STILL ADRIFT
I could do nothing but let her cry; yet, knowing there is no better
medicine for such misery and fear as hers than action and the sight of
it, I got up and went to the pantry for materials to trim and light the
lamp. I found oil and bundles of wick, but no matches. I returned and
asked the poor weeping young lady to tell me if she knew where I might
find a box of matches; she went to a cabin which I supposed was hers,
one on the port side, almost aft. I was struck by her walk: not once
did she stumble or pause, wild as the play of the plank was. In a few
minutes she rejoined me with a box of wax lights, and, unhooking the
lamp, I filled and trimmed it and hung it up, and it swung burning
brightly.
Now I could see Miss Otway, and as much of her face as showed was
remarkable for delicacy and refinement. She was very pale, her eyes
light, whether blue or grey I could not then tell; her hair was of a
soft, rather dark amber. She had perfectly even small white teeth,
but her lips were pale and marked a want of red blood. She was of
medium height, but of a shape not to be guessed at, heaped as her form
was with clothes. What she wore was very rich and fine, and a little
diamond sparkled in each ear. She seemed fragile, in delicate health,
just the sort of girl to whom the doctors, despairing of their physic,
would recommend the breezes of the world's oceans.
Her eyes were red with weeping, and when I glanced at her after hanging
up the lamp I found her staring at me with looks of anxiety and
expectation piteous with passion.
'This,' said I, casting up my gaze at the lamp, 'makes the cabin
cheerful. I hope there is plenty of oil aboard to keep us in light till
we are taken off.'
'When will that be?' she cried.
'Why, perhaps to-day and perhaps tomorrow,' said I. 'My ship can't be
far off; her captain is one of the humanest hearts afloat. He thinks
three of you are aboard here, and he'll cruise for you. If he don't
find us the reason will lie in the weather, not in his not hunting.'
Then, looking towards the stove, I exclaimed, 'You'll have been ice
cold down in this well. Let's build a fire, there's plenty of coal in
the hull: the boatswain Wall said so.'
'Who were the dead?' she exclaimed.
'Two seamen and the steward. A fourth--the doctor--lies fearfully
frostbitten. He stands to lose his feet and hands.'
'They wanted to take me with them,' she cried. 'Captain Burke would not
let me go; Mrs. Burke was against it: had I gone I might now be safe
in your ship.'
'Don't imagine that,' said I, deeply pitying as I looked at her. '_You_
capable of enduring two nights of exposure in the seas in that open
boat! They proved sound friends who kept you here. _Here_ you're alive
and you shall be saved--you shall be saved!' I exclaimed heartily.
A faint smile put a look of spirit into her pale face. I went to the
stove, and beside it, secured so they should not fetch away, were three
or four buckets of coal, but no wood. I was in no temper to rummage
the ship for a faggot, and, having noticed a chopper in the pantry,
I fetched a bunk-board from the captain's cabin and split it, and
presently had a roaring fire.
'Did the crew cook their victuals here before leaving?' said I,
noticing a kettle, a frying-pan, and other galley furniture lying near
the stove.
She answered that some cooking had been done for the crew in this cabin.
'Pray sit you here,' said I, catching her gently by the wrist and
bringing her close to the stove, and seating her on a small cleated
sofa beside it. 'I believe a pannikin of hot drink--tea, coffee, or
cocoa--and something to eat, will do us both good. Keep you here and
thaw through and through whilst I get a kettleful of water.'
She was watching me with some life: the cuddy fire threw a warm,
cheerful colour upon her face, and the flames shone in her eyes,
filling them as with a dance of courage. When I spoke of fetching some
fresh water, she cried out eagerly, extending her arms:
'Oh! mind you do not slide overboard. The decks are deadly. I can't be
left alone again.'
I smiled and bade her not fear for me, and picking up the kettle and
dropping the chopper into my coat pocket--it was an immensely thick
pilot-cloth coat I had found in the captain's cabin and put on--I went
on deck.
This was a lead-coloured day with a confusion of ragged black cloud
thronging southward where the vapour was crowded and darkening into a
look of thunder. I saw no signs of the 'Planter,' nothing but the ice
afar. Secretly I had no hope that Captain Parry would persevere in his
quest. I made no doubt he would suppose all hands in the jolly-boat had
been drowned, which, God knows, was very near the truth; and this would
dispirit him, his forecastle working strength would be weakened also,
for, saving Wall, the 'Lady Emma's' men were of no use, and I reckoned
he would be glad to stick his ship north, clear of the perils of the
ice and the blinding snow-storms.
But whether it was because I was a young fellow of a heart naturally
lively, or whether because I had escaped a dreadful death, so that
the being on board this hull was almost as a rescue, 'tis true I felt
no depression, no despondency in any marked degree when I looked round
on stepping on deck and saw the leaden, rolling, frosting ocean bare,
and viewed the tumbling, dismasted, mutilated hull, white fore and aft,
bright with a hundred figures in ice, a most forlorn and dismal object
as she bowed her naked bowsprit into the sallow trough, wearily leaning
off the slant, with cataracts of foam hissing from the channels and
scaling her sloping side. I could not but reflect that, though we were
far south, whalers in plenty were to be met with in these seas, and
that the hulk was stout and buoyant, and bade fair to last us our time
in her, which might not extend beyond the morrow.
So, with a good heart and a vow besides to do my manhood's best to
cheer up my poor companion, to make her as comfortable as the means of
the hulk and my sailor's judgment would allow, and to help preserve her
life in God's own time, I looked along the deck, and then seeing how
it must be, went to a scuttlebutt lashed forwards of the port gangway,
and finding it half full, went to work on it with the chopper, knocked
the hoops off, and the staves tumbled to the deck, letting slip a mass
of fresh-water ice, shaped cask-wise. I struck off as much as would
fill a kettle, leaving the rest to lie, and returned to the cabin.
'Now,' said I, knowing the tonic worth of work in a time like this,
'melt this for us, if you please. When the kettle boils we'll go to
breakfast.'
'Is your ship in sight?' said she, getting up and taking the kettle and
ice.
'No,' I answered, 'but something will be coming along soon. This is a
great whaling ocean, you know.'
'What is your name?' she asked.
'Ralph Selby,' I replied.
'How did you know my name?'
'Wall, the boatswain, was full of you and Captain Burke and his wife
when he was brought aboard out of the long-boat.'
'Yes, yes, I understand,' said she. 'I should have guessed it.'
'There are things to be done whilst you get the kettle to boil,' said
I. 'You move about very easily, I see.'
'I am used to this dreadful monotonous rolling,' she answered.
'Can you lay your hands upon what we may want in the pantry?'
'Oh, yes. I know what's there. Shall I boil some coffee?'
'If you please,' said I, smiling to find her talking with a show
of life. 'I am going to the captain's cabin to look to one or two
matters,' and with that I left her.
I entered the berth I had shifted myself in, and which I knew had
been the captain's by its appointments, and first I looked at the
chronometers, and, finding them still going, carefully wound them
afresh, guessing by the revolutions of the key that they would have
stopped shortly. I then sought for and found the ship's papers, and
overhauled them to gather the character of the supplies aboard. The
cargo consisted of stout, brandy, and whiskey; samples of preserved
potatoes and articles of potted food, a quantity of theatrical scenery,
builders' stuff, such as doors and window frames; patent fuel, oil
cake, india rubber, and certain other commodities. I observed that
amongst the samples was a quantity of preserved milk: there was also a
consignment of one hundred iron cases, each containing two hundred and
fourteen biscuits, weighing one pound each, and specified as six inches
square by one and a half inches thick.
In short the paper indicated half a shipload of food and liquor. But I
made nothing of this then. Such a plenty was not likely to seem of any
use to two people who looked to be taken off the wreck in a few days at
the outside, and for whom therefore a single cask of beef, a single
barrel of ship's bread, along with the little stock of delicacies I had
observed in the pantry, would be more than enough.
I lingered to overhaul the nautical appliances, intending, should a
phantom of sun show, to get an observation. It was very gloomy here.
I found a small brass clock ticking stoutly, and this I wound up, the
plain silver watch in my pocket having stopped when the jolly-boat
capsized: the time by the little clock was a quarter after eleven. I
went out and set a clock under the skylight to this hour. I guessed
it would comfort the girl's eye to see the time. Nothing in such a
situation as ours could make one feel more outcast, more hopelessly
removed from human reach and sympathy, than a lifeless clock silently
telling the same hour always. It would be as though time itself had
abandoned one.
The ice was melted and the kettle boiling, and Miss Otway was making a
potful of coffee. She had lifted the fiddles and spread a cloth, and
put some preserved meat, cheese, jam, biscuit, and the like upon the
table. The lamp and the flames in the grate made a light like noon,
and, now looking round, I beheld a very rosy interior, a quantity of
books, mirrors for decoration, comfortable armchairs and couches, and
sundry fal-lals; all designed, no doubt, to render the voyage of Miss
Otway cheerful and pleasant.
Turning, she cried out: 'Oh, Mr. Selby, you cannot imagine what it is
to see someone--to have someone to speak to. Only God could say how
lonely I have felt. The dreadfully long nights; the endless hours of
darkness----' Her voice broke and her head drooped.
'No need to tell me what you have undergone,' said I. 'Never in all
sea story did any girl suffer upon the ocean as you have. But you've a
brave look. You'll keep up your tears now. I'm a sailor and I give you
my word we are very well off. We need but patience, and faith in that
God who has watched over us both.'
On this she raised her head and viewed me a little while steadily, as
one who stares critically to make sure of another.
I took the pot of coffee from her and we seated ourselves. She
had suffered so long from what I may truly call a very anguish of
loneliness--and, indeed, one had need to be locked up in that same
rolling hull, in the blackness and the cold, with the seas roaring
outside, and within always the same soul-maddening noise of creaking
bulkheads and harshly strained fastenings, to realise what this poor,
gentle, delicate lady had endured--that I was sure she'd find a
wonderful ease in talking freely. I therefore questioned her whilst we
sat eating, and she told me who she was, where she lived, how the wife
of the master of the vessel had been her old nurse, with other matters
which she herself relates.
She warmed up in talking. I think she found a sort of hope in merely
speaking of her father and her home and the gentleman, Mr. Archibald
Moore, to whom, but for her health, so she told me, she would have been
married some months before the date of her sailing. I so questioned
her that the early despair in her manner died out when she talked of
her father and sweetheart. I took care to converse as though they were
within reach, and the meeting a matter of a little waiting only. In
short, my resolution to cheer her mastered her fears and perhaps her
convictions; and even whilst we sat I beheld a new life stealing into
her, speaking in her raised, hopeful, more eager voice, and softening
the haggard, wild look in her eyes.
Presently she put some question which I had to fence with.
'My dread,' she said, 'all the while I was alone here, was ice; the
ship lies helpless; I never knew but that an iceberg was close to,
and that every next hurl of the sea would dash the wreck against some
frozen cliff. Is there any ice in sight?'
'Yes,' I answered, 'but a good way off.'
'Suppose we drift towards an iceberg, what shall we do?'
'No good in _supposing_ at sea,' I said. 'Time enough to deal with a
difficulty when it's within hail.'
'Does the hull remain in one place? Or are we being driven by the seas
and the wind?'
'If the sun will put his nose out,' said I, with a glance at the
thickly snow-coated skylight, 'I'll find out where we are.'
'Do you understand navigation?'
I replied with a grave nod.
'If we are moving at all, which way are we driving, do you think?'
'The sextant will tell us,' said I.
Thus she plied me, straining her poor eyes with consuming anxiety. I
answered warily but always on the side of hope.
When I was going on deck she wanted to accompany me, but I bade her
stop where she was till I had stretched some lifelines along. When I
looked out I saw there was no chance of obtaining an observation. The
sky was near, and thick with rolling clouds: the windy dusk had shrunk
the sea-girdle, and the distant ice was out of sight: the leaden surge
broke in against the snow-soft gloom. No more desolate ocean-picture
had I ever viewed; its spirit sank into me in a depression that brought
me to an idle halt for some minutes whilst I wrestled with myself. I
started, and my very soul shrank within me when I asked myself: If we
are not fallen in with what is to become of us? Where are we drifting?
Then I plucked up with the reflection that we were in navigated seas;
any moment might give me the sight of a sail; and my immediate
business therefore was to render our distress a visible thing upon the
face of the rolling waters.
I shut the companion doors that the girl might be warm below, and, that
I might move with security, went to work to stretch lines along the
deck. A great plenty of gear lay frozen all about; I got hold of an end
and worked a length into some sort of suppleness, and with much hard
labour succeeded in setting up life-lines in short scoops, so as to
bring them taut, for the winch and capstan were frozen motionless, and
I could do nothing with them.
This business carried me abreast of the galley, where I saw with a
sudden recoil once again the body of the captain's wife. She seemed
asleep, so fresh, living and breathing she looked, with even a sort
of colour in her face, and the expression of her mouth easy and
placid. But since she was dead it was fit she should be buried, and
as her presence added to the ghastliness of this picture of wreck,
and weighed like an assurance of doom upon the spirits, I resolved to
turn her over the side without ado; so, with averted face--for I could
not bear to look upon her, she lay so life-like: it was like drowning
rather than burying her--I took the body under the arms, and with all
reverence gently dragged it to a great gap of smashed bulwark, when,
just whispering, 'May God receive you, poor woman, and may He have
mercy upon those who are left,' I slided her overboard, and instantly
quitted the side, not choosing to get a memory of her as she lay
floating ere the drenched clothes sucked her under.
Constantly I cast my eyes into the north for a sight of the sun; but
he never showed himself. There stood about twelve foot of splintered
foremast. I meant to fly a flag by day and hoist a lighted lantern by
night; but how to shin up so as to secure a block at the head?
I mused a bit, and then went in search of the carpenter's chest, which
I found in the forecastle. It was a huge chest, cleated and lashed down
against the bulk-head that divided the men's sea-parlour from the hold,
and it lay in such gloom that I could make nothing of it, so I returned
to the cabin for a lantern. I found a couple of bull's-eye lamps in the
pantry. Whilst I filled and trimmed one of them, Miss Otway came from
the stove to the door and stood looking in.
'Can't I help you?' said she.
'No,' said I.
'What are you going to do?'
'I am going to hoist a distress signal.'
'Is there anything in sight?' she shrieked.
I shook my head.
'Why won't you let me help you?' said she. 'It's horrible to be left
alone down here. Make me of use. It will do me good to help you.'
But I would not allow her to come on deck merely to look on and be
frozen to the marrow by the pouring wind; so, cheerily saying I'd find
her employment by-and-by, I carried the lighted bull's-eye on deck and
made my way to the forecastle, holding by the life-lines, so that I
moved as briskly as if the hull lay quiet.
I quickly found what I immediately wanted, namely, a quantity of long
iron spikes. I took a handful of these and a hammer on deck and drove a
spike deep into the wood, a little above the other; and thus I made a
ladder of spikes, every projection of iron yielding me room for my foot
and for a grip of one hand. When I had driven in the spikes as high
as was needful, I came down, and after hunting over the gear upon the
deck found a small block through which I rove a line that looked like
a length of the fore-royal signal halliards. I climbed the mast again
with this block and line and, driving a spike into the head of the
stump, I secured the block to it and descended for good, this business
being finished.
I had taken notice of a flag locker under a grating abaft the wheel; I
went to it and found a complete code of Marryatt's signals, a large and
small ensign, and a jack. There was too much bunting in the big ensign
for such weather as this, and for such winds as might burst upon us at
any moment: so I bent on the small ensign to my halliards and ran it,
jack downwards, to the head of the stump of foremast, where it flared
bravely, chattering like a thing of life.
Yet I found it but a mocking signal after all, when I sent my glance
from it round the thick swollen and breaking seas, and noticed that
even already the dye of the early night seemed in the air, and that in
little more than an hour that streaming, flame-like appeal would, as a
call to the eye, be as useless as the stump it blew from.
I was now extremely anxious to ascertain the depth of water in the
hold, and went to the pumps to see what was to be done with the ice
there. The sounding tube was perhaps solid with ice half-way to the
hold; I thought then I would try and draw one of the pumps, and having
the pantry chopper in my hand, let fly, bruising and splintering so as
to free the bucket. In the midst of my chopping Miss Otway called out.
I stopped and saw her head in the companion way.
'Oh,' she cried, with a note in her voice that sounded almost like joy,
pointing with a gesture of rapture to the inverted ensign, 'that will
bring help to us! That will be seen for miles and miles. How clever!
How did you manage to climb that slippery mast?' And then, catching
sight of the spikes, she exclaimed, 'I see. I see. It's wonderfully
done.'
'It's too cold for you on deck,' said I, scarcely keeping grave over
this girlish praise. 'Remain below in the warmth. No use taking a
voyage for your health only to lose your toes and fingers as your
doctor has.'
But paying no heed to this, she stepped out of the companion way, and
putting her thickly-gloved hand upon one of the life-lines, came to
where I was letting fly at the pump and watched me.
It was the best light I had yet viewed her in; and now indeed I
perceived that she was a very delicate, sweet-looking young lady,
about two-and-twenty years of age, pale, but of a transparency of
complexion that made a beauty of her pallor; nor were her eyes wanting
in expression, though they would be too light to faithfully reflect the
deeper and subtler passions and sensations of her spirit.
I thought her the most refined-looking lady I had ever seen; which
perhaps is not saying much, seeing how many of my years had been passed
upon the ocean. I saw the quality and breeding of her in her face and
heard it in her voice, and I think anyone, no matter how inexperienced
in such things, but would, on looking at her, have said to himself,
this is an English lady.
After chopping and hammering for some time, I freed the bucket and
drew the pump; and, the sounding-rod lying handily by, I dropped it,
and after several casts, so hard did I find it to get the level of the
water betwixt the swift abrupt rolls of the hull, I made a little more
than a foot and a half. I was astonished, but wonderfully heartened.
Here was a hull that had not been pumped out for eight or ten days: she
had been straining heavily in the hollow hour after hour: and yet there
was no more water in her than a single spell of a watch on deck at the
pumps might free her of!
I refitted the pump and fell to work at the brake and brought up some
water.
'Let me help you,' said Miss Otway.
'It won't hurt you,' said I, and brought a coil of rope across the
deck for her to stand on, that her feet might be clear of the water as
it washed with the slant of the planks. We then went to work: the water
bubbled, the clank of the brake ran a noise of life through the hulk;
the exercise flushed the girl's face, and, in a pause for breath, I
told her it would do her more good than sitting by the fire.
In that same pause whilst she breathed quickly she glanced with a
sudden look of pain and consternation in the direction of the galley,
and exclaimed:
'The body of my poor old nurse lies there. I had forgotten her.'
'I buried her,' said I.
'Where?'
I told her. She was shocked and her eyes filled, and she turned her
head to hide her face.
'It was not a thing to keep,' said I.
'Oh no,' she cried, looking round at me, eagerly and yet piteously.
'I don't mean that. You threw her into the sea as she lay--without a
prayer----'
'No,' said I, shortly.
She viewed me a little gratefully. I grasped the brake: she put her
hand upon it, and we fell to afresh.
We worked in this fashion for above half an hour, and then Miss Otway,
glowing with the labour and in no wise distressed by it, saving that
her breathing was quick, went below. I fetched the telescope and
stayed to carefully search the horizon before it fell dark. But point
the tubes as I would they gave me nothing. The near sea-line tumbled
dimly in long ragged wings of dark vapour, which as they lifted with
the wind stretched overhead like lengths of smoke; and betwixt them
I spied a higher platform of cloud, mouse-coloured here and there as
though touched by some wild stormy light. I saw no ice, but the wind
blew as though ice were close aboard: the sting of it was insufferable
when you faced it standing. A noise of rattling sometimes came from
the forecastle as though the spray froze in leaping, and fell with the
weight of hail in the tropics, and already the pump we had been plying
was as thick and hard bound as the other.
And still I lingered, not indeed with the hope of sighting a sail
before the blackness fell upon us, but with the idea of making some
sort of blind guess at the drift of the hull. The strong breeze blew
out of the north, and the tall coils of sea ran in wide flashings from
that quarter, but the large ocean swell was about north-west. I was
not very well acquainted with these waters and scarcely knew what to
recollect of the currents hereabouts. I was aware that the set of the
ice was to the northwards. But then the bergs struck deep root into
motions of the sea which had no influence atop; so that there might
be very well a surface-trend to the southward through wind and surge
and swell, when, some fathoms under, the body of the water was slowly
streaming in another direction.
A dismal picture with the sadness of despair coming into me out of it,
when I looked at that square of bunting flaming in mute appeal from the
stump-head to the blind horizon! But we had life, and so there must be
hope, and rallying my spirits with a will, I strode the length of the
life-line to the halliards, hauled the flag down, and went to the cabin
to find and trim a lantern to hoist in its place.