Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0062/00626.txt

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$Title{(A) Message From The Sea
Chapter IV - Part II}
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$Author{Dickens, Charles}
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$Subject{says
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$Date{}
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Title:       (A) Message From The Sea
Author:      Dickens, Charles

Chapter IV - Part II

     The knowledge that the Message had reached him by mortal means - on the
word of a seaman, I half doubled it when I first set eyes on the paper! -
eased me in my mind; and I now did my best to quiet Alfred, in my turn.  I
told him that I was in my right senses, though sorely troubled, when my hand
had written those words.  Also, that where the writing was rubbed out, I could
tell him, for his necessary guidance and mine, what once stood in the empty
places.  Also, that I knew no more what the real truth might be than he did,
till inquiry was made, and the slander on father's good name was dragged
boldly into daylight to show itself for what it was worth.  Lastly, that all
the voyage home there was one hope and one determination uppermost in my mind,
- the hope that I might get safe to England, and find my wife and kindred
alive to take me back among them again, - the determination that I would put
the doubt about father's five hundred pounds to the proof, if ever my feet
touched English land once more.

     "Come out with me now, Alfred," I said, after winding up as above, "and
let me tell you in the quiet of the morning how that Message came to be
written and committed to the sea."

     We went downstairs softly, and let ourselves out without disturbing any
one.  The sun was just rising when we left the village and took our way slowly
over the cliffs.  As soon as the sea began to open on us I returned to that
true story of mine which I had left but half told the night before, - and this
time I went through with it to the end.

     I shipped, as you may remember (were my first words to Alfred), in a
second mate's berth, on board the Peruvian, nine hundred tons' burden.  We
carried an assorted cargo, and we were bound round the Horn, to Truxillo and
Guayaquil, on the western coast of South America.  From this last port -
namely, Guayaquil - we were to go back to Truxillo, and there to take in
another cargo for the return voyage.  Those were all the instructions
communicated to me when I signed articles with the owners, in London City,
three years ago.

     After we had been, I think, a week at sea, I heard from the first mate, -
who had himself heard it from the captain, - that the supercargo we were
taking with us, on the outward voyage, was to be left at Truxillo, and that
another supercargo (also connected with our firm, and latterly employed by
them as their foreign agent) was to ship with us at that port for the voyage
home.  His name on the captain's instructions was Mr. Lawrence Clissold.  None
of us had ever set eyes on him to our knowledge, and none of us knew more
about him than what I have told you here.

     We had a wonderful voyage out, especially round the Horn.  I never before
saw such fair weather in that infernal latitude, and I never expect to see the
like again.  We followed our instructions to the letter, discharging our cargo
in fine condition, and returning to Truxillo to load again as directed.  At
this place I was so unfortunate as to be seized with the fever of the country,
which laid me on my back, while we were in harbour; and which only let me
return to my duty after we had been ten days at sea, on the voyage home again.
For this reason, the first morning when I was able to get on deck was also the
first time of my setting eyes on our new supercargo, Mr. Lawrence Clissold.

     I found him to be a long, lean, wiry man, with some complaint in his eyes
which forced him to wear spectacles of blue glass.  His age appeared to be
fifty-six, or thereabouts; but he might well have been more.  There was not
above a handful of gray hair, altogether, on his bald head, - and as for the
wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and the side of his mouth, if he could
have had a pound apiece in his pocket for every one of them, he might have
retired from business from that time forth.  Judging by certain signs in his
face, and by a suspicious morning-tremble in his hands, I set him down, in my
own mind (rightly enough, as it afterwards turned out), for a drinker.  In one
word, I didn't like the looks of the new supercargo; and, on the first day
when I got on deck, I found that he had reasons of his own for paying me back
in my own coin, and not liking my looks, either.

     "I've been asking the captain about you," were his first words to me in
return for my civilly wishing him good-morning.  "You're name's Raybrock, I
hear.  Are you any relation to the late Hugh Raybrock, of Barnstaple,
Devonshire?"

     "Rather a near relation," I made answer.  "I am the late Hugh Raybrock's
eldest son."

     There was no telling how his eyes looked, because they were hidden by his
blue spectacles, but I saw him wince at the mouth when I gave him that reply.

     "Your father ended by failing in business; didn't he?" was the next
question the supercargo put to me.

     "Who told you he failed?" I asked, sharply enough.

     "Oh, I heard it!" says Mr. Lawrence Clissold, both looking and speaking
as if he was glad to have heard it, and he hoped it was true.

     "Whoever told you my father failed in business told you a lie," I said.
"His business fell off towards the last years of his life, - I don't deny it.
But every creditor he had was honestly paid at his death, without so much as
touching the provision left for his widow and children. Please to mention that
next time you hear it reported that my father failed in business."

     Mr. Clissold grinned to himself, and I lost my temper.

     "I'll tell you what," I said to him, "I don't like your laughing to
yourself when I ask you to do justice to my father's memory; and, what is
more, I didn't like the way you mentioned that report of his failing in
business, just now.  You looked as if you hoped it was true."

     "Perhaps I did," says Mr. Clissold, coolly.  "Shall I tell you why? When
I was a young man I was unlucky enough to owe your father some money. He was a
merciless creditor, and he threatened me with a prison if the debt remained
unpaid on the day when it was due.  I have never forgotten that circumstance;
and I should certainly not have been sorry if your father's creditors had
given him a lesson in forbearance, by treating him as harshly as he once
treated me."

     "My father had a right to ask for his own," I broke out.  "If you owed
him the money and didn't pay it - "

     "I never told you I didn't pay it," says Mr. Clissold, as coolly as ever.

     "Well, if you did pay it," I put in, "then you didn't go to prison, and
you have no cause of complaint now.  My father wronged nobody; and I won't
believe he ever wronged you.  He was a just man in all his dealings; and
whoever tells me to the contrary - "

     "That will do," says Mr. Clissold, backing away to the cabin stairs. "You
seem to have not quite got over your fever yet.  I'll leave you to air
yourself in the sea-breeze, Mr. Second Mate; and I'll receive your excuses
when you are cool enough to make them."

     "It is a son's business to defend his father's character," I answered;
"and, cool or hot, I'll leave the ship sooner than ask your pardon for doing
my duty!"

     "You will leave the ship!" says the supercargo, quietly going down into
the cabin.  "You will leave at the next port, if I have any interest with the
captain."

     That was how Mr. Clissold and I scraped acquaintance on the first day
when we met together!  And as we began, so we went on to the end.  But though
he persecuted me in almost every other way, he did not anger me again about
father's affairs; he seemed to have dropped talking of them at once and
forever.  On my side I nevertheless bore in mind what he had said to me, and
determined, if I got home safe, to go to the lawyer at Barnstaple who keeps
father's old books and letters for us, and see what information they might
give on the subject of Mr. Lawrence Clissold.  I myself had never heard his
name mentioned at home, - father (as you know, Alfred) being always close
about business-matters, and mother never troubling him with idle questions
about his affairs.  But it was likely enough that he and Mr. Clissold might
have been concerned in money-matters, in past years, and that Mr. Clissold
might have tried to cheat him, and failed.  I rather hoped it might prove to
be so, - for the truth is, the supercargo provoked me past all endurance, and
I hated him as heartily as he hated me.

     All this while the ship was making such a speedy voyage down the coast
that we began to think we were carrying back with us the fine weather we had
brought out.  But on nearing Cape Horn the signs and tokens appeared which
told us that our run of luck was at an end.  Down went the barometer, lower
and lower; and up got the wind in the northerly quarter, higher and higher.
This happened toward nightfall, and at daybreak next day we found ourselves
forced to lay to.  It blew all that day and all that night; toward noon the
next day it lulled a little, and we made sail again.  But at sunset the
heavens grew blacker than ever, and the wind returned upon us with double and
treble fury.  The Peruvian was a fine, stout, roomy ship, but the unhandiest
vessel at laying to I ever sailed in.  After taking tons of water on board and
losing our best boat, we had nothing left for it but to turn tail and scud for
our lives.  For the next three days and nights we ran before the wind.  The
gale moderated more than once in that time, but there was such a sea on that
we durstn't heave the ship to.  From the beginning of the gale none of us
officers had a chance of taking any observations.  We only knew that the wind
was driving us as hard as we could go in a southerly direction, and that we
were by this time hundreds of miles out of the ordinary course of ships in
doubling the Cape.

     On the third night - or rather, I should say, early on the fourth morning
- I went below, dead-beat, to get a little rest, leaving the vessel in charge
of the captain and first mate.  The night was then pitch-dark, - it was
raining, hailing, and sleeting all at once, - and the Peruvian was wallowing
in the frightful seas, as if she meant to roll the masts out of her.  I
tumbled into bed the instant my wet oil-skins were off my back, and slept as
only a man can who lays himself down dead-beat.

     I was woke - how long afterward I don't know - by being pitched clean out
of my berth on to the cabin floor; and at the same moment I heard the crash of
the ship's timbers, forward, which told me it was all over with us.

     Though bruised and shaken by my fall I was on deck directly.  Before I
had taken two steps forward the Peruvian forged ahead on the send of the sea,
swung round a little, and struck heavily at the bows for the second time.  The
shrouds of the foremast cracked one after another, like pistol-shots, and the
mast went overboard.  I next felt our people go tearing past me, in the black
darkness, to the lee-side of the vessel; and I knew that in their last
extremity they were taking to the boats.  I say I felt them go past me,
because the roaring of the sea and the howling of the wind deafened me, on
deck, as completely as the darkness blinded me. I myself no more believed the
boats would live in the sea than I believed the ship would hold together on
the reef; but as the rest were running the risk, I made up my mind to run it
with them.

     But before I followed the crew to leeward I went below again for a
minute, - not to save money or clothes, for, with death staring me in the
face, neither were of any account now, - but to get my little writing-case
which mother had given me at parting.  A curl of Margaret's hair was in the
pocket inside it, with all the letters she had sent me when I had been away on
other voyages.  If I saved anything I was resolved to save this; and if I
died, I would die with it about me.

     My locker was jammed with the wrenching of the ship, and had to be broken
open.  I was, maybe, longer over this job than I myself supposed. At any rate,
when I got on deck again with my case in my breast, it was useless calling and
useless groping about.  The larger of the two boats when I felt for it, was
gone; and every soul on board was beyond a doubt gone with her.

     Before I had time to think I was thrown off my feet by another sea coming
on board, and a great heave of the vessel which drove her farther over the
reef, and canted the after-part of her up like the roof of a house.  In that
position the stern stuck, wedged fast into the rocks beneath, while the
fore-part of the ship was all to pieces and down under water.  If the
after-part kept the place it was now jammed in till daylight there might be a
chance, but if the sea wrenched it out from between the rocks there was an end
of me.  After straining my eyes to discover if there was land beyond the reef,
and seeing nothing but the flash of the breakers, like white fire in the
darkness, I crawled below again to the shelter of the cabin stairs and waited
for death or daylight.

     As the morning hours wore on the weather moderated again, and the
after-part of the vessel, though shaken often, was not shaken out of its
place.  A little before dawn the winds and the waves, though fierce enough
still, allowed me at last to hear something besides themselves.  What I did
hear, crouched up in my dark corner, was a heavy thumping and grinding, every
now and then, against the side of the ship to windward. Day broke soon
afterward, and when I climbed to the deck I clawed my way up to windward first
to see what the noise was caused by.

     My first look over the bulwark showed me that it was caused by the boat
which my unfortunate brother-officers and the crew had launched and gone away
in when the ship struck.  The boat was bottom upward, thumping against the
ship's side on the lift of the sea.  I wanted no second look at it to tell me
that every mother's son of them was drowned.

     The main and mizzen masts still stood.  I got into the mizzen rigging to
look out next to leeward, - and there, in the blessed daylight, I saw a low,
green, rocky little island, lying away beyond the reef, barely a mile distant
from the ship!  My life began to look of some small value to me again when I
saw land.  I got higher up in the rigging to note how the current set, and
where there might be a passage through the reef.  The ship had driven over the
rocks through the worst of the surf, and the sea between myself and the
island, though angry and broken in places, was not too high for a lost man
like me to venture on, provided I could launch the last and smallest boat
still left in the vessel.  I noted carefully the likeliest-looking channel for
trying the experiment, and then got down on deck again to see what I could do,
first of all, with the boat.

     At the moment when my feet touched the deck I heard a dull knocking and
banging just under them, in the region of the cabin.  When the sound first
reached my ears I got such a shock of surprise that I could neither move nor
speak.  It had never yet crossed my mind that a single soul was left in the
vessel besides myself; but now there was something in the knocking noise which
started the hope in me, that I was not alone.  I shook myself up, and got down
directly.

     The noise came from inside one of the sleeping-berths, on the far side of
the main cabin; the door of which was jammed, no doubt, just as my locker had
been jammed, by the wrenching of the ship.  "Who's there?" I called out.  A
faint muffled kind of voice answered something through the air-grating in the
upper part of the door.  I got up on the overthrown cabin furniture; and,
looking in through the trellis-work of the grating, found myself face to face
with the blue spectacles of Mr. Lawrence Clissold, looking out!

     God forgive me for thinking it, but there was not a man in the vessel I
wouldn't sooner have found alive in her than Mr. Clissold!  Of all that ship's
company, we two, who were least friendly together, were the only two saved.

     I had a better chance of breaking out the jammed door from the main cabin
than he had from the berth inside; and in less than five minutes he was set
free.  I had smelled spirits already through the air-grating, and now, when he
and I stood face to face, I saw what the smell meant.  There was an open case
of spirits by the bedside, - two of the bottles out of it were lying broken on
the floor, - and Mr. Clissold was drunk.

     "What's the matter with the ship?" says he, looking fierce, and speaking
thick.

     "You shall see for yourself," says I.  With which words I took hold of
him, and pulled him after me up the cabin stairs.  I reckoned on the sight
that would meet him, when he first looked over the deck to sober his drunken
brains, - and I reckoned right; he fell on his knees, stock still and
speechless as if he was turned to stone.

     I lashed him up safe to the cabin rail, and left it to the air to bring
him round.  He had, likely enough, been drinking in the sleeping-berth for
days together, - for none of us, as I now remembered, had seen him since the
gale set in, - and even if he had had sense enough to try to get out, or to
call for help, when the ship struck, he would not have made himself heard in
the noise and confusion of that awful time. But for the lull in the weather I
should not have heard him myself when he attempted to get free in the morning.
Enemy of mine as he was, he had a pair of arms, -and he was worth untold gold,
in my situation, for that reason.  With the help I could make him give me,
there was no doubt now about launching the boat.  In half an hour I had the
means ready for trying the experiment; and Mr. Clissold was sober enough to
see that his life depended on his doing what I told him.

     The sky looked angry still, - there was no opening anywhere, - and the
clouds were slowly banking up again to windward.  The supercargo knew what I
meant when I pointed that way, and worked with a will when I gave him the
word.  I had previously stowed away in the boat such stores of meat, biscuit,
and fresh water as I could readily lay hands on; together with a compass, a
lantern, a few candles, and some boxes of matches in my pocket, to kindle
light and fire with.  At the last moment I thought of a gun and some powder
and shot.  The powder and shot I found, and an old flint pocket-pistol in the
captain's cabin, - with which, for fear of wasting precious time, I was forced
to be content.  The pistol lay on the top of the medicine-chest, and I took
that also, finding it handy, and not knowing but what it might be of use.
Having made these preparations, we launched the boat down the steep of the
deck, into the water over the forward part of the ship which was sunk.  I took
the oars, ordering Mr. Clissold to sit still in the stern-sheets, and pulled
for the island.

     It was neck or nothing with us more than once, before we were two hundred
yards from the ship.  Luckily the supercargo was used to boats; and muddled as
he still was, he had sense enough to sit quiet.  We found our way into the
smooth channel which I had noted from the mizzen-rigging, after which it was
easy enough to get ashore.

     We landed on a little sandy creek.  From the time of our leaving the ship
the supercargo had not spoken a word to me, nor I to him.  I now told him to
lend a hand in getting the stores out of the boat, and in helping me to carry
them to the first sheltered place we could find in-shore on the island.  He
shook himself up with a sulky look at me, and did as I had bidden him.  We
found a little dip, or dell, in the ground, after getting up the low sides of
the island, which was sheltered to windward - and here I left him to stow away
the stores while I walked farther on to survey the place.

     According to the hasty judgment I formed at the time, the island was not
a mile across, and not much more than three miles round.  I noted nothing in
the way of food but a few wild roots and vegetables, growing in ragged patches
amidst the thick scrub which covered the place.  There was not a tree on it
anywhere, nor any living creatures, nor any signs of fresh water that I could
see.  Standing on the highest ground, I looked about anxiously for other
islands that might be inhabited; there were none visible, - at least none in
the hazy state of the heavens that morning. When I fairly discovered what a
desert the place was; when I remembered how far it lay out of the track of
ships; and when I thought of the small store of provisions which we had
brought with us, the doubt lest we might only have changed the chance of death
by drowning for the chance of death by starvation was so strong in me that I
determined to go back to the boat, with the desperate notion of making another
trip to the vessel for water and food.  I say desperate, because the clouds to
windward were banking up blacker and higher every minute.  The wind was
freshening already, and there was every sign of the storm coming on again
wilder and fiercer than ever.

     Mr. Clissold, when I passed him on my way back to the beach, had got the
stores pretty tidy, covered with the tarpaulin which I had thrown over them in
the bottom of the boat.  Just as I looked down at him in the hollow, I saw him
take a bottle of spirits out of the pocket of his pilot-coat.  He must have
stowed the bottle away there, as I suppose, while I was breaking open the door
of his berth.  "You'll be drowned, and I shall have double allowance to live
upon here," was all he said to me when he heard I was going back to the ship.
"Yes!  and die, in your turn, when you've got through it," says I, going away
to the boat.  It's shocking to think of now, but we couldn't be civil to each
other, even on the first day when we were wrecked together!

     Having previously stripped to my trousers, in case of accident, I now
pulled out.  On getting from the channel into the broken water again, I looked
over my shoulder to windward, and saw that I was too late.  It was coming! -
the ship was hidden already in the horrible haze of it.  I got the boat's head
round to pull back - and I did pull back, just inside the opening in the reef
which made the mouth of the channel - when the storm came down on me like
death and judgment.  The boat filled in an instant, and I was tossed head over
heels into the water.  The sea, which burst into raging surf upon the rock on
either side, rushed in one great roller up the deep channel between them, and
took me with it.  If the under-tow afterward had lasted for half a minute, I
should have been carried into the white water and lost.  But a second roller
followed the first, almost on the instant, and swept me right up on the beach.
I had just strength enough to dig my arms and legs well into the wet sand; and
though I was taken back with the backward shift of it, I was not taken into
deep water again.  Before the third roller came I was out of its reach, and
was down in a sort of swoon on the dry sand.

     When I got back to the hollow in shore, where I had left my clothes under
shelter with the stores, I found Mr. Clissold snugly crouched up, in the
driest place, with the tarpaulin to cover him.  "Oh!" says he; in a state of
great surprise, "you're not drowned?" "No," says I; "you won't get your double
allowance after all." "How much shall I get?" says he, rousing up and looking
anxious.  "Your fair half-share of what is here," I answered him.  "And how
long will that last me?" says he.  "The food, if you have sense enough to eke
it out with what you may find in this miserable place, barely three weeks,"
says I; "and the water (if you ever drink any) about a fortnight." At hearing
that, he took the bottle out of his pocket again, and put it to his lips.
"I'm cold to the bones," says I, frowning at him for a drop.  "And I'm warm to
the marrow," says he, chuckling, and handling me the bottle empty.  I pitched
it away at once, - or the temptation to break it over his head might have been
too much for me, - I pitched it away, and looked into the medicine-chest to
see if there was a drop of peppermint, or anything comforting of that sort,
inside.  Only three physic bottles were left in it, all three being neatly
tied over with oil-skin.  One of them held a strong white liquor, smelling
like hartshorn.  The other two were filled with stuff in powder, having the
names in printed gibberish pasted outside.  On looking a little closer, I
found under some broken divisions of the chest, a small flask covered with
wicker-work.  "Ginger-brandy," was written with pen and ink on the
wicker-work, and the flask was full!  I think that blessed discovery saved me
from shivering myself to pieces.  After a pull at the flask which made a new
man of me, I put it away in my inside breast-pocket; Mr. Clissold watching me
with greedy eyes, but saying nothing.

     All this while the rain was rushing, the wind roaring, and the sea
crashing, as if Noah's Flood had come again.  I sat close against the
supercargo, because he was in the driest place, and pulled my fair share of
the tarpaulin away from him, whether he liked it or not.  He by no means liked
it; being in that sort of half-drunken, half-sober state (after finishing his
bottle), in which a man's temper is most easily upset by trifles.  The upset
of his temper showed itself in the way of small aggravations, of which I took
no notice, till he suddenly bethought himself of angering me by going back
again to that dispute about father, which had bred ill-blood between us on the
day when we first saw each other.  If he had been a younger man, I am afraid I
should have stopped him by a punch on the head.  As it was, considering his
age and the shame of this quarrelling betwixt us when we were both cast away
together, I only warned him that I might punch his head if he went on.  It did
just as well, and I'm glad now to think that it did.

     We were huddled so close together that when he coiled himself up to sleep
(with a growl), and when he did go to sleep (with a grunt), he growled and
grunted into my ear.  His rest, like the rest of all the regular drunkards I
have ever met with, was broken.  He ground his teeth, and talked in his sleep.
Among the words he mumbled to himself I heard, as plain as could be, father's
name.  This vexed, but did not surprise me, seeing that he had talked of
father before he dropped off.  But when I made out next, among his mutterings
and mumblings, the words "five hundred pound," spoken over and over again,
with father's name, now before, now after, now mixed in along with them, I got
curious, and listened for more. My listening (and serve me right, you will
say) came to nothing; he certainly talked on, but I couldn't make out a word
more that he said.

     When he woke up, I told him plainly he had been talking in his sleep; and
mightily taken aback he looked when he first heard it.  "What about?" says he.
I made answer, "My father, and five hundred pound; and how do you come to
couple them together, I should like to know?" "I couldn't have coupled them,"
says he, in a great hurry; "what do I know about it?  I don't believe a man
like your father ever had such a sum of money as that in all his life." "Don't
you?" says I, feeling the aggravation of him, in spite of myself; "I can just
tell you my father had such a sum when he was no older a man than I am, - and
saved it, - and left it for a provision, in his will to my mother, who has got
it now, - and, I say again, how came a stranger like you to be talking of it
in your sleep?" At hearing this, he went about on the other tack directly.
"Was that all your father left after his debts were paid?" says he.  "Are you
very curious to know?" says I.  He took no notice, - he only persisted with
his question.  "Was it just five hundred pound, no more and no less?" says he.
"Suppose it was," says I; "what then?" "O, nothing!" says he, and turns sharp
round from me and chuckles to himself.  "You're drunk!" says I.  "Yes," says
he; "that's it, - stick to that, - I'm drunk," - and he chuckles again.  Try
as I might, and threaten as I might, not another word on the matter of the
five hundred pound could I get from him.  I bore it well in mind, though, for
all that, - it being one of my slow ways not easily to forget anything that
had once surprised me, and not to give up returning to it over and over again
as time and occasion may serve for the purpose.