University of Virginia Library

40. CHAPTER XL.

When Thurstane got into the cabin, he found it pretty nearly clear of water,
the steward having opened doors and trap-doors and drawn off the deluge into
the hold.

The first object that he saw, or could see, was Clara, curled up in a chair
which was lashed to the mast, and secured in it by a lanyard. As he paused at
the foot of the stairway to steady himself against a sickening lurch, she uttered
a cry of joy and astonishment, and held out her hand. The cry was not speech;
her gladness was far beyond words; it was simply the first utterance of nature;
it was the primal inarticulate language.

He had expected to stand at a distance and ask her leave to save her life.
Instead of that, he hurried toward her, caught her in his arms, kissed her hand
over and over, called her pet names, uttered a pathetic moan of grief and affection,
and shook with inward sobbing. He did not understand her; he still believed
that she had rejected him—believed that she only reached out to him for help.
But he never thought of charging her with being false or hard-hearted or selfish.
At the mere sight of her asking rescue of him he devoted himself to her. He
dared to kiss her and call her dearest, because it seemed to him that in this awful
moment of perhaps mortal separation he might show his love. If they were
to be torn apart by death, and sepulchred possibly in different caves of the
ocean, surely his last farewell might be a kiss.

If she talked to him, he scarcely heard her words, and did not realize their
meaning. If it was indeed true that she kissed his cheek, he thought it was
because she wanted rescue and would thank any one for it. She was, as he understood
her, like a pet animal, who licks the face of any friend in need, though
a stranger. Never mind; he loved her just the same as if she were not selfish;
he would serve her just the same as if she were still his. He unloosed her arms
from his shoulders, wondering that they should be there, and crawling with difficulty
to the cabin locker, groped in it for life-preservers. There was only one
in the vessel; that one he buckled around Clara.

“Oh, my darling!” she exclaimed; “what do you mean?”

“My darling!” he echoed, “bear it bravely. There is great danger; but
don't be afraid—I will save you.”

He had no doubts in making this promise; it seemed to him that he could
overcome the billows for her sake—that he could make himself stronger than
the powers of nature.

“Where did you come from? from another vessel?” she asked, stretching
out her arms to him again.

“I was here,” he said, taking and kissing her hands; “I was here, watching
over you. But there is no time to lose. Let me carry you.”

“They must be saved,” returned Clara, pointing to the staterooms. “Garcia
and Coronado are there.”

Should he try to deliver those enemies from death? He did not hesitate a
moment about it, but bursting open the doors of the two rooms he shouted, “On
deck with you! Into the boats! We are sinking!”

Next he set Clara down, passed his left arm around her waist, clung to things
with his right hand, dragged her up the companionway to the quarter-deck, and
lashed her to the weather shrouds, with her feet on the wooden leader. Not a
word was spoken during the five minutes occupied by this short journey. Even

while Clara was crossing the deck a frothing comber deluged her to her waist,
and Thurstane had all he could do to keep her from being flung into the lee
scuppers. But once he had her fast and temporarily safe, he made a great effort
to smile cheerfully, and said, “Never fear; I won't leave you.”

“Oh! to meet to die!” she sobbed, for the strength of the water and the
rage of the surrounding sea had frightened her. “Oh, it is cruel!”

Presently she smothered her crying, and implored, “Come up here and tie
yourself by my side; I want to hold your hand.”

He wondered whether she loved him again, now that she saw him; and in
spite of the chilling seas and the death at hand, he thrilled warm at the thought.
He was about to obey her when Coronado and Garcia appeared, pale as two
ghosts, clinging to each other, tottering and helpless. Thurstane went to them,
got the old man lashed to one of the backstays, and helped Coronado to secure
himself to another. Garcia was jabbering prayers and crying aloud like a
scared child, his jaws shaking as if in a palsy. Coronado, although seeming
resolved to bear himself like an hidalgo and maintain a grim silence, his face was
wilted and seamed with anxiety, as if he had become an old man in the night.
It was rather a fine sight to see him looking into the face of the storm with an
air of defying death and all that it might bring; and perhaps he would have
been helpful, and would have shown himself one of the bravest of the brave, had
he not been prostrated by sickness. As it was, he took little interest in the fate
of others, hardly noticing Thurstane as he resumed his post beside Clara, and
only addressing the girl with one word: “Patience!”

Clara and Thurstane, side by side and hand in hand, were also for the most
part silent, now looking around them upon their fate, and then at each other for
strength to bear it.

Meantime part of the crew had tried the pumps, and been washed away from
them twice by seas, floating helplessly about the main deck, and clutching at
rigging to save themselves, but nevertheless discovering that the brig was filling
but slowly, and would have full time to strike before she could founder.

“'Vast there!” called the captain; “'vast the pumps! All hands stand by
to launch the boats!”

“Long boat's stove!” shouted the mate, putting his hands to his mouth so
as to be heard through the gale.

“All hands aft!” was the next order. “Stand by to launch the quarter-boats!”

So the entire remaining crew—two mates and eight men, including the steward—splashed
and clambered on to the quarter-deck and took station by the
boat-falls, hanging on as they could.

“Can I do anything?” asked Thurstane.

“Not yet,” answered the captain; “you are doing what's right; take care
of the lady.”

“What are the chances?” the lieutenant ventured now to inquire.

With fate upon him, and seemingly irresistible, the skipper had dropped his
grim air of conflict and become gentle, almost resigned. His voice was friendly,
sympathetic, and quite calm, as he stepped up by Thurstane's side and said,
“We shall have a tough time of it. The land is only about ten miles away. At
this rate we shall strike it inside of three hours. I don't see how it can be
helped.”

“Where shall we strike?”

“Smack into the Bay of Monterey, between the town and Point Pinos.'

“Can I do anything?”

“Do just what you've got in hand. Take care of the lady. See that she
gets into the biggest boat—if we try the boats.”

Clara overheard, gave the skipper a kind look, and said, “Thank you, captain.”

“You're fit to be capm of a liner, miss,” returned the sailor. “You're one
of the best sort.”

For some time longer, while waiting for the final catastrophe, nothing was
done but to hold fast and gaze. The voyagers were like condemned men who
are preceded, followed, accompanied, jostled, and hurried to the place of death
by a vindictive people. The giants of the sea were coming in multitudes to
this execution which they had ordained; all the windward ocean was full of rising
and falling billows, which seemed to trample one another down in their
savage haste. There was no mercy in the formless faces which grimaced around
the doomed ones, nor in the tempestuous voices which deafened them with
threatenings and insult. The breakers seemed to signal to each other; they
were cruelly eloquent with menacing gestures. There was but one sentence
among them, and that sentence was a thousand times repeated, and it was always
Death.

To paint the shifting sublimity of the tempest is as difficult as it was to paint
the steadfast sublimity of the Great Cañon. The waves were in furious movement,
continual change, and almost incessant death. They destroyed themselves
and each other by their violence. Scarcely did one become eminent before it
was torn to pieces by its comrades, or perished of its own rage. They were
like barbarous hordes, exterminating one another or falling into dissolution,
while devastating everything in their course.

There was a frantic revelry, an indescribable pandemonium of transformations.
Lofty plumes of foam fell into hoary, flattened sheets; curling and howling
cataracts became suddenly deep hollows. The indigo slopes were marbled
with white, but not one of these mottlings retained the same shape for an instant;
it was broad, deep, and creamy when the eye first beheld it; in the next
breath it was waving, shallow, and narrow; in the next it was gone. A thousand
eddies, whirls, and ebullitions of all magnitudes appeared only to disappear.
Great and little jets of froth struggled from the agitated centres toward
the surface, and never reached it. Every one of the hundred waves which
made up each billow rapidly tossed and wallowed itself to death.

Yet there was no diminution in the spectacle, no relaxation in the combat.
In the place of what vanished there was immediately something else. Out of
the quick grave of one surge rose the white plume of another. Marbling followed
marbling, and cataract overstrode cataract. Even to their bases the
oceanic ranges and peaks were full of power, activity, and, as it were, explosions.
It seemed as if endless multitudes of transformations boiled up through
them from their abodes in sea-deep caves. There was no exhausting this reproductiveness
of form and power. At every glance a thousand worlds of
waters had perished, and a thousand worlds of waters had been created. And
all these worlds, the new even more than the old, were full of malignity toward
the wreck, and bent on its destruction.

The wind, though invisible, was not less wonderful. It surpassed the ocean
in strength, for it chased, gashed, and deformed the ocean. It inflicted upon it
countless wounds, slashing fresh ones as fast as others healed. It not only tore
off the hoary scalps of the billows and flung them through the air, but it wrenched

out and hurled large masses of water, scattering them in rain and mist, the
blood of the sea. Now and then it made all the air dense with spray, causing
the Pacific to resemble the Sahara in a simoom. At other times it levelled the
tops of scores of waves at once, crushing and kneading them by the immense
force that lay in its swiftness.

It would not be looked in the face; it blinded the eyes that strove to search
it; it seemed to flap and beat them with harsh, churlish wings; it was as full
of insult as the billows. Its cry was not multitudinous like that of the sea, but
one and incessant and invariable, a long scream that almost hissed. On reaching
the wreck, however, this shriek became hoarse with rage, and howled as it
shook the rigging. It used the shrouds and stays of the still upright mainmast
as an æolian harp from which to draw horrible music. It made the tense ropes
tremble and thrill, and tortured the spars until they wailed a death-song. Its force
as felt by the shipwrecked ones was astonishing; it beat them about as if it
were a sea, and bruised them against the shrouds and bulwarks; it asserted its
mastery over them with the long-drawn cruelty of a tiger.

Just around the wreck the tumult of both wind and sea was of course more
horrible than anywhere else. These enemies were infuriated by the sluggishness
of the disabled hulk; they treated it as Indians treat a captive who cannot
keep up with their march; they belabored it with blows and insulted it with
howls. The brig, constantly tossed and dropped and shoved, was never still
for an instant. It rolled heavily and somewhat slowly, but with perpetual jerks
and jars, shuddering at every concussion. Its only regularity of movement lay
in this, that the force of the wind and direction of the waves kept it larboard
side on, drifting steadily toward the land.

One moment it was on a lofty crest, seeming as if it would be hurled into
air. The next it was rolling in the trough of the sea, between a wave which
hoarsely threatened to engulf it, and another which rushed seething and hissing
from beneath the keel. The deck stood mostly at a steep angle, the weather
bulwarks being at a considerable elevation, and the lee ones dipping the surges.
Against this helpless and partially water-logged mass the combers rushed incessantly,
hiding it every few seconds with sheets of spray, and often sweeping it
with deluges. Around the stern and bow the rush of bubbling, roaring whirls
was uninterrupted.

The motion was sickly and dismaying, like the throes of one who is dying.
It could not be trusted; it dropped away under the feet traitorously; then, by
an insolent surprise, it violently stopped or lifted. It was made the more uncertain
and distressing by the swaying of the water which had entered the hull.
Sometimes, too, the under boiling of a crushed billow caused a great lurch to
windward; and after each of these struggles came a reel to leeward which
threatened to turn the wreck bottom up; the breakers meantime leaping aboard
with loud stampings as if resolved to beat through the deck.

During hours of this tossing and plunging, this tearing of the wind and battering
of the sea, no one was lost. The sailors were clustered around the boats,
some clinging to the davits and others lashed to belaying pins, exhausted by
long labor, want of sleep, and constant soakings, but ready to fight for life to
the last. Coronado and Garcia were still fast to the backstays, the former a
good deal wilted by his hardships, and the latter whimpering. Thurstane had
literally seized up Clara to the outside of the weather shrounds, so that, although
she was terribly jammed by the wind, she could not be carried away by it, while

she was above the heaviest pounding of the seas. His own position was alongside
of her, secured in like manner by ends of cordage.

Sometimes he held her hand, and sometimes her waist. She could lean her
shoulder against his, and she did so nearly all the while. Her eyes were fixed
as often on his face as on the breakers which threatened her life. The few
words that she spoke were more likely to be confessions of love than of terror.
Now and then, when a billow of unusual size had slipped harmlessly by, he
gratefully and almost joyously drew her close to him, uttering a few syllables of
cheer. She thanked him by sending all her affectionate heart through her eyes
into his.

Although there had been no explanations as to the past, they understood
each other's present feelings. It could not be, he was sure, that she clung to him
thus and looked at him thus merely because she wanted him to save her life.
She had been detached from him by others, he said; she had been drawn away
from thinking of him during his absence; she had been brought to judge, perhaps
wisely, that she ought not to marry a poor man; but now that she saw
him again she loved him as of old, and, standing at death's door, she felt at
liberty to confess it. Thus did he translate to himself a past that had no existence.
He still believed that she had dismissed him, and that she had done it
with cruel harshness. But he could not resent her conduct; he believed what
he did and forgave her; he believed it, and loved her.

There were moments when it was delightful for them to be as they were.
As they held fast to each other, though drenched and exhausted and in mortal
peril, they had a sensation as if they were warm. The hearts were beating hotly
clean through the wet frames and the dripping clothing.

“Oh, my love!” was a phrase which Clara repeated many times with an air
of deep content.

Once she said, “My love, I never thought to die so easily. How horrible it
would have been without you!”

Again she murmured, “I have prayed many, many times to have you. I did
not know how the answer would come. But this is it.”

“My darling, I have had visions about you,” was another of these confessions.
“When I had been praying for you nearly all one night, there was a great
light came into the room. It was some promise for you. I knew it was then;
something told me so. Oh, how happy I was!”

Presently she added, “My dear love, we shall be just as happy as that. We
shall live in great light together. God will be pleased to see plainly how we love
each other.”

Her only complaints were a patient “Isn't it hard?” when a new billow had
covered her from head to foot, crushed her pitilessly against the shrouds, and
nearly smothered her.

The next words would perhaps be, “I am so sorry for you, my darling. I
wish for your sake that you had not come. But oh, how you help me!”

“I am glad to be here,” firmly and honestly and passionately responded the
young man, raising her wet hand and covering it with kisses. “But you shall
not die.”

He was bearing like a man and she like a woman. He was resolved to
fight his battle to the last; she was weak, resigned, gentle, and ready for heaven.

The land, even to its minor features, was now distinctly visible, not more than
a mile to leeward. As they rose on the billows they could distinguish the long
beach, the grassy slopes, and wooded knolls beyond it, the green lawn on which

stood the village of Monterey, the whitewashed walls and red-tiled roofs of the
houses, and the groups of people who were watching the oncoming tragedy.

“Are you not going to launch the boats?” shouted Thurstane after a glance
at the awful line of frothing breakers which careered back and forth athwart the
beach.

“They are both stove,” returned the captain calmly. “We must go ashore
as we are.”