JANUARY 23rd.--Only eleven of us now remain; and the probability is very
great that every day must now carry off at least its one victim, and
perhaps more. The end of the tragedy is rapidly approaching, and save
for the chance, which is next to an impossibility, of our sighting land,
or being picked up by a passing vessel, ere another week has elapsed not
a single survivor of the “Chancellor” will remain.
The wind freshened considerably in the night, and it is now blowing
pretty briskly from the north-east. It has filled our sail, and
the white foam in our wake is an indication that we are making some
progress. The captain reckons that we must be advancing at the rate of
about three miles an hour.
Curtis and Falsten are certainly in the best condition amongst us, and
in spite of their extreme emaciation they bear up wonderfully under
the protracted hardships we have all endured. Words cannot describe the
melancholy state to which poor Miss Herbey bodily is reduced; her whole
being seems absorbed into her soul, but that soul is brave and resolute
as ever, living in heaven rather than on earth. The boatswain, strong,
energetic man that he was, has shrunk into a mere shadow of his former
self, and I doubt whether any one would recognize him to be the same
man. He keeps perpetually to one corner of the raft, his head dropped
upon his chest, and his long, bony hands lying upon knees that project
sharply from his worn-out trowsers. Unlike Miss Herbey, his spirit seems
to have sunk into apathy, and it is at times difficult to believe that
he is living at all, so motionless and statue-like does he sit.
Silence continues to reign upon the raft. Not a sound, not even a groan,
escapes our lips. We do not exchange ten words in the course of the
day, and the few syllables that our parched tongue and swollen lips can
pronounce are almost unintelligible. Wasted and bloodless, we are no
longer human beings; we are spectres.