Chapter VI The Hurricane — Crusoes in Great Snake Island
Kep stepped lightly over the body of his friend, and found his way into the saloon. He sat down there, burying his face in his hands, and thanking God for something he hardly knew what.
Then the glimmer of the candle alight in the skipper’s state-room attracted his attention. It was shining through the partially open doorway, and on tiptoe fearfully he approached it.
He saw at a glance what had happened and what had been intended.
Steadily now, slowly, almost mechanically he lifted out the guttering candle.
A little flat red crust had formed on the top of the wick, and this fell off just as he entered the saloon again.
Then the poor lad fainted.
Daylight was streaming in through the skylight when Kep re-opened his eyes, and found Dolphin himself bending over him.
“Oh, it is all so terrible!” were the first words Kep uttered when Dolphin helped him on deck, and the fresh air revived him.
“There is hope though,” said the steward.
“Hope?”
“Yes, hope, friend, hope. They had locked me in forward, but I forced my way out and came aft. I thought you dead, so passed you by and entered the store-room. The mutineers had rifled this, and in doing so severed a rope and saved the ship.”
“I do not understand?”
“No; but I will tell you. It was, of course, by mere accident that the rope was severed, and the men could not have known what they had done; but that rope communicates with a sea-valve in the bilge—a hellish contrivance. I got down to the hold with the electric light, and when I pulled that rope the water was at once agitated as if by a huge spring beneath; when I let slack all was quiet again.
“And now, Kep, there are no living responsible beings on this ship but ourselves. For the mate——”
“Ah! yes; he is dead, is he not?”
“No; he was simply bound and gagged, but now, oh, horror, he is a gibbering maniac. He had been watching that candle getting shorter and shorter, knowing well what must follow. Is it any wonder he went mad?”
For long weeks Kep and the steward drifted to and fro with wind or tide in the derelict ship. They had managed to get up the dead from the charnel-house saloon, and, one by one, they were thrown overboard.
But over the Turk, who seemed peacefully sleeping, Kep shed many tears, and he was the only one they sewed up in a hammock and ballasted so that it might sink speedily down to the bottom, beyond the reach of the blue sharks with which this region abounds.
Then the mate. Well, they had cast off the ropes, for though he jabbered, he was quiet. He had apparently lost all memory, and it was sad to see him smile as he wandered about the deck touching things and trying to speak.
But on the third day he died, and was at once thrown overboard.
Strange it is, reader, that though the saying “Murder will out” does not often come true on shore, at sea it is nearly always so, and murders and mutinies on the high seas have been discovered in the most miraculous ways.
Well Dolphin, or Adolphus, as we had best now call him, in order to get the odour of that ghastly ship out of our thoughts, had taken the bearings of the land near to which the tragedy had occurred, as well as—from the mate’s own slate—its latitude and longitude.
After a time, the weather being clear and fine, Adolphus and Kep managed to set a jib and a bit of square canvas also, and glad enough they were to find that she obeyed her helm.
So they took trick and trick at the wheel, and all day long were for ever on the watch for a sail.
But they had somehow drifted far out of ocean highways, and it was weeks before they could possibly get near one again, for they were doing little more than three knots an hour.
In their spare time they did all they could to clean ship, but the terrible stench still hung around the after cabin or saloon, and so they concluded to bunk aft. This was more cheerful, and Kep found heart enough to play on his marvellous piccolo again.
He called himself Captain Vanderdecken, and so baptized the ship the Flying Dutchman.
“Ah,” he would say, “I fear, Adolph, we will never round the Cape.”
One day the sky grew thick and dark to windward and the barometer went down and down, the mercury column sinking cup-shaped, and rapidly. Something was coming.
And something did come too, with a vengeance. Cold, bitterly cold; so cold that Adolphus had to blow on his hands at the wheel; dark, too, though it was but mid-day, and hail, which was accompanied by a storm of thunder and lightning, lay on the deck inches deep.
But the strength of the two of them could not command that wheel when the tempest began to blow and roar in earnest. Their bits of sails were soon torn into rattling rags, and they themselves, drenched and worn out, sought refuge below.
Would she founder?
They expected her to almost at any moment, but the Macbeth was heavily ballasted and broad in beam; she tumbled and rolled like a log or a dead porpoise, but staggered on or was driven on. They had managed to batten down fore and aft, and perhaps that saved her, for overcome by fatigue both slept at last, and when Kep, who was first awake, managed to get up on deck, he saw that his Flying Dutchman was sadly battered; bulwarks like sheep hurdles and yards fallen; but he saw something else that astonished him still more, for around the wreck were high rocks and cliffs, with bushes on top, and upon and among these rocks the ship was hard and fast, but on a very even keel.
It did not take him long to awaken Adolphus.
“Adolph,” he shouted, as he let himself down the ladder. “Come on deck. Come at once. Here is a sight! Here is a plight!”
Adolph was quickly by his side.
“Well,” he said, after a glance about him, “this is really better than foundering, Kep.”
“Yes,” admitted Kep, “we are still above the crust; but what are we going to do? What——”
“What—indeed. There are so many ‘what’s’ about it, that I don’t know which what to ask first. You’ve never seen a tidal wave, Kep?”
“Aren’t all waves tidal?”
“Well, I don’t know. The tides are caused by the suction of the sun and moon, a German philosopher told me once. Especially the moon; and I think it was suction he said. Never mind. Sometimes a black spot grows suddenly up in the sun—that is the sun-mouth perhaps. Then he takes a bigger suck than usual, and this raises up tornadoes and whirlwinds and big, big tidal waves down below in the world here.”
“I understand.”
“Well, then, here is just what has happened. A huge, great tidal wave has been raised during the hurricane, and has rushed in up here into a kind of dry dock. It has gone now, and such another wave may not come again for a hundred years.”
“You are much wiser than I thought, Adolph.”
“No doubt, Kep; but no ordinary tide can touch us or poop us here, so we are not so badly off. We have provisions enough to last us for a year and more.”
“But we are a kind of Crusoes, aren’t we, comrade?”
“Kind of ——. Yes, true.”
“And there will be a bit of fun in being Crusoes, won’t there?”
“No doubts of that.”
“And mayn’t there be some savages on this island, if it be an island? Mayn’t there?”
“There may be.”
“And that would mean some danger, wouldn’t it, Adolph?”
“Yes—yes—yes. But really, from the way you talk, Kep, one would think you really wanted savages and danger too.”
“Oh, if we are to be Crusoes, I should like everything ship-shape, and even the mark of the naked foot in the sand.”
“I suppose, Kep, you could manage to get up the cliffs?”
“Dear me, yes, Adolphus,” answered Kep somewhat proudly; “my sister Madge and I were awfully good cragsmen. Oh, shouldn’t I like if Madge and Bounder were here.”
“Well, Madge isn’t here, and you can’t write home if you wished to. So content you.”
“But goodness knows, Adolph, there are scores and scores of empty bottles on board. Suppose we write scores and scores of letters and send them adrift in the scores and scores of bottles?”
“What would be the use?”
“Oh, some would be picked up, and then a ship would be sent to take us off.”
“Off? Do you know where we are, latitude and longitude and all that? If not, how could you tell them where to come to?”
Kep scratched his wise head. “I daresay that is the drawback,” he said.
“We’ll just have to wait till the ship comes, Kep, as patiently as a penguin on a rock.”
“But the ship is sure to come, ain’t it?”
“I reckon it will, some day.”
“And we’ll take turns at lighting fires on the rocks, and make a broom and hoist it. I think, Adolph, we can look forward to some real good fun.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure. But, I say, let us go below now, and I’ll cook a nice comfortable bit of breakfast, and then we’ll go on shore and spy out the land.”
“That’s it—spy out the land. We’ll take our guns and creep from bush to bush like real wild Cuscorora Indians, and if we meet a savage we will say, ‘O golly, foh true!’ and he’ll say ‘Ugh!’”
“Well, here are some nice red herrings and hard biscuits, and preserved eggs and coffee.”
“Any butter, waiter?” Kep was lively now.
“Yes, sir; butter, sir. Can’t quite recommend it though. Has been to sea, sir, three times before.”
These two shipwrecked mariners threw over a Jacob’s ladder and descended one at a time. Adolph went first, but found he had to jump fully eight feet to the rock below.
“Hold on, Kep,” he cried. “Don’t you jump, else you will never get up again. Haul up the Jacob and lash a rope to it; we can shin up that.”
The lad slung their rifles, and they found it easy enough to get up the rocks, though they were inhabited by malicious-looking snakes, who had come out to sun themselves.
Now, as I like to adhere most strictly to the truth, it is my duty to inform the reader that from a Crusoe point of view this island was a trifle disappointing.
First and foremost, it was only about two miles wide by three long, one bare and inhospitable-looking hill in the centre, which, from its conical shape and table-top, had doubtless been at one time, volcanic.
With the exception of this hill, all the rest of the land was covered with dense thick scrub and alive with snakes.
But there was a little lake of remarkably cool water, that was no doubt fed by springs from the higher and more hilly land they could see lying like clouds upon the horizon.
There was very little sand at the foot of the cliffs, so the mark of the savage’s foot was not likely to be traced.
No inhabitants; nothing much to speak of in the fauna line, bar a species of rock rabbit and the snakes. Birds on the rocks though, and in some parts of the woods flowers of rare beauty.
“I’m disheartened, Adolph,” said Kep.
“Yes; you look so.”
Then the boy brightened up.
“I say, Adolph, my ancient mariner. Yonder is land, isn’t there?”
“That is land. Bigger islands, I reckon, than ours.”
“Well, it might be that Crusoes might come from there. And if there were too many we could retire to our ship and give them fits from over the bulwarks. I’m just spoiling for some fun, Adolph. Here, I know what I’ll do. You saw that big grey snake that darted into a hole in yonder hillock? Well, just see if I can’t entice him out again.”
Out came the boy’s piccolo. Down he sat, and began to play some melodies from Faust.
No effect.
“You’d better,” said Adolph, “switch on Wagner.”
Kep did, and the effect seemed magical. Not one, but three of these grey horrors appeared, and their horrid though graceful movements showed that for the time they were really fascinated.
“Come back on board,” cried Adolph, “else I shall dream of these all night long.”
I’m not sorry, however, that Kep did not find the Isle of Snakes altogether to his taste, because this is not a Crusoe story. Suffice it to say, after a few weeks they found the dead and awful monotony of the place almost unbearable. Moreover, there were but few books to read, no sport to speak of, and positively nothing to do.
But weeks and weeks passed by, and still came no sail in sight. They kept fires burning as much as they could, but neither the pillar of fire by night nor the pillar of smoke by day attracted anything.
Several times they thought they saw ships in the far distance, but looking at them through a telescope these turned out to be either floating sea-birds or the dorsal fins of some solitary basking shark, with birds perching on his back.
“Why,” said Kep one day, “it is three whole months since we were cast away on this dreary shore, and never one single vessel has come near us. I tell you what it is, Dolphin, I am very weary of it all. Being a Crusoe is not half such good fun as I thought it would be.”
“And I, too,” said Adolph, “am weary.”
“Tired of shooting those big tasteless rabbit-things; tired even of catching fish, though they are nice to eat, and so are rock oysters.”
“But I say, Kep, I have a plan.”
“Oh, have you? How delightful!”
“Well, you know we have had many a wild storm since we settled here, and you remember how the ship shook with the wind only last week.”
“I won’t forget that.”
“No; and there is a bit of a list on her. She has heeled over a little to starboard.”
“Yes.”
“And the next storm that comes from the same direction will blow her over.”
“Yes.”
“Yes; and there where will we be, Kep?”
“Why, we’ll be—we’ll be blown over.”
“You don’t know the real danger, Kep. She won’t simply heel over on her beam ends; she will go clean and clear over this cliff where the tidal wave drydocked her so neatly, and ten to one we will never get out again. We should be buried alive.”
“Oh, I should hate being buried alive. Couldn’t we find a cave somewhere among the cliffs here, and shift our camp, in case of an accident.”
“But,” said Adolph, “I have found one already. Yesterday, when you were fishing from a boulder; only, you know——”
“What, only?”
“There will be the snakes to contend with.”
“Yes; that is it, and they’re thicker than the rock-rabbits. Do you think,” he added, “I could lure them away somewhere with my little flute, and murder them?”
“Well, you might try; only don’t let them get too familiar with you, else they’ll follow you everywhere, and get into your bed at night.”
“We can do our best, anyhow, Adolph. A fire in the cave to begin with would start them. Whatever men dare they can do. And there is nothing charms these snakes like Wagner.”
“Umph! Wagner never charmed me, Kep.”
“It’s all a matter of idiosyncracy, comrade. It wouldn’t do if we all went in for Bach or Beethoven nor even for ‘Annie Laurie.’ But now let us go on shore and see that cave of yours. A change is what we both need.”