Armadale (25 page)

Cordially accepting the invitation (which was extended to Midwinter also, if he cared to profit by it), Allan returned to the coffee-room to look after his friend. Half asleep and half awake, Midwinter was still stretched on the sofa, with the local newspaper just dropping out of his languid hand.

‘I heard your voice in the passage,' he said drowsily. ‘Who were you talking to?'

‘The doctor,' replied Allan. ‘I am going to smoke a cigar with him, in an hour's time. Will you come too?'

Midwinter assented with a weary sigh. Always shyly unwilling to make new acquaintances, fatigue increased the reluctance he now felt to become Mr Hawbury's guest. As matters stood, however, there was no alternative but to go – for, with Allan's constitutional imprudence, there was no safely trusting him alone anywhere, and more especially in a stranger's house. Mr Brock would certainly not have left his pupil to visit the doctor alone; and Midwinter was still nervously conscious that he occupied Mr Brock's place.

‘What shall we do till it's time to go?' asked Allan, looking about him. ‘Anything in this?' he added, observing the fallen newspaper, and picking it up from the floor.

‘I'm too tired to look. If you find anything interesting; read it out,' said Midwinter – thinking that the reading might help to keep him awake.

Part of the newspaper, and no small part of it, was devoted to extracts from books recently published in London. One of the works most largely laid under contribution in this manner, was of the sort to interest Allan: it was a highly-spiced narrative of Travelling Adventures in the wilds of Australia.
⁴
Pouncing on an extract which described the sufferings of the travelling-party, lost in a trackless wilderness, and in danger of dying by thirst, Allan announced that he had found something to make his friend's flesh creep, and began eagerly to read the passage aloud. Resolute not to sleep, Midwinter followed the progress of the adventure, sentence by sentence, without missing a word. The consultation of the lost travellers, with death by thirst staring them in the face; the resolution to press on while their strength lasted; the fall of a heavy shower, the vain efforts made to catch the rain-water, the transient relief experienced by sucking their wet clothes; the sufferings renewed a few hours after; the night-advance of the strongest of the party, leaving the weakest behind; the following a flight of birds, when morning dawned; the discovery by the lost men of the broad pool of water that saved their lives – all this, Midwinter's fast failing attention mastered painfully; Allan's voice growing fainter and fainter on his ear, with every sentence that was read. Soon, the next words seemed to drop away gently, and nothing but the slowly-sinking sound of the voice was left. Then, the light in the room darkened gradually; the sound dwindled into delicious silence; and the last waking impressions of the weary Midwinter came peacefully to an end.

The next event of which he was conscious, was a sharp ringing at the closed door of the hotel. He started to his feet, with the ready alacrity of a man whose life has accustomed him to wake at the shortest notice. An instant's look round showed him that the room was empty; and a glance at his watch told him that it was close on midnight. The noise made by the sleepy servant in opening the door, and the tread the next moment of quick footsteps in the passage, filled him with a sudden foreboding of something wrong. As he hurriedly stepped forward to go out and make inquiry, the door of the coffee-room opened, and the doctor stood before him.

‘I am sorry to disturb you,' said Mr Hawbury. ‘Don't be alarmed; there's nothing wrong.'

‘Where is my friend?' asked Midwinter.

‘At the pier-head,' answered the doctor. ‘I am, to a certain extent, responsible for what he is doing now; and I think some careful person, like yourself, ought to be with him.'

The hint was enough for Midwinter. He and the doctor set out for the pier immediately — Mr Hawbury mentioning, on the way, the circumstances under which he had come to the hotel.

Punctual to the appointed hour, Allan had made his appearance at the doctor's house; explaining that he had left his weary friend so fast asleep on the sofa that he had not had the heart to wake him. The evening had passed pleasantly, and the conversation had turned on many subjects – until, in an evil hour, Mr Hawbury had dropped a hint which showed that he was fond of sailing, and that he possessed a pleasure-boat of his own in the harbour. Excited on the instant by his favourite topic, Allan had left his host no hospitable alternative but to take him to the pier-head and show him the boat. The beauty of the night and the softness of the breeze had done the rest of the mischief – they had filled Allan with irresistible longings for a sail by moonlight. Prevented from accompanying his guest by professional hindrances which obliged him to remain on shore, the doctor, not knowing what else to do, had ventured on disturbing Midwinter, rather than take the responsibility of allowing Mr Armadale (no matter how well he might be accustomed to the sea) to set off on a sailing trip at midnight entirely by himself.

The time taken to make this explanation brought Midwinter and the doctor to the pier-head. There, sure enough, was young Armadale in the boat, hoisting the sail, and singing the sailor's ‘Yo-heave-ho!' at the top of his voice.

‘Come along, old boy!' cried Allan. ‘You're just in time for a frolic by moonlight!'

Midwinter suggested a frolic by daylight, and an adjournment to bed in the meantime.

‘Bed!' cried Allan, on whose harum-scarum high spirits Mr Hawbury's hospitality had certainly not produced a sedative effect. ‘Hear him, doctor! one would think he was ninety! Bed, you drowsy old dormouse! Look at that – and think of bed, if you can!'

He pointed to the sea. The moon was shining in the cloudless heaven; the night-breeze blew soft and steady from the land; the peaceful waters rippled joyfully in the silence and the glory of the night. Midwinter turned to the doctor, with a wise resignation to circumstances: he had seen enough to satisfy him that all words of remonstrance would be words simply thrown away.

‘How is the tide?' he asked.

Mr Hawbury told him.

‘Are the oars in the boat?'

‘Yes.'

‘I am well used to the sea,' said Midwinter, descending the pier-steps. ‘You may trust me to take care of my friend, and to take care of the boat.'

‘Good-night, doctor!' shouted Allan. ‘Your whisky-and-water is delicious – your boat's a little beauty—and you're the best fellow I ever met in my life!'

The doctor laughed, and waved his hand; and the boat glided out from the harbour, with Midwinter at the helm.

As the breeze then blew, they were soon abreast of the westward headland, bounding the bay of Poolvash; and the question was started whether they should run out to sea, or keep along the shore. The wisest proceeding, in the event of the wind failing them, was to keep by the land. Midwinter altered the course of the boat, and they sailed on smoothly in a south-westerly direction, abreast of the coast.

Little by little the cliffs rose in height, and the rocks, massed wild and jagged, showed rifted black chasms yawning deep in their seaward sides. Off the bold promontory called Spanish Head, Midwinter looked ominously at his watch. But Allan pleaded hard for half-an-hour more, and for a glance at the famous channel of the Sound, which they were now fast nearing, and of which he had heard some startling stories from the workmen employed on his yacht. The new change which Midwinter's compliance with this request rendered it necessary to make in the course of the boat, brought her close to the wind; and revealed, on one side, the grand view of the southernmost shores of the Isle of Man, and, on the other, the black precipices of the islet called the Calf, separated from the mainland by the dark and dangerous channel of the Sound.

Once more Midwinter looked at his watch. ‘We have gone far enough,' he said. ‘Stand by the sheet!'

‘Stop!' cried Allan, from the bows of the boat. ‘Good God! here's a wrecked ship right ahead of us!'

Midwinter let the boat fall off a little, and looked where the other pointed.

There, stranded midway between the rocky boundaries on either side of the Sound – there, never again to rise on the living waters from her grave on the sunken rock; lost and lonely in the quiet night; high, and dark, and ghostly in the yellow moonshine, lay the Wrecked Ship.

‘I know the vessel,' said Allan, in great excitement. ‘I heard my workmen talking of her yesterday. She drifted in here, on a pitch dark night, when they couldn't see the lights. A poor old worn-out merchantman, Midwinter, that the shipbrokers have bought to break up. Let's run in, and have a look at her.'

Midwinter hesitated. All the old sympathies of his sea-life strongly inclined him to follow Allan's suggestion – but the wind was falling light; and he distrusted the broken water and the swirling currents of the channel ahead. ‘This is an ugly place to take a boat into, when you know nothing about it,' he said.

‘Nonsense!' returned Allan. ‘It's as light as day, and we float in two feet of water.'

Before Midwinter could answer, the current caught the boat, and swept them onward through the channel, straight towards the Wreck.

‘Lower the sail,' said Midwinter quietly, ‘and ship the oars. We are running down on her fast enough now; whether we like it or not.'

Both well accustomed to the use of the oar, they brought the course of the boat under sufficient control to keep her on the smoothest side of the channel – the side which was nearest to the Islet of the Calf. As they came swiftly up with the wreck, Midwinter resigned his oar to Allan; and, watching his opportunity, caught a hold with the boat-hook on the forechains of the vessel. The next moment they had the boat safely in hand, under the lee of the Wreck.

The ship's ladder used by the workmen hung over the forechains. Mounting it, with the boat's rope in his teeth, Midwinter secured one end, and lowered the other to Allan in the boat. ‘Make that fast,' he said, ‘and wait till I see if it's safe on board.' With those words, he disappeared behind the bulwark.

‘Wait?' repeated Allan, in the blankest astonishment at his friend's excessive caution. ‘What on earth does he mean? I'll be hanged if I wait – where one of us goes, the other goes too!'

He hitched the loose end of the rope round the forward thwart of the boat; and, swinging himself up the ladder, stood the next moment on the deck. ‘Anything very dreadful on board?' he inquired sarcastically, as he and his friend met.

Midwinter smiled. ‘Nothing whatever,' he replied. ‘But I couldn't be sure that we were to have the whole ship to ourselves, till I got over the bulwark, and looked about me.'

Allan took a turn on the deck, and surveyed the wreck critically from stem to stern.

‘Not much of a vessel,' he said; ‘the Frenchmen generally build better ships than this.'

Midwinter crossed the deck, and eyed Allan in a momentary silence.

‘Frenchmen?' he repeated, after an interval. ‘Is this vessel French?'

‘Yes.'

‘How do you know?'

‘The men I have got at work on the yacht told me. They know all about her.'

Midwinter came a little nearer. His swarthy face began to look, to Allan's eyes, unaccountably pale in the moonlight.

‘Did they mention what trade she was engaged in?'

‘Yes. — The timber-trade.'

As Allan gave that answer, Midwinter's lean brown hand clutched him fast by the shoulder; and Midwinter's teeth chattered in his head, like the teeth of a man struck by a sudden chill.

‘Did they tell you her name?' he asked, in a voice that dropped suddenly to a whisper.

‘They did, I think. But it has slipped my memory. – Gently, old fellow; those long claws of yours are rather tight on my shoulder.'

‘Was the name—?' he stopped; removed his hand; and dashed away the great drops that were gathering on his forehead — ‘Was the name
La Grace de Dieu?
'

‘How the deuce did you come to know it? That's the name, sure enough.
La Grace de Dieu
.'

At one bound, Midwinter leapt on the bulwark of the wreck.

‘The boat!!!' he cried, with a scream of horror that rang far and wide through the stillness of the night, and brought Allan instantly to his side.

The lower end of the carelessly-hitched rope was loose on the water; and, a-head, in the track of the moonlight, a small black object was floating out of view. The boat was adrift.

One stepping back under the dark shelter of the bulwark, and one standing out boldly in the yellow light of the moon, the two friends turned face to face on the deck of the timber-ship, and looked at each other in silence. The next moment Allan's inveterate recklessness seized on the grotesque side of the situation by main force. He seated himself astride on the bulwark, and burst out boisterously into his loudest and heartiest laugh.

‘All my fault,' he said; ‘but there's no help for it now. Here we are, hard and fast in a trap of our own setting – and there goes the last of the doctor's boat! Come out of the dark, Midwinter; I can't half see you there, and I want to know what's to be done next.'

Midwinter neither answered nor moved. Allan left the bulwark, and, mounting the forecastle, looked down attentively at the waters of the Sound.

‘One thing is pretty certain,' he said. ‘With the current on that side, and the sunken rocks on this, we can't find our way out of the scrape by swimming, at any rate. So much for the prospect at this end of the wreck. Let's try how things look at the other. Rouse up, messmate!' he called out cheerfully, as he passed Midwinter. ‘Come and see what the old tub of a timber-ship has got to show us, astern.' He sauntered on, with his hands in his pockets, humming the chorus of a comic song.