CHAPTER XXIV. THE TEMPEST
The sea is raging. Mountainous waves of dark green, marbled with whitefoam, stand out, in high, deep undulations, from the broad streak of redlight, which extends along the horizon. Above are piled heavy massesof black and sulphurous vapor, whilst a few lighter clouds of a reddishgray, driven by the violence of the wind, rush across the murky sky.
The pale winter sun, before he quite disappears in the great clouds,behind which he is slowly mounting, casts here and there some obliquerays upon the troubled sea, and gilds the transparent crest of some ofthe tallest waves. A band of snow-white foam boils and rages as faras the eye can reach, along the line of the reefs that bristle on thisdangerous coast.
Half-way up a rugged promontory, which juts pretty far into the sea,rises Cardoville Castle; a ray of the sun glitters upon its windows; itsbrick walls and pointed roofs of slate are visible in the midst of thissky loaded with vapors.
A large, disabled ship, with mere shreds of sail still fluttering fromthe stumps of broken masts, drives dead upon the coast. Now she rollsher monstrous hull upon the waves--now plunges into their trough. Aflash is seen, followed by a dull sound, scarcely perceptible inthe midst of the roar of the tempest. That gun is the last signal ofdistress from this lost vessel, which is fast forging on the breakers.
At the same moment, a steamer, with its long plume of black smoke, isworking her way from east to west, making every effort to keep at adistance from the shore, leaving the breakers on her left. The dismastedship, drifting towards the rocks, at the mercy of the wind and tide,must some time pass right ahead of the steamer.
Suddenly, the rush of a heavy sea laid the steamer upon her side; theenormous wave broke furiously on her deck; in a second the chimneywas carried away, the paddle box stove in, one of the wheels rendereduseless. A second white-cap, following the first, again struck thevessel amidships, and so increased the damage that, no longer answeringto the helm, she also drifted towards the shore, in the same directionas the ship. But the latter, though further from the breakers, presenteda greater surface to the wind and sea, and so gained upon the steamerin swiftness that a collision between the two vessels became imminent--anew clanger added to all the horrors of the now certain wreck.
The ship was an English vessel, the "Black Eagle," homeward bound fromAlexandria, with passengers, who arriving from India and Java, viathe Red Sea, had disembarked at the Isthmus of Suez, from on boardthe steamship "Ruyter." The "Black Eagle," quitting the Straits ofGibraltar, had gone to touch at the Azores. She headed thence forPortsmouth, when she was overtaken in the Channel by the northwester.The steamer was the "William Tell," coming from Germany, by way of theElbe, and bound, in the last place, for Hamburg to Havre.
These two vessels, the sport of enormous rollers, driven along by tideand tempest, were now rushing upon the breakers with frightful speed.The deck of each offered a terrible spectacle; the loss of crew andpassengers appeared almost certain, for before them a tremendous seabroke on jagged rocks, at the foot of a perpendicular cliff.
The captain of the "Black Eagle," standing on the poop, holding by theremnant of a spar, issued his last orders in this fearful extremitywith courageous coolness. The smaller boats had been carried away bythe waves; it was in vain to think of launching the long-boat; the onlychance of escape in case the ship should not be immediately dashed topieces on touching the rocks, was to establish a communication with theland by means of a life-line--almost the last resort for passing betweenthe shore and a stranded vessel.
The deck was covered with passengers, whose cries and terror augmentedthe general confusion. Some, struck with a kind of stupor, and clingingconvulsively to the shrouds, awaited their doom in a state of stupidinsensibility. Others wrung their hands in despair, or rolled upon thedeck uttering horrible imprecations. Here, women knelt down to pray;there, others hid their faces in their hands, that they might not seethe awful approach of death. A young mother, pale as a specter, holdingher child clasped tightly to her bosom, went supplicating from sailorto sailor, and offering a purse full of gold and jewels to any one thatwould take charge of her son.
These cries, and tears, and terror contrasted with the stern and silentresignation of the sailors. Knowing the imminence of the inevitabledanger, some of them stripped themselves of part of their clothes,waiting for the moment to make a last effort, to dispute their liveswith the fury of the waves; others renouncing all hope, prepared to meetdeath with stoical indifference.
Here and there, touching or awful episodes rose in relief, if one may soexpress it, from this dark and gloomy background of despair.
A young man of about eighteen or twenty, with shiny black hair, coppercolored complexion, and perfectly regular and handsome features,contemplated this scene of dismay and horror with that sad calmnesspeculiar to those who have often braved great perils; wrapped in acloak, he leaned his back against the bulwarks, with his feet restingagainst one of the bulkheads. Suddenly, the unhappy mother, who, withher child in her arms, and gold in her hand, had in vain addressedherself to several of the mariners, to beg them to save her boy,perceiving the young man with the copper-colored complexion, threwherself on her knees before him, and lifted her child towards him witha burst of inexpressible agony. The young man took it, mournfully shookhis head, and pointed to the furious waves--but, with a meaning gesture,he appeared to promise that he would at least try to save it. Then theyoung mother, in a mad transport of hope, seized the hand of the youth,and bathed it with her tears.
Further on, another passenger of the "Black Eagle," seemed animatedby sentiments of the most active pity. One would hardly have given himfive-and-twenty years of age. His long, fair locks fell in curls oneither side of his angelic countenance. He wore a black cassock andwhite neck-band. Applying himself to comfort the most desponding, hewent from one to the other, and spoke to them pious words of hope andresignation; to hear him console some, and encourage others, in languagefull of unction, tenderness, and ineffable charity, one would havesupposed him unaware or indifferent to the perils that he shared.
On his fine, mild features, was impressed a calm and sacred intrepidity,a religious abstraction from every terrestrial thought; from time totime, he raised to heaven his large blue eyes, beaming with gratitude,love, and serenity, as if to thank God for having called him to one ofthose formidable trials in which the man of humanity and courage maydevote himself for his brethren, and, if not able to rescue them at all,at least die with them, pointing to the sky. One might almost havetaken him for an angel, sent down to render less cruel the strokes ofinexorable fate.
Strange contrast! not far from this young man's angelic beauty, therewas another being, who resembled an evil spirit!
Boldly mounted on what was left of the bowsprit, to which he held on bymeans of some remaining cordage, this man looked down upon the terriblescene that was passing on the deck. A grim, wild joy lighted up hiscountenance of a dead yellow, that tint peculiar to those who springfrom the union of the white race with the East. He wore only a shirt andlinen drawers; from his neck was suspended, by a cord, a cylindrical tinbox, similar to that in which soldiers carry their leave of absence.
The more the danger augmented, the nearer the ship came to thebreakers, or to a collision with the steamer, which she was now rapidlyapproaching--a terrible collision, which would probably cause the twovessels to founder before even they touched the rocks--the more did theinfernal joy of this passenger reveal itself in frightful transports. Heseemed to long, with ferocious impatience, for the moment when the workof destruction should be accomplished. To see him thus feasting withavidity on all the agony, the terror, and the despair of those aroundhim, one might have taken him for the apostle of one of those sanguinarydeities, who, in barbarous countries, preside over murder and carnage.
By this time the "Black Eagle," driven by the wind and waves, came sonear the "William Tell" that the passengers on the deck of the nearlydismantled steamer were visible from the first-named vessel.
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These passengers were no longer numerous. The heavy sea, which stovein the paddle-box and broke one of the paddles, had also carried awaynearly the whole of the bulwarks on that side; the waves, enteringevery instant by this large opening, swept the decks with irresistibleviolence, and every time bore away with them some fresh victims.
Amongst the passengers, who seemed only to have escaped this dangerto be hurled against the rocks, or crushed in the encounter of the twovessels, one group was especially worthy of the most tender and painfulinterest. Taking refuge abaft, a tall old man, with bald forehead andgray moustache, had lashed himself to a stanchion, by winding a piece ofrope round his body, whilst he clasped in his arms, and held fast to hisbreast, two girls of fifteen or sixteen, half enveloped in a pelisse ofreindeer-skin. A large, fallow, Siberian dog, dripping with water, andbarking furiously at the waves, stood close to their feet.
These girls, clasped in the arms of the old man, also pressed close toeach other; but, far from being lost in terror, they raised theireyes to heaven, full of confidence and ingenuous hope, as though theyexpected to be saved by the intervention of some supernatural power.
A frightful shriek of horror and despair, raised by the passengers ofboth vessels, was heard suddenly above the roar of the tempest. At themoment when, plunging deeply between two waves, the broadside of thesteamer was turned towards the bows of the ship, the latter, lifted toa prodigious height on a mountain of water, remained, as it were,suspended over the "William Tell," during the second which preceded theshock of the two vessels.
There are sights of so sublime a horror, that it is impossible todescribe them. Yet, in the midst of these catastrophes, swift asthought, one catches sometimes a momentary glimpse of a picture, rapidand fleeting, as if illumined by a flash of lightning.
Thus, when the "Black Eagle," poised aloft by the flood, was aboutto crash down upon the "William Tell," the young man with the angeliccountenance and fair, waving locks bent over the prow of the ship, readyto cast himself into the sea to save some victim. Suddenly, he perceivedon board the steamer, on which he looked down from the summit ofthe immense wave, the two girls extending their arms towards him insupplication. They appeared to recognize him, and gazed on him with asort of ecstacy and religious homage!
For a second, in spite of the horrors of the tempest, in spite of theapproaching shipwreck, the looks of those three beings met. The featuresof the young man were expressive of sudden and profound pity; for themaidens with their hands clasped in prayer, seemed to invoke him astheir expected Saviour. The old man, struck down by the fall of a plank,lay helpless on the deck. Soon all disappeared together.
A fearful mass of water dashed the "Black Eagle" down upon the "WilliamTell," in the midst of a cloud of boiling foam. To the dreadful crashof the two great bodies of wood and iron, which splintering against oneanother, instantly foundered, one loud cry was added--a cry of agony anddeath--the cry of a hundred human creatures swallowed up at once by thewaves!
And then--nothing more was visible!
A few moments after, the fragments of the two vessels appeared in thetrough of the sea, and on the caps of the waves--with here and therethe contracted arms, the livid and despairing faces of some unhappywretches, striving to make their way to the reefs along the shore, atthe risk of being crushed to death by the shock of the furious breakers.