Foul Play by Dion Boucicault (snow like ashes .TXT) 📖

And now the situation was beyond words. They both watched, and watched, to see the line of smoke cease.

It continued to increase, and spread eastward; and that proved the steamer was continuing her course.

The sun drew close to the horizon.

“They don’t see us,” said Helen, faintly.

“No,” said Hazel; “not yet.”

“And the sun is just setting. It is all over.” She put her handkerchief to her eyes a moment, and then, after a sob or two, she said almost cheerfully, “Well, dear friend, we were happy till that smoke came to disturb us. Let us try and be as happy now it is gone. Don’t smile like that, it makes me shudder.”

“Did I smile? It must have been at your simplicity in thinking we have seen the last of that steamer.”

“And so we have.”

“Not so. In three hours she will be at anchor in that bay.”

“Why, what will bring her?”

“I shall bring her.”

“You? How?”

“By lighting my bonfire.”

CHAPTER XLVI.

HELEN had forgotten all about the bonfire. She now asked whether he was sure those on board the steamer could see the bonfire. Then Hazel told her that it was now of prodigious size and height. Some six months before he was crippled he had added and added to it.

“That bonfire,” said he, “will throw a ruddy glare over the heavens that they can’t help seeing on board the steamer. Then, as they are not on a course, but on a search, they will certainly run a few miles southward to see what it is. They will say it is either a beacon or a ship on fire; and, in either case, they will turn the boat’s head this way. Well, before they have run southward half a dozen miles, their lookout will see the bonfire, and the island in its light. Let us get to the boat, my lucifers are there.”

She lent him her arm to the boat, and stood by while he made his preparations. They were very simple. He took a pine torch and smeared it all over with pitch; then put his lucifer-box in his bosom and took his crutch. His face was drawn pitiably, but his closed lips betrayed unshaken and unshakable resolution. He shouldered his crutch, and hobbled up as far as the cavern. Here Helen interposed.

“Don’t you go toiling up the hill,” said she. “Give me the lucifers and the torch and let me light the beacon. I shall be there in half the time you will.”

“Thank you! thank you!” said Hazel, eagerly, not to say violently.

He wanted it done; but it killed him to do it. He then gave her his instructions.

“It is as big as a haystack,” said he, “and as dry as a chip; and there are eight bundles of straw placed expressly. Light bundles to windward first, then the others; it will soon be all in a blaze.”

“Meanwhile,” said Helen, “you prepare our supper. I feel quite faint—for want of it.”

Hazel assented.

“It is the last we shall—” he was going to say it was the last they would eat together; but his voice failed him, and he hobbled into the cavern, and tried to smother his emotion in work. He lighted the fire, and blew it into a flame with a palmetto-leaf, and then he sat down awhile, very sick at heart; then he got up and did the cooking, sighing all the time; and, just when he was beginning to wonder why Helen was so long lighting eight bundles of straw, she came in, looking pale.

“Is it all right?” said he.

“Go and look,” said she. “No, let us have our supper first.”

Neither had any appetite. They sat and kept casting strange looks at one another.

To divert this anyhow, Hazel looked up at the roof, and said faintly, “If I had known, I would have made more haste, and set pearl there as well.”

“What does that matter?” said Helen, looking down.

“Not much, indeed,” replied he, sadly. “I am a fool to utter such childish regrets; and, more than that, I am a mean selfish cur to have a regret. Come, come, we can’t eat; let us go round the Point and see the waves reddened by the beacon that gives you back to the world you were born to embellish.”

Helen said she would go directly. And her languid reply contrasted strangely with his excitement. She played with her supper, and wasted time in a very unusual way, until he told her plump she was not really eating, and he could wait no longer, he must go and see how the beacon was burning.

“Oh, very well,” said she; and they went down to the beach.

She took his crutch and gave it to him. This little thing cut him to the heart. It was the first time she had accompanied him so far as that without offering herself to be his crutch. He sighed deeply, as he put the crutch under his arm; but he was too proud to complain, only he laid it all on the approaching steamboat.

The subtle creature by his side heard the sigh, and smiled sadly at being misunderstood—but what man could understand her? They hardly spoke till they reached the Point. The waves glittered in the moonlight; there was no red light on the water.

“Why, what is this?” said Hazel. “You can’t have lighted the bonfire in eight places, as I told you.”

She folded her arms and stood before him in an attitude of defiance; all but her melting eye.

“I have not lighted it at all,” said she.

Hazel stood aghast. “What have I done?” he cried. “Duty, manhood, everything demanded that I should light that beacon, and I trusted it to you.”

Then Helen’s attitude of defiance melted away. She began to cower, and hid her blushing face in her hands. Then she looked up imploringly. Then she uttered a wild and eloquent cry, and fled from him like the wind.

CHAPTER XLVII.

THAT cloud was really the smoke of the Springbok, which had mounted into air so thin that it could rise no higher. The boat herself was many miles to the northward, returning full of heavy hearts from a fruitless search. She came back in a higher parallel of latitude, intending afterward to steer N.W. to Easter Island. The life was gone out of the ship; the father was deeply dejected, and the crew could no longer feign the hope they did not feel. Having pursued the above course to within four hundred miles of Juan Fernandez, General Rolleston begged the captain to make a bold deviation to the S.W., and then see if they could find nothing there before going to Easter Island.

Captain Moreland was very unwilling to go to the S.W., the more so as coal was getting short. However, he had not the heart to refuse General Rolleston anything. There was a northerly breeze. He had the fires put out, and, covering the ship with canvas, sailed three hundred miles S.W. But found nothing. Then he took in sail, got up steam again, and away for Easter Island. The ship ran so fast that she had got into latitude thirty-two by ten A.M. next morning.

At l0h. l5m. the dreary monotony of this cruise was broken by the man at the masthead.

“On deck there!”

“Hullo!”

“The schooner on our weather-bow!”

“Well, what of her?”

“She has luffed.”

“Well, what o’ that?”

“She has altered her course.”

“How many points?”

“She was sailing S.E., and now her head is N.E.”

“That is curious.”

General Rolleston, who had come and listened with a grain of hope, now sighed, and turned away.

The captain explained kindly that the man was quite right to draw his captain’s attention to the fact of a trading-vessel altering her course. “There is a sea-grammar, general,” said he; “and, when one seaman sees another violate it, he concludes there is some reason or other. Now, Jack, what d’ye make of her?”

“I can’t make much of her; she don’t seem to know her own mind, that is all. At ten o’clock she was bound for Valparaiso or the Island. But now she has come about and beating to windward.”

“Bound for Easter Island?”

“I dunno.”

“Keep your eye on her.”

“Ay, ay, sir.”

Captain Moreland told General Rolleston that very few ships went to Easter Island, which lies in a lovely climate, but is a miserable place; and he was telling the general that it is inhabited by savages of a low order, who half worship the relics of masonry left by their more civilized predecessors, when Jack hailed the deck again.

“Well,” said the captain.

“I think she is bound for the Springbok.”

The soldier received this conjecture with astonishment and incredulity, not to be wondered at. The steamboat headed N.W.; right in the wind’s eye. Sixteen miles off, at least, a ship was sailing N.E. So that the two courses might be represented thus:

A / B

And there hung in the air, like a black mark against the blue sky, a fellow, whose oracular voice came down and said B was endeavoring to intercept A.

Nevertheless, time confirmed the conjecture; the schooner, having made a short board to the N.E., came about, and made a long board due west, which was as near as he could lie to the wind. On this Captain Moreland laid the steamboat’s head due north. This brought the vessels rapidly together.

When they were about two miles distant, the stranger slackened sail and hove to, hoisting stars and stripes at her mizzen. The union jack went up the shrouds of the Springbok directly, and she pursued her course, but gradually slackened her steam.

General Rolleston walked the deck in great agitation, and now indulged in wild hopes, which Captain Moreland thought it best to discourage at once.

“Ah, sir,” he said; “don’t you run into the other extreme, and imagine he has come on our business. It is at sea as it is ashore. If a man goes out of his course to speak to you, it is for his own sake, not yours. This Yankee has got men sick with scurvy, and is come for lime-juice. Or his water is out. Or—hallo, savages aboard.” It was too true. The schooner had a cargo of savages, male and female; the males were nearly naked, but the females, strange to say, were dressed to the throat in ample robes with broad and flowing skirts and had little coronets on their heads. As soon as the schooner hove to, the fiddle had struck up, and the savages were now dancing in parties of four; the men doing a sort of monkey hornpipe in quick pace, with their hands nearly touching the ground; the women, on the contrary, erect and queenly, swept about in slow rhythm, with most graceful and coquettish movements of the arms and hands, and bewitching smiles.

The steamboat came alongside, but at a certain distance, to avoid all chance of collision; and the crew clustered at the side and cheered the savages dancing. The poor general was forgotten at the merry sight.

Presently a negro in white cotton, with a face blacker than the savages, stepped forward and hoisted a board, on which was printed very large, ARE YOU

Having allowed this a moment to sink into the mind, he reversed the board, and showed these words, also printed large, THE SPRINGBOK?

There was a thrilling murmur on board; and, after a pause of surprise, the question was answered by a loud cheer and waving of hats.

The reply was perfectly understood; almost immediately a boat was lowered by some novel machinery and pulled toward the steamer. There were