seven—and the sailors ate their breakfast on the forecastle, that they
might view the strange contrivance. The mate, Mr. Perkins, came on deck
to relieve the boatswain, and, after inspecting the raft through the
telescope, gave it as his opinion that it was a Malay floating bier—“a
Mussulman trick of ocean burial, anyhow,” said he. “There should be a jar
of water aboard the raft, and cakes and fruit for the corpse to regale
on, if he ha’n’t been dead long.”
The steward announced breakfast; the captain told him to hold it back
awhile. He was as curious as I to get a close view of the queer object
with its white cloth and mast and parcel and chocolate-coloured fragment
half in and half out like a barge’s leeboard, and he bade the man at
the helm put the wheel over by a spoke or two; but the wind was nearly
gone, the barque scarcely responded to the motion of her rudder, the
thread-like lines at the cut-water had faded, and a roasting, oppressive
calm was upon the water, whitening it out into a tingling sheen of
quicksilver with a fiery shaft of blinding dazzle, solitary and splendid,
working with the swell like some monstrous serpent of light right under
the sun.
The raft was about six cables’ lengths off us when the barque came to a
dead stand, with a soft, universal hollowing in of her canvas from royal
to course, as though, like something sentient, she delivered one final
sigh before the swoon of the calm seized her. But now we were near enough
to resolve the floating thing with the naked eye into details. It was a
raft formed of bamboo canes. A mast about six feet tall was erected upon
it; the dark thing over the edge proved a human leg, and, when the fabric
lifted with the swell and raised the leg clear, we saw that the foot had
been eaten away by fish, a number of which were swimming about the raft,
sending little flashes of foam over the pale surface as they darted along
with their back or dorsal fins exposed. They were all little fish; I saw
no sharks. The body to which the leg belonged was covered by a white
cloth. The captain called my attention to the parcel attached to the
mast, and said that it possibly contained the food which the Malays leave
beside their dead after burial.
“But let’s go to breakfast now, Mr. Barron,” said he, with a slow,
reproachful, impatient look round the breathless scene of ocean. “If
there’s any amusement to be got out of that thing yonder there’s a
precious long, quiet day before us, I fear, for the entertainment.”
We breakfasted, and in due course returned on deck. The slewing of the
barque had caused the raft to shift its bearings, otherwise its distance
remained as it was when we went below.
“Mr. Perkins,” said the captain, “lower a boat and bring aboard that
parcel from the raft’s jury-mast, and likewise take a peep at the figure
under the cloth, and report its sex and what it looks like.”
I asked leave to go in the boat, and when she was lowered, with three men
in her, I followed Mr. Perkins, and we rowed over to the raft. All above
the frail bamboo contrivance the water was beautiful with the colours
and movements of innumerable fish. As we approached we were greeted by
an evil smell. The raft seemed to have been afloat for a considerable
period; its submerged portion was green with marine adhesions or growths.
The fellow in the bows of the boat, manœuvring with the boathook,
cleverly snicked the parcel from the jury-mast and handed it along to the
mate, who put it beside him without opening it, for that was to be the
captain’s privilege.
“Off with that cloth,” said Mr. Perkins, “and then back water a bit out
of this atmosphere.”
The bowman jerked the cloth clear of the raft with his boathook; the
white sheet floated like a snowflake upon the water for a few breaths,
then slowly sank. The body exposed was stark naked and tawny. It was a
male. I saw nothing revolting in the thing; it would have been otherwise
perhaps had it been white. The hair was long and black, the nose
aquiline, the mouth puckered into the aspect of a hare-lip; the gleam of
a few white teeth painted a ghastly contemptuous grin upon the dead face.
The only shocking part was the footless leg.
“Shall I hook him overboard, sir?” said the bowman.
“No, let him take his ease as he lies,” answered the mate, and with that
we returned to the barque.
We climbed over the side, the boat was hoisted to the davits, and Mr.
Perkins took the parcel out of the stern-sheets and handed it to the
captain. The cover was a kind of fine canvas, very neatly stitched with
white thread. Captain Cayzer ripped through the stitching with his knife,
and exposed a couple of books bound in some kind of skin or parchment.
They were probably the Koran, but the characters none of us knew. The
captain turned them about for a bit, and I stood by looking at them;
he then replaced them in their canvas cover and put them down upon the
skylight, and by-and-by, on his leaving the deck, he took them below to
his cabin.
The moon rose about ten that night. She came up hot, distorted, with a
sullen face belted with vapour, but was soon clear of the dewy thickness
over the horizon and showering a pure greenish silver upon the sea.
She made the night lovely and cool: her reflection sparkled in the dew
along the rails, and her beam whitened out the canvas into the tender
softness of wreaths of cloud motionless upon the summit of some dark heap
of mountain. I looked for the raft and saw it plainly, and it is not in
language to express how the sight of that frail cradle of death deepened
the universal silence and expanded the prodigious distances defined by
the stars, and accentuated the tremendous spirit of loneliness that slept
like a presence in that wide region of sea and air.
There had not been a stir of wind all day: not the faintest breathing of
breeze had tarnished the sea down to the hour of midnight when, feeling
weary, I withdrew to my cabin. I slept well, spite of the heat and the
cockroaches, and rose at seven. I found the steward in the cabin. His
face wore a look of concern, and on seeing me he instantly exclaimed—
“The captain seems very ill, sir. Might you know anything of physic?
Neither Mr. Perkins nor me can make out what’s the matter.”
“I know nothing of physic,” I answered, “but I’ll look in on him.”
I stepped to his door, knocked, and entered. Captain Cayzer lay in a bunk
under a middling-sized porthole: the cabin was full of the morning light.
I started and stood at gaze, scarce crediting my sight, so shocked and
astounded was I by the dreadful change which had happened in the night in
the poor man’s appearance. His face was blue, and I remarked a cadaverous
sinking in of the eyeballs: the lips were livid, the hands likewise blue,
but strangely wrinkled like a washer-woman’s. On seeing me he asked
in a husky whispering voice for a drink of water. I handed him a full
pannikin, which he drained feverishly, and then began to moan and cry
out, making some weak miserable efforts to rub first one arm, then the
other, then his legs.
The steward stood in the doorway. I turned to him, sensible that my face
was ashen, and asked some questions. I then said, “Where is Mr. Perkins?”
He was on deck. I bade the steward attend to the captain, and passed
through the hatch to the quarter-deck, where I found the mate.
“Do you know that the captain is very ill?” said I.
“Do I know it, sir? Why, yes. I’ve been sitting by him chafing his limbs
and giving him water to drink, and attending to him in other ways. What
is it, d’ye know, sir?”
“_Cholera!_” said I.
“Oh, my God, I hope not!” he exclaimed. “How could it be cholera? How
could cholera come aboard?”
“A friend of mine died of cholera at Rangoon when I was there,” said I.
“I recognize the looks, and will swear to the symptoms.”
“But how could it have come aboard?” he exclaimed, in a voice low but
agitated.
My eyes, as he asked the question, were upon the raft. I started and
cried, “Is that thing still there?”
“Ay,” said the mate, “we haven’t budged a foot all night.”
The suspicion rushed upon me whilst I looked at the raft, and ran my
eyes over the bright hot morning sky and the burnished surface of sea,
sheeting into dimness in the misty junction of heaven and water.
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” said I, “to discover that we brought the
cholera aboard with us yesterday from that dead man’s raft yonder.”
“How is cholera to be caught in that fashion?” exclaimed Mr. Perkins,
pale and a bit wild in his way of staring at me.
“We may have brought the poison aboard in the parcel of books.”
“Is cholera to be caught so?”
“Undoubtedly. The disease may be propagated by human intercourse. Why
not, then, by books which have been handled by cholera-poisoned people,
or by the atmosphere of a body dead of the plague?” I added, pointing at
the raft.
“No man amongst us is safe, then, now?” cried the mate.
“I’m no doctor,” said I; “but I know this, that contagious poisons, such
as scarlet fever and glanders, may retain their properties in a dormant
state for years. I’ve heard tell of scores of instances of cholera being
propagated through articles of dress. Depend upon it,” said I, “that we
brought the poison aboard with us yesterday from that accursed death-raft
yonder.”
“Aren’t the books in the captain’s cabin?” said the mate.
“Are they?”
“He took them below yesterday, sir.”
“The sooner they’re overboard the better,” I exclaimed, and returned to
the cabin.
I went to the captain, and found the steward rubbing him. The disease
appeared to be doing its work with horrible rapidity; the eyes were
deeply sunk and red; every feature had grown sharp and pinched as after
a long wasting disease; the complexion was thick and muddy. Those who
have watched beside cholera know that terrific changes may take place in
a few minutes. I cast my eyes about for the parcel of books, and, spying
it, took a stick from a corner of the berth, hooked up the parcel, and,
passing it through the open porthole, shook it overboard.
The captain followed my movements with a languid rolling of his eyes
but spoke not, though he groaned often, and frequently cried out. I
could not in the least imagine what was proper to be done. His was the
most important life on board the ship, and yet I could only look on and
helplessly watch him expire.
He lived till the evening, and seldom spoke save to call upon God to
release him. I had found an opportunity to tell him that he was ill of
the cholera, and explained how it happened that the horrible distemper
was on board, for I was absolutely sure we had brought it with us in
that parcel of books; but his anguish was so keen, his death so close
then, that I cannot be sure he understood me. He died shortly after seven
o’clock, and I have since learnt that that time is one of the critical
hours in cholera.
When the captain was dead I went to the mate, and advised him to cast
the body overboard at once. He called to some of the hands. They brought
the body out just as the poor fellow had died, and, securing a weight
to the feet, they lifted the corpse over the rail, and dropped it. No
burial service was read. We were all too panic-stricken for reverence. We
got rid of the body quickly, the men handling the thing as though they
felt the death in it stealing into them through their fingers—hoping and
praying that with it the cholera would go. It was almost dark when this
hurried funeral was ended. I stood beside the mate, looking round the sea
for a shadow of wind in any quarter. The boatswain, who had been one of
the men that handled the body, came up to us.
“Ain’t there nothing to be done with that corpus out there?” he
exclaimed, pointing with a square hand to the raft. “The men are agreed
that there’ll come no wind whilst that there dead blackie keeps afloat.
And ain’t he enough to make a disease of the hatmosphere itself, from
horizon to horizon?”
I waited for the mate to answer. He said gloomily, “I’m of the poor
captain’s mind. You’ll need to make something fast to the body to sink
it. Who’s to handle it? I’ll ask no man to do what I wouldn’t do myself,
and rat me if I’d do _that_!”
“We brought the poison aboard by visiting the raft, bo’sun,” said I.
“Best leave the thing alone. The corpse is too far off to corrupt
the air, as you suppose; though the imagination’s nigh as bad as the
reality,” said I, spitting.
“If there’s any of them game to sink the thing, may they do it?” said
the boatswain. “For if there’s ne’er a breeze of wind to come while it’s
there——”
“Chaw!” said the mate. “But try ’em, if you will. They may take the boat
when the moon’s up, should there come no wind first.”
An hour later the steward told me that two of the sailors were seized
with cramps and convulsions. After this no more was said about taking
the boat and sinking the body. The mate went into the forecastle. On his
return, he begged me to go and look at the men.
“Better make sure that it’s cholera with them too, sir,” said he. “You
know the signs;” and, folding his arms, he leaned against the bulwarks in
a posture of profound dejection.
I went forward and descended the forescuttle, and found myself in a
small cave. The heat was overpowering; there was no air to pass through
the little hatch; the place was dimly lighted by an evil-smelling lamp
hanging under a beam, but, poor as the illumination was, I could see by
it, and when I looked at the two men and spoke to them, I saw how it was,
and came away sick at heart, and half dead with the hot foul air of the
forecastle, and in deepest distress of mind, moreover, through perceiving
that the two men had formed a part of the crew of the boat when we
visited the raft.
One died at six o’clock next morning, and the other at noon; but before
this second man was dead three others had been attacked, and one of them
was the mate. And still never a breath of air stirred the silver surface
of the sea.
The mate was a strong man, and his fear of death made the conflict
dreadful to behold. I was paralyzed at first by the suddenness of the
thing and the tremendous character of our calamity, and, never doubting
that I must speedily prove a victim as being one who had gone in the
boat, I cast myself down upon a sofa in the cabin and there sat, waiting
for the first signal of pain, sometimes praying, or striving to pray, and
seeking hard to accustom my mind to the fate I regarded as inevitable.
But a keen and biting sense of my cowardice came to my rescue. I sprang
to my feet and went to the mate’s berth, and nursed him till he died,
which was shortly before midnight of the day of his seizure—so swift and
sure was the poison we had brought from the raft. He was dropped over the
side, and in a few hours later he was followed by three others. I cannot
be sure of my figures: it was a time of delirium, and I recall some
details of it with difficulty, but I am pretty sure that by the morning
of the fourth day of our falling in with the accursed raft the ship’s
company had been reduced to the boatswain and five men, making, with
myself, seven survivors of fifteen souls who had sailed from Calcutta.
It was some time about the middle of the fifth day—two men were then
lying stricken in the forecastle—the boatswain and a couple of seamen
came aft to the quarter-deck where I was standing. The wheel was
deserted: no man had grasped it since the captain’s death; indeed, there
was nothing to be done at the helm. The ocean floated in liquid glass;
the smell of frying paint, bubbled into cinders by the roasting rays,
rose like the stench of a second plague to the nostrils. The boatswain
and his companions had been drinking; no doubt they had broached the rum
casks below. They had never entered the cabin to my knowledge, nor do I
believe they got their liquor from there. The boatswain carried a heavy
weight of some sort, bound in canvas, with a long laniard attached to it.
He flung the parcel into the quarter-boat, and roared out—
“If that don’t drag the blistered cuss out of sight I’ll show the fired
carcass the road myself. Cholera or no cholera, here goes!”
“What are you going to do?” said I.
“Do?” he cried; “why sink that there plague out of it, so as to give us
the chance of a breeze. Ain’t this hell’s delight? What’s a-going to blow
us clear whilst _he_ keeps watch?” And he nodded with a fierce drunken
gesture towards the raft.
“You’ll have to handle the body to sink it,” said I. “You’re well men,
now; keep well, won’t you? The two who are going may be the next taken.”
The three of them roared out drunkenly together, so muddling their speech
with oaths that I did not understand them. I walked aft, not liking
their savage looks. Shouting and cursing plentifully, they lowered the
boat, got into her by descending the falls, and shoved off for the raft.
They drew alongside the bamboo contrivance, and I looked to see the boat
capsize, so wildly did they sway her in their wrath and drink as they
fastened the weight to the foot of the body. They then sank the corpse,
and, with the loom of their oars, hammered at the raft till the bamboos
were scattered like a sheaf of walking-sticks cut adrift. They now
returned to the barque, clambered aboard, and hoisted the boat.
The two sick men in the forecastle were at this time looked after by a
seaman named Archer. I have said it was the fifth day of the calm; of
the ship’s company the boatswain and five men were living, but two were
dying, and that, not counting me, left three as yet well and able to get
about.
This man Archer, when the boatswain and his companions went forward, came
out of the forecastle, and drank at the scuttle-butt in the waist. He
walked unsteadily, with that effort after stateliness which is peculiar
to tipsy sailors; his eyes wandered, and he found some difficulty in
hitting the bunghole with the dipper. Yet he was a civil sort of man
when sober; I had occasionally chatted with him during his tricks at the
wheel; and, feeling the need of some one to talk to about our frightful
situation, I walked up to him, and asked how the sick men did.
“Dying fast,” he answered, steadying himself by leaning against the
scuttle-butt, “and a-ravin’ like screech-owls.”
“What’s to be done, Archer?”
“Oh, God alone He knows!” answered the man, and here he put his knuckles
into his eyes, and began to cry and sob.
“Is it possible that this calm can last much longer?”
“It may last six weeks,” he answered, whimpering. “Down here, when the
wind’s drawed away by the sun, it may take six weeks afore it comes on to
blow. Six weeks of calm down here ain’t thought nothen of,” and here he
burst out blubbering again.
“Where do you get your liquor from?” said I.
“Oh, don’t talk of it, don’t talk of it!” he replied, with a maudlin
shake of the head.
“Drinking’ll not help you,” said I; “you’ll all be the likelier to catch
the malady for drinking. This is a sort of time, I should think, when
a man most wants his senses. A breeze may come, and we ought to decide
where to steer the barque to. The vessel’s under all plain sail, too, and
here we are, four men and a useless passenger, should it come on to blow
suddenly——”
“We didn’t sign on under you,” he interrupted, with a tipsy scowl,
“and as ye ain’t no good either as sailor or doctor, you can keep your
blooming sarmons to yourself till they’re asked for.”
I had now not only to fear the cholera but to dread the men. My mental
distress was beyond all power of words to convey: I wonder it did not
quickly drive me crazy and hurry me overboard. I lurked in the cabin to
be out of sight of the fellows, and all the while my imagination was
tormenting me with the first pangs of the cholera, and every minute I
was believing I had the mortal malady. Sometimes I would creep up the
companion steps and cautiously peer around, and always I beheld the same
dead, faint blue surface of sea stretching like an ocean in a dream
into the faint indefinable distances. But shocking as that calm was to
me, I very well knew there was nothing wonderful or preternatural in it.
Our forefoot five days before had struck the equatorial zone called the
Doldrums, and at a period of the year when a fortnight or even a month of
atmospheric lifelessness might be as confidently looked for as the rising
and setting of the sun.
At nine o’clock that night I was sitting at the cabin table with biscuit
and a little weak brandy and water before me, when I was hailed by some
one at the open skylight above. It was black night, though the sky was
glorious with stars: the moon did not rise till after eleven. I had
lighted the cabin lamp, and the sheen of it was upon the face of Archer.
“The two men are dead and gone,” said he, “and now the bo’sun and Bill
are down. There’s Jim dead drunk in his hammock. I can’t stand the cries
of sick men. What with liquor and pain, the air below suffocates me. Let
me come aft, sir, and keep along with you. I’m sober now. Oh, Christ,
have mercy upon me! It’s my turn next, ain’t it?”
I passed a glass of brandy to him through the skylight, then joined him
on deck, and told him that the two dead bodies must be thrown overboard,
and the sick men looked to. For some time he refused to go forward with
me, saying that he was already poisoned and deadly sick, and a dying man,
and that I had no right to expect that one dying man should wait upon
another. However, I was determined to turn the dead out of the ship in
any case, for in freeing the vessel of the remains of the victims might
lie my salvation. He consented to help me at last, and we went into the
forecastle, and between us got the bodies out of their bunks, and dropped
them, weighted, over the rail. The boatswain and the other men lay
groaning and writhing and crying for water; cursing at intervals. A coil
of black smoke went up from the lamp flame to the blackened beam under
which the light was burning. The atmosphere was horrible. I bade Archer
help me to carry a couple of mattresses on to the forecastle, and we got
the sick men through the hatch, and they lay there in the coolness with
plenty of cold water beside them and a heaven of stars above, instead of
a low-pitched ceiling of grimy beam and plank dark with processions of
cockroaches, and dim with the smoke of the stinking slush lamp.
All this occupied us till about half-past ten. When I went aft I was
seized with nausea, and, sinking upon the skylight, dabbled my brow in
the dew betwixt the lifted lids for the refreshment of the moisture. I
believed that my time had come, and that this sickness was the cholera.
Archer followed me, and seeing me in a posture of torment, as he
supposed, concluded that I was a dead man. He flung himself upon the deck
with a groan, and lay motionless, crying out at intervals, “God, have
mercy! God, have mercy!” and that was all.
In about half an hour’s time the sensation of sickness passed. I went
below for some brandy, swallowed half a glass, and returning with a dram
for Archer, but the man had either swooned or fallen asleep, and I let
him lie. I had my senses perfectly, but felt shockingly weak in body, and
I could think of nothing consolatory to diminish my exquisite distress
of mind. Indeed, the capacity of realization grew unendurably poignant.
I imagined too well, I figured too clearly. I pictured myself as lying
dead upon the deck of the barque, found a corpse by some passing vessel
after many days; and so I dreamt, often breaking away from my horrible
imaginations with moans and starts, then pacing the deck to rid me of the
nightmare hag of thought till I was in a fever, then cooling my head by
laying my cheek upon the dew-covered skylight.
By-and-by the moon rose, and I sat watching it. In half an hour she was
a bright light in the east, and the shaft of silver that slept under her
stretched to the barque’s side. It was just then that one of the two sick
men on the forecastle sent up a yell. The dreadful note rang through the
vessel, and dropped back to the deck in an echo from the canvas. A moment
after I saw a figure get on to the forecastle-rail and spring overboard.
I heard the splash of his body, and, bounding over to Archer, who lay on
the deck, I pulled and hauled at him, roaring out that one of the sick
men had jumped overboard, and then rushed forward and looked over into
the water in the place where the man had leapt, but saw nothing, not
even a ripple.