In the Sargasso Sea - Thomas A. Janvier (top books to read txt) 📗

I had that something was going wrong with me was a

swimming in my head—so sudden and so violent that I lurched forward

and 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; and

then a sick feeling in my own stomach, and a blurring of my eyes that

made everything seem misty and shadowy, settled for me the fact that

it was I who was reeling about and that the ship was still—and I had

sense enough to lie down at full length on the bridge, between the

wheel-house and the rail, where I was safe against rolling off. And

then the shadows about me got deeper and blacker, and a horrible sense

of oppression came over me, and I seemed to be falling endlessly while

myriads of black specks arranged themselves in curious geometrical

figures before my eyes—and then the black specks and everything else

vanished suddenly, and my consciousness left me with what seemed to me

a great crash and bang.

 

Had I begun matters by being roundly sick I might have pulled through

my attack without being much the worse for it. But as that did not

happen—my weakness, I suppose, not giving nature a chance to set

things right in her own way—I had a good deal more to suffer before I

began to mend. After a while I got enough of my senses back to know

that my head was aching as though it would split open, and to realize

how utterly miserable I was lying there on the bridge with the hot

sunshine simmering down on me through the haze; and then to think how

delightful it would be if only I were back in the cabin again—where

the 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 remember

working my way along the bridge on my hands and knees, and going

backward down the steps in the same fashion for fear of falling; and

of trying to walk upright when I got to the deck, so that I should not

get wet above my knees in the water there, and of falling souse into

it and getting soaked all over; and then of crawling aft very

slowly—stopping now and then because of my pain and dizziness—and

down the companionway and through the passage, and so into the cabin

at last; and then, all in my wet clothes, of tumbling anyhow into my

berth—and after that there is only a long dead blank.

 

When I caught up with myself again, night had come and I was in pitch

darkness. My head still ached horridly, and I was burning hot all

over, and yet from time to time shivering with creeping chills. What I

wanted most in the world was a drink of water; but when I tried to get

up, in the hope of finding some in the jug that no doubt was in the

stateroom, I went so dizzy that I had to plump back into my berth

again. As the night went on, and I lay there thinking how deliciously

the water would taste going cool and sweet down my throat, I got quite

crazy with longing for it; and, in a way, really crazy—for through

most of the night I was light-headed and saw visions that sometimes

comforted me and sometimes made me afraid. The comforting ones were of

fresh green meadows with streams running through them, and of shady

glens in the woods where springs welled up into little basins

surrounded by ferns—just such as I remembered in the woods which

bordered the creek where I used to go swimming when I was a boy. The

horrible ones were not clear at all, and for that were the more

dreadful—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 globes

or ponderously vague masses of I knew not what which were coming

straight 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 uneasy

sleep, which yet was better than no sleep and a little rested me. When

I woke again there was enough light in the room for me to see the

water-jug, and that gave me strength to get to it—and most blessedly

it was nearly full. And so I had a long drink, that for a time checked

the heat of my fever; and then I lay down in my berth again, with the

jug on the floor at my side.

 

For a while I was almost comfortable. Then the fever came back, and

the visions with it—but no longer so painful as those which had been

begotten of my thirst. I seemed to be in a region dreamy and unreal.

Sometimes I would see far stretches of mountain peaks, and sometimes

the crowded streets of cities; but for the most part my visions were

of the sea—tall ships sailing, and little boats drifting over calm

water in moonlight, and black steamers gliding quickly past me; and

still more frequently, but always in a calm sea, the broken hulks of

wrecked ships with shattered masts and tangled rigging and with dead

men lying about their decks, and sometimes with a dead man hanging

across the wheel and moving a little with the hulk’s motion so that in

a horrible sort of way he seemed to be half alive.

 

Night came again, bringing me more pain and the burning of a stronger

fever; and then another day, in which the fever rose still higher and

the visions became almost intolerable—because of their intense

reality, and of my conviction all the while that they were unreal and

that I must be well on the way toward a raving madness in which I

would die.

 

It was at the end of this day—or it may have been at the end of still

another day, for I have no clear reckoning of how the time

passed—that my worst vision came to me; hurting me not because it was

terrifying in itself, but because it made me feel that even hope had

parted company with me at last. And it was more like a dream than a

vision, seemingly being brought to my sight by my own bodily

movement—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 way

that was rather pleasant to me, for the pain in my head lessened and I

seemed to be getting back my strength. After a while I began to long

to get out of the cabin and up on deck, and so have a look around me

over the open sea; and with my longing came the feeling that I was

strong enough to realize it.

 

My getting up seemed entirely real and natural, as did my firm

walking—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 the

companionway I seemed to go up the stairs easily, and to step out on

the 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 toward

the sunset and I saw only its red light touching the soft swell of the

weed-covered sea extending far before me, and the same red light

shimmering in the mist and caught up more strongly on a bank of

lowlying clouds. The outlook was much the same as that which I had

had from the bridge, only the weed seemed to be packed more closely

and there was wreckage about me everywhere. Masts and spars and planks

were in sight in all directions, sometimes floating singly and

sometimes tangled together in little heaps; half a mile away was what

seemed to be a large ship lying bottom upward; near me was a perfectly

sound boat, having in its stern-sheets a bit of sail that fell in such

folds as to make me think that a human form lay under it; and off

toward 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 white

robe 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 hulk

along with it, slowly was drifting closer and closer together; and was

packing tighter and tighter in the soft oozy tangle of the weed, which

everywhere 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 look

down into the west—and to feel all hope dying with the sight that I

saw there. Far away, under the red mist, across the red gleaming weed

and against a sunset sky bloody red, I seemed to see a vast ruinous

congregation of wrecks; so far-extending that it was as though all the

wrecked ships in the world were lying huddled together there in a

miserably desolate company. And with sight of them the certain

conviction was borne in upon me that my own wreck presently would take

its station in that shattered fleet for which there was no salvation;

and that it would lie among them rotting slowly, as they were

rotting, through months or years—until finally, in its turn, it would

drop down from amidst those lepers of the ocean, and would sink with

all 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 with

it, or saved my life for a while longer by getting aboard of another

hulk which still floated, sooner or later my end must come to me in

that same way. On one or another of those rotting dead ships my own

dead 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—my

fever having run its course, I suppose—I slept easily; and when

another day came and I woke again my fever was gone. I was pretty weak

and ragged, but the cut in my head was healing and no longer hurt me

much, 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 I

felt so hungry that I managed to get up and go to the pantry on a

foraging expedition for something to eat.

 

This time I was careful not to stuff myself. I found a box of light

biscuit and ate a couple of them; and then I filled my water-jug at

the tank and brought it and the biscuit back to my stateroom without

going on the deck at all. My light meal greatly refreshed me; and in

an hour or two I ate another biscuit—and kept on nibbling at them off

and on through the night when I happened to wake up. In between whiles

my sleep was of a sort to do me good; not deep, but restful. With the

coming of another morning I felt so strong that I went to the pantry

again for food of a better sort—venturing to eat a part of a tin of

meat with my biscuit and to add to my water a