Chapter 9
I did not try to board this adjoining wreck, but only clambered up on the rail of the brig so that I could look well at it--and when I got my look I came more nearly to breaking down completely than I had done at any time since I had been cast overboard from the _Golden Hind_, For there, showing faintly in the gloom below me, was the gun-set deck of a war-ship, and over the deck dimly-gleaming bones were scattered--and in that moment I knew that the whole of my wandering had been but a circle, and that I was come back again at the weary ending of it to the _Wasp_.
But what crushed the heart of me was not that my afternoon of toil had been wasted, but the strong conviction--from which I no longer saw any way of escaping--that I had strayed too deep into that hideous sea-labyrinth ever to find my way out of it, and that I must die there slowly 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, leaning my back against her bulwarks and a little sheltered by their old-fashioned in-board overhang. But I had no very clear notion of what I was doing; and my feeling, so far as I had any feeling, was less that I was moving of my own volition than that I was being moved by some power acting from outside of me--the sensation of irresponsibility that comes to one sometimes in a dream.
Indeed, the whole of that night seemed to me then, and still seems to me, much more a dream than a reality: I being utterly wearied by my long hard day's work in scrambling about among the wrecks, and a little light-headed because of my stomach's emptiness, and feverish because of my growing thirst, and my mind stunned by the dull pain of my despair. And it was lucky for me, I suppose, that my thinking powers were so feeble and so blunted. Had I been fully awake to my own misery I might very well have gone crazy there in the darkness; or have been moved by a sharp horror of my surroundings to try to escape them by going on through the black night from ship to ship--which would have ended quickly by my falling down the side of one or another of them and so drowning beneath the weed.
Yet the sort of stupor that I was in did not hold fast my inner consciousness; being rather a numbing cloud surrounding me and separating me from things external--though not cutting me off from them wholly--while within this wrapping my spirit in a way was awake and free. And the result of my being thus on something less than speaking terms with my own body was to make my attitude toward it that of a sympathizing acquaintance, with merely a lively pity for its ill-being, rather than that of a personal partaker in its pains. And even my mental attitude toward myself was a good deal of the same sort: for my thoughts kept turning sorrowfully to the sorrow of my own spirit solitary there, shrinking within itself because of its chill forsakenness and lonely pain of finding itself so desolate--the one thing living in that great sea-garnering of the dead.
And after a while--either because my light-headedness increased, or because I dozed and took to dreaming--I had the feeling that the dense blackness about me, a gloom that the heavily overhanging mist made almost palpable, was filling with all those dead spirits come to peer curiously into my living spirit; and that they hated it and were envious of it because it was not as they were but still was alive. And from this, presently, I went on to fancying that I could see them about me clad again dimly in the forms which had clothed them when they also in their time had been living men. At first they were uncertain and shadowy, but before long they became so distinct that I plainly saw them: shaggy-bearded resolute fellows, roughly dressed in strange old-fashioned sea-gear, with here and there among them others in finer garb having the still more resolute air of officers; and all with the fierce determined look of those old-time mariners of the period when all the ocean was a battling-place where seamen spent their time--and most of them, in the end, spent their lives also--in fighting with each other and in fighting with the sea.
Gradually this throng of the sea-dead filled the whole deck about me and everywhere hemmed me in; but they gave no heed to me, and were ranged orderly at their stations as though the service of the ship was being carried on. Among themselves they seemed to talk; but I could hear nothing of what they were saying, though I fancied that there was a humming sound filling the air about me like the murmur of a far-away crowd. Now and then an angry bout would spring up suddenly between two or 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 them with blows right and left with his fists or with the butt of his pistol or with the pommel of his sword--and so would scatter the rough brutes, scowling, and as it seemed uttering growls such as beasts lashed by their keepers would give forth.
And at other times they would seem to be fighting with some enemy--serving at their guns stripped half-naked, with handkerchiefs knotted about their heads, and with the grime of powder-smoke upon their bare flesh and so blackening their faces as to give their gleaming eyes a still more savage look; falling dead or wounded with their blood streaming out upon the deck and making slimy pools in which a man running sometimes would slip and go down headlong--and would get up, with a laugh and a curse, only in another moment to drop for good as a musket-ball struck him or as a round-shot sliced him in two; and all of them with a savage joy in their work, and going at it with a lust for blood that made them delight in it--and take no more thought than any other fighting brutes would take of guarding their own lives.
Or, again, they would seem to be in the midst of a tempest, with the roar of the wind and the rush of the waves upon them, and would be fighting the gale and the ocean's turbulence with the same devil's daring that they had shown in fighting the enemy--and with the same carelessness as to what happened to themselves so long as they stuck to their duty and did the best that was in them to bring their ship safely through the storm. And so they went on ringing the changes on their old-time wild sea-life--their savage fights among themselves, and their battlings with foemen of a like metal, and their warfare with the ocean--while the dark night wore on.
Yet even when these visionary forms were thickest about me--and when it seemed, too, as though from all the dead hulks about me the shadows of the dead were rising in the same fashion in pale fierce throngs--I tried to hold fast, and pretty well succeeded in it, to the steadying conviction that the making of them was in my own imagination and that they were not real. And then, too, I fell off from time to time into a light sleep which still was deep enough to rid me of them wholly; and which also gave me some of the rest that I so much needed after all that I had passed through during that weary day.
What I could not get rid of, either sleeping or waking, was my gnawing hunger 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, my thirst was a good deal lessened; which was a gain in one way, though not in another--for that same chill of night very searchingly quickened my longing for food. But as the hours wore away my desire for water got the better of every other feeling, even changing my haunting visions of dead crews rising from the dead ships about me into visions of brooks and rivulets--which only made my burning craving the more keen.
Nor did what little reasoning I could bring to bear upon my case, when from time to time I partly came out from the sort of lethargy that had hold 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 scraps of old salted meat, or some remnant of musty flour, that at least would serve to keep life in me. But even food of this wretched sort would do me no good without water--and water was to be found only in one of the wrecks forming the outer fringe of my prison, toward which I had been trying so long vainly to find my way.
Yet in spite of my having already gone astray half a dozen times over in daylight I still did have, deep down in me, a feeling that if only the darkness would pass I could manage to steer a true course. And when at last, as it seemed to me after years of waiting for it, I began to see a little pink tone showing in the mist dimly it almost seemed as though my troubles were coming instantly to an end. And, at least, the horror of deep darkness, which all night long had been crushing me, did leave me from the moment when that first gleam of returning 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 spread up into the sky far enough to thin the shadows which hung over my dead fleet heavily, and longer still before I had light enough to venture to 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 on the preceding evening; and this, with the fiery glow that was in it when the sunrise came, gave me hope that a douse of rain might be coming--which chance of getting the water that I longed for heartened me even more than did the up-coming of the sun.
My throat was hurting me a good deal because of its dryness, and my itching thirst was all the stronger because the last food I had eaten--being the mess left in the pan by the two men who had killed each 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 of my emptiness--as I discovered when I got on my legs, and found myself staggering a little and the things around me swimming before my eyes. And what was worse than that was a dull stupidity which so possessed me that I could not think clearly; and so for a while kept me wandering about the deck of the brig aimlessly, while my wits went wool-gathering instead of trying to work out some plan--even a foolish plan--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 been aroused suddenly by feeling a big drop of rain on my face; and only a moment later--the thick mist, I suppose, being surcharged with water, and some little waft of wind in its upper region having loosened its vent-peg--I was in the thick of a dashing shower. So violent was the downpour that in less than a minute the deck was streaming, and I had only to plug with my shirt one of the scuppers amidships to have in another minute or two a little lake of fresh sweet water from which--lying on my belly, with the rain pelting down on me--I drank and drank until at last I was full. And the feel of the rain on my body was almost as good as the drinking of it, for it was deliciously cool and yet not chill.
When I got at last to my legs again, with the dryness gone from my throat and only a little pain there because of the swollen glands, I found that I walked steadily and that my head was clear too; and for the moment I was so entirely filled with water that I was not hungry at all. Presently the rain stopped, and that set me to thinking of finding some better way to keep a store of water by me than leaving it in a pool on the open deck; where, indeed, it would not stay long, but would ooze out through the scupper and be sopped up by the rotten planks.
And so, though I did not at all fancy going below on the old brig, I went down the companion-way into the cabin to search for a vessel of some sort that would be water-tight; and shivered a little as I entered that dusky place, and did not venture to move about there until my eyes got accustomed to the half darkness for fear that I should go stumbling over dead men's bones.
As it turned out, the cabin was bare enough of dead people, and of pretty much everything else; from which I inferred that in the long past time when the brig had been wrecked her crew had got safe away from her, and had been able in part to strip her before they left her alone 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 the skipper had carried his private stock of liquors very likely; and two of the bottles, no doubt being empty when the cabin was cleared, had been left behind. They served my turn exactly, and I brought them on deck and filled them from my pool of rain-water--and so was safe against thirst for at least another day.
Being thus freshened by my good drink, and cheered by the certainty of having water by me, I sat down for a while on the cabin-scuttle that I might puzzle out a plan for getting to some ship so recently storm-slain that aboard of her still would be eatable food. As for rummaging in the hold of the brig, I knew that no good could come of it--she having lain there, as I judged, for a good deal more than half a century; and for the same reason I knew that I only would waste time in searching the other old wrecks about me for stores. All that was open to me was to press toward the edge of the wreck-pack, for there alone could I hope to find what I was after--and there it pretty certainly would be. But after my miserable experience of the preceding day it was plain that before I started on my hunting expedition I must hit upon some way of laying a course and holding it; or else, most likely, go rambling from wreck to wreck until I grew so weak from starvation that on one or another of them I should fall down at last and die.
Close beside me, as I sat on the hatch, was the brig's binnacle, and in it I could see the shrivelled remnant of what had been the compass-card; and the sight of this put into my head presently the thought--that might have got there sooner had my wits been sharper--to look for a compass still in working order and by means of it to steer some sort of a steady course. The argument against this plan was plain enough, and it was a strong one: that in holding as well as I could to any straight line I might only get deeper and deeper into my maze--for I was turned around completely, and while I knew that I could not be very far from the edge of my island of flotsam I had not the faintest notion in which direction that near edge lay.
For some minutes longer I sat on the hatch thinking the matter over and trying to hit on something that would open to me a better prospect of success; and all the while I had a hungry pain in my stomach that made clear thinking difficult, and that at the same time urged me to do 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 of water over my shoulders with a bit of line that I found in the brig's cabin--making the slings short, that the bottles might hang close under my arms and be pretty safe against breaking--and then away I went on my cruise after a compass still on speaking terms with the north pole.
That I would find one seemed for a good while unlikely; for I searched a score and more of wrecks, and on every one of them the binnacle either was empty or the needle entirely rusted away. But at last I came to a barque that had a newer look about her than that of the craft amidst which she was lying, and that also had her binnacle covered with a tarred canvas hood such as is used when vessels are lying in port. How the hood came to be where it was on that broken wreck was more than I could account for; but by reason of its being in place the binnacle had been well protected from the weather, and I found to my delight that the compass inside was in working trim.
It was an awkward thing to carry, being an old-fashioned big square box heavily and clumsily made; but I was so glad to get it that I was not for quarrelling with it, though it did for a little put me to a puzzle as to how I should pack it along. What I came to was to sling it on my back knapsack-fashion, which was a poor way to have it, since every time that I looked at it I had to unsling it and then to sling it again; yet there was no other way for me to manage it, because in my scrambling from one wreck to another I needs must have both hands free. But what with this big box strapped to my shoulders, and the two big bottles dangling close up under my arm-pits, I must have looked--only there was nobody to look at me--nothing less than a figure 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 more disposed thus to go due north because that way, as far as I could see for the mist and the mast-tangle, the wrecks lay packed so close together that passing from one to another would be easy for me--which was a matter to be considered in view of the load that I had to carry along.
But just as I was ready to start another notion struck me. I had noticed the modern look of the barque, as compared with the ancient build of the hulks amidst which she was lying, when I first came aboard of her; and as I was about to leave her--my eye being caught by the soundness of a bit of line made fast to a belaying-pin on her rail--the thought occurred to me that I might find on her something or other still fit to be called food. And when this thought came to me I unslung my compass and my water-bottles in a hurry--for I was as ravenous 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 changing again to a golden haze, and the cabin of the barque well lighted through the skylight over it, I felt less creepy and uncomfortable as I went down the companion-way than I had felt when I went below into the old brig's dusky cabin in the early dawn. But for all that I walked gingerly, and stopped to sniff at every step that I took downward; for I could not by any means get rid of my dread of coming upon some grewsome thing. However, the air was sweet enough--the slide of the hatch being closed, but the doors open and the cabin well ventilated--and when I got to the foot of the stair I saw nothing horrible in my first sharp look around.
It was a small cabin, but comfortably fitted; and almost the first thing that caught my eye was a work-basket spilled down into a corner and some spools and a pair of rusty scissors lying on the floor, and then in another corner I saw a little chair. And the sight of these things, which told that the barque's captain had had his wife and his child along with him, gave me a heavy sorrowful feeling--for all that if death had come to this sea-family the pain of it must have been over 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 bunks and in one of them a canvas bed-bag such as seamen use. The doors of the other two rooms, there being four in all, were closed, and I opened them hesitatingly; and felt a good deal easier in my mind when I found that in neither of them was what I dreaded might be there. In one of them the bunk had been left in disorder, as though some one had risen from it hurriedly, and a frock and a bonnet were hanging against the wall; but the other one seemed to have been used only as a sort of storeroom--there being in it a pair of rubber boots and a suit of oil-skins, and a locker in which were some pretty trifles in shell-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 these books I opened, and found written on the flyleaf: "Mary Woodbridge, with Aunt Jane's love. For the coming Christmas of 1879"--and this date, though it did not settle certainly when the barque had started on the voyage that had come to so bad an ending, at least proved that she had not been lying where I found her for a very great many years.
As to how the barque had got so deep into the wreck-pack, she being so lately added to it, I could not determine; but my conjecture was that some storm had broken the pack and had driven her down into it, and then that the opening had closed again, leaving her fast a good way in its inside. But about the way of her getting there I did not much bother myself, my one strong thought being that I had a chance of finding on board of her something that I could eat; and so--being by that time pretty well satisfied that I was safe not to come upon anything horrid hid away in a dark corner of her--I went at my farther explorations with a will. Indeed, I was so desperately hungry by that time that even had I made some nasty discoveries I doubt if they would have held me back from my eager search for food.
Luckily I had not far to look before I found what I was after, the very first door that I tried--a door in the forward side of the cabin--opening into a pantry in which were stowed what had been, as I judged from the nature of them and the place where I found them, the captain's private stores. The door was not locked, and a good many empty boxes were lying around on the floor with splintered lids, as though they had been smashed open in a hurry--which looked as though the pantry had been levied on suddenly to provision the boats after the wreck occurred, and so made me hope that the captain and his wife and baby had got away from the barque alive.
But the stock of stores had been a big one, and I saw that I was safe enough against starvation if only a part of what was left still were sound--and that uncertainty I settled in no time by picking up a hatchet that was lying among the broken boxes and splitting open the first tin on which I laid my hands. The tin had beans in it, and when I cracked it open that way more than half of them went flying over the floor; and they looked so good, those blessed beans, that without stopping to smell at them critically, or otherwise to test their soundness, I fell to feeding myself out of the open tin with my hand--and never stopped until all that remained of them were in my inside. I don't suppose that they were the better for having lain there so long, but they certainly were not much the worse for it--as I proved more conclusively, having by that time taken off the sharp edge of my hunger, by eating a part of another tin of them and finding them very good indeed. After that I opened a tin of meat--but on the instant that the hatchet split into it there came bouncing out such a dreadful smell that I had to rush on deck in a hurry with it and heave it over the side.
But even without the meat my food supply was secure to me for a good while onward, there being no less than ten boxes with two dozen tins of beans in each of them--quite enough to keep life in me for more than half a year. I rummaged through the place thoroughly, but found nothing more that was fit to eat there. Some boxes of biscuit and a barrel of flour had gone musty until they fairly were rotten; and all the other things that I came across were spoiled utterly by damp and mould. As for the stores for the crew, when I went forward to have a look at them, they were spoiled too--the flour and biscuit rotten, and the pickled meat a mouldy mass of tough fibre encrusted thickly with salt.