I found the cabin in utter wreck: littered everywhere with broken glass and broken wood from the skylight, and from the smashed hanging-racks and the smashed dining-table, and with splinters from the mast—which had broken in falling, and along the whole length of the place had made a tangle of its own fragments and of the ropes and blocks which had held its sails. Of the sails themselves there were left only some fuzzy traces clinging to the bolt-ropes, all the rest having been blown loose and frayed away by the storm. Oddly enough, some of the drinking-glasses still remained unbroken in one of the racks, and with them a bottle partly filled with wine—to the neck of which a card was fastened bearing the name, Jose Rubio y Salinas, of the passenger to whom it had belonged. I took the liberty of drinking a glass of Don Jose's wine—feeling sure that he was not coming back to claim it—and felt so much better after it that I thanked him cordially for leaving it there.

Most of the state-room doors stood open, showing within clothing tossed about and trunks with their lids turned back, and the general confusion in which the passengers had left things when they scrambled together their most precious belongings and rushed for the boats—with death, as they fancied, treading close upon their heels. But with what remained in the state-rooms I did not concern myself, being desirous first of all to get on deck and have a look about me that I might size up my chances of keeping alive. That there was no companion-way up from the cabin puzzled me a little, for I knew nothing of the internal arrangements of steamships; but presently I found a passage leading forward, and by that I came to the stair to the deck of which I was in search.

Up it I went, but when I fairly got outside and saw the desperate state of the craft that I was afloat on my heart sank. Indeed, it seemed a flying in the face of all reason that such an utter wreck should float at all. Of the foremast nothing but the splintered stump remained. The starboard rail, which had been to windward of it, was gashed by chance axe-blows made in cutting away the shrouds; and as to the port rail, twenty feet of it was gone entirely where the mast had come crashing down, while the side-plates below were bulged out with the strain put upon them before the standing-rigging fastened there had fetched away. The mizzen-mast lay aft across the cabin skylight, with its standing and running rigging making a tangle on each side of it. The main-mast still stood, but with its top-mast broken off and dangling nearly to the deck. Two of the weather-boats remained fast to the davits, but so smashed that they looked like battered tin wash-basins, and would have floated just about as well. All the other boats were gone: those on the weather side, as the splintered ways and broken ropes showed, having been washed overboard; and those to leeward having been hoisted out by the tackles, which still hung from the davits and dipped lazily with the ship's easy motion into the sea.

All this was bad enough, but what most took the spirit out of me was the way that the ship was lying—her stern high up in the air, and her bow so deep in the water that the sea came up almost to her main-mast along her sloping deck. It seemed inevitable that in another moment she would follow her nose in the start downward that it had made and go straight to the bottom; and each little wave, as it lapped its way aft softly, made me fancy that the plunge had begun.

As to the outlook around me, the only comfort that I got from it was the fairness of the weather and the smoothness of the sea. For close upon the water a soft haze was hanging that even to the north, out of which blew a gentle wind, brought the horizon within a mile of me; and down to leeward the haze was banked so thick that I could make out nothing beyond half a mile. And so, even though a whole fleet might be passing near me, my chances of rescue were very small. But from the look of the ocean I knew that no fleets were likely to be thereabouts, and that even though the haze lifted I might search long and vainly for sight of so much as a single sail. As far as I could see around me the water was covered thickly with gulf-weed, and with this was all sorts of desolate flotsam—planks, and parts of masts, and fragments of ships' timbers—lolling languidly on the soft swell that was running, yet each scrap having behind it its own personal tragedy of death and storm. And this mess of wreckage was so much thicker than I had seen when the brig was on the coast—as Bowers had called it—of the Sargasso Sea as to convince me that already I must be within the borders of that ocean mystery which a little while before I had been so keen for exploring; and my fate seemed sealed to me as I realized that I therefore was in a region which every living ship steered clear of, and into which never any but dead ships came.



X

I TAKE A CHEERFUL VIEW OF A BAD SITUATION

When I perceived the tight fix that I was in my broken head went to throbbing again, and my legs were so shaky under me that I had to sit down on the deck in a hurry in order to save myself from a fall. Indeed, I was in no condition to face even an ordinary trouble, let alone an overwhelming disaster; for what with my loss of blood from the cut on my head, and the little food I had eaten since I got it, I was as weak as a cat.

Luckily I had the sense to realize that I needed the strength which food would give me in order to save myself from dropping off into sheer despair. And with the thought of eating there suddenly woke up in my inside a hungry feeling that surprised me by its sharpness; and instantly put such vigor into my shaky legs that I was up on them in a moment, and off to the companion-way to begin my explorations below. And when, being come to the cabin again, I had another sup of Don Jose's wine I got quite ravenous, and felt strong enough to kick a door in—if that should be necessary—in order to satisfy my craving for food.

There was no need for staving in doors, for none of them was fastened; but it was some little time—because of my ignorance of the arrangement of steamships—before I could find one that had things to eat on the other side of it. Around the cabin, and along the passage leading forward, were only state-rooms; but just beyond the companion-way I came at last to the pantry—and beyond this again, as I found later, were the store-rooms and the galley. For the moment, however, the pantry gave me all that I wanted. In a covered box I found some loaves of bread, and in a big refrigerator a lot of cold victuals that set my eyes to dancing—two or three roast fowls, part of a big joint of beef, a boiled tongue, and so on; and, what was almost as welcome, in another division of the refrigerator a dozen or more bottles of beer. On the racks above were dishes and glasses, in a locker were knives and forks, and I even found hanging on a hook a corkscrew—and the quickness with which I brought these various things together and made them serve my purposes was a sight to see!

When I had eaten nearly a whole fowl, and had drunk a bottle of beer with it, I felt like another man; and then, pursuing my investigations more leisurely, I found in one of the lockers—which I took the liberty of prying open with a big carving-knife—four or five boxes of capital cigars. In the same locker was a package of safety-matches, and in a moment I was puffing away with such satisfaction that I fairly grew light-hearted—so great is the comfort that comes to a man with good smoking on top of a hearty meal. All sorts of bright fancies came to me: of making one of the battered boats serviceable again and getting off in it, of a ship blown out of her course coming to my rescue, of a strong southerly wind that would carry the hulk of the poor old Hurst Castle back again into the inhabited parts of the sea. And with these thoughts cheering me I set myself to work to find out just what I had in the way of provisions aboard my shattered craft.

I did not have to search far nor long to satisfy myself that I had a bigger stock of food by me than I could eat in a dozen years. Forward of the galley were the store-rooms: a cold-room, with a plenty of ice still in it, in which was hanging a great quantity of fresh meat; a wine-room, very well stocked and containing also some cases of tobacco and cigars; and in the other rooms was stuff enough to fit up a big grocery shop on shore—hams and bacon and potted meats, and a great variety of vegetables in tins, and all sorts of sweets and sauces and table-delicacies in tins and in glass. Indeed, although I was full to the chin with the meal that I had just eaten, my mouth fairly watered at sight of all these good things. In the bakery I found only a loaf or two of bread, and this—as it was lying on the floor—I suppose must have been dropped in the scramble while the boats were being provisioned; but in the baker's store-room were a good many cases of fine biscuit, and more than twenty barrels of flour. In addition to all this, I did not doubt that somewhere on board was an equally large store of provisions for the use of the crew; but with that I did not bother myself, being satisfied to fare as a cabin-passenger on the good things which I had found. Finally, two of the big water-tanks still were full—the others, as I inferred from the cocks being open, having been emptied for the supply of the boats; and as a reserve—leaving rain out of the question—I had the ice to fall back upon, of which there was so great a quantity that it alone would last me for a long while. In a word, so far as eating and drinking were concerned, I was as well off as a man could be anywhere—having by me not only all the necessaries of life but most of its luxuries as well.

Finding all these good things cheered me and put heart in me in much the same way that I was cheered and heartened by finding my floating mast after Captain Luke and the mate chucked me overboard. Again I had the certainty that death for a while could not get a chance at me; and this second reprieve was of a more promising sort than that which my mast had given me in the open sea. On board the steamer, or what was left of her, I was sure of being in positive comfort so long as she floated; and my good spirits made me so sanguine that I was confident she would keep on floating until I struck out some plan by which I could get safe away from her, or until rescue came to me by some lucky turn of chance. And so, having completed my tour of inspection, and my general inventory of the property to which by right of survival I had fallen heir, I went on deck again in a very hopeful mood.

Even the utter wreck and confusion into which the steamer had fallen, when I got to the deck and saw it again, did not crush the hope out of me as it did when I came upon it—being then weak and famished—for the first time. I even found a cause for greater hopefulness in observing that the water-line still stood, as it had stood an hour and more earlier, a little forward of the main-mast; for that showed that the water-tight compartments were holding, and that the hulk was in no immediate danger of going down. It did seem, to be sure, that the haze had grown a little thicker, and that the weed and wreckage around the steamer were thicker too; and I was convinced that my hulk was moving—or that the flotsam about it was moving—by seeing a broken boat floating bottom upward that I was sure was not in sight when I went below. But I argued with myself cheerfully that the thickening of the haze might be due to a wind coming down on me that would blow it clean away; and that a small thing like an empty boat drifting down from windward proved that the Hurst Castle herself was moving southward very slowly, or perhaps was not moving at all. And so, still in good spirits, I set myself to looking carefully for something that would float me, in case I decided to abandon the hulk and make a dash for it—on the chance of falling in with a passing vessel—out over the open sea.

But when I had made the round of the deck—at least of the part of it that was out of water—I had to admit that getting away from the steamer was a sheer impossibility, unless I might manage it by cobbling together some sort of a raft. It had been all very well for me to fancy, while I was being cheered with chicken and beer and tobacco down in the pantry, that I could make one of the battered boats sea-worthy; but my round of the deck showed me that with all my training in mechanics I never could make one of them float again—for the sea had wrenched and hammered them until they were no better than so much old iron. The raft, certainly, was a possibility. Spars that would serve for its body were lying around in plenty, and with the doors from the rooms below I could deck it over so as to make it both solid and dry; and somewhere aboard the ship, no doubt, were carpenter's tools—though, most likely, they were down under water forward and could be come at only by diving for them. Still, the raft was a possibility; and so was comforting to think about as giving me another reprieve from drowning in case the water-tight compartments broke down—and as that break might come at any moment, and as the job would take me two days at the shortest, I realized that I could not set about it too soon.



XI

MY GOOD SPIRITS ARE WRUNG OUT OF ME

But the other chance which I had thought of, that my hulk might be blown clear of the Sargasso Sea and back into the track of trade again, still was to be reckoned with; and to know how that chance was working it was necessary that I should find out my exact position on the ocean, and then check off the changes in it by fresh observations taken from day to day. And as I saw that the sun was close upon the meridian, and no time to waste if I wanted to secure my first noon-sight, I put off beginning my carpentering until I should have hunted for the ship's instruments and got the latitude and longitude that would give me my departure on my drifting voyage.

This was so simple a piece of work that I anticipated no difficulty in executing it. While the low-lying haze narrowed my horizon it did not sufficiently obscure the sun to interfere with sight-taking; I could count upon finding the chronometers still going, they being made to run for fifty-six hours and the ship having been abandoned only the night before; and where I found the chronometers I felt sure that I should find also a sextant and a chart. But when I went at this easy-looking task I was brought up with a round turn: there were no chronometers, there was no sextant, there was no chart of the North Atlantic—there was not even a compass left on board!

It took me some little time to arrive at a certainty in this series of negatives. I fancied—because it had been that way aboard the Golden Hind—that the captain's room would be one of those opening off from the cabin, and so began my search for it in that quarter. But when I had made the round of all the state-rooms I was satisfied that they had been occupied only by passengers. The single timepiece that I found—for the clock in the cabin had been smashed when the mizzen-mast came down—was a fine gold watch lying in one of the berths partly under the pillow, where its owner must have left it in his hurry to get to the boats. It still was going, and I slipped it into my pocket—feeling that a thing with even that much of life in it would be a comfort to me; but the hour that it gave was a quarter past eleven (it having been set to the ship's time the day before, I suppose) and therefore was of no use to me as a basis for sight-taking.

Having exhausted the possibilities of the cabin I concluded that the captain's quarters must have been forward, and so shifted my search to the forward deck-house; and as I found a blue uniform coat and a suit of oil-skins in the first room that I entered I was sure that in a general way I was on the right track. But in none of these rooms did I find what I was looking for—though I did find in one of them, and greatly to my satisfaction, a chest of carpenter's tools and a big box of nails. The nails must have been there by pure accident, but the tools probably were the carpenter's private kit; and as in the course of my farther search I did not come across the ship's carpenter-shop—which no doubt was under water forward—I felt that this chance supply of what I needed for my raft-building was a very lucky thing for me indeed.

The upper story of the deck-house still remained to be investigated; and when, by the steps leading to the steamer's bridge, I got up there and entered a little room behind the wheel-house, I was pretty sure that at last I had found the place where what I wanted ought to be. The part forward of the doors on each side of this room—a good third of it—was filled by a chart-locker having a dozen or more wide shallow drawers; and the flat top of the locker showed at its four corners the prickings of thumb-tacks which had held the charts open there, and four tacks still were in place with scraps of thick white paper under them—as though some one in too great a hurry to loosen it properly had ripped the chart away.

This would be, of course, the chart actually in use when the steamer got into trouble, and therefore the one that I needed. As it was gone, I opened the drawers of the locker and looked through them in search of a duplicate; or of anything—even a wind-chart or a current-chart would have answered—that would serve my turn. But while there were charts in plenty of West Indian and of English waters, and a set covering the German Ocean, not a chart of any sort relating to the North Atlantic did I find. Neither were there chronometers nor any nautical instruments in the room. In one corner was a strongly made closet in which they may have been kept; but of this the door stood open and the shelves were bare. Even a barometer which had hung near the closet had been wrenched away, as I could tell by the broken brass gimbals still fast to the brass supports; but this was a matter of no importance, since I had noticed another in good order in the cabin—to say nothing of the fact that my powerlessness to make any provision against bad weather made me indifferent to warnings of coming storms. And then, when I continued my search in the wheel-house, though not very hopefully, all that I discovered there was that the binnacle was empty and that the compass was gone too. In a word, there was absolutely nothing on board the hulk that would enable me to fix my position on the surface of the ocean, or that would guide me should I try the pretty hopeless experiment of going cruising on a raft.

This fact being settled—and hindsight being clearer than foresight—I had no difficulty in accounting for it. In order to lay a course and to keep it, the people in the boats would need precisely the things which had been carried off; and as each boat no doubt had been furnished so that in case of separation it could make its way alone, a clean sweep had been made of all the North Atlantic charts and of all the nautical instruments that the steamer had on board. It was to the credit of the captain that he had kept his wits so well about him—seeing to it, in the sudden skurry for the boats, that the ultimate as well as the immediate safety of his people was provided for—but when I found out, and fairly realized, what his coolness had cost me I fell off once more from good spirits into gloom.

Being left that way all at loose ends as to my reckoning, with no means of finding out where I was nor whether my position changed for the better from day to day, the hopes that I had been building of drifting northward and so falling in with a passing vessel fell down in a bunch and left me miserable. I see now, though I did not see it then, that they went quite as unreasonably as they came. In that region of calms—for I was fairly within the horse-latitudes—the only bit of wind that I was likely to encounter was an eddy from the northeast trades that would set me still farther to the southward; and the only other moving impulse acting upon my hulk—at least while fair weather lasted—would be the slow eddy setting in from the Gulf Stream and moving me in the same direction. In the case of a storm coming up from the south, and so giving me the push northward that I was so eager for, the chances were a thousand to one that my hulk would go to the bottom long before I could get to a part of the ocean where ships were likely to be. And as to navigating a raft through that tangle of weed, already thick enough around me to check the way of a sharply built boat, the notion was so absurd that only a man in my desperate fix would even have thought about it.

But had there been a Job's comforter at hand to put these black thoughts into my head they would not have helped me nor harmed me much. My whole heart had been set on getting my sights, and filled with the inconsequent hope that in getting them I somehow would be bettering my chances of coming out safe at last; and so it seemed to me when I could not get them—and in this, though the sight-taking had nothing to do with it, there was reason in plenty—that all likelihood of my being rescued had slipped away.

I had come out from the wheel-house and was standing on the steamer's bridge—which rose right out of the water so that I looked down from it directly on the weed-laden sea. As far as my sight would carry through the soft golden haze I saw only weed-covered water, broken here and there by a bit of wreckage or by a little open space on which the pale sunshine gleamed. A very gentle swell was running, giving to the ocean the look of some strange sort of meadow with tall grass swaying evenly in an easy wind. The broken boat had moved a good deal and already was well to the south of me; showing me that there was motion in that apparent stillness, and compelling me to believe that my hulk—though less rapidly than the boat—was moving southward too. And what that meant for me I knew. The fair weather might continue almost indefinitely. Days and weeks, even months, might pass, and I still might live on there in bodily safety; but so far as the world was concerned I was dead already—being fairly caught in the slow eddying current which was carrying my hulk steadily and hopelessly into the dense wreck-filled centre of the Sargasso Sea.



XII

I HAVE A FEVER AND SEE VISIONS

Because I had felt hungry and thirsty, and the cold chicken and beer had tasted good, I had eaten and drunk a great deal more heartily than was wholesome for me—being so weakened by loss of blood, and by the strain put upon me by the danger that I had passed through, and by living only on slops and some scraps of biscuit since my rescue, that my insides were in no condition to deal with such a lot of strong food. And then, within an hour after I so unwisely had stuffed myself, came the blow—in itself hard enough to upset a strong digestion in good working order—of discovering that I could do nothing to save myself, and that my hulk was drifting steadily deeper and deeper into that ocean mystery out of which no man ever yet had come alive.

The first sign that I had that something was going wrong with me was a swimming in my head—so sudden and so violent that I lurched forward and was close to pitching over the rail of the bridge into the sea. For a moment I fancied that the ship had taken a quick plunge; and then a sick feeling in my own stomach, and a blurring of my eyes that made everything seem misty and shadowy, settled for me the fact that it was I who was reeling about and that the ship was still—and I had sense enough to lie down at full length on the bridge, between the wheel-house and the rail, where I was safe against rolling off. And then the shadows about me got deeper and blacker, and a horrible sense of oppression came over me, and I seemed to be falling endlessly while myriads of black specks arranged themselves in curious geometrical figures before my eyes—and then the black specks and everything else vanished suddenly, and my consciousness left me with what seemed to me a great crash and bang.

Had I begun matters by being roundly sick I might have pulled through my attack without being much the worse for it. But as that did not happen—my weakness, I suppose, not giving nature a chance to set things right in her own way—I had a good deal more to suffer before I began to mend. After a while I got enough of my senses back to know that my head was aching as though it would split open, and to realize how utterly miserable I was lying there on the bridge with the hot sunshine simmering down on me through the haze; and then to think how delightful it would be if only I were back in the cabin again—where the sun could not stew me, and where my berth would be easy and soft.

How I managed to get to the cabin I scarcely know. I faintly remember working my way along the bridge on my hands and knees, and going backward down the steps in the same fashion for fear of falling; and of trying to walk upright when I got to the deck, so that I should not get wet above my knees in the water there, and of falling souse into it and getting soaked all over; and then of crawling aft very slowly—stopping now and then because of my pain and dizziness—and down the companion-way and through the passage, and so into the cabin at last; and then, all in my wet clothes, of tumbling anyhow into my berth—and after that there is only a long dead blank.

When I caught up with myself again, night had come and I was in pitch darkness. My head still ached horridly, and I was burning hot all over, and yet from time to time shivering with creeping chills. What I wanted most in the world was a drink of water; but when I tried to get up, in the hope of finding some in the jug that no doubt was in the state-room, I went so dizzy that I had to plump back into my berth again. As the night went on, and I lay there thinking how deliciously the water would taste going cool and sweet down my throat, I got quite crazy with longing for it; and, in a way, really crazy—for through most of the night I was light-headed and saw visions that sometimes comforted me and sometimes made me afraid. The comforting ones were of fresh green meadows with streams running through them, and of shady glens in the woods where springs welled up into little basins surrounded by ferns—just such as I remembered in the woods which bordered the creek where I used to go swimming when I was a boy. The horrible ones were not clear at all, and for that were the more dreadful—being of a fire that was getting nearer and nearer to me, and of a blazing sun that fairly withered me, and of huge hot globes or ponderously vague masses of I knew not what which were coming straight on to crush me and from which I could not get away.

At last I got so worn out with it all that I fell off into an uneasy sleep, which yet was better than no sleep and a little rested me. When I woke again there was enough light in the room for me to see the water-jug, and that gave me strength to get to it—and most blessedly it was nearly full. And so I had a long drink, that for a time checked the heat of my fever; and then I lay down in my berth again, with the jug on the floor at my side.

For a while I was almost comfortable. Then the fever came back, and the visions with it—but no longer so painful as those which had been begotten of my thirst. I seemed to be in a region dreamy and unreal. Sometimes I would see far stretches of mountain peaks, and sometimes the crowded streets of cities; but for the most part my visions were of the sea—tall ships sailing, and little boats drifting over calm water in moonlight, and black steamers gliding quickly past me; and still more frequently, but always in a calm sea, the broken hulks of wrecked ships with shattered masts and tangled rigging and with dead men lying about their decks, and sometimes with a dead man hanging across the wheel and moving a little with the hulk's motion so that in a horrible sort of way he seemed to be half alive.

Night came again, bringing me more pain and the burning of a stronger fever; and then another day, in which the fever rose still higher and the visions became almost intolerable—because of their intense reality, and of my conviction all the while that they were unreal and that I must be well on the way toward a raving madness in which I would die.

It was at the end of this day—or it may have been at the end of still another day, for I have no clear reckoning of how the time passed—that my worst vision came to me; hurting me not because it was terrifying in itself, but because it made me feel that even hope had parted company with me at last. And it was more like a dream than a vision, seemingly being brought to my sight by my own bodily movement—not something which floated before my eyes as I lay still.

As the afternoon went on my fever increased a good deal; but in a way that was rather pleasant to me, for the pain in my head lessened and I seemed to be getting back my strength. After a while I began to long to get out of the cabin and up on deck, and so have a look around me over the open sea; and with my longing came the feeling that I was strong enough to realize it.

My getting up seemed entirely real and natural, as did my firm walking—without a touch of dizziness—after I fairly was on my feet; and all the rest of it seemed real too. Even when I came to the companion-way I seemed to go up the stairs easily, and to step out on the deck as steadily as though I had been entirely well.

The sun was near setting, but as I came on the deck my back was toward the sunset and I saw only its red light touching the soft swell of the weed-covered sea extending far before me, and the same red light shimmering in the mist and caught up more strongly on a bank of low-lying clouds. The outlook was much the same as that which I had had from the bridge, only the weed seemed to be packed more closely and there was wreckage about me everywhere. Masts and spars and planks were in sight in all directions, sometimes floating singly and sometimes tangled together in little heaps; half a mile away was what seemed to be a large ship lying bottom upward; near me was a perfectly sound boat, having in its stern-sheets a bit of sail that fell in such folds as to make me think that a human form lay under it; and off toward the horizon was a large raft, with a sort of mast fitted to it, and at the foot of the mast I fancied that I saw a woman in a white robe of some sort stretched out as though asleep. And it seemed to me, though I could not tell why, that all this flotsam, and my own hulk along with it, slowly was drifting closer and closer together; and was packing tighter and tighter in the soft oozy tangle of the weed, which everywhere was matted so thickly that the water did not show at all.

Then I seemed to walk around to the other side of my hulk and to look down into the west—and to feel all hope dying with the sight that I saw there. Far away, under the red mist, across the red gleaming weed and against a sunset sky bloody red, I seemed to see a vast ruinous congregation of wrecks; so far-extending that it was as though all the wrecked ships in the world were lying huddled together there in a miserably desolate company. And with sight of them the certain conviction was borne in upon me that my own wreck presently would take its station in that shattered fleet for which there was no salvation; and that it would lie among them rotting slowly, as they were rotting, through months or years—until finally, in its turn, it would drop down from amidst those lepers of the ocean, and would sink with all its foulness upon it into the black depths beneath the oozy weed.

And I knew, too, that whether I already were dead and went down with it, or saved my life for a while longer by getting aboard of another hulk which still floated, sooner or later my end must come to me in that same way. On one or another of those rotting dead ships my own dead body surely must sink at last.



XIII

I HEAR A STRANGE CRY IN THE NIGHT

That was the end of my visions. Through the night that followed—my fever having run its course, I suppose—I slept easily; and when another day came and I woke again my fever was gone. I was pretty weak and ragged, but the cut in my head was healing and no longer hurt me much, and my mind was clear. There still was water left in the jug, and I drank freely and felt the better for it; and toward afternoon I felt so hungry that I managed to get up and go to the pantry on a foraging expedition for something to eat.

This time I was careful not to stuff myself. I found a box of light biscuit and ate a couple of them; and then I filled my water-jug at the tank and brought it and the biscuit back to my stateroom without going on the deck at all. My light meal greatly refreshed me; and in an hour or two I ate another biscuit—and kept on nibbling at them off and on through the night when I happened to wake up. In between whiles my sleep was of a sort to do me good; not deep, but restful. With the coming of another morning I felt so strong that I went to the pantry again for food of a better sort—venturing to eat a part of a tin of meat with my biscuit and to add to my water a little wine; and when this was down I began to feel quite like myself once more, and to long so strongly for some sunshine and fresh air that I climbed up the companion-way to the deck.

But when I got there I thought at first that my visions were coming back again. Indeed, what I saw was so nearly my last vision over again as to make me half believe, later, that I really did go on deck in my delirium and really did see that blood-red sunset and all the rest that had seemed to me a dream. At any rate, there was no doubting this second time—if it were the second time—the reality of what I beheld; and because I no longer was fever-struck, and so could take in fully the wonder of it, my astonishment kept my spirits from being wholly pulled down.

The haze was so thick as to be almost like a fog hanging about me, but the hot sunshine pouring down into it gave it a golden brightness and I could see through it dimly for a good long way; and there was no need for far-seeing to be sure that I had before me what I think must be the strangest sight that the world has in it for the eyes of man. For what I looked at was the host of wrecked ships, the dross of wave and tempest, which through four centuries—from the time when sailors first pushed out upon the great western ocean—has been gathering slowly, and still more slowly wasting, in the central fastnesses of the Sargasso Sea.

The nearest edge of this mass of wreckage was not a quarter of a mile off from me; but it swept away in a great irregular curve to the right and left and vanished into the golden haze softly—and straight ahead I could see it stretching dimly away from me, getting thicker and closer until it seemed to be almost as solid as a real island would have been. And, indeed, it had a good deal the look of being a real island; the loom through the haze of countless broken masts rising to various heights and having frayed ropes streaming from them having much the effect of trees growing there, while the irregularities of the surface made it seem as though little houses were scattered thickly among the trees. But in spite of the golden light which hung over it, and which ought to have given it a cheerful look, it was the most desolate and sorrowful place I ever saw; for it seemed to belong—and in a way really did belong, since every hulk in all that fleet was the slowly wasting dead body of a ship slain by storm or disaster—to that outcast region of mortality in which death has achieved its ugliness but to which the cleansing of a complete dissolution has not yet been brought by time.

Yet the curious interest that I found in this strange sight kept me from feeling only the horror of it. In my talks with Bowers about the old-time sea-wonders which must be hidden in the Sargasso Sea my imagination had been fired; and when I thus found myself actually in the way to see these wonders I half forgot how useless the sight was to me—being myself about the same as killed in the winning of it—and was so full of eagerness to press forward that I grew almost angry because of the infinite slowness with which my hulk drifted on to its place in the ruined ranks.

There was no hurrying my progress. Around me the weed and wreckage were packed so closely that the wonder was that my hulk moved through it at all. Of wind there was not a particle; indeed, as I found later, under that soft golden haze was a dead calm that very rarely in those still latitudes was ruffled by even the faintest breeze. Only a weak swirl of current from the far-off Gulf Stream pushed my hulk onward; and this, I suppose, was helped a little by that attraction of floating bodies for each other which brings chips and leaves together on the surface of even the stillest pool. But a snail goes faster than I was going; and it was only at the end of a full hour of watching that I could see—yet even then could not be quite certain about it—that my position a very little had changed.

Save that now and then I went below and got some solid food into me—and as I was careful to eat but little at a time I got the good of it—I sat there on the deck all day long gazing; and by nightfall my hulk had gone forward by perhaps as much as a hundred yards. But my motion was a steady and direct one, and I saw that if it continued it would end by laying me aboard of a big steamer—having the look of being a cargo-boat—that stood out a little from the others and evidently herself had not long been a part of that broken company. She was less of a wreck, in one way, than my own hulk; for she floated on an even keel and so high out of the water as to show that she had no leak in her; but her masts had been swept clean away and even her funnel and her bridge were gone—as though a sharp-edged sea had sliced like a razor over her and shaved her decks clean.

Immediately beyond this steamer lay a big wooden ship evidently waterlogged; for she lay so low that the whole of her hull, save a bit of her stern, was hidden from me by the steamer, and the most of her that showed was her broken masts. And beyond her again was a jam of wrecks so confused that I could not make out clearly any one of them from the rest. Taken all together, they made a sort of promontory that jutted out from what I may call the main-land of wreckage; and to the right and left of the promontory there went off in long receding lines the coast of that country of despair.

At last the sun sunk away to the horizon, and as it fell off westward pink tones began to show in the clouds there and then to be reflected in the haze; and these tones grew warmer and deeper until I saw just such another blood-red sunset as I had seen in what I had fancied was my dream. And under the crimson haze lay the dead wrecks, looming large in it, with gleams of crimson light striking here and there on spars and masts and giving them the look of being on fire. And then the light faded slowly, through shades of purple and soft pink and warm gray, until at last the blessed darkness came and shut off everything from my tired eyes.

Indeed, I was glad when the darkness fell; for as I sat there looking and looking and feeling the bitter hopelessness of it all, I was well on my way to going crazy with sorrow. But somehow, not seeing any longer the ruin which was so near to me, and of which I knew myself to be a part, it seemed less real to me—and so less dreadful. And being thus eased a little I realized that I was hungry again, and that commonplace natural feeling did me good too.

I went below to the pantry, striking a match to see my way by; and when I had lighted the big lamp that was hanging there—the glass chimney of which, in some wonderful way, had pulled through the crash which had sent the mizzen-mast flying—the place seemed so cheerful that my desire for supper increased prodigiously, and tended still farther to down my sorrowful thoughts. I even had a notion of trying to light a fire in the galley and cooking over it some of the beef or mutton that I had found in the cold-room; but I gave that up, just then, because I really was too hungry to wait until I could carry through so large a plan.

But there was a plenty of good food in tins easily to be got at; and what was still better I felt quite strong enough to eat a lot of it without hurting myself. I even went at my meal a little daintily, spreading a napkin—that I got from a locker filled with table linen—on the pantry dresser, and setting out on it a tin of chicken and a bunch of cheese and some bread which was pretty stale and hard and a pot of jam to end off with; and from the wine-room I brought a bottle of good Bordeaux.

As I ate my supper, greatly relishing it, the oddness of what I was doing did not occur to me; but often since I have thought how strange was that meal of mine—in that brightly lighted cosey little room, and myself really cheerful over it—in its contrast with the utterly desperate strait in which I was. And I think that the contrast was still sharper, my supper being ended, when I fetched a steamer-chair that I had noticed lying on the floor of the cabin and settled myself in it easily—facing toward the stern, so that the slope of the deck only made the slope of the chair still easier—and so sat there in the brightness smoking a very good cigar.

And after a while—what with my comfort of body, and the good meal in my stomach, and the good wine there too—a soothing drowsiness stole over me, and I had the feeling that in another moment or two I should fall away into a delicious doze. And then, all of a sudden, I was roused wide awake again by hearing faintly, but quite distinctly, a long and piercingly shrill cry.

I fairly jumped from my chair, so greatly was I startled; and for a good while I stood quite still, drawing my breath softly, in waiting wonder for that strange cry to come again. But it did not come again—and as the silence continued I fell to doubting if I had not been asleep, and that this sound which had seemed so real to me had not been only a part of a dream.



XIV

OF MY MEETING WITH A MURDERED MAN

Robinson Crusoe's footprint in the sand did not startle him more than that strange lonely cry startled me. Indeed, as between the two of us, I had rather the worse of it: for Crusoe, at least, knew that he was dealing with a reality, while I could not be certain that I was not dealing with a bit of a dream in which there was no reality at all.

For a long while I sat there puzzling over it—half hoping that I might hear it again, and so be sure of it; and half hoping that I might not hear it, because of the thrilling tone in it which had filled me with a sharp alarm. I was so shaken that I had not the courage to go off to my berth in the cabin, with only a candle to light me there, but stayed on in the little room that the lamp lighted so brightly that there were no dark corners for my fancy to people with things horrible; and so, at last, still scared and puzzled, I went off to sleep in my chair.

When I woke again the lamp had burned out and had filled the place with a vile smell of lamp-smoke that set me to sneezing. But I did not mind that much; for daylight had come, and my nerves were both quieted by sleep and steadied by that confident courage which most men feel—no matter how tight a fix they may be in—when they have the backing of the sun.

My first thought was to get on deck and have a look about me; the feeling being strong in my mind that on one or another of the near-by wrecks I should find the man who had uttered that thrilling cry, and would find him in some trouble that I might be able to help him out of. But my second thought, and it was the wiser, was to eat first of all a good breakfast and so get strength in me that would make me ready to face whatever might come along—for a vague dread hung by me that I was in the way of danger, and whatever it might be I knew that I could the better stand up against it after a hearty meal. Therefore I got out another tin of meat and ate the whole of it, and a hunk of stale bread along with it, and washed down my breakfast with a bottle of beer—longing greatly for a cup of coffee in place of the beer, but being in too much of a hurry to stop for that while I made a fire.

As the food got inside of me—though in that smoky and smelly place eating it was not much of a pleasure—my thoughts took a more cheerful turn. The hope of meeting a live man to talk to and to help me out of my utter loneliness rose strong in my mind; and I felt that no matter who or what he might be—even a man in desperate sickness and pain, whom I must nurse and care for—finding him in that solitude would make my own case less sad. And so, when I went on deck, my longing hope for companionship was the strongest feeling in my heart.

With my first glance around I saw that during the night my hulk had made more progress than I had counted on; having moved the faster, I suppose, as it felt more strongly the pull of the mass of floatage near by. Be this as it may, I found myself so close alongside the big cargo-boat that a good jump would carry me aboard of her; and I was so eager to begin my investigations that I took the jump without a single moment of delay. And being come to her deck, the first thing that I saw there was a dead man lying in the middle of it with a pool of still fresh blood staining the planks by his side.

I never had seen anything like that, and as I looked at the dead man—he was a big strong coarse fellow, dressed in a pair of dirty sail-cloth trousers and in a dirty checked shirt—I went so queasy and giddy that I had to step back a little and lean for a while against the steamer's rail. It was clear enough that he had died fighting. His face had a bad cut on it and there was another on his neck, and his hands were cut cruelly, as though he had caught again and again at a sharp knife in trying to keep it away from him; but the stab that had finished him was in his breast, showing ghastly as he lay on his back with his shirt open—and no doubt it was as the knife went into him there that he had uttered the cry of mortal agony which had come to me through the darkness, with so thrilling a note in it, while I was sitting in bright comfort drowsily smoking my cigar. And then, as I remembered my drowsiness, for a moment I seemed to get back into it—and I had a half hope that perhaps what I was looking at was only a part of a horrible dream.

Had there been any sign of a living man about, of the murderer as well as the murdered, I should have been less broken by what I saw; for then I should have had something practical to attend to—either in bringing the other man to book on the poor dead fellow's account, or in fighting him on my own. But the nearest thing to life in sight, on that storm-swept hulk under the low-hanging golden haze, was the rough body out of which life had but just gone forever; and the bloody stains everywhere on the deck showing that he and another must have been fighting pretty much all over it before they got to an end. And the horror of it all was the stronger because of the awful and hopeless loneliness: with the dead-still weed-covered ocean stretching away to the horizon on the one hand, and on the other only dead ships tangled and crushed together going off in a desolate wilderness that grew fainter—but for its faintness all the more despairing—until it was lost in the dun-gold murky thickness of the haze.

As I got steadier, in a little while, I realized that I must hunt up the other man, the one who had done the killing, and have things out with him. Pretty certainly, his disposition would be to try to kill me; and if I were to have a fight on hand as soon as I fell in with him it was plain that my chances would be all the better for downing him could I take him by surprise. I would have given a good deal just then for a knife, and a good deal more for a pistol; but the best that I could do to arm myself was to take an iron belaying-pin from the rail, and with this in my hand I walked aft to the companion-way —feeling sure that my best chance of coming upon my man unexpectedly was to find him asleep in the cabin below. And then, suddenly, the very uncomfortable thought came to me that there might be more than one man down there—with the likelihood that if I roused them they all would set upon me together and finish me quickly; and this brought me to a halt just within the companion-way, in the shadowy place at the head of the cabin stair.

I stood there for a minute or two listening closely, but I heard no sound whatever from below; and presently the dead silence made me feel rather ashamed of myself for being so easily scared. And then I noticed, my eyes having become accustomed to the shadow, that there was a splash of blood on the top step and more blood on the steps lower down—as though a man badly hurt, and without any one to help him, had gone down the stair slowly and had rested on almost every step and bled for a while before he could go on; and seeing this made it seem likely to me that I would have but a single man to deal with, and he in such a state that I need not fear him much. But for all that I kept a tight grip on my belaying-pin, and held it in such a way that I could use it easily, as I put my foot on the first of the bloody steps and so went on down.

The cabin, when I got to it, was but a small one—the boat not being built to carry passengers—and so dusky that I could not make it out well; for the skylight was covered with a tarpaulin—put there, I suppose, to protect it when the gale came on that the steamer was wrecked in—and all the light there was came in from one corner where the covering had fetched away. It gave me a sort of shivering feeling when I looked into that dusky place, where I saw nothing clearly and where there was at least a chance that in another moment I might be fighting for my life. I stood in the doorway, gripping my belaying-pin, until I began to see more clearly—making out that a small fixed table, with a water-jug and some bottles and glasses on it, filled a half of the cabin, and that three state-room doors—one of which stood open—were ranged on each of its sides. And then, just as I was about to enter, I fairly jumped as there came to me softly through the silence a low sad sound that was between a groan and a sigh. But in an instant my reason told me that this was not the sort of sound to come from a man whom I need be afraid of; and as it came plainly enough from the state-room of which the door stood open I stepped briskly over there and looked inside.



XV

I HAVE SOME TALK WITH A MURDERER

At first—the dead-light being fast over the port, and the state-room in darkness save for the little light which came in from the dusky cabin, and my own person in the doorway making it darker still—I was sure of nothing there. But presently I made out a biggish heap of some sort in the lower berth, and then that the heap was a man lying with his back toward me and his face turned to the ship's side.

The noise of my footsteps must have roused him, either from sleep or from the stupor that his hurts had put him in: for while I stood looking at him his body moved a little, and then his head turned slowly and in the shadows I caught the glint of his open eyes. What little light there was being behind me, all that he could see—and that but in black outline—was the figure of a tall man looming in the doorway; but instantly at sight of me he let off a yell as sharp as though I had run a knife into him, and then he covered his head all up with the bedclothes and lay kicking and shaking as though he were in deadly fear. I myself was so upset by his outburst, and by the half-horror that came to me at sight of his spasms of terror, that I stood for a moment or so silent; but in one way satisfied, since it was evident that this poor scared wretch could not possibly do me harm. Just as I was about to speak to him, hoping to soothe him a little, he pushed the bedclothes down from over his eyes and took another look at me—and straightway yelled again, and then cried out at me: "Go away, damn you! Go away, damn you! You're dead! You're dead, I tell you! Do you want me to kill you all over again, when I've done it once as well as I know how?" And with that he fell to kicking again, and to shouting out curses, and to letting off the most dreadful shrieks and cries—until suddenly a gasping choking checked him, and he lay silent and still.

Then the notion came to me that he took me for the dead man up on deck; I being about the dead fellow's size and build, and therefore looking very like him as I stood there with the light behind me and the shadows too deep for him to make out my face. And so, to ease his mind and get him quiet—and this was quite as much for my own sake as for his, for his wild fear was strangely horrible to witness—I spoke to him, asking him if he were badly hurt and if I could help him; and at the sound of my voice he gave a long sigh, as though of great relief, and in a moment said: "Who the devil are you, anyway? I thought you was Jack—come back after my killin' him to have another round with me. Is Jack true dead?"

"If you mean the man on deck," I answered, "he is true dead—as dead as any man can be with a cut straight through his heart."

He gave another sigh of relief, as though what I told him was a real comfort to him; and in a moment he said: "Well, that's a good job, and I'm glad of it. He's killed me, too, I reckon; but I'm glad I got in on him first an' fixed him fur his damn starin' at me. Now he's dead I guess he won't stare at me no more." He was silent for nearly a minute, and then he added: "Jest get me a drink, won't you? I'm all burnin' up inside. There's water in th' jug out there. An' put a good dash of gin in it—there's gin out there, too."

I got him some water from the jug on the cabin table, but when he tasted it and found that it was water only he began to swear at me for leaving out the gin; and when I added the gin—thinking that he probably was so used to strong drink as really to need a little to put some life into him—he took off the whole glassful at a gulp and asked for more.

I told him to wait for another drink until I should have a look at his hurts and see what I could do to better them; for, while hanging seemed to be what he deserved, I had a natural desire to ease the pain that was racking him—as I could tell by the gasps and groans which he was giving and by the sharp motions which he made.

"Jest shet your head an' gimme some more drink," he said in a surly way. "Jack's give me a dose that'll settle me, an' lookin' at me won't do no good—'cause there's nothin' to be done. He's ripped me up, Jack has, an' no man can live long that way. All I can do is to die happy—so it's a good thing there's lots of gin. You'll find a kag of it over there in th' fur corner. Me an' Jack filled it from th' spirit room yesterday, afore our fuss begun."

But I stuck out that I must have a look at his hurts first, and managed to open the dead-light—which luckily had not been screwed tight—and so had some light in the room; and in the end, finding that I would not give him a drink otherwise, he let me have my way. But I had only to take a glance over him to see that what he said about the other man having settled him was true enough; for he was cut in a dozen places savagely, and had one desperate slash—which had laid him all open about the waist—from which alone he was certain to die in a very little while.

There was nothing for me to do, and I did not know what was best to say to him; and while I was casting about in my mind to comfort him a little, for his horrible hurts could not but stir my pity, he settled the matter for both of us in his own way—grunting out that he guessed I'd found he knew what he was talking about, and then asking for more gin.

This time I gave it to him, and gave it to him strong—being certain that he was past hurting by it, and hoping that it might deaden his pain. And presently, when he asked for another drink, I gave him that too.

The liquor did make him easier, and it raised his spirits so much that he fell to swearing quite cheerfully at the man Jack who had given him his death—and seemed to feel a good deal better for freeing his mind that way. And after a while he began of his own accord to tell me about the wreck that he had passed through, and about what had come after it—only stopping now and then to ask for more gin-and-water, and gulping it down with such satisfaction that I gave him all he cared to have. Indeed, it was the only thing that I could do to ease him, and I knew that no matter how much he drank the end shortly would be the same.

As well as I could make out from his rambling talk, the storm that had wrecked him had happened about three months earlier: a tremendous burst of tempest that had sent everything to smash suddenly, and had washed the captain and first and second officers overboard—they all being on the bridge together—and three or four of the crew as well. At the same time the funnel was carried away, and such a deluge of water got down to the engine-room that the fires were drowned. This brought the engineers on deck and the coal-passers with them; and the coal-passers—"a beach-combin' lot," he called them—led in breaking into the spirit-room, and before long pretty much all the men of the crew were as drunk as lords. What happened after that for a while he did not know; but when he got sober enough to stagger up on deck he found the man Jack there—who also had just come up after sleeping off his drunk below somewhere—and they had the ship to themselves. The others might have found a boat that would float and tried their luck that way, or they might have been washed overboard. He didn't know what had become of them, and he didn't care. Then the hulk had taken to drifting slowly, and at the end of a month or so had settled into the berth where I found her; and since then the two of them had known that all chance of their getting back into the world again was gone.

"At first I didn't mind it much," he went on, "there bein' lashins to eat aboard, an' more to drink than me an' Jack ever'd hoped to get a show at in all our lives. But pretty soon Jack he begun to be worryin'. He'd get drunk, an' then he'd set an' stare at me like a damn owl—jest a-blinkin' and a-blinkin' his damn eyes. You hev no idee, ontil it's done to you, how worryin' it is when a drunken man jest sets an' stares at you fur hours together in that fool way. I give Jack fair warnin' time and agen when he was sober that I'd hurt him ef he kep' on starin' at me like that; but then he'd get drunk agen right off, an' at it he'd go. I s'pose I wouldn't 'a' minded it in a ornary way an' ashore, or ef we'd had some other folks around. But here we was jest alone—oh, it was terr'ble how much we was alone!—an' Jack more'n half the time like a damn starin' owl, till he a-most druv me wild."

"An' Jack said as how I was onbearable too. He said it was me as stared at him—the damn fool not knowin' that I was only a-tryin' to squench his beastly owlin' by lookin' steady at him; an' he said he'd settle me ef I kep' on. An' so things went like that atween us fur days an' days—and all th' time nothin' near us but dead ships with mos' likely dead men fillin' 'em, an' him an' me knowin' we'd soon got to be dead too. An' the stinks out of th' rotten weed, and out of all th' rotten ships whenever a bit of wind breezed up soft from th' s'uthard over th' hull mess of 'em, was horrider than you hev any idee! Gettin' drunk was all there was lef' fur us; and even in gettin' drunk there wasn't no real Christian comfort, 'cause of Jack's damn owlin' stares."

"I guess ef anybody stared steady at you fur better'n three months you'd want to kill him too. Anyway, that's how I felt about it; an' I told Jack yesterday—soon as he waked up in th' mornin', an' while he was plumb sober—that ef he didn't let up on it I'd go fur him sure. An' that fool up an' says it was me done th' starin', and I'd got to stop it or he'd cut out my damn heart—an' them was his very words. An' by noon yesterday he was drunker'n a Dutchman, an' was starin' harder'n ever. An' he kep' at it all along till sunset, an' when we come down into th' cabin to get supper he still was starin'; and after supper—when we mought 'a' been jest like two brothers a-gettin' drunk together on gin-an'-water—he stared wust of all."

"Nobody could 'a' stood it no longer—and up I gets an' goes fur him, keepin' my promise fair an' square. At fust we jest punched each other sort o' friendly with our fists, but after a while Jack give me a clip that roused my dander and I took my knife to him; an' then he took his knife to me. I don't remember jest all about it, but I know we licked away at each other all over th' cabin, an' then up through th' companion-way, an' then all over th' deck—me a-slicin' into him an' him a-slicin' into me all th' time. And at last he got this rippin' cut into me, an' jest then I give him a jab that made him yell like a stuck pig an' down he fell. I knowed he'd done fur me, but somehow I managed to work my way along th' deck an' to get down here to my bunk, where I knowed I'd die easier; an' then things was all black fur a while—ontil all of a sudden you comes along, and I sees you standin' in the door there, an' takes you fur Jack's ghost, an' gets scared th' wust kind. But he's not doin' no ghost racket, Jack ain't. I've settled him an' his damn owl starin'—and it's a good job I have. Gimme some more gin."

And then, having taken the drink that I gave him, he rolled over a little—so that he lay as I found him, with his face turned away from me—and for a good long while he did not speak a word.



XVI

I RID MYSELF OF TWO DEAD MEN

Only an hour before I had been longing for any sort of a live man to talk with and so break my loneliness; but having thus found a live man—who, to be sure, was close to being a dead one—I would have been almost ready to get rid of him by going back to my mast in the open sea. Indeed, as I stood there in the shadows beside that dying brute, and with the other brute lying dead on the deck above me, the feeling of dull horror that filled me is more than I can put into words.

I think that the underlying strong strain of my wretchedness was an intense pity for myself. In what the fellow had told me I saw clearly outlined a good deal of what must be my own fate in that vile solitude: which I perceived suddenly must be strewn everywhere with dead men lying unhidden, corrupting openly; since none there were to hide the dead from sight as we hide them in the living world. And I realized that until I myself should be a part of that indecent exhibition of human carcasses—which might not be for a long while, for I was a strong man and not likely to die soon—I should have to dwell in the midst of all that corruption; and always with the knowledge that sooner or later I must take my place in it, and lie with all those unhidden others wasting away slowly in the open light of day. I got so sick as these horrid thoughts pressed upon me that I turned to the table and poured out for myself a stiff drink of gin-and-water—being careful first to rinse the glass well—and I was glad that I thought of it, for it did me good.

My movement about the cabin roused up the dying fellow and he hailed me to give him some more gin. His voice was so thick that I knew that the drink already had fuddled him; and after he had swiped off what I gave him he began to talk again. But the liquor had taken such hold upon him that he called me "Jack," not recognizing me, and evidently fancying that I was his mate—the man whom he had killed.

At first he rambled on about the storm that had wrecked them; and then about their chance of falling in with a passing vessel; and then about some woman named Hannah who would be worrying about him because he did not come home. As well as I could make out he went over in this fashion most of what had happened—and it was little enough, in one way—from the time that the two found themselves alone upon the hulk until they began to get among the weed, and realized pretty well what that meant for them.

"It ain't no use now, Jack," he rambled on. "It ain't no use now thinkin' about gettin' home, an' Hannah may as well stop lookin' fur me. This is th' Dead Man's Sea we're gettin' into; an' I knows it well, an' you knows it well, both on us havin' heerd it talked about by sailor-men ever sence we come afloat as boys. Down in th' middle of it is all th' old dead wrecks that ever was sence ships begun sailin'; and all th' old dead sailor-men is there too. It's a orful place, Jack, that me an' you's goin' to—more damn orful, I reckon, than we can hev any idee. Gin's all thet's lef' to us, and it's good luck we hev such swashins of it aboard. Here's at you, Jack an' gimme some more out o' the kag, you damn starin' owl."

There was an angry tone in his voice as he spoke these last words; and the tone was sharper a moment later when he went on: "Can't you keep your owl eyes shet, you beast? Don't look at me like that, or I'll stick a knife into you. No, I'm not starin' at you; it's you who's starin' at me, damn you. Stop it! Stop it, I say, you—" and he broke out with a volley of foul names and curses; and partly raised himself, as though he thought that a fight was coming on. And then the pain which this movement caused him made him fall back again with a groan.

Without his asking for it I gave him another drink, which quieted him a little; and then put fresh strength into him, so that he burst out again with his curses and abuse. "Cut the heart out of me, will you—you scum of rottenness? I'd have you to know that cuttin' hearts out is a game two can play at. Take that, damn you! An' that! An' that! Them's fur your starin'—you damn fat-faced blinkin' owl. And I mean now t' keep on till I stop you. No more of your owl-starin' fur me! Take it agen, you stinkin' starin' owl. So! An' so! An' so!"

He fairly raised himself up in the berth as he rushed out his words, and at the same time thrust savagely with his right hand as though he had a knife in it. For a minute or more he kept his position, cursing with a strong voice and thrusting all the time. Suddenly he gave a yell of pain and fell on his back again, crying brokenly: "Hell! It's you who've finished me!" And then he gave two or three short sharp gasps, and after that there was a little gurgling in his throat, and then he was still—lying there as dead as any man could be.

This quick ending of him came so suddenly that it staggered me; but I must say that my first feeling, when I fairly realized what had happened, was thankfulness that his life was gone—for I had had enough of him to know that having much more of him would drive me mad.

In the telling of it, of course, most of what made all this horrible slips away from me, and it don't seem much to strain a man, after all. But it really was pretty bad: what with the shadowy light in the state-room, for even with the port uncovered it still was dusky; and the horrid smell there; and the vividness with which the fellow somehow managed to make me feel those days and weeks of his half-crazy half-drunken life, while he and the other man stared at each other until neither of them could bear it any longer—and so took to fighting from sheer heart-breaking horror of loneliness and killed each other out of hand. And back of all that I had the feeling that I was caught in the same fate that had shut in upon them; and was even worse off than they had been, since I had no one to fight my life away with but must take it myself when I found my solitude in that rotten desolation more than I could stand.

Even the gin-and-water, though I took another big drink of it, could not hearten me; but it did give me the courage to rid myself of the two dead brutes by casting them overboard; and, indeed, getting rid of them was a necessity, for their presence seemed to me so befouling that I found it hard to breathe.

With the man on deck—except that touching him was hateful to me—I did not have much trouble. I just made fast to him a couple of heavy iron bars that I found down in the engine-room—pokers, they seemed to be, for serving the boiler fires—and then dragged him along the deck to a place where the bulwarks were gone and there shot him overboard. And luckily the weed was thinnish there, and he went down like a stone into it and through it and so disappeared.

But with the man in the cabin I had a harder job. In his horridly cut condition I could not bring myself to touch him, and the best that I could do was to make a sort of bundle of him and the mattress and the bedclothes all together—with a bit of light line whipped around and around the whole mass until it was snug and firm. When it was finished I worked it out of the state-room, and rolled it fairly easily along the floor of the cabin to the companion-way—and there it stuck fast. Budge it I could not; for it was too long to roll up the stair, and too heavy for me to haul it up after me or to push it up before me, though I tried both ways and tried hard. But in the end I managed to get it up by means of a purchase that I rigged from a ring-bolt in the deck just outside the companion-way door; and once having it on deck I could manage it again easily, for there I could roll it along.

Yet I did not at once cast it overboard; for I had no more iron bars with which to weight it, and I knew that such a bunch of stuff would not sink through the weed—and that I should have it still loathsomely with me, lying only partly hidden in the weed right alongside. In the end I got up a big iron cinder-bucket that I filled with coal—making sure that the coal would stay in it by lashing a piece of canvas over the top—and this I made fast to the bundle by a rope three or four fathoms long. Then I cast the bucket overboard through the break in the bulwarks, and as it shot downward I rolled the bundle after it—and I had the comfort of seeing the whole go down through the weed and away from my sight forever into the hidden water below.

And then I sat down on the deck and rested; for what little cheering and strength I had got from the gin-and-water had left me and I was utterly miserable and tired as a dog. But I was well quit of both my dead men, and that was a good job well done.



XVII

HOW I WALKED MYSELF INTO A MAZE

Sitting there with the splotches of fresh blood on the deck all around me was more than I could stomach for very long. The sight of them brought back to me with a horrid distinctness everything that I had seen since I came aboard the hulk: the dead man lying on the deck, the other man with his frightful wounds and his wild talk and his death in the midst of his passionate ravings, and the disgusting work that I had been forced to do before I could hide their two bodies from my sight in the sea-depths beneath the tangled weed. And so, presently, I scrambled to my feet, thinking to get back to the Hurst Castle again—where there was no taint of blood to bring up haunting visions and where, though it seemed a long while past to me, I had been in the company of honest and kindly men.

But when I turned toward this poor escape from my misery—which at best was but a change from a foul prison to a clean one—I saw that I could not easily compass it; for in the time that had passed since I had made my jump in the morning—noon being by then upon me—the Hurst Castle had swung around a little, being caught I suppose upon some bit of sunken wreckage, so that where the two ships were nearest to each other there was an open reach of twenty feet or more across the weed.

This was too great a distance for a jump, seeing that it must be made from rail to rail without a run to give me a send-off; and yet it was so short that my not being able to cross it never even entered my mind. Had there been a mast standing on the hulk, with a yard fast to it, I could have rigged a rope from the yard-arm and swung myself across in a moment; but the decks being sea-swept, with nothing left standing on them, that way was not open to me; nor could I find a light spar—even the flag-staff at the stern being snapt away—that I could stretch across from one rail to the other and make a bridge of. The only other thing that occurred to me was to tear off some of the doors in the cabin and to make of them a little raft that I could pass by, though I saw well enough that pushing a raft through so dense a tangle even for that short distance would be a hard job. And then I had the thought that perhaps on the sailing-ship lying beside me I might find a sound boat, which would better answer my purpose since it could be the more easily moved through the weed. In point of fact I could not have moved a boat a single foot through that thicket without cutting a passage for it, and I might have thrown overboard three or four doors and so made a bridge over the weed that would have borne me easily—but I did not know then as much about that strange sea-growth as I came to know later on.

As there was no hurry in one way, the ships being so bedded fast there that they were certain not to move more than a few feet at the utmost, I hunted up some food before setting myself to what I knew would be a heavy task; finding cold victuals of a coarse sort in the galley—left from the last meal that the two men had made there—and fairly fresh water in the tank. It was hard work eating, on board that foul ship and thinking of the foul hands which had made the food ready; but going without eating would have been harder, for I had the healthy appetite of a sound young fellow three-and-twenty years old.

When I had finished my meal, and I got through it quickly, I made fast a line to the steamer's rail and slipped down it to the deck of the sailing-ship—a fine vessel of above a thousand tons, built of wood and on clipper lines. There was an immediate sense of relief in getting aboard of her, and away from the blood-stained steamer where the dead men had been; but I saw at a glance that what I was after was not there. She had carried four boats on her rail, as I could tell by the davits, and likely enough a long-boat on her fore-castle as well. But all of them were gone, and I could only hope—since they were not there for my use—that her crew had got safe away in them: as well enough might have happened when she was floating water-logged after the storm that had wrecked her was past.

Without stopping to explore her—and, indeed, after what I had found on the steamer, I had no fancy for explorations which might end in my stumbling upon still more horrors—I went on to a trim little brig lying on the other side of her; a beautiful little vessel, with all her spars and rigging save her bow-hamper in perfect order for sea-going—but showing by her broken bow-sprit that she had been in collision, and by her depth in the water that after the collision she had filled. Naturally enough, her boats were gone too; and so I left her and went on.

In the course of the next two hours or so I must have traversed more than a hundred wrecks—scrambling up or down from one to another, as they happened to lie low in the water or high out of it—and with all their differences of size and build finding them in one way the same: all of them were dead ships which some sort of a sea-disaster had slain. And not one of them had a sound boat left on board. The same reason that kept me from exploring the first of them kept me from exploring any of them: the dread of finding in their shadowy depths grisly horrors in the way of dead men long lying there; and, indeed, I was distinctly warned to hurry away from some of them by the vile stenches which came to me and made my stomach turn sickish and my blood go cold.

I must have walked for a good mile, I suppose, over the dead bodies of these sea-killed ships—and it was the most dismal walk that ever I had taken—before I realized that even if I found a boat and got it overboard it would be of no use to me, since there was no possibility of my getting back in it to my own hulk through that densely packed mass of wrecks and weed. Indeed, I should have perceived this plain certainty sooner had not the wondering curiosity which this strange walk bred in me lured me on and on. And then, being brought at last to a halt by my rational reflection, there came over me suddenly a queer shiver of doubt as to the direction in which the Hurst Castle lay; and then a still more shivering doubt as to whether I should be able to get back to her again by the way that I had come, or by any way at all.

At the beginning of my march in this haze-covered sea-wilderness I had tried to keep upon the outer edge of it; but insensibly—having to pass from ship to ship rather by the way that was open to me than by the way that I wished to go—I had wandered into the thick of it more and more. And so, when at last I took thought of my whereabouts, and stopped to look around me that I might shape a course back again, I found that in whatever direction I turned I saw only what I had seen ahead of me when my hulk was drawing in upon its borders: a dense confusion of broken and ruined ships which fell away from me vaguely under the golden haze. It had been a dismal sight then; but what gave a fresh note to it, and a thrilling one, was that it no longer was only in front of me but was all around me—stretching away on every side of the wreck on which I was standing, and growing fainter and fainter as the haze shut down thick upon it until it vanished softly into the golden blur.

Yet even then the full meaning of my outlook did not take hold of me. That I was in something of a coil, out of which I could not find my way easily, was plain enough; but that I really was lost in it did not cross my mind. With all my wanderings, I knew that I could not have traversed any great distance; and the certainty that I had passed always from one ship to the ship next touching it seemed to make finding my way back again entirely open and plain. And so I laughed at myself a little—though that was not much of a place for laughter—because of my touch of panic fright; and then I turned back from the ship on which I was standing to the one next to it, over which I had just come—and so on to the next, and in the same way to three or four more. Yet even in that short distance—though my way was unmistakable, for these ships touched only each other as it happened—I was surprised by finding how differently things looked to me as I took my course backward: all the ups and downs of my scrambling walk being inverted, and the lay of the ships one to another and the look of them being entirely changed.

Presently I got on board of a brig—which I well remembered, because it was one of the vessels having about it a vile stench that had made me cross it quickly—on the farther side of which two ships were lying, both rising a little above it and both jammed close against its side. For a moment I hesitated, in doubt as to which of the two I had come by; and I should have hesitated longer had not a whiff of the horrid smell struck upon me strongly and urged me to go on. And so away I went, taking to the ship that I thought was the right one; and still fancying that it was the right one when I got aboard of it—for both, as I have said, were ships, and the two had been about equally mauled by sea and storm. Indeed, except for the differences in their build and rig, there was a strong family resemblance among these storm-broken vessels; and the way that they were jammed together made their build less noticeable, while a good many of them were dismasted and so had no rig at all.

Therefore I went on confidently for a dozen ships or more before I had any misgivings that I had missed my way—which was but a natural reaction against my momentary doubtfulness—and then I found myself suddenly pulled up short. Right above me was the side of a big iron steamer—called the City of Boston, as I made out from the weathered name-plate on her bows, and a packet-boat as I judged by her build—rising so high out of the water that getting up to her deck was impossible: as equally impossible was my having forgotten it had I made such a rattling jump down. Yet this big steamer was the only vessel in touch with the barque on which I was standing, save the schooner from which I had just come; and that gave me sharply the choice between two conclusions: either I had made that big jump without noticing it, or else—and I felt a queer lump rising in my throat as I faced this alternative—I had managed to go astray completely and had lost myself in what had the look of being a hopeless maze.



XVIII

I FIND THE KEY TO A SEA MYSTERY

On shore, in a forest, I would not in the least have minded finding myself in a fix of this sort—though my getting into it would have been unlikely—because getting out of it would have been the easiest thing in the world. I know a good deal of wood-craft, and always can steer a course steadily by having the points of the compass fixed for me by the size and the trend of the branches, and by the bark growing thin or thick or by the moss or the lack of moss on the tree-trunks, and by the other such simple forest signs which are the outcome of the affection that there is on the part of things growing for the sun.

But what made my breath come hard and my heart take to pumping—as I stood looking up the tall side of the City of Boston, being certain that I never had come down it and so must be off my course entirely—was my conviction that in this forest of the ocean, if I may call it so, there were no signs which would help me to find my way. All around me was the same wild hopeless confusion of broken wrecks jammed tight together, or only a little separated by narrow spaces thick-grown with weed; and everywhere overhanging it heavily, growing denser the deeper that I got into the tangle, was the haze that made it more confusing still. And under the haze—and because of it, I suppose—was a soft languorish warmth that seemed to steal my strength away and a good deal of my courage too.

But I knew that to give way to the feeling of dull fright, having somehow a touch of awe in it, that was creeping over me would be to put myself into a panic; and that once my wits fairly were addled my chance of getting back to the Hurst Castle again would be pretty much gone. And to get back to her seemed to me the only way of keeping my heart up and of keeping myself alive. She was the one ship, in all that great dismal fleet, aboard of which I could be sure that nothing horrible had happened, and in which I could be certain that no loathsome sights were to be come upon suddenly in shadowy nooks and corners to which dying men had crept in their extremity—trying, since none ever would bury them, to hide away a little their own bodies against the time when death should be upon them and corruption should begin.

And so I pulled myself together as well as I could and tried to do a little quiet thinking; and presently I came to the conclusion that I must find my way back to the brig against which the two ships were lying and start afresh from her; since it was pretty certain that it was there, by boarding the wrong ship, that I had got off my course. But because of my certain knowledge of what horridness the brig sheltered, and of the noisome stench that I must encounter there, it took a good deal of resolution to put this plan into practice; so much, indeed, that for a while I wavered about it, and succeeded at last in starting back again only by setting going the full force of my will.

But I need not have whipped myself on to my work so resolutely, nor have fretted myself in advance with planning the rush that I should make across the brig when I came to her—for I never, so far as I know, laid eyes on her again. For a little while, as in my first turn-about, I found my way backward without much difficulty—though again the different look that the ships had as I returned across them pulled me up from time to time with doubts about them; and then, just as before, I came to a place where more than one line of advance was open to me and there went wrong—as I knew a little later by finding myself aboard a vessel so strange in her appearance that my first glimpse over her deck satisfied me that I saw her then for the first time.

This craft was an old-fashioned sloop-of-war, carrying eighteen guns; and that she had perished in action was as evident as that her death-battle had been fought a long while back in the past. The mauling that she had received had made an utter wreck of her—her masts being shot away and hanging by the board, most of her bulwarks being splintered, and her whole stern torn open as though a crashing broad-side had been poured into her at short range. Moreover, nearly all her guns had been dismounted, and two of them had burst in firing—as the shattered gun-carriages showed.

But what most strongly proved the fierceness of her last action, and the length of time that had passed since she fought it, were the scores of skeletons lying about her deck—a few with bits of clothing hanging fast to them, but most of them clean fleshless naked bones. Just as they had fallen, there they lay: with legs or arms or ribs splintered or carried off by the shot which had struck them, or with bullet-holes clean through their skulls. But the sight of them, while it put a sort of awe upon me, did not horrify me; because time had done its cleansing work with them and they were pure.

Indeed, my imagination was taken such fast hold of by coming upon this 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.