THE FATAL VOYAGE--HOW THEY CAST LOTS.
"I am aware," says the author of _Antonina_, "of the tendency in some
readers to denounce truth itself as improbable, unless their own
personal experience has borne witness to it." In this spirit, some
may denounce the fatalities of the Heer's voyage as improbabilities,
though the hideous circumstance of human beings in extremity of
hunger destroying each other for food, has been too well and too
terribly established in many instances--such as the wreck of the
French frigate _Medusa_; when the British frigate _Nautilus_ was lost
on a solitary rock in the Mediterranean; during the famine on board
the American ship _Peggy_; and on many other occasions.
But to resume our little quarto.
The mate conducted the Heer Van Estell to the capstan, where the
starving seamen stood in a silent group, and then he informed him in
a hoarse whisper--
"That unless they contrived a means of furnishing themselves with
food, they must all die of starvation; it was impossible for them to
subsist for another day. That there were eleven persons on board,
and they had come to the resolution of determining by lot who should
die that the rest might live."
"_Eleven_ on board!" reiterated the Heer, faintly, for his poor wife
Grudule was one of these.
"Eleven," added a seaman named Adrian Crudelius, with a wild glare in
his eye; "if one dies, ten may live. Bring your wife on deck, sir;
she must take her chance with the rest. There must be no distinction
here."
"Nay," said George Carpinger, "we may excuse her presence, and so
spare her some of this horror; but her husband shall draw for her."
"Sirs," replied the poor Heer, "I thank you. Even here she finds the
privileges of her sex accorded her."
Then with tremulous hands the mate tore a sheet of paper into eleven
pieces, and numbered them from _one_ to _eleven_. He folded and
placed them in his hat. It was then agreed that he who drew number
_one_ was to die, and that he who drew number _two_ was to be the
executioner. After shaking the fatal pieces of paper, amid a silence
that was awful--the silence of horror--for food or want, death or
life, were on the issue, every glassy eye was fixed, each nether jaw
relaxed, while with hot and feverish hands that trembled, they drew
forth their lots--the Heer taking two in succession. He opened them
hastily, smote his forehead, uttered a wailing cry, and reeled
against the capstan.
He had drawn numbers "one" and "two," so it was the lot of him to
die, and by the hand of Grudule, or _vice versâ_!
The unhappy seamen had scarcely foreseen a chance so terrible as
this. Carpinger urged that the wife should be spared, or that lots
should be cast once more; but those who by risking their fate had
escaped death, were loth to tempt it again, and with sullen murmurs
declined. Propping himself against the capstan, the unfortunate Van
Estell summoned all his energies, and thus addressed them:--
"My good companions in misery, you have seen our sorrow and despair
for the loss of our dear little children; and though I know that
death would be a relief and refuge to my poor Grudule, neither she
nor I can perish by the other's hand. Thus I offer myself freely and
willingly as the victim and sacrifice. When I am dead, I charge
you--I pray you be kind unto her. Conduct her to her friends, her
home, her country, and be assured that if ever you are happy enough
to see the waters of the Maese, and the old spires of Rotterdam, she
will have wealth enough to reward you all. May Heaven bless you!
Gudule, farewell--my poor Gudule!"
At these words he drew a pistol from his pocket, shot himself through
the head, and fell flat on the deck. Some appeared stunned by the
whole affair, but two threw themselves upon the yet quivering body
like wild animals, and sucked up the blood that oozed from it.
In the weird light of the moon, that bloody deck, that silent group
and fallen corpse, presented an awful scene to Gudule Van Estell, who
tottered from her cabin, being roused by the sound of the pistol; but
now Carpinger the mate, Adrian Crudelius, and her old nurse, bore her
back into the cabin, and fastened the door to prevent her seeing the
dreadful scene that was sure to ensue, when the famished men, in
their voracity and fury, almost tore the clothes from the body of the
Heer, being rendered more mad than ever by the contents of a single
case-bottle of Geneva which had been discovered. They hewed the body
to pieces, cast its head into the sea, and again the horrible repast
commenced--a repast which rendered two raving mad, for with loud
yells they sprang overboard and disappeared.
All the rest became insane, save the mate and Adrian Crudelius, who
endeavoured to control their extravagance. One proposed to scuttle
the ship, or set her on fire, that all might perish together; another
raved and blasphemed Heaven for withholding the wind; a third
denounced the craft as being under a spell, and thus fixed to one
part of the sea, from whence she would never stir till her timbers
rotted and her planks opened; and all, save the mate, were unanimous
that next time the wife of the Heer, upon whom one of the lots had
fallen, should perish for their sustenance if a sail came not in
sight.
That day passed as others had done; the glassy sea without a ripple,
the hot sun overhead, the sails flapping against the masts; the
banner of the Seven Provinces, inverted as a sign of distress,
hanging listlessly downward from the gaff-peak; the sky without a
cloud, the horizon without a sail, and the hearts of the cannibals on
board the _De Ruyter_ without hope!
Gudule Van Estell was still surviving. The kind mate had caught a
couple of mice; these he gave to the nurse, who cooked them in secret
for her mistress and herself. But now, towards evening, four of the
crew, who were bereft of reason, approached her cabin door, and were
attempting to force it open, for the purpose of dragging her to the
capstan head, when George Carpinger, armed with a cutlass, rushed
forward, and drove them back.
They soon procured arms, and howling like wild animals, attacked him,
staggering the while like drunken men with weakness. Crudelius now
joined the mate, and there ensued a conflict in which two were slain,
and their bodies were cast overboard by the survivors, who were
already so glutted by their horrible food as to have no desire for
more.
By the noon of the next day, all had perished by exhaustion, save the
mate and the Dame Van Estell.
Night was coming on, and the poor solitary seaman was sitting on the
windlass in a species of stupor, when an unusual coolness in the
atmosphere roused his attention, and, with a sailor's instinct, he
felt the coming breeze.
First there came a gentle catspaw upon the darkening water, then a
ripple, and now a whitening of the wave-tops at a distance. He
stretched his tremulous hands towards them, and wept in joy!
Anon, clouds came banking up in dense masses to leeward, and
rain--blessed rain! began to fall, while the wind of heaven blew the
long neglected rigging out in bands, and filled the flapping sails.
A brace of lazy gulls suddenly appeared wheeling about; and a bird--a
land bird--perched on the end of the studding-sail boom alongside.
The haggard eyes of Carpinger swept the horizon, and saw afar off a
spark, which he at first supposed to be a star, but, ere long,
discovered to be a light; yet whether it shone on board of a ship, or
on the shore, he knew not; so he lashed the helm, and rushing to the
lifts and braces, strove to trim the sails and shape the vessel's
course towards it.
The bunting began to shake at the gaff-peak; ere long it floated out
upon the wind, while a wake whitened astern, a bubble rose under the
bows, and the _De Ruyter_ walked through the water as of yore.
The breeze continued, and next morning she was close in upon a bleak,
rugged, and mountainous coast, which proved to be the Lizard Point in
Cornwall, the most southern promontory of England.*
* It must be borne in mind that the mouth of the Channel was less
frequented by shipping in 1670, than now.
George Carpinger had the Dame Van Estell conveyed ashore in the
stern-boat, together with a casket of valuable jewels; and the _De
Ruyter_, after drifting about the coast, escaping the Cornish
wreckers, who deemed a wreck "a Godsend," was taken into Plymouth and
sold. Gudule Van Estell was afterwards conveyed to Rotterdam, where
she found herself one of the wealthiest widows in the city; and as a
reward to George Carpinger for defending her life so valiantly in the
fated _De Ruyter_, she bestowed her hand and guilders upon him.
"They lived long and happily together; and he died Burgomaster of
Rotterdam in 1720, when Anne was Queen of Britain."
------------
"So ends this story," said I.
Hartly filled his glass of grog, and emptied it in silence.
Then I could perceive that the perusal of the history of this fatal
voyage had a most unpleasant effect upon all who heard it, for
Reeves, Hartly, and Hans Peterkin, frequently recurred to it
afterwards.
"That little black pamphlet came from a wrecked ship," said Hartly,
one day--"'a fated craft'--I can't help wishing you had never brought
it on board, Jack."
"Why?" I asked.
"It is such a devil of a horse-marine yarn about these Dutchmen
eating each other."
"How?"
"I always think about it."
"I can easily put it out of existence by stuffing it under a kettle
in the cook's galley; it may aid Cuffy in cooking the dinner."
"No, no," said he, hastily, "that would be worse."
"In what way?"
"I don't know," said he, thoughtfully; "but such things are like the
Flying Dutchman's letters, which must neither be taken or refused
when the wind blows them on board."
Some days after this, Hartly lost his ring--the ring given him by old
Mother Jensdochter--the amulet which, until that moment, he had never
been without. It was torn from his hand while assisting to haul the
maintack on board, and dropped over the gunnel.
This trivial event, and the story of the _De Ruyter_, together with
the past evils of our voyage, affected Hartly and Reeves more
seriously than I could have imagined. From the cabin, Cuffy Snowball
soon carried the vague fears forward among the seamen. Hans Peterkin
began to shake his white head ominously, for old mariners have, they
know not why or how, strange instincts and presentiments; so our
crew, without any just reason, became more than usually solicitous
about their duties, and anxious for the termination of the voyage.