The Island of Gold: A Sailor's Yarn

Is this all? Ah, no, for James himself, as he turns to leave the scene of carnage, leans suddenly on his sword, his face looks ghastly pale in the firelight, and Halcott springs forward only in time to prevent him from falling.

Book Three – Chapter Eleven.

Death of James

The morning of the victory was a sad enough one in the camp of the Crusoes.

The enemy was routed, the king was slain. For a time, at least, there would be a cessation of strife. For how long no one troubled himself to consider; sorrow seemed everywhere, on board and in the camp around.

Poor James lay on a mattress on deck. Perhaps he was the only man that smiled or seemed happy. He knew, and Halcott knew too, that he could not last for many days, so grievously was he wounded.

Halcott, I need not say, was constant in his attendance on him, and so too was little Nelda.

The girl would sit for hours beside him, sometimes reading childish stories to him, which she felt certain, in her own mind, would help to make him better. Or she would gently pat his weather-beaten face, saying, as she did so, “Poor uncle James! poor dear uncle! Never mind! never mind!”

The dead were tenderly wrapped in hammocks which were heavily loaded. Theirs would be a sailor’s grave. Halcott himself read the beautiful words of the English Church service, the few that were now left of the brave crew of the Sea Flower kneeling bareheaded beside the bodies of their late comrades; more than one was weeping.

“We commit their bodies to the deep,

And their souls to Him who gave them.”

Their shipmates just patted the hammocks, before they let them slide, in a way that was very pathetic; then down, one by one, over the cliff they dropped —

“To lie where pearls lie deep.”

When Halcott returned one day from the cliff-top, some time after this sad funeral, there was a shade of greater uneasiness than usual on his face.

James was quick to note it.

“They are coming again?” he said quietly.

“You have guessed aright,” said Halcott. “And they are using the same tactics – coming up under cover of brushwood. There is no Fitz now to fire the heap, and our strength is terribly reduced.”

“Be of good cheer, Halcott – be of good cheer; it is God Himself who giveth the victory. But death cometh sooner or later to all.”

“Amen!” said Halcott; “and oh, James, I for one am almost tired of life.”

“Say not so, brother, say not so, ’tis sinful.”

How terrible is war, reader! The accounts that we read of this scourge, in papers or in books, seldom show it up in its true colours. We are told only of its glory – its tinsel show of glory. But that glory is but the gilded shell that hides the hideous kernel, consisting of sorrow, misery, murder, and rapine.

I am not poor Tandy’s judge, and shall not pretend to say whether the resolve he now made was right or wrong.

Just under the saloon was the magazine, and when the worst should come to the worst, and the savage foe burst through the outer barrier with yells and howls of victory, his child, he determined, should not be torn from his grasp, to suffer cruelty unspeakable at the hands of the foe. He would fire the magazine!

“My friends,” said Halcott, a morning or two after this, as he stood talking to his garrison of five, “the enemy is advancing in even greater force than on any previous occasion. I have but little more to say to you. Let us bid each other ‘good-bye’ just before the fight begins, and die with our swords in our hands —

“‘Like true-born British sailors.’”

The time came at last – and the enemy too.

It was one of the brightest days the Crusoes had ever witnessed on this Isle of Misfortune. Even from the cliff-top, or over the barricade, the distant islands could be seen, like emeralds afloat between sea and sky. The volcanic mountain – so clear was the air – appeared almost within gunshot of the camp.

For hours and hours there had not been a sound heard anywhere. The monster pile of brushwood, behind which those dusky, fiendish warriors hid, had been advanced to within seventy yards of the palisade, but all was silence there. Even the sea-birds had ceased their screaming. All nature was ominously hushed; the bare and blackened country around the camp lay sweltering in the noon-day heat; and the ensign on Observatory Hill had drooped, till it appeared only as a thin, red line against the upper end of the pole.

No one spoke save in a whisper.

But with a little more excitement than usual, Halcott advanced to the place where Tandy stood, rifle in hand, his pistols in his belt, waiting like the others for the inevitable.

Halcott did not even speak. He simply took his friend by the arm and pointed westward.

A cloud lay like a dark pall on the very summit of Fire Hill.

Tandy knew the meaning of it. He only shook his head, however. “Too late, I fear!” That was all he said. But hardly had the last word been spoken, before a stranger thing than that cloud on the mountain attracted attention.

A huge, smooth, house-high billow was seen gradually approaching the bay from seaward. It gathered strength, and speed too, as it came onwards, and finally it broke on the beach in one long line of curling foam, and with a sound as loud as distant thunder.

Wave after wave succeeded it, though they were neither so high nor so swift; then silence once more prevailed, and the sea was as quiet and still as before.

Not for long though.

For a few minutes’ time every man’s senses seemed to reel, and a giddy, sickly feeling passed through the brain, such as only those who have visited countries like Japan or South America have ever experienced.

It was the first shock of an earthquake!

Peal after peal of strange subterranean thunder accompanied it, and a kind of hot wave spread suddenly over the island, like a breeze blowing over a burning prairie.

The effect of these manifestations on the enemy was marvellous. For a few moments they were dumb and silent with terror; then yells of fear arose, and they fled indiscriminately away towards the sea beach, throwing away bows, arrows, and spears, and even their scanty articles of apparel, in their headlong, hurried flight.

“The fire-fiend! He comes! he comes!”

That was their cry now, and their only cry.

In a marvellously short time they were seen swarming on the beach, and in all haste dragging down and launching their great war-canoes; and in less than twenty minutes’ time they were, to the immense relief of the little garrison, afloat on the now heaving bosom of the deep.

When Halcott ran on board the hulk, I do not think he knew quite what he was doing or saying. He seemed beside himself with joy.

“Oh, live, brother James! live! Do not die and leave us now that our safety is assured. The savages have fled, they will never return. Live, brother, live?”

“Oh, live, poor uncle! live!” cried Nelda; “live for my sake, dear uncle!”

Tandy was the next to rush on board, and his first act was to catch his little daughter up, cover her face with kisses, and press her to his breast.

“And now, Halcott,” he cried at last, “there is just one more shot in the big gun. Come, let us drag her to the cliff. If I can sink but a single boat, I shall be satisfied.”

But the dying man lifted his hand, and Halcott and Tandy both drew near.

“No, brothers, no,” he murmured. “Fire not the gun – the battle is the Lord’s. He alone – hath given us the victory.”