The Ocean Waifs: A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea. Reid Mayne
was fortunate that for many hours they continued to enjoy the sweet unconsciousness of sleep, – if such may be termed enjoyment. It was long after midnight before either awoke: for there was nothing to awake them. The breeze had kept gentle, and constant in the same quarter; and the slight noise made by the water, as it went “swishing” along the edge of the raft, instead of rousing them acted rather as a lullaby to their rest. The boy awoke first. He had been longer asleep; and his nervous system, refreshed and restored to its normal condition, had become more keenly sensitive to outward impressions. Some big, cold rain-drops falling upon his face had recalled him to wakefulness.
Was it spray tossed up by the spars ploughing through the water?
No. It was rain from the clouds. The canopy overhead was black as ink; but while the lad was scrutinising it, a gleam of lightning suddenly illumined both sea and sky, and then all was dark as before.
Little William would have restored his cheek to its sail-cloth pillow and gone to sleep again. He was not dismayed by the silent lightning, – for it was that sort that had flickered over the sky. No more did he mind the threatening rainclouds. His shirt had been soaked too often, by showers from the sky and spray from the sea, for him to have any dread of a ducking.
It was not that, – neither the presence of the lightning nor the prospect of the rain, – that kept him awake; but something he had heard, – or fancied he had heard, – something that not only restrained him from returning to repose, but inspired him with a fear that robbed him of an inclination to go to sleep again.
What was it he had heard or fancied? A noise, – a voice!
Was it the scream of the sea-mew, the shriek of the frigate-bird, or the hoarse note of the nelly?
None of these. The boy-sailor was acquainted with the cries of all three, and of many other sea-birds besides. It was not the call of a bird that had fallen so unexpectedly on his ear, but a note of far different intonation. It more resembled a voice, – a human voice, – the voice of a child! Not of a very young child, – an infant, – but more like that of a girl of eight or ten years of age!
Nor was it a cry of distress, though uttered in a melancholy tone. It seemed to the ear of the lad – freshly awakened from his sleep – like words spoken in conversation.
But it could not be what he had taken it for! Improbable, – impossible! He had been deluded by a fancy; or it might be the mutterings of some ocean bird with whose note he was unacquainted.
Should he awake his companion and tell him of it? A pity, if it should prove to be nothing, or only the chattering of a sea-gull. His brave protector had need of rest. Ben would not be angry to be awaked; but the sailor would be sure to laugh at him if he were to say he had heard a little girl talking at that time of night in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Perhaps Ben might say it was a mermaid, and mock him in that sort of style?
No: he would not run the risk of being ridiculed, even by his best of friends. Better let the thing pass, and say nothing about it.
Little William had arrived at this resolution, and had more than half determined to treat the sound he had heard as an aurical delusion. He had even replaced his cheek upon the sail-cloth pillow, when the very same sound again fill upon his ear, – this time more distinctly heard, as if either the utterance had been clearer or the being that made it was nearer!
If it was not the voice of a girl, – a very young girl, – then the boy-sailor had never listened to the prattling of his younger sister, or the conversation of his little female playmates. If it was a young mermaid, then most assuredly could mermaids talk: for the sound was exactly like a string or series of words uttered in conversation!
Ben must be aroused from his slumber. It could not be an illusion. Either a talking mermaid, or a little girl, was within earshot of the raft.
There was no help for it: Ben must be aroused.
“Ben! Ben!”
“Ho – hah – ow – aw – what’s the row? – seven bells, I bean’t on the dog-watch. Hi, hi, oh! it’s you, little Will’m. What is’t, lad?”
“Ben, I hear something.”
“Hear somethin’! Well, what o’ that, boy? Theer ’s allers somethin’ to be heerd: even here, in the middle o’ the Atlantic. Ah! boy, I was dreamin’ a nice dream when ye woke me. I thought I war back on the ole frigate. ’T wa’nt so nice, eyther, for I thought the bos’n war roustin’ me up for my watch on deck. Anyhow, would a been better than this watch here. Heerd something ye say? What d’ye mean, little Will’m?”
“I heard a voice, Ben. I think it was a voice.”
“Voice – o’ a human, do ye mean?”
“It sounded like that of a little girl.”
“Voice o’ a little girl! Shiver my timbers, lad, you’re goin’ demented! Put yer face close to mine. Let me see ye, boy! Are ye in yer senses, Will’m?”
“I am, Ben. I’m sure I heard what I’ve said. Twice I heard it. The first time I wasn’t sure; but just now I heard it again, and if – ”
“If there hadn’t been gulls, an’ boobies, an’ Mother Carey’s chickens, as squeals and chitters just like little childer, I’d a been puzzled at what ye be a tellin’ me; but as I knows there be all o’ these creators in the middle o’ the broad ocean, – and mermaids too, I dare say, – then, ye see, little Will’m, I must disbelieve that ye heard anything more than the voice of – a man, by – !”
As the sailor terminated his speech with this terrible emphasis, he started into an upright attitude, and listened with all his ears for another utterance of that harsh monotone that, borne upon the breeze and rising above the “sough” of the disturbed water, could easily be distinguished as the voice of a man.
“We’re lost, Will’m!” cried he, without waiting for a repetition of the sound; “we’re lost. It’s the voice of Le Gros. The big raft is a bearin’ down upon us wi’ them bloodthirsty cannibals we thought we’d got clear o’. It’s no use tryin’ to escape. Make up your mind to it, lad; we’ve got to die! we’ve got to die!”
Chapter Sixteen.
Other Waifs
Had it been daylight, instead of a very dark night, Ben Brace and his youthful comrade would have been less alarmed by the voices that came up the wind. Daylight would have discovered to them an object, or rather collection of objects, which, instead of repelling, would have attracted them nearer.
It was not the great raft that was drifting to leeward, nor was it the voice of Le Gros or any of his wicked companions, that had been heard; though, in the excitement of their fears, that was the first thought of the two castaways.
Could their eyes have penetrated the deep obscurity that shrouded the sea, they would have beheld a number of objects, like themselves, adrift upon the water, and like them, at the mercy of the winds and waves. They would have seen pieces of timber, black and charred with fire; fragments of broken spars, with sails and cordage attached and trailing after them; here and there a cask or barrel, sunk to the level of the surface by the weight of its contents; pieces of packing-cases, torn asunder as if by some terrible explosion; cabin-chairs, coops, oars, handspikes, and other implements of the mariner’s calling, – all bobbing about on the bosom of the blue deep, and carried hither and thither by the arbitrary oscillations of the breeze.
These various objects were not all huddled up together, but scattered unequally over a space of more than a square mile in extent. Had it been daylight, so that the sailor could have seen them, as they appeared mottling the bright surface of the sea, he would have experienced no difficulty in determining their character. At a glance he would have recognised the débris of the burnt ship, from which he and his companion had so narrowly escaped, – the slave-bark Pandora.
He would have looked upon these objects with no very great surprise, but in all likelihood with a feeling of considerable satisfaction: as offering the means for