A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

In the Sargasso Sea

T >> Thomas A. Janvier >> In the Sargasso Sea




The boat had stood all along in the cradle that had been built to hold
her steady for the voyage. This was a very stout wooden framework
built up from two heavy beams joined by cross-pieces, and all so well
bolted together that it was very solid and firm. In this the boat
rested snugly and was held fast by rope lashings; and the cradle
itself--resting on the lower hatch and projecting on each side of
it--was lashed to the hatch ringbolts so as to be safe against
shifting in a heavy sea. I could have removed the cradle by taking it
to pieces, but that would not have helped matters; and the plan that I
decided upon--liking it better because all this wood-work around and
under the boat would protect her from harm as she went overboard--was
to weight the cradle with iron bars that would cause it to sink away
from beneath the boat when they took the water, and then to work it up
with jack-screws until I could get rollers under it and so send them
both together over the side.

How long I worked over this job I really do not know; but I do know
that at the time it seemed as though it never would come to an end.
First of all I had the rollers to make from another topgallant mast
that I got down, and when these were finished I had to go at the frame
of the cradle with a pair of jack-screws and raise it, by fractions of
an inch, until I could get my rollers under it one at a time. I think
that it was the deadly dullness of this jack-screw work that I most
resented--the stupid monotony of doing precisely the same sort of
utterly wearying work all day long and for day after day. But in the
end I got it finished: all my rollers properly in place, and the
cradle made fast to hold it from starting before I was ready to have
it go--although of that there was not much danger, for while the
steamer had a decided pitch forward she lay on an even keel.

At first I was for sending my boat overboard the minute that I got the
last roller under her; but I had the sense, luckily, to take a reef in
this brisk intention as the thought struck me that I must have open
water to launch her in or else very likely have boat and cradle
together stuck fast in the weed. And so I set myself to clearing a
little pool into which I could launch her; and as I carried this work
on I came quickly to a realizing sense of what was before me when I
should begin to break a way through the weed for my boat's passage,
and to the conviction that had I tried to make my voyage without steam
to help me I never should have got through at all.

In point of fact, the weed was so thick and so firmly matted together
that I almost could walk on it; and when I had knocked loose a couple
of doors from their hinges and had thrown them overboard--taking two,
so that I might move one ahead of the other as my cutting advanced--I
had firm enough standing place from which I could slash away. So tough
was the mass that I was a whole day in uncovering a space less than
forty feet long by twenty broad; and when my launching-pool was
finished it had the look of a little pond in a meadow surrounded by
solid banks.

All this showed me that even with the screw to push while I cleared a
way for the boat's passage I should have my hands full; but it also
put into my head a notion that helped me a good deal in the end. This
was to rig on the straight stem of my boat a set of guide-bars
projecting forward in which I could work perpendicularly a cross-cut
saw, and in that way to cut a slit in the weed--which would be widened
by the boat's nose thrusting into it as the screw shoved her onward,
and so would enable me to squeeze along. And as this was a matter easy
of accomplishment--being only to double over a couple of iron bars so
that there would be a slit a half inch wide for the saw to travel in,
and to bolt them fast to the top and bottom of the boat's stem--I did
it immediately; and it worked so well when I came to try it that I was
glad enough that I had had so lucky a thought. Indeed, had I known
how well it would turn out I should have gone a step farther and
rigged my saw to run by steam power--setting up a frame in the bows to
hold a wheel carrying a pin on which the saw could play and to which I
could make fast a bar from my piston-rod--and in that way saved myself
from the longest bit of back-breaking work that ever I had to do. But
that was a piece of foresight that came afterward, and so did me
no good.

When my guide-bars were in place, and the saw made ready to slip into
them by taking off one of its handles--and I had still a spare saw to
fall back upon in the event of the first one breaking--my boat was
ready to go overboard into the open water, where she would lie while I
put aboard of her my coal and stores. But the work that was before me,
as I thus came close to it, loomed up very large; and so did the
doubts which beset me as to how my voyage would end. Indeed, it was in
a spirit far from exultant that at last I cut the lashings which held
the cradle; and then with the tackle that I had ready got the heavy
mass started--and in a couple of minutes had my boat safely overboard
and floating free, as the cradle sunk away from under her, carried
down by its lading of iron bars.

But, whatever was to come of it, the launching of my boat started me
definitely along a fresh line of adventure, and whether I liked it or
not I had to make the best of it: and so I stated the case to my
cat--who had got scared and run off into a corner while the launching
was in progress--when he came marching up to me and seated himself
beside me gravely, as I stood in the break in the steamer's side
looking down at the boat that I hoped would set us free.





XXXVI

HOW MY CAT PROMISED ME GOOD LUCK


What would have been most useful to me as foresight, but was only
aggravating to me as hindsight--which happened to be the way that I
got it--was the very sensible notion that I might have put all of my
stores, and even a good part of my coal, aboard the boat before she
was decked over and launched. A few tons more or less would have made
no difference in moving her; but having to put those extra tons aboard
of her over the side of the steamer, and then to drag them through the
cabin and through the awkward little hatch, and at last to stow them
by the light of a lantern in her stillingly close hot hold--all that
made a lot of difference to me. However, I could not foresee
everything; and I think, on the whole, that I really did foresee most
of what I wanted pretty well.

Of provisions I took along enough to last me, by a rough calculation,
for three months; being pretty well satisfied that unless within that
time I got through the weed-tangle to open water--over which I could
make my way to land, or on which I might fall in with a passing
vessel--I never would get free at all. And I was the more disposed to
keep down my lading of provisions because I wanted every scrap of room
that I could save for my cargo of coal. But my stores were plentiful
for the term that I had fixed upon, and the best and the most
nourishing--save that I could not take fresh meat with me--that the
_Ville de Saint Remy_ had on board; and I did not forget to take a
good supply of the tinned chicken and the condensed milk of which my
dainty cat was so fond. As for water--beside having my condenser to
fall back upon--I felt pretty sure that until I got well out toward
the open sea I could trust to the morning rains. But for all that I
carried two barrels with me--filled fresh the last thing before I
started--stowed in the well of the boat aft of the cabin; and there
too I carried a couple of ten-gallon tins of oil for my lanterns
and lamps.

My bone-breaking job was getting my coal aboard. For ease in handling
and in stowing it--though I lost a little room that way--I put it in
canvas sacks, of which I luckily found some bales in the steamer's
cargo. These I swung up from the engine-room by the cinder-tackle to
the main deck; and having got them that far I packed them on my back
to the break in the steamer's side where my boat was lying and tumbled
them aboard of her, and then dragged them along to where I stowed
them in her hold. On my coal holding out at least until I got through
the weed--for on open water I could lay a course under sail--the
success of my adventure wholly depended; and knowing that, I filled my
boat with all that I dared to put into her--loading the last twenty
bags on her deck and on the roof of her cabin, to be used before I
drew on my main supply.

But while this lading was a big one it did not satisfy me; and the
only way that I could think of to better it was to build a long and
narrow raft that I could stow as much more on and tow after me in the
boat's wake. This was a big undertaking, but I had to face it and to
carry it through: lowering down three spars (in managing which I used
a treble-purchase to swing them clear, and eased them down with a
couple of turns of the rope still around the capstan), and when I had
them over the side in a pool that I had cleared for them I lashed them
strongly together and decked them over with some of the state-room
doors. This gave me a raft sixty feet long, or thereabouts, but
narrower than my boat; and to make it follow the boat still more
easily I set a V-shaped cut-water at its bows to turn the weed. To be
sure, it was a clumsy thing, but it well enough served my turn.

On this structure I was able to carry a prodigious quantity of
coal--more than I had on the boat, by a good deal; but by a little
planning in advance I arranged matters so that the lading of it was
not so hard a piece of work--though in all conscience it was hard
enough--as the lading of my boat had been. What I did was to clear a
pool in the weed for it and to build it directly beneath the outhang
of the cinder-tackle; and having that apparatus ready to my hand I
swung my bags of coal up from the engine-room, and then out along the
traveller, and then lowered them away--and so had only to stow them on
the raft when they were down. But there was only one of me to do all
this--to fill each bag in the bunkers and to bring it to the
engine-room, to make it fast there to the tackle, to come on deck and
haul it up and set it overboard, to go down the side and set it in
place, and then back to the bunkers again for the next round--and so I
spent a week in doing what three men could have done in a day. And I
was a tired man and a grimy man when I got this piece of work
finished; but I was comforted by knowing that I had as much coal in my
sea-stock as I possibly could have use for--and so I scrubbed myself
clean in the steamers bath-room and was easy in my mind. But it was a
good long while before I got the aches out of my bones.

During my last week aboard the _Ville de Saint Remy_ I had steam up in
my boat and my engine at work during the greater part of each day: as
was necessary, the engine being new, in order to get the machinery
to running smoothly, and to set right anything that might be wrong
while I still had the steamer's machine-shop to turn to for repairs.
However, the engine proved to be a well-made one, and except that I
had to tighten a joint here and there and to repack the piston I had
nothing to rectify; and what still more pleased me was to find that my
cage answered to keep the screw from fouling, and that my plan for
sawing a way through the weed--which I tested by running a little
distance from the steamer through the thick of it--worked well too.
But because of the great friction to be overcome as the boat opened a
way for itself in the dense soft mass my progress was desperately
slow; and I had to comfort me the reflection that it would be still
slower when I got regularly under way and had in addition to the dead
thrust forward of the boat the dead drag after it of the raft.

Slow or fast, though, I had no choice in the matter. With the means at
my command, I had done all that I could do to enable me to climb the
walls of my prison--if I may put it that way--and there remained only
to muster what pluck I had to help me and to abide by the result. This
was the view of the situation that I presented to my cat--for I had
got into the habit of talking to him quite as much as he talked to
me--while we sat at supper together on the last evening that we were
to pass on board of the _Ville de Saint Remy_; and while he did not
make much of a reply to me he did mumble some sort of a purring answer
that I took to mean he was willing, if I were, to make the trial.

Early that morning, while the rain still was falling, I had filled my
two casks with fresh water; and after my breakfast I got them aboard
the boat and then went to work at setting up my mast--using one of the
davits in place of sheers and so managing the job very well. After
that I had rigged the sail, and had set it to make sure that all was
right; and then had furled it and lashed the boom fast on the roof of
the cabin among the bags of coal--and with rather a heavy heart, too,
for I knew that the chances were more than even against my ever
getting to open water and fresh breezes, and so loosing again the
knots which I had just tied. In the afternoon I had set my engine to
going again for an hour, and then had banked my fires against the
morning; and after that, until the shadows began to fall, I had spent
my time in going over the list that I had made of my sea-stock to be
sure that nothing that I needed was forgotten, and in taking a final
general survey of my boat and its stores. And when darkness came the
cat and I had our supper together--which was as good a one as the ship
could provide us with--and when we had finished I told him, as I have
said, what the chances were for and against our succeeding in our
undertaking and in return asked him for an expression of his
own views.

That he fully understood what I told him I am not prepared to say; but
he certainly did answer me: jumping up on my lap and shoving his paws
alternately against my stomach, and purring in so cheerful a fashion,
and altogether making such a show of good spirits as to satisfy me
that he was trying to tell me that we certainly would pull through.
And my cat's promise of good luck fell in so exactly with my own
confident hopes--which were rising strongly as the time for testing
them got close at hand--that I hugged him tight to me very lovingly,
and on my side promised that within another month or two he should
stretch his legs in a mouse-hunt on dry land! And with that I put the
lamp out and we turned in for the night.





XXXVII

HOW MY CAT STILL FARTHER CHEERED ME


It was in the grey of early morning, while the rain still was falling,
that the cat and I had our breakfast; and as soon as the rain was over
I was down in the boat, and had off the tarpaulin that covered her
stern-sheets, and was busy bringing up my banked fires. One thing that
I had learned how to do during the week that I had been testing my
engine was to bank my fires well; and that was a matter of a good deal
of importance to me--since every night during my voyage the fires
would have to be kept that way, on the double score of my inability to
hold my course in the darkness and of my need for sleep.

Presently I had steam up; and then I went back to the ship for the
last and most important piece of my cargo--my bag of jewels. It was
with a queer feeling, half of doubt and half of exultation, that I
fetched out this little bundle--still done up in the sleeve of the
oilskin jacket--and stowed it in one of the lockers in the cabin of my
boat. If my voyage went well, then all the rest of my life--so far as
wealth makes for happiness--would go well too: for in that rough and
dirty little bag was such a treasure--that I had won away from the
dead ship holding it--as would make me one of the richest men in the
world. But against this exultant hope stood up a doubt so dark that
there was no great room in my mind for cheerfulness: for as I stowed
away the jewels in the boat I could not but think of those others who
had stowed them away two hundred years and more before aboard the
galleon; and who had started in their great ship well manned on a
voyage in which the risk of disaster was as nothing in comparison with
the risk that I had to face in the voyage that I was undertaking in my
little boat alone. Yet their venture had ended miserably; and I,
trying singly to accomplish what their whole company had failed in,
very well might surrender the treasure again, as they had surrendered
it, to the storm-power of the sea.

But thinking these dismal thoughts was no help to me, and so I choked
them down and went once more aboard the steamer to make sure that I
had forgotten nothing that I needed by taking a final look around.
This being ended without my seeing anything that was necessary to me,
I said goodbye to the _Ville de Saint Remy_ and got down into my boat
again; and my cat--who usually sat in the break of the side of the
steamer while I was at work in the boat, though sometimes asking
with a miau to be lifted down into her--of his own accord jumped
aboard ahead of me: and that I took for a good sign.

Certainly, the cat and I made as queer a ship's company as ever went
afloat together; and our little craft--with its cargo that would have
bought a whole fleet's lading--was such an argosy as never before had
sailed the seas. Nor did even Columbus, when he struck out across the
black ocean westward, start upon a voyage so blind and so seemingly
hopeless as was ours. The Admiral, at least, had with him such aids to
navigation as his times afforded, and went cruising in open water;
failing in his quest, the chance was free to him to put about again
and so come once more to his home among living men. But I had not even
his poor equipment; and as to turning again and so coming back to the
point whence I started--even supposing that I could manage it--that
ending to my voyage would be so miserable that it would be better for
me to die by the way.

In none of the vessels through which I had searched had I found a
sextant; nor would it have been of any use to me, had I found one,
unless I had found also a chronometer still keeping time. Charts I did
find; but as I had to know my position to get any good from them, and
as I would run straight for any land that I sighted without in the
least caring on what coast I made my landfall, I left them behind. My
only aid to navigation was a compass, that I got from the binnacle of
a ship lying near the _Ville de Saint Remy_; and aboard the same
vessel I found a very good spyglass, and gladly brought it along with
me because it would add to my chances--should I reach open water--not
only of sighting a distant ship but of making out how she was standing
in time to head her off.

But for all practical purposes the compass was enough for me. I knew
that to the westward lay the American continent, and that between it
and where I then was--for it was certain that I was not far south of
the latitude of the Azores--was that section of the Atlantic which is
more thickly crowded with ships than any other like-sized bit of ocean
in the world. My chance of escape, therefore, and my only chance, lay
in holding to a due west course: hoping first that, being clear of the
weed, I might fall in with some passing vessel; and second that I
might make the coast before a storm came on me by which my little boat
would be swamped. And so I opened the throttle of my engine: and as
the screw began to revolve I headed my boat for the cut in the weed
which I had made when I was testing her--while my tow-rope drew taut
and after me came slowly my long raft.

No doubt it was only because the hiss of the escaping steam startled
him; but at the first turn of the engine my cat scampered forward and
seated himself in the very bows of the boat--a little black
figure-head--and thence gazed out steadfastly westward as though he
were the pilot charged with the duty of setting our vessel's course.
He had to give place to me in a moment--when I went to the bows to
begin my sawing through the weed--but I was cheered by his planting
himself that way pointing our course with his nose for me: and again I
took his bit of freakishness for a good sign.





XXXVIII

HOW I FOUGHT MY WAY THROUGH THE SARGASSO WEED


What I did on that first day of my voyage was what I did on every
succeeding day during so long a time that it seemed to me the end of
it never would come.

When my craft fairly was started, with the fire well fed and a light
enough weight on the safety-valve to guard against any sudden chance
rise in the steam pressure, I went forward to the bows with the
compass and set myself to my sawing. The wheel being lashed with the
rudder amidships, all the steering was managed from the bows--any
deviation from the straight line westward being corrected by my taking
the saw out from the guide-bars and cutting to the right or to the
left with it until I had the boat's nose pointing again the right way.
But there was not often need for cutting of this sort. Held by the
guide-bars, the saw cut a straight path for the boat to follow; while,
conversely, the boat held the saw true. And so, for the most part, I
had only to stand like a machine there--endlessly hauling the saw up
and endlessly thrusting it down. Behind me my little engine puffed
and snorted; over the bows, below me, was the soft crunching sound of
the weed opening as the boat thrust her nose into it; and on each side
of me was the soft hissing rustling of the weed against the boat's
sides. From time to time I would stop for sheer weariness--for
anything more back-breaking than the steady working of that saw I
never came across; and from time to time I had to stop my
engine--which I managed, and also the starting of it, by means of a
pair of lines brought forward into the bows from the lever-bar--while
I attended to feeding the fire.

The only breaks in this deadly monotonous round were when I ate my
meals--and at first these were as pleasant as they were restful, with
the cat sitting beside me and eating very contentedly too--and when I
fell in with a bit of wreckage that I had to steer clear of or to move
out of my way. Interruptions of this latter sort--even though they
gave me a change from my wearying sawing--were hard to put up with;
for they not only held me back woefully, but they kept me in continual
alarm lest I should break my saw. When the obstacle was a derelict, or
anything so large that I could see it well ahead of me and so could
have plenty of time in which to swing the boat to one side of it by
slicing a diagonal way for her, I could get along without much
difficulty; but when it was only a spar or a mast, so bedded in the
weed that my first knowledge of it was finding it close under my bows,
there was no chance to make a detour and I had to thrust it aside with
a boat-hook or go to hacking at it with an axe until I had cut it
through. And often it happened that I knew nothing at all of the
obstacle, the weed covering it completely, until my saw struck against
it; and that would send a cold shiver through me, as I whipped my saw
out of the water--for I had only two saws with me, and I knew that to
break one of them cut down my chances of escape by a half. Indeed, my
first saw did get broken while I still was in the thick of the tangle;
and after that I was in a constant tremor, which became almost agony
when I felt the least jar in my cutting, for fear that the other
would go too.

But with it all I managed to make pretty fair progress, and better
than I had counted upon; for I succeeded in covering, as nearly as I
could reckon it, close upon three miles a day. After I fairly got out
upon my course I had no means whatever of judging distances; but my
estimate of my advance was made at the end of my first day's run, when
the wreck-pack still was in sight behind me and enabled me to make a
close guess at how far I had come. As the sun went down that night
over my bows--making a long path of crimson along the weed ahead of
me, and filling the mist with a crimson glow--I still could make out,
though very faintly, the continent of wrecks from which I had started;
and with my glass I could distinguish the _Ville de Saint Remy_ by the
three flags which I had left flying on her masts. And the sight of
her, and the thought of how comfortable and how safe I had been aboard
of her, and of how I was done with her forever and was tying to as
slim a chance of life as ever a man tied to, for a while put a great
heaviness upon my heart. Not until darkness came and shut her out from
me, and I was resting in my brightly lighted comfortable little
cabin--with my supper to cheer me, and with my cat to cheer me
too--did my spirits rise again; and I was glad, when I got under way
once more in the morning, that the heavy mist cut her off from me--and
that by the time the sun had thinned the mist a little I had made such
progress as to put her out of sight of me for good and all.

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