Part 10 (2/2)

And then it was, just as the sun was sinking, that I saw clearly--far away to the westward--the funnel of a steamer standing out black and sharp against the blood-red ball that in another minute went down into the sea. And with that glimpse--which made me sure that I was close to the edge of the wreck-pack, and so close to food again--a strong warm rush of hope swept through me that outcast finally my despair.

XXIX

I GET INTO A SEA CHARNEL-HOUSE

That I should get to the steamer that night I knew was clean impossible, for she lay a long way off from me, and that I had seen her funnel at all was due to the mere happy accident of its standing for that single minute directly between me and the setting sun. I did hope, though, that by pressing hard toward her I might fetch aboard of some vessel not long wrecked on which I would find eatable food; yet in this I was disappointed, the shadows coming down on me so fast that I was forced in a little while to pull up short--stopping while still a little daylight remained so that I might stow myself the more comfortably for the night.

As to looking for provender on the little old s.h.i.+p that I settled to camp on, I knew that it was useless. From her build I fixed her as belonging to the beginning of the present century, and from her depth in the wreck-pack she probably had met her death-storm not less than threescore years before; and so what provisions she had carried long since had wasted away. Yet there was a chance that I might find some spirits aboard of her--which would be a poor subst.i.tute for food, but better than nothing--and I hurried to have a look in her cabin before darkness settled down.

The cabin hatch was closed, and as it was both locked and swelled with moisture I could not budge it; but two or three kicks sent the doors beneath the hatch flying and so opened an entrance for me--that I was slow to make use of because of a heavy musty stench which poured out from that shut up place and made me turn a little sick, as I got my first strong whiff of it. Indeed, I was so faint and so hungry that I was in no condition to stand up against that curiously vile smell. To lessen it, by getting a current of air into the cabin, I smashed in the little skylight--over which some ropes were stretched and still held the remnant of a tarpaulin, that must have been set in place while the storm was blowing which sent the s.h.i.+p to her account; and this so far improved matters that presently I was able to go down the companion-way, though the stench still was horridly strong.

At the bottom of the stair, the light being faint, I tripped over something; and looking down saw bones lying there with a sort of fungus partly covering them, and to the skull there still clung a mat of woolly hair plaited here and there into little braids: by which, and by the size of the bones, it seemed that a negro woman must have been left fastened into the cabin to die there after the crew had been washed overboard or had taken to the boats. But even then the business in which the s.h.i.+p had been engaged did not occur to me; and after hesitating for a moment I went on into the cabin, and looked about me as well as I could in the twilight for the case of bottles that I hoped to find.

The case was there, as I was pretty certain that it would be, such provision rarely being absent from old-time vessels, but all the bottles had been taken from it except an empty one--which looked as though the cabin had been opened at the last moment to fetch out supplies for the boats, and then deliberately locked fast again with the poor woman inside: an act so barbarous that it did not seem possible unless a crew of out and out devils had been in charge of the ancient craft. However, the matter which just then most concerned me was the liquor that I was in search of, that I might a little stay my stomach with it against the hunger that was tormenting me; and so I ransacked the lockers that ran across the stern of the s.h.i.+p and across a part of the bulkhead forward, in the faint hope that I might come upon another supply--but my search was a vain one, two of the lockers having only some mouldy clothing in them, and all the rest being filled with arms. The stock of muskets and pistols and cutla.s.ses was so large, so far beyond any honest traders needs, that I could not at all account for it: until the thought occurred to me that the vessel I had come aboard of had been a pirate--and that notion seemed to fit in pretty well with her crew having gone off and left the poor woman locked up in the cabin to starve. However, as I found out a little later, while my guess was a close one it still was wrong.

The four bunks, two on each side, were not enclosed, and the only door opening from the cabin was in the bulkhead forward--and worth trying because it might lead to a store-room, I thought. It was a very stout-looking door, and across it, resting in strong iron catches, were two heavy wooden bars. These puzzled me a good deal, there being no sense in barring the outside of a store-room door in that fas.h.i.+on, since the door did not seem to be locked and anybody could lift the bars away. However, I got them out of their sockets without much difficulty; and after a good deal of tugging at a ring made fast in it I got the door open too--and instantly I was thrust back from the opening by an outpouring of the same vile heavy musty stench that had come up from the cabin when I staved in the hatch, only this was still ranker and more vile. And I found that the door did not lead into a little store-room, as I had fancied, but right through from the cabin to the s.h.i.+p's main-deck--that stretched away forward in a gloomy tunnel, as black as a cellar on a rainy night, into which I could see only for four or five yards. Indeed, but for the way that the s.h.i.+p chanced to be lying--with her stern toward the west, so that a good deal of light came in through the broken skylight from the ruddy sunset--I could not have seen into it at all.

But I saw far enough, and more than far enough--and the sight that I looked on sent all over me a creeping chill. Wherever the light went, skeletons were lying--with a fungus growth on the bones that gave a horrid effect of sc.r.a.ps of flesh still clinging to them, and the loose-lying skulls (of which a couple were close by the doorway) were covered still with a matting of woolly hair. And I could tell from the tangle that the skeletons were in--though also lying in some sort of orderly rows, because of the chains which held them fast--that the poor wretches to whom they had belonged had writhed and struggled over each other in their agony: and I could fancy what a h.e.l.l that black place must have been while death was doing his work among them, they all squirming together like worms in a pot; and it seemed to me that I could hear their yells and howls--at first loud and terrible, and then growing fainter and fainter until they came to be but low groans of misery that at last ended softly in dying sighs.

The horror of it all came home to me so sharply, after I had stood there at the doorway for a moment or two held fast by a sort of ghastly fascination, that I gave a yell myself as keen and as loud as any which the poor blacks had uttered; and with that I turned about and dashed up the companionway to the deck as hard as I could go. Nor could I bear to abide on the slave-s.h.i.+p, nor even near her, for the night. Very little light was left to me, but I made the most of it and went scrambling from hulk to hulk until I had put a good distance behind me--so that I not only could not see her but could not tell certainly, having twisted and turned a dozen times in my scurrying flight, in which direction she lay. And being thus rid of her, I fairly dropped--so weak and so wearied was I--on the deck of the vessel that I had come to, and lay there for a while resting, with my breath coming and going in panting sobs.

What sort of a craft I had fetched aboard of I did not dare to try to find out. Going any farther then was impossible, the twilight having slipped away almost into darkness, and whatever she might be I had to make the best of her for the night. And so I settled myself into a corner well up in her bows--that I might be as far away as possible from any grisly things that might be hid in her cabin--and did my best to go to sleep. But it was a long while, utterly weary though I was, before sleep would come to me. My stomach, being pretty well reconciled by that time to emptiness, did not bother me much; but my frightened rush away from that sickening charnel-house had left me greatly tormented by thirst, and my mind was so fevered by the horror of what I had seen that for a long while I could not stop making pictures to myself of the black wretches, chained and imprisoned, writhing under the torture of starvation and at last dying desperate in the dark. And when sleep did come to me I still had the same loathsome horrors with me in my dreams.

x.x.x

I COME TO THE WALL OF MY SEA-PRISON

The morning shower that waked me gave me the water that I so longed for; but it only a little refreshed me, because my chief need was food. Being past the first sharp pangs of hunger, I was in no great bodily pain; but a heavy languor was upon me that dulled me in both flesh and spirit and disposed me to give up struggling for a while, that I might enjoy what seemed to me just then to be the supreme delight of sitting still. Yet I had sense enough to know that if I surrendered to this feeling it would be the end of me; and after a little I found energy enough to throw it off.

I was helped thus to rouse myself by finding, as I looked around me with dull eyes, that the hulk I had come aboard of in such a hurry in the twilight certainly had not been wrecked for any great length of time. She was a good-sized schooner, quite modern in her build; and, although she had weathered everywhere to a pale gray, her timbers were not rotten and what was left of her cordage still was fairly sound: all of which, as I took it in slowly, gave me hope of finding aboard of her some sort of eatable food.

But while this hope was slow to shape itself in my heavy mind, I was quick enough to act upon it when once it had taken form. With a briskness that quite astonished me I got on my feet and walked aft to the cabin--the cabin pantry being the most likely place in which to look for food put up in tins; and I was farther encouraged by finding the hatch open and the cabin itself fresh-smelling and clean. And, to my joy, the food that I hoped to find in the pantry really was there; and such a plenty of it that I could not have eaten it in a whole year.

I had the good sense to go slowly--and that was not easy, for at sight of something that would satisfy it my hunger all of a sudden woke up ragingly; but I knew that I stood a good chance of killing myself after my long fast unless I held my appet.i.te well in hand, and so I began with a tin of peaches--opening it with a knife that I found there--and it seemed to me that those peaches were the most delicious thing that I had tasted since I was born. After they were down I went on deck again--to be out of reach of temptation--and staid there resolutely for an hour; getting at this time, and also keeping myself a little quiet, by counting six thousand slowly--and it did seem to me as though I never should get to the end! Then I had another of those delicious tins; and after a trying half hour of waiting I had a third; and then--being no longer ravenous, and no longer having the feeling of infinite emptiness--I laid down on the deck just outside the cabin scuttle and slept like a tree in winter until well along in the afternoon.

I woke as hungry as a hound, but with a comfortable and natural sort of hunger that I set myself to satisfying with good strong food: eating a tin of meat with a lively relish and without any following stomach-ache, and drinking the juice of a tin of peaches after it--there being no water fit to drink on board. My meal began to set me on my feet again; but I still felt so tired and so shaky that I decided to stay where I was until the next morning--having at last a comforting sense of security that took away my desire to hurry and made me wholly easy in my mind. And this feeling got stronger as the sun fell away westward and made a crimson bank of mist along the horizon, against which I saw the funnels of more than a dozen steamers--and so knew that the coast of my continent surely was close by. What I would do when I got to the steamers was a matter that I did not bother about. For the moment I was satisfied with the certainty that I would find aboard of them food in plenty and a comfortable place to sleep in, and that was enough. And so I did not make any plans, or even think much; but just ate as much supper as I could stow away in my carcase, and then settled myself in the schooner's cabin for the night.

In the morning I was so well rested, and felt so fresh again, that I was eager to get on; and I was so light-hearted that I fell to singing as I pushed forward briskly, being full of hope once more and of airy fancies that I had only to reach the edge of the wreck-pack in order to hit upon some easy way of getting off from it out over the open sea. A little thinking would have shown me, of course, that my fancies had nothing to rest on, and that coming once more to the coast of my continent was only to be where I was when my long journey through that death-stricken ma.s.s of rottenness began; but the reaction of my spirits was natural enough after the gloom that for so long had held them, and so was the castle-building that I took to as I went onward as to what I would do with my great treasure when at last I had it safe out in the living world.

Although I did not doubt that food of some sort was to be found on board of all the vessels which I should cross that day, I guarded against losing time in looking for it by carrying along with me a couple of tins of meat--slung on my shoulders in a wrapping of canvas--and on one of these, about noon-time, I made a good meal. When I had finished it I was sorry enough that I had not brought a tin of peaches too, for the meat was pretty well salted and made me as thirsty as a fish very soon after I got it down.

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