His Unknown Wife

Then the captain opened one of the three bottles of claret stored in a locker, and portioned out the contents among the survivors.

There was no need to measure the share of a heavily-built Spaniard who was reputed to be a wealthy rancher from the Argentine. His spine was broken when the ship lurched over the reef. He was found dead when they tried to move him to the sheltered corner.

And now a pall of darkness spread swiftly over the face of the waters. The tide fell, but the ship sank with it. She no longer rocked and shook under the blows of the waves. It seemed as though she knew herself crippled beyond all hope of succor, and only awaited another tide to meet annihilation.

Wind and sea were more furious than ever. In all likelihood, the gale would blow itself out next day. But long before dawn the rising tide would have made short work of what was left of the Southern Cross.

Never was a small company of Christian people in a more hopeless position. Every boat was gone. They had no food. They were wet to the skin, and pierced with bitter cold. Even the hardy captain’s teeth chattered as he took a pipe from his pocket, rolled some tobacco between the palms of his hands, and said smilingly to those near him:

“This is one of the occasions when a water-tight pipe-lighter is a real treasure. Who’d like a smoke? You must find your own pipes. I can supply some ’baccy and a light!”

CHAPTER VIII

ONE CHANCE IN A MILLION

Maseden was badly hurt and quite stunned. Of that there could be no manner of doubt. He was blissfully unaware of the destruction of the ship, and did not regain his senses until long after the captain and some few of the men gathered in the dismantled chart-room had indulged in what was to prove their last pipeful of tobacco.

Even when a species of ordered perception was restored he was wholly unable during an hour or more to collect his wits sufficiently to understand just what had happened.

Certain phenomena were vaguely disturbing; that was all. He knew, for instance, that the Southern Cross was wrecked, because the deck was tilted permanently at an alarming angle. As the downward slope was forward, however, and his bunk lay across it and on the forward side of the door the physical outcome was by no means unpleasant, since his body was wedged comfortably between the mattress and the bulkhead.

He was dry and warm. The weather-proof garments of the pampas were admirably adapted to resist exposure, while the pitch of the deck, aided by the conformation of the bows, diminished the striking power of the waves and carried the spray and broken water clean over the remains of the forecastle.

Maseden’s position resembled that of a man ensconced in a dry niche of a cave behind a waterfall. So long as he did not move and the cavern held intact he was safe and comfortable. Happily, a long time elapsed between the first glimmer of consciousness and the moment when the knowledge was borne in on him that he was actually beset by immediate and most deadly peril.

He imagined that the ship had been cast ashore after he met with some rather serious accident, that some kind Samaritan had tucked him into his own berth, and that, in due course, some one would look in on him with a cheery inquiry as to how he was faring. His answer would have been that his head ached abominably, that his mouth and throat were on fire, and that a long drink of cold water was the one thing needed to send him to sleep and speedy recovery.

He did not realize that when he dropped face downward into the folds of the sail he had swallowed a quantity of salt water lodged there instantly by the pelting seas. It was not until he moved, and yielded to a fit of vomiting, which relieved the pain in his head and cleared his faculties, that the dreadful truth began to dawn in his mind.

Once, however, the process of clear reasoning set in, it developed rapidly. He noticed, in the first instance, that the angle of the deck was becoming steeper. It was strange, he thought, that although the light was failing, no one came near. His ears, too, told him that seas were still hammering furiously on every side.

Finally, a marked movement of the forecastle as it slipped over a smooth rock race, owing to the increase of dead weight brought about by the falling tide, induced a species of alarmed curiosity which proved a most potent tonic. At one moment feeling hardly able to move, the next he was scrambling out of the bunk and climbing crab-like through the doorway.

Then he saw that the forecastle deck had been torn away in line with the forward bulkhead of the fore hold. With some difficulty, being still physically weak and shaken, he raised head and shoulders above this jagged edge and peered over.

Then he understood. The ship was in pieces on the reef. Two bits of her still remained; the forecastle, a stubborn wedge nearly always the last part of a steel-built vessel to collapse, and the bridge, with its backing of the chart house. All else had gone – the funnels had fallen an hour earlier.

Even the steel plates and stout wood work of the superstructure had melted away from the six strong ribs to which the sunken engines were bolted, leaving the bridge and chart house in air.

Already, too, one of the six pillars which had proved the salvation of that forlorn aerie had yielded to the strain and snapped. In the half-light it was difficult to discern just what support was given to the squat rectangle of the chart-house; Maseden had to look long and steadily through the flying scud before he gathered the exact facts.

The upper deck of the forecastle shut off any glimpse of the cliffs. All he could see was the reef, much more visible now, but still partially submerged by every sea; beyond it, a howling wilderness of broken water, and in the midst of this depressing picture, the ghost-like chart-house and bridge.

But he recalled vividly enough the sight of an awesome precipice close at hand before something had hit him and robbed him of senses. If the ship, or what was left of her, was lodged on the reef towards which she was being driven at the time of his mishap, the shore could not be far distant.

Within a foot of where he lay on the deck, clinging to it as a man might save himself from falling off the steeply-pitched roof of a house, was the big bole of the foremast, on which the rings of the sails formed a sort of ladder. He pulled himself up, stretched his body along the mast in the opposite direction, and made out the uneven summit of the cliff above the straight line of the upper deck.

He was exposed to the weather here, but the waves were not breaking across the forecastle now, and the spray and biting wind tended rather to dissipate the feeling of lassitude which had proved quite overpowering while he remained in the bunk. He raised himself cautiously another foot or so, and the rugged wall of the precipice loomed so close that at first he fancied the wreck was touching it.

The broken topmast, however, swaying in the wind, and still held to its more solid support by a couple of wire stays, pointed drunkenly at the cliff, and the pulley dangling from it was occasionally dashed by the gale against an overhanging ledge.

Even while Maseden was arriving at a pretty accurate estimate of the way in which he had been injured – because he now recalled the parting of the anchor cable – the forecastle moved again, the wet and frowning wall became even more visible, and although an awesome gap intervened, the swaying, pointed spar seemed to offer a fantastic glimpse of a means of escape.

As yet, the truck, or top of the mast, was fully sixteen feet distant from the face of the cliff. But it had been twenty feet or more distant a moment ago, and that last movement of the hull had lessened the width of the chasm.

What if the spar jammed? Could a man obtain foothold on that slimy rock surface?

He thought it possible. A deep crevice seemed to promise some vague prospect of upward progress to one who could climb, and to whom any risk was preferable to the certain fate which must attend remaining on the wreck during the coming tide.

But, notwithstanding his partial recovery, he still felt very feeble and quite unequal to more exertion. As nothing in the way of an attempt to save his life was possible until the broken topmast was lodged firmly against the cliff, he wondered whether he would find some sort of food in the forecastle.

It was improbable, of course. Meals were brought from the cook’s galley amidships, and utensils only were stored in the lockers of the dingy saloon in which he and many of the sailors used to eat.

Still, spurred by the necessity of doing something to take his mind off the fearsome alternative should the forecastle topple over sideways, or even remain in its present position, he turned his back on the cliff. With never a glance at the bridge, he regained the sloping deck, lowered himself to the doorway of his own cabin, and peered into the gloom in the effort to determine how best and where to begin his search.

At first his heart sank, because the saloon was awash. Then he remembered the Spanish sailor’s queer offer of a bottle of brandy, stored in a kit-bag in number seven berth, “the lowest bunk on the left.”

Number seven! Had he not seen the man at odd times entering or leaving the second cabin on the port side? At any rate, there was no harm in trying.

Crawling farther into the darkness, he walked on what was normally the cross bulkhead of the saloon, groped to a doorway, found a kit-bag in the stated position, opened it, and came upon a bottle of brandy!

He drank a little. Luckily it was not the raw spirit beloved of such men as its late owner, but sound, mellow liquor, which the Spaniard had probably bought as a medicine.

Be that as it may, the brandy exercised the magical effect which good cognac always produces in those wise enough not to vitiate the blood with alcohol when in robust health. For the first time since he was struck down, Maseden felt himself capable of putting forth physical effort involving sustained muscular exertion.

He returned to his own cabin, secured the poncho, or cloak, and wrapped the bottle in it. Rummaging round in the dark, he laid hands on a strap, with which he buckled the folded poncho tightly to his shoulders. Then reviewing the prospects which awaited an unfortunate castaway on that inhospitable coast, he endeavored to get at his own trunk.

Therein, however, he failed. The iron frame of the bunk had buckled, and the trunk was held as in a vise.

Realizing that he had very little time before the light in the interior of the forecastle would vanish altogether, he hurried back to the Spaniard’s berth and hauled out the kit-bag. He had an uncomfortable feeling that he was robbing the dead, but if it were practicable to land any sort of stores the effort should be made.

He had not a moment to spare for further search. The forecastle slipped again, and he experienced no little difficulty in regaining his perch on the solid stump of the foremast, on which, so nearly had it approached the horizontal, he could sit quite easily.

The dangling spar, he estimated, was now about eight feet from the cliff. Would it catch the rock wall while any glimmer of light remained, or would some new movement of the wreck divert its progress? He could only hope for the best and be ready to seize the opportunity when, if ever, it presented itself.

To his thinking, the gale was moderating; but he dared not indulge in the smallest hope that the forecastle would live through the next tide. The heavy swell of the Pacific after a westerly storm would create a worse sea on the reef than that already experienced. Probably the breakers would be more destructive immediately after than during the gale.

It was at that moment, when in a plight seldom equaled and never surpassed by any man destined to survive a disastrous shipwreck, that Maseden’s thoughts reverted to his fellow passengers. There was no need to watch the spar, since he could not fail to become aware of any further movement of the forecastle, so he lashed the kit-bag to a sail ring, again turned his back on the cliff, and gave close attention to the chart-house.

Despite the increasing darkness it was a good deal more visible now than when he had looked that way earlier. No dense clouds of spray or spindrift intervened; hence he noticed for the first time the improvised shutters which had replaced the glass front of the structure on the seaward side.

He was wondering whether or not it was possible that some one might still be living on the only other part of the ship still intact, when he became aware of a figure silhouetted against the sky above the canvas screen of the bridge.

It was, in fact, the captain, who crept out of the chart-house every now and then to examine the state of the iron uprights and the condition of the reef. The gallant old sailor had abandoned, or never formed, any notion of escape, because nothing could live for an instant on the reef itself, and he could not possibly detect the chance of salvation offered by the broken mast. But the nature of the man demanded that he should keep watch and ward over those committed to his care. In all likelihood he experienced a vague sense of relief in being able to discharge even the melancholy duty of noting the gradual breaking-up of the supports.

Three had gone, two on the port side and one on the starboard. When the third stanchion yielded on the port side, bridge and chart-room would fall with a crash and there would be an end. He said nothing of this to the unhappy company within.

“The weather is improving,” he told them cheerfully, as Maseden heard later. “I can’t honestly give you any prospect of escape, but – while there’s life there’s hope!”