Left to Themselves/Chapter 11
CHAPTER XI.
A NAMELESS HAVEN.
NOW, all night long those two floated. For hours there was but a step between them and death; but death kept its distance. The boat, like some treacherous, living thing, whose cruelty had been appeased in that angry overturn, was pacified now, and seemed resolved to protect the remnant of its charge. It rode lightly over crest after crest. They bailed it out as well as they could, and disposed carefully the odds and ends left in it—a shawl, a bottle, a soaked bundle of clothing—poor relics, terribly eloquent. They fought away the chill and misery of their situation as well as Philip's energy could devise, and not unsuccessfully. Before long he took the tiller in the darkness, and with straining eyes and tense nerves aided the boat to weather the subsiding seas.
They could not talk much—a few sentences here and there, and then long silence. Gerald was exhausted, and besides that his shoulder had suffered a severe wrench. He lay on his back in the bottom of the boat, staring into the gloom; for the moon had gone, and only a shimmer in the atmosphere marked where she sulked, far up above. The lad set his teeth, to keep from crying out with pain and with the dreadfulness of a situation so novel to a boy reared like a hot-house plant.
"I wonder if we will ever get out of this alive?" he thought every now and then. But he answered Philip's solicitous questions as to his welfare with a tone that nobly feigned ease and hope. Gulping and struggling down any thing like a sob, his prompt "Yes, Philip," or "No, Philip," was the only sound that carried any comfort to Touchtone's heart. "There is no use in asking questions," he said to himself. "Philip don't know any more about what is before us than I do, and I guess he hates to have to tell me so."
By and by the dragging daylight began to whiten the air. The ocean gradually paled from inkiness to lead-color, and from lead-color to streaked gray, and the gray to a yeasty milk. The dashing waves had given place to a rolling swell on which the boat was lifted, but ever seemed urged forward—whither? Dawn advanced. But such a dawn and such a day! For when the latter had fairly come the fog hung closer than ever. Hour by hour passed with no reasonable gain in the light. Whether the sun was on the one side or the other, before or behind, no man could have told. They were ever surrounded by a dirty greenish haze that made their faces more wan, and that mixed sea and air into one elastic wall, which moved with them as they moved and closed about them as they slid helplessly onward into it.
With the lessening of his strength and the rolling of the boat Gerald became deathly sick. Philip could do little for that. His own arms were stiff; every now and then a chill ran down his body that boded future discomfort if they were not soon delivered from this present one. But he kept to his post. Thanks to his determination, the boat met wave and crest with less and less motion and no mishap, and he said to himself, as he glanced at Gerald's despairing face, that he "was good for a whole day's steering, if need be, and a great deal beyond that." Fortunately, it was not cold, though the stormy chilliness made the early air sharp. In silence, except for a word from Touchtone or a sigh from Gerald, who lay in the bottom of the boat with his eyes closed, they moved onward whither waves and current might shape their sluggard's course.
Suddenly, about noon, Gerald sat up and declared he felt better. He seemed to have awakened from a stupor of weariness and sickness that had been on him.
"Let me take the tiller," he pleaded. "Indeed I can, just as well as you. You must be used up."
"Used up steering nowhere, and with hardly any sea running?" returned Philip, continuing to smile, not a little relieved to see color returned into his protégé's face, and with something like the usual tone to his voice. "Not a bit! I'm glad if you're able to move about again, though I must say you've not much occasion to do that at present. Sit down there. See how the waves have gone down. O, we're going to get along bravely presently. You'll see!"
"But which way are we going?"
"Well, that I can't positively inform you," Philip replied, trying to treat lightly the most important worry that now pressed on him, "but no great distance from land, I'm somehow inclined to think. A steamer, or something, may pick us up any hour."
"But perhaps every hour we are slipping out to sea all the farther?"
"Let us hope not. O, no! I'm sure not such bad luck as that. I—I don't think, Gerald," he added more seriously, "that you and I have been—carried through last night—to be put in worse trouble much longer. Keep up a good heart, like the brave fellow you are! We have water and biscuit enough for the time we shall need them, I'm sure." And he remembered gratefully Captain Widgins and poor Eversham's forethought. "We're drifting along the coast somewhere; we shall know before long."
"O, it has been terrible!" exclaimed Gerald, piteously. "If we only knew any thing of the others on the steamer—or about papa, or what the people on shore think about us—or how any thing is to end for us!"
"We'll know all that in good time, depend on it."
He spoke confidently; but the uncertainty of how "any thing was to end" for them was indeed a mighty weight.
"The main thing will soon be to get word to your father as soon as we can. Newspaper accounts will make him believe—well, almost any thing. Doesn't it seem about a hundred years to you since two or three days ago?" he went on, as conversationally as he could. "That funny adventure in the train—our stopping with Mr. Hilliard—last night's excitement? We can't say we haven't had a good deal crowded in, since we bid Mr. Marcy and the Ossokosee good-bye, can we? Or that we haven't had enough of a story to tell your father when we get safe and sound to Halifax?"
"I shall be glad to find out sometime what made the explosion," said Gerald, easing his position, and already decidedly more tranquil.
"So shall I. They kept it from us as long as they could, didn't they?"
"You did from me, I know," Gerald answered. He gave Philip a grateful look. "You wanted to keep me from being frightened. O, I know. I sort of suspected that. How awfully good and—thoughtful—"
"Very, very, very," Philip replied, dryly. "I wish my goodness and my thoughtfulness together had gone as far as keeping you and me safe in New York, instead of taking the Old Province."
"But—then—then," said Gerald, eagerly, "we couldn't have any such story to tell people for the rest of our lives—if we get through this part of it all right. I guess we will. I'm sure we will. Philip"—he suddenly changed his tone—"what was that quarrel, just before we put off last night, between some man—a gentleman, I think—and the captain? Don't you remember? He said his son was with us. You spoke to Mr. Eversham, too."
"It was a mistake," Philip quickly responded. "I—I happened to know it, and Captain Widgins didn't want to lose an instant. So he put a stop to the man's tongue."
The afternoon glided away in much the same way as the morning. After their rations had been apportioned and eaten Gerald slept heavily. No succoring vessel, no glimpses of the sun—fog and the sea still curtaining them around. Philip took account of their provisions. There were two boxes of biscuit, but the water was low in its can. The two light satchels that had been hanging across their shoulders, by straps, at the time of the boat's overturn had not parted their company, but they contained no eatables. Philip stared out, thinking, it seemed to him, every thing that had ever happened to him in his whole life until this afternoon as far away and unreal. Now and then he read a few pages in a battered copy of Scott's Poems that he had been carrying in his pocket for a week or two. Night came. With the last light their situation was unchanged, except that they seemed to be in a particular current which sped the boat along with uncommon persistency in a particular direction—north, south, east, or west, he surmised in turn.
Gerald broke down pitifully once. The strain and privation began to tell visibly on the little boy. Then he slept again. Pitch darkness once more. The sea was almost tranquil. Once Philip thought he heard breakers roaring afar on his right, but the faint sound died directly. To steer was useless. He was beaten down, by weariness, exposure, and sleeplessness, night and day. He would be on the alert for both. But he could not be. Unwillingly his senses grew dull, his head drooped. He lay back in the stern, thinking that he was resisting nature successfully, and that his ears and eyes, at least, were performing their self-sacrificing task. In a few moments he slept profoundly, so unwakably that he did not feel the edge of the stern-seat pressing into his neck, nor the occasional dash of a few drops of water over his face.
Awake once more? A cry of wonder and astonishment broke from his lips when he started up. It was a shout of delight that made Gerald, too, open his eyes and lift himself quickly upright.
Where were the night, the fog, the threatenings of the sea? It was a bright, golden, enchanting autumn morning, a little past sunrise. The air was clear as crystal, the sky the bluest of blue, the sea twinkling in the early rays. As far as their eyes could see on one side stretched the water, all its threats turned to one calm smile. A pale sail or two showed above the horizon. On one side opened out the limitless ocean; on the other, only some ten or twelve miles away, stretched the coast near to which they had been tossing ever since their helplessness to reach it had begun.
But there was far more than that of immediate promise that their perils were ended as suddenly as they had risen. There lay, in full view, perhaps two miles from the spot where they drifted, in a current carrying them straight in its direction, a low green island. They could see one or two white buildings, probably a farm-house and other structures. The crow of cocks and the low of a cow came to their ears distinctly. They made out from where they were several tilled fields, stone walls and fences, a hollow tract that possibly contained a pond of fresh water for cattle; and trees grew in an orchard behind the dwelling-house, around which were clumps and patches of deeper verdure. There was no mistake. They were not to be cast on any desolate shore, like some new Robinson Crusoes; but if they could make that land they would set their feet in some one of the little water-locked farms that now and then occur along the shore of the seaboard States of New England—solitary little spots that the owners sometimes make green with every thing, from corn to clover, and to the kitchen-garden of which more than one yachtsman can testify.
"Do you think we can make it?" asked Gerald. They had forgotten every thing of the stern and wearisome past, in their relief and hope.
"I should say we were going there about as straight as we could," cried Philip. "This is a wonderfully steady current. They're lazy folks there, though. No smoke from the chimneys yet, and it's a good deal after six, you say. If only we could row!"
The boat kept on its course with Philip's care. The light air blew in their faces and dashed the little waves gayly. They were going to get to shore! They were saved! They should see their friends again and tell with living lips the story of their dangers and deliverance. They almost held their breaths with hope and suspense. Still nearer and nearer they slowly drew to the island. New details and those of the farm and the farm-house—there seemed to be only one—came, bit by bit, into clearer sight. At the land's nearer edge rocks and shallows alternated and long stretches of brush or meadow sloped back. A little creek opened in view, with a rough pier built out into it, and from the rickety dock ran back a road or lane, between what appeared to be corn-fields, to the door of the house, with its high roof and two or three wings. A fence inclosed it and a garden; and some tall trees grouped themselves beside its chimney.
Thanks to friendly current and wind, they made steady progress toward their unexpected refuge. At one or two points less and less fairly in front of them the surf broke, but not to any formidable extent nor for many yards, apparently. Occasionally they did not seem to move at all. Then would come a gentle impetus, and they glided on. The sun was high in the sky, a hot autumn day was well in course before the boat drifted around and into a tiny cove quite on the landward shore of the island and back of the farm and its structures, which they must reach on foot. They grounded in a shoal. They could not secure the boat, though they were unwilling to risk its loss. At last they were compelled to do this. They attempted little carrying. Wet and panting, especially Philip, without whose assistance Gerald scarcely could have landed where they came in, they got to the firm ground.
Yes, it was not a dream! Their feet pressed earth at last. They walked slowly up the narrow, rocky beach to a stony field full of daisies and coarse grass. They turned around a buck-wheat patch, and, last, they struck a lane that apparently traversed the entire length of their unknown host's farm and premises. All was beautiful and peaceful in the sunshine of noon, though they were too exhausted and anxious to think of nature. They met nobody yet. The farm-house loomed up in the midst of its trees nearer and nearer. They plodded on wearily. Soon they came to a turn in the lane. A dog barked loudly from the edge of the garden fifty yards beyond, succeeding to a great patch of wild laurel. Philip called out a friendly "Holloa!" twice or thrice as they advanced. No one answered from right or left. Perhaps it would be well for him to go on alone for a few moments, anxious as he was to have Gerald well cared for.
"You stay here," he said, accordingly, making Gerald sit down amid the laurel in one angle of a stone wall. "I'll just walk ahead—and lecture that dog—and ring the bell and rouse the community, whatever it amounts to, and then I'll come back and carry you into it in triumph. I wont leave you a moment longer than it will take me to break the news to them that they have got a couple of shipwrecked mariners on their hands who want luncheon—or breakfast."
Gerald sat down, anxious, but nothing loath. Philip quickened his steps and went on toward the distant garden-gate and the yet silent house.