CHAPTER V VOICES IN THE NIGHT

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The boat tackle of the Gaston de Paris was the latest patent arrangement for lowering boats in a hurry; every boat was provisioned, and the water casks left nothing to be desired, there were frequent inspections and boat drills. Yet when the Gaston de Paris foundered only three souls were saved.

The starboard boats, owing to the list, could not be lowered at all; every boat had its canvas cover on, which did not expedite matters. The patent tackle developed defects in practise, and, to crown all, the men panicked owing to the sudden darkness that fell on them like a clap on the extinction of the electric light. The port quarter-boat into which the girl had been flung had two men in her and was lowered away by Prince Selm, the doctor and the first officer; panic had herded the rest of the hands towards the pinnace and forward boats, and the pinnace, over-crowded, was stoved by the sea as soon as she was water-bourne. The other boats never left their davits, they went with the ship when the decks opened and the boilers saluted the night with a column of coloured steam and a clap of thunder that resounded for miles.

The whole tragedy from impact to explosion lasted only seven minutes.

The two men in the boat with the girl had shoved off like demons and taken to the oars as soon as the falls were released. If they had not, being so short-handed for the size of the boat, they would have been stoved; as it was they were nearly wrecked by a balk of timber from the explosion. It missed them by a short two fathoms, drenching them with spray, and then the night shut down pierced by voices, voices of men swimming and crying for help.

The rowers did not know each other. The bow oar shouted to the stern. “Is that you Larsen?”

“No, Bompard, and you?”

“La Touche—Row—God! Listen, there’s a chap ahead.”

The cries ahead ceased, and the boat bumped on something that duddered away under it and sank.

“He’s gone, whoever he is,” cried Bompard. “No use hunting for him. Listen, there’s more.” Voices shrill and voices bubbling came through the blackness from here and from there. The men tried to locate them and rowed now in this direction, now in that—always wrong. Once a voice sudden and shrill and close to the boat cried “A moi,” and at the same instant Bompard’s oar struck something, but they found nothing, the voice had ceased.

They could see, now, the waves like spectres evolving themselves from the night, a vision touching the very limit of dimness, and now as they entered a mist patch—nothing. The voices to port and starboard were ceasing, one by one—being blotted out. Then silence fell, broken only by the sound of the oars. La Touche shouted and shouted again, but there came no response. Then came Bompard’s voice. “Is that hooker gone, too?”

“Curse her, yes. I was the lookout. Sailing without lights.”

“This woman seems dead.”

“It’s the girl. I heard her squeal out as they hove her in. Let her lie. Well, this is a start.”

“A black job, but we’re out of it, so far.”

“Ay, as far as we’ve got—as far as we’ve got. Well, there’s no use rowing, there’s no sea to hurt her, let her toss.”

The oars came in and the fellows slithered from their seats on to the bottom boards. Ballasted so the boat rode easy. They lay like shivering dogs, grumbling and cursing and then, as they lay, the talk went on.

“Mon Dieu! What a thing—but we’ve grub and water all right.”

“Ay, the boats are all right for that.”

There was a long silence and then La Touche began in a high complaining voice:

“I was lookout, but it was not my fault, that I swear. I saw nothing till a big three-master broke out of the smother making to cross our bows, no lights shewing, snoring along asleep. Then I shouted. The bridge had seen her too and put the engines full speed ahead. They’d mistaken the distance, thought to clear her. I got aft. Hadn’t reached the port alley way when the smash came. It was all the fault of those fools on the bridge.”

“Who knows,” came Bompard’s voice. “Things happen and what is to be must be. Well, they’re all gone a hundred fathoms deep and here we are drifting about with a dead woman. I’d sooner have any other cargo if I was given my choice.”

“Sure she’s dead?”

“Ay, she’s dead sure enough by the way she’s lying, not a breath in her.”

Neither man suggested that she should be cast over. She ballasted the boat, and for Bompard she was something to lean against.

The French mercantile marine is divided into two great classes, the northerners and southerners. The man from the north is a Ponantaise, the man from the south a Moco.

Bompard was a Moco, La Touche a Ponantaise. They talked and talked, repeating themselves, cursing the “hooker,” the Bridge and the steersman. Once La Touche, grown hysterical, seemed choking against tears.

Then after a while, conversation died out. They had nothing more to talk about. The boat rode easy. There was nothing to do, and these men blunt to life and sea-hardened so that to them all things came in the hour’s work, nodded off, La Touche curled up in the bow, Bompard with his grizzled head on the breast of Mademoiselle de Bromsart.


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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