conviction that I could see living men moving hither and thither over
those pale-lit decks, where my reason told me that only ancient death
could be; for the play of the flickering light made such a commotion
of fleeting flames and dancing shadows, going and coming in all manner
of fantastic shapes, that every shattered hulk around me seemed to
have her old crew alive and on board of her again--all hurrying in
bustling crowds fore and aft, and up and down the heights of her, as
though under orderly command. And at times these shapes were so real
and so distinct to me that I was for crying out to them--and would
check myself suddenly, shivering with a fright which I knew was out of
all reason but which for the life of me I could not keep down.
And so the night wore away: while I stood there on the galleon's poop
with the soft pale flames flickering around me in the mist, and my
fears rising and falling as I lost and regained control of myself; and
I think that it is a wonder that I did not go mad.
XXVII
I SET MYSELF TO A HEAVY TASK
At last, after what seemed to me an age of waiting for it, a little
pinkish tone began to glow in the mist to the eastward; and as that
honest light got stronger the death-fires on the old galleon and on
the wrecks around her paled quickly until they were snuffed out
altogether--and then came the customary morning down-pour of rain.
With the return of the blessed daylight, and with the enlivening douse
of cool fresh water upon me, I got to be myself again: my fanciful
fears of the night-time leaving me, and my mind coming back soberly to
a consideration of my actual needs. Of these the most pressing, as my
stomach told me, was to get my breakfast; and when that matter, in a
very poor way, had been attended to, and I had drunk what water I
needed--without much relishing it--from a pool that had formed on the
deck where the timbers sagged down a little, I was in better heart to
lay out for myself a plan of campaign.
In one way planning was not necessary. By holding to a northerly
course I believed that I had got at least half way across my
continent, and my determination was fixed to keep on by the
north--rather than risk a fresh departure that might only carry me by
a fresh way again into the depths of the tangle--until I should come
once more to the open sea: if I may call open sea that far outlying
expanse of ocean covered with thick-grown weed. But it was needful
that I should plan for my supply of food as I went onward, that was to
be got only by returning to the far-away barque; and also I felt an
itching desire--as strong as at first blush it was unreasonable--to
carry away with me some part of the treasure that I had found. That I
ever should get out into the world again, and so have the good of my
riches, seemed likely to me only in my most sanguine moments; but even
on the slimmest chance of accomplishing my own deliverance I had a
very natural human objection to leaving behind me the wealth that I
had found through such peril--only to lie there for a while longer
idly, and then to be lost forever when the galleon sank to the bottom
of the sea.
As to the gold, it was plain that I could carry off so little of it
that I might as well resign myself--having that which was better worth
working for--to losing it all. But my treasure of jewels was another
matter. This was so very much more valuable than the gold--for the
stones for the most part were of a prodigious size and a rare
fineness--that between the two there really was no comparison; and at
the same time it was so compact in bulk and so petty in weight that I
might easily carry the whole of it with me and a good store of food
too. And so, to make a beginning, I picked the stones out of the slimy
and stinking ooze in which they were lying and washed them clean in
the pool of water on the deck; and then I packed them snugly into the
shirt-sleeve in which my beans had been stored--and tickled myself the
while with the fancy that most men would be willing for the sake of
stuffing a shirt-sleeve that way to cut off the arm to which
it belonged.
My packing being finished, and my precious bag laid away in a corner
of the cabin until I should come to fetch it again, I was in a better
mood for facing my long march back to the barque: for I had come to
have fortune as well as life to work for, and those two strong
stimulants to endeavor working together gave my spirits a great upward
pull. And, fortunately, my cheerfulness staid by me through my long
scrambling struggle backward along my blazed path; nor was it, in
reality, as hard a journey as I had expected it to be--for I had but a
light load of food to carry, barely enough to last me through, and the
marks which I had left upon the wrecks in passing made my way plain.
And so, at last, I got back to the barque one evening about sunset,
and had almost a feeling of homecoming in boarding her again; and I
was thankful enough to be able to eat all the supper I wanted, and
then to lie down comfortably in her clean cabin and to rest myself in
sound slumber after my many restless nights on rotten old ships
reeking with a chill dampness that struck into my very bones.
I slept soundly and woke refreshed; and for that I was thankful, since
the work cut out for me--to get back to the galleon with enough
provisions to last me until I could cross the rest of the
wreck-pack--was about as much as a strong man in good condition could
do. However, I had thought of something that would make this hard job
less difficult; for the ease with which I had carried a part of my
food in long narrow bags, sausage-fashion--thereby getting rid of
both the weight and the awkwardness of the tins--had put into my head
the notion of carrying in that way the whole of my fresh supply, and
so carrying at least twice as much of it. And I calculated--since I
could go rapidly along my blazed path--that by cutting myself down to
very short rations I could get back to the galleon with a bigger stock
of provisions than that with which I left the barque when I made my
first start toward the north--and if the galleon lay, as I believed
that she did, about in the centre of the pack, this would give me
enough food to last me until I got across to the other side. So I
rummaged out some more of the linen shirts that I had found--taking a
fresh one for my own wear to begin with--and set myself to my
sausage-making with the sleeves of them; packing each sleeve with
beans as tight as I could ram it, and working over each a netting of
light line that I finished off with loops at the ends. Ten of my big
sausages I made into a bundle to be carried on my shoulders like a
knapsack; and the rest I arranged to swing by their loops from a rope
collar about my neck, with another rope run through the lower loops to
be made fast about my waist and so hold them steady--and this
arrangement, as I found when I tried it, answered very well. And
finally, that I might carry my jewels the more securely, I cut off a
sleeve from the oil-skin jacket to serve for an outer casing for them,
and took along also some of the light line to net over the bundle and
make it solid and strong; in that way guarding against the chance of
their rubbing a hole in their linen covering--by which I might have
lost them all.
I worked fast over my packing, and got it all finished and was ready
to start away by not a great while after sunrise; yet when the time
for my start came I hesitated a little, so darkly uncertain seemed the
issue of the adventure that I had in hand. Indeed, the whole of my
project was a wild one, such as no man not fairly driven into it
would have entertained at all. Its one certainty was that only by
excessive toil could I even hope to carry it through. All else was
doubtful: for I knew not how distant were the farther bounds of the
desolate dead region into which I was bent upon penetrating; nor had I
ground for believing--since I had food in plenty where I was--that I
would gain anything by traversing it; and back of all that was the
gloomy chance of some accident befalling me that would end in my dying
miserably by the way. While I was busily employed in making ready for
my march I had grown quite cheerful; but suddenly my little crop of
good spirits withered within me, and when at last I did go forward it
was with a very heavy heart.
XXVIII
HOW I RUBBED SHOULDERS WITH DESPAIR
Could I have foreseen all that was ahead of me I doubt if I should
have had the courage to go on: choosing rather to stay there on the
barque until I had eaten what food I had by me, and then to die
slowly--and finding that way easier than the one I chose to follow,
with its many days of struggle and its many chill nights of sorrow and
I throughout the whole of it rubbing shoulders with despair.
As I think of it now, that long, long march seems to me like a
horrible nightmare; and sometimes it comes back to me as a real
nightmare in my dreams. Again, always heavy laden, I am climbing and
scrambling and jumping, endlessly and hopelessly, among old rotten
hulks; each morning trying to comfort myself with the belief that by
night I may see some sign of ships less ancient, and so know that I am
winning my way a little toward where I would be; and each night
finding myself still surrounded by tall antique craft such as have not
for two centuries and more held the seas, with the feeling coming down
crushingly upon me that I have not advanced at all; and even then no
good rest for me--as I lie down wearily in some foul-smelling old
cabin, chill with heavy night-mist and with the reeking damp of oozy
rotten timbers, and perhaps find in it for my sleeping-mates little
heaps of fungus outgrowing from dead men's bones. And the mere dream
of all this so bitterly hurts me that I wonder how I ever came through
the reality of it alive.
At the start, as I have said, I had calculated that the treasure-laden
galleon lay about in the centre of the wreck-pack, and therefore that
I would get across from her to the other side of the pack in about the
same time that I had taken to reach her in my first journey from the
barque; and on the basis of that assumption, when I was come to her
again, I shaped my course hopefully for the north. But my calculation,
though on its face a reasonable enough one, proved to be most woefully
wrong: and I have come to the conclusion, after a good deal of
thinking about it, that this was because the whole vast mass of
wreckage had a circular motion--the great current that created it
giving at the same time a swirl to it--which made the seemingly
straight line that I followed in reality a constantly extended curve.
But whatever the cause may have been, the fact remains that when by my
calculation I should have been on the outer edge of the wreck-pack I
still was wandering in its depths. In one way my march was easier the
longer that it lasted, my load growing a little lighter daily as my
store of food was transferred to my stomach from my back. At first
this steady decrease of my burden was a comfort to me; but after a
while--when more than half of it was gone, and I still seemed to be no
nearer to the end of my journey than when I left the galleon--I had a
very different feeling about it: for I realized that unless I came
speedily to ships whereon I would find food--of which there seemed
little probability, so ancient were the craft surrounding me--I either
must go back to the barque and wait on her until death came to me
slowly, or else die quickly where I was. And so I had for my
comforting the option of a tardy death or a speedy one--with the
certainty of the latter if I hesitated long in choosing between
the two.
I suppose that the two great motive powers in the world are hope and
despair. It was hope that started me on that dismal march, but if
despair had not at last come in to help me I never should have got to
its end: for I took Death by both shoulders and looked straight into
the eyes of him when I decided, having by me only food for three days
longer--and at that but as little as would keep the life in me--to
give over all thought of returning to the barque and to make a dash
forward as fast as I could go. I had little enough to carry, but
that I might have still less I left my hatchet behind me--having,
indeed, no farther use for it since if my dash miscarried I was done
for and there was no use in marking a path over which I never could
return; and I was half-minded to leave my bag of jewels behind me too.
But in the end I decided to carry the jewels along with me--my fancy
being caught by the grim notion that if I did die miserably in that
vile solitude at least I would die one of the richest men in all the
world. As to my water-bottles, one of them I had thrown away when I
found that I could count on the morning showers certainly, and the
other had been broken in one of my many tumbles: yet without much
troubling me--as I found that I could manage fairly well, eating but
little, if I filled myself pretty full of water at the beginning of
each day. And so, with only the bag of food and the bag of jewels upon
my back, and with the compass on top of them, I was ready to press
onward to try conclusions with despair.
The very hopelessness of my effort, and the fact that at last I was
dealing with what in one way was a certainty--for I knew that if my
plan miscarried I had only a very little while longer to live--gave me
a sort of stolid recklessness which amazingly helped me: stimulating
me to taking risks in climbing which before I should have shrunk
from, and so getting me on faster; and at the same time dulling my
mind to the dreads besetting it and my body to its ceaseless pains
begot of weariness and thirst and scanty food. So little, indeed, did
I care what became of me that even when by the middle of my second
day's march I saw no change in my surroundings I did not mind it much:
but, to be sure, at the outset of this last stage of my journey I had
thrown hope overboard, and a man once become desperate can feel no
farther ills.
But what does surprise me--as I think of it now, though it did not in
any way touch me then--was the slowness with which, when there was
reason for it, my dead hope got alive again: as it did, and for cause,
at the end of that same second day--for by the evening I came out,
with a sharp suddenness, from among the strange old craft which for so
long on every side had beset me and found myself among ships which by
comparison with the others--though they too, in all conscience, were
old enough--seemed to be quite of a modern build. What is likely, I
think--and this would help to account for my long wanderings over
those ancient rotten hulks--is that some stormy commotion of the whole
mass of wreckage, such as had thrust the barque whereon I had found
food deep into the thick of it, had squeezed a part of the centre of
the pack outward; in that way making a sort of promontory--along
which by mere bad mischance I had been journeying--among the wrecks of
a later time. But this notion did not then occur to me; nor did I, as
I have said, at first feel any very thrilling hope coming back to me
when I found myself among modern ships again--so worn had my long
tussle with difficulties left my body and so sodden was my mind.
At first I had just a dull feeling of satisfaction that I had got once
more--after my many nights passed on hulks soaked with wet to
rottenness--on good honest dry planks: where I could sleep with no
deadly chill striking into me, and where in my restless wakings I
should not see the pale gleam of death-fires, and where foul stenches
would not half stifle me the whole night long. And it was not until I
had eaten my scant supper, and because of the comfort that even that
little food gave me felt more disposed to cheerfulness, that in a weak
faint-hearted way I began to hope again that perhaps the run of luck
against me had come to an end.
In truth, though, there was not much to be hopeful about. For my
supper I had eaten the half of what food was left me, and it was so
little that I still had a mighty hungry feeling in my belly after it
was down. For my breakfast I should eat what was left; and after that,
unless I found fresh supplies quickly, I was in a fair way to lie down
beside my bag of jewels and die of starvation--like the veriest
beggar that ever was. But I did hope a little all the same; and when I
went on again the next morning, though my last scrap of food was
eaten, my spirits kept up pretty well--for I was sure from the look of
the wrecks which I traversed that the dead ancient centre of my
continent at last was behind me, and that its living outer fringe
could not be very far away.
All that day I pressed forward steadily, helped by my little
flickering flame of hope--which burned low because sanguine
expectation does not consort well with an empty stomach, yet which
kept alive because the wreck-pack had more and more of a modern look
about it as I went on. But the faintness that I felt coming over me as
the day waned gave me warning that the rope by which I held my life
was a short one; and as the sun dropped down into the mist--at once
thinning it, so that I could see farther, and giving it a ruddy tone
which sent red streams of brightness gleaming over the tangle of
wreckage far down into the west--I felt that the rope must come to an
end altogether, and that I must stop still and let death overtake me,
by the sunset of one day more.
And then it was, just as the sun was sinking, that I saw clearly--far
away to the westward--the funnel of a steamer standing out black and
sharp against the blood-red ball that in another minute went down
into the sea. And with that glimpse--which made me sure that I was
close to the edge of the wreck-pack, and so close to food again--a
strong warm rush of hope swept through me that outcast finally my
despair.
XXIX
I GET INTO A SEA CHARNEL-HOUSE
That I should get to the steamer that night I knew was clean
impossible, for she lay a long way off from me, and that I had seen
her funnel at all was due to the mere happy accident of its standing
for that single minute directly between me and the setting sun. I did
hope, though, that by pressing hard toward her I might fetch aboard of
some vessel not long wrecked on which I would find eatable food; yet
in this I was disappointed, the shadows coming down on me so fast that
I was forced in a little while to pull up short--stopping while still
a little daylight remained so that I might stow myself the more
comfortably for the night.
As to looking for provender on the little old ship that I settled to
camp on, I knew that it was useless. From her build I fixed her as
belonging to the beginning of the present century, and from her depth
in the wreck-pack she probably had met her death-storm not less than
threescore years before; and so what provisions she had carried long
since had wasted away. Yet there was a chance that I might find some
spirits aboard of her--which would be a poor substitute for food, but
better than nothing--and I hurried to have a look in her cabin before
darkness settled down.
The cabin hatch was closed, and as it was both locked and swelled with
moisture I could not budge it; but two or three kicks sent the doors
beneath the hatch flying and so opened an entrance for me--that I was
slow to make use of because of a heavy musty stench which poured out
from that shut up place and made me turn a little sick, as I got my
first strong whiff of it. Indeed, I was so faint and so hungry that I
was in no condition to stand up against that curiously vile smell. To
lessen it, by getting a current of air into the cabin, I smashed in
the little skylight--over which some ropes were stretched and still
held the remnant of a tarpaulin, that must have been set in place
while the storm was blowing which sent the ship to her account; and
this so far improved matters that presently I was able to go down the
companion-way, though the stench still was horridly strong.
At the bottom of the stair, the light being faint, I tripped over
something; and looking down saw bones lying there with a sort of
fungus partly covering them, and to the skull there still clung a mat
of woolly hair plaited here and there into little braids: by which,
and by the size of the bones, it seemed that a negro woman must have
been left fastened into the cabin to die there after the crew had
been washed overboard or had taken to the boats. But even then the
business in which the ship had been engaged did not occur to me; and
after hesitating for a moment I went on into the cabin, and looked
about me as well as I could in the twilight for the case of bottles
that I hoped to find.
The case was there, as I was pretty certain that it would be, such
provision rarely being absent from old-time vessels, but all the
bottles had been taken from it except an empty one--which looked as
though the cabin had been opened at the last moment to fetch out
supplies for the boats, and then deliberately locked fast again with
the poor woman inside: an act so barbarous that it did not seem
possible unless a crew of out and out devils had been in charge of the
ancient craft. However, the matter which just then most concerned me
was the liquor that I was in search of, that I might a little stay my
stomach with it against the hunger that was tormenting me; and so I
ransacked the lockers that ran across the stern of the ship and across
a part of the bulkhead forward, in the faint hope that I might come
upon another supply--but my search was a vain one, two of the lockers
having only some mouldy clothing in them, and all the rest being
filled with arms. The stock of muskets and pistols and cutlasses was
so large, so far beyond any honest traders needs, that I could not at
all account for it: until the thought occurred to me that the vessel
I had come aboard of had been a pirate--and that notion seemed to fit
in pretty well with her crew having gone off and left the poor woman
locked up in the cabin to starve. However, as I found out a little
later, while my guess was a close one it still was wrong.
The four bunks, two on each side, were not enclosed, and the only door
opening from the cabin was in the bulkhead forward--and worth trying
because it might lead to a store-room, I thought. It was a very
stout-looking door, and across it, resting in strong iron catches,
were two heavy wooden bars. These puzzled me a good deal, there being
no sense in barring the outside of a store-room door in that fashion,
since the door did not seem to be locked and anybody could lift the
bars away. However, I got them out of their sockets without much
difficulty; and after a good deal of tugging at a ring made fast in it
I got the door open too--and instantly I was thrust back from the
opening by an outpouring of the same vile heavy musty stench that had
come up from the cabin when I staved in the hatch, only this was still
ranker and more vile. And I found that the door did not lead into a
little store-room, as I had fancied, but right through from the cabin
to the ship's main-deck--that stretched away forward in a gloomy
tunnel, as black as a cellar on a rainy night, into which I could
see only for four or five yards. Indeed, but for the way that the ship
chanced to be lying--with her stern toward the west, so that a good
deal of light came in through the broken skylight from the ruddy
sunset--I could not have seen into it at all.
But I saw far enough, and more than far enough--and the sight that I
looked on sent all over me a creeping chill. Wherever the light went,
skeletons were lying--with a fungus growth on the bones that gave a
horrid effect of scraps of flesh still clinging to them, and the
loose-lying skulls (of which a couple were close by the doorway) were
covered still with a matting of woolly hair. And I could tell from the
tangle that the skeletons were in--though also lying in some sort of
orderly rows, because of the chains which held them fast--that the
poor wretches to whom they had belonged had writhed and struggled over
each other in their agony: and I could fancy what a hell that black
place must have been while death was doing his work among them, they
all squirming together like worms in a pot; and it seemed to me that I
could hear their yells and howls--at first loud and terrible, and then
growing fainter and fainter until they came to be but low groans of
misery that at last ended softly in dying sighs.