Chapter 74 - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea by Mayne Reid
A Light!
The man who had so unexpectedly interrupted the deadly duello, while giving utterance to his strange speech, kept one of his arms extended towards the ocean,—as if pointing to something he had descried above the horizon.
The eyes of all were suddenly turned in the direction thus indicated. The magic words, “We are saved!” had an immediate effect,—not only upon the spectators of the tragedy thus intruded upon, but upon its actors. Even rancour became appeased by the sweet sound; and that of the Irishman, as with most of his countrymen, being born “as the flint bears fire,” subsided on the instant.
He permitted his upraised arm to be held in restraint; it became relaxed, as did also his grasp on the wrist of his antagonist; while the latter, finding himself free, was allowed to retire from the contest.
O’Gorman, among the rest, had faced round; and stood looking in the direction where somebody had seen something that promised salvation of all.
“What is it?” inquired several voices in the same breath,—“the land?”
No: it could not be that. There was not one of them such a nautical ignoramus as to believe himself within sigh of land.
“A sail?—a ship?”
That was more likely: though, at the first glance, neither tail nor ship appeared upon the horizon, “What is it?” was the interrogatory reiterated by a dozen voices.
“A light! Don’t you see it?” asked the lynx-eyed individual, whose interference in the combat had caused this sudden departure from the programme. “Look!” he continued; “just where the sun’s gone down yonder. It’s only a speck; but I can see it plain enough. It must be the light from a ship’s binnacle!”
“Carrajo!” exclaimed a Spaniard; “it’s only a spark the sun’s left behind him. It’s the ignis fatuus you’ve seen, amigo!”
“Bah!” added another; “supposing it is a binnacle-lamp, as you say, what would be the use, except to tantalise us. If it be in the binnacle, in course the ship as carries it must be stern towards us. What chance would there be of our overhaulin’ her?”
“Par Dieu! there be von light!” cried a sharp-eyed little Frenchman. “Pe Gar! I him see. Ver true, vraiment! An—pe dam!—zat same est no lamp in ze binnacle!”
“I see it too!” cried another.
“And I!” added a third.
“Io tambien!” (I also) echoed a fourth, whose tongue proclaimed him of Spanish nativity.
“Ich sehe!” drawled out a native of the German Confederacy; and then followed a volley of voices,—each saying something to confirm the belief that a light was really gleaming over the ocean.
This was a fact that nobody—not even the first objectors—any longer doubted.
It is true that the light seen appeared only a mere sparkle, feebly glimmering against the sky, and might have been mistaken for a star. But it was just in that part of the heavens where a star could not at that time have been seen,—on the western horizon, still slightly reddened by the rays of the declining sun.
The men who speculated upon its appearance,—rude as they were in a moral sense,—were not so intellectually stupid as to mistake for a star that speck of yellowish hue, struggling to reveal itself against the almost kindred colour of the occidental sky.
“It isn’t a star,—that’s certain,” confidently declared one of their number; “and if it be a light aboard ship, it’s no binnacle-lamp, I say. Bah! who’d call that a binnacle glim, or a lamp of any kind? If’t be a ship’s light at all, it’s the glare o’ the galley-fire,—where the cook’s makin’ coffee for all hands.”
The superb picture of comfort thus called forth was too much for the temper of the starving men, to whom the idea was addressed; and a wild cry of exultation responded to the speech.
A galley; a galley-fire; a cook; coffee for all hands; lobscouse; plum-duff; sea-pies; even the much-despised pea-soup and salt junk, had been long looked upon as things belonging to another world,—pleasures of the past, never more to be indulged in!
Now that the gleam of a galley-fire—as they believed the light to be—rose up before their eyes, the spirits of all became suddenly electrified by the wildest imaginings; and the contest so lately carried on,—as well as the combatants engaged in it,—was instantaneously forgotten; while the thoughts, and eager glances, of every individual on the raft were now directed towards that all-absorbing speck,—still gleaming but obscurely against the reddish background of the sun-stained horizon.
As they continued to gaze, the tiny spark seemed to increase, not only in size, but intensity; and, before many minutes had elapsed, it proclaimed itself no longer a mere spark, but a blaze of light, with its own luminous halo around it. The gradual chastening of colour in the western sky, along with the increased darkness of the atmosphere around it, would account for this change in the appearance of the light. So reasoned the spectators,—now more than ever convinced that what they saw was the glare of a galley-fire.