The Island Queen, R. M. Ballantyne [sight word readers .txt] 📗

Let us now, good reader, wing our flight out to sea, and backwards a little in time. On that stormy night of which we treat, a large emigrant ship was scudding before the gale almost under bare poles. Part of her sails and rigging had been carried away; the rest of her was more or less damaged. The officers, having had no reliable observation for several days, were not sure of their exact position on the great ocean, and the captain, being well aware of the danger of those seas, was filled with anxiety. To add to his troubles, the crew had become slightly mutinous, and some of the emigrants—of whom there were upwards of three hundred on board—sided with the crew. It was even whispered that the chief mate was at the bottom of a plot to murder the captain and seize the ship. For what purpose, of course, no one could tell, and, indeed, there was no apparent ground for the rumour, beyond the fact that the mate—Malines by name—was a surly, taciturn man, with a scowling, though handsome, visage, and a powerful frame.

But whatever of truth might have been in these rumours was never brought to light, for an accident occurred during the gale which put the commander of the vessel beyond the power of earthly foes. One of the larger ropes of the vessel snapt, and the heavy block attached to it swung against the captain with such violence as to kill him on the spot. The momentary confusion which followed the disaster distracted the attention of the steersman, and a heavy sea was shipped, by which the captain’s body was swept overboard. No attempt was made to lower a boat or check the ship. Even the unskilled emigrants understood that no boat could live in such a sea, and that rescue was impossible. The vessel held on her wild course as if nothing had happened.

Malines, being now in command, issued an order that all the emigrants should go below, and the hatches be secured.

The women and children and most of the men were already in their uncomfortable quarters below hatches, but a group of hardy-looking fellows, who held on to ropes and stanchions near the windlass, refused to move. Among them was a remarkably powerful woman, whose tongue afforded presumptive evidence that she had been born in the Emerald Isle.

“We’ll stop where we be, master,” said one of the emigrants, with a quiet but resolute air.

“That’s right, Joe, stick up. We ain’t slaves,” said another.

To this last speaker Malines turned fiercely and knocked him down; then, seizing him by the collar and dragging him to the hatchway, he thrust him below. It may be remarked that the man thus roughly treated—Redding by name—was a little man. Bullies usually select little men when inclined to display their courage.

“Shame on yez,” exclaimed the Irish woman, clenching her huge fist. “If it wasn’t that I’m a poor widdy woman, I’d—I’d—”

“Howld yer tongue, Mother Lynch,” whispered a lively youth of about nineteen by her side, who obviously hailed from the same country. “It’s not aggravatin’ him that’ll do him good. Let him be, darlin’, and he’ll soon blow the steam off.”

“An’ what does it matter to me, Teddy Malone, whether he blows the steam off, or keeps it down till he bursts his biler? Is it a descendant o’ the royal family o’ Munster as’ll howld her tongue whin she sees cruelty and injustice?”

Without paying the slightest regard to this royal personage, Malines returned to the group of men, and repeated his order to go below; but they did not go, and he seized a handspike with a view to enforce his commands. He hesitated, however, on observing that the man named Joe, after quietly buttoning his coat, was turning up his wristbands as if in preparation for a pugilistic encounter.

“Lookee here now, Mister Malines,” said Joe, with a mild, even kindly, expression, which was the very reverse of belligerent; “I was allers a law-abidin’ man myself, and don’t have no love for fightin’; but when I’m ordered to go into a dark hole, and have the lid shut down on me an’ locked, I feels a sort of objection, d’ee see. If you lets us be, us’ll let you be. If otherwise—”

Joe stopped abruptly, grinned, and clenched his enormous fists.

Mr Malines was one of those wise men who know when they have met their match. His knockings down and overbearing ways always stopped short at that line where he met courage and strength equal or superior to his own. He possessed about the average of bull-dog courage and more than the average of physical strength, but observing that Joe was gifted with still more of both these qualities, he lowered the handspike, and with a sneer replied—

“Oh, well—please yourselves. It matters nothing to me if you get washed overboard. Make all fast, lads,” he added, turning to his crew, who stood prepared for what one of them styled a scrimmage. Malines returned to the quarter-deck, followed by a half-suppressed laugh from some of the mutinous emigrants.

“You see, David,” remarked Joe, in a quiet tone, to a man beside him, as he turned down his cuffs, “I think, from the look of him, that if we was to strike on rocks, or run on shore, or take to sinking, or anything o’ that sort, the mate is mean enough to look arter hisself and leave the poor things below to be choked in a hole. So you an’ me must keep on deck, so as to let ’em all out if need be.”

“Right, Joe, right you are.”

The man who thus replied bore such a strong resemblance to Joe in grave kindliness of expression and colossal size of frame, that even a stranger could not fail to recognise them as brothers, and such they were—in truth they were twins, having first seen the light together just thirty years before. There was this difference in the character of the brothers, however, that Joe Binney was the more intellectual and resolute of the two. David Binney, recognising this fact, and loving his brother with all the fervour of a strong nature, was in the habit of looking up to him for advice, and submitting to him as if he had been an elder brother. Nevertheless, David was not without a mind of his own, and sometimes differed in opinion with Joe. He even occasionally disputed, but never with the slightest tinge of ill-feeling.

While the brothers were conversing in an undertone on the dangers of the sea, and the disagreeables of a fore-cabin, the mass of unfortunates below were cowering in their berths, rendered almost forgetful of the stifling atmosphere, and the wailing of sick children, by the fear of shipwreck, as they listened with throbbing hearts to the howling wind and rattling cordage overhead, and felt the tremendous shocks when the good ship was buffeted by the sea.

Near to Joe Binney stood one of the sailors on outlook. He was a dark-complexioned, savage-looking man, who had done more than any one else to foment the bad feeling that had existed between the captain and his men.

“Ye look somethin’ skeared, Hugh Morris,” said Joe, observing that the look-out was gazing over the bow with an expression of alarm.

“Breakers ahead!” roared the man at that moment—“port!—hard-a-port!”

The order was sharply repeated, and promptly obeyed, and the vessel came round in time to escape destruction on a ledge of rocks, over which the water was foaming furiously.

Instantly Malines went forward and began to give hurried directions to the steersman. The danger was avoided, though the escape was narrow, and the low rocks were seen passing astern, while the sea ahead seemed to be free from obstruction, as far, at least, as the profound darkness permitted them to see.

“They’ll be all drowned like rats in a hole if we strike,” muttered the sailor, Hugh Morris, as if speaking to himself.

“Not if I can help it,” said Joe Binney, who overheard the remark.

As he spoke he went to the little companion hatch, or door to the fore-cabin, and tried to open it, but could not.

“Here, David,” he cried, “lend a hand.”

Applying their united strength—with some assistance from Teddy Malone, and earnest encouragement from Mrs Lynch—they succeeded in bursting open the hatch.

“Hallo! there,” shouted Joe, in a voice that would have been creditable to a boatswain, “come on deck if ye don’t want to be drownded.”

“Hooroo!” added Malone, “we’re goin’ to the bottom! Look alive wid ye.”

“Ay, an’ bring up the childers,” yelled Mrs Lynch. “Don’t lave wan o’ thim below.”

Of course, the poor emigrants were not slow to obey these startling orders.

The state of affairs was so serious that Malines either did not see, or did not care for, what was going on. He stood on the forecastle looking out intently ahead.

“Land on the starboard beam!” shouted Morris suddenly.

The mate was on the point of giving an order to the steersman when he observed land looming on the port bow. Instantly he saw that all hope was over. They were steering to inevitable destruction between two ledges of rock! What he would have done in the circumstances no one can tell, because before he had time to act the vessel struck with great violence, and the terror-stricken passengers gave vent to that appalling cry of fear which had so suddenly aroused Dominick Rigonda and his brother.

As the vessel remained hard and fast, with her bow thrust high on the rocks, the emigrants and crew found a partial refuge from the violence of the waves on the forecastle. Hence the first wild shriek of fear was not repeated. In a few minutes, however, a wave of greater size than usual came rushing towards the vessel. Fortunately, most of the emigrants failed to realise the danger, but the seamen were fully alive to it.

“It’s all over with us,” exclaimed the mate, in a sort of reckless despair. But he was wrong. The great billow, which he expected would dash the vessel in pieces—and which, in nine cases out of ten, would have done so—lifted the wreck so high as to carry it almost completely over the ledge, on which it had struck, leaving the stern high on the rocks, while the bow was plunged into the partly-protected water on the other side.

The sudden descent of the forecastle induced the belief an many of the emigrants’ minds that they were about to go headlong to the bottom, and another cry of terror arose; but when they found that their place of refuge sank no further than to a level with the water, most of them took heart again, and began to scramble up to the quarter-deck as hastily as they had before scrambled to the forecastle.

“Something like land ahead,” observed Hugh Morris, who stood close to the mate.

“I don’t see it,” returned the latter, gruffly, for he was jealous of the influence that Morris had over the crew, and, during the whole voyage, had treated him harshly.

“It may be there, although you don’t see it,” retorted Hugh, with a feeling of scorn, which he made no attempt to conceal.

“Sure I sees somethin’ movin’ on the wather,” exclaimed Mrs Lynch, who, during the occurrences just described, had held on to a belaying pin with the tenacity and strength of an octopus.

“It’s the wather movin’ in yer own eyes, mother,” said Malone, who stood beside his Amazonian countrywoman.

At that moment a halloo was heard faintly in the distance, and, soon after, a raft was seen approaching, guided, apparently, by two men.

“Raft a-hoy! Where d’ee hail from?” shouted the mate.

“From nowhere!” came back promptly in a boy’s ringing voice.

“You’ve got on a coral reef,” shouted a powerful voice, which, we need scarcely say, was that of Dominick Rigonda, “but you’re safe enough now. The last wave has shoved you over into sheltered water. You’re in luck. We’ll soon put you on shore.”

“An island, I suppose,” said Malines,