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

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 companionway 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 stateroom 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

oilskins, 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.

 

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 came

aboard—and because of its excellent condition was all the more

tantalizing. This was a case of plug tobacco—a bit of which shredded

and filled into one of the pipes that I found with it, could I have

got 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 if

I had not found it at all.

 

Having made my tour of inspection and taken a general inventory of my

new possessions, I came on deck again and seated myself on the roof of

the cabin that I might do some quiet thinking about what should be my

next move; for I realized that only by a stroke of rare good fortune

had I come upon this supply of food far away from, the coast of my

continent, and that should I leave it and keep on the course northward

that I had set for myself I very likely might starve before another

such store fell in my way. And yet, on the other hand, to stay on

where I was merely because I was able to keep alive there—with no

outlook of hope to stay me—was but making a bid for that madness

which comes of despair.

 

As to carrying any great quantity of food on with me, it was a sheer

impossibility. The tins of beans weighed each of them more than five

pounds, and a score of them would make as much of a load as I