In the Sargasso Sea Part 7

"9.20 A.M. Engaged the enemy with our starboard battery, hulling him severely.

"9.24. Our foremast by the board.

"9.28. The enemy's broadside in our stern. Great havoc.

"9.35. The wreck of the foremast cleared, giving us steerage way.

"9.40. Our hulling fire telling. The enemy's battery fire slacking. His musketry fire very hot and galling.

"9.45. The enemy badly hulled. More than half of our crew now killed or disabled.

"9.52. Our main-mast by the board and our mizzen badly wounded. Action again very severe. Few of our men left.

"9.56. Captain Blakeley killed and brought below.

"10.01. Our mizzen down. The enemy's fire slacking again.

"10.10. The enemy sheering off, with the look of being sinking.

"10.15. The enemy sinking. We cannot help him. Most of our men are dead. All of us living are badly hurt."

And there the entries came to an end.

My breath came fast as I read that short record of as brave a fight as ever was fought on salt water; and when my reading was finished I gave a great sigh. It was a fit ending for the little _Wasp_, that death triumphant: and it was a fit ending to a fight between American and English sailors that they should hang at each other's throats, neither yielding, until they died that way--they being each of a nation unaccustomed to surrender, and both of the one race which alone in modern times has held the sea.

XIX

OF A GOOD PLAN THAT WENT WRONG WITH ME

For a while I was so stirred by the enthusiasm which my discovery aroused in me that I had no room in my mind for any other thoughts.

But at last, as I still stood pondering in the _Wasp's_ cabin, I became aware that the daylight was fading into darkness; and as I realized what that meant for me my thoughts came back suddenly to myself, and then all my enthusiasm ebbed away.

I came out upon the deck again, but leaving everything as I had found it--my momentary impulse to lift the flag having vanished as I felt how fit it was that this dead battle-captain should rest on undisturbed where his men had laid him beneath the colors that he had died for; and I was glad to find when I got into the open that a good deal of daylight still remained. But it was so far gone, and was waning so rapidly, that I saw that I had little chance of getting back to the _Hurst Castle_ before nightfall; and that the most that I could hope for was to make a start in the right direction--and perhaps to find a wreck to sleep on that had food and water aboard of it, and thence take up my search again the next day.

Yet the dread was strong upon me, as I looked around upon the wrecks among which the _Wasp_ was bedded, that I might not only be unable to find the _Hurst Castle_ again, but ever to find my way across that tangle to the outer edges of it--where only was it possible that s.h.i.+ps on which were provisions fit for eating would be found. The very fact that the _Wasp_ had settled into her position more than fourscore years back made it certain that she was deep in the labyrinth; and the strange old-fas.h.i.+oned look of the craft surrounding her showed me that I should have to go far before finding a vessel wrecked in recent times.

But these disheartening thoughts I crushed down as well as I could, yet not making much of it; and as trying to go back by the way that I had come to the _Wasp_ would not serve any good purpose--even supposing that I could have managed it, which was not likely--I went on beyond her on a new course: taking a longish jump from her quarter-rail and landing on the deck of a clumsy little ill-shapen brig, with a high-built square stern and a high-built bow that was pretty nearly square too. She was Dutch, I fancy, and a merchant vessel; but she carried a little battery of bra.s.s six-pounders, and had also a half dozen pederaros set along her rail. And by her carrying these old-fas.h.i.+oned swivel-guns--which proved that she had got her armament not much later than the middle of the last century--and by the general look of her, I knew that she was an older vessel even than the _Wasp_.

This observation, and the reflection growing out of it that the deeper I went into the Sarga.s.so Sea the older must be the craft bedded in it--since that great dead fleet is recruited constantly by new wrecks drifting in upon its outer edges from all ways seaward--put into my head what seemed to me to be a very reasonable plan for finding my way back to the _Hurst Castle_ again; or, at least, to some other newly come in hulk on which there would be fresh water and sound food. And this was to shape my course by considering attentively the look of each wreck that I came aboard of, and the look of those surrounding it, and by then going forward to whichever one of them seemed to be of the most modern build.

As the first step in carrying out my plan--and it seemed to be such a good plan that I felt almost light-hearted over it--I got up on the rail of the old brig and jumped back to the less-old _Wasp_ again: landing in her main-channels, and thence easily boarding her by scrambling up what was left of the chains. But in taking my next step I had no choice in the matter, as only one other vessel was in touch with the sloop--a heavily-built little schooner that had the look of being quite as old as the brig which I had just left. And her age was so evident as I came aboard of her--having crossed the deck of the _Wasp_ hastily, picking my way among the scattered bones--that of a sudden my faith in my fine plan for getting out of the tangle began to wane.

In a general way, of course, the conclusion which I had arrived at was a sound one. Broadly speaking, it was certain that could I pa.s.s in a straight line from the centre to the circ.u.mference of that vast a.s.semblage of wrecks I constantly would find vessels of newer build; and so at last, upon the outermost fringe, would come to the wrecks of s.h.i.+ps belonging to my own day. But one weak point in my calculations was my inability to hold to a straight line, or to anything like one--because I had to advance from one wreck to another as they happened to touch or to be within jumping distance of each other, and therefore went crookedly upon my course and often fairly had to double on it. And another weak point was that the sea in its tempests recognizes no order of seniority, but destroys in the same breath of storm s.h.i.+ps just beginning their lives upon it and s.h.i.+ps which have withstood its ragings for a hundred years: so that I very well might find--as I actually did find in the case of the _Wasp_--a comparatively modern-built vessel lying hemmed in by ancient craft, survivals of obsolete types, which had lingered so long upon the ocean that in their lives as in their deaths they merged and blended the present and the past.

Thus a check was put upon my plan at the very outset; yet in a stolid sort of way--knowing that to give it up entirely would be to bring despair upon me, for I could not think of a better one--I tried still to hold by it: going on from the clumsy little old schooner to that one of two vessels lying beyond her which I fancied, though both of them belonged to a long past period, was the more modern-looking in her build. And so I continued to go onward over a dozen craft of one sort or another, holding by my rule--or trying to believe that I was holding by it, for all of the wrecks which I crossed were of an antique type--and now and then being left with no chance for choosing by finding open to me only a single way. And all this while the daylight was leaving me--the sun having gone down a ruddy globe beyond the forest of wrecks westward, and heavy purple shadows having begun to close down upon me through the low-hanging haze.

The imminence of night-fall made clear to me that I had no chance whatever of getting out from among those long-dead s.h.i.+ps before the next morning; and this certainty was the harder to bear because I was desperately hungry--more than six hours having pa.s.sed since I had eaten anything--and thirsty too: though my thirst, because of the dampness of the haze I suppose, was not very severe. But the belief that I really was advancing toward the coast of my strange floating continent and that I should find both food and drink when I got there, made me press forward; comforting myself as well as I could with the reflection that even though I did have to keep a hungry and thirsty vigil among those old withered hulks I yet should be the nearer, by every one of them that I put behind me that night, to the freshly come in wrecks on the coast line--where I made sure of finding a breakfast on the following day. Moreover, I knew how forlornly miserable I should be the moment that I lost the excitement of scrambling and climbing and just sat down there among the ancient dead, with the darkness closing over me, to wait for the slow coming of another day.

And my dread of that desolate loneliness urged me to push forward while the least bit of daylight was left by which to see my way.

It was ticklish work, as the dusk deepened, getting from one wreck to another; and at last--after nearly going down into the weed between two of them, because of a rotten belaying-pin that I caught at breaking in my hand--I had to resign myself to giving over until morning any farther attempt to advance. But I was cheered by the thought that I had got on a good way in the hour or more that had gone since I had left the _Wasp_ behind me; and so I tried to make the best of things as I cast around me for some sheltered nook on the deck of the vessel I had come aboard of--a little clumsy old brig--where my night might be pa.s.sed. As to going below, either into the cabin or the forecastle, I could not bring myself to it; for my heart failed me at the thought of what I might touch in the darkness there, and my mind--sore and troubled by all that I had pa.s.sed through, and by the dim dread filling it--certainly would have crowded those black depths with grisly phantoms until I very well might have gone mad.

And so, as I say, I cast about the deck of the brig for some nook that would shelter me from the dampness while I did my best to sleep away into forgetfulness my hunger and my thirst; but was troubled all the while that I was making my round of investigation by a haunting feeling that I had been on that same deck only a little while before.

Growing stronger and stronger, this feeling became so insistent that I could not rest for it; and presently compelled me to try to quiet it by taking a look at the wreck next beyond the brig to see if I recognized that too--as would be likely, since I must have crossed it also, had I really come that way.

I did not try to board this adjoining wreck, but only clambered up on the rail of the brig so that I could look well at it--and when I got my look I came more nearly to breaking down completely than I had done at any time since I had been cast overboard from the _Golden Hind_, For there, showing faintly in the gloom below me, was the gun-set deck of a war-s.h.i.+p, and over the deck dimly-gleaming bones were scattered--and in that moment I knew that the whole of my wandering had been but a circle, and that I was come back again at the weary ending of it to the _Wasp_.

But what crushed the heart of me was not that my afternoon of toil had been wasted, but the strong conviction--from which I no longer saw any way of escaping--that I had strayed too deep into that hideous sea-labyrinth ever to find my way out of it, and that I must die there slowly for lack of water and of food.

XX

HOW I SPENT A NIGHT WEARILY

I got down from the rail and seated myself on the brig's deck, leaning my back against her bulwarks and a little sheltered by their old-fas.h.i.+oned in-board overhang. But I had no very clear notion of what I was doing; and my feeling, so far as I had any feeling, was less that I was moving of my own volition than that I was being moved by some power acting from outside of me--the sensation of irresponsibility that comes to one sometimes in a dream.

Indeed, the whole of that night seemed to me then, and still seems to me, much more a dream than a reality: I being utterly wearied by my long hard day's work in scrambling about among the wrecks, and a little light-headed because of my stomach's emptiness, and feverish because of my growing thirst, and my mind stunned by the dull pain of my despair. And it was lucky for me, I suppose, that my thinking powers were so feeble and so blunted. Had I been fully awake to my own misery I might very well have gone crazy there in the darkness; or have been moved by a sharp horror of my surroundings to try to escape them by going on through the black night from s.h.i.+p to s.h.i.+p--which would have ended quickly by my falling down the side of one or another of them and so drowning beneath the weed.

Yet the sort of stupor that I was in did not hold fast my inner consciousness; being rather a numbing cloud surrounding me and separating me from things external--though not cutting me off from them wholly--while within this wrapping my spirit in a way was awake and free. And the result of my being thus on something less than speaking terms with my own body was to make my att.i.tude toward it that of a sympathizing acquaintance, with merely a lively pity for its ill-being, rather than that of a personal partaker in its pains. And even my mental att.i.tude toward myself was a good deal of the same sort: for my thoughts kept turning sorrowfully to the sorrow of my own spirit solitary there, shrinking within itself because of its chill forsakenness and lonely pain of finding itself so desolate--the one thing living in that great sea-garnering of the dead.

And after a while--either because my light-headedness increased, or because I dozed and took to dreaming--I had the feeling that the dense blackness about me, a gloom that the heavily overhanging mist made almost palpable, was filling with all those dead spirits come to peer curiously into my living spirit; and that they hated it and were envious of it because it was not as they were but still was alive. And from this, presently, I went on to fancying that I could see them about me clad again dimly in the forms which had clothed them when they also in their time had been living men. At first they were uncertain and shadowy, but before long they became so distinct that I plainly saw them: s.h.a.ggy-bearded resolute fellows, roughly dressed in strange old-fas.h.i.+oned sea-gear, with here and there among them others in finer garb having the still more resolute air of officers; and all with the fierce determined look of those old-time mariners of the period when all the ocean was a battling-place where seamen spent their time--and most of them, in the end, spent their lives also--in fighting with each other and in fighting with the sea.

Gradually this throng of the sea-dead filled the whole deck about me and everywhere hemmed me in; but they gave no heed to me, and were ranged orderly at their stations as though the service of the s.h.i.+p was being carried on. Among themselves they seemed to talk; but I could hear nothing of what they were saying, though I fancied that there was a humming sound filling the air about me like the murmur of a far-away crowd. Now and then an angry bout would spring up suddenly between two or three of them; and in a moment they would be fighting together, and would keep at it until one of their stern officers was upon them with blows right and left with his fists or with the b.u.t.t of his pistol or with the pommel of his sword--and so would scatter the rough brutes, scowling, and as it seemed uttering growls such as beasts lashed by their keepers would give forth.

And at other times they would seem to be fighting with some enemy--serving at their guns stripped half-naked, with handkerchiefs knotted about their heads, and with the grime of powder-smoke upon their bare flesh and so blackening their faces as to give their gleaming eyes a still more savage look; falling dead or wounded with their blood streaming out upon the deck and making slimy pools in which a man running sometimes would slip and go down headlong--and would get up, with a laugh and a curse, only in another moment to drop for good as a musket-ball struck him or as a round-shot sliced him in two; and all of them with a savage joy in their work, and going at it with a l.u.s.t for blood that made them delight in it--and take no more thought than any other fighting brutes would take of guarding their own lives.

Or, again, they would seem to be in the midst of a tempest, with the roar of the wind and the rush of the waves upon them, and would be fighting the gale and the ocean's turbulence with the same devil's daring that they had shown in fighting the enemy--and with the same carelessness as to what happened to themselves so long as they stuck to their duty and did the best that was in them to bring their s.h.i.+p safely through the storm. And so they went on ringing the changes on their old-time wild sea-life--their savage fights among themselves, and their battlings with foemen of a like metal, and their warfare with the ocean--while the dark night wore on.

Yet even when these visionary forms were thickest about me--and when it seemed, too, as though from all the dead hulks about me the shadows of the dead were rising in the same fas.h.i.+on in pale fierce throngs--I tried to hold fast, and pretty well succeeded in it, to the steadying conviction that the making of them was in my own imagination and that they were not real. And then, too, I fell off from time to time into a light sleep which still was deep enough to rid me of them wholly; and which also gave me some of the rest that I so much needed after all that I had pa.s.sed through during that weary day.

What I could not get rid of, either sleeping or waking, was my gnawing hunger and my still worse thirst. For an hour or two after nightfall, the air being fresher and the haze turning to a damp cool mist, my thirst was a good deal lessened; which was a gain in one way, though not in another--for that same chill of night very searchingly quickened my longing for food. But as the hours wore away my desire for water got the better of every other feeling, even changing my haunting visions of dead crews rising from the dead s.h.i.+ps about me into visions of brooks and rivulets--which only made my burning craving the more keen.

Nor did what little reasoning I could bring to bear upon my case, when from time to time I partly came out from the sort of lethargy that had hold of me, do much for my comforting. It was possible, I perceived, that I might find even in a long-wrecked s.h.i.+p some half-rotten sc.r.a.ps of old salted meat, or some remnant of musty flour, that at least would serve to keep life in me. But even food of this wretched sort would do me no good without water--and water was to be found only in one of the wrecks forming the outer fringe of my prison, toward which I had been trying so long vainly to find my way.

Yet in spite of my having already gone astray half a dozen times over in daylight I still did have, deep down in me, a feeling that if only the darkness would pa.s.s I could manage to steer a true course. And when at last, as it seemed to me after years of waiting for it, I began to see a little pink tone showing in the mist dimly it almost seemed as though my troubles were coming instantly to an end. And, at least, the horror of deep darkness, which all night long had been crus.h.i.+ng me, did leave me from the moment when that first gleam of returning daylight appeared.