The Mystery of Cloomber Page 11

  CHAPTER XI. OF THE CASTING AWAY OF THE BARQUE "BELINDA"

  The third of October had broken auspiciously with a bright sun and acloudless sky. There had in the morning been a slight breeze, and a fewlittle white wreaths of vapour drifted here and there like the scatteredfeathers of some gigantic bird, but, as the day wore on, such wind asthere was fell completely away, and the air became close and stagnant.

  The sun blazed down with a degree of heat which was remarkable so latein the season, and a shimmering haze lay upon the upland moors andconcealed the Irish mountains on the other side of the Channel.

  The sea itself rose and fell in a long, heavy, oily roll, sweepingslowly landward, and breaking sullenly with a dull, monotonous boomingupon the rock-girt shore. To the inexperienced all seemed calm andpeaceful, but to those who are accustomed to read Nature's warningsthere was a dark menace in air and sky and sea.

  My sister and I walked out in the afternoon, sauntering slowly alongthe margin of the great, sandy spit which shoots out into the Irish Sea,flanking upon one side the magnificent Bay of Luce, and on the other themore obscure inlet of Kirkmaiden, on the shores of which the Branksomeproperty is situated.

  It was too sultry to go far, so we soon seated ourselves upon one of thesandy hillocks, overgrown with faded grass-tufts, which extend along thecoast-line, and which form Nature's dykes against the encroachments ofthe ocean.

  Our rest was soon interrupted by the scrunching of heavy boots upon theshingle, and Jamieson, the old man-o'-war's man whom I have already hadoccasion to mention, made his appearance, with the flat, circular netupon his back which he used for shrimp-catching. He came towards us uponseeing us, and said in his rough, kindly way that he hoped we wouldnot take it amiss if he sent us up a dish of shrimps for our tea atBranksome.

  "I aye make a good catch before a storm," he remarked.

  "You think there is going to be a storm, then?" I asked.

  "Why, even a marine could see that," he answered, sticking a great wedgeof tobacco into his cheek. "The moors over near Cloomber are just whitewi' gulls and kittiewakes. What d'ye think they come ashore for exceptto escape having all the feathers blown out o' them? I mind a day likethis when I was wi' Charlie Napier off Cronstadt. It well-nigh blew usunder the guns of the forts, for all our engines and propellers."

  "Have you ever known a wreck in these parts?" I asked.

  "Lord love ye, sir, it's a famous place for wrecks. Why, in that verybay down there two o' King Philip's first-rates foundered wi' all handsin the days o' the Spanish war. If that sheet o' water and the Bay o'Luce round the corner could tell their ain tale they'd have a gey lotto speak of. When the Jedgment Day comes round that water will bejust bubbling wi' the number o' folks that will be coming up frae thebottom."

  "I trust that there will be no wrecks while we are here," said Estherearnestly.

  The old man shook his grizzled head and looked distrustfully at the hazyhorizon.

  "If it blows from the west," he said, "some o' these sailing ships mayfind it no joke to be caught without sea-room in the North Channel.There's that barque out yonder--I daresay her maister would be gladenough to find himsel' safe in the Clyde."

  "She seems to be absolutely motionless," I remarked, looking at thevessel in question, whose black hull and gleaming sails rose and fellslowly with the throbbing of the giant pulse beneath her. "Perhaps,Jamieson, we are wrong, and there will be no storm after all."

  The old sailor chuckled to himself with an air of superior knowledge,and shuffled away with his shrimp-net, while my sister and I walkedslowly homewards through the hot and stagnant air.

  I went up to my father's study to see if the old gentleman had anyinstructions as to the estate, for he had become engrossed in a new workupon Oriental literature, and the practical management of the propertyhad in consequence devolved entirely upon me.

  I found him seated at his square library table, which was so heaped withbooks and papers that nothing of him was visible from the door except atuft of white hair.

  "My dear son," he said to me as I entered, "it is a great grief to methat you are not more conversant with Sanscrit. When I was your age, Icould converse not only in that noble language, but also in the Tamulic,Lohitic, Gangelic, Taic, and Malaic dialects, which are all offshootsfrom the Turanian branch."

  "I regret extremely, sir," I answered, "that I have not inherited yourwonderful talents as a polyglot."

  "I have set myself a task," he explained, "which, if it could only becontinued from generation to generation in our own family until it wascompleted, would make the name of West immortal. This is nothing lessthan to publish an English translation of the Buddhist Djarmas, with apreface giving an idea of the position of Brahminism before the comingof Sakyamuni. With diligence it is possible that I might be able myselfto complete part of the preface before I die."

  "And pray, sir," I asked, "how long would the whole work be when it wasfinished?"

  "The abridged edition in the Imperial Library of Pekin," said my father,rubbing his hands together, "consists of 325 volumes of an averageweight of five pounds. Then the preface, which must embrace someaccount of the Rig-veda, the Sama-veda, the Yagur-veda, and theAtharva-veda, with the Brahmanas, could hardly be completed in lessthan ten volumes. Now, if we apportion one volume to each year, there isevery prospect of the family coming to an end of its task about the date2250, the twelfth generation completing the work, while the thirteenthmight occupy itself upon the index."

  "And how are our descendants to live, sir," I asked, with a smile,"during the progress of this great undertaking:"

  "That's the worst of you, Jack," my father cried petulantly. "There isnothing practical about you. Instead of confining your attention to theworking out of my noble scheme, you begin raising all sorts of absurdobjections. It is a mere matter of detail how our descendants live, solong as they stick to the Djarmas. Now, I want you to go up to the bothyof Fergus McDonald and see about the thatch, and Willie Fullerton haswritten to say that his milk-cow is bad. You might took in upon your wayand ask after it."

  I started off upon my errands, but before doing so I took a look at thebarometer upon the wall. The mercury had sunk to the phenomenal pointof twenty-eight inches. Clearly the old sailor had not been wrong in hisinterpretation of Nature's signs.

  As I returned over the moors in the evening, the wind was blowing inshort, angry puffs, and the western horizon was heaped with sombreclouds which stretched their long, ragged tentacles right up to thezenith.

  Against their dark background one or two livid, sulphur-colouredsplotches showed up malignant and menacing, while the surface of thesea had changed from the appearance of burnished quicksilver to that ofground glass. A low, moaning sound rose up from the ocean as if it knewthat trouble was in store for it.

  Far out in the Channel I saw a single panting, eager steam vessel makingits way to Belfast Lough, and the large barque which I had observed inthe morning still beating about in the offing, endeavouring to pass tothe northward.

  At nine o'clock a sharp breeze was blowing, at ten it had freshened intoa gale, and before midnight the most furious storm was raging which Ican remember upon that weather-beaten coast.

  I sat for some time in our small, oak-panelled sitting-room listening tothe screeching and howling of the blast and to the rattle of the graveland pebbles as they pattered against the window. Nature's grim orchestrawas playing its world-old piece with a compass which ranged fromthe deep diapason of the thundering surge to the thin shriek of thescattered shingle and the keen piping of frightened sea birds.

  Once for an instant I opened the lattice window, but a gust of wind andrain came blustering through, bearing with it a great sheet of seaweed,which flapped down upon the table. It was all I could do to close itagain with a thrust of my shoulder in the face of the blast.

  My sister and father had retired to their rooms, but my thoughtswere too active for sleep, so I continued to sit and to smoke by thesmouldering fire.


  What was going on in the Hall now, I wondered? What did Gabriel think ofthe storm, and how did it affect the old man who wandered about in thenight? Did he welcome these dread forces of Nature as being of the sameorder of things as his own tumultuous thoughts?

  It was only two days now from the date which I had been assured was tomark a crisis in his fortunes. Would he regard this sudden tempest asbeing in any way connected with the mysterious fate which threatenedhim?

  Over all these things and many more I pondered as I sat by the glowingembers until they died gradually out, and the chill night air warned methat it was time to retire.

  I may have slept a couple of hours when I was awakened by someonetugging furiously at my shoulder. Sitting up in bed, I saw by the dimlight that my father was standing half-clad by my bedside, and that itwas his grasp which I felt on my night-shirt.

  "Get up, Jack, get up!" he was crying excitedly. "There's a great shipashore in the bay, and the poor folk will all be drowned. Come down, myboy, and let us see what we can do."

  The good old man seemed to be nearly beside himself with excitement andimpatience. I sprang from my bed, and was huddling on a few clothes,when a dull, booming sound made itself heard above the howling of thewind and the thunder of the breakers.

  "There it is again!" cried my father. "It is their signal gun, poorcreatures! Jamieson and the fishermen are below. Put your oil-skin coaton and the Glengarry hat. Come, come, every second may mean a humanlife!"

  We hurried down together and made our way to the beach, accompanied by adozen or so of the inhabitants of Branksome.

  The gale had increased rather than moderated, and the wind screamed allround us with an infernal clamour. So great was its force that we hadto put our shoulders against it, and bore our way through it, while thesand and gravel tingled up against our faces.

  There was just light enough to make out the scudding clouds and thewhite gleam of the breakers, but beyond that all was absolute darkness.

  We stood ankle deep in the shingle and seaweed, shading our eyes withour hands and peering out into the inky obscurity.

  It seemed to me as I listened that I could hear human voices loudin intreaty and terror, but amid the wild turmoil of Nature it wasdifficult to distinguish one sound from another.

  Suddenly, however, a light glimmered in the heart of the tempest, andnext instant the beach and sea and wide, tossing bay were brilliantlyilluminated by the wild glare of a signal light.

  The ship lay on her beam-ends right in the centre of the terrible Hanselreef, hurled over to such an angle that I could see all the planking ofher deck. I recognised her at once as being the same three-masted barquewhich I had observed in the Channel in the morning, and the UnionJack which was nailed upside down to the jagged slump of her mizzenproclaimed her nationality.

  Every spar and rope and writhing piece of cordage showed up hard andclear under the vivid light which spluttered and flickered from thehighest portion of the forecastle. Beyond the doomed ship, out of thegreat darkness came the long, rolling lines of big waves, never ending,never tiring, with a petulant tuft of foam here and there upon theircrests. Each as it reached the broad circle of unnatural light appearedto gather strength and volume and to hurry on more impetuously untilwith a roar and a jarring crash it sprang upon its victim.

  Clinging to the weather shrouds we could distinctly see ten or a dozenfrightened seamen who, when the light revealed our presence, turnedtheir white faces towards us and waved their hands imploringly. The poorwretches had evidently taken fresh hope from our presence, though it wasclear that their own boats had either been washed away or so damaged asto render them useless.

  The sailors who clung to the rigging were not, however, the onlyunfortunates on board. On the breaking poop there stood three men whoappeared to be both of a different race and nature from the coweringwretches who implored our assistance.

  Leaning upon the shattered taff-rail they seemed to be conversingtogether as quietly and unconcernedly as though they were unconscious ofthe deadly peril which surrounded them.

  As the signal light flickered over them, we could see from the shorethat these immutable strangers wore red fezes, and that their faces wereof a swarthy, large-featured type, which proclaimed an Eastern origin.

  There was little time, however, for us to take note of such details.The ship was breaking rapidly, and some effort must be made to save thepoor, sodden group of humanity who implored our assistance.

  The nearest lifeboat was in the Bay of Luce, ten long miles away, buthere was our own broad, roomy craft upon the shingle, and plenty ofbrave fisher lads to form a crew. Six of us sprang to the oars, theothers pushed us off, and we fought our way through the swirling, ragingwaters, staggering and recoiling before the great, sweeping billows, butstill steadily decreasing the distance between the barque and ourselves.

  It seemed, however, that our efforts were fated to be in vain.

  As we mounted upon a surge I saw a giant wave, topping all the others,and coming after them like a driver following a flock, sweep down uponthe vessel, curling its great, green arch over the breaking deck.

  With a rending, riving sound the ship split in two where the terrible,serrated back of the Hansel reef was sawing into her keel. Theafter-part, with the broken mizzen and the three Orientals, sankbackwards into deep water and vanished, while the fore-half oscillatedhelplessly about, retaining its precarious balance upon the rocks.

  A wail of fear went up from the wreck and was echoed from the beach,but by the blessing of Providence she kept afloat until we made our wayunder her bowsprit and rescued every man of the crew.

  We had not got half-way upon our return, however, when another greatwave swept the shattered forecastle off the reef, and, extinguishing thesignal light, hid the wild denouement from our view.

  Our friends upon the shore were loud in congratulation and praise, norwere they backward in welcoming and comforting the castaways. They werethirteen in all, as cold and cowed a set of mortals as ever slippedthrough Death's fingers, save, indeed, their captain, who was a hardy,robust man, and who made light of the affair.

  Some were taken off to this cottage and some to that, but the greaterpart came back to Branksome with us, where we gave them such dry clothesas we could lay our hands on, and served them with beef and beer by thekitchen fire. The captain, whose name was Meadows, compressed his bulkyform into a suit of my own, and came down to the parlour, where hemixed himself some grog and gave my father and myself an account of thedisaster.

  "If it hadn't been for you, sir, and your brave fellows," he said,smiling across at me, "we should be ten fathoms deep by this time. As tothe _Belinda_, she was a leaky old tub and well insured, so neither theowners nor I are likely to break our hearts over her."

  "I am afraid," said my father sadly, "that we shall never see your threepassengers again. I have left men upon the beach in case they should bewashed up, but I fear it is hopeless. I saw them go down when the vesselsplit, and no man could have lived for a moment among that terriblesurge."

  "Who were they?" I asked. "I could not have believed that it waspossible for men to appear so unconcerned in the face of such imminentperil."

  "As to who they are or were," the captain answered, puffing thoughtfullyat his pipe, "that is by no means easy to say. Our last port wasKurrachee, in the north of India, and there we took them aboard aspassengers for Glasgow. Ram Singh was the name of the younger, and it isonly with him that I have come in contact, but they all appeared to bequiet, inoffensive gentlemen. I never inquired their business, but Ishould judge that they were Parsee merchants from Hyderabad whose tradetook them to Europe. I could never see why the crew should fear them,and the mate, too, he should have had more sense."

  "Fear them!" I ejaculated in surprise.

  "Yes, they had some preposterous idea that they were dangerousshipmates. I have no doubt if you were to go down into the kitchen nowyou would find that they are all agreed that our passengers were thecause of the whole d
isaster."

  As the captain was speaking the parlour door opened and the mate ofthe barque, a tall, red-bearded sailor, stepped in. He had obtained acomplete rig-out from some kind-hearted fisherman, and looked in hiscomfortable jersey and well-greased seaboots a very favourable specimenof a shipwrecked mariner.

  With a few words of grateful acknowledgment of our hospitality, he drewa chair up to the fire and warmed his great, brown hands before theblaze.

  "What d'ye think now, Captain Meadows?" he asked presently, glancing upat his superior officer. "Didn't I warn you what would be the upshot ofhaving those niggers on board the _Belinda_?"

  The captain leant back in his chair and laughed heartily.

  "Didn't I tell you?" he cried, appealing to us. "Didn't I tell you?"

  "It might have been no laughing matter for us," the other remarkedpetulantly. "I have lost a good sea-kit and nearly my life into thebargain."

  "Do I understand you to say," said I, "that you attribute yourmisfortunes to your ill-fated passengers?"

  The mate opened his eyes at the adjective.

  "Why ill-fated, sir?" he asked.

  "Because they are most certainly drowned," I answered.

  He sniffed incredulously and went on warming his hands.

  "Men of that kind are never drowned," he said, after a pause. "Theirfather, the devil, looks after them. Did you see them standing on thepoop and rolling cigarettes at the time when the mizzen was carried awayand the quarter-boats stove? That was enough for me. I'm not surprisedat you landsmen not being able to take it in, but the captain here,who's been sailing since he was the height of the binnacle, ought toknow by this time that a cat and a priest are the worst cargo you cancarry. If a Christian priest is bad, I guess an idolatrous pagan one isfifty times worse. I stand by the old religion, and be d--d to it!"

  My father and I could not help laughing at the rough sailor's veryunorthodox way of proclaiming his orthodoxy. The mate, however, wasevidently in deadly earnest, and proceeded to state his case, markingoff the different points upon the rough, red fingers of his left hand.

  "It was at Kurrachee, directly after they come that I warned ye," hesaid reproachfully to the captain. "There was three Buddhist Lascars inmy watch, and what did they do when them chaps come aboard? Why, theydown on their stomachs and rubbed their noses on the deck--that's whatthey did. They wouldn't ha' done as much for an admiral of the R'yalNavy. They know who's who--these niggers do; and I smelt mischiefthe moment I saw them on their faces. I asked them afterwards in yourpresence, Captain, why they had done it, and they answered that thepassengers were holy men. You heard 'em yourself."

  "Well, there's no harm in that, Hawkins," said Captain Meadows.

  "I don't know that," the mate said doubtfully. "The holiest Christianis the one that's nearest God, but the holiest nigger is, in my opinion,the one that's nearest the devil. Then you saw yourself, CaptainMeadows, how they went on during the voyage, reading books that waswrit on wood instead o' paper, and sitting up right through the night tojabber together on the quarter-deck. What did they want to have a chartof their own for and to mark the course of the vessel every day?"

  "They didn't," said the captain.

  "Indeed they did, and if I did not tell you sooner it was becauseyou were always ready to laugh at what I said about them. They hadinstruments o' their own--when they used them I can't say--but every dayat noon they worked out the latitude and longitude, and marked out thevessel's position on a chart that was pinned on their cabin table. I sawthem at it, and so did the steward from his pantry."

  "Well, I don't see what you prove from that," the captain remarked,"though I confess it is a strange thing."

  "I'll tell you another strange thing," said the mate impressively. "Doyou know the name of this bay in which we are cast away?"

  "I have learnt from our kind friends here that we are upon theWigtownshire coast," the captain answered, "but I have not heard thename of the bay."

  The mate leant forward with a grave face.

  "It is the Bay of Kirkmaiden," he said.

  If he expected to astonish Captain Meadows he certainly succeeded, forthat gentleman was fairly bereft of speech for a minute or more.

  "This is really marvellous," he said, after a time, turning to us."These passengers of ours cross-questioned us early in the voyage asto the existence of a bay of that name. Hawkins here and I denied allknowledge of one, for on the chart it is included in the Bay ofLuce. That we should eventually be blown into it and destroyed is anextraordinary coincidence."

  "Too extraordinary to be a coincidence," growled the mate. "I sawthem during the calm yesterday morning, pointing to the land over ourstarboard quarter. They knew well enough that that was the port theywere making for."

  "What do you make of it all, then, Hawkins?" asked the captain, with atroubled face. "What is your own theory on the matter?"

  "Why, in my opinion," the mate answered, "them three swabs have no moredifficulty in raising a gale o' wind than I should have in swallowingthis here grog. They had reasons o' their own for coming to thisGod-forsaken--saving your presence, sirs--this God-forsaken bay, andthey took a short cut to it by arranging to be blown ashore there.That's my idea o' the matter, though what three Buddhist priests couldfind to do in the Bay of Kirkmaiden is clean past my comprehension."

  My father raised his eyebrows to indicate the doubt which hishospitality forbade him from putting into words.

  "I think, gentlemen," he said, "that you are both sorely in need of restafter your perilous adventures. If you will follow me I shall lead youto your rooms."

  He conducted them with old-fashioned ceremony to the laird's best sparebedroom, and then, returning to me in the parlour, proposed that weshould go down together to the beach and learn whether anything freshhad occurred.

  The first pale light of dawn was just appearing in the east when we madeour way for the second time to the scene of the shipwreck. The gale hadblown itself out, but the sea was still very high, and all inside thebreakers was a seething, gleaming line of foam, as though the fierce oldocean were gnashing its white fangs at the victims who had escaped fromits clutches.

  All along the beach fishermen and crofters were hard at work hauling upspars and barrels as fast as they were tossed ashore. None of them hadseen any bodies, however, and they explained to us that only such thingsas could float had any chance of coming ashore, for the undercurrent wasso strong that whatever was beneath the surface must infallibly be sweptout to sea.

  As to the possibility of the unfortunate passengers having been able toreach the shore, these practical men would not hear of it for a moment,and showed us conclusively that if they had not been drowned they musthave been dashed to pieces upon the rocks.

  "We did all that could be done," my father said sadly, as we returnedhome. "I am afraid that the poor mate has had his reason affected bythe suddenness of the disaster. Did you hear what he said about Buddhistpriests raising a gale?"

  "Yes, I heard him," said I. "It was very painful to listen to him," saidmy father. "I wonder if he would object to my putting a small mustardplaster under each of his ears. It would relieve any congestion ofthe brain. Or perhaps it would be best to wake him up and give him twoantibilious pills. What do you think, Jack?"

  "I think," said I, with a yawn, "that you had best let him sleep, and goto sleep yourself. You can physic him in the morning if he needs it."

  So saying I stumbled off to my bedroom, and throwing myself upon thecouch was soon in a dreamless slumber.