The Log of a Privateersman Page 14

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

  THE SHADOW OF DEATH.

  The mast and sails of the boat had gone clean over the bows into thewater, and would in all probability have been lost to us but for thefact that the shrouds still held; and, this being the case, the boatrode to them as to a sort of floating anchor, keeping her stem-on to thesea. Her trim was such that her bows were considerably more above waterthan her stern, which may have had something to do with the fact that,although the sea was now higher and more dangerous than ever, the waterno longer broke into her. Dumaresq and I, however, were both of opinionthat the floating mast, with the sails attached, served in some measureas a breakwater for the seas to expend their most dangerous energiesupon, and after discussing the matter a little further it was determinedto submit our theory to the test of experiment. The shrouds wereaccordingly unbent, and the mast hauled alongside, when the boat againbegan to ship water; moreover, an oar over the stern at once becamenecessary to keep her bows on to the sea. This experiment satisfied usthat our impression was something more than a mere fancy, and we at oncewent to work to further test it. There were six oars in the boat, andanother portion of her equipment was a painter, some six fathoms inlength. We securely lashed together the whole six of the oars and themast, with the sails still attached, in a sort of bundle, by the middle,using the end of the painter as a lashing, and when everything had beenmade secure we veered away the painter until the whole of it was out,and the bundle of oars and what-not was floating about five fathomsahead of the boat. This served as a drag, again bringing the gig's bowson to the sea, and a comparatively short period of observation sufficedto convince us that the arrangement did indeed serve also as anappreciable protection to the boat. By the time that this was done therain had nearly ceased, and presently it cleared up to leeward,revealing the ship once more, under double-reefed topsails, now broad onour larboard quarter and hopelessly beyond all possibility of beingovertaken, even had we dared to resume the chase, which, after ourrecent experience, and in the face of the terrible weather, none of usdreamed of attempting.

  It was a cruelly bitter disappointment to us all to reflect that we hadbeen so near to the possibility of rescue, and yet had missed it, and Icaught the rumbling notes of more than one sea-blessing invoked upon theheads of the crew, who ought to have seen us, but apparently did not.It was useless, however, to cry over spilt milk, or to murmur againstthe mysterious decrees of Providence. Our business now was to do allthat lay in our power to keep the boat afloat and enable her to ride outthe gale; so we baled her dry, trimmed her a trifle more by the stern toenable her to present a bolder bow to the sea, and then piped to dinner.

  And now arose fresh cause for distress and apprehension, for when wecame to look into the state of our provisions, it was found that prettynearly everything that was spoilable had been ruined by the salt-waterthat we had shipped, our bread especially being almost reduced to pulp.We picked out the least damaged portions, however, and ate them, withsome chunks of raw salt beef, washing down the whole with a sparinglibation of weak grog, after which we felt in somewhat better spirits.

  But, oh! the cold and misery of it all! We were drenched to the skin,and the wind seemed to penetrate to our very marrow. Moreover, therewas no hope whatever of the slightest improvement so long as the galecontinued, for even though the rain had ceased, the air was full ofspindrift and scud-water that fell upon us in drenching showers; while,cooped up as we were within the circumscribed dimensions of a smallboat, there was no possibility of warming ourselves by exercise oractive movement of any sort. The sea was running too dangerously highto admit of our taking to the oars and keeping ourselves warm by thatexpedient, and all that we could do to mitigate our misery was to huddleclosely together in the bottom of the boat, and so shield ourselves asfar as possible from the piercing wind and the drenching spray. Had webeen able to smoke, matters would not have been so bad with us, but wehad no means of obtaining a light; so there we crouched, hour afterhour, our teeth clenched or chattering with cold, our drenched clothingclinging to our shivering bodies, and the gale howling over our headswith ever-increasing fury, while the sheets of salt spray lashed usrelentlessly like whips of steel. So utterly miserable did we becomethat at length we even ceased to rise occasionally to take a look round,to see whether, perchance, another sail might have hove in sight. Ibelieve that some of my companions in suffering found a temporary refugefrom their wretchedness in short snatches of fitful sleep; at all eventsI caught at intervals the sound of low mutterings, as of sleeping men;but, as for me, exhausted though I was, I could not sleep. My anxietyon behalf of these poor wretches, who were in a way under my command,and who were certainly dependent to a great extent upon my experienceand judgment, seemed to have driven sleep for ever from my eyes.

  And so we lay there, hour after hour, now flung aloft until the wholeocean to the limits of the horizon lay spread around us, anon sweepingdown the back of some giant billow until it seemed that the boat wasabout to plunge to the ocean's bed, and the passage of every hour wasmarked by an increasing greyness and haggardness in the faces of mycompanions, while a more hopelessly despairing expression came intotheir eyes.

  At length, however, shortly before sunset, a welcome break appeared inthe sky to windward; a gleam of watery, yellow light spread along thehorizon; the pall of murky vapour broke up into detached masses; smallbut gradually widening patches of blue sky appeared here and here; andfinally we got a momentary glimpse of the sun through a break in theclouds, just as the great luminary was on the point of sinking below thewestern horizon. We greeted the blessed sight with a cheer of revivinghope, for we knew that the gale was breaking, and that with themoderating of the wind and sea we should once again be able to take someactive steps toward our preservation; while, apart from that, the finerweather would at least afford us some relief from our present sufferingand misery. About half an hour later there was a noticeable diminutionin the strength of the wind, which by midnight had become merely amoderate breeze. The sea no longer broke dangerously, the sky cleared,the stars beamed benignantly down upon us, and there was every prospectof our being able to resume our voyage on the morrow. But although, sofar as the weather was concerned, matters were greatly improving withus, our suffering from cold was still very acute, for the night windseemed to penetrate right through our wet clothes and to strike colderthan ice upon our skins that were now burning with fever.

  As for me, I envied my more fortunate companions who were able to sleep.I was deadly weary, worn out with prolonged watching and anxiety andexposure; my eyes were burning and my head throbbing with the fever thatconsumed me, while my teeth were chattering with cold to such an extentthat I could scarcely make my speech intelligible. Wild, fantastic,irrelevant fancies were whirling confusedly through my brain, and Ifound it simply impossible to fix my mind upon the important question ofthe direction in which we ought to steer upon the resumption of ourvoyage. For the impression now forced itself upon me that poor CaptainChesney had committed an error of judgment in adhering to hisdetermination to make for the Azores, after the breeze had sprung upfrom a direction which placed those islands almost dead to windward, andhis only alternative of making for the Canaries appeared to be open tothe same objection, although in a considerably lesser degree. Thenarose the question: If he was mistaken in thus deciding, what ought heto have done? But to this, in the then disordered condition of mymental faculties, I could find no satisfactory reply. At length, whilementally groping for a solution to this knotty problem, I sank into afeverish semi-somnolent condition that eventually merged into sleep, andwhen I again became conscious, the sun was flashing his first beamsacross the surface of the heaving waters, now no longer scourged to furyby the lashing of a gale, but just ruffled to a deep, tender blue by thegentle breathing of a soft breeze from the north-east. A very heavyswell was still running, of course; but it no longer broke, and therewas nothing whatever to prevent our resuming our voyage at once, savingthe question--W
hither?

  The matter, however, that called for our first and most imperativeattention was our own condition. We were still suffering greatly fromthe effects of prolonged exposure in our still damp clothes, and wecould hope for little or no amelioration until our garments were oncemore dry, and the healthy action of our skin restored; so, to facilitatethis, I suggested that we should all strip, and spread out our clothingto thoroughly dry in the sun's now ardent beams, and that, while thedrying process was in progress, we should all go overboard and indulgein a good swim. The greater portion of our party thought this advicegood enough to be acted upon, and in a few minutes seven of us were inthe water and swimming vigorously round the boat; the other three wereunable to swim, but they imitated us so far as to strip and pour bucketsof water over each other. The water felt pleasantly warm in comparisonwith the temperature of the air, and we remained overboard for nearlyhalf an hour; then we scrambled back into the boat again, rubbedourselves and each other vigorously with the palms of our hands, whileour bodies were in process of being dried by the joint action of the sunand air; and finally we donned our clothes again, they being by thistime quite dry, feeling much refreshed and in every way considerably thebetter for our bath. Our next business was to go to breakfast, but ourbread was by this time so completely destroyed as to be quite uneatable.We therefore threw it overboard, and made a meagre and unpalatable mealoff more raw salt beef, washed down as before with weak grog.

  And while the meal was in progress I brought up the question that hadbeen vexing me during the previous night; namely, the direction in whichwe should steer. I had been giving this matter my best considerationduring the time that I had been overboard; indeed Dumaresq and I hadbeen discussing it together as we swam industriously round and round theboat, and we both agreed in the conclusion that the appearance of thesky warranted the belief that we were on the very margin of the north-east trade-wind, if not actually within its influence. And if this wereindeed the case, it appeared that the proper course for us to adoptwould be to bear up and run for the West Indies, instead of attemptingto reach the Azores or even the Canaries. For while Corvo was onlyseven hundred and twenty miles from the spot where the Indiaman wasdestroyed, while Teneriffe was about thirteen hundred and eighty miles,and Saint Thomas, in the West Indies, fifteen hundred miles from thesame spot, we could reckon with tolerable certainty upon reaching thelatter island in about twelve days if the breeze now blowing actuallyhappened to be the young trade-wind; while, under the same supposition,it was exceedingly doubtful when, if ever, we should succeed in reachingeither the Azores or the Canary Islands. It was altogether toomomentous a question for me to settle off-hand and upon my ownresponsibility, so I laid the matter before the whole boat's company,inviting them to decide it by a preponderating vote. I found that themajority agreed with me in the opinion that we might be on the fringeof, if not actually within, the influence of the trade-wind, but when itcame to the question of bearing up and running for the West Indies, thegreat distance to be traversed seemed to frighten them. They werehardly prepared to face the prospect of nearly a fortnight in an openboat, even although we might reckon with tolerable certainty upon a fairwind and moderate weather all the time. They pointed out that our stockof provisions was wholly inadequate for such a voyage, unless we wereall prepared to go upon an exceedingly short allowance forthwith, andthey appeared to consider that, by adhering to Captain Chesney's plan,we should stand a better chance of falling in with and being picked upby a ship. As to whether we should make for the Azores or the Canaries,we were pretty unanimously of opinion that, despite the much greaterdistance of the latter, if we were, as we supposed, within the influenceof the trade-wind, we should stand a much better chance of fetching it;and after some further discussion it was definitely determined to shapethe best course we could for Teneriffe.

  This important matter settled, all that we had to do was to lash themast thwart in its place again, haul the mast and oars alongside, getthem inboard, and make sail, which we did forthwith.

  For the next five days we sailed comfortably enough to the eastward,making on an average, about eighty-five miles in the twenty-four hours,during which not a single sail had been sighted; and then the windgradually died away, and it fell stark calm. This obliged us to take tothe oars; and whereas during the gale we had suffered greatly from coldand wet, all our complaint now was of the intense heat; for the cloudshad passed away, leaving the sky a vault of purest blue, out of whichthe sun blazed down upon us relentlessly for about eleven hours out ofthe twenty-four. This, coupled with our exertions at the oars--andpossibly the profuse perspiration induced thereby--provoked a continuousthirst which we had no means of satisfying; for immediately upon ourdetermination to make for Teneriffe, we had carefully gauged our stockof provisions and water, and had placed ourselves upon a very shortallowance of both. And, to make matters still worse, the setting in ofthe calm immediately rendered it imperatively necessary to still furtherreduce our already far too scanty allowance.

  There was nothing for it, however, but to toil on, hour after hour, withever-decreasing strength; the only redeeming feature of our case beingthe knowledge that, should we now chance to sight a ship, she could notpossibly sail away from us so long as the calm lasted. But when thecalm had continued for twenty-four hours, during which we pulledcontinuously to the eastward, relieving each other at frequentintervals, this reflection almost ceased to afford us any comfort, forwe found that short commons and hard work together were exhausting ourstrength with such alarming rapidity that, unless we sighted the hoped-for sail pretty speedily, we should have no strength left with which topull to her. And when another twelve hours had passed over our heads,and another cloudless, breathless, blazing morning had dawned upon us,the men with one accord laid in their oars, protesting their utterinability to any longer keep up the exhausting work of pulling the boatI argued with, entreated, and threatened them alternately, withoutavail; they turned a deaf ear to me, and lay down in the bottom of theboat, where they almost instantly fell into a restless, troubled sleep.All, that is to say, except Dumaresq, who recognised as clearly as I didthe vital necessity for us to push onward as speedily as possible; afterdiscussing the situation for a while, therefore, we threw over a coupleof oars, and, placing the boat compass between my feet where I could seeit, paddled wearily and painfully onward until noon, when we ceased,that I might have an opportunity to take an observation for thedetermination of our latitude. While I was still engaged upon thisoperation the men awoke; and as soon as I had ascertained our latitudewe went to dinner; if dinner that could be called which consisted of asmall cube of raw meat, measuring about an inch each way, and as muchtepid, fetid water as would half-fill the neck of a rum-bottle that hadbeen broken off from the body to serve as a measure.

  After dinner the men again stretched themselves out, either in thebottom of the boat or on the thwarts, and once more sought surcease ofsuffering in sleep; and again Dumaresq and I threw out our oars andtoiled at them until sunset. But it was cruel work, and nothing shortof such urgent necessity as ours would have induced me to do it. Thenthe men awoke again, apparently somewhat refreshed by their day's rest,and we went to supper. The fact that Dumaresq and I had been working atthe oars all through the scorching day, while they had been sleeping,seemed to awaken a sense of shame in some of them; and after supper theytook to the oars of their own accord, announcing their determination torest henceforth through the day, and to work all night, a plan which Iwas at once compelled to admit had much to recommend it. And so, whilethe men pulled pretty steadily on through the night, Dumaresq and I tookwatch and watch at the tiller.

  Another breathless morning dawned; we went to breakfast, and the menthen lay down to sleep, as on the previous day, while Dumaresq and Ilaboured at the oars until noon, when the gallant young Frenchman wascompelled to give up, declaring that he could not pull another stroke,even though his life depended upon it. I could, of course, do nothingsingle-handed; so after din
ner we all lay down together, and the sleepof utter exhaustion soon fell upon me. When I next awoke the men werealready astir and getting their supper; and it appeared to me, from thelook in their faces, that they would have been better pleased hadDumaresq and I remained asleep. After supper they threw out their oars,and the Frenchman and I sat together in the stern-sheets, moodilydiscussing the situation, and marvelling at our strange ill-fortune inhaving sighted but one solitary sail ever since the destruction of theIndiaman.

  "The fact is," remarked Dumaresq, in a low tone, "that we have made aterrible mistake in deciding to try for Teneriffe. We ought to haveacted upon your suggestion to bear away for the West Indies. Had wedone so, we should have been more than half-way there by this time--if,indeed, we had not already been fallen in with and picked up. As it is,it is now clear enough that, if as we both believed, we were on the edgeof the trade-wind, we have lost it again, and it may be many days beforewe shall get another breeze. And should that be the case, it is mybelief that not one of us will ever see dry land again. Note ourcondition at this moment; observe our companions. When we abandoned theill-fated _Manilla_ they were a stout, sturdy crew of willing, obedientmen; whilst now they are a gang of gaunt and savage outlaws, no longeramenable to discipline, and rendered ferociously selfish by starvation.Did you observe the fell gleam of animosity with which they regarded uswhen we awoke this evening and helped ourselves to our share of theprovisions? There has been no hint of violence thus far; but, mark mywords, Bowen, unless we are rescued within the next forty-eight hoursthis boat will become the scene of a ghastly tragedy. Ah! _mon Dieu_!look at that!"

  Dumaresq had brought his lips close to my ear while speaking, and theaccompanying turn of his head had permitted his eyes to glance over myshoulder into the water astern of the boat. As he uttered his closingexclamation he pointed to the boat's wake; and there, not two fathomsaway from the rudder, could be seen two large sharks, their formsclearly indicated in the phosphorescent water, steadily following theboat, and swimming at a distance of about three feet below the water.

  "What did I say?" continued Dumaresq. "The shadow of death is hoveringover this boat; those sharks see it, and they will follow us until theyget their prey!"