ALL HOPE GONE
JANUARY 23.--Only eleven of us now remain; and the probability is very
great that every day must now carry off at least its one victim, and
perhaps more. The end of the tragedy is rapidly approaching, and save
for the chance, which is next to an impossibility, of our sighting
land, or being picked up by a passing vessel, ere another week has
elapsed not a single survivor of the Chancellor will remain.
The wind freshened considerably in the night, and it is now blowing
pretty briskly from the northeast. It has filled our sail, and the
white foam in our wake is an indication that we are making some
progress. The captain reckons that we must be advancing at the rate of
about three miles an hour.
Curtis and Falsten are certainly in the best condition among us, and in
spite of their extreme emaciation they bear up wonderfully under the
protracted hardships we have all endured. Words cannot describe the
melancholy state to which poor Miss Herbey bodily is reduced; her whole
being seems absorbed into her soul, but that soul is brave and resolute
as ever, living in heaven rather than on earth. The boatswain, strong,
energetic man that he was, has shrunk into a mere shadow of his former
self, and I doubt whether anyone would recognize him to be the same
man. He keeps perpetually to one corner of the raft, his head dropped
upon his chest, and his long, bony hands lying upon knees that project
sharply from his worn-out trowsers. Unlike Miss Herbey, his spirit
seems to have sunk into apathy, and it is at times difficult to believe
that he is living at all, so motionless and statue-like does he sit.
Silence continues to reign upon the raft. Not a sound, not even a
groan, escapes our lips. We do not exchange ten words in the course of
the day, and the few syllables that our parched tongues and swollen
lips can pronounce are almost unintelligible. Wasted and bloodless, we
are no longer human beings; we are specters.