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Story
THE WRECK
I was apprenticed to the Sea when I was twelve years old, and I have
encountered a great deal of rough weather, both literal and
metaphorical. It has always been my opinion since I first possessed
such a thing as an opinion, that the man who knows only one subject
is next tiresome to the man who knows no subject. Therefore, in the
course of my life I have taught myself whatever I could, and
although I am not an educated man, I am able, I am thankful to say,
to have an intelligent interest in most things.
A person might suppose, from reading the above, that I am in the
habit of holding forth about number one. That is not the case.
Just as if I was to come into a room among strangers, and must
either be introduced or introduce myself, so I have taken the
liberty of passing these few remarks, simply and plainly that it may
be known who and what I am. I will add no more of the sort than
that my name is William George Ravender, that I was born at Penrith
half a year after my own father was drowned, and that I am on the
second day of this present blessed Christmas week of one thousand
eight hundred and fifty-six, fifty-six years of age.
When the rumour first went flying up and down that there was gold in
California--which, as most people know, was before it was discovered
in the British colony of Australia--I was in the West Indies,
trading among the Islands. Being in command and likewise part-owner
of a smart schooner, I had my work cut out for me, and I was doing
it. Consequently, gold in California was no business of mine.
But, by the time when I came home to England again, the thing was as
clear as your hand held up before you at noon-day. There was
Californian gold in the museums and in the goldsmiths' shops, and
the very first time I went upon 'Change, I met a friend of mine (a
seafaring man like myself), with a Californian nugget hanging to his
watch-chain. I handled it. It was as like a peeled walnut with
bits unevenly broken off here and there, and then electrotyped all
over, as ever I saw anything in my life.
I am a single man (she was too good for this world and for me, and
she died six weeks before our marriage-day), so when I am ashore, I
live in my house at Poplar. My house at Poplar is taken care of and
kept ship-shape by an old lady who was my mother's maid before I was
born. She is as handsome and as upright as any old lady in the
world. She is as fond of me as if she had ever had an only son, and
I was he. Well do I know wherever I sail that she never lays down
her head at night without having said, "Merciful Lord! bless and
preserve William George Ravender, and send him safe home, through
Christ our Saviour!" I have thought of it in many a dangerous
moment, when it has done me no harm, I am sure.
In my house at Poplar, along with this old lady, I lived quiet for
best part of a year: having had a long spell of it among the
Islands, and having (which was very uncommon in me) taken the fever
rather badly. At last, being strong and hearty, and having read
every book I could lay hold of, right out, I was walking down
Leadenhall Street in the City of London, thinking of turning-to
again, when I met what I call Smithick and Watersby of Liverpool. I
chanced to lift up my eyes from looking in at a ship's chronometer
in a window, and I saw him bearing down upon me, head on.
It is, personally, neither Smithick, nor Watersby, that I here
mention, nor was I ever acquainted with any man of either of those
names, nor do I think that there has been any one of either of those
names in that Liverpool House for years back. But, it is in reality
the House itself that I refer to; and a wiser merchant or a truer
gentleman never stepped.
"My dear Captain Ravender," says he. "Of all the men on earth, I
wanted to see you most. I was on my way to you."
"Well!" says I. "That looks as if you WERE to see me, don't it?"
With that I put my arm in his, and we walked on towards the Royal
Exchange, and when we got there, walked up and down at the back of
it where the Clock-Tower is. We walked an hour and more, for he had
much to say to me. He had a scheme for chartering a new ship of
their own to take out cargo to the diggers and emigrants in
California, and to buy and bring back gold. Into the particulars of
that scheme I will not enter, and I have no right to enter. All I
say of it is, that it was a very original one, a very fine one, a
very sound one, and a very lucrative one beyond doubt.
He imparted it to me as freely as if I had been a part of himself.
After doing so, he made me the handsomest sharing offer that ever
was made to me, boy or man--or I believe to any other captain in the
Merchant Navy--and he took this round turn to finish with:
"Ravender, you are well aware that the lawlessness of that coast and
country at present, is as special as the circumstances in which it
is placed. Crews of vessels outward-bound, desert as soon as they
make the land; crews of vessels homeward-bound, ship at enormous
wages, with the express intention of murdering the captain and
seizing the gold freight; no man can trust another, and the devil
seems let loose. Now," says he, "you know my opinion of you, and
you know I am only expressing it, and with no singularity, when I
tell you that you are almost the only man on whose integrity,
discretion, and energy--" &c., &c. For, I don't want to repeat what
he said, though I was and am sensible of it.
Notwithstanding my being, as I have mentioned, quite ready for a
voyage, still I had some doubts of this voyage. Of course I knew,
without being told, that there were peculiar difficulties and
dangers in it, a long way over and above those which attend all
voyages. It must not be supposed that I was afraid to face them;
but, in my opinion a man has no manly motive or sustainment in his
own breast for facing dangers, unless he has well considered what
they are, and is able quietly to say to himself, "None of these
perils can now take me by surprise; I shall know what to do for the
best in any of them; all the rest lies in the higher and greater
hands to which I humbly commit myself." On this principle I have so
attentively considered (regarding it as my duty) all the hazards I
have ever been able to think of, in the ordinary way of storm,
shipwreck, and fire at sea, that I hope I should be prepared to do,
in any of those cases, whatever could be done, to save the lives
intrusted to my charge.
As I was thoughtful, my good friend proposed that he should leave me
to walk there as long as I liked, and that I should dine with him
by-and-by at his club in Pall Mall. I accepted the invitation and I
walked up and down there, quarter-deck fashion, a matter of a couple
of hours; now and then looking up at the weathercock as I might have
looked up aloft; and now and then taking a look into Cornhill, as I
might have taken a look over the side.
All dinner-time, and all after dinner-time, we talked it over again.
I gave him my views of his plan, and he very much approved of the
same. I told him I had nearly decided, but not quite. "Well,
well," says he, "come down to Liverpool to-morrow with me, and see
the Golden Mary." I liked the name (her name was Mary, and she was
golden, if golden stands for good), so I began to feel that it was
almost done when I said I would go to Liverpool. On the next
morning but one we were on board the Golden Mary. I might have
known, from his asking me to come down and see her, what she was. I
declare her to have been the completest and most exquisite Beauty
that ever I set my eyes upon.
We had inspected every timber in her, and had come back to the
gangway to go ashore from the dock-basin, when I put out my hand to
my friend. "Touch upon it," says I, "and touch heartily. I take
command of this ship, and I am hers and yours, if I can get John
Steadiman for my chief mate."
John Steadiman had sailed with me four voyages. The first voyage
John was third mate out to China, and came home second. The other
three voyages he was my first officer. At this time of chartering
the Golden Mary, he was aged thirty-two. A brisk, bright, blue-eyed
fellow, a very neat figure and rather under the middle size, never
out of the way and never in it, a face that pleased everybody and
that all children took to, a habit of going about singing as
cheerily as a blackbird, and a perfect sailor.
We were in one of those Liverpool hackney-coaches in less than a
minute, and we cruised about in her upwards of three hours, looking
for John. John had come home from Van Diemen's Land barely a month
before, and I had heard of him as taking a frisk in Liverpool. We
asked after him, among many other places, at the two boarding-houses
he was fondest of, and we found he had had a week's spell at each of
them; but, he had gone here and gone there, and had set off "to lay
out on the main-to'-gallant-yard of the highest Welsh mountain" (so
he had told the people of the house), and where he might be then, or
when he might come back, nobody could tell us. But it was
surprising, to be sure, to see how every face brightened the moment
there was mention made of the name of Mr. Steadiman.
We were taken aback at meeting with no better luck, and we had wore
ship and put her head for my friends, when as we were jogging
through the streets, I clap my eyes on John himself coming out of a
toyshop! He was carrying a little boy, and conducting two uncommon
pretty women to their coach, and he told me afterwards that he had
never in his life seen one of the three before, but that he was so
taken with them on looking in at the toyshop while they were buying
the child a cranky Noah's Ark, very much down by the head, that he
had gone in and asked the ladies' permission to treat him to a
tolerably correct Cutter there was in the window, in order that such
a handsome boy might not grow up with a lubberly idea of naval
architecture.
We stood off and on until the ladies' coachman began to give way,
and then we hailed John. On his coming aboard of us, I told him,
very gravely, what I had said to my friend. It struck him, as he
said himself, amidships. He was quite shaken by it. "Captain
Ravender," were John Steadiman's words, "such an opinion from you is
true commendation, and I'll sail round the world with you for twenty
years if you hoist the signal, and stand by you for ever!" And now
indeed I felt that it was done, and that the Golden Mary was afloat.
Grass never grew yet under the feet of Smithick and Watersby. The
riggers were out of that ship in a fortnight's time, and we had
begun taking in cargo. John was always aboard, seeing everything
stowed with his own eyes; and whenever I went aboard myself early or
late, whether he was below in the hold, or on deck at the hatchway,
or overhauling his cabin, nailing up pictures in it of the Blush
Roses of England, the Blue Belles of Scotland, and the female
Shamrock of Ireland: of a certainty I heard John singing like a
blackbird.
We had room for twenty passengers. Our sailing advertisement was no
sooner out, than we might have taken these twenty times over. In
entering our men, I and John (both together) picked them, and we
entered none but good hands--as good as were to be found in that
port. And so, in a good ship of the best build, well owned, well
arranged, well officered, well manned, well found in all respects,
we parted with our pilot at a quarter past four o'clock in the
afternoon of the seventh of March, one thousand eight hundred and
fifty-one, and stood with a fair wind out to sea.
It may be easily believed that up to that time I had had no leisure
to be intimate with my passengers. The most of them were then in
their berths sea-sick; however, in going among them, telling them
what was good for them, persuading them not to be there, but to come
up on deck and feel the breeze, and in rousing them with a joke, or
a comfortable word, I made acquaintance with them, perhaps, in a
more friendly and confidential way from the first, than I might have
done at the cabin table.
Of my passengers, I need only particularise, just at present, a
bright-eyed blooming young wife who was going out to join her
husband in California, taking with her their only child, a little
girl of three years old, whom he had never seen; a sedate young
woman in black, some five years older (about thirty as I should
say), who was going out to join a brother; and an old gentleman, a
good deal like a hawk if his eyes had been better and not so red,
who was always talking, morning, noon, and night, about the gold
discovery. But, whether he was making the voyage, thinking his old
arms could dig for gold, or whether his speculation was to buy it,
or to barter for it, or to cheat for it, or to snatch it anyhow from
other people, was his secret. He kept his secret.
These three and the child were the soonest well. The child was a
most engaging child, to be sure, and very fond of me: though I am
bound to admit that John Steadiman and I were borne on her pretty
little books in reverse order, and that he was captain there, and I
was mate. It was beautiful to watch her with John, and it was
beautiful to watch John with her. Few would have thought it
possible, to see John playing at bo-peep round the mast, that he was
the man who had caught up an iron bar and struck a Malay and a
Maltese dead, as they were gliding with their knives down the cabin
stair aboard the barque Old England, when the captain lay ill in his
cot, off Saugar Point. But he was; and give him his back against a
bulwark, he would have done the same by half a dozen of them. The
name of the young mother was Mrs. Atherfield, the name of the young
lady in black was Miss Coleshaw, and the name of the old gentleman
was Mr. Rarx.
As the child had a quantity of shining fair hair, clustering in
curls all about her face, and as her name was Lucy, Steadiman gave
her the name of the Golden Lucy. So, we had the Golden Lucy and the
Golden Mary; and John kept up the idea to that extent as he and the
child went playing about the decks, that I believe she used to think
the ship was alive somehow--a sister or companion, going to the same
place as herself. She liked to be by the wheel, and in fine
weather, I have often stood by the man whose trick it was at the
wheel, only to hear her, sitting near my feet, talking to the ship.
Never had a child such a doll before, I suppose; but she made a doll
of the Golden Mary, and used to dress her up by tying ribbons and
little bits of finery to the belaying-pins; and nobody ever moved
them, unless it was to save them from being blown away.
Of course I took charge of the two young women, and I called them
"my dear," and they never minded, knowing that whatever I said was
said in a fatherly and protecting spirit. I gave them their places
on each side of me at dinner, Mrs. Atherfield on my right and Miss
Coleshaw on my left; and I directed the unmarried lady to serve out
the breakfast, and the married lady to serve out the tea. Likewise
I said to my black steward in their presence, "Tom Snow, these two
ladies are equally the mistresses of this house, and do you obey
their orders equally;" at which Tom laughed, and they all laughed.
Old Mr. Rarx was not a pleasant man to look at, nor yet to talk to,
or to be with, for no one could help seeing that he was a sordid and
selfish character, and that he had warped further and further out of
the straight with time. Not but what he was on his best behaviour
with us, as everybody was; for we had no bickering among us, for'ard
or aft. I only mean to say, he was not the man one would have
chosen for a messmate. If choice there had been, one might even
have gone a few points out of one's course, to say, "No! Not him!"
But, there was one curious inconsistency in Mr. Rarx. That was,
that he took an astonishing interest in the child. He looked, and I
may add, he was, one of the last of men to care at all for a child,
or to care much for any human creature. Still, he went so far as to
be habitually uneasy, if the child was long on deck, out of his
sight. He was always afraid of her falling overboard, or falling
down a hatchway, or of a block or what not coming down upon her from
the rigging in the working of the ship, or of her getting some hurt
or other. He used to look at her and touch her, as if she was
something precious to him. He was always solicitous about her not
injuring her health, and constantly entreated her mother to be
careful of it. This was so much the more curious, because the child
did not like him, but used to shrink away from him, and would not
even put out her hand to him without coaxing from others. I believe
that every soul on board frequently noticed this, and not one of us
understood it. However, it was such a plain fact, that John
Steadiman said more than once when old Mr. Rarx was not within
earshot, that if the Golden Mary felt a tenderness for the dear old
gentleman she carried in her lap, she must be bitterly jealous of
the Golden Lucy.
Before I go any further with this narrative, I will state that our
ship was a barque of three hundred tons, carrying a crew of eighteen
men, a second mate in addition to John, a carpenter, an armourer or
smith, and two apprentices (one a Scotch boy, poor little fellow).
We had three boats; the Long-boat, capable of carrying twenty-five
men; the Cutter, capable of carrying fifteen; and the Surf-boat,
capable of carrying ten. I put down the capacity of these boats
according to the numbers they were really meant to hold.
We had tastes of bad weather and head-winds, of course; but, on the
whole we had as fine a run as any reasonable man could expect, for
sixty days. I then began to enter two remarks in the ship's Log and
in my Journal; first, that there was an unusual and amazing quantity
of ice; second, that the nights were most wonderfully dark, in spite
of the ice.
For five days and a half, it seemed quite useless and hopeless to
alter the ship's course so as to stand out of the way of this ice.
I made what southing I could; but, all that time, we were beset by
it. Mrs. Atherfield after standing by me on deck once, looking for
some time in an awed manner at the great bergs that surrounded us,
said in a whisper, "O! Captain Ravender, it looks as if the whole
solid earth had changed into ice, and broken up!" I said to her,
laughing, "I don't wonder that it does, to your inexperienced eyes,
my dear." But I had never seen a twentieth part of the quantity,
and, in reality, I was pretty much of her opinion.
However, at two p.m. on the afternoon of the sixth day, that is to
say, when we were sixty-six days out, John Steadiman who had gone
aloft, sang out from the top, that the sea was clear ahead. Before
four p.m. a strong breeze springing up right astern, we were in open
water at sunset. The breeze then freshening into half a gale of
wind, and the Golden Mary being a very fast sailer, we went before
the wind merrily, all night.
I had thought it impossible that it could be darker than it had
been, until the sun, moon, and stars should fall out of the Heavens,
and Time should be destroyed; but, it had been next to light, in
comparison with what it was now. The darkness was so profound, that
looking into it was painful and oppressive--like looking, without a
ray of light, into a dense black bandage put as close before the
eyes as it could be, without touching them. I doubled the look-out,
and John and I stood in the bow side-by-side, never leaving it all
night. Yet I should no more have known that he was near me when he
was silent, without putting out my arm and touching him, than I
should if he had turned in and been fast asleep below. We were not
so much looking out, all of us, as listening to the utmost, both
with our eyes and ears.
Next day, I found that the mercury in the barometer, which had risen
steadily since we cleared the ice, remained steady. I had had very
good observations, with now and then the interruption of a day or
so, since our departure. I got the sun at noon, and found that we
were in Lat. 58 degrees S., Long. 60 degrees W., off New South
Shetland; in the neighbourhood of Cape Horn. We were sixty-seven
days out, that day. The ship's reckoning was accurately worked and
made up. The ship did her duty admirably, all on board were well,
and all hands were as smart, efficient, and contented, as it was
possible to be.
When the night came on again as dark as before, it was the eighth
night I had been on deck. Nor had I taken more than a very little
sleep in the day-time, my station being always near the helm, and
often at it, while we were among the ice. Few but those who have
tried it can imagine the difficulty and pain of only keeping the
eyes open--physically open--under such circumstances, in such
darkness. They get struck by the darkness, and blinded by the
darkness. They make patterns in it, and they flash in it, as if
they had gone out of your head to look at you. On the turn of
midnight, John Steadiman, who was alert and fresh (for I had always
made him turn in by day), said to me, "Captain Ravender, I entreat
of you to go below. I am sure you can hardly stand, and your voice
is getting weak, sir. Go below, and take a little rest. I'll call
you if a block chafes." I said to John in answer, "Well, well,
John! Let us wait till the turn of one o'clock, before we talk
about that." I had just had one of the ship's lanterns held up,
that I might see how the night went by my watch, and it was then
twenty minutes after twelve.
At five minutes before one, John sang out to the boy to bring the
lantern again, and when I told him once more what the time was,
entreated and prayed of me to go below. "Captain Ravender," says
he, "all's well; we can't afford to have you laid up for a single
hour; and I respectfully and earnestly beg of you to go below." The
end of it was, that I agreed to do so, on the understanding that if
I failed to come up of my own accord within three hours, I was to be
punctually called. Having settled that, I left John in charge. But
I called him to me once afterwards, to ask him a question. I had
been to look at the barometer, and had seen the mercury still
perfectly steady, and had come up the companion again to take a last
look about me--if I can use such a word in reference to such
darkness--when I thought that the waves, as the Golden Mary parted
them and shook them off, had a hollow sound in them; something that
I fancied was a rather unusual reverberation. I was standing by the
quarter-deck rail on the starboard side, when I called John aft to
me, and bade him listen. He did so with the greatest attention.
Turning to me he then said, "Rely upon it, Captain Ravender, you
have been without rest too long, and the novelty is only in the
state of your sense of hearing." I thought so too by that time, and
I think so now, though I can never know for absolute certain in this
world, whether it was or not.
When I left John Steadiman in charge, the ship was still going at a
great rate through the water. The wind still blew right astern.
Though she was making great way, she was under shortened sail, and
had no more than she could easily carry. All was snug, and nothing
complained. There was a pretty sea running, but not a very high sea
neither, nor at all a confused one.
I turned in, as we seamen say, all standing. The meaning of that
is, I did not pull my clothes off--no, not even so much as my coat:
though I did my shoes, for my feet were badly swelled with the deck.
There was a little swing-lamp alight in my cabin. I thought, as I
looked at it before shutting my eyes, that I was so tired of
darkness, and troubled by darkness, that I could have gone to sleep
best in the midst of a million of flaming gas-lights. That was the
last thought I had before I went off, except the prevailing thought
that I should not be able to get to sleep at all.
I dreamed that I was back at Penrith again, and was trying to get
round the church, which had altered its shape very much since I last
saw it, and was cloven all down the middle of the steeple in a most
singular manner. Why I wanted to get round the church I don't know;
but I was as anxious to do it as if my life depended on it. Indeed,
I believe it did in the dream. For all that, I could not get round
the church. I was still trying, when I came against it with a
violent shock, and was flung out of my cot against the ship's side.
Shrieks and a terrific outcry struck me far harder than the bruising
timbers, and amidst sounds of grinding and crashing, and a heavy
rushing and breaking of water--sounds I understood too well--I made
my way on deck. It was not an easy thing to do, for the ship heeled
over frightfully, and was beating in a furious manner.
I could not see the men as I went forward, but I could hear that
they were hauling in sail, in disorder. I had my trumpet in my
hand, and, after directing and encouraging them in this till it was
done, I hailed first John Steadiman, and then my second mate, Mr.
William Rames. Both answered clearly and steadily. Now, I had
practised them and all my crew, as I have ever made it a custom to
practise all who sail with me, to take certain stations and wait my
orders, in case of any unexpected crisis. When my voice was heard
hailing, and their voices were heard answering, I was aware, through
all the noises of the ship and sea, and all the crying of the
passengers below, that there was a pause. "Are you ready, Rames?"--
"Ay, ay, sir!"--"Then light up, for God's sake!" In a moment he and
another were burning blue-lights, and the ship and all on board
seemed to be enclosed in a mist of light, under a great black dome.
The light shone up so high that I could see the huge Iceberg upon
which we had struck, cloven at the top and down the middle, exactly
like Penrith Church in my dream. At the same moment I could see the
watch last relieved, crowding up and down on deck; I could see Mrs.
Atherfield and Miss Coleshaw thrown about on the top of the
companion as they struggled to bring the child up from below; I
could see that the masts were going with the shock and the beating
of the ship; I could see the frightful breach stove in on the
starboard side, half the length of the vessel, and the sheathing and
timbers spirting up; I could see that the Cutter was disabled, in a
wreck of broken fragments; and I could see every eye turned upon me.
It is my belief that if there had been ten thousand eyes there, I
should have seen them all, with their different looks. And all this
in a moment. But you must consider what a moment.
I saw the men, as they looked at me, fall towards their appointed
stations, like good men and true. If she had not righted, they
could have done very little there or anywhere but die--not that it
is little for a man to die at his post--I mean they could have done
nothing to save the passengers and themselves. Happily, however,
the violence of the shock with which we had so determinedly borne
down direct on that fatal Iceberg, as if it had been our destination
instead of our destruction, had so smashed and pounded the ship that
she got off in this same instant and righted. I did not want the
carpenter to tell me she was filling and going down; I could see and
hear that. I gave Rames the word to lower the Long-boat and the
Surf-boat, and I myself told off the men for each duty. Not one
hung back, or came before the other. I now whispered to John
Steadiman, "John, I stand at the gangway here, to see every soul on
board safe over the side. You shall have the next post of honour,
and shall be the last but one to leave the ship. Bring up the
passengers, and range them behind me; and put what provision and
water you can got at, in the boats. Cast your eye for'ard, John,
and you'll see you have not a moment to lose."
My noble fellows got the boats over the side as orderly as I ever
saw boats lowered with any sea running, and, when they were
launched, two or three of the nearest men in them as they held on,
rising and falling with the swell, called out, looking up at me,
"Captain Ravender, if anything goes wrong with us, and you are
saved, remember we stood by you!"--"We'll all stand by one another
ashore, yet, please God, my lads!" says I. "Hold on bravely, and be
tender with the women."
The women were an example to us. They trembled very much, but they
were quiet and perfectly collected. "Kiss me, Captain Ravender,"
says Mrs. Atherfield, "and God in heaven bless you, you good man!"
"My dear," says I, "those words are better for me than a life-boat."
I held her child in my arms till she was in the boat, and then
kissed the child and handed her safe down. I now said to the people
in her, "You have got your freight, my lads, all but me, and I am
not coming yet awhile. Pull away from the ship, and keep off!"
That was the Long-boat. Old Mr. Rarx was one of her complement, and
he was the only passenger who had greatly misbehaved since the ship
struck. Others had been a little wild, which was not to be wondered
at, and not very blamable; but, he had made a lamentation and uproar
which it was dangerous for the people to hear, as there is always
contagion in weakness and selfishness. His incessant cry had been
that he must not be separated from the child, that he couldn't see
the child, and that he and the child must go together. He had even
tried to wrest the child out of my arms, that he might keep her in
his. "Mr. Rarx," said I to him when it came to that, "I have a
loaded pistol in my pocket; and if you don't stand out of the gang-
way, and keep perfectly quiet, I shall shoot you through the heart,
if you have got one." Says he, "You won't do murder, Captain
Ravender!" "No, sir," says I, "I won't murder forty-four people to
humour you, but I'll shoot you to save them." After that he was
quiet, and stood shivering a little way off, until I named him to go
over the side.
The Long-boat being cast off, the Surf-boat was soon filled. There
only remained aboard the Golden Mary, John Mullion the man who had
kept on burning the blue-lights (and who had lighted every new one
at every old one before it went out, as quietly as if he had been at
an illumination); John Steadiman; and myself. I hurried those two
into the Surf-boat, called to them to keep off, and waited with a
grateful and relieved heart for the Long-boat to come and take me
in, if she could. I looked at my watch, and it showed me, by the
blue-light, ten minutes past two. They lost no time. As soon as
she was near enough, I swung myself into her, and called to the men,
"With a will, lads! She's reeling!" We were not an inch too far
out of the inner vortex of her going down, when, by the blue-light
which John Mullion still burnt in the bow of the Surf-boat, we saw
her lurch, and plunge to the bottom head-foremost. The child cried,
weeping wildly, "O the dear Golden Mary! O look at her! Save her!
Save the poor Golden Mary!" And then the light burnt out, and the
black dome seemed to come down upon us.
I suppose if we had all stood a-top of a mountain, and seen the
whole remainder of the world sink away from under us, we could
hardly have felt more shocked and solitary than we did when we knew
we were alone on the wide ocean, and that the beautiful ship in
which most of us had been securely asleep within half an hour was
gone for ever. There was an awful silence in our boat, and such a
kind of palsy on the rowers and the man at the rudder, that I felt
they were scarcely keeping her before the sea. I spoke out then,
and said, "Let every one here thank the Lord for our preservation!"
All the voices answered (even the child's), "We thank the Lord!" I
then said the Lord's Prayer, and all hands said it after me with a
solemn murmuring. Then I gave the word "Cheerily, O men, Cheerily!"
and I felt that they were handling the boat again as a boat ought to
be handled.
The Surf-boat now burnt another blue-light to show us where they
were, and we made for her, and laid ourselves as nearly alongside of
her as we dared. I had always kept my boats with a coil or two of
good stout stuff in each of them, so both boats had a rope at hand.
We made a shift, with much labour and trouble, to got near enough to
one another to divide the blue-lights (they were no use after that
night, for the sea-water soon got at them), and to get a tow-rope
out between us. All night long we kept together, sometimes obliged
to cast off the rope, and sometimes getting it out again, and all of
us wearying for the morning--which appeared so long in coming that
old Mr. Rarx screamed out, in spite of his fears of me, "The world
is drawing to an end, and the sun will never rise any more!"
When the day broke, I found that we were all huddled together in a
miserable manner. We were deep in the water; being, as I found on
mustering, thirty-one in number, or at least six too many. In the
Surf-boat they were fourteen in number, being at least four too
many. The first thing I did, was to get myself passed to the
rudder--which I took from that time--and to get Mrs. Atherfield, her
child, and Miss Coleshaw, passed on to sit next me. As to old Mr.
Rarx, I put him in the bow, as far from us as I could. And I put
some of the best men near us in order that if I should drop there
might be a skilful hand ready to take the helm.
The sea moderating as the sun came up, though the sky was cloudy and
wild, we spoke the other boat, to know what stores they had, and to
overhaul what we had. I had a compass in my pocket, a small
telescope, a double-barrelled pistol, a knife, and a fire-box and
matches. Most of my men had knives, and some had a little tobacco:
some, a pipe as well. We had a mug among us, and an iron spoon. As
to provisions, there were in my boat two bags of biscuit, one piece
of raw beef, one piece of raw pork, a bag of coffee, roasted but not
ground (thrown in, I imagine, by mistake, for something else), two
small casks of water, and about half-a-gallon of rum in a keg. The
Surf-boat, having rather more rum than we, and fewer to drink it,
gave us, as I estimated, another quart into our keg. In return, we
gave them three double handfuls of coffee, tied up in a piece of a
handkerchief; they reported that they had aboard besides, a bag of
biscuit, a piece of beef, a small cask of water, a small box of
lemons, and a Dutch cheese. It took a long time to make these
exchanges, and they were not made without risk to both parties; the
sea running quite high enough to make our approaching near to one
another very hazardous. In the bundle with the coffee, I conveyed
to John Steadiman (who had a ship's compass with him), a paper
written in pencil, and torn from my pocket-book, containing the
course I meant to steer, in the hope of making land, or being picked
up by some vessel--I say in the hope, though I had little hope of
either deliverance. I then sang out to him, so as all might hear,
that if we two boats could live or die together, we would; but, that
if we should be parted by the weather, and join company no more,
they should have our prayers and blessings, and we asked for theirs.
We then gave them three cheers, which they returned, and I saw the
men's heads droop in both boats as they fell to their oars again.
These arrangements had occupied the general attention advantageously
for all, though (as I expressed in the last sentence) they ended in
a sorrowful feeling. I now said a few words to my fellow-voyagers
on the subject of the small stock of food on which our lives
depended if they were preserved from the great deep, and on the
rigid necessity of our eking it out in the most frugal manner. One
and all replied that whatever allowance I thought best to lay down
should be strictly kept to. We made a pair of scales out of a thin
scrap of iron-plating and some twine, and I got together for weights
such of the heaviest buttons among us as I calculated made up some
fraction over two ounces. This was the allowance of solid food
served out once a-day to each, from that time to the end; with the
addition of a coffee-berry, or sometimes half a one, when the
weather was very fair, for breakfast. We had nothing else whatever,
but half a pint of water each per day, and sometimes, when we were
coldest and weakest, a teaspoonful of rum each, served out as a
dram. I know how learnedly it can be shown that rum is poison, but
I also know that in this case, as in all similar cases I have ever
read of--which are numerous--no words can express the comfort and
support derived from it. Nor have I the least doubt that it saved
the lives of far more than half our number. Having mentioned half a
pint of water as our daily allowance, I ought to observe that
sometimes we had less, and sometimes we had more; for much rain
fell, and we caught it in a canvas stretched for the purpose.
Thus, at that tempestuous time of the year, and in that tempestuous
part of the world, we shipwrecked people rose and fell with the
waves. It is not my intention to relate (if I can avoid it) such
circumstances appertaining to our doleful condition as have been
better told in many other narratives of the kind than I can be
expected to tell them. I will only note, in so many passing words,
that day after day and night after night, we received the sea upon
our backs to prevent it from swamping the boat; that one party was
always kept baling, and that every hat and cap among us soon got
worn out, though patched up fifty times, as the only vessels we had
for that service; that another party lay down in the bottom of the
boat, while a third rowed; and that we were soon all in boils and
blisters and rags.
The other boat was a source of such anxious interest to all of us
that I used to wonder whether, if we were saved, the time could ever
come when the survivors in this boat of ours could be at all
indifferent to the fortunes of the survivors in that. We got out a
tow-rope whenever the weather permitted, but that did not often
happen, and how we two parties kept within the same horizon, as we
did, He, who mercifully permitted it to be so for our consolation,
only knows. I never shall forget the looks with which, when the
morning light came, we used to gaze about us over the stormy waters,
for the other boat. We once parted company for seventy-two hours,
and we believed them to have gone down, as they did us. The joy on
both sides when we came within view of one another again, had
something in a manner Divine in it; each was so forgetful of
individual suffering, in tears of delight and sympathy for the
people in the other boat.
I have been wanting to get round to the individual or personal part
of my subject, as I call it, and the foregoing incident puts me in
the right way. The patience and good disposition aboard of us, was
wonderful. I was not surprised by it in the women; for all men born
of women know what great qualities they will show when men will
fail; but, I own I was a little surprised by it in some of the men.
Among one-and-thirty people assembled at the best of times, there
will usually, I should say, be two or three uncertain tempers. I
knew that I had more than one rough temper with me among my own
people, for I had chosen those for the Long-boat that I might have
them under my eye. But, they softened under their misery, and were
as considerate of the ladies, and as compassionate of the child, as
the best among us, or among men--they could not have been more so.
I heard scarcely any complaining. The party lying down would moan a
good deal in their sleep, and I would often notice a man--not always
the same man, it is to be understood, but nearly all of them at one
time or other--sitting moaning at his oar, or in his place, as he
looked mistily over the sea. When it happened to be long before I
could catch his eye, he would go on moaning all the time in the
dismallest manner; but, when our looks met, he would brighten and
leave off. I almost always got the impression that he did not know
what sound he had been making, but that he thought he had been
humming a tune.
Our sufferings from cold and wet were far greater than our
sufferings from hunger. We managed to keep the child warm; but, I
doubt if any one else among us ever was warm for five minutes
together; and the shivering, and the chattering of teeth, were sad
to hear. The child cried a little at first for her lost playfellow,
the Golden Mary; but hardly ever whimpered afterwards; and when the
state of the weather made it possible, she used now and then to be
held up in the arms of some of us, to look over the sea for John
Steadiman's boat. I see the golden hair and the innocent face now,
between me and the driving clouds, like an angel going to fly away.
It had happened on the second day, towards night, that Mrs.
Atherfield, in getting Little Lucy to sleep, sang her a song. She
had a soft, melodious voice, and, when she had finished it, our
people up and begged for another. She sang them another, and after
it had fallen dark ended with the Evening Hymn. From that time,
whenever anything could be heard above the sea and wind, and while
she had any voice left, nothing would serve the people but that she
should sing at sunset. She always did, and always ended with the
Evening Hymn. We mostly took up the last line, and shed tears when
it was done, but not miserably. We had a prayer night and morning,
also, when the weather allowed of it.
Twelve nights and eleven days we had been driving in the boat, when
old Mr. Rarx began to be delirious, and to cry out to me to throw
the gold overboard or it would sink us, and we should all be lost.
For days past the child had been declining, and that was the great
cause of his wildness. He had been over and over again shrieking
out to me to give her all the remaining meat, to give her all the
remaining rum, to save her at any cost, or we should all be ruined.
At this time, she lay in her mother's arms at my feet. One of her
little hands was almost always creeping about her mother's neck or
chin. I had watched the wasting of the little hand, and I knew it
was nearly over.
The old man's cries were so discordant with the mother's love and
submission, that I called out to him in an angry voice, unless he
held his peace on the instant, I would order him to be knocked on
the head and thrown overboard. He was mute then, until the child
died, very peacefully, an hour afterwards: which was known to all
in the boat by the mother's breaking out into lamentations for the
first time since the wreck--for, she had great fortitude and
constancy, though she was a little gentle woman. Old Mr. Rarx then
became quite ungovernable, tearing what rags he had on him, raging
in imprecations, and calling to me that if I had thrown the gold
overboard (always the gold with him!) I might have saved the child.
"And now," says he, in a terrible voice, "we shall founder, and all
go to the Devil, for our sins will sink us, when we have no innocent
child to bear us up!" We so discovered with amazement, that this
old wretch had only cared for the life of the pretty little creature
dear to all of us, because of the influence he superstitiously hoped
she might have in preserving him! Altogether it was too much for
the smith or armourer, who was sitting next the old man, to bear.
He took him by the throat and rolled him under the thwarts, where he
lay still enough for hours afterwards.
All that thirteenth night, Miss Coleshaw, lying across my knees as I
kept the helm, comforted and supported the poor mother. Her child,
covered with a pea-jacket of mine, lay in her lap. It troubled me
all night to think that there was no Prayer-Book among us, and that
I could remember but very few of the exact words of the burial
service. When I stood up at broad day, all knew what was going to
be done, and I noticed that my poor fellows made the motion of
uncovering their heads, though their heads had been stark bare to
the sky and sea for many a weary hour. There was a long heavy swell
on, but otherwise it was a fair morning, and there were broad fields
of sunlight on the waves in the east. I said no more than this: "I
am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord. He raised the
daughter of Jairus the ruler, and said she was not dead but slept.
He raised the widow's son. He arose Himself, and was seen of many.
He loved little children, saying, Suffer them to come unto Me and
rebuke them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven. In His name,
my friends, and committed to His merciful goodness!" With those
words I laid my rough face softly on the placid little forehead, and
buried the Golden Lucy in the grave of the Golden Mary.
Having had it on my mind to relate the end of this dear little
child, I have omitted something from its exact place, which I will
supply here. It will come quite as well here as anywhere else.
Foreseeing that if the boat lived through the stormy weather, the
time must come, and soon come, when we should have absolutely no
morsel to eat, I had one momentous point often in my thoughts.
Although I had, years before that, fully satisfied myself that the
instances in which human beings in the last distress have fed upon
each other, are exceedingly few, and have very seldom indeed (if
ever) occurred when the people in distress, however dreadful their
extremity, have been accustomed to moderate forbearance and
restraint; I say, though I had long before quite satisfied my mind
on this topic, I felt doubtful whether there might not have been in
former cases some harm and danger from keeping it out of sight and
pretending not to think of it. I felt doubtful whether some minds,
growing weak with fasting and exposure and having such a terrific
idea to dwell upon in secret, might not magnify it until it got to
have an awful attraction about it. This was not a new thought of
mine, for it had grown out of my reading. However, it came over me
stronger than it had ever done before--as it had reason for doing--
in the boat, and on the fourth day I decided that I would bring out
into the light that unformed fear which must have been more or less
darkly in every brain among us. Therefore, as a means of beguiling
the time and inspiring hope, I gave them the best summary in my
power of Bligh's voyage of more than three thousand miles, in an
open boat, after the Mutiny of the Bounty, and of the wonderful
preservation of that boat's crew. They listened throughout with
great interest, and I concluded by telling them, that, in my
opinion, the happiest circumstance in the whole narrative was, that
Bligh, who was no delicate man either, had solemnly placed it on
record therein that he was sure and certain that under no
conceivable circumstances whatever would that emaciated party, who
had gone through all the pains of famine, have preyed on one
another. I cannot describe the visible relief which this spread
through the boat, and how the tears stood in every eye. From that
time I was as well convinced as Bligh himself that there was no
danger, and that this phantom, at any rate, did not haunt us.
Now, it was a part of Bligh's experience that when the people in his
boat were most cast down, nothing did them so much good as hearing a
story told by one of their number. When I mentioned that, I saw
that it struck the general attention as much as it did my own, for I
had not thought of it until I came to it in my summary. This was on
the day after Mrs. Atherfield first sang to us. I proposed that,
whenever the weather would permit, we should have a story two hours
after dinner (I always issued the allowance I have mentioned at one
o'clock, and called it by that name), as well as our song at sunset.
The proposal was received with a cheerful satisfaction that warmed
my heart within me; and I do not say too much when I say that those
two periods in the four-and-twenty hours were expected with positive
pleasure, and were really enjoyed by all hands. Spectres as we soon
were in our bodily wasting, our imaginations did not perish like the
gross flesh upon our bones. Music and Adventure, two of the great
gifts of Providence to mankind, could charm us long after that was
lost.
The wind was almost always against us after the second day; and for
many days together we could not nearly hold our own. We had all
varieties of bad weather. We had rain, hail, snow, wind, mist,
thunder and lightning. Still the boats lived through the heavy
seas, and still we perishing people rose and fell with the great
waves.
Sixteen nights and fifteen days, twenty nights and nineteen days,
twenty-four nights and twenty-three days. So the time went on.
Disheartening as I knew that our progress, or want of progress, must
be, I never deceived them as to my calculations of it. In the first
place, I felt that we were all too near eternity for deceit; in the
second place, I knew that if I failed, or died, the man who followed
me must have a knowledge of the true state of things to begin upon.
When I told them at noon, what I reckoned we had made or lost, they
generally received what I said in a tranquil and resigned manner,
and always gratefully towards me. It was not unusual at any time of
the day for some one to burst out weeping loudly without any new
cause; and, when the burst was over, to calm down a little better
than before. I had seen exactly the same thing in a house of
mourning.
During the whole of this time, old Mr. Rarx had had his fits of
calling out to me to throw the gold (always the gold!) overboard,
and of heaping violent reproaches upon me for not having saved the
child; but now, the food being all gone, and I having nothing left
to serve out but a bit of coffee-berry now and then, he began to be
too weak to do this, and consequently fell silent. Mrs. Atherfield
and Miss Coleshaw generally lay, each with an arm across one of my
knees, and her head upon it. They never complained at all. Up to
the time of her child's death, Mrs. Atherfield had bound up her own
beautiful hair every day; and I took particular notice that this was
always before she sang her song at night, when everyone looked at
her. But she never did it after the loss of her darling; and it
would have been now all tangled with dirt and wet, but that Miss
Coleshaw was careful of it long after she was herself, and would
sometimes smooth it down with her weak thin hands.
We were past mustering a story now; but one day, at about this
period, I reverted to the superstition of old Mr. Rarx, concerning
the Golden Lucy, and told them that nothing vanished from the eye of
God, though much might pass away from the eyes of men. "We were all
of us," says I, "children once; and our baby feet have strolled in
green woods ashore; and our baby hands have gathered flowers in
gardens, where the birds were singing. The children that we were,
are not lost to the great knowledge of our Creator. Those innocent
creatures will appear with us before Him, and plead for us. What we
were in the best time of our generous youth will arise and go with
us too. The purest part of our lives will not desert us at the pass
to which all of us here present are gliding. What we were then,
will be as much in existence before Him, as what we are now." They
were no less comforted by this consideration, than I was myself; and
Miss Coleshaw, drawing my ear nearer to her lips, said, "Captain
Ravender, I was on my way to marry a disgraced and broken man, whom
I dearly loved when he was honourable and good. Your words seem to
have come out of my own poor heart." She pressed my hand upon it,
smiling.
Twenty-seven nights and twenty-six days. We were in no want of
rain-water, but we had nothing else. And yet, even now, I never
turned my eyes upon a waking face but it tried to brighten before
mine. O, what a thing it is, in a time of danger and in the
presence of death, the shining of a face upon a face! I have heard
it broached that orders should be given in great new ships by
electric telegraph. I admire machinery as much is any man, and am
as thankful to it as any man can be for what it does for us. But it
will never be a substitute for the face of a man, with his soul in
it, encouraging another man to be brave and true. Never try it for
that. It will break down like a straw.
I now began to remark certain changes in myself which I did not
like. They caused me much disquiet. I often saw the Golden Lucy in
the air above the boat. I often saw her I have spoken of before,
sitting beside me. I saw the Golden Mary go down, as she really had
gone down, twenty times in a day. And yet the sea was mostly, to my
thinking, not sea neither, but moving country and extraordinary
mountainous regions, the like of which have never been beheld. I
felt it time to leave my last words regarding John Steadiman, in
case any lips should last out to repeat them to any living ears. I
said that John had told me (as he had on deck) that he had sung out
"Breakers ahead!" the instant they were audible, and had tried to
wear ship, but she struck before it could be done. (His cry, I dare
say, had made my dream.) I said that the circumstances were
altogether without warning, and out of any course that could have
been guarded against; that the same loss would have happened if I
had been in charge; and that John was not to blame, but from first
to last had done his duty nobly, like the man he was. I tried to
write it down in my pocket-book, but could make no words, though I
knew what the words were that I wanted to make. When it had come to
that, her hands--though she was dead so long--laid me down gently in
the bottom of the boat, and she and the Golden Lucy swung me to
sleep.
ALL THAT FOLLOWS, WAS WRITTEN BY JOHN STEADIMAN, CHIEF MATE,
On the twenty-sixth day after the foundering of the Golden Mary at
sea, I, John Steadiman, was sitting in my place in the stern-sheets
of the Surf-boat, with just sense enough left in me to steer--that
is to say, with my eyes strained, wide-awake, over the bows of the
boat, and my brains fast asleep and dreaming--when I was roused upon
a sudden by our second mate, Mr. William Rames.
"Let me take a spell in your place," says he. "And look you out for
the Long-boat astern. The last time she rose on the crest of a
wave, I thought I made out a signal flying aboard her."
We shifted our places, clumsily and slowly enough, for we were both
of us weak and dazed with wet, cold, and hunger. I waited some
time, watching the heavy rollers astern, before the Long-boat rose
a-top of one of them at the same time with us. At last, she was
heaved up for a moment well in view, and there, sure enough, was the
signal flying aboard of her--a strip of rag of some sort, rigged to
an oar, and hoisted in her bows.
"What does it mean?" says Rames to me in a quavering, trembling sort
of voice. "Do they signal a sail in sight?"
"Hush, for God's sake!" says I, clapping my hand over his mouth.
"Don't let the people hear you. They'll all go mad together if we
mislead them about that signal. Wait a bit, till I have another
look at it."
I held on by him, for he had set me all of a tremble with his notion
of a sail in sight, and watched for the Long-boat again. Up she
rose on the top of another roller. I made out the signal clearly,
that second time, and saw that it was rigged half-mast high.
"Rames," says I, "it's a signal of distress. Pass the word forward
to keep her before the sea, and no more. We must get the Long-boat
within hailing distance of us, as soon as possible."
I dropped down into my old place at the tiller without another word-
-for the thought went through me like a knife that something had
happened to Captain Ravender. I should consider myself unworthy to
write another line of this statement, if I had not made up my mind
to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth--and
I must, therefore, confess plainly that now, for the first time, my
heart sank within me. This weakness on my part was produced in some
degree, as I take it, by the exhausting effects of previous anxiety
and grief.
Our provisions--if I may give that name to what we had left--were
reduced to the rind of one lemon and about a couple of handsfull of
coffee-berries. Besides these great distresses, caused by the
death, the danger, and the suffering among my crew and passengers, I
had had a little distress of my own to shake me still more, in the
death of the child whom I had got to be very fond of on the voyage
out--so fond that I was secretly a little jealous of her being taken
in the Long-boat instead of mine when the ship foundered. It used
to be a great comfort to me, and I think to those with me also,
after we had seen the last of the Golden Mary, to see the Golden
Lucy, held up by the men in the Long-boat, when the weather allowed
it, as the best and brightest sight they had to show. She looked,
at the distance we saw her from, almost like a little white bird in
the air. To miss her for the first time, when the weather lulled a
little again, and we all looked out for our white bird and looked in
vain, was a sore disappointment. To see the men's heads bowed down
and the captain's hand pointing into the sea when we hailed the
Long-boat, a few days after, gave me as heavy a shock and as sharp a
pang of heartache to bear as ever I remember suffering in all my
life. I only mention these things to show that if I did give way a
little at first, under the dread that our captain was lost to us, it
was not without having been a good deal shaken beforehand by more
trials of one sort or another than often fall to one man's share.
I had got over the choking in my throat with the help of a drop of
water, and had steadied my mind again so as to be prepared against
the worst, when I heard the hail (Lord help the poor fellows, how
weak it sounded!) -
"Surf-boat, ahoy!"
I looked up, and there were our companions in misfortune tossing
abreast of us; not so near that we could make out the features of
any of them, but near enough, with some exertion for people in our
condition, to make their voices heard in the intervals when the wind
was weakest.
I answered the hail, and waited a bit, and heard nothing, and then
sung out the captain's name. The voice that replied did not sound
like his; the words that reached us were:
"Chief-mate wanted on board!"
Every man of my crew knew what that meant as well as I did. As
second officer in command, there could be but one reason for wanting
me on board the Long-boat. A groan went all round us, and my men
looked darkly in each other's faces, and whispered under their
breaths:
"The captain is dead!"
I commanded them to be silent, and not to make too sure of bad news,
at such a pass as things had now come to with us. Then, hailing the
Long-boat, I signified that I was ready to go on board when the
weather would let me--stopped a bit to draw a good long breath--and
then called out as loud as I could the dreadful question:
"Is the captain dead?"
The black figures of three or four men in the after-part of the
Long-boat all stooped down together as my voice reached them. They
were lost to view for about a minute; then appeared again--one man
among them was held up on his feet by the rest, and he hailed back
the blessed words (a very faint hope went a very long way with
people in our desperate situation): "Not yet!"
The relief felt by me, and by all with me, when we knew that our
captain, though unfitted for duty, was not lost to us, it is not in
words--at least, not in such words as a man like me can command--to
express. I did my best to cheer the men by telling them what a good
sign it was that we were not as badly off yet as we had feared; and
then communicated what instructions I had to give, to William Rames,
who was to be left in command in my place when I took charge of the
Long-boat. After that, there was nothing to be done, but to wait
for the chance of the wind dropping at sunset, and the sea going
down afterwards, so as to enable our weak crews to lay the two boats
alongside of each other, without undue risk--or, to put it plainer,
without saddling ourselves with the necessity for any extraordinary
exertion of strength or skill. Both the one and the other had now
been starved out of us for days and days together.
At sunset the wind suddenly dropped, but the sea, which had been
running high for so long a time past, took hours after that before
it showed any signs of getting to rest. The moon was shining, the
sky was wonderfully clear, and it could not have been, according to
my calculations, far off midnight, when the long, slow, regular
swell of the calming ocean fairly set in, and I took the
responsibility of lessening the distance between the Long-boat and
ourselves.
It was, I dare say, a delusion of mine; but I thought I had never
seen the moon shine so white and ghastly anywhere, either on sea or
on land, as she shone that night while we were approaching our
companions in misery. When there was not much
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