The Log of a Privateersman Page 15

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

  DYING OF HUNGER AND THIRST.

  I must confess that the sudden appearance of those two ferociousmonsters of the deep excited within me a feeling of intense horror anduneasiness; for I had heard so much about the alleged mysteriousinstinct by which the shark is said to be enabled to foresee theapproaching death of one or more members of a crew, and had listened toso many apparently authentic stories confirming this belief in thecreature's powers, that I had grown to be quite prepared to believe thatthere might be something more than mere superstition at the bottom ofit. And now it almost appeared as though I was to have an opportunityof learning by personal experience what amount of truth there really wasin the gruesome theory. But after the first shock of horror had passed,reason and common sense whispered that the presence of these visitors,instead of being a constant horror and menace to us, might, by goodluck, be converted into a valuable source of food-supply, and Iaccordingly at once informed the men that there were two sharksfollowing us, and inquired whether any of them could suggest a plan forthe capture of one of the fish. I immediately discovered, however, thatI should have done better to have said nothing; for the announcementexcited the utmost consternation; while my proposal to attempt thecapture of one of the fish was ridiculed as something approaching theheight of absurdity. Tom Hardy--a weather-beaten seaman, who had beenknocking about in all parts of the world for thirty years from the timewhen he first plunged his hands into the tar bucket at the age offourteen--at once rose from his thwart, where he was pulling the strokeoar; and, looking over the heads of Dumaresq and myself, stared intentlydown at the fish for a few seconds, and then resumed his seat,remarking:

  "Ay, mates, what Mr Bowen says is true enough; there's two of 'em; andthat means that two of this here party is goin' to lose the number oftheir mess afore long; you mark my words and see if they don't cometrue. As to catchin' either of them sharks, why, we haven't got no hookto catch 'em with. And, if we had, 'twouldn't be of no use to try; themfish ain't to be caught; they're astarn of us for a purpose; and therethey'll stay until that purpose have come to pass. I've knowed thissort of thing to happen afore. I was once aboard of a brig called the_Black Snake_, hailin' from Liverpool, and tradin' between the WestInjies and the Guinea coast. We'd made a fine run across fromBarbadoes, and was within a week's run of the Old Calabar river when itfell calm with us, just as it have done now.

  "There wasn't nothing the matter with none of us at the time; but a'terwe'd been becalmed about a week--which, let me tell ye, mates, ain'tnothing so very much out of the common in them latitoods--the secondmate fell sick, and took to his bunk. He hadn't been there not twohours when somebody sings out as there was a shark under the counter;and we goes to work to try and catch him. But, mates, he wasn't to becaught, though we tried him all ways, even to pitchin' the bait rightdown atop of his ugly snout. Mind you, he was ready enough to swalleras much pork as ever we chose to give him, so long as there wasn't nohook in it; but if there was a hook buried in it he wouldn't so much aslook at it.

  "Well, we was obliged to give it up at last; and as we was haulin' inthe line and unbendin' the hook I heard the chief mate say to theskipper:--

  "`That settles poor Hobbs' hash, anyhow!'

  "`How d'ye mean?' says the skipper, short and angry-like.

  "`Why,' says the mate, `I means that Hobbs won't get better, and thatshark knows it. He's just waitin' for him!'

  "`Oh, nonsense,' says the skipper; `I'm surprised, Mr Barker, to hear ahintelligent man like you sayin' such things.'

  "And he marches off down below, and goes into the second mate's cabin tosee how the poor chap was gettin' on. About twenty minutes a'terwardshe comes up on deck again, and tells the mate as poor Mr Hobbs have gotthe yaller fever. And, mates, I takes notice that the skipper weren'tjust then lookin' so extra well hisself. About a hour a'terwards hegoes below again; and by and by the steward comes for'ard, lookin'pretty frightened, I can tell ye, and says as the skipper is sick, too.

  "`I wonder whether there's a shark come for him, as well as for thesecond mate,' says one of the men, jokin' like. `Run aft, steward,'says he, `and look over the taffrail, and see.'

  "The steward did as he was told; and presently he comes for'ard again,as white as a ghost; and:--

  "`There's two of 'em now,' says he. And sure enough, shipmates, when wewent aft and had a look for ourselves, there was two sharks just playin'about under the starn, scullin' here and there, lazy-like, but nevergoin' very far away.

  "I told the mate of this, and p'inted out the brutes to him; but hedidn't seem a bit put out by it; he just laughed and said:--

  "`Then the skipper's goose is cooked, too; and I shall have to takecharge of the ship myself!'

  "And, as he said it, mates, you may believe me or not, as you like, butup comes a third shark, and jines company with the two that was standin'off and on.

  "`Hillo!' says the mate, now lookin' frightened enough; `what's themeanin' of this here, I wonder? Three of 'em,' he says; `one for Hobbs,and one for the cap'n: but who's the third one a'ter?'

  "Mates, what I'm goin' to tell you is as true as that I'm sittin' hereon this here thwart: the mate was took ill that very night; and the nextday he follered poor Mr Hobbs and the skipper over the rail; and thenthe three sharks left us. And a week later the brig went ashore on thecoast, about the middle of as dark a night as ever you see, and me andtwo more was all as managed to reach the sand-hills alive."

  This weird story, told with all the impressiveness of a man who knewhimself to be speaking the truth--emphasised as it was by the persistentpresence of those two remorseless brutes under our own stern,--affectedthe listeners powerfully; and at its close there was not one of us, Iwill venture to say, but was firmly convinced that at least two of ourparty were doomed.

  We continued pulling to the eastward until nearly midnight that night,relieving each other at the oars at short intervals, when, suddenly, oneof the men--Peter Green by name--dropped his oar and, with a chokingcry, rolled off his thwart and fell prone into the bottom of the boat.His place was immediately taken by another; but within a quarter of anhour this man, too, was obliged to give up; and so, one after the other,they all succumbed, until only Dumaresq and myself were left; and we hadnot been tugging at the oars five minutes when the Frenchman cried:

  "It is no good, _mon ami_; I am `gastados', as the Spaniards say; I amexpended, worn out!" He rose to his feet; staggered heavily aft, andsank down in the stern-sheets with a groan and a gasping cry of:

  "Water! water! For the love of God give me a mouthful of water, or Ishall die!"

  The poor fellow had, of course, been receiving the same allowance as therest of us; and the small quantity of putrid fluid now remaining in thebottom of our breaker was of such priceless value that I could not givehim any more without inflicting a grievous injustice and injury upon therest; nevertheless, I could not sit there and see him die; so I drew asingle allowance from the cask--explaining to the men as well as my ownparched throat would allow, that I would forego my own allowance nexttime that it was due--and, raising his head, I poured it into his mouth,bitterly grudging him every drop, I am ashamed to say, as I did so.There was only enough to just moisten his cracked lips and his dry,black tongue; but, such as it was, it seemed to revive him somewhat,and, squeezing my hand gratefully, he settled himself more comfortablyon the thwart, and presently appeared to sink into a state of semi-unconsciousness that perhaps partially served in place of sleep.

  I would gladly have followed his example if I could, but it wasimpossible. My stubborn constitution seemed to defy the destructivewear and tear of prolonged hunger and thirst; but my sufferings werebeyond the power of language to portray; my craving hunger was sointense that I believe I could have eaten and enjoyed any food, howeverrevolting, could I but have obtained it; while my thirst was sooverpowering that it was with the utmost difficulty I combated thetemptation to open a vein and moisten my parched and burning tongue and
throat with my own blood. Equally difficult was it to resist thetemptation to take a long, cool, satisfying draught of the salt-waterthat lapped so tantalisingly against the sides of the boat, andshimmered so temptingly in the starlight all around me; but I knew whatthe consequences of such an act would be, and, by the resolute exerciseof all the will power remaining to me I contrived to overcome thelonging. Yet so excruciating was my torment that I felt I must dosomething to alleviate it, even though the alleviation were to be of thebriefest. I therefore determined to try an experiment; and, strippingoff all my clothing, I plunged the garments, one by one, into the wateralongside, until they were saturated; when I donned them again. Thecool, wet contact of them with my dry, burning skin seemed to affordsome relief to my tormenting thirst; and, encouraged by this smallmeasure of success, I next cut a strip of leather from one of my bootsand, dividing this into small pieces, I placed them, one at a time, inmy mouth, masticating them as well as I could, and finally swallowingthem. It will, perhaps, convey to the reader some idea of the intensityof my hunger when I say that I actually enjoyed these pieces of leather,and that my unendurable craving for food was in an appreciable degreeappeased by them, to an extent sufficient, indeed, to enable me to liedown and actually fall asleep.

  I remember that my dreams, that night, were of feasting and drinking, ofa profusion of appetising viands and choice wines spread upon longtables that stood under the welcome shadow of umbrageous trees and closeto the borders of sparkling streams of sweet, crystal-clear water; andwhen I awoke the sun was again rising above the horizon into a sky offleckless blue reflected by an ocean of glassy calm unbroken by thefaintest discoverable suggestion of a flaw of wind anywhere upon itsmirror-like surface. My companions were also stirring; some of themcontenting themselves by merely grasping the gunwale of the boat and soraising their bodies that they could look round them for a moment, andthen sinking back with a moan of despair at the sight of the breathlesscalm and the blank horizon, while others--two or three whose strengthstill sufficed for the extra effort--painfully raised themselves upontheir feet and scanned the horizon with a longer and more searching gazefor a sail. There was nothing to be seen, however, in the whole visiblestretch of the ocean, save the fins of the two sharks which haunted usso remorselessly; so, with inarticulate mutterings of despair, andhoarse, broken curses at the ill-fortune which so persistently doggedus, we prepared to devour our last insignificant ration of food andconsume the last drops of our hoarded water.

  The next minute saw us transformed into a crew of furious, ravingmaniacs; for--the food and the water had both disappeared! the lockerforward in which our last morsel of meat had been deposited on theprevious night was empty; the water-breaker was dry! some unscrupulousvillain, some vile, dastardly thief among us had stolen and consumedboth! The discovery of this detestable crime had the temporary effectof a powerful restorative upon us; our furious indignation temporarilyimbued our bodies with new vigour; and in an instant every man of us wasupon his feet and glaring round, with eyes ablaze, upon his fellows, insearch of the criminal. In vain I strove to quell the excitement, tostay the clamour, and to restore order; discipline and obedience indeedwere at an end, distinctions of rank no longer existed, the ordinaryrestraints of civilisation were discarded, our frightful situation hadreduced us to the condition of wild beasts, and my entreaties that thematter might be dealt with in something like judicial form might as wellhave been urged upon the empty air.

  There was not much difficulty in identifying the culprit. He was aWelshman, named Evans, a poor, pitiful, sneaking creature, one of theunder-stewards belonging to the _Manilla_, who had systematicallyshirked his share of the work, and done his best to evade his share ofthe hardship from the very first; and although, when taxed with hiscrime, he at first strenuously denied it, his manner belied his words,and presently he flung himself upon his knees and--with tears andprotestations of his inability to resist the temptation that hadsuddenly come upon him--acknowledged the theft, and abjectly besoughtour forgiveness. I very much doubt whether, in my then frame of mind, Icould have been induced to forgive the miserable creature: but Icertainly had no desire to inflict any punishment upon him beyond whathe would derive from my undisguised expressions of contempt andabhorrence. Not so his more immediate companions, however. Evans hadno sooner confessed than, with a hoarse howl of fury, his self-constituted judges whipped out their sheath-knives, while in a paroxysmof terror the wretched steward leapt to his feet and hastily retreatedforward, shrieking for mercy. The men followed him; and ere I couldintervene there was a scuffle, a rapid rain of blows, a smothered groan,a splash alongside, and the next instant the Welshman's head reappearedabove water, about a fathom away from the boat, his face grey anddistorted with fear, and his skinny hands outstretched in a vainendeavour to reach the gunwale of the boat. Then, almost in the self-same instant, and before one's benumbed senses found time to realise theghastly tragedy, there was a rapid swirl of water alongside, an ear-splitting yell, and the miserable man was dragged down, an ensanguinedpatch in the deep crystalline blue, and a few transitory air-bubblesalone marking the spot from which he had vanished. Involuntarily Iglanced astern. There was but one shark's fin now visible!

  "Shame upon you, men; shame upon you!" cried I, emerging from thetemporary trance of stupefaction which seemed to have seized me whilethis frightful tragedy was in progress. "You have taken a human life,and branded yourselves as murderers. And for what? Simply because thatpoor craven of a fellow appropriated a small morsel of putrid meat and afew drops of disgusting liquid that, evenly divided among you all, couldhave done you no appreciable good. At most, it could but have prolongedyour lives an hour or two."

  "Ay, that's just it!" huskily interrupted one of the men. "The meat andthe water that we've lost would have give us another hour or two oflife, and who's to say that just that hour or two mightn't have made allthe difference between livin' and dyin' to us? If anything was tohappen to drift into view within the next few hours, that bit of meatand they few drops of water might have give us strength enough to handlethe oars again and pull far enough to be sighted and picked up; but nowwe're done for, all hands of us. Our strength is gone, and we'venothin' left to give it back to us, even if a whole fleet was in sightat this present moment. When that chap stole the last of our grub hestole our lives with it. He's the murderer, not us, and he deservedwhat he got! Oh, my God, water! Give us water, for Christ's sake!"

  And, throwing up his poor, lean, shrivelled hands toward the cloudlesssky, with a gesture eloquent of frantic, despairing appeal, the poor,tortured creature suddenly collapsed and fell senseless athwart thegunwale of the boat, with his arms hanging down into the water. Wedragged him quickly inboard again, but we were not a second too soon,for we had scarcely done so when the remaining shark was alongside,glaring up at us with a look of fell longing in those cruel goggle eyesof his, that seemed to say he intended to have his prey sooner or later,although we had baulked him of it for the present.

  The dreadful exhaustion of reaction from the late excitement now seizedupon the rest of us, and one by one we wearily sank down again into ourrespective places in the boat. Then I told the men by what means I hadobtained temporary relief during the night, advising them to try thesame method, and presently we were all sitting in our wet clothes,ravenously chewing away upon strips of our shoe leather. But nobodythought of again having recourse to the oars; indeed our strength hadnow so completely melted away that I doubt very much whether a singleman in the whole of that boat's company--saving, perhaps, myself--couldhave laid out an oar unaided.

  The blazing hot, breathless day lagged slowly along, every hour seemingto spin itself out to a more intolerable length than the last, and withevery moment our suffering grew more nearly unbearable, until towardevening I seemed to be going mad, for the most fantastic ideas wentcrowding through my whirling brain, and I now and then caught myselfmuttering the most utter nonsense, now laughing, now weeping and moaninglike a child
. Anon I found myself kneeling in the stern-sheets andsupporting my body upon one arm as I gesticulated with the other whileapostrophising that demon shark--or were there two of them again, orthree? I remember laughing to myself uproariously, noticing at the sametime, with a sort of wonder, what a wild, eldritch, gibbering laugh itwas, at the thought of how those sharks--yes, there _were_ three; I wascertain of it--would jostle and hustle each other, in their greedy hasteto get at me, were I to simply stand up and topple over the gunwale intothe water. And how easily--how ridiculously easily--I might do it too.I laughed again at the absurdity of taking so much trouble and enduringsuch frightful extremity of suffering to preserve a life that might beso readily got rid of, and wondered dully why I had been so foolish asto go through it all when it might be put an end to in a single moment.Why, I asked myself, should I remain any longer in the boat with thatgreat, red, flaming eye staring so mercilessly down upon me out of thatbrazen sky, when the laughing blue water smiled so temptingly up into myeyes and wooed me to its cool embrace? There would be no more hungerand thirst down there, no relentless sun to torment me century aftercentury by darting his fiery beams down upon my uncovered head andthrough my hissing, seething brain. A plunge, and all my miseries wouldbe at an end. I would make that plunge; I would seek those cool,cerulean depths; I would--Ah! I had forgotten you, you devils! What!are you waiting for me? Are you growing impatient? How many of you arethere? One, two, three, four--stop, stop. I cannot count you if youswarm around the boat in that unseemly fashion! Why, there are hundredsof you, thousands, millions! The sea is black with you! Your wavingfins cover the ocean to the farthest confines of the horizon! And youare all waiting for me! Very well, then, I shall disappoint you. Ishall--

  When I recovered from my delirium it was night. The stars were shiningbrightly, and the air was deliciously cool after the scorching heat ofthe day. Strange to say, I no longer felt hungry. The craving for foodwas gone, but its place was more than supplied by an increased agony ofthirst which seared my vitals as with fire. My lips were dry andcracked; my tongue felt shrivelled and hard in my mouth. I tried tospeak to Dumaresq, who was lying in the bottom of the boat with hisglazed eyes turned up at the stars, but I could give utterance only to ahusky, hissing sound. There was no movement on the part of any of theforms that were dimly discernable, huddled up in the bottom of the boat.Whether they were dead or only asleep I knew not, nor cared. Life andeverything connected with it had lost all interest for me I was dying.I knew it, and longed only for the end to come that I might be deliveredout of my misery. With inexpressible pain I raised myself to my kneesto take one more last look round, lest peradventure a sail should bysome miraculous interposition of Providence have drifted within our ken,but there was nothing. There could be nothing while that murderous calmlasted. I felt the old delirium returning upon me; it was riotingwithin my brain. Strange forms and hideous shapes floated around me.The dead steward climbed in over the gunwale and stood in the eyes ofthe boat, denouncing us as murderers and calling curses down upon us.Then the scene changed. A glorious light shone round about us; softstrains of sweetest music came floating to us across the placid waters;delicious perfumes filled the air. There was a gentle murmuring soundas of a soft wind among trees and a gentle tinkling as of a runningstream. Then my brain seemed to burst. I was dimly conscious that Iwas falling backward, and I knew no more.