Part 3 (1/2)

”He says himself, sir, that he's not dangerous, and I s'pose he ought to know. Th' captain an' th' purser together, he orderin' 'em, have set his leg for him; and his head, he says, 'll take care of itself, bein' both thick an' hard. But he's worryin' painful because he can't look after you, sir, an' th' four or five others that got hurt in th'

storm. And I can tell you, sir,” the man went on, ”that all th' s.h.i.+p's company, an' th' pa.s.sengers on top of 'em, are sick with sorrow that this has happened to him; for there's not a soul ever comes near th'

doctor but loves him for his goodness, and we'd all be glad to break our own legs this minute if by that we could be mendin' his!”

The steward spoke very feelingly and earnestly, and with what he said I was in thorough sympathy; for the doctor's care of me and his friendliness had won my heart to him, just as it had won to him the hearts of all on board. But there was comfort in knowing that he had got off with only a broken leg and a broken head from a peril that so easily might have been the death of him, and of that consolation I made the most--while the steward, who was a handy fellow and pretty well trained as a surgeon's a.s.sistant, freshly bandaged my head for me as the doctor had ordered him to do, and so set me much more at my ease. After that, for the rest of the day, he came every hour or so to look after me; giving me some broth to eat and a biscuit, and some medicine that the doctor sent me with the message that it would put strength enough into a dead pig to set him to dancing--by which I knew that even if his head and leg were broken there was no break in his whimsical fun.

The steward was the only man who came near me; but this did not surprise me when he told me more about the condition that the s.h.i.+p was in, and how all hands--excepting himself, who had been detailed because of his knowledge that way to look after the hurt people under the doctor's direction--were hard at work making repairs, with what men there were among the pa.s.sengers helping too. The s.h.i.+p was not leaking, he said, and this was the luckier because her frame was so strained that it was doubtful if her water-tight compartments would hold; but the foremast had been carried away, and all the weather-boats had been mashed out of all shape or swept overboard, and the mizzen was so shaky that it seemed likely at any moment to fall. Indeed, the mast was in such a bad way, he said, that the first and second officers were for getting rid of it--and of the danger that there was of its coming down all in a heap anyway--by sending it overboard; but that the captain thought it safe to stand now that the sea was getting smooth again, and was setting up jury-stays to hold it until we made the Azores--for which islands our course was laid.

By the time that night came again the sea had pretty well gone down, and beyond the easy roll that was on her the s.h.i.+p had no motion save the steady vibration of her screw. With this comforting change the pain in my head became only a dull heavy aching, and I had a chance to feel how utterly weary I was after the strain of mind and body that had been put on me by the gale. A little after eight o'clock, as I knew by hearing the s.h.i.+p's bell striking--and mighty pleasant it was to hear regularly that orderly sound again--the steward brought me a bowl of broth and propped me up in my berth while I drank it; and cheered me by telling me that the doctor was swearing at his broken leg like a good fellow, and was getting on very well indeed. And then my weariness had its way with me, and I fell off into that deep sleep which comes to a man only when all his energy has slipped away from him on a dead low tide. How long I slept I do not know. But I do know that I was routed suddenly into wakefulness by a jar that almost pitched me out of my berth, and that an instant later there was a tremendous crash as though the whole deck above me was smas.h.i.+ng to pieces, and with this a rattle of light woodwork splintering and the sharp tinkling of breaking gla.s.s. For a moment there was silence; and then I heard shouts and screams close by me in the cabin, and a little later a great trampling on deck, and then the screw stopped turning and there was a roar of escaping steam.

I was so heavy with sleep that at first I thought we still were in the storm and that this commotion was a part of it; but as I shook off my drowsiness I got a clearer notion of the situation--remembering what the steward had told me of the condition of the mizzen-mast, and so arriving at the conclusion that it had fetched away bodily and had come cras.h.i.+ng through the cabin skylight in its fall. But what the shock was that had sent it flying--unless we had been in collision--I could not understand. And all this while the trampling on deck continued, and out in the cabin the shouts and cries went on.

I thought that the steward would come to me--forgetting that in times of danger men are apt to think only of saving their own skins--and so laid still; being, indeed, so weak and wretched that it did not seem possible to me to do anything else. But he did not come, and at the end of what seemed to me to be a desperately long time--though I doubt if it were more than five minutes--I realized that I must try to do something to help myself; and was the more nerved to action by the fact that there no longer was the sound of voices in the cabin, while the noises on deck a good deal had increased. Indeed, I began to hear up there the puffing and snorting of the donkey-engine, and so felt certain that they were hoisting out the boats.

Somehow or another I managed to get out of my berth, and on my feet, and so to the door; but when I tried to open the door I could not budge it, and in the darkness I struck my head against what seemed to be a bar of wood that stuck in through one of the upper panels and so held it fast. The blow dizzied me, for it took me close to where my cut was and put me into intense pain.

While I stood there, pulling in a weak way at the door-k.n.o.b and making nothing of it, I heard voices out in the cabin and through my broken door saw a gleam of light. But in the moment that my hope rose it went down again, for I heard some one say quickly and sharply: ”It's no good. The way the spar lies we can't get at him--and to cut it through would take an hour.”

And then a voice that I recognized for the steward's answered: ”But the doctor ordered it. Where's an axe for a try?” To which the other man answered back again: ”If it was the doctor himself we couldn't do it, and we'll tell him so. The s.h.i.+p'll be down in five minutes. We've got to run for it or the boats'll be off.” And then away they ran together, giving no heed in their fright to my yells after them to come back and not leave me there to drown.

For a little while I was as nearly wild crazy as a man can be and yet have a purpose in his mind. The keen sense of my peril made me strong again. I kicked with my bare feet and pounded with my hands upon the door to break it, I shouted for help to come to me, and I gave out shrill screams of terror such as brutes give in their agony--for I was down to the hard-pan of human nature, and what I felt most strongly was the purely animal longing to keep alive.

But no one answered me, and I could tell by the sounds on deck getting fainter that some of the boats already had put off; and in a little while longer no sound came from the deck of any sort whatever, and by that I knew that all the boats must have got away. And as I realized that I was forsaken, and felt sure from what I had heard that the s.h.i.+p would float for only a few minutes longer, I gave a cry of downright despair--and then I lost track of the whole bad business by tumbling to the floor in the darkness in a dead swoon.

IX

ON THE EDGE OF THE SARGa.s.sO SEA

When I came to myself again, and found my state-room--although the dead-light was set--bright with the light which entered through the broken door, my first feeling was of wonder that I was not yet drowned; for it was evident that the sun must be well up in the heavens to s.h.i.+ne so strongly, and therefore that a good many hours must have pa.s.sed since the smash had happened that had sent everybody flying to the boats believing that the s.h.i.+p was going right down. And my next wonder was caused by the queer way in which the s.h.i.+p was lying--making me fancy at first that I was dizzy again, and my eyes tricking me--with a pitch forward that gave a slope to the floor of my state-room, of not less than twenty degrees.

For a while, in a stupid sort of way, I ruminated over these matters; and at last got hold of the simple explanation of them. Evidently, in spite of the straining of the steamer's frame in the storm, her water-tight compartments--or some of them--had held, leaving her floating with her broken bow well down in the water and her stern canted up into the air. And then the farther comforting thought came to me that if she had kept afloat for so many hours already, and seemed so steady in her new position, there was no reason why she should not keep on floating at least for as long as the fine weather lasted--which gave me a chance of rescue by some pa.s.sing vessel, and so brought a good deal of hope back into my heart.

I still was very weak and shaky, and how I was to get out of the prison that I was in I did not know. By daylight it was easy to see what held me there: which was the end of a yard, with the reef-block hanging to it, smashed through the upper panel and caught so tight in the splintered wood-work as to anchor the door fast. If the wits of the steward and of the other fellow had not been scared clean out of them they easily might have knocked in the lower part of the door with an axe and so opened a way out for me; but as their only notion had been to cut away the spar--a tough piece of work--I could not in cool blood very greatly blame them for having given up my rescue and run for their own lives.

These thoughts went through my head while I lay there, most uncomfortably, on the sloping floor. Presently I managed to get up, but felt so dizzy that I had to seat myself in a hurry on the edge of the berth until my head got steadier. Fortunately my water-jug was half full, and I had a good drink from it which refreshed me greatly; and then I had the farther good fortune to see some biscuit which the steward had left on a shelf in the corner, and as I caught sight of them I realized that I was very hungry indeed. I ate one, along with some more sups of water, and felt much the better for it; but lay down in my berth that I might save the strength it gave me until I should have thought matters over a little and settled some line of action in my mind.

That I was too weak to break the door down was quite certain, and the only other thing that I could think of was cutting out the lower panels and so making a hole through which I could crawl. As this thought came to me I remembered the big jack-knife that had been in my trousers' pocket when I went overboard from the brig; and in a minute I was on my feet--and without feeling any dizziness, this time--and got to where my clothes were hanging on a hook, and found to my joy that my knife and all the other things which had been in my pockets had been returned to them after the clothes had been dried. The knife was badly rusted and I had a hard time opening it; but the rust did not much dull it, and I seated myself upon the floor and fell to slicing away at the soft pine wood with a will. I had to rest now and then, although I found that my strength held out better than I had hoped for, and that put me back a little; but the wood was so soft that in not much more than half an hour I had the job finished--and then I slipped on my trousers, and out I went through the hole on my hands and knees.

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

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

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