Part 10 (1/2)

XXVII

I SET MYSELF TO A HEAVY TASK

At last, after what seemed to me an age of waiting for it, a little pinkish tone began to glow in the mist to the eastward; and as that honest light got stronger the death-fires on the old galleon and on the wrecks around her paled quickly until they were snuffed out altogether--and then came the customary morning down-pour of rain.

With the return of the blessed daylight, and with the enlivening douse of cool fresh water upon me, I got to be myself again: my fanciful fears of the night-time leaving me, and my mind coming back soberly to a consideration of my actual needs. Of these the most pressing, as my stomach told me, was to get my breakfast; and when that matter, in a very poor way, had been attended to, and I had drunk what water I needed--without much relis.h.i.+ng it--from a pool that had formed on the deck where the timbers sagged down a little, I was in better heart to lay out for myself a plan of campaign.

In one way planning was not necessary. By holding to a northerly course I believed that I had got at least half way across my continent, and my determination was fixed to keep on by the north--rather than risk a fresh departure that might only carry me by a fresh way again into the depths of the tangle--until I should come once more to the open sea: if I may call open sea that far outlying expanse of ocean covered with thick-grown weed. But it was needful that I should plan for my supply of food as I went onward, that was to be got only by returning to the far-away barque; and also I felt an itching desire--as strong as at first blush it was unreasonable--to carry away with me some part of the treasure that I had found. That I ever should get out into the world again, and so have the good of my riches, seemed likely to me only in my most sanguine moments; but even on the slimmest chance of accomplis.h.i.+ng my own deliverance I had a very natural human objection to leaving behind me the wealth that I had found through such peril--only to lie there for a while longer idly, and then to be lost forever when the galleon sank to the bottom of the sea.

As to the gold, it was plain that I could carry off so little of it that I might as well resign myself--having that which was better worth working for--to losing it all. But my treasure of jewels was another matter. This was so very much more valuable than the gold--for the stones for the most part were of a prodigious size and a rare fineness--that between the two there really was no comparison; and at the same time it was so compact in bulk and so petty in weight that I might easily carry the whole of it with me and a good store of food too. And so, to make a beginning, I picked the stones out of the slimy and stinking ooze in which they were lying and washed them clean in the pool of water on the deck; and then I packed them snugly into the s.h.i.+rt-sleeve in which my beans had been stored--and tickled myself the while with the fancy that most men would be willing for the sake of stuffing a s.h.i.+rt-sleeve that way to cut off the arm to which it belonged.

My packing being finished, and my precious bag laid away in a corner of the cabin until I should come to fetch it again, I was in a better mood for facing my long march back to the barque: for I had come to have fortune as well as life to work for, and those two strong stimulants to endeavor working together gave my spirits a great upward pull. And, fortunately, my cheerfulness staid by me through my long scrambling struggle backward along my blazed path; nor was it, in reality, as hard a journey as I had expected it to be--for I had but a light load of food to carry, barely enough to last me through, and the marks which I had left upon the wrecks in pa.s.sing made my way plain.

And so, at last, I got back to the barque one evening about sunset, and had almost a feeling of homecoming in boarding her again; and I was thankful enough to be able to eat all the supper I wanted, and then to lie down comfortably in her clean cabin and to rest myself in sound slumber after my many restless nights on rotten old s.h.i.+ps reeking with a chill dampness that struck into my very bones.

I slept soundly and woke refreshed; and for that I was thankful, since the work cut out for me--to get back to the galleon with enough provisions to last me until I could cross the rest of the wreck-pack--was about as much as a strong man in good condition could do. However, I had thought of something that would make this hard job less difficult; for the ease with which I had carried a part of my food in long narrow bags, sausage-fas.h.i.+on--thereby getting rid of both the weight and the awkwardness of the tins--had put into my head the notion of carrying in that way the whole of my fresh supply, and so carrying at least twice as much of it. And I calculated--since I could go rapidly along my blazed path--that by cutting myself down to very short rations I could get back to the galleon with a bigger stock of provisions than that with which I left the barque when I made my first start toward the north--and if the galleon lay, as I believed that she did, about in the centre of the pack, this would give me enough food to last me until I got across to the other side. So I rummaged out some more of the linen s.h.i.+rts that I had found--taking a fresh one for my own wear to begin with--and set myself to my sausage-making with the sleeves of them; packing each sleeve with beans as tight as I could ram it, and working over each a netting of light line that I finished off with loops at the ends. Ten of my big sausages I made into a bundle to be carried on my shoulders like a knapsack; and the rest I arranged to swing by their loops from a rope collar about my neck, with another rope run through the lower loops to be made fast about my waist and so hold them steady--and this arrangement, as I found when I tried it, answered very well. And finally, that I might carry my jewels the more securely, I cut off a sleeve from the oil-skin jacket to serve for an outer casing for them, and took along also some of the light line to net over the bundle and make it solid and strong; in that way guarding against the chance of their rubbing a hole in their linen covering--by which I might have lost them all.

I worked fast over my packing, and got it all finished and was ready to start away by not a great while after sunrise; yet when the time for my start came I hesitated a little, so darkly uncertain seemed the issue of the adventure that I had in hand. Indeed, the whole of my project was a wild one, such as no man not fairly driven into it would have entertained at all. Its one certainty was that only by excessive toil could I even hope to carry it through. All else was doubtful: for I knew not how distant were the farther bounds of the desolate dead region into which I was bent upon penetrating; nor had I ground for believing--since I had food in plenty where I was--that I would gain anything by traversing it; and back of all that was the gloomy chance of some accident befalling me that would end in my dying miserably by the way. While I was busily employed in making ready for my march I had grown quite cheerful; but suddenly my little crop of good spirits withered within me, and when at last I did go forward it was with a very heavy heart.

XXVIII

HOW I RUBBED SHOULDERS WITH DESPAIR

Could I have foreseen all that was ahead of me I doubt if I should have had the courage to go on: choosing rather to stay there on the barque until I had eaten what food I had by me, and then to die slowly--and finding that way easier than the one I chose to follow, with its many days of struggle and its many chill nights of sorrow and I throughout the whole of it rubbing shoulders with despair.

As I think of it now, that long, long march seems to me like a horrible nightmare; and sometimes it comes back to me as a real nightmare in my dreams. Again, always heavy laden, I am climbing and scrambling and jumping, endlessly and hopelessly, among old rotten hulks; each morning trying to comfort myself with the belief that by night I may see some sign of s.h.i.+ps less ancient, and so know that I am winning my way a little toward where I would be; and each night finding myself still surrounded by tall antique craft such as have not for two centuries and more held the seas, with the feeling coming down crus.h.i.+ngly upon me that I have not advanced at all; and even then no good rest for me--as I lie down wearily in some foul-smelling old cabin, chill with heavy night-mist and with the reeking damp of oozy rotten timbers, and perhaps find in it for my sleeping-mates little heaps of fungus outgrowing from dead men's bones. And the mere dream of all this so bitterly hurts me that I wonder how I ever came through the reality of it alive.

At the start, as I have said, I had calculated that the treasure-laden galleon lay about in the centre of the wreck-pack, and therefore that I would get across from her to the other side of the pack in about the same time that I had taken to reach her in my first journey from the barque; and on the basis of that a.s.sumption, when I was come to her again, I shaped my course hopefully for the north. But my calculation, though on its face a reasonable enough one, proved to be most woefully wrong: and I have come to the conclusion, after a good deal of thinking about it, that this was because the whole vast ma.s.s of wreckage had a circular motion--the great current that created it giving at the same time a swirl to it--which made the seemingly straight line that I followed in reality a constantly extended curve.

But whatever the cause may have been, the fact remains that when by my calculation I should have been on the outer edge of the wreck-pack I still was wandering in its depths. In one way my march was easier the longer that it lasted, my load growing a little lighter daily as my store of food was transferred to my stomach from my back. At first this steady decrease of my burden was a comfort to me; but after a while--when more than half of it was gone, and I still seemed to be no nearer to the end of my journey than when I left the galleon--I had a very different feeling about it: for I realized that unless I came speedily to s.h.i.+ps whereon I would find food--of which there seemed little probability, so ancient were the craft surrounding me--I either must go back to the barque and wait on her until death came to me slowly, or else die quickly where I was. And so I had for my comforting the option of a tardy death or a speedy one--with the certainty of the latter if I hesitated long in choosing between the two.

I suppose that the two great motive powers in the world are hope and despair. It was hope that started me on that dismal march, but if despair had not at last come in to help me I never should have got to its end: for I took Death by both shoulders and looked straight into the eyes of him when I decided, having by me only food for three days longer--and at that but as little as would keep the life in me--to give over all thought of returning to the barque and to make a dash forward as fast as I could go. I had little enough to carry, but that I might have still less I left my hatchet behind me--having, indeed, no farther use for it since if my dash miscarried I was done for and there was no use in marking a path over which I never could return; and I was half-minded to leave my bag of jewels behind me too.

But in the end I decided to carry the jewels along with me--my fancy being caught by the grim notion that if I did die miserably in that vile solitude at least I would die one of the richest men in all the world. As to my water-bottles, one of them I had thrown away when I found that I could count on the morning showers certainly, and the other had been broken in one of my many tumbles: yet without much troubling me--as I found that I could manage fairly well, eating but little, if I filled myself pretty full of water at the beginning of each day. And so, with only the bag of food and the bag of jewels upon my back, and with the compa.s.s on top of them, I was ready to press onward to try conclusions with despair.

The very hopelessness of my effort, and the fact that at last I was dealing with what in one way was a certainty--for I knew that if my plan miscarried I had only a very little while longer to live--gave me a sort of stolid recklessness which amazingly helped me: stimulating me to taking risks in climbing which before I should have shrunk from, and so getting me on faster; and at the same time dulling my mind to the dreads besetting it and my body to its ceaseless pains begot of weariness and thirst and scanty food. So little, indeed, did I care what became of me that even when by the middle of my second day's march I saw no change in my surroundings I did not mind it much: but, to be sure, at the outset of this last stage of my journey I had thrown hope overboard, and a man once become desperate can feel no farther ills.

But what does surprise me--as I think of it now, though it did not in any way touch me then--was the slowness with which, when there was reason for it, my dead hope got alive again: as it did, and for cause, at the end of that same second day--for by the evening I came out, with a sharp suddenness, from among the strange old craft which for so long on every side had beset me and found myself among s.h.i.+ps which by comparison with the others--though they too, in all conscience, were old enough--seemed to be quite of a modern build. What is likely, I think--and this would help to account for my long wanderings over those ancient rotten hulks--is that some stormy commotion of the whole ma.s.s of wreckage, such as had thrust the barque whereon I had found food deep into the thick of it, had squeezed a part of the centre of the pack outward; in that way making a sort of promontory--along which by mere bad mischance I had been journeying--among the wrecks of a later time. But this notion did not then occur to me; nor did I, as I have said, at first feel any very thrilling hope coming back to me when I found myself among modern s.h.i.+ps again--so worn had my long tussle with difficulties left my body and so sodden was my mind.

At first I had just a dull feeling of satisfaction that I had got once more--after my many nights pa.s.sed on hulks soaked with wet to rottenness--on good honest dry planks: where I could sleep with no deadly chill striking into me, and where in my restless wakings I should not see the pale gleam of death-fires, and where foul stenches would not half stifle me the whole night long. And it was not until I had eaten my scant supper, and because of the comfort that even that little food gave me felt more disposed to cheerfulness, that in a weak faint-hearted way I began to hope again that perhaps the run of luck against me had come to an end.

In truth, though, there was not much to be hopeful about. For my supper I had eaten the half of what food was left me, and it was so little that I still had a mighty hungry feeling in my belly after it was down. For my breakfast I should eat what was left; and after that, unless I found fresh supplies quickly, I was in a fair way to lie down beside my bag of jewels and die of starvation--like the veriest beggar that ever was. But I did hope a little all the same; and when I went on again the next morning, though my last sc.r.a.p of food was eaten, my spirits kept up pretty well--for I was sure from the look of the wrecks which I traversed that the dead ancient centre of my continent at last was behind me, and that its living outer fringe could not be very far away.

All that day I pressed forward steadily, helped by my little flickering flame of hope--which burned low because sanguine expectation does not consort well with an empty stomach, yet which kept alive because the wreck-pack had more and more of a modern look about it as I went on. But the faintness that I felt coming over me as the day waned gave me warning that the rope by which I held my life was a short one; and as the sun dropped down into the mist--at once thinning it, so that I could see farther, and giving it a ruddy tone which sent red streams of brightness gleaming over the tangle of wreckage far down into the west--I felt that the rope must come to an end altogether, and that I must stop still and let death overtake me, by the sunset of one day more.