Dead Men Tell No Tales Page 4

  CHAPTER IV. THE SILENT SEA

  Remember (if indeed there be any need to remind you) that it is aflagrant landsman who is telling you this tale. Nothing know I ofseamanship, save what one could not avoid picking up on the round voyageof the Lady Jermyn, never to be completed on this globe. I may be toldthat I have burned that devoted vessel as nothing ever burned on land orsea. I answer that I write of what I saw, and that is not altered by amiscalled spar or a misunderstood manouvre. But now I am aboard a craftI handle for myself, and must make shift to handle a second time withthis frail pen.

  The hen-coop was some six feet long, by eighteen or twenty inches inbreadth and depth. It was simply a long box with bars in lieu of a lid;but it was very strongly built.

  I recognized it as one of two which had stood lashed against either railof the Lady Jermyn's poop; there the bars had risen at right angles tothe deck; now they lay horizontal, a gridiron six feet long-and my bed.And as each particular bar left its own stripe across my wearied body,and yet its own comfort in my quivering heart, another day broke overthe face of the waters, and over me.

  Discipline, what there was of it originally, had been the very firstthing to perish aboard our ill-starred ship; the officers, I am afraid,were not much better than poor Ready made them out (thanks to Bendigoand Ballarat), and little had been done in true ship-shape style allnight. All hands had taken their spell at everything as the fancy seizedthem; not a bell had been struck from first to last; and I can onlyconjecture that the fire raged four or five hours, from the fact thatit was midnight by my watch when I left it on my cabin drawers, and thatthe final extinction of the smouldering keel was so soon followed by thefirst deep hint of dawn. The rest took place with the trite rapidity ofthe equatorial latitudes. It had been my foolish way to pooh-pooh theold saying that there is no twilight in the tropics. I saw more truth init as I lay lonely on this heaving waste.

  The stars were out; the sea was silver; the sun was up.

  And oh! the awful glory of that sunrise! It was terrific; it wassickening; my senses swam. Sunlit billows smooth and sinister, without acrest, without a sound; miles and miles of them as I rose; an oily graveamong them as I fell. Hill after hill of horror, valley after valley ofdespair! The face of the waters in petty but eternal unrest; and nowthe sun must shine to set it smiling, to show me its cruel ceaselessmouthings, to reveal all but the ghastlier horrors underneath.

  How deep was it? I fell to wondering! Not that it makes any differencewhether you drown in one fathom or in ten thousand, whether you fallfrom a balloon or from the attic window. But the greater depth ordistance is the worse to contemplate; and I was as a man hanging by hishands so high above the world, that his dangling feet cover countries,continents; a man who must fall very soon, and wonders how long he willbe falling, falling; and how far his soul will bear his body company.

  In time I became more accustomed to the sun upon this heaving void; lessfrightened, as a child is frightened, by the mere picture. And I havestill the impression that, as hour followed hour since the falling ofthe wind, the nauseous swell in part subsided. I seemed less often onan eminence or in a pit; my glassy azure dales had gentler slopes, or adistemper was melting from my eyes.

  At least I know that I had now less work to keep my frail ship trim,though this also may have come by use and practice. In the beginning oneor other of my legs had been for ever trailing in the sea, to keep thehen-coop from rolling over the other way; in fact, as I understand theysteer the toboggan in Canada, so I my little bark. Now the necessity forthis was gradually decreasing; whatever the cause, it was the greatestmercy the day had brought me yet. With less strain on the attention,however, there was more upon the mind. No longer forced to exert somemuscle twice or thrice a minute, I had time to feel very faint, and yettime to think. My soul flew homing to its proper prison. I was no longerany unit at unequal strife with the elements; instincts common to mykind were no longer my only stimulus. I was my poor self again; it wasmy own little life, and no other, that I wanted to go on living; andyet I felt vaguely there was some special thing I wished to live for,something that had not been very long in my ken; something that hadperhaps nerved and strengthened me all these hours. What, then, could itbe? I could not think.

  For moments or for minutes I wondered stupidly, dazed as I was. ThenI remembered--and the tears gushed to my eyes. How could I ever haveforgotten? I deserved it all, all, all! To think that many a time wemust have sat together on this very coop! I kissed its blistering edgeat the thought, and my tears ran afresh, as though they never wouldstop.

  Ah! how I thought of her as that cruel day's most cruel sun climbedhigher and higher in the flawless flaming vault. A pocket-handkerchiefof all things had remained in my trousers pocket through fire and water;I knotted it on the old childish plan, and kept it ever drenched uponthe head that had its own fever to endure as well. Eva Denison! EvaDenison! I was talking to her in the past, I was talking to her in thefuture, and oh! how different were the words, the tone! Yes, I hatedmyself for having forgotten her; but I hated God for having given herback to my tortured brain; it made life so many thousandfold more sweet,and death so many thousandfold more bitter.

  She was saved in the gig. Sweet Jesus, thanks for that! But I--I wasdying a lingering death in mid-ocean; she would never know how I lovedher, I, who could only lecture her when I had her at my side.

  Dying? No--no--not yet! I must live--live--live--to tell my darling howI had loved her all the time. So I forced myself from my lethargy ofdespair and grief; and this thought, the sweetest thought of all mylife, may or may not have been my unrealized stimulus ere now; it was invery deed my most conscious and perpetual spur henceforth until the end.

  From this onward, while my sense stood by me, I was practical,resourceful, alert. It was now high-noon, and I had eaten nothing sincedinner the night before. How clearly I saw the long saloon table, onlylaid, however, abaft the mast; the glittering glass, the cool whitenapery, the poor old dried dessert in the green dishes! Earlier, thishad occupied my mind an hour; now I dismissed it in a moment; there wasEva, I must live for her; there must be ways of living at least a day ortwo without sustenance, and I must think of them.

  So I undid that belt of mine which fastened me to my gridiron, and Istraddled my craft with a sudden keen eye for sharks, of which I neveronce had thought until now. Then I tightened the belt about my hollowbody, and just sat there with the problem. The past hour I had beenwholly unobservant; the inner eye had had its turn; but that was overnow, and I sat as upright as possible, seeking greedily for a sail. Ofcourse I saw none. Had we indeed been off our course before the firebroke out? Had we burned to cinders aside and apart from the regulartrack of ships? Then, though my present valiant mood might ignorethe adverse chances, they were as one hundred to a single chance ofdeliverance. Our burning had brought no ship to our succor; and howshould I, a mere speck amid the waves, bring one to mine?

  Moreover, I was all but motionless; I was barely drifting at all. ThisI saw from a few objects which were floating around me now at noon; theyhad been with me when the high sun rose. One was, I think, the veryoar which had been my first support; another was a sailor's cap; butanother, which floated nearer, was new to me, as though it had come tothe surface while my eyes were turned inwards. And this was clearly thecase; for the thing was a drowned and bloated corpse.

  It fascinated me, though not with extraordinary horror; it came too lateto do that. I thought I recognized the man's back. I fancied it wasthe mate who had taken charge of the long-boat. Was I then the singlesurvivor of those thirty souls? I was still watching my poor lostcomrade, when that happened to him against which even I was not proof.Through the deep translucent blue beneath me a slim shape glided; threesmaller fish led the way; they dallied an instant a fathom under myfeet, which were snatched up, with what haste you may imagine; then onthey went to surer prey.

  He turned over; his dreadful face stared upwards; it was the chiefofficer, sure enough. Then he clove
the water with a rush, his dead handwaved, the last of him to disappear; and I had a new horror to thinkover for my sins. His poor fingers were all broken and beaten to a pulp.

  The voices of the night came back to me--the curses and the cries. Yes,I must have heard them. In memory now I recognized the voice of thechief mate, but there again came in the assisted imagination. Yet Iwas not so sure of this as before. I thought of Santos and his horribleheavy cane. Good God! she was in the power of that! I must live for Evaindeed; must save myself to save and protect my innocent and helplessgirl.

  Again I was a man; stronger than ever was the stimulus now, louder thanever the call on every drop of true man's blood in my perishing frame.It should not perish! It should not!

  Yet my throat was parched; my lips were caked; my frame was hollow. Veryweak I was already; without sustenance I should surely die. But as yetI was far enough from death, or I had done disdaining the means of lifethat all this time lay ready to my hand. A number of dead fowls impartedballast to my little craft.

  Yet I could not look at them in all these hours; or I could look, butthat was all. So I must sit up one hour more, and keep a sharper eyethan ever for the tiniest glimmer of a sail. To what end, I often askedmyself? I might see them; they would never see me.

  Then my eyes would fail, and "you squeamish fool!" I said at intervals,until my tongue failed to articulate; it had swollen so in my mouth.Flying fish skimmed the water like thick spray; petrels were so few thatI could count them; another shark swam round me for an hour. In suddenpanic I dashed my knuckles on the wooden bars, to get at a duck to givethe monster for a sop. My knuckles bled. I held them to my mouth. Mycleaving tongue wanted more. The duck went to the shark; a few minutesmore and I had made my own vile meal as well.