CHAPTER XVIII.
THE HIGHEST RESOURCE.
The wreck being lightened, was sinking more slowly, but none the lesssurely.
The hopelessness of their situation was without resource--withoutmitigation; they had exhausted their last expedient.
"Is there anything else we can throw overboard?"
The doctor, whom every one had forgotten, rose from the companion, andsaid,
"Yes."
"What?" asked the chief.
The doctor answered, "Our Crime."
They shuddered, and all cried out,--
"Amen."
The doctor standing up, pale, raised his hand to heaven, saying,--
"Kneel down."
They wavered--to waver is the preface to kneeling down.
The doctor went on,--
"Let us throw our crimes into the sea, they weigh us down; it is theythat are sinking the ship. Let us think no more of safety--let us thinkof salvation. Our last crime, above all, the crime which we committed,or rather completed, just now--O wretched beings who are listening tome--it is that which is overwhelming us. For those who leave intendedmurder behind them, it is an impious insolence to tempt the abyss. Hewho sins against a child, sins against God. True, we were obliged to putto sea, but it was certain perdition. The storm, warned by the shadow ofour crime, came on. It is well. Regret nothing, however. There, not faroff in the darkness, are the sands of Vauville and Cape la Hogue. It isFrance. There was but one possible shelter for us, which was Spain.France is no less dangerous to us than England. Our deliverance from thesea would have led but to the gibbet. Hanged or drowned--we had noalternative. God has chosen for us; let us give Him thanks. He hasvouchsafed us the grave which cleanses. Brethren, the inevitable hand isin it. Remember that it was we who just now did our best to send on highthat child, and that at this very moment, now as I speak, there isperhaps, above our heads, a soul accusing us before a Judge whose eye ison us. Let us make the best use of this last respite; let us make aneffort, if we still may, to repair, as far as we are able, the evil thatwe have wrought. If the child survives us, let us come to his aid; if heis dead, let us seek his forgiveness. Let us cast our crime from us. Letus ease our consciences of its weight. Let us strive that our souls benot swallowed up before God, for that is the awful shipwreck. Bodies goto the fishes, souls to the devils. Have pity on yourselves. Kneel down,I tell you. Repentance is the bark which never sinks. You have lost yourcompass! You are wrong! You still have prayer."
The wolves became lambs--such transformations occur in last agonies;tigers lick the crucifix; when the dark portal opens ajar, belief isdifficult, unbelief impossible. However imperfect may be the differentsketches of religion essayed by man, even when his belief is shapeless,even when the outline of the dogma is not in harmony with the lineamentsof the eternity he foresees, there comes in his last hour a trembling ofthe soul. There is something which will begin when life is over; thisthought impresses the last pang.
A man's dying agony is the expiration of a term. In that fatal second hefeels weighing on him a diffused responsibility. That which has beencomplicates that which is to be. The past returns and enters into thefuture. What is known becomes as much an abyss as the unknown. And thetwo chasms, the one which is full by his faults, the other of hisanticipations, mingle their reverberations. It is this confusion of thetwo gulfs which terrifies the dying man.
They had spent their last grain of hope on the direction of life; hencethey turned in the other. Their only remaining chance was in its darkshadow. They understood it. It came on them as a lugubrious flash,followed by the relapse of horror. That which is intelligible to thedying man is as what is perceived in the lightning. Everything, thennothing; you see, then all is blindness. After death the eye willreopen, and that which was a flash will become a sun.
They cried out to the doctor,--
"Thou, thou, there is no one but thee. We will obey thee, what must wedo? Speak."
The doctor answered,--
"The question is how to pass over the unknown precipice and reach theother bank of life, which is beyond the tomb. Being the one who knowsthe most, my danger is greater than yours. You do well to leave thechoice of the bridge to him whose burden is the heaviest."
He added,--
"Knowledge is a weight added to conscience."
He continued,--
"How much time have we still?"
Galdeazun looked at the water-mark, and answered,--
"A little more than a quarter of an hour."
"Good," said the doctor.
The low hood of the companion on which he leant his elbows made a sortof table; the doctor took from his pocket his inkhorn and pen, and hispocket-book out of which he drew a parchment, the same one on the backof which he had written, a few hours before, some twenty cramped andcrooked lines.
"A light," he said.
The snow, falling like the spray of a cataract, had extinguished thetorches one after another; there was but one left. Ave Maria took it outof the place where it had been stuck, and holding it in his hand, cameand stood by the doctor's side.
The doctor replaced his pocket-book in his pocket, put down the pen andinkhorn on the hood of the companion, unfolded the parchment, andsaid,--
"Listen."
Then in the midst of the sea, on the failing bridge (a sort ofshuddering flooring of the tomb), the doctor began a solemn reading, towhich all the shadows seemed to listen. The doomed men bowed their headsaround him. The flaming of the torch intensified their pallor. What thedoctor read was written in English. Now and then, when one of thosewoebegone looks seemed to ask an explanation, the doctor would stop, torepeat--whether in French, or Spanish, Basque, or Italian--the passagehe had just read. Stifled sobs and hollow beatings of the breast wereheard. The wreck was sinking more and more.
The reading over, the doctor placed the parchment flat on the companion,seized his pen, and on a clear margin which he had carefully left at thebottom of what he had written, he signed himself, GERNARDUS GEESTEMUNDE:Doctor.
Then, turning towards the others, he said,--
"Come, and sign."
The Basque woman approached, took the pen, and signed herself, ASUNCION.
She handed the pen to the Irish woman, who, not knowing how to write,made a cross.
The doctor, by the side of this cross, wrote, BARBARA FERMOY, _of TyrrifIsland, in the Hebrides_.
Then he handed the pen to the chief of the band.
The chief signed, GAIZDORRA: _Captal_.
The Genoese signed himself under the chief's name. GIANGIRATE.
The Languedocian signed, JACQUES QUARTOURZE: _alias, the Narbonnais_.
The Provencal signed, LUC-PIERRE CAPGAROUPE, _of the Galleys of Mahon_.
Under these signatures the doctor added a note:--
"Of the crew of three men, the skipper having been washed overboard by asea, but two remain, and they have signed."
The two sailors affixed their names underneath the note. The northernBasque signed himself, GALDEAZUN.
The southern Basque signed, AVE MARIA: _Robber_.
Then the doctor said,--
"Capgaroupe."
"Here," said the Provencal.
"Have you Hardquanonne's flask?"
"Yes."
"Give it me."
Capgaroupe drank off the last mouthful of brandy, and handed the flaskto the doctor.
The water was rising in the hold; the wreck was sinking deeper anddeeper into the sea. The sloping edges of the ship were covered by athin gnawing wave, which was rising. All were crowded on the centre ofthe deck.
The doctor dried the ink on the signatures by the heat of the torch, andfolding the parchment into a narrower compass than the diameter of theneck, put it into the flask. He called for the cork.
"I don't know where it is," said Capgaroupe.
"Here is a piece of rope," said Jacques Quartourze.
The doctor corked the flask with a bit of rope, and asked for some t
ar.Galdeazun went forward, extinguished the signal light with a piece oftow, took the vessel in which it was contained from the stern, andbrought it, half full of burning tar, to the doctor.
The flask holding the parchment which they had all signed was corked andtarred over.
"It is done," said the doctor.
And from out all their mouths, vaguely stammered in every language, camethe dismal utterances of the catacombs.
"Ainsi soit-il!"
"Mea culpa!"
"Asi sea!"
"Aro rai!"
"Amen!"
It was as though the sombre voices of Babel were scattered through theshadows as Heaven uttered its awful refusal to hear them.
The doctor turned away from his companions in crime and distress, andtook a few steps towards the gunwale. Reaching the side, he looked intospace, and said, in a deep voice,--
"Bist du bei mir?"[8]
Perchance he was addressing some phantom.
The wreck was sinking.
Behind the doctor all the others were in a dream. Prayer mastered themby main force. They did not bow, they were bent. There was somethinginvoluntary in their condition; they wavered as a sail flaps when thebreeze fails. And the haggard group took by degrees, with clasping ofhands and prostration of foreheads, attitudes various, yet ofhumiliation. Some strange reflection of the deep seemed to soften theirvillainous features.
The doctor returned towards them. Whatever had been his past, the oldman was great in the presence of the catastrophe.
The deep reserve of nature which enveloped him preoccupied withoutdisconcerting him. He was not one to be taken unawares. Over him was thecalm of a silent horror: on his countenance the majesty of God's willcomprehended.
This old and thoughtful outlaw unconsciously assumed the air of apontiff.
He said,--
"Attend to me."
He contemplated for a moment the waste of water, and added,--
"Now we are going to die."
Then he took the torch from the hands of Ave Maria, and waved it.
A spark broke from it and flew into the night.
Then the doctor cast the torch into the sea.
The torch was extinguished: all light disappeared. Nothing left but thehuge, unfathomable shadow. It was like the filling up of the grave.
In the darkness the doctor was heard saying,--
"Let us pray."
All knelt down.
It was no longer on the snow, but in the water, that they knelt.
They had but a few minutes more.
The doctor alone remained standing.
The flakes of snow falling on him had sprinkled him with white tears,and made him visible on the background of darkness. He might have beenthe speaking statue of the shadow.
The doctor made the sign of the cross and raised his voice, whilebeneath his feet he felt that almost imperceptible oscillation whichprefaces the moment in which a wreck is about to founder. He said,--
"Pater noster qui es in coelis."
The Provencal repeated in French,--
"Notre Pere qui etes aux cieux."
The Irishwoman repeated in Gaelic, understood by the Basque woman,--
"Ar nathair ata ar neamh."
The doctor continued,--
"Sanctificetur nomen tuum."
"Que votre nom soit sanctifie," said the Provencal.
"Naomhthar hainm," said the Irishwoman.
"Adveniat regnum tuum," continued the doctor.
"Que votre regne arrive," said the Provencal.
"Tigeadh do rioghachd," said the Irishwoman.
As they knelt, the waters had risen to their shoulders. The doctor wenton,--
"Fiat voluntas tua."
"Que votre volonte soit faite," stammered the Provencal.
And the Irishwoman and Basque woman cried,--
"Deuntar do thoil ar an Hhalamb."
"Sicut in coelo, sicut in terra," said the doctor.
No voice answered him.
He looked down. All their heads were under water. They had letthemselves be drowned on their knees.
The doctor took in his right hand the flask which he had placed on thecompanion, and raised it above his head.
The wreck was going down. As he sank, the doctor murmured the rest ofthe prayer.
For an instant his shoulders were above water, then his head, thennothing remained but his arm holding up the flask, as if he were showingit to the Infinite.
His arm disappeared; there was no greater fold on the deep sea thanthere would have been on a tun of oil. The snow continued falling.
One thing floated, and was carried by the waves into the darkness. Itwas the tarred flask, kept afloat by its osier cover.
BOOK THE THIRD.
_THE CHILD IN THE SHADOW_.