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

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loathsome horrors with me in my dreams.

XXX

I COME TO THE WALL OF MY SEA-PRISON

 

The morning shower that waked me gave me the water that I so longed

for; but it only a little refreshed me, because my chief need was

food. Being past the first sharp pangs of hunger, I was in no great

bodily pain; but a heavy languor was upon me that dulled me in both

flesh and spirit and disposed me to give up struggling for a while,

that I might enjoy what seemed to me just then to be the supreme

delight of sitting still. Yet I had sense enough to know that if I

surrendered to this feeling it would be the end of me; and after a

little I found energy enough to throw it off.

 

I was helped thus to rouse myself by finding, as I looked around me

with dull eyes, that the hulk I had come aboard of in such a hurry in

the twilight certainly had not been wrecked for any great length of

time. She was a good-sized schooner, quite modern in her build; and,

although she had weathered everywhere to a pale gray, her timbers were

not rotten and what was left of her cordage still was fairly sound:

all of which, as I took it in slowly, gave me hope of finding aboard

of her some sort of eatable food.

 

But while this hope was slow to shape itself in my heavy mind, I was

quick enough to act upon it when once it had taken form. With a

briskness that quite astonished me I got on my feet and walked aft to

the cabin—the cabin pantry being the most likely place in which to

look for food put up in tins; and I was farther encouraged by finding

the hatch open and the cabin itself fresh-smelling and clean. And, to

my joy, the food that I hoped to find in the pantry really was there;

and such a plenty of it that I could not have eaten it in a

whole year.

 

I had the good sense to go slowly—and that was not easy, for at sight

of something that would satisfy it my hunger all of a sudden woke up

ragingly; but I knew that I stood a good chance of killing myself

after my long fast unless I held my appetite well in hand, and so I

began with a tin of peaches—opening it with a knife that I found

there—and it seemed to me that those peaches were the most delicious

thing that I had tasted since I was born. After they were down I went

on deck again—to be out of reach of temptation—and staid there

resolutely for an hour; getting at this time, and also keeping myself

a little quiet, by counting six thousand slowly—and it did seem to me

as though I never should get to the end! Then I had another of those

delicious tins; and after a trying half hour of waiting I had a third;

and then—being no longer ravenous, and no longer having the feeling

of infinite emptiness—I laid down on the deck just outside the cabin

scuttle and slept like a tree in winter until well along in the

afternoon.

 

I woke as hungry as a hound, but with a comfortable and natural sort

of hunger that I set myself to satisfying with good strong food:

eating a tin of meat with a lively relish and without any following

stomach-ache, and drinking the juice of a tin of peaches after

it—there being no water fit to drink on board. My meal began to set

me on my feet again; but I still felt so tired and so shaky that I

decided to stay where I was until the next morning—having at last a

comforting sense of security that took away my desire to hurry and

made me wholly easy in my mind. And this feeling got stronger as the

sun fell away westward and made a crimson bank of mist along the

horizon, against which I saw the funnels of more than a dozen

steamers—and so knew that the coast of my continent surely was close

by. What I would do when I got to the steamers was a matter that I did

not bother about. For the moment I was satisfied with the certainty

that I would find aboard of them food in plenty and a comfortable

place to sleep in, and that was enough. And so I did not make any

plans, or even think much; but just ate as much supper as I could

stow away in my carcase, and then settled myself in the schooner’s

cabin for the night.

 

In the morning I was so well rested, and felt so fresh again, that I

was eager to get on; and I was so lighthearted that I fell to singing

as I pushed forward briskly, being full of hope once more and of airy

fancies that I had only to reach the edge of the wreck-pack in order

to hit upon some easy way of getting off from it out over the open

sea. A little thinking would have shown me, of course, that my fancies

had nothing to rest on, and that coming once more to the coast of my

continent was only to be where I was when my long journey through that

death-stricken mass of rottenness began; but the reaction of my

spirits was natural enough after the gloom that for so long had held

them, and so was the castle-building that I took to as I went onward

as to what I would do with my great treasure when at last I had it

safe out in the living world.

 

Although I did not doubt that food of some sort was to be found on

board of all the vessels which I should cross that day, I guarded

against losing time in looking for it by carrying along with me a

couple of tins of meat—slung on my shoulders in a wrapping of

canvas—and on one of these, about noon-time, I made a good meal. When

I had finished it I was sorry enough that I had not brought a tin of

peaches too, for the meat was pretty well salted and made me as

thirsty as a fish very soon after I got it down.

 

But my thirst was not severe enough to trouble me greatly; and,

indeed, I partly forgot it in my steadily growing excitement as I

pressed forward and more and more distinctly saw the funnels of a

whole fleet of steamers looming up through the golden mist ahead of me

like chimneys in a sun-shot London fog. And so the afternoon went by,

and my crooked rough path slipped away behind me so rapidly that by a

good hour before sunset I was near enough to the steamers to see not

only their funnels but their hulls.

 

The look of one of them, and she was one of the nearest, was so

familiar as I began to make her out clearly that I was sure that I had

got back again to the Hurst Castle; for she was just about the size

of the Hurst Castle, and was lying with her bow down in the water

and her stern high in the air—and the delight of this discovery threw

me into such a ferment that I quite forgot how tired I was and fairly

ran across the last half dozen vessels that I had to traverse before I

came under her tall side. However, when I got close to her I saw that

she was not the Hurst Castle after all, but only another unlucky

vessel that had broken her nose in collision and so had filled forward

and gone sagging down by the bows.

 

As it happened, the wreck from which I had to board her was a little

waterlogged brig, close under her quarter, so lowlying that the

tilted-up stern of the steamer fairly towered above the brig like a

three-story house; and at first it seemed to me that I was about as

likely to climb up a house-front as I was to climb up that high smooth

wall of iron. But a part of the brig’s foremast still was standing,

and from it a yard jutted out to within jumping distance of the

steamer’s rail; and while that was not a way that I fancied—nor a way

that ever I should have dared to take, I suppose, had there been any

choice in the matter—up it I had to go. Hot as I was though with

eagerness, I was a badly scared man as I slowly got to my feet and

steadied myself for a moment on the end of the yard and then jumped

for it; and a very thankful man, an instant later, when I struck the

steamer’s rail and fell floundering inboard on her deck—though I

bruised myself in my fall pretty badly, and got an unexpected crack on

the back of my head as my bag of jewels flew up and hit me with

a bang.

 

However, no real harm was done; and I was so keen to look about me

that in a moment I was on my legs again and went forward, limping a

little, that I might get up on the bridge: for my strongest

desire—stronger even than my longing to go in search, of the water

that I did not doubt I would find in the steamer’s tanks—was to gaze

out over the open ocean, across which I had to go in some way if ever

again I was to be free.

 

The sun was close down on the horizon, a red ball of fire glowing

through the mist, and in the mist above and over the surface of the

sea below a red light shone. But as I stood on the bridge looking at

this strange splendor all my hope died away slowly within me and a

chill settled upon my heart. As far as ever I could see the water was

covered thickly with tangled and matted weed, broken only here and

there by hummocks of wreckage and by a few hulks drifting in slowly to

take their places in the ranks of the dead. The almost imperceptible

progress of these hulks showed how dense was the mass through which

they were drifting; and showed, too, how utterly impossible it would

be for me to force my way in a boat driven by oars or sails to the

clear water lying far, far off. Even a steamer scarcely could have

pushed through that tangle; and could not have gone twice her own

length without hopelessly fouling her screw. And it seemed to me that

I might better have died on one of the old rotten hulks among which I

had been for so long a time wandering—where hope was not, and where I

was well in the mood for dying—rather than thus to have got clear of

them, and have hope come back to me, only to bring up short against

the wall of my sea-prison and so find myself held fast there for all

the remainder of my days. And I was the more savagely bitter because I

had no right whatever to be disappointed. What I saw was not new to

me, and I had known what I was coming to—though I had kept down my

thoughts about it—all along.

XXXI

HOW HOPE DIED OUT OF MY HEART

 

The steamer that I had come aboard of proved to be French; and that

she had not long been abandoned I knew by finding an abundance of ice

in her cold-room and a great deal of fresh meat there too. Had she

been manned by a stiff-necked