Chapter 98 - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea by Mayne Reid
A phantom Ship or a Ship on Fire?
With the Catamaran once more under sail, and going on her due course, her crew might have seemed restored to the situation held by them previous to their encountering the dead cachalot Unfortunately for them, this was far from being the case.
A change for the worse had occurred in their circumstances. Then they were “victualled”—if not to full rations, at least with stores calculated to last them for some time. They were provided, moreover, with certain weapons and implements that might be the means of replenishing their stores in the event of their falling short.
Now it was altogether different. The Catamaran was as true and seaworthy as ever, her “rig” as of yore, and her sailing qualities not in the least impaired. But her “fitting out” was far inferior, especially in the “victualling department”; and this weighed heavily upon the minds of her crew.
Notwithstanding the depression of their spirits, which soon returned again, they could not resist an inclination for sleep. It is to be remembered that they had been deprived of this on the preceding night through the violence of the gale, and that they had got but very little on the night before that from being engaged in scorching their shark-meat.
Exhausted nature called loudly for repose; and so universally, that the complete crew yielded to the call, not even one of them remaining in charge of the helm.
It had been agreed upon that the craft should be left to choose its own track; or rather, that which the wind might select for it.
Guided by the breath of heaven, and by that alone, did the Catamaran continue her course.
How much way she made thus left alone to herself is not written down in her “log.” The time alone is recorded; and we are told that it was the hour of midnight before any individual of her crew awoke from that slumber, to which “all hands” had surrendered after setting her sail.
The first of them who awoke was little William. The sailor-lad was not a heavy sleeper at any time, and on this night in particular his slumbers had been especially unsound. There was trouble on his mind before going to sleep, an uneasiness of no ordinary kind. It was not any fear for his own fate. He was a true English tar in miniature, and could not have been greatly distressed with any apprehensions of a purely selfish nature. Those that harassed him were caused by his consideration for another,—for Lilly Lalee.
For days he had been observing a change in the appearance of the child. He had noticed the gradual paling of her cheek, and rapid attenuation of her form,—the natural consequence of such a terrible exposure to one accustomed all her days to a delicate and luxurious mode of existence.
On that day in particular, after the fearful shock they had all sustained, the young Portuguese girl had appeared,—at least, in the eyes of little William,—more enfeebled than ever; and the boy-sailor had gone to sleep under a sad foreboding that she would be the first to succumb,—and that soon,—to the hardships they were called upon to encounter.
Little William loved Lilly Lalee with such love as a lad may feel for one of his own age,—a love perhaps the sweetest in life, if not the most lasting.
Inspired by this juvenile passion, and by the apprehensions he had for its object, the boy-sailor did not sleep very soundly.
Fortunate that it was so; else that brilliant flame that near the mid-hours of night glared athwart the deck of the Catamaran might not have awakened him; and had it not done so, neither he nor his three companions might ever again have looked upon human face except their own, and that only to see one another expire in the agonies of death.
There was a flame far lighting up the sombre surface of the ocean that shone upon the sleepy Catamarans. Gleaming in the half-closed eye of the sailor-lad, it awoke him.
Starting up, he beheld an apparition, which caused him surprise, not unmingled with alarm. It was a ship beyond doubt,—or the semblance of one,—but such as the sailor-lad had never before seen.
She appeared to be on fire. Vast clouds of smoke were rising up from her decks, and rolling away over her stern, illuminated by columns of bright flame that jetted up forward of her foremast, almost to the height of her lower shrouds. No man unaccustomed to such a sight could have looked upon that ship without supposing that she was on fire.
Little William should have been able to judge of what he saw. Unfortunately for himself, the spectacle of a ship on fire was not new to him. He had witnessed the burning of the bark which had borne him into the middle of the Atlantic, and left him where he now was, in a position of extremest peril.
But the memory of that conflagration did not assist him in determining the character of the spectacle now before his eyes. On the decks of the Pandora he had seen men endeavouring to escape from the flames, in every attitude of wild terror. On the ship now in sight he beheld the very reverse. He saw human beings standing in front of the column of fire, not only unconcerned at its proximity, but apparently feeding the flames!
It was a spectacle to startle the most experienced mariner, and call forth the keenest alarm,—a sight to suggest the double interrogatory,—“Is it a phantom ship, or a ship on fire?”