HOW I GOT ADRIFT.
I had been asleep nearly four hours, when a fall on the cabin floor,
as I slipped from the table, awoke me.
Stiff, cold, and benumbed, I started up, confused to find myself in
the dark, and at first I knew not _where_.
I reeled, and fell twice or thrice in efforts to keep my feet for now
the schooner was rolling from side to side--rolling and afloat!
"Home--let me hasten home," was my first thought. I scrambled up the
companion ladder and reached the deck, to find water around me on
every side, while the schooner being without ballast and light as a
cork, lay almost on her beam ends, as she was careened by a heavy
breeze that blew from the shore, the lights of which, probably
Erlesmere, I could see about three miles distant.
A deadly terror filled my heart!
To swim so far was impossible; I dared not leave the schooner, even
with a spar or any thing else that would float, as the wind and sea
were evidently rising together, and to remain on board was almost as
dangerous and hopeless. I had the risk of drowning by her capsizing,
or lying on her beam ends in the water, and so foundering and going
down.
A plank might start in her sheathing--she might even then be filling
by some uncaulked leak! I had no idea of the state of her hold, and
from many reasons feared she might sink before daybreak, and before
my perilous situation could be discovered from the shore.
The waves were black as ink; the sky was moonless overhead, but the
pale, white stars winked and twinkled, and were reflected in the
trough of the ocean. Now, I could perceive foam cresting the tops of
the waves, and knew that the breeze was increasing to a gale--a gale
that was blowing _from_ the land.
This added to my despair, for the lights I had seen soon disappeared,
and the dark outline of the coast seemed to sink lower and to blend
with the sea. Clutching the weather rigging, I could scarcely keep
my feet, so slippery was the now wetted deck, and so cold and
benumbed were my hands and arms by the chill atmosphere of the ocean,
and by the salt spray which ever and anon flew over me in bitter
briny showers.
I shouted, but the mocking wind bore my voice away to seaward. With
despairing eyes I swept the dusky water, in the hope of seeing a
vessel, a fishing boat, or the light of a steamer near; but gazed,
with haggard glance, in vain.
I had no hope now but to wait for dawn of day; and when it came,
_where_ might I and the empty schooner be? Fortunately, her topmasts
were struck, her fore-yard was lowered, and all her gear made
tolerably snug. Her canvas, however, was only in the brails, and a
portion of the fore-and-aft foresail having got loose, it was swelled
out by the blast, and kept her head partially before the wind, thus
accelerating the rate at which she was borne _from_ the land, and
being without trimming or ballast, she danced over the waves, as I
have said, like a cork, but in momentary danger of capsizing and
foundering. As dawn drew near, the cold increased so much, that
though at the risk of being passed unseen by some coaster, I was fain
to creep on my hands and knees to the companion hatch, and descend
into the cabin.
It was darker now than ever, for the lamp had gone out.
The memory of the captain's weird story made me shudder. His words,
"I was lying in the larboard berth--_there_, on the cabin floor, I
struck the figure down," seemed ever in my ears, and the pale,
spectral face he had portrayed, with the moonbeams streaming on its
ghastly features and glazing eyes, were ever before me in the dark
filling my young heart with a chilling horror.
"Oh to be ashore!" I exclaimed passionately, with clasped hands;
"ashore, and free from this floating prison!"
I thought of my gentle and loving mother, and my soul seemed to die
within me. The schooner would be missed by daybreak--the alarm would
be given; _her_ alarm would rapidly become irrepressible anxiety,
which would soon turn to a despair that nothing could alleviate.
Sounds like thunder, or like tremendous blows, at times made me
start. These were caused by billets of wood, mallets, or pieces of
pig-iron, pitching about in the hold of the schooner, as she rolled,
and lurched, and righted herself, to roll and lurch again.
For a time I cowered miserably in the dark cabin, until my childish
fears overmatched reason, and I crept once more upon deck.
A regular gale was blowing now, and the schooner careened fearfully
beneath it on her starboard side, while the bellying of that portion
of the fore-and-aft foresail which had got loose aided in hurrying
her faster out to sea.
The light of the coming day was spread in dull gray over the sky,
imparting the same cold tint to the whitening waves. Land was still
visible, but it seemed like a dark bank at the horizon. I supposed
it to be about ten miles distant, but what part of the coast, or how
far from Erlesmere, I knew not.
Now I began to be assailed by that illness, which terror and anxiety
had hitherto but partially repressed--a violent sea-sickness in all
its horror. Afraid of being washed from the deck over which the
waves were breaking now, once more I crept in wretchedness below.
Before descending, I cast a despairing glance at the loosening sail
which still caught the wind it was a source of increasing danger
which dared not attempt to remedy, even had I strength to have done
so, for the wet deck was now sloping like the roof of a house, and I
would assuredly have fallen into the sea to leeward. After several
feeble efforts, I succeeded in partially closing the companion hatch,
for warmth and security, and descending, threw myself on the cabin
floor, sick and despairing.
The lurching of the vessel, the closeness of the atmosphere, and
general odor of the cabin, overpowered me at last; I became fearfully
ill, and from being so, lapsed into unconsciousness, after enduring
all the wretchedness induced by that ailment of the ocean. For the
top of my head seemed about to fly off, its sides to be crushed in;
there was a singing in my ears, an ache in my eyeballs; and then came
that awful sinking of the pulses, of the body, of the soul itself,
which thousands have endured in cases of aggravated sea-sickness, but
none have been able to depict.
In short, after a paroxysm of illness and tears, I became totally
unconscious of the peril and horror of my situation, and found a
refuge in sleep.