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

and a little

later a great trampling on deck, and then the screw stopped turning

and there was a roar of escaping steam.

 

I was so heavy with sleep that at first I thought we still were in the

storm and that this commotion was a part of it; but as I shook off my

drowsiness I got a clearer notion of the situation—remembering what

the steward had told me of the condition of the mizzen-mast, and so

arriving at the conclusion that it had fetched away bodily and had

come crashing through the cabin skylight in its fall. But what the

shock was that had sent it flying—unless we had been in collision—I

could not understand. And all this while the trampling on deck

continued, and out in the cabin the shouts and cries went on.

 

I thought that the steward would come to me—forgetting that in times

of danger men are apt to think only of saving their own skins—and so

laid still; being, indeed, so weak and wretched that it did not seem

possible to me to do anything else. But he did not come, and at the

end of what seemed to me to be a desperately long time—though I doubt

if it were more than five minutes—I realized that I must try to do

something to help myself; and was the more nerved to action by the

fact that there no longer was the sound of voices in the cabin, while

the noises on deck a good deal had increased. Indeed, I began to hear

up there the puffing and snorting of the donkey-engine, and so felt

certain that they were hoisting out the boats.

 

Somehow or another I managed to get out of my berth, and on my feet,

and so to the door; but when I tried to open the door I could not

budge it, and in the darkness I struck my head against what seemed to

be a bar of wood that stuck in through one of the upper panels and so

held it fast. The blow dizzied me, for it took me close to where my

cut was and put me into intense pain.

 

While I stood there, pulling in a weak way at the door-knob and making

nothing of it, I heard voices out in the cabin and through my broken

door saw a gleam of light. But in the moment that my hope rose it went

down again, for I heard some one say quickly and sharply: “It’s no

good. The way the spar lies we can’t get at him—and to cut it through

would take an hour.”

 

And then a voice that I recognized for the steward’s answered: “But

the doctor ordered it. Where’s an axe for a try?” To which the other

man answered back again: “If it was the doctor himself we couldn’t do

it, and we’ll tell him so. The ship’ll be down in five minutes. We’ve

got to run for it or the boats’ll be off.” And then away they ran

together, giving no heed in their fright to my yells after them to

come back and not leave me there to drown.

 

For a little while I was as nearly wild crazy as a man can be and yet

have a purpose in his mind. The keen sense of my peril made me strong

again. I kicked with my bare feet and pounded with my hands upon the

door to break it, I shouted for help to come to me, and I gave out

shrill screams of terror such as brutes give in their agony—for I was

down to the hard-pan of human nature, and what I felt most strongly

was the purely animal longing to keep alive.

 

But no one answered me, and I could tell by the sounds on deck getting

fainter that some of the boats already had put off; and in a little

while longer no sound came from the deck of any sort whatever, and by

that I knew that all the boats must have got away. And as I realized

that I was forsaken, and felt sure from what I had heard that the ship

would float for only a few minutes longer, I gave a cry of downright

despair—and then I lost track of the whole bad business by tumbling

to the floor in the darkness in a dead swoon.

IX

ON THE EDGE OF THE SARGASSO SEA

 

When I came to myself again, and found my stateroom—although the

deadlight was set—bright with the light which entered through the

broken door, my first feeling was of wonder that I was not yet

drowned; for it was evident that the sun must be well up in the

heavens to shine so strongly, and therefore that a good many hours

must have passed since the smash had happened that had sent everybody

flying to the boats believing that the ship was going right down. And

my next wonder was caused by the queer way in which the ship was

lying—making me fancy at first that I was dizzy again, and my eyes

tricking me—with a pitch forward that gave a slope to the floor of my

stateroom, of not less than twenty degrees.

 

For a while, in a stupid sort of way, I ruminated over these matters;

and at last got hold of the simple explanation of them. Evidently, in

spite of the straining of the steamer’s frame in the storm, her

water-tight compartments—or some of them—had held, leaving her

floating with her broken bow well down in the water and her stern

canted up into the air. And then the farther comforting thought came

to me that if she had kept afloat for so many hours already, and

seemed so steady in her new position, there was no reason why she

should not keep on floating at least for as long as the fine weather

lasted—which gave me a chance of rescue by some passing vessel, and

so brought a good deal of hope back into my heart.

 

I still was very weak and shaky, and how I was to get out of the

prison that I was in I did not know. By daylight it was easy to see

what held me there: which was the end of a yard, with the reef-block

hanging to it, smashed through the upper panel and caught so tight in

the splintered woodwork as to anchor the door fast. If the wits of

the steward and of the other fellow had not been scared clean out of

them they easily might have knocked in the lower part of the door with

an axe and so opened a way out for me; but as their only notion had

been to cut away the spar—a tough piece of work—I could not in cool

blood very greatly blame them for having given up my rescue and run

for their own lives.

 

These thoughts went through my head while I lay there, most

uncomfortably, on the sloping floor. Presently I managed to get up,

but felt so dizzy that I had to seat myself in a hurry on the edge of

the berth until my head got steadier. Fortunately my water-jug was

half full, and I had a good drink from it which refreshed me greatly;

and then I had the farther good fortune to see some biscuit which the

steward had left on a shelf in the corner, and as I caught sight of

them I realized that I was very hungry indeed. I ate one, along with

some more sups of water, and felt much the better for it; but lay down

in my berth that I might save the strength it gave me until I should

have thought matters over a little and settled some line of action

in my mind.

 

That I was too weak to break the door down was quite certain, and the

only other thing that I could think of was cutting out the lower

panels and so making a hole through which I could crawl. As this

thought came to me I remembered the big jack-knife that had been in my

trousers’ pocket when I went overboard from the brig; and in a minute

I was on my feet—and without feeling any dizziness, this time—and

got to where my clothes were hanging on a hook, and found to my joy

that my knife and all the other things which had been in my pockets

had been returned to them after the clothes had been dried. The knife

was badly rusted and I had a hard time opening it; but the rust did

not much dull it, and I seated myself upon the floor and fell to

slicing away at the soft pine wood with a will. I had to rest now and

then, although I found that my strength held out better than I had

hoped for, and that put me back a little; but the wood was so soft

that in not much more than half an hour I had the job finished—and

then I slipped on my trousers, and out I went through the hole on my

hands and knees.

 

I found the cabin in utter wreck: littered everywhere with broken

glass and broken wood from the skylight, and from the smashed

hanging-racks and the smashed dining-table, and with splinters from

the mast—which had broken in falling, and along the whole length of

the place had made a tangle of its own fragments and of the ropes and

blocks which had held its sails. Of the sails themselves there were

left only some fuzzy traces clinging to the bolt-ropes, all the rest

having been blown loose and frayed away by the storm. Oddly enough,

some of the drinking-glasses still remained unbroken in one of the

racks, and with them a bottle partly filled with wine—to the neck of

which a card was fastened bearing the name, Jos� Rubio y Salinas, of

the passenger to whom it had belonged. I took the liberty of drinking

a glass of Don Jos�‘s wine—feeling sure that he was not coming back

to claim it—and felt so much better after it that I thanked him

cordially for leaving it there.

 

Most of the stateroom doors stood open, showing within clothing

tossed about and trunks with their lids turned back, and the general

confusion in which the passengers had left things when they scrambled

together their most precious belongings and rushed for the boats—with

death, as they fancied, treading close upon their heels. But with what

remained in the staterooms I did not concern myself, being desirous

first of all to get on deck and have a look about me that I might size

up my chances of keeping alive. That there was no companionway up

from the cabin puzzled me a little, for I knew nothing of the internal

arrangements of steamships; but presently I found a passage leading

forward, and by that I came to the stair to the deck of which I was

in search.

 

Up it I went, but when I fairly got outside and saw the desperate

state of the craft that I was afloat on my heart sank. Indeed, it

seemed a flying in the face of all reason that such an utter wreck

should float at all. Of the foremast nothing but the splintered stump

remained. The starboard rail, which had been to windward of it, was

gashed by chance axe-blows made in cutting away the shrouds; and as to

the port rail, twenty feet of it was gone entirely where the mast had

come crashing down, while the side-plates below were bulged out with

the strain put upon them before the standing-rigging fastened there

had fetched away. The mizzen-mast lay aft across the cabin skylight,

with its standing and running rigging making a tangle on