“Heave to!” came from the quarter-boat, as she laboured behind.
“Lay on your oars, bullies!” cried the ruffian at the bow, who was still standing up like an evil genius who had taken momentary command over events. “Lay on your oars, bullies; they’d better have it now.”
The quarter-boat in her turn ceased rowing, and lay a cable’s length away.
“How much water have you?” came the mate’s voice.
“Not enough to go round.”
Le Farge made to rise, and the stroke oar struck at him, catching him in the wind and doubling him up in the bottom of the boat.
“Give us some, for God’s sake!” came the mate’s voice; “we’re parched with rowing, and there’s a woman on board.”
The fellow in the bow of the longboat, as if someone had suddenly struck him, broke into a tornado of blasphemy.
“Give us some,” came the mate’s voice, “or, by God, we’ll lay you aboard!”
Before the words were well spoken the men in the quarter-boat carried the threat into action. The conflict was brief: the quarter-boat was too crowded for fighting. The starboard men in the longboat fought with their oars, whilst the fellows to port steadied the boat.
The fight did not last long, and presently the quarter-boat sheered off, half of the men in her cut about the head and bleeding—two of them senseless.
It was sundown on the following day. The longboat lay adrift. The last drop of water had been served out eight hours before.
The quarter-boat, like a horrible phantom, had been haunting and pursuing her all day, begging for water when there was none. It was like the prayers one might expect to hear in hell.
The men in the longboat, gloomy and morose, weighed down with a sense of crime, tortured by thirst, and tormented by the voices imploring for water, lay on their oars when the other boat tried to approach.
Now and then, suddenly, and as if moved by a common impulse, they would all shout out together: “We have none.” But the quarter-boat would not believe. It was in vain to hold the breaker with the bung out to prove its dryness, the half-delirious creatures had it fixed in their minds that their comrades were withholding from them the water that was not.
Just as the sun touched the sea, Lestrange, rousing himself from a torpor into which he had sunk, raised himself and looked over the gunwale. He saw the quarter-boat drifting a cable’s length away, lit by the full light of sunset, and the spectres in it, seeing him, held out in mute appeal their blackened tongues.
Of the night that followed it is almost impossible to speak. Thirst was nothing to what the scowbankers suffered from the torture of the whimpering appeal for water that came to them at intervals during the night.
When at last the Arago, a French whale ship, sighted them, the crew of the longboat were still alive, but three of them were raving madmen. Of the crew of the quarter-boat was saved—not one.
Part II
XI
The Island
“Childer!” shouted Paddy. He was at the cross-trees in the full dawn, whilst the children standing beneath on deck were craning their faces up to him. “There’s an island forenint us.”
“Hurrah!” cried Dick. He was not quite sure what an island might be like in the concrete, but it was something fresh, and Paddy’s voice was jubilant.
“Land ho! it is,” said he, coming down to the deck. “Come for’ard to the bows, and I’ll show it you.”
He stood on the timber in the bows and lifted Emmeline up in his arms; and even at that humble elevation from the water she could see something of an undecided colour—green for choice—on the horizon.
It was not directly ahead, but on the starboard bow—or, as she would have expressed it, to the right. When Dick had looked and expressed his disappointment at there being so little to see, Paddy began to make preparations for leaving the ship.
It was only just now, with land in sight, that he recognised in some fashion the horror of the position from which they were about to escape.
He fed the children hurriedly with some biscuits and tinned meat, and then, with a biscuit in his hand, eating as he went, he trotted about the decks, collecting things and stowing them in the dinghy. The bolt of striped flannel, all the old clothes, a housewife full of needles and thread, such as seamen sometimes carry, the half-sack of potatoes, a saw which he found in the caboose, the precious coil of tobacco, and a lot of other odds and ends he transhipped, sinking the little dinghy several strakes in the process. Also, of course, he took the breaker of water, and the remains of the biscuit and tinned stuff they had brought on board. These being stowed, and the dinghy ready, he went forward with the children to the bow, to see how the island was bearing.
It had loomed up nearer during the hour or so in which he had been collecting and storing the things—nearer, and more to the right, which meant that the brig was being borne by a fairly swift current, and that she would pass it, leaving it two or three miles to starboard. It was well they had command of the dinghy.
“The sea’s all round it,” said Emmeline, who was seated on Paddy’s shoulder, holding on tight to him, and gazing upon the island, the green of whose trees was now visible, an oasis of verdure in the sparkling and seraphic blue.
“Are we going there, Paddy?” asked Dick, holding on to a stay, and straining his eyes towards the land.
“Ay, are we,” said Mr. Button. “Hot foot—five knots, if we’re makin’ wan; and it’s ashore we’ll be by noon, and maybe
