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

of it. And I calculated—since I

could go rapidly along my blazed path—that by cutting myself down to

very short rations I could get back to the galleon with a bigger stock

of provisions than that with which I left the barque when I made my

first start toward the north—and if the galleon lay, as I believed

that she did, about in the centre of the pack, this would give me

enough food to last me until I got across to the other side. So I

rummaged out some more of the linen shirts that I had found—taking a

fresh one for my own wear to begin with—and set myself to my

sausage-making with the sleeves of them; packing each sleeve with

beans as tight as I could ram it, and working over each a netting of

light line that I finished off with loops at the ends. Ten of my big

sausages I made into a bundle to be carried on my shoulders like a

knapsack; and the rest I arranged to swing by their loops from a rope

collar about my neck, with another rope run through the lower loops to

be made fast about my waist and so hold them steady—and this

arrangement, as I found when I tried it, answered very well. And

finally, that I might carry my jewels the more securely, I cut off a

sleeve from the oilskin jacket to serve for an outer casing for them,

and took along also some of the light line to net over the bundle and

make it solid and strong; in that way guarding against the chance of

their rubbing a hole in their linen covering—by which I might have

lost them all.

 

I worked fast over my packing, and got it all finished and was ready

to start away by not a great while after sunrise; yet when the time

for my start came I hesitated a little, so darkly uncertain seemed the

issue of the adventure that I had in hand. Indeed, the whole of my

project was a wild one, such as no man not fairly driven into it

would have entertained at all. Its one certainty was that only by

excessive toil could I even hope to carry it through. All else was

doubtful: for I knew not how distant were the farther bounds of the

desolate dead region into which I was bent upon penetrating; nor had I

ground for believing—since I had food in plenty where I was—that I

would gain anything by traversing it; and back of all that was the

gloomy chance of some accident befalling me that would end in my dying

miserably by the way. While I was busily employed in making ready for

my march I had grown quite cheerful; but suddenly my little crop of

good spirits withered within me, and when at last I did go forward it

was with a very heavy heart.

XXVIII

HOW I RUBBED SHOULDERS WITH DESPAIR

 

Could I have foreseen all that was ahead of me I doubt if I should

have had the courage to go on: choosing rather to stay there on the

barque until I had eaten what food I had by me, and then to die

slowly—and finding that way easier than the one I chose to follow,

with its many days of struggle and its many chill nights of sorrow and

I throughout the whole of it rubbing shoulders with despair.

 

As I think of it now, that long, long march seems to me like a

horrible nightmare; and sometimes it comes back to me as a real

nightmare in my dreams. Again, always heavy laden, I am climbing and

scrambling and jumping, endlessly and hopelessly, among old rotten

hulks; each morning trying to comfort myself with the belief that by

night I may see some sign of ships less ancient, and so know that I am

winning my way a little toward where I would be; and each night

finding myself still surrounded by tall antique craft such as have not

for two centuries and more held the seas, with the feeling coming down

crushingly upon me that I have not advanced at all; and even then no

good rest for me—as I lie down wearily in some foul-smelling old

cabin, chill with heavy night-mist and with the reeking damp of oozy

rotten timbers, and perhaps find in it for my sleeping-mates little

heaps of fungus outgrowing from dead men’s bones. And the mere dream

of all this so bitterly hurts me that I wonder how I ever came through

the reality of it alive.

 

At the start, as I have said, I had calculated that the treasure-laden

galleon lay about in the centre of the wreck-pack, and therefore that

I would get across from her to the other side of the pack in about the

same time that I had taken to reach her in my first journey from the

barque; and on the basis of that assumption, when I was come to her

again, I shaped my course hopefully for the north. But my calculation,

though on its face a reasonable enough one, proved to be most woefully

wrong: and I have come to the conclusion, after a good deal of

thinking about it, that this was because the whole vast mass of

wreckage had a circular motion—the great current that created it

giving at the same time a swirl to it—which made the seemingly

straight line that I followed in reality a constantly extended curve.

But whatever the cause may have been, the fact remains that when by my

calculation I should have been on the outer edge of the wreck-pack I

still was wandering in its depths. In one way my march was easier the

longer that it lasted, my load growing a little lighter daily as my

store of food was transferred to my stomach from my back. At first

this steady decrease of my burden was a comfort to me; but after a

while—when more than half of it was gone, and I still seemed to be no

nearer to the end of my journey than when I left the galleon—I had a

very different feeling about it: for I realized that unless I came

speedily to ships whereon I would find food—of which there seemed

little probability, so ancient were the craft surrounding me—I either

must go back to the barque and wait on her until death came to me

slowly, or else die quickly where I was. And so I had for my

comforting the option of a tardy death or a speedy one—with the

certainty of the latter if I hesitated long in choosing between

the two.

 

I suppose that the two great motive powers in the world are hope and

despair. It was hope that started me on that dismal march, but if

despair had not at last come in to help me I never should have got to

its end: for I took Death by both shoulders and looked straight into

the eyes of him when I decided, having by me only food for three days

longer—and at that but as little as would keep the life in me—to

give over all thought of returning to the barque and to make a dash

forward as fast as I could go. I had little enough to carry, but

that I might have still less I left my hatchet behind me—having,

indeed, no farther use for it since if my dash miscarried I was done

for and there was no use in marking a path over which I never could

return; and I was half-minded to leave my bag of jewels behind me too.

But in the end I decided to carry the jewels along with me—my fancy

being caught by the grim notion that if I did die miserably in that

vile solitude at least I would die one of the richest men in all the

world. As to my water-bottles, one of them I had thrown away when I

found that I could count on the morning showers certainly, and the

other had been broken in one of my many tumbles: yet without much

troubling me—as I found that I could manage fairly well, eating but

little, if I filled myself pretty full of water at the beginning of

each day. And so, with only the bag of food and the bag of jewels upon

my back, and with the compass on top of them, I was ready to press

onward to try conclusions with despair.

 

The very hopelessness of my effort, and the fact that at last I was

dealing with what in one way was a certainty—for I knew that if my

plan miscarried I had only a very little while longer to live—gave me

a sort of stolid recklessness which amazingly helped me: stimulating

me to taking risks in climbing which before I should have shrunk

from, and so getting me on faster; and at the same time dulling my

mind to the dreads besetting it and my body to its ceaseless pains

begot of weariness and thirst and scanty food. So little, indeed, did

I care what became of me that even when by the middle of my second

day’s march I saw no change in my surroundings I did not mind it much:

but, to be sure, at the outset of this last stage of my journey I had

thrown hope overboard, and a man once become desperate can feel no

farther ills.

 

But what does surprise me—as I think of it now, though it did not in

any way touch me then—was the slowness with which, when there was

reason for it, my dead hope got alive again: as it did, and for cause,

at the end of that same second day—for by the evening I came out,

with a sharp suddenness, from among the strange old craft which for so

long on every side had beset me and found myself among ships which by

comparison with the others—though they too, in all conscience, were

old enough—seemed to be quite of a modern build. What is likely, I

think—and this would help to account for my long wanderings over

those ancient rotten hulks—is that some stormy commotion of the whole

mass of wreckage, such as had thrust the barque whereon I had found

food deep into the thick of it, had squeezed a part of the centre of

the pack outward; in that way making a sort of promontory—along

which by mere bad mischance I had been journeying—among the wrecks of

a later time. But this notion did not then occur to me; nor did I, as

I have said, at first feel any very thrilling hope coming back to me

when I found myself among modern ships again—so worn had my long

tussle with difficulties left my body and so sodden was my mind.

 

At first I had just a dull feeling of satisfaction that I had got once

more—after my many nights passed on hulks soaked with wet to

rottenness—on good honest dry planks: where I could sleep with no

deadly chill striking into me, and where in my restless wakings I

should not see the pale gleam of death-fires, and where foul stenches

would not half stifle me the whole night long. And it was not until I

had eaten my scant supper, and because of the comfort that even that

little food gave me felt more disposed to cheerfulness, that in a weak

faint-hearted way I began to hope again that perhaps the run of luck

against me had come to an end.

 

In truth, though, there was not much to be hopeful about. For my

supper I had eaten the half of what food was left me, and it was so

little that I still had a mighty hungry