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

well

could carry on level ground—and far more of a load than I could

manage 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. As

to water, however, since the shower of the morning. I felt less

anxiety: and the event proved that my confidence in the rainfall was

justified—for the showers came regularly a little after dawn, and

only once or twice after that first sharp experience did I feel more

than passing pain from thirst.

 

I sat there on the roof of the cabin for a good part of the morning

cogitating the matter; and in the end I could think of no better

plan than one which promised certainly a world of hard labor, and only

promised uncertainly to serve my turn. This was to stick to my project

of going steadily northward—carrying with me as much food as I could

stagger under—until I came again to the outer edge of the

wreck—pack; but to safeguard my return to the barque, should my food

give out before my journey was accomplished, by blazing my path: that

is to say, by making a mark on each wreck that I crossed so that I

could retrace my steps easily and without fear of losing my way. What

I would gain in the end I did not try very clearly to tell

myself—having only a vague feeling that in getting again to the coast

of my great dead continent I would be that much the nearer to the

living world once more; and having a clearer feeling that only by

sticking at some sort of hard work that had a little hopefulness in it

could 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; for

no man ever set himself to a crazier undertaking than that to which I

set 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, and

I was growing hungry again. I made a good meal on what was left in the

second tin of beans that I had opened for my breakfast; and when I was

done I tried to get a light for my pipe by rubbing bits of wood

together, but made nothing of it at all. I had read about castaways on

desert islands getting fire that way—but they went at it with dry

wood, I fancy, and in my mist-sodden desert all the wood was soaked

with damp.

 

For that afternoon I decided to go forward only as far as I could

fetch it to be back on board the barque again by sunset, taking with

me as many tins of beans as I could carry and leaving them where I

made my turn: by which arrangement I would save the carriage of my

supper and my breakfast, and would have a little store of victuals to

fall back upon—when I should be fairly started on my journey—without

coming all the way again to the barque.

 

I got the bed-bag that I had seen in the stateroom, and managed with

the rusty scissors to cut it down to half its size. Into this I packed

ten tins of beans, and made them snug by whipping around the bag one

end 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 space

between two vessels, and so go at my climbing and jumping with both

hands free. As for the compass, my back was the only place for it and

I 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 belt

that I made for myself with a bit of line.

 

Considering what a load I was carrying, and that on every vessel which

I crossed I had to stop while I blazed a mark on her, I made a good

long march of it before the waning of the daylight was a sign to me

that I must put about again; and my return journey was both quick and

easy, for I left the whole of my load, excepting the empty bag, behind

me and came back lightly along my plainly marked path. But I was tired

enough when I got on board the barque again, and glad enough to eat my

supper and then stretch myself out to sleep upon the cabin floor.

 

That night, being easy in my body—except for my wholesome

weariness—and easier in my mind because it seemed to me that I was

doing something for my deliverance, and being also aboard a vessel

that 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 the

saying is, the whole night through. Indeed, I slept later than suited

my purposes—being for rising early and making a long day’s march of

it—and I might have wasted still more time in drowsing lazily had I

not been wakened a little before sunrise by the rattle on the cabin

roof of a dashing burst of rain. I was on deck in a moment, and by

stopping a scupper—as I had done the previous morning—presently had

by me a far bigger supply of water than I needed; from which I got a

good drink lying down to it, and filled an empty bean-tin for another

drink after my breakfast, and so had my two bottles full to last me

until the next day—and was pretty well satisfied by the rain’s

recurrence that I could count upon a shower every morning about the

hour of dawn.

 

When I had finished my breakfast I stowed ten tins of beans in the bag

and lashed four more together so that I could carry them on my

shoulders—being able to manage them in that way because I had no

other back-load—and so was ready to set out along my blazed path. But

before leaving the barque—hoping never again to lay eyes on her—I

took one more look through the cabin to make sure that I had not

passed over something that might be useful to me: and was lucky enough

to find under one of the bunks a drawer—that had been hidden by the

tumbled sheets hanging down over it—in which were some shirts and a

suit of linen clothing that most opportunely supplied my needs. They

all were badly mildewed, but sound enough, and the trousers—I had no

use for the coat and waistcoat—fitted me very well. So I threw off

the rags and tatters that I was wearing and put on in their place

these 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 such

good time that I got to the end of the course over which I had spent a

good part of the previous afternoon in not much more than three hours.

I was pretty well pleased to find that I could make such brisk

marching under such a load; for it showed me that even when I should

get a long way from my base of supplies, that is to say from the

barque, I still could return to it at no great expense of time—and

the 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 for

anything better than to find ways for killing it through all the

remainder of my days.

 

Being thus come to my place of deposit I had to rearrange my

packing—going forward with a lighter load of food that I might

carry also the compass and the hatchet; and going slowly because of my

constant stops to take fresh bearings and to mark my path. But that

time I went straight onward until nightfall; and my heart sank a good

deal within me as I found that the farther I went the more antique in

model, and the more anciently sea-worn, were the wrecks which I came

upon—and so I knew that I must be making my way steadily into the

very depths of my maze.

 

Yet I could not see that I would gain anything by going back to the

barque and thence taking a fresh departure. The barque, as I knew

certainly from the sort of craft surrounding her, was so deeply bedded

in the pack that no matter how I headed from her I should have to go

far before I came again to the coast of it; and on the other hand I

thought that by holding to my course northward I might work my way in

no great time across the innermost huddle of ancient wrecks—for of

the vast number of these I had no notion then—and so to the outer

belt of wrecks new-made: on board of which I certainly should find

fresh food in plenty, and from which (as I forced myself to believe) I

might get away once more into the living world. And so I pushed on

doggedly until the twilight changed to dusk and I could not venture

farther; and then I ate my supper on board of a strange old ship, as

round as a dumpling and with a high bow and a higher stern; and when

I had finished settled myself for the night, being very weary, under

the in-hang of her heavy bulging side.

 

When morning came—and a shower with it that gave me what drink I

wanted and a store of water for the day—I debated for a while with

myself as to whether I should go onward with my whole load, or leave a

part of it in a fresh deposit to which I could return at will. The

second course seemed the better to me; and, indeed, it was necessary

for me to go light-loaded in order to get on at all. For I had come

among ships of such strange old-fashioned build, standing at bow and

stern so high out of the water, that unless they happened to be lying

side by side so that I could pass from one to another amidships—which

was the case but seldom—I had almost as much climbing up and down

among them as though I had been a monkey mounting and descending a

row of trees.

 

Therefore I ate as much breakfast as I could pack into myself—that

being as good a way as any other of carrying food with me—and then I

tore the sleeves from my shirt and stuffed them from the tins that I

opened until I had two great bean sausages, which I fastened

belt-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 could

have gone onward; and even with it I had all that I could do to make

my way. The bag with the remaining tins in it I stood away inside the

cabin of the old ship—which I should have explored farther, so

strange-looking was it, but for my eager desire to get on; and I felt

quite sure that I would find all just as I had left it there even

though I did not come back again for twenty years.

XXIV

OF WHAT I FOUND ABOARD A