Jack at Sea Part 90

Five minutes later the boat was swinging to the davits.

"Don't want to punish them any more, Sir John, I suppose?" cried the captain.

"No, no, let the miserable wretches go," said Jack's father.

"Then we'll go back to the old anchorage, sir, for there's a look about the sky I don't like."

The signal was given, and the yacht began to glide rapidly through the water, back toward where the volcano rose up glowing with colour in the morning light, while Jack was at Ned's side as he lay coming to on the deck.

He stared about him for a few moments, and then fixed his eyes on those of Jack, breaking out half hysterically--

"I couldn't help it, Mr Jack, sir; don't set me down for a cowardly cur."

"Help what?" said the lad wonderingly.

"Turning like a woman, and fainting away that how. Oh, do give me a dose o' something, doctor, I feel sick as a dog."

"No, no; lie still for a minute or two, and you'll be all right," said the doctor, patting his shoulder, and Ned uttered a cry.

"Don't, don't, sir. It's agony--my bad shoulder--the arrow--and he hit me there with his club."

"Ned, Ned," said Jack softly, as he bent over the poor fellow and held his hand, "who could think you a coward for saving my life?"

The men began to cheer again when Ned was helped by the doctor and Jack down to his berth, wincing at the slightest touch, for his arm had received a nasty jar, but a smile came into his drawn face as he heard the hearty welcome.

"Thankye, lads, thankye kindly," he kept on saying till he got below, where the steward helped him to change his clothes, and Jack went to his cabin for the same purpose.

"Ever so much better, sir," cried Ned half-an-hour later, when Jack went to see him, and found him dressed and ready to go on deck. "That crack was just like one on the funny-bone, sir, but it's all gone off now. My eye, though! suppose it had been where he meant it! What a headache I should have had!"

By the time Jack reached the deck, the islands from whence the blacks came were hidden by a peculiar-looking haze, and the _Star_ was racing through the sea to gain the shelter of the lagoon.

"A hurricane, my lad," said the captain, "and we shall get into shelter none too soon."

"A nice hunt you gave us, Jack," said his father. "Here have we been with half the crew hard at work every day looking for you two. Well, thank Heaven you are both back safe and sound."

"We did our best to get back, father," said the lad, looking at Sir John wistfully.

"Of course, I know that, my boy, and I hope you think we did our best to find you. The doctor here pretty well lamed himself with walking."

"Of course I did," said that gentleman. "Doctors don't like to lose their patients, do they?"

Go where he would during their run back to the harbour, Jack found the men ready to smile and salute him with a hearty "Glad to see you back, sir," till it set him wondering, and finding Ned forward alone, he went to him and said something about it.

"Yes, sir, ain't it queer? I was thinking the same. I ain't done nothing but be civil to the chaps since we come aboard, but they're as pleased as Punch to see us back again. They're a bit disappointed though that Sir John didn't go in for giving the black beggars an out-and-out good thras.h.i.+ng."

"My father says he came for a pleasure-trip," said Jack quietly, "and he does not wish to go back home feeling that it was obtained at the cost of killing a number of fellow-creatures."

"No, no, of course not," said Ned quickly; "only you must draw the line somewhere, and I want to know whether black fellows who shoot poisoned arrows into you, and when you're swimming for your life, and ain't never interfered with them, and they come and try to knock your brains out with clubs, is fellow-creatures. Why, if it was me, I'd rather try to make friends with a respectable set o' wild beasts. They wouldn't eat you unless they was hungry. Strikes me that if I hadn't dodged that gentleman when he hit at me, I shouldn't have been here; nor I shouldn't neither if some one hadn't fired that shot. I say, Mr Jack, sir; it was Sir John, wasn't it?"

"No, Ned, it was Doctor Instow."

"Then that's two I owe him. I always used to think that Sir John was best man with a gun, but after that--well, I'm done. All I can say is, I hope my turn 'll come to do something for the doctor, and till it does I'll take anything he likes to give me, even if it's jollop, and won't make a face."

Jack laughed.

"Oh yes, it's easy to smile a grin, sir," said Ned, "but if you'd tasted some of the stuff he gave me you wouldn't."

"Ah, well, you will not want any physic now, Ned."

"Hah! it seems more natural on board now," said the mate, coming up smiling. "You two have given us an anxious time. We must have it all over as soon as we're safe from the hurricane."

"Hurricane?" said Ned, staring. "What hurricane? Where?"

The mate pointed astern, and Ned stared out to sea as the yacht raced along.

"Well, I can't see anything," he said.

"Can't you see that thick, hazy look astern?"

"What, that bit o' fog?"

"Yes; it is chasing us pretty sharply; I'm afraid we shall not get into harbour before it's down upon us. Ah, there's the skipper."

The speaker walked quickly aft, and found Captain Bradleigh, who had just come on deck from the cabin, and after a look round there was a brief consultation, and all hands were piped on deck. Then for the next hour there was a busy scene. The tops were sent down, the sails doubly secured, boats swung inboard and lashed, and every possible precaution taken to make all that could be caught by a furious tempest thoroughly secure.

"Well, I suppose they know what they're about, Mr Jack, sir," said Ned; "but it looks to me like taking a lot of trouble because the sky's getting a bit dark, and a shower's coming."

But Ned's knowledge of the typhoon of the eastern tropical seas was naturally not very extensive, and he altered his opinion an hour later, when, in spite of the speed with which the yacht had rushed away before the terrible storm sweeping after them, the sea was white, and half the heavens black as night. It was at half-speed the yacht ran in through the gates of the reef into smooth water, and then turning round at full speed again, went on and on, till she was well under the lee of the great volcano, which did its part when anchors were down, and head to the wind they lay facing the quarter from which the awful hurricane blew.

There was no narrative of adventure given by the seekers or the sought that night, nor any thought of sleep, for officers and men never left the deck, but pa.s.sed a terrible time of anxiety in the expectation that one of the terrific blasts would tear the little vessel from her moorings and cast her upon the inner side of the reef. But the steam was kept up, and the propeller gently turning, sufficient to ease the strain upon the cables, and the anchors held fast.

"She's a splendid craft, gentlemen," said the captain, when they had a.s.sembled for refreshment in the cabin, during one of the brief lulls of the furious blast; "but I'm afraid we should none of us have seen another day if we had been caught outside. A man feels very small at a time like this. The worst hurricane I was ever in. Didn't think the wind could blow so fiercely, Mr Jack, eh?"

Jack shook his head.

"It feels," he said slowly, "as if the world had broke away, and was rus.h.i.+ng on through s.p.a.ce faster and faster, and never to stop again."

"Yes, sir," said the captain quietly, as he gazed at the thoughtful lad.

"You're a scholar, and have read and studied these things. So have I, sir, but not from books, and it seems to me that these things work by their wonderful laws for reasons far beyond our little minds to grasp, and all are working for some great end."

No one answered, and the wind began to increase in violence again, the noise almost stifling the captain's next words:--

"But we have not broken away, sir, and the sun will rise to a minute in the morning, just as if this hurricane had not come, and please G.o.d everything around us will be calm; but be sure yonder you will hardly know the island, it will be such a wreck."

The captain's words were true enough as to the calm, for just before daylight the intense blackness which had covered the heavens pa.s.sed away, leaving the stars glittering with a most wondrous brilliancy; there was a deep murmur dying away in the distance, and, utterly exhausted, Jack laid himself down on one of the cabin lounges, to drop off into the deep sleep of utter exhaustion, one from which he awoke to find the warm glow of evening s.h.i.+ning in at the open window, and his father watching him with an anxious expression upon his face.

Captain Bradleigh was quite right. The hurricane had pa.s.sed, and the aspect of the island from where Jack stood with his gla.s.s on deck, sweeping the mountain slopes, in places a terrible wreck. The hollows and deep ravines had naturally escaped, but the higher portions, even on that side, were swept bare, and every now and then the lad gazed through his binocular at piled-up ma.s.ses of tangled bough and branch shattered and splintered as if they had been straws.