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

the blood from flowing after the bandage was made fast. At

first, while I was paddling in the water and splashing my way along

the mast and while the bandage was flapping about my ears, I had no

chance to hear any noises save those little ones close to me which I

was making myself. But when I had finished my rough surgery, and

leaned back against the top to rest after it—and my heart was

beginning to sink with the thought of how utterly desperate my case

was, afloat there on the open ocean with a gale coming on—I heard in

the deep silence a faint rythmic sound that I recognized instantly as

the pulsing of a steamer’s engine and the steady churning of her

screw. This mere whisper in the darkness was a very little thing to

hang a hope upon; but hope did return to me with the conviction that

the sound came from the steamer of which I had seen the lights just

before I was pitched overboard, and that I had a chance of her passing

near enough to me to hear my hail.

 

I peered eagerly over the waters, trying to make out her lights again

and so settle how she was heading; but I could see no lights, though

with each passing minute the beating of the screw sounded louder to my

straining ears. From that I concluded that she must be coming up

behind me and was hid by the top from me; and so, slowly and

painfully, I managed to get on my hands and knees on the mast, and

then to raise myself until I stood erect and could see over the edge

of the top as it rose like a little wall upright—and gave a weak

shout of joy as I saw what I was looking for, the three bright points

against the blackness, not more than a mile away. And I was all the

more hopeful because her red and green lights showed full on each side

of the white light on her foremast, and by that I knew that she was

heading for me as straight as she could steer.

 

I gave another little shout—but fainter than the first, for my

struggle to get to my feet, and then to hold myself erect as the swell

rolled the mast about, made me weak and a little giddy; and I wanted

to keep on shouting—but had the sense not to, that I might save my

strength for the yells that I should have to give when the steamer got

near enough to me for her people to hear my cries. So I stood

silent—swaying with the roll of the mast, and with my head throbbing

horribly because of my excitement and the strain of holding on

there—while I watched her bearing down on me; and making her out so

plainly as she got closer that it never occurred to me that I and my

bit of mast would not be just as plain to her people as her great bulk

was to me.

 

I don’t suppose that she was within a quarter of a mile of me when I

began my yelling; but I was too much worked up to wait longer, and the

result of my hurry was to make my voice very hoarse and feeble by the

time that she really was within hail. She came dashing along so

straight for me that I suddenly got into a tremor of fear that she

would run me down; and, indeed, she only cleared me by fifty feet or

so—her huge black hull, dotted with the bright lights of her cabin

ports, sliding past me so close that she seemed to tower right up over

me—and I was near to being swamped, so violently was my mast tossed

about by the rush and suck of the water from her big screw. And while

she hung over me, and until she was gone past me and clear out of all

hearing, I yelled and yelled!

 

At first I could not believe, so sure had I been of my rescue, that

she had left me; and it was not until she was a good half mile away

from me, with only the sound of her screw ripping the water, and a

faint gleam of light from her after ports showing through the

darkness, that I realized that she was gone—and then I grew so sick

and dizzy that it is a wonder I did not lose my hold altogether and

fall off into the sea. Somehow or another I managed to swing myself

down and to seat myself upon the mast again, with my head fairly

splitting and with my heart altogether gone: and so rested there,

shutting my eyes to hide the sight of my hope vanishing, and as

desolate as any man ever was.

 

Presently, in a dull way, I noticed that I no longer heard the swash

of her screw, and rather wondered at her getting out of hearing so

quickly; but for fear of still seeing her lights, and so having more

pain from her, I still kept my eyes tight closed. And then, all of a

sudden, I heard quite close by me a hail—and opened my eyes in a

hurry to see a light not a hundred feet away from me, and to make out

below it the loom of a boat moving slowly over the weed-strewn sea.

 

The shout that I gave saved me, but before it saved me I came near to

being done for. Such a rush of blood went up into my broken head with

the sudden burst of joy upon me that a dead faint came upon me and I

fell off into the water; and that I was floating when the boat got to

me was due to the mere chance that as I dropped away from the mast one

of my arms slipped into the tangle of the futtock-shrouds. But I knew

nothing about that, nor about anything else that happened, until we

were half-way back to the steamer and I came to my senses a little;

and very little for a good while longer—except that I was swung up a

ship’s side and there was a good deal of talking going on around me;

and then that my clothes were taken off and I was lifted into a soft

delightful berth; and then that somebody with gentle hands was binding

up my broken crown.

 

When this job was finished—which hurt me a good deal, but did not

rouse me much—I just fell back upon the soft pillow and went to

sleep: with a blessed sense of rest and safety, as I felt the roll of

a whole ship under me again after the short jerk of my mast, and knew

that I was not back on the brig but aboard an honest steamer by

hearing and by feeling the strong steady pulsing of her screw.

VII

I ENCOUNTER A GOOD DOCTOR AND A VIOLENT GALE

 

I was roused from my sleep by the sharp motion of the vessel; but did

not get very wide awake, for I felt donsie and there was a dull

ringing in my head along with a great dull pain. I had sense enough,

though, to perceive that the storm had come, about which Captain Luke

and the barometer had been at odds; and to shake a little with a

creepy terror as I thought of the short work it would have made with

me had I waited for it on my mast. But I was too much hurt to feel

anything very keenly, and so heavy that even with the quick short roll

of the ship to rouse me I kept pretty much in a doze.

 

After a while the door of my stateroom was opened a little and a man

peeped in; and when he saw my open eyes looking at him he came in

altogether, giving me a nod and a smile. He was a tall fellow in a

blue uniform, with a face that I liked the looks of; and when he spoke

to me I liked the sound of his voice.

 

“You must be after being own cousin to all the Seven Sleepers of

Ephesus and the dog too, my big young man,” he said, holding fast to

the upper berth to steady himself. “You’ve put in ten solid hours, so

far, and you don’t seem to be over wide awake yet. Faith, I’d be after

backing you to sleep standing, like Father O’Rafferty’s old dun cow!”

 

I did not feel up to answering him, but I managed to grin a little,

and he went on: “I’m for thinking that I’d better let that broken head

of yours alone till this fool of a ship is sitting still

again—instead of trying to teach the porpoises such tricks of rolling

and pitching as never entered into their poor brute minds. But you’ll

do without doctoring for the present, myself having last night sewed

up all right and tight for you the bit of your scalp that had fetched

away. How does it feel?”

 

“It hurts,” was all that I could answer.

 

“And small blame to it,” said the doctor, and went on: “It’s a

well-made thick head you have, and it’s tough you are, my son, not to

be killed entirely by such a whack as you got on your brain-box—to

say nothing of your fancy for trying to cure it hydropathically by

taking it into the sea with you when you were for crossing the

Atlantic Ocean on the fag-end of a mast. It’s much indeed that you

have to learn, I am thinking, both about surgery and about taking care

of yourself. But in the former you’ll now do well, being in the

competent hands of a graduate of Dublin University; and in regard to

your incompetence in the latter good reason have you for being

thankful that the Hurst Castle happened to be travelling in these

parts last night, and that her third officer is blessed with a pair of

extra big ears and so happened to hear you talking to him from out of

the depths of the sea.

 

“But talking isn’t now the best thing for you, and some more of the

sleep that you’re so fond of is—if only the tumbling of the ship will

let you have it; so take this powder into that mouth of yours which

you opened so wide when you were conversing with us as we went sailing

past you, and then stop your present chattering and take all the sleep

that you can hold.”

 

With that he put a bitter powder into my mouth, and gave me a drink of

water after it—raising me up with a wonderful deftness and gentleness

that I might take it, and settling me back again on the pillow in just

the way that I wanted to lie. “And now be off again to your friends

the Ephesians,” he said; “only remember that if you or they—or their

dog either, poor beasty—wants anything, it’s only needed to touch

this electric bell. As to the doggy,” he added, with his hand on the

door-knob, “tell him to poke at the button with the tip of his foolish

nose.” And with that he opened the door and went away. All this

light friendly talk was such a comfort to me—showing, as it did,

along with the good care that I was getting, what kindly people I had

fallen among—that in my weak state I cried a little because of my

happy thankfulness; and then, my weakness and the powder acting

together to lull me, in spite of the ship’s sharp motion I went off

again to sleep.

 

But that time my sleep did not last