bottom of the boat or on the thwarts, and once more sought surcease of
suffering in sleep; and again Dumaresq and I threw out our oars and
toiled at them until sunset. But it was cruel work, and nothing short
of such urgent necessity as ours would have induced me to do it. Then
the men awoke again, apparently somewhat refreshed by their day's rest,
and we went to supper. The fact that Dumaresq and I had been working at
the oars all through the scorching day, while they had been sleeping,
seemed to awaken a sense of shame in some of them; and after supper they
took to the oars of their own accord, announcing their determination to
rest henceforth through the day, and to work all night, a plan which I
was at once compelled to admit had much to recommend it. And so, while
the men pulled pretty steadily on through the night, Dumaresq and I took
watch and watch at the tiller.
Another breathless morning dawned; we went to breakfast, and the men
then lay down to sleep, as on the previous day, while Dumaresq and I
laboured at the oars until noon, when the gallant young Frenchman was
compelled to give up, declaring that he could not pull another stroke,
even though his life depended upon it. I could, of course, do nothing
single-handed; so after dinner we all lay down together, and the sleep
of utter exhaustion soon fell upon me. When I next awoke the men were
already astir and getting their supper; and it appeared to me, from the
look in their faces, that they would have been better pleased had
Dumaresq and I remained asleep. After supper they threw out their oars,
and the Frenchman and I sat together in the stern-sheets, moodily
discussing the situation, and marvelling at our strange ill-fortune in
having sighted but one solitary sail ever since the destruction of the
Indiaman.
"The fact is," remarked Dumaresq, in a low tone, "that we have made a
terrible mistake in deciding to try for Teneriffe. We ought to have
acted upon your suggestion to bear away for the West Indies. Had we
done so, we should have been more than half-way there by this time--if,
indeed, we had not already been fallen in with and picked up. As it is,
it is now clear enough that, if as we both believed, we were on the edge
of the trade-wind, we have lost it again, and it may be many days before
we shall get another breeze. And should that be the case, it is my
belief that not one of us will ever see dry land again. Note our
condition at this moment; observe our companions. When we abandoned the
ill-fated _Manilla_ they were a stout, sturdy crew of willing, obedient
men; whilst now they are a gang of gaunt and savage outlaws, no longer
amenable to discipline, and rendered ferociously selfish by starvation.
Did you observe the fell gleam of animosity with which they regarded us
when we awoke this evening and helped ourselves to our share of the
provisions? There has been no hint of violence thus far; but, mark my
words, Bowen, unless we are rescued within the next forty-eight hours
this boat will become the scene of a ghastly tragedy. Ah! _mon Dieu_!
look at that!"
Dumaresq had brought his lips close to my ear while speaking, and the
accompanying turn of his head had permitted his eyes to glance over my
shoulder into the water astern of the boat. As he uttered his closing
exclamation he pointed to the boat's wake; and there, not two fathoms
away from the rudder, could be seen two large sharks, their forms
clearly indicated in the phosphorescent water, steadily following the
boat, and swimming at a distance of about three feet below the water.
"What did I say?" continued Dumaresq. "The shadow of death is hovering
over this boat; those sharks see it, and they will follow us until they
get their prey!"
CHAPTER FIFTEEN.
DYING OF HUNGER AND THIRST.
I must confess that the sudden appearance of those two ferocious
monsters of the deep excited within me a feeling of intense horror and
uneasiness; for I had heard so much about the alleged mysterious
instinct by which the shark is said to be enabled to foresee the
approaching death of one or more members of a crew, and had listened to
so many apparently authentic stories confirming this belief in the
creature's powers, that I had grown to be quite prepared to believe that
there might be something more than mere superstition at the bottom of
it. And now it almost appeared as though I was to have an opportunity
of learning by personal experience what amount of truth there really was
in the gruesome theory. But after the first shock of horror had passed,
reason and common sense whispered that the presence of these visitors,
instead of being a constant horror and menace to us, might, by good
luck, be converted into a valuable source of food-supply, and I
accordingly at once informed the men that there were two sharks
following us, and inquired whether any of them could suggest a plan for
the capture of one of the fish. I immediately discovered, however, that
I should have done better to have said nothing; for the announcement
excited the utmost consternation; while my proposal to attempt the
capture of one of the fish was ridiculed as something approaching the
height of absurdity. Tom Hardy--a weather-beaten seaman, who had been
knocking about in all parts of the world for thirty years from the time
when he first plunged his hands into the tar bucket at the age of
fourteen--at once rose from his thwart, where he was pulling the stroke
oar; and, looking over the heads of Dumaresq and myself, stared intently
down at the fish for a few seconds, and then resumed his seat,
remarking:
"Ay, mates, what Mr Bowen says is true enough; there's two of 'em; and
that means that two of this here party is goin' to lose the number of
their mess afore long; you mark my words and see if they don't come
true. As to catchin' either of them sharks, why, we haven't got no hook
to catch 'em with. And, if we had, 'twouldn't be of no use to try; them
fish ain't to be caught; they're astarn of us for a purpose; and there
they'll stay until that purpose have come to pass. I've knowed this
sort of thing to happen afore. I was once aboard of a brig called the
_Black Snake_, hailin' from Liverpool, and tradin' between the West
Injies and the Guinea coast. We'd made a fine run across from
Barbadoes, and was within a week's run of the Old Calabar river when it
fell calm with us, just as it have done now.
"There wasn't nothing the matter with none of us at the time; but a'ter
we'd been becalmed about a week--which, let me tell ye, mates, ain't
nothing so very much out of the common in them latitoods--the second
mate fell sick, and took to his bunk. He hadn't been there not two
hours when somebody sings out as there was a shark under the counter;
and we goes to work to try and catch him. But, mates, he wasn't to be
caught, though we tried him all ways, even to pitchin' the bait right
down atop of his ugly snout. Mind you, he was ready enough to swaller
as much pork as ever we chose to give him, so long as there wasn't no
hook in it; but if there was a hook buried in it he wouldn't so much as
look at it.
"Well, we was obliged to give it up at last; and as we was haulin' in
the line and unbendin' the hook I heard the chief mate say to the
skipper:--
"`That settles poor Hobbs' hash, anyhow!'
"`How d'ye mean?' says the skipper, short and angry-like.
"`Why,' says the mate, `I means that Hobbs won't get better, and that
shark knows it. He's just waitin' for him!'
"`Oh, nonsense,' says the skipper; `I'm surprised, Mr Barker, to hear a
hintelligent man like you sayin' such things.'
"And he marches off down below, and goes into the second mate's cabin to
see how the poor chap was gettin' on. About twenty minutes a'terwards
he comes up on deck again, and tells the mate as poor Mr Hobbs have got
the yaller fever. And, mates, I takes notice that the skipper weren't
just then lookin' so extra well hisself. About a hour a'terwards he
goes below again; and by and by the steward comes for'ard, lookin'
pretty frightened, I can tell ye, and says as the skipper is sick, too.
"`I wonder whether there's a shark come for him, as well as for the
second mate,' says one of the men, jokin' like. `Run aft, steward,'
says he, `and look over the taffrail, and see.'
"The steward did as he was told; and presently he comes for'ard again,
as white as a ghost; and:--
"`There's two of 'em now,' says he. And sure enough, shipmates, when we
went aft and had a look for ourselves, there was two sharks just playin'
about under the starn, scullin' here and there, lazy-like, but never
goin' very far away.
"I told the mate of this, and p'inted out the brutes to him; but he
didn't seem a bit put out by it; he just laughed and said:--
"`Then the skipper's goose is cooked, too; and I shall have to take
charge of the ship myself!'
"And, as he said it, mates, you may believe me or not, as you like, but
up comes a third shark, and jines company with the two that was standin'
off and on.
"`Hillo!' says the mate, now lookin' frightened enough; `what's the
meanin' of this here, I wonder? Three of 'em,' he says; `one for Hobbs,
and one for the cap'n: but who's the third one a'ter?'
"Mates, what I'm goin' to tell you is as true as that I'm sittin' here
on this here thwart: the mate was took ill that very night; and the next
day he follered poor Mr Hobbs and the skipper over the rail; and then
the three sharks left us. And a week later the brig went ashore on the
coast, about the middle of as dark a night as ever you see, and me and
two more was all as managed to reach the sand-hills alive."
This weird story, told with all the impressiveness of a man who knew
himself to be speaking the truth--emphasised as it was by the persistent
presence of those two remorseless brutes under our own stern,--affected
the listeners powerfully; and at its close there was not one of us, I
will venture to say, but was firmly convinced that at least two of our
party were doomed.
We continued pulling to the eastward until nearly midnight that night,
relieving each other at the oars at short intervals, when, suddenly, one
of the men--Peter Green by name--dropped his oar and, with a choking
cry, rolled off his thwart and fell prone into the bottom of the boat.
His place was immediately taken by another; but within a quarter of an
hour this man, too, was obliged to give up; and so, one after the other,
they all succumbed, until only Dumaresq and myself were left; and we had
not been tugging at the oars five minutes when the Frenchman cried:
"It is no good, _mon ami_; I am `gastados', as the Spaniards say; I am
expended, worn out!" He rose to his feet; staggered heavily aft, and
sank down in the stern-sheets with a groan and a gasping cry of:
"Water! water! For the love of God give me a mouthful of water, or I
shall die!"
The poor fellow had, of course, been receiving the same allowance as the
rest of us; and the small quantity of putrid fluid now remaining in the
bottom of our breaker was of such priceless value that I could not give
him any more without inflicting a grievous injustice and injury upon the
rest; nevertheless, I could not sit there and see him die; so I drew a
single allowance from the cask--explaining to the men as well as my own
parched throat would allow, that I would forego my own allowance next
time that it was due--and, raising his head, I poured it into his mouth,
bitterly grudging him every drop, I am ashamed to say, as I did so.
There was only enough to just moisten his cracked lips and his dry,
black tongue; but, such as it was, it seemed to revive him somewhat,
and, squeezing my hand gratefully, he settled himself more comfortably
on the thwart, and presently appeared to sink into a state of semi-
unconsciousness that perhaps partially served in place of sleep.
I would gladly have followed his example if I could, but it was
impossible. My stubborn constitution seemed to defy the destructive
wear and tear of prolonged hunger and thirst; but my sufferings were
beyond the power of language to portray; my craving hunger was so
intense that I believe I could have eaten and enjoyed any food, however
revolting, could I but have obtained it; while my thirst was so
overpowering that it was with the utmost difficulty I combated the
temptation to open a vein and moisten my parched and burning tongue and
throat with my own blood. Equally difficult was it to resist the
temptation to take a long, cool, satisfying draught of the salt-water
that lapped so tantalisingly against the sides of the boat, and
shimmered so temptingly in the starlight all around me; but I knew what
the consequences of such an act would be, and, by the resolute exercise
of all the will power remaining to me I contrived to overcome the
longing. Yet so excruciating was my torment that I felt I must do
something to alleviate it, even though the alleviation were to be of the
briefest. I therefore determined to try an experiment; and, stripping
off all my clothing, I plunged the garments, one by one, into the water
alongside, until they were saturated; when I donned them again. The
cool, wet contact of them with my dry, burning skin seemed to afford
some relief to my tormenting thirst; and, encouraged by this small
measure of success, I next cut a strip of leather from one of my boots
and, dividing this into small pieces, I placed them, one at a time, in
my mouth, masticating them as well as I could, and finally swallowing
them. It will, perhaps, convey to the reader some idea of the intensity
of my hunger when I say that I actually enjoyed these pieces of leather,
and that my unendurable craving for food was in an appreciable degree
appeased by them, to an extent sufficient, indeed, to enable me to lie
down and actually fall asleep.
I remember that my dreams, that night, were of feasting and drinking, of
a profusion of appetising viands and choice wines spread upon long
tables that stood under the welcome shadow of umbrageous trees and close
to the borders of sparkling streams of sweet, crystal-clear water; and
when I awoke the sun was again rising above the horizon into a sky of
fleckless blue reflected by an ocean of glassy calm unbroken by the
faintest discoverable suggestion of a flaw of wind anywhere upon its
mirror-like surface. My companions were also stirring; some of them
contenting themselves by merely grasping the gunwale of the boat and so
raising their bodies that they could look round them for a moment, and
then sinking back with a moan of despair at the sight of the breathless
calm and the blank horizon, while others--two or three whose strength
still sufficed for the extra effort--painfully raised themselves upon
their feet and scanned the horizon with a longer and more searching gaze
for a sail. There was nothing to be seen, however, in the whole visible
stretch of the ocean, save the fins of the two sharks which haunted us
so remorselessly; so, with inarticulate mutterings of despair, and
hoarse, broken curses at the ill-fortune which so persistently dogged
us, we prepared to devour our last insignificant ration of food and
consume the last drops of our hoarded water.
The next minute saw us transformed into a crew of furious, raving
maniacs; for--the food and the water had both disappeared! the locker
forward in which our last morsel of meat had been deposited on the
previous night was empty; the water-breaker was dry! some unscrupulous
villain, some vile, dastardly thief among us had stolen and consumed
both! The discovery of this detestable crime had the temporary effect
of a powerful restorative upon us; our furious indignation temporarily
imbued our bodies with new vigour; and in an instant every man of us was
upon his feet and glaring round, with eyes ablaze, upon his fellows, in
search of the criminal. In vain I strove to quell the excitement, to
stay the clamour, and to restore order; discipline and obedience indeed
were at an end, distinctions of rank no longer existed, the ordinary
restraints of civilisation were discarded, our frightful situation had
reduced us to the condition of wild beasts, and my entreaties that the
matter might be dealt with in something like judicial form might as well
have been urged upon the empty air.
There was not much difficulty in identifying the culprit. He was a
Welshman, named Evans, a poor, pitiful, sneaking creature, one of the
under-stewards belonging to the _Manilla_, who had systematically
shirked his share of the work, and done his best to evade his share of
the hardship from the very first; and although, when taxed with his
crime, he at first strenuously denied it, his manner belied his words,
and presently he flung himself upon his knees and--with tears and
protestations of his inability to resist the temptation that had
suddenly come upon him--acknowledged the theft, and abjectly besought
our forgiveness. I very much doubt whether, in my then frame of mind, I
could have been induced to forgive the miserable creature: but I
certainly had no desire to inflict any punishment upon him beyond what
he would derive from my undisguised expressions of contempt and
abhorrence. Not so his more immediate companions, however. Evans had
no sooner confessed than, with a hoarse howl of fury, his self-
constituted judges whipped out their sheath-knives, while in a paroxysm
of terror the wretched steward leapt to his feet and hastily retreated
forward, shrieking for mercy. The men followed him; and ere I could
intervene there was a scuffle, a rapid rain of blows, a smothered groan,
a splash alongside, and the next instant the Welshman's head reappeared
above water, about a fathom away from the boat, his face grey and
distorted with fear, and his skinny hands outstretched in a vain
endeavour to reach the gunwale of the boat. Then, almost in the self-
same instant, and before one's benumbed senses found time to realise the
ghastly tragedy, there was a rapid swirl of water alongside, an ear-
splitting yell, and the miserable man was dragged down, an ensanguined
patch in the deep crystalline blue, and a few transitory air-bubbles
alone marking the spot from which he had vanished. Involuntarily I
glanced astern. There was but one shark's fin now visible!
"Shame upon you, men; shame upon you!" cried I, emerging from the
temporary trance of stupefaction which seemed to have seized me while
this frightful tragedy was in progress. "You have taken a human life,
and branded yourselves as murderers. And for what? Simply because that
poor craven of a fellow appropriated a small morsel of putrid meat and a
few drops of disgusting liquid that, evenly divided among you all, could
have done you no appreciable good. At most, it could but have prolonged
your lives an hour or two."
"Ay, that's just it!" huskily interrupted one of the men. "The meat and
the water that we've lost would have give us another hour or two of
life, and who's to say that just that hour or two mightn't have made all
the difference between livin' and dyin' to us? If anything was to
happen to drift into view within the next few hours, that bit of meat
and they few drops of water might have give us strength enough to handle
the oars again and pull far enough to be sighted and picked up; but now
we're done for, all hands of us. Our strength is gone, and we've
nothin' left to give it back to us, even if a whole fleet was in sight
at this present moment. When that chap stole the last of our grub he
stole our lives with it. He's the murderer, not us, and he deserved
what he got! Oh, my God, water! Give us water, for Christ's sake!"
And, throwing up his poor, lean, shrivelled hands toward the cloudless
sky, with a gesture eloquent of frantic, despairing appeal, the poor,
tortured creature suddenly collapsed and fell senseless athwart the
gunwale of the boat, with his arms hanging down into the water. We
dragged him quickly inboard again, but we were not a second too soon,
for we had scarcely done so when the remaining shark was alongside,
glaring up at us with a look of fell longing in those cruel goggle eyes
of his, that seemed to say he intended to have his prey sooner or later,
although we had baulked him of it for the present.
The dreadful exhaustion of reaction from the late excitement now seized
upon the rest of us, and one by one we wearily sank down again into our
respective places in the boat. Then I told the men by what means I had
obtained temporary relief during the night, advising them to try the
same method, and presently we were all sitting in our wet clothes,
ravenously chewing away upon strips of our shoe leather. But nobody
thought of again having recourse to the oars; indeed our strength had
now so completely melted away that I doubt very much whether a single
man in the whole of that boat's company--saving, perhaps, myself--could
have laid out an oar unaided.
The blazing hot, breathless day lagged slowly along, every hour seeming
to spin itself out to a more intolerable length than the last, and with
every moment our suffering grew more nearly unbearable, until toward
evening I seemed to be going mad, for the most fantastic ideas went
crowding through my whirling brain, and I now and then caught myself
muttering the most utter nonsense, now laughing, now weeping and moaning
like a child. Anon I found myself kneeling in the stern-sheets and
supporting my body upon one arm as I gesticulated with the other while
apostrophising that demon shark--or were there two of them again, or
three? I remember laughing to myself uproariously, noticing at the same
time, with a sort of wonder, what a wild, eldritch, gibbering laugh it
was, at the thought of how those sharks--yes, there _were_ three; I was
certain of it--would jostle and hustle each other, in their greedy haste
to get at me, were I to simply stand up and topple over the gunwale into
the water. And how easily--how ridiculously easily--I might do it too.
I laughed again at the absurdity of taking so much trouble and enduring
such frightful extremity of suffering to preserve a life that might be
so readily got rid of, and wondered dully why I had been so foolish as
to go through it all when it might be put an end to in a single moment.
Why, I asked myself, should I remain any longer in the boat with that
great, red, flaming eye staring so mercilessly down upon me out of that
brazen sky, when the laughing blue water smiled so temptingly up into my
eyes and wooed me to its cool embrace? There would be no more hunger
and thirst down there, no relentless sun to torment me century after
century by darting his fiery beams down upon my uncovered head and
through my hissing, seething brain. A plunge, and all my miseries would
be at an end. I would make that plunge; I would seek those cool,
cerulean depths; I would--Ah! I had forgotten you, you devils! What!
are you waiting for me? Are you growing impatient? How many of you are
there? One, two, three, four--stop, stop. I cannot count you if you
swarm around the boat in that unseemly fashion! Why, there are hundreds
of you, thousands, millions! The sea is black with you! Your waving
fins cover the ocean to the farthest confines of the horizon! And you
are all waiting for me! Very well, then, I shall disappoint you. I
shall--