LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

Woe to him who is inexperienced on the ocean! One ought to be familiar with the Channel – the Channel is the Sphinx. Look out for shoals.”

      The wind and the sea were rising.

      The dark punishment of the waters, eternally tortured, was commencing. A lamentation arose from the whole main.

      The wind had just set due north[16]. Its violence was so favourable and so useful in driving them away from England that the captain had made up his mind to set all sail[17]. The boat slipped through the foam as at a gallop, bounding from wave to wave in a gay frenzy. The fugitives were delighted, and laughed; they clapped their hands, applauded the surf, the sea, the wind, the sails, the swift progress, the flight, all unmindful of the future.

      Every vestige of day had faded away. This was the moment when the child, watching from the distant cliff, lost sight of the boat. The child went north and the ship went south. All were plunged in darkness.

      SUPERHUMAN HORRORS

      England disappeared. The fugitives had now nothing round them but the sea. All at once night grew awful.

      The sky became blackness. The snow began to fall slowly; a few flakes appeared. A great muddy cloud, like to the belly of ahydra, hung over ocean.

      The boreal storm hurled itself on the boat. A deep rumbling was brewing up in the distance. The roar of the abyss, nothing can be compared to it. It is the great brutish howl of the universe.

      No thunderstrokes. The snowstorm is a storm blind and dumb; when it has passed, the ships also are often blind and the sailors dumb. To escape from such an abyss is difficult.

      The howling of the wind became more and more frightful. The boat became a wreck, it was irrevocably disabled. The vessel drifted like a cork at the mercy of the waves. It sailed no longer – it merely floated, like a dead fish.

      One of the women, the Irishwoman, told her beads[18] wildly. They neared the cliff. They were about to strike. The wave dashed the boat against the rock. Then came the shock. Nothing remained but the abyss.

      But suddenly something terrible appeared to them in the darkness. On the port bow arose, standing stark, a tall, opaque mass, vertical a tower of the abyss. They watched it open-mouthed.

      The storm was driving them towards it. They knew not what it was. It was the rock.

      It was a moment of great anxiety. Meanwhile a thickening mist had descended on the drifting wretches. They were ignorant of their whereabouts.

      Suddenly the boat was driven back. The wave reared up under the vessel. It was again on the open sea.

      The hurricane had stopped. The fierce clarions of space were mute. None knew what had become of it; flakes replaced the hailstones, the snow began to fall slowly. No more swell: the sea flattened down. In a few minutes the boat was floating in sleeping waters.

      All was silence, stillness, blindness. It was clear that they were delivered out of the storm, out of the foam, out of the wind, out of the uproar. In three or four hours it would be sunrise. Some passing ship would see them; they would be rescued. The worst was over. They said to themselves, “It is all over this time.”

      Suddenly they found that all was indeed over.

      One of the sailors, went down into the hold to look for a rope, then came above again and said, -

      “The hold is full[19].”

      “Of what?” asked the chief.

      “Of water,” answered the sailor.

      The chief cried out, -

      “What does that mean?”

      “It means,” replied the captain, “that in half an hour we shall founder.”

      THE LAST RESOURCE

      There was a hole in the keel. When it happened no one could have said. It was most probable that they had touched some rock. The other sailor, whose name was Ave Maria, went down into the hold, too, came on deck again, and said, -

      “There are two varas of water in the hold.”

      About six feet.

      Ave Maria added, “In less than forty minutes we shall sink.”

      The water, however, was not rising very fast.

      The chief called out,

      “We must work the pump.”

      “We have no pump left.”

      “Then,” said the chief, “we must make for land[20].”

      “Where is the land?”

      “I don’t know.”

      “Nor I.”

      “But it must be somewhere.”

      “True enough.”

      “Let some one steer for it.”

      “We have no pilot.”

      “Stand to the tiller yourself.”

      “We have lost the tiller.”

      “Let’s make one. Nails – a hammer – quick – some tools.”

      “The carpenter’s box is overboard, we have no tools.”

      “We’ll steer all the same, no matter where.”

      “The rudder is lost.”

      “We’ll row the wreck.”

      “We have lost the oars.”

      “We’ll sail.”

      “We have lost the sails and the mast.”

      “We’ll make one.”

      “There is no wind.”

      The wind, indeed, had left them, the storm had fled; and its departure, which they had believed to mean safety, meant, in fact, destruction. The swiftness of the storm might enable them to reach land; but no more wind, no more hope. They were going to die because the hurricane was over. The end was near! The snow was falling, and as the wreck was now motionless.

      The chief said,

      “Let us lighten the wreck.”

      They took the luggage, and threw it over the gunwale. Thus they emptied the cabin. The lantern, the cap, the barrels, the sacks, the bales, and the water-butts, the pot of soup, all went over into the waves.

      The wreck was lightened, it was sinking more slowly, but none the less surely.

      “Is there anything else we can throw overboard?”

      “Yes”, said the old man.

      “What?” asked the chief.

      “Our Crime. Let us throw our crimes into the sea, they weigh us down; it is they that are sinking the ship. Our last crime, above all, the crime which we committed.”

      The old man put down the pen and inkhorn on the hood of the companion, unfolded the parchment, and said, -

      “Listen.”

      The doomed men bowed their heads around him. What he read was written in English. The wreck was sinking more and more. He signed himself. Then, turning towards the others, he said, -

      “Come, and sign.”

      The Basque woman approached, took the pen, and signed herself. She handed the pen to the Irish woman, who, not knowing how to write, made a cross. Then she handed the pen to the chief of the band. The chief signed. The Genoese signed himself under the chief’s name. The others signed, too.

      Then they folded the parchment and put it into the flask. The wreck was sinking. The old man said, -

      “Now

Скачать книгу