Chapter 8
I must have walked for a good mile, I suppose, over the dead bodies of these sea-killed ships--and it was the most dismal walk that ever I had taken--before I realized that even if I found a boat and got it overboard it would be of no use to me, since there was no possibility of my getting back in it to my own hulk through that densely packed mass of wrecks and weed. Indeed, I should have perceived this plain certainty sooner had not the wondering curiosity which this strange walk bred in me lured me on and on. And then, being brought at last to a halt by my rational reflection, there came over me suddenly a queer shiver 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 able to get back to her again by the way that I had come, or by any way at all.
At the beginning of my march in this haze-covered sea-wilderness I had tried to keep upon the outer edge of it; but insensibly--having to pass from ship to ship rather by the way that was open to me than by the way that I wished to go--I had wandered into the thick of it more 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 seen ahead of me when my hulk was drawing in upon its borders: a dense confusion of broken and ruined ships which fell away from me vaguely under the golden haze. It had been a dismal sight then; but what gave a fresh note to it, and a thrilling one, was that it no longer was only in front of me but was all around me--stretching away on every side of the wreck on which I was standing, and growing fainter and fainter as the haze shut down thick upon it until it vanished softly into 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 my way easily, was plain enough; but that I really was lost in it did not cross my mind. With all my wanderings, I knew that I could not have traversed any great distance; and the certainty that I had passed always from one ship to the ship next touching it seemed to make finding my way back again entirely open and plain. And so I laughed at myself a little--though that was not much of a place for laughter--because of my touch of panic fright; and then I turned back from the ship on which I was standing to the one next to it, over which I had just come--and so on to the next, and in the same way to three or four more. Yet even in that short distance--though my way was unmistakable, for these ships touched only each other as it happened--I was surprised by finding how differently things looked to me as I took my course backward: all the ups and downs of my scrambling walk being inverted, and the lay of the ships one to another and the look of them being entirely changed.
Presently I got on board of a brig--which I well remembered, because it was one of the vessels having about it a vile stench that had made me cross it quickly--on the farther side of which two ships were lying, both rising a little above it and both jammed close against its side. For a moment I hesitated, in doubt as to which of the two I had come by; and I should have hesitated longer had not a whiff of the horrid smell struck upon me strongly and urged me to go on. And so away I went, taking to the ship that I thought was the right one; and still fancying that it was the right one when I got aboard of it--for both, as I have said, were ships, and the two had been about equally mauled by sea and storm. Indeed, except for the differences in their build and rig, there was a strong family resemblance among these storm-broken vessels; and the way that they were jammed together made their build less noticeable, while a good many of them were dismasted and so had no rig at all.
Therefore I went on confidently for a dozen ships or more before I had any misgivings that I had missed my way--which was but a natural reaction against my momentary doubtfulness--and then I found myself suddenly pulled up short. Right above me was the side of a big iron steamer--called the _City of Boston_, as I made out from the weathered name-plate on her bows, and a packet-boat as I judged by her build--rising so high out of the water that getting up to her deck was impossible: as equally impossible was my having forgotten it had I made such a rattling jump down. Yet this big steamer was the only vessel in touch with the barque on which I was standing, save the schooner from which I had just come; and that gave me sharply the choice between two conclusions: either I had made that big jump without noticing it, or else--and I felt a queer lump rising in my throat as I faced this alternative--I had managed to go astray completely and had lost myself in what had the look of being a hopeless maze.
XVIII
I FIND THE KEY TO A SEA MYSTERY
On shore, in a forest, I would not in the least have minded finding myself in a fix of this sort--though my getting into it would have been unlikely--because getting out of it would have been the easiest thing in the world. I know a good deal of wood-craft, and always can steer a course steadily by having the points of the compass fixed for me by the size and the trend of the branches, and by the bark growing thin 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 the affection 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 I stood looking up the tall side of the _City of Boston_, being certain that I never had come down it and so must be off my course entirely--was my conviction that in this forest of the ocean, if I may call 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 wrecks jammed tight together, or only a little separated by narrow spaces thick-grown with weed; and everywhere overhanging it heavily, growing denser the deeper that I got into the tangle, was the haze that made it more confusing still. And under the haze--and because of it, I suppose--was a soft languorish warmth that seemed to steal my strength away and a good deal of my courage too.
But I knew that to give way to the feeling of dull fright, having somehow a touch of awe in it, that was creeping over me would be to put myself into a panic; and that once my wits fairly were addled my chance of getting back to the _Hurst Castle_ again would be pretty much gone. And to get back to her seemed to me the only way of keeping my heart up and of keeping myself alive. She was the one ship, in all that great dismal fleet, aboard of which I could be sure that nothing horrible had happened, and in which I could be certain that no loathsome sights were to be come upon suddenly in shadowy nooks and corners to which dying men had crept in their extremity--trying, since none ever would bury them, to hide away a little their own bodies against the time when death should be upon them and corruption should begin.
And so I pulled myself together as well as I could and tried to do a little quiet thinking; and presently I came to the conclusion that I must find my way back to the brig against which the two ships were lying and start afresh from her; since it was pretty certain that it was there, by boarding the wrong ship, that I had got off my course. But because of my certain knowledge of what horridness the brig sheltered, and of the noisome stench that I must encounter there, it took a good deal of resolution to put this plan into practice; so much, indeed, that for a while I wavered about it, and succeeded at last in starting back again only by setting going the full force of my will.
But I need not have whipped myself on to my work so resolutely, nor have fretted myself in advance with planning the rush that I should make across the brig when I came to her--for I never, so far as I know, laid eyes on her again. For a little while, as in my first turn-about, I found my way backward without much difficulty--though again the different look that the ships had as I returned across them pulled me up from time to time with doubts about them; and then, just as before, I came to a place where more than one line of advance was open to me and there went wrong--as I knew a little later by finding myself aboard a vessel so strange in her appearance that my first glimpse over her deck satisfied me that I saw her then for the first 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 her death-battle had been fought a long while back in the past. The mauling that she had received had made an utter wreck of her--her masts being shot away and hanging by the board, most of her bulwarks being splintered, and her whole stern torn open as though a crashing broad-side had been poured into her at short range. Moreover, nearly all her guns had been dismounted, and two of them had burst in firing--as the shattered gun-carriages showed.
But what most strongly proved the fierceness of her last action, and the length of time that had passed since she fought it, were the scores of skeletons lying about her deck--a few with bits of clothing hanging fast to them, but most of them clean fleshless naked bones. Just as they had fallen, there they lay: with legs or arms or ribs splintered or carried off by the shot which had struck them, or with bullet-holes clean through their skulls. But the sight of them, while it put a sort of awe upon me, did not horrify me; because time had done its cleansing work with them and they were pure.
Indeed, my imagination was taken such fast hold of by coming upon this thrilling wreck of ancient sea-battle, fought out fiercely to a finish generations before ever I was born, that for a little while I forgot my own troubles entirely; and so got over the shock which my first sight of the riddled sloop and her dead crew had given me by proving that again I had lost my way. And my longing to know all that I could find out about it--backed by the certainty that I should not come upon anything below that would revolt me--led me to go searching in the shattered cabin for some clue to the sloop's name and nationality, and to the cause in which her death-fight had been fought.
The question of nationality was decided the moment that I set my foot within the cabin doorway--there being a good deal of light there, coming in through the broken stern--by my seeing stretched over a standing bed-place in a state-room to starboard an American flag; and the flag, taken together with the ancient build of the sloop, also settled the fact pretty clearly that the action which had finished her must 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 her commander, from the respect shown to him by covering him with the colors--must be lying there, just as his men had placed him to wait for a sea-burial until the fighting should come to an end. And that he had remained there was proof that not a man of the sloop's company but had been killed outright in the fight or had got his death-wound in it; and also of the fact that in a way the fight had been a victory--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's log-book lying open on the cabin table, just as it had lain there, and had entries made in it, while the action was going on. And a very strange thrill ran through me as I read on the mouldy page in brown faint letters the date, "October 5, 1814," and across the page-head, in bigger brown faint letters: "U.S. Sloop-of-war _Wasp_": and so knew that I was aboard of that stinging little war-sloop--whereof the record is a bright legend, and the fate a mystery, of our Navy--which in less than three months' time successively fought and whipped three English war-vessels--the ship _Reindeer_ and the brigs _Avon_ and _Atalanta_, all of them bigger than herself--and then, being last sighted in September, 1814, not far from the Azores, vanished with all her crew and officers from off the ocean and never was seen nor heard of again.
There before me in the mouldy log-book was the record of her last action--and in gallantry it led the three others which have made her fame.
The entries began at 7.20 A.M. with: "A strange sail in sight on the weather bow;" at 7.45 followed: "The strange brig bearing down on us. Looks English"; and at 8.10: "The strange brig has shown English colors." Then came the manoeuvring for position, covering more than an hour, and the beating to general quarters; and after that the short entries ran on quickly--in such rough and ready writing as might be expected of a man dashing in for a moment to make them, and then dashing 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 as ever was fought on salt water; and when my reading was finished I gave a great sigh. It was a fit ending for the little _Wasp_, that death triumphant: and it was a fit ending to a fight between American and English sailors that they should hang at each other's throats, neither yielding, until they died that way--they being each of a nation unaccustomed to surrender, and both of the one race which alone in 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 discovery aroused 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, I became aware that the daylight was fading into darkness; and as I realized what that meant for me my thoughts came back suddenly to myself, and then all my enthusiasm ebbed away.
I came out upon the deck again, but leaving everything as I had found it--my momentary impulse to lift the flag having vanished as I felt how fit it was that this dead battle-captain should rest on undisturbed where his men had laid him beneath the colors that he had died for; and I was glad to find when I got into the open that a good deal of daylight still remained. But it was so far gone, and was waning so rapidly, that I saw that I had little chance of getting back to the _Hurst Castle_ before nightfall; and that the most that I could hope for was to make a start in the right direction--and perhaps to find a wreck to sleep on that had food and water aboard of it, and thence take up my search again the next day.
Yet the dread was strong upon me, as I looked around upon the wrecks among which the _Wasp_ was bedded, that I might not only be unable to find the _Hurst Castle_ again, but ever to find my way across that tangle to the outer edges of it--where only was it possible that ships on which were provisions fit for eating would be found. The very fact that the _Wasp_ had settled into her position more than fourscore years back made it certain that she was deep in the labyrinth; and the strange old-fashioned look of the craft surrounding her showed me that I should have to go far before finding a vessel wrecked in recent 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 I had come to the _Wasp_ would not serve any good purpose--even supposing that I could have managed it, which was not likely--I went on beyond her on a new course: taking a longish jump from her quarter-rail and landing on the deck of a clumsy little ill-shapen brig, with a high-built square stern and a high-built bow that was pretty nearly square too. She was Dutch, I fancy, and a merchant vessel; but she carried a little battery of brass six-pounders, and had also a half dozen pederaros set along her rail. And by her carrying these old-fashioned swivel-guns--which proved that she had got her armament not much later than the middle of the last century--and by the general look of her, I knew that she was an older vessel even than the _Wasp_.
This observation, and the reflection growing out of it that the deeper I went into the Sargasso Sea the older must be the craft bedded in it--since that great dead fleet is recruited constantly by new wrecks drifting in upon its outer edges from all ways seaward--put into my head what seemed to me to be a very reasonable plan for finding my way back to the _Hurst Castle_ again; or, at least, to some other newly come in hulk on which there would be fresh water and sound food. And this was to shape my course by considering attentively the look of each wreck that I came aboard of, and the look of those surrounding it, and by then going forward to whichever one of them seemed to be of the most modern build.
As the first step in carrying out my plan--and it seemed to be such a good plan that I felt almost light-hearted over it--I got up on the rail of the old brig and jumped back to the less-old _Wasp_ again: landing in her main-channels, and thence easily boarding her by scrambling up what was left of the chains. But in taking my next step I had no choice in the matter, as only one other vessel was in touch with the sloop--a heavily-built little schooner that had the look of being quite as old as the brig which I had just left. And her age was 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 a sudden my faith in my fine plan for getting out of the tangle began to wane.
In a general way, of course, the conclusion which I had arrived at was a sound one. Broadly speaking, it was certain that could I pass in a straight line from the centre to the circumference of that vast assemblage of wrecks I constantly would find vessels of newer build; and so at last, upon the outermost fringe, would come to the wrecks of ships belonging to my own day. But one weak point in my calculations was my inability to hold to a straight line, or to anything like one--because I had to advance from one wreck to another as they happened to touch or to be within jumping distance of each other, and therefore went crookedly upon my course and often fairly had to double on it. And another weak point was that the sea in its tempests recognizes no order of seniority, but destroys in the same breath of storm ships just beginning their lives upon it and ships which have withstood its ragings for a hundred years: so that I very well might find--as I actually did find in the case of the _Wasp_--a comparatively modern-built vessel lying hemmed in by ancient craft, survivals of obsolete types, which had lingered so long upon the ocean that in their lives as in their deaths they merged and blended the present and the past.
Thus a check was put upon my plan at the very outset; yet in a stolid sort of way--knowing that to give it up entirely would be to bring despair upon me, for I could not think of a better one--I tried still to hold by it: going on from the clumsy little old schooner to that one of two vessels lying beyond her which I fancied, though both of them belonged to a long past period, was the more modern-looking in her build. And so I continued to go onward over a dozen craft of one sort or another, holding by my rule--or trying to believe that I was holding by it, for all of the wrecks which I crossed were of an antique type--and now and then being left with no chance for choosing by finding open to me only a single way. And all this while the daylight was leaving me--the sun having gone down a ruddy globe beyond the forest of wrecks westward, and heavy purple shadows having begun to close down upon me through the low-hanging haze.
The imminence of night-fall made clear to me that I had no chance whatever of getting out from among those long-dead ships before the next morning; and this certainty was the harder to bear because I was desperately hungry--more than six hours having passed since I had eaten anything--and thirsty too: though my thirst, because of the dampness of the haze I suppose, was not very severe. But the belief that I really was advancing toward the coast of my strange floating continent 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 the reflection that even though I did have to keep a hungry and thirsty vigil among those old withered hulks I yet should be the nearer, by every one of them that I put behind me that night, to the freshly come in wrecks on the coast line--where I made sure of finding a breakfast on the following day. Moreover, I knew how forlornly miserable I should be the moment that I lost the excitement of scrambling and climbing and just sat down there among the ancient dead, with the darkness closing over me, to wait for the slow coming of another day. And my dread of that desolate loneliness urged me to push forward while 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 to another; and at last--after nearly going down into the weed between two of them, because of a rotten belaying-pin that I caught at breaking in my hand--I had to resign myself to giving over until morning any farther attempt to advance. But I was cheered by the thought that I had got on a good way in the hour or more that had gone since I had left the _Wasp_ behind me; and so I tried to make the best of things as I cast around me for some sheltered nook on the deck of the vessel I had come aboard of--a little clumsy old brig--where my night might be passed. As to going below, either into the cabin or the forecastle, I could not bring myself to it; for my heart failed me at the thought of what I might touch in the darkness there, and my mind--sore and troubled by all that I had passed through, and by the dim dread filling it--certainly would have crowded those black depths with 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 that would shelter me from the dampness while I did my best to sleep away into forgetfulness my hunger and my thirst; but was troubled all the while that I was making my round of investigation by a haunting feeling that I had been on that same deck only a little while before. Growing stronger and stronger, this feeling became so insistent that I could not rest for it; and presently compelled me to try to quiet it by taking a look at the wreck next beyond the brig to see if I recognized that too--as would be likely, since I must have crossed it also, had I really come that way.