In the newspapers of 1876 appeared the following extracts from
the log of a merchantman: "VOLCANIC ISLAND IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC.
--The ship Hercules, of Liverpool, lately arrived in the Mersey,
reports as follows: March 23, in 2 deg. 12' north latitude, 33 deg.
27' west longitude, a shock of earthquake was felt, and shortly
afterward a mass of land was hove up at a distance of about two miles
from the ship. Michael Balfour, the chief officer, fell overboard.
A buoy was thrown to him, the ship brought to the wind, and a boat
lowered within fifteen minutes of the occurence. But though the
men sought the chief mate for some time, nothing could be seen of
him, and it is supposed that he sank shortly after falling into
the sea. Masters of vessels are recommended to keep a sharp lookout
in approaching the situation of the new island as given above. No
doubt it will be sighted by other ships, and duly reported."
I am Michael Balfour; I it was who fell overboard; and it is
needless for me to say here that I not drowned. The volcanic island
was only reported by one other ship, and the reason why will be
read at large in this account of my strange adventure and merciful
deliverance.
It was the evening of the 23d of March, 1876. Our passage to the
equator from Sydney had been good, but for three days we had been
bothered with light head winds and calms, and since four o'clock
this day the ocean had stretched in oil-smooth undulations to its
margin, with never a sigh of air to crispen its marvellous serenity
into shadow. The courses were hauled up, the staysails down, the
mizzen brailed up; the canvas delicately beat the masts to the soft
swing of the tall spars, and sent a small rippling thunder through
the still air, like a roll of drums heard at a distance. The heat
was great; I had never remembered a more biting sun. The pitch in
the seams was soft as putty, the atmosphere was full of the smell
of blistered paint, and it was like putting your hand on a red-hot
stove to touch the binnacle hood or grasp for an an instant an iron
belaying-pin.
A sort of loathing comes into a man with a calm like this. "The
very deep did rot," says the poet; and you understood his fancy
when you marked the blind heave of the swell to the sun standing
in the midst of a sky of brass, with his wake under him sinking in
a sinuous dazzle, as though it was his fiery glance piercing to the
green depths a thousand fathoms deep. It was hot enough to slacken
the nerves and give the imagination a longer scope than sanity
would have it ride by.
That was why, perhaps, I found something awful and forbidding in
the sunset, though at another time it might scarcely have detained
my gaze a minute. But it is true, nevertheless, that others besides
me gaped at the wonderful gushings of hot purple,--arrested whirlpools
of crimson haze, they looked,--in the heart of which the orb sat
rayless, flooding the sea with blood under him, so magnificently
fell was the hue, and flushing the sky with twenty dyes of gold
and orange, till, in the far east, the radiance fainted into the
delicacy of pale amber.
"Yon's a sunset," said Captain Matthews, a North of England man,
to me, "to make a fellow think of the last day."
"I'm looking at it, sir," said I, "as though I had never seen a
sunset before. That's the oddest part of it, to my mind. There's
fire enough there to eat a gale up. How should a cat's-paw crawl
then?" And I softly whistled, while he wetted his finger and held
it up; but to no purpose; the draught was all between the rails,
and they blew forward and aft with every swing of the sails.
When the dusk came along, the silence upon the sea was something
to put all sorts of moods into a man. The sky was a hovering velvet
stretch of stars, with a young moon lying curled among them, and
winkings of delicate violet sheet-lightning down in the southwest,
as though some gigantic-tinted lantern, passing, flung its light
upon the dark blue obscure there. The captain went below, after a
long, impatient look round, and I overhung the rail, peering into
the water alongside, or sending my gaze into the frightful distance,
where the low-lying stars hung. With every soft dip of the ship's
side to the slant of the dark folds, there shot forth puffs of
cloudy phosphor, intermixed with a sparkling of sharper fires now
and again, blue, yellow, and green, like worms of flame striking
out of their cocoons of misty radiance. The noise of the canvas on
high resembled the stirring of pinions, and the cheep of a block,
the grind of a parrel, helped the illusion, as though the sounds
were the voices of huge birds restlessly beating their pinions
aloft.
Presently the man at the wheel startled me with an observation.
I went to him, and he pointed upward with a long, shadowy arm. I
looked, and saw a corposant, as it is called at sea,--a St. Elmo's
fire,--burning at the end of the crossjack-yard. The yard lay
square, and the polished sea beneath gave back the reflection so
clearly that the mystic fire lay like a huge glow-worm on the black
mirror.
"There should be wind not far off," said the helmsman, in a subdued
voice; for few sailors can see one of these lights without a stirring
of their superstitious instincts, and this particular exhalation
hung close to us.
"I hope so," said I, "though I don't know where it's to come from."
As I spoke, the light vanished. I ran my eye over the yards,
expecting its reappearance; but it returned no more, and the sails
rose pale and phantom-like to the stars. I was in an odd humour,
and this was an apparition not to brighten one up. Of course one
knows all about these maritime corpse-candles, and can explain
their nature; but nevertheless the sudden kindling of them upon
the darkness of the night, in the dead hush of the calm or amid the
fury of the shrieking hurricane, produces feelings which there is
nothing in science to resolve. I could have laughed to find myself
sending a half-awed look aloft, as if I expected to see some visionary
hand at work upon another one these graveyard illuminations-with
a stealing out of some large, sad face to the melancholy glow; but
I returned to the side very pensive for all that, and there stood
watching the fiery outline of a shark subtly sneaking close to the
surface (insomuch that the wake of its fin slipped away in little
coils of green flame) toward the ship's bows.
Half an hour later the dark curl of a light air of wind shattered
the starlight in the sea, and our canvas fell asleep. I called to
the watch to trim sail, and in a few moments the decks were busy
with the figures of men pulling and hauling and surging out at the
ropes in sulky, slumberous growlings. The captain arrived.
"Little worth having in this, I fear," said he. "But make the most
of it--make the most of it. Get the foretopmast stunsail run up.
If she creeps but a league, it is a league to the good."
The sail was sleepily set. Humbugging about with stunsails to the
cat's-paws little pleased the men, especially at night. For three
days they had been boxhauling the yards about to no purpose, and
it was sickening work running stunsail-booms out to airs that died
in their struggles to reach us. However, here was a draught at
last, and the old gurgling and moaning sounds of the breathless,
sluggish swell washing heavily like liquid lead to the sides were
replaced by the tinkling noises of waters parting at the bows with
a pretty little seething of expiring foam, and the hiss of exploding
froth-bells. At eleven o'clock the light breeze was still holding,
and the ship was floating softly through the dusk, the paring
of moon swaying like a silver sickle over the port mizzen topsail
yard-arm, everything quiet along the decks, no light save the
sheen from the lamps in the binnacle, and nothing stirring but the
figure of a man on the forecastle pacing athwartships, and blotting
out at every step a handful of the stars which lay like dust
on the blackness, under the yawn of the forecourse. On a sudden a
steamer's lights showed on the starboard bow--a green beam, and a
yellow one above, with the water on fire beneath them, and sparks
floating away upon her coil of smoke, that made you think of the
spangles of a falling rocket. She went past swiftly, at no great
distance from us. There was not a moan in the hot breeze to disturb
the wonderful ocean stillness, and you almost thought you caught
the beating of the iron heart in her, and the curious monotonous
songs which engines sing as they work. She swept past like a phantom,
running a line of illuminated windows along, which resembled a
row of street-lamps out in the darkness; and as she came on to our
quarter she struck seven bells (half-past eleven), the rich metallic
notes of which I clearly heard; and with the trembling of the last
stroke upon the ear her outline melted.
At that instant a peculiar thrill ran through the ship. It may
be likened to the trembling in a floor when a heavy waggon passes
in the street outside. It was over in a breath, but I could have
sworn that it was not my fancy. I walked aft to the wheel, and
said to the man, "Did you notice anything just now?"
"Seemed to me as if the vessel trembled like," he replied.
As he spoke the ship shook again, this time strongly. It was
something more than a shudder; the sensation was for all the world
as though she had scraped over a shoal of rock or shingle. There
was a little clatter below, a noise of broken glass. The watch,
who had been dozing on deck, sprang to their feet, and their
ejaculations of surprise and fear rolled in a growl among them.
The captain ran out of the companionway in his shirt and trousers.
"What was that, Mr. Balfour?" he bawled.
"Either the shock of an earthquake," said I, "or a whale sliding
along our keel."
"Get a cast of the lead! get a cast of the lead!" he shouted.
This was done to the full scope of the hand-line, without bottom,
of course. By this time the watch below had tumbled up, and all
hands were now on deck, staring aloft or over the side, sniffing,
spitting, muttering, and wondering what had happened.
"There's that bloomin' compreesant come again!" exclaimed a hoarse
voice; and, sure enough, a light similar to the one that had hung
at the crossjack yard-arm now floated upon the end of the upper
maintopsail-yard.
"The devil's abroad to-night!" exclaimed the captain. "There's
sulphur enough about," and he fell a-snuffling.
What followed might have made an infidel suppose so; for scarce
were the words out of his mouth when there happened an astonishing
blast of noise, as loud and violent as that of forty or fifty cannons
fired off at once, and out of the black sea no farther than a mile
broad on the starboard beam rose a pillar of fire, crimson as the
light of the setting sun and as dazzling too; it lived while you
might have counted twenty, but in that time it lighted up the sea
for leagues and leagues, put out the stars, and made the sky resemble
a canopy of yellow satin; we on the ship saw one another's faces
as if by daylight; the shrouds and masts and our own figures cast
jet-black shadows on the deck; the whole ship flashed out to that
amazing radiance like a fabric sun-touched. The column of fire
then fattened and disappeared, and the night rolled down upon our
blinded eyes as black as thunder.
There was no noise--no hissing as of boiling water. If the furious
report that preceded the leap of the fire had rendered its coming
terrible, its extinction was made not less awful by the tomb-like
stillness that attended it. I sprang on to the rail, believing I
could perceive a dark mass--like a deeper dye upon the blackness
that way--upon the water, and to steady myself caught hold of the
mizzen loyal backstay, swinging out to my arm's length and peering
with all my might. My excitement was great, and the consternation
that posessed the ship's crew was upon me. As I leaned, the
vessel heeled violently to a large swell caused by the volcanic
disturbances. The roll was extraordinarily severe, heaving the
vessel down to her covering-board; and the great hill of water
running silent and in darkness through the sea, so that it could
neither be viewed nor heard, made the sickening lurch a dreadful
surprise and wonder.
It was in that moment that I fell overboard. I suppose my grip of
the backstay relaxed when the ship lay down; but, let the thing
have happened how it would, in a breath I was under water. It is
said that the swiftness of thought is best shown by dreams. This
may be so; yet I cannot believe that thought was ever swifter in
a dream than it was in me ere I came to the surface; for in those
few seconds I gathered exactly what had befallen me, wondered
whether my fall had been seen, whether I should be saved, realised
my hopeless condition if I had not been observed, and, above all, was
thinking steadfastly and with horror of the shark I had not long
ago watched stemming in fire past the ship. I was a very indifferent
swimmer, and what little power I had in that way was like to be
paralysed by thoughts of the shark. I rose and fetched a breath,
shook the water out of my eyes, and looked for the ship. She had
been sliding along at the rate of about four knots an hour; but
had she been sailing at ten she could not seem to have gone farther
from me during the brief while I was submerged. From the edge of
the water, where my eyes were, she appeared a towering pale shadow
about a mile off. I endeavoured to scream out; but whether the cold
of the plunge had bereft me of my voice, or that I had swallowed
water enough to stop my pipes, I found I could utter nothing
louder than a small groan. I made several strokes with my arms,
and suddenly spied a life-buoy floating almost twenty yards ahead
of me. I made for it in a transport of joy, for the sight of it
was all the assurance I could ask that they knew on the ship that
I had tumbled overboard; and, coming to the buoy, I seized and
threw it over my head, and then got it under my arms and so floated.
The breeze, such as it was, was on the ship's quarter, and she
would need to describe a considerable arc before she rounded to.
I could hear very faintly the voices on board, the flinging down
of coils of rope, the dim echoes of hurry and commotion. I again
sought to exert my lungs, but could deliver no louder note than a
moan. The agony of mind I was under lest a shark should seize me I
cannot express, and my strained eyeballs would come from the tall
shadow of the ship to the the sea about me in a wild searching of
the liquid ebony of it for the sparkling configuration of the most
abhorred of all fish. I could have sworn that hours elapsed before
they lowered a boat from the ship, that seemed to grow fainter and
fainter every time I looked at her, so swallowing is the character
of ocean darkness, and so subtle apparently, so fleet in fact, the
settling away of a fabric under canvas from an object stationary
on the water. I could distinctly hear the rattle of the oars in
the rowlocks, and the splash of the dipped blades, but could not
discern the boat. It was speedily evident, however, that they were
pulling wide of me; my ear could not mistake. Again I tried to
shout, but to no purpose. Manifestly no one had thought of taking
my bearings when I fell, and I, who lay south, was being sought
for southwest.
Time passed; the boat never approached me within a quarter of a
mile. They must instantly have heard me, could I have halloed; but
my throat refused its office. I reckoned that they continued to
row here and there for about half an hour, during which they were
several times hailed by the captain, as I supposed; the sound of
the oars then died. A little later I heard the very faint noises
made by their hoisting the boat and hauling in upon the braces,
and then there was nothing for me to do but to watch, with dying
eyes, the shadow of the ship till it faded, and the stars shone
where she had been.
The sky shed very little light, and there was no foam to cast an
illumination of its own. However, by this time, as you will suppose,
I was used to my situation; that is to say, the horror and novelty
of my condition had abated, and settled into a miserable feeling
of despair; so that I was like a dying man who had passed days in
an open boat, and who languidly directs his eyes over the gunwale
at the sea, with the hopelessness that is bred by familiarity with
his dreadful posture. It was some time after the ship had melted
into the airy dusk that I seemed to notice, for the first time
since I had been in the life-buoy, the lump of blackness at which
I had been straining my eyes when the vessel heeled and I fell.
It had the elusiveness of a light at sea, that is best seen (at
a distance) by gazing a little on one side of it. It lay, a black
mass, and whether it was a vast huddle of weeds, or a great whale
killed by the earthquake, or solid land uphove by the volcanic
rupture, was not conjecturable. It hung, still and not very tall,
for I could not see that it put out any stars, and was about a mile
distant. Whatever it might prove, I could not be worse off near
or on or amid it than I was here; so, setting my face toward it,
I began to strike out with my legs and arms.
The water was so fiery, it chipped in flashes to every blow of my
hands. I swam in the utmost terror, never knowing but that the next
moment I should be feeling the teeth of a shark upon my legs, for
the sparkling of the sea to my kicks and motions was signal enough
for such a beast if it was a league distant; but I may as well say
here that there is no doubt the shock of earthquake and the flame
effectually cleared the sea in its neighbourhood of every kind
of fish that floated in it, though the hope of such a thing could
yield me but very little comfort while I swam.
I continued to make good progress, and presently approaching the
block of blackness, for so it looked, perceived that it was certainly
land,--a solid rock, in short,--the head of some mountainous
submarine formation lifted ten or twelve feet above the sea. I could
now discern a faintness of vapour circling up from it and showing
like steam against the stars. Its front stretched a length of a
few hundred feet; how far it went behind I could not tell. A small
sound of creaming waters came from it, produced by the light swell
washing its shelter side. It lay all in a line of grayish darkness
even when I was quite close, and I could see nothing but the shapeless
body of it. Of a sudden my feet struck ground, and I waded thirty
paces along a shelf that was under water till my paces lifted to
the dry beach. But by this time I was fearfully exhausted; I could
scarcely breathe. My legs and arms were numbed to the weight of
lead. The atmosphere was warm, but not unbearably so--not hotter
than it had been at noon in the ship. Steam crawled up from every
pore, like the drainings of smoke from damp straw, but it did not
add to the distress of my breathing. I made shift to stagger onward
till I had gone about fifty feet from the wash of the sea. Nature
then broke down; my knees gave way, I stumbled and fell--whether
in a swoon or whether in a death-like slumber, I cannot say; all
I can tell is that when I awoke, or recovered my senses, the sun
stood fifteen degrees above the horizon, and I opened my eyes upon
a hot and dazzling sky.
I sat up in the utmost amazement. My mind for some time was all
abroad, and I could recollect nothing. Memory then entered me with
a bound, and I staggered to my feet with a cry. The first thing
I took notice of was that my clothes were nearly dry, which was
not very reconcilable with the steam that was still issuing from
the island, though it was as I say. My bones ached cruelly, but
I was not sensible of any particular languor. The brilliance was
so blinding that I had to employ my eyes very warily in order
to see; and it was not until I had kept opening and shutting them
and shading them with my hands for some minutes that they acquired
their old power. The island on which I stood had unquestionably been
hove up in the night by the earthquake. I cannot figure it better
than by asking you to imagine a gigantic mass of pumice-stone,
somewhat flat on top, and shelving on all sides very gently to the
water, lying afloat but steady on the sea. It was of the hue of
pumice, and as clean as an egg-shell, without a grain of calcined
dust or any appearance of scoriae that I could anywhere observe.
It was riddled with holes, some wide and deep--a very honeycomb;
and that I did not break my neck or a limb in staggering walk from
the beach in the darkness, I must ever account the most miraculous
part of my adventure.
But what (when I had my whole wits) riveted my attention, and held
me staring open-mouthed, as though in good truth the apparition of
the devil had risen before me, was the body of a ship leaning on
its bilge, at not more than a gunshot from where I stood, looking
toward the interior. When my eyes first went to the thing I could
not believe them. I imagined it some trick of the volcanic explosion
that had fashioned a portion of the land or rock (as it may be
called) into the likeness of a ship, but, on gazing steadfastly, I
saw that it was indeed a vessel, rendered extraordinarily beautiful
and wonderful by being densely covered with shells of a hundred
different kinds, by which her bulk was enlarged, though her shape
was preserved. Bright fountains of water were gushing from fifty
places in her, all these waterfalls shone like rainbows, and showed
surprisingly soft and lovely against the velvet green of the moss
and the gray and kaleidoscopic tints of the shells upon her. Lost
in amazement, I made my way toward her, and stood viewing her at
a short distance. She had three lower masts standing--one right
in the bows, and the mizzen raking very much aft. All three masts
were supported by shrouds, and that was all the rigging the sea
had left. She looked to be made of shells and moss; her shrouds and
masts were incrusted as thickly as her hull. She was a mere tub of
a ship in shape, being scarce twice as long as she was broad, with
great fat buttocks, a very tall stern narrowing atop, and low bows
with a prodigious curve to the stem-head. I am not well versed in
the shipping of olden times, but I would have willingly staked all
I was worth in the world that the fabric before me belonged to a
period not much later than the days of Columbus, and that she had
been sunk at least three centuries below the sea; and it was also
perfectly clear to me that she had risen in the daylight, out of
her green and oozy sepulchre, with the upheaval of the bed on which
she lay to the convulsion that had produced this island.
But my situation was not one to suffer me to stand long idly
wondering and staring. The moment I brought my eyes away from
the ship to the mighty desolation of the blue and gleaming ocean,
a horror broke upon me, my heart turned into lead, and in the
anguish of my spirits I involuntarily lifted my clinched hands to
God. What was to become of me? I had no boat, no means of making
anything to bear me, nothing but the life-buoy, that was no better
than a trap for sharks to tear me to pieces in. I was thirsty, but
there was no fresh water on this steaming speck of rock, and I tell
you, the knowing that there was none, and that unless rain fell
I must die of thirst, had like to have driven me mad. Where the
ship was, and beyond it, the island rose somewhat in the form of
a gentle undulation. I walked that way, and there obtained a view
of the whole island, which was very nearly circular, like the head
of a hill, somewhat after the shape of a saucepan lid. It resembled
a great mass of sponge to the sight, and there was no break upon its
surface save the incrusted ship, which did, indeed, form a very
conspicuous object. Happening to look downward, I spied a large
dead fish, of the size of a cod of sixteen or eighteen pounds,
lying a-dry in a hole. I put my arm down and dragged it out, and,
hoping by appeasing my hunger to help my thirst somewhat, I opened
my knife and cut a little raw steak, and ate it. The moisture in the
flesh refreshed me, and, that the sun might not spoil the carcass,
I carried it to the shadow made by the ship, and put it under one
of the waterfalls that the play might keep it sweet. There was
plenty more dead fish in the numerous holes, and I picked out two
and put them in the shade; but I knew that the great heat must
soon taint them and rot the rest, whence would come a stench that
might make the island poisonous to me.
I sat down under the bends of the ship for the shadow it threw,
and gazed at the sea. Perhaps I ought to have felt grateful for
the miraculous creation of this spot of land, when, but for it, I
must have miserably perished in the life-buoy, dying a most dreadful,
slow, tormenting death, if some shark had not quickly despatched
me; but the solitude was so frightful, my doom seemed so assured,
I was threatened with such dire sufferings ere my end came, that,
in the madness and despair of my heart, I could have cursed the
intervention of this rock, which promised nothing but the prolongation
of my misery. There was but one live spark amid the ashes of my
hopes; namely, that the island lay in the highway of ships, and
that it was impossible a vessel could sight so unusual an object
without deviating from her course to examine it. That was all the
hope I had; but God knows there was nothing in it to keep me alive
when I set off against it the consideration that there was no water
on the island, no food; that a ship would have to sail close to
remark so flat and little a point as this rock; and that days, ay,
and weeks might elapse before the rim of yonder boundless surface,
stretching in airy leagues of deep blue to the azure sky at the
horizon, should be broken by the star-like shining of a sail.
Happily, the wondrous incrusted bulk was at hand to draw my thoughts
away from my hideous condition; for I verily believe, had my eye
found nothing to rest upon but the honeycombed pumice, my brain would
have given way. I stood up and took a long view of the petrified
shell-covered structure, feeling a sort of awe in me while I looked,
for it was a kind of illustration of the saying of the sea giving
up its dead, and the thing stirred me almost as though it had been
a corpse that had risen to the sun, after having been a secret of
the deep for three hundred years.
It occurred to me that if I could board her she might furnish me
with a shelter from the dew of the night. She had channels with
long plates, all looking as if they were formed of shells; and
stepping round to the side toward which she leaned, I found the
fore channel-plates to be within reach of my hands. The shells were
slippery and cutting; but I was a sailor, and there would have been
nothing in a harder climb than this to daunt me. So, after a bit
of a struggle, I succeeded in hauling myself into the chains, and
thence easily dragged myself over the rail on to the deck.
The sight between the bulwarks was far more lovely and surprising
than the spectacle presented by the ship's sides. For the decks
seemed not only formed of shells of a hundred different hues;
there was a great abundance of branching corals, white as milk,
and marine plants of kinds for which I could not find names, of
several brilliant colours; so that, what with the delicate velvet
of the moss, the dark shades of seaweed of figurations as dainty
as those of ferns, and the different sorts of shells, big and
little, all lying as solid as if they had been set in concrete,
the appearance of the ship submitted was something incredibly
fantastic and admirable. Whether the hatches were on or not I could
not tell, so thickly coated were the decks; but whether or not, the
deposits and marine growths rendered the surface as impenetrable
as iron, and I believe it would have kept a small army of labourers
plying their pickaxes for a whole week to have made openings into
the hold through that shelly coating of mail.
My eye was taken by a peculiar sort of protuberance at the foot
of the mainmast. It stood as high as I did, and had something of
the shape of a man, and, indeed, after staring at it for some time,
I perceived that it had been a man; that is to say, it was a human
skeleton, filled up to the bulk of a living being by the shells and
barnacles which covered it. Ashore, it might have passed for some
odd imitation in shells of the human figure; but, viewing it as I
did, in the midst of that great ocean, amid the frightful solitude
of the great dome of heaven, in a ship that was like the handiwork
of the sea-gods at the bottom of the deep--I say, looking at it as
I did, and knowing the thing had had life in centuries past, and
had risen thus wildly garnished out of the unfathomable secret
heart of the ocean, it awed me to an extent I cannot express, and
I gazed as though fascinated. In all probability, this was a man
who, when the ship foundered, had been securely lashed to the mast
for safety or for punishment.
I turned away at last with a shudder, and walked aft. The wreck
was unquestionably some Spanish or Portuguese carrack or galleon
as old as I have stated; for you saw her shape when you stood on
her deck, and her castellated stern rising into a tower from her
poop and poop-royal, as it was called, proved her age as convincingly
as if the date of her launch had been scored upon her.
What was in her hold? Thousands of pounds' worth of precious ore in
gold and silver bars and ingots, for all I knew; but had she been
flush to her upper decks with doubloons and ducats, I have exchanged
them all for the sight of a ship, or for a rill of fresh water. I
searched the horizon with feverish eyes; there was nothing in sight.
The afternoon was advancing; the sun was burning unbearably midway
down the western sky, and my thirst tormented me. I dropped over
the side and cut another steak of fish; but though the moisture
temporarily relieved me, the salt of the water flowing upon it dried
into my throat and increased my sufferings. There was a light air
blowing, and the sea trembled to it into a deeper hue of blue, and
met in a glorious stream of twinkling rubies under the setting sun.
I counted half a score of wet black fins round about the island,
and understood that the sharks had recovered from their scare, and
had returned to see if the earthquake had cast up anything to eat.
When the sun sank, the night came along in a stride; the curl of the
moon looked wanly down upon me, and the sky flashed with starshine,
so rich and magnificent was the glow of the nearer luminaries.
I reentered the ship and stepped to the cabin front, over which
extended a "break" or penthouse, under which I might find some
shelter from the dew that was already falling like rain, and squatted
down, lascar-fashion, with my back against the shell-armoured
bulkhead. Great Father! never had I known what solitude was till
then. There was no sound save the quiet foaming of waters draining
from the wreck, and the purring of the very light swell softly
moving upon the beach, and the faint, scarce audible whispering
of the dew-laden draught of air stirring in the stony, fossilised
shrouds. My throat felt like hot brass; I tried to pray, but could
not. Imagination grew a little delirious, and I would sometimes
fancy that the terrible shape at the foot of the mainmast moved
as if seeking to free itself and approach me. There was a constant
glancing of shooting stars on high, swift sparklings and trailings
of luminous dust, and, as on the previous night, here and there
upon the horizon a dim violet play of sheet-lightning. It was like
being at the bottom of the sea, alive there, to be in this black,
shelly, weed-smelling ship. Whether my thoughts came to me waking
or sleeping I cannot tell, but I know some mad fancies possessed
me, and upon the sable canvas of the night, imagination, like
a magic lantern, flung a dozen febriletinctured pictures, and
I particularly recollect conceiving that I was my own soul at the
bottom of the ocean in the ship; that, in the green twilight of
the valley in which I was, I saw many forms of dead men standing or
lying or sitting, preserving the postures in which they had come
floating down into the darkly gleaming profound--figures of sailors
of different centuries clad in the garb of their times, intermixed
with old ordnance making coarse and rusty streaks upon the sand,
the glitter of minted money, the gleam of jewels, and fish brightly
apparelled and of shapes unknown to man floating round about like
fragments of rainbow. My dreams always wound up with imaginations
of babbling drinks, and then I'd wake with the froth upon my lips.
However, I got some ease by leaving my handkerchief to soak in the
dew and then sucking it.
Several times during the night I had got on to the upper poop--the
deck above the poop anciently termed the poop-royal--and looked
around me. But there was nothing to see, not a shadow to catch the
eye. The breeze freshened somewhat about midnight, and the air
was made pleasant by the musical noises of running waters. I fell
asleep an hour before dawn, and when I awoke the early ashen line
was brightening in the east. The birth of the day is rapid in those
parallels, and the light of the morning was soon all over sea and
sky. I turned to search the ocean, and the first thing I saw was a
brig not above half a mile from the island. She had studding sails
set, and was going north, creeping along before the breeze. The
instant I saw her I rushed on to the poop, where my figure would be
best seen, and fell to flourishing my handkerchief like a maniac.
I sought to shout, but my voice was even weaker than it had been
after I fell overboard. I have no power to describe my feelings
while I waited to see what the brig would do. I cursed myself for
not having kept a lookout, so that I might have had plenty of time
to signal to her as she approached. If she abandoned me I knew I
must perish, as every instant assured me that I had neither mental
nor physical power to undergo another day and night without drink
and without hope upon the island.
On a sudden she hauled up the lee clew of her mainsail, boom-ended
her studding sails, and put her helm over. I knew what this signified,
and, clasping my hands, I looked up to God.
Presently a boat was lowered and pulled toward the island. I dropped
over the side, tumbling down upon my nose in my weakness, and made
with trembling legs to the beach, standing, in my eagerness, in
the very curl of the wash there. There were three men in the boat,
and they eyed me, as they rowed, over their shoulders as if I had
been a spectre.
"Who are you, mate, and what country is this?" exclaimed the man
who pulled stroke, standing up to stretch his hand to me.
I pointed to my throat, and gasped, "Water!" I could barely
articulate.
Nothing in this wide world moves sailors like a cry to them for
water. In an instant the three men had dragged me into the boat,
and were straining like horses at their oars, as they sent the boat
flashing through the rippling water. We dashed alongside.
"He's dying of thirst!" was the cry.
I was bundled on deck; the captain ran below, and returned with a
small draught of wine and water.
"Start with that," said he. "You'll be fitter for a longer pull
later on."
The drink gave me back my voice; yet for a while I could scarce
speak, for the tears that swelled my heart.
"Are there any more of ye?" said the captain.