IN THE SARGASSO SEA

A Novel

BY

THOMAS A. JANVIER

AUTHOR OF"THE UNCLE OF AN ANGEL""THE AZTEC TREASURE-HOUSE""STORIES OF OLD NEW SPAIN" ETC. 

 * * * * *

1898

TO

C. A. J. 

CONTENTS

 I. I PAY FOR MY PASSAGE TO LOANGO II. HOW I BOARDED THE BRIG _GOLDEN HIND_ III. I HAVE A SCARE, AND GET OVER IT IV. CAPTAIN LUKE MAKES ME AN OFFER V. I GIVE CAPTAIN LUKE MY ANSWER VI. I TIE UP MY BROKEN HEAD, AND TRY TO ATTRACT ATTENTION VII. I ENCOUNTER A GOOD DOCTOR AND A VIOLENT GALE VIII. THE _HURST CASTLE_ IS DONE FOR IX. ON THE EDGE OF THE SARGASSO SEA X. I TAKE A CHEERFUL VIEW OF A BAD SITUATION XI. MY GOOD SPIRITS ARE WRUNG OUT OF ME XII. I HAVE A FEVER AND SEE VISIONS XIII. I HEAR A STRANGE CRY IN THE NIGHT XIV. OF MY MEETING WITH A MURDERED MAN XV. I HAVE SOME TALK WITH A MURDERER XVI. I RID MYSELF OF TWO DEAD MEN XVII. HOW I WALKED MYSELF INTO A MAZE XVIII. I FIND THE KEY TO A SEA MYSTERY XIX. OF A GOOD PLAN THAT WENT WRONG WITH ME XX. HOW I SPENT A NIGHT WEARILY XXI. MY THIRST IS QUENCHED, AND I FIND A COMPASS XXII. I GET SOME FOOD IN ME, AND FORM A CRAZY PLAN XXIII. HOW I STARTED ON A JOURNEY DUE NORTH XXIV. OF WHAT I FOUND ABOARD A SPANISH GALLEON XXV. I AM THE MASTER OF A GREAT TREASURE XXVI. OF A STRANGE SIGHT THAT I SAW IN THE NIGHT-TIME XXVII. I SET MYSELF TO A HEAVY TASK XXVIII. HOW I RUBBED SHOULDERS WITH DESPAIR XXIX. I GET INTO A SEA CHARNEL-HOUSE XXX. I COME TO THE WALL OF MY SEA-PRISON XXXI. HOW HOPE DIED OUT OF MY HEART XXXII. I FALL IN WITH A FELLOW-PRISONER XXXIII. I MAKE A GLAD DISCOVERY XXXIV. I END A GOOD JOB WELL, AND GET A SET-BACK XXXV. I AM READY FOR A FRESH HAZARD OF FORTUNE XXXVI. HOW MY CAT PROMISED ME GOOD LUCK XXXVII. HOW MY CAT STILL FURTHER CHEERED ME XXXVIII. HOW I FOUGHT MY WAY THROUGH THE SARGASSO WEED XXXIX. WHY MY CAT CALLED OUT TO ME

IN THE SARGASSO SEA

I

I PAY FOR MY PASSAGE TO LOANGO

Captain Luke Chilton counted over the five-dollar notes with a greatercare than I thought was necessary, considering that there were onlyten of them; and cautiously examined each separate one, as though hefeared that I might be trying to pay for my passage in bad money. Hisshow of distrust set my back up, and I came near to damning him rightout for his impudence--until I reflected that a West Coast trader mustpretty well divide his time between cheating people and seeing to itthat he isn't cheated, and so held my tongue. 

Having satisfied himself that the tale was correct and that the noteswere genuine, he brought out from the inside pocket of his long-tailedshore-going coat a big canvas pocket-book, into which he stowed themlengthwise; and from the glimpse I had of it I fancied that until mymoney got there it was about bare. As he put away the pocket-book, hesaid, and pleasantly enough:

"You see, Mr. Stetworth, it's this way: fifty dollars is dirt cheapfor a cast across from New York to the Coast, and that's a fact; butyou say that it's an object with you to get your passage low, and Isay that even at that price I can make money out of you. The _GoldenHind_ has got to call at Loango, anyhow; there's a spare room in hercabin that'll be empty if you don't fill it; and while you're a bigman and look to be rather extra hearty, I reckon you won't eat more'nabout twenty dollars' worth of victuals--counting 'em at cost--on thewhole run. But the main thing is that I want all the spot cash I canget a-holt of before I start. Fifty dollars' worth of trade laid innow means five hundred dollars for me when I get back here in New Yorkwith what I've turned it over for on the Coast. So, you see, if you'resuited, I'm suited too. Shake! And now we'll have another drink. Thistime it's on me. "

We shook, and Captain Luke gave me an honest enough grip, just as hehad spoken in an honest enough tone. I knew, of course, that in ageneral way he must be a good deal of a rascal--he couldn't well be aWest Coast trader and be anything else; but then his rascality ingeneral didn't matter much so long as his dealings with me weresquare. He called the waiter and ordered arrack again--it was themost wholesome drink in the world, he said--and we touched glasses, and so brought our deal to an end. 

That a cheap passage to Loango was an object to me, as Captain Lukehad said, was quite true. It was a very important object. After I gotacross, of course, and my pay from the palm-oil people began, I wouldbe all right; but until I could touch my salary I had to sail mightyclose to the wind. For pretty much all of my capital consisted of myheadful of knowledge of the theory and practice of mechanicalengineering which had brought me out first of my class at the StevensInstitute--and in that way had got me the offer from the palm-oilpeople--and because of which I thought that there wasn't anybody quitemy equal anywhere as a mechanical engineer. And that was only natural, I suppose, since my passing first had swelled my head a bit, and I wasonly three-and-twenty, and more or less of a promiscuously greenyoung fool. 

As I looked over Captain Luke's shoulder, while we supped our arracktogether--out through the window across the rush and bustle of SouthStreet--and saw a trim steamer of the Maracaibo line lying at herdock, I could not but be sorry that my voyage to Africa would be madeunder sails. But, on the other hand, I comforted myself by thinkingthat if the _Golden Hind_ were half the clipper her captain made herout to be I should not lose much time--taking into account theroundabout way I should have to go if I went under steam. And Icomforted myself still more by thinking what a lot of money I hadsaved by coming on this chance for a cheap cast across; and I blessedmy lucky stars for putting into my head the notion of cruising alongSouth Street that October morning and asking every sailor-like man Imet if he knew of a craft bound for the West Coast--and especially forhaving run me up against Captain Luke Chilton before my cruise hadlasted an hour. 

The captain looked at his glass so sorrowfully when it was empty thatI begged him to have it filled again, and he did. But he took down hisarrack this time at a single gulp, and then got up briskly and saidthat he must be off. 

"We don't sail till to-morrow afternoon, on the half flood, Mr. Stetworth, " he said, "so you'll have lots of time to get your trapsaboard if you'll take a boat off from the Battery about noon. Iwouldn't come earlier than that, if I were you. Things are bound to bein a mess aboard the brig to-morrow, and the less you have of it thebetter. We lie well down the anchorage, you know, only a little thisside of Robbin's Reef. Your boatmen will know the place, and they'llfind the brig for you if you'll tell 'em where to look for her andthat she's painted green. Well, so long. " And then Captain Luke shookhands with me again, and so was off into the South Street crowd. 

I hurried away too. My general outfit was bought and packed; but thethings lying around my lodgings had to be got together, and I had tobuy a few articles in the way of sea-stock for my voyage in a sailingvessel that I should not have needed had I gone by the regular steamlines. So I got some lunch inside of me, and after that I took acab--a bit of extravagance that my hurry justified--and bustled aboutfrom shop to shop and got what I needed inside of an hour; and then Itold the man to drive me to my lodgings up-town. 

It was while I was driving up Broadway--the first quiet moment forthinking that had come to me since I had met Captain Luke on SouthStreet, and we had gone into the saloon together to settle about thepassage he had offered me--that all of a sudden the thought struck methat perhaps I had made the biggest kind of a fool of myself; and itstruck so hard that for a minute or two I fairly was dizzy and faint. 

What earthly proof had I, beyond Captain Luke's bare word for it, thatthere was such a brig as the _Golden Hind_? What proof had Ieven--beyond the general look of him and his canvas pocket-book--thatCaptain Luke was a sailor? And what proof had I, supposing that therewas such a brig and that he was a sailor, that the two had anythingto do with each other? I simply had accepted for truth all that hetold me, and on the strength of his mere assertion that he was aship-master and was about to sail for the West African coast I hadpaid him my fifty dollars--and had taken by way of receipt for it nomore than a clinking of our glasses and a shake of his hand. I saidjust now that I was only twenty-three years old, and more or less of apromiscuously green young fool. I suppose that I might as well haveleft that out. There are some things that tell themselves. 

For three or four blocks, as I drove along, I was in such a rage withmyself that I could not think clearly. Then I began to cool a little, and to hope that I had gone off the handle too suddenly and too far. After all, there were some chances in my favor the other way. CaptainChilton, I remembered, had told me that he was about to sail for WestCoast ports before I asked him for a passage; and had mentioned, also, whereabouts on the anchorage the _Golden Hind_ was lying. Had he madethese statements after he knew what I wanted there would have beensome reason for doubting them; but being made on general principles, without knowledge of what I was after, it seemed to me that they verywell might be true. And if they were true, why then there was no greatcause for my sudden fit of alarm. However, I was so rattled by myfright, and still so uncertain as to how things were coming out forme, that the thought of waiting until the next afternoon to knowcertainly whether I had or had not been cheated was more than I couldbear. The only way that I could see to settle the matter was to goright away down to the anchorage, and so satisfy myself that the_Golden Hind_ was a real brig and really was lying there; and itoccurred to me that I might kill two birds with one stone, and alsohave a reason to give for a visit which otherwise might seemunreasonable, if I were to take down my luggage and put it aboard thatvery afternoon. 

II

HOW I BOARDED THE BRIG _GOLDEN HIND_

Having come to this conclusion, I acted on it. I kept the cab at thedoor while I finished my packing with a rush, and then piled myluggage on it and in it--and what with my two trunks, and my kit offine tools, and all my bundles, this made tight stowing--and then awayI went down-town again as fast as the man could drive with sucha load. 

We got to the Battery in a little more than an hour, and there Itransshipped my cargo to a pair-oared boat and started away for theanchorage. The boatmen comforted me a good deal at the outset bysaying that they thought they knew just where the _Golden Hind_ waslying, as they were pretty sure they had seen her only that morningwhile going down the harbor with another fare; and before we were muchmore than past Bedloe's Island--having pulled well over to get out ofthe channel and the danger of being run down by one of the swarm ofpassing craft--they made my mind quite easy by actually pointing herout to me. But almost in the same moment I was startled again by oneof them saying to me: "I don't believe you've much time to spare, captain. There's a lighter just shoved off from her, and she's gettin'her tops'ls loose. I guess she means to slide out on this tide. Thattug seems to be headin' for her now. "

The men laid to their oars at this, and it was a good thing--or a badthing, some people might think--that they did; for had we lost fiveminutes on our pull down from the Battery I never should have gotaboard of the _Golden Hind_ at all. As it was, the anchor was a-peak, and the lines of the tug made fast, by the time that we rounded underher counter; and the decks were so full of the bustle of starting thatit was only a chance that anybody heard our hail. But somebody didhear it, and a man--it was the mate, as I found out afterwards--cameto the side. 

"Hold on, captain, " one of the boatmen sang out, "here's yourpassenger!"

"Go to hell!" the mate answered, and turned inboard again. 

But just then I caught sight of Captain Chilton, coming aft to standby the wheel, and called out to him by name. He turned in a hurry--andwith a look of being scared, I fancied--but it seemed to me a goodhalf-minute before he answered me. In this time the men had shoved theboat alongside and had made fast to the main-chains; and just thenthe tug began to puff and snort, and the towline lifted, and the brigslowly began to gather way. I could not understand what they were upto; but the boatmen, who were quick fellows, took the matter intotheir own hands, and began to pass in my boxes over the gunwale--thebrig lying very low in the water--as we moved along. This brought themate to the side again, with a rattle of curses and orders to standoff. And then Captain Chilton came along himself--having finishedwhatever he had been doing in the way of thinking--and gave matters amore reasonable turn. 

"It's all right, George, " he said to the mate. "This gentleman is afriend of mine who's going out with us" (the mate gave him a queerlook at that), "and he's got here just in time. " And then he turned tome and added: "I'd given you up, Mr. Stetworth, and that's afact--concluding that the man I sent to your lodgings hadn't foundyou. We had to sail this afternoon, you see, all in a hurry; and theonly thing I could do was to rush a man after you to bring you down. He seems to have overhauled you in time, even if it was a closecall--so all's well. "

While he was talking the boatmen were passing aboard my boxes andbundles, while the brig went ahead slowly; and when they all wereshipped, and I had paid the men, he gave me his hand in a friendly wayand helped me up the side. What to make of it all I could not tell. Captain Luke told a straight enough story, and the fact that hismessenger had not got to me before I started did not prove that helied. Moreover, he went on to say that if I had not got down to thebrig he had meant to leave my fifty dollars with the palm-oil peopleat Loango, and that sounded square enough too. At any rate, if he werelying to me I had no way of proving it against him, and he wasentitled to the benefit of the doubt; and so, when he had finishedexplaining matters--which was short work, as he had the brig to lookafter--I did not see my way to refusing his suggestion that we shouldcall it all right and shake hands. 

For the next three hours or so--until we were clear of the Hook andhad sea-room and the tug had cast us off--I was left to my owndevices: except that a couple of men were detailed to carry to mystate-room what I needed there, while the rest of my boxes were stowedbelow. Indeed, nobody had time to spare me a single word--the captainstanding by the wheel in charge of the brig, and the two mates havingtheir hands full in driving forward the work of finishing the lading, so that the hatches might be on and things in some sort of orderbefore the crew should be needed to make sail. 

The decks everywhere were littered with the stuff put aboard from thelighter that left the brig just before I reached her, and the huddleand confusion showed that the transfer must have been made in atearing hurry. Many of the boxes gave no hint of what was inside ofthem; but a good deal of the stuff--as the pigs of lead and cans ofpowder, the many five-gallon kegs of spirits, the boxes of fixedammunition, the cases of arms, and so on--evidently was regular WestCoast "trade. " And all of it was jumbled together just as it had beentumbled aboard. 

I was surprised by our starting with the brig in such a mess--until itoccurred to me that the captain had no choice in the matter if hewanted to save the tide. Very likely the tide did enter into hiscalculations; but I was led to believe a little later--and all themore because of his scared look when I hailed him from the boat--thathe had run into some tangle on shore that made him want to get away ina hurry before the law-officers should bring him up with a round turn. 

What put this notion into my head was a matter that occurred when wewere down almost to the Hook, and its conclusion came when we werefairly outside and the tug had cast us off; otherwise my boxes and Iassuredly would have gone back on the tug to New York--and I with aflea in my ear, as the saying is, stinging me to more prudence in mydealings with chance-met mariners and their offers of cheap passageson strange craft. 

When we were nearly across the lower bay, the nose of a steamershowed in the Narrows; and as she swung out from the land I saw thatshe flew the revenue flag. Captain Luke, standing aft by the wheel, nodoubt made her out before I did; for all of a sudden he let drive avolley of curses at the mates to hurry their stowing below of thestuff with which our decks were cluttered. At first I did notassociate the appearance of the cutter with this outbreak; but as shecame rattling down the bay in our wake I could not but notice hisuneasiness as he kept turning to look at her and then turning forwardagain to swear at the slowness of the men. But she was a long wayastern at first, and by the time that she got close up to us we werefairly outside the Hook and the tug had cast us off--which made adelay in the stowing, as the men had to be called away from it to setenough sail to give us steerage way. 

Captain Luke barely gave them time to make fast the sheets before hehurried them back to the hatch again; and by that time the cutter hadso walked up to us that we had her close aboard. I could see that hefully expected her to hail us; and I could see also that there seemedto be a feeling of uneasiness among the crew, though they went onbriskly with their work of getting what remained of the boxes andbarrels below. And then, being close under our stern, the cutterquietly shifted her helm to clear us--and so slid past us, withouthailing and with scarcely a look at us, and stood on out to sea. 

That the captain and all hands so manifestly should dread beingoverhauled by a government vessel greatly increased my vague doubts asto the kind of company that I had got into; and at the very momentthat the cutter passed us these doubts were so nearly resolved intobad certainties that my thoughts shot around from speculation uponCaptain Luke's possible perils into consideration of what seemed to bevery real perils of my own. 

With the cutter close aboard of us, and with the captain and both themates swearing at them, I suppose that the men at the hatch--who wereswinging the things below with a whip--got rattled a little. At anyrate, some of them rigged the sling so carelessly that a box fell outfrom it, and shot down to the main-deck with such a bang that it burstopen. It was a small and strongly made box, that from its shape andevident weight I had fancied might have arms in it. But when it splitto bits that way--the noise of the crash drawing me to the hatch tosee what had happened--its contents proved to be shackles: and thesight of them, and the flash of thought which made me realize whatthey must be there for, gave me a sudden sick feeling in my inside!

In my hurried reading about the West Coast--carried on at odd timessince my meeting with the palm-oil people--I had learned enough aboutthe trade carried on there to know that slaving still was a part ofit; but so small a part that the matter had not much stuck in my mind. But it was a fact then (as it also is a fact now) that the traders whorun along the coast--exchanging such stuff as Captain Luke carried forivory and coffee and hides and whatever offers--do now and then takethe chances and run a cargo of slaves from one or another of the lowerports into Mogador: where the Arab dealers pay such prices for livefreight in good condition as to make the venture worth the risk thatit involves. This traffic is not so barbarous as the old traffic toAmerica used to be--when shippers regularly counted upon the loss of athird or a half of the cargo in transit, and so charged off thedeath-rate against profit and loss--for the run is a short one, andslaves are so hard to get and so dangerous to deal in nowadays that itis sound business policy to take enough care of them to keep themalive. But I am safe in saying that the men engaged in the Mogadortrade are about the worst brutes afloat in our time--not excepting theisland traders of the South Pacific--and for an honest man to getafloat in their company opens to him large possibilities of beingmurdered off-hand, with side chances of sharing in their punishment ifhe happens to be with them when they are caught. And so it is not tobe wondered at that when I saw the shackles come flying out from thatbroken box, and so realized the sort of men I had for shipmates, thata sweating fright seized me which made my stomach go queer. And then, as I thought how I had tumbled myself into this scrape that the leastshred of prudence would have kept me out of, I realized for the secondtime that day that I was very young and very much of a fool. 

III

I HAVE A SCARE, AND GET OVER IT

I went to the stern of the brig and looked at the tug, far off andalmost out of sight in the dusk, and at the loom of the Highlands, above which shone the light-house lamps--and my heart went down intomy boots, and for a while stayed there. For a moment the thought cameinto my head to cut away the buoy lashed to the rail and to take mychances with it overboard--trusting to being picked up by some passingvessel and so set safe ashore. But the night was closing down fast anda lively sea was running, and I had sense enough to perceive thatleaving the brig that way would be about the same as getting out ofthe frying-pan into the fire. 

Fortunately, in a little while I began to get wholesomely angry; whichalways is a good thing, I think, when a man gets into a tightplace--if he don't carry it too far--since it rouses the fightingspirit in him and so helps him to pull through. In reason, I ought tohave been angry with myself, for the trouble that I was in was all ofmy own making; but, beyond giving myself a passing kick or two, allmy anger was turned upon Captain Luke for taking advantage of mygreenness to land me in such a pickle when his gain from it would beso small. I know now that I did Captain Luke injustice. His subsequentconduct showed that he did not want me aboard with him any more than Iwanted to be there. Had I not taken matters into my own hands byboarding the brig in such a desperate hurry--just as I had hurried toclose with his offer and to clinch it by paying down mypassage-money--he would have gone off without me. And very likely hewould have thought that the lesson in worldly wisdom he had given mewas only fairly paid for by the fifty dollars which had jumped soeasily out of my pocket into his. 

But that was not the way I looked at the matter then; and in my heartI cursed Captain Luke up hill and down dale for having, as I fancied, lured me aboard the brig and so into peril of my skin. And my angerwas so strong that I went by turns hot and cold with it, and itched toget at Captain Luke with my fists and give him a dressing--which Ivery well could have done, had we come to fighting, for I was a biggerman than he was and a stronger man, too. 

It is rather absurd as I look back at it, considering what a taking Iwas in and how strong was my desire just then to punch Captain Luke'shead for him, that while I was at the top of my rage he came aft towhere I was leaning against the rail and put his hand on my shoulderas friendly as possible and asked me to come down into the cabin tosupper. I suppose I had a queer pale look, because of my anger, for hesaid not to mind if I did feel sickish, but to eat all the same and Iwould feel better for it; and he really was so cordial and so pleasantthat for a moment or two I could not answer him. It was upsetting, when I was so full of fight, to have him come at me in that friendlyway; and I must say that I felt rather sheepish, and wondered whetherI had not been working myself up over a mare's-nest as I followedhim below. 

We had the mate to supper with us, at a square table in the middle ofthe cabin, and at breakfast the next morning we had the second mate;and so it went turn and turn with them at meals--except that they hadsome sort of dog-watch way about the Saturday night and Sunday morningthat always gave the mate his Sunday dinner with the captain, as wasthe due of his rank. 

The mate was a surly brute, and when Captain Chilton said, in quite aformal way, "Mr. Roger Stetworth, let me make you acquainted with Mr. George Hinds, " he only grunted and gave me a sort of a nod. He did nothave much to say while the supper went on, speaking only when thecaptain spoke to him, and then shortly; but from time to time hesnatched a mighty sharp look at me--that I pretended not to notice, but saw well enough out of the tail of my eye. It was plain enoughthat he was taking my measure, and I even fancied that he would havebeen better pleased had I been six inches or so shorter and with lesswell-made shoulders and arms. When he did speak it was in a growlingrumble of a voice, and he swore naturally. 

Captain Luke evidently tried to make up for the mate's surliness; andhe really was very pleasant indeed--telling me stories about theCoast, and giving me good advice about guarding against sicknessthere, and showing such an interest in my prospects with the palm-oilpeople, and in my welfare generally, that I was still more inclined tothink that my scare about the shackles was only foolishness from firstto last. He seemed to be really pleased when he found that I was notseasick, and interested when I told him how well I knew the sea andthe management of small craft from my sailing in the waters aboutNantucket every summer for so many years; and then we got to talkingabout the Coast again and about my outfit for it, which he said was avery good one; and he especially commended me--instead of laughing atme, as I was afraid he would--for having brought along such a lot ofquinine. Indeed, the quinine seemed to make a good deal of animpression on him, for he turned to the mate and said: "Do you hearthat, George? Mr. Stetworth has with him a whole case ofquinine--enough to serve a ship's company through a cruise. " And themate rumbled out, as he got up from the table and started for thedeck, that quinine was a damned good thing. 

We waited below until the second mate came down, to whom the captainintroduced me with his regular formula: "Mr. Roger Stetworth, let memake you acquainted with Mr. Martin Bowers. " He was a young fellow, ofno more than my own age, and I took a fancy to him at sight--for henot only shook my hand heartily but he looked me squarely in the eyes, and that is a thing I like a man to do. It seemed to me that my beingthere was a good deal of a puzzle to him; and he also took my measure, but quite frankly--telling me when he had looked me over that if Iknew how to steer I'd be a good man to have at the wheel in a gale. 

The captain brought out a bottle of his favorite arrack, and he and Ihad a glass together--in which, as I thought rather hard, Bowers wasnot given a chance to join us--and then we went on deck and walked upand down for a while, smoking our pipes and talking about the weatherand the prospects for the voyage. And it all went so easily and sopleasantly that I couldn't help laughing a little to myself overmy scare. 

I turned in early, for I was pretty well tired after so lively a day;but when I got into my bunk I could not get to sleep for a longwhile--although the bunk was a good one and the easy motion of thebrig lulled me--for the excitement I was in because my voyage fairlywas begun. I slipped through my mind all that had happened to me thatday--from my meeting with Captain Luke in the forenoon until there Iwas, at nine o'clock at night, fairly out at sea; and I was so pleasedwith the series of lucky chances which had put me on my way so rapidlythat my one mischance--my scare about the shackles--seemedutterly absurd. 

It was perfectly reasonable, I reflected, for Captain Luke to carryout a lot of shackles simply as "trade. " It was pretty dirty "trade, "of course, but so was the vile so-called brandy he was carrying outwith him; and so, for that matter, were the arms--which prettycertainly would be used in slaving forays up from the Coast. And evensupposing the very worst--that Captain Luke meant to ship a cargo ofslaves himself and had these irons ready for them--that worst wouldcome after I was out of the brig and done with her; the captain havingtold me that Loango, which was my landing-place, would be his firstport of call. When I was well quit of the _Golden Hind_ she and hercrew and her captain, for all that I cared, might all go to the deviltogether. It was enough for me that I should be well treated on thevoyage over; and from the way that the voyage had begun--unless thesurly mate and I might have a bit of a flare-up--it looked as though Iwere going to be very well treated indeed. And so, having come to thiscomforting conclusion, I let the soft motion of the brig have its waywith me and began to snooze. 

A little later I was partly aroused by the sound of steps coming downthe companion-way; and then by hearing, in the mate's rumble, thesewords: "I guess you're right, captain. As you had to run for it to-daybefore you could buy our quinine, it's a damn good thing he did getaboard, after all!"

I was too nearly asleep to pay much attention to this, but in a drowsyway I felt glad that my stock of quinine had removed the mate'sobjections to me as a passenger; and I concluded that my purchase ofsuch an absurd lot of it--after getting worked up by my reading aboutthe West Coast fevers--had turned out to be a good thing for me inthe long-run. 

After that the talk went on in the cabin for a good while, but in suchlow tones that even had I been wide awake I could not have followedit. But I kept dozing off, catching only a word or two now and then;and the only whole sentence I heard was in the mate's rumble again:"Well, if we can't square things, there's always room for one morein the sea. "

It all was very dream-like--and fitted into a dream that came later, in the light sleep of early morning, I suppose, in which the mate worethe uniform of a street-car conductor, and I was giving him doses ofquinine, and he was asking the passengers in a car full of salt-waterto move up and make room for me, and was telling them and me that in asea-car there always was room for one more. 

IV

CAPTAIN LUKE MAKES ME AN OFFER

During the next fortnight or so my life on board the brig was aspleasant as it well could be. On the first day out we got a slant ofwind that held by us until it had carried us fairly into the northeasttrades--and then away we went on our course, with everything set anddrawing steady, and nothing much to do but man the wheel and eat threesquare meals a day. 

And so everybody was in a good humor, from the captain down. Even themate rumbled what he meant to be a civil word to me now and then; andBowers and I--being nearly of an age, and each of us with his foot onthe first round of the ladder--struck up a friendship that kept ustalking away together by the hour at a time: and very frankly, exceptthat he was shy of saying anything about the brig and her doings, andwhenever I tried to draw him on that course got flurried a little andheld off. But in all other matters he was open; and especiallydelighted in running on about ships and seafaring--for the man was aborn sailor and loved his profession with all his heart. 

It was in one of these talks with Bowers that I got my first knowledgeof the Sargasso Sea--about which I shortly was to know a great dealmore than he did: that old sea-wonder which puzzled and scaredColumbus when he coasted it on his way to discover America; and whichcontinued to puzzle all mariners until modern nautical sciencerevealed its cause--yet still left it a good deal of a mystery--almostin our own times. 

The subject came up one day while we were crossing the Gulf Stream, and the sea all around us was pretty well covered with patches ofyellow weed--having much the look of mustard-plasters--amidst which abit of a barnacled spar bobbed along slowly near us, and not far off anew pine plank. The yellow stuff, Bowers said, was gulf-weed, broughtup from the Gulf of Mexico where the Stream had its beginning; andthat, thick though it was around us, this was nothing to the thicknessof it in the part of the ocean where the Stream (so he put it, notknowing any better) had its end. And to that same place, he added, theStream carried all that was caught in its current--like the spar andthe plank floating near us--so that the sea was covered with a thicktangle of the weed in which was held fast fragments of wreckage, andstuff washed overboard, and logs adrift from far-off southern shores, until in its central part the mass was so dense that no ship couldsail through it, nor could a steamer traverse it because of thefouling of her screw. And this sort of floating island--which lay in ageneral way between the Bermudas and the Canaries--covered an area ofocean, he said, half as big as the area of the United States; and toclear it ships had to make a wide detour--for even in its thin outwardedges a vessel's way was a good deal retarded and a steamer's wheelwould foul sometimes, and there was danger always of collision withderelicts drifting in from the open sea to become a part of thecentral mass. Our own course, he further said, would be changedbecause of it; but we would be for a while upon what might be calledits coast, and so I would have a chance to see for myself something ofits look as we sailed along. 

As I know now, Bowers over-estimated the size of this strange islandof sea-waifs and sea-weed by nearly one-half; and he was partly wrongas to the making of it: for the Sargasso Sea is not where any currentends, but lies in that currentless region of the ocean that is foundto the east of the main Gulf Stream and to the south of the branchwhich sweeps across the North Atlantic to the Azores; and its floatingstuff is matter cast off from the Gulf Stream's edge into thebordering still water--as a river eddies into its pools twigs and deadleaves and such-like small flotsam--and there is compacted bycapillary attraction and by the slow strong pressure of the winds. 

On the whole, though, Bowers was not very much off in hisdescription--which somehow took a queer deep hold upon me, andespecially set me to wondering what strange old waifs and strays ofthe ocean might not be found in the thick of that tangle if only therewere some way of pushing into it and reaching the hidden depths thatno man ever yet had seen. But when I put this view of the matter tohim I did not get much sympathy. He was a practical young man, withouta stitch of romance in his whole make-up, and he only laughed at mysuggestion and said that anybody who tried to push into that mess justfor the sake of seeing some barnacle-covered logs, or perhaps arotting hulk or two, would be a good deal of a fool. And so I did notpress my fancy on him, and our talks went on about morecommonplace things. 

It was with Captain Luke that I had most to do, and before long I gotto have a very friendly feeling for him because of the trouble that hetook to make me comfortable and to help me pass the time. The firstday out, seeing that I was interested when he took the sun, he turnedthe sextant over to me and showed me how to take an observation; andthen how to work it out and fix the brig's position on the chart--andwas a good deal surprised by my quickness in understanding hisexplanations (for I suppose that to him, with his rule-of-thumbknowledge of mathematics, the matter seemed complex), and still moresurprised when he found, presently, that I really understood theunderlying principle of this simple bit of seamanship far better thanhe did himself. He said that I knew more than most of the captainsafloat and that I ought to be a sailor; which he meant, no doubt, tobe the greatest compliment that he could pay me. After that I took thesights and worked them with him daily; and as I several timescorrected his calculations--for even simple addition and subtractionwere more than he could manage with certainty--he became so impressedby my knowledge as to treat me with an odd show of respect. 

But in practical matters--knowledge of men and things, and of the manyplaces about the world which he had seen, and of the management of aship in all weathers--he was one of the best-informed men that ever Icame across: being naturally of a hard-headed make, with greatacuteness of observation, and with quick and sound reasoning powers. Ifound his talk always worth listening to; and I liked nothing betterthan to sit beside him, or to walk the deck with him, while we smokedour pipes together and he told me in his shrewd way about one queerthing and another which he had come upon in various parts of theworld--for he had followed the sea from the time that he was a boy, and there did not seem to be a bit of coast country nor any part ofall the oceans which he did not know well. 

Unlike Bowers, he was very free in talking about the trade that hecarried on in the brig upon the African coast, and quite astonished meby his showing of the profits that he made; and he generally ended hisdiscourses on this head by laughingly contrasting the amount of moneythat even Bowers got every year--the mates being allowed an interestin the brig's earnings--with the salary that the palm-oil people wereto pay to me. Indeed, he managed to make me quite discontented with myprospects, although I had thought them very good indeed when I firsttold him about them; and when he would say jokingly, as he very oftendid, that I had better drop the palm-oil people and take a berth onthe brig instead, I would be half sorry that he was only in fun. 

In a serious way, too, he told me that the Coast trade had got veryunfairly a bad name that it did not deserve. At one time, he said, agreat many hard characters had got into it, and their doings had givenit a black reputation that still stuck to it. But in recent years, heexplained, it had fallen into the hands of a better class of traders, and its tone had been greatly improved. As a rule, he declared, theWest Coast traders were as decent men as would be found anywhere--notsaints, perhaps, he said smilingly, but men who played a reasonablysquare game and who got big money mainly because they took big risks. When I asked him what sort of risks, he answered: "Oh, pretty much allsorts--sometimes your pocket and sometimes your neck, " and added thatto a man of spirit these risks made half the fun. And then he saidthat for a man who did not care for that sort of thing it was betterto be contented with a safe place and low wages--and asked me how longI expected to stay at Loango, and if I had a better job ahead, when mywork there was done. 

At first he would shift the subject when I tried to make him talkabout the slave traffic. But one day--it was toward the end of oursecond week out, and I was beginning to think from his constantturning to it that perhaps he really might mean to offer me a berth onthe brig, and that his offer might be pretty well worth accepting--heall of a sudden spoke out freely and of his own accord. It was true, he said, that sometimes a few blacks were taken aboard by traders, when no other stuff offered for barter, and were carried up to Mogadorand there sold for very high prices indeed--for there was a prejudiceagainst the business, and the naval vessels on the Coast tried sopersistently to stop it that the risk of capture was great and theprofit from a successful venture correspondingly large. But theprejudice, he continued, was really not well-founded. Slavery, ofcourse, was a very bad thing; but there were degrees of badness in it, and since it could not be broken up there was much to be said in favorof any course that would make it less cruel. The blacks who were theslaves of other blacks, or of Portuguese, --and it was only these thatthe traders bought--were exposed to such barbarous treatment that itwas a charity to rescue them from it on almost any terms. Certainly itwas for their good, as they had to be in bondage somewhere, to deliverthem from such masters by carrying them away to Northern Africa: wherethe slavery was of so mild and paternal a sort that cruelty almost wasunknown. And then he went on to tell me about the kindly relationswhich he himself had seen existing between slaves and their masters inthose parts, both among Arabs and Moors. 

This presentment of the case put so new a face on it that at first Icould not get my bearings; which I am the less ashamed to own up tobecause, as I look at the matter now, I perceive how much troubleCaptain Luke took to win me for his own purposes--he being amiddle-aged man packed full of shrewd worldly wisdom, and I only afresh young fool. 

My hesitation about making up an answer to him--for, while I was surethat in the main point he was all wrong, I was caught for the momentin his sophisms--made him fancy, I suppose, that he had convinced me;and so was safe to go ahead in the way that he had intended, no doubt, all along. At any rate, without stopping until my slow wits had achance to get pulled together, he put on a great show of friendlyfrankness and said that he now knew me well enough to trust me, and sowould tell me openly that he himself engaged in the Mogador trade whenoccasion offered; and that there was more money in it a dozen timesover than in all the other trade that he carried on in the_Golden Hind_. 

I confess that this avowal completely staggered me, and with a rushbrought back all the fears by which I had been so rattled on the firstday of our voyage. In a hazy way I perceived that the captain had beenplaying a part with me, and that the others had been playing partstoo--for I could not hope that among men of that stripe suchfriendliness should be natural--and what with my surprise, and thefresh fright I was thrown into, I was struck fairly dumb. 

But Captain Luke--likely enough deceived by his own hopes, as evenshrewd men will be sometimes--either did not notice the fluster I wasin, or thought to set matters all right with me in his own way; forwhen he found that I remained silent he took up the talk himselfagain, and went on to show in detail the profits of a single venturewith a live cargo--and his figures were certainly big enough to firethe fancy of any man who was keen for money-getting and who waswilling to get his money by rotten ways. And then, when he hadfinished with this part of the matter, he came out plumply with theoffer to give me a mate's rating on board the brig if I would cast inmy fortunes with his. Of the theory of seamanship, he said, I alreadyknew more than he did himself; and so much more than either of hismates that he would feel entirely at ease--as he could not withthem--in trusting the navigation of the brig in my hands. As to thepractical part of the work, that was a matter that with my quickness Iwould pick up in no time; and my bigness and strength, he added, wouldcome in mighty handily when there was trouble among the crew, assometimes happened, and in keeping the blacks in order, and in thelittle fights that now and then were necessary with folks on shore. And then he came to the real kernel of the matter: which was thatBowers did not like his work and was not fit for it, and wasthreatening to leave the brig at the first port she made, and so a manwho could be trusted was badly needed to take his place. 

When he had finished with it all I was dumber than ever; for I was ina rage at him for making me such an offer, and at the same time sawpretty clearly that if I refused it as plumply as he made it weshould come to such open enmity that I--being in his powercompletely--would be in danger of my skin. And so I was glad when hegave me a breathing spell, and the chance to think things overquietly, by telling me that he would not hurry me for answer and thatI could take a day or two--or a week or two if I wanted it--in whichto make up my mind. 

V

I GIVE CAPTAIN LUKE MY ANSWER

For the rest of that day, and for the two days following, Captain Lukedid not in any way refer to his offer; and as he showed himself morethan ever friendly, and talked away to me in his usual entertainingfashion, my rage and fright began to go off a little--though atbottom, of course, there was no change in my opinions, nor any doubtas to my giving him a point-blank refusal when the issue should besquarely raised. 

All this time the brig was bowling along down the trades; and on thethird morning after I had the captain's offer--we being then closeupon the thirty-fifth parallel of north latitude--Bowers called myattention to the gulf-weed floating about us, and told me that we werefairly on the outer edge of the Sargasso Sea. We should not get intoany thicker part of it, he said, as we should bear up to clear it; andso we actually did, hauling away a good deal to the eastward when thebrig's course was set that day at noon. But my interest in the matterhad been so checked--all my thought being given to finding some wayout of the pickle in which I found myself--that I paid littleattention to the patches of yellow weed on the water around us or tothe bits of wreckage that we saw now and then; and when Bowers, keeping on with his talk, fell to chaffing me about my desire to makea voyage of discovery into the thick part of this floating mystery Idid not rise to his joking, nor did I make him much of a reply. 

Indeed, I was in rather a low way that day; which was due in part tomy not being able, for all my thinking, to see any sort of a clearcourse before me; and in part to the fact that the weather wasthickening and that my spirits were dulled a good deal by what we callthe heaviness of the air. All around the horizon steel-gray cloudswere rising, and a soft sort of a haze hung about us and took the lifeout of the sunshine, and the wind fell away until there was almostnothing of it, and that little fitful--while with the dying out of itthe sea began to stir slowly with a long oily swell. Far down to thesoutheast a line of smoke hung along the horizon, coming from thefunnel of some steamer out of sight over the ocean's curve, and theheaviness of the atmosphere was shown by the way that this smoke heldclose to the surface of the sea. 

That Captain Luke did not like the look of things was plain enoughfrom his sharp glances about him and from his frequent examinationsof the glass; and he seemed to be all the more bothered--his seaman'sinstinct that a storm was brewing being at odds with the barometer'sprophecy--by the fact that the mercury showed a marked tendency torise. Had he known as much of the scientific side of navigation as heknew of the practical side he could have reconciled the conduct of thebarometer with his own convictions, and so would have been easier inhis mind; for it is a fact that the mercury often rises suddenly onthe front edge of a storm--that is to say, a little in advance ofit--by reason of the air banking up there. But having only hisrule-of-thumb knowledge to apply in the premises, the apparentscientific contradiction of his own practical notions as to what wasgoing to happen confused him and made him irritable--thenerve-stirring state of the atmosphere no doubt having also a share inthe matter--as was made plain by his sharp quick motions, and by theway in which on the smallest provocation he fell to swearing at themen. And so the day wore itself out to nightfall: with the steel-grayclouds lifting steadily from the horizon toward the zenith, and withthe swell of the weed-spattered sea slowly rising, and with a doubtinguneasiness among all of us that found its most marked expression inCaptain Luke's increasingly savage mood. 

Our supper was a glowering one. The captain had little to say, andthat little of a sharp sort, while the mate only rumbled out a cursenow and then at the boy who served us; and I myself was in a bitterbad humor as I thought how hard it was on me to be shut up at sea insuch vile company, and how I had only myself to blame for getting intoit--and found my case all the harder because of my nervous uneasinessdue to the coming storm. As to the storm, there no longer could bedoubt about it, for the barometer had got into line with CaptainLuke's convictions and was falling fast. 

When the supper was over the captain brought out his arrack-bottle andtook off a full tumbler, which was more than double his usualallowance, and then pushed the liquor across to the mate and me. Themate also took a good pull at it, and I took a fair drink myself inthe hope that it would quiet my nerves--but it had exactly theopposite effect and made me both excited and cross. And then we allcame on deck together, and all in a rough humor, and Bowers went downinto the cabin to have his supper by himself. 

What happened in the next half-hour happened so quickly that I cannotgive a very clear account of it. A part of it, no doubt, was due tomere chance and angry impulse; but not the whole of it, and I thinknot the worst of it--for the first thing that the captain did was toorder the man who was steering to go forward and to tell the mate totake the wheel. That left just the three of us together at the sternof the brig--with Bowers below and so out of sight and hearing, andwith all the crew completely cut off from us and put out of sight andhearing by the rise of the cabin above the deck. 

Night had settled down on the ocean, but not darkness. Far off to theeastward the full moon was standing well above the horizon and wasfighting her way upward through the clouds--now and then gettingenough the better of them to send down a dash of brightness on thewater, but for the most part making only a faint twilight throughtheir gloom. The wind still was very light and fitful, but broken bystrongish puffs which would heel the brig over a little and send heralong sharply for half a mile or so before they died away; and theswell had so risen that we had a long sleepy roll. Up to windward Imade out a ship's lights--that seemed to be coming down on us rapidly, from their steady brightening--and I concluded that this must be thesteamer from which the smoke had come that I had seen trailing alongthe horizon through the afternoon; and I even fancied, the night beingintensely still, that I could hear across the water the soft purringsound made by the steady churning of her wheel. Somehow it deepenedthe sullen anger that had hold of me to see so close by a ship havinghonest men aboard of her, and to know at the same time how hopelesslyfast I was tied to the brig and her dirty crew. I don't mind sayingthat the tears came to my eyes, for I was both hurt by my sorrow andheavy with my dull rage. 

We all three were silent for a matter of ten minutes or so, or itmight even have been longer, and then Captain Luke faced around on mesuddenly and asked: "Well, have you made up your mind?"

Had I been cooler I should have tried to fence a little, since my onlyresource--I being caught like a rat in a trap that way--was to try togain time; but I was all in a quiver, just as I suppose he was, withthe excitement of the situation and with the excitement of thethunderous night, and his short sharp question jostled out of my headwhat few wits I had there and made me throw away my only chance. Andso I answered him, just as shortly and as sharply: "Yes, I have. "

"Do you mean to join the brig?" he demanded. 

"No, I don't, " I answered, and stepped a little closer to him andlooked him squarely in the eyes. 

"I told you so, " the mate broke in with his rumble; and I saw that hewas whipping a light lashing on the wheel in a way that would hold itsteady in case he wanted to let go. 

"Better think a minute, " said Captain Luke, speaking coolly enough, but still with an angry undertone in his voice. "I've made you a goodoffer, and I'm ready to stand by it. But if you won't take what I'veoffered you you'll take something else that you won't like, my freshyoung man. In a friendly way, and for your information, I've told youa lot of things that I can't trust to the keeping of any living manwho won't chip in with us and take our chances--the bad ones with thegood ones--just as they happen to come along. You know too much, now, for me to part company from you while you have a wagging tongue inyour head--and so my offer's still open to you. Only there's thisabout it: if you won't take it, overboard you go. "

I had a little gleam of sense at that; for I knew that he spoke indead earnest, and that the mate stood ready to back him, and thatagainst the two of them I had not much show. And so I tried to playfor time, saying: "Well, let me think it over a bit longer. You saidthere was no hurry and that I might have a week to consider in. I'vehad only three days, so far. Do you call that square?"

"Squareness be damned, " rumbled the mate, and he gave a look aloft andanother to windward--the breeze just then had fallen to a merewhisper--and took his hands off the wheel and stepped away from it sothat he and the captain were close in front of me, side by side. Istood off from them a little, and got my back against the cabin--thatI might be safe against an attack from behind--and I was so furiouslyangry that I forgot to be scared. 

"Three days is as good as three years, " Captain Luke jerked out. "WhatI want is an answer right now. Will you join the brig--yes or no?"

Somehow I remembered just then seeing our pig killed, when I was aboy--how he ran around the lot with the men after him, and got into acorner and tried to fight them, and was caught in spite of his poorlittle show of fighting, and was rolled over on his back and had histhroat stuck. He was a nice pig, and I had felt sorry for him:thinking that he didn't deserve such treatment, his life having been arespectable one, and he never having done anybody any harm. It allcame back to me in a flash, as I settled myself well against the cabinand answered: "No, I won't join you--and you and your brig may goto hell!"

All I remember after that was their rush together upon me, and myhitting out two or three times--getting in one smasher on the mate'sjaw that was a comfort to me--and then something hard cracking me onthe head, and so stunning me that I knew nothing at all of whathappened until I found myself coming up to the surface of the sea, sputtering salt-water and partly tangled in a bunch of gulf-weed, andsaw the brig heeling over and sliding fast away from me before asudden strong draught of wind. 

VI

I TIE UP MY BROKEN HEAD, AND TRY TO ATTRACT ATTENTION

My head was tingling with pain, and so buzzy that I had no sense worthspeaking of, but just kept myself afloat in an instinctive sort of wayby paddling a little with my hands. And I could not see well for whatI thought was water in my eyes--until I found that it was bloodrunning down over my forehead from a gash in my scalp that went fromthe top of my right ear pretty nearly to my crown. Had the blow thatmade it struck fair it certainly would have finished me; but from theway that the scalp was cut loose the blow must have glanced. 

The chill of the water freshened me and brought my senses back alittle: for which I was not especially thankful at first, being insuch pain and misery that to drown without knowing much about itseemed quite the best thing that I could hope for just then. Indeed, when I began to think again, though not very clearly, I had half amind to drop my arms to my sides and so go under and have done withit--so despairing was I as I bobbed about on the swell among thepatches of gulf-weed which littered the dark ocean, with the brigdrawing away from me rapidly, and no chance of a rescue from her evenhad she been near at hand. 

Whether I had or had not hurried the matter, under I certainly shouldhave gone shortly--for the crack on my head and the loss of blood fromit had taken most of my strength out of me, and even with my fullstrength I could not have kept afloat long--had not a break in theclouds let through a dash of moonlight that gave me another chance. Itwas only for a moment or two that the moonlight lasted, yet longenough for me to make out within a hundred feet of me a biggish pieceof wreckage--which but for that flash I should not have noticed, or inthe dimness would have taken only for a bunch of weed. 

Near though it was, getting to it was almost more than I could manage;and when at last I did reach it I was so nearly used up that I barelyhad strength to throw my arms about it and one leg over it, and sohang fast for a good many minutes in a half-swoon of weaknessand pain. 

But the feel of something solid under me, and the certainty that for alittle while at least I was safe from drowning, helped me to pullmyself together; and before long some of my strength came back, and alittle of my spirit with it, and I went about settling myself moresecurely on my poor sort of a raft. What I had hit upon, I found, wasa good part of a ship's mast; with the yards still holding fast by itand steadying it, and all so clean-looking that it evidently had notbeen in the water long. The main-top, I saw, would give me a back tolean against and also a little shelter; and in that nook I would bestill more secure because the futtock-shrouds made a sort of cageabout it and gave me something to catch fast to should the swell ofthe sea roll me off. So I worked along the mast from where I first hadcaught hold of it until I got myself stowed away under the main-top:where I had my body fairly out of water, and a chance to rest easilyby leaning against the upstanding woodwork, and a good grip with mylegs to keep me firm. And it is true, though it don't sound so, that Iwas almost happy at finding myself so snug and safe there--as itseemed after having nothing under me but the sea. 

And then I set myself--my head hurting me cruelly, and the flow ofblood still bothering me--to see what I could do in the way of bindingup my wound; and made a pretty good job of it, having a big silkhandkerchief in my pocket that I folded into a smooth bandage andpassed over my crown and under my chin--after first dowsing my head inthe cold sea water, which set the cut to smarting like fury but helpedto keep the blood from flowing after the bandage was made fast. Atfirst, while I was paddling in the water and splashing my way alongthe mast and while the bandage was flapping about my ears, I had nochance to hear any noises save those little ones close to me which Iwas making myself. But when I had finished my rough surgery, andleaned back against the top to rest after it--and my heart wasbeginning to sink with the thought of how utterly desperate my casewas, afloat there on the open ocean with a gale coming on--I heard inthe deep silence a faint rythmic sound that I recognized instantly asthe pulsing of a steamer's engine and the steady churning of herscrew. This mere whisper in the darkness was a very little thing tohang a hope upon; but hope did return to me with the conviction thatthe sound came from the steamer of which I had seen the lights justbefore I was pitched overboard, and that I had a chance of her passingnear enough to me to hear my hail. 

I peered eagerly over the waters, trying to make out her lights againand so settle how she was heading; but I could see no lights, thoughwith each passing minute the beating of the screw sounded louder to mystraining ears. From that I concluded that she must be coming upbehind me and was hid by the top from me; and so, slowly andpainfully, I managed to get on my hands and knees on the mast, andthen to raise myself until I stood erect and could see over the edgeof the top as it rose like a little wall upright--and gave a weakshout of joy as I saw what I was looking for, the three bright pointsagainst the blackness, not more than a mile away. And I was all themore hopeful because her red and green lights showed full on each sideof the white light on her foremast, and by that I knew that she washeading for me as straight as she could steer. 

I gave another little shout--but fainter than the first, for mystruggle to get to my feet, and then to hold myself erect as the swellrolled the mast about, made me weak and a little giddy; and I wantedto keep on shouting--but had the sense not to, that I might save mystrength for the yells that I should have to give when the steamer gotnear enough to me for her people to hear my cries. So I stoodsilent--swaying with the roll of the mast, and with my head throbbinghorribly because of my excitement and the strain of holding onthere--while I watched her bearing down on me; and making her out soplainly as she got closer that it never occurred to me that I and mybit of mast would not be just as plain to her people as her great bulkwas to me. 

I don't suppose that she was within a quarter of a mile of me when Ibegan my yelling; but I was too much worked up to wait longer, and theresult of my hurry was to make my voice very hoarse and feeble by thetime that she really was within hail. She came dashing along sostraight for me that I suddenly got into a tremor of fear that shewould run me down; and, indeed, she only cleared me by fifty feet orso--her huge black hull, dotted with the bright lights of her cabinports, sliding past me so close that she seemed to tower right up overme--and I was near to being swamped, so violently was my mast tossedabout by the rush and suck of the water from her big screw. And whileshe hung over me, and until she was gone past me and clear out of allhearing, I yelled and yelled!

At first I could not believe, so sure had I been of my rescue, thatshe had left me; and it was not until she was a good half mile awayfrom me, with only the sound of her screw ripping the water, and afaint gleam of light from her after ports showing through thedarkness, that I realized that she was gone--and then I grew so sickand dizzy that it is a wonder I did not lose my hold altogether andfall off into the sea. Somehow or another I managed to swing myselfdown and to seat myself upon the mast again, with my head fairlysplitting and with my heart altogether gone: and so rested there, shutting my eyes to hide the sight of my hope vanishing, and asdesolate as any man ever was. 

Presently, in a dull way, I noticed that I no longer heard the swashof her screw, and rather wondered at her getting out of hearing soquickly; but for fear of still seeing her lights, and so having morepain from her, I still kept my eyes tight closed. And then, all of asudden, I heard quite close by me a hail--and opened my eyes in ahurry to see a light not a hundred feet away from me, and to make outbelow it the loom of a boat moving slowly over the weed-strewn sea. 

The shout that I gave saved me, but before it saved me I came near tobeing done for. Such a rush of blood went up into my broken head withthe sudden burst of joy upon me that a dead faint came upon me and Ifell off into the water; and that I was floating when the boat got tome was due to the mere chance that as I dropped away from the mast oneof my arms slipped into the tangle of the futtock-shrouds. But I knewnothing about that, nor about anything else that happened, until wewere half-way back to the steamer and I came to my senses a little;and very little for a good while longer--except that I was swung up aship's side and there was a good deal of talking going on around me;and then that my clothes were taken off and I was lifted into a softdelightful berth; and then that somebody with gentle hands was bindingup my broken crown. 

When this job was finished--which hurt me a good deal, but did notrouse me much--I just fell back upon the soft pillow and went tosleep: with a blessed sense of rest and safety, as I felt the roll ofa whole ship under me again after the short jerk of my mast, and knewthat I was not back on the brig but aboard an honest steamer byhearing and by feeling the strong steady pulsing of her screw. 

VII

I ENCOUNTER A GOOD DOCTOR AND A VIOLENT GALE

I was roused from my sleep by the sharp motion of the vessel; but didnot get very wide awake, for I felt donsie and there was a dullringing in my head along with a great dull pain. I had sense enough, though, to perceive that the storm had come, about which Captain Lukeand the barometer had been at odds; and to shake a little with acreepy terror as I thought of the short work it would have made withme had I waited for it on my mast. But I was too much hurt to feelanything very keenly, and so heavy that even with the quick short rollof the ship to rouse me I kept pretty much in a doze. 

After a while the door of my state-room was opened a little and a manpeeped in; and when he saw my open eyes looking at him he came inaltogether, giving me a nod and a smile. He was a tall fellow in ablue uniform, with a face that I liked the looks of; and when he spoketo me I liked the sound of his voice. 

"You must be after being own cousin to all the Seven Sleepers ofEphesus and the dog too, my big young man, " he said, holding fast tothe upper berth to steady himself. "You've put in ten solid hours, sofar, and you don't seem to be over wide awake yet. Faith, I'd be afterbacking you to sleep standing, like Father O'Rafferty's old dun cow!"

I did not feel up to answering him, but I managed to grin a little, and he went on: "I'm for thinking that I'd better let that broken headof yours alone till this fool of a ship is sitting stillagain--instead of trying to teach the porpoises such tricks of rollingand pitching as never entered into their poor brute minds. But you'lldo without doctoring for the present, myself having last night sewedup all right and tight for you the bit of your scalp that had fetchedaway. How does it feel?"

"It hurts, " was all that I could answer. 

"And small blame to it, " said the doctor, and went on: "It's awell-made thick head you have, and it's tough you are, my son, not tobe killed entirely by such a whack as you got on your brain-box--tosay nothing of your fancy for trying to cure it hydropathically bytaking it into the sea with you when you were for crossing theAtlantic Ocean on the fag-end of a mast. It's much indeed that youhave to learn, I am thinking, both about surgery and about taking careof yourself. But in the former you'll now do well, being in thecompetent hands of a graduate of Dublin University; and in regard toyour incompetence in the latter good reason have you for beingthankful that the _Hurst Castle_ happened to be travelling in theseparts last night, and that her third officer is blessed with a pair ofextra big ears and so happened to hear you talking to him from out ofthe depths of the sea. 

"But talking isn't now the best thing for you, and some more of thesleep that you're so fond of is--if only the tumbling of the ship willlet you have it; so take this powder into that mouth of yours whichyou opened so wide when you were conversing with us as we went sailingpast you, and then stop your present chattering and take all the sleepthat you can hold. "

With that he put a bitter powder into my mouth, and gave me a drink ofwater after it--raising me up with a wonderful deftness and gentlenessthat I might take it, and settling me back again on the pillow in justthe way that I wanted to lie. "And now be off again to your friendsthe Ephesians, " he said; "only remember that if you or they--or theirdog either, poor beasty--wants anything, it's only needed to touchthis electric bell. As to the doggy, " he added, with his hand on thedoor-knob, "tell him to poke at the button with the tip of his foolishnose. " And with that he opened the door and went away. All thislight friendly talk was such a comfort to me--showing, as it did, along with the good care that I was getting, what kindly people I hadfallen among--that in my weak state I cried a little because of myhappy thankfulness; and then, my weakness and the powder actingtogether to lull me, in spite of the ship's sharp motion I went offagain to sleep. 

But that time my sleep did not last long. In less than an hour, Isuppose, the motion became so violent as to shake me awake again--andto give me all that I could do to keep myself from being shot out ofmy berth upon the floor. Presently the doctor came again, fetchingwith him one of the cabin stewards to rig the storm-board at the sideof my berth and some extra pillows with which to wedge me fast. Butthough he gave me a lot more of his pleasant chaff to cheer me I couldsee that his look was anxious, and it seemed to me that the stewardwas badly scared. Between them they managed to stow me pretty tight inmy berth and to make me as comfortable as was possible whileeverything was in such commotion--with the ship bouncing about like apea on a hot shovel and all the wood-work grinding and creaking withthe sudden lifts and strains. 

"It's a baddish gale that's got hold of the old _Hurst Castle_, andthat's a fact, " the doctor said, when they had finished with me, inanswer to the questioning look that he saw in my eyes. "But it'snothing to worry about, " he went on; "except that it's hard on you, with that badly broken head of yours, to be tumbled about worse thanMother O'Donohue's pig when they took it to Limerick fair in a cart. So just lie easy there among your pillows, my son; and pretend thatit's exercise that you are taking for the good of your liver--which isa torpid and a sluggish organ in the best of us, and always the betterfor such a shaking as the sea is giving us now. And be rememberingthat the _Hurst Castle_ is a Clyde-built boat, with every plate andrivet in her as good as a Scotsman knows how to make it--and in suchmatters it's the Sandies who know more than any other men alive. In myown ken she's pulled through storms fit to founder the Giant'sCauseway and been none the worse for 'em, and so it's herself that'scertain to weather this bit of a gale--which has been at its worst noless than two times this same morning, and therefore by all rule andreason must be for breaking soon. 

"And be thinking, too, " he added as he was leaving me, "that I'll becoming in to look after you now and then when I have a spareminute--for there are some others, I'm sorry to say, who are afterneeding me; and as soon as the gale goes down a bit I'll overhaulagain that cracked head of yours, and likely be singing you at thesame time for your amusement a real Irish song. " But not much wasthere of singing, nor of any other show of lightheartedness, aboardthe _Hurst Castle_ during the next twelve hours. So far from breaking, the gale--as the doctor had called it, although in reality it was ahurricane--got worse steadily; with only a lull now and then, asthough for breath-taking, and then a fiercer rush of wind--beforewhich the ship would reel and shiver, while the grinding of her ironframe and the crunching of her wood-work made a sort of wild chorus ofgroans and growls. For all my wedging of pillows I was near to flyingover the storm-board out of my berth with some of the plunges that shetook; and very likely I should have had such a tumble had not thedoctor returned again in a little while and with the mattress from theupper berth so covered me as to jam me fast--and how he managed to dothis, under the circumstances, I am sure I don't know. 

When he had finished my packing he bent down over me--or I could nothave heard him--and said: "It's sorry I am for you, my poor boy, foryou're getting just now more than your full share of troubles. Butwe're all in a pickle together, and that's a fact, and the choicebetween us is small. And I'd be for suggesting that if you know such athing as a prayer or two you'll never have a finer opportunity forsaying them than you have now. " And by that, and by the friendlysorrowful look that he gave me, I knew that our peril mustbe extreme. 

I don't like to think of the next few hours; while I lay there packedtight as any mummy, and with no better than a mummy's chances, as itseemed to me, of ever seeing the live world again--terrified by theawful war of the storm and by the confusion of wild noises, and everynow and then sharply startled by hearing on the deck above me a fiercecrash as something fetched away. It was a bad time, Heaven knows, foreverybody; but for me I thought that it was worst of all. For there Iwas lying in utter helplessness, with the certainty that if the shipfoundered there was not a chance for me--since I must drown solitaryin my state-room, like a rat drowned in a hole. 

VIII

THE _HURST CASTLE_ IS DONE FOR

At last, having worn itself out, as sailors say, the storm began tolessen: first showing its weakening by losing its little lulls andfiercer gusts after them, and then dropping from a tempest to a meregale--that in turn fell slowly to a gentle wind. But even after thewind had fallen, and for a good while after, the ship labored in atremendous sea. 

As I grew easier in my mind and body, and so could think a little, Iwondered why my friend the doctor did not come to me; and when at lastmy door was opened I looked eagerly--my eyes being the only free partof me--to see him come in. But it was the steward who entered, and Ihad a little sharp pang of disappointment because I missed the facethat I wanted to see. However, the man stooped over me, kindly enough, and lifted off the mattress and did his best to make me comfortable;only when I asked him where the doctor was he pretty dismallyshook his head. 

"It's th' doctor himself is needin' doctorin', poor soul, " heanswered, "he bein' with his right leg broke, and with his blessedhead broke a-most as bad as yours!" And then he told me that when thestorm was near ended the doctor had gone on deck to have a look atthings, and almost the minute he got there had been knocked over by afalling spar. "For th' old ship's shook a-most to pieces, " the manwent on; "with th' foremast clean overboard, an' th' mizzen so wobblythat it's dancin' a jig every time she pitches, and everything at ragsan' tatters of loose ends. "

"But the doctor?" I asked. 

"He says himself, sir, that he's not dangerous, and I s'pose he oughtto know. Th' captain an' th' purser together, he orderin' 'em, haveset his leg for him; and his head, he says, 'll take care of itself, bein' both thick an' hard. But he's worryin' painful because he can'tlook after you, sir, an' th' four or five others that got hurt in th'storm. And I can tell you, sir, " the man went on, "that all th' ship'scompany, an' th' passengers on top of 'em, are sick with sorrow thatthis has happened to him; for there's not a soul ever comes near th'doctor but loves him for his goodness, and we'd all be glad to breakour own legs this minute if by that we could be mendin' his!"

The steward spoke very feelingly and earnestly, and with what he saidI was in thorough sympathy; for the doctor's care of me and hisfriendliness had won my heart to him, just as it had won to him thehearts of all on board. But there was comfort in knowing that he hadgot off with only a broken leg and a broken head from a peril that soeasily might have been the death of him, and of that consolation Imade the most--while the steward, who was a handy fellow and prettywell trained as a surgeon's assistant, freshly bandaged my head for meas the doctor had ordered him to do, and so set me much more at myease. After that, for the rest of the day, he came every hour or so tolook after me; giving me some broth to eat and a biscuit, and somemedicine that the doctor sent me with the message that it would putstrength enough into a dead pig to set him to dancing--by which I knewthat even if his head and leg were broken there was no break in hiswhimsical fun. 

The steward was the only man who came near me; but this did notsurprise me when he told me more about the condition that the ship wasin, and how all hands--excepting himself, who had been detailedbecause of his knowledge that way to look after the hurt people underthe doctor's direction--were hard at work making repairs, with what menthere were among the passengers helping too. The ship was not leaking, he said, and this was the luckier because her frame was so strainedthat it was doubtful if her water-tight compartments would hold; butthe foremast had been carried away, and all the weather-boats had beenmashed out of all shape or swept overboard, and the mizzen was soshaky that it seemed likely at any moment to fall. Indeed, the mastwas in such a bad way, he said, that the first and second officerswere for getting rid of it--and of the danger that there was of itscoming down all in a heap anyway--by sending it overboard; but thatthe captain thought it safe to stand now that the sea was gettingsmooth again, and was setting up jury-stays to hold it until we madethe Azores--for which islands our course was laid. 

By the time that night came again the sea had pretty well gone down, and beyond the easy roll that was on her the ship had no motion savethe steady vibration of her screw. With this comforting change thepain in my head became only a dull heavy aching, and I had a chance tofeel how utterly weary I was after the strain of mind and body thathad been put on me by the gale. A little after eight o'clock, as Iknew by hearing the ship's bell striking--and mighty pleasant it wasto hear regularly that orderly sound again--the steward brought me abowl of broth and propped me up in my berth while I drank it; andcheered me by telling me that the doctor was swearing at his brokenleg like a good fellow, and was getting on very well indeed. And thenmy weariness had its way with me, and I fell off into that deep sleepwhich comes to a man only when all his energy has slipped away fromhim on a dead low tide. How long I slept I do not know. But I doknow that I was routed suddenly into wakefulness by a jar that almostpitched me out of my berth, and that an instant later there was atremendous crash as though the whole deck above me was smashing topieces, and with this a rattle of light woodwork splintering and thesharp tinkling of breaking glass. For a moment there was silence; andthen I heard shouts and screams close by me in the cabin, and a littlelater a great trampling on deck, and then the screw stopped turningand there was a roar of escaping steam. 

I was so heavy with sleep that at first I thought we still were in thestorm and that this commotion was a part of it; but as I shook off mydrowsiness I got a clearer notion of the situation--remembering whatthe steward had told me of the condition of the mizzen-mast, and soarriving at the conclusion that it had fetched away bodily and hadcome crashing through the cabin skylight in its fall. But what theshock was that had sent it flying--unless we had been in collision--Icould not understand. And all this while the trampling on deckcontinued, and out in the cabin the shouts and cries went on. 

I thought that the steward would come to me--forgetting that in timesof danger men are apt to think only of saving their own skins--and solaid still; being, indeed, so weak and wretched that it did not seempossible to me to do anything else. But he did not come, and at theend of what seemed to me to be a desperately long time--though I doubtif it were more than five minutes--I realized that I must try to dosomething to help myself; and was the more nerved to action by thefact that there no longer was the sound of voices in the cabin, whilethe noises on deck a good deal had increased. Indeed, I began to hearup there the puffing and snorting of the donkey-engine, and so feltcertain that they were hoisting out the boats. 

Somehow or another I managed to get out of my berth, and on my feet, and so to the door; but when I tried to open the door I could notbudge it, and in the darkness I struck my head against what seemed tobe a bar of wood that stuck in through one of the upper panels and soheld it fast. The blow dizzied me, for it took me close to where mycut was and put me into intense pain. 

While I stood there, pulling in a weak way at the door-knob and makingnothing of it, I heard voices out in the cabin and through my brokendoor saw a gleam of light. But in the moment that my hope rose it wentdown again, for I heard some one say quickly and sharply: "It's nogood. The way the spar lies we can't get at him--and to cut it throughwould take an hour. "

And then a voice that I recognized for the steward's answered: "Butthe doctor ordered it. Where's an axe for a try?" To which the otherman answered back again: "If it was the doctor himself we couldn't doit, and we'll tell him so. The ship'll be down in five minutes. We'vegot to run for it or the boats'll be off. " And then away they rantogether, giving no heed in their fright to my yells after them tocome back and not leave me there to drown. 

For a little while I was as nearly wild crazy as a man can be and yethave a purpose in his mind. The keen sense of my peril made me strongagain. I kicked with my bare feet and pounded with my hands upon thedoor to break it, I shouted for help to come to me, and I gave outshrill screams of terror such as brutes give in their agony--for I wasdown to the hard-pan of human nature, and what I felt most stronglywas the purely animal longing to keep alive. 

But no one answered me, and I could tell by the sounds on deck gettingfainter that some of the boats already had put off; and in a littlewhile longer no sound came from the deck of any sort whatever, and bythat I knew that all the boats must have got away. And as I realizedthat I was forsaken, and felt sure from what I had heard that the shipwould float for only a few minutes longer, I gave a cry of downrightdespair--and then I lost track of the whole bad business by tumblingto the floor in the darkness in a dead swoon. 

IX

ON THE EDGE OF THE SARGASSO SEA

When I came to myself again, and found my state-room--although thedead-light was set--bright with the light which entered through thebroken door, my first feeling was of wonder that I was not yetdrowned; for it was evident that the sun must be well up in theheavens to shine so strongly, and therefore that a good many hoursmust have passed since the smash had happened that had sent everybodyflying to the boats believing that the ship was going right down. Andmy next wonder was caused by the queer way in which the ship waslying--making me fancy at first that I was dizzy again, and my eyestricking me--with a pitch forward that gave a slope to the floor of mystate-room, of not less than twenty degrees. 

For a while, in a stupid sort of way, I ruminated over these matters;and at last got hold of the simple explanation of them. Evidently, inspite of the straining of the steamer's frame in the storm, herwater-tight compartments--or some of them--had held, leaving herfloating with her broken bow well down in the water and her sterncanted up into the air. And then the farther comforting thought cameto me that if she had kept afloat for so many hours already, andseemed so steady in her new position, there was no reason why sheshould not keep on floating at least for as long as the fine weatherlasted--which gave me a chance of rescue by some passing vessel, andso brought a good deal of hope back into my heart. 

I still was very weak and shaky, and how I was to get out of theprison that I was in I did not know. By daylight it was easy to seewhat held me there: which was the end of a yard, with the reef-blockhanging to it, smashed through the upper panel and caught so tight inthe splintered wood-work as to anchor the door fast. If the wits ofthe steward and of the other fellow had not been scared clean out ofthem they easily might have knocked in the lower part of the door withan axe and so opened a way out for me; but as their only notion hadbeen to cut away the spar--a tough piece of work--I could not in coolblood very greatly blame them for having given up my rescue and runfor their own lives. 

These thoughts went through my head while I lay there, mostuncomfortably, on the sloping floor. Presently I managed to get up, but felt so dizzy that I had to seat myself in a hurry on the edge ofthe berth until my head got steadier. Fortunately my water-jug washalf full, and I had a good drink from it which refreshed me greatly;and then I had the farther good fortune to see some biscuit which thesteward had left on a shelf in the corner, and as I caught sight ofthem I realized that I was very hungry indeed. I ate one, along withsome more sups of water, and felt much the better for it; but lay downin my berth that I might save the strength it gave me until I shouldhave thought matters over a little and settled some line of actionin my mind. 

That I was too weak to break the door down was quite certain, and theonly other thing that I could think of was cutting out the lowerpanels and so making a hole through which I could crawl. As thisthought came to me I remembered the big jack-knife that had been in mytrousers' pocket when I went overboard from the brig; and in a minuteI was on my feet--and without feeling any dizziness, this time--andgot to where my clothes were hanging on a hook, and found to my joythat my knife and all the other things which had been in my pocketshad been returned to them after the clothes had been dried. The knifewas badly rusted and I had a hard time opening it; but the rust didnot much dull it, and I seated myself upon the floor and fell toslicing away at the soft pine wood with a will. I had to rest now andthen, although I found that my strength held out better than I hadhoped for, and that put me back a little; but the wood was so softthat in not much more than half an hour I had the job finished--andthen I slipped on my trousers, and out I went through the hole on myhands and knees. 

I found the cabin in utter wreck: littered everywhere with brokenglass and broken wood from the skylight, and from the smashedhanging-racks and the smashed dining-table, and with splinters fromthe mast--which had broken in falling, and along the whole length ofthe place had made a tangle of its own fragments and of the ropes andblocks which had held its sails. Of the sails themselves there wereleft only some fuzzy traces clinging to the bolt-ropes, all the resthaving been blown loose and frayed away by the storm. Oddly enough, some of the drinking-glasses still remained unbroken in one of theracks, and with them a bottle partly filled with wine--to the neck ofwhich a card was fastened bearing the name, José Rubio y Salinas, ofthe passenger to whom it had belonged. I took the liberty of drinkinga glass of Don José's wine--feeling sure that he was not coming backto claim it--and felt so much better after it that I thanked himcordially for leaving it there. 

Most of the state-room doors stood open, showing within clothingtossed about and trunks with their lids turned back, and the generalconfusion in which the passengers had left things when they scrambledtogether their most precious belongings and rushed for the boats--withdeath, as they fancied, treading close upon their heels. But with whatremained in the state-rooms I did not concern myself, being desirousfirst of all to get on deck and have a look about me that I might sizeup my chances of keeping alive. That there was no companion-way upfrom the cabin puzzled me a little, for I knew nothing of the internalarrangements of steamships; but presently I found a passage leadingforward, and by that I came to the stair to the deck of which I wasin search. 

Up it I went, but when I fairly got outside and saw the desperatestate of the craft that I was afloat on my heart sank. Indeed, itseemed a flying in the face of all reason that such an utter wreckshould float at all. Of the foremast nothing but the splintered stumpremained. The starboard rail, which had been to windward of it, wasgashed by chance axe-blows made in cutting away the shrouds; and as tothe port rail, twenty feet of it was gone entirely where the mast hadcome crashing down, while the side-plates below were bulged out withthe strain put upon them before the standing-rigging fastened therehad fetched away. The mizzen-mast lay aft across the cabin skylight, with its standing and running rigging making a tangle on each side ofit. The main-mast still stood, but with its top-mast broken off anddangling nearly to the deck. Two of the weather-boats remained fastto the davits, but so smashed that they looked like battered tinwash-basins, and would have floated just about as well. All the otherboats were gone: those on the weather side, as the splintered ways andbroken ropes showed, having been washed overboard; and those toleeward having been hoisted out by the tackles, which still hung fromthe davits and dipped lazily with the ship's easy motion into the sea. 

All this was bad enough, but what most took the spirit out of me wasthe way that the ship was lying--her stern high up in the air, and herbow so deep in the water that the sea came up almost to her main-mastalong her sloping deck. It seemed inevitable that in another momentshe would follow her nose in the start downward that it had made andgo straight to the bottom; and each little wave, as it lapped its wayaft softly, made me fancy that the plunge had begun. 

As to the outlook around me, the only comfort that I got from it wasthe fairness of the weather and the smoothness of the sea. For closeupon the water a soft haze was hanging that even to the north, out ofwhich blew a gentle wind, brought the horizon within a mile of me; anddown to leeward the haze was banked so thick that I could make outnothing beyond half a mile. And so, even though a whole fleet might bepassing near me, my chances of rescue were very small. But from thelook of the ocean I knew that no fleets were likely to be thereabouts, and that even though the haze lifted I might search long and vainlyfor sight of so much as a single sail. As far as I could see around methe water was covered thickly with gulf-weed, and with this was allsorts of desolate flotsam--planks, and parts of masts, and fragmentsof ships' timbers--lolling languidly on the soft swell that wasrunning, yet each scrap having behind it its own personal tragedy ofdeath and storm. And this mess of wreckage was so much thicker than Ihad seen when the brig was on the coast--as Bowers had called it--ofthe Sargasso Sea as to convince me that already I must be within theborders of that ocean mystery which a little while before I had beenso keen for exploring; and my fate seemed sealed to me as I realizedthat I therefore was in a region which every living ship steered clearof, and into which never any but dead ships came. 

X

I TAKE A CHEERFUL VIEW OF A BAD SITUATION

When I perceived the tight fix that I was in my broken head went tothrobbing again, and my legs were so shaky under me that I had to sitdown on the deck in a hurry in order to save myself from a fall. Indeed, I was in no condition to face even an ordinary trouble, letalone an overwhelming disaster; for what with my loss of blood fromthe cut on my head, and the little food I had eaten since I got it, Iwas as weak as a cat. 

Luckily I had the sense to realize that I needed the strength whichfood would give me in order to save myself from dropping off intosheer despair. And with the thought of eating there suddenly woke upin my inside a hungry feeling that surprised me by its sharpness; andinstantly put such vigor into my shaky legs that I was up on them in amoment, and off to the companion-way to begin my explorations below. And when, being come to the cabin again, I had another sup of DonJosé's wine I got quite ravenous, and felt strong enough to kick adoor in--if that should be necessary--in order to satisfy mycraving for food. 

There was no need for staving in doors, for none of them was fastened;but it was some little time--because of my ignorance of thearrangement of steamships--before I could find one that had things toeat on the other side of it. Around the cabin, and along the passageleading forward, were only state-rooms; but just beyond thecompanion-way I came at last to the pantry--and beyond this again, asI found later, were the store-rooms and the galley. For the moment, however, the pantry gave me all that I wanted. In a covered box Ifound some loaves of bread, and in a big refrigerator a lot of coldvictuals that set my eyes to dancing--two or three roast fowls, partof a big joint of beef, a boiled tongue, and so on; and, what wasalmost as welcome, in another division of the refrigerator a dozen ormore bottles of beer. On the racks above were dishes and glasses, in alocker were knives and forks, and I even found hanging on a hook acorkscrew--and the quickness with which I brought these various thingstogether and made them serve my purposes was a sight to see!

When I had eaten nearly a whole fowl, and had drunk a bottle of beerwith it, I felt like another man; and then, pursuing my investigationsmore leisurely, I found in one of the lockers--which I took theliberty of prying open with a big carving-knife--four or five boxesof capital cigars. In the same locker was a package of safety-matches, and in a moment I was puffing away with such satisfaction that Ifairly grew light-hearted--so great is the comfort that comes to a manwith good smoking on top of a hearty meal. All sorts of bright fanciescame to me: of making one of the battered boats serviceable again andgetting off in it, of a ship blown out of her course coming to myrescue, of a strong southerly wind that would carry the hulk of thepoor old _Hurst Castle_ back again into the inhabited parts of thesea. And with these thoughts cheering me I set myself to work to findout just what I had in the way of provisions aboard my shattered craft. 

I did not have to search far nor long to satisfy myself that I had abigger stock of food by me than I could eat in a dozen years. Forwardof the galley were the store-rooms: a cold-room, with a plenty of icestill in it, in which was hanging a great quantity of fresh meat; awine-room, very well stocked and containing also some cases of tobaccoand cigars; and in the other rooms was stuff enough to fit up a biggrocery shop on shore--hams and bacon and potted meats, and a greatvariety of vegetables in tins, and all sorts of sweets and sauces andtable-delicacies in tins and in glass. Indeed, although I was full tothe chin with the meal that I had just eaten, my mouth fairly wateredat sight of all these good things. In the bakery I found only a loafor two of bread, and this--as it was lying on the floor--I supposemust have been dropped in the scramble while the boats were beingprovisioned; but in the baker's store-room were a good many cases offine biscuit, and more than twenty barrels of flour. In addition toall this, I did not doubt that somewhere on board was an equally largestore of provisions for the use of the crew; but with that I did notbother myself, being satisfied to fare as a cabin-passenger on thegood things which I had found. Finally, two of the big water-tanksstill were full--the others, as I inferred from the cocks being open, having been emptied for the supply of the boats; and as areserve--leaving rain out of the question--I had the ice to fall backupon, of which there was so great a quantity that it alone would lastme for a long while. In a word, so far as eating and drinking wereconcerned, I was as well off as a man could be anywhere--having by menot only all the necessaries of life but most of its luxuries as well. 

Finding all these good things cheered me and put heart in me in muchthe same way that I was cheered and heartened by finding my floatingmast after Captain Luke and the mate chucked me overboard. Again I hadthe certainty that death for a while could not get a chance at me; andthis second reprieve was of a more promising sort than that which mymast had given me in the open sea. On board the steamer, or what wasleft of her, I was sure of being in positive comfort so long as shefloated; and my good spirits made me so sanguine that I was confidentshe would keep on floating until I struck out some plan by which Icould get safe away from her, or until rescue came to me by some luckyturn of chance. And so, having completed my tour of inspection, and mygeneral inventory of the property to which by right of survival I hadfallen heir, I went on deck again in a very hopeful mood. 

Even the utter wreck and confusion into which the steamer had fallen, when I got to the deck and saw it again, did not crush the hope out ofme as it did when I came upon it--being then weak and famished--forthe first time. I even found a cause for greater hopefulness inobserving that the water-line still stood, as it had stood an hour andmore earlier, a little forward of the main-mast; for that showed thatthe water-tight compartments were holding, and that the hulk was in noimmediate danger of going down. It did seem, to be sure, that the hazehad grown a little thicker, and that the weed and wreckage around thesteamer were thicker too; and I was convinced that my hulk wasmoving--or that the flotsam about it was moving--by seeing a brokenboat floating bottom upward that I was sure was not in sight when Iwent below. But I argued with myself cheerfully that the thickeningof the haze might be due to a wind coming down on me that would blowit clean away; and that a small thing like an empty boat drifting downfrom windward proved that the _Hurst Castle_ herself was movingsouthward very slowly, or perhaps was not moving at all. And so, stillin good spirits, I set myself to looking carefully for something thatwould float me, in case I decided to abandon the hulk and make a dashfor it--on the chance of falling in with a passing vessel--out overthe open sea. 

But when I had made the round of the deck--at least of the part of itthat was out of water--I had to admit that getting away from thesteamer was a sheer impossibility, unless I might manage it bycobbling together some sort of a raft. It had been all very well forme to fancy, while I was being cheered with chicken and beer andtobacco down in the pantry, that I could make one of the batteredboats sea-worthy; but my round of the deck showed me that with all mytraining in mechanics I never could make one of them float again--forthe sea had wrenched and hammered them until they were no better thanso much old iron. The raft, certainly, was a possibility. Spars thatwould serve for its body were lying around in plenty, and with thedoors from the rooms below I could deck it over so as to make it bothsolid and dry; and somewhere aboard the ship, no doubt, werecarpenter's tools--though, most likely, they were down under waterforward and could be come at only by diving for them. Still, the raftwas a possibility; and so was comforting to think about as giving meanother reprieve from drowning in case the water-tight compartmentsbroke down--and as that break might come at any moment, and as the jobwould take me two days at the shortest, I realized that I could notset about it too soon. 

XI

MY GOOD SPIRITS ARE WRUNG OUT OF ME

But the other chance which I had thought of, that my hulk might beblown clear of the Sargasso Sea and back into the track of tradeagain, still was to be reckoned with; and to know how that chance wasworking it was necessary that I should find out my exact position onthe ocean, and then check off the changes in it by fresh observationstaken from day to day. And as I saw that the sun was close upon themeridian, and no time to waste if I wanted to secure my firstnoon-sight, I put off beginning my carpentering until I should havehunted for the ship's instruments and got the latitude and longitudethat would give me my departure on my drifting voyage. 

This was so simple a piece of work that I anticipated no difficulty inexecuting it. While the low-lying haze narrowed my horizon it did notsufficiently obscure the sun to interfere with sight-taking; I couldcount upon finding the chronometers still going, they being made torun for fifty-six hours and the ship having been abandoned only thenight before; and where I found the chronometers I felt sure that Ishould find also a sextant and a chart. But when I went at thiseasy-looking task I was brought up with a round turn: there were nochronometers, there was no sextant, there was no chart of the NorthAtlantic--there was not even a compass left on board!

It took me some little time to arrive at a certainty in this series ofnegatives. I fancied--because it had been that way aboard the _GoldenHind_--that the captain's room would be one of those opening off fromthe cabin, and so began my search for it in that quarter. But when Ihad made the round of all the state-rooms I was satisfied that theyhad been occupied only by passengers. The single timepiece that Ifound--for the clock in the cabin had been smashed when themizzen-mast came down--was a fine gold watch lying in one of theberths partly under the pillow, where its owner must have left it inhis hurry to get to the boats. It still was going, and I slipped itinto my pocket--feeling that a thing with even that much of life in itwould be a comfort to me; but the hour that it gave was a quarter pasteleven (it having been set to the ship's time the day before, Isuppose) and therefore was of no use to me as a basis forsight-taking. 

Having exhausted the possibilities of the cabin I concluded that thecaptain's quarters must have been forward, and so shifted my searchto the forward deck-house; and as I found a blue uniform coat and asuit of oil-skins in the first room that I entered I was sure that ina general way I was on the right track. But in none of these rooms didI find what I was looking for--though I did find in one of them, andgreatly to my satisfaction, a chest of carpenter's tools and a big boxof nails. The nails must have been there by pure accident, but thetools probably were the carpenter's private kit; and as in the courseof my farther search I did not come across the ship'scarpenter-shop--which no doubt was under water forward--I felt thatthis chance supply of what I needed for my raft-building was a verylucky thing for me indeed. 

The upper story of the deck-house still remained to be investigated;and when, by the steps leading to the steamer's bridge, I got up thereand entered a little room behind the wheel-house, I was pretty surethat at last I had found the place where what I wanted ought to be. The part forward of the doors on each side of this room--a good thirdof it--was filled by a chart-locker having a dozen or more wideshallow drawers; and the flat top of the locker showed at its fourcorners the prickings of thumb-tacks which had held the charts openthere, and four tacks still were in place with scraps of thick whitepaper under them--as though some one in too great a hurry to loosenit properly had ripped the chart away. 

This would be, of course, the chart actually in use when the steamergot into trouble, and therefore the one that I needed. As it was gone, I opened the drawers of the locker and looked through them in searchof a duplicate; or of anything--even a wind-chart or a current-chartwould have answered--that would serve my turn. But while there werecharts in plenty of West Indian and of English waters, and a setcovering the German Ocean, not a chart of any sort relating to theNorth Atlantic did I find. Neither were there chronometers nor anynautical instruments in the room. In one corner was a strongly madecloset in which they may have been kept; but of this the door stoodopen and the shelves were bare. Even a barometer which had hung nearthe closet had been wrenched away, as I could tell by the broken brassgimbals still fast to the brass supports; but this was a matter of noimportance, since I had noticed another in good order in the cabin--tosay nothing of the fact that my powerlessness to make any provisionagainst bad weather made me indifferent to warnings of coming storms. And then, when I continued my search in the wheel-house, though notvery hopefully, all that I discovered there was that the binnacle wasempty and that the compass was gone too. In a word, there wasabsolutely nothing on board the hulk that would enable me to fix myposition on the surface of the ocean, or that would guide me should Itry the pretty hopeless experiment of going cruising on a raft. 

This fact being settled--and hindsight being clearer than foresight--Ihad no difficulty in accounting for it. In order to lay a course andto keep it, the people in the boats would need precisely the thingswhich had been carried off; and as each boat no doubt had beenfurnished so that in case of separation it could make its way alone, aclean sweep had been made of all the North Atlantic charts and of allthe nautical instruments that the steamer had on board. It was to thecredit of the captain that he had kept his wits so well abouthim--seeing to it, in the sudden skurry for the boats, that theultimate as well as the immediate safety of his people was providedfor--but when I found out, and fairly realized, what his coolness hadcost me I fell off once more from good spirits into gloom. 

Being left that way all at loose ends as to my reckoning, with nomeans of finding out where I was nor whether my position changed forthe better from day to day, the hopes that I had been building ofdrifting northward and so falling in with a passing vessel fell downin a bunch and left me miserable. I see now, though I did not see itthen, that they went quite as unreasonably as they came. In thatregion of calms--for I was fairly within the horse-latitudes--the onlybit of wind that I was likely to encounter was an eddy from thenortheast trades that would set me still farther to the southward; andthe only other moving impulse acting upon my hulk--at least while fairweather lasted--would be the slow eddy setting in from the Gulf Streamand moving me in the same direction. In the case of a storm coming upfrom the south, and so giving me the push northward that I was soeager for, the chances were a thousand to one that my hulk would go tothe bottom long before I could get to a part of the ocean where shipswere likely to be. And as to navigating a raft through that tangle ofweed, already thick enough around me to check the way of a sharplybuilt boat, the notion was so absurd that only a man in my desperatefix would even have thought about it. 

But had there been a Job's comforter at hand to put these blackthoughts into my head they would not have helped me nor harmed memuch. My whole heart had been set on getting my sights, and filledwith the inconsequent hope that in getting them I somehow would bebettering my chances of coming out safe at last; and so it seemed tome when I could not get them--and in this, though the sight-taking hadnothing to do with it, there was reason in plenty--that alllikelihood of my being rescued had slipped away. 

I had come out from the wheel-house and was standing on the steamer'sbridge--which rose right out of the water so that I looked down fromit directly on the weed-laden sea. As far as my sight would carrythrough the soft golden haze I saw only weed-covered water, brokenhere and there by a bit of wreckage or by a little open space on whichthe pale sunshine gleamed. A very gentle swell was running, giving tothe ocean the look of some strange sort of meadow with tall grassswaying evenly in an easy wind. The broken boat had moved a good dealand already was well to the south of me; showing me that there wasmotion in that apparent stillness, and compelling me to believe thatmy hulk--though less rapidly than the boat--was moving southward too. And what that meant for me I knew. The fair weather might continuealmost indefinitely. Days and weeks, even months, might pass, and Istill might live on there in bodily safety; but so far as the worldwas concerned I was dead already--being fairly caught in the sloweddying current which was carrying my hulk steadily and hopelesslyinto the dense wreck-filled centre of the Sargasso Sea. 

XII

I HAVE A FEVER AND SEE VISIONS

Because I had felt hungry and thirsty, and the cold chicken and beerhad tasted good, I had eaten and drunk a great deal more heartily thanwas wholesome for me--being so weakened by loss of blood, and by thestrain put upon me by the danger that I had passed through, and byliving only on slops and some scraps of biscuit since my rescue, thatmy insides were in no condition to deal with such a lot of strongfood. And then, within an hour after I so unwisely had stuffed myself, came the blow--in itself hard enough to upset a strong digestion ingood working order--of discovering that I could do nothing to savemyself, and that my hulk was drifting steadily deeper and deeper intothat ocean mystery out of which no man ever yet had come alive. 

The first sign that I had that something was going wrong with me was aswimming in my head--so sudden and so violent that I lurched forwardand was close to pitching over the rail of the bridge into the sea. For a moment I fancied that the ship had taken a quick plunge; andthen a sick feeling in my own stomach, and a blurring of my eyes thatmade everything seem misty and shadowy, settled for me the fact thatit was I who was reeling about and that the ship was still--and I hadsense enough to lie down at full length on the bridge, between thewheel-house and the rail, where I was safe against rolling off. Andthen the shadows about me got deeper and blacker, and a horrible senseof oppression came over me, and I seemed to be falling endlessly whilemyriads of black specks arranged themselves in curious geometricalfigures before my eyes--and then the black specks and everything elsevanished suddenly, and my consciousness left me with what seemed to mea great crash and bang. 

Had I begun matters by being roundly sick I might have pulled throughmy attack without being much the worse for it. But as that did nothappen--my weakness, I suppose, not giving nature a chance to setthings right in her own way--I had a good deal more to suffer before Ibegan to mend. After a while I got enough of my senses back to knowthat my head was aching as though it would split open, and to realizehow utterly miserable I was lying there on the bridge with the hotsunshine simmering down on me through the haze; and then to think howdelightful it would be if only I were back in the cabin again--wherethe sun could not stew me, and where my berth would be easy and soft. 

How I managed to get to the cabin I scarcely know. I faintly rememberworking my way along the bridge on my hands and knees, and goingbackward down the steps in the same fashion for fear of falling; andof trying to walk upright when I got to the deck, so that I should notget wet above my knees in the water there, and of falling souse intoit and getting soaked all over; and then of crawling aft veryslowly--stopping now and then because of my pain and dizziness--anddown the companion-way and through the passage, and so into the cabinat last; and then, all in my wet clothes, of tumbling anyhow into myberth--and after that there is only a long dead blank. 

When I caught up with myself again, night had come and I was in pitchdarkness. My head still ached horridly, and I was burning hot allover, and yet from time to time shivering with creeping chills. What Iwanted most in the world was a drink of water; but when I tried to getup, in the hope of finding some in the jug that no doubt was in thestate-room, I went so dizzy that I had to plump back into my berthagain. As the night went on, and I lay there thinking how deliciouslythe water would taste going cool and sweet down my throat, I got quitecrazy with longing for it; and, in a way, really crazy--for throughmost of the night I was light-headed and saw visions that sometimescomforted me and sometimes made me afraid. The comforting ones were offresh green meadows with streams running through them, and of shadyglens in the woods where springs welled up into little basinssurrounded by ferns--just such as I remembered in the woods whichbordered the creek where I used to go swimming when I was a boy. Thehorrible ones were not clear at all, and for that were the moredreadful--being of a fire that was getting nearer and nearer to me, and of a blazing sun that fairly withered me, and of huge hot globesor ponderously vague masses of I knew not what which were comingstraight on to crush me and from which I could not get away. 

At last I got so worn out with it all that I fell off into an uneasysleep, which yet was better than no sleep and a little rested me. WhenI woke again there was enough light in the room for me to see thewater-jug, and that gave me strength to get to it--and most blessedlyit was nearly full. And so I had a long drink, that for a time checkedthe heat of my fever; and then I lay down in my berth again, with thejug on the floor at my side. 

For a while I was almost comfortable. Then the fever came back, andthe visions with it--but no longer so painful as those which had beenbegotten of my thirst. I seemed to be in a region dreamy and unreal. Sometimes I would see far stretches of mountain peaks, and sometimesthe crowded streets of cities; but for the most part my visions wereof the sea--tall ships sailing, and little boats drifting over calmwater in moonlight, and black steamers gliding quickly past me; andstill more frequently, but always in a calm sea, the broken hulks ofwrecked ships with shattered masts and tangled rigging and with deadmen lying about their decks, and sometimes with a dead man hangingacross the wheel and moving a little with the hulk's motion so that ina horrible sort of way he seemed to be half alive. 

Night came again, bringing me more pain and the burning of a strongerfever; and then another day, in which the fever rose still higher andthe visions became almost intolerable--because of their intensereality, and of my conviction all the while that they were unreal andthat I must be well on the way toward a raving madness in which Iwould die. 

It was at the end of this day--or it may have been at the end of stillanother day, for I have no clear reckoning of how the timepassed--that my worst vision came to me; hurting me not because it wasterrifying in itself, but because it made me feel that even hope hadparted company with me at last. And it was more like a dream than avision, seemingly being brought to my sight by my own bodilymovement--not something which floated before my eyes as I lay still. 

As the afternoon went on my fever increased a good deal; but in a waythat was rather pleasant to me, for the pain in my head lessened and Iseemed to be getting back my strength. After a while I began to longto get out of the cabin and up on deck, and so have a look around meover the open sea; and with my longing came the feeling that I wasstrong enough to realize it. 

My getting up seemed entirely real and natural, as did my firmwalking--without a touch of dizziness--after I fairly was on my feet;and all the rest of it seemed real too. Even when I came to thecompanion-way I seemed to go up the stairs easily, and to step out onthe deck as steadily as though I had been entirely well. 

The sun was near setting, but as I came on the deck my back was towardthe sunset and I saw only its red light touching the soft swell of theweed-covered sea extending far before me, and the same red lightshimmering in the mist and caught up more strongly on a bank oflow-lying clouds. The outlook was much the same as that which I hadhad from the bridge, only the weed seemed to be packed more closelyand there was wreckage about me everywhere. Masts and spars and plankswere in sight in all directions, sometimes floating singly andsometimes tangled together in little heaps; half a mile away was whatseemed to be a large ship lying bottom upward; near me was a perfectlysound boat, having in its stern-sheets a bit of sail that fell in suchfolds as to make me think that a human form lay under it; and offtoward the horizon was a large raft, with a sort of mast fitted to it, and at the foot of the mast I fancied that I saw a woman in a whiterobe of some sort stretched out as though asleep. And it seemed to me, though I could not tell why, that all this flotsam, and my own hulkalong with it, slowly was drifting closer and closer together; and waspacking tighter and tighter in the soft oozy tangle of the weed, whicheverywhere was matted so thickly that the water did not show at all. 

Then I seemed to walk around to the other side of my hulk and to lookdown into the west--and to feel all hope dying with the sight that Isaw there. Far away, under the red mist, across the red gleaming weedand against a sunset sky bloody red, I seemed to see a vast ruinouscongregation of wrecks; so far-extending that it was as though all thewrecked ships in the world were lying huddled together there in amiserably desolate company. And with sight of them the certainconviction was borne in upon me that my own wreck presently would takeits station in that shattered fleet for which there was no salvation;and that it would lie among them rotting slowly, as they wererotting, through months or years--until finally, in its turn, it woulddrop down from amidst those lepers of the ocean, and would sink withall its foulness upon it into the black depths beneath the oozy weed. 

And I knew, too, that whether I already were dead and went down withit, or saved my life for a while longer by getting aboard of anotherhulk which still floated, sooner or later my end must come to me inthat same way. On one or another of those rotting dead ships my owndead body surely must sink at last. 

XIII

I HEAR A STRANGE CRY IN THE NIGHT

That was the end of my visions. Through the night that followed--myfever having run its course, I suppose--I slept easily; and whenanother day came and I woke again my fever was gone. I was pretty weakand ragged, but the cut in my head was healing and no longer hurt memuch, and my mind was clear. There still was water left in the jug, and I drank freely and felt the better for it; and toward afternoon Ifelt so hungry that I managed to get up and go to the pantry on aforaging expedition for something to eat. 

This time I was careful not to stuff myself. I found a box of lightbiscuit and ate a couple of them; and then I filled my water-jug atthe tank and brought it and the biscuit back to my stateroom withoutgoing on the deck at all. My light meal greatly refreshed me; and inan hour or two I ate another biscuit--and kept on nibbling at them offand on through the night when I happened to wake up. In between whilesmy sleep was of a sort to do me good; not deep, but restful. With thecoming of another morning I felt so strong that I went to the pantryagain for food of a better sort--venturing to eat a part of a tin ofmeat with my biscuit and to add to my water a little wine; and whenthis was down I began to feel quite like myself once more, and to longso strongly for some sunshine and fresh air that I climbed up thecompanion-way to the deck. 

But when I got there I thought at first that my visions were comingback again. Indeed, what I saw was so nearly my last vision over againas to make me half believe, later, that I really did go on deck in mydelirium and really did see that blood-red sunset and all the restthat had seemed to me a dream. At any rate, there was no doubting thissecond time--if it were the second time--the reality of what I beheld;and because I no longer was fever-struck, and so could take in fullythe wonder of it, my astonishment kept my spirits from being whollypulled down. 

The haze was so thick as to be almost like a fog hanging about me, butthe hot sunshine pouring down into it gave it a golden brightness andI could see through it dimly for a good long way; and there was noneed for far-seeing to be sure that I had before me what I think mustbe the strangest sight that the world has in it for the eyes of man. For what I looked at was the host of wrecked ships, the dross of waveand tempest, which through four centuries--from the time when sailorsfirst pushed out upon the great western ocean--has been gatheringslowly, and still more slowly wasting, in the central fastnesses ofthe Sargasso Sea. 

The nearest edge of this mass of wreckage was not a quarter of a mileoff from me; but it swept away in a great irregular curve to the rightand left and vanished into the golden haze softly--and straight aheadI could see it stretching dimly away from me, getting thicker andcloser until it seemed to be almost as solid as a real island wouldhave been. And, indeed, it had a good deal the look of being a realisland; the loom through the haze of countless broken masts rising tovarious heights and having frayed ropes streaming from them havingmuch the effect of trees growing there, while the irregularities ofthe surface made it seem as though little houses were scatteredthickly among the trees. But in spite of the golden light which hungover it, and which ought to have given it a cheerful look, it was themost desolate and sorrowful place I ever saw; for it seemed tobelong--and in a way really did belong, since every hulk in all thatfleet was the slowly wasting dead body of a ship slain by storm ordisaster--to that outcast region of mortality in which death hasachieved its ugliness but to which the cleansing of a completedissolution has not yet been brought by time. 

Yet the curious interest that I found in this strange sight kept mefrom feeling only the horror of it. In my talks with Bowers about theold-time sea-wonders which must be hidden in the Sargasso Sea myimagination had been fired; and when I thus found myself actually inthe way to see these wonders I half forgot how useless the sight wasto me--being myself about the same as killed in the winning of it--andwas so full of eagerness to press forward that I grew almost angrybecause of the infinite slowness with which my hulk drifted on to itsplace in the ruined ranks. 

There was no hurrying my progress. Around me the weed and wreckagewere packed so closely that the wonder was that my hulk moved throughit at all. Of wind there was not a particle; indeed, as I found later, under that soft golden haze was a dead calm that very rarely in thosestill latitudes was ruffled by even the faintest breeze. Only a weakswirl of current from the far-off Gulf Stream pushed my hulk onward;and this, I suppose, was helped a little by that attraction offloating bodies for each other which brings chips and leaves togetheron the surface of even the stillest pool. But a snail goes faster thanI was going; and it was only at the end of a full hour of watchingthat I could see--yet even then could not be quite certain about it--thatmy position a very little had changed. 

Save that now and then I went below and got some solid food into me--andas I was careful to eat but little at a time I got the good of it--I satthere on the deck all day long gazing; and by nightfall my hulk had goneforward by perhaps as much as a hundred yards. But my motion was a steadyand direct one, and I saw that if it continued it would end by laying meaboard of a big steamer--having the look of being a cargo-boat--that stoodout a little from the others and evidently herself had not long been apart of that broken company. She was less of a wreck, in one way, thanmy own hulk; for she floated on an even keel and so high out of thewater as to show that she had no leak in her; but her masts had beenswept clean away and even her funnel and her bridge were gone--as thougha sharp-edged sea had sliced like a razor over her and shaved her decksclean. 

Immediately beyond this steamer lay a big wooden ship evidentlywaterlogged; for she lay so low that the whole of her hull, save a bit ofher stern, was hidden from me by the steamer, and the most of her thatshowed was her broken masts. And beyond her again was a jam of wrecks soconfused that I could not make out clearly any one of them from the rest. Taken all together, they made a sort of promontory that jutted out fromwhat I may call the main-land of wreckage; and to the right and left ofthe promontory there went off in long receding lines the coast of thatcountry of despair. 

At last the sun sunk away to the horizon, and as it fell off westward pinktones began to show in the clouds there and then to be reflected in thehaze; and these tones grew warmer and deeper until I saw just such anotherblood-red sunset as I had seen in what I had fancied was my dream. Andunder the crimson haze lay the dead wrecks, looming large in it, withgleams of crimson light striking here and there on spars and masts andgiving them the look of being on fire. And then the light faded slowly, through shades of purple and soft pink and warm gray, until at last theblessed darkness came and shut off everything from my tired eyes. 

Indeed, I was glad when the darkness fell; for as I sat there looking andlooking and feeling the bitter hopelessness of it all, I was well on myway to going crazy with sorrow. But somehow, not seeing any longer theruin which was so near to me, and of which I knew myself to be a part, itseemed less real to me--and so less dreadful. And being thus eased alittle I realized that I was hungry again, and that commonplace naturalfeeling did me good too. 

I went below to the pantry, striking a match to see my way by; and whenI had lighted the big lamp that was hanging there--the glass chimney ofwhich, in some wonderful way, had pulled through the crash which had sentthe mizzen-mast flying--the place seemed so cheerful that my desire forsupper increased prodigiously, and tended still farther to down mysorrowful thoughts. I even had a notion of trying to light a fire inthe galley and cooking over it some of the beef or mutton that I hadfound in the cold-room; but I gave that up, just then, because Ireally was too hungry to wait until I could carry through so largea plan. 

But there was a plenty of good food in tins easily to be got at; andwhat was still better I felt quite strong enough to eat a lot of itwithout hurting myself. I even went at my meal a little daintily, spreading a napkin--that I got from a locker filled with tablelinen--on the pantry dresser, and setting out on it a tin of chickenand a bunch of cheese and some bread which was pretty stale and hardand a pot of jam to end off with; and from the wine-room I brought abottle of good Bordeaux. 

As I ate my supper, greatly relishing it, the oddness of what I wasdoing did not occur to me; but often since I have thought how strangewas that meal of mine--in that brightly lighted cosey little room, and myself really cheerful over it--in its contrast with the utterlydesperate strait in which I was. And I think that the contrast wasstill sharper, my supper being ended, when I fetched a steamer-chairthat I had noticed lying on the floor of the cabin and settled myselfin it easily--facing toward the stern, so that the slope of the deckonly made the slope of the chair still easier--and so sat there in thebrightness smoking a very good cigar. 

And after a while--what with my comfort of body, and the good mealin my stomach, and the good wine there too--a soothing drowsinessstole over me, and I had the feeling that in another moment or two Ishould fall away into a delicious doze. And then, all of a sudden, Iwas roused wide awake again by hearing faintly, but quite distinctly, a long and piercingly shrill cry. 

I fairly jumped from my chair, so greatly was I startled; and for agood while I stood quite still, drawing my breath softly, in waitingwonder for that strange cry to come again. But it did not comeagain--and as the silence continued I fell to doubting if I had notbeen asleep, and that this sound which had seemed so real to me hadnot been only a part of a dream. 

XIV

OF MY MEETING WITH A MURDERED MAN

Robinson Crusoe's footprint in the sand did not startle him more thanthat strange lonely cry startled me. Indeed, as between the two of us, I had rather the worse of it: for Crusoe, at least, knew that he wasdealing with a reality, while I could not be certain that I was notdealing with a bit of a dream in which there was no reality at all. 

For a long while I sat there puzzling over it--half hoping that Imight hear it again, and so be sure of it; and half hoping that Imight not hear it, because of the thrilling tone in it which hadfilled me with a sharp alarm. I was so shaken that I had not thecourage to go off to my berth in the cabin, with only a candle tolight me there, but stayed on in the little room that the lamp lightedso brightly that there were no dark corners for my fancy to peoplewith things horrible; and so, at last, still scared and puzzled, Iwent off to sleep in my chair. 

When I woke again the lamp had burned out and had filled the placewith a vile smell of lamp-smoke that set me to sneezing. But I didnot mind that much; for daylight had come, and my nerves were bothquieted by sleep and steadied by that confident courage which most menfeel--no matter how tight a fix they may be in--when they have thebacking of the sun. 

My first thought was to get on deck and have a look about me; thefeeling being strong in my mind that on one or another of the near-bywrecks I should find the man who had uttered that thrilling cry, andwould find him in some trouble that I might be able to help him outof. But my second thought, and it was the wiser, was to eat first ofall a good breakfast and so get strength in me that would make meready to face whatever might come along--for a vague dread hung by methat I was in the way of danger, and whatever it might be I knew thatI could the better stand up against it after a hearty meal. ThereforeI got out another tin of meat and ate the whole of it, and a hunk ofstale bread along with it, and washed down my breakfast with a bottleof beer--longing greatly for a cup of coffee in place of the beer, butbeing in too much of a hurry to stop for that while I made a fire. 

As the food got inside of me--though in that smoky and smelly placeeating it was not much of a pleasure--my thoughts took a more cheerfulturn. The hope of meeting a live man to talk to and to help me out ofmy utter loneliness rose strong in my mind; and I felt that no matterwho or what he might be--even a man in desperate sickness and pain, whom I must nurse and care for--finding him in that solitude wouldmake my own case less sad. And so, when I went on deck, my longinghope for companionship was the strongest feeling in my heart. 

With my first glance around I saw that during the night my hulk hadmade more progress than I had counted on; having moved the faster, Isuppose, as it felt more strongly the pull of the mass of floatagenear by. Be this as it may, I found myself so close alongside the bigcargo-boat that a good jump would carry me aboard of her; and I was soeager to begin my investigations that I took the jump without a singlemoment of delay. And being come to her deck, the first thing that Isaw there was a dead man lying in the middle of it with a pool ofstill fresh blood staining the planks by his side. 

I never had seen anything like that, and as I looked at the deadman--he was a big strong coarse fellow, dressed in a pair of dirtysail-cloth trousers and in a dirty checked shirt--I went so queasy andgiddy that I had to step back a little and lean for a while againstthe steamer's rail. It was clear enough that he had died fighting. Hisface had a bad cut on it and there was another on his neck, and hishands were cut cruelly, as though he had caught again and again at asharp knife in trying to keep it away from him; but the stab that hadfinished him was in his breast, showing ghastly as he lay on his backwith his shirt open--and no doubt it was as the knife went into himthere that he had uttered the cry of mortal agony which had come to methrough the darkness, with so thrilling a note in it, while I wassitting in bright comfort drowsily smoking my cigar. And then, as Iremembered my drowsiness, for a moment I seemed to get back intoit--and I had a half hope that perhaps what I was looking at was onlya part of a horrible dream. 

Had there been any sign of a living man about, of the murderer as wellas the murdered, I should have been less broken by what I saw; forthen I should have had something practical to attend to--either inbringing the other man to book on the poor dead fellow's account, orin fighting him on my own. But the nearest thing to life in sight, onthat storm-swept hulk under the low-hanging golden haze, was the roughbody out of which life had but just gone forever; and the bloodystains everywhere on the deck showing that he and another must havebeen fighting pretty much all over it before they got to an end. Andthe horror of it all was the stronger because of the awful andhopeless loneliness: with the dead-still weed-covered oceanstretching away to the horizon on the one hand, and on the other onlydead ships tangled and crushed together going off in a desolatewilderness that grew fainter--but for its faintness all the moredespairing--until it was lost in the dun-gold murky thickness ofthe haze. 

As I got steadier, in a little while, I realized that I must hunt upthe other man, the one who had done the killing, and have things outwith him. Pretty certainly, his disposition would be to try to killme; and if I were to have a fight on hand as soon as I fell in withhim it was plain that my chances would be all the better for downinghim could I take him by surprise. I would have given a good deal justthen for a knife, and a good deal more for a pistol; but the best thatI could do to arm myself was to take an iron belaying-pin from therail, and with this in my hand I walked aft to the companion-way--feeling sure that my best chance of coming upon my manunexpectedly was to find him asleep in the cabin below. And then, suddenly, the very uncomfortable thought came to me that there mightbe more than one man down there--with the likelihood that if I rousedthem they all would set upon me together and finish me quickly; andthis brought me to a halt just within the companion-way, in theshadowy place at the head of the cabin stair. 

I stood there for a minute or two listening closely, but I heard nosound whatever from below; and presently the dead silence made me feelrather ashamed of myself for being so easily scared. And then Inoticed, my eyes having become accustomed to the shadow, that therewas a splash of blood on the top step and more blood on the stepslower down--as though a man badly hurt, and without any one to helphim, had gone down the stair slowly and had rested on almost everystep and bled for a while before he could go on; and seeing this madeit seem likely to me that I would have but a single man to deal with, and he in such a state that I need not fear him much. But for all thatI kept a tight grip on my belaying-pin, and held it in such a way thatI could use it easily, as I put my foot on the first of the bloodysteps and so went on down. 

The cabin, when I got to it, was but a small one--the boat not beingbuilt to carry passengers--and so dusky that I could not make it outwell; for the skylight was covered with a tarpaulin--put there, Isuppose, to protect it when the gale came on that the steamer waswrecked in--and all the light there was came in from one corner wherethe covering had fetched away. It gave me a sort of shivering feelingwhen I looked into that dusky place, where I saw nothing clearly andwhere there was at least a chance that in another moment I might befighting for my life. I stood in the doorway, gripping mybelaying-pin, until I began to see more clearly--making out that asmall fixed table, with a water-jug and some bottles and glasses onit, filled a half of the cabin, and that three state-room doors--oneof which stood open--were ranged on each of its sides. And then, justas I was about to enter, I fairly jumped as there came to me softlythrough the silence a low sad sound that was between a groan and asigh. But in an instant my reason told me that this was not the sortof sound to come from a man whom I need be afraid of; and as it cameplainly enough from the state-room of which the door stood open Istepped briskly over there and looked inside. 

XV

I HAVE SOME TALK WITH A MURDERER

At first--the dead-light being fast over the port, and the state-roomin darkness save for the little light which came in from the duskycabin, and my own person in the doorway making it darker still--I wassure of nothing there. But presently I made out a biggish heap of somesort in the lower berth, and then that the heap was a man lying withhis back toward me and his face turned to the ship's side. 

The noise of my footsteps must have roused him, either from sleep orfrom the stupor that his hurts had put him in: for while I stoodlooking at him his body moved a little, and then his head turnedslowly and in the shadows I caught the glint of his open eyes. Whatlittle light there was being behind me, all that he could see--andthat but in black outline--was the figure of a tall man looming in thedoorway; but instantly at sight of me he let off a yell as sharp asthough I had run a knife into him, and then he covered his head all upwith the bedclothes and lay kicking and shaking as though he were indeadly fear. I myself was so upset by his outburst, and by thehalf-horror that came to me at sight of his spasms of terror, that Istood for a moment or so silent; but in one way satisfied, since itwas evident that this poor scared wretch could not possibly do meharm. Just as I was about to speak to him, hoping to soothe him alittle, he pushed the bedclothes down from over his eyes and tookanother look at me--and straightway yelled again, and then cried outat me: "Go away, damn you! Go away, damn you! You're dead! You'redead, I tell you! Do you want me to kill you all over again, when I'vedone it once as well as I know how?" And with that he fell to kickingagain, and to shouting out curses, and to letting off the mostdreadful shrieks and cries--until suddenly a gasping choking checkedhim, and he lay silent and still. 

Then the notion came to me that he took me for the dead man up ondeck; I being about the dead fellow's size and build, and thereforelooking very like him as I stood there with the light behind me andthe shadows too deep for him to make out my face. And so, to ease hismind and get him quiet--and this was quite as much for my own sake asfor his, for his wild fear was strangely horrible to witness--I spoketo him, asking him if he were badly hurt and if I could help him; andat the sound of my voice he gave a long sigh, as though of greatrelief, and in a moment said: "Who the devil are you, anyway? Ithought you was Jack--come back after my killin' him to have anotherround with me. Is Jack true dead?"

"If you mean the man on deck, " I answered, "he is true dead--as deadas any man can be with a cut straight through his heart. "

He gave another sigh of relief, as though what I told him was a realcomfort to him; and in a moment he said: "Well, that's a good job, andI'm glad of it. He's killed me, too, I reckon; but I'm glad I got inon him first an' fixed him fur his damn starin' at me. Now he's dead Iguess he won't stare at me no more. " He was silent for nearly aminute, and then he added: "Jest get me a drink, won't you? I'm allburnin' up inside. There's water in th' jug out there. An' put a gooddash of gin in it--there's gin out there, too. "

I got him some water from the jug on the cabin table, but when hetasted it and found that it was water only he began to swear at me forleaving out the gin; and when I added the gin--thinking that heprobably was so used to strong drink as really to need a little to putsome life into him--he took off the whole glassful at a gulp andasked for more. 

I told him to wait for another drink until I should have a look at hishurts and see what I could do to better them; for, while hangingseemed to be what he deserved, I had a natural desire to ease thepain that was racking him--as I could tell by the gasps and groanswhich he was giving and by the sharp motions which he made. 

"Jest shet your head an' gimme some more drink, " he said in a surlyway. "Jack's give me a dose that'll settle me, an' lookin' at me won'tdo no good--'cause there's nothin' to be done. He's ripped me up, Jackhas, an' no man can live long that way. All I can do is to diehappy--so it's a good thing there's lots of gin. You'll find a kag ofit over there in th' fur corner. Me an' Jack filled it from th' spiritroom yesterday, afore our fuss begun. "

But I stuck out that I must have a look at his hurts first, andmanaged to open the dead-light--which luckily had not been screwedtight--and so had some light in the room; and in the end, finding thatI would not give him a drink otherwise, he let me have my way. But Ihad only to take a glance over him to see that what he said about theother man having settled him was true enough; for he was cut in adozen places savagely, and had one desperate slash--which had laid himall open about the waist--from which alone he was certain to die in avery little while. 

There was nothing for me to do, and I did not know what was best tosay to him; and while I was casting about in my mind to comfort him alittle, for his horrible hurts could not but stir my pity, he settledthe matter for both of us in his own way--grunting out that he guessedI'd found he knew what he was talking about, and then asking formore gin. 

This time I gave it to him, and gave it to him strong--being certainthat he was past hurting by it, and hoping that it might deaden hispain. And presently, when he asked for another drink, I gave himthat too. 

The liquor did make him easier, and it raised his spirits so much thathe fell to swearing quite cheerfully at the man Jack who had given himhis death--and seemed to feel a good deal better for freeing his mindthat way. And after a while he began of his own accord to tell meabout the wreck that he had passed through, and about what had comeafter it--only stopping now and then to ask for more gin-and-water, and gulping it down with such satisfaction that I gave him all hecared to have. Indeed, it was the only thing that I could do to easehim, and I knew that no matter how much he drank the end shortly wouldbe the same. 

As well as I could make out from his rambling talk, the storm that hadwrecked him had happened about three months earlier: a tremendousburst of tempest that had sent everything to smash suddenly, and hadwashed the captain and first and second officers overboard--they allbeing on the bridge together--and three or four of the crew as well. At the same time the funnel was carried away, and such a deluge ofwater got down to the engine-room that the fires were drowned. Thisbrought the engineers on deck and the coal-passers with them; and thecoal-passers--"a beach-combin' lot, " he called them--led in breakinginto the spirit-room, and before long pretty much all the men of thecrew were as drunk as lords. What happened after that for a while hedid not know; but when he got sober enough to stagger up on deck hefound the man Jack there--who also had just come up after sleeping offhis drunk below somewhere--and they had the ship to themselves. Theothers might have found a boat that would float and tried their luckthat way, or they might have been washed overboard. He didn't knowwhat had become of them, and he didn't care. Then the hulk had takento drifting slowly, and at the end of a month or so had settled intothe berth where I found her; and since then the two of them had knownthat all chance of their getting back into the world again was gone. 

"At first I didn't mind it much, " he went on, "there bein' lashins toeat aboard, an' more to drink than me an' Jack ever'd hoped to get ashow at in all our lives. But pretty soon Jack he begun to beworryin'. He'd get drunk, an' then he'd set an' stare at me like adamn owl--jest a-blinkin' and a-blinkin' his damn eyes. You hev noidee, ontil it's done to you, how worryin' it is when a drunken manjest sets an' stares at you fur hours together in that fool way. Igive Jack fair warnin' time and agen when he was sober that I'd hurthim ef he kep' on starin' at me like that; but then he'd get drunkagen right off, an' at it he'd go. I s'pose I wouldn't 'a' minded itin a ornary way an' ashore, or ef we'd had some other folks around. But here we was jest alone--oh, it was terr'ble how much we wasalone!--an' Jack more'n half the time like a damn starin' owl, till hea-most druv me wild. "

"An' Jack said as how I was onbearable too. _He_ said it was me asstared at him--the damn fool not knowin' that I was only a-tryin' tosquench his beastly owlin' by lookin' steady at him; an' he said he'dsettle me ef I kep' on. An' so things went like that atween us furdays an' days--and all th' time nothin' near us but dead ships withmos' likely dead men fillin' 'em, an' him an' me knowin' we'd soon gotto be dead too. An' the stinks out of th' rotten weed, and out of allth' rotten ships whenever a bit of wind breezed up soft from th's'uthard over th' hull mess of 'em, was horrider than you hev anyidee! Gettin' drunk was all there was lef' fur us; and even in gettin'drunk there wasn't no real Christian comfort, 'cause of Jack's damnowlin' stares. "

"I guess ef anybody stared steady at you fur better'n three monthsyou'd want to kill him too. Anyway, that's how I felt about it; an' Itold Jack yesterday--soon as he waked up in th' mornin', an' while hewas plumb sober--that ef he didn't let up on it I'd go fur him sure. An' that fool up an' says it was me done th' starin', and I'd got tostop it or he'd cut out my damn heart--an' them was his very words. An' by noon yesterday he was drunker'n a Dutchman, an' was starin'harder'n ever. An' he kep' at it all along till sunset, an' when wecome down into th' cabin to get supper he still was starin'; and aftersupper--when we mought 'a' been jest like two brothers a-gettin' drunktogether on gin-an'-water--he stared wust of all. "

"Nobody could 'a' stood it no longer--and up I gets an' goes fur him, keepin' my promise fair an' square. At fust we jest punched each othersort o' friendly with our fists, but after a while Jack give me a clipthat roused my dander and I took my knife to him; an' then he took hisknife to me. I don't remember jest all about it, but I know we lickedaway at each other all over th' cabin, an' then up through th'companion-way, an' then all over th' deck--me a-slicin' into him an'him a-slicin' into me all th' time. And at last he got this rippin'cut into me, an' jest then I give him a jab that made him yell like astuck pig an' down he fell. I knowed he'd done fur me, but somehow Imanaged to work my way along th' deck an' to get down here to mybunk, where I knowed I'd die easier; an' then things was all black fura while--ontil all of a sudden you comes along, and I sees youstandin' in the door there, an' takes you fur Jack's ghost, an' getsscared th' wust kind. But he's not doin' no ghost racket, Jack ain't. I've settled him an' his damn owl starin'--and it's a good job I have. Gimme some more gin. "

And then, having taken the drink that I gave him, he rolled over alittle--so that he lay as I found him, with his face turned away fromme--and for a good long while he did not speak a word. 

XVI

I RID MYSELF OF TWO DEAD MEN

Only an hour before I had been longing for any sort of a live man totalk with and so break my loneliness; but having thus found a liveman--who, to be sure, was close to being a dead one--I would have beenalmost ready to get rid of him by going back to my mast in the opensea. Indeed, as I stood there in the shadows beside that dying brute, and with the other brute lying dead on the deck above me, the feelingof dull horror that filled me is more than I can put into words. 

I think that the underlying strong strain of my wretchedness was anintense pity for myself. In what the fellow had told me I saw clearlyoutlined a good deal of what must be my own fate in that vilesolitude: which I perceived suddenly must be strewn everywhere withdead men lying unhidden, corrupting openly; since none there were tohide the dead from sight as we hide them in the living world. And Irealized that until I myself should be a part of that indecentexhibition of human carcasses--which might not be for a long while, for I was a strong man and not likely to die soon--I should have todwell in the midst of all that corruption; and always with theknowledge that sooner or later I must take my place in it, and liewith all those unhidden others wasting away slowly in the open lightof day. I got so sick as these horrid thoughts pressed upon me that Iturned to the table and poured out for myself a stiff drink ofgin-and-water--being careful first to rinse the glass well--and I wasglad that I thought of it, for it did me good. 

My movement about the cabin roused up the dying fellow and he hailedme to give him some more gin. His voice was so thick that I knew thatthe drink already had fuddled him; and after he had swiped off what Igave him he began to talk again. But the liquor had taken such holdupon him that he called me "Jack, " not recognizing me, and evidentlyfancying that I was his mate--the man whom he had killed. 

At first he rambled on about the storm that had wrecked them; and thenabout their chance of falling in with a passing vessel; and then aboutsome woman named Hannah who would be worrying about him because he didnot come home. As well as I could make out he went over in thisfashion most of what had happened--and it was little enough, in oneway--from the time that the two found themselves alone upon the hulkuntil they began to get among the weed, and realized pretty wellwhat that meant for them. 

"It ain't no use now, Jack, " he rambled on. "It ain't no use nowthinkin' about gettin' home, an' Hannah may as well stop lookin' furme. This is th' Dead Man's Sea we're gettin' into; an' I knows itwell, an' you knows it well, both on us havin' heerd it talked aboutby sailor-men ever sence we come afloat as boys. Down in th' middle ofit is all th' old dead wrecks that ever was sence ships begun sailin';and all th' old dead sailor-men is there too. It's a orful place, Jack, that me an' you's goin' to--more damn orful, I reckon, than wecan hev any idee. Gin's all thet's lef' to us, and it's good luck wehev such swashins of it aboard. Here's at you, Jack an' gimme somemore out o' the kag, you damn starin' owl. "

There was an angry tone in his voice as he spoke these last words; andthe tone was sharper a moment later when he went on: "Can't you keepyour owl eyes shet, you beast? Don't look at me like that, or I'llstick a knife into you. No, I'm _not_ starin' at you; it's you who'sstarin' at me, damn you. Stop it! Stop it, I say, you--" and he brokeout with a volley of foul names and curses; and partly raised himself, as though he thought that a fight was coming on. And then the painwhich this movement caused him made him fall back again with a groan. 

Without his asking for it I gave him another drink, which quietedhim a little; and then put fresh strength into him, so that he burstout again with his curses and abuse. "Cut the heart out of me, willyou--you scum of rottenness? I'd have you to know that cuttin' heartsout is a game two can play at. Take that, damn you! An' that! An'that! Them's fur your starin'--you damn fat-faced blinkin' owl. And Imean now t' keep on till I stop you. No more of your owl-starin' furme! Take it agen, you stinkin' starin' owl. So! An' so! An' so!"

He fairly raised himself up in the berth as he rushed out his words, and at the same time thrust savagely with his right hand as though hehad a knife in it. For a minute or more he kept his position, cursingwith a strong voice and thrusting all the time. Suddenly he gave ayell of pain and fell on his back again, crying brokenly: "Hell! It's_you_ who've finished me!" And then he gave two or three short sharpgasps, and after that there was a little gurgling in his throat, andthen he was still--lying there as dead as any man could be. 

This quick ending of him came so suddenly that it staggered me; but Imust say that my first feeling, when I fairly realized what hadhappened, was thankfulness that his life was gone--for I had hadenough of him to know that having much more of him would drive me mad. 

In the telling of it, of course, most of what made all this horribleslips away from me, and it don't seem much to strain a man, after all. But it really was pretty bad: what with the shadowy light in thestate-room, for even with the port uncovered it still was dusky; andthe horrid smell there; and the vividness with which the fellowsomehow managed to make me feel those days and weeks of his half-crazyhalf-drunken life, while he and the other man stared at each otheruntil neither of them could bear it any longer--and so took tofighting from sheer heart-breaking horror of loneliness and killedeach other out of hand. And back of all that I had the feeling that Iwas caught in the same fate that had shut in upon them; and was evenworse off than they had been, since I had no one to fight my life awaywith but must take it myself when I found my solitude in that rottendesolation more than I could stand. 

Even the gin-and-water, though I took another big drink of it, couldnot hearten me; but it did give me the courage to rid myself of thetwo dead brutes by casting them overboard; and, indeed, getting rid ofthem was a necessity, for their presence seemed to me so befoulingthat I found it hard to breathe. 

With the man on deck--except that touching him was hateful to me--Idid not have much trouble. I just made fast to him a couple of heavyiron bars that I found down in the engine-room--pokers, they seemed tobe, for serving the boiler fires--and then dragged him along the deckto a place where the bulwarks were gone and there shot him overboard. And luckily the weed was thinnish there, and he went down like a stoneinto it and through it and so disappeared. 

But with the man in the cabin I had a harder job. In his horridly cutcondition I could not bring myself to touch him, and the best that Icould do was to make a sort of bundle of him and the mattress and thebedclothes all together--with a bit of light line whipped around andaround the whole mass until it was snug and firm. When it was finishedI worked it out of the state-room, and rolled it fairly easily alongthe floor of the cabin to the companion-way--and there it stuck fast. Budge it I could not; for it was too long to roll up the stair, andtoo heavy for me to haul it up after me or to push it up before me, though I tried both ways and tried hard. But in the end I managed toget it up by means of a purchase that I rigged from a ring-bolt in thedeck just outside the companion-way door; and once having it on deck Icould manage it again easily, for there I could roll it along. 

Yet I did not at once cast it overboard; for I had no more iron barswith which to weight it, and I knew that such a bunch of stuff wouldnot sink through the weed--and that I should have it stillloathsomely with me, lying only partly hidden in the weed rightalongside. In the end I got up a big iron cinder-bucket that I filledwith coal--making sure that the coal would stay in it by lashing apiece of canvas over the top--and this I made fast to the bundle by arope three or four fathoms long. Then I cast the bucket overboardthrough the break in the bulwarks, and as it shot downward I rolledthe bundle after it--and I had the comfort of seeing the whole go downthrough the weed and away from my sight forever into the hiddenwater below. 

And then I sat down on the deck and rested; for what little cheeringand strength I had got from the gin-and-water had left me and I wasutterly miserable and tired as a dog. But I was well quit of both mydead men, and that was a good job well done. 

XVII

HOW I WALKED MYSELF INTO A MAZE

Sitting there with the splotches of fresh blood on the deck all aroundme was more than I could stomach for very long. The sight of thembrought back to me with a horrid distinctness everything that I hadseen since I came aboard the hulk: the dead man lying on the deck, theother man with his frightful wounds and his wild talk and his death inthe midst of his passionate ravings, and the disgusting work that Ihad been forced to do before I could hide their two bodies from mysight in the sea-depths beneath the tangled weed. And so, presently, Iscrambled to my feet, thinking to get back to the _Hurst Castle_again--where there was no taint of blood to bring up haunting visionsand where, though it seemed a long while past to me, I had been in thecompany of honest and kindly men. 

But when I turned toward this poor escape from my misery--which atbest was but a change from a foul prison to a clean one--I saw that Icould not easily compass it; for in the time that had passed since Ihad made my jump in the morning--noon being by then upon me--the_Hurst Castle_ had swung around a little, being caught I suppose uponsome bit of sunken wreckage, so that where the two ships were nearestto each other there was an open reach of twenty feet or moreacross the weed. 

This was too great a distance for a jump, seeing that it must be madefrom rail to rail without a run to give me a send-off; and yet it wasso short that my not being able to cross it never even entered mymind. Had there been a mast standing on the hulk, with a yard fast toit, I could have rigged a rope from the yard-arm and swung myselfacross in a moment; but the decks being sea-swept, with nothing leftstanding on them, that way was not open to me; nor could I find alight spar--even the flag-staff at the stern being snapt away--that Icould stretch across from one rail to the other and make a bridge of. The only other thing that occurred to me was to tear off some of thedoors in the cabin and to make of them a little raft that I could passby, though I saw well enough that pushing a raft through so dense atangle even for that short distance would be a hard job. And then Ihad the thought that perhaps on the sailing-ship lying beside me Imight find a sound boat, which would better answer my purpose since itcould be the more easily moved through the weed. In point of fact Icould not have moved a boat a single foot through that thicket withoutcutting a passage for it, and I might have thrown overboard three orfour doors and so made a bridge over the weed that would have borne meeasily--but I did not know then as much about that strange sea-growthas I came to know later on. 

As there was no hurry in one way, the ships being so bedded fast therethat they were certain not to move more than a few feet at the utmost, I hunted up some food before setting myself to what I knew would be aheavy task; finding cold victuals of a coarse sort in the galley--leftfrom the last meal that the two men had made there--and fairly freshwater in the tank. It was hard work eating, on board that foul shipand thinking of the foul hands which had made the food ready; butgoing without eating would have been harder, for I had the healthyappetite of a sound young fellow three-and-twenty years old. 

When I had finished my meal, and I got through it quickly, I made fasta line to the steamer's rail and slipped down it to the deck of thesailing-ship--a fine vessel of above a thousand tons, built of woodand on clipper lines. There was an immediate sense of relief ingetting aboard of her, and away from the blood-stained steamer wherethe dead men had been; but I saw at a glance that what I was after wasnot there. She had carried four boats on her rail, as I could tellby the davits, and likely enough a long-boat on her fore-castle aswell. But all of them were gone, and I could only hope--since theywere not there for my use--that her crew had got safe away in them: aswell enough might have happened when she was floating water-loggedafter the storm that had wrecked her was past. 

Without stopping to explore her--and, indeed, after what I had foundon the steamer, I had no fancy for explorations which might end in mystumbling upon still more horrors--I went on to a trim little briglying on the other side of her; a beautiful little vessel, with allher spars and rigging save her bow-hamper in perfect order forsea-going--but showing by her broken bow-sprit that she had been incollision, and by her depth in the water that after the collision shehad filled. Naturally enough, her boats were gone too; and so I lefther and went on. 

In the course of the next two hours or so I must have traversed morethan a hundred wrecks--scrambling up or down from one to another, asthey happened to lie low in the water or high out of it--and with alltheir differences of size and build finding them in one way the same:all of them were dead ships which some sort of a sea-disaster hadslain. And not one of them had a sound boat left on board. The samereason that kept me from exploring the first of them kept me fromexploring any of them: the dread of finding in their shadowy depthsgrisly horrors in the way of dead men long lying there; and, indeed, Iwas distinctly warned to hurry away from some of them by the vilestenches which came to me and made my stomach turn sickish and myblood go cold. 

I must have walked for a good mile, I suppose, over the dead bodies ofthese sea-killed ships--and it was the most dismal walk that ever Ihad taken--before I realized that even if I found a boat and got itoverboard it would be of no use to me, since there was no possibilityof my getting back in it to my own hulk through that densely packedmass of wrecks and weed. Indeed, I should have perceived this plaincertainty sooner had not the wondering curiosity which this strangewalk bred in me lured me on and on. And then, being brought at last toa halt by my rational reflection, there came over me suddenly a queershiver of doubt as to the direction in which the _Hurst Castle_ lay;and then a still more shivering doubt as to whether I should be ableto get back to her again by the way that I had come, or by any wayat all. 

At the beginning of my march in this haze-covered sea-wilderness I hadtried to keep upon the outer edge of it; but insensibly--having topass from ship to ship rather by the way that was open to me than bythe way that I wished to go--I had wandered into the thick of itmore and more. And so, when at last I took thought of my whereabouts, and stopped to look around me that I might shape a course back again, I found that in whatever direction I turned I saw only what I had seenahead of me when my hulk was drawing in upon its borders: a denseconfusion of broken and ruined ships which fell away from me vaguelyunder the golden haze. It had been a dismal sight then; but what gavea fresh note to it, and a thrilling one, was that it no longer wasonly in front of me but was all around me--stretching away on everyside of the wreck on which I was standing, and growing fainter andfainter as the haze shut down thick upon it until it vanished softlyinto the golden blur. 

Yet even then the full meaning of my outlook did not take hold of me. That I was in something of a coil, out of which I could not find myway easily, was plain enough; but that I really was lost in it did notcross my mind. With all my wanderings, I knew that I could not havetraversed any great distance; and the certainty that I had passedalways from one ship to the ship next touching it seemed to makefinding my way back again entirely open and plain. And so I laughed atmyself a little--though that was not much of a place forlaughter--because of my touch of panic fright; and then I turned backfrom the ship on which I was standing to the one next to it, overwhich I had just come--and so on to the next, and in the same way tothree or four more. Yet even in that short distance--though my way wasunmistakable, for these ships touched only each other as ithappened--I was surprised by finding how differently things looked tome as I took my course backward: all the ups and downs of myscrambling walk being inverted, and the lay of the ships one toanother and the look of them being entirely changed. 

Presently I got on board of a brig--which I well remembered, becauseit was one of the vessels having about it a vile stench that had mademe cross it quickly--on the farther side of which two ships werelying, both rising a little above it and both jammed close against itsside. For a moment I hesitated, in doubt as to which of the two I hadcome by; and I should have hesitated longer had not a whiff of thehorrid smell struck upon me strongly and urged me to go on. And soaway I went, taking to the ship that I thought was the right one; andstill fancying that it was the right one when I got aboard of it--forboth, as I have said, were ships, and the two had been about equallymauled by sea and storm. Indeed, except for the differences in theirbuild and rig, there was a strong family resemblance among thesestorm-broken vessels; and the way that they were jammed together madetheir build less noticeable, while a good many of them weredismasted and so had no rig at all. 

Therefore I went on confidently for a dozen ships or more before I hadany misgivings that I had missed my way--which was but a naturalreaction against my momentary doubtfulness--and then I found myselfsuddenly pulled up short. Right above me was the side of a big ironsteamer--called the _City of Boston_, as I made out from the weatheredname-plate on her bows, and a packet-boat as I judged by herbuild--rising so high out of the water that getting up to her deck wasimpossible: as equally impossible was my having forgotten it had Imade such a rattling jump down. Yet this big steamer was the onlyvessel in touch with the barque on which I was standing, save theschooner from which I had just come; and that gave me sharply thechoice between two conclusions: either I had made that big jumpwithout noticing it, or else--and I felt a queer lump rising in mythroat as I faced this alternative--I had managed to go astraycompletely and had lost myself in what had the look of being ahopeless maze. 

XVIII

I FIND THE KEY TO A SEA MYSTERY

On shore, in a forest, I would not in the least have minded findingmyself in a fix of this sort--though my getting into it would havebeen unlikely--because getting out of it would have been the easiestthing in the world. I know a good deal of wood-craft, and always cansteer a course steadily by having the points of the compass fixed forme by the size and the trend of the branches, and by the bark growingthin or thick or by the moss or the lack of moss on the tree-trunks, and by the other such simple forest signs which are the outcome of theaffection that there is on the part of things growing for the sun. 

But what made my breath come hard and my heart take to pumping--as Istood looking up the tall side of the _City of Boston_, being certainthat I never had come down it and so must be off my courseentirely--was my conviction that in this forest of the ocean, if I maycall it so, there were no signs which would help me to find my way. All around me was the same wild hopeless confusion of broken wrecksjammed tight together, or only a little separated by narrow spacesthick-grown with weed; and everywhere overhanging it heavily, growingdenser the deeper that I got into the tangle, was the haze that madeit more confusing still. And under the haze--and because of it, Isuppose--was a soft languorish warmth that seemed to steal my strengthaway and a good deal of my courage too. 

But I knew that to give way to the feeling of dull fright, havingsomehow a touch of awe in it, that was creeping over me would be toput myself into a panic; and that once my wits fairly were addled mychance of getting back to the _Hurst Castle_ again would be prettymuch gone. And to get back to her seemed to me the only way of keepingmy heart up and of keeping myself alive. She was the one ship, in allthat great dismal fleet, aboard of which I could be sure that nothinghorrible had happened, and in which I could be certain that noloathsome sights were to be come upon suddenly in shadowy nooks andcorners to which dying men had crept in their extremity--trying, sincenone ever would bury them, to hide away a little their own bodiesagainst the time when death should be upon them and corruptionshould begin. 

And so I pulled myself together as well as I could and tried to do alittle quiet thinking; and presently I came to the conclusion that Imust find my way back to the brig against which the two ships werelying and start afresh from her; since it was pretty certain that itwas there, by boarding the wrong ship, that I had got off my course. But because of my certain knowledge of what horridness the brigsheltered, and of the noisome stench that I must encounter there, ittook a good deal of resolution to put this plan into practice; somuch, indeed, that for a while I wavered about it, and succeeded atlast in starting back again only by setting going the full force ofmy will. 

But I need not have whipped myself on to my work so resolutely, norhave fretted myself in advance with planning the rush that I shouldmake across the brig when I came to her--for I never, so far as Iknow, laid eyes on her again. For a little while, as in my firstturn-about, I found my way backward without much difficulty--thoughagain the different look that the ships had as I returned across thempulled me up from time to time with doubts about them; and then, justas before, I came to a place where more than one line of advance wasopen to me and there went wrong--as I knew a little later by findingmyself aboard a vessel so strange in her appearance that my firstglimpse over her deck satisfied me that I saw her then for thefirst time. 

This craft was an old-fashioned sloop-of-war, carrying eighteen guns;and that she had perished in action was as evident as that herdeath-battle had been fought a long while back in the past. Themauling that she had received had made an utter wreck of her--hermasts being shot away and hanging by the board, most of her bulwarksbeing splintered, and her whole stern torn open as though a crashingbroad-side had been poured into her at short range. Moreover, nearlyall her guns had been dismounted, and two of them had burst infiring--as the shattered gun-carriages showed. 

But what most strongly proved the fierceness of her last action, andthe length of time that had passed since she fought it, were thescores of skeletons lying about her deck--a few with bits of clothinghanging fast to them, but most of them clean fleshless naked bones. Just as they had fallen, there they lay: with legs or arms or ribssplintered or carried off by the shot which had struck them, or withbullet-holes clean through their skulls. But the sight of them, whileit put a sort of awe upon me, did not horrify me; because timehad done its cleansing work with them and they were pure. 

Indeed, my imagination was taken such fast hold of by coming upon thisthrilling wreck of ancient sea-battle, fought out fiercely to a finishgenerations before ever I was born, that for a little while I forgotmy own troubles entirely; and so got over the shock which my firstsight of the riddled sloop and her dead crew had given me by provingthat again I had lost my way. And my longing to know all that I couldfind out about it--backed by the certainty that I should not come uponanything below that would revolt me--led me to go searching in theshattered cabin for some clue to the sloop's name and nationality, andto the cause in which her death-fight had been fought. 

The question of nationality was decided the moment that I set my footwithin the cabin doorway--there being a good deal of light there, coming in through the broken stern--by my seeing stretched over astanding bed-place in a state-room to starboard an American flag; andthe flag, taken together with the ancient build of the sloop, alsosettled the fact pretty clearly that the action which had finished hermust have been fought with an English vessel in the War of 1812. 

Under the flag I could make out faintly the lines of a human figure, and I knew that one of the sloop's officers--most likely hercommander, from the respect shown to him by covering him with thecolors--must be lying there, just as his men had placed him to waitfor a sea-burial until the fighting should come to an end. And that hehad remained there was proof that not a man of the sloop's company buthad been killed outright in the fight or had got his death-wound init; and also of the fact that in a way the fight had been avictory--since it was evident that the enemy had not taken possession, and therefore must have been beaten off. 

But the whole matter was settled clearly by my finding the sloop'slog-book lying open on the cabin table, just as it had lain there, andhad entries made in it, while the action was going on. And a verystrange thrill ran through me as I read on the mouldy page in brownfaint letters the date, "October 5, 1814, " and across the page-head, in bigger brown faint letters: "U. S. Sloop-of-war _Wasp_": and so knewthat I was aboard of that stinging little war-sloop--whereof therecord is a bright legend, and the fate a mystery, of our Navy--whichin less than three months' time successively fought and whipped threeEnglish war-vessels--the ship _Reindeer_ and the brigs _Avon_ and_Atalanta_, all of them bigger than herself--and then, being lastsighted in September, 1814, not far from the Azores, vanished with allher crew and officers from off the ocean and never was seen norheard of again. 

There before me in the mouldy log-book was the record of her lastaction--and in gallantry it led the three others which have madeher fame. 

The entries began at 7. 20 A. M. With: "A strange sail in sight on theweather bow;" at 7. 45 followed: "The strange brig bearing down on us. Looks English"; and at 8. 10: "The strange brig has shown Englishcolors. " Then came the manoeuvring for position, covering more than anhour, and the beating to general quarters; and after that the shortentries ran on quickly--in such rough and ready writing as might beexpected of a man dashing in for a moment to make them, and thendashing out again to where the fighting was going on:

"9. 20 A. M. Engaged the enemy with our starboard battery, hulling him severely. 

"9. 24. Our foremast by the board. 

"9. 28. The enemy's broadside in our stern. Great havoc. 

"9. 35. The wreck of the foremast cleared, giving us steerage way. 

"9. 40. Our hulling fire telling. The enemy's battery fire slacking. His musketry fire very hot and galling. 

"9. 45. The enemy badly hulled. More than half of our crew now killed or disabled. 

"9. 52. Our main-mast by the board and our mizzen badly wounded. Action again very severe. Few of our men left. 

"9. 56. Captain Blakeley killed and brought below. 

"10. 01. Our mizzen down. The enemy's fire slacking again. 

"10. 10. The enemy sheering off, with the look of being sinking. 

"10. 15. The enemy sinking. We cannot help him. Most of our men are dead. All of us living are badly hurt. "

And there the entries came to an end. 

My breath came fast as I read that short record of as brave a fight asever was fought on salt water; and when my reading was finished Igave a great sigh. It was a fit ending for the little _Wasp_, thatdeath triumphant: and it was a fit ending to a fight between Americanand English sailors that they should hang at each other's throats, neither yielding, until they died that way--they being each of anation unaccustomed to surrender, and both of the one race which alonein modern times has held the sea. 

XIX

OF A GOOD PLAN THAT WENT WRONG WITH ME

For a while I was so stirred by the enthusiasm which my discoveryaroused in me that I had no room in my mind for any other thoughts. But at last, as I still stood pondering in the _Wasp's_ cabin, Ibecame aware that the daylight was fading into darkness; and as Irealized what that meant for me my thoughts came back suddenly tomyself, and then all my enthusiasm ebbed away. 

I came out upon the deck again, but leaving everything as I had foundit--my momentary impulse to lift the flag having vanished as I felthow fit it was that this dead battle-captain should rest onundisturbed where his men had laid him beneath the colors that he haddied for; and I was glad to find when I got into the open that a gooddeal of daylight still remained. But it was so far gone, and waswaning so rapidly, that I saw that I had little chance of getting backto the _Hurst Castle_ before nightfall; and that the most that I couldhope for was to make a start in the right direction--and perhaps tofind a wreck to sleep on that had food and water aboard of it, andthence take up my search again the next day. 

Yet the dread was strong upon me, as I looked around upon the wrecksamong which the _Wasp_ was bedded, that I might not only be unable tofind the _Hurst Castle_ again, but ever to find my way across thattangle to the outer edges of it--where only was it possible that shipson which were provisions fit for eating would be found. The very factthat the _Wasp_ had settled into her position more than fourscoreyears back made it certain that she was deep in the labyrinth; and thestrange old-fashioned look of the craft surrounding her showed me thatI should have to go far before finding a vessel wrecked inrecent times. 

But these disheartening thoughts I crushed down as well as I could, yet not making much of it; and as trying to go back by the way that Ihad come to the _Wasp_ would not serve any good purpose--evensupposing that I could have managed it, which was not likely--I wenton beyond her on a new course: taking a longish jump from herquarter-rail and landing on the deck of a clumsy little ill-shapenbrig, with a high-built square stern and a high-built bow that waspretty nearly square too. She was Dutch, I fancy, and a merchantvessel; but she carried a little battery of brass six-pounders, andhad also a half dozen pederaros set along her rail. And by hercarrying these old-fashioned swivel-guns--which proved that she hadgot her armament not much later than the middle of the lastcentury--and by the general look of her, I knew that she was an oldervessel even than the _Wasp_. 

This observation, and the reflection growing out of it that the deeperI went into the Sargasso Sea the older must be the craft bedded init--since that great dead fleet is recruited constantly by new wrecksdrifting in upon its outer edges from all ways seaward--put into myhead what seemed to me to be a very reasonable plan for finding my wayback to the _Hurst Castle_ again; or, at least, to some other newlycome in hulk on which there would be fresh water and sound food. Andthis was to shape my course by considering attentively the look ofeach wreck that I came aboard of, and the look of those surroundingit, and by then going forward to whichever one of them seemed to be ofthe most modern build. 

As the first step in carrying out my plan--and it seemed to be such agood plan that I felt almost light-hearted over it--I got up on therail of the old brig and jumped back to the less-old _Wasp_ again:landing in her main-channels, and thence easily boarding her byscrambling up what was left of the chains. But in taking my next stepI had no choice in the matter, as only one other vessel was in touchwith the sloop--a heavily-built little schooner that had the look ofbeing quite as old as the brig which I had just left. And her agewas so evident as I came aboard of her--having crossed the deck of the_Wasp_ hastily, picking my way among the scattered bones--that of asudden my faith in my fine plan for getting out of the tangle beganto wane. 

In a general way, of course, the conclusion which I had arrived at wasa sound one. Broadly speaking, it was certain that could I pass in astraight line from the centre to the circumference of that vastassemblage of wrecks I constantly would find vessels of newer build;and so at last, upon the outermost fringe, would come to the wrecks ofships belonging to my own day. But one weak point in my calculationswas my inability to hold to a straight line, or to anything likeone--because I had to advance from one wreck to another as theyhappened to touch or to be within jumping distance of each other, andtherefore went crookedly upon my course and often fairly had to doubleon it. And another weak point was that the sea in its tempestsrecognizes no order of seniority, but destroys in the same breath ofstorm ships just beginning their lives upon it and ships which havewithstood its ragings for a hundred years: so that I very well mightfind--as I actually did find in the case of the _Wasp_--acomparatively modern-built vessel lying hemmed in by ancient craft, survivals of obsolete types, which had lingered so long upon theocean that in their lives as in their deaths they merged and blendedthe present and the past. 

Thus a check was put upon my plan at the very outset; yet in a stolidsort of way--knowing that to give it up entirely would be to bringdespair upon me, for I could not think of a better one--I tried stillto hold by it: going on from the clumsy little old schooner to thatone of two vessels lying beyond her which I fancied, though both ofthem belonged to a long past period, was the more modern-looking inher build. And so I continued to go onward over a dozen craft of onesort or another, holding by my rule--or trying to believe that I washolding by it, for all of the wrecks which I crossed were of anantique type--and now and then being left with no chance for choosingby finding open to me only a single way. And all this while thedaylight was leaving me--the sun having gone down a ruddy globe beyondthe forest of wrecks westward, and heavy purple shadows having begunto close down upon me through the low-hanging haze. 

The imminence of night-fall made clear to me that I had no chancewhatever of getting out from among those long-dead ships before thenext morning; and this certainty was the harder to bear because I wasdesperately hungry--more than six hours having passed since I hadeaten anything--and thirsty too: though my thirst, because of thedampness of the haze I suppose, was not very severe. But the beliefthat I really was advancing toward the coast of my strange floatingcontinent and that I should find both food and drink when I got there, made me press forward; comforting myself as well as I could with thereflection that even though I did have to keep a hungry and thirstyvigil among those old withered hulks I yet should be the nearer, byevery one of them that I put behind me that night, to the freshly comein wrecks on the coast line--where I made sure of finding a breakfaston the following day. Moreover, I knew how forlornly miserable Ishould be the moment that I lost the excitement of scrambling andclimbing and just sat down there among the ancient dead, with thedarkness closing over me, to wait for the slow coming of another day. And my dread of that desolate loneliness urged me to push forwardwhile the least bit of daylight was left by which to see my way. 

It was ticklish work, as the dusk deepened, getting from one wreck toanother; and at last--after nearly going down into the weed betweentwo of them, because of a rotten belaying-pin that I caught atbreaking in my hand--I had to resign myself to giving over untilmorning any farther attempt to advance. But I was cheered by thethought that I had got on a good way in the hour or more that had gonesince I had left the _Wasp_ behind me; and so I tried to make thebest of things as I cast around me for some sheltered nook on the deckof the vessel I had come aboard of--a little clumsy old brig--where mynight might be passed. As to going below, either into the cabin or theforecastle, I could not bring myself to it; for my heart failed me atthe thought of what I might touch in the darkness there, and mymind--sore and troubled by all that I had passed through, and by thedim dread filling it--certainly would have crowded those black depthswith grisly phantoms until I very well might have gone mad. 

And so, as I say, I cast about the deck of the brig for some nook thatwould shelter me from the dampness while I did my best to sleep awayinto forgetfulness my hunger and my thirst; but was troubled all thewhile that I was making my round of investigation by a hauntingfeeling that I had been on that same deck only a little while before. Growing stronger and stronger, this feeling became so insistent that Icould not rest for it; and presently compelled me to try to quiet itby taking a look at the wreck next beyond the brig to see if Irecognized that too--as would be likely, since I must have crossed italso, had I really come that way. 

I did not try to board this adjoining wreck, but only clambered up onthe rail of the brig so that I could look well at it--and when I gotmy look I came more nearly to breaking down completely than I haddone at any time since I had been cast overboard from the _GoldenHind_, For there, showing faintly in the gloom below me, was thegun-set deck of a war-ship, and over the deck dimly-gleaming boneswere scattered--and in that moment I knew that the whole of mywandering had been but a circle, and that I was come back again at theweary ending of it to the _Wasp_. 

But what crushed the heart of me was not that my afternoon of toil hadbeen wasted, but the strong conviction--from which I no longer saw anyway of escaping--that I had strayed too deep into that hideoussea-labyrinth ever to find my way out of it, and that I must die thereslowly for lack of water and of food. 

XX

HOW I SPENT A NIGHT WEARILY

I got down from the rail and seated myself on the brig's deck, leaningmy back against her bulwarks and a little sheltered by theirold-fashioned in-board overhang. But I had no very clear notion ofwhat I was doing; and my feeling, so far as I had any feeling, wasless that I was moving of my own volition than that I was being movedby some power acting from outside of me--the sensation ofirresponsibility that comes to one sometimes in a dream. 

Indeed, the whole of that night seemed to me then, and still seems tome, much more a dream than a reality: I being utterly wearied by mylong hard day's work in scrambling about among the wrecks, and alittle light-headed because of my stomach's emptiness, and feverishbecause of my growing thirst, and my mind stunned by the dull pain ofmy despair. And it was lucky for me, I suppose, that my thinkingpowers were so feeble and so blunted. Had I been fully awake to my ownmisery I might very well have gone crazy there in the darkness; orhave been moved by a sharp horror of my surroundings to try to escapethem by going on through the black night from ship to ship--whichwould have ended quickly by my falling down the side of one or anotherof them and so drowning beneath the weed. 

Yet the sort of stupor that I was in did not hold fast my innerconsciousness; being rather a numbing cloud surrounding me andseparating me from things external--though not cutting me off fromthem wholly--while within this wrapping my spirit in a way was awakeand free. And the result of my being thus on something less thanspeaking terms with my own body was to make my attitude toward it thatof a sympathizing acquaintance, with merely a lively pity for itsill-being, rather than that of a personal partaker in its pains. Andeven my mental attitude toward myself was a good deal of the samesort: for my thoughts kept turning sorrowfully to the sorrow of my ownspirit solitary there, shrinking within itself because of its chillforsakenness and lonely pain of finding itself so desolate--the onething living in that great sea-garnering of the dead. 

And after a while--either because my light-headedness increased, orbecause I dozed and took to dreaming--I had the feeling that the denseblackness about me, a gloom that the heavily overhanging mist madealmost palpable, was filling with all those dead spirits come topeer curiously into my living spirit; and that they hated it and wereenvious of it because it was not as they were but still was alive. Andfrom this, presently, I went on to fancying that I could see themabout me clad again dimly in the forms which had clothed them whenthey also in their time had been living men. At first they wereuncertain and shadowy, but before long they became so distinct that Iplainly saw them: shaggy-bearded resolute fellows, roughly dressed instrange old-fashioned sea-gear, with here and there among them othersin finer garb having the still more resolute air of officers; and allwith the fierce determined look of those old-time mariners of theperiod when all the ocean was a battling-place where seamen spenttheir time--and most of them, in the end, spent their lives also--infighting with each other and in fighting with the sea. 

Gradually this throng of the sea-dead filled the whole deck about meand everywhere hemmed me in; but they gave no heed to me, and wereranged orderly at their stations as though the service of the ship wasbeing carried on. Among themselves they seemed to talk; but I couldhear nothing of what they were saying, though I fancied that there wasa humming sound filling the air about me like the murmur of a far-awaycrowd. Now and then an angry bout would spring up suddenly between twoor three of them; and in a moment they would be fighting together, and would keep at it until one of their stern officers was upon themwith blows right and left with his fists or with the butt of hispistol or with the pommel of his sword--and so would scatter the roughbrutes, scowling, and as it seemed uttering growls such as beastslashed by their keepers would give forth. 

And at other times they would seem to be fighting with someenemy--serving at their guns stripped half-naked, with handkerchiefsknotted about their heads, and with the grime of powder-smoke upontheir bare flesh and so blackening their faces as to give theirgleaming eyes a still more savage look; falling dead or wounded withtheir blood streaming out upon the deck and making slimy pools inwhich a man running sometimes would slip and go down headlong--andwould get up, with a laugh and a curse, only in another moment to dropfor good as a musket-ball struck him or as a round-shot sliced him intwo; and all of them with a savage joy in their work, and going at itwith a lust for blood that made them delight in it--and take no morethought than any other fighting brutes would take of guarding theirown lives. 

Or, again, they would seem to be in the midst of a tempest, with theroar of the wind and the rush of the waves upon them, and would befighting the gale and the ocean's turbulence with the same devil'sdaring that they had shown in fighting the enemy--and with the samecarelessness as to what happened to themselves so long as they stuckto their duty and did the best that was in them to bring their shipsafely through the storm. And so they went on ringing the changes ontheir old-time wild sea-life--their savage fights among themselves, and their battlings with foemen of a like metal, and their warfarewith the ocean--while the dark night wore on. 

Yet even when these visionary forms were thickest about me--and whenit seemed, too, as though from all the dead hulks about me the shadowsof the dead were rising in the same fashion in pale fierce throngs--Itried to hold fast, and pretty well succeeded in it, to the steadyingconviction that the making of them was in my own imagination and thatthey were not real. And then, too, I fell off from time to time into alight sleep which still was deep enough to rid me of them wholly; andwhich also gave me some of the rest that I so much needed after allthat I had passed through during that weary day. 

What I could not get rid of, either sleeping or waking, was my gnawinghunger and my still worse thirst. For an hour or two after nightfall, the air being fresher and the haze turning to a damp cool mist, mythirst was a good deal lessened; which was a gain in one way, thoughnot in another--for that same chill of night very searchinglyquickened my longing for food. But as the hours wore away my desirefor water got the better of every other feeling, even changing myhaunting visions of dead crews rising from the dead ships about meinto visions of brooks and rivulets--which only made my burningcraving the more keen. 

Nor did what little reasoning I could bring to bear upon my case, whenfrom time to time I partly came out from the sort of lethargy that hadhold of me, do much for my comforting. It was possible, I perceived, that I might find even in a long-wrecked ship some half-rotten scrapsof old salted meat, or some remnant of musty flour, that at leastwould serve to keep life in me. But even food of this wretched sortwould do me no good without water--and water was to be found only inone of the wrecks forming the outer fringe of my prison, toward whichI had been trying so long vainly to find my way. 

Yet in spite of my having already gone astray half a dozen times overin daylight I still did have, deep down in me, a feeling that if onlythe darkness would pass I could manage to steer a true course. Andwhen at last, as it seemed to me after years of waiting for it, Ibegan to see a little pink tone showing in the mist dimly it almostseemed as though my troubles were coming instantly to an end. And, at least, the horror of deep darkness, which all night long had beencrushing me, did leave me from the moment when that first gleam ofreturning daylight appeared. 

XXI

MY THIRST IS QUENCHED, AND I FIND A COMPASS

It was a long while before the pale pink gleam to the eastward spreadup into the sky far enough to thin the shadows which hung over my deadfleet heavily, and longer still before I had light enough to ventureto begin my scrambling walk from ship to ship again. It seemed to me, indeed, that the mist lay lower and was a good deal thicker than onthe preceding evening; and this, with the fiery glow that was in itwhen the sunrise came, gave me hope that a douse of rain might becoming--which chance of getting the water that I longed for heartenedme even more than did the up-coming of the sun. 

My throat was hurting me a good deal because of its dryness, and myitching thirst was all the stronger because the last food I hadeaten--being the mess left in the pan by the two men who had killedeach other--had been a salt-meat stew. Of hunger I did not feel much, save for gripes in my inside now and then; but I was weak because ofmy emptiness--as I discovered when I got on my legs, and found myselfstaggering a little and the things around me swimming before my eyes. And what was worse than that was a dull stupidity which so possessedme that I could not think clearly; and so for a while kept mewandering about the deck of the brig aimlessly, while my wits wentwool-gathering instead of trying to work out some plan--even a foolishplan--which would cheer me up with hopes of pulling through. 

I might have gone on all day that way, very likely, if I had not beenaroused suddenly by feeling a big drop of rain on my face; and only amoment later--the thick mist, I suppose, being surcharged with water, and some little waft of wind in its upper region having loosened itsvent-peg--I was in the thick of a dashing shower. So violent was thedownpour that in less than a minute the deck was streaming, and I hadonly to plug with my shirt one of the scuppers amidships to have inanother minute or two a little lake of fresh sweet water fromwhich--lying on my belly, with the rain pelting down on me--I drankand drank until at last I was full. And the feel of the rain on mybody was almost as good as the drinking of it, for it was deliciouslycool and yet not chill. 

When I got at last to my legs again, with the dryness gone from mythroat and only a little pain there because of the swollen glands, Ifound that I walked steadily and that my head was clear too; and forthe moment I was so entirely filled with water that I was not hungryat all. Presently the rain stopped, and that set me to thinking offinding some better way to keep a store of water by me than leaving itin a pool on the open deck; where, indeed, it would not stay long, butwould ooze out through the scupper and be sopped up by therotten planks. 

And so, though I did not at all fancy going below on the old brig, Iwent down the companion-way into the cabin to search for a vessel ofsome sort that would be water-tight; and shivered a little as Ientered that dusky place, and did not venture to move about thereuntil my eyes got accustomed to the half darkness for fear that Ishould go stumbling over dead men's bones. 

As it turned out, the cabin was bare enough of dead people, and ofpretty much everything else; from which I inferred that in the longpast time when the brig had been wrecked her crew had got safe awayfrom her, and had been able in part to strip her before they left heralone upon the sea. What I wanted, however, they had not taken away. In a locker I found a case made to hold six big bottles, in which theskipper had carried his private stock of liquors very likely; and twoof the bottles, no doubt being empty when the cabin was cleared, hadbeen left behind. They served my turn exactly, and I brought them ondeck and filled them from my pool of rain-water--and so was safeagainst thirst for at least another day. 

Being thus freshened by my good drink, and cheered by the certainty ofhaving water by me, I sat down for a while on the cabin-scuttle that Imight puzzle out a plan for getting to some ship so recentlystorm-slain that aboard of her still would be eatable food. As forrummaging in the hold of the brig, I knew that no good could come ofit--she having lain there, as I judged, for a good deal more than halfa century; and for the same reason I knew that I only would waste timein searching the other old wrecks about me for stores. All that wasopen to me was to press toward the edge of the wreck-pack, for therealone could I hope to find what I was after--and there it prettycertainly would be. But after my miserable experience of the precedingday it was plain that before I started on my hunting expedition I musthit upon some way of laying a course and holding it; or else, mostlikely, go rambling from wreck to wreck until I grew so weak fromstarvation that on one or another of them I should fall down atlast and die. 

Close beside me, as I sat on the hatch, was the brig's binnacle, andin it I could see the shrivelled remnant of what had been thecompass-card; and the sight of this put into my head presently thethought--that might have got there sooner had my wits beensharper--to look for a compass still in working order and by means ofit to steer some sort of a steady course. The argument against thisplan was plain enough, and it was a strong one: that in holding aswell as I could to any straight line I might only get deeper anddeeper into my maze--for I was turned around completely, and while Iknew that I could not be very far from the edge of my island offlotsam I had not the faintest notion in which direction thatnear edge lay. 

For some minutes longer I sat on the hatch thinking the matter overand trying to hit on something that would open to me a better prospectof success; and all the while I had a hungry pain in my stomach thatmade clear thinking difficult, and that at the same time urged me todo quickly anything that gave even the least promise of getting food. And so the upshot of the matter was that I slung my two bottles ofwater over my shoulders with a bit of line that I found in the brig'scabin--making the slings short, that the bottles might hang closeunder my arms and be pretty safe against breaking--and then away Iwent on my cruise after a compass still on speaking terms with thenorth pole. 

That I would find one seemed for a good while unlikely; for I searcheda score and more of wrecks, and on every one of them the binnacleeither was empty or the needle entirely rusted away. But at last Icame to a barque that had a newer look about her than that of thecraft amidst which she was lying, and that also had her binnaclecovered with a tarred canvas hood such as is used when vessels arelying in port. How the hood came to be where it was on that brokenwreck was more than I could account for; but by reason of its being inplace the binnacle had been well protected from the weather, and Ifound to my delight that the compass inside was in working trim. 

It was an awkward thing to carry, being an old-fashioned big squarebox heavily and clumsily made; but I was so glad to get it that I wasnot for quarrelling with it, though it did for a little put me to apuzzle as to how I should pack it along. What I came to was to slingit on my back knapsack-fashion, which was a poor way to have it, sinceevery time that I looked at it I had to unsling it and then to slingit again; yet there was no other way for me to manage it, because inmy scrambling from one wreck to another I needs must have both handsfree. But what with this big box strapped to my shoulders, and the twobig bottles dangling close up under my arm-pits, I must havelooked--only there was nobody to look at me--nothing less than afigure of fun. 

As I knew not which way I ought to go, and so had all ways open to me, I laid my course for the head of the compass; and was the moredisposed thus to go due north because that way, as far as I could seefor the mist and the mast-tangle, the wrecks lay packed so closetogether that passing from one to another would be easy for me--whichwas a matter to be considered in view of the load that I had tocarry along. 

But just as I was ready to start another notion struck me. I hadnoticed the modern look of the barque, as compared with the ancientbuild of the hulks amidst which she was lying, when I first cameaboard of her; and as I was about to leave her--my eye being caught bythe soundness of a bit of line made fast to a belaying-pin on herrail--the thought occurred to me that I might find on her something orother still fit to be called food. And when this thought came to me Iunslung my compass and my water-bottles in a hurry--for I was asravenous as a man well could be. 

XXII

I GET SOME FOOD IN ME AND FORM A CRAZY PLAN

The sun by that time being risen so high that the mist was changingagain to a golden haze, and the cabin of the barque well lightedthrough the skylight over it, I felt less creepy and uncomfortable asI went down the companion-way than I had felt when I went below intothe old brig's dusky cabin in the early dawn. But for all that Iwalked gingerly, and stopped to sniff at every step that I tookdownward; for I could not by any means get rid of my dread of comingupon some grewsome thing. However, the air was sweet enough--the slideof the hatch being closed, but the doors open and the cabin wellventilated--and when I got to the foot of the stair I saw nothinghorrible in my first sharp look around. 

It was a small cabin, but comfortably fitted; and almost the firstthing that caught my eye was a work-basket spilled down into a cornerand some spools and a pair of rusty scissors lying on the floor, andthen in another corner I saw a little chair. And the sight of thesethings, which told that the barque's captain had had his wife and hischild along with him, gave me a heavy sorrowful feeling--for all thatif death had come to this sea-family the pain of it must have beenover quickly a long while back in the past. 

Two of the state-room doors, both on the starboard side, were open;and both rooms were empty, save for the mouldy bedding in the bunksand in one of them a canvas bed-bag such as seamen use. The doors ofthe other two rooms, there being four in all, were closed, and Iopened them hesitatingly; and felt a good deal easier in my mind whenI found that in neither of them was what I dreaded might be there. Inone of them the bunk had been left in disorder, as though some one hadrisen from it hurriedly, and a frock and a bonnet were hanging againstthe wall; but the other one seemed to have been used only as a sort ofstoreroom--there being in it a pair of rubber boots and a suit ofoil-skins, and a locker in which were some pretty trifles inshell-work such as might have been picked up in a West Indian port, and a little rack of books gone mouldy with the damp. One of thesebooks I opened, and found written on the flyleaf: "Mary Woodbridge, with Aunt Jane's love. For the coming Christmas of 1879"--and thisdate, though it did not settle certainly when the barque had startedon the voyage that had come to so bad an ending, at least proved thatshe had not been lying where I found her for a very greatmany years. 

As to how the barque had got so deep into the wreck-pack, she being solately added to it, I could not determine; but my conjecture was thatsome storm had broken the pack and had driven her down into it, andthen that the opening had closed again, leaving her fast a good way inits inside. But about the way of her getting there I did not muchbother myself, my one strong thought being that I had a chance offinding on board of her something that I could eat; and so--being bythat time pretty well satisfied that I was safe not to come uponanything horrid hid away in a dark corner of her--I went at my fartherexplorations with a will. Indeed, I was so desperately hungry by thattime that even had I made some nasty discoveries I doubt if they wouldhave held me back from my eager search for food. 

Luckily I had not far to look before I found what I was after, thevery first door that I tried--a door in the forward side of thecabin--opening into a pantry in which were stowed what had been, as Ijudged from the nature of them and the place where I found them, thecaptain's private stores. The door was not locked, and a good manyempty boxes were lying around on the floor with splintered lids, asthough they had been smashed open in a hurry--which looked as thoughthe pantry had been levied on suddenly to provision the boats afterthe wreck occurred, and so made me hope that the captain and his wifeand baby had got away from the barque alive. 

But the stock of stores had been a big one, and I saw that I was safeenough against starvation if only a part of what was left still weresound--and that uncertainty I settled in no time by picking up ahatchet that was lying among the broken boxes and splitting open thefirst tin on which I laid my hands. The tin had beans in it, and whenI cracked it open that way more than half of them went flying over thefloor; and they looked so good, those blessed beans, that withoutstopping to smell at them critically, or otherwise to test theirsoundness, I fell to feeding myself out of the open tin with myhand--and never stopped until all that remained of them were in myinside. I don't suppose that they were the better for having lainthere so long, but they certainly were not much the worse for it--as Iproved more conclusively, having by that time taken off the sharp edgeof my hunger, by eating a part of another tin of them and finding themvery good indeed. After that I opened a tin of meat--but on theinstant that the hatchet split into it there came bouncing out such adreadful smell that I had to rush on deck in a hurry with it and heaveit over the side. 

But even without the meat my food supply was secure to me for a goodwhile onward, there being no less than ten boxes with two dozen tinsof beans in each of them--quite enough to keep life in me for morethan half a year. I rummaged through the place thoroughly, but foundnothing more that was fit to eat there. Some boxes of biscuit and abarrel of flour had gone musty until they fairly were rotten; and allthe other things that I came across were spoiled utterly by damp andmould. As for the stores for the crew, when I went forward to have alook at them, they were spoiled too--the flour and biscuit rotten, andthe pickled meat a mouldy mass of tough fibre encrusted thicklywith salt. 

One other thing I did find in the captain's pantry that was as good, save for the mould that coated the outside of it, as when it cameaboard--and because of its excellent condition was all the moretantalizing. This was a case of plug tobacco--a bit of which shreddedand filled into one of the pipes that I found with it, could I havegot it lighted, would have made me for the moment almost a happy man. But as I could think of no way of lighting it I was worse off than ifI had not found it at all. 

Having made my tour of inspection and taken a general inventory of mynew possessions, I came on deck again and seated myself on the roof ofthe cabin that I might do some quiet thinking about what should be mynext move; for I realized that only by a stroke of rare good fortunehad I come upon this supply of food far away from, the coast of mycontinent, and that should I leave it and keep on the course northwardthat I had set for myself I very likely might starve before anothersuch store fell in my way. And yet, on the other hand, to stay onwhere I was merely because I was able to keep alive there--with nooutlook of hope to stay me--was but making a bid for that madnesswhich comes of despair. 

As to carrying any great quantity of food on with me, it was a sheerimpossibility. The tins of beans weighed each of them more than fivepounds, and a score of them would make as much of a load as I wellcould carry on level ground--and far more of a load than I couldmanage in the scramble that was before me if I decided to go on. Indeed, I had found my two bottles of water a serious inconvenience;and yet I would have them to carry also, and the big compass too. Asto water, however, since the shower of the morning. I felt lessanxiety: and the event proved that my confidence in the rainfall wasjustified--for the showers came regularly a little after dawn, andonly once or twice after that first sharp experience did I feel morethan passing pain from thirst. 

I sat there on the roof of the cabin for a good part of the morningcogitating the matter; and in the end I could think of no betterplan than one which promised certainly a world of hard labor, and onlypromised uncertainly to serve my turn. This was to stick to my projectof going steadily northward--carrying with me as much food as I couldstagger under--until I came again to the outer edge of thewreck--pack; but to safeguard my return to the barque, should my foodgive out before my journey was accomplished, by blazing my path: thatis to say, by making a mark on each wreck that I crossed so that Icould retrace my steps easily and without fear of losing my way. WhatI would gain in the end I did not try very clearly to tellmyself--having only a vague feeling that in getting again to the coastof my great dead continent I would be that much the nearer to theliving world once more; and having a clearer feeling that only bysticking at some sort of hard work that had a little hopefulness in itcould I save myself from going mad. And I cannot but think now, looking back at it, that a touch of madness already was upon me; forno man ever set himself to a crazier undertaking than that to which Iset myself then. 

XXIII

HOW I STARTED ON A JOURNEY DUE NORTH

The morning was well spent by the time that I had made my mind up, andI was growing hungry again. I made a good meal on what was left in thesecond tin of beans that I had opened for my breakfast; and when I wasdone I tried to get a light for my pipe by rubbing bits of woodtogether, but made nothing of it at all. I had read about castaways ondesert islands getting fire that way--but they went at it with drywood, I fancy, and in my mist-sodden desert all the wood was soakedwith damp. 

For that afternoon I decided to go forward only as far as I couldfetch it to be back on board the barque again by sunset, taking withme as many tins of beans as I could carry and leaving them where Imade my turn: by which arrangement I would save the carriage of mysupper and my breakfast, and would have a little store of victuals tofall back upon--when I should be fairly started on my journey--withoutcoming all the way again to the barque. 

I got the bed-bag that I had seen in the stateroom, and managed withthe rusty scissors to cut it down to half its size. Into this I packedten tins of beans, and made them snug by whipping around the bag oneend of a longish line--which served when coiled as a handle for it;and, being uncoiled, enabled me to haul it up a ship's side after me, or to let it down ahead of me, or to sway it across an open spacebetween two vessels, and so go at my climbing and jumping with bothhands free. As for the compass, my back was the only place for it andI put it there--where it did not bother me much, having little weight;and I stuck the hatchet to blaze my path with into a sort of a beltthat I made for myself with a bit of line. 

Considering what a load I was carrying, and that on every vessel whichI crossed I had to stop while I blazed a mark on her, I made a goodlong march of it before the waning of the daylight was a sign to methat I must put about again; and my return journey was both quick andeasy, for I left the whole of my load, excepting the empty bag, behindme and came back lightly along my plainly marked path. But I was tiredenough when I got on board the barque again, and glad enough to eat mysupper and then stretch myself out to sleep upon the cabin floor. 

That night, being easy in my body--except for my wholesomeweariness--and easier in my mind because it seemed to me that I wasdoing something for my deliverance, and being also aboard a vesselthat I knew was clean and pure, I had no visions of any kind whatever, but went to sleep almost in a moment, and slept like a log, as thesaying is, the whole night through. Indeed, I slept later than suitedmy purposes--being for rising early and making a long day's march ofit--and I might have wasted still more time in drowsing lazily had Inot been wakened a little before sunrise by the rattle on the cabinroof of a dashing burst of rain. I was on deck in a moment, and bystopping a scupper--as I had done the previous morning--presently hadby me a far bigger supply of water than I needed; from which I got agood drink lying down to it, and filled an empty bean-tin for anotherdrink after my breakfast, and so had my two bottles full to last meuntil the next day--and was pretty well satisfied by the rain'srecurrence that I could count upon a shower every morning about thehour of dawn. 

When I had finished my breakfast I stowed ten tins of beans in the bagand lashed four more together so that I could carry them on myshoulders--being able to manage them in that way because I had noother back-load--and so was ready to set out along my blazed path. Butbefore leaving the barque--hoping never again to lay eyes on her--Itook one more look through the cabin to make sure that I had notpassed over something that might be useful to me: and was lucky enoughto find under one of the bunks a drawer--that had been hidden by thetumbled sheets hanging down over it--in which were some shirts and asuit of linen clothing that most opportunely supplied my needs. Theyall were badly mildewed, but sound enough, and the trousers--I had nouse for the coat and waistcoat--fitted me very well. So I threw offthe rags and tatters that I was wearing and put on in their placethese sound garments; and then I picked up my load and was off. 

Not having to stop to take bearings or to blaze my way, I made suchgood time that I got to the end of the course over which I had spent agood part of the previous afternoon in not much more than three hours. I was pretty well pleased to find that I could make such briskmarching under such a load; for it showed me that even when I shouldget a long way from my base of supplies, that is to say from thebarque, I still could return to it at no great expense of time--andthe thought never entered my head that time was of no value to me, since only by what would be close upon a miracle could I hope foranything better than to find ways for killing it through all theremainder of my days. 

Being thus come to my place of deposit I had to rearrange mypacking--going forward with a lighter load of food that I mightcarry also the compass and the hatchet; and going slowly because of myconstant stops to take fresh bearings and to mark my path. But thattime I went straight onward until nightfall; and my heart sank a gooddeal within me as I found that the farther I went the more antique inmodel, and the more anciently sea-worn, were the wrecks which I cameupon--and so I knew that I must be making my way steadily into thevery depths of my maze. 

Yet I could not see that I would gain anything by going back to thebarque and thence taking a fresh departure. The barque, as I knewcertainly from the sort of craft surrounding her, was so deeply beddedin the pack that no matter how I headed from her I should have to gofar before I came again to the coast of it; and on the other hand Ithought that by holding to my course northward I might work my way inno great time across the innermost huddle of ancient wrecks--for ofthe vast number of these I had no notion then--and so to the outerbelt of wrecks new-made: on board of which I certainly should findfresh food in plenty, and from which (as I forced myself to believe) Imight get away once more into the living world. And so I pushed ondoggedly until the twilight changed to dusk and I could not venturefarther; and then I ate my supper on board of a strange old ship, asround as a dumpling and with a high bow and a higher stern; and whenI had finished settled myself for the night, being very weary, underthe in-hang of her heavy bulging side. 

When morning came--and a shower with it that gave me what drink Iwanted and a store of water for the day--I debated for a while withmyself as to whether I should go onward with my whole load, or leave apart of it in a fresh deposit to which I could return at will. Thesecond course seemed the better to me; and, indeed, it was necessaryfor me to go light-loaded in order to get on at all. For I had comeamong ships of such strange old-fashioned build, standing at bow andstern so high out of the water, that unless they happened to be lyingside by side so that I could pass from one to another amidships--whichwas the case but seldom--I had almost as much climbing up and downamong them as though I had been a monkey mounting and descending arow of trees. 

Therefore I ate as much breakfast as I could pack into myself--thatbeing as good a way as any other of carrying food with me--and then Itore the sleeves from my shirt and stuffed them from the tins that Iopened until I had two great bean sausages, which I fastenedbelt-fashion about my waist and so carried without any trouble at all. Indeed, but for this new arrangement of my load I doubt if I couldhave gone onward; and even with it I had all that I could do to makemy way. The bag with the remaining tins in it I stood away inside thecabin of the old ship--which I should have explored farther, sostrange-looking was it, but for my eager desire to get on; and I feltquite sure that I would find all just as I had left it there eventhough I did not come back again for twenty years. 

XXIV

OF WHAT I FOUND ABOARD A SPANISH GALLEON

Bent as I was upon hurrying forward, I could not but stop often in mywearying marches--which began each morning at sunrise and did not enduntil dusk--to gaze about me in wonder at the curious ancient craftacross which lay my way. It seemed to me, indeed, as though I had gotinto a great marine museum where were stored together all manner ofsuch antique vessels as not for two full centuries, and a good many ofthem for still longer, had sailed the seas. Some of them were mereshallops, so little that sailormen nowadays would not venture to goa-coasting in them, and others were great round-bellied oldmerchantmen--yet half war-ships, too--with high-built fore-castles, and towering poops blossoming out into rich carvings and havinggalleries rising one above another and with a big iron lantern at thetop of all. And all of them had been shattered in fights and tempests, and were so rotten with age that the decks beneath my feet were softand spongy; and all were weathered to a soft gray, or to a brownishblackness, with here and there a gleam of bright upon them where therestill clung fast in some protected recess of their carving a little ofthe heavy gilding with which it all had been overlaid. Guns of somesort were on every one of them--ranging upward from little swivelsmounted on the rail (mere pop-guns they looked like) to long bronzepieces of which the delicate ornamentation was lost in a thick coat ofverdigris that had been gathering slowly through years and years. Butas to the strange rig that they had worn in their days of activesea-faring, I could only guess at it; for such of them as had comeinto this death-haven with any of their top-hamper still standing, assome of them no doubt had come, long since had lost it--first thestanding-rigging and later the masts rotting, and so all togetherfalling in a heap anyway upon the decks or over the side. And such acompany of withered old sea-corpses as these ancient wrecks madethere, all huddled together with the weed thick about them, was ashopeless and as dismal a sight as ever was seen by the eyes of man. But a matter that to me was more instantly dismal, as I pressed onamong them, came when I found that I was getting so close to the endof my stock of provisions--while yet apparently no nearer to the endof my journey--that there was no shirking the necessity of returningto the distant barque for a fresh supply: a journey involving suchdesperate toil, and so much of it, that the mere thought of it sentaches through all my bones. 

It was about noon one day, while I was trying to nerve myself to makethis hard expedition, that I called a halt in order to eat mydinner--which I knew would be a very little one--being just then comeaboard of a great ungainly galleon that from the look of her I thoughtcould not be less than two centuries and a half old: she being morecuriously ancient in her build than any vessel that I had got upon, and her timbers so rotten that I had ticklish climbing as I worked myway up her high quarter--and, indeed, one of her galleries giving wayunder me, was near to spilling down her tall side to my death beneaththe tangled weed. And when at last I got to her deck I found it sosoft, partly with rottenness and partly with a sort of moss growingover it, that I was fearful at each step that it would give way underme and let me down with a crash into her hold. 

I would have been glad of a better place to eat my dinner in--shebeing sodden wet everywhere, and with a chill about her for all thewarmth of the misty air shimmering with dull sunshine, and with a rankunwholesome smell rising from her rotting mass. But all the hulksthereabouts were in so much the same condition that by going on I wasnot likely greatly to better myself; and I was so tired and so hungrythat I had no heart to attempt any more hard scrambling until I hadhad both rest and food. And so I hunted out a spot on her deck wherethe moss was thinnest and least oozy with moisture--being a place alittle sheltered by a sort of porch above her cabin doorway--and thereI seated myself and with a good deal of satisfaction fell to upon myvery scanty ration of beans. 

For a while I was busied wholly with my eating, being mighty sharp setafter my morning's walk; but when my short meal was ended I began tolook about me, and especially to peer into the deep old cabin--thatwas pretty well lighted through the stern-windows and through thedoorway at my shoulder, of which the door had rotted away. 

From where I was seated I could see nearly the whole of it; and what Ifirst noted was that a little hatch in the middle of the floor wasopen, and that dangling down into it from one of the roof-beams was adouble-purchase--as though an attempt to haul up some heavy thing fromthat place had come to a short end. For the rest, there was little tosee: only a clumsy table set fast between fixed benches close underthe stern windows; a locker in which I found, when I looked into it, asodden thing that very likely had been the ship's log-book along witha queer old Jacob's staff (as they were called) such as mariners tooktheir observations with before quadrants were known; and against thewall were hanging a couple of long old rusty swords and a rusty thingthat I took at first to be a wash-basin, but made out was adeep-curved breast-plate that must have belonged to a veryround-bellied little man. 

The floor of the cabin, as I found when I went in there, was so firmand solid--being laid in teak, very likely, and having been shelteredby the roof over it from the rains--that I had no fear, as I had onthe open deck, that the planks would give way under me and let methrough. And when I was come inside I found resting on a wooden rackset against the front wall a couple of old bell-mouthed brassfire-locks, coated thick with verdigris, and with them three smallerbell-mouthed pieces which were neither guns nor pistols but somethingbetween the two. As for the log-book, if it were the log-book, I couldmake nothing of it. It was so soaked and swelled by the dampness, andso rotten, that my fingers sank into it when I tried to pick it up asthey would have sunk into porridge; and the slimy stuff left a horridsmell upon my hand. Therefore I cannot tell what was the name of thisold ship, nor to what country she belonged, nor whither she wassailing on her last voyage; but that she was Spanish--or perhapsPortuguese--and was wrecked while on her way homeward from some portin the Indies, I do not doubt at all. 

When I had made my round of the cabin, finding so little, I came tothe open hatch in the middle of it and gazed down into the dusky depthcuriously: wondering a good deal that in what must have been almostthe moment when death was setting its clutch upon the galleon, andwhen all aboard of her assuredly were in peril of their lives, herpeople should have tried to rouse out a part of her cargo--as I hadproof that they had tried to do in the tackle still hanging there fromthe beam. And the only reasonable way to account for this strangeendeavor, it seemed to me--since provisions were not likely to becarried in that part of the vessel--was that something so precious wasdown there in the blackness as to make the risk of death worth takingin order to try to save it from the sea. 

With that there came over me an itching curiosity to find out what thetreasure was which the crew of the galleon--in such stress of somesort that they had been forced to give up the job suddenly--had triedto get out of their ship and carry off with them; and along with mycuriosity came an eager pounding of my heart as I thought tomyself--without ever stopping to think also how useless riches of anysort were to me--that by right of discovery their treasure, whateverit might be, had become mine. 

With my breath coming and going quickly, I got down upon my hands andknees and stooped my head well into the opening that I might get ridof the light in my eyes from the cabin windows; and being that way Imade out dimly that the lower block of the purchase was whipped fastto a little wooden box, and that other small boxes were stowed inregular tiers under it so that they filled snugly a little chamberabout a dozen feet square. That there were several layers of theseboxes seemed probable, for those in sight were only six feet or sobelow the level of the cabin floor, and that they held either gold orsilver I considered to be beyond a doubt; and as I raised my head upout of the hatch, my eyes blinking as the light struck them, andthought of the wealth that must be stored there in that littlechamber, and that it was mine because I had found it, I gave a longgreat sigh. 

For a minute or two I was quite dazed by my discovery; and then as Igot steadier--or got crazier, perhaps I ought to say--nothing wouldserve me but that I must get down to where my treasure was, so that myeyes might see it and that I might touch it with my hands. And withthat I caught at the tackle and gave a tug on the ropes to test them, and as they held I swung to them to slide down--and the moment that myfull weight was on them they snapped like punk, and down I went feetforemost and struck on the tiers of boxes with a bang. As I fell onlya little way, and upon a level surface--for I went clear of the boxto which the tackle was made fast--no harm came to me; but under myfeet I felt the rotten wood going squashily, and then beneath itsomething firm and hard. And when I got back my balance and lookeddown eagerly my eyes caught a dull gleam in the semi-darkness, andthen made out beneath my feet a mass of yellow ingots: and I gave agreat shout--that seemed to be forced out of me to keep my heart frombursting--for I knew that I was standing on bars of gold!

XXV

I AM THE MASTER OF A GREAT TREASURE

For a while, down in that black little place, I was quite a crazycreature; being so stirred by my finding this great store of richesthat I went to dancing and singing there--and was not a bit botheredby the vile stench rising from the rotten wood that my feet sentflying, nor by the still viler stench rising from the reeking mass ofrottenness below me in the galleon's hold. 

And then, that I might see my treasure the more clearly, I fell totossing the ingots up through the hatch into the cabin--where I couldhave a good light upon them, and could gloat upon the yellow gleam ofthem, and could make some sort of a guess at how much each of themrepresented in golden coin. From that I went on to calculating howmuch the whole of them were worth together; and when I got to the endof my figuring I fairly was dazed. 

In a rough way I estimated that each ingot weighed at least fivepounds, and as each of the little boxes contained ten of them thevalue of every single box stored there was not less than fifteenthousand dollars. As well as I could make out, the boxes were in rowsof ten and there were ten rows of them--which gave over a million anda half of dollars for the top tier alone; and as there certainly wasan under-tier the value of my treasure at the least was threemillions. But actually, as I found by digging down through the ingotsuntil I came to the solid flooring, there were in all five tiers ofboxes; and what made the whole of them worth close upon eight millionsof our American money, or well on toward two millions of Englishpounds. My brain reeled as I thought about it. The treasure that I hadpossession of was a fortune fit for a king!

I had swung myself up from the little chamber and was standing in thecabin while I made these calculations, and when at last I got to mysum total I felt so light-headed that it seemed as though I werewalking on air. Indeed, I fairly was stunned by my tremendous goodfortune and could not think clearly: and it was because my mind thuswas turned all topsy-turvy, I suppose, that the odd thought poppedinto it that in the matter of weight my gold ingots were pretty muchthe same as the tins of beans to get which I was about to return tothe barque--a foolish notion which so tickled my fancy that I burstout into a loud laugh. 

The jarring sound of my laughter, which rang out with a ghastlyimpropriety in that deathly place, brought me to my senses a littleand made me calmer. But my mind ran on for a moment or so upon the oddnotion that had provoked it, and in that time certain other thoughtsflashed into my head which had only to get there to spill out of meevery bit of my crazy joy. For first I realized that since I couldcarry only the same weight of gold that I could carry of food myactual wealth was but a single back-load, which brought my millionsdown to a few beggarly thousands; and on top of that I realized--andthis came like a douse of ice-water--that for every ingot that Icarried away with me I must leave a like weight of food behind: whichmeant neither more nor less than that my great treasure, for all thegood that ever it would be to me--so little could I venture to take ofit on these terms--might as well be already at the bottom of the sea. 

And then, being utterly dispirited and broken, I fell to thinking howlittle difference it made one way or the other--how even a singleingot would be a vain lading--since I had no ground for hoping thatever again would I get to a region where I would have use for gold. And with that--though I kept on staring in a dull way at the ingotsscattered over the floor of the cabin--I thought of the treasure nolonger: my heart being filled with a great sorrowing pity for myself, because of the doom upon me to live out whatever life might be leftme in the most horrid solitude into which ever a man was cast. 

For a long while I stood despairing there; and then at last the hopeof life began to rise in me again--as it always must rise, no matterhow desperate are the odds against it, in the mind of a sound andvigorous man. And with this saner feeling came again my desire to pushon in the direction that offered me a chance of deliverance--leavingall my treasure behind me, since it was worth less to me than food;and presently came the farther hope that when I had succeeded infinding a way out of my sea-prison, and so was sure of my life oncemore, I might be able to return to the galleon and take away with meat least some portion of the great riches that I had found. 

Because of this foolish hope, and the very human comfort that I foundin knowing myself to be the possessor of such prodigious wealth, Ineeds must jump down again to where it was and take another survey ofit before I left it behind. And then, being cooler and looking morecarefully, I noticed that the box to which the tackle had been madefast was not like the other boxes--though about the same size withthem--but was a little coffer that seemed once to have been locked andthat still had around it the rusty remnants of iron bands. Thisdifference in the make of it put into my head the notion that itscontents were more precious than the contents of the otherboxes--though how that could be I did not well see; and my notionseemed the more reasonable as I reflected that if the coffer reallywere of an extraordinary value there would have been sense in tryingto save it even in a time of great peril--which was more than could besaid of trying to load down boats launched in the midst of some finaldisaster with any of those heavy boxes of gold. 

My mind became excited by another mirage of riches as these thoughtswent through it, and to settle the matter I stooped down and got agrip on the coffer--which was made of a tougher wood than the boxesand held together--and managed by a good deal of straining to lift itup through the hatch into the cabin, where I could examine it atmy ease. 

When it was new an axe would not have made much impression upon it, sostrongly had it been put together; but there were left only blackstains to show where the iron had bound it, and the wood had rotteduntil it was softer than the softest bit of pine. Indeed, I had onlyto give a little jerk to the lid to open it: both the lock and thehinges being gone with rust, and the lid held in place only by a sortof sticky slime. 

But when I did get it open the first thing that came out of it was astench so vile that I had to jump up in a hurry and rush to the opendeck until the worst of it had ebbed away; and this exceeding evilodor was given off by a slimy ooze of rotted leather--as I knew alittle later by finding still unmelted some bits of small leather bagsin which what was stored there had been tied. But even as I jumped upand left the cabin my eyes caught a gleam of brightness in the horridslimy mess that set my heart to beating hard again; and it poundedaway in my breast still harder when I came back and made out clearlywhat I had found. 

For there in the rotten ooze, strewn thickly, was such a collection ofglittering jewels that my eyes fairly were dazzled by them; and when Ihad turned the coffer upside down on the deck so that the slime flowedaway stickily--giving off the most dreadful stench that ever I haveencountered--I saw a heap of precious stones such as for size andbeauty has not been gathered into one place, I suppose--unless it mayhave been in the treasury of some Eastern sovereign--since the verybeginning of the world. At a single glance I knew that the greattreasure of gold, which had seemed to me overwhelming because of itsimmensity, was as nothing in comparison with this other treasurewherein riches were so concentrate and sublimate that I had the veryessence of them: and I reeled and trembled again as I hugged thethought to me that by my finding of it I was made master of it all. 

XXVI

OF A STRANGE SIGHT THAT I SAW IN THE NIGHT-TIME

I was pretty much mooning mad for a while, I suppose: sometimeswalking about the cabin and thrusting with my feet contemptuously atthe gold ingots strewn over the floor of it, and sometimes standingstill in a sort of rapt wonder over my heap of jewels--and anythinglike sensible thinking was quite beyond the power of my unbalancedmind. But at last I was aroused, and so brought to myself a little, bythe daylight waning suddenly: as it did in that region when the sundropped down into the thick layer of mist lying close upon thewater--making at first a strange purplish dusk, and then a richcrimson after-glow that deepened into purple again, and so turningslowly into blackness as night came on. 

When I had come aboard the galleon, about noon-time, and had found herso sodden with wet and so reeking with foul odors--as, indeed, wereall of the very ancient ships which made the mid-part of that seagraveyard--I had made my mind up to a forced march in the afternoonthat I hoped would carry me through the worst of all that rottenness, and so to a ship partly dry and less ill-smelling for the night. Butwhen I came out from the cabin and looked about me, and saw how thickand black were the shadows in the clefts between the wrecks, I knewthat I could not venture onward, but must pass the night where I was. And this was a prospect not at all to my mind. 

The cabin, of course, was the only place for me, the soaked deck withthe soaked moss on top of it being quite out of the question; but eventhe cabin was not fit for a dog to lie in, so chill and damp was itand so foul with the stench rising and spreading from the slime ofrotted leather that I had emptied from the coffer and that made alittle vile pool upon the floor. And through the open hatch there cameup a dismal heavy odor of all the rotten stuff down there that almostturned my stomach, and that made the air laden with it hard tobreathe--though in my hot excitement I had not noticed it at all. Butthis last I got the better of in part by covering again the opening, though I had to move the hatch very gently and carefully to keep itfrom falling into rotten fragments in my hands. Yet because it was sodense with moisture, when I did get it set in place, it pretty wellkept the stench down. And then I kicked away some of the ingots into acorner, and so cleared a space on the floor where I could stretchmyself just within the cabin door. 

These matters being attended to, I seated myself in the same placewhere I had eaten my dinner--just outside the door, under the littlesort of porch overhanging it--and ate the short ration that I allowedmyself for my supper, and found it very much less than my livelyhunger required. When I had finished I sat on there for a good whilelonger, being very loath to go into the cabin; but at last, by findingmyself nodding with weary drowsiness, I knew that sleep would comequickly, and so went inside and laid myself down upon the floor. Therestill was a faint glimmer of dying daylight outside, and this littleglow somehow comforted me as I lay there facing the doorway andblinking now and then before my eyes were tight closed; but I did notlie long that way half-waking, being so utterly fagged in both mindand body that I dropped off into deep slumber before thedarkness fell. 

I suppose that even in my sleep I had an uneasy sense of my bleaksurroundings; and that this, in the course of three or four hours--bywhich time I was a good deal rested and so slept less soundly--got thebetter of my weariness and roused me awake again. But when I firstwoke I was sure that I had slept the night through and that earlymorning was come--for there was so much light in the cabin that Inever thought to account for it save by the return of day. Yet thelight was not like daylight, as I realized when I had a little moreshaken off my sleepiness, being curiously white and soft. 

I turned over--for I had rolled in my uneasy sleep and got my backtoward the doorway--and raised myself a little on my elbow so that Imight see out clearly; and what I saw was so unearthly strange, and ina way so awe-compelling, that in another moment I was on my feet andstaring with all my eyes. Over the whole deck of the galleon a softlambent light was playing, and this went along her bulwarks and upover her high fore-castle so that all the lines of her structure weredefined sharply by it; and pale through the mist against theblackness, out over her low waist, I could catch glimpses of the othertall old ships lying near her all likewise shining everywhere with thesame soft flames--which yet were not flames exactly, but rather aflickering glow. 

In a moment or so I realized that this luminous wonder, which at thefirst look had so strong a touch of the supernatural in it, was nomore than the manifestation of a natural phenomenon: being the shimmerof phosphorescent light upon the soaking rotten woodwork of thegalleon and of the ships about her, as rotten and as old. But makingthis explanation to myself did not lessen the frightening strangenessof the spectacle, nor do much to stop the cold creeps which ran overme as I looked at it: I being there solitary in that marvellousbrightness--that I knew was in a way a death-glow--the onething alive. 

But presently my unreasoning shivering dread began to yield a little, as my curiosity bred in me an eager desire to see the whole of thiswondrous soft splendor; for I made sure from my glimpses over thegalleon's bulwarks that it was about me on every side. And so Istepped out from the cabin upon the deck, where my feet sank into theshort mossy growth that coated the rotten planks and I was fairlywalking in what seemed like a lake of wavering pale flame; and fromthere, that I might see the better, I climbed cautiously up the rottenstair leading to the roof of the cabin, and thence to the littleover-topping gallery where the stern-lantern was. And from that heightI could gaze about me as far as ever the mist would let me see. 

Everywhere within the circle that my eyes covered--which was not avery big one, for in the night the mist was thick and low-lying--theold wrecks wedged together there were lighted with the same lambentflames: which came and went over their dead carcasses as though theyall suddenly were lighted and then as suddenly were put out again; andfarther away the glow of them in the mist was like a silveryshimmering haze. By this ebbing and flowing light--which seemed tome, for all that I knew the natural cause of it, so outside of naturethat I thrilled with a creeping fear as I looked at it--I could seeclearly the shapes of the strange ancient ships around me: their greatpoops and fore-castles rising high above their shallow waists, andhere and there among them the remnant of a mast making a line of lightrising higher still--like a huge corpse-candle shining against theblackness beyond. And the ruin of them--the breaks in their lines, andthe black gaps where bits of their frames had rotted awaycompletely--gave to them all a ghastly death-like look; while theirwild tangling together made strange ragged lines of brightnesswavering under the veil of mist, as though a desolate sea-city werelying there dead before me lit up with lanterns of despair. 

Yet that which most keenly thrilled me with a cold dread was my strongconviction that I could see living men moving hither and thither overthose pale-lit decks, where my reason told me that only ancient deathcould be; for the play of the flickering light made such a commotionof fleeting flames and dancing shadows, going and coming in all mannerof fantastic shapes, that every shattered hulk around me seemed tohave her old crew alive and on board of her again--all hurrying inbustling crowds fore and aft, and up and down the heights of her, asthough under orderly command. And at times these shapes were so realand so distinct to me that I was for crying out to them--and wouldcheck myself suddenly, shivering with a fright which I knew was out ofall reason but which for the life of me I could not keep down. 

And so the night wore away: while I stood there on the galleon's poopwith the soft pale flames flickering around me in the mist, and myfears rising and falling as I lost and regained control of myself; andI think that it is a wonder that I did not go mad. 

XXVII

I SET MYSELF TO A HEAVY TASK

At last, after what seemed to me an age of waiting for it, a littlepinkish tone began to glow in the mist to the eastward; and as thathonest light got stronger the death-fires on the old galleon and onthe wrecks around her paled quickly until they were snuffed outaltogether--and then came the customary morning down-pour of rain. 

With the return of the blessed daylight, and with the enlivening douseof cool fresh water upon me, I got to be myself again: my fancifulfears of the night-time leaving me, and my mind coming back soberly toa consideration of my actual needs. Of these the most pressing, as mystomach told me, was to get my breakfast; and when that matter, in avery poor way, had been attended to, and I had drunk what water Ineeded--without much relishing it--from a pool that had formed on thedeck where the timbers sagged down a little, I was in better heart tolay out for myself a plan of campaign. 

In one way planning was not necessary. By holding to a northerlycourse I believed that I had got at least half way across mycontinent, and my determination was fixed to keep on by thenorth--rather than risk a fresh departure that might only carry me bya fresh way again into the depths of the tangle--until I should comeonce more to the open sea: if I may call open sea that far outlyingexpanse of ocean covered with thick-grown weed. But it was needfulthat I should plan for my supply of food as I went onward, that was tobe got only by returning to the far-away barque; and also I felt anitching desire--as strong as at first blush it was unreasonable--tocarry away with me some part of the treasure that I had found. That Iever should get out into the world again, and so have the good of myriches, seemed likely to me only in my most sanguine moments; but evenon the slimmest chance of accomplishing my own deliverance I had avery natural human objection to leaving behind me the wealth that Ihad found through such peril--only to lie there for a while longeridly, and then to be lost forever when the galleon sank to the bottomof the sea. 

As to the gold, it was plain that I could carry off so little of itthat I might as well resign myself--having that which was better worthworking for--to losing it all. But my treasure of jewels was anothermatter. This was so very much more valuable than the gold--for thestones for the most part were of a prodigious size and a rarefineness--that between the two there really was no comparison; and atthe same time it was so compact in bulk and so petty in weight that Imight easily carry the whole of it with me and a good store of foodtoo. And so, to make a beginning, I picked the stones out of the slimyand stinking ooze in which they were lying and washed them clean inthe pool of water on the deck; and then I packed them snugly into theshirt-sleeve in which my beans had been stored--and tickled myself thewhile with the fancy that most men would be willing for the sake ofstuffing a shirt-sleeve that way to cut off the arm to whichit belonged. 

My packing being finished, and my precious bag laid away in a cornerof the cabin until I should come to fetch it again, I was in a bettermood for facing my long march back to the barque: for I had come tohave fortune as well as life to work for, and those two strongstimulants to endeavor working together gave my spirits a great upwardpull. And, fortunately, my cheerfulness staid by me through my longscrambling struggle backward along my blazed path; nor was it, inreality, as hard a journey as I had expected it to be--for I had but alight load of food to carry, barely enough to last me through, and themarks which I had left upon the wrecks in passing made my way plain. And so, at last, I got back to the barque one evening about sunset, and had almost a feeling of homecoming in boarding her again; and Iwas thankful enough to be able to eat all the supper I wanted, andthen to lie down comfortably in her clean cabin and to rest myself insound slumber after my many restless nights on rotten old shipsreeking with a chill dampness that struck into my very bones. 

I slept soundly and woke refreshed; and for that I was thankful, sincethe work cut out for me--to get back to the galleon with enoughprovisions to last me until I could cross the rest of thewreck-pack--was about as much as a strong man in good condition coulddo. However, I had thought of something that would make this hard jobless difficult; for the ease with which I had carried a part of myfood in long narrow bags, sausage-fashion--thereby getting rid ofboth the weight and the awkwardness of the tins--had put into my headthe notion of carrying in that way the whole of my fresh supply, andso carrying at least twice as much of it. And I calculated--since Icould go rapidly along my blazed path--that by cutting myself down tovery short rations I could get back to the galleon with a bigger stockof provisions than that with which I left the barque when I made myfirst start toward the north--and if the galleon lay, as I believedthat she did, about in the centre of the pack, this would give meenough food to last me until I got across to the other side. So Irummaged out some more of the linen shirts that I had found--taking afresh one for my own wear to begin with--and set myself to mysausage-making with the sleeves of them; packing each sleeve withbeans as tight as I could ram it, and working over each a netting oflight line that I finished off with loops at the ends. Ten of my bigsausages I made into a bundle to be carried on my shoulders like aknapsack; and the rest I arranged to swing by their loops from a ropecollar about my neck, with another rope run through the lower loops tobe made fast about my waist and so hold them steady--and thisarrangement, as I found when I tried it, answered very well. Andfinally, that I might carry my jewels the more securely, I cut off asleeve from the oil-skin jacket to serve for an outer casing for them, and took along also some of the light line to net over the bundle andmake it solid and strong; in that way guarding against the chance oftheir rubbing a hole in their linen covering--by which I might havelost them all. 

I worked fast over my packing, and got it all finished and was readyto start away by not a great while after sunrise; yet when the timefor my start came I hesitated a little, so darkly uncertain seemed theissue of the adventure that I had in hand. Indeed, the whole of myproject was a wild one, such as no man not fairly driven into itwould have entertained at all. Its one certainty was that only byexcessive toil could I even hope to carry it through. All else wasdoubtful: for I knew not how distant were the farther bounds of thedesolate dead region into which I was bent upon penetrating; nor had Iground for believing--since I had food in plenty where I was--that Iwould gain anything by traversing it; and back of all that was thegloomy chance of some accident befalling me that would end in my dyingmiserably by the way. While I was busily employed in making ready formy march I had grown quite cheerful; but suddenly my little crop ofgood spirits withered within me, and when at last I did go forward itwas with a very heavy heart. 

XXVIII

HOW I RUBBED SHOULDERS WITH DESPAIR

Could I have foreseen all that was ahead of me I doubt if I shouldhave had the courage to go on: choosing rather to stay there on thebarque until I had eaten what food I had by me, and then to dieslowly--and finding that way easier than the one I chose to follow, with its many days of struggle and its many chill nights of sorrow andI throughout the whole of it rubbing shoulders with despair. 

As I think of it now, that long, long march seems to me like ahorrible nightmare; and sometimes it comes back to me as a realnightmare in my dreams. Again, always heavy laden, I am climbing andscrambling and jumping, endlessly and hopelessly, among old rottenhulks; each morning trying to comfort myself with the belief that bynight I may see some sign of ships less ancient, and so know that I amwinning my way a little toward where I would be; and each nightfinding myself still surrounded by tall antique craft such as have notfor two centuries and more held the seas, with the feeling coming downcrushingly upon me that I have not advanced at all; and even then nogood rest for me--as I lie down wearily in some foul-smelling oldcabin, chill with heavy night-mist and with the reeking damp of oozyrotten timbers, and perhaps find in it for my sleeping-mates littleheaps of fungus outgrowing from dead men's bones. And the mere dreamof all this so bitterly hurts me that I wonder how I ever came throughthe reality of it alive. 

At the start, as I have said, I had calculated that the treasure-ladengalleon lay about in the centre of the wreck-pack, and therefore thatI would get across from her to the other side of the pack in about thesame time that I had taken to reach her in my first journey from thebarque; and on the basis of that assumption, when I was come to heragain, I shaped my course hopefully for the north. But my calculation, though on its face a reasonable enough one, proved to be most woefullywrong: and I have come to the conclusion, after a good deal ofthinking about it, that this was because the whole vast mass ofwreckage had a circular motion--the great current that created itgiving at the same time a swirl to it--which made the seeminglystraight line that I followed in reality a constantly extended curve. But whatever the cause may have been, the fact remains that when by mycalculation I should have been on the outer edge of the wreck-pack Istill was wandering in its depths. In one way my march was easier thelonger that it lasted, my load growing a little lighter daily as mystore of food was transferred to my stomach from my back. At firstthis steady decrease of my burden was a comfort to me; but after awhile--when more than half of it was gone, and I still seemed to be nonearer to the end of my journey than when I left the galleon--I had avery different feeling about it: for I realized that unless I camespeedily to ships whereon I would find food--of which there seemedlittle probability, so ancient were the craft surrounding me--I eithermust go back to the barque and wait on her until death came to meslowly, or else die quickly where I was. And so I had for mycomforting the option of a tardy death or a speedy one--with thecertainty of the latter if I hesitated long in choosing betweenthe two. 

I suppose that the two great motive powers in the world are hope anddespair. It was hope that started me on that dismal march, but ifdespair had not at last come in to help me I never should have got toits end: for I took Death by both shoulders and looked straight intothe eyes of him when I decided, having by me only food for three dayslonger--and at that but as little as would keep the life in me--togive over all thought of returning to the barque and to make a dashforward as fast as I could go. I had little enough to carry, butthat I might have still less I left my hatchet behind me--having, indeed, no farther use for it since if my dash miscarried I was donefor and there was no use in marking a path over which I never couldreturn; and I was half-minded to leave my bag of jewels behind me too. But in the end I decided to carry the jewels along with me--my fancybeing caught by the grim notion that if I did die miserably in thatvile solitude at least I would die one of the richest men in all theworld. As to my water-bottles, one of them I had thrown away when Ifound that I could count on the morning showers certainly, and theother had been broken in one of my many tumbles: yet without muchtroubling me--as I found that I could manage fairly well, eating butlittle, if I filled myself pretty full of water at the beginning ofeach day. And so, with only the bag of food and the bag of jewels uponmy back, and with the compass on top of them, I was ready to pressonward to try conclusions with despair. 

The very hopelessness of my effort, and the fact that at last I wasdealing with what in one way was a certainty--for I knew that if myplan miscarried I had only a very little while longer to live--gave mea sort of stolid recklessness which amazingly helped me: stimulatingme to taking risks in climbing which before I should have shrunkfrom, and so getting me on faster; and at the same time dulling mymind to the dreads besetting it and my body to its ceaseless painsbegot of weariness and thirst and scanty food. So little, indeed, didI care what became of me that even when by the middle of my secondday's march I saw no change in my surroundings I did not mind it much:but, to be sure, at the outset of this last stage of my journey I hadthrown hope overboard, and a man once become desperate can feel nofarther ills. 

But what does surprise me--as I think of it now, though it did not inany way touch me then--was the slowness with which, when there wasreason for it, my dead hope got alive again: as it did, and for cause, at the end of that same second day--for by the evening I came out, with a sharp suddenness, from among the strange old craft which for solong on every side had beset me and found myself among ships which bycomparison with the others--though they too, in all conscience, wereold enough--seemed to be quite of a modern build. What is likely, Ithink--and this would help to account for my long wanderings overthose ancient rotten hulks--is that some stormy commotion of the wholemass of wreckage, such as had thrust the barque whereon I had foundfood deep into the thick of it, had squeezed a part of the centre ofthe pack outward; in that way making a sort of promontory--alongwhich by mere bad mischance I had been journeying--among the wrecks ofa later time. But this notion did not then occur to me; nor did I, asI have said, at first feel any very thrilling hope coming back to mewhen I found myself among modern ships again--so worn had my longtussle with difficulties left my body and so sodden was my mind. 

At first I had just a dull feeling of satisfaction that I had got oncemore--after my many nights passed on hulks soaked with wet torottenness--on good honest dry planks: where I could sleep with nodeadly chill striking into me, and where in my restless wakings Ishould not see the pale gleam of death-fires, and where foul stencheswould not half stifle me the whole night long. And it was not until Ihad eaten my scant supper, and because of the comfort that even thatlittle food gave me felt more disposed to cheerfulness, that in a weakfaint-hearted way I began to hope again that perhaps the run of luckagainst me had come to an end. 

In truth, though, there was not much to be hopeful about. For mysupper I had eaten the half of what food was left me, and it was solittle that I still had a mighty hungry feeling in my belly after itwas down. For my breakfast I should eat what was left; and after that, unless I found fresh supplies quickly, I was in a fair way to lie downbeside my bag of jewels and die of starvation--like the veriestbeggar that ever was. But I did hope a little all the same; and when Iwent on again the next morning, though my last scrap of food waseaten, my spirits kept up pretty well--for I was sure from the look ofthe wrecks which I traversed that the dead ancient centre of mycontinent at last was behind me, and that its living outer fringecould not be very far away. 

All that day I pressed forward steadily, helped by my littleflickering flame of hope--which burned low because sanguineexpectation does not consort well with an empty stomach, yet whichkept alive because the wreck-pack had more and more of a modern lookabout it as I went on. But the faintness that I felt coming over me asthe day waned gave me warning that the rope by which I held my lifewas a short one; and as the sun dropped down into the mist--at oncethinning it, so that I could see farther, and giving it a ruddy tonewhich sent red streams of brightness gleaming over the tangle ofwreckage far down into the west--I felt that the rope must come to anend altogether, and that I must stop still and let death overtake me, by the sunset of one day more. 

And then it was, just as the sun was sinking, that I saw clearly--faraway to the westward--the funnel of a steamer standing out black andsharp against the blood-red ball that in another minute went downinto the sea. And with that glimpse--which made me sure that I wasclose to the edge of the wreck-pack, and so close to food again--astrong warm rush of hope swept through me that outcast finally mydespair. 

XXIX

I GET INTO A SEA CHARNEL-HOUSE

That I should get to the steamer that night I knew was cleanimpossible, for she lay a long way off from me, and that I had seenher funnel at all was due to the mere happy accident of its standingfor that single minute directly between me and the setting sun. I didhope, though, that by pressing hard toward her I might fetch aboard ofsome vessel not long wrecked on which I would find eatable food; yetin this I was disappointed, the shadows coming down on me so fast thatI was forced in a little while to pull up short--stopping while stilla little daylight remained so that I might stow myself the morecomfortably for the night. 

As to looking for provender on the little old ship that I settled tocamp on, I knew that it was useless. From her build I fixed her asbelonging to the beginning of the present century, and from her depthin the wreck-pack she probably had met her death-storm not less thanthreescore years before; and so what provisions she had carried longsince had wasted away. Yet there was a chance that I might find somespirits aboard of her--which would be a poor substitute for food, butbetter than nothing--and I hurried to have a look in her cabin beforedarkness settled down. 

The cabin hatch was closed, and as it was both locked and swelled withmoisture I could not budge it; but two or three kicks sent the doorsbeneath the hatch flying and so opened an entrance for me--that I wasslow to make use of because of a heavy musty stench which poured outfrom that shut up place and made me turn a little sick, as I got myfirst strong whiff of it. Indeed, I was so faint and so hungry that Iwas in no condition to stand up against that curiously vile smell. Tolessen it, by getting a current of air into the cabin, I smashed inthe little skylight--over which some ropes were stretched and stillheld the remnant of a tarpaulin, that must have been set in placewhile the storm was blowing which sent the ship to her account; andthis so far improved matters that presently I was able to go down thecompanion-way, though the stench still was horridly strong. 

At the bottom of the stair, the light being faint, I tripped oversomething; and looking down saw bones lying there with a sort offungus partly covering them, and to the skull there still clung a matof woolly hair plaited here and there into little braids: by which, and by the size of the bones, it seemed that a negro woman must havebeen left fastened into the cabin to die there after the crew hadbeen washed overboard or had taken to the boats. But even then thebusiness in which the ship had been engaged did not occur to me; andafter hesitating for a moment I went on into the cabin, and lookedabout me as well as I could in the twilight for the case of bottlesthat I hoped to find. 

The case was there, as I was pretty certain that it would be, suchprovision rarely being absent from old-time vessels, but all thebottles had been taken from it except an empty one--which looked asthough the cabin had been opened at the last moment to fetch outsupplies for the boats, and then deliberately locked fast again withthe poor woman inside: an act so barbarous that it did not seempossible unless a crew of out and out devils had been in charge of theancient craft. However, the matter which just then most concerned mewas the liquor that I was in search of, that I might a little stay mystomach with it against the hunger that was tormenting me; and so Iransacked the lockers that ran across the stern of the ship and acrossa part of the bulkhead forward, in the faint hope that I might comeupon another supply--but my search was a vain one, two of the lockershaving only some mouldy clothing in them, and all the rest beingfilled with arms. The stock of muskets and pistols and cutlasses wasso large, so far beyond any honest traders needs, that I could not atall account for it: until the thought occurred to me that the vesselI had come aboard of had been a pirate--and that notion seemed to fitin pretty well with her crew having gone off and left the poor womanlocked up in the cabin to starve. However, as I found out a littlelater, while my guess was a close one it still was wrong. 

The four bunks, two on each side, were not enclosed, and the only dooropening from the cabin was in the bulkhead forward--and worth tryingbecause it might lead to a store-room, I thought. It was a verystout-looking door, and across it, resting in strong iron catches, were two heavy wooden bars. These puzzled me a good deal, there beingno sense in barring the outside of a store-room door in that fashion, since the door did not seem to be locked and anybody could lift thebars away. However, I got them out of their sockets without muchdifficulty; and after a good deal of tugging at a ring made fast in itI got the door open too--and instantly I was thrust back from theopening by an outpouring of the same vile heavy musty stench that hadcome up from the cabin when I staved in the hatch, only this was stillranker and more vile. And I found that the door did not lead into alittle store-room, as I had fancied, but right through from the cabinto the ship's main-deck--that stretched away forward in a gloomytunnel, as black as a cellar on a rainy night, into which I couldsee only for four or five yards. Indeed, but for the way that the shipchanced to be lying--with her stern toward the west, so that a gooddeal of light came in through the broken skylight from the ruddysunset--I could not have seen into it at all. 

But I saw far enough, and more than far enough--and the sight that Ilooked on sent all over me a creeping chill. Wherever the light went, skeletons were lying--with a fungus growth on the bones that gave ahorrid effect of scraps of flesh still clinging to them, and theloose-lying skulls (of which a couple were close by the doorway) werecovered still with a matting of woolly hair. And I could tell from thetangle that the skeletons were in--though also lying in some sort oforderly rows, because of the chains which held them fast--that thepoor wretches to whom they had belonged had writhed and struggled overeach other in their agony: and I could fancy what a hell that blackplace must have been while death was doing his work among them, theyall squirming together like worms in a pot; and it seemed to me that Icould hear their yells and howls--at first loud and terrible, and thengrowing fainter and fainter until they came to be but low groans ofmisery that at last ended softly in dying sighs. 

The horror of it all came home to me so sharply, after I had stoodthere at the doorway for a moment or two held fast by a sort ofghastly fascination, that I gave a yell myself as keen and as loud asany which the poor blacks had uttered; and with that I turned aboutand dashed up the companionway to the deck as hard as I could go. Norcould I bear to abide on the slave-ship, nor even near her, for thenight. Very little light was left to me, but I made the most of it andwent scrambling from hulk to hulk until I had put a good distancebehind me--so that I not only could not see her but could not tellcertainly, having twisted and turned a dozen times in my scurryingflight, in which direction she lay. And being thus rid of her, Ifairly dropped--so weak and so wearied was I--on the deck of thevessel that I had come to, and lay there for a while resting, with mybreath coming and going in panting sobs. 

What sort of a craft I had fetched aboard of I did not dare to try tofind out. Going any farther then was impossible, the twilight havingslipped away almost into darkness, and whatever she might be I had tomake the best of her for the night. And so I settled myself into acorner well up in her bows--that I might be as far away as possiblefrom any grisly things that might be hid in her cabin--and did my bestto go to sleep. But it was a long while, utterly weary though I was, before sleep would come to me. My stomach, being pretty wellreconciled by that time to emptiness, did not bother me much; but myfrightened rush away from that sickening charnel-house had left megreatly tormented by thirst, and my mind was so fevered by the horrorof what I had seen that for a long while I could not stop makingpictures to myself of the black wretches, chained and imprisoned, writhing under the torture of starvation and at last dying desperatein the dark. And when sleep did come to me I still had the sameloathsome horrors with me in my dreams. 

XXX

I COME TO THE WALL OF MY SEA-PRISON

The morning shower that waked me gave me the water that I so longedfor; but it only a little refreshed me, because my chief need wasfood. Being past the first sharp pangs of hunger, I was in no greatbodily pain; but a heavy languor was upon me that dulled me in bothflesh and spirit and disposed me to give up struggling for a while, that I might enjoy what seemed to me just then to be the supremedelight of sitting still. Yet I had sense enough to know that if Isurrendered to this feeling it would be the end of me; and after alittle I found energy enough to throw it off. 

I was helped thus to rouse myself by finding, as I looked around mewith dull eyes, that the hulk I had come aboard of in such a hurry inthe twilight certainly had not been wrecked for any great length oftime. She was a good-sized schooner, quite modern in her build; and, although she had weathered everywhere to a pale gray, her timbers werenot rotten and what was left of her cordage still was fairly sound:all of which, as I took it in slowly, gave me hope of finding aboardof her some sort of eatable food. 

But while this hope was slow to shape itself in my heavy mind, I wasquick enough to act upon it when once it had taken form. With abriskness that quite astonished me I got on my feet and walked aft tothe cabin--the cabin pantry being the most likely place in which tolook for food put up in tins; and I was farther encouraged by findingthe hatch open and the cabin itself fresh-smelling and clean. And, tomy joy, the food that I hoped to find in the pantry really was there;and such a plenty of it that I could not have eaten it in awhole year. 

I had the good sense to go slowly--and that was not easy, for at sightof something that would satisfy it my hunger all of a sudden woke upragingly; but I knew that I stood a good chance of killing myselfafter my long fast unless I held my appetite well in hand, and so Ibegan with a tin of peaches--opening it with a knife that I foundthere--and it seemed to me that those peaches were the most deliciousthing that I had tasted since I was born. After they were down I wenton deck again--to be out of reach of temptation--and staid thereresolutely for an hour; getting at this time, and also keeping myselfa little quiet, by counting six thousand slowly--and it did seem to meas though I never should get to the end! Then I had another of thosedelicious tins; and after a trying half hour of waiting I had a third;and then--being no longer ravenous, and no longer having the feelingof infinite emptiness--I laid down on the deck just outside the cabinscuttle and slept like a tree in winter until well along in theafternoon. 

I woke as hungry as a hound, but with a comfortable and natural sortof hunger that I set myself to satisfying with good strong food:eating a tin of meat with a lively relish and without any followingstomach-ache, and drinking the juice of a tin of peaches afterit--there being no water fit to drink on board. My meal began to setme on my feet again; but I still felt so tired and so shaky that Idecided to stay where I was until the next morning--having at last acomforting sense of security that took away my desire to hurry andmade me wholly easy in my mind. And this feeling got stronger as thesun fell away westward and made a crimson bank of mist along thehorizon, against which I saw the funnels of more than a dozensteamers--and so knew that the coast of my continent surely was closeby. What I would do when I got to the steamers was a matter that I didnot bother about. For the moment I was satisfied with the certaintythat I would find aboard of them food in plenty and a comfortableplace to sleep in, and that was enough. And so I did not make anyplans, or even think much; but just ate as much supper as I couldstow away in my carcase, and then settled myself in the schooner'scabin for the night. 

In the morning I was so well rested, and felt so fresh again, that Iwas eager to get on; and I was so light-hearted that I fell to singingas I pushed forward briskly, being full of hope once more and of airyfancies that I had only to reach the edge of the wreck-pack in orderto hit upon some easy way of getting off from it out over the opensea. A little thinking would have shown me, of course, that my fancieshad nothing to rest on, and that coming once more to the coast of mycontinent was only to be where I was when my long journey through thatdeath-stricken mass of rottenness began; but the reaction of myspirits was natural enough after the gloom that for so long had heldthem, and so was the castle-building that I took to as I went onwardas to what I would do with my great treasure when at last I had itsafe out in the living world. 

Although I did not doubt that food of some sort was to be found onboard of all the vessels which I should cross that day, I guardedagainst losing time in looking for it by carrying along with me acouple of tins of meat--slung on my shoulders in a wrapping ofcanvas--and on one of these, about noon-time, I made a good meal. WhenI had finished it I was sorry enough that I had not brought a tin ofpeaches too, for the meat was pretty well salted and made me asthirsty as a fish very soon after I got it down. 

But my thirst was not severe enough to trouble me greatly; and, indeed, I partly forgot it in my steadily growing excitement as Ipressed forward and more and more distinctly saw the funnels of awhole fleet of steamers looming up through the golden mist ahead of melike chimneys in a sun-shot London fog. And so the afternoon went by, and my crooked rough path slipped away behind me so rapidly that by agood hour before sunset I was near enough to the steamers to see notonly their funnels but their hulls. 

The look of one of them, and she was one of the nearest, was sofamiliar as I began to make her out clearly that I was sure that I hadgot back again to the _Hurst Castle_; for she was just about the sizeof the _Hurst Castle_, and was lying with her bow down in the waterand her stern high in the air--and the delight of this discovery threwme into such a ferment that I quite forgot how tired I was and fairlyran across the last half dozen vessels that I had to traverse before Icame under her tall side. However, when I got close to her I saw thatshe was not the _Hurst Castle_ after all, but only another unluckyvessel that had broken her nose in collision and so had filled forwardand gone sagging down by the bows. 

As it happened, the wreck from which I had to board her was a littlewater-logged brig, close under her quarter, so low-lying that thetilted-up stern of the steamer fairly towered above the brig like athree-story house; and at first it seemed to me that I was about aslikely to climb up a house-front as I was to climb up that high smoothwall of iron. But a part of the brig's foremast still was standing, and from it a yard jutted out to within jumping distance of thesteamer's rail; and while that was not a way that I fancied--nor a waythat ever I should have dared to take, I suppose, had there been anychoice in the matter--up it I had to go. Hot as I was though witheagerness, I was a badly scared man as I slowly got to my feet andsteadied myself for a moment on the end of the yard and then jumpedfor it; and a very thankful man, an instant later, when I struck thesteamer's rail and fell floundering inboard on her deck--though Ibruised myself in my fall pretty badly, and got an unexpected crack onthe back of my head as my bag of jewels flew up and hit me witha bang. 

However, no real harm was done; and I was so keen to look about methat in a moment I was on my legs again and went forward, limping alittle, that I might get up on the bridge: for my strongestdesire--stronger even than my longing to go in search, of the waterthat I did not doubt I would find in the steamer's tanks--was to gazeout over the open ocean, across which I had to go in some way if everagain I was to be free. 

The sun was close down on the horizon, a red ball of fire glowingthrough the mist, and in the mist above and over the surface of thesea below a red light shone. But as I stood on the bridge looking atthis strange splendor all my hope died away slowly within me and achill settled upon my heart. As far as ever I could see the water wascovered thickly with tangled and matted weed, broken only here andthere by hummocks of wreckage and by a few hulks drifting in slowly totake their places in the ranks of the dead. The almost imperceptibleprogress of these hulks showed how dense was the mass through whichthey were drifting; and showed, too, how utterly impossible it wouldbe for me to force my way in a boat driven by oars or sails to theclear water lying far, far off. Even a steamer scarcely could havepushed through that tangle; and could not have gone twice her ownlength without hopelessly fouling her screw. And it seemed to me thatI might better have died on one of the old rotten hulks among which Ihad been for so long a time wandering--where hope was not, and where Iwas well in the mood for dying--rather than thus to have got clear ofthem, and have hope come back to me, only to bring up short againstthe wall of my sea-prison and so find myself held fast there for allthe remainder of my days. And I was the more savagely bitter because Ihad no right whatever to be disappointed. What I saw was not new tome, and I had known what I was coming to--though I had kept down mythoughts about it--all along. 

XXXI

HOW HOPE DIED OUT OF MY HEART

The steamer that I had come aboard of proved to be French; and thatshe had not long been abandoned I knew by finding an abundance of icein her cold-room and a great deal of fresh meat there too. Had shebeen manned by a stiff-necked crew she would not have been abandonedat all. She had been in collision, and her bow-compartment was full ofwater; but the water had not got aft of her foremast, and except thatshe was down by the head a little she was not much the worse for herbang. That her captain had tried to carry on after the accident wasshown by the sail that had been set in place very snugly over hersmashed bows; and I greatly wondered why he had given up the fight, until I found--getting a look at her stern from one of the wreckslying near her--that her screw was gone. This second accidentevidently had been too much for her people and they had taken to theboats and left her. But I think that an English or an American crewwould have stood by her, and would have succeeded in getting hertowed into port--or even would have brought her in under her ownsails. She was called the _Ville de Saint Remy_, and was a fine boatof about five thousand tons. 

All that I had hoped to find aboard of her in the way of comforts andluxuries was there, and more too. Indeed, if a good bed, and the bestof food, and excellent wines and tobacco, had been all that I wanted Ivery well might have settled myself on the _Ville de Saint Remy_ forthe balance of my days. But I almost resented the luck which hadbrought me all these things--for which I had been longing so keenlybut a few hours before--because I did not find with them what Idesired still more earnestly: the means that would enable me to getaway seaward and leave them all behind. What such means would be, itis only fair to add, I could not imagine; at least, I could notimagine anything at all reasonable--for the only thing I could thinkof that would carry me out across that weed-covered ocean to openwater was a balloon. 

And so, although I fed daintily and drank of the best, and had goodtobacco to cheer me after my meals, my first day aboard the _Ville deSaint Remy_ was as sad a one as any that I had passed since I had comeinto my sea-prison; for while the daylight lasted, and I wanderedabout her decks looking always at the barrier of weed which held methere, I had clearly before me the impossibility of ever gettingaway. Only when darkness came, hiding my prison walls from me, did Ibecome a little more cheerful--as the very human disposition to makelight of difficulties when they no longer are visible began to assertitself in my mind. 

Down in the comfortable cabin, well lighted and airy, I had a capitaldinner--and a bottle of sound Bordeaux with it that no doubt added agood deal to my sanguine cheerfulness; and to end with I made myselfsome delicious coffee--over a spirit-lamp that I found in thepantry--and had with it a glass of Benedictine and a very choicecigar. And all of these luxurious refreshments of the flesh--which setme to smiling a little as I thought of the contrast that they made tomy surroundings--so comforted my spirit that my gloomy thoughts leftme, and I began to plan airily how I would start off in a boat wellloaded with provisions and somehow or another push my way through theweed. I even got along to details: deciding that it would be quite aneasy matter to open a way through the tangle over the bows of my boatwith an oar--or with an axe, if need be--and then press forward bypoling against the weed on each side; which seemed so feasible amethod that I concluded I could accomplish readily at least a mile aday. And so, with these fine fancies dancing in my brain, I settledmyself into a delightful bed; and as I drowsed off deliciously I hadthe comforting conviction that in a little while longer all mydifficulties would be conquered and all my troubles at an end. 

With the return of daylight, giving me an outlook over theweed-covered water again, most of my hopefulness left me along withmost of my faith in my airily-made plan; but even in this colder moodit did seem to me that there was at least a chance of my pullingthrough--and my slim courage was strengthened by the feeling within methat unless I threw myself with all my energy into work of some sort Ipresently would find myself going melancholy mad. And so, but onlyhalf-heartedly, I mustered up resolution to make a trial of my poorproject for getting away. 

On board the _Ville de Saint Remy_ there was nothing to be done. Thecorner-stone of my undertaking was finding a boat and launching it, and the Frenchmen--in their panic-stricken scamper from a danger thatwas mainly in their own lively imaginations--had carried all theirboats away. It was necessary, therefore, that I should go on a cruiseamong the other wrecks lying around me in search of a boat still in acondition to swim; but I was very careful this time--profiting by myrough experience--to make sure before I started of my safe return. Fortunately the stern of the steamer was so high out of the waterthat it rose conspicuously above the wrecks lying thereabouts; but tomake her still more conspicuous I roused out a couple of French flagsand an American flag from her signal-chest and set them at her threemastheads--giving to our own colors the place of honor on themainmast--and so made her quite unmistakable from as far off as Icould see her through the haze. And as a still farther precautionagainst losing myself I hunted up a hatchet to take along with me toblaze my way. All of which matters being attended to, I made a ropefast to the rail--knotting it at intervals, so that I could climb itagain easily--and so slipped down the steamer's side. 

My business was only with the wrecks lying along the extreme outeredge of the pack--from which alone it would be possible for me tolaunch a boat in the event of my finding one--but in order to get fromone to the other of them I had to make so many long detours that myprogress was very slow. Indeed, by the time that noon came, and Istopped to eat my dinner--which I had brought along with me, that Ineed not have to hunt for it--I had made less than half a mile in astraight line. And in none of the vessels that I had crossed--excepton one lying so far in the pack as to be of no use to me--had I founda single boat that would swim. Nor had I any better luck when I wenton with my search again in the afternoon. As it had been in the caseof the _Hurst Castle_ so it had been, I suppose, in the case of allthe wrecks which I examined that day: either their boats had beenstaved-in or washed overboard by tempest, or else had served to carryaway their crews. But what had become of them, so far as I wasconcerned, made no difference--the essential matter was that they weregone. And so, toward evening, I turned backward from my fruitlessjourney and headed for the _Ville de Saint Remy_ again--for I hadfound no other ship so comfortable in the course of my explorations--andgot safe aboard of her just as the sun was going down. 

That night I had not much comfort in the good dinner that I set outfor myself--though I was glad enough to get it, being both hungry andtired--and I only half plucked up my spirits over my coffee and cigar. But still, as the needs of my body were gratified, my mind got so farsoothed and refreshed that I held to my purpose--which had been prettymuch given over when I came back tired and hungry after my vainsearch--and I went to bed resolute to begin again my explorations onthe following day. 

But when the morning came and I set off--though I had a good breakfastinside of me, and such a store of food by me as fairly would have setme dancing with delight only a week before--I was in low spirits andwent at my work rather because I was resolved to push through with itthan because I had any strong hope that it would give me whatI desired. 

This time--having already examined the wrecks for near a milenorthward along the edge of the pack--I set my course for the south;and again, until late in the afternoon, I worked my way from ship toship--with long detours inland from time to time in order to getaround some break in the coast-line--and on all of them the result wasthe same: not a boat did I find anywhere that was not so riven andshattered as to be beyond all hope of repair. And at nightfall I cameback once more to the _Ville de Saint Remy_ wearied out in body andutterly dispirited in mind. 

Even after I had eaten my dinner and was smoking at my ease in thecheerfully lighted cabin, sitting restfully in a big arm-chair andwith every sort of material comfort at hand, I could not whip myselfup to hoping again. It was true that I had not exhausted thepossibilities of finding the boat that I desired so eagerly, for mysearch along the coast-line had extended for only about a mile eachway; but in my down-hearted state it seemed to me that my search hadgone far enough to settle definitely that what I wanted was not to befound. And this brought down on me heavily the conviction that myprison--though it was the biggest, I suppose, that ever a man was shutup in--must hold me fast always: and with that feeling in it there nolonger was room for hope also in my heart. 

XXXII

I FALL IN WITH A FELLOW-PRISONER

When I had finished my breakfast the next morning I faced the worstthing which I had been forced to face since I had been cast prisonerinto the Sargasso Sea: a whole day of idleness without hope. Untilthen there had not been an hour--save when I was asleep--that I hadnot been doing something which in some way I had hoped would better mycondition temporarily, or would tend toward my deliverance. But thatmorning I was without such spurs to effort and there was absolutelynothing for me to do. My condition could not be improved by making myhome on another vessel; it was doubtful, indeed, if in all thewreck-pack I could find a home so comfortable and so abundantlystocked with the best provisions as I had found aboard of the _Villede Saint Remy_. As for working farther for my deliverance, I had setthat behind me after my experience during the two preceding days. Andso I brought a steamer-chair out on the deck and sat in it smoking, idle and hopeless, gazing straight out before me with a dullsteadfastness over the very gently undulating surface of theweed-covered sea. 

After a while, tiring of sitting still, I began to pace the deckslowly; and I was so heavy with my sorrow that I could not thinkclearly, but had only in my mind a confused feeling that I was takingthe first of a series of walks such as wild animals imprisoned takeendlessly back and forth behind the bars that shut them in. And fromthis I went on to thinking, still in the same confused way, that thewild animals at least were not outcast in their captivity--havingliving people and living beasts around them, and the pleasure ofhearing living sounds--while one of the worst things about my prisonwas the absolute dead silence that hung over it like a dismal cloud. And perhaps it was because my thoughts happened at that moment to beset to take notice of such matters that I fancied I heard a very faintsound of scratching and an instant later a still fainter little cry. 

I was standing just then close to the water-line on the deck forward, beside a covered hatch that seemed to lead to what had been thequarters of the crew; and it was from beneath this hatch, I wascertain, that the sounds came. Slight though the noise was, it greatlystartled me; and at the same time it aroused in me thestrangely-thrilling hope that there possibly might be a living manstill aboard of the steamer and that I would be no longer horriblyalone. Yet I would not suffer myself too much to give room to thishappy hope, for the little faint scratching--which I heard againpresently--was not the sort of noise that a man shut in would belikely to make; nor did the little plaintive sound seem like a humancry. But the matter was one to be investigated in a hurry, and with anenergy quite astonishing, in comparison with my lassitude of a momentbefore, I got the hatch open and leaned down it, listening; and then Iheard the scratching so plainly that I hurried down the stair. 

The between-decks was well enough lighted by a good-sized skylight, and the place that I had got into had fixed tables set in it andseemed to be the mess-room of the crew. Doors opened out from it bothfore and aft; and from behind the after door--so plainly that I had nodifficulty in placing it--came the scratching sound that I waspursuing: and with it came the cries again, and this time sodistinctly as to shatter my hope of finding a human being there, butat the same time to make me, for all my sorrow, almost smile. For thecry was a very long and plaintive m-i-i-a-a-u! And the next moment, when I had the door open, a great black cat came out upon me--soovercome with delight at meeting a human being again that he wasalmost choking with his gurgling purr. Indeed the extravagant joy ofthe poor lonely creature was as great as mine would have been had Ifound a man there--and he manifested it by lunging sidewise against mylegs, and by standing up on his hind paws and reaching his fore pawsup to my knees and clutching them, and then with a spring he climbedright up me--all the while choking with his great gurglingpurring--and was not satisfied until he found himself bundled closeagainst my breast as I held him tight in my arms. And on myside--after I had gulped down my first disappointment because it wasonly a cat who was my fellow-prisoner--I was as glad to meet him as hewas to meet me; and I am not ashamed to say that I fairly cried overhim--as a warm rush of joy went over me at finding myself at last, after being for so long a time surrounded only by the dead, in thecompany of a living creature; and a creature which showed toward me byevery means that a brute beast could compass its gratitude andits love. 

And I must add without delay that my cat's affection for me was whollydisinterested; at least, I am sure that he loved me--from the firstmoment of our encounter--not because he wanted me to do something forhim, but because he longed, as I did, for human companionship and wasfilled up with happiness because he had found again a human friend. AsI discovered upon investigation, his prison had been the galley inwhich food for the crew had been cooked; and upon the odds and endsleft there he had fared very well indeed--not overeating himself bygobbling down all his food in a hurry, and then dying of starvation, as a dog would have done, but temperately eating for his daily rationsonly what his sustenance required; and for drink he had had a potpartly full of what had been hot water that stood upon the galleystove. But I also must add that this coarse fare was not at all to hisliking; and that thereafter he ordered me around pretty sharply, inhis own way, and insisted always upon my providing him withdainty food. 

It was a good thing for the cat, certainly, that I had found him; forhis stock of provisions was pretty nearly exhausted, and in a littlewhile longer he would have come to a dismal end. But my finding himwas a still better thing for me. When I first heard his faint littlescratching, and his still fainter plaintive little call for help, Iwas so deep in my despairing melancholy that my reason was in a fairway to go, and with it all farther effort on my part to set myselffree. From that desperate state my small adventure with him roused me, which was a good deal to thank him for; but I had more to thank himfor still. 

In the little time that I had been aboard of the _Ville de SaintRemy_--my days having been passed away from her--I had made noexploration of her interior beyond her cabin and the region in whichwere carried her cabin stores; which latter were so abundant as to setme at my ease for an indefinite period in regard to food. But thismeeting with my fellow-prisoner so stirred me up, and put such freshspirit into me, that I began to think of having a general look allover her: that I might in a way take stock of my belongings and at thesame time have something to occupy my mind--for I knew that to sitdown idly again would be only again to fall back into despair. And so, my cat going with me--and, indeed, making a good deal of a convenienceof me, for he by no means would walk on his own legs but insisted uponjumping up on my shoulder and going that way as a passenger--I set offon my round. 

As well as I could make out from what I found on board of her--for herpapers either had been carried away or were stowed in some place whichI did not discover--the _Ville de Saint Remy_ had been bound outwardto some colonial port and carried a cargo of general stores. When Igot her hatches off--though that came later--I saw in one place a lotof wheelbarrows, and some heavy wagons stowed with their wheels insideof them, and some machinery for threshing along with a portablesteam-engine; and in another place were boxes which seemed to havedry-goods in them, and a great many cases of wines, and some very bigcases that evidently contained pianos--and so on with a great lot ofstuff such as the people of a flourishing colony would be likelyto need. 

But in my round that morning with the cat on my shoulders--for he wasnot content to remain perched on one of them quietly, but kept passingfrom one to the other with affectionate rubs against the back of myhead, and all the while purring as hard as he could purr--I did notget below the main-deck except into the engine-room, my attentionbeing given to finding out fully what the steamer had on board of herin the way of work-shops and tools: for already, with my renewedcheerfulness, the notion was beginning to take hold of me that I mightset to work and build a boat for myself--and so make what I could notfind. And, indeed, I don't doubt that I should have set myself to thisbig undertaking--for the appointments of the vessel were admirablycomplete and everything that I wanted for my work was there--had not abigger, but a more promising, undertaking presented itself to me andso turned my efforts into another way. 

XXXIII

I MAKE A GLAD DISCOVERY

It was directly to my cat that I owed the great piece of good fortunethat then came to me: but I must confess that he was an unwillingagent in the matter, and probably wished himself well out of it, theimmediate result in his case being rather a bad squeeze to one of hisfore paws. 

We had been examining the machine-shop, the cat and I, and whateverhis views about it may have been mine were of great satisfaction; forwhen I had got the dead-lights unscrewed so that I could see wellabout me I had been delighted by finding there everything that myboat-building project required. Indeed, I almost fancied myself backagain in one of the work-shops of the Stevens Institute, so well wasthe place fitted and supplied--a completeness probably due to the factthat the _Ville de Saint Remy_ was intended for long voyages toout-of-the-way ports, and very well might have to depend upon her ownresources for important repairs. 

It was as we were leaving the machine-shop to continue our round ofinvestigations that my cat suddenly took it into his head to jump downfrom my shoulders and stretch his own legs a little; and away hescampered--being much given to such frisking dashes, as I laterdiscovered, though for the next week or so after that one he wentlimping on three legs mighty soberly--first down the deck aft, andthen past me and up a dark passage leading toward the bows; and I, being pretty well accustomed to cat habits, stood waiting until heshould have his fun out and so come back again with a miau by way of"if you please" to be taken up into my arms. But he did not come backin any great hurry, and off in the darkness I could hear his pawspadding about briskly; and then there was silence for a moment; andthen he broke out into a loud miauling which showed that he was introuble of some sort and also in pain. 

As there was no helping him until I could see what was the matter withhim, I hurried first into the machine-shop for a wrench, and then wentforward into that dark place cautiously--until by a glint of light onthe ship's side I made out where a port was, and so got loose thedeadlight and could look around. What I saw was my poor cat in such apickle that I did not in the least blame him for crying out about it;he having, as it seemed, made an unlucky jump upon some small bars ofiron which were lying loose and disorderly, with the one on which helanded balanced so nicely that it had turned suddenly and jammed fasthis paw. And so he was anchored there very painfully, and was tellingwhat he thought about it in the most piercing yowls. 

Fortunately it was an easy matter to let him loose from the trap thathe had got into; but even while I was doing it--and before I pickedhim up to look at his hurt and to comfort him--I gave a shout ofdelight on my own account that was a good deal louder than any of mypoor cat's yells of pain. For there before me was a very stout-lookingand large steam-launch--thirty-two feet over all, as I found when Icame to measure her--stowed snugly in a cradle set athwart-ship andlooking all ready to be put overboard into the sea. And at finding inthis unexpected fashion what I had been so long looking for, and hadquite done with hoping for, it is no wonder that I shouted with joy. 

My cat coming limping to me to be pitied and cared for, holding up hispinched paw and with little miaus asking for my sympathy quite like aChristian, I had first of all to give him my attention. But his hurtwas not a very serious one--the flesh not being cut, and no bonesbroken--and when I had comforted him as well as I could, until I gothim soothed a little, I put him down out of my arms that I mightexamine carefully my great prize; but first of all opening all theports so that I might have plenty of light for what I wanted to do. 

Coming to this deliberate survey, I found that the launch truly enoughwas complete, but that she was very far from being ready to take thewater; for while all her parts were there--and even duplicates of hermore important pieces, in readiness against a break-down--most of herfittings and all of her machinery was lying inside of her boxed fortransportation; being arranged that way, I suppose, because she wouldhave been far too heavy to swing into the snug place where I found herand out again with everything bolted fast. She was a very beautifullittle boat, evidently intended for a pleasure craft--but very strongand seaworthy, too; and it no doubt was to keep her in good order fordelivery that she had been stowed between-decks for the long voyage. Indeed, only with a steam-winch and a good many men to handle her, could she have been got down there; and the first of my uncomfortablethoughts about her, of the many that I had first and last, came whileI was taking stock of her equipment--as I fell to wondering how in theworld I should manage, with only a cat to help me, ever to get heroverboard into the sea. 

As to assembling her parts, and so making her ready for cruising, Ihad no doubts whatever. That piece of work was directly in the lineof my training and I felt entirely secure about it; but even on thatscore I quaked a good deal at the size of the contract to be taken bya single pair of hands, and at thought of the long, long while thatwould be required to carry it through. Yet the hope that came withfinding this boat put such heart into me that my spirits did not godown far. Working on her--aside from the pleasure that any man with anatural love for mechanics finds in serious and difficult labor withhis hands--would be a constant delight to me because of what it wouldbe leading to; and in every moment of my work I would have to sustainme the thought that each rivet set in place and each bolt fastenedbrought me appreciably nearer to being set free. 

Having cursorily finished with the boat, I continued my survey to hersurroundings; that I might plan roughly my scheme of work upon her, and that I might plan also for getting her launched when my work uponher should be done. She was stowed on the main-deck--in a place thatprobably was intended for the use of third-class passengers, when suchwere carried--and the machine-shop was so close to her that in thematter of fetching tools and so on my steps would be well saved. Directly over her was the forward hatch; through which she had beenlowered and set in place in the cradle previously made ready for her, and there fixed firm and fast. For a moment I had the fancy that Imight get up steam to work the donkey-engine and so hoist her outagain by that same way, and overboard too. But a very littlereflection showed me that this airily formed plan must be abandoned, as all my work on her then would have to be done far away from themachine-shop and with the additional disadvantage that through thelong time that certainly must pass before I could get her finished shewould lie open to the daily heavy rains. And then I had the much morereasonable notion--though the amount of extra labor that it involvedwas not encouraging to contemplate--that I would do my work on herwhere she lay; and when I had finished her that I would cut loose asufficient number of plates from the side of the steamer to make ahole big enough to get her overboard that way. 

But having the hatch directly over where she was lying, though I couldnot get her up through it, made my undertaking a good deal easier andmore comfortable for me. Even with all the ports open I would have hadbut little light to work by; and, what was of even more importance inthat hot misty region, I would have had little fresh air--and stillless when I had set a-going my forge. But with the hatch off I couldhave all the light that I needed and as much fresh air as was to behad--with the advantage that the hatch could be set in place everynight when I went off duty and not opened again in the morning untilthe rain was at an end: so preserving my machinery against the rustthat pretty much would have ruined it--for all that it was welltallowed--had my slow building gone on in the open air. 

My preliminary investigations being thus well ended, and the morningended too, I piped all hands to dinner; that is to say, I whistled tomy cat--who had been sitting still and watching me pretty solemnly, his friskiness being for the time taken out of him by the pain in hispaw--and when he perceived that I was paying some attention to himagain he came limping to me on his three good legs and said with amiau that if I pleased he would prefer going to his dinner in my arms. And when I picked him up--as, indeed, I had to, for he positivelyinsisted upon my carrying him--he forgot about his hurt and fell topurring to me at a great rate and to making little gentle thrustsagainst my arm with the fore paw that was sound. And so we went aft ingreat friendship and contentment and had a gay dinner together: thecat sitting on the table opposite to me with all possible decorum--butmanifesting his daintiness by refusing to eat anything but tinnedchicken, and only the white meat at that!

XXXIV

I END A GOOD JOB WELL, AND GET A SET-BACK

When my meal was finished I set myself first of all to getting off thehatch beneath which my boat lay; and this proved to be a bigger jobthan I had counted upon--each of its sections being so heavy that Icould not manage it without tackle, and even with tackle the work tookme a good hour. My plan of operations had included removing the hatchevery morning and setting it back again every night, but when I foundhow much energy and time would be wasted in that way I changed myfront a little and got at the same result along another line. All thatI needed was a covering for the hatch that would keep the rain out;and what I did, therefore, was to knock together a light grating ofwood to fit over it--sloping the grating downward on each side from asort of a ridge pole--on which a tarpaulin could be stretched; and inthat way I got shortly to a water-tight covering for my hatch that Icould shift back and forth quickly and without any trouble at all. Butthe whole of what remained of the afternoon was spent in gettingthat piece of preliminary work finished to my mind. 

The next morning I set myself to the examination of the stuff stowedin the boat--the several parts which I would have to put together inorder to make my craft ready for the sea--and for this job also agreat deal of preliminary arrangement was required. Many of thepieces--as the boiler, the cylinder, the shaft, the screw, and thesections of the cabin--were too heavy for me to lift without tackle;and as they all had to be got out and arranged in order ready for use, and then in due course put aboard the boat one at a time in theirproper places, I first of all had to set up some sort of liftingapparatus to take the place of a crane. 

In this matter the open hatch directly over the boat again was a helpto me. Across it, running fore and aft, I stretched a heavy wire ropeon which I had placed a big block for a traveller, and carrying theend of the rope forward to the capstan I fell to work with thehand-bars and got it strained so taut that it was like a bar of iron. Then to the traveller block I made fast my hoisting tackle--and so wasable to swing up the heavy pieces from where they were stowed, and torun them along the taut rope until they were clear of the boat oneither side, and then to let them down upon the deck: where they wouldremain until a reversal of this process would lift them up again andset them in place as they were required. But even with my tackle--anddouble tackle in the case of the heavier pieces--this was aback-breaking job that took up the whole of three days. 

However, I finished it at last, and had the boat clear and all thepieces so arranged that as I needed them they would be ready to myhand; and the examination that I was able to make of them, and of theboat too after I had her empty, gave very satisfactory results. Allthe parts were there, and all numbered so carefully that they couldhave been assembled by much less skilful hands than mine; while thehull of the boat was completely finished, and the sockets andrivet-holes for attaching her fittings were all as they should be inher frame. Farther, I could see by the little scratches here and thereon her iron-work that she had been set up and then taken apart again;and so was sure that all was smooth for her coming together in theright way. But, for all that I had such plain sailing before me in theactual work of refitting her, my courage went down a little as Iperceived what a big contract I had taken, and what a very long timemust pass before I could pull it through. 

Moreover, I saw that while the boat was well built for pleasurecruising in smooth water--and, indeed, was so stout in her frame thatshe would stand a great deal of knocking about without being theworse for it--she by no means was prepared for the chances of an oceanvoyage. Except where her little cabin and engine-room would be--thetwo filling about half of her length amidships--she was entirely open;and while the frame of her cabin was stoutly built, that part of itintended to rise above the rail was arranged for sliding glasswindows--which would be smashed in a moment by a heavy dash of sea. Itwas clear, therefore, that in addition to setting her up on the linesplanned for her--a big job and a long job to start with--there was alot more for me to do. To fit her for my purposes it would benecessary to cover her cabin windows with planking; to deck her overforward in order to have my stores under cover as well as to guardagainst shipping enough water to swamp her in rough weather; andfinally to rig her with a mast and sail upon which to fall back formotive-power in the event of my running out of coal. This additionalwork would not, in one way, present any difficulties--it being initself simple and easy of accomplishment; but in another way it wasnot pleasant to contemplate, since the doing of it all single-handedwould increase very greatly the time which must pass before I couldstart upon my voyage. However, as consideration of that phase of thematter only tended to discourage me, I put it out of sight as well asI was able and set myself with a will to finishing my preliminarywork--of which there still was a good deal to do. 

The steamer's machine-shop, as I have said, was unusually well fittedand supplied; but even in the short time that the vessel had beenlying abandoned in that reeking atmosphere rust had so coatedeverything not shut up in lockers that all the tools in the racks andthe fittings of the lathe--although the lathe had an oil-cloth hoodover it--had to be cleaned before they could be used: a job that keptme busy with the grind-stone, and emery-cloth, and oiled cotton-waste, for a good long while. And after that I had to get the forge in order, and to bring up fuel for it from the coal bunkers. And in attending toall these various matters the time slipped away so quickly that awhole week had passed before I had done. 

But I must say that as the cat and I labored together--though hislabors were confined to cheering me by following me about on threelegs wherever I went, and pretty much all the while talking to me inhis way so that I should not fail to take notice of him--I got moreand more light-hearted; which was natural enough, seeing that what Iwas doing in itself interested me and so made the time pass quickly, and that I had also a great swelling undercurrent of hope as Ithought of what my slow-going work would bring me to in the end. 

When at last I fairly got started at my building I was in a stillmore cheerful mood--there being such a sense of definiteaccomplishment as I set each piece in its place, and such a comfort inthe tangible advance that I was making, that half the time I wassinging as I made my bolts and rivets fast. But for all mycheerfulness I had a plenty of trouble over what I was doing; and Iwas sorry enough that I had not somebody beside my cat to help me, orthat I myself had not another pair or two of hands. 

Almost at the start, when I began to swing the pieces of machineryinboard, I found that I had still another bit of preliminary work toattend to before I could go on. My travelling tackle crossing the boatamidships had worked well enough in getting the stuff out of her, butwhen I came to hoisting the parts aboard and setting them exactly intheir places, and holding them steady while I made fast the rivets, itwould not in any way serve my turn. What I had to do was to stretchanother wire rope across the hatch--at right angles with and a coupleof feet above the first one, and parallel with the boat's keel--and torig on this two travellers, to one or the other of which I couldtransfer each piece as I got it inboard and so run it along until Ihad it exactly over the place where it was to be made fast. But I wasa whole day in attending to this matter--and it was only one of themany makeshifts to which I had to resort to accomplish what was toomuch for my unaided strength; and in meeting such like sidedifficulties I lost in all a good many days. 

But though my work went very slowly, and now and then was stoppedshort for a while by some obstacle that had to be overcome in anyrough and ready way that I could think of, I did get on; and at last Ihad my boat together on the lines that her builders had planned. Yetwhile, in a way, she was finished, there still was a weary lot to doto her to fit her for my purposes; and in decking her over, and inmaking her cabin solid, and in fitting a mast and sail to her, I spentalmost two months more. 

All this work went slowly because I had to spend nearly as much timein making ready for what I wanted to do as in doing it. Before I beganmy planking I had to rip up from the steamer's deck the material forit; and this was a hard job in itself and did not give me what Iwanted when it was done--for while the stuff served well enough for mybeams and braces it was clumsily heavy for the decking of my littlelaunch. But it had to answer, and in the end I got it well in placeand the joints so tightly caulked that I was sure of having a dryhold. And that my deck might the more easily turn the water in a seaway I made it flush with the rail; and I had no hatch init--arranging to get to the hold by a scuttle that I set in theforward end of the cabin--and that gave me a still better chance ofkeeping dry below. 

For my mast I got down one of the top-gallant masts--and I had a closeshave to coming down with it and so ending my adventures right there. The best way that I could think of to manage this piece of work--and Ihave not since thought of any way better--was to make fast a line tothe lower end of the top-gallant mast just above the cap of thetopmast and to carry this line through the top-block and so down tothe deck, and there to pass it through another block to the capstanand haul it taut and stop it; and when all that was in order, and thestays cut, to get up into the cross-trees and saw through the sparjust below where I had whipped it with my line. My expectation wasthat as the spar parted and fell it would be held hanging by my tackleuntil I could get down to the deck again and lower it away; and thatreally was what did happen--only as it fell there was a bit of slackline to take up, and this gave such a tremendous jerk to thecross-trees that I was within an ace of being shaken out of them andof going down to the deck with a bang. But I didn't--which is the mainthing--and I did get my mast. It was a good deal heavier than my boatcould stand, and I had to spend a couple of days in taking it downwith a broad-axe and in finishing it with a plane until I got it as itshould be; and from the flag-staff at the steamer's stern I got outwith very little trouble a good boom and gaff. 

After that I had only my sail to fit; and as I did not trouble myselfto make a very neat job of it this did not take me long. Indeed, Igrudged the time that I spent on my mast and sail--close upon afortnight, altogether--more than any like amount of time that I gaveto my task; for my hope was strong that I would not need a sail atall, but would be able to manage--by a way that I had thought of--tocarry enough coal with me to make my voyage under steam. But I was notleaving anything to chance--so far as chances could be foreseen--inthe adventure that I was about to make, and so I got my sail-power allready to fall back upon in case my steam-power failed. And when thatbit of work was finished I was full of a joyful light-heartedness; formy boat in every way was ready for the water, and I was come at lastto the good ending of my long job. 

That night I made a feast in celebration of what I had accomplished, and in hope of my greater good fortune that I believed was soon tocome--with a place duly set on the opposite side of the table for myonly guest, and with a champagne-glass beside his plate to hold hisunsweetened condensed milk (for which, when I found it among theship's stores, he manifested a strong partiality) that he might lapproperly his responses to the toasts which I pledged him inchampagne. And I don't suppose that a man and a cat ever had a merriermeal anywhere than we had in that queer place for it that evening; northat any two friends ever were happier together than we were when, ourfeast being ended, he went through his various tricks--of which he hadlearned a great many, and with a wonderful quickness, after his pawgot well--and then settled himself for a snooze on my lap while I satsmoking my cigar and thinking that at last I had sawn throughmy prison bars. 

And it was while I was sitting in that state of placid happiness thatsuddenly I was brought up all standing by the reflection--and why ithad not come sooner to me is a mystery--that a dozen turns of thescrew of my launch in that weed-covered ocean would be enough to foulit hopelessly, and so at the very start to cut short the voyage understeam that I had planned. 

XXXV

I AM READY FOR A FRESH HAZARD OF FORTUNE

For a while after this black thought came to me I was pretty muchbeaten by it; but when I got steadier--and had finished kicking myselffor a fool because I had not foreseen it all along--I perceived thatthe odds were not wholly against me, after all. I had, at least, asea-worthy boat in which to make my venture, and therefore was as welloff as I had hoped to be when I had set about looking for one; and ifthe plan that I had formed worked out in practice--if I could manageto force a passage through the tangle by alternately working over thebow of my boat to break up the weed, and over the sides to pole myboat forward--I was a great deal better off than I had hoped to be:for should I win my way to open water I would have steam as well assail power at my command. 

But while this more reasonable view of the situation comforted me, itdid not satisfy me. The difficulty of working myself along in thatslow fashion I foresaw would be so enormous that I very well might dieof sheer exhaustion before I got clear of the weed-tangle--whichmust extend outward, as I knew from my guess at the time that I hadtaken in drifting in through it, for a very long way. What I had beencounting upon ever since I had found the launch was in having part ofthe work, and the heaviest part, done by her engine; my part to be thebreaking of a passage, while the motive power was to be supplied bythe screw. But of course if the screw fouled, as it certainly wouldfoul with the loose weed all around it, that would be the end of myhopeful plan. 

This consideration of the matter reduced it to a definite problem. What was needed was some sort of protection for the screw that wouldkeep the weed away from it and yet would allow it to work freely: and, having the case thus clearly stated, the thought presently occurred tome that I could secure this protection by building out from the sternof the boat, so that the screw would be enclosed in it, some sort ofan iron cage. That arrangement, I conceived, would meet therequirements of the case fully; and being come to my conclusion Iresigned myself to still another long delay while I carried my planinto execution, and so went to bed at last hopefully--but well knowingthat this fresh piece of work that I had cut out for myself would behard to do. 

I certainly did not overestimate the amount of labor involved in mycage-building. I was a good three weeks over it. But I was kept up tothe collar by my conviction that without the cage I had no chance ofsucceeding in my project; and so I got it finished at last. And then Iconsidered that my boat really was ready to take the water; and thecat and I had another banquet in celebration of the long step that wehad taken toward our deliverance--only this time I did not give analtogether free rein to my rejoicing, being fearful that some otherdifficulty might present itself suddenly and bring me up again with around turn. 

The boat being ready--for I could think of nothing more to do toher--I had still to launch her, and the first step toward that end wasbreaking out a section in the steamer's side. Luckily the stock ofcold-chisels aboard the _Ville de Saint Remy_ was a good one; but Idulled them all twice over--and weary work at the grindstone I hadsharpening them again--before I had chipped away the bindings of thoseendless rivets and had the satisfaction of seeing the big section ofiron plate between two of her iron ribs pitch outboard and splash downthrough the weed into the sea. 

As I have said, the bow compartment of the steamer was full of water, and this brought her main-deck so low down forward that the boat hadonly to be slid out almost on a level through the hole that I hadmade. But to slide her that way--which seems easy, because I havehappened to put it glibly--was quite a different thing. With steampower to work the capstan I could have got the boat overboard in notime; but without steam power the launching went desperately slowly, and was altogether the hardest piece of work that I had to do in thewhole of my long hard job. 

The boat had stood all along in the cradle that had been built to holdher steady for the voyage. This was a very stout wooden frameworkbuilt up from two heavy beams joined by cross-pieces, and all so wellbolted together that it was very solid and firm. In this the boatrested snugly and was held fast by rope lashings; and the cradleitself--resting on the lower hatch and projecting on each side ofit--was lashed to the hatch ringbolts so as to be safe againstshifting in a heavy sea. I could have removed the cradle by taking itto pieces, but that would not have helped matters; and the plan that Idecided upon--liking it better because all this wood-work around andunder the boat would protect her from harm as she went overboard--wasto weight the cradle with iron bars that would cause it to sink awayfrom beneath the boat when they took the water, and then to work it upwith jack-screws until I could get rollers under it and so send themboth together over the side. 

How long I worked over this job I really do not know; but I do knowthat at the time it seemed as though it never would come to an end. First of all I had the rollers to make from another topgallant mastthat I got down, and when these were finished I had to go at the frameof the cradle with a pair of jack-screws and raise it, by fractions ofan inch, until I could get my rollers under it one at a time. I thinkthat it was the deadly dullness of this jack-screw work that I mostresented--the stupid monotony of doing precisely the same sort ofutterly wearying work all day long and for day after day. But in theend I got it finished: all my rollers properly in place, and thecradle made fast to hold it from starting before I was ready to haveit go--although of that there was not much danger, for while thesteamer had a decided pitch forward she lay on an even keel. 

At first I was for sending my boat overboard the minute that I got thelast roller under her; but I had the sense, luckily, to take a reef inthis brisk intention as the thought struck me that I must have openwater to launch her in or else very likely have boat and cradletogether stuck fast in the weed. And so I set myself to clearing alittle pool into which I could launch her; and as I carried this workon I came quickly to a realizing sense of what was before me when Ishould begin to break a way through the weed for my boat's passage, and to the conviction that had I tried to make my voyage without steamto help me I never should have got through at all. 

In point of fact, the weed was so thick and so firmly matted togetherthat I almost could walk on it; and when I had knocked loose a coupleof doors from their hinges and had thrown them overboard--taking two, so that I might move one ahead of the other as my cutting advanced--Ihad firm enough standing place from which I could slash away. So toughwas the mass that I was a whole day in uncovering a space less thanforty feet long by twenty broad; and when my launching-pool wasfinished it had the look of a little pond in a meadow surrounded bysolid banks. 

All this showed me that even with the screw to push while I cleared away for the boat's passage I should have my hands full; but it alsoput into my head a notion that helped me a good deal in the end. Thiswas to rig on the straight stem of my boat a set of guide-barsprojecting forward in which I could work perpendicularly a cross-cutsaw, and in that way to cut a slit in the weed--which would be widenedby the boat's nose thrusting into it as the screw shoved her onward, and so would enable me to squeeze along. And as this was a matter easyof accomplishment--being only to double over a couple of iron bars sothat there would be a slit a half inch wide for the saw to travel in, and to bolt them fast to the top and bottom of the boat's stem--I didit immediately; and it worked so well when I came to try it that I wasglad enough that I had had so lucky a thought. Indeed, had I knownhow well it would turn out I should have gone a step farther andrigged my saw to run by steam power--setting up a frame in the bows tohold a wheel carrying a pin on which the saw could play and to which Icould make fast a bar from my piston-rod--and in that way saved myselffrom the longest bit of back-breaking work that ever I had to do. Butthat was a piece of foresight that came afterward, and so did meno good. 

When my guide-bars were in place, and the saw made ready to slip intothem by taking off one of its handles--and I had still a spare saw tofall back upon in the event of the first one breaking--my boat wasready to go overboard into the open water, where she would lie while Iput aboard of her my coal and stores. But the work that was before me, as I thus came close to it, loomed up very large; and so did thedoubts which beset me as to how my voyage would end. Indeed, it was ina spirit far from exultant that at last I cut the lashings which heldthe cradle; and then with the tackle that I had ready got the heavymass started--and in a couple of minutes had my boat safely overboardand floating free, as the cradle sunk away from under her, carrieddown by its lading of iron bars. 

But, whatever was to come of it, the launching of my boat started medefinitely along a fresh line of adventure, and whether I liked it ornot I had to make the best of it: and so I stated the case to mycat--who had got scared and run off into a corner while the launchingwas in progress--when he came marching up to me and seated himselfbeside me gravely, as I stood in the break in the steamer's sidelooking down at the boat that I hoped would set us free. 

XXXVI

HOW MY CAT PROMISED ME GOOD LUCK

What would have been most useful to me as foresight, but was onlyaggravating to me as hindsight--which happened to be the way that Igot it--was the very sensible notion that I might have put all of mystores, and even a good part of my coal, aboard the boat before shewas decked over and launched. A few tons more or less would have madeno difference in moving her; but having to put those extra tons aboardof her over the side of the steamer, and then to drag them through thecabin and through the awkward little hatch, and at last to stow themby the light of a lantern in her stillingly close hot hold--all thatmade a lot of difference to me. However, I could not foreseeeverything; and I think, on the whole, that I really did foresee mostof what I wanted pretty well. 

Of provisions I took along enough to last me, by a rough calculation, for three months; being pretty well satisfied that unless within thattime I got through the weed-tangle to open water--over which I couldmake my way to land, or on which I might fall in with a passingvessel--I never would get free at all. And I was the more disposed tokeep down my lading of provisions because I wanted every scrap of roomthat I could save for my cargo of coal. But my stores were plentifulfor the term that I had fixed upon, and the best and the mostnourishing--save that I could not take fresh meat with me--that the_Ville de Saint Remy_ had on board; and I did not forget to take agood supply of the tinned chicken and the condensed milk of which mydainty cat was so fond. As for water--beside having my condenser tofall back upon--I felt pretty sure that until I got well out towardthe open sea I could trust to the morning rains. But for all that Icarried two barrels with me--filled fresh the last thing before Istarted--stowed in the well of the boat aft of the cabin; and theretoo I carried a couple of ten-gallon tins of oil for my lanternsand lamps. 

My bone-breaking job was getting my coal aboard. For ease in handlingand in stowing it--though I lost a little room that way--I put it incanvas sacks, of which I luckily found some bales in the steamer'scargo. These I swung up from the engine-room by the cinder-tackle tothe main deck; and having got them that far I packed them on my backto the break in the steamer's side where my boat was lying and tumbledthem aboard of her, and then dragged them along to where I stowedthem in her hold. On my coal holding out at least until I got throughthe weed--for on open water I could lay a course under sail--thesuccess of my adventure wholly depended; and knowing that, I filled myboat with all that I dared to put into her--loading the last twentybags on her deck and on the roof of her cabin, to be used before Idrew on my main supply. 

But while this lading was a big one it did not satisfy me; and theonly way that I could think of to better it was to build a long andnarrow raft that I could stow as much more on and tow after me in theboat's wake. This was a big undertaking, but I had to face it and tocarry it through: lowering down three spars (in managing which I useda treble-purchase to swing them clear, and eased them down with acouple of turns of the rope still around the capstan), and when I hadthem over the side in a pool that I had cleared for them I lashed themstrongly together and decked them over with some of the state-roomdoors. This gave me a raft sixty feet long, or thereabouts, butnarrower than my boat; and to make it follow the boat still moreeasily I set a V-shaped cut-water at its bows to turn the weed. To besure, it was a clumsy thing, but it well enough served my turn. 

On this structure I was able to carry a prodigious quantity ofcoal--more than I had on the boat, by a good deal; but by a littleplanning in advance I arranged matters so that the lading of it wasnot so hard a piece of work--though in all conscience it was hardenough--as the lading of my boat had been. What I did was to clear apool in the weed for it and to build it directly beneath the outhangof the cinder-tackle; and having that apparatus ready to my hand Iswung my bags of coal up from the engine-room, and then out along thetraveller, and then lowered them away--and so had only to stow them onthe raft when they were down. But there was only one of me to do allthis--to fill each bag in the bunkers and to bring it to theengine-room, to make it fast there to the tackle, to come on deck andhaul it up and set it overboard, to go down the side and set it inplace, and then back to the bunkers again for the next round--and so Ispent a week in doing what three men could have done in a day. And Iwas a tired man and a grimy man when I got this piece of workfinished; but I was comforted by knowing that I had as much coal in mysea-stock as I possibly could have use for--and so I scrubbed myselfclean in the steamers bath-room and was easy in my mind. But it was agood long while before I got the aches out of my bones. 

During my last week aboard the _Ville de Saint Remy_ I had steam up inmy boat and my engine at work during the greater part of each day: aswas necessary, the engine being new, in order to get the machineryto running smoothly, and to set right anything that might be wrongwhile I still had the steamer's machine-shop to turn to for repairs. However, the engine proved to be a well-made one, and except that Ihad to tighten a joint here and there and to repack the piston I hadnothing to rectify; and what still more pleased me was to find that mycage answered to keep the screw from fouling, and that my plan forsawing a way through the weed--which I tested by running a littledistance from the steamer through the thick of it--worked well too. But because of the great friction to be overcome as the boat opened away for itself in the dense soft mass my progress was desperatelyslow; and I had to comfort me the reflection that it would be stillslower when I got regularly under way and had in addition to the deadthrust forward of the boat the dead drag after it of the raft. 

Slow or fast, though, I had no choice in the matter. With the means atmy command, I had done all that I could do to enable me to climb thewalls of my prison--if I may put it that way--and there remained onlyto muster what pluck I had to help me and to abide by the result. Thiswas the view of the situation that I presented to my cat--for I hadgot into the habit of talking to him quite as much as he talked tome--while we sat at supper together on the last evening that we wereto pass on board of the _Ville de Saint Remy_; and while he did notmake much of a reply to me he did mumble some sort of a purring answerthat I took to mean he was willing, if I were, to make the trial. 

Early that morning, while the rain still was falling, I had filled mytwo casks with fresh water; and after my breakfast I got them aboardthe boat and then went to work at setting up my mast--using one of thedavits in place of sheers and so managing the job very well. Afterthat I had rigged the sail, and had set it to make sure that all wasright; and then had furled it and lashed the boom fast on the roof ofthe cabin among the bags of coal--and with rather a heavy heart, too, for I knew that the chances were more than even against my evergetting to open water and fresh breezes, and so loosing again theknots which I had just tied. In the afternoon I had set my engine togoing again for an hour, and then had banked my fires against themorning; and after that, until the shadows began to fall, I had spentmy time in going over the list that I had made of my sea-stock to besure that nothing that I needed was forgotten, and in taking a finalgeneral survey of my boat and its stores. And when darkness came thecat and I had our supper together--which was as good a one as the shipcould provide us with--and when we had finished I told him, as I havesaid, what the chances were for and against our succeeding in ourundertaking and in return asked him for an expression of hisown views. 

That he fully understood what I told him I am not prepared to say; buthe certainly did answer me: jumping up on my lap and shoving his pawsalternately against my stomach, and purring in so cheerful a fashion, and altogether making such a show of good spirits as to satisfy methat he was trying to tell me that we certainly would pull through. And my cat's promise of good luck fell in so exactly with my ownconfident hopes--which were rising strongly as the time for testingthem got close at hand--that I hugged him tight to me very lovingly, and on my side promised that within another month or two he shouldstretch his legs in a mouse-hunt on dry land! And with that I put thelamp out and we turned in for the night. 

XXXVII

HOW MY CAT STILL FARTHER CHEERED ME

It was in the grey of early morning, while the rain still was falling, that the cat and I had our breakfast; and as soon as the rain was overI was down in the boat, and had off the tarpaulin that covered herstern-sheets, and was busy bringing up my banked fires. One thing thatI had learned how to do during the week that I had been testing myengine was to bank my fires well; and that was a matter of a good dealof importance to me--since every night during my voyage the fireswould have to be kept that way, on the double score of my inability tohold my course in the darkness and of my need for sleep. 

Presently I had steam up; and then I went back to the ship for thelast and most important piece of my cargo--my bag of jewels. It waswith a queer feeling, half of doubt and half of exultation, that Ifetched out this little bundle--still done up in the sleeve of theoilskin jacket--and stowed it in one of the lockers in the cabin of myboat. If my voyage went well, then all the rest of my life--so far aswealth makes for happiness--would go well too: for in that rough anddirty little bag was such a treasure--that I had won away from thedead ship holding it--as would make me one of the richest men in theworld. But against this exultant hope stood up a doubt so dark thatthere was no great room in my mind for cheerfulness: for as I stowedaway the jewels in the boat I could not but think of those others whohad stowed them away two hundred years and more before aboard thegalleon; and who had started in their great ship well manned on avoyage in which the risk of disaster was as nothing in comparison withthe risk that I had to face in the voyage that I was undertaking in mylittle boat alone. Yet their venture had ended miserably; and I, trying singly to accomplish what their whole company had failed in, very well might surrender the treasure again, as they had surrenderedit, to the storm-power of the sea. 

But thinking these dismal thoughts was no help to me, and so I chokedthem down and went once more aboard the steamer to make sure that Ihad forgotten nothing that I needed by taking a final look around. This being ended without my seeing anything that was necessary to me, I said goodbye to the _Ville de Saint Remy_ and got down into my boatagain; and my cat--who usually sat in the break of the side of thesteamer while I was at work in the boat, though sometimes askingwith a miau to be lifted down into her--of his own accord jumpedaboard ahead of me: and that I took for a good sign. 

Certainly, the cat and I made as queer a ship's company as ever wentafloat together; and our little craft--with its cargo that would havebought a whole fleet's lading--was such an argosy as never before hadsailed the seas. Nor did even Columbus, when he struck out across theblack ocean westward, start upon a voyage so blind and so seeminglyhopeless as was ours. The Admiral, at least, had with him such aids tonavigation as his times afforded, and went cruising in open water;failing in his quest, the chance was free to him to put about againand so come once more to his home among living men. But I had not evenhis poor equipment; and as to turning again and so coming back to thepoint whence I started--even supposing that I could manage it--thatending to my voyage would be so miserable that it would be better forme to die by the way. 

In none of the vessels through which I had searched had I found asextant; nor would it have been of any use to me, had I found one, unless I had found also a chronometer still keeping time. Charts I didfind; but as I had to know my position to get any good from them, andas I would run straight for any land that I sighted without in theleast caring on what coast I made my landfall, I left them behind. Myonly aid to navigation was a compass, that I got from the binnacle ofa ship lying near the _Ville de Saint Remy_; and aboard the samevessel I found a very good spyglass, and gladly brought it along withme because it would add to my chances--should I reach open water--notonly of sighting a distant ship but of making out how she was standingin time to head her off. 

But for all practical purposes the compass was enough for me. I knewthat to the westward lay the American continent, and that between itand where I then was--for it was certain that I was not far south ofthe latitude of the Azores--was that section of the Atlantic which ismore thickly crowded with ships than any other like-sized bit of oceanin the world. My chance of escape, therefore, and my only chance, layin holding to a due west course: hoping first that, being clear of theweed, I might fall in with some passing vessel; and second that Imight make the coast before a storm came on me by which my little boatwould be swamped. And so I opened the throttle of my engine: and asthe screw began to revolve I headed my boat for the cut in the weedwhich I had made when I was testing her--while my tow-rope drew tautand after me came slowly my long raft. 

No doubt it was only because the hiss of the escaping steam startledhim; but at the first turn of the engine my cat scampered forward andseated himself in the very bows of the boat--a little blackfigure-head--and thence gazed out steadfastly westward as though hewere the pilot charged with the duty of setting our vessel's course. He had to give place to me in a moment--when I went to the bows tobegin my sawing through the weed--but I was cheered by his plantinghimself that way pointing our course with his nose for me: and again Itook his bit of freakishness for a good sign. 

XXXVIII

HOW I FOUGHT MY WAY THROUGH THE SARGASSO WEED

What I did on that first day of my voyage was what I did on everysucceeding day during so long a time that it seemed to me the end ofit never would come. 

When my craft fairly was started, with the fire well fed and a lightenough weight on the safety-valve to guard against any sudden chancerise in the steam pressure, I went forward to the bows with thecompass and set myself to my sawing. The wheel being lashed with therudder amidships, all the steering was managed from the bows--anydeviation from the straight line westward being corrected by my takingthe saw out from the guide-bars and cutting to the right or to theleft with it until I had the boat's nose pointing again the right way. But there was not often need for cutting of this sort. Held by theguide-bars, the saw cut a straight path for the boat to follow; while, conversely, the boat held the saw true. And so, for the most part, Ihad only to stand like a machine there--endlessly hauling the saw upand endlessly thrusting it down. Behind me my little engine puffedand snorted; over the bows, below me, was the soft crunching sound ofthe weed opening as the boat thrust her nose into it; and on each sideof me was the soft hissing rustling of the weed against the boat'ssides. From time to time I would stop for sheer weariness--foranything more back-breaking than the steady working of that saw Inever came across; and from time to time I had to stop myengine--which I managed, and also the starting of it, by means of apair of lines brought forward into the bows from the lever-bar--whileI attended to feeding the fire. 

The only breaks in this deadly monotonous round were when I ate mymeals--and at first these were as pleasant as they were restful, withthe cat sitting beside me and eating very contentedly too--and when Ifell in with a bit of wreckage that I had to steer clear of or to moveout of my way. Interruptions of this latter sort--even though theygave me a change from my wearying sawing--were hard to put up with;for they not only held me back woefully, but they kept me in continualalarm lest I should break my saw. When the obstacle was a derelict, oranything so large that I could see it well ahead of me and so couldhave plenty of time in which to swing the boat to one side of it byslicing a diagonal way for her, I could get along without muchdifficulty; but when it was only a spar or a mast, so bedded in theweed that my first knowledge of it was finding it close under my bows, there was no chance to make a detour and I had to thrust it aside witha boat-hook or go to hacking at it with an axe until I had cut itthrough. And often it happened that I knew nothing at all of theobstacle, the weed covering it completely, until my saw struck againstit; and that would send a cold shiver through me, as I whipped my sawout of the water--for I had only two saws with me, and I knew that tobreak one of them cut down my chances of escape by a half. Indeed, myfirst saw did get broken while I still was in the thick of the tangle;and after that I was in a constant tremor, which became almost agonywhen I felt the least jar in my cutting, for fear that the otherwould go too. 

But with it all I managed to make pretty fair progress, and betterthan I had counted upon; for I succeeded in covering, as nearly as Icould reckon it, close upon three miles a day. After I fairly got outupon my course I had no means whatever of judging distances; but myestimate of my advance was made at the end of my first day's run, whenthe wreck-pack still was in sight behind me and enabled me to make aclose guess at how far I had come. As the sun went down that nightover my bows--making a long path of crimson along the weed ahead ofme, and filling the mist with a crimson glow--I still could make out, though very faintly, the continent of wrecks from which I had started;and with my glass I could distinguish the _Ville de Saint Remy_ by thethree flags which I had left flying on her masts. And the sight ofher, and the thought of how comfortable and how safe I had been aboardof her, and of how I was done with her forever and was tying to asslim a chance of life as ever a man tied to, for a while put a greatheaviness upon my heart. Not until darkness came and shut her out fromme, and I was resting in my brightly lighted comfortable littlecabin--with my supper to cheer me, and with my cat to cheer metoo--did my spirits rise again; and I was glad, when I got under wayonce more in the morning, that the heavy mist cut her off from me--andthat by the time the sun had thinned the mist a little I had made suchprogress as to put her out of sight of me for good and all. 

Through my second day I still could make out the loom of thewreck-pack behind me--a dark line low down in the mist that I shouldhave taken for a rain-cloud had I not known what it was; but that alsowas pretty well gone by evening, and from my third day onward I wasencompassed wholly by the soft veil of golden mist hanging low aroundme over the weed-covered sea. Only about noon time, when this veilgrew thinner and had in it a brighter golden tone--or at sunset, whenit was shot through with streams of crimson light which filled itwith a ruddy glow--was it possible for me to see for more than a mileor so in any direction; and even when my horizon thus was enlarged alittle my view still was the same: always the weed spread out over thewater so thickly that nowhere was there the slightest break in it, andso dense and solid that it would have seemed like land around me butfor its very gentle undulating motion--which made me giddy if I lookedat it for long at a time. The only relief to this dull flat surfacewas when I came upon a wrecked ship, or upon a hummock of wreckage, rising a little up from it--also swaying very gently with a wearyingmotion that seemed as slow as time. And the silent despairingdesolateness of it all sunk down into my very soul. 

Even my cat seemed to feel the misery of that great loneliness andlost so much of his cheerfulness that he got to be but a dullcompanion for me; though likely enough what ailed him was the reflexof my own poor spirits, made low by my constant bodily weariness, andhad I shown any liveliness he would have been lively too. But I wastoo tired to think much about him--or about anything else--as dayafter day I stood in the bow of the boat working my saw up and downwith a deadly dull monotony: that had no break save when I stopped torest a little my aching body, or to have a tussle with a bit ofwreckage that barred my passage, or to stoke myself with food, or toput coal beneath my boiler, or to lie down at night with every one ofmy bones and muscles heavy with a dull pain. 

And all the sound that there was in that still misty solitude was thepuffing of my engine, and the wheel churning in the water, and thesharp hiss of the saw as it severed the matted fibres, and thecrunching and rustling that the boat made as it went onward with aleaden slowness through the weed. 

XXXIX

WHY MY CAT CALLED OUT TO ME

I had thought that I had struck the bed-rock of misery when I waswandering in the dead depths of the wreck-pack, with the convictionstrong upon me that in a little while I would be dead there too. Butas I look back upon that long suffering of lonely sorrow I think nowthat the worst of it came to me after I had left the wreck-packbehind. In that last round that I fought with misfortune the strengthof my body was exhausted so completely that it could give no supportto my spirit; and as the days went on and on--always with the sameweed-covered sea around me and the same soft golden mist over me, andI always working wearily but with the stolid steadiness of amachine--so deadening a numbness took hold of me that I seemed tomyself like some far-away strange person--yet one with whom I had adirect connection, and must needs sorrow for and sympathizewith--struggling interminably through the dull jading mazes of anight-mare dream. 

Once only was I aroused from this stupor of spirit that went with myvigorous yet apathetic bodily action. Just at sunset one evening Isighted a vessel of some sort far ahead of me--a black mass loominguncertainly against the rich glow of crimson that filled the west--andfor some reason or another I took into my head the fancy that I wasnearing open water and that this was not a wreck but a living ship onboard of which I would find living men: and at the thought of meetingwith live men again I fairly cried with joy. Then darkness fell andshut her out from me; leaving me so eager that I could not sleep forthinking of her, and almost tempting me to press on through the nightthat I might be close up to her by dawn. But when in the first faintgrey light of early morning I made her out again, and saw that she wasin just the same position and at just the same distance ahead of me, Iwas almost as sorry as I would have been had she vanished; for I knewthat had she been a living ship in that long night-time she would havesailed away. And by noon, being then close upon her, I could see thatshe was floating bottom upwards: and so knew certainly that she wasonly a dead wreck drifting in slowly to take her place among the deadwrecks which I had left behind me; and beyond her, instead of openwater, I saw only the weed--covered ocean stretching onward unbrokenuntil it was lost in the golden haze. 

Even then, though, I had a foolish hope that there might be living menclinging to her, and I edged my boat off its course a little so that Imight run close under her stern. But no one showed on her hull as Ineared her, and only my own voice broke the heavy silence as I crazilyhailed her again and again. And then I fell into a dull rage with her, so weary was I of my loneliness and so bitter was my disappointment atfinding her deserted--until suddenly a very different train ofemotions was aroused in me as I made out slowly the weathered invertedlettering on her up-tilting stern, and so read her name there:_Golden Hind_!

Like a flash I had before me clearly all the details of my lastmoments aboard of her: my quick sharp words with Captain Luke, my stepbackward with my arms up as he and the mate pressed upon me, thesmasher that I got in on the mate's jaw, the crack on my own head thatstunned me--and then my revival of consciousness as I found myselfadrift in the ocean and saw the brig sailing away. And while thesethoughts crowded upon me my boat went onward through the weedslowly--and presently I had again parted company with the _GoldenHind_, and this time for good and all. 

After that break in it my dull despairing weariness settled down uponme again--as the heavy days drifted past me and I pressed steadily on, and on, and on. How time went I do not know. I could keep no track ofdays which always were the same. But I must have been on my voyage fornearly a month when I fell in with the _Golden Hind_: as I knowbecause a little while after passing her I used the last of the coalthat was on the raft and cast it off--and my calculation at startinghad been that the coal aboard the raft would last me for aboutthirty days. 

Getting rid of the raft was a good thing for me in one way, for whenthe boat was relieved from that heavy mass dragging through the weedafter her she went almost twice as fast. But in another way it was abad thing for me, for it left me with only what coal I had on the boatherself and, so far as I could judge from my surroundings, I was nonearer to being over the wall of my prison than I was on that firstmorning when I put off from the _Ville de Saint Remy_. Still the weedstretched away endlessly on all sides of me, and still the golden mistceaselessly hung over me--only it did seem to me, though I did nottrust myself to play much with this hopeful fancy, that the mist was agood deal thinner than it had been during the earlier part ofmy voyage. 

But I was too broken to take much notice of my surroundings. Still Iworked on and on, with the steadfastness and the hopelessness of amachine: up and down over the bows with my saw interminably, withonly little breaks for rest and eating and to keep my fires up or fora struggle with a bit of wreckage that barred my way; and at night toweary sleep that did not rest me; and then up before sunrise to beginit all again with a fresh day that had no freshness in it--and waslike all the many days of desperate toil which had gone before it, andlike the others which still were to come. 

Even when I saw ahead of me one morning a long lane of open water, awide break in the weed, I was too dull to think much about it beyondsteering my way into it thankfully--and then feeling a slow wonder asthe boat slid along with no rustling noise on each side of her at whatseemed to me an almost breathless speed. But as that day went on andthe mist grew lighter and lighter about me and I came to more and moreof these open spaces, and at the same time found that the weed betweenthem was so much thinner that the boat almost could push through itwithout having a path cut for her, I began faintly to realize thatperhaps I had got to the beginning of the end. And then, for the firsttime since I had lapsed into my stolid insensibility, a little weakthrill of hope went through me and I seemed to be waking from mydespairing dream. 

With the next day, however, hope full and strong fairly got hold ofme: for I was out of the mist completely, and the weed was so thinthat I brought my saw inboard and finally had done with it, and thestretches of open water were so many and so large that I knew that theblessed free ocean must be very near at hand. And I think that my catknew as well as I did that our troubles were close to a good ending;for all of a sudden he gave over his moping and fell to frisking aboutme and to going through all the tricks which I had taught him of hisown accord; and thence onward he spent most of his time on the roof ofthe cabin--looking about him with a curious intentness, for all theworld as though I had stationed him there to watch out for a shipbearing down on us, or for land. Even when I found that day that onlya dozen bags of coal were left to me--for I had fed my furnace whilemy heaviness was upon me without paying any attention to how thingswere going with my stock of fuel--my spirits were none the worse formy discovery; for with every mile that I went onward the weed wasgrowing thinner and I felt safe enough about continuing my voyageunder sail. 

Because my rousing out of my lethargy had been so slow, this change inmy chances seemed to come upon me with a startling suddenness--when inreality, I suppose, I might have seen signs of it a good while soonerthan I did see them had my mind been clear. But the actual end of myadventure, the resolving of my hopes into a glad certainty of rescue, really did come upon me with a rush at last. 

We fairly were in open water, and the cat and I were dining in thecabin together very cheerfully--with the helm lashed and the boatgoing on her course at half speed. I was disposed to linger over mymeal a little, for I was beginning to enjoy once more the luxury ofgetting rest when I rested, and when my cat suddenly left me and wenton deck by himself--a thing that he never before had done--I took hisdesertion of me in ill part. A moment later I heard the padding of hisfeet on the roof of the cabin over me, and smiled to myself as Ithought of him going on watch there; and then, presently, I heard himcalling me--for I had come to understand a good many of his turns oflanguage--with a lively "Miau!" But it was not until he called meagain, and more urgently, that the oddness of his conduct came home tome and made me hurry on deck after him; and my first glance at himmade me look in the direction in which he was looking eagerly: andthere I saw the smoke of a steamer trailing black to the horizon, andbeneath it her long black hull--and she was heading straight for me, and coming along at such a ripping rate that within twenty minutes shewould be across my bows. 

Half an hour more brought matters to a finish. I had only to waitwhere I was until the steamer was close down upon me, and then to runin under her counter so that her people might throw me a line. Herwhole side was crowded with faces as she stopped her way and I came upwith her, and on her rail a tall officer was standing--holding fastwith one hand to the rigging and having in the other a coil of ropeall ready to cast. 

One face among the many clustered there, and a mighty friendly one, was familiar to me; but I could not place it until a jolly voicehailed me that I recognized with a warm thrill--and the sound of itfilled me with joy as I thought of my bag of jewels in the cabinlocker, and of how at last my doctor's bill would be paid. 

"And so it's yourself, my fine big young man, and at your old tricksagain. But it's this time that you have the good luck of a black catfor company in your cruising all alone by yourself over the open sea!"

And then the tall officer with the coil of rope sung out "Catch!"--andsent the line whizzing down to me, and I caught the end of it inmy hand. 

THE END

BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 

THE AZTEC TREASURE-HOUSE. A Romance of Contemporaneous Antiquity. Illustrated by FREDERIC REMINGTON. Post 8vo, Cloth, $1 50. 

This powerful story may well be ranked among the wonder books. Nostory-reader should miss it, for it is different from anything he hasever read. --_Christian at Work_, N. Y. 

THE UNCLE OF AN ANGEL, and Other Stories. Post 8vo, Cloth, $1 25;Paper, 50 cents. 

Janvier stands in the first rank as a writer of short stories, and a newvolume coming from him is sure to meet with success. In the presentinstance it well deserves to, for the stories it contains, from the onewhich gives it its title to the last between the covers, are among hisbest. --_Christian at Work_, N. Y. 

IN OLD NEW YORK. With 13 Maps and 58 Illustrations. Post 8vo, Cloth, $1 75. 

Overflows with all sorts of minute and curious information concerning boththe old and the recent town. . . . Mr. Janvier has long been a zealous andsympathetic student of this subject. His text is supplemented withnumerous maps and illustrations, instructive and interesting. --_N. Y. Sun_.