Adrift in the Pacific-Two Years Holiday Read online

  In a calm the task would not have been easy, for the surf beat furiously among the rocks. Currents and counter-currents prevented the brave boy from keeping a straight line, and when he entered them he could with difficulty make his way through. Gradually he made his way towards the beach, but it was evident that his strength was failing him. He had not gone twenty yards from the schooner when he entered a whirlpool caused by the meeting of two streams of surf. If he could get round it or through it, all might be well, for the sea beyond was calm. He tried to pass it on the left hand, but the attempt was a failure. A strong swimmer in the pride of life would have tried in vain. The whirlpool seized him, and drew him irresistibly to the centre.

  ‘Help! Pull! Pull!’ he shouted, and then he disappeared.

  On the yacht terror was at its height. ‘Haul away!’ said Gordon coolly. And the boys hauled as if for their lives, and in less than a minute Briant was on board—unconscious, it is true, but soon brought back to life in his brother’s arms. That attempt had failed. What was to be done now?

  Were they to wait? To wait for what? Help? And where was help to come from?

  It was now past noon, and the tide began to make, and the surf increased as the water rose. And as it was new moon the tide would be higher than the evening before. And the wind had gone down but little; and the schooner might be lifted from its rocky bed, and strike again, and be shattered on the reef! And no one would survive! And yet nothing could be done!

  In the stern the young boys gathered round the older ones, and watched the waters rise, and the rocks disappear in turn beneath the surf. The wind had gone round to the west again, and beat full on the shore. As the water deepened the waves rose, and rolled and broke up against her. By two o’clock the schooner had recovered from her heel and was upright, and her bow was free, and being dashed up and down on the rocks, while her stern remained firmly fixed. Soon she began to roll from side to side, and the boys had to cling together to prevent being thrown overboard. Suddenly a foaming mountain came rolling in from the open sea, and rose a few feet from the stern of the yacht. It was over twenty feet high; it came with the fury of a torrent; it covered the reef; it lifted the schooner from the rocks, and without even grazing them swept her onward: in less than a minute, amid the roaring mass of water, the wreck was carried to the beach, and laid on the sand within a couple of hundred feet of the trees at the foot of the clift. And there it remained, while the sea flowed back and left it high and dry.

  CHAPTER III—CAST ADRIFT

  AT the time of our story, Charman’s boarding-school was one of the largest in Auckland, New Zealand. It boasted about a hundred pupils belonging to the best families in the colony, and the course of study and the management were the same as in high-class schools at home.

  The archipelago of New Zealand has two principal islands, the North Island and the Middle Island, separated by Cook Strait. It lies between the thirty-fourth and forty-fifth parallels of south latitude—a position equivalent to that part of the northern hemisphere occupied by France and Northern Africa. The North Island is much cut into at its southern end, and forms an irregular trapezium prolonged at its north-western angle and terminated by the North Cape and Cape Van Diemen. Just where the curve begins, and where the peninsula is only a few miles across, the town of Auckland is situated. Its position is similar to that of Corinth in Greece, and to that fact is due its name of the Corinth of the South. It has two harbours, one on the west, one on the east, the latter on Hauraki Gulf being rather shallow, so that long piers have had to be built into it where the smaller vessels can unload. One of these piers is Commercial Pier at the foot of Queen Street; and about half way up Queen Street was Charman’s school.

  On the 15th of February, 1880, in the afternoon, a crowd of boys and their relatives came out of the schoolhouse into Queen Street, merry and happy as birds just escaped from their cage. It was the beginning of the holidays. Two months of independence; two months of liberty! And for some of the boys there was the prospect of a sea voyage which had been talked about in school for months. How the others envied those who were to go on this cruise in which New Zealand was to be circumnavigated! The schooner had been chartered by the boys’ friends, and fitted out for a voyage of six weeks. She belonged to the father of one of the boys, Mr. William H. Garnett, an old merchant captain in whom every confidence was felt, A subscription had been raised among the parents to cover the expenses; and great was the joy of the young folks, who would have found it difficult to spend their holidays better.

  The fortunate boys came from all of the first forms of the school, and as we have seen, were of all ages from eight to fourteen. With the exception of the Briants who were French, and Gordon who was an American, they were all English.

  Donagan and Cross were the sons of rich landholders, who occupy the highest social rank in New Zealand. They were cousins; both were a little over thirteen and both were in the fifth form. Donagan was somewhat of a dandy, and was undoubtedly the most prominent pupil in the school. He was clever and hardworking, and by his fondness for study and his desire to excel, he easily maintained his position. A certain aristocratic arrogance had gained him the nickname of Lord Donagan, and his imperious character led him to strive to command wherever he was placed. Hence between him and Briant there had sprung up this rivalry which had become keener than ever since circumstances had increased Briant’s influence over his companions. Cross was a very ordinary sort of boy, distinguished by a constant admiration for everything his cousin said or did.

  Baxter was also a fifth-form boy. He was thirteen years of age, a cool, thoughtful, ingenious fellow, who could do almost anything with his hands. He was the son of a merchant who was not particularly well off.

  Webb and Wilcox, who were both about twelve and a half, were in the fourth form. They were not particularly bright, and were rather inclined to be quarrelsome. On one thing they prided themselves; that was their intimate knowledge of faggism in all its branches. Every information on the fag, and how to treat him, was to be obtained gratis from Messrs. Webb and Wilcox. Their fathers were wealthy men, and held high rank among the magistracy of the colony.

  Garnett and Service were in the third form. They were both twelve years old. One was the son of a retired merchant captain, the other’s father was a well-to-do colonist living on the North Shore, on the upper coast of Waitemata Harbour. The families were very intimate, and Service and Garnett were almost inseparable. They were good-hearted boys, not over fond of work, and if they had been given the key of the fields, they would not have let it rest idle in their pockets. Garnett had an overmastering passion—he loved an accordion! And he took it with him on board the yacht, to occupy his spare time in a way befitting a sailor’s son. Service was the school wag, the liveliest and noisiest of the lot, a devourer of traveller’s tales, and a worshipper of Robinson Crusoe and the Swiss Family Robinson, which he knew by heart.

  Among the boys were two of nine years old. The first of these was Jenkins, the son of the secretary of the New Zealand Royal Society; the other was Iverson, whose father was the minister of the church of St Paul. Jenkins was in the third form, Iverson in the second; but both were good boys. Dole and Costar were each a year younger than Iverson, and were the sons of military officers at Onehunga, six miles from Auckland, in Manukau Harbour. They were both little fellows. Dole was very obstinate, and Costar very greedy. Both were in the first form, and both knew how to read and write, and that is all we need say about them.

  Of the three we have left to the last Gordon, the American, was about fourteen, and, in his somewhat angular build, already betrayed his Yankee origin. Slightly awkward, and a little heavy, he was far and away the steadiest boy in the fifth form; and although there was nothing very brilliant about him, he had a clear head and a strong fund of common sense. His tastes ran in a serious direction, and he was of an observant character and cool temperament. He was methodic even to the slightest detail, classifying his ideas in his head as he arra
nged the things in his desk, where everything was classified, docketed, and entered in its special notebook. His companions liked him, and recognized his good qualities. He was a native of Boston, but having neither father nor mother, he had been taken care of by his guardian, a consular agent who had made his fortune and settled in New Zealand. For some years he had lived in one of those pretty villas scattered on the heights near the village of Mount St. John.

  Briant and his brother were the sons of a French engineer, who, for two years and a half, had been employed in charge of the works for draining a marsh in the centre of the North Island. Briant was thirteen, an intelligent lad with no particular liking for hard work, and figuring with undesirable frequency at the wrong end of the fifth form. When he made up his mind, however, he speedily rose in the class, thanks to his facility of assimilation and his remarkable memory. He was bold, enterprising, active, quick at repartee, and good-natured. He was generally liked, and when the schooner was in difficulties his companions, with a few exceptions, did as he told them, principally, as we know, from his having gained some nautical knowledge on his way out from Europe.

  His young brother, Jack, was the funny boy of the third form, who would have been the school jester had it not been for Service. He spent his time chiefly in inventing new modes of mischief for the benefit of his schoolfellows, and being consequently in frequent hot water; but for some reason his conduct on the yacht differed very much from what it had been at school.

  Such were the schoolboys whom the storm had cast ashore in the Pacific. During the cruise round New Zealand the schooner was to be commanded by Garnett’s father, who was one of the best yachtsmen in Australasia. Many times had the schooner appeared on the coast of Australia from the southernmost cape of Tasmania to Torres Straits, and even in the seas of the Moluccas and the Philippines, which are so dangerous to vessels of greater tonnage. But she was a well-built boat, handy, weatherly, and fit to keep the sea in all weathers.

  The crew consisted of the mate, six sailors, a cook, and a boy, Moko, the young negro of twelve, whose family had been in the service of a well-known colonist for many years. And we ought to mention Fan, a dog of American extraction, which belonged to Gordon, and never left her master.

  The day of departure had been fixed for the 15th of February. The yacht lay moored at the end of Commercial Pier. The crew was not on board when, on the evening of the 14th, the young passengers embarked. Captain Garnett was not expected till the last moment, and the mate and the boy received Gordon and his companions, the men having gone ashore to take a parting glass. When the yacht had been cleared of visitors, and the boys had all gone to bed, so as to be ready early in the morning for the start, it occurred to the mate that he would go up into the town and look for his men, leaving Moko in charge. And Moko was too tired to keep awake.

  What happened immediately the mate left was a mystery, but accidentally or purposely, the moorings of the yacht got cast off without any one on board being the wiser.

  It was a dark night. The land-breeze was strong, and the tide running out, and away went the schooner to sea.

  When Moko awoke he found the yacht adrift!

  His shouts brought up Gordon, Briant, Donagan, and a few of the others from below, but nothing could they do. They called for help in vain. None of the harbour lights were visible. The yacht was right out in the gulf three miles from land.

  At the suggestion of Briant and Moko, the boys tried to get sail on the yacht so as to beat back into the harbour. But the sail was too heavy for them to set properly, and the result was that the yacht instead of keeping her head up, dropped dead away to leeward. Cape Colville was doubled, and the strait between Great Barrier Island and the mainland run through, and soon the schooner was off to the eastward, many miles from New Zealand.

  It was a serious position. There could be no help from the land. If a vessel were to come in search, several hours must elapse before she could catch them, even supposing that she could find them in the darkness. And even when day came, how could she descry so small a craft on the high sea? If the wind did not change, all hope of returning to land must be given up. There remained only the chance of being spoken by some vessel on her way to a New Zealand port. And to meet this, Moko hastened to hoist a lantern at the foremast head. And then all that could be done was to wait for daylight.

  Many of the smaller boys were still asleep, and it was thought best not to wake them.

  Several attempts were made to bring the schooner up in the wind, but all were useless. Her head fell off immediately, and away she went drifting to the eastward.

  Suddenly a light was sighted two or three miles off. It was a white masthead light showing a steamer under way. Soon the side lights, red and green, rose above the water, and the fact of their being seen together showed that the steamer was steering straight for the yacht.

  The boys shouted in vain. The wash of the waves, the roar of the steam blowing off, and the moan of the rising wind united to drown their voices. But if they could not hear the cries, the look-outs might see the light at the schooner’s foremast? It was a last chance, and unfortunately in one of the yacht’s jerky pitches, the halliard broke and the lantern fell into the sea, and there was nothing to show the presence of the schooner, which the steamer was steering straight down upon at the rate of twelve knots an hour.

  In a few seconds she had struck the yacht, and would have sunk her, had she not taken her on the slant close to the stern; as it was she carried away only a bit of the name board.

  The shock had been so feeble that the steamer kept on, leaving the schooner to the mercy of the approaching storm. It is often the case, unfortunately, that captains do not trouble about stopping to help a vessel they have run into. But in this case some excuse could be made, for those on board the steamer felt nothing of the collision, and saw nothing of the yacht in the darkness.

  Drifting before the wind, the boys might well think they were lost. When day came the wide horizon was deserted. In the Pacific, ships bound from Australia to America, or from America to Australia, take a more northerly or more southerly route than that taken by the yacht. Not one was sighted, and although the wind moderated occasionally, yet it never ceased blowing from the westward.

  How long this drifting was to last, neither Briant nor his comrades knew. In vain they tried to get the schooner back into New Zealand waters. It was under these conditions that Briant displaying energy superior to his age, began to exercise an influence over his companions, to which even Donagan submitted. Although with Moko’s help he could not succeed in getting the yacht to the westward, he could, and did, manage to keep her navigable. He did not spare himself. He watched night and day. He swept the horizon for any chance of safety. And he threw overboard several bottles containing an account of what had happened to the schooner; it was a slender chance, doubtless, but he did not care to neglect it.

  A few hours after the yacht left Hauraki Gulf, the storm arose, and for two weeks it raged with unusual impetuosity. Assaulted by enormous waves, and escaping a hundred times from being overwhelmed by the mountains of water, the yacht had gone ashore on an unknown land in the Pacific.

  What was to be the fate of these shipwrecked school-boys? From what side was help to come to them if they could not help themselves?

  Their families had only too good reason to suppose that they had been swallowed up. When it was found that the yacht had disappeared the alarm was given. We need not dwell on the consternation produced by the news.

  Without losing an instant, the harbour-master sent out two small steamers in search, with orders to explore the gulf and some miles beyond it All that night though the sea grew rough, the little steamers sought in vain; and when day came and they returned to Auckland, it was to deprive the unfortunate relatives of every hope. They had not found the schooner, but they had found the wreckage knocked away in collision by the Quito—a collision of which those on board the Quito knew nothing.

  And in this wreckag
e were three or four letters of the schooner’s name.

  It seemed certain that the yacht had met with disaster, and gone down with all on board within a dozen miles of New Zealand.

  CHAPTER IV—THE FIRST DAY ASHORE

  THE shore was deserted, as Briant had discovered when he was on the foremast crosstrees. For an hour the schooner lay on her bed of sand, and no native was seen. There was no sign of house or hut either under the trees, in front of the cliff, or on the banks of the rivulet, now full with the waters of the rising tide. There was not even the print of a human foot on the beach, which the tide had bordered with a long line of seaweed. At the mouth of the river there was no fishing-boat to be seen, and no smoke arose in the air along the whole curve of the bay between the northern and southern capes.

  The first idea that occurred to Briant and Gordon was to get through the trees and ascend the cliffs behind.

  ‘We are on land, that is something!’ said Gordon; ‘but what is this land which seems uninhabited?’

  ‘The important thing is that it is not uninhabitable,’ answered Briant ‘We have food and ammunition for some time. We want a shelter of some sort, and we must find one—at least for the youngsters.’

  ‘Yes. Right you are!’

  ‘As to finding out where we are,’ said Briant, ‘there will be time enough for that when we have nothing else to do. If it is a continent, we may perhaps be rescued. If it is an island! an uninhabited island—well we shall see! Come, Gordon, let us be off on our voyage of discovery.’

  They soon readied the edge of the trees, which ran off on the slant from the cliff to the right bank of the stream, three or four hundred yards above its mouth.

  In the wood there was no sign of the passage of man, not a track, not a footpath. Old trunks, fallen through old age, lay on the ground, and the boys sank to their knees in the carpet of dead leaves. But the birds flew away in alarm as if they had learnt that man was their enemy, and it was therefore likely that if the island was not inhabited, it was occasionally visited by the natives of a neighbouring territory.