While the strange phenomenon of a blazing fire upon the back of a whale
was being exhibited to the eyes of ocean-birds and ocean-fishes,--all
doubtless wondering what it meant,--another and very different spectacle
was occurring scarce twenty miles from the spot,--of course also upon
the surface of the ocean.
If in the former there was something that might be called comic, there
was nothing of this in the latter. On the contrary, it was a true
tragedy,--a drama of death.
The stage upon which it was being enacted was a platform of planks and
spars, rudely united together,--in short, a raft. The _dramatis
persona_ were men,--all men; although it might have required some
stretch of imagination,--aided by a little acquaintanceship with the
circumstances that had placed them upon that raft,--to have been certain
that they were human beings. A stranger to them, looking upon them in
reality,--or upon a picture, giving a faithful representation of them,--
might have doubted their humanity, and mistaken them for _fiends_. No
one could have been blamed for such a misconception.
If human beings in shape, and so in reality, they were fiends in aspect,
and not far from it in mental conformation. Even in appearance they
were more like skeletons than men. One actually was a skeleton,--not a
living skeleton, but a corpse, clean-stripped of its flesh. The
ensanguined bones, with some fragments of the cartilage still adhering
to them, showed that the despoliation had been recent. The skeleton was
not perfect. Some of the bones were absent. A few were lying near on
the timbers of the raft, and a few others might have been seen in places
where it was horrible to behold them!
The raft was an oblong platform of some twenty feet in length by about
fifteen in width. It was constructed out of pieces of broken masts and
spars of a ship, upon which was supported an irregular sheeting of
planks, the fragments of bulwarks, hatches, cabin-doors that had been
wrested from their hinges, lids of tea-chests, coops, and a few other
articles,--such as form the paraphernalia of movables on board a ship.
There was a large hogshead with two or three small barrels upon the
raft; and around its edge were lashed several empty casks, serving as
buoys to keep it above water. A single spar stood up out of its centre,
or "midships," to which was rigged--in a very slovenly manner--a large
lateen sail,--either the spanker or spritsail of a ship, or the mizzen
topsail of a bark.
Around the "step" of the mast a variety of other objects might have been
seen: such as oars, handspikes, pieces of loose boards, some tangled
coils of rope, an axe or two, half a dozen tin pots and "tots,"--such as
are used by sailors,--a quantity of shark-bones clean picked, with two
or three other bones, like those already alluded to, and whose size and
form told them to be the _tibia_ of a human skeleton.
Between twenty and thirty men were moving amid this miscellaneous
collection,--not all moving: for they were in every conceivable
attitude, of repose as of action. Some were seated, some lying
stretched, some standing, some staggering,--as if reeling under the
influence of intoxication, or too feeble to support their bodies in an
erect attitude. It was not any rocking on the part of the raft that was
producing these eccentric movements. The sea was perfectly quiescent,
and the rude embarkation rested upon it like a log.
The cause might have been discovered near the bottom of the mast, where
stood a barrel or cask of medium size, from which proceeded an
exhalation, telling its contents to be rum.
The staggering skeletons were _drunk_!
It was not that noisy intoxication that tells of recent indulgence, but
rather of the nervous wreck which succeeds it; and the words heard,
instead of being the loud banterings of inebriated men, were more like
the ravings and gibbering of maniacs. No wonder: since they who uttered
them _were_ mad,--mad with _mania potu_! If they were ever to recover,
it would be the last time they were likely to be afflicted by the same
disease,--at least on board that embarkation. Not from any virtuous
resolve on their parts, but simply from the fact that the cause of their
insanity no longer existed.
The rum-cask was as dry inside as out. There was no longer a drop of
the infernal liquor on the raft; no more spirit of any kind to produce
fresh drunkenness or renewed _delirium tremens_!
The madmen were not heeded by the others; but allowed to totter about,
and give speech to their incoherent mumblings!--sometimes diversified by
yells, or peals of mania laughter,--always thickly interlarded with
oaths and other blasphemous utterances.
It was only when disturbing the repose of some one less _exalted_ than
themselves, or when two of them chanced to come into collision, that a
scene would ensue,--in some instances extending to almost every
individual on the raft, and ending by one or other of the delirious
disputants getting "chucked" into the sea, and having a swim before
recovering foothold on the frail embarkation. This the ducked
individual would be certain to do. Drunk as he might have been, and
maudlin as he might be, his instincts were never so benumbed as to
render him regardless of self-preservation. Even from out his haggard
eyes still gleamed enough of intelligence to tell that those dark
triangular objects, moving in scores around the raft, and cutting the
water, so swift and sheer, were the dorsal fins of the dreaded sharks.
Each one was a sight that, to a sailor's eye, even when "blind drunk,"
brings habitual dread.
The _douche_, and the fright attending it, would usually restore his
reason to the delirious individual,--or, at all events, would have the
effect of restoring tranquillity upon the raft,--soon after to be
disturbed by some scene of like, or perhaps more terrible, activity.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The reader, unacquainted with the history of this raft and the people
upon it, may require some information concerning them. A few words must
suffice for both.
As already stated, at the beginning of our narrative, a raft was
constructed out of such timbers as could be detached from the slave-bark
_Pandora_,--after that vessel had caught fire, and previous to her
blowing up. Upon this embarkation the slaver's crew had escaped,
leaving her _cargo_ to perish,--some by the explosion, some by drowning,
and not a few by the teeth of sharks. The _Pandora's_ captain, along
with five others,--including the mates and carpenter,--had stolen away
with the gig. As this was the only boat found available in the fearful
crisis of the conflagration, the remainder of the crew had betaken
themselves to the large raft, hurriedly constructed for the occasion.
As already related, Snowball and the Portuguese girl were the only
individuals on board the _Pandora_ who had remained by the wreck, or
rather among its _debris_. There the Coromantee, by great courage and
cunning, had succeeded not only in keeping himself and his _protege_
afloat, but in establishing a chance for sustaining existence,
calculated to last for some days. It is known also that Ben Brace with
_his protege_, having been informed by the captain's parting speech that
there was a barrel of gunpowder aboard the burning bark, apprehensive of
the explosion, had silently constructed a little raft of his own; which,
after being launched from under the bows of the slaver, he had brought
_en rapport_ with the "big raft," and thereto attached it. This
"tender," still carrying the English sailor and the boy, had been
afterwards cut loose from its larger companion in the dead hour of
night, and permitted to fall far into the wake. The reason of this
defection was simply to save little William from being eaten up by the
ex-crew of the _Pandora_, then reduced to a famished condition,--if we
may use the phrase, screwed up to the standard of anthropophagy.
Since the hour in which the two rafts became separated from each other,
the reader is acquainted, in all its minute details, with the history of
the lesser: how it joined issue with the embarkation that carried the
ex-cook and his _protege_; how the union with the latter produced a
cross between the two,--afterwards yclept the _Catamaran_; with all the
particulars of the _Catamaran's_ voyage, up to the time when she became
moored alongside the carcass of the _cachalot_; and for several days
after.
During this time, the "big raft" carrying the crew of tin burnt bark,--
being out of sight, may also have escaped from the reader's mind. Both
it and its occupants were still in existence. Not all of them, it is
true, but the greater number; and among these, the most prominent in
strength of body, energy of mind; and wickedness of disposition.
It is scarce necessary to say, that the raft now introduced as lying
upon the ocean some twenty miles from the dead _cachalot_ was that which
some days before had parted from the _Pandora_, or that the fiendish
forms that occupied it were the remnant of the _Pandora's_ crew.
These were not all there: nearly a score of them were absent. The
absence of the captain, with five others who had accompanied him in his
gig, has been explained. The ex-cook, the English sailor and
sailor-boy, with the cabin passenger, Lilly Lalee, have also been
accounted for; but there were several others aboard the big raft, on its
first starting "to sea," that were no longer to be seen amidst the crowd
still occupying this ungainly embarkation. Half a dozen,--perhaps
more,--seemed to be missing. Their absence might have appeared
mysterious, to anyone who had not been kept "posted" up in the
particulars of the ill-directed cruise through which the raft had been
passing; though the skeleton above described, and the dissevered _tibia_
scattered around, might have given a clew to their disappearance,--at
least, to anyone initiated into the shifts and extremities of
starvation.
To those of less experience,--or less quick comprehension,--it may be
necessary to repeat the conversation which was being carried on upon the
raft,--at the moment when it is thus reintroduced to the notice of the
reader. A correct report of this will satisfactorily explain why its
original crew had been reduced, from over thirty, to the number of
six-and-twenty, exclusive of the skeleton!