Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1778 page)

We had room for twenty passengers.  Our sailing advertisement was no sooner out, than we might have taken these twenty times over.  In entering our men, I and John (both together) picked them, and we entered none but good hands — as good as were to be found in that port.  And so, in a good ship of the best build, well owned, well arranged, well officered, well manned, well found in all respects, we parted with our pilot at a quarter past four o’clock in the afternoon of the seventh of March, one thousand eight hundred and fifty-one, and stood with a fair wind out to sea.

It may be easily believed that up to that time I had had no leisure to be intimate with my passengers.  The most of them were then in their berths sea-sick; however, in going among them, telling them what was good for them, persuading them not to be there, but to come up on deck and feel the breeze, and in rousing them with a joke, or a comfortable word, I made acquaintance with them, perhaps, in a more friendly and confidential way from the first, than I might have done at the cabin table.

Of my passengers, I need only particularise, just at present, a bright-eyed blooming young wife who was going out to join her husband in California, taking with her their only child, a little girl of three years old, whom he had never seen; a sedate young woman in black, some five years older (about thirty as I should say), who was going out to join a brother; and an old gentleman, a good deal like a hawk if his eyes had been better and not so red, who was always talking, morning, noon, and night, about the gold discovery.  But, whether he was making the voyage, thinking his old arms could dig for gold, or whether his speculation was to buy it, or to barter for it, or to cheat for it, or to snatch it anyhow from other people, was his secret.  He kept his secret.

These three and the child were the soonest well.  The child was a most engaging child, to be sure, and very fond of me: though I am bound to admit that John Steadiman and I were borne on her pretty little books in reverse order, and that he was captain there, and I was mate.  It was beautiful to watch her with John, and it was beautiful to watch John with her.  Few would have thought it possible, to see John playing at bo-peep round the mast, that he was the man who had caught up an iron bar and struck a Malay and a Maltese dead, as they were gliding with their knives down the cabin stair aboard the barque Old England, when the captain lay ill in his cot, off Saugar Point.  But he was; and give him his back against a bulwark, he would have done the same by half a dozen of them.  The name of the young mother was Mrs. Atherfield, the name of the young lady in black was Miss Coleshaw, and the name of the old gentleman was Mr. Rarx.

As the child had a quantity of shining fair hair, clustering in curls all about her face, and as her name was Lucy, Steadiman gave her the name of the Golden Lucy.  So, we had the Golden Lucy and the Golden Mary; and John kept up the idea to that extent as he and the child went playing about the decks, that I believe she used to think the ship was alive somehow — a sister or companion, going to the same place as herself.  She liked to be by the wheel, and in fine weather, I have often stood by the man whose trick it was at the wheel, only to hear her, sitting near my feet, talking to the ship.  Never had a child such a doll before, I suppose; but she made a doll of the Golden Mary, and used to dress her up by tying ribbons and little bits of finery to the belaying-pins; and nobody ever moved them, unless it was to save them from being blown away.

Of course I took charge of the two young women, and I called them “my dear,” and they never minded, knowing that whatever I said was said in a fatherly and protecting spirit.  I gave them their places on each side of me at dinner, Mrs. Atherfield on my right and Miss Coleshaw on my left; and I directed the unmarried lady to serve out the breakfast, and the married lady to serve out the tea.  Likewise I said to my black steward in their presence, “Tom Snow, these two ladies are equally the mistresses of this house, and do you obey their orders equally;” at which Tom laughed, and they all laughed.

Old Mr. Rarx was not a pleasant man to look at, nor yet to talk to, or to be with, for no one could help seeing that he was a sordid and selfish character, and that he had warped further and further out of the straight with time.  Not but what he was on his best behaviour with us, as everybody was; for we had no bickering among us, for’ard or aft.  I only mean to say, he was not the man one would have chosen for a messmate.  If choice there had been, one might even have gone a few points out of one’s course, to say, “No!  Not him!”  But, there was one curious inconsistency in Mr. Rarx.  That was, that he took an astonishing interest in the child.  He looked, and I may add, he was, one of the last of men to care at all for a child, or to care much for any human creature.  Still, he went so far as to be habitually uneasy, if the child was long on deck, out of his sight.  He was always afraid of her falling overboard, or falling down a hatchway, or of a block or what not coming down upon her from the rigging in the working of the ship, or of her getting some hurt or other.  He used to look at her and touch her, as if she was something precious to him.  He was always solicitous about her not injuring her health, and constantly entreated her mother to be careful of it.  This was so much the more curious, because the child did not like him, but used to shrink away from him, and would not even put out her hand to him without coaxing from others.  I believe that every soul on board frequently noticed this, and not one of us understood it.  However, it was such a plain fact, that John Steadiman said more than once when old Mr. Rarx was not within earshot, that if the Golden Mary felt a tenderness for the dear old gentleman she carried in her lap, she must be bitterly jealous of the Golden Lucy.

Before I go any further with this narrative, I will state that our ship was a barque of three hundred tons, carrying a crew of eighteen men, a second mate in addition to John, a carpenter, an armourer or smith, and two apprentices (one a Scotch boy, poor little fellow).  We had three boats; the Long-boat, capable of carrying twenty-five men; the Cutter, capable of carrying fifteen; and the Surf-boat, capable of carrying ten.  I put down the capacity of these boats according to the numbers they were really meant to hold.

We had tastes of bad weather and head-winds, of course; but, on the whole we had as fine a run as any reasonable man could expect, for sixty days.  I then began to enter two remarks in the ship’s Log and in my Journal; first, that there was an unusual and amazing quantity of ice; second, that the nights were most wonderfully dark, in spite of the ice.

For five days and a half, it seemed quite useless and hopeless to alter the ship’s course so as to stand out of the way of this ice.  I made what southing I could; but, all that time, we were beset by it.  Mrs. Atherfield after standing by me on deck once, looking for some time in an awed manner at the great bergs that surrounded us, said in a whisper, “O! Captain Ravender, it looks as if the whole solid earth had changed into ice, and broken up!”  I said to her, laughing, “I don’t wonder that it does, to your inexperienced eyes, my dear.”  But I had never seen a twentieth part of the quantity, and, in reality, I was pretty much of her opinion.

However, at two p.m. on the afternoon of the sixth day, that is to say, when we were sixty-six days out, John Steadiman who had gone aloft, sang out from the top, that the sea was clear ahead.  Before four p.m. a strong breeze springing up right astern, we were in open water at sunset.  The breeze then freshening into half a gale of wind, and the Golden Mary being a very fast sailer, we went before the wind merrily, all night.

I had thought it impossible that it could be darker than it had been, until the sun, moon, and stars should fall out of the Heavens, and Time should be destroyed; but, it had been next to light, in comparison with what it was now.  The darkness was so profound, that looking into it was painful and oppressive — like looking, without a ray of light, into a dense black bandage put as close before the eyes as it could be, without touching them.  I doubled the look-out, and John and I stood in the bow side-by-side, never leaving it all night.  Yet I should no more have known that he was near me when he was silent, without putting out my arm and touching him, than I should if he had turned in and been fast asleep below.  We were not so much looking out, all of us, as listening to the utmost, both with our eyes and ears.

Next day, I found that the mercury in the barometer, which had risen steadily since we cleared the ice, remained steady.  I had had very good observations, with now and then the interruption of a day or so, since our departure.  I got the sun at noon, and found that we were in Lat. 58 degrees S., Long. 60 degrees W., off New South Shetland; in the neighbourhood of Cape Horn.  We were sixty-seven days out, that day.  The ship’s reckoning was accurately worked and made up.  The ship did her duty admirably, all on board were well, and all hands were as smart, efficient, and contented, as it was possible to be.

When the night came on again as dark as before, it was the eighth night I had been on deck.  Nor had I taken more than a very little sleep in the day-time, my station being always near the helm, and often at it, while we were among the ice.  Few but those who have tried it can imagine the difficulty and pain of only keeping the eyes open — physically open — under such circumstances, in such darkness.  They get struck by the darkness, and blinded by the darkness.  They make patterns in it, and they flash in it, as if they had gone out of your head to look at you.  On the turn of midnight, John Steadiman, who was alert and fresh (for I had always made him turn in by day), said to me, “Captain Ravender, I entreat of you to go below.  I am sure you can hardly stand, and your voice is getting weak, sir.  Go below, and take a little rest.  I’ll call you if a block chafes.”  I said to John in answer, “Well, well, John!  Let us wait till the turn of one o’clock, before we talk about that.”  I had just had one of the ship’s lanterns held up, that I might see how the night went by my watch, and it was then twenty minutes after twelve.

At five minutes before one, John sang out to the boy to bring the lantern again, and when I told him once more what the time was, entreated and prayed of me to go below.  “Captain Ravender,” says he, “all’s well; we can’t afford to have you laid up for a single hour; and I respectfully and earnestly beg of you to go below.”  The end of it was, that I agreed to do so, on the understanding that if I failed to come up of my own accord within three hours, I was to be punctually called.  Having settled that, I left John in charge.  But I called him to me once afterwards, to ask him a question.  I had been to look at the barometer, and had seen the mercury still perfectly steady, and had come up the companion again to take a last look about me — if I can use such a word in reference to such darkness — when I thought that the waves, as the Golden Mary parted them and shook them off, had a hollow sound in them; something that I fancied was a rather unusual reverberation.  I was standing by the quarter-deck rail on the starboard side, when I called John aft to me, and bade him listen.  He did so with the greatest attention.  Turning to me he then said, “Rely upon it, Captain Ravender, you have been without rest too long, and the novelty is only in the state of your sense of hearing.”  I thought so too by that time, and I think so now, though I can never know for absolute certain in this world, whether it was or not.

When I left John Steadiman in charge, the ship was still going at a great rate through the water.  The wind still blew right astern.  Though she was making great way, she was under shortened sail, and had no more than she could easily carry.  All was snug, and nothing complained.  There was a pretty sea running, but not a very high sea neither, nor at all a confused one.

I turned in, as we seamen say, all standing.  The meaning of that is, I did not pull my clothes off — no, not even so much as my coat: though I did my shoes, for my feet were badly swelled with the deck.  There was a little swing-lamp alight in my cabin.  I thought, as I looked at it before shutting my eyes, that I was so tired of darkness, and troubled by darkness, that I could have gone to sleep best in the midst of a million of flaming gas-lights.  That was the last thought I had before I went off, except the prevailing thought that I should not be able to get to sleep at all.

I dreamed that I was back at Penrith again, and was trying to get round the church, which had altered its shape very much since I last saw it, and was cloven all down the middle of the steeple in a most singular manner.  Why I wanted to get round the church I don’t know; but I was as anxious to do it as if my life depended on it.  Indeed, I believe it did in the dream.  For all that, I could not get round the church.  I was still trying, when I came against it with a violent shock, and was flung out of my cot against the ship’s side.  Shrieks and a terrific outcry struck me far harder than the bruising timbers, and amidst sounds of grinding and crashing, and a heavy rushing and breaking of water — sounds I understood too well — I made my way on deck.  It was not an easy thing to do, for the ship heeled over frightfully, and was beating in a furious manner.

I could not see the men as I went forward, but I could hear that they were hauling in sail, in disorder.  I had my trumpet in my hand, and, after directing and encouraging them in this till it was done, I hailed first John Steadiman, and then my second mate, Mr. William Rames.  Both answered clearly and steadily.  Now, I had practised them and all my crew, as I have ever made it a custom to practise all who sail with me, to take certain stations and wait my orders, in case of any unexpected crisis.  When my voice was heard hailing, and their voices were heard answering, I was aware, through all the noises of the ship and sea, and all the crying of the passengers below, that there was a pause.  “Are you ready, Rames?” — ”Ay, ay, sir!” — ”Then light up, for God’s sake!”  In a moment he and another were burning blue-lights, and the ship and all on board seemed to be enclosed in a mist of light, under a great black dome.