CHAPTER III
THE SHADOW AND THE FIRE
It was the fourth day of the long calm. An awning had been rigged up onthe poop for the passengers, and under it sat Lestrange, trying toread, and the children trying to play. The heat and monotony hadreduced even Dicky to just a surly mass, languid in movement as a grub.As for Emmeline, she seemed dazed. The rag-doll lay a yard away fromher on the poop deck unnursed; even the wretched box and itswhereabouts she seemed to have quite forgotten.
“Daddy!” suddenly cried Dick, who had clambered up, and was lookingover the after-rail.
“What?”
“Fish!”
Lestrange rose to his feet, came aft and looked over the rail.
Down in the vague green of the water something moved, something paleand long—a ghastly form. It vanished; and yet another came, neared thesurface, and displayed itself more fully. Lestrange saw its eyes, hesaw the dark fin, and the whole hideous length of the creature; ashudder ran through him as he clasped Dicky.
“Ain’t he fine?” said the child. “I guess, daddy, I’d pull him aboardif I had a hook. Why haven’t I a hook, daddy?—why haven’t I a hook,daddy?— Ow, you’re _squeezin’_ me!”
Something plucked at Lestrange’s coat: it was Emmeline—she also wantedto look. He lifted her up in his arms; her little pale face peeped overthe rail, but there was nothing to see: the forms of terror hadvanished, leaving the green depths untroubled and unstained.
“What’s they called, daddy?” persisted Dick, as his father took himdown from the rail, and led him back to the chair.
“Sharks,” said Lestrange, whose face was covered with perspiration.
He picked up the book he had been reading—it was a volume ofTennyson—and he sat with it on his knees staring at the white sunlitmain-deck barred with the white shadows of the standing rigging.
The sea had disclosed to him a vision. Poetry, Philosophy, Beauty, Art,the love and joy of life—was it possible that these should exist inthe same world as those?
He glanced at the book upon his knees, and contrasted the beautifulthings in it which he remembered with the terrible things he had justseen, the things that were waiting for their food under the keel of theship.
It was three bells—half-past three in the afternoon—and the ship’sbell had just rung out. The stewardess appeared to take the childrenbelow; and as they vanished down the saloon companion-way Captain LeFarge came aft, on to the poop, and stood for a moment looking over thesea on the port side, where a bank of fog had suddenly appeared likethe spectre of a country.
“The sun has dimmed a bit,” said he; “I can a’most look at it. Glasssteady enough—there’s a fog coming up—ever seen a Pacific fog?”
“No, never.”
“Well, you won’t want to see another,” replied the mariner, shading hiseyes and fixing them upon the sea-line. The sea-line away to starboardhad lost somewhat its distinctness, and over the day an almostimperceptible shade had crept.
The captain suddenly turned from his contemplation of the sea and sky,raised his head and sniffed.
“Something is burning somewhere—smell it? Seems to me like an old mator summat. It’s that swab of a steward, maybe; if he isn’t breakingglass, he’s upsetting lamps and burning holes in the carpet. Bless _my_soul, I’d sooner have a dozen Mary Anns an’ their dustpans round theplace than one tomfool steward like Jenkins.” He went to the saloonhatch. “Below there!”
“Ay, ay, sir.”
“What are you burning?”
“I an’t burnin’ northen, sir.”
“Tell you, I smell it!”
“There’s northen burnin’ here, sir.”
“Neither is there, it’s all on deck. Something in the galley,maybe—rags, most likely, they’ve thrown on the fire.”
“Captain!” said Lestrange.
“Ay, ay.”
“Come here, please.”
Le Farge climbed on to the poop.
“I don’t know whether it’s my weakness that’s affecting my eyes, butthere seems to me something strange about the main-mast.”
The main-mast near where it entered the deck, and for some distance up,seemed in motion—a corkscrew movement most strange to watch from theshelter of the awning.
This apparent movement was caused by a spiral haze of smoke so vaguethat one could only tell of its existence from the mirage-like tremorof the mast round which it curled.
“My God!” cried Le Farge, as he sprang from the poop and rushed forward.
Lestrange followed him slowly, stopping every moment to clutch thebulwark rail and pant for breath. He heard the shrill bird-like notesof the bosun’s pipe. He saw the hands emerging from the forecastle,like bees out of a hive; he watched them surrounding the main-hatch. Hewatched the tarpaulin and locking-bars removed. He saw the hatchopened, and a burst of smoke—black, villainous smoke—ascend to thesky, solid as a plume in the windless air.
Lestrange was a man of a highly nervous temperament, and it is justthis sort of man who keeps his head in an emergency, whilst yourlevel-headed, phlegmatic individual loses his balance. His firstthought was of the children, his second of the boats.
In the battering off Cape Horn the _Northumberland_ lost several of herboats. There were left the long-boat, a quarter-boat, and the dinghy.He heard Le Farge’s voice ordering the hatch to be closed and the pumpsmanned, so as to flood the hold; and, knowing that he could do nothingon deck, he made as swiftly as he could for the saloon companion-way.
Mrs Stannard was just coming out of the children’s cabin.
“Are the children lying down, Mrs Stannard?” asked Lestrange, almostbreathless from the excitement and exertion of the last few minutes.
The woman glanced at him with frightened eyes. He looked like the veryherald of disaster.
“For if they are, and you have undressed them, then you must put theirclothes on again. The ship is on fire, Mrs Stannard.”
“Good God, sir!”
“Listen!” said Lestrange.
From a distance, thin, and dreary as the crying of sea-gulls on adesolate beach, came the clanking of the pumps.