THE SIXTH AND SEVENTH DAYS.
The dawn awoke Johnson, who remained seated for some time motionless,
with his open eyes fixed upon the sea half-way to the horizon. As he
continued gazing, a wild smile of joy kindled up his face and parted
his cracked lips into a grin so extravagant, so indescribable, that it
converted his face into a likeness of humanity as repulsive and unreal
as an ugly paper mask.
He thrust his bony fingers into Holdsworth’s collar and shook him
violently, whilst he pointed to the sea with his right hand.
“Look! look!” he cried. “Wake up! wake up! there is the land! See the
houses, master! and the trees!... O Jesus! how green they are! Wake up,
I say!”
Holdsworth started up violently and shook himself, with a mighty
effort, clear of the benumbing torpor that had weighed him down
throughout the night. He stared in the direction indicated by Johnson,
then rubbed his eyes furiously with his knuckles, and stared again, but
could see nothing but the ocean growing blue under the gathering light
in the east, and stretching its illimitable surface to the horizon.
“Come, master, let’s get the oars out. Why, where have we drifted? O
Lord, see the trees! how green and beautiful! I reckon there’s water
there--and I’ll strip and souse in it! Will they see us? Wave your hat!”
He took off his own and brandished it furiously. But all on a sudden he
let fall his arm--he stretched his head forward, and his glassy eyes
seemed to protrude from their sockets; his breath went and came shrilly
through his open mouth; and then, giving a scream, he shrieked, “It’s
gone! it’s gone!” and as if the disappointment were a blow dealt him by
some heavy instrument, he gave a great gasp, collapsed, and fell like
a bundle of rags from his seat.
The fit of convulsive trembling that had seized Holdsworth passed; he
caught sight of the boy lying on his side, with his eyes, wide open,
fixed upon his face. The child was pointing to his throat. Holdsworth
raised him and laid him along the seat, not conceiving that the little
creature had fallen from his resting-place during the night, but that
he had placed himself in that position the better to rest his limbs.
He moistened his lips with rum, but on looking attentively at his face,
perceived indications denoting approaching death as clearly as though
the piteous message was written upon his brow. This perception gave
him exquisite misery. The bright eyes of the child, suggesting sweet
memories of the little wife he had left at Southbourne, had endeared
the boy to him; he had been his playmate and companion on the “Meteor;”
he had watched the deep and beautiful love of the mother; and her
death, recent as it was, had imparted the deepest pathos to the little
orphan, and made his claims upon Holdsworth’s protection and love
infinitely eloquent and appealing. That he should be dying now--now
that the bright sun was climbing the brilliant morning sky--dying for
want of a cup of water, a morsel of bread--dying without a mother’s
love to enfold him in his last struggle and waft his young and innocent
soul to God on the wings of a prayer, such as _her_ agony, _her_
devotion only could dictate--oh, it was too pitiful!
“My little boy--look up!--tell me--do you suffer? Where is the pain? Is
it in your throat? Oh my poor innocent!”
His tears blinded him. He took his handkerchief and dipped it into the
sea and laid it upon the child’s throat.
The little creature seemed to feel his love, for he made a movement as
if he would nestle against him, and smiled wanly, but could not speak.
His young dying face was an unbearable sight, and Holdsworth, groaning,
gazed wildly around the horizon as if there--or there--or there--must
be the ship sent by God to save the boy’s life!
A long hour passed; the child still lived, and Holdsworth hung
over him, heedless of the other poor creature who had awakened to
consciousness, but yet lay in a heap, supporting his head against the
stanchion of a thwart, and watching his companions with glazed eyes.
Then a craving for food mastered Holdsworth, and he looked at the
biscuit, but had yet sufficient control over himself not to touch it,
knowing the penalty of increased thirst that must follow the absorption
of the brine into his stomach. He went to the locker and plunged his
arm into the water that half filled it, and groped about in search of
he knew not what; something to appease his craving might be there; but
he found nothing but slimy pieces of biscuit and the broken bottles.
In a sudden fury of hunger he tore off his boot and cut a piece of the
leather from the top of it, and began to chew it.
The mere act of mastication somewhat diminished his suffering, and he
returned to the boy. No marked change had occurred within the hour,
but, imperceptible as the departure might be, it was only too evident
that the child was dying. Thirst, exposure, and grief--for there had
been something so akin to a heart-broken expression in the little
fellow’s eyes when he stared at the sea, expecting his mother to rise
from it, that it would be impossible to doubt the keenness of his
sorrow--these things had done their work.
Holdsworth bathed his face and throat with salt water, and again
offered to moisten his lips with rum; but the boy made a gesture of
dissent. Indeed the rum served no other end than to irritate his lips
and his tongue, which was swollen and discoloured.
As the day wore on, the torment of thirst abated in Holdsworth, and
Johnson also seemed to suffer less. The first agony which thirst brings
with it, and which endures for two or three days, was passing; the next
stage would be a kind of insensibility to the craving for water; but
this would presently be followed by a renewal of the suffering in its
sharpest form, which would continue until death ended it.
Throughout the afternoon, Holdsworth remained at the side of the boy,
who lay with half-closed eyes and no movement of the body, save the
faint rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. They were neither of
them much more than skeletons, and so ashen was the complexion of
Holdsworth, so lustreless his eyes, so wild and gaunt and ragged his
whole face with the grisly beard, the white lips, the livid hollows
beneath the eyes, and the twisted knotted hair upon his forehead and
down his back, that he seemed much nearer to death than the child,
whose infancy saved his face from being made actually repulsive by
suffering.
Before sunset the boy became delirious, and mouthed shocking gibberish,
being unable to articulate. For a whole half-hour this babbling lasted,
and then died out, and the boy grew conscious. Holdsworth supported
his head on his knee, but he slightly twisted it round to look at the
sun, which was just then resting, a great orb of burning gold, upon
the line of the horizon. He watched the sun intently, undazzled by
the splendour, until it vanished, when he uttered a low wailing cry
and stretched his arms out to it. Holdsworth felt his little body
trembling, and some convulsive movements passed through him. Holdsworth
kissed his forehead, and the boy smiled, and with that smile his spirit
passed away.
When he could not doubt that he was dead, Holdsworth removed the little
jacket from the child’s back, covered his face with it, and laid him in
the bottom of the boat.
The mere exertion of doing this made him fall half-swooning upon a
seat, on which Johnson came staggering over the thwarts and gave him
some rum. There was now no more than a quarter of a pint left in the
bottle.
“Master,” said the man, bringing his lips close to Holdsworth’s ear,
“if I die first, please throw my body overboard. I don’t like the
notion of drifting about in this boat maybe for weeks, and becoming a
sight not fit to be looked at, if e’er a ship should come by.”
“I shan’t live to do you that service,” muttered Holdsworth. “I don’t
feel as if I could last out much longer.”
“The curse of God is on us!” said Johnson. “There’s nothing but calms,
and to think of two being left out o’ seven!”
The night fell quickly. At about ten o’clock a breeze came up from the
north, and blew coolly and gratefully over the burning heads of the
two men. It took the boat aback, and Holdsworth, acting from sheer
instinct, put her before it, and hauling the sheet aft, steered east.
No clouds came up with the wind; it was a summer breeze which might
lull at any moment, or veer round, perhaps, to the south-west, and
bring up a change of weather.
Lying pretty close to the wind the boat required no steering, which was
fortunate, for the yoke-lines soon slipped out of Holdsworth’s hands,
and a torpor stole over him, which, without actually suspending his
consciousness, rendered his perceptions dreamy and useless. He rested
with his back against the side of the boat, his head upon his breast,
and his eyes half closed. Johnson crouched near the mast.
The breeze proved steady during the night, but died away towards the
small hours; then, at daybreak, sprang up afresh from the west. The
heeling over of the boat aroused the two men, who languidly, and with
gestures terribly significant of their growing indifference to their
fate, dipped the sail, and again let the boat lie close to save the
trouble of steering her.
When the morning was a little advanced, Johnson crept to the side of
the dead boy and groped about him.
“What are you doing?” cried Holdsworth fiercely.
“Feeling if there isn’t a piece of ship’s bread in his pockets,”
answered the man doggedly, and looking up with a wolfish light in his
sunken eyes.
“Let him alone!” said Holdsworth.
The man dragged himself away reluctantly, grumbling to himself, and
resumed his place near the mast, keeping his eye steadfastly fixed on
the dead body.
A sick shudder passed through Holdsworth as he observed the man’s
peculiar stare, and sinking on his knees, he uncovered the child’s face
and inspected it attentively, to satisfy himself that he was actually
dead. He then raised him in his arms with the intention of casting him
overboard. But Johnson came scrambling over to him and gripped him by
the wrist.
The expression of his face, made devilish by suffering, was heightened
to the horribly grotesque by the action of his mouth, which gaped and
contorted ere he could articulate.
“What are you going to do? Keep him!” he exclaimed.
“Why?” answered Holdsworth, looking him full in the face.
But the man could not deliver the idea that was in his mind; he could
only _look_ it.
Holdsworth turned his back upon him and raised his burden on a level
with the boat’s gunwale, but Johnson grasped the body with both hands.
“Let go!” said Holdsworth.
The man with an oath retained his hold. Weak as Holdsworth was, the
passion that boiled in him at the desecration the half-maddened wretch
was doing his poor little favourite, gave him temporarily back his
old strength. He raised his foot, and, planting it in Johnson’s chest
hurled him back; the man fell with a crash over the thwart, and lay
stunned.
Holdsworth leaned over the boat’s side and let the body gently sink in
the water; which done, he felt that his own turn was come, and dropped
in the stern-sheets groaning, with drops in his eyes that scalded them.
But he still lived, and whilst his heart beat nature would assert
herself. Towards the afternoon a torturing craving for food beset
him, started him into life, and made him sit upright. He wiped the
foam from his lips and beheld it discoloured with blood. He looked
savagely around him like a wild beast, and, beholding nothing but the
dry, bare seats, the boat’s hot interior with the gratings whitened
by the heat of the sun, and underneath them the glistening water that
bubbled coolly and with a maddening suggestion of sparkling, refreshing
springs, he dragged his knife from his pocket, pierced his arm, and put
his lips to the wound.
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