CHAPTER XIII

THE LOSS OF THE BRIG

It was already late at night, and as dark as it ever would be at
that season of the year (and that is to say, it was still pretty
bright), when Hoseason clapped his head into the round-house
door.

"Here," said he, "come out and see if ye can pilot."

"Is this one of your tricks?" asked Alan.

"Do I look like tricks?" cries the captain. "I have other things
to think of -- my brig's in danger!"

By the concerned look of his face, and, above all, by the sharp
tones in which he spoke of his brig, it was plain to both of us
he was in deadly earnest; and so Alan and I, with no great fear
of treachery, stepped on deck.

The sky was clear; it blew hard, and was bitter cold; a great
deal of daylight lingered; and the moon, which was nearly full,
shone brightly. The brig was close hauled, so as to round the
southwest corner of the Island of Mull, the hills of which (and
Ben More above them all, with a wisp of mist upon the top of it)
lay full upon the lar-board bow. Though it was no good point of
sailing for the Covenant, she tore through the seas at a great
rate, pitching and straining, and pursued by the westerly swell.

Altogether it was no such ill night to keep the seas in; and I
had begun to wonder what it was that sat so heavily upon the
captain, when the brig rising suddenly on the top of a high
swell, he pointed and cried to us to look. Away on the lee bow,
a thing like a fountain rose out of the moonlit sea, and
immediately after we heard a low sound of roaring.

"What do ye call that?" asked the captain, gloomily.

"The sea breaking on a reef," said Alan. "And now ye ken where
it is; and what better would ye have?"

"Ay," said Hoseason, "if it was the only one."

And sure enough, just as he spoke there came a second fountain
farther to the south.

"There!" said Hoseason. "Ye see for yourself. If I had kent of
these reefs, if I had had a chart, or if Shuan had been spared,
it's not sixty guineas, no, nor six hundred, would have made me
risk my brig in sic a stoneyard! But you, sir, that was to pilot
us, have ye never a word?"

"I'm thinking," said Alan, "these'll be what they call the Torran
Rocks."

"Are there many of them?" says the captain.

"Truly, sir, I am nae pilot," said Alan; "but it sticks in my
mind there are ten miles of them."

Mr. Riach and the captain looked at each other.

"There's a way through them, I suppose?" said the captain.

"Doubtless," said Alan, "but where? But it somehow runs in my
mind once more that it is clearer under the land."

"So?" said Hoseason. "We'll have to haul our wind then, Mr.
Riach; we'll have to come as near in about the end of Mull as we
can take her, sir; and even then we'll have the land to kep the
wind off us, and that stoneyard on our lee. Well, we're in for
it now, and may as well crack on."

With that he gave an order to the steersman, and sent Riach to
the foretop. There were only five men on deck, counting the
officers; these being all that were fit (or, at least, both fit
and willing) for their work. So, as I say, it fell to Mr. Riach
to go aloft, and he sat there looking out and hailing the deck
with news of all he saw.

"The sea to the south is thick," he cried; and then, after a
while, "it does seem clearer in by the land."

"Well, sir," said Hoseason to Alan, "we'll try your way of it.
But I think I might as well trust to a blind fiddler. Pray God
you're right."

"Pray God I am!" says Alan to me. "But where did I hear it?
Well, well, it will be as it must."

As we got nearer to the turn of the land the reefs began to be
sown here and there on our very path; and Mr. Riach sometimes
cried down to us to change the course. Sometimes, indeed, none
too soon; for one reef was so close on the brig's weather board
that when a sea burst upon it the lighter sprays fell upon her
deck and wetted us like rain.

The brightness of the night showed us these perils as clearly as
by day, which was, perhaps, the more alarming. It showed me,
too, the face of the captain as he stood by the steersman, now on
one foot, now on the other, and sometimes blowing in his hands,
but still listening and looking and as steady as steel. Neither
he nor Mr. Riach had shown well in the fighting; but I saw they
were brave in their own trade, and admired them all the more
because I found Alan very white.

"Ochone, David," says he, "this is no the kind of death I fancy!"

"What, Alan!" I cried, "you're not afraid?"

"No," said he, wetting his lips, "but you'll allow, yourself,
it's a cold ending."

By this time, now and then sheering to one side or the other to
avoid a reef, but still hugging the wind and the land, we had got
round Iona and begun to come alongside Mull. The tide at the
tail of the land ran very strong, and threw the brig about. Two
hands were put to the helm, and Hoseason himself would sometimes
lend a help; and it was strange to see three strong men throw
their weight upon the tiller, and it (like a living thing)
struggle against and drive them back. This would have been the
greater danger had not the sea been for some while free of
obstacles. Mr. Riach, besides, announced from the top that he
saw clear water ahead.

"Ye were right," said Hoseason to Alan. "Ye have saved the brig,
sir. I'll mind that when we come to clear accounts." And I
believe he not only meant what he said, but would have done it;
so high a place did the Covenant hold in his affections.

But this is matter only for conjecture, things having gone
otherwise than he forecast.

"Keep her away a point," sings out Mr. Riach. "Reef to
windward!"

And just at the same time the tide caught the brig, and threw the
wind out of her sails. She came round into the wind like a top,
and the next moment struck the reef with such a dunch as threw us
all flat upon the deck, and came near to shake Mr. Riach from his
place upon the mast.

I was on my feet in a minute. The reef on which we had struck
was close in under the southwest end of Mull, off a little isle
they call Earraid, which lay low and black upon the larboard.
Sometimes the swell broke clean over us; sometimes it only ground
the poor brig upon the reef, so that we could hear her beat
herself to pieces; and what with the great noise of the sails,
and the singing of the wind, and the flying of the spray in the
moonlight, and the sense of danger, I think my head must have
been partly turned, for I could scarcely understand the things I
saw.

Presently I observed Mr. Riach and the seamen busy round the
skiff, and, still in the same blank, ran over to assist them; and
as soon as I set my hand to work, my mind came clear again. It
was no very easy task, for the skiff lay amidships and was full
of hamper, and the breaking of the heavier seas continually
forced us to give over and hold on; but we all wrought like
horses while we could.

Meanwhile such of the wounded as could move came clambering out
of the fore-scuttle and began to help; while the rest that lay
helpless in their bunks harrowed me with screaming and begging to
be saved.

The captain took no part. It seemed he was struck stupid. He
stood holding by the shrouds, talking to himself and groaning out
aloud whenever the ship hammered on the rock. His brig was like
wife and child to him; he had looked on, day by day, at the
mishandling of poor Ransome; but when it came to the brig, he
seemed to suffer along with her.

All the time of our working at the boat, I remember only one
other thing: that I asked Alan, looking across at the shore, what
country it was; and he answered, it was the worst possible for
him, for it was a land of the Campbells.

We had one of the wounded men told off to keep a watch upon the
seas and cry us warning. Well, we had the boat about ready to be
launched, when this man sang out pretty shrill: "For God's sake,
hold on!" We knew by his tone that it was something more than
ordinary; and sure enough, there followed a sea so huge that it
lifted the brig right up and canted her over on her beam.
Whether the cry came too late, or my hold was too weak, I know
not; but at the sudden tilting of the ship I was cast clean over
the bulwarks into the sea.

I went down, and drank my fill, and then came up, and got a blink
of the moon, and then down again. They say a man sinks a third
time for good. I cannot be made like other folk, then; for I
would not like to write how often I went down, or how often I
came up again. All the while, I was being hurled along, and
beaten upon and choked, and then swallowed whole; and the thing
was so distracting to my wits, that I was neither sorry nor
afraid.

Presently, I found I was holding to a spar, which helped me
somewhat. And then all of a sudden I was in quiet water, and
began to come to myself.

It was the spare yard I had got hold of, and I was amazed to see
how far I had travelled from the brig. I hailed her, indeed; but
it was plain she was already out of cry. She was still holding
together; but whether or not they had yet launched the boat, I
was too far off and too low down to see.

While I was hailing the brig, I spied a tract of water lying
between us where no great waves came, but which yet boiled white
all over and bristled in the moon with rings and bubbles.
Sometimes the whole tract swung to one side, like the tail of a
live serpent; sometimes, for a glimpse, it would all disappear
and then boil up again. What it was I had no guess, which for
the time increased my fear of it; but I now know it must have
been the roost or tide race, which had carried me away so fast
and tumbled me about so cruelly, and at last, as if tired of that
play, had flung out me and the spare yard upon its landward
margin.

I now lay quite becalmed, and began to feel that a man can die of
cold as well as of drowning. The shores of Earraid were close
in; I could see in the moonlight the dots of heather and the
sparkling of the mica in the rocks.

"Well," thought I to myself, "if I cannot get as far as that,
it's strange!"

I had no skill of swimming, Essen Water being small in our
neighbourhood; but when I laid hold upon the yard with both arms,
and kicked out with both feet, I soon begun to find that I was
moving. Hard work it was, and mortally slow; but in about an
hour of kicking and splashing, I had got well in between the
points of a sandy bay surrounded by low hills.

The sea was here quite quiet; there was no sound of any surf; the
moon shone clear; and I thought in my heart I had never seen a
place so desert and desolate. But it was dry land; and when at
last it grew so shallow that I could leave the yard and wade
ashore upon my feet, I cannot tell if I was more tired or more
grateful. Both, at least, I was: tired as I never was before
that night; and grateful to God as I trust I have been often,
though never with more cause.

****

Top of Page

< BACK    NEXT >

| Home | Reading Room | KIDNAPPED