The Mid-air Signal.

Auckland Star, Volume XXV, Issue 143, 16 June 1894, Page 3 (Supplement)

The Mid-air Signal.

By Roger Stabbuck.

A bitter disappointment it was to little Tom Trent, the Bailing-master's sop, a boy of twelve, aboard the coast-inspecting ship Saracen, when, half an hour after eight bells, noon, on May 14th, 1855,.hia father told him that a midshipman's warrant, which the lad had been expecting coon, was to be delayed two years longer, Sadly the little fellow cuddled himself on a gun-slide forward of the waist; bub, naturally of a bright cheerful temper, he finally arose, trying to feel comforted, • I will still do my duty like a true man,' thought be, drawing up bis small form. The vessel, under topsails and topgallant eaile, with a strong wind, was at this time in the Okhotsk Sea, a mile to leeward of the upper west Kamtchatka coast, nearly opposite a purple signal-flag which had been left ashore by the Saracen'a first lieutenant on the day before for a highwater mark at that point. The boy now heard the boatswain say that as all the. officers of the ship would be required on this day to attend a court-martial to beheld aboard the craft, Wilton French, a youth of fifteen, the nephew of the master's mate, who was also expecting a warrant, would be sent, instead of a midshipman, after the flag. Presently quick orders came ; the maintopsail was laid to the mast, and the gig piped down. Tom, having received permission from his father and the captain to accompany French, dropped lightly into the boat, which was then rowed landward by its crew, As a fog was spreading, the captain had given strict orders to French to return as soon as possible to the ship, and not to stop to molest the eeals among the ice-drifts. "When at last, however, the boat grated against a long, wide strip of fixed ice extending from a shore cove, beyond which was the signal-flag, the mate's nephew noticing that the ship was then concealed by the tog, thought it was a good time for a little sport. ' I'm going to have a crack at that fellow with the boat-hook before the fog hides him,' he said, pointing to a seal on a floating ice-cake astern. • No, no I' cried Tom ; • the captain told you not to meddle with the seals.' ♦Oh, come, stow that, young Peter Proper !' retorted French. Then, in obedience to his command, the cockswain was about to give the rudder a twist, when Tom sprang out on the fixed ice and held the boat firmly to hinder its being turned. ' Let go that gunwale!' cried French, angrily. Tom stoutly held on. 'I'm doing my duty, Wilton, preventing you disobeying orders,' he said. French leaped out at him, and, being very strong, pulled him away from the boat. ' I'll drag you ashore, my conscientious prig,' be shouted, ' and leave you there till I come to pick you up.' Little Trent resisted vigorously. ' Look out for that ice hole !' cried the cockswain, warningly, for during the struggle the lads had slid close to a pool in the ice. Jußb thon French slipped, let go the master's son, and, pitching headlong toward the pool, would have plunged under the ice, to certainly perish, had not Tom, at the risk of his own life, braced his right foot against the opposite edge of the opening, thus catching the falling youth on his knee. The shock nearly knocked his leg from its position, bat the little tellow having his* heel in a hollow kept it firm, otherwise both boys would have tumbled into the hole. After the lads had drawn back from the pool, Wilton grasped Tom's hand, thanking him warmly. ' But 1 must have my way about that seal,' he added, running, and springing into the gig, to be rowed off before Tom could reach the boat. Suddenly the report of a gun from the ship came booming over the waters. ' The recall gun !' cried Trent. • Quick ! Wilton, come back, while I go to fetch the signal-flag.' French, without answering, kepb on after the seal. Tom ran to the signal-flag. As he plucked the low staff from the rocky crevice that held it, close at band came the rumbling roar of a gale. The cove ice, upheaved by a swell, split asunder, preventing his return over it to the gig, which, fearing to lose more time, Wilton had at last headed back. The booming of a second gun from tho ship rolled along the darkening sea. With flying rack, mist, and snow, a cold, biting, howling gale came, a moment later, scudding from the east. Trent, waving the flag, now stood on a low shelf near a large boulder that fronted the deep cleft of a tall rock at the extremity of a projecting headland. French strove in vain to reach him. Tho violent gale blowing directly from shore, driving the rushing wavea and the ice against the gig, forced it rapidly back in spite of all the efforts of the crew. A great sea slantingly struok the rock. Trent was hidden by tho waters and the spray. After the sea passed, French no longer caw him, and the next instant the storm haze had shut the rock from his view. • Loat! Tom is lost!' was his despairing cry. 'All my fault too, wasting time going after that seal.' But Tom, who heard that cry, though he could no longer see the fast-receding boat through tho thick mist, had nob been washed away by the great wave. He had narrowly escaped by throwing himself behind the concealing boulder, into the cleft of the rugged wall. Thoroughly drenched, he at) length scrambled, still holding the flag, to a higher shelf of the rock projecting from an opening. Alone on that uninhabited part of the cold Kamtchatka coast, with no means for making a fire, with Bhip and boat out of 9ight, and driven every moment further from him by tho east gale, Tom began to \ despair. He, knowing that French, if he ehould reach the Saracen, would report him a» perhap3 lost, now realised his peril. The full fury of this gale of May 14th, 1855, probably remembered by any mariner living who was then in the Okhotsk Sea, finally 'broke forth. Far along, to the uttermost bounds of the sea, there was one continuous crackling, crashing roar, like the incoasant discharges of mighty guns, aa swiftly westward, dashing together and rending the the ice-drifts, rolled the great greon walls of water. Shivering, with the water freezing on his coat, little Tom crouched in the lee of the headland rock, even here exposed to the snow-drifts and sea-spray. 'I'm a lost boy,' he muttered. ' I'll never get my midshipnaan'a warrant. But French will reach the ship, I think, and hell tell how I did my duty about the seal and the signal flag to the last!' He thrust the flag throueh the opening near him in the rupged wall. His limbs were stiffening. He crawled through the opening, to find himself in a slanting fissure extending to the rock's'summit.' It was wide enough to enable him to swing his arms and stamp bis feet in efforts to keep

warm. Bat it was bitterly cold here too, and every time he stopped exercising the biting air would benumb his body. Night came on. Faint and exhausted, bis movements became few and feeble. The etorm still raged. Long dreary hours passed. Another day dawned, the atmosphere was clearing, and the gale had subsided to a gentle breeze. Whitened with hardened Bnow, and partly sheathed in the frozen waters, the tall headland rock resembled some Crystal tomb. Tom lay on the rugged floor of the fissure, n«ar bia signal-flag, facing the opening that fronted the ocean, with scarcely power enough to move his benumbed frame, with icicles in his hair and all over bisclothes. Half frozen, he wanted to go to sleep. Something crept to the opening and looked at him/ It was a small seal, with soft humanlike eyes. * Come in, little shipmate,' said Tom, in a drowsy voice. He tried to raise a band to pat the seal on its round head, but then it glided off. • Little friend has left me,' muttered the half-unconscious lad. 'I thought he'd be company, but he's gone.' Now he heard a ringing sound. Innumerable tiny silver bells seemed toglitter, swing, and tinkle before him. 4 How strange 1' thought the boy. In reality, however, what he saw and heard were shining icicles, dropping under the sun gleams about the opening in front of. him. He was hardly aware that he was lapsing into a dreamy state. But presently the weird, hareh, barking cry of a walrus not far off roused him. A partial sense of the danger he incurred-from giving way to Bleep nerved him temporarily to struggle against) it. He 'raised his head, looking over : the eea with his half-shut eyes fora Bail. But discovering none, he was about yielding to the drowsy influence, when, afar off, where a thin misty strip resembling water extended high above and parallel with the ocean, he saw a ship slowly sailing along through the air. The strange image seemed double—another ship was under it, upside down, with its masts pointed toward the sea so far below. But Tom was not at all startled. Having been long enough" in the Okhotsk Sea to,know that such spectacles were nob uncommon in this region, where ho had previously witnessed them, ho was convinced that he was now looking upon a mirage. The real ship was too far off ab sea for him to discover even the tops of her masts, yet there was her image— he knew not she must be the Saracen— plainly revealed to him, doubly reflected high in air, gliding toward the desolate coast. , That eight roused him to renewed efforts to keep awake. But from the upper part of the rock big lumps of frozen snow now and then dropping before the opening through which he gazed musb finally close it. Then he would be entombed and never discovered, for his shipmates, having probably heard French's report about his seeming to have been swept off by the great wave, would conclude that he had really been losb. But.if he could show a sign they might come here to look for him, and so with great difficulty he contrived with his stiffened fingers to push the signal-staff through the opening far enough for the bright purple flag to hang over the rocky shelf outside, and he kept it so by resting bis breaßt upon the lower parb of the pole. A moment later the mirage had faded away, but Tom could now see the tops of the real ships masts above the ocean. In a short time the openings in his cave was half blocked up by the lumps of fallen snow, while in the meantime the lad was having a hard struggle to keep awake. It was a long struggle. It seemed ages to little Tom; but ab lasb his eyes closed and he was yielding to the deathly slumber when the booming of a gun vibrating through his brain created a vision in his confused mind. A eorb of' froßt spirit' seemed to appear, faaving a conical cap of snow ornamented with niinute bells of ice. Its short, thick legs, its whole form, and its face were sheathed in icy armour, and it had ice gauntlets, which shook threateningly at the boy as it advanced, crying out: 'They have'sent a boab and are firing a gun that you may know they have seen your signal; but I'll have you in my embrace before they reach you, and my clasp is death !' . On it came. Tom could not move. Presently ib seemed to seize him, and then he recovered from his dreamy stupor to hear his father's well-known voice. 'Wake up, Tom ! wake up, my boy!' He opened his eyes. He was in his father's arms. A Bailor was pouring brandy from a flask between his lips. Another was bathing and chafing his head. Presently, wrapped in blankets, he wus taken to the cutter that had come ashore, and an hour later he was doing so well aboard the Saracen, under the surgeon's care, that he was able to tell his father about the mirage .—the sign of a coming ship—and to hear explanation from his parent in return. ' French succeeded yesterday in reaching us,' he said, ' before the full fury of the gale broke forth. Hie story about you was a heavy blow to mo, bub I would not give you up, hoping that you might in some way have escaped the great wave that had washed the rock. Therefore, when the gale had subsided, with the wind shitting a little to the north, our ship was headed, closehauled, for the coast, the signal flag was seen, a cutter was finally lowered, a gun fired, and with some sailors I reached the headland rook to discover you through the gap in the opening, which was not yet closed by the snow clumps, lying in the fissure, from which we soon rescued you.' French had honestly told the captain about hia own disobedience of orders, and how Tom had nob only opposed him, bub had also saved his life. The captain, after praising the sufferer both for doing his duty and for his pluck, promised to reward him with the midshipman's warrant in a year's time. French's warrant, for his misconduct, was to be put off indefinitely; but he did not mind this, so overjoyed was he at the rescue of Trent. The latter at the time promised received his warrant, and there never was a happier boy. _«_«_«»___——