For the Term of His Natural Life
Page 99
From the deck of the vessel the scene was appalling. The clouds hadclosed in. The arch of light had disappeared, and all was a dull,windy blackness. Gigantic seas seemed to mount in the horizon and sweeptowards and upon them. It was as though the ship lay in the vortex ofa whirlpool, so high on either side of her were piled the roughpyramidical masses of sea. Mighty gusts arose--claps of wind whichseemed like strokes of thunder. A sail loosened from its tackling wastorn away and blown out to sea, disappearing like a shred of white paperto leeward. The mercury in the barometer marked 29:50. Blunt, who hadbeen at the rum bottle, swore great oaths that no soul on board wouldsee another sun; and when Partridge rebuked him for blasphemy at such amoment, wept spirituous tears.
The howling of the wind was benumbing; the very fury of sound enfeebledwhile it terrified. The sailors, horror-stricken, crawled about thedeck, clinging to anything they thought most secure. It was impossibleto raise the head to look to windward. The eyelids were driven together,and the face stung by the swift and biting spray. Men breathed thisatmosphere of salt and wind, and became sickened. Partridge felt thatorders were useless--the man at his elbow could not have heard them. Thevessel lay almost on her beam ends, with her helm up, stripped even ofthe sails which had been furled upon the yards. Mortal hands could donothing for her.
By five o'clock in the morning the gale had reached its height. Theheavens showered out rain and lightnings--rain which the wind blewaway before it reached the ocean, lightnings which the ravenous andmountainous waves swallowed before they could pierce the gloom. The shiplay over on her side, held there by the madly rushing wind, which seemedto flatten down the sea, cutting off the top of the waves, and breakingthem into fine white spray which covered the ocean like a thickcloud, as high as the topmast heads. Each gust seemed unsurpassable inintensity, but was succeeded, after a pause, that was not a lull but agasp, by one of more frantic violence. The barometer stood at 27:82. Theship was a mere labouring, crazy wreck, that might sink at any moment.At half-past three o'clock the barometer had fallen to 27:62. Save whenlighted by occasional flashes of sheet-lightning, which showed to thecowed wretches their awe-stricken faces, this tragedy of the elementswas performed in a darkness which was almost palpable.
Suddenly the mercury rose to 29:90, and, with one awful shriek, thewind dropped to a calm. The Lady Franklin had reached the centre of thecyclone. Partridge, glancing to where the great body of drunken Bluntrolled helplessly lashed to the wheel, felt a strange selfish joy thrillhim. If the ship survived the drunken captain would be dismissed, andhe, Partridge, the gallant, would reign in his stead. The schooner, nolonger steadied by the wind, was at the mercy of every sea. Volumes ofwater poured over her. Presently she heeled over, for, with a triumphantscream, the wind leapt on to her from a fresh quarter. Following itsusual course, the storm returned upon its track. The hurricane was aboutto repeat itself from the north-west.
The sea, pouring down through the burst hatchway, tore the door ofthe cuddy from its hinges. Sylvia found herself surrounded by awildly-surging torrent which threatened to overwhelm her. She shriekedaloud for aid, but her voice was inaudible even to herself. Clinging tothe mast which penetrated the little cuddy, she fixed her eyes upon thedoor behind which she imagined North was, and whispered a last prayerfor succour. The door opened, and from out the cabin came a figure cladin black. She looked up, and the light of the expiring lamp showed her aface that was not that of the man she hoped to see. Then a pair of darkeyes beaming ineffable love and pity were bent upon her, and a pair ofdripping arms held her above the brine as she had once been held in themisty mysterious days that were gone.
In the terror of that moment the cloud which had so long oppressed herbrain passed from it. The action of the strange man before her completedand explained the action of the convict chained to the PortArthur coal-wagons, of the convict kneeling in the Norfolk Islandtorture-chamber. She remembered the terrible experience of MacquarieHarbour. She recalled the evening of the boat-building, when, swunginto the air by stalwart arms, she had promised the rescuing prisoner toplead for him with her kindred. Regaining her memory thus, all the agonyand shame of the man's long life of misery became at once apparent toher. She understood how her husband had deceived her, and with what baseinjustice and falsehood he had bought her young love. No question as tohow this doubly-condemned prisoner had escaped from the hideous isle ofpunishment she had quitted occurred to her. She asked not--even in herthoughts--how it had been given to him to supplant the chaplain in hisplace on board the vessel. She only considered, in her sudden awakening,the story of his wrongs, remembered only his marvellous fortitude andlove, knew only, in this last instant of her pure, ill-fated life, thatas he had saved her once from starvation and death, so had he come againto save her from sin and from despair. Whoever has known a deadly perilwill remember how swiftly thought then travelled back through scenesclean forgotten, and will understand how Sylvia's retrospective visionmerged the past into the actual before her, how the shock of recoveredmemory subsided in the grateful utterance of other days--"Good Mr.Dawes!"
The eyes of the man and woman met in one long, wild gaze. Sylviastretched out her white hands and smiled, and Richard Devine understoodin his turn the story of the young girl's joyless life, and knew how shehad been sacrificed.
In the great crisis of our life, when, brought face to face withannihilation, we are suspended gasping over the great emptiness ofdeath, we become conscious that the Self which we think we knew so wellhas strange and unthought-of capacities. To describe a tempest ofthe elements is not easy, but to describe a tempest of the soul isimpossible. Amid the fury of such a tempest, a thousand memories, eachbearing in its breast the corpse of some dead deed whose influencehaunts us yet, are driven like feathers before the blast, asunsubstantial and as unregarded. The mists which shroud ourself--knowledge become transparent, and we are smitten with suddenlightning-like comprehension of our own misused power over our fate.
This much we feel and know, but who can coldly describe the hurricanewhich thus o'erwhelms him? As well ask the drowned mariner to tellof the marvels of mid-sea when the great deeps swallowed him and thedarkness of death encompassed him round about. These two human beingsfelt that they had done with life. Together thus, alone in the verymidst and presence of death, the distinctions of the world they wereabout to leave disappeared. Then vision grew clear. They felt as beingswhose bodies had already perished, and as they clasped hands their freedsouls, recognizing each the loveliness of the other, rushed tremblinglytogether.
Borne before the returning whirlwind, an immense wave, which glimmeredin the darkness, spouted up and towered above the wreck. The wretcheswho yet clung to the deck looked shuddering up into the bellyinggreenness, and knew that the end was come.
END OF BOOK THE FOURTH