*Reprinted by permission of Alexandrina Clark Russell and of
Frederick A. Stokes Company.
The _Justitia_ was a smart little barque of 395 tons. I had viewed
her with something of admiration as she lay in mid-stream in the
Hooghly--somewhere off the Coolie Bazaar, I think it was. There was
steam then coming to Calcutta, though not as steam now is; very
little of it was in any sense palatial, and some of the very best of
it was to be as promptly distanced under given conditions of weather
by certain of the clippers, clouded with studding sails and
flying-kites to the starry buttons of their skysail mastheads, as the
six-knot ocean tramp of to-day is to be outrun by the four-masted
leviathan thrashing through it to windward with her yards fore and
aft.
I--representing in those days a large Birmingham firm of dealers in
the fal-lal industries--had wished to make my way from Calcutta to
Capetown. I saw the _Justitia_ and took a fancy to her; I admired
the long, low, piratic run of her hull as she lay with straining
hawsepipes on the rushing stream of the Hooghly; upon which, as you
watched, there might go by in the space of an hour some half-score at
least of dead natives made ghastly canoes of by huge birds, erect
upon the corpses, burying their beaks as they sailed along.
I found out that the _Justitia_ was one of the smartest of the Thames
and East India traders of that time, memorable on one occasion for
having reeled off a clean seventeen knots by the log under a main
topgallant-sail, set over a single-reefed topsail. It was murmured,
indeed, that the mate who hove that log was drunk when he counted the
knots; yet the dead reckoning tallied with the next day's
observations. I called upon the agents, was told that the _Justitia_
was not a passenger ship, but that I could hire a cabin for the run
to Capetown if I chose; a sum of rupees, trifling compared with the
cost of transit by steam, was named. I went on board, found the
captain walking up and down under the awning, and agreeably killed an
hour in a chat with as amiable a seaman as ever it was my good
fortune to meet.
We sailed in the middle of July. Nothing worth talking about
happened during our run down the Bay of Bengal. The crew aforemast
were all of them Englishmen; there were twelve, counting cook and
steward. The captain was a man named Cayzer; the only mate of the
vessel was one William Perkins. The boatswain, a rough, short,
hairy, immensely strong man, acted as second mate and kept a lookout
when Perkins was below. But he was entirely ignorant of navigation,
and owned to me that he read with difficulty words of one syllable,
and could not write.
I was the only passenger. My name, I may as well say here, is Thomas
Barren. Our run to the south Ceylon parallels was slow and
disappointing. The monsoon was light and treacherous, sometimes
dying out in a sort of laughing, mocking gust till the whole ocean
was a sheet-calm surface, as though the dependable trade wind was
never again to blow.
"Oh, yes," said Captain Cayzer to me, "we're used to the unexpected
hereabouts. Monsoon or no monsoon, I'll tell you what: you're always
safe in standing by for an Irishman's hurricane down here."
"And what sort of a breeze is that?" I asked.
"An up-and-down calm," said he, "as hard to know where it begins as
to guess where it'll end."
However, thanks to the frequent trade puffs and other winds, which
tasted not like the monsoon, we crawled through those latitudes which
Ceylon spans, and fetched within a few degrees of the equator. In
this part of the waters we were to be thankful for even the most
trifling donation of a catspaw, or for the equally small and
short-lived mercy of the gust of the electric cloud. I forget how
many days we were out from Calcutta: the matter is of no moment. I
left my cabin one morning some hour after the sun had risen, by which
time the decks had been washed down, and were already dry, with a
salt sparkle as of bright white sand on the face of the planks, so
roasting was it. I went into the head to get a bath under the pump
there. I feel in memory, as I write, the exquisite sensation of that
luxury of brilliant brine, cold as snow, melting through me from head
to foot to the nimble plying of the pump-brake by a seaman.
It was a true tropic morning. The sea, of a pale lilac, flowed in a
long-drawn, gentle heave of swell into the southwest; the glare of
the early morning brooded in a sort of steamy whiteness in the
atmosphere; the sea went working to its distant reaches, and floated
into a dim blending of liquid air and water, so that you couldn't
tell where the sky ended; a weak, hot wind blew over the taffrail,
but it was without weight. The courses swung to the swell without
response to the breathings of the air; and on high the light
cotton-white royals were scarcely curved by the delicate passage of
the draught.
Yet the barque had steerage way. When I looked through the grating
at her metalled forefoot I saw the ripples plentiful as harp strings
threading aft, and whilst I dried myself I watched the slow approach
of a piece of timber hoary with barnacles, and venerable with long
hairs of seaweed, amid and around which a thousand little fish were
sporting, many-coloured as though a rainbow had been shivered.
I returned to my cabin, dressed, and stepped on the quarter-deck,
where I found some men spreading the awning, and the captain in a
white straw hat viewing an object out upon the water through a
telescope, and talking to the boatswain, who stood alongside.
"What do you see?" I asked.
"Something that resembles a raft," answered the captain.
The thing he looked at was about a mile distant, some three points on
the starboard bow. On pointing the telescope, I distinctly made out
the fabric of a raft, fitted with a short mast, to which midway a
bundle--it resembled a parcel--was attached. A portion of the raft
was covered by a white sheet or cloth, whence dangled a short length
of something chocolate-coloured, indistinguishable even with the
glass, lifting and sinking as the raft rose and fell upon the flowing
heave of the sea.
"This ocean," said the captain, taking the glass from me, "is a big
volume of tragic stories, and the artist who illustrates the book
does it in that fashion," and he nodded in the direction of the raft.
"What do you make of it, boatswain?" I asked.
"It looks to me," he answered in his strong, harsh, deep voice, "like
a religious job--one of them rafts the Burmuh covies float away their
dead on. I never seen one afore, sir, but I've heard tell of such
things."
We sneaked stealthily toward the raft. It was seven bells--half-past
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 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
cutwater 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 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. Barren," 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 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 about the frail contrivance the water was beautiful with the
colors 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,
manoeuvring with the boat-hook, cleverly snicked the parcel from the
jury-mast and 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 backwater 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 harelip; 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 bow-man.
"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 vapor, 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, in 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 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 panikin, 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 question. 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?"
"Aye," 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 learned 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 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 around 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'sw'n," 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 ther'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 over-powering; 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 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 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
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 lanyard 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 a 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 toward 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 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
him how the sick men did.
"Dying fast," he answered, steadying himself by leaning against the
scuttle-butt, "and a-ravin' like screetch 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 a 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!" he replied, with a maudlin shake of the head.
"Drinking'll not help you," said I; "you'll be all 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 a 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 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 the 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 returned 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.
I turned and peered close at the man who lay on the forecastle, and
discovered that the fellow who had jumped was the boatswain. I went
again to the rail to look, and lifted a coil of rope from a pin,
ready to fling the fakes to the man, should he rise. The moonlight
was streaming along the ocean on this side of the ship, and now, when
I leaned over the rail for the second time, I saw a figure close
under the bows. I stared a minute or two, the colour of the body
blended with the gloom, yet the moonlight was upon him too, and then
it was that after looking awhile, and observing the thing to lie
motionless, I perceived that it was the body that had been upon the
raft! No doubt the extreme horror raised in me by the sight of the
poisonous thing beheld in that light and under such conditions crazed
me. I have recollection of laughing wildly, and defying the dark
floating shape in insane language. I remember that I shook my fist
and spat at it, and that I turned to seek for something to hurl at
the body, and it may have been that in the instant of turning, my
senses left me, for after this I can recall no more.
The sequel to this tragic and extraordinary experience will be found
in the following statement, made by the people of the ship
_Forfarshire_, from Calcutta to Liverpool:--"August 29, 1857. When
in latitude 2° 15' N. and longitude 79° 40' E. we sighted a barque
under all plain sail, apparently abandoned. The breeze was very
scanty, and though we immediately shifted our helm for her on judging
that she was in distress, it took us all the morning to approach her
within hailing distance. Everything was deserted, and there were no
signs of anything living in her. We sent a boat in charge of the
second officer, who returned and informed us that the barque was the
_Justitia_, of London. We knew that she was from Calcutta, for we
had seen her lying in the river. The second officer stated that
there were three dead bodies aboard, one in a hammock in the
forecastle, a second on a mattress on the forecastle, and a third
against the coamings of the main-hatch; there was also a fourth man
lying at the heel of the port cathead--he did not seem to be dead.
On this Dr. Davison was requested to visit the barque, and he was put
aboard by the second officer. He returned quickly with one of the
men, whom he instantly ordered to be stripped and put into a warm
bath, and his clothes thrown overboard. He said that the dead showed
unmistakable signs of having died from cholera. We proceeded, not
deeming it prudent to have anything further to do with the ill-fated
craft. The person we had rescued remained insensible for two days;
his recovery was then slow, but sure, thanks to the skilful treatment
of Dr. Davison. He informed us that his name was Thomas Barron, and
that he was a passenger on board the _Justitia_ for Capetown. He was
the travelling representative of a large Birmingham firm. The barque
had on the preceding Friday fallen in with a raft bearing a dead
body. A boat was sent to bring away a parcel from the raft's mast,
and it is supposed that the contents of the parcel communicated the
cholera. There were fifteen souls when the vessel left Calcutta, and
all perished except the passenger, Thomas Barron."