The Martyrdom of Madeline. Robert Williams Buchanan

The Martyrdom of Madeline - Robert Williams Buchanan


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moon showed her the silently sleeping river, through the silvery threads of rain which still fell from the ever-darkening sky.

      ‘Uncle Mark, Uncle Luke!’ exclaimed Madeline, clapping her hands, ‘make haste and come home, and I’ll try not to laugh any more.’

      At that moment the barge, with Uncles Mark and Luke on board, was gliding slowly up the river, ten miles away. The wind had been fair all day and the barge had made good speed, but as night came on and the rain fell faster, the breeze completely died.

      The barge lay heavily on the shining river, with the great red sail flapping listlessly above and black shadows all around. They had hoisted the side-lights, and now and then through the impenetrable blackness a faint light answered them—this was the only indication of human life which came to them at all.

      Uncle Luke was at the helm, peering with his small keen grey eyes into the blackness; and Uncle Mark was below, eating his supper. Presently the latter passed his red night-capped head out of the hatchway, and gave 8 sharp glance around him; then his whole long body emerged, and he strolled to Luke’s side.

      ‘Well, mate,’ he said, ‘there don’t seem much wind, and I’m a-feared there ain’t much a-coming; suppose you go and turn in?’

      But Uncle Luke shook his head decidedly.

      ‘No, no, Mark!’ he answered; ‘reckon you’re more knocked up nor what I be. Just you turn in for a bit while ’tis calm—and when the wind comes I’ll sing out.’

      After a little more discussion as to which should get the first spell of sleep, Uncle Mark descended to the cabin and Luke was left alone.

      It was very dreary above, very dark and wet; but Uncle Luke, who was generally in a happy state of mind, seemed quite contented. He grasped the tiller firmly in his hard, horny hand, and fixed his eyes with wonderful keenness upon the moving lights around him.

      There was scarcely any wind at all now, and the barge lay like a log; but ever and anon she was lifted up as on a bosom in gentle breathing, while the great sail flapped listlessly above, and the side-lights shone out like glimmering stars in the darkness, and flashed their brightness at the sky which loomed so darkly overhead.

      An hour or so passed thus, and then the rain gradually ceased to fall, the black in the sky began to float gently on before a cold, light wind, which bellied out the sail, swung the heavy boom over the side, and made the barge glide softly on.

      Uncle Luke, holding the tiller more firmly, rapped sharply on the deck with his hob-nailed shoes, and in a very short space of time Uncle Mark emerged, fresh and active, from the cabin hatchway.

      ‘Ah, we shall get a goodish bit o’ wind before morning, mate,’ he said as he took possession of the tiller; ‘get the sheets clear, Luke, we mustn’t lose much time i’ working round;—remember the old barge ain’t been over spry sin’ she got water-logged, and there be goodish bit o’ traffic here.’

      Uncle Luke trotted aft obediently, and now that Mark had relieved him of all responsibility, he turned his mind again to solve the great problem which had been worrying him ever since he left home—whether he should take Madeline a present from the great City, or allow her to buy it for herself when she got there.

      While he was speculating thus, his eyes were dreamily surveying the scene around him, and his hands were busy hauling in the sheets, for the breeze was coming more and more ahead, and less upon the quarter.

      As the night passed off and day began to dawn, the breeze grew fresher and fresher, until it spread quite fiercely over the surface of the water, driving it up into little crisp wavelets fringed with foam.

      The thick black clouds had drifted westwards, and left the east a mass of scarlet and grey. The landscape was still dim, as with distance, and the light was of that palpitating silvern kind which is neither daylight nor moonlight.

      They had left the low-lying marshes of Essex far behind them, and already they could see dimly in the distance, like a cloud brooding over a mountain peak, the smoke which for ever rises above the great City.

      The river now seemed alive with traffic, barges beating onwards, laden almost to the water’s edge—others running down—steam tugs and ocean steamers, blackening the air with smoke—all twining in and out, passing and repassing, in a bewildering maze.

      Uncle Mark still grasped the tiller, and though he performed his task with skill, it was a difficult job. The bends of the river were innumerable; often the wind came dead ahead; the barge was an unwieldy sailer at all times, and now she was overloaded into the bargain. Once or twice Uncle Mark, miscalculating her power of ‘coming about,’ had brought her into danger, and had a narrow escape from collision. Then the river grew clearer and the wind came straight on the quarter. She scudded onward merrily, and the water all round her was white with foam.

      ‘Look out, Mark, look out!’ cried Uncle Luke presently, and Uncle Mark, stooping to look under the red mainsail, saw that a steam-tug was swiftly steaming down on their course.

      ‘She’s straight ahead. Ain’t ye goin’ to keep away?’ screamed Uncle Luke, for the whistling of the wind was deafening.

      Mark noted the speed of the barge, then measured the distance between the two.

      ‘All right, mate,’ he shouted, ‘we’ll clear.’

      The barge sped on, the tug advanced quickly, Uncle Mark watched, carelessly at first, then anxiously. The tug was woefully near; by swerving slightly from her course she could have passed by the barge’s stern—by keeping steadily on she seemed likely to cut it through the middle. Uncle Mark concluded that the tug would clear him; the tug calculated that the barge must ‘keep away;’ and she came straight on.

      A collision seemed unavoidable, when Uncle Mark screamed:—

      ‘Haul in the main sheet!’ and, with a cry, he put down the helm.

      He had jibbed her as the only chance of escape. The barge swept round before the shrieking wind with her bowsprit within a few inches of the tug’s side, quivering through and through as she heeled over, with a thunder crash, almost wrenching out the mast. Then there was a crash, like the bursting of a cannon, a great splash in the water—a shout from the tug.

      Uncle Luke, who had been thrown flat on his face, scrambled to his feet to find the tiller abandoned, the great boom in two, the mast bending like a reed, and Uncle Mark—gone!

      Abandoned by the helmsman, the barge swept round into the wind, with her great sails flapping uselessly, and her whole fabric like a drifting wreck.

      Confused by the accident and the thunderous sound of shrouds and sails, Uncle Luke, who could not at any time get his ideas to work quickly, gazed about him for a few moments in horrified despair—then he saw that the tug, having reversed her engines, was close upon the barge, and that a boat which she had put out was rowing swiftly towards a figure which was floating, apparently lifeless, on the waves—the figure of Uncle Mark. Dead? It seemed so—the body was moveless, the face livid, and it floated without a struggle.

      Suddenly Uncle Luke became aware that the deck of the barge was withdrawing itself from his feet. The shaking of the mast had wrenched open the timbers—the water was pouring in like a torrent, the barge was rapidly sinking. He leapt into the punt which floated behind, cut the painter with his knife, and, utterly unmindful of the barge, pulled rapidly to the spot where they were rescuing Uncle Mark.

      They had got him into the boat by this time, and he lay in the stern motionless, his cheeks ashen grey, his lips bloody, his eyes half closed.

      With a wild cry like that of a child, Luke leapt into the boat, abandoning his own, seized the cold wet hand, smoothed back the dripping hair, and began to cry and moan.

      ‘Mark, mate, open your eyes,’ he cried. ‘What ails you?—don’t you know Luke—your brother Luke?’

      But Mark answered neither by sign nor word—a splinter of the boom


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