The Pilot (42 page)

"Our ground-tackle has parted," said Tom, with his resigned patience of
manner undisturbed; "she shall die as easy as man can make her!"—While
he yet spoke, he seized the tiller, and gave to the vessel such a
direction as would be most likely to cause her to strike the rocks with
her bows foremost.

There was, for one moment, an expression of exquisite anguish betrayed
in the dark countenance of Barnstable; but, at the next, it passed away,
and he spoke cheerfully to his men:

"Be steady, my lads, be calm; there is yet a hope of life for
you
—our light draught will let us run in close to the cliffs,
and it is still falling water—see your boats clear, and be steady."

The crew of the whale-boat, aroused by this speech from a sort of
stupor, sprang into their light vessel, which was quickly lowered into
the sea, and kept riding on the foam, free from the sides of the
schooner, by the powerful exertions of the men. The cry for the
cockswain was earnest and repeated, but Tom shook his head, without
replying, still grasping the tiller, and keeping his eyes steadily bent
on the chaos of waters into which they were driving. The launch, the
largest boat of the two, was cut loose from the "gripes," and the bustle
and exertion of the moment rendered the crew insensible to the horror of
the scene that surrounded them. But the loud hoarse call of the
cockswain, to "look out—secure yourselves!" suspended even their
efforts, and at that instant the Ariel settled on a wave that melted
from under her, heavily on the rocks. The shock was so violent, as to
throw all who disregarded the warning cry from their feet, and the
universal quiver that pervaded the vessel was like the last shudder of
animated nature. For a time long enough to breathe, the least
experienced among the men supposed the danger to be past; but a wave of
great height followed the one that had deserted them, and raising the
vessel again, threw her roughly still farther on the bed of rocks, and
at the same time its crest broke over her quarter, sweeping the length
of her decks with a fury that was almost resistless. The shuddering
seamen beheld their loosened boat driven from their grasp, and dashed
against the base of the cliffs, where no fragment of her wreck could be
traced, at the receding of the waters. But the passing billow had thrown
the vessel into a position which, in some measure, protected her decks
from the violence of those that succeeded it.

"Go, my boys, go," said Barnstable, as the moment of dreadful
uncertainty passed; "you have still the whale-boat, and she, at least,
will take you nigh the shore. Go into her, my boys. God bless you, God
bless you all! You have been faithful and honest fellows, and I believe
he will not yet desert you; go, my friends, while there is a lull."

The seamen threw themselves, in a mass, into the light vessel, which
nearly sank under the unusual burden; but when they looked around them,
Barnstable and Merry, Dillon and the cockswain, were yet to be seen on
the decks of the Ariel. The former was pacing, in deep and perhaps
bitter melancholy, the wet planks of the schooner, while the boy hung,
unheeded, on his arm, uttering disregarded petitions to his commander to
desert the wreck. Dillon approached the side where the boat lay, again
and again, but the threatening countenances of the seamen as often drove
him back in despair. Tom had seated himself on the heel of the bowsprit,
where he continued, in an attitude of quiet resignation, returning no
other answers to the loud and repeated calls of his shipmates, than by
waving his hand towards the shore.

"Now hear me," said the boy, urging his request, to tears; "if not for
my sake, or for your own sake, Mr. Barnstable, or for the hope of God's
mercy, go into the boat, for the love of my cousin Katherine."

The young lieutenant paused in his troubled walk, and for a moment he
cast a glance of hesitation at the cliffs; but, at the next instant, his
eyes fell on the ruin of his vessel, and he answered:

"Never, boy, never; if my hour has come, I will not shrink from my
fate."

"Listen to the men, dear sir; the boat will be swamped, alongside the
wreck, and their cry is, that without you they will not let her go."

Barnstable motioned to the boat, to bid the boy enter it, and turned
away in silence.

"Well," said Merry, with firmness, "if it be right that a lieutenant
shall stay by the wreck, it must also be right for a midshipman; shove
off; neither Mr. Barnstable nor myself will quit the vessel."

"Boy, your life has been entrusted to my keeping, and at my hands will
it be required," said his commander, lifting the struggling youth, and
tossing him into the arms of the seamen. "Away with ye, and God be with
you; there is more weight in you now than can go safe to land."

Still the seamen hesitated, for they perceived the cockswain moving,
with a steady tread, along the deck, and they hoped he had relented, and
would yet persuade the lieutenant to join his crew. But Tom, imitating
the example of his commander, seized the latter suddenly in his powerful
grasp, and threw him over the bulwarks with an irresistible force. At
the same moment he cast the fast of the boat from the pin that held it,
and, lifting his broad hands high into the air, his voice was heard in
the tempest:

"God's will be done with me," he cried. "I saw the first timber of the
Ariel laid, and shall live just long enough to see it turn out of her
bottom; after which I wish to live no longer."

But his shipmates were swept far beyond the sounds of his voice, before
half these words were uttered. All command of the boat was rendered
impossible, by the numbers it contained, as well as the raging of the
surf; and, as it rose on the white crest of a wave, Tom saw his beloved
little craft for the last time. It fell into a trough of the sea, and in
a few moments more its fragments were ground into splinters on the
adjacent rocks. The cockswain still remained where he had cast off the
rope, and beheld the numerous heads and arms that appeared rising, at
short intervals, on the waves; some making powerful and well-directed
efforts to gain the sands, that were becoming visible as the tide fell,
and others wildly tossed in the frantic movements of helpless despair.
The honest old seaman gave a cry of joy, as he saw Barnstable issue from
the surf, bearing the form of Merry in safety to the sands, where, one
by one, several seamen soon appeared also, dripping and exhausted. Many
others of the crew were carried, in a similar manner, to places of
safety; though, as Tom returned to his seat on the bowsprit, he could
not conceal from his reluctant eyes the lifeless forms that were, in
other spots, driven against the rocks with a fury that soon left them
but few of the outward vestiges of humanity.

Dillon and the cockswain were now the sole occupants of their dreadful
station. The former stood in a kind of stupid despair, a witness of the
scene we have related; but as his curdled blood began again to flow more
warmly through his heart, he crept close to the side of Tom, with that
sort of selfish feeling that makes even hopeless misery more tolerable,
when endured in participation with another.

"When the tide falls," he said, in a voice that betrayed the agony of
fear, though his words expressed the renewal of hope, "we shall be able
to walk to land."

"There was One and only One to whose feet the waters were the same as a
dry dock," returned the cockswain; "and none but such as have his power
will ever be able to walk from these rocks to the sands." The old seaman
paused, and turning his eyes, which exhibited a mingled expression of
disgust and compassion, on his companion, he added, with reverence: "Had
you thought more of Him in fair weather, your case would be less to be
pitied in this tempest."

"Do you still think there is much danger?" asked Dillon.

"To them that have reason to fear death. Listen! do you hear that hollow
noise beneath ye?"

"'Tis the wind driving by the vessel!"

"'Tis the poor thing herself," said the affected cockswain, "giving her
last groans. The water is breaking up her decks, and, in a few minutes
more, the handsomest model that ever cut a wave will be like the chips
that fell from her timbers in framing!"

"Why then did you remain here!" cried Dillon, wildly.

"To die in my coffin, if it should be the will of God," returned Tom.
"These waves, to me, are what the land is to you; I was born on them,
and I have always meant that they should be my grave."

"But I—I," shrieked Dillon, "I am not ready to die!—I cannot die!—I
will not die!"

"Poor wretch!" muttered his companion; "you must go, like the rest of
us; when the death-watch is called, none can skulk from the muster."

"I can swim," Dillon continued, rushing with frantic eagerness to the
side of the wreck. "Is there no billet of wood, no rope, that I can take
with me?"

"None; everything has been cut away, or carried off by the sea. If ye
are about to strive for your life, take with ye a stout heart and a
clean conscience, and trust the rest to God!"

"God!" echoed Dillon, in the madness of his frenzy; "I know no God!
there is no God that knows me!"

"Peace!" said the deep tones of the cockswain, in a voice that seemed to
speak in the elements; "blasphemer, peace!"

The heavy groaning, produced by the water in the timbers of the Ariel,
at that moment added its impulse to the raging feelings of Dillon, and
he cast himself headlong into the sea.

The water, thrown by the rolling of the surf on the beach, was
necessarily returned to the ocean, in eddies, in different places
favorable to such an action of the element. Into the edge of one of
these countercurrents, that was produced by the very rocks on which the
schooner lay, and which the watermen call the "undertow," Dillon had,
unknowingly, thrown his person; and when the waves had driven him a
short distance from the wreck, he was met by a stream that his most
desperate efforts could not overcome. He was a light and powerful
swimmer, and the struggle was hard and protracted. With the shore
immediately before his eyes, and at no great distance, he was led, as by
a false phantom, to continue his efforts, although they did not advance
him a foot. The old seaman, who at first had watched his motions with
careless indifference, understood the danger of his situation at a
glance; and, forgetful of his own fate, he shouted aloud, in a voice
that was driven over the struggling victim to the ears of his shipmates
on the sands:

"Sheer to port, and clear the undertow! Sheer to the southward!"

Dillon heard the sounds, but his faculties were too much obscured by
terror to distinguish their object; he, however, blindly yielded to the
call, and gradually changed his direction, until his face was once more
turned towards the vessel. The current swept him diagonally by the
rocks, and he was forced into an eddy, where he had nothing to contend
against but the waves, whose violence was much broken by the wreck. In
this state, he continued still to struggle, but with a force that was
too much weakened to overcome the resistance he met. Tom looked around
him for a rope, but all had gone over with the spars, or been swept away
by the waves. At this moment of disappointment, his eyes met those of
the desperate Dillon. Calm and inured to horrors as was the veteran
seaman, he involuntarily passed his hand before his brow, to exclude the
look of despair he encountered; and when, a moment afterwards, he
removed the rigid member, he beheld the sinking form of the victim as it
gradually settled in the ocean, still struggling, with regular but
impotent strokes of the arms and feet, to gain the wreck, and to
preserve an existence that had been so much abused in its hour of
allotted probation.

"He will soon know his God, and learn that his God knows him!" murmured
the cockswain to himself. As he yet spoke, the wreck of the Ariel
yielded to an overwhelming sea, and, after an universal shudder, her
timbers and planks gave way, and were swept towards the cliffs, bearing
the body of the simple-hearted cockswain among the ruins.

"Let us think of them that sleep
Full many a fathom deep,
By the wild and stormy steep,
Elsinore!"
Campbell
.

Long and dreary did the hours appear to Barnstable, before the falling
tide had so far receded as to leave the sands entirely exposed to his
search for the bodies of his lost shipmates. Several had been rescued
from the wild fury of the waves themselves; and one by one, as the
melancholy conviction that life had ceased was forced on the survivors,
they had been decently interred in graves dug on the very margin of that
element on which they had passed their lives. But still the form longest
known and most beloved was missing, and the lieutenant paced the broad
space that was now left between the foot of the cliffs and the raging
ocean, with hurried strides and a feverish eye, watching and following
those fragments of the wreck that the sea still continued to cast on the
beach. Living and dead, he now found that of those who had lately been
in the Ariel, only two were missing. Of the former he could muster but
twelve, besides Merry and himself, and his men had already interred more
than half that number of the latter, which, together, embraced all who
had trusted their lives to the frail keeping of the whale-boat.

"Tell me not, boy, of the impossibility of his being safe," said
Barnstable, in deep agitation, which he in vain struggled to conceal
from the anxious youth, who thought it unnecessary to follow the uneasy
motions of his commander, as he strode along the sands. "How often have
men been found floating on pieces of wreck, days after the loss of their
vessel? and you can see, with your own eyes, that the falling water has
swept the planks this distance; ay, a good half-league from where she
struck. Does the lookout from the top of the cliffs make no signal of
seeing him yet?"