<p><SPAN name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013"></SPAN></p>
<h2> CHAPTER XIII </h2>
<h3> THE LOSS OF THE BRIG </h3>
<p>It was already late at night, and as dark as it ever would be at that
season of the year (and that is to say, it was still pretty bright), when
Hoseason clapped his head into the round-house door.</p>
<p>"Here," said he, "come out and see if ye can pilot."</p>
<p>"Is this one of your tricks?" asked Alan.</p>
<p>"Do I look like tricks?" cries the captain. "I have other things to think
of—my brig's in danger!"</p>
<p>By the concerned look of his face, and, above all, by the sharp tones in
which he spoke of his brig, it was plain to both of us he was in deadly
earnest; and so Alan and I, with no great fear of treachery, stepped on
deck.</p>
<p>The sky was clear; it blew hard, and was bitter cold; a great deal of
daylight lingered; and the moon, which was nearly full, shone brightly.
The brig was close hauled, so as to round the southwest corner of the
Island of Mull, the hills of which (and Ben More above them all, with a
wisp of mist upon the top of it) lay full upon the lar-board bow. Though
it was no good point of sailing for the Covenant, she tore through the
seas at a great rate, pitching and straining, and pursued by the westerly
swell.</p>
<p>Altogether it was no such ill night to keep the seas in; and I had begun
to wonder what it was that sat so heavily upon the captain, when the brig
rising suddenly on the top of a high swell, he pointed and cried to us to
look. Away on the lee bow, a thing like a fountain rose out of the moonlit
sea, and immediately after we heard a low sound of roaring.</p>
<p>"What do ye call that?" asked the captain, gloomily.</p>
<p>"The sea breaking on a reef," said Alan. "And now ye ken where it is; and
what better would ye have?"</p>
<p>"Ay," said Hoseason, "if it was the only one."</p>
<p>And sure enough, just as he spoke there came a second fountain farther to
the south.</p>
<p>"There!" said Hoseason. "Ye see for yourself. If I had kent of these
reefs, if I had had a chart, or if Shuan had been spared, it's not sixty
guineas, no, nor six hundred, would have made me risk my brig in sic a
stoneyard! But you, sir, that was to pilot us, have ye never a word?"</p>
<p>"I'm thinking," said Alan, "these'll be what they call the Torran Rocks."</p>
<p>"Are there many of them?" says the captain.</p>
<p>"Truly, sir, I am nae pilot," said Alan; "but it sticks in my mind there
are ten miles of them."</p>
<p>Mr. Riach and the captain looked at each other.</p>
<p>"There's a way through them, I suppose?" said the captain.</p>
<p>"Doubtless," said Alan, "but where? But it somehow runs in my mind once
more that it is clearer under the land."</p>
<p>"So?" said Hoseason. "We'll have to haul our wind then, Mr. Riach; we'll
have to come as near in about the end of Mull as we can take her, sir; and
even then we'll have the land to kep the wind off us, and that stoneyard
on our lee. Well, we're in for it now, and may as well crack on."</p>
<p>With that he gave an order to the steersman, and sent Riach to the
foretop. There were only five men on deck, counting the officers; these
being all that were fit (or, at least, both fit and willing) for their
work. So, as I say, it fell to Mr. Riach to go aloft, and he sat there
looking out and hailing the deck with news of all he saw.</p>
<p>"The sea to the south is thick," he cried; and then, after a while, "it
does seem clearer in by the land."</p>
<p>"Well, sir," said Hoseason to Alan, "we'll try your way of it. But I think
I might as well trust to a blind fiddler. Pray God you're right."</p>
<p>"Pray God I am!" says Alan to me. "But where did I hear it? Well, well, it
will be as it must."</p>
<p>As we got nearer to the turn of the land the reefs began to be sown here
and there on our very path; and Mr. Riach sometimes cried down to us to
change the course. Sometimes, indeed, none too soon; for one reef was so
close on the brig's weather board that when a sea burst upon it the
lighter sprays fell upon her deck and wetted us like rain.</p>
<p>The brightness of the night showed us these perils as clearly as by day,
which was, perhaps, the more alarming. It showed me, too, the face of the
captain as he stood by the steersman, now on one foot, now on the other,
and sometimes blowing in his hands, but still listening and looking and as
steady as steel. Neither he nor Mr. Riach had shown well in the fighting;
but I saw they were brave in their own trade, and admired them all the
more because I found Alan very white.</p>
<p>"Ochone, David," says he, "this is no the kind of death I fancy!"</p>
<p>"What, Alan!" I cried, "you're not afraid?"</p>
<p>"No," said he, wetting his lips, "but you'll allow, yourself, it's a cold
ending."</p>
<p>By this time, now and then sheering to one side or the other to avoid a
reef, but still hugging the wind and the land, we had got round Iona and
begun to come alongside Mull. The tide at the tail of the land ran very
strong, and threw the brig about. Two hands were put to the helm, and
Hoseason himself would sometimes lend a help; and it was strange to see
three strong men throw their weight upon the tiller, and it (like a living
thing) struggle against and drive them back. This would have been the
greater danger had not the sea been for some while free of obstacles. Mr.
Riach, besides, announced from the top that he saw clear water ahead.</p>
<p>"Ye were right," said Hoseason to Alan. "Ye have saved the brig, sir. I'll
mind that when we come to clear accounts." And I believe he not only meant
what he said, but would have done it; so high a place did the Covenant
hold in his affections.</p>
<p>But this is matter only for conjecture, things having gone otherwise than
he forecast.</p>
<p>"Keep her away a point," sings out Mr. Riach. "Reef to windward!"</p>
<p>And just at the same time the tide caught the brig, and threw the wind out
of her sails. She came round into the wind like a top, and the next moment
struck the reef with such a dunch as threw us all flat upon the deck, and
came near to shake Mr. Riach from his place upon the mast.</p>
<p>I was on my feet in a minute. The reef on which we had struck was close in
under the southwest end of Mull, off a little isle they call Earraid,
which lay low and black upon the larboard. Sometimes the swell broke clean
over us; sometimes it only ground the poor brig upon the reef, so that we
could hear her beat herself to pieces; and what with the great noise of
the sails, and the singing of the wind, and the flying of the spray in the
moonlight, and the sense of danger, I think my head must have been partly
turned, for I could scarcely understand the things I saw.</p>
<p>Presently I observed Mr. Riach and the seamen busy round the skiff, and,
still in the same blank, ran over to assist them; and as soon as I set my
hand to work, my mind came clear again. It was no very easy task, for the
skiff lay amidships and was full of hamper, and the breaking of the
heavier seas continually forced us to give over and hold on; but we all
wrought like horses while we could.</p>
<p>Meanwhile such of the wounded as could move came clambering out of the
fore-scuttle and began to help; while the rest that lay helpless in their
bunks harrowed me with screaming and begging to be saved.</p>
<p>The captain took no part. It seemed he was struck stupid. He stood holding
by the shrouds, talking to himself and groaning out aloud whenever the
ship hammered on the rock. His brig was like wife and child to him; he had
looked on, day by day, at the mishandling of poor Ransome; but when it
came to the brig, he seemed to suffer along with her.</p>
<p>All the time of our working at the boat, I remember only one other thing:
that I asked Alan, looking across at the shore, what country it was; and
he answered, it was the worst possible for him, for it was a land of the
Campbells.</p>
<p>We had one of the wounded men told off to keep a watch upon the seas and
cry us warning. Well, we had the boat about ready to be launched, when
this man sang out pretty shrill: "For God's sake, hold on!" We knew by his
tone that it was something more than ordinary; and sure enough, there
followed a sea so huge that it lifted the brig right up and canted her
over on her beam. Whether the cry came too late, or my hold was too weak,
I know not; but at the sudden tilting of the ship I was cast clean over
the bulwarks into the sea.</p>
<p>I went down, and drank my fill, and then came up, and got a blink of the
moon, and then down again. They say a man sinks a third time for good. I
cannot be made like other folk, then; for I would not like to write how
often I went down, or how often I came up again. All the while, I was
being hurled along, and beaten upon and choked, and then swallowed whole;
and the thing was so distracting to my wits, that I was neither sorry nor
afraid.</p>
<p>Presently, I found I was holding to a spar, which helped me somewhat. And
then all of a sudden I was in quiet water, and began to come to myself.</p>
<p>It was the spare yard I had got hold of, and I was amazed to see how far I
had travelled from the brig. I hailed her, indeed; but it was plain she
was already out of cry. She was still holding together; but whether or not
they had yet launched the boat, I was too far off and too low down to see.</p>
<p>While I was hailing the brig, I spied a tract of water lying between us
where no great waves came, but which yet boiled white all over and
bristled in the moon with rings and bubbles. Sometimes the whole tract
swung to one side, like the tail of a live serpent; sometimes, for a
glimpse, it would all disappear and then boil up again. What it was I had
no guess, which for the time increased my fear of it; but I now know it
must have been the roost or tide race, which had carried me away so fast
and tumbled me about so cruelly, and at last, as if tired of that play,
had flung out me and the spare yard upon its landward margin.</p>
<p>I now lay quite becalmed, and began to feel that a man can die of cold as
well as of drowning. The shores of Earraid were close in; I could see in
the moonlight the dots of heather and the sparkling of the mica in the
rocks.</p>
<p>"Well," thought I to myself, "if I cannot get as far as that, it's
strange!"</p>
<p>I had no skill of swimming, Essen Water being small in our neighbourhood;
but when I laid hold upon the yard with both arms, and kicked out with
both feet, I soon begun to find that I was moving. Hard work it was, and
mortally slow; but in about an hour of kicking and splashing, I had got
well in between the points of a sandy bay surrounded by low hills.</p>
<p>The sea was here quite quiet; there was no sound of any surf; the moon
shone clear; and I thought in my heart I had never seen a place so desert
and desolate. But it was dry land; and when at last it grew so shallow
that I could leave the yard and wade ashore upon my feet, I cannot tell if
I was more tired or more grateful. Both, at least, I was: tired as I never
was before that night; and grateful to God as I trust I have been often,
though never with more cause.</p>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />