The first copy of this appeal was dispatched that very day, by the
simple process of wrapping it carefully in oiled silk, inserting it in
an empty bottle, which was tightly corked and sealed, and heaving it
overboard to take its chance. As I stood watching the bottle's progress
I was gratified to see that there was a one-knot current setting across
the reef, which I hoped would carry it clear into the open sea; though
whether it would ever be found by anyone capable of making intelligent
use of it was quite another matter. The chances of it being seen were
small, and of its recovery still less. But I determined to increase
both before dispatching the next message; and this I did by routing out
some paint and setting the boy Julius to the task of painting a number
of bottles all over in alternate bands of red and white. An ordinary
floating bottle might be seen and passed without the smallest effort to
pick it up, even though all the conditions for recovery should be
favourable. But I argued that if a bottle were seen bearing
distinguishing marks that were obviously put upon it with the object of
attracting attention, the person sighting it might reasonably conclude
that it would be worth while to salve it and ascertain its contents.
If the sight of our first call for help drifting placidly seaward across
the lagoon was an agreeable sight, there was another which appeared
later on that was by no means so agreeable--the dorsal fins of several
sharks cruising lazily here and there about the lagoon. I thought I
could make a pretty shrewd guess at the meaning of their presence there,
I therefore devised a number of pretexts for keeping everybody off the
poop, so that there might be as little chance as possible of anyone
beholding the gruesome sight.
There were so many matters demanding immediate attention that it was
difficult to determine which of them should first be taken in hand. But
as the weather was fine, and the barometer stood high, exhibiting a
tendency to rise still higher and thus promising a continuance of fine
weather, it was agreed that, for health's sake, the living quarters
should be cleared of water and thoroughly aired and made wholesome first
of all. This was accordingly done, the task keeping us all busily
employed for the best part of three days. Then provision had to be made
against the further flooding of Mrs Vansittart's cabin and the
drawing-room by rain, for, as has already been mentioned, the skylights
and companion had been swept away, and the corresponding apertures in
the deck were quite open and unprotected.
Very fortunately, a large quantity of timber scantling and planking of
various kinds and dimensions had been shipped by our far-seeing owner,
for the purpose of effecting repairs at sea, if required. As soon as
the cabins had been cleared of water, therefore, some of this timber was
brought on deck; and with the aid of the carpenter's tools, Julius and I
proceeded to plank over the openings, and make them weather-proof by
covering the planking with tarpaulins tightly nailed over them.
When I first invited the boy to help me he refused point-blank, upon two
distinct pleas: the first of which was that he saw no reason why he
should work at all, seeing that I was there to do what needed to be
done; while, in the second place, if he chose to work at all he would do
only such work as he pleased, and in any case was not going to be
ordered about by any darned Britisher. So I just let him severely
alone, and for the first day he loafed about, smoking cigarettes and
pretending to fish in the troubled water over the side.
When, however, on the second day, seeing that I needed help, his mother
and sister came to my assistance, the sight of them working while he
idled was too much for even his spoiled and selfish temper; and with
many grumblings and mutterings below his breath he ordered his mother
away and took her place. But so intractable was he, so unwilling to
receive the slightest suggestion or hint from a "darned Britisher", and
so determined to do things his own way or not at all, that eventually I
had to tell him plainly he must consent to do as he was told, or drop
work altogether. Finally he gave in, mainly in consequence of his
sister's outspoken comments upon his behaviour, but it was with a very
bad grace.
Having made the living quarters of the ship once more habitable and safe
against bad weather, the next task undertaken was the salving of the
sails and as many of the spars and as much of the rigging as possible.
This was a lengthy and heavy job, in the performance of which it became
necessary for me to be frequently over the side, in the water, cutting
the sails from the yards and stays, clearing and unreeving rigging, and
so on. It would have been exceedingly dangerous had the sharks which I
had seen during the first few days remained in the lagoon; but they
seemed to have gone again, for I saw nothing of them.
Although their absence enabled me to work with the utmost freedom, I
could not make very rapid headway, single-handed, in the water; while
the hoisting inboard of the heavier spars and sails, assisted though we
were with such appliances as a derrick, tackles, snatch-blocks, and the
winch, taxed our energies to the very utmost. It was done at last,
however, and most thankful was I when the last spar it was possible for
us to secure came up over the side; for not only had we saved a
considerable quantity of material that might possibly prove of the
utmost value to us, but we had also rid ourselves of the menace of
having the ship holed by the wreckage bumping alongside.
This big task was completed exactly six weeks from the day upon which
the wreck had occurred, all of us working strenuously from dawn to dark
day after day, excepting Sundays, which Mrs Vansittart insisted should
be observed as days of rest, during which she conducted a service,
morning and evening, in the drawing-room. Christmas Day, which occurred
three weeks after the wreck, was also observed as a holiday; and despite
our forlorn and rather precarious situation, we contrived to make a
fairly jolly day of it, the only discordant element being the boy
Julius, who early became sulky for some unaccountable reason, and spent
the entire day upon the topgallant forecastle with a rifle, shooting at
sea-birds and wasting some two hundred rounds of ball cartridge. I felt
strongly inclined several times to take the rifle forcibly from him, but
the mere hint of such a thing seemed to distress his mother so keenly
that I did not refer to it a second time. Yet I must confess that I
bitterly begrudged the utterly useless expenditure of so many good and,
in our case, valuable cartridges.
Now, it must not be supposed that, in our anxiety to recover as much
wreckage as possible, we forgot to keep a diligent look-out for passing
ships, for we did not. Nor did we neglect to dispatch a copy of our
appeal for help, securely sealed up in a bottle, regularly every day.
But thus far the horizon had remained blank while daylight lasted;
therefore if perchance any ships had passed us, they must have done so
during the night. Up to this we had all been working so hard that we
had deemed it hardly worth while to sacrifice our hours of rest for the
very doubtful advantage of maintaining a night watch; but with the
conclusion of what we considered our heaviest task, so far as actual
labour was concerned, we decided that it might be of advantage to keep a
look-out at night time, at least during the moonlit nights. We should
then be able to see a passing ship at such a distance as would enable us
to attract her attention by means of a flare. Accordingly it was
arranged that four of us, namely, Julius, the two stewardesses, and I,
should each take one watch in succession.
In that latitude, which was only a few degrees north of the Line, day
and night were approximately of equal length, and for all practical
purposes the night might be reckoned as beginning at six p.m., and
ending at six a.m. Therefore if each of us kept a watch of three hours,
we should cover the twelve hours between us. But by this arrangement
the same person would keep one particular watch every night, and, of
course, the least arduous of the watches would be that from six o'clock
to nine o'clock p.m.; I therefore decided to split this watch into two
dog-watches of one and a half hours each, by which arrangement the
regularity would be broken, and each of us would get the benefit of the
first dog-watch in succession, which seemed to be not only a fair but a
desirable thing.
To keep a night watch, however, without possessing the means to attract
the notice of a passing ship, would be useless. I therefore constructed
a sort of framework consisting of four twelve-foot planks, which I set
up on edge in the form of a square enclosure on the after extremity of
the poop, securing them firmly to the deck planking by means of battens.
The planks were nine inches wide, consequently when my work was
complete I had a kind of open box twelve feet square and nine inches
deep in which to light my flare. But something was needed to protect
the deck from the action of the fire; my next act, therefore, was to
nail together a sort of light raft, consisting of six fifteen-foot
planks laid side by side and secured to each other by cross battens, the
forward ends being bevelled to reduce the resistance to the raft's
passage through the water. Then I fixed up an arrangement on each side
of the raft whereby, with the aid of rowlocks, I could work a pair of
sculls and so propel the raft through the water. This job took me two
days to complete, but when it was done I had a raft that would sustain
not only my own weight but something to spare. I placed upon it a
couple of wash-deck tubs, put a shovel in one of them, and paddled
myself ashore to the small sandbank about half a mile away.
As I rowed away from the wreck, standing up to my work and facing
forward, fisherman fashion, I took a rather wide sweep, whereby I was
enabled to obtain a good view of her. A pitiful sight she presented,
bereft of her three masts, with her jib-boom snapped short off, odds and
ends of rigging trailing overboard, a great gap in her starboard
bulwarks, and the fair whiteness of her hull disfigured here and there
with rust streaks. She sat with a list to starboard, and was a trifle
down by the head, from which latter circumstance I concluded that her
forefoot and bottom forward were the most seriously damaged parts of
her, as, indeed, it was only reasonable to suppose, seeing that she must
have hit the reef stem-on. But, oh! it was distressing to look at that
still beautiful though dishevelled hull and reflect that she had been
brought to her present lamentable condition by pure negligence.
The raft travelled more easily through the water than I had dared to
hope, and in about a quarter of an hour I reached the sandbank and
sprang ashore, taking the precaution to secure the raft by a painter
made fast to one of the oars, the loom of which I drove well into the
sand. Then I walked to the highest point of the bank and looked about
me.
With the exception of a few bunches of dry and rotting seaweed, the bank
was as bare as the back of my hand, but a colony of gulls had settled
upon it, and by their cries indicated the resentment which they felt at
my intrusion. I looked round to see if I could discover any eggs, for
fresh gulls' eggs are not at all bad eating, and would perhaps afford a
welcome change of diet to the women folk; but I found none, so concluded
that it was not just then the season for them. The bank measured, by
pacing, a little over eighty yards long by some forty broad; and I
diligently examined the seaward side of it to see whether perchance
there might be a spring of fresh water gushing out of it. I hardly
expected that there would be, and was therefore not greatly disappointed
at failing to find any such thing. But I found the margin liberally
strewed with small shellfish, as well as with numerous empty shells,
some of which were so exquisite, both in form and in colouring, that I
could not resist the temptation to waste a few minutes in securing
specimens of the most beautiful for the delectation of Mrs Vansittart
and her daughter. This done, I returned to the raft, hauled it
broadside on to the beach, and proceeded to fill my two wash-deck tubs
with sand, with which I designed to fill my square box-like arrangement
on the poop as a protection for the deck from the flames of my projected
flare. Needless to say, two tubs of sand did not go very far toward
filling the box, and it was not until the following evening that I had
everything ready. Then, with a goodly pile of combustibles, consisting
of dry seaweed, chips, kindling wood, and coal, heaped up in the middle
of my sandbox, I had everything ready for lighting a flare at a moment's
notice.
Our most pressing necessities having been attended to, I found time to
attend to the matter which seemed to come next in importance. Hitherto
we had been favoured with the finest of fine weather--nothing but the
bluest of skies, often without the smallest shred of cloud, no rain, and
only the most gentle of zephyrs. But I knew that such a condition of
things could not last for ever. A change must inevitably come sooner or
later; and if that change should chance to take the form of a gale from
the southward, I had scarcely a shadow of doubt that, unless it should
happen to be of the very briefest character, the wreck would go to
pieces under our feet. Therefore it seemed to me that the task which
now clamoured most loudly for our immediate attention was the
construction of a craft of some sort which would enable us to escape in
the last resort.
Now, there are very few tasks in connection with his craft which
mercantile Jack cannot perform in a more or less efficient manner. He
can unrig his ship, and rig her afresh. If any of her spars should be
sprung, he can fix them up in such a fashion that they will serve their
purpose very well until a new spar can be procured. He can knot and
splice rigging; he can patch or rope a sail; and there are a thousand
other things that he can do very deftly. But there is one thing which
he cannot do, unless he has served an apprenticeship, or at least part
of an apprenticeship to it, and that is--build a boat. He can repair a
damaged boat, I grant you, put in a new plank, or replace a damaged
timber. But to build a boat, as we understand the term, is altogether
beyond him. The best that he can do is to construct some sort of a
makeshift; and the problem that now confronted me was, what form was my
makeshift to take?
First, what were my requirements? If it came to our being obliged to
abandon the wreck, either through stress of weather or because of a
conviction that our appeals for help had gone astray and that we must
give up all hope of rescue and effect our own deliverance, it would mean
a boat voyage. This in its turn would mean that the craft must be a
good sea boat, capable of facing any weather, weatherly, a reasonably
good sailer, and big enough to accommodate six people--four of whom were
women, whose comfort and welfare must receive special consideration--
together with a stock of provisions and water sufficient to last us all
for, say, five weeks at least. I had already discussed this matter with
Mrs Vansittart, and she had expressed a determination to try for
Manila, in such a case, that being an American possession. Secondly,
had we the materials, and had I the skill and strength to build such a
boat, with such assistance as my companions could afford me? That was
the question which now demanded an answer, and, in consultation with
Mrs Vansittart, I now diligently proceeded to seek the reply.