat. I don't know whether Captain
Gould was conscious. He seemed to be delirious. He was talking about land. 'The
land ought to be over there,' he kept saying, and his hand was wobbling about
like the pennon on the mainmast when all winds are blowing at once. I answered:
' Ay, ay, captain, quite so. The land is somewhere! We shall reach it soon. I
can smell it, to northwards.' And that is a sure thing. We old sailors can
smell land like that. And I said too: 'Don't be uneasy, captain, everything is
all right. We have a stout boat and I will keep her course steady. There must
be more islands hereabouts than we could know what to do with. Too many to
choose from! We shall find one to suit our convenience—an inhabited island
where we shall find a welcome and where we shall be sent home from.' The poor
chap understood what I said, I am sure, and when I held the lantern near his
face he smiled to me—such a sad smile!—and at the good angel too. Then he
closed his eyes again, and fell asleep almost at once. Well! I may have lied
pretty heavily when I talked about land to him as if it were only a few miles
off, but was I far wrong?"

           
"No,
Block," the youngest passenger replied ; "that is the kind of lie
that God allows."

           
The
conversation ended, and the silence was only broken thereafter by the flapping
of the sail against the mast as the boat rolled from one side to the other.
Most of those who were aboard her, broken down by fatigue and weakened by long
privation, forgot their terrors in heavy sleep.

           
Although
these unhappy people still had something wherewith to quench their thirst, they
would have nothing wherewith to appease their hunger in the coming days. Of the
few pounds of salt meat that had been flung into the boat when she was pushed
off, nothing now remained. They were reduced to one bag of sea-biscuits for
eleven people. How could they manage, if the calm persisted % And for the last
forty-eight hours not one breath of breeze had stolen through the stifling
atmosphere, not even one of those intermittent gusts which are like the last
sighs of a dying man. It meant death by starvation, and that within a short
time.

           
There was no
steam navigation in those days. So the probability was that, in the absence of
wind, no ship would come into sight, and, in the absence of wind, the boat
could not reach land, whether island or continent.

           
It was
necessary to have perfect faith in God to combat utter despair, or else to
possess the unshakeable philosophy of the boatswain, which consisted in
refusing to see any but the bright side of things. Even now he muttered to
himself:

           
"Ay, ay,
I know; the time will come when the last biscuit will have been eaten; but as
long as one can keep one's stomach one mustn't grumble, even if there is
nothing to put in it! Now, if one hadn't got a stomach left, even if there were
plenty to put in it—that would be really serious!"

           
Two hours
passed. The boat had not moved a cable's length, for there was only the motion
of the swell to affect her. Now the swell does not move forward; it merely
makes the surface of the water undulate. A few chips of wood that had been
thrown over the side the day before were still floating close by, and the sail
had not filled once to move the boat away from them.

           
While merely
afloat like this, it was little use to remain at the helm. But the boatswain
declined to leave his post. With the tiller under his arm, he tried at least to
avoid the lurching which tilted the boat to one side and another, and thus to
spare his companions excessive shaking.

           
It was about
three o'clock in the morning when John Block felt a light breath pass across
his cheeks, roughened and hardened as they were by the salt sea air.

           
"Can the
wind be getting up?" he murmured as he rose.

           
He turned
towards the south, and, wetting his finger in his mouth, held it up. There was
a distinct sensation of coldness, caused by the evaporation, and now a distant
rippling sound became audible.

           
He turned to
the passenger sitting on the middle bench, near one of the women.

           
"Mr.
Fritz!" he said.

           
Fritz
Robinson raised his head and bent round.

           
"What do
you want, bo'sun?" he asked.

           
"Look
over there—towards the east."

           
"What do
you think you see?"

           
"If I'm
not mistaken, a kind of rift, like a belt, on the water-line."

           
Unmistakably
there was a lighter line along the horizon in that direction. Sky and sea could
be distinguished with more definiteness. It was as if a rent had just been made
in the dome of mist and vapour.

           
"It's
wind!" the boatswain declared.

           
"Isn't
it only the first beginning of daybreak?" the passenger asked.

           
"It
might be daylight, though it's very early for it," John Block replied,
"and again it might be a breeze! I felt something of it in my beard just
now, and look!—it's twitching still! I'm aware it's not a breeze to fill the
top-gallant sails, but anyhow it's more than we've had for the last four and
twenty hours. Put your hand to your ear, Mr. Fritz, and listen; you'll hear
what I heard."

           
"You are
right," said the passenger, leaning over the gunwale; "it is the
breeze."

           
"And
we're ready for it," the boatswain replied, "with the foresail block
and tackle. We've only got to haul the sheet taut to save all the wind which is
rising."

           
"But
where will it take us?"

           
"Wherever
it likes," the boatswain answered; "all I want it to do is to blow us
out of these cursed waters!''

           
Twenty
minutes went by. The breath of wind, which at first was almost imperceptible,
grew stronger. The rippling aft became louder. The boat made a few rougher
motions, not caused by the slow, nauseating swell. Folds of the sail spread
out, fell flat, and opened again, and the sheet sagged against its cleats. The
wind was not strong enough yet to fill the heavy canvas of the foresail and the
jib. Patience was needed, while the boat's head was kept to her course as well
as might be by means of one of the sculls.

           
A quarter of
an hour later, progress was marked by a light wake.

           
Just at this
moment one of the passengers who had been lying in the bows got up and looked
at the rift in the clouds to the eastward.

           
"Is it a
breeze?" he asked.

           
'' Yes,''
John Block answered. ''1 think we have got it this time, like a bird in the
hand— and we won't let go of it!"

           
The wind was
beginning to spread steadily now through the rift, through which, too, the
first gleams of light must come. From southeast to south-west, the clouds still
hung in heavy masses, over three-quarters of the circumference of the sky. It
was still impossible to see more than a few cables' lengths from the boat, and
beyond that distance no ship could have been detected.

           
As the breeze
had freshened, the sheet had to be hauled in, the foresail, whose gear was
slackened, hoisted, and the course veered a point or two, so as to give the jib
a hold on the wind.

           
"We've
got it; we've got it!" the boatswain said cheerily, and the boat, heeling
gently over to starboard, dipped her nose into the first waves.

           
Little by
little the rent in the clouds grew bigger and spread overhead. The sky assumed
a reddish hue. It seemed that the wind might hold to the present quarter for
some little time, and that the period of calms had come to an end.

           
Hope of
reaching land revived once more, or the alternative hope of falling in with a
ship.

           
At five
o'clock the rent in the clouds was ringed with a collar of vivid coloured
clouds. It was the day, appearing with the suddenness peculiar to the low
latitudes of the tropical regions. Soon purple rays of light arose above the
horizon, like the sticks of a fan. The rim of the solar disc, heightened by the
refraction, touched the horizon line, drawn clearly now at the end of sky and
sea. At once the rays of light caught on the little clouds which hung in the
high heaven, and dyed them every shade of crimson. But they were stubbornly
arrested by the dense vapours accumulated in the north, and could not break through
them. And so the range of vision, long behind, was still extremely limited in
front. The boat was leaving a long wake behind her now, marked in creamy white
upon the greenish water.

           
And now the
whole sun emerged above the horizon, enormously magnified at its diameter. No
haze dimmed its brilliance, which was insupportable to the eye. All aboard the
boat looked away from it; they only scanned the north, whither the wind was
carrying them. The main question was what the fog screened from them in that
direction.

           
At length,
just before half-past six, one of the passengers seized the halyards of the
foresail and clambered nimbly up to the yardarm, just as the sun cleared the
sky to the eastward with its early rays.

           
And in a
ringing voice he shouted:

           
"Land!"

           
IT was on the
20th of October that the
Unicorn
had left New Switzerland on her way
back to England. On her return, when the Admiralty sent to take possession of
the new colony in the Indian Ocean, after a brief stop at the Cape of Good
Hope, she was to bring back Fritz and Frank Zermatt, Jenny Montrose and Dolly
Wolston. The two brothers took the berths left vacant by the Wolstons who were
now settled on the island. A comfortable cabin had been placed at the disposal
of Jenny and her little companion Dolly, who was going to join James Wolston
and his wife and child at Cape Town.