Blue Jackets Part 88

"Wind. Tremendous. It will be on us in five minutes."

But even then it seemed impossible, for we were still sailing swiftly and gently along towards the channel between the islands, and the roar like distant thunder or heavy guns had once more ceased.

"We shall get to the sh.o.r.e first after all," I whispered.

"No."

At that moment there was a sensation as of a hot puff of air behind us.

It literally struck my head just as if a great furnace door had been opened, and the glow had shot out on to our necks.

"Here she comes," growled Tom Jecks; "and good luck to us."

And then, as if to carry out the idea of the opened furnace, it suddenly grew lighter--a strange, weird, wan kind of light--and on either side, and running away from us on to the land, the sea was in a wild froth as if suddenly turned to an ocean of milk.

"Down with the sail!" shouted Mr Brooke, who had held on to the last moment, so as to keep the boat as long as possible under his governance; and quickly as disciplined men could obey the sail was lowered, and as far as I could see they were in the act of stowing it along the side, when it filled out with a loud report, and was s.n.a.t.c.hed from their hands and gone.

"Any one hurt?"

"No, sir," in chorus.

"Oars."

I heard the rattle of the two pairs being thrust out. Next Mr Brooke's words, yelled out by my ear--"sit fast!" and then there was a heavy blow, heavy but soft and pressing, followed by the stinging on my neck as of hundreds of tiny whips, and then we were rus.h.i.+ng along over the white sea, in the midst of a ma.s.s--I can call it nothing else--of spray, deafened, stunned, feeling as if each moment I should be torn out of my seat, and as if the boat itself were being swept along like lightning over the sea, riding, not on heavy water, but on the spray.

Then all was one wild, confusing shriek and roar. I was deafened; something seemed to clutch me by the throat and try to strangle me; huge soft hands grasped me by the body, and tugged and dragged at me, to tear me from my hold; and then, two arms that were not imaginary, but solid and real, went round me, and grasped the thwart on which I sat, holding me down, while I felt a head resting on my lap.

I could see nothing but a strange, dull, whitish light when I managed to hold my eyelids up for a moment, but nothing else was visible; and above all--the deafening roar, the fearful buffeting and tearing at me--there was one thing which mastered, and that was the sensation of being stunned and utterly confused. I was, as it were, a helpless nothing, beaten and driven by the wind and spray, onward, onward, like a sc.r.a.p of chaff. Somebody was clinging to me, partly to save himself, partly to keep me from being dragged out of the boat; but whether Mr Brooke was still near me, whether the men were before me, or whether there was any more boat at all than that upon which I was seated, I did not know. All I knew was that I was there, and that I was safe, in spite of all the attempts made by the typhoon to drag me out and sweep me away like a leaf over the milky sea.

It cannot be described. Every sense was numbed. And if any lad who reads this were to take the most terrible storm he ever witnessed, square it, and then cube it, I do not believe that he would approach the elemental disturbance through which we were being hurled.

There was a rocky sh.o.r.e in front of us, and another rocky island sh.o.r.e to our left; and between these two sh.o.r.es lay the channel for which we had tried to make. But Mr Brooke's rule over the boat was at an end the moment the storm was upon us, and, as far as I could ever learn afterwards, no one thought of rocks, channel, saving his life, or being drowned. The storm struck us, and with its furious rush went all power of planning or thinking. Every nerve of the body was devoted to the tasks of holding on and getting breath.

How long it lasted--that wild rush, riding on the spray, held as it were by the wind--I don't know. I tell you I could not think. It went on and on as things do in a horrible dream, till all at once something happened. I did not hear it, nor see it, hardly even felt it. I only know that something happened, and I was being strangled--choked, but in another way. The hands which grasped my throat to keep me from breathing had, I believe, ceased to hold, and something hot and terrible was rus.h.i.+ng up my nostrils and down my throat, and I think I then made some effort with my hands. Then I was being dragged along through water and over something soft, and all at once, though the deafening, confusing noise went on, I was not being swept away, but lying still on something hard.

I think that my senses left me entirely then for a few moments--not more, for I was staring soon after at the dull light of white water sweeping along a little way off, and breathing more freely as I struggled hard to grasp what it all meant, for I did not know. I saw something dim pa.s.s me, and then come close and touch me, as if it sank down by my side; and that happened again and again.

But it was all very dream-like and strange: the awful, overwhelming, crus.h.i.+ng sound of the wind seemed to press upon my brain so that I could not for a long time think, only lie and try to breathe without catching each inspiration in a jerky, spasmodic way.

I suppose hours must have pa.s.sed, during which I stared through the darkness at the dull whitish phosph.o.r.escent glow which appeared through the gloom, and died out, and appeared and died out again and again, pa.s.sing like clouds faintly illumined in a ghastly way, and all mingled with the confusion caused by that awful roar. Then at last I began to feel that the rush of wind and water was pa.s.sing over me, and that I was in some kind of shelter; and when I had once hit upon this, I had as it were grasped a clue. I knew that I was lying on stones, and saw that rising above me was a ma.s.s of rock, which I knew by the touch, and this stone was sheltering me from the wind and spray.

"We must have reached the sh.o.r.e safely, then," I said to myself, for my head was getting clearer; "and--yes--no--I was not hurt. We were all saved, then."

At that point a terrible feeling of dread came over me. I was safe, but my companions?

The shock of this thought threw me back for a bit, but I was soon struggling with the confusion again, and I recalled the fact that I had felt some one touch me as he sank down by my side.

Arrived at this point, I turned a little to look, but all was perfectly black. I stretched out my hand and felt about.

I s.n.a.t.c.hed it back with a cry of horror. Yes, a cry of horror; for, though I could not hear it, I felt it escape from my lips. I had touched something all wet and cold lying close beside me, and I felt that it was one of my companions who had been cast up or dragged ash.o.r.e--dead.

s.h.i.+vering violently, I shrank away, and stretched out my hand in the other direction--my left hand now, with my arm numbed, and my shoulder aching when I moved it, as if the joint had become stiffened and would not work.

I touched somebody there--something cold and smooth and wet, and drew my hand away again, when, as it glided over the sand, it touched something else round and soft and long, and--yes--plaited. It was a long tail.

"Ching!" I e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed; and, gaining courage, I felt again in the darkness, to find that it grew thinner. I tried again in the other direction, and once more touched the round wet object, which did not seem so cold, and then the next moment a hand caught mine and held it.

I was right; it was Ching. I knew him by his long nails.

Not alone! I had a companion in the darkness, one who was nearly as much stunned as I, for he moved no more, but lay holding on by my left hand, and for a time I was content to listen to the savage roar of the wind. But at last, as my brain worked and I mastered the sensation of horror, I began to feel about again with my right hand, till I touched the same cold, wet object I had encountered before.

It was an arm, quite bare and cold; while now I could not withdraw my hand, but lay trembling and shuddering, till I felt that perhaps I was not right--that any one lying dead would not feel like that; and my hand glided down to the wrist.

I knew nothing about feeling pulses only from having seen a doctor do so, but by chance my fingers fell naturally in the right place in the hollow just above the wrist joint, and a thrill of exultation ran through me, for I could distinctly feel a tremulous beating, and I knew that my imagination had played me false--that the man was not dead.

CHAPTER FORTY ONE.

AFTER THE TYPHOON.

The repugnance and horror gave way to a sensation of joy. Here was another companion in misfortune, alive and ready to share the terrible trouble with us, but who was it?

I tried to withdraw my left hand from Ching's grasp; but as soon as he felt it going, he clung to it spasmodically, and it was only by a sharp effort that I dragged it away, and turned to the side of my other companion, and began to touch him. There was the bare arm, but that was no guide; the face helped me no more; but the torn remnants of his clothes told me it was not Mr Brooke, and my heart sank. I felt again, and my hand encountered a drawn-up leg, and then I touched a bandage.

It was Tom Jecks, who had been wounded by the fire from the junk.

I could learn no more. I tried to speak; I shouted; but he made no sign, and I could not even hear my own cries. The darkness remained profound, and the deafening roar of the wind kept on without cessation.

But, feeling more myself at last, I determined to crawl about a little, and find out whether any more of our crew were near us. Then I hesitated; but, summoning courage, I crept on my hands and knees, pa.s.sed Ching, and then crouched down nearly flat, for I had crept to where the shelter ceased, and to have gone on would have been to be swept away.

To test this I raised one hand, and in an instant I suffered quite a jerk, and each time I repeated the experiment I felt more and more that to leave the shelter meant to die, for the power of the blast was appalling.

Crawling back, I proceeded in the other direction, and found that I could go what I guessed to be quite a dozen yards, feeling more and more in shelter. Then all at once I reached a point where the wind came through what afterwards proved to be a narrow pa.s.s between two ma.s.ses of rock, and I shrank back disheartened at the barrenness of my search.

In that black darkness it was very difficult to find my former position, even in so confined a s.p.a.ce, and I found myself completely going wrong, and into the rus.h.i.+ng wind, the effect being horribly confusing again.

But, after lying flat down on the sand, which kept flying up and nearly blinding me, I grew more composed, and, resuming my search once more, found where my two companions lay; and, after touching our wounded sailor, and finding him lying as I had left him, I began to think of what I could do to help him, but thought in vain. To give help was impossible in the midst of that awful storm, and, utterly exhausted now, I sank back and reached out my left hand once more to try and touch Ching.

He was on the alert, and caught my hand in both his, grasping it firmly, as if, boy as I was, he would gladly cling to me for protection; while I, in my horror and loneliness, was only too thankful to feel the touch of a human hand.

Then, amid the strange confusion produced by the roar of the wind and thunder of the waves whose spray hissed over our heads, I lay wondering what had become of Mr Brooke and the others--whether they had reached the land, and were screened behind the rocks as we were; then about the _Teaser_--whether she had been able to make the shelter of the river before the typhoon came down upon them in all its fury.

I seemed to see the men at their quarters, with the spars lowered upon deck, the boats doubly secured, and everything loose made fast. I fancied I felt the throb of the engines, and the whirr of the shaft, as it raced when the stern rose at some dive down of the prow; and the sharp "ting-ting" of the engine-room gong-bell struck on my ears above the yelling of the storm, for wild shrieks at times came mingled with the one tremendous overpowering roar.

Then I began thinking again about Mr Brooke, and whether, instead of lying there in shelter on the sand, I ought not to be striving with all my might to find him; and all at once the roar over my head, the thunder of the breakers somewhere near, and the hiss and splash of the cutting spray, seemed to cease, and I was crawling about the sh.o.r.e, over sand and rocks, and through pools of water, to find Mr Brooke, while Ching followed me, crying out in piping tones, "Velly long of you. Windee blow allee way." But still I toiled on, lying flat sometimes, and holding tightly to the rocks beneath me, for fear of being s.n.a.t.c.hed up and sent whirling over the sea. Then on again, to come to a ma.s.s of rock, up which I climbed, but only to slip back again, climbed once more and slipped, and so on and on till all was nothingness, save that the deafening roar went on, and the billows dashed among the rocks, but in a subdued far-off way that did not trouble me in the least. For my sleep--the sleep of utter exhaustion--had grown less troubled, the dreamy crawl in search of Mr Brooke died away, and I slept soundly there, till the sun glowing warmly upon my face made me open my eyes, to find Ching's round smooth yellow face smiling down at me, and Tom Jecks nursing his leg.

I started up in wonder, but sank back with a groan, feeling stiff and sore, as if I had been belaboured with capstan bars.

"You feel velly bad?" said Ching.

"Horribly stiff."