THE HULL
After Friend had lain at my feet for about an hour I stripped the
oilskins off the body and put them on; they diminished the sense of
deadly cold. I dragged the body into the bows, and after baling hard
sat down, sure that my death was at hand, but seeking consolation in
the thought that suffering ceases some while before you die of cold,
and that death from this cause is as easy as drowning after the first
agony.
It never ceased to snow until the night fell, and then when it was
black the weather cleared--that is, I could see the flash of froth at a
distance; but stare as I might I beheld nothing of the ship, no smudge
nor deeper dye upon the darkness anywhere to indicate her presence.
I stood up and looked and looked, waiting for the toss of the sea to
strain my gaze; then, with an awful despair in my heart, and the full
rushing weight of my doom upon my spirits, I threw myself down into the
stern sheets to die.
That I should have lived through that night is the miracle of my life.
There is no lack of suffering in the maritime records, but I vow that
mine in those hours of darkness which I passed in that open boat is
not to be topped, though it may be matched. Perhaps it was that all my
organs were sound, whilst Friend perished from the shock of immersion,
and from failure of some vital power--doubtless the heart.
Be this as it may, I lived through that night and through the icy
darkness of the morning, till daylight came crawling in a sallow
green over the sky, low, broken and flying. It might be that Friend's
oilskins preserved my life by excluding the needle-like tide of
frost-black wind from my flesh. When it was fairly daylight I stood
up. My sight was clear; but I felt as though formed of stone. I could
poise my figure to the wild leaping of the boat, but I could not lift
my arms: each shoulder felt brittle as glass; it seemed to me that if
either limb should be grasped and pulled, it must break short off.
The body of Friend lay ghastly in the bows. It was on its side, the
cheek on the floor of the boat, and every time the little craft dived,
the water in her boiled about the figure, which bristled with ice, and
the head seemed nailed to the bottom boards by long spikes of crystal.
I could not bear it, and made a step to cast it overboard, but, finding
my arms helpless, stood still and looked round for the ship.
No wilder, drearier dawn ever broke over that cold, stormy, and
desolate ocean. I guessed the wind about north; a strong wind, with
a shriek as shrill as salt as it fled spray-charged past the ear,
flaying as though it were a naked edge of sharp steel. A large squall
was darkening the sea to leeward of the boat; when I was thrown up I
saw the dim whiteness of ice in several places. I gazed slowly around
in a broken way, for in every other breath there stood a wall of water
betwixt me and the horizon.
All on a sudden when my eyes went astern I saw, not above a mile
distant, a dark object: it reared and sank, came and went; sometimes
froth leapt in a light of snow about it. I stared, scarcely daring
to hope as yet that it was more than an illusion of the vision, a
reappearing shape of green surge, a hard reforming moulding of brine,
looking like--looking like----
And then with a short choking cry of transport I recognised it. It was
the dismasted hull: that wreck of the 'Lady Emma' we had been in search
of.
I watched her to make sure, dreading some cheat of delirious
imagination--but it was the wreck; I marked her rise with the sea, a
firm, defined, black shape against the root of the thick large squall
that was blowing to leeward of her. A dim sheen of the gloomy day was
in her wet side or sheathing as she soared, heeling not above a mile
off and dead to leeward.
The sight gave life to my dead limbs, as it put spirit into my dying
heart. I got the use of my arms and hands with a sudden frenzy of
resolution, like to the effect of the panic terror that will compel a
bedridden man to rise, though till thus started he has lain helpless as
the mattress he springs from. I went into the bows, and getting hold
of the body of Friend turned it over the gunwale. The corpse as I have
said was that of a stout burly man, yet I found it light as a baby.
How was that? Unless it was that the strength of half a dozen had come
into me with the passion of life and hope the sight of the wreck had
inspired.
I pulled in the pair of oars the boat had been riding to and took my
chance of the broadside send of sea; the fierce sweep and sharp angle
nearly flung me overboard, and thrice whilst I was clearing the oars
which were heavy and difficult with ice, the boat was almost capsized.
In a few minutes I got an oar over the stern and sculled the boat's
head round for the wreck. She shot forward, and I sat square that
my back might break any smaller sea which should foam tall and curl
faster than the boat could rise. For the rest--for the peril of a great
sea, for the swamping by seething waters uniting on either side the
gunwale--I was in God's hands.
The wind and the sea swept me so swiftly onwards that the hull was
close ahead all on a sudden, a large black mass, rolling heavily with
violently quick recoveries; she lifted her channels foaming, and again
and again a sea shot up her side in a height of white brine, which
blew into the water on the other side of her in a cloud like steam.
There was nothing for it but to drive for her stem on and take my
chance. I tore off the oilskins for the freer use of my limbs, and
when I was close to the wreck, having headed the boat fair for the
main-chains, I sprang forward and seized the end of the painter; the
boat's nose smote the hull as she was roaring from me. I got a turn
with the painter round a chain plate; the boat swung in, but so swift
were the motions of the hull that she was rolling down upon me even in
that time, and, letting go the painter, I jumped in a single bound into
the chains and was stumbling over the rail, spiked with ice, as the
hulk swept her streaming side out again from the sea, with such a slant
of deck that if I had not flung myself into a squatting posture and
made the athwartship run of the hard frozen surface on my hams, I must
have broken my neck or fled sheer overboard through the openings where
the bulwarks had been smashed level.
I was crazy with hunger and thirst and cold, and could think of nothing
but shelter and food and drink. I took a hurried look along the deck
hoping to see smoke from the galley or cabin chimney, for I reckoned
of course upon finding the three people the 'Planter' had searched
for alive in this hull. I saw no signs of life. I cautiously crawled
aft, and coming to the companion-way tried to open it; the doors
were thickly glazed, whence I judged they had been kept closed for
some time. I pulled out my clasp knife--all that I carried was in my
pocket as it had been before the boat capsized--and after scraping
and dislodging the ice in sheets like plate glass, I got one of the
companion-doors open and descended, pulling the door to behind me.
After the long hours of exposure and the ceaseless crackling noises of
warring waters, the shelter, the comparative warmth and stillness down
here, were like the gift of a new life. It was dark, yet not so gloomy
but that I could see. The daylight lay upon the snow on the skylight,
and that large square of whiteness sifted a sort of dim illumination of
its own into the dusk.
My first look was for those whom the boatswain Wall had told us the
crew left behind them when they abandoned the hull. Nobody was here. An
unlighted lamp swung violently over the table. I beheld a dull gleam
of looking-glasses upon the ship's side, and thought in the glance I
cast round that I could make out the equipment of a small, comfortable
state cabin. I quickly spied a rack half circling the trunk of the
mizzenmast; in it were some decanters; three were half full of red
and yellow wine. I put the mouth of one to my lips and drank heartily
of its contents, but whether it was claret or sherry I could not say;
excessive thirst seemed to have robbed my palate of the power of
tasting. I then went straight to the first cabin my eye rested upon,
intending to go the rounds for the pantry; but this cabin proved to
be the pantry, where, after a short hunt, I found cheese, biscuit,
preserved meat, and jams. I fell to wolfishly, breaking off only to
fetch another decanter of the wine from the cabin.
And now having eaten with a dangerous heartiness, and drank as much as
would have brimmed two tumblers, I stepped into the cabin, refreshed
and warm, a new man, almost my old self again, needing little more
to perfectly comfort me than a shift of clothes, which might be
obtained by seeking. But first I stood still, holding by the table to
listen. I heard nothing but the sounds of the labouring of the hull.
Had the captain and the two women been taken off the wreck? I should
have believed so but for having found the companion-doors closed and
glazed; ice could not have collected to the thickness I had found it
had people been coming and going by the companion-way. And yet it is
true they might have been taken off, and before going some one of the
rescuing party had closed the companion-door with a kick or a thrust as
he stepped on deck.
I saw no fire in the stove; the lamp was out; it did not seem as if
there were human life in the hull. I went to a door on the starboard
side, the next to or second door past the pantry, and entered a berth.
I could scarcely see. The porthole was submerged every other moment
and the sight blinded with a sudden plunge of foam-thick twilight.
After gazing awhile I made out that this berth had been occupied by the
captain and his wife. I observed a quantity of male and female apparel
hanging from a row of pegs running along the bulk-head; also I made out
two bunks, a table with certain navigating appliances upon it, a couple
of chronometer cases on a shelf, and sundry other matters not worth
cataloguing. I lifted a locker, and after groping came across some
flannel garments and under-linen. If the captain were aboard I guessed
that in any case he would give me leave to help myself, so, after
feeling over the clothes upon the bulk-head, I shifted to the frozen
flesh of me.
Scarcely was I warmly and dryly clothed, when so heavy a drowsiness
came upon my eyelids that I could instantly have sunk upon the deck
in a sound sleep. But first I was resolved to ascertain the condition
of the hull; likewise whilst it was daylight to see if there were any
signs of the 'Planter,' and if the weather gave me any promise of her.
The idea of falling into a trance-like sleep which might run into
hours, from which, for all I could tell as things stood, I should be
awakened by finding myself strangling in a cabin full of water, and the
hull already fathoms under, put such a fear and horror into my spirits
as enabled me to thrust back into my brain the heavy, stupefying weight
of slumber, that was making my eyes ache as though the balls of vision
had been wrung and unseated. I shook my body as a dog does when fresh
from the water, and beat my arms upon my breast with all my strength;
then, with a wild yawn, strode into the stateroom and went up the steps.
The first thing I saw was the boat I had gained the wreck in: she was
flinging and leaping upon the seas about a hundred fathoms off on the
port quarter; being light and released she had blown away quickly.
Every time a surge forked her on high the pouring blast smote and
swirled her further yet to leeward. This would go on till she filled.
I hardly took thought of her, abhorring her as I did as the theatre
of that drama of anguish and hopelessness I had been forced to act in
during the long black hours of the past night: and yet I very well
understood that she had been bound to go adrift, as I had taken but a
slippery turn with the painter round the chain plate at the instant
when the hull brought her main chains crushing down upon me for that
spring by which I had saved my life.
I crossed to the port bulwarks to hold on by: t'other side was full of
ugly yawns and rents, a dangerous, ragged wreckage of bulwark through
which down the ice-hard slant a man would shoot, with a sudden roll,
to his death. The galley was standing: all the boats were gone: the
wheel and binnacle remained, and the apparatus of the helm looked
sound. The decks were littered with frozen gear. Nothing showed of the
main and mizzen masts but a barbed block, scarce a foot high above the
mast-coats. But the stump of the foremast rose to perhaps twelve feet.
The pumps were frozen: the sounding rod lay close to, but I could do
nothing with it. Yet, as an old hand, I could feel the life of a ship
in my feet, and I was sure, by the hull's buoyant jumps, her cork-like
recovery from the headlong dives, and the loneliness of her rolls that
there was nothing in the water she had drained in so far to make me
uneasy.
Cheered by this conviction, I pushed forwards, clawing along by the
pins in the rail, by whatever else came to my hand, till I was abreast
of the galley, whose port sliding-door lay half open, and going to it
and looking in, there on the deck I saw lying on her back the body of
a woman. I peered close, the light being weak. The body was warmly but
plainly clothed; the colour of the face fresh as though she slept.
I should not have guessed her dead by her looks: it was her lying
there that made me know it. She seemed a woman of between forty and
forty-five, flat of face, treble-chinned, and she showed as a person
that had been fat and heavy in life.
The sight startled me: I had not thought to find anything dead. Had she
been the wife of the captain? Where was _he_? And where the young lady
that had sailed as passenger with them? Were they both lying frozen in
other parts of the vessel? But there yet remained two or three cabins
below to look into.
I came out of the galley shocked and low-spirited, and, still pushing
forward, came to the forecastle and called down the hatch. I got no
answer and descended. Here I found a number of hammocks, a few sea
chests, and some odds and ends of seamen's apparel scattered about the
deck. The forecastle lamp swung black under its grimy beam. I could
scarcely see. Water--though no depth of it--seethed over the planks as
the vessel pitched and rolled: this water I reckoned had tumbled down
the forecastle hatch, and when I returned on deck I drew the slide of
the scuttle over.
I went to the stump of foremast that was ringed with some pins, and
holding on by one of them, looked round and round the sea, waiting for
every lofty heave to dart my glances; but there was nothing in sight
save ice, the peaks of bergs afar, coming and going past the rounds
of the swell, and the rush of the surge flickering into foam. It was
blowing half as strong again as it had been an hour before, and the
seas were racing with a weight and spite of headlong yeast which must
have drowned me out of hand in the jolly-boat. A low sky of thick black
cloud coiling, revolving, like sooty pourings from countless factory
chimneys, was sweeping southwards. I crawled aft for the shelter of
the cabin--the wind was marrow-freezing; and scarce was I within the
comparative warmth and stillness of the interior, when slumber again
oppressed me; and nature now giving out I stretched myself upon a
cushioned locker and was asleep in a minute.
When I awoke I started instantly into an upright posture, beholding a
figure gazing at me; in some muddled fashion I seemed to realise my
situation, whilst I imagined that the cabin was half full of people
who had come to save me. Then, getting my wits fully, I made out that
the person who stood close was a young woman. Her figure was inclined
towards me, and so she stood despite the swaying of her with the
motions of the deck: it was a posture of fear, incredulity, amazement,
incommunicable in words.
It was too dim in that cabin to note more of her than that incomparable
attitude of fright and astonishment.
It had been past noon when I lay down to sleep: the strong feeling
of refreshment within me was assurance, true as the sun's evidence
could have been, that I had slept through more than the two remaining
hours of daylight. It was daylight now, consequently I understood that
whatever might be the hour, I had been sleeping since noon on the
previous day.
I stared at the girl, for a young girl I now perceived her to be, and
exclaimed:
'Are you Miss Otway?'
'Oh!' she shrieked, 'have you come to save me?' and she dropped on her
knees and grasped my hand. 'Save me!' she cried, 'I am alone here. I
have been alone for days. I am in darkness. When did you come? Where
are your companions? Why were you sleeping here? And take me on deck.
Is your ship near? If the boat that brought you can live in this sea
she can carry me on board your vessel.'
I cannot express the agony of heart in her voice. Her terror at seeing
me had been changed into another passion by my naming her.
'Where's the captain?' said I, obliging her to rise, and seating her on
the locker beside me.
'He is drowned,' she answered.
'When?'
'A long time ago. Seven or eight days ago. I have lost the day. I do
not know how long I have been alone. Why don't we go on deck? Is the
sea too rough for your boat to leave this wreck?'
'Why, poor young lady,' said I, trying to catch a fair view of her
face; but it was too dim for that, and then again she was thickly
furred about the neck, and her hat, that seemed of velvet without a
brim, sat low. 'I would take you away from this rolling hulk at once
if I could. Under God I may yet save you. I am as much shipwrecked as
you are. But we needn't despair. This hull dances tightly; she has been
washing about now for some days, and I should doubt by the feel of her
jumps if there's two foot of water in her hold. Who's that dead woman
in the galley?'
'The captain's wife,' she answered, staring at me.
'How came she to perish there?'
'She went with her husband to help him affix a lantern to the bowsprit.
He slipped overboard with the light and was drowned. I waited for them
here and went to find them, and saw Mrs. Burke lying on the deck. She
had fallen and broken her leg. I was too weak to carry or drag her into
this cabin and I pulled her into the galley for the shelter of it, and
there she lay, and I could not help her,' she cried, clasping her hands
with strange, piteous, involuntary motions of her head. 'I don't know
whether she died of grief, or from the injury of her fall, or whether
the cold killed her. It was black in the galley, and I could not see
her. I often called her name, but she never answered me. Oh, what an
awful time was that night! I stayed by her until long after I knew she
was dead, and then came down here, and have remained in this place ever
since--no, three times I have been on deck to look for a ship: it was
always snowing--it has been enough to drive me mad,' said she, passing
her hand with a wild gesture across her eyes.
'Mad indeed!' said I to myself, all thought of my own situation
vanishing in the presence of the anguish of this poor gentle young
woman: she had a sweet soft voice: I supposed she had been alone in
this labouring hulk for hard upon a week. It was wonderful she should
have kept her mind. Indeed it put a sort of craziness even into _my_
seasoned head when I paused in contemplation of her, and realised
how it might have been with _me_ had I been alone in this straining,
creaking, wallowing fabric with no one aboard beside myself but a dead
woman, an atmosphere of stinging cold, nigh twenty hours of blackness
every day.
'But you've not been starving all this while?' said I.
'When there was daylight,' she answered, 'I'd get some food and wine
from yonder;' she pointed to the pantry. 'I took a little stock to my
cabin. Where is your ship? Have you no companions? Take me on deck to
see your boat and the vessel,' and she extended her hand.
I saw she had not understood me, and I told her how it had come to
pass that I was on board the hulk with her. She listened in silence,
saying nothing when I spoke of the men who had been lifted aboard
the 'Planter' out of the 'Lady Emma's' long-boat, frozen to death,
and nothing whilst I described what I myself had undergone in the
jolly-boat. She seemed slow to understand; but at last, when I was
done, after continuing to stare at me, for our faces were a sort of
glimmer one to the other in that gloom, she gave a shriek, and crying
'There is no hope for me, then! there is no hope for me, then!' buried
her face and shook and swayed in a passion of weeping.