CHAPTER THIRTY ONE.
THE WRECK OF THE BRIG.
"Himmel!" exclaimed Fritz, rising up from the bench on which he wassitting and clutching on to the side of the hut for support, being stillvery feeble and hardly able to stand upright. "There must be a ship outthere approaching the island. If she should get too close inshore, sheis doomed!"
But, Eric did not answer him. The lad had already rushed down to thebeach; and, climbing on to a projecting boulder, was peering into theoffing, endeavouring to make out the vessel whose signal gun had beenheard in the distance.
The darkness, however, was too great. The heavens were overcast withthick, drifting clouds, while the sea below was as black as ink--exceptwhere the breakers at the base of the cliffs broke in masses of foamthat gave out a sort of phosphorescent light for the moment, lighting upthe outlines of the headlands during the brief interval, only for themto be swallowed up the next instant in the sombre gloom that enwrappedthe bay and surrounding scene. Eric, consequently, could see nothingbeyond the wall of heaving water which the rollers presented as theythundered on the shingle, dragging back the pebbles in their back-washwith a rattling noise, as if the spirits of the deep were playing withdice in the depths below under the waves!
At his back, the lad could see the bonfire still blazing, casting theforeground in all the deeper shadow from its flickering light; and,never did he regret anything more in his life than the sudden impulsewhich had led him into so dangerous a freak, as that of lighting thebonfire.
Who knew what further terrible peril that treacherous fire might notlead to, besides the mischief it had already done?
Bye-and-bye, there came the sound of another gun from the sea. Thereport sounded nearer this time; still, Eric could see nothing in sighton the horizon when some break in the clouds allowed him a momentaryglimpse of the angry ocean--nothing but the huge billows chasing eachother in towards the land and the seething foam at the base of thecrags, on which they broke themselves in impotent fury when they foundtheir further course arrested by the rocky ramparts of the island.
Nor could the lad hear anything beyond the crash of the breakers andsplash of the eddying water, which sometimes washed up to his feet, ashe stood on the boulder gazing out vainly to sea, the sound of thebreaking billows being mingled with the shriek of the wind as itwhistled by overhead.
Nothing but the tumult of the sea, stirred into frenzy by the storm-blast of angry Aeolus!
After a time, Eric suddenly recollected that his brother could not movefar from the hut and must be wondering what had become of him; and,recognising as well the fact that he was powerless alone to do anythingwhere he was, even if a ship should be in danger, he returned towardsthe cottage to rejoin Fritz, his path up the valley being lit up quiteclearly by the expiring bonfire, which still flamed out every now andthen, as the wind fanned it in its mad rush up the gorge, stirring outthe embers into an occasional flash of brilliancy.
Fritz, usually so calm, was in a terribly anxious state when his brotherreached him.
"Well, have you seen anything?" he asked impatiently.
"No," said Eric sorrowfully. "There's nothing to be seen."
"But _you_ heard another cannon, did you not?"
"Oh yes, and it seemed closer in."
"So I thought, too," said the other, whom the sound of the heavy guns,from his old experience in war, appeared to affect like a stimulant."Can't we do anything? It is terrible to stand idly here and allow ourfellow-creatures to perish, without trying to save them!"
"What could we do?" asked Eric helplessly, all the buoyancy gone out ofhim. He seemed to be quite another lad.
"You couldn't launch the boat without me, eh?"
"No," answered Eric; "I couldn't move it off the beach with all mystrength--I tried just now."
Fritz ground his teeth in rage at his invalid condition.
"It serves me right to be crippled in this fashion!" he cried. "It allresults from my making such a fool of myself the other day, after thatgoat on the plateau. I ought to have known better."
"You need not vex yourself, brother, about that," said Eric. "If therewere twenty of us to get the boat into the water, instead of two, shecould not live in the heavy sea that is now running. She would beswamped by the first roller that came in upon us, for the wind isblowing dead on shore!"
"That may be," replied Fritz; "still, I should like to do something,even if I knew it would be useless!"
"So should I," said Eric, disconsolately.
In silence, the two continued to pace up and down the little platformthey had levelled in front of their hut, trying to pierce the darknessthat now entirely obscured the sea, the north-easter having brought up athick fog in its train, perhaps from the far-distant African coast,which shut out everything on that side; although, the light of thebonfire still illumined the cliff encircling the valley where they hadpitched their homestead, disclosing the inmost recesses of this, so thatthey could see from where they stood, the wood, which the conflagrationhad spared, as well as their garden and the tussock-grass rookery of thepenguins beyond, not a feature of the landscape being hid.
Again came the booming, melancholy sound of the minute guns from sea,making the brothers more impatient than ever; and, at that moment, thefog suddenly lifted, being rapidly wafted away to leeward over theisland, enabling the two anxious watchers to see a bit of bright skyoverhead, with a twinkling star or two looking down on the raging ocean,now exposed to their gaze--all covered with rolling breakers andseething foam as far as the eye could reach, to the furthest confines ofthe horizon beyond the bay.
Still, they could perceive nothing of the ship that had been firing thesignals of distress, till, all at once, another gun was heard; and theflash, which caught their glance at the same moment as the reportreached them, now enabled them to notice her imminent peril. This, thepeople on board could only then have noticed for the first time, the foghaving previously concealed their danger; for they distinctly heard,above the noise of the sea and wind, a hoarse shout of agonised, franticalarm, wafted shorewards by the wind in one of its wild gusts.
The vessel was coming up under close-reefed topsails, bow on to theheadland on the western side of the bay; and, almost at the very instantthe brothers saw her, she struck with a crash on the rocks, the surfrushing up the steep face of the cliff and falling back on the deck ofthe ill-fated craft in sheets of spray like soapsuds.
Fritz and Eric clasped their hands in mute supplication to heaven; but,at the same moment, the spars of the vessel--she was a brig, they couldsee--fell over her side with a crash. There was a grinding and rendingof timbers; and then, one enormous wave, as of three billows rolled intoone, poured over her in a cataract.
One concentrated shriek of horror and agony came from the seethingwhirlpool of broken water, and, all was over; for, when the foam hadwashed away with the retreating wave, not a single vestige could be seenof the hapless craft!
She had sunk below the sea with those on board.
"Oh, brother, it is awful!" cried Eric.
Fritz could not answer. His throat was filled with a great gulping lumpwhich prevented him from drawing his breath; while his eyes weresuffused with tears that no unmanly feelings had called forth.
Eric was starting off again down to the beach, to see whether any onehad escaped from the wreck and been swept into the bay, in which case hemight have been of use in trying to drag them from the clutch of thecruel waves, when Fritz called him back.
"Don't leave me behind, brother," he cried out passionately. "Wheel medown, in the barrow, so that I may help, too!"
The lad stopped in a instant, comprehending his brother's request; and,flying back, in and out of the hut as if he had been galvanised, hequickly placed the old door on top of the wheelbarrow as a sort ofplatform, with a mattress on top. He then lifted Fritz on thesuperstructure as if he were a child, the excitement having given himtenfold strength; and, wheeling the barrow down at a run, the twoarrived on th
e beach almost sooner than a boat could have pulled ashorefrom the point where the catastrophe to the vessel had occurred.
But, although it was now light enough to scan the surface of therestless sea for some distance out, no struggling form could be seenbattling with the waves; nor was there a single fragment of the wrecknoticeable, tossing about on the billows that still rolled inthunderingly on the beach, marking out the contour of the bay with aline of white surf, which shone out in contrast to the glittering blacksand that was ever and anon displayed as the back-wash of the wavesswept out again in a downward curve preparatory to the billows hurlingthemselves in shore once more with renewed force.
"Poor chaps, they must all have gone down!" said Eric, half crying. Hehad made sure that some one would have escaped, if only for him torescue at the last moment--perhaps just when the sinking swimmer mightrequire a helping hand to drag him from the clutches of the graspingbillows that sought to overwhelm him as he was getting beyond theirreach!
"There's no doubt of that," echoed Fritz, who had got off his platformon the wheelbarrow with much more agility than he had been capable of ashort time before. "The sea has swallowed up those who were not dashedto pieces on the headland! I hardly know which fate was the leastpreferable of the two?"
"I do hope that the bonfire did not lead to their misfortune," said Ericpresently. "If so, I should consider myself to be the cause of theirdeath!"
"No, I don't think it was, laddie," replied Fritz, to cheer him, the ladbeing greatly distressed at the thought of having occasioned thecatastrophe. "You see, the ship must have been coming from the otherside of the headland, whose height would shut all view of our valleyentirely from the sea."
"Well, I only hope so," replied Eric, only half consoled. "I'm afraid,however, the people on board took the flame of the burning grass to besome beacon to warn them."
"In that case, they would have kept away from it, of course," said Fritzdecidedly; "so, no blame can be attached to you. The wind, you see, wasblowing a gale from the north-east; and, probably, they were driving onbefore it, never thinking they were near Inaccessible Island, norbelieving that there was such a place anywhere within miles of them, orland at all, for that matter, till they should reach the South Americancoast!"
"Perhaps so," rejoined Eric, in a brighter tone; "but then, again, theymight have thought the light to be a ship on fire, and, in going out oftheir way to lend assistance, they possibly met with their doom, eh?"
"Ah, that would be sad to believe," said Fritz. "However, I don't thinkwe should worry ourselves over the dispensations of providence. Poorfellows, whoever they are, or whatever they were about at the time ofthe disaster, I'm sorry for them from the bottom of my heart!"
"And so am I," chimed in his brother. "But now, old fellow," addedEric, "it is time for you to be getting back indoors, with your poorback and wounded leg."
"Yes, I shan't be sorry to lie down now; for, I've exerted myself morethan I should have done. Oh," continued Fritz, as the lad helped him onto the wheelbarrow platform, again preparing to return to the hut, "Ishall never forget the sight of that doomed vessel dashing against therocks. I fancy I can now see the whole hideous panorama before my eyesagain, just as we saw it when the mist cleared away, disclosing all thehorrors of the scene!"
"I shan't forget it either, brother," said Eric, as he commenced towheel back Fritz homeward, neither uttering another word on the way.
Both went to bed sadly enough; for, the calamity that had just occurredbefore their eyes made them more depressed than they had ever beenbefore--aye, even in the solitude of their first night alone on theisland.
Next morning, the gale had blown itself out, the wind having toned downto a gentle breeze; while the sea was smiling in the sunshine, soinnocently that it seemed impossible it could have been lashed into thefury it exhibited the previous night. There it was, rippling andprattling away on the beach in the most light-hearted fashion,oblivious, apparently, of all thought of evil!
All trace of the wreck, too, had disappeared, nothing being subsequentlycast ashore but one single plank, on which the hieroglyphic letters, "PFBordeaux," were carved rudely with a chisel; so, the mystery of thebrig's name and destination remained unsolved to the brothers, as itprobably will continue a mystery, until that day when the ocean gives upits secrets and yields up its dead to life!