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

long. In less than an hour, I

suppose, the motion became so violent as to shake me awake again—and

to give me all that I could do to keep myself from being shot out of

my berth upon the floor. Presently the doctor came again, fetching

with him one of the cabin stewards to rig the storm-board at the side

of my berth and some extra pillows with which to wedge me fast. But

though he gave me a lot more of his pleasant chaff to cheer me I could

see that his look was anxious, and it seemed to me that the steward

was badly scared. Between them they managed to stow me pretty tight in

my berth and to make me as comfortable as was possible while

everything was in such commotion—with the ship bouncing about like a

pea on a hot shovel and all the woodwork grinding and creaking with

the sudden lifts and strains.

 

“It’s a baddish gale that’s got hold of the old Hurst Castle, and

that’s a fact,” the doctor said, when they had finished with me, in

answer to the questioning look that he saw in my eyes. “But it’s

nothing to worry about,” he went on; “except that it’s hard on you,

with that badly broken head of yours, to be tumbled about worse than

Mother O’Donohue’s pig when they took it to Limerick fair in a cart.

So just lie easy there among your pillows, my son; and pretend that

it’s exercise that you are taking for the good of your liver—which is

a torpid and a sluggish organ in the best of us, and always the better

for such a shaking as the sea is giving us now. And be remembering

that the Hurst Castle is a Clyde-built boat, with every plate and

rivet in her as good as a Scotsman knows how to make it—and in such

matters it’s the Sandies who know more than any other men alive. In my

own ken she’s pulled through storms fit to founder the Giant’s

Causeway and been none the worse for ‘em, and so it’s herself that’s

certain to weather this bit of a gale—which has been at its worst no

less than two times this same morning, and therefore by all rule and

reason must be for breaking soon.

 

“And be thinking, too,” he added as he was leaving me, “that I’ll be

coming in to look after you now and then when I have a spare

minute—for there are some others, I’m sorry to say, who are after

needing me; and as soon as the gale goes down a bit I’ll overhaul

again that cracked head of yours, and likely be singing you at the

same time for your amusement a real Irish song.” But not much was

there of singing, nor of any other show of lightheartedness, aboard

the Hurst Castle during the next twelve hours. So far from breaking,

the gale—as the doctor had called it, although in reality it was a

hurricane—got worse steadily; with only a lull now and then, as

though for breath-taking, and then a fiercer rush of wind—before

which the ship would reel and shiver, while the grinding of her iron

frame and the crunching of her woodwork made a sort of wild chorus of

groans and growls. For all my wedging of pillows I was near to flying

over the storm-board out of my berth with some of the plunges that she

took; and very likely I should have had such a tumble had not the

doctor returned again in a little while and with the mattress from the

upper berth so covered me as to jam me fast—and how he managed to do

this, under the circumstances, I am sure I don’t know.

 

When he had finished my packing he bent down over me—or I could not

have heard him—and said: “It’s sorry I am for you, my poor boy, for

you’re getting just now more than your full share of troubles. But

we’re all in a pickle together, and that’s a fact, and the choice

between us is small. And I’d be for suggesting that if you know such a

thing as a prayer or two you’ll never have a finer opportunity for

saying them than you have now.” And by that, and by the friendly

sorrowful look that he gave me, I knew that our peril must

be extreme.

 

I don’t like to think of the next few hours; while I lay there packed

tight as any mummy, and with no better than a mummy’s chances, as it

seemed to me, of ever seeing the live world again—terrified by the

awful war of the storm and by the confusion of wild noises, and every

now and then sharply startled by hearing on the deck above me a fierce

crash as something fetched away. It was a bad time, Heaven knows, for

everybody; but for me I thought that it was worst of all. For there I

was lying in utter helplessness, with the certainty that if the ship

foundered there was not a chance for me—since I must drown solitary

in my stateroom, like a rat drowned in a hole.

VIII

THE HURST CASTLE IS DONE FOR

 

At last, having worn itself out, as sailors say, the storm began to

lessen: first showing its weakening by losing its little lulls and

fiercer gusts after them, and then dropping from a tempest to a mere

gale—that in turn fell slowly to a gentle wind. But even after the

wind had fallen, and for a good while after, the ship labored in a

tremendous sea.

 

As I grew easier in my mind and body, and so could think a little, I

wondered why my friend the doctor did not come to me; and when at last

my door was opened I looked eagerly—my eyes being the only free part

of me—to see him come in. But it was the steward who entered, and I

had a little sharp pang of disappointment because I missed the face

that I wanted to see. However, the man stooped over me, kindly enough,

and lifted off the mattress and did his best to make me comfortable;

only when I asked him where the doctor was he pretty dismally

shook his head.

 

“It’s th’ doctor himself is needin’ doctorin’, poor soul,” he

answered, “he bein’ with his right leg broke, and with his blessed

head broke a-most as bad as yours!” And then he told me that when the

storm was near ended the doctor had gone on deck to have a look at

things, and almost the minute he got there had been knocked over by a

falling spar. “For th’ old ship’s shook a-most to pieces,” the man

went on; “with th’ foremast clean overboard, an’ th’ mizzen so wobbly

that it’s dancin’ a jig every time she pitches, and everything at rags

an’ tatters of loose ends.”

 

“But the doctor?” I asked.

 

“He says himself, sir, that he’s not dangerous, and I s’pose he ought

to know. Th’ captain an’ th’ purser together, he orderin’ ‘em, have

set his leg for him; and his head, he says, ‘ll take care of itself,

bein’ both thick an’ hard. But he’s worryin’ painful because he can’t

look after you, sir, an’ th’ four or five others that got hurt in th’

storm. And I can tell you, sir,” the man went on, “that all th’ ship’s

company, an’ th’ passengers on top of ‘em, are sick with sorrow that

this has happened to him; for there’s not a soul ever comes near th’

doctor but loves him for his goodness, and we’d all be glad to break

our own legs this minute if by that we could be mendin’ his!”

 

The steward spoke very feelingly and earnestly, and with what he said

I was in thorough sympathy; for the doctor’s care of me and his

friendliness had won my heart to him, just as it had won to him the

hearts of all on board. But there was comfort in knowing that he had

got off with only a broken leg and a broken head from a peril that so

easily might have been the death of him, and of that consolation I

made the most—while the steward, who was a handy fellow and pretty

well trained as a surgeon’s assistant, freshly bandaged my head for me

as the doctor had ordered him to do, and so set me much more at my

ease. After that, for the rest of the day, he came every hour or so to

look after me; giving me some broth to eat and a biscuit, and some

medicine that the doctor sent me with the message that it would put

strength enough into a dead pig to set him to dancing—by which I knew

that even if his head and leg were broken there was no break in his

whimsical fun.

 

The steward was the only man who came near me; but this did not

surprise me when he told me more about the condition that the ship was

in, and how all hands—excepting himself, who had been detailed

because of his knowledge that way to look after the hurt people under

the doctor’s direction—were hard at work making repairs, with what men

there were among the passengers helping too. The ship was not leaking,

he said, and this was the luckier because her frame was so strained

that it was doubtful if her water-tight compartments would hold; but

the foremast had been carried away, and all the weather-boats had been

mashed out of all shape or swept overboard, and the mizzen was so

shaky that it seemed likely at any moment to fall. Indeed, the mast

was in such a bad way, he said, that the first and second officers

were for getting rid of it—and of the danger that there was of its

coming down all in a heap anyway—by sending it overboard; but that

the captain thought it safe to stand now that the sea was getting

smooth again, and was setting up jury-stays to hold it until we made

the Azores—for which islands our course was laid.

 

By the time that night came again the sea had pretty well gone down,

and beyond the easy roll that was on her the ship had no motion save

the steady vibration of her screw. With this comforting change the

pain in my head became only a dull heavy aching, and I had a chance to

feel how utterly weary I was after the strain of mind and body that

had been put on me by the gale. A little after eight o’clock, as I

knew by hearing the ship’s bell striking—and mighty pleasant it was

to hear regularly that orderly sound again—the steward brought me a

bowl of broth and propped me up in my berth while I drank it; and

cheered me by telling me that the doctor was swearing at his broken

leg like a good fellow, and was getting on very well indeed. And then

my weariness had its way with me, and I fell off into that deep sleep

which comes to a man only when all his energy has slipped away from

him on a dead low tide. How long I slept I do not know. But I do

know that I was routed suddenly into wakefulness by a jar that almost

pitched me out of my berth, and that an instant later there was a

tremendous crash as though the whole deck above me was smashing to

pieces, and with this a rattle of light woodwork splintering and the

sharp tinkling of breaking glass. For a moment there was silence; and

then I heard shouts and screams close by me in the cabin,