Adrift in Pacific and Other Great Adventures – 17 Titles in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). Jules VerneЧитать онлайн книгу.
went through these in order, and found that the water had been taken in from the seas dashing over the bows, down the fore-companion, which had not been quite closed, and that it had been run aft by the pitching of the ship. There was thus no danger on this head.
Briant stopped to cheer up his companions as he went back through the saloon, and then returned to his place at the helm. The schooner was very strongly built, and had only just been re-coppered, so that she might withstand the waves for some time.
It was then about one o'clock. The darkness was darker than ever, and the dark clouds still gathered; and more furiously than ever raged the storm. The yacht seemed to be rushing through a liquid mass that flowed above, beneath, and around her. The shrill cry of the petrel was heard in the air. Did its appearance mean that land was near ? No; for it is often met with hundreds of miles at sea. And, in truth these birds of the storm found themselves powerless to struggle against the aerial current, and by it were borne along like the schooner.
An hour later there was another report from the bow. What remained of the foresail had been split to ribbons and the strips flew off into space like huge seagulls.
" We have no sail left !" exclaimed Donagan, " and it is impossible for us to set another."
" Well, it doesn't matter," said Briant. " We shall not get along so fast, that is all !"
" What an answer !" replied Donagan. " If that is your style of seamanship—"
" Look out for the wave astern!" said Moko. " Lash yourselves, or you'll be swept overboard—"
The boy had not finished the sentence when several tons of water came with a leap over the taffrail. Briant, Donagan, and Gordon were hurled against the companion, to which they managed to cling. But the negro had disappeared in the wave which had swept the deck from stern to bow, carrying away the binnacle, a lot of spare spars, and the three boats which were swinging to the davits inboard. The deck was cleared at one blow, but the water almost instantly flowed off, and the yacht was saved from sinking beneath the flood.
" Moko ! Moko! " shouted Briant, as soon as he could speak.
" See if he's gone overboard," said Donagan.
" No," said Gordon, leaning out to leeward. " No, I don't see him, and I don't hear him."
" We must save him! Throw him a buoy! Throw him a rope! " said Briant.
And in a voice that rang clearly out in a few seconds of calm, he shouted again,—
"Moko! Moko!"
" Here ! Help ! " replied the negro.
" He is not in the sea," said Gordon. " His voice comes from the bow."
" I'll save him," said Briant.
And he crept forward along the heaving, slippery deck, avoiding as best he might the blocks swinging from the ropes that were all adrift. The boy's voice was heard again, and then all was silent. By great effort Briant reached the fore-companion.
He shouted. There was no response.
Had Moko been swept away into the sea since he uttered his last cry ? If so, he must be far astern now for the waves could not carry him along as fast as the schooner was going. And then he was lost.
No ! A feeble cry reached Briant, who hurried to the windlass in the frame of which the foot of the bowsprit was fitted. There he found the negro stuck in the very angle of the bow. A halliard was tightening every instant round his neck. He had been saved by it when the wave was carrying him away. Was he now to be strangled by it ?
Briant opened his knife, and, with some difficulty, managed to cut the rope. Moko was then dragged aft, and as soon as he had recovered strength enough to speak, " Thanks, Massa Briant," he said, and immediately resumed his place at the wheel, where the four did their utmost to keep the yacht safe from the enormous waves that now ran behind them, for the waves now ran faster than the yacht, and could easily board her as they passed. But what could be done ? It was impossible to set the least scrap of sail.
In the southern hemisphere the month of March corresponds to that of September in the northern, and the nights are shorter than the days. About four o'clock the horizon would grow grey in the east, whither the schooner was being borne. With daybreak the storm might lull. Perhaps land might be in sight, and the fate of the schooner's passengers be settled in a few minutes!
About half-past four a diffused light began to appear overhead. Unfortunately the mist limited the range of view to less than a quarter of a mile. The clouds swept by with terrible rapidity. The storm had lost nothing of its fury; and but a short distance off the sea was hidden by the veil of spray from the raging waves. The schooner at one moment mounting the wave-crest, at the next hurled into the trough, would have been shattered to pieces again and again had she touched the ground.
The four boys looked out at the chaos of wild water ; they felt that if the calm was long in coming their situation would be desperate. It was impossible that the schooner could float for another day, for the waves would assuredly sweep away the companions and swamp her.
But suddenly there came a cry from Moko of " Land, Land!"
Through a rift in the mist the boy thought he had seen the outline of a coast to the eastward. Was he mistaken ? Nothing is more difficult than to recognize the faint outlines of land,which are so easily confounded with those of the clouds.
" Land ! " exclaimed Briant.
" Yes," replied Moko. " Land ! to the eastward." And he pointed towards a part of the horizon now hidden by a mass of vapours.
" Are you sure ? " asked Donagan.
" Yes !—Yes!—Certain ! " said Moko. " If the mist opens again you look—there—a little to the right of the foremast—Look ! look ! "
The mist began to open and rise from the sea. A few moments more and the ocean reappeared for several miles in front of the yacht.
" Yes! Land ! It is really land! " shouted Briant.
" And land that is very low," added Gordon, who had just caught sight of the indicated coast.
There was now no room for doubt. A land—continent, or island—lay some five or six miles ahead along a large segment of the horizon. In the direction she was going, and which the storm would not allow her to deviate from, the schooner would be driven on it in less than an hour. That she would be smashed, particularly if breakers stopped her before she reached the shore, there was every reason to fear. But the boys did not give that a thought. In this land, which had offered itself so unexpectedly to their sight, they saw, they could only see, a means of safety.
And now the wind blew with still greater strength, the schooner, carried along like a feather, was hurled towards the coast, which stood out like a line of ink on the Whitish waste of sky. In the background was a cliff, from a hundred and fifty to two hundred feet high; in the foreground was a yellowish beach ending towards the right in a rounded mass which seemed to belong to a forest further inland.
Ah! If the schooner could reach the sandy beach without meeting with a line of reefs, if the mouth of a river would only offer a refuge, her passengers might perhaps escape safe and sound.
Leaving Donagan, Gordon, and Moko, at the helm, Briant went forward and examined the land which he was nearing so rapidly. But in vain did he look for some place in which the yacht could be run ashore without risk. There was the mouth of no river or stream not even a sandbank, on which they could run her aground; but there was a line of breakers with the black heads of rock rising amid the undulations of the surge, where at the first shock the schooner would be wrenched to pieces.
It occurred to Briant that it would be better for all his friends to be on deck when the crash came, and opening the companion-door he shouted down,—
" Come on deck, every one of you ! "
Immediately out jumped the dog, and then the eleven boys one after the other, the smallest at the sight of the mighty waves around them beginning to yell with terror.
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