thrilling wreck of ancient sea-battle, fought out fiercely to a finish
generations before ever I was born, that for a little while I forgot
my own troubles entirely; and so got over the shock which my first
sight of the riddled sloop and her dead crew had given me by proving
that again I had lost my way. And my longing to know all that I could
find out about it--backed by the certainty that I should not come upon
anything below that would revolt me--led me to go searching in the
shattered cabin for some clue to the sloop's name and nationality, and
to the cause in which her death-fight had been fought.
The question of nationality was decided the moment that I set my foot
within the cabin doorway--there being a good deal of light there,
coming in through the broken stern--by my seeing stretched over a
standing bed-place in a state-room to starboard an American flag; and
the flag, taken together with the ancient build of the sloop, also
settled the fact pretty clearly that the action which had finished her
must have been fought with an English vessel in the War of 1812.
Under the flag I could make out faintly the lines of a human figure,
and I knew that one of the sloop's officers--most likely her
commander, from the respect shown to him by covering him with the
colors--must be lying there, just as his men had placed him to wait
for a sea-burial until the fighting should come to an end. And that he
had remained there was proof that not a man of the sloop's company but
had been killed outright in the fight or had got his death-wound in
it; and also of the fact that in a way the fight had been a
victory--since it was evident that the enemy had not taken possession,
and therefore must have been beaten off.
But the whole matter was settled clearly by my finding the sloop's
log-book lying open on the cabin table, just as it had lain there, and
had entries made in it, while the action was going on. And a very
strange thrill ran through me as I read on the mouldy page in brown
faint letters the date, "October 5, 1814," and across the page-head,
in bigger brown faint letters: "U.S. Sloop-of-war _Wasp_": and so knew
that I was aboard of that stinging little war-sloop--whereof the
record is a bright legend, and the fate a mystery, of our Navy--which
in less than three months' time successively fought and whipped three
English war-vessels--the ship _Reindeer_ and the brigs _Avon_ and
_Atalanta_, all of them bigger than herself--and then, being last
sighted in September, 1814, not far from the Azores, vanished with all
her crew and officers from off the ocean and never was seen nor
heard of again.
There before me in the mouldy log-book was the record of her last
action--and in gallantry it led the three others which have made
her fame.
The entries began at 7.20 A.M. with: "A strange sail in sight on the
weather bow;" at 7.45 followed: "The strange brig bearing down on us.
Looks English"; and at 8.10: "The strange brig has shown English
colors." Then came the manoeuvring for position, covering more than an
hour, and the beating to general quarters; and after that the short
entries ran on quickly--in such rough and ready writing as might be
expected of a man dashing in for a moment to make them, and then
dashing out again to where the fighting was going on:
"9.20 A.M. Engaged the enemy with our starboard battery,
hulling him severely.
"9.24. Our foremast by the board.
"9.28. The enemy's broadside in our stern. Great havoc.
"9.35. The wreck of the foremast cleared, giving us steerage way.
"9.40. Our hulling fire telling. The enemy's battery fire
slacking. His musketry fire very hot and galling.
"9.45. The enemy badly hulled. More than half of our crew
now killed or disabled.
"9.52. Our main-mast by the board and our mizzen badly
wounded. Action again very severe. Few of our men left.
"9.56. Captain Blakeley killed and brought below.
"10.01. Our mizzen down. The enemy's fire slacking again.
"10.10. The enemy sheering off, with the look of being
sinking.
"10.15. The enemy sinking. We cannot help him. Most of our men are
dead. All of us living are badly hurt."
And there the entries came to an end.
My breath came fast as I read that short record of as brave a fight as
ever was fought on salt water; and when my reading was finished I
gave a great sigh. It was a fit ending for the little _Wasp_, that
death triumphant: and it was a fit ending to a fight between American
and English sailors that they should hang at each other's throats,
neither yielding, until they died that way--they being each of a
nation unaccustomed to surrender, and both of the one race which alone
in modern times has held the sea.
XIX
OF A GOOD PLAN THAT WENT WRONG WITH ME
For a while I was so stirred by the enthusiasm which my discovery
aroused in me that I had no room in my mind for any other thoughts.
But at last, as I still stood pondering in the _Wasp's_ cabin, I
became aware that the daylight was fading into darkness; and as I
realized what that meant for me my thoughts came back suddenly to
myself, and then all my enthusiasm ebbed away.
I came out upon the deck again, but leaving everything as I had found
it--my momentary impulse to lift the flag having vanished as I felt
how fit it was that this dead battle-captain should rest on
undisturbed where his men had laid him beneath the colors that he had
died for; and I was glad to find when I got into the open that a good
deal of daylight still remained. But it was so far gone, and was
waning so rapidly, that I saw that I had little chance of getting back
to the _Hurst Castle_ before nightfall; and that the most that I could
hope for was to make a start in the right direction--and perhaps to
find a wreck to sleep on that had food and water aboard of it, and
thence take up my search again the next day.
Yet the dread was strong upon me, as I looked around upon the wrecks
among which the _Wasp_ was bedded, that I might not only be unable to
find the _Hurst Castle_ again, but ever to find my way across that
tangle to the outer edges of it--where only was it possible that ships
on which were provisions fit for eating would be found. The very fact
that the _Wasp_ had settled into her position more than fourscore
years back made it certain that she was deep in the labyrinth; and the
strange old-fashioned look of the craft surrounding her showed me that
I should have to go far before finding a vessel wrecked in
recent times.
But these disheartening thoughts I crushed down as well as I could,
yet not making much of it; and as trying to go back by the way that I
had come to the _Wasp_ would not serve any good purpose--even
supposing that I could have managed it, which was not likely--I went
on beyond her on a new course: taking a longish jump from her
quarter-rail and landing on the deck of a clumsy little ill-shapen
brig, with a high-built square stern and a high-built bow that was
pretty nearly square too. She was Dutch, I fancy, and a merchant
vessel; but she carried a little battery of brass six-pounders, and
had also a half dozen pederaros set along her rail. And by her
carrying these old-fashioned swivel-guns--which proved that she had
got her armament not much later than the middle of the last
century--and by the general look of her, I knew that she was an older
vessel even than the _Wasp_.
This observation, and the reflection growing out of it that the deeper
I went into the Sargasso Sea the older must be the craft bedded in
it--since that great dead fleet is recruited constantly by new wrecks
drifting in upon its outer edges from all ways seaward--put into my
head what seemed to me to be a very reasonable plan for finding my way
back to the _Hurst Castle_ again; or, at least, to some other newly
come in hulk on which there would be fresh water and sound food. And
this was to shape my course by considering attentively the look of
each wreck that I came aboard of, and the look of those surrounding
it, and by then going forward to whichever one of them seemed to be of
the most modern build.
As the first step in carrying out my plan--and it seemed to be such a
good plan that I felt almost light-hearted over it--I got up on the
rail of the old brig and jumped back to the less-old _Wasp_ again:
landing in her main-channels, and thence easily boarding her by
scrambling up what was left of the chains. But in taking my next step
I had no choice in the matter, as only one other vessel was in touch
with the sloop--a heavily-built little schooner that had the look of
being quite as old as the brig which I had just left. And her age
was so evident as I came aboard of her--having crossed the deck of the
_Wasp_ hastily, picking my way among the scattered bones--that of a
sudden my faith in my fine plan for getting out of the tangle began
to wane.
In a general way, of course, the conclusion which I had arrived at was
a sound one. Broadly speaking, it was certain that could I pass in a
straight line from the centre to the circumference of that vast
assemblage of wrecks I constantly would find vessels of newer build;
and so at last, upon the outermost fringe, would come to the wrecks of
ships belonging to my own day. But one weak point in my calculations
was my inability to hold to a straight line, or to anything like
one--because I had to advance from one wreck to another as they
happened to touch or to be within jumping distance of each other, and
therefore went crookedly upon my course and often fairly had to double
on it. And another weak point was that the sea in its tempests
recognizes no order of seniority, but destroys in the same breath of
storm ships just beginning their lives upon it and ships which have
withstood its ragings for a hundred years: so that I very well might
find--as I actually did find in the case of the _Wasp_--a
comparatively modern-built vessel lying hemmed in by ancient craft,
survivals of obsolete types, which had lingered so long upon the
ocean that in their lives as in their deaths they merged and blended
the present and the past.
Thus a check was put upon my plan at the very outset; yet in a stolid
sort of way--knowing that to give it up entirely would be to bring
despair upon me, for I could not think of a better one--I tried still
to hold by it: going on from the clumsy little old schooner to that
one of two vessels lying beyond her which I fancied, though both of
them belonged to a long past period, was the more modern-looking in
her build. And so I continued to go onward over a dozen craft of one
sort or another, holding by my rule--or trying to believe that I was
holding by it, for all of the wrecks which I crossed were of an
antique type--and now and then being left with no chance for choosing
by finding open to me only a single way. And all this while the
daylight was leaving me--the sun having gone down a ruddy globe beyond
the forest of wrecks westward, and heavy purple shadows having begun
to close down upon me through the low-hanging haze.
The imminence of night-fall made clear to me that I had no chance
whatever of getting out from among those long-dead ships before the
next morning; and this certainty was the harder to bear because I was
desperately hungry--more than six hours having passed since I had
eaten anything--and thirsty too: though my thirst, because of the
dampness of the haze I suppose, was not very severe. But the belief
that I really was advancing toward the coast of my strange floating
continent and that I should find both food and drink when I got there,
made me press forward; comforting myself as well as I could with the
reflection that even though I did have to keep a hungry and thirsty
vigil among those old withered hulks I yet should be the nearer, by
every one of them that I put behind me that night, to the freshly come
in wrecks on the coast line--where I made sure of finding a breakfast
on the following day. Moreover, I knew how forlornly miserable I
should be the moment that I lost the excitement of scrambling and
climbing and just sat down there among the ancient dead, with the
darkness closing over me, to wait for the slow coming of another day.
And my dread of that desolate loneliness urged me to push forward
while the least bit of daylight was left by which to see my way.
It was ticklish work, as the dusk deepened, getting from one wreck to
another; and at last--after nearly going down into the weed between
two of them, because of a rotten belaying-pin that I caught at
breaking in my hand--I had to resign myself to giving over until
morning any farther attempt to advance. But I was cheered by the
thought that I had got on a good way in the hour or more that had gone
since I had left the _Wasp_ behind me; and so I tried to make the
best of things as I cast around me for some sheltered nook on the deck
of the vessel I had come aboard of--a little clumsy old brig--where my
night might be passed. As to going below, either into the cabin or the
forecastle, I could not bring myself to it; for my heart failed me at
the thought of what I might touch in the darkness there, and my
mind--sore and troubled by all that I had passed through, and by the
dim dread filling it--certainly would have crowded those black depths
with grisly phantoms until I very well might have gone mad.
And so, as I say, I cast about the deck of the brig for some nook that
would shelter me from the dampness while I did my best to sleep away
into forgetfulness my hunger and my thirst; but was troubled all the
while that I was making my round of investigation by a haunting
feeling that I had been on that same deck only a little while before.
Growing stronger and stronger, this feeling became so insistent that I
could not rest for it; and presently compelled me to try to quiet it
by taking a look at the wreck next beyond the brig to see if I
recognized that too--as would be likely, since I must have crossed it
also, had I really come that way.
I did not try to board this adjoining wreck, but only clambered up on
the rail of the brig so that I could look well at it--and when I got
my look I came more nearly to breaking down completely than I had
done at any time since I had been cast overboard from the _Golden
Hind_, For there, showing faintly in the gloom below me, was the
gun-set deck of a war-ship, and over the deck dimly-gleaming bones
were scattered--and in that moment I knew that the whole of my
wandering had been but a circle, and that I was come back again at the
weary ending of it to the _Wasp_.
But what crushed the heart of me was not that my afternoon of toil had
been wasted, but the strong conviction--from which I no longer saw any
way of escaping--that I had strayed too deep into that hideous
sea-labyrinth ever to find my way out of it, and that I must die there
slowly for lack of water and of food.
XX
HOW I SPENT A NIGHT WEARILY
I got down from the rail and seated myself on the brig's deck, leaning
my back against her bulwarks and a little sheltered by their
old-fashioned in-board overhang. But I had no very clear notion of
what I was doing; and my feeling, so far as I had any feeling, was
less that I was moving of my own volition than that I was being moved
by some power acting from outside of me--the sensation of
irresponsibility that comes to one sometimes in a dream.
Indeed, the whole of that night seemed to me then, and still seems to
me, much more a dream than a reality: I being utterly wearied by my
long hard day's work in scrambling about among the wrecks, and a
little light-headed because of my stomach's emptiness, and feverish
because of my growing thirst, and my mind stunned by the dull pain of
my despair. And it was lucky for me, I suppose, that my thinking
powers were so feeble and so blunted. Had I been fully awake to my own
misery I might very well have gone crazy there in the darkness; or
have been moved by a sharp horror of my surroundings to try to escape
them by going on through the black night from ship to ship--which
would have ended quickly by my falling down the side of one or another
of them and so drowning beneath the weed.
Yet the sort of stupor that I was in did not hold fast my inner
consciousness; being rather a numbing cloud surrounding me and
separating me from things external--though not cutting me off from
them wholly--while within this wrapping my spirit in a way was awake
and free. And the result of my being thus on something less than
speaking terms with my own body was to make my attitude toward it that
of a sympathizing acquaintance, with merely a lively pity for its
ill-being, rather than that of a personal partaker in its pains. And
even my mental attitude toward myself was a good deal of the same
sort: for my thoughts kept turning sorrowfully to the sorrow of my own
spirit solitary there, shrinking within itself because of its chill
forsakenness and lonely pain of finding itself so desolate--the one
thing living in that great sea-garnering of the dead.
And after a while--either because my light-headedness increased, or
because I dozed and took to dreaming--I had the feeling that the dense
blackness about me, a gloom that the heavily overhanging mist made
almost palpable, was filling with all those dead spirits come to
peer curiously into my living spirit; and that they hated it and were
envious of it because it was not as they were but still was alive. And
from this, presently, I went on to fancying that I could see them
about me clad again dimly in the forms which had clothed them when
they also in their time had been living men. At first they were
uncertain and shadowy, but before long they became so distinct that I
plainly saw them: shaggy-bearded resolute fellows, roughly dressed in
strange old-fashioned sea-gear, with here and there among them others
in finer garb having the still more resolute air of officers; and all
with the fierce determined look of those old-time mariners of the
period when all the ocean was a battling-place where seamen spent
their time--and most of them, in the end, spent their lives also--in
fighting with each other and in fighting with the sea.
Gradually this throng of the sea-dead filled the whole deck about me
and everywhere hemmed me in; but they gave no heed to me, and were
ranged orderly at their stations as though the service of the ship was
being carried on. Among themselves they seemed to talk; but I could
hear nothing of what they were saying, though I fancied that there was
a humming sound filling the air about me like the murmur of a far-away
crowd. Now and then an angry bout would spring up suddenly between two
or three of them; and in a moment they would be fighting together,
and would keep at it until one of their stern officers was upon them
with blows right and left with his fists or with the butt of his
pistol or with the pommel of his sword--and so would scatter the rough
brutes, scowling, and as it seemed uttering growls such as beasts
lashed by their keepers would give forth.
And at other times they would seem to be fighting with some
enemy--serving at their guns stripped half-naked, with handkerchiefs
knotted about their heads, and with the grime of powder-smoke upon
their bare flesh and so blackening their faces as to give their
gleaming eyes a still more savage look; falling dead or wounded with
their blood streaming out upon the deck and making slimy pools in
which a man running sometimes would slip and go down headlong--and
would get up, with a laugh and a curse, only in another moment to drop
for good as a musket-ball struck him or as a round-shot sliced him in
two; and all of them with a savage joy in their work, and going at it
with a lust for blood that made them delight in it--and take no more
thought than any other fighting brutes would take of guarding their
own lives.
Or, again, they would seem to be in the midst of a tempest, with the
roar of the wind and the rush of the waves upon them, and would be
fighting the gale and the ocean's turbulence with the same devil's
daring that they had shown in fighting the enemy--and with the same
carelessness as to what happened to themselves so long as they stuck
to their duty and did the best that was in them to bring their ship
safely through the storm. And so they went on ringing the changes on
their old-time wild sea-life--their savage fights among themselves,
and their battlings with foemen of a like metal, and their warfare
with the ocean--while the dark night wore on.
Yet even when these visionary forms were thickest about me--and when
it seemed, too, as though from all the dead hulks about me the shadows
of the dead were rising in the same fashion in pale fierce throngs--I
tried to hold fast, and pretty well succeeded in it, to the steadying
conviction that the making of them was in my own imagination and that
they were not real. And then, too, I fell off from time to time into a
light sleep which still was deep enough to rid me of them wholly; and
which also gave me some of the rest that I so much needed after all
that I had passed through during that weary day.
What I could not get rid of, either sleeping or waking, was my gnawing
hunger and my still worse thirst. For an hour or two after nightfall,
the air being fresher and the haze turning to a damp cool mist, my
thirst was a good deal lessened; which was a gain in one way, though
not in another--for that same chill of night very searchingly
quickened my longing for food. But as the hours wore away my desire
for water got the better of every other feeling, even changing my
haunting visions of dead crews rising from the dead ships about me
into visions of brooks and rivulets--which only made my burning
craving the more keen.
Nor did what little reasoning I could bring to bear upon my case, when
from time to time I partly came out from the sort of lethargy that had
hold of me, do much for my comforting. It was possible, I perceived,
that I might find even in a long-wrecked ship some half-rotten scraps
of old salted meat, or some remnant of musty flour, that at least
would serve to keep life in me. But even food of this wretched sort
would do me no good without water--and water was to be found only in
one of the wrecks forming the outer fringe of my prison, toward which
I had been trying so long vainly to find my way.
Yet in spite of my having already gone astray half a dozen times over
in daylight I still did have, deep down in me, a feeling that if only
the darkness would pass I could manage to steer a true course. And
when at last, as it seemed to me after years of waiting for it, I
began to see a little pink tone showing in the mist dimly it almost
seemed as though my troubles were coming instantly to an end. And,
at least, the horror of deep darkness, which all night long had been
crushing me, did leave me from the moment when that first gleam of
returning daylight appeared.
XXI
MY THIRST IS QUENCHED, AND I FIND A COMPASS
It was a long while before the pale pink gleam to the eastward spread
up into the sky far enough to thin the shadows which hung over my dead
fleet heavily, and longer still before I had light enough to venture
to begin my scrambling walk from ship to ship again. It seemed to me,
indeed, that the mist lay lower and was a good deal thicker than on
the preceding evening; and this, with the fiery glow that was in it
when the sunrise came, gave me hope that a douse of rain might be
coming--which chance of getting the water that I longed for heartened
me even more than did the up-coming of the sun.
My throat was hurting me a good deal because of its dryness, and my
itching thirst was all the stronger because the last food I had
eaten--being the mess left in the pan by the two men who had killed
each other--had been a salt-meat stew. Of hunger I did not feel much,
save for gripes in my inside now and then; but I was weak because of
my emptiness--as I discovered when I got on my legs, and found myself
staggering a little and the things around me swimming before my eyes.
And what was worse than that was a dull stupidity which so possessed
me that I could not think clearly; and so for a while kept me
wandering about the deck of the brig aimlessly, while my wits went
wool-gathering instead of trying to work out some plan--even a foolish
plan--which would cheer me up with hopes of pulling through.