A Desperate Voyage Part 21

Carew looked round with the sense of vague terror that is experienced in a nightmare. He felt all the influence of this stern nature so hostile to the life of man. It seemed to him that at any moment some fearful cataclysm of the earth, or some unexampled calamity of any sort, might occur. It would not have appeared strange to him to behold a fire-breathing dragon or gigantic snake--such as are supposed to live in fable only--issue from that gloomy ravine. Nothing could have appeared too strange to happen on this mysterious sh.o.r.e.

The prisoners could not be seen from the landing-place, as the clump of trees to which they had been lashed was some little way up the ravine, and a huge boulder of black rock stood in front of it. Carew heard no sound of voices as he approached. He considered it very unlikely that the men had succeeded in freeing themselves from their bonds; but, prepared for any emergency, he held his revolver in his hand and walked round the corner of the rock.

He looked towards the clump of dead brown trees.

His hand relaxed its grasp, and the revolver fell with a ringing sound on the rocks. He was struck motionless with a great horror. He stood fascinated, staring before him with wide-open eyes, unwincing. He would have given worlds to have closed his lids and shut out what he saw, but he could not. It was as if some irresistible power was holding him there, compelling him to look until every horrible detail of the scene should be burnt into his brain for ever.

It was only for a few seconds, and then the spell was broken. He covered his face with his hands and staggered back. Then turning from the sight, he rushed away, not caring whither, sobbing such sobs as the lost souls in h.e.l.l may sob in their despair--a dreadful sobbing, that told of a hopeless agony too intense to be endured for long by weak human flesh.

Suddenly he stopped short, looked wildly round him, raised his hands towards the skies, and, uttering shrill shriek upon shriek, threw himself on the ground. He rolled down the steep incline for some way, cutting his hands and face with the sharp rocks, and when at last a projecting stone prevented his farther descent, he lay foaming at the mouth and writhing convulsively in an epileptic fit.

The tragic spectacle the man had suddenly come upon might indeed well have made him, the guilty cause of it, go mad with horror. The fearful cries that had been heard from the vessel were now explained. The voracious land-crabs had done his work. He had gazed upon his victims, and he felt that his limbs were paralysed; but his brain was intensely, unnaturally active. It seemed to him that a voice had said, "Look, and grasp all that there is to see, and remember, before the relief of madness is allowed to thee. Thou hast murdered sleep, and shalt never know peace again. For ever, in the worlds to come, the picture of this that thou hast done shall be branded on thy soul!"

And he had been forced to look; not a detail of the horror was spared him. The surroundings of the scene, the weird black rocks, the gaunt dead trees, everything about the accursed spot entered into his brain.

He even noticed with what callous indifference Nature seemed to contemplate the hideous evidences of the crime. Quite heedless, the huge crabs dragged their clumsy bodies slowly over the stones. The sea-birds fought noisily with each other for morsels of fish among the skeleton branches of the trees, careless of those ghastly relics of poor humanity beneath them. He felt how fitting a scene for such a tragedy was this doleful corner of the earth, this island that a malevolent fiend might have created, where Nature had no beauty, no love, no pity, and where, like some foul witch, she could only conceive forms of life cruel and repulsive, and become a mother of monsters.

The sun was low in the heaven, and Carew woke out of a profound slumber, weak, parched with thirst, his mind dazed. He raised himself on his elbow, and, looking round him, he found that he was lying on a beach of beautiful golden sand that fringed an extensive bay. From the sands there sloped up to a great height domes of loose stones of red volcanic formation, of all shapes and sizes, the debris of shattered mountains, and from the summits of these slopes there rose what the earthquakes had still left of the solid hills--dark red pinnacles: some squared like gigantic towers, others pointed like pyramids. The bay was enclosed by two huge b.u.t.tresses of rock that stretched as rugged promontories far out into the ocean. There was no vegetation, not even a blade of gra.s.s, visible anywhere on this savage coast. Looking seawards he saw that a vast number of black rocks, among which raged a furious surf, bordered the sh.o.r.e. Beyond these were the outer reefs on which the sea broke heavily. And still farther out, on the horizon, rose three rocky islands of considerable size, glowing red as the sun's rays fell full upon them.

Carew could not imagine where he was and how he had reached this place.

He tried to think. By degrees he called to mind the dreadful sight he had seen in the ravine; but he could remember nothing that had occurred since then. As the sun was to the back of the hills, he fancied that it was still early in the forenoon, and that he had wandered a short distance only from South West Bay; though the presence of the distant islands and the different character of the coast perplexed him.

But he could think of nothing at that moment except the satisfaction of the fearful thirst that was tormenting him.

He rose to his feet, eager to reach the cascade as soon as possible. He felt that he should die if he could not procure water soon.

But in which direction had he to go--to the left or to the right? He could not tell.

Then he saw his footprints on the soft sand, showing the way that he had come. He had but to follow them.

Dizzy and faint, and often stumbling, he wearily retraced his steps. The footprints led him along the sh.o.r.e to that extremity of the bay which would have been on the left hand of one looking seaward. Reaching the promontory of rock he clambered to the summit of it; and then, to his dismay, he looked down upon another extensive bay, at the farther end of which was a mountain of square shape falling perpendicularly into the surf, and preventing all further progress in that direction. An ocean current must be perpetually setting into this bay, for he perceived that the sh.o.r.e was strewn with a prodigious quant.i.ty of wreckage. The spars and barrels were heaped up together in places. There were vessels lying crushed among the sharp rocks; others were sunk in the sand, their skeleton ribs alone showing; there were vessels of all sizes, and some of very antique construction--relics of disaster that had been collecting gradually on this desert coast unvisited by man through all the ages since European keels first clove the southern seas: a melancholy record of much suffering and the loss of many gallant men.

Then Carew began to suspect the truth, and a great dread fell on him.

Lying down he placed a small stone on the edge of a shadow cast by a pointed rock, and watched it with a breathless suspense.

Yes, it was as he had feared. _The shadow was slowly lengthening!_ He laid his face on the ground and wept hysterically in his despair.

The shadow was lengthening, therefore the sun was setting. It was setting inland over the mountains, and thus the sea was to the east of him. So--unconsciously, by what road he knew not--he must have traversed the whole island, and he was now on the coast the most remote from South West Bay. The cascade, the water he was dying for, was miles away, beyond those great hills. He could never reach it in his present state.

He was on the weather side of Trinidad.

Those heavy breakers on the reefs were caused by the high swell of the south-east trades, and there on the horizon were the three islands of Martin Vas, twenty-five miles away.

So he despaired and lay down on the rocks, and longed for the release of death. Then he became delirious, and fancied that he was in Fleet Street again, and was going into a tavern with some comrades to drink a gla.s.s of wine. But once more the agony of thirst woke him to a consciousness of his position. He staggered to his feet, and ran on blindly a few yards; then he stumbled, and fell to his knees.

Ah! what was that gleaming so temptingly before him?--an illusion only to mock him into madness with its lying promise. He stretched his hand to it--touched it. He plunged his face into it.

It was water--fresh water; a small pool left in a hollow of a rock by the last rains. It was nauseous to the taste, and heated by the tropical sun; but it was water, and infinitely more precious to him at that moment than all the gold quartz in his vessel's hold. He drank fiercely and long, before his craving was a.s.suaged; then his senses returned to him, and, though still very weak, he felt capable of making an effort to save his life.

He descended the farther side of the b.u.t.tress of rock that divides the two bays, and again followed his footprints, which led him across the wreck-strewn sands to the entrance of a ravine that clove the mountains, and seemed to afford the only practicable pa.s.s across them.

He looked upwards, and wondered how he could have possibly found his way with safety down that perilous place; for he supposed that he must have been in a trance-like condition when he made that journey, of which he was now so entirely oblivious.

With great pain and labour he accomplished the difficult ascent. This ravine had the same character as most of those in Trinidad. The bottom of it was enc.u.mbered with ma.s.ses of fallen rock, among which stood the mysterious dead trees. Here the foul sea-birds were very numerous. The air stank with the fish on which they fed; and as it was now the breeding season, the mothers were very fierce, and attacked Carew with their wings and beaks as he advanced, so that he had to arm himself with a piece of wood, and fight his way through them.

After much weary climbing, often in places where a false step would have meant death, he reached an elevated plateau covered with tree-ferns--the only vegetation on the island which was fair to the eye.

Crossing this plateau, he found himself on the summit of a precipitous cliff, and he looked down upon the ocean into which the sun was just setting. At his feet, far below, the barque lay at anchor.

Proceeding along the edge of the precipice, he came to the head of a ravine, which he knew must be the one from which the cascade falls into the sea. After clambering down a little way, he reached the source of the stream. The cool clear water rushed out with a pleasant sound from a hole in the rocks. Here he lay down and drank greedily, for his throat was again parched with fever.

Feeling too exhausted to make any further exertion, and knowing that the darkness would soon render it impossible to continue the descent down those perilous slopes, he determined to pa.s.s the night where he was.

Lying on a narrow ledge of rock he fell into a profound sleep.

After a while he dreamt a frightful dream. He thought that his victims had come to life again, and, having surprised him in his sleep, were holding him by his arms with a grip of iron, and were about to put him to the torture.

He awoke with a start, and for a moment fancied that he saw their skeleton forms leaning over him in the starlight.

But was it all a dream? What was that sensation of pain in his right arm, as if a vice were tightening upon it?

He sprang to his feet, and with his arm dragged up a heavy weight that was clinging to it.

Shuddering with horror, he shook it violently from him, and a large land-crab fell with a crash on the stones.

The wretched man looked round, and could distinguish in the dim light that the rocks were covered with the brutes. They had come out of their holes at sunset, and were about to devour him alive.

He seized a large stone, and hurled it at one of them. It broke through the creature's armour and killed it. But the others paid no heed to the death of their fellow, and crawled on with a deliberate slowness. He pulled a branch off one of the dead trees, and with this he was able to thrust them away as they approached. He was obliged to keep watch and defend himself thus through all that long night. Once or twice he dropped off asleep in sheer exhaustion, only to be awakened again a moment afterwards by the closing of sharp pincers on some portion of his body. It was a night the realities of which equalled in horror the worst illusions of a nightmare. Several times he thought of throwing himself off the cliffs and putting an end to his misery, but still he clung to life, and fought for it, as men who value it the least always will when in the presence of a merely physical danger.

At daybreak Carew, his eyes bloodshot, his limbs shaking, having the appearance of one who is recovering from an attack of delirium tremens, descended the ravine as hastily as his weak condition permitted. He turned his head aside as he pa.s.sed the fatal clump of trees. He reached the landing-place, and there found Baptiste and El Chico awaiting him with the cutter.

Carew stepped into the boat without saying a word.

Baptiste glanced at the haggard face of the captain, but made no remark on his altered appearance. He merely said, "We were anxious about you, so have been off here since daybreak waiting for you."

Carew looked inquiringly into the mate's face, but did not dare to utter the question that was on his lips.

Baptiste understood. "Yes, I have seen it," he said, in a low voice.

Even that callous villain had been awed by the sight at the foot of the ravine.

CHAPTER XVII

For two more days the barque lay becalmed off the desert island, but not one of the crew ventured on land again. The two Spaniards shrunk with a superst.i.tious terror from further contact with that accursed sh.o.r.e--that _costa maldita_, as they invariably spoke of it.