The Stowaway Girl

  CHAPTER IV

  SHOWING WHAT BECAME OF THE "ANDROMEDA"

  The island artillery did not succeed in hitting the crippled shipagain. Three more shells were fired, but each projectile screamedharmlessly far out to sea. A trained gunner, noting these facts, wouldreason that the shore battery made good practice in the first instancesolely because its ordnance was trained at a known range. Indeed, hemight even hazard a guess that the _Andromeda's_ warm reception wasarranged long before her masts and funnel rose over the horizon. Thatthe islanders intended nothing less than her complete destruction wasself-evident. Without the slightest warning they had tried to sinkher; and now that she was escaping the further attentions of the fieldpieces, a number of troops stationed on South Point and the Isle desFregates began to pelt her with bullets.

  Iris, when the first paralysis of fear had passed, when her strickensenses resumed their sway and her limbs lost their palsy, flinched fromthis new danger, and sank sobbing to her knees behind the canvas shieldof the bridge. Somehow, this flimsy shelter, which sailors call the"dodger," gave some sense of safety. Her throbbing brain was incapableof lucid thought, but it was borne in on her mistily that the world andits occupants had suddenly gone mad. The omen of the blood-red waterhad justified itself most horribly. The dead carpenter was sprawlingover the forecastle windlass. His hand still clutched the brake. Thesailor at the wheel had been shot through the throat, and had fallenlimply through the open doorway of the chart-room; he lay there,coughing up blood and froth, and gasping his life out. The two menwounded by the second shell were creeping down the forward companion inthe effort to avoid the hail of lead that was beating on the ship.Hozier was raising himself on hands and knees, his attitude that of aman who is dazed, almost insensible. Watts had gone from thebridge--he might have been whirled to death over the side like theunfortunate foremast hand she had seen tossed from off the forecastle;but Coke, whose charmed life apparently entitled him to act like alunatic, was actually balancing himself on top of the starboard railsof the bridge by clinging to a stay, having climbed to that exposedposition in order to hurl oaths at the soldiers on shore. He had goneberserk with rage. His cap had either fallen off or been torn from hishead by a bullet; his squat, powerful figure was shaking with frenzy;he emphasized each curse with a passionate gesture of the free hand andarm; he said among other things, and with no lack of forcefuladjectives, that if he could only come to close quarters with some ofthe Portygee assassins on the island he would tear their sanguinarylivers out. It is an odd thing that men made animal by fury often usethat trope. They do really mean it. The liver is the earliest spoilof the successful tiger.

  The _Andromeda_, uncontrollable as destiny, and quite as heedless ofher human freight, swung round with the current until her bows pointedto the islet occupied by the marksmen. All at once, Coke suspended hisflow of invectives and rushed into the chart-room, where Iris heard himtearing lockers open and throwing their contents on the deck. Toenter, he was obliged to leap over the body of the dying man. Theaction was grotesque, callous, almost inhuman; it jarred the girl'sagonized transports back into a species of spiritual calm, a mentalstate akin to the fatalism often exhibited by Asiatics when death isimminent and not to be denied. The apparent madness of the captain wasnow more distressing to her than the certain loss of the ship or theinvisible missiles that clanged into white patches on the iron plates,cut sudden holes and scars in the woodwork, or whirred through the airwith a buzzing whistle of singularly menacing sound. She began to beafraid of remaining on the bridge; her fear was not due to the reallyvital fact that it was so exposed; it arose from the purely feminineconsideration that she was sure Coke had become a raving maniac, andshe dreaded meeting him when, if ever, he reappeared.

  A bullet struck the front frame of the chart-room, and several panes ofglass were shattered with a fearful din. That decided her. Coke, ifhe were not killed, would surely be driven out. She sprang to herfeet, and literally ran down the steep ladder to the saloon deck.Through the open door of the officers' mess she witnessed anotherbizarre act--an act quite as extraordinary in its way as Coke's jumpover the steersman's body. In the midst of this drama of death anddestruction, Watts was standing there, with head thrown back anduplifted arm, gulping down a tumblerful of some dark-colored liquid,draining it to the dregs, while he held a black bottle in the otherhand. That a man should fly to rum for solace when existence itselfmight be measured by minutes or seconds, was, to Iris, not the leastamazing experience of an episode crammed with all that was new, andstrange, and horrible in her life. She raced on, wholly unaware thatthe drifting ship was now presenting her port bow to the death-dealingfusillade.

  Then, from somewhere, she heard a gruff voice:

  "Hev' ye shut off steam, Macfarlane?"

  "Ou ay. It's a' snug below till the watter reaches the furnaces," camethe answer.

  So some of the men were doing their duty. Thank God for that!Undeterred by the fact that a live shell had burst among the engines,the oil-stained, grim-looking engineers had not quitted their postuntil they had taken such precautions as lay in their power to insurethe ship's safety. A light broke in on the fog in the girl's mind.Even now, at the very gate of eternity, one might try to help others!The thought brought a ray of comfort. She was about to look for thespeakers when a bullet drilled a hole in a panel close to her side.She began to run again, for a terrified glance through the forwardgangway showed that the ship was quite close to the land, where men inblue uniforms, wearing curiously shaped hats and white gaiters, werescattered among the rocks, some standing, some kneeling, some prone,but all taking steady aim.

  But it showed something more. Hozier was now lying sideways on theraised deck of the forecastle; he partly supported himself on his rightarm; his left hand was pressed to his forehead; he was trying to rise.With an intuition that was phenomenal under the circumstances, Irisrealized that he was screened from observation for the moment by thewindlass and the corpse that lay across it. But the ship's everincreasing speed, and the curving course of her drifting, would soonbring him into sight, and then those merciless riflemen would shoot himdown.

  "Oh, not that! Not that!" she wailed aloud.

  An impulse stronger than the instinct of self-preservation caused theblood to tingle in her veins. She had waited to take that one look,and now, bent double so as to avoid being seen by the soldiers, shesped back through the gangway, gained the open deck, crouched close tothe bulwarks on the port side, and thus reached unscathed the foot ofthe companion down which the wounded men had crawled. The zinc plateson the steps were slippery with their blood, but she did not falter atthe sight. Up she went, stooped over Hozier, and placed her strongyoung arms round his body.

  "Quick!" she panted, "let me help you! You will be killed if youremain here!"

  Her voice seemed to rouse him as from troubled sleep.

  "I was hit," he muttered. "What is it? What is wrong?"

  "Oh, come, come!" she screamed, for some unseen agency tore atransverse gash in the planking not a foot in front of them.

  He yielded with broken expostulations. She dragged him to the top ofthe stairs. Clinging to him, she half walked, half fell down the fewsteps. But she did not quite fall; Hozier's weight was almost morethan she could manage, but she clung to him desperately, saved him froma headlong plunge to the deck, and literally carried him into theforecastle, where she found some of the crew who had scurried therelike rabbits to their burrow when the first shell crashed into theengine-room.

  Iris's fine eyes darted lightning at them.

  "You call yourselves men," she cried shrilly, "yet you leave one ofyour officers lying on deck to be shot at by those fiends!"

  "We didn't know he was there, miss," said one. "We'd ha' fetched himright enough if we did."

  Even in her present stress of mixed emotions, the sailor's wordssounded reasonable. Every other person on board was just as greatlystunned by this monstrous attack as she herself,
and the firing nowappeared to increase in volume and accuracy. Several bullets clangedagainst the funnel or broke huge splinters off the boats.

  "Gord A'mighty, listen to that," growled a voice. "An' we cooped uphere, blazed at by a lot of rotten Dagos, with not a gun to our name!"

  Iris was still supporting Hozier, whose head and shoulders werepillowed against her breast as she knelt behind him.

  "Can nothing be done?" she asked. "I believe Captain Coke has beenkilled. Mr. Hozier is badly injured, I fear. Bring some water, ifpossible."

  "Yes, yes, water. . . . Only a knock on the head. . . . How did ithappen? And what is that noise of firing?"

  Hozier's scattered wits were returning, though neither he nor Irisremembered that the _Andromeda_ was waterless. He looked up at her,then at the men, and he smiled as his eyes met hers again.

  "Funny thing!" he said, with a natural tone that was reassuring. "Ithought the windlass smashed itself into smithereens. But it couldn't.What was it that banged?"

  "A shell, fired from the island," said the girl.

  Hozier straightened himself a little. He was hearing marvels, thoughfar from understanding them, as yet.

  "A shell!" he repeated vacantly. Had she said "a comet" it could nothave sounded more incredible.

  "Yes. It might have killed you. Several of the men are dead. Imyself saw three of them killed outright, and two others are badlywounded."

  "Here you are, sir--drink this," said a fireman, offering a pannikin ofbeer. It was unpalatable stuff, but it tasted like the nectar of thegods to one who had sustained a blow that would have felled an ox.Hozier had almost emptied the tin when an exclamation from an Irishstoker drew all eyes to the after part of the ship.

  "Holy war! Will ye look at that!" shouted the man. "Sure the skipperisn't dead, at all, at all."

  Iris had failed to grasp the meaning of Coke's antics in thechart-room, but they were now fully explained. The bulldog breed ofthis self-confessed rascal had taken the upper hand of him. Though hehad not scrupled to plot the destruction of the ship, and thus rob amarine insurance company of a considerable sum of money--though at thatvery instant there was actual proof of his scheme in the preparationshe had made to jam the steering-gear when the anchor was raised afterthe tanks were replenished--it was not in the man's nature to skulkinto comparative safety because a foreigner, a pirate, anot-to-be-mentioned-in-polite-society Portygee, opened fire on him inthis murderous fashion. Moreover, Coke's villainy would havesacrificed no lives. The _Andromeda_ might be converted into scrapiron, and thereby give back, by perverted arithmetic, the moneyinvested in her. But her white decks would not be stained with blood.Whatever risk was incurred would be his, the responsible captain's, hisonly. It was a vastly different thing that shot and shell should berained on an unarmed ship by the troops of a civilized power when shewas seeking the lowest form of hospitality. No wonder if thebull-necked skipper foamed at the mouth and used words forbidden by thecatechism; no wonder if he tried to express his helpless fury in onelast act of defiance.

  He rummaged the lockers for a Union Jack and the four flags that showedthe ship's name in signal letters. The red ensign was alreadyfluttering from a staff at the stern, and the house flag of DavidVerity & Co. was at the fore, but these emblems did not satisfy Coke'sfighting mettle. The _Andromeda_ would probably crack like an eggshellthe instant she touched the reef towards which she was hurrying; hedetermined that she would go down with colors flying if he were not putout of action by a bullet before he could reach the main halyard.

  The swerve in the ship's course as she passed the island gave him anopportunity. In justice to Coke it should be said that he reckednaught of this, but it would have been humanly impossible otherwise forthe soldiers to have missed him. And now, while the vessel lay withstraight keel in the set of the current, the national emblem ofBritain, with the _Andromeda's_ code flags beneath, fluttered up themainmast.

  There are many imaginable conditions under which Coke's deed would beregarded as sublime; there are none which could deny his splendidaudacity. The soldiers, who seemed to be actuated by the utmostmalevolence, redoubled their efforts to hit the squat Hercules who hadbellowed at them and their fellow artillerists from the bridge.Bullets struck the deck, lodged in the masts, splintered the roof andpanels of the upper structure, but not one touched Coke. He coollymade fast each flag in its turn, and hauled away till the Union Jackhad reached the truck; then, drawn forrard by a hoarse cheer that camefrom the forecastle, he turned his back on the enemy and swung himselfdown to the fore-deck.

  He was still wearing the heavy garments demanded by the gale; hisrecent exertions, joined to the fact that the normal temperature of asub-tropical island was making itself felt, had induced a violentperspiration. As he lumbered along the deck he mopped his facevigorously with a pocket handkerchief, and this homely action helped toconvince Iris that she was mistaken in thinking him mad. His words,too, when he caught sight of her, were not those of a maniac.

  "Well, missy," he cried, "wot'll they say in Liverpool now? I s'posethey'll 'ear of this some day," and he jerked a thumb backwards toindicate the unceasing hail of bullets that poured into the after partof the ship.

  The girl looked at him with an air of surprise that would have beencomical under less grievous conditions. She knew, with a vaguedefiniteness, that death was near, perhaps unavoidable, and it hadnever occurred to her that she or any other person on board need feelany concern about the view entertained by Liverpool as to their fate.Before she could frame a reply, however, Hozier seemed to recover hisfaculties. He stood up, walked unaided to the side of the ship, andglanced ahead.

  "Shouldn't we try to lower a boat, sir?" he asked instantly.

  "Wot's the use?" growled Coke. "Oo's goin' to lower boats while themblighters on the island are pumpin' lead into us? And wot good are theboats w'en they're lowered? They've been drilled full of holes. Youmight as well try to float a sieve. Look at that," he addedsarcastically, as the side of the cutter was ripped open by aricochetting shot, and splinters were littered on the deck, "they knowwot they want an' they mean to get it. Dead men tell no tales. Itwon't be anybody 'ere now who'll 'ave the job of lettin' the folk at'ome know 'ow the pore ole _Andromeda_ went under."

  "Are none of the boats seaworthy?"

  "Not one. They're knocked to pieces. Sorry for you, Miss Yorke. Butwe're all booked for Kingdom Come. In 'arf a minnit, or less, we'll beon the reef, an' the ship must begin to break up."

  Coke was telling the plain truth, but Hozier ran aft to make sure thathe was right in assuming the extent of the boats' damages. One of themen, an Italian, climbed to the forecastle deck in order to see moreclearly what sort of danger they were running into. He came backinstantly, and his swarthy face was green with terror. Though he spokeEnglish well enough, he began to jabber wildly in his mother tongue.None paid heed to him. It was common knowledge that the vessel must belost, and that those who still lived when she struck would have thealternatives of being drowned, or beaten to pieces against the frowningrocks, or shot from the mainland like so many stranded seals, if somealliance of luck and strength secured a momentary foothold on one ofthe tiny islets that barred the way. And at such moments, when themind is driven into a swift-running channel that ends in a cataract,elemental passions are apt to strive with elemental fears. Few amongthese rough sailors had ever given thought to the future. They hadlived from hand to mouth, the demands of a hard and dangerousprofession alternating with bouts of foolish revelry. Most of them hadlooked on death in the tempest, in the swirling seas, in the upliftedknife. But then, there was always a chance of escape, an open door forthe stout heart and ready hand; whereas, under present conditions,there was nothing to be done but pray, or curse, or wait in stoicsilence until the first ominous quiver ran through the swift-movingship. So, all unknowingly, they grouped themselves according to theirnationalities, for the Latins knelt and supplicated the saints and theVirgin Mother, t
he Celts roared insensate threats at the islanders whohad thrown them into the very jaws of eternity, and the Saxons stoodmotionless, with grim jaws and frowning brows, disdaining alike bothfrenzied appeal and useless execration.

  Someone threw a cork jacket over the girl's shoulders, and bade herfasten its straps around her waist. She obeyed without a word.Indeed, she seemed to have lost the power of speech. Everything hadsuddenly assumed such a crystal clear aspect that her eyes were giftedwith unnatural vision though her remaining senses were benumbed. Theblue and white of the sky, the emerald green of the water, the russetbrown and cold gray of the land--these shone now with a beauty vividbeyond any of nature's tints she had ever before seen. She wasconscious, too, of an awful aloofness. Her spirit was entrenched inits own citadel. She seemed to be brooding, solitary and remote, yetshrinking ever within herself; quite unknowing, she offered a piteousexample of the old Hebrew's dire truism that man came naked into theworld and naked shall he depart.

  In a curiously detached way she wondered why Hozier did not return.The prayers and curses of the men surrounding her fell unheeded on herears. Where was Hozier? What was he doing? Why did he not come toher? She felt a strange confidence in him. If he had not been struckdown by that calamitous shell he would have saved the ship--assuredlyhe would have devised some means of saving their lives! Perhaps, evennow, he was attempting some desperate expedient! . . . The thoughtnerved her for an instant. Then a rending, grinding noise was followedby a sudden swerve and roll of the ship that sent her staggeringagainst a bulkhead. An outburst of cries and shouting rang through herbrain, and a shriek was wrung from her parched throat.

  But the _Andromeda_ righted herself again, though there was anothersound of tearing metal, and the deck heaved perceptibly under a shock.

  Ah, kind Heaven! here came Hozier, running, thundering some loud order.

  "The port life-boat . . . seaworthy!"

  There was a fierce rush, in which she joined. She was knocked down. Astrong hand dragged her to her feet. It was Coke, swearing horribly.She saw Hozier leap against the flood of men.

  "D--n you, the woman first!" she heard him say, and he sent the leadersof the mob sprawling over the hatches of the forehold.

  Coke, almost carrying her in his left arm, butted in among the crewlike an infuriated bull. Some of the men, shamefaced, made way forthem. Hosier reached her. She thought he said to the captain:

  "There's a chance, if we can swing her clear."

  Then the ship struck, and they were all flung to the deck. They rose,somehow, anyhow, but the _Andromeda_, apparently resenting the check,lifted herself bodily, tilted bow upward, and struck again. A mass ofspray dashed down upon the struggling figures who had been driven asecond time to their knees. There was a terrific explosion in theafter-hold, for the deck had burst under the pressure of air, andanother ominous roar announced that the water had reached the furnaces.Steam and smoke and dust mingled with the incessant lashing of sheetsof spray, and Iris was torn from Coke's grip.

  She fancied she heard Hozier cry, "Too late!" and a lightning glimpsedown the sloping deck showed some of the engineers and stokers crawlingup toward the quivering forecastle. She felt herself clasped inHozier's arms, and knew that he was climbing. After a few breathlessseconds she realized that they were standing on the forecastle, wherethe captain and many of the crew were clinging to the windlass, andanchor, and cable, and bulwarks, to maintain their footing. Below,beyond a stretch of unbroken deck, the sea raged against all that wasleft of the ship. The bridge just showed above the froth and spume ofsea level. The funnel still held by its stays, but the mainmast wasgone, and with it the string of flags.

  The noise was deafening, overpowering. It sounded like the rattle ofsome immense factory; yet a voice was audible through the din, forHozier was telling her not to abandon hope, as the fore part of theship was firmly wedged into a cleft in the rocks: they might still havea chance when the tide dropped.

  So that explained why it was so dark where a few moments ago all waslight. Iris pressed the salt water out of her burning eyes, and triedto look up. On both sides of the narrow triangle of the forecastlerose smooth overhanging walls, black and dripping. They were festoonedwith seaweed, and every wave that curled up between the ship's platesand the rocks was thrown back over the deck, while streams of waterfell constantly from the masses of weed. She gasped for breath. Themere sight of this dismal cleft with its super-saturated air space madeactive the choking sensation of which she was just beginning to beaware.

  "I--cannot breathe!" she sobbed, and she would have slipped off intothe welter of angry foam beneath had not Hozier tightened a protectingarm round her waist.

  "Stoop down!" he said.

  She had a dim knowledge that he unbuttoned his coat and drew one of itsfolds over her head. Ah, the blessed relief of it! Freed from thestifling showers of spray, she drew a deep breath or two. How good hewas to her! How sure she was now that if he had been spared by thatdisabling shell he would have saved them all!

  Bent and shrouded as she was, she could see quite clearly downward.The ship was breaking up with inconceivable rapidity. Already therewas a huge irregular vent between the fore deck and the central blockof cabins topped by the bridge. And a new horror was added to all thathad gone before. Swarms of rats were skimming up the slippery planks.They were invading the forecastle and the forecastle deck. They camein an irresistible army, though, fortunately for Iris's continuedsanity, the greater number scurried into the darkness of the men'squarters.

  She was watching them with fascinated eyes, though not daring towithdraw her head from under the coat, when she heard a ghastly yellfrom beneath, and an erie face appeared above the stairway. It wasWatts, mad with fright and drink.

  "Save me! save me!" he screamed, and the girl shuddered as she realizedthat the man did not fear death so much as he loathed the scamperingrats. He had no difficulty in climbing the steep companion, though, byreason of the present position of all that was left of the _Andromeda_,its pitch was thrown back to an unusual angle. He scrambled up, apitiable object. A couple of rats ran over his body, and as eachwhisked across his shoulders and past his cheek he uttered ablood-curdling yell. A big wave surged up into the recesses of thecleft and was flung off in a drenching shower on to the forecastle. Itnearly swept Watts into the next world, and it drove every rodent inthat exposed place back to the dry interior.

  To return, they had to use the unhappy chief officer as a causeway, andthe poor wretch's despairing cries were heartrending. He was clingingfor dear life to a bolt in the deck when Coke joined hands with asailor and was thus enabled to reach him. Once the skipper's strongfingers had clutched his collar he was rescued--at least from theinstant death that might have been the outcome of his abject terror,for there could be little doubt in the minds of those who saw hisglistening eyes and drawn lips that it would have needed the passage ofbut one more rat and he would have relaxed his hold.

  Coke pulled him up until he was lodged in safety in front of thewindlass. The manner of the welcome given by the captain to his _aide_need not be recorded here. It was curt and lurid; it would serve as asorry passport if proffered on his entry to another world; but thetragi-comedy of Watts's appearance among the close-packed gathering onthe forecastle was forthwith blotted out of existence by a thing soamazing, so utterly unlooked for that during a couple of spellboundseconds not a man moved nor spoke.