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

wanted every scrap of room

that I could save for my cargo of coal. But my stores were plentiful

for the term that I had fixed upon, and the best and the most

nourishing—save that I could not take fresh meat with me—that the

Ville de Saint Remy had on board; and I did not forget to take a

good supply of the tinned chicken and the condensed milk of which my

dainty cat was so fond. As for water—beside having my condenser to

fall back upon—I felt pretty sure that until I got well out toward

the open sea I could trust to the morning rains. But for all that I

carried two barrels with me—filled fresh the last thing before I

started—stowed in the well of the boat aft of the cabin; and there

too I carried a couple of ten-gallon tins of oil for my lanterns

and lamps.

 

My bone-breaking job was getting my coal aboard. For ease in handling

and in stowing it—though I lost a little room that way—I put it in

canvas sacks, of which I luckily found some bales in the steamer’s

cargo. These I swung up from the engine-room by the cinder-tackle to

the main deck; and having got them that far I packed them on my back

to the break in the steamer’s side where my boat was lying and tumbled

them aboard of her, and then dragged them along to where I stowed

them in her hold. On my coal holding out at least until I got through

the weed—for on open water I could lay a course under sail—the

success of my adventure wholly depended; and knowing that, I filled my

boat with all that I dared to put into her—loading the last twenty

bags on her deck and on the roof of her cabin, to be used before I

drew on my main supply.

 

But while this lading was a big one it did not satisfy me; and the

only way that I could think of to better it was to build a long and

narrow raft that I could stow as much more on and tow after me in the

boat’s wake. This was a big undertaking, but I had to face it and to

carry it through: lowering down three spars (in managing which I used

a treble-purchase to swing them clear, and eased them down with a

couple of turns of the rope still around the capstan), and when I had

them over the side in a pool that I had cleared for them I lashed them

strongly together and decked them over with some of the stateroom

doors. This gave me a raft sixty feet long, or thereabouts, but

narrower than my boat; and to make it follow the boat still more

easily I set a V-shaped cut-water at its bows to turn the weed. To be

sure, it was a clumsy thing, but it well enough served my turn.

 

On this structure I was able to carry a prodigious quantity of

coal—more than I had on the boat, by a good deal; but by a little

planning in advance I arranged matters so that the lading of it was

not so hard a piece of work—though in all conscience it was hard

enough—as the lading of my boat had been. What I did was to clear a

pool in the weed for it and to build it directly beneath the outhang

of the cinder-tackle; and having that apparatus ready to my hand I

swung my bags of coal up from the engine-room, and then out along the

traveller, and then lowered them away—and so had only to stow them on

the raft when they were down. But there was only one of me to do all

this—to fill each bag in the bunkers and to bring it to the

engine-room, to make it fast there to the tackle, to come on deck and

haul it up and set it overboard, to go down the side and set it in

place, and then back to the bunkers again for the next round—and so I

spent a week in doing what three men could have done in a day. And I

was a tired man and a grimy man when I got this piece of work

finished; but I was comforted by knowing that I had as much coal in my

sea-stock as I possibly could have use for—and so I scrubbed myself

clean in the steamers bath-room and was easy in my mind. But it was a

good long while before I got the aches out of my bones.

 

During my last week aboard the Ville de Saint Remy I had steam up in

my boat and my engine at work during the greater part of each day: as

was necessary, the engine being new, in order to get the machinery

to running smoothly, and to set right anything that might be wrong

while I still had the steamer’s machine-shop to turn to for repairs.

However, the engine proved to be a well-made one, and except that I

had to tighten a joint here and there and to repack the piston I had

nothing to rectify; and what still more pleased me was to find that my

cage answered to keep the screw from fouling, and that my plan for

sawing a way through the weed—which I tested by running a little

distance from the steamer through the thick of it—worked well too.

But because of the great friction to be overcome as the boat opened a

way for itself in the dense soft mass my progress was desperately

slow; and I had to comfort me the reflection that it would be still

slower when I got regularly under way and had in addition to the dead

thrust forward of the boat the dead drag after it of the raft.

 

Slow or fast, though, I had no choice in the matter. With the means at

my command, I had done all that I could do to enable me to climb the

walls of my prison—if I may put it that way—and there remained only

to muster what pluck I had to help me and to abide by the result. This

was the view of the situation that I presented to my cat—for I had

got into the habit of talking to him quite as much as he talked to

me—while we sat at supper together on the last evening that we were

to pass on board of the Ville de Saint Remy; and while he did not

make much of a reply to me he did mumble some sort of a purring answer

that I took to mean he was willing, if I were, to make the trial.

 

Early that morning, while the rain still was falling, I had filled my

two casks with fresh water; and after my breakfast I got them aboard

the boat and then went to work at setting up my mast—using one of the

davits in place of sheers and so managing the job very well. After

that I had rigged the sail, and had set it to make sure that all was

right; and then had furled it and lashed the boom fast on the roof of

the cabin among the bags of coal—and with rather a heavy heart, too,

for I knew that the chances were more than even against my ever

getting to open water and fresh breezes, and so loosing again the

knots which I had just tied. In the afternoon I had set my engine to

going again for an hour, and then had banked my fires against the

morning; and after that, until the shadows began to fall, I had spent

my time in going over the list that I had made of my sea-stock to be

sure that nothing that I needed was forgotten, and in taking a final

general survey of my boat and its stores. And when darkness came the

cat and I had our supper together—which was as good a one as the ship

could provide us with—and when we had finished I told him, as I have

said, what the chances were for and against our succeeding in our

undertaking and in return asked him for an expression of his

own views.

 

That he fully understood what I told him I am not prepared to say; but

he certainly did answer me: jumping up on my lap and shoving his paws

alternately against my stomach, and purring in so cheerful a fashion,

and altogether making such a show of good spirits as to satisfy me

that he was trying to tell me that we certainly would pull through.

And my cat’s promise of good luck fell in so exactly with my own

confident hopes—which were rising strongly as the time for testing

them got close at hand—that I hugged him tight to me very lovingly,

and on my side promised that within another month or two he should

stretch his legs in a mouse-hunt on dry land! And with that I put the

lamp out and we turned in for the night.

XXXVII

HOW MY CAT STILL FARTHER CHEERED ME

 

It was in the grey of early morning, while the rain still was falling,

that the cat and I had our breakfast; and as soon as the rain was over

I was down in the boat, and had off the tarpaulin that covered her

stern-sheets, and was busy bringing up my banked fires. One thing that

I had learned how to do during the week that I had been testing my

engine was to bank my fires well; and that was a matter of a good deal

of importance to me—since every night during my voyage the fires

would have to be kept that way, on the double score of my inability to

hold my course in the darkness and of my need for sleep.

 

Presently I had steam up; and then I went back to the ship for the

last and most important piece of my cargo—my bag of jewels. It was

with a queer feeling, half of doubt and half of exultation, that I

fetched out this little bundle—still done up in the sleeve of the

oilskin jacket—and stowed it in one of the lockers in the cabin of my

boat. If my voyage went well, then all the rest of my life—so far as

wealth makes for happiness—would go well too: for in that rough and

dirty little bag was such a treasure—that I had won away from the

dead ship holding it—as would make me one of the richest men in the

world. But against this exultant hope stood up a doubt so dark that

there was no great room in my mind for cheerfulness: for as I stowed

away the jewels in the boat I could not but think of those others who

had stowed them away two hundred years and more before aboard the

galleon; and who had started in their great ship well manned on a

voyage in which the risk of disaster was as nothing in comparison with

the risk that I had to face in the voyage that I was undertaking in my

little boat alone. Yet their venture had ended miserably; and I,

trying singly to accomplish what their whole company had failed in,

very well might surrender the treasure again, as they had surrendered

it, to the storm-power of the sea.

 

But thinking these dismal thoughts was no help to me, and so I choked

them down and went once more aboard the steamer to make sure that I

had forgotten nothing that I needed by taking a final look around.

This being ended without my seeing anything that was necessary to me,

I said goodbye to the Ville de Saint Remy