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

and got down into my boat

again; and my cat—who usually sat in the break of the side of the

steamer while I was at work in the boat, though sometimes asking

with a miau to be lifted down into her—of his own accord jumped

aboard ahead of me: and that I took for a good sign.

 

Certainly, the cat and I made as queer a ship’s company as ever went

afloat together; and our little craft—with its cargo that would have

bought a whole fleet’s lading—was such an argosy as never before had

sailed the seas. Nor did even Columbus, when he struck out across the

black ocean westward, start upon a voyage so blind and so seemingly

hopeless as was ours. The Admiral, at least, had with him such aids to

navigation as his times afforded, and went cruising in open water;

failing in his quest, the chance was free to him to put about again

and so come once more to his home among living men. But I had not even

his poor equipment; and as to turning again and so coming back to the

point whence I started—even supposing that I could manage it—that

ending to my voyage would be so miserable that it would be better for

me to die by the way.

 

In none of the vessels through which I had searched had I found a

sextant; nor would it have been of any use to me, had I found one,

unless I had found also a chronometer still keeping time. Charts I did

find; but as I had to know my position to get any good from them, and

as I would run straight for any land that I sighted without in the

least caring on what coast I made my landfall, I left them behind. My

only aid to navigation was a compass, that I got from the binnacle of

a ship lying near the Ville de Saint Remy; and aboard the same

vessel I found a very good spyglass, and gladly brought it along with

me because it would add to my chances—should I reach open water—not

only of sighting a distant ship but of making out how she was standing

in time to head her off.

 

But for all practical purposes the compass was enough for me. I knew

that to the westward lay the American continent, and that between it

and where I then was—for it was certain that I was not far south of

the latitude of the Azores—was that section of the Atlantic which is

more thickly crowded with ships than any other like-sized bit of ocean

in the world. My chance of escape, therefore, and my only chance, lay

in holding to a due west course: hoping first that, being clear of the

weed, I might fall in with some passing vessel; and second that I

might make the coast before a storm came on me by which my little boat

would be swamped. And so I opened the throttle of my engine: and as

the screw began to revolve I headed my boat for the cut in the weed

which I had made when I was testing her—while my tow-rope drew taut

and after me came slowly my long raft.

 

No doubt it was only because the hiss of the escaping steam startled

him; but at the first turn of the engine my cat scampered forward and

seated himself in the very bows of the boat—a little black

figure-head—and thence gazed out steadfastly westward as though he

were the pilot charged with the duty of setting our vessel’s course.

He had to give place to me in a moment—when I went to the bows to

begin my sawing through the weed—but I was cheered by his planting

himself that way pointing our course with his nose for me: and again I

took his bit of freakishness for a good sign.

XXXVIII

HOW I FOUGHT MY WAY THROUGH THE SARGASSO WEED

 

What I did on that first day of my voyage was what I did on every

succeeding day during so long a time that it seemed to me the end of

it never would come.

 

When my craft fairly was started, with the fire well fed and a light

enough weight on the safety-valve to guard against any sudden chance

rise in the steam pressure, I went forward to the bows with the

compass and set myself to my sawing. The wheel being lashed with the

rudder amidships, all the steering was managed from the bows—any

deviation from the straight line westward being corrected by my taking

the saw out from the guide-bars and cutting to the right or to the

left with it until I had the boat’s nose pointing again the right way.

But there was not often need for cutting of this sort. Held by the

guide-bars, the saw cut a straight path for the boat to follow; while,

conversely, the boat held the saw true. And so, for the most part, I

had only to stand like a machine there—endlessly hauling the saw up

and endlessly thrusting it down. Behind me my little engine puffed

and snorted; over the bows, below me, was the soft crunching sound of

the weed opening as the boat thrust her nose into it; and on each side

of me was the soft hissing rustling of the weed against the boat’s

sides. From time to time I would stop for sheer weariness—for

anything more back-breaking than the steady working of that saw I

never came across; and from time to time I had to stop my

engine—which I managed, and also the starting of it, by means of a

pair of lines brought forward into the bows from the lever-bar—while

I attended to feeding the fire.

 

The only breaks in this deadly monotonous round were when I ate my

meals—and at first these were as pleasant as they were restful, with

the cat sitting beside me and eating very contentedly too—and when I

fell in with a bit of wreckage that I had to steer clear of or to move

out of my way. Interruptions of this latter sort—even though they

gave me a change from my wearying sawing—were hard to put up with;

for they not only held me back woefully, but they kept me in continual

alarm lest I should break my saw. When the obstacle was a derelict, or

anything so large that I could see it well ahead of me and so could

have plenty of time in which to swing the boat to one side of it by

slicing a diagonal way for her, I could get along without much

difficulty; but when it was only a spar or a mast, so bedded in the

weed that my first knowledge of it was finding it close under my bows,

there was no chance to make a detour and I had to thrust it aside with

a boat-hook or go to hacking at it with an axe until I had cut it

through. And often it happened that I knew nothing at all of the

obstacle, the weed covering it completely, until my saw struck against

it; and that would send a cold shiver through me, as I whipped my saw

out of the water—for I had only two saws with me, and I knew that to

break one of them cut down my chances of escape by a half. Indeed, my

first saw did get broken while I still was in the thick of the tangle;

and after that I was in a constant tremor, which became almost agony

when I felt the least jar in my cutting, for fear that the other

would go too.

 

But with it all I managed to make pretty fair progress, and better

than I had counted upon; for I succeeded in covering, as nearly as I

could reckon it, close upon three miles a day. After I fairly got out

upon my course I had no means whatever of judging distances; but my

estimate of my advance was made at the end of my first day’s run, when

the wreck-pack still was in sight behind me and enabled me to make a

close guess at how far I had come. As the sun went down that night

over my bows—making a long path of crimson along the weed ahead of

me, and filling the mist with a crimson glow—I still could make out,

though very faintly, the continent of wrecks from which I had started;

and with my glass I could distinguish the Ville de Saint Remy by the

three flags which I had left flying on her masts. And the sight of

her, and the thought of how comfortable and how safe I had been aboard

of her, and of how I was done with her forever and was tying to as

slim a chance of life as ever a man tied to, for a while put a great

heaviness upon my heart. Not until darkness came and shut her out from

me, and I was resting in my brightly lighted comfortable little

cabin—with my supper to cheer me, and with my cat to cheer me

too—did my spirits rise again; and I was glad, when I got under way

once more in the morning, that the heavy mist cut her off from me—and

that by the time the sun had thinned the mist a little I had made such

progress as to put her out of sight of me for good and all.

 

Through my second day I still could make out the loom of the

wreck-pack behind me—a dark line low down in the mist that I should

have taken for a rain-cloud had I not known what it was; but that also

was pretty well gone by evening, and from my third day onward I was

encompassed wholly by the soft veil of golden mist hanging low around

me over the weed-covered sea. Only about noon time, when this veil

grew thinner and had in it a brighter golden tone—or at sunset, when

it was shot through with streams of crimson light which filled it

with a ruddy glow—was it possible for me to see for more than a mile

or so in any direction; and even when my horizon thus was enlarged a

little my view still was the same: always the weed spread out over the

water so thickly that nowhere was there the slightest break in it, and

so dense and solid that it would have seemed like land around me but

for its very gentle undulating motion—which made me giddy if I looked

at it for long at a time. The only relief to this dull flat surface

was when I came upon a wrecked ship, or upon a hummock of wreckage,

rising a little up from it—also swaying very gently with a wearying

motion that seemed as slow as time. And the silent despairing

desolateness of it all sunk down into my very soul.

 

Even my cat seemed to feel the misery of that great loneliness and

lost so much of his cheerfulness that he got to be but a dull

companion for me; though likely enough what ailed him was the reflex

of my own poor spirits, made low by my constant bodily weariness, and

had I shown any liveliness he would have been lively too. But I was

too tired to think much about him—or about anything else—as day

after day I stood in the bow of the boat working my saw up and down

with a deadly dull monotony: that had no break save when I stopped to

rest a little my aching body, or to have a tussle with a bit of

wreckage that barred my passage, or to stoke myself with food, or to

put coal beneath