"Well, sorr, we'll say," retorted the mate. However, the argument was settled offhand by Ben Boltrope, who had clambered up to a higher ledge of rock from whence he could see further out to seaward over the fog, which hung low on the water and did not extend to the upper regions of the air.
"There she is, your honour, bless her old heart!" he exclaimed. "She's still hard and fast on the reef, and never another plank sprung from the starn, as far as I can see!"
This was good news; and Mr Meldrum, with the mate, hastened to join the carpenter on his perch above.
Yes, there in the distance, rising out of the mist, could be seen the upper portion of the poop of the _Nancy Bell_, although the wreck was still occasionally obscured by a wave breaking over it; and, presently, on the lifting of the fog, as the clouds cleared off from the face of the sky and a gleam of sunshine stole out, lighting up the sea and landscape around, it could be observed that the remains of the vessel were nearly in the same condition, apparently, as when last noticed on the evening before--save that the poor ship was now surrounded by a line of breakers which dashed over the stern continually, looking as if they meant to pull it in pieces before they had done with it!
"She's shifted more on to her side," said Mr Meldrum, who had taken out a glass from his pocket and was now inspecting the remains of the old ship more carefully. "I can see the deck clearly. The waves are spurting up through the hole where the skylight was removed, so the cabins must be pretty well washed out by this time."
"Ah! that's the rayson we couldn't say the flag, sorr," observed the mate.
"It is there still," replied Mr Meldrum; "although it is now all to port, instead of right amidships as it was when we left. This is on account of the mizzen-mast stump leaning over into the water, for I couldn't see it myself till I took the glass. She can't last much longer, though. Those seas are breaking over her with frightful force, judging by the amount of surf they send up, and they must soon make an end of her!"
"I hope it'll calm down a bit, sir," said Ben Boltrope. "I'm nervous about them timbers for the roof of the house."
"Be aisy with you, man," put in Mr McCarthy. "Sure an' all the anxiety in the worruld won't dhrive a pig to market! If we're to have the crathur's planks we'll have thim sure enough; and if we aren't, why we won't, that's all about it!"
"The sea may run easier at low water, Boltrope," said Mr Meldrum to console the carpenter; "and if she should be broken up by that time, we'll send out the jolly-boat and pick up what we can."
"Begorrah, you won't have to wait long," cried the mate; and almost as he spoke, a heavy roller was seen to lift up the wreck on the top of its crest and roll it over, after which the dark body they had observed on the reef with the little scrap of a flag fluttering over it was there no longer!
The _Nancy Bell_, or rather the remaining fragments of her hull, had disappeared at last beneath the waves!
"I'm afraid we sha'n't be able to save anything," said Mr Meldrum, after a moment of silence, in which each of the three witnesses of the vessel's end had drawn a deep breath, showing how affecting had been the sight. "It is such a long distance out there, and the sea is running so heavily besides, that I wouldn't like to risk the boat."
"Sure and we could thry, sorr," pleaded the first mate eagerly.
"No, Mr McCarthy, it would be hazardous in the extreme; and we ought not to peril the men's lives unnecessarily! Still, if you want to do something--"
"Bedad I do," interrupted the other, as if ready at once to dive into the sea if required.
"Well," continued Mr Meldrum, "you can post a man on the watch here and one or two other places along the cliff, to notice if anything floats inshore; and then, of course, we'll make an effort to bring it to land should the wreckage drift near."
"Aye, aye, sorr, you may dipind upon me that same," said Mr McCarthy; and, rushing down from the rock, he was soon in front of the men's compartment of the tent, rousing them out with a cry of, "Ahoy there!
All hands on deck to save ship! Tumble up, tumble up there, my hearties, there's no time to lose!"
The men coming out with alacrity, half bewildered by such a hail under the circumstances and surroundings, four were picked out and posted to look out like sentinels--two on the beach and two on the ridge above-- and all with strict injunctions to report anything they saw at once, just as if they were put to the same duty on board ship.
"Now, mind ye kape a good watch," said the first mate, as he left them to their own devices, "and out if you say a single hincoop floating in the say foreninst ye--though it's little enough of them you'll say, sure, considerin' they were all washed overboard off the Cape!--I mane if ye say any timbers or spars from the wrack drifting inshore, just you hould your eye on thim, or the divil a mother's son ye'll have a roof over his hid or a pace of foire to warm his-self! Faix, ye needn't snigger, ye spalpeens; it's the truth I'm afther tellin' ye!" and Mr McCarthy then went off, shaking his fist good-humouredly at those who laughed at his quaint speech.
Four other men he selected as a crew for the jolly-boat, which was hauled down on the beach in readiness to shove off as soon as any of the wreckage was reported in sight; the remainder of the hands being directed to place themselves under the orders of the carpenter until their services should be required to relieve the look-out men at the end of their watch. The duty of these latter, however, was for some time a sinecure, as the breakers were still breaking angrily against the cliffs and keeping up the hoarse diapason in which they expressed their impotent rage; while the wind, though blowing with less force than during the night time, was yet strong enough to sweep off the tops of the billows when it caught them well abeam, carrying the spindrift away to leeward and scattering the surge with its blast as it transformed it into fairy-like foam bubbles and wreaths of gossamer spray.
Noon came before there was any change.
Then, soon after the end of the ebb and just as the tide began to flow again, the wind died away into a dead calm; and the sea settling down somewhat--the rollers still rolling in, but only breaking when they reached the shore, instead of jostling one another in their tumultuous rushings together and mimic encounters out in the open--every eye was on the _qui vive_. It was either "now or never" that they might expect anything coming inshore from the wreck!
"Sail ho!" at length shouted one of the look-out men on the ridge. The sailor evidently could not help using the nautical term from old habit, although he well knew that there was little chance of his seeing a "sail" that quarter!
"Where away?" called out Mr McCarthy, who had the jolly-boat's crew round her, running her into the water the moment he heard the cry.
"Right to leeward of the reef, sir, about a mile out," answered the look-out, adding quickly afterwards, "it looks a pretty biggish bit of timber, sir, and rides high in the water."
"All right, my man," said the mate; "mind you kape still on the watch, and fix any other paces of planking you may say in your mind's eye! You can till me where to look for thim whin I come back agin within hail.
Shove off, you beggars!" he then cried out to the boat's crew, as he jumped in over the side. "Arrah put your backs into it, for we're bound to save ivery scrap of the ould vessel we can come across, in order sure to tow it ashore!"
Watching for an opportunity, the boat's head was shoved out on top of a return wave, when, the oars being plied with sturdy strokes, the little buoyant craft was soon well out of the broken water and making steady progress in the direction that had been pointed out. No object, however, could be seen as yet by Mr McCarthy; for the rollers were still so high that when the boat was sunk in the hollow between them nothing could be noticed beyond the curving ridge of the next wave and the broken wash of the one just overtopped.
"Go it, boys, kape at it with a will," cried the mate, rising up in the stern-sheets after a while to look round better, steadying himself by holding on to the yoke-lines and leaning forwards. "Ha! I can say it now, right in front! We'll soon have it--one more stroke, and we'll be there, sure!"
"Aisy, now--avast--row of all!" he cried out in turn; and then, with a sullen, grating sound the boat brought up against a large mass of broken timberwork which the men had no difficulty in recognising as the larger portion of the poop deck. It had the combings of the companion and skylight still attached, as well as a part of one of the ladder-ways, and was in every sense a treasure trove.
"Sure we're in luck, boys, anyhow," said Mr McCarthy joyfully. "Be jabers, I niver expected to git so much ov it all at once without any trouble!"
The first mate proceeded without delay to attach the small hawser which they had used for towing the raft to a ring-bolt, left as if for the purpose on the floating mass; and then the men, backing water on one side, and pulling sharp on the other, soon had the boat on her way back to the land, with the mass of broken timberwork trailing behind her. It was in itself, without picking up another plank, more than sufficient to supply all the carpenter's needs for the roof of the house, "besoides making the ladies a prisint of a staircase for the front door," as Mr McCarthy observed!
It was fortunate they came across this, for little more of the wreckage was secured, the tide having evidently carried out the lighter portions of the planking too far to sea for it to be brought back again by the returning flood. It was probably only owing to the weight of the poop- deck that they had been able to make certain of that.
Still, on making a trip out to the reef later on, to see whether any more of the timbers remained there, a "find" was discovered which greatly rejoiced Snowball's heart when it was brought on shore.
This was nothing less than one of the ship's coppers, which had become detached from the galley framework and in falling on to the reef had managed to get securely fixed between the rocks, just a little below the surface of the water. A couple of the men were easily able to pull it up into the jolly-boat, where, on being inspected, it was found perfectly sound and as good as ever!
"Golly, massa," exclaimed the darkey, when Mr Meldrum presented him with the recovered copper--which Snowball looked upon almost as the apple of his eye--"me able cook pea-shoop now, sah, and bile de beef in 'spectable style, sah! Dat sospan, massa, no good for ship's company.
Um bile, and bile, and bile, and nebbah bile enuff!"
"Ah! mind you don't go cooking too extravagantly," said Mr Meldrum.
"If I see you wasting anything, I'll taboo the copper."
"Lor, massa, I'se too careful for dat," replied the negro cook, with a grin which displayed his ivory-mounted mouth from ear to ear; "when de men sing out for more thoop, why, sah, I just water um grog! Yah, yah!
ho, ho!" and he burst into a roar of laughter in which those around could not help joining, the darkey's hearty merriment was so contagious.
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX.
KERGUELEN CABBAGE.
While Mr McCarthy and the jolly-boat's crew were thus trying to save all the "flotsam and jetsam" they could from the wreck, Ben Boltrope and those of the crew told off to help him, as "carpenter's mates," were as busy as bees house-building, if running up the shanty which Mr Meldrum had designed could be so designated; while the rest of the party were lending all the aid they could in fetching and carrying what the actual workers required.
It was only a rough wooden hut, or rather "composite" structure; but as it was more than probable that it would have to be the home of the shipwrecked people for some five months at the least, no trouble or pains were spared in endeavouring to make it as substantial and comfortable under the circumstances as Ben and his active assistants could effect with the limited means at their command.
The gable-end of the cliff, under whose lee the hut was erected, so as to gain shelter from the southward and westward winds, which seemed to be the most prevalent on the coast, presented a flat and even face, just like a slab of black slate standing up perpendicularly from the ground.
The wall of rock, which was of a hard volcanic material that was evidently not porous, was made to serve for the back of the building, a niche or groove being excavated along it, about ten feet from the bottom, for the insertion of the ridge poles. This was a task of some difficulty, owing to the toughness of the stone; but it was a necessary one in order to prevent the moisture from above trickling down into the interior between the roof and the face of the cliff. The lower ends of the ridge poles, which sloped down from the top at an angle of some fifteen degrees, were then firmly fastened to the posts placed in the holes dug for them and lashed together with stout seizings of rope and sennet, so strongly that it would almost have taken a hurricane to have blown them away.
The next proceeding was to fix, at equal distances apart across the rough framework of the roof, a series of slender scantlings cut from the deck planks by splitting them with an axe, which Ben was forced to make use of on account of his having no saw, that and other similar useful instruments having been left in his tool-chest, which had been placed in the long-boat when the first preparations were made for abandoning the _Nancy Bell_.
The scantlings were secured to the ridge poles diagonally, not only for greater security but on account of the shortness of some of the pieces of timber they had and the necessity there was for their economising it; and, over the scantlings were laid in due order, the one overlapping the other to prevent any crevices in between, the shingles which the ingenious carpenter had improvised out of the staves of the empty casks--although, as the space to be covered amounted to some seven hundred superficial feet or thereabouts, every one of the casks had to be broken up save the six containing their beef and pork and the salted- down flesh of the sea-elephant, Ben even then hardly having enough shingles for his purpose.
However, casks or no casks, the roof of their house was a consideration that stood at the moment before all others; and, being now properly shingled, it was rendered additionally watertight by spreading over it the old tarpaulin and sail that had already temporarily done duty above their tent, and then giving them a good coating of pitch. A supply of this article had been fortunately thrown on to the raft along with the other odds and ends that had came in so usefullys and it was now melted down in Snowball's recovered copper. The finishing touch was given to the structure by piling several big boulders over the upper row of shingles along the ridge pole, for greater stability and to prevent boisterous Boreas from playing any of his rude tricks to its disadvantage.