Midwinter altered the course of the boat, and they sailed on smoothly in a south-westerly direction, abreast of the coast.
Little by little the cliffs rose in height, and the rocks, massed wild and jagged, showed rifted black chasms yawning deep in their seaward sides. Off the bold promontory called Spanish Head, Midwinter looked ominously at his watch. But Allan pleaded hard for half an hour more, and for a glance at the famous channel of the Sound, which they were now fast nearing, and of which he had heard some startling stories from the workmen employed on his yacht. The new change which Midwinter's compliance with this request rendered it necessary to make in the course of the boat brought her close to the wind; and revealed, on one side, the grand view of the southernmost shores of the Isle of Man, and, on the other, the black precipices of the islet called the Calf, separated from the mainland by the dark and dangerous channel of the Sound.
Once more Midwinter looked at his watch. "We have gone far enough," he said. "Stand by the sheet!"
"Stop!" cried Allan, from the bows of the boat. "Good God! here's a wrecked ship right ahead of us!"
Midwinter let the boat fall off a little, and looked where the other pointed.
There, stranded midway between the rocky boundaries on either side of the Sound--there, never again to rise on the living waters from her grave on the sunken rock; lost and lonely in the quiet night; high, and dark, and ghostly in the yellow moonshine, lay the Wrecked Ship.
"I know the vessel," said Allan, in great excitement. "I heard my workmen talking of her yesterday. She drifted in here, on a pitch-dark night, when they couldn't see the lights; a poor old worn-out merchantman, Midwinter, that the ship-brokers have bought to break up. Let's run in and have a look at her."
Midwinter hesitated. All the old sympathies of his sea-life strongly inclined him to follow Allan's suggestion; but the wind was falling light, and he distrusted the broken water and the swirling currents of the channel ahead. "This is an ugly place to take a boat into when you know nothing about it," he said.
"Nonsense!" returned Allan. "It's as light as day, and we float in two feet of water."
Before Midwinter could answer, the current caught the boat, and swept them onward through the channel straight toward the wreck.
"Lower the sail," said Midwinter, quietly, "and ship the oars. We are running down on her fast enough now, whether we like it or not."
Both well accustomed to the use of the oar, they brought the course of the boat under sufficient control to keep her on the smoothest side of the channel--the side which was nearest to the Islet of the Calf. As they came swiftly up with the wreck, Midwinter resigned his oar to Allan; and, watching his opportunity, caught a hold with the boat-hook on the fore-chains of the vessel. The next moment they had the boat safely in hand, under the lee of the wreck.
The ship's ladder used by the workmen hung over the fore-chains. Mounting it, with the boat's rope in his teeth, Midwinter secured one end, and lowered the other to Allan in the boat. "Make that fast," he said, "and wait till I see if it's all safe on board." With those words, he disappeared behind the bulwark.
"Wait?" repeated Allan, in the blankest astonishment at his friend's excessive caution. "What on earth does he mean? I'll be hanged if I wait. Where one of us goes, the other goes too!"
He hitched the loose end of the rope round the forward thwart of the boat, and, swinging himself up the ladder, stood the next moment on the deck. "Anything very dreadful on board?" he inquired sarcastically, as he and his friend met.
Midwinter smiled. "Nothing whatever," he replied. "But I couldn't be sure that we were to have the whole ship to ourselves till I got over the bulwark and looked about me."
Allan took a turn on the deck, and surveyed the wreck critically from stem to stern.
"Not much of a vessel," he said; "the Frenchmen generally build better ships than this."
Midwinter crossed the deck, and eyed Allan in a momentary silence.
"Frenchmen?" he repeated, after an interval. "Is this vessel French?"
"Yes."
"How do you know?"
"The men I have got at work on the yacht told me. They know all about her."
Midwinter came a little nearer. His swarthy face began to look, to Allan's eyes, unaccountably pale in the moonlight.
"Did they mention what trade she was engaged in?"
"Yes; the timber trade."
As Allan gave that answer, Midwinter's lean brown hand clutched him fast by the shoulder, and Midwinter's teeth chattered in his head like the teeth of a man struck by a sudden chill.
"Did they tell you her name?" he asked, in a voice that dropped suddenly to a whisper.
"They did, I think. But it has slipped my memory.--Gently, old fellow; these long claws of yours are rather tight on my shoulder."
"Was the name--?" He stopped, removed his hand, and dashed away the great drops that were gathering on his forehead. "Was the name La Grace de Dieu?"
"How the deuce did you come to know it? That's the name, sure enough. La Grace de Dieu."
At one bound, Midwinter leaped on the bulwark of the wreck.
"The boat!" he cried, with a scream of horror that rang far and wide through the stillness of the night, and brought Allan instantly to his side.
The lower end of the carelessly hitched rope was loose on the water, and ahead, in the track of the moonlight, a small black object was floating out of view. The boat was adrift.
CHAPTER IV.
THE SHADOW OF THE PAST.
One stepping back under the dark shelter of the bulwark, and one standing out boldly in the yellow light of the moon, the two friends turned face to face on the deck of the timber-ship, and looked at each other in silence. The next moment Allan's inveterate recklessness seized on the grotesque side of the situation by main force. He seated himself astride on the bulwark, and burst out boisterously into his loudest and heartiest laugh.
"All my fault," he said; "but there's no help for it now. Here we are, hard and fast in a trap of our own setting; and there goes the last of the doctor's boat! Come out of the dark, Midwinter; I can't half see you there, and I want to know what's to be done next."
Midwinter neither answered nor moved. Allan left the bulwark, and, mounting the forecastle, looked down attentively at the waters of the Sound.
"One thing is pretty certain," he said. "With the current on that side, and the sunken rocks on this, we can't find our way out of the scrape by swimming, at any rate. So much for the prospect at this end of the wreck. Let's try how things look at the other. Rouse up, messmate!" he called out, cheerfully, as he passed Midwinter. "Come and see what the old tub of a timber-ship has got to show us astern." He sauntered on, with his hands in his pockets, humming the chorus of a comic song.
His voice had produced no apparent effect on his friend; but, at the light touch of his hand in passing, Midwinter started, and moved out slowly from the shadow of the bulwark. "Come along!" cried Allan, suspending his singing for a moment, and glancing back. Still, without a word of answer, the other followed. Thrice he stopped before he reached the stern end of the wreck: the first time, to throw aside his hat, and push back his hair from his forehead and temples; the second time, reeling, giddy, to hold for a moment by a ring-bolt close at hand; the last time (though Allan was plainly visible a few yards ahead), to look stealthily behind him, with the furtive scrutiny of a man who believes that other footsteps are following him in the dark. "Not yet!" he whispered to himself, with eyes that searched the empty air. "I shall see him astern, with his hand on the lock of the cabin door."
The stern end of the wreck was clear of the ship-breakers' lumber, accumulated in the other parts of the vessel. Here, the one object that rose visible on the smooth surface of the deck was the low wooden structure which held the cabin door and roofed in the cabin stairs. The wheel-house had been removed, the binnacle had been removed, but the cabin entrance, and all that had belonged to it, had been left untouched. The scuttle was on, and the door was closed.
On gaining the after-part of the vessel, Allan walked straight to the stern, and looked out to sea over the taffrail. No such thing as a boat was in view anywhere on the quiet, moon-brightened waters. Knowing Midwinter's sight to be better than his own, he called out, "Come up here, and see if there's a fisherman within hail of us." Hearing no reply, he looked back. Midwinter had followed him as far as the cabin, and had stopped there. He called again in a louder voice, and beckoned impatiently. Midwinter had heard the call, for he looked up, but still he never stirred from his place. There he stood, as if he had reached the utmost limits of the ship and could go no further.
Allan went back and joined him. It was not easy to discover what he was looking at, for he kept his face turned away from the moonlight; but it seemed as if his eyes were fixed, with a strange expression of inquiry, on the cabin door.