Midwinter suggested a frolic by daylight, and an adjournment to bed in the meantime.
“Bed!” cried Allan, on whose harum-scarum high spirits Mr. Hawbury’s hospitality had certainly not produced a sedative effect. “Hear him, doctor! one would think he was ninety! Bed, you drowsy old dormouse! Look at that, and think of bed if you can!”
He pointed to the sea. The moon was shining in the cloudless heaven; the night-breeze blew soft and steady from the land; the peaceful waters rippled joyfully in the silence and the glory of the night. Midwinter turned to the doctor with a wise resignation to circumstances: he had seen enough to satisfy him that all words of remonstrance would be words simply thrown away.
“How is the tide?” he asked.
Mr. Hawbury told him.
“Are there oars in the boat?”
“Yes.”
“I am well used to the sea,” said Midwinter, descending the pier steps. “You may trust me to take care of my friend, and to take care of the boat.”
“Goodnight, doctor!” shouted Allan. “Your whisky-and-water is delicious — your boat’s a little beauty — and you’re the best fellow I ever met in my life!”
The doctor laughed and waved his hand, and the boat glided out from the harbor, with Midwinter at the helm.
As the breeze then blew, they were soon abreast of the westward headland, bounding the Bay of Poolvash, and the question was started whether they should run out to sea or keep along the shore. The wisest proceeding, in the event of the wind failing them, was to keep by the land. 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 wornout 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 boathook 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.
IV. The Shadow of the Past
One