For Love of Country: A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution, Brady [acx book reading .TXT] 📗

not yet reached the deck when the rain and the wind were upon them. By the captain's direction, the colonel had brought Katharine from below, and she was standing on the quarter-deck sheltered by the overhang of the poop above, listlessly watching. Desborough had made no progress in his love-affairs; he had too much tact and delicacy to press his suit under the present untoward circumstances, and indeed had been too incessantly occupied with the pressing exigencies of the shattered ship, and the duties of his responsible position thereon, to have any time to spare for more than the common courtesies. The awful storm was at last upon them: a sudden change in its direction caused the first fierce blow to fall fairly upon the starboard side of the ship; it pressed her down on her beam-ends; over and over she went, down, down. Would she ever right again? Ah, the spliced shrouds and stays on the weather-side, which had been that attacked by the Randolph, finally gave way, the mainmast went by the board about halfway below the top, the foremast at the cap, and the mizzentopmast, too; relieved of this enormous mass of heavy top hamper, the ship slowly righted herself. The immense mass of wreckage beat and thundered against the port side; it was a fearful situation, but all was not yet lost. Gallantly led by Desborough himself, who saw in one sweeping glance that Katharine was still safe, the men, with axes and knives, hacked through the rigging which held the wreck of the giant spars to the ship, and after a few moments of sickening suspense she drifted clear; a bit of storm canvas was spread forward on the wreck of the foremast, and the ship got before the wind and drove on, laboring and pitching in the heavy sea. The decks were cleared; and indeed there was little left to clear, the waves having broken over her several times when she lay in the trough of the sea, sweeping everything out with them, and the vessel was a total wreck,—the spars gone, rails and bulwarks battered in and smashed, boats lost, the battle having destroyed these on the starboard side, and the wreck and the sea the others. Stop! there was one boat left amidships, a launch capable of holding about forty persons in a pinch, and still seaworthy; it was, by the captain's order, promptly made as serviceable as possible in view of the probable emergency.

About four o'clock in the afternoon the carpenter came aft with the sounding-rod of the well in his hand. The strain had been too much for her; some of the weakened timbers had given way, or some of the seams had opened, or perhaps a butt had started, for the ship was leaking badly. Still those dauntless men did not despair. The crew were told off in gangs to work, and all night the clank, clank, of the pumps was heard. Katharine dutifully laid down as she was bidden; but there was no sleep for her nor any one else on the ship that long night. The day broke again finally, but brought them no cheer: their labor had been unavailing; the leak had gained on them so rapidly that the ship lay low in the water, listless and inert, rolling in a sick, sluggish, helpless way in the trough of the sea. The wind had abated somewhat, and a boat well handled might live in the water now. By Captain Vincent's direction the men were sent to their stations on the spar, or upper deck. The boat's crew was chosen by selecting every fifteenth man in the long lines, the division officers doing the counting. The boat was launched without tackles, by main strength, sliding on rollers over the side through the broken bulwarks. Katharine, listless and indifferent, still attended by Chloe, was put aboard. Captain Vincent looked about among his officers; whom should he put in charge? They all looked deprecatingly and entreatingly at him. None desired to go; no one wished to be singled out to abandon the ship and his brother officers. His glance fell on Desborough.

"The duty is yours; you are the first officer of the ship."

"Oh, Captain Vincent, do not send me, I beg you. My place surely is on the ship with you. Cannot some one else—"

"No, you must go. My last command to you, my lord," he said, smiling faintly and extending his hand. Desborough, seeing the futility of further appeal, grasped it warmly in both his own, bowed to the other officers, and with a wave of his hand stepped on the rail and sprang into the tossing boat alongside.

"Are there any others to go?" he said.

The captain's eye fell upon the figure of the colonel standing among the officers.

"You are to go, sir. Nay, I will hear of no objections. You are my prisoner, and I am bound to see you delivered safely. Go, colonel. I mean it; I will have you put aboard by a file of marines if you do not go at once."

Katharine awoke from her apathy and stretched out her hands with a piteous cry,—

"Father, father, oh, I cannot lose you too."

"Prisoner or no prisoner, sir," said the colonel, "let me say that I am proud of my connection with you and your officers and your men. If I live to reach the shore, the world shall hear of this noble ending. Good-by, captain; good-by, gentlemen. I would fain stay with you."

"No, no!" was the cry from this band of heroes; and then Hollins sprang forward and shouted,—

"Lads! Three cheers for the colonel and for our shipmates in the launch! Let them tell at home that we were glad to stay by the old ship."

The hearty cheers came with a roar from five hundred throats.

"Good-by, good-by; God bless you!" cried the colonel, choking and utterly overcome, as he got into the boat, and sank down in the stern sheets beside his daughter.

"Colonel, we have n't a moment of time," whispered Desborough, who saw that the ship was sinking.

"Shove off, men; pull hard!"

A few moments of hard rowing in the heavy sea put them some little distance away, and the boat waited under just enough way to give them command of her. The men of the ship kept their stations; calm and peaceful, they also waited. The ship settled lower and lower; a man stepped hurriedly aft; and a moment later the bold and brilliant ensign of Old England, which never waved over braver men, fluttered out in the heavy breeze from the wrecked mast-head, the vivid red of the proud flag making a lurid dash of color against the gray sky-line. The ship was lower now. Now she plunged forward; the water rose; the captain raised his hand; three hearty cheers rang out; the drums beat; the marines presented arms. She was gone! The flag streamed out bravely on the surface of the water, and then it was drawn down; a confused mass of heads and waving arms was seen in the water, and they too in a moment were slowly drawn down into the vortex caused by the sinking ship. The woman again hid her face in her hands; the colonel laid his arm across the shoulder of his daughter; Desborough and the men in the boat stared horribly at the spot left vacant; a deep groan broke from them; they rose on the crest of a wave, sank down again, rose once more and looked again,—the little boat was alone on that mighty sea!

Oh, the agony of those long and frightful days in that little boat! Never a sail did they sight, as day after day they rowed or sailed to the westward, eagerly scanning the horizon for a landfall. The waves washed over them, saturating their clothing; the chill winds of winter froze them. First their provisions gave out, though served with the most rigid economy by Desborough himself; then the water, husbanded as no precious jewel was ever hoarded, was exhausted to the last drop, and that drop, by common consent, Desborough forced between Katharine's reluctant lips, though she would fain have refused it, claiming no indulgence beyond the others. The rare qualities of that young officer showed themselves brilliantly in this frightful peril. It was due to his skill and careful management that they were not swamped a dozen times; tireless, unselfish, cheerful, unsparing of himself, without him they would have died. The men bore their sufferings, when all food and water failed them, with the sturdy resolution of British sailors; Desborough his, with the courage of the hero that he was, his fiercest pang being for the white-faced girl who suffered in uncomplaining silence. The colonel exhibited the stoical indifference of a seasoned old soldier, as to his own personal condition, all his thoughts being centred upon his daughter, who passed through the dreadful experience with the calm resignation of a woman who had nothing left to live for, and, strange to say, seemed to feel it less acutely than the rest; even black Chloe, who had impartially shared with her mistress in all the favors accorded to her, being in a state of utter exhaustion, amounting to collapse.

When the pangs of hunger and thirst got hold of them, they refused—and were indeed entirely unable—to work longer with the oars, so that, unless the wind was fair and the sail was set, they simply drifted on.

One by one the sailors died. Waking from a troubled sleep of short duration, Katharine one day found Chloe's dead hand around her feet, her cold lips pressed upon them. Some of the men grew mad before they died, and raved and babbled of green fields and running brooks until the end came, and still the little boat drifted on. Few and short were the prayers the living said as, day by day they cast the dead into the sea. Desborough, the resolute, with undying strength kept steadily at the helm. Once only did he speak to Katharine in words of love. As their situation grew more and more hopeless, and even his resolute optimism began to fail him, he bent down and whispered in her ear,—

"I would not trouble you now, Katharine, but before we die I must tell you once again that I love you. Will you believe it?"

"I will believe it," she answered dully, giving him her hand. Oh, he thought in agony, as he bent over it and kissed it, how thin and white and feeble it was I One morning, after hope was dead, he was listlessly scanning the line of the horizon as the rising sun threw it into relief, more from habit than expectancy, when his heart almost stopped its feeble beating, for land was there before him if his strained eyes did not deceive him. Doubting the evidence of his weakened senses, and fearing the delusions of a disordered imagination, he refrained from communicating his impressions to any of the others until the light of day determined the accuracy of his vision. Then he whispered the news to Katharine, the apathetic woman told it to the sinking colonel, and then Desborough cried it to his dying crew. The wind sprang up at the moment too, and in a few hours they beached the boat upon a low sandy shore, with the waves breaking gently over it in long easy rollers. It was a desolate coast, sparsely wooded with small trees, and having little evidence of human habitation about it; but no glimpse of heaven could have more rejoiced a dying soul than this bleak haven to which they had been brought. They staggered, half fell, out of the boat, and lay exhausted, with ghastly haggard faces, on the shining sands, giving thanks to God for His mercy.

Desborough, as the strongest of the party, started inland, finding by and by a little stream of fresh water, and farther on, on higher ground, seeing a house, the smoke curling from its chimneys showing that it was inhabited. To the bubbling spring he half led, half dragged his shipwrecked party. They drank sparingly by his direction, and were refreshed, for with the cool water life and hope came back to them once more. Then he left them again and went on to the house. They had landed on the shore of Virginia, and the