The Rescue by Joseph Conrad Read Free Book Online Page B

disappeared as if he had
fallen out of the universe. Lingard heard him say:
    "Catch hold of my leg, John." There were hollow sounds in the boat; a
voice growled, "All right."
    "Keep clear of the counter," said Lingard, speaking in quiet warning
tones into the night. "The brig may get a lot of sternway on her should
this squall not strike her fairly."
    "Aye, aye. I will mind," was the muttered answer from the water.
    Lingard crossed over to the port side, and looked steadily at the sooty
mass of approaching vapours. After a moment he said curtly, "Brace up
for the port tack, Mr. Shaw," and remained silent, with his face to
the sea. A sound, sorrowful and startling like the sigh of some immense
creature, travelling across the starless space, passed above the
vertical and lofty spars of the motionless brig.
    It grew louder, then suddenly ceased for a moment, and the taut rigging
of the brig was heard vibrating its answer in a singing note to this
threatening murmur of the winds. A long and slow undulation lifted the
level of the waters, as if the sea had drawn a deep breath of anxious
suspense. The next minute an immense disturbance leaped out of the
darkness upon the sea, kindling upon it a livid clearness of foam, and
the first gust of the squall boarded the brig in a stinging flick of
rain and spray. As if overwhelmed by the suddenness of the fierce onset,
the vessel remained for a second upright where she floated, shaking with
tremendous jerks from trucks to keel; while high up in the night the
invisible canvas was heard rattling and beating about violently.
    Then, with a quick double report, as of heavy guns, both topsails filled
at once and the brig fell over swiftly on her side. Shaw was thrown
headlong against the skylight, and Lingard, who had encircled the
weather rail with his arm, felt the vessel under his feet dart forward
smoothly, and the deck become less slanting—the speed of the brig
running off a little now, easing the overturning strain of the wind upon
the distended surfaces of the sails. It was only the fineness of the
little vessel's lines and the perfect shape of her hull that saved the
canvas, and perhaps the spars, by enabling the ready craft to get way
upon herself with such lightning-like rapidity. Lingard drew a long
breath and yelled jubilantly at Shaw who was struggling up against wind
and rain to his commander's side.
    "She'll do. Hold on everything."
    Shaw tried to speak. He swallowed great mouthfuls of tepid water
which the wind drove down his throat. The brig seemed to sail through
undulating waves that passed swishing between the masts and swept over
the decks with the fierce rush and noise of a cataract. From every spar
and every rope a ragged sheet of water streamed flicking to leeward. The
overpowering deluge seemed to last for an age; became unbearable—and,
all at once, stopped. In a couple of minutes the shower had run its
length over the brig and now could be seen like a straight grey wall,
going away into the night under the fierce whispering of dissolving
clouds. The wind eased. To the northward, low down in the darkness,
three stars appeared in a row, leaping in and out between the crests
of waves like the distant heads of swimmers in a running surf; and the
retreating edge of the cloud, perfectly straight from east to west,
slipped along the dome of the sky like an immense hemispheric, iron
shutter pivoting down smoothly as if operated by some mighty engine. An
inspiring and penetrating freshness flowed together with the shimmer
of light, through the augmented glory of the heaven, a glory exalted,
undimmed, and strangely startling as if a new world had been created
during the short flight of the stormy cloud. It was a return to life,
a return to space; the earth coming out from under a pall to take its
place in the renewed and immense scintillation of the universe.
    The brig, her yards slightly checked in, ran with an easy motion under
the topsails, jib and driver, pushing