DEAD MAN’S RAFT.
_The Voyage to the Azores and an Episode._
So the desire of every man on board the _White Wings_ became that of
making the port of Santa Maria without the loss of a single day. When
our prudent Captain insisted that we must call at Porto Grande to coal,
I believe that we regarded him as guilty of an offence against our
earnestness. The fever of the quest had infected the very firemen in the
stoke-hold. My men spent the sunny days peering Northward as though the
sea would disclose to them sights and sounds beyond all belief
wonderful. They would have burned their beds if by such an act the
course had been held.
For my own part, while the zeal flattered me, there were hours of great
despondency and, upon that, of silent doubt which no optimism of others
could atone for. Reflect how ill-matched were the links in the chain I
had forged and how little to be relied upon. A dead man upon a lonely
shore; a woman wearing my stolen pearls in a London ball-room; the just
belief that diamonds smuggled from the mines of South Africa were hidden
upon the high seas; the discovery of a great ship, drifting like a
phantom derelict in the waste of the South Atlantic Ocean! This was the
record. If I judged that the island of Santa Maria could add to it, the
belief was purely supposititious. I went there as a man goes to an
address which may help him in a quest. He may find the house empty or
tenanted, hostile or friendly; but, in any case, he is wise to go and to
answer the question for himself, for no other can take the full measure
of that responsibility.
We were delayed awhile at Porto Grande waiting for coal, and after that,
sparing our engines as much as possible, we set a drowsy course almost
due North, and upon the third day we were within fifty miles of that
island of our hopes—Santa Maria in the Azores. I am not likely to
forget either the occasion or the circumstance of it. The month was
November, the hour eleven o’clock in the forenoon watch, the morning
that of Saturday, the nineteenth day of the month. Despite the season of
the year, a warm sun shone down upon us almost with tropic heat. Captain
Larry was in his cabin preparing for the mid-day observation; the
quartermaster Cain was at the wheel; Balaam, the boatswain, sat against
the bulwarks amidships, knitting a scarf for his throat; my virile
friend, McShanus, had gone below to “soak in the cold water,” as he put
it. My own occupation was that of reading for the third time that very
beautiful book—Maeterlinck’s “Life of the Bee,” and I was wondering
anew at the master knowledge of Nature it displayed when the second
officer sent down word from the bridge that he would like to speak with
me. Understanding that he did not wish to call the Captain from the
cabin, I went up immediately and discovered him not a little excited
about a black object drifting with the wind at a distance, it may be, of
a third of a mile from the ship. This he pointed out to me, and handing
me the glass, he asked me what I made of it.
“It’s a raft, Andrews,” I said—for that was the second officer’s
name—“a raft, and there are men upon it.”
“Exactly as I thought, sir. It is a raft, and there are men upon it—but
not living men, I fear. I have been watching it for a good ten minutes,
and I am sure of what I say. Yon poor fellows will never sail a ship
again.”
I lifted the glass again and spied out the raft with a new interest.
Clearly, it was not a safety raft such as is carried by most steamships
nowadays; indeed, it appeared to be a very rude structure made of rough
planks lashed together at hazard. So far as I could count them, there
were seven bodies made fast by ropes to this uncouth structure, but the
seas broke over them continually, and I waited some moments before I
observed that the clothes of the men were but rags, and that two of the
poor fellows at least were almost entirely immersed and must have been
drowned as we looked at them, if their deaths had not occurred long
weeks ago.
“That’s a fearful thing, Andrews,” I exclaimed, returning him the glass.
“Of course, we shall go and see what we can do.”
“I have already altered the course two points, sir,” he said.
“Will you send a boat, do you think?”
“Ah, sir, that’s for you to say. If you think it wise that the men
should know, remembering what a sailor is, then a boat by all means.”
“That is to be considered. If these poor fellows are really dead——”
“They have been dead many weeks, sir. What’s more, no shipwreck put them
in that position.”
“Good God! Do you mean to say that they have been murdered!”
“Ah, that’s not for me to decide, Dr. Fabos. Look at the way they are
lashed aboard there. Did their own hands do that? I’ll wager all I’ve
got against it. They were tied up like that and then sent adrift. It’s
plain enough without the glass, and the glass makes it sure.”
Be it said that we were steaming some fifteen knots an hour by this
time, and had come almost within a biscuit toss of the raft. The
foreward look-out had been warned to say nothing, and Abel, the
quartermaster, took his cue from the officer of the watch. So it came
about that we passed by the dreadful spectacle and remained as a crew
almost ignorant of it. Indeed, knowing how easily seamen are depressed,
I was thankful that it should have been so. The poor fellows upon the
raft must have been dead for some weeks. Two of them were little more
than human skeletons. The others were washed by every wave that broke
over the hellish contrivance of ropes and planks to which they had been
tied. I doubted no longer my officer’s supposition, horrible as it was
to believe. Neither peril of the sea nor accident of destiny had sent
those men to a death unnameable. I knew that they had been foully
murdered, and that he who had thus dealt with them was the man I had set
out to seek.
“We cannot help them, Andrews,” I exclaimed. “Let us keep our secret.
The day may not be distant when the man shall share it with me. It would
be something to have lived for—even to avenge that!”
Hardly could he answer me. Terror of the voyage, and upon terror a
fierce delight, had rapidly become the guiding impulses of my crew. They
would have sailed with me to the world’s end now, and made no complaint.
It remained for me, I said, not to betray them, even for the sake of a
woman worthy of a man’s love.