Masterman Ready; Or, The Wreck of the Pacific

by Frederick Marryat

  CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR.

  A heavy storm came on soon after they had retired to rest; the lightningwas so vivid that its flashes penetrated through the chinks of the doorand windows, and the thunder burst upon them with a noise whichprevented them obtaining any sleep. The children cried and trembled asthey lay in the arms of Mrs Seagrave and Juno, who were almost as muchalarmed themselves.

  "This is very awful," said Mr Seagrave to Ready, for they had bothrisen from their beds.

  "It is indeed, sir; I never knew a more terrible storm than this."

  "Merciful Heaven!" exclaimed Mr Seagrave.

  As he spoke, they were both thrown back half-stunned; a crash of thunderburst over the house, which shook everything in it; a sulphurous smellpervaded the building, and soon afterwards, when they recovered theirfeet, they perceived that the house was full of smoke, and they heardthe wailing of the women and the shrieks of the children in thebed-places on the other side.

  "God have mercy on us!" exclaimed Ready, who was the first to recoverhimself, and who now attempted to ascertain the injury which had beendone: "the lightning has struck us, and I fear that the house is on firesomewhere."

  "My wife--my children!" exclaimed Mr Seagrave; "are they all safe?"

  "Yes, yes!" cried Mrs Seagrave, "all safe; Tommy has come to me; butwhere is Juno? Juno!"

  Juno answered not. William darted to the other side of the house, andfound Juno lying on her side, motionless.

  "She is dead, father," cried William.

  "Help me to carry her out of the house, Mr Seagrave," said Ready, whohad lifted up the poor girl; "she may be only stunned."

  They carried Juno out of the house, and laid her on the ground; the rainpoured down in torrents.

  Ready left them for a minute, to ascertain if the house was on fire; hefound that it had been in flames at the further corner, but the rain hadextinguished it. He then went back to Mr Seagrave and William, whowere with Juno.

  "I will attend to the girl, sir," said Ready; "go you and Master Williaminto the house; Mrs Seagrave will be too much frightened if she is leftalone at such an awful time. See, sir! Juno is not dead--her chestheaves--she will come to very soon; thank God for it!"

  William and Mr Seagrave returned to the house; they found Mrs Seagravefainting with anxiety and fear. The information they brought, that Junowas not killed by the lightning, did much to restore her. Williamsoothed little Albert, and Tommy in a few minutes was fast asleep againin his father's arms. The storm now abated, and as the day began tobreak, Ready appeared with Juno, who was sufficiently recovered to beable to walk in with his support; she was put into her bed, and thenReady and Mr Seagrave went to examine if further mischief had beendone. The lightning had come in at the further end of the house, at thepart where the fireplace was intended to have been made.

  "We have been most mercifully preserved," said Mr Seagrave.

  "Yes, sir, thanks be to God for all his goodness," replied Ready.

  "I think we have a large roll of copper wire, Ready; have we not?" saidMr Seagrave.

  "Yes, sir, I was just thinking of it myself; we will have alightning-conductor up the first thing."

  It was now broad daylight. Mrs Seagrave dressed herself and thechildren, and as soon as she was ready, Mr Seagrave read such portionsof the Psalms as were appropriate, and they earnestly joined in a prayerof thankfulness and humility. William went out to prepare thebreakfast, and Ready procured the coil of copper wire from those storeswhich were stowed under the bed-places. This he unrolled, and stretchedit out straight, and then went for the ladder, which was at the outhousethey had commenced building. As soon as breakfast was over, Ready andMr Seagrave went out again to fix up the lightning-conductor, leavingWilliam to do the work of Juno, who still remained fast asleep in herbed.

  "I think," said Ready, "that one of those two trees which are closetogether will suit the best; they are not too near the house, and yetquite near enough for the wire to attract the lightning."

  "I agree with you, Ready; but we must not leave both standing."

  "No, sir, but we shall require them both to get up and fix the wire;after that we will cut down the other."

  Ready put his ladder against one of the trees, and, taking with him thehammer and a bag of large spike-nails, drove one of the nails into thetrunk of the tree till it was deep enough in to bear his weight; he thendrove in another above it, and so he continued to do, standing upon oneof them while he drove in another above, till he had reached the top ofthe tree, close to the boughs; he then descended, and, leaving thehammer behind him, took up a saw and small axe, and in about ten minuteshe had cut off the head of the cocoa-nut tree, which remained a tall,bare pole.

  "Take care, Ready, how you come down," said Mr Seagrave anxiously.

  "Never fear, sir," replied Ready; "I'm not so young as I was, but I havebeen too often at the mast-head, much higher than this."

  Ready came down again, and then cut down a small pole, to fix with athick piece of pointed wire at the top of it, on the head of thecocoa-nut tree. He then went up, lashed the small pole to the head ofthe tree, made the end of the copper wire fast to the pointed wire, andthen he descended. The other tree near to it was then cut down, and thelower end of the wire buried in the ground at the bottom of the tree onwhich the lightning-conductor had been fixed.

  "That's a good job done, sir," said Ready, wiping his face, for he waswarm with the work.

  "Yes," replied Mr Seagrave; "and we must put up another near theouthouse, or we may lose our stores."

  "Very true, sir."

  "You understand this, William, don't you?" said his father.

  "O yes, papa; lightning is attracted by metal, and will now strike thepoint instead of the house, run down the wire, and only tear up theground below."

  "It's coming on again, sir, as thick as ever," observed the old man; "weshall do no work to-day, I'm afraid. I'll just go and see where thestock are."

  Juno was now up again, and said that she was quite well, with theexception of a headache. As Ready had predicted, the rain now came onagain with great violence, and it was impossible to do any work out ofdoors. At the request of William he continued his narrative.

  NARRATIVE OF OLD READY.

  "Well, William, as soon as they had let go their anchor in Table Bay, wewere all ordered on shore, and sent up to a prison close to theGovernment Gardens. We were not very carefully watched, as it appearedimpossible for us to get away, and I must say we were well treated inevery respect; but we were told that we should be sent to Holland in thefirst man-of-war which came into the bay, and we did not much like theidea.

  "There were, as I told you, some other boys as well as myself, whobelonged to the Indiaman, and we kept very much together, not onlybecause we were more of an age, but because we had been shipmates solong. Two of these boys, one of whom I have mentioned as Jack Romer,and the other Will Hastings, were my particular friends; and one day, aswe were sitting under the wall warming ourselves, for it was wintertime, Romer said, `How very easy it would be for us to get away, if weonly knew where to go to!'

  "`Yes,' replied Hastings; `but where are we to go to, if it is not tothe Hottentots and wild savages; and when we get there, what can wedo?--we can't get any further.' `Well,' said I, `I would rather beliving free among savages, than be shut up in a prison.' That was ourfirst talk on the subject, but we had many others afterwards; and as theone or two Dutch soldiers who stood sentry spoke English, and we couldtalk a little Dutch, we obtained a good deal of information from them;for they had very often been sent to the frontiers of the colony. Wecontinued to ask questions, and to talk among ourselves for about twomonths, and at last we resolved that we would make our escape. Weshould have done much better if we had remained where we were; but thereis no putting old heads upon young shoulders. We saved up ourprovisions, bought some long Dutch knives, tied our few clothes up inbundles, and one dark night we contrived to remain in the yard withoutbeing perceived,
when the prisoners were locked up; and raising a longpole, which lay in the yard, to the top of the wall, with a good deal ofscrambling we contrived to get over it, and made off as fast as we couldfor the Table Mountain."

  "What was your reason for going there, Ready?"

  "Why, Hastings, who was the oldest, and, I will say, the sharpest of thethree, said that we had better stay up there for a few days, till we hadmade up our minds what to do, and try if we could not procure a musketor two, and ammunition; for, you see, we had money, as, when theIndiaman was first taken, the captain divided a keg of rupees, which wason board, among the officers and men, in proportion to the wages due tothem, thinking it was better for the crew to have the money than toleave it for the Frenchmen; and we had spent very little while inprison. There was also another reason why he persuaded us to go to theTable Mountain, which was, that as soon as our escape was found out,they would send parties to look for us; thinking, of course, that we hadmade for the interior; and we should have less chance of being retakenif we travelled after the first search was over. The soldiers had toldus of the lions, and other wild animals, and how dangerous it was totravel, and Hastings said, that not finding us, they would suppose wehad been destroyed by the wild beasts, and would not look for us anymore."

  "Foolish indeed," observed Mrs Seagrave, "to set off you knew notwhere, in a country full of wild beasts and savages."

  "True enough, madam," replied Ready. "We ran at first until we were outof breath, and then we walked on as fast as we could--not going right upthe mountain, but keeping a slanting direction to the south-west, so asto get away from the town, and more towards False Bay.

  "We had walked about four hours, and began to feel very tired, when theday dawned, and then we looked out for a place to conceal ourselves in.We soon found a cave with a narrow entrance, large enough inside to holdhalf-a-dozen of such lads as we were, and we crawled in. It was quitedry, and, as we were very tired, we lay down with our heads on ourbundles, intending to take a nap; but we had hardly made ourselvescomfortable and shut our eyes, when we heard such a screaming andbarking that we were frightened out of our lives almost. We could notthink what it could be. At last Hastings peeped out, and began tolaugh; so Romer and I looked out also, and there we saw about onehundred and fifty large baboons leaping and tumbling about in such a wayas I never saw; they were bigger than we were--indeed, when they stoodon their hind legs they were much taller, and they had very large whitetusks. Some of them were females, with young ones on their backs, andthey were just as active as the males. At last they played such antics,that we all burst out into a loud laugh, and we had not ceased when wefound the grinning face of one of the largest of those brutes close toour own. He had dropped from the rock above us, like magic. We allthree backed into the cave, very much frightened, for the teeth of theanimal were enormous, and he looked very savage. He gave a shrill cry,and we perceived all the rest of the herd coming to him as fast as theycould. I said that the cave was large enough to hold six of us; butthere was a sort of inner cave which we had not gone into, as theentrance was much smaller. Romer cried out, `Let us go into the insidecave--we can get in one by one;' and he backed in; Hastings followedwith his bundle, and I hurried in after him just in time; for thebaboons, who had been chattering to each other for half a minute, cameinto the outer cave just as I crawled into the inner. Five or six ofthem came in, all males, and very large. The first thing they did wasto lay hold of Romer's bundle, which they soon opened--at once theyseized his provisions and rammed them into their pouches, and then theypulled out the other things and tore them all to pieces. As soon asthey had done with the bundle, two of them came towards the inner caveand saw us. One put his long paw in to seize us; but Hastings gave hima slash with his knife, and the animal took his paw out again fastenough. It was laughable to see him hold out his hand to the others,and then taste the blood with the tip of his tongue, and such achattering I never heard--they were evidently very angry, and more cameinto the cave and joined them; then another put in his hand, andreceived a cut just as before. At last, two or three at once tried topull us out, but we beat them all off with our knives, wounding them allvery severely. For about an hour they continued their attempts, andthen they went away out of the cave, but remained at the mouth shriekingand howling. We began to be very tired of this work, and Romer saidthat he wished he was back in prison again; and so did I, I can assureyou; but there was no getting out, for had we gone out the animals wouldhave torn us to pieces. We agreed that we had no chance but the animalsbecoming tired and going away; and most anxious we were, for theexcitement had made us very thirsty, and we wanted water. We remainedfor two hours in this way imprisoned by baboons, when all of a sudden ashrill cry was given by one of the animals, and the whole herd wentgalloping off as fast as they could, screaming louder than ever. Wewaited for a short time to see if they would return, and then Hastingscrawled out first, and looking out of the cave very cautiously, saidthat they were all gone, and that he could see nothing but a Hottentotsitting down watching some cattle; we therefore all came out, very happyat our release. That was our first adventure; we had plenty afterwards;but I think it is now time we should go to bed. It is my opinion weshall have a fine day to-morrow, sir; but there's no saying."

  "I do so want to hear what happened to you afterwards, Ready," saidWilliam.

  "Well, so you shall; but there's a time for everything, and this isbed-time, unless you like to go with me; the weather has cleared up, andI want to catch a fish or two for to-morrow."