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In the Sargasso Sea

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




Night had settled down on the ocean, but not darkness. Far off to the
eastward the full moon was standing well above the horizon and was
fighting her way upward through the clouds--now and then getting
enough the better of them to send down a dash of brightness on the
water, but for the most part making only a faint twilight through
their gloom. The wind still was very light and fitful, but broken by
strongish puffs which would heel the brig over a little and send her
along sharply for half a mile or so before they died away; and the
swell had so risen that we had a long sleepy roll. Up to windward I
made out a ship's lights--that seemed to be coming down on us rapidly,
from their steady brightening--and I concluded that this must be the
steamer from which the smoke had come that I had seen trailing along
the horizon through the afternoon; and I even fancied, the night being
intensely still, that I could hear across the water the soft purring
sound made by the steady churning of her wheel. Somehow it deepened
the sullen anger that had hold of me to see so close by a ship having
honest men aboard of her, and to know at the same time how hopelessly
fast I was tied to the brig and her dirty crew. I don't mind saying
that the tears came to my eyes, for I was both hurt by my sorrow and
heavy with my dull rage.

We all three were silent for a matter of ten minutes or so, or it
might even have been longer, and then Captain Luke faced around on me
suddenly and asked: "Well, have you made up your mind?"

Had I been cooler I should have tried to fence a little, since my only
resource--I being caught like a rat in a trap that way--was to try to
gain time; but I was all in a quiver, just as I suppose he was, with
the excitement of the situation and with the excitement of the
thunderous night, and his short sharp question jostled out of my head
what few wits I had there and made me throw away my only chance. And
so I answered him, just as shortly and as sharply: "Yes, I have."

"Do you mean to join the brig?" he demanded.

"No, I don't," I answered, and stepped a little closer to him and
looked him squarely in the eyes.

"I told you so," the mate broke in with his rumble; and I saw that he
was whipping a light lashing on the wheel in a way that would hold it
steady in case he wanted to let go.

"Better think a minute," said Captain Luke, speaking coolly enough,
but still with an angry undertone in his voice. "I've made you a good
offer, and I'm ready to stand by it. But if you won't take what I've
offered you you'll take something else that you won't like, my fresh
young man. In a friendly way, and for your information, I've told you
a lot of things that I can't trust to the keeping of any living man
who won't chip in with us and take our chances--the bad ones with the
good ones--just as they happen to come along. You know too much, now,
for me to part company from you while you have a wagging tongue in
your head--and so my offer's still open to you. Only there's this
about it: if you won't take it, overboard you go."

I had a little gleam of sense at that; for I knew that he spoke in
dead earnest, and that the mate stood ready to back him, and that
against the two of them I had not much show. And so I tried to play
for time, saying: "Well, let me think it over a bit longer. You said
there was no hurry and that I might have a week to consider in. I've
had only three days, so far. Do you call that square?"

"Squareness be damned," rumbled the mate, and he gave a look aloft and
another to windward--the breeze just then had fallen to a mere
whisper--and took his hands off the wheel and stepped away from it so
that he and the captain were close in front of me, side by side. I
stood off from them a little, and got my back against the cabin--that
I might be safe against an attack from behind--and I was so furiously
angry that I forgot to be scared.

"Three days is as good as three years," Captain Luke jerked out. "What
I want is an answer right now. Will you join the brig--yes or no?"

Somehow I remembered just then seeing our pig killed, when I was a
boy--how he ran around the lot with the men after him, and got into a
corner and tried to fight them, and was caught in spite of his poor
little show of fighting, and was rolled over on his back and had his
throat stuck. He was a nice pig, and I had felt sorry for him:
thinking that he didn't deserve such treatment, his life having been a
respectable one, and he never having done anybody any harm. It all
came back to me in a flash, as I settled myself well against the cabin
and answered: "No, I won't join you--and you and your brig may go
to hell!"

All I remember after that was their rush together upon me, and my
hitting out two or three times--getting in one smasher on the mate's
jaw that was a comfort to me--and then something hard cracking me on
the head, and so stunning me that I knew nothing at all of what
happened until I found myself coming up to the surface of the sea,
sputtering salt-water and partly tangled in a bunch of gulf-weed, and
saw the brig heeling over and sliding fast away from me before a
sudden strong draught of wind.





VI

I TIE UP MY BROKEN HEAD, AND TRY TO ATTRACT ATTENTION


My head was tingling with pain, and so buzzy that I had no sense worth
speaking of, but just kept myself afloat in an instinctive sort of way
by paddling a little with my hands. And I could not see well for what
I thought was water in my eyes--until I found that it was blood
running down over my forehead from a gash in my scalp that went from
the top of my right ear pretty nearly to my crown. Had the blow that
made it struck fair it certainly would have finished me; but from the
way that the scalp was cut loose the blow must have glanced.

The chill of the water freshened me and brought my senses back a
little: for which I was not especially thankful at first, being in
such pain and misery that to drown without knowing much about it
seemed quite the best thing that I could hope for just then. Indeed,
when I began to think again, though not very clearly, I had half a
mind to drop my arms to my sides and so go under and have done with
it--so despairing was I as I bobbed about on the swell among the
patches of gulf-weed which littered the dark ocean, with the brig
drawing away from me rapidly, and no chance of a rescue from her even
had she been near at hand.

Whether I had or had not hurried the matter, under I certainly should
have gone shortly--for the crack on my head and the loss of blood from
it had taken most of my strength out of me, and even with my full
strength I could not have kept afloat long--had not a break in the
clouds let through a dash of moonlight that gave me another chance. It
was only for a moment or two that the moonlight lasted, yet long
enough for me to make out within a hundred feet of me a biggish piece
of wreckage--which but for that flash I should not have noticed, or in
the dimness would have taken only for a bunch of weed.

Near though it was, getting to it was almost more than I could manage;
and when at last I did reach it I was so nearly used up that I barely
had strength to throw my arms about it and one leg over it, and so
hang fast for a good many minutes in a half-swoon of weakness
and pain.

But the feel of something solid under me, and the certainty that for a
little while at least I was safe from drowning, helped me to pull
myself together; and before long some of my strength came back, and a
little of my spirit with it, and I went about settling myself more
securely on my poor sort of a raft. What I had hit upon, I found, was
a good part of a ship's mast; with the yards still holding fast by it
and steadying it, and all so clean-looking that it evidently had not
been in the water long. The main-top, I saw, would give me a back to
lean against and also a little shelter; and in that nook I would be
still more secure because the futtock-shrouds made a sort of cage
about it and gave me something to catch fast to should the swell of
the sea roll me off. So I worked along the mast from where I first had
caught hold of it until I got myself stowed away under the main-top:
where I had my body fairly out of water, and a chance to rest easily
by leaning against the upstanding woodwork, and a good grip with my
legs to keep me firm. And it is true, though it don't sound so, that I
was almost happy at finding myself so snug and safe there--as it
seemed after having nothing under me but the sea.

And then I set myself--my head hurting me cruelly, and the flow of
blood still bothering me--to see what I could do in the way of binding
up my wound; and made a pretty good job of it, having a big silk
handkerchief in my pocket that I folded into a smooth bandage and
passed over my crown and under my chin--after first dowsing my head in
the cold sea water, which set the cut to smarting like fury but helped
to keep 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 state-room 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 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 wood-work 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 wood-work 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 state-room, 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!"

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