I was awakened, some five hours later, by the sound water washing
heavily to and fro, and upon looking over the edge of the bunk I
discovered that the cabin was all afloat, the floor being covered to a
depth of nearly a foot, so that I looked down upon a miniature sea,
violently agitated by the furious leaping and plunging and rolling of
the felucca. I could tell, by the roar of the wind and the hissing of
the sea, with the frequent heavy fall of water on deck, that it was
still blowing heavily, and my first impression was that the water had
come down through the companion,--the slide of which I had left open,--
but a few minutes of patient observation convinced me that, although a
slight sprinkling of spray rained down occasionally, it was not nearly
sufficient to account for the quantity that surged and splashed about
the cabin. The only other explanation I could think of was that the
felucca had sprung a leak; and, leaping out of the bunk, I made my way
on deck to ascertain the truth of this conjecture.
It was a dismal and dreary scene that presented itself when I swung
myself out on deck through the companion top. It was still blowing with
the force of a whole gale; the sky to windward was as black and
threatening as ever; and the sea was running so high and breaking so
heavily that, as every succeeding comber came sweeping down upon the
felucca, with its foaming, hissing crest towering above her to nearly
the height of her masthead, it appeared to me--new to the scene as I
was--that the next sea must inevitably overwhelm her. Yet, deep in the
water as I instantly noticed her to be, the little craft still retained
buoyancy enough to climb somehow up the steep slope of each advancing
wave, though not to carry her fairly over its crest, every one of which
broke aboard her--usually well forward, as luck would have it; with the
result that while I had been sleeping below the whole of the lee
bulwarks and the forward half of them on the weather side had been swept
away, leaving her deck open to the sea, which had swept away every
movable thing, leaving nothing but the mast and the splintered ends of
the stanchions standing.
This constant sweeping of the deck by green seas rendered the task of
moving about extremely dangerous, for the rush of water over the fore
part of the deck was quite heavy enough to lift a man off his feet and
carry him overboard. But I wanted to sound the well; so, securing the
pump-rod, which, for convenience, was hung in beckets in the companion,
I watched my opportunity, and, rushing forward, succeeded in dropping
the rod down the well and getting a firm grip upon the fall of the main
halliard before the next sea broke aboard. Then, as the water poured
off the deck, I quickly drew the rod out of the well and dashed aft with
it to the shelter of the companion in time to escape the next sea. An
inspection of the rod then sufficed to realise my worst fears; the
little craft had upwards of three feet of water in her hold! Evidently
she was leaking badly, and the sooner I could devise some means of
relieving her of the weight of water in her the better it would be for
me. Had I made this discovery half a dozen hours earlier I should
probably have regarded it with perfect indifference; but those five
hours of death--like sleep had so greatly refreshed me that I now felt a
new man. My state of indifference had passed away with the intensity of
my fatigue, and the instinct of self-preservation was once more
asserting itself.
My first idea was to rig the pump; but this was instantly discarded, for
I had but to stand in the companion-way for a couple of minutes, and
watch the heavy rush of water athwart the deck, to be convinced of the
absolute impossibility of maintaining my position at the pump; for, even
if lashed there, my utmost efforts would barely suffice to prevent
myself from being swept overboard, while to work the pump would be quite
out of the question. Then I remembered that the lazarette hatch was
situated immediately at the foot of the companion ladder; and I thought
that, by raising the cover, I might get a sort of well from which to
bale, and in this way at least keep the leak from gaining upon me, even
if I found it impossible to reduce it. For _time_ was what I now
wanted. I had a conviction that the felucca's seams were opening,
through the violent straining of her in the heavy sea and through the
tremendous pressure of the wind upon her sail; and I felt tolerably
confident that, if I could succeed in keeping her afloat until the gale
had blown itself out, all would be well.
But at this point of my meditations it suddenly occurred to me that I
was hungry and thirsty; so I descended the companion ladder and made my
way to the small pantry, in search of something to eat and drink. It
was a small place, scarcely larger than a cupboard, and very imperfectly
lighted by a single bull's-eye let into the deck; but it had one merit,
it was well provided with good wide shelves, upon which everything that
could possibly spoil was stowed; and here I was lucky enough to find an
abundance of food--such as it was--and several bottles of the thin, sour
wine which Dominguez and his crew drank instead of coffee. I ate and
drank there in the pantry, standing up to my knees in water, and when I
had finished, went to work with a bucket and rope to bail the water out
of the lazarette, standing out on deck, on the lee side of the
companion, and drawing the water out of the lazarette as out of a well.
I stuck doggedly to this work throughout the whole afternoon and well on
into the night, until I could bail no longer for very weariness; and
then--having convinced myself that I had succeeded in checking the rise
of the water--I took a final look round to ascertain whether anything
happened to be in sight, but could see nothing, the night being again
dark as pitch, came to the conclusion that it was blowing a trifle less
hard than it had been, and that the felucca would live through the night
even though I should cease to bale; and so descended to the cabin and
again flung myself into my bunk, where I dropped sound asleep as my head
touched the pillow.
When I next returned to consciousness my awakening was brought about
through the agency of water splashing in over the side of my bunk, the
felucca having steadily filled during the period of my sleep until the
cabin was fully three feet deep in water. It was broad day, and oh,
blessed change! the sun was shining brilliantly down through the
skylight, while the wind had evidently dropped to a pleasant breeze. A
heavy sea, however, was still running,--as I could tell by the movements
of the felucca,--and I could hear the water well and gurgle up the side
of the little craft and go pouring across her deck from time to time,
although not so frequently as before I turned in.
I rolled reluctantly out of my bunk--for I seemed to be aching in every
joint of my body, and my head was burning and throbbing with a dull pain
like what would be occasioned by the strokes of a small hammer--and
waded, waist deep in water, to the companion ladder, up which I crawled,
and so out on deck.
The gale had blown itself out, the wind having subsided to a very gentle
breeze, that I soon discovered was fast dying away to a calm--although
what little wind there was still came breathing out from the westward.
The sky was perfectly clear, of a rich, deep, pure blue colour, without
a shred of cloud to be seen in the whole of the vast vault; and in the
midst of it, about two hours high, hung the morning sun, a dazzling
globe of brilliance and heat. The sea, I now found, had subsided almost
entirely, but a very heavy swell was still running, over which the
felucca rode laboriously, the water in her interior occasionally pinning
her down to such an extent that the quick-running swell would brim up
over her bows and pour in a perfect cataract athwart her deck. This,
however, I was not surprised at, for--as nearly as I could judge--the
felucca showed barely nine inches of freeboard! Still the little hooker
seemed surprisingly buoyant, considering her water-logged condition, and
now that the seas no longer broke over her, there seemed to be no reason
why, given enough time, I should not be able to pump her dry, and resume
my voyage to Barbadoes.
So I rigged the pump and went to work, hoping that, as the gale had now
abated and the sea had gone down, the straining of the hull and the
opening of the seams had ceased, and that consequently the felucca was
no longer in a leaky condition. I toiled on throughout the whole of
that roasting morning, with the sun beating mercilessly down upon me,
while the water swirled athwart the deck and about my legs, until noon,
and then, utterly exhausted with my labour, my skin burning with fever
and my hands raw and bleeding, I was fain to cry "spell ho!" and give up
for a time, while I sought somewhat to eat and drink. I had worked with
a good will, sanguinely hoping that when I felt myself compelled to
knock off I should discover that I had sensibly diminished the amount of
water in the felucca's interior; but this hope was cruelly disappointed,
for when I reached the companion, on my way below, I found that there
was no perceptible difference in the height of the water in the cabin
from what it had been before I turned to; indeed the water seemed to
have _risen_ rather than diminished, a sure indication that the hull was
still leaking, and that by no effort of mine could I hope to keep the
craft much longer afloat.
And now, as I descended to the cabin, and noted the violence with which
the water surged hither and thither with the rolling and pitching of the
little vessel, a wild fear seized upon me that I might find all the
provisions in the pantry spoiled. A moment later and my surmise was
changed to certainty, for as I opened the door of the small, cupboard-
like apartment, a recoiling wave surged out through the doorway, its
surface bestrewed with the hard, coarse biscuits that sailors speak of
as "bread." The water had risen high enough to flood the shelf upon
which the eatables had been stowed, and everything was washed off and
utterly spoiled. Worse still, there was no possibility of obtaining a
further supply, for the lazarette, or storehouse, was beneath the cabin
floor and had been flooded for hours. Moreover, it was unapproachable.
Fortunately I did not feel very hungry; I was, however, consumed with a
burning thirst which--all the water-casks having been washed overboard--
I quenched by draining a whole bottle of the thin, sour wine of which I
have before spoken. Then I went to work to collect all the biscuit I
could secure, and carried it up on deck to dry in the sun, spreading it
out on a cloth on the top of the companion; and while engaged upon this
task, and also in removing my small stock of wine to the deck--for the
cabin was by this time uninhabitable--I began to consider what I could
do to save my life when the felucca should founder, as founder she must,
now that I had demonstrated my inability to keep the leaks under. The
question was not a very knotty one, or one demanding very profound
consideration; obviously there was but one thing to do, and that was to
build a raft with such materials as offered themselves to my hand. And
just at this point the first difficulty presented itself in the shape of
the question: what available materials were there? For, as I have
already mentioned, the deck had been swept of every movable thing,
including the big lateen yard, which had doubtless gone overboard when
the bulwarks were carried away. There seemed to be absolutely
_nothing_, unless I set to work to break up the felucca herself! Yet
stay, there was the mast, the yard that spread and supported the lug-
sail, the tiller--a good, stout, serviceable stick of timber--and--yes,
certainly, the hatches--which could now be safely taken off, as the sea
no longer swept over the deck heavily enough to pour over the coamings.
Surely with those materials I ought to be able to construct a raft
buoyant enough to support me, even although it would be obviously
necessary for me to construct it on the deck, and then patiently wait
until the felucca sank and floated it off--for it would be quite
impossible for me to launch it.
So to work I went, my first task being to descend into the flooded
forecastle and grope about for an axe that I knew was kept there
somewhere; and I was fortunate enough to find it almost at once. Then,
returning to the deck, I lowered away the lug-sail and cut the canvas
adrift from the yard, carefully lashing the latter, that it might not
roll or be washed overboard. Then I began to cut away the mast,
chopping a deep notch in it close to the deck, and when I heard it
beginning to complain, I cut the lanyards of the weather rigging, when
away it went over the side with a crash. This gave me a good deal of
trouble, for I wanted the spar on deck, not overboard; so I had to go to
work to parbuckle it up the side, which I managed pretty well by
watching the lift of the seas. Then I cut the mast in halves, laid the
two halves parallel athwart the deck, and secured the yard and the
tiller to them, as cross-pieces, with good stout lashings. And finally,
to these last I firmly lashed four of the main hatch covers, when I had
a platform of some twelve feet long and eight feet wide to support me.
All that now remained to be done was to secure my provisions and wine,
which I did by stowing the whole in a double thickness of tarpaulin, the
edges of which I gathered together and tightly lashed with spun-yarn,
finally securing the bundle to the raft by a short end of rope, so that
it might not be washed away when the felucca should take her final
plunge; and I had then done everything that it was possible for me to
do.
By the time that my task was finished the sun had sunk to within a
hand's breadth of the western horizon, while the wind had dwindled away
until it had become the faintest zephyr, scarcely to be distinguished
save by the slight ruffling of the water here and there where it
touched, it being so nearly a flat calm that already great oily-looking
patches of gleaming smoothness had appeared and were spreading
momentarily through the faint blue ripplings that still betrayed a
movement in the air. As for me, I was utterly exhausted with my long
day's toil under the roasting sun; every bone in my body was aching; I
was in a burning fever, and was sick with the smart of my raw and
bleeding hands. The old feeling of callousness and indifference to my
fate was once more upon me, and as I gazed at the crazy-looking raft
which I had constructed with such a lavish expenditure of painful toil,
I smiled in grim irony of myself that I should have done so much to
preserve that life which now seemed of such little worth, and which
promised soon to become an unendurable burden to me. A reaction from
the excitement that had sustained me during my labours had set in, and I
am persuaded that had any further exertion been necessary for the
preservation of my life I should not have undertaken it.
Meanwhile the felucca had sunk nearly to her covering-board, and might
be expected to founder at any moment. I climbed laboriously upon the
top of the closed skylight and took a last, long look round to ascertain
whether anything had drifted into my range of view while I had been
engaged upon the raft, but there was nothing; the horizon was bare
throughout its entire circumference; so I climbed down again, and,
staggering to the raft, flung myself down upon it, with my bundle of
provision as a pillow, and patiently awaited the evanishment of the
felucca.
Poor little craft! what a forlorn, weather-beaten, sea-washed wreck she
looked, as she lay there wallowing wearily and--as it seemed to me--
painfully upon the long, creeping, glassy undulations of the swell! How
different from the trim, sturdy little hooker that had sailed seaward so
confidently and saucily out of Kingston harbour a few years--no, not
_years_, it must be months, or--was it only _days_--a few _days_ ago?
It seemed more like years than days to me, and yet--why, of course it
_could_ only be days. Heaven, how my head ached! how my brain seemed to
throb and boil within my skull! and surely it was not blood--it must be
fire that was coursing through my veins and causing my body to glow like
white-hot steel! A big, glassy mound of swell came creeping along
toward the felucca, and, as she rolled toward it, curled in over her
covering-board and poured in a heavy torrent across her deck, swirling
round my raft and shifting it a foot or two nearer the side; and as it
swept past I dabbled one of my hands in it, and was dully surprised that
the contact did not cause the water to hiss and boil! Another mountain
of water came brimming over the deck of the shuddering craft and shifted
the raft so far that it fairly overhung the covering-board, so that when
the felucca rolled in the opposite direction the end of the raft not
only dipped in the water but actually lifted and floated, the heave of
the water sucking it perhaps another foot off the deck. The next two or
three undulations passed harmlessly by,--the swing and roll of the
felucca was such that she just happened to meet them at the right
moment, though lagging a little at the last,--and then came another
great liquid hill, towering high above the horizon, until the sinking
sun was utterly obscured. On it swept toward the felucca, which had now
slewed so that she faced the coming swell nearly stem-on, the water in
her meanwhile rushing forward as she sank down into the trough until her
stem-head was completely buried. Now she was meeting the breast of the
on-coming swell, her bows still pinned down by the rush of water in her
interior, and now the glistening green wave was upon her, sweeping aft
along and athwart her deck, mounting over the coamings of the main
hatchway and pouring down the opening in a smooth, hissing, four-sided
cataract, snatching up the raft in its embrace and shooting it half a
dozen fathoms clear of the doomed craft, and rushing along the deck
until even the companion and the skylight were submerged. By that time
the hull was full, the curious rectangular hollow in the surface of the
water that marked the position of the main hatchway was filled, the hull
was completely hidden save for a splintered stanchion that projected
above water here and there. Then, as the wave passed, the bows of the
felucca emerged, gleaming and dripping with snowy, foaming cascades,
that poured off the uncovered portion of the deck. Higher and higher
rose the bows out of the water, until some ten feet in length of the
felucca was revealed, the deck gradually sloping until it assumed an
almost perpendicular inclination, when slowly, silently, and glidingly,
without a sob or gurgle of escaping air, the wreck slid backward and
downward until it vanished beneath the waters, now gleaming in gold and
crimson with the last rays of the setting sun. A few seconds later the
great luminary also vanished, a sudden grey pallor overspread the ocean,
and I found myself alone indeed, swaying upon that vast, heaving
expanse, with nothing between me and death save the clumsy structure
that I had so laboriously put together, and which now looked so
insignificantly small that I caught myself wondering why my weight did
not sink it.
But it did not; on the contrary, the raft proved to be surprisingly
buoyant, riding over the great, glassy, round-backed hills of swell as
dry as a bone, with a gentle, swaying movement that somehow seemed to
soothe my fever-racked frame, so that the condition of semi-delirium
that had possessed me just before the felucca foundered passed away and
left me sufficiently self-possessed to recognise the necessity for
eating and drinking, if I was to survive and get the better of my
misfortunes. So I carefully opened my bundle and extracted from it a
small quantity of sun-dried biscuit--which, thanks to the curiously
gentle manner in which the raft had been launched, had received no
further wetting--and proceeded to make such a meal as I could, washing
it down with a sparing draught of wine. But although the biscuit had
dried superficially, it was still wet and pasty in the middle, and
horribly nauseous to the palate, so that I made but a poor meal; after
which I stretched myself at full length upon the raft, and endeavoured
to find relief in sleep. But, exhausted though I was, sleep would not
come to me; on the contrary, my memory and imagination rapidly became
painfully excited. I thought of Dominguez, and wondered whether he and
his companions had escaped the hurricane; then I thought of Morillo and
his fiendish hatred of me; and so my thoughts and fancies chased one
another until they became all mingled together in an inextricable
jumble; and through it all I heard myself singing, shouting, laughing,
arguing upon impossible subjects with wholly imaginary persons, and
performing I know not what other mad vagaries, until finally, I suppose,
I must have become so utterly exhausted as to have subsided into a
restless, feverish sleep.