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

arrack-bottle and

took off a full tumbler, which was more than double his usual

allowance, and then pushed the liquor across to the mate and me. The

mate also took a good pull at it, and I took a fair drink myself in

the hope that it would quiet my nerves—but it had exactly the

opposite effect and made me both excited and cross. And then we all

came on deck together, and all in a rough humor, and Bowers went down

into the cabin to have his supper by himself.

 

What happened in the next half-hour happened so quickly that I cannot

give a very clear account of it. A part of it, no doubt, was due to

mere chance and angry impulse; but not the whole of it, and I think

not the worst of it—for the first thing that the captain did was to

order the man who was steering to go forward and to tell the mate to

take the wheel. That left just the three of us together at the stern

of the brig—with Bowers below and so out of sight and hearing, and

with all the crew completely cut off from us and put out of sight and

hearing by the rise of the cabin above the deck.

 

Night had settled down on the ocean, but not darkness. Far off to the

eastward the full moon was standing well above the horizon and was

fighting her way upward through the clouds—now and then getting

enough the better of them to send down a dash of brightness on the

water, but for the most part making only a faint twilight through

their gloom. The wind still was very light and fitful, but broken by

strongish puffs which would heel the brig over a little and send her

along sharply for half a mile or so before they died away; and the

swell had so risen that we had a long sleepy roll. Up to windward I

made out a ship’s lights—that seemed to be coming down on us rapidly,

from their steady brightening—and I concluded that this must be the

steamer from which the smoke had come that I had seen trailing along

the horizon through the afternoon; and I even fancied, the night being

intensely still, that I could hear across the water the soft purring

sound made by the steady churning of her wheel. Somehow it deepened

the sullen anger that had hold of me to see so close by a ship having

honest men aboard of her, and to know at the same time how hopelessly

fast I was tied to the brig and her dirty crew. I don’t mind saying

that the tears came to my eyes, for I was both hurt by my sorrow and

heavy with my dull rage.

 

We all three were silent for a matter of ten minutes or so, or it

might even have been longer, and then Captain Luke faced around on me

suddenly and asked: “Well, have you made up your mind?”

 

Had I been cooler I should have tried to fence a little, since my only

resource—I being caught like a rat in a trap that way—was to try to

gain time; but I was all in a quiver, just as I suppose he was, with

the excitement of the situation and with the excitement of the

thunderous night, and his short sharp question jostled out of my head

what few wits I had there and made me throw away my only chance. And

so I answered him, just as shortly and as sharply: “Yes, I have.”

 

“Do you mean to join the brig?” he demanded.

 

“No, I don’t,” I answered, and stepped a little closer to him and

looked him squarely in the eyes.

 

“I told you so,” the mate broke in with his rumble; and I saw that he

was whipping a light lashing on the wheel in a way that would hold it

steady in case he wanted to let go.

 

“Better think a minute,” said Captain Luke, speaking coolly enough,

but still with an angry undertone in his voice. “I’ve made you a good

offer, and I’m ready to stand by it. But if you won’t take what I’ve

offered you you’ll take something else that you won’t like, my fresh

young man. In a friendly way, and for your information, I’ve told you

a lot of things that I can’t trust to the keeping of any living man

who won’t chip in with us and take our chances—the bad ones with the

good ones—just as they happen to come along. You know too much, now,

for me to part company from you while you have a wagging tongue in

your head—and so my offer’s still open to you. Only there’s this

about it: if you won’t take it, overboard you go.”

 

I had a little gleam of sense at that; for I knew that he spoke in

dead earnest, and that the mate stood ready to back him, and that

against the two of them I had not much show. And so I tried to play

for time, saying: “Well, let me think it over a bit longer. You said

there was no hurry and that I might have a week to consider in. I’ve

had only three days, so far. Do you call that square?”

 

“Squareness be damned,” rumbled the mate, and he gave a look aloft and

another to windward—the breeze just then had fallen to a mere

whisper—and took his hands off the wheel and stepped away from it so

that he and the captain were close in front of me, side by side. I

stood off from them a little, and got my back against the cabin—that

I might be safe against an attack from behind—and I was so furiously

angry that I forgot to be scared.

 

“Three days is as good as three years,” Captain Luke jerked out. “What

I want is an answer right now. Will you join the brig—yes or no?”

 

Somehow I remembered just then seeing our pig killed, when I was a

boy—how he ran around the lot with the men after him, and got into a

corner and tried to fight them, and was caught in spite of his poor

little show of fighting, and was rolled over on his back and had his

throat stuck. He was a nice pig, and I had felt sorry for him:

thinking that he didn’t deserve such treatment, his life having been a

respectable one, and he never having done anybody any harm. It all

came back to me in a flash, as I settled myself well against the cabin

and answered: “No, I won’t join you—and you and your brig may go

to hell!”

 

All I remember after that was their rush together upon me, and my

hitting out two or three times—getting in one smasher on the mate’s

jaw that was a comfort to me—and then something hard cracking me on

the head, and so stunning me that I knew nothing at all of what

happened until I found myself coming up to the surface of the sea,

sputtering salt-water and partly tangled in a bunch of gulf-weed, and

saw the brig heeling over and sliding fast away from me before a

sudden strong draught of wind.

VI

I TIE UP MY BROKEN HEAD, AND TRY TO ATTRACT ATTENTION

 

My head was tingling with pain, and so buzzy that I had no sense worth

speaking of, but just kept myself afloat in an instinctive sort of way

by paddling a little with my hands. And I could not see well for what

I thought was water in my eyes—until I found that it was blood

running down over my forehead from a gash in my scalp that went from

the top of my right ear pretty nearly to my crown. Had the blow that

made it struck fair it certainly would have finished me; but from the

way that the scalp was cut loose the blow must have glanced.

 

The chill of the water freshened me and brought my senses back a

little: for which I was not especially thankful at first, being in

such pain and misery that to drown without knowing much about it

seemed quite the best thing that I could hope for just then. Indeed,

when I began to think again, though not very clearly, I had half a

mind to drop my arms to my sides and so go under and have done with

it—so despairing was I as I bobbed about on the swell among the

patches of gulf-weed which littered the dark ocean, with the brig

drawing away from me rapidly, and no chance of a rescue from her even

had she been near at hand.

 

Whether I had or had not hurried the matter, under I certainly should

have gone shortly—for the crack on my head and the loss of blood from

it had taken most of my strength out of me, and even with my full

strength I could not have kept afloat long—had not a break in the

clouds let through a dash of moonlight that gave me another chance. It

was only for a moment or two that the moonlight lasted, yet long

enough for me to make out within a hundred feet of me a biggish piece

of wreckage—which but for that flash I should not have noticed, or in

the dimness would have taken only for a bunch of weed.

 

Near though it was, getting to it was almost more than I could manage;

and when at last I did reach it I was so nearly used up that I barely

had strength to throw my arms about it and one leg over it, and so

hang fast for a good many minutes in a half-swoon of weakness

and pain.

 

But the feel of something solid under me, and the certainty that for a

little while at least I was safe from drowning, helped me to pull

myself together; and before long some of my strength came back, and a

little of my spirit with it, and I went about settling myself more

securely on my poor sort of a raft. What I had hit upon, I found, was

a good part of a ship’s mast; with the yards still holding fast by it

and steadying it, and all so clean-looking that it evidently had not

been in the water long. The main-top, I saw, would give me a back to

lean against and also a little shelter; and in that nook I would be

still more secure because the futtock-shrouds made a sort of cage

about it and gave me something to catch fast to should the swell of

the sea roll me off. So I worked along the mast from where I first had

caught hold of it until I got myself stowed away under the main-top:

where I had my body fairly out of water, and a chance to rest easily

by leaning against the upstanding woodwork, and a good grip with my

legs to keep me firm. And it is true, though it don’t sound so, that I

was almost happy at finding myself so snug and safe there—as it

seemed after having nothing under me but the sea.

 

And then I set myself—my head hurting me cruelly, and the flow of

blood still bothering me—to see what I could do in the way of binding

up my wound; and made a pretty good job of it, having a big silk

handkerchief in my pocket that I folded into a smooth bandage and

passed over my crown and under my chin—after first dowsing my head in

the cold sea water, which set the cut to smarting like fury but helped

to keep