Return to consciousness. Seek for my comrades. Commence a calendar,
and take inventory of my effects.
How long I lay unconscious where I had scrambled and fallen down I
shall never know, but when I awoke and stared around me, I found that
it was broad daylight, and, by the sun, at least eleven or twelve
o'clock in the day. I gazed around me and tried to collect my thoughts,
and the horrors of the preceding night came slowly back to my memory. I
arose and stretched my limbs, and with the exception of some stiffness
in my joints, and bruises that were not of a serious nature, I found
myself all right. I fell upon my knees and devoutly thanked God for
my deliverance, and then arose and looked around me. I found myself
standing on a smooth, sandy beach, which, by the sun, evidently ran
nearly, if not quite, east and west; a narrow strip of water not more
than a short quarter of a mile separated me from the reef over which
I had evidently been swept the previous night. To my right hand, as I
stood facing the north, ran a level beach of a mile or so in extent,
ending in an elevation and hills at the extreme end, faced, its entire
length, as far as I could see, by this natural breakwater or reef in
front of me. To the left I discerned an opening to the sea about one
mile distant; and beyond, low land extending for several miles, and
ending in a promontory of some elevation. Turning about, I saw behind
me, running down almost to the sandy beach, a grove of trees, with many
of which I was familiar, and wooded higher land in the background.
My nautical knowledge told that there was no known land in this part of
the world. Where was I? Where were my companions in the boat? Was the
island inhabited by savages? Had I been saved to become their prey? All
these questions rushed through my mind, but were unanswerable. I began
to feel faint and sick with thirst, hunger, and fatigue, and devoured
with an unappeasable curiosity to know the fate of my comrades; and to
this end, I stripped off my clothing and waded into the water towards
the reef over which I had so providentially been cast. I found the
water shallow and with a pure, sandy bottom, and had only to swim a
few rods to regain my feet again, and be able to reach the breakwater.
With what intense excitement, fierce but restrained, I climbed the
rocks, and gazed upon the open sea, you who have never been cast away,
from home, kindred, and society can never know. I looked about me upon
the rocks, and at the treacherous sea, now as smooth and smiling as a
sleeping infant. In vain did I search for any traces of my comrades.
Not a sign of them was to be seen. Now that the storm had gone down,
this breakwater of rocks stood several feet above the sea, irregular
in width and height. By aligning myself on the place on shore where
I had landed, and whence I had come, I felt sure that I must be near
the spot where the boat had struck. I passed a little farther to the
right, and came upon the scene of my disaster. Upon the rocks I found
small portions of the boat, broken to atoms not larger than my hand,
but no friend, no comrade, no living soul to cheer my despair. I saw
in a very few minutes that if they had not been swept over the reef at
the very first sea, as I had been, they had inevitably been washed back
again into the ocean, dashed amongst the rocks, and sucked in by the
undertow, never more to be seen by man. A very few moments' examination
convinced me that such must have been the case. But one single chance
remained, and that was, if they were swept over the reef as I was, if
alive, their tracks would show on the sand of the shore behind me. I
did not have the slightest faith in this, but saved it in my mind to
be proved when I returned to the shore. Striving to put the horror
of my position far from me, and trying to see if there was anything
to be saved that could be useful to me in my miserable condition, I
began to look about me in the crevices of the rocks for any small
article that might have escaped the maw of the ocean. In about an
hour's search I had gathered the following together, which was every
atom that seemed to remain of the boat and her appurtenances,--the
remainder had evidently been ground into powder against the rocks,
and hurled back with the retiring waves into the insatiable ocean:
One piece of boat-planking, about nine feet long and ten inches wide,
which I preserved on account of its containing several nails which
had bolted it to the keelson; one tin meat-can that we had used as a
bailer, somewhat bent, which I found securely jammed in a crevice of
the rock; one canister of preserved meat, thrown by the sea into a sort
of natural cavity or pocket in the rocks; and last, the most important
of all, the boat's anchor and rope cable, which had washed across the
reef and hung with the end in the quiet waters of the inner bay. I
grasped it and coiled it up, following it to the outer side of the
reef, whence I pulled up the anchor, and found myself in possession of
it and some twenty fathoms of good inch-and-three-quarter manilla rope.
This constituted all my earthly fortunes, and, placing the anchor and
rope and the empty meat canister and the full one upon the piece of
boat-planking, which just barely supported them when submerged in the
water, I thrust them carefully before me towards the other shore, and,
getting too deep to wade, I guided them with one hand and pushed them
before me till, again touching bottom with my feet, I soon had them on
land, safe and sound, at the place where I had first landed, and beyond
the reach of the sea.
As soon as these were secured, I started off to the left to examine
the pure white sand to see if any human foot had come on shore but
my own; but, alas, there was no sign. Turning, when I had reached
a distance beyond which it would have been useless to look, I came
back and made a similar exploration to the right. As I advanced I
saw something black rolling quietly up and down the beach with each
miniature wave. For one instant I mistook it for the body of one of my
comrades; the next I knew it for one of the breakers that had been in
the boat. I rushed into the sea and grasped it, its light weight told
me at once that it was the one containing my charts, books, Epitome,
and Nautical Almanac, that its very lightness had preserved it and
allowed it to be cast over the reef at the very first sea, instead of
being crushed, as the one full of water evidently had been, with the
boat. With gratitude to God for even this slight mercy and solace, I
dragged the cask well towards the land and beyond all danger of the sea.
Having made sure that there was nothing else to be saved, I came back
to my first landing-place, sat down fainter than ever, but managed to
get on my clothes, and with one of the rusty nails from the boat's
plank to scratch upon a large stone near by, "November 9, 1865," after
which I forced open the top of the canister of preserved meats, by
means of the same nail and a small pebble, taking care not to cut the
whole top quite out, but to leave it hanging by a kind of hinge. By
punching hole after hole around the periphery of the canister with the
point of the nail, close together, I soon had it off except in one
portion purposely preserved. Pressing this cover back, I took a draught
of what to me, in my state, might be called nectar, for it was both
food and water, but which was in reality simply beef soup.
After this refreshing draught, I lay myself down upon the bank and gave
myself up to meditation. After reclining upon the ground about half an
hour, my eyes became fixed upon an object slowly approaching me from
the right hand, and evidently going out of the narrow inlet in front of
me with the tide, which was then at ebb. I rubbed my eyes, and thought
I recognized an article belonging to the boat. I took off my clothes
again and entered the water, and soon had hold of one of the large red
powder-canisters, which had been filled with seeds and stored in the
boat when we entered Magellan Straits. I eagerly seized upon my prize
and brought it safely to shore, and found that it had been preserved
perfectly water-tight by the screw in the top, through which hole the
seeds had been dropped into it and then closed. I carried this canister
to my former seat and sat myself down with all my worldly goods about
me. I made mentally the following inventory of effects:--
On my person I had the following: I had lost my hat in the gale, and
the remainder of my clothing consisted of one pair of coarse shoes, one
pair of woollen stockings, one pair of flannel drawers, one pair of
cheap woollen trousers, one flannel undershirt, one blue flannel shirt,
one silk necktie. On the ground before me: one empty tin canister
that we had used as a bailer, one empty tin canister that had lately
contained the beef soup, one large tin canister, filled with garden
seeds, one anchor of about forty pounds weight, and twenty fathoms of
line, one piece of boat-planking with several nails, and the empty
breaker, containing, as I knew by memory, one Bowditch's Epitome,
one Nautical Almanac, one large book, entitled, "Compendium of Useful
Arts and Sciences," and one chart of the South Pacific Ocean. In the
pocket of my trousers I found one piece of plug tobacco, a small piece
of twine, a hair comb, and clay pipe. My knife, for which I would have
given so much, had either been laid down in the boat or since lost; it
was, at any rate, gone, and I mourned for it.
My various duties in collecting these things about me; my former
fatigue and depression, aided by the food I had swallowed, soon
brought me to a state of drowsiness; and as the sun was now fast
declining, I drew myself further upon the island and under a sort of
cedar-tree,--the thick and low boughs of which formed a covering for
my body from the dews,--and gathering my household goods about me, I,
after meekly resigning myself to my fate and commending myself to God,
lay quietly down and fell to sleep with the setting sun.