The Pirate Story Megapack. R.M. Ballantyne

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ saw him—the meek, the gentle, the venerable Corbet,—thus descending, by his own free will, and by his own act, into the dark abyss of this unknown sea.

      And so they watched with pallid faces, and with agonized hearts for the end.

      The ancient mariner sank down, as has been said, with his sinking schooner, and his feet were overwhelmed by the rushing flood, and his ankles, and his knees, and his thighs, and at length he stood there with the waters about his waist, and his mild eyes fixed upon vacancy.

      Another moment, and they expected to see that venerable and beloved form disappear forever from their gaze.

      But that venerable form did not, in fact, disappear.

      That venerable form remained stationary,—the waters reaching as far as the waist: thus far, but no farther. The lower half had disappeared beneath the sea, but the upper half still remained to bless and cheer their eyes. Corbet still lived! But it was what an artist might call a Torso of Corbet.

      Corbet thus had sunk into the unfathomable depth of ocean up to his waist, but after that he sank no more. Higher than that the waters did not rise. He stood in that rigid attitude already described, grasping the tiller, and thus steadying himself,—upright, firm as a rock, and so he stood after the waters had risen to his waist.

      The hull of the Antelope had disappeared. But still her masts and rigging rose above the waters, and above the head of Corbet, and these sank no farther, but remained at the same height above the sea.

      Astonishment seized upon all of them, Corbet included. What was it that had caused this wonder? Was it because the hull was too buoyant to sink any farther? Was it because there was still some air left inside the hull which prevented the schooner from sinking altogether? This they might have thought had they not been made wiser through their recent experiences. By these they now knew that on these seas there were sand banks and shoals; and, therefore, what was more natural than that, the Antelope had sunk in some place where there happened to be, just beneath her, a convenient shoal which had received her sinking hull? It was certainly a very curious sea,—a sea which seemed to abound in such shoals as these; but whatever might be the character of that sea, this fact remained, that the Antelope had sunk in less than a couple of fathoms of water.

      And so it was that the heroic and devoted resolve of the venerable and high-minded captain was baffled, and his descent into the depths of the ocean was arrested. For there lay the Antelope, resting upon some place not far beneath the sea, with her masts still high above water, and with the person of her gifted commander half submerged and half exposed to view; and there stood that venerable commander up to his waist in water, but unable to descend any farther; a singular, a wonderful, an unparalleled spectacle; unaccountable altogether to those whose eyes were fastened upon it.

      But the thought of a shoal or sand bank soon came, and so they began to understand the state of affairs. The Antelope had sunk, not into an unfathomable abyss in mid-ocean, but upon some sand bank. Where or what that sand-bank might be, they did not then take time to consider. Whether it was some part of one of the Banks of Newfoundland, or the slowly declining shore around Sable Island, or some other far different and far removed place, did not at that time enter into the sphere of their calculations. Enough it was for them that the terror had passed; that the grim spectacle of death and destruction before their very eyes had been averted; that Corbet was saved.

      Till this moment they had not been aware of the greatness of their anguish. But now the reaction from that anguish made them acquainted with its intensity, and in proportion to their late sufferings was now their joy and rejoicing. At the first movement of the Antelope towards a descent into the sea, they had instinctively and very naturally moved their boat farther away, so as to avoid being sharers of the fate which Captain Corbet seemed to desire; but now, after the first danger was over, and the first emotions of amazement and wonder had subsided, they rowed nearer. They believed that now Captain Corbet would listen to reason, and that, having done so much in obedience to the call of duty, he would be willing to save himself.

      And now, as they rowed nearer, the boat floated over the rail of the sunken schooner, and came close up to the half-submerged commander.

      “Come, captain,” said Bart, in a voice that was yet tremulous with excitement, “jump in. There’s plenty of room. You—you—don’t—don’t want to be standing in the water this way any longer, of course.”

      To this remark Captain Corbet made no reply in words, but he did make a reply in acts, which were far more eloquent. He seized the side of the boat at once, and scrambling in, sank down, wet and shivering, in the stern, alongside of those other obstinate and contumacious ones—Pat, Wade, and Solomon. And so it was that at last, after so much trouble, those four, who had at first been so unmanageable, now were assembled on board the boat into which they had once refused to enter.

      The delight of the boys was as great as their grief had been a short time before, and no other thought came into their minds than that of the happy end that had occurred to a scene that had promised such disaster. The fact that their situation was one of doubt and uncertainty, perhaps peril, did not just then occur to them. It was enough joy for them that Captain Corbet had been snatched from a watery grave; and so they now surrounded him with careful attention. Bruce offered him a biscuit; Bart asked about his health; Tom urged him to wring out the water from his trousers; and Phil, who was next to him in the boat, fearing that he might feel faint, pressed upon him a tin dipper full of water.

      Captain Corbet took the proffered draught and raised it to his lips. A few swallows, however, satisfied him, and he put it down with some appearance of haste.

      “As a gen’ral thing,” said he, in a tone of mild remonstrance, “I don’t use sea water for a beverage. I kin take it, but don’t hanker arter it, as the man said when he ate the raw crow on a bet.”

      “Sea water!” exclaimed Phil. “Did I?”

      He raised the water to his own lips, and found that it was so.

      “Then we’ve taken sea water in this keg,” he cried, “and we haven’t any fresh.”

      At this dreadful intelligence consternation filled all minds.

      “Who filled that keg?” asked Bruce, after a long silence.

      “Sure I did,” said Pat.

      “You! and how did you happen to make such a mistake?” cried Bart.

      “Sure ye said to fill the kegs with wather, an didn’t say what kind; so I jist tuk the say wather, because it was most convaynient.”

      At this amazing blunder the boys were dumb, and stared at Pat in silence. Words were useless. The mistake was a fatal one. The fresh water had gone with the Antelope to the bottom. Where or when could they hope to get any more? Who could tell how long a time, or how great a distance, might now separate them from the land? Bad enough their situation already had been, but this opened up before them the prospect of unknown sufferings.

      “O, don’t talk to me about water,” said Captain Corbet, in lugubrious tones, squeezing his hands, as he spoke, over his thighs and shins, so as to force the water out of his clothes. “Don’t you go and talk to me about water. I’ve hed enough, an don’t want ever to see any agin. Why, it kem up as high as my waist if it kem a inch. An now what’s to hender me a fallin a helpuless victim to rheumatiz. O, I know it. Don’t tell me. I know what’s a goin to come to this ferrail body. Thar’s rheumatiz acute and chronic, an thar’s pleurisy, an thar’s lumbago, an thar’s nooralgy, an thar’s fifty other diseases equally agonizin. An dear, dear, dear, dear! But how dreadful СКАЧАТЬ