第87章

Don't tempt me to leave you in this plight, and be a cur! Live or die, Imust be the last man on her. Here's something coming out to us, the Lord in Heaven be praised!"A bright light was seen moving down the black line that held them to the shore; it descended slowly within a foot of the billows, and lighting them up showed their fearful proximity to the rope in mid-passage: they had washed off many a poor fellow at that part.

"Look at that! Thank Heaven you did not try it!" said Dodd to Mrs.

Beresford.

At tins moment a higher wave than usual swallowed up the light: there was a loud cry of dismay from the shore, and a wail of despair from the ship.

No! not lost after all! The light emerged, and mounted, and mounted towards the ship.

It came near, and showed the black shiny body of Vespasian, with very little on but a handkerchief and a lantern--the former round his waist, and the latter lashed to his back: he arrived with a "Yah! yah!" and showed his white teeth in a grin.

Mrs. Beresford clutched his shoulder, and whimpered, " Oh, Mr. Black!""Iss, Missy, dis child bring good news. Cap'n! Massah Fullalove send you his congratulations, and the compliments of the season; and take the liberty to observe the tide am turn in twenty minutes."The good news thus quaintly announced caused an outburst of joy from Dodd, and, sailor-like, he insisted on all hands joining in a cheer. The shore re-echoed it directly. And this encouraged the forlorn band still more; to hear other hearts beating for them so near. Even the intervening waves could not quite annul the sustaining power of sympathy.

At this moment came the first faint streaks of welcome dawn, and revealed their situation more fully.

The vessel lay on the edge of a sandbank. She was clean in two, the stern lying somewhat higher than the stem. The sea rolled through her amidships six feet broad, frightful to look at, and made a clean breach over her forward, all except the bowsprit to the end of which the poor sailors were now discovered to be clinging. The afterpart of the poop was out of water, and in a corner of it the goat crouched like a rabbit: four dead bodies washed about beneath the party trembling in the mizen-top, and one had got jammed in the wheel, face uppermost and glared up at them, gazing terror-stricken down.

No sign of the tide turning yet, and much reason to fear it would turn too late for them and the poor fellows shivering on the bowsprit.

These fears were well founded.

A huge sea rolled in, and turned the forepart of the vessel half over, buried the bowsprit, and washed the men off into the breakers.

Mrs. Beresford sank down, and prayed, holding Vespasian by the knee.

Fortunately, as in that vessel wrecked long syne on Melita, "the hind part of the ship stuck fast and remained immovable."But for how long?

Each wave now struck the ship's weather quarter with a sound like a cannon fired in a church, and sent the water clear into the mizen-top. It hit them like strokes of a whip. They were drenched to the skin, chilled to the bone, and frozen to the heart with fear. They made acquaintance that hour with Death. Ay, Death itself has no bitterness that forlorn cluster did not feel: only the insensibility that ends that bitterness was wanting.

Now the sea, you must know, was literally strewed with things out of the _Agra_; masts, rigging, furniture, tea-chests, bundles of canes, chairs, tables; but of all this jetsam, Dodd's eye had been for some little time fixed on one object: a live sailor drifting ashore on a great wooden case. It struck him after a while that the man made very little way, and at last seemed to go up and down in one place. By-and-bye he saw him nearer and nearer, and recognised him. It was one of the three washed off the bowsprit.

He cried joyfully, "The tide has turned! here's Thompson coming out to sea."Then there ensued a dialogue, incredible to landsmen, between these two sailors, the captain of the ship and the captain of the foretop, one perched on a stationary fragment of that vessel, the other drifting on a pianoforte, and both bawling at one another across the jaws of death.

"Thompson ahoy!"

"Hal-lo!"

"Whither bound?"

"Going out with the tide, and be d----d to me.""What, can't ye swim ?""Like a brass figure-head. It's all over with poor Jack, sir.""All over! Don't tell me! Look out now as you drift under our stern, and we'll lower you the four-inch hawser.""Lord bless you, sir, do, pray!" cried Thompson, losing his recklessness with the chance of life.

By this time the shore was black with people, and a boat was brought down to the beach, but to attempt to launch it was to be sucked out to sea.

At present all eyes were fixed on Thompson drifting to destruction.

Dodd cut the four-inch hawser, and Vespasian, on deck, lowered it with a line, so that Thompson presently drifted right athwart it. "All right, sir!" said he, grasping it, and, amidst thundering acclamations, was drawn to land full of salt water and all but insensible. The piano landed at Dunkirk three weeks later.

In the bustle of this good and smart action the tide retired perceptibly.

By-and-bye the sea struck lower and with less weight.

At 9 P. M. Dodd took his little party down on deck again, being now the safest place; for the mast might go.

It was a sad scene: the deck was now dry, and the dead bodies lay quiet around them with glassy eyes; and, grotesquely horrible, the long hair of two or three was stiff and crystallised with the saltpetre in the ship.

Mrs. Beresford clung to Vespasian: she held his bare black shoulder with one white and jewelled hand, and his wrist with the other, tight. "Oh, Mr. Black," said she, "how brave you are! It is incredible. Why, you came back! I must feel a brave man with both my hands or I shall die. Your skin is nice and soft, too. I shall never outlive this dreadful day."And now that the water was too low to wash them off the hawser, several of the ship's company came back to the ship to help the women down.