Part 11 (1/2)

I cried, I screamed, I shouted. Long and loudly I cried, but how long I cannot tell. I did not leave off till I was weak and hoa.r.s.e.

At intervals I listened, but no response reached me--no sound of human voice. The echoes of my own reverberated along the sides of the s.h.i.+p, throughout the dark hold; but no voice responded to its lamentable tones.

I listened to discover whether I could not hear the voices of the sailors. I had heard them in their chorus, when they were weighing anchor, but then the s.h.i.+p was at rest, and the waves were not las.h.i.+ng her timbers. Moreover, as I afterwards learned, the hold hatches had then been up, and were only put down on our standing out to sea.

For a long while I listened, but neither command nor chorus reached my ears. If I could not hear their loud baritone voices, how could they hear mine?

”Oh! they cannot hear me! They will never hear me! They will never come to my rescue! Here I must die--I must die!”

Such was my conviction, after I had shouted myself hoa.r.s.e and feeble.

The sea-sickness had yielded for a time to the more powerful throes of despair; but the physical malady returned again, and, acting in conjunction with my mental misery, produced such agony as I never before endured. I yielded to it; my energies gave way, and I fell over like one struck down by paralysis.

For a long while, I lay in a state of helpless stupor. I wished myself dead, and indeed I thought I was going to die. I seriously believe, that at that moment I would have hastened the event if I could; but I was too weak to have killed myself, even had I been provided with a weapon. I _had_ a weapon, but I had forgotten all about it in the confusion of my thoughts.

You will wonder at my making this confession--that I desired death; but you would have to be placed in a situation similar to that I was in, to be able to realise the horror of despair. Oh, it is a fearful thing!

May you never experience it!

I fancied I was going to die, but I _did not_. Men do not die either from sea-sickness or despair, nor boys either. Life is not so easily laid down.

I certainly was more than half dead, however; and I think for a good while insensible. I was in a stupor for a long time--for many hours.

At length my consciousness began to return, and along with it a portion of my energies. Strange enough, too, I felt my appet.i.te reviving; for, in this respect, the ”sea-sickness” is somewhat peculiar. Patients, under it, often eat more heartily than at other times. With me, however, the appet.i.te of thirst was now far stronger than that of hunger, and its misery was not allayed by any hope of its being appeased. As for the other, I could still relieve it; some morsels were in my pocket.

I need not recount the many fearful reflections that pa.s.sed through my mind. For hours after, I was the victim of many a terrible paroxysm of despair. For hours I lay, or rather tossed about, in a state of confused thought; but at last, to my relief, I fell asleep.

I fell asleep, for I had now been a long time awake, and this, with the prostration of my strength from mental suffering, had at length deadened the nerve of pain; so that, despite all my misery, I fell asleep.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.

THIRST.

I slept neither very long, nor very soundly. My sleep was full of dreams, all troubled and horrid; but not more horrid than the reality to which I once more awoke.

After awaking, it was some time before I could think of where I was; but on stretching out my arms, I was reminded of my situation: on every side the wooden walls of my prison were within reach, and I could touch them with my fingers all around. I had little more than room sufficient to turn myself in. Small as was my body, another as big as myself would almost have filled the s.p.a.ce in which I was shut up.

On again comprehending my fearful situation, I once more gave utterance to loud cries, shouting and screaming at the very highest pitch of my voice. I had not yet lost all hope that the sailors might hear me; for, as already stated, I knew not what quant.i.ty of merchandise might be stowed above me, nor did I think of the hatches of the lower deck being fastened down.

Perhaps it was as well I did not know the whole truth, else the complete despair which the knowledge must have produced might have driven me out of my senses. As it was, the intervals of despair already endured had ever alternated with glimpses of hope; and this had sustained me, until I became more able to look my terrible fate in the face.

I continued to cry out, sometimes for minutes at a time, and then only now and again, at intervals; but as no response came, the intervals between my spells of shouting became longer and longer, till at length, resigning all hope of being heard, I allowed my hoa.r.s.e voice to rest, and remained silent.

For several hours after this, I lay in a sort of half stupor--that is, my mind was in this state, but unfortunately my body was not so. On the contrary, I was racked with severe bodily pain--the pain of extreme thirst--perhaps the most grievous and hardest to endure of all physical suffering. I never should have believed that one could be so tortured by so simple a thing as the want of a drink of water, and when I used to read of travellers in the desert, and s.h.i.+pwrecked mariners on the ocean, having endured such agonies from thirst, as even to die of it, I always fancied there was exaggeration in the narrative. Like all English boys, brought up in a climate where there is plenty of moisture, and in a country where springs or runlets exist within a few hundred yards of any given point, it is not likely I should ever have known thirst by experience. Perhaps a little of it at times, when at play off in the fields, or by the sea-sh.o.r.e, where there was no fresh water. Then I had felt what we ordinarily call thirst--a somewhat unpleasant sensation in the throat, which causes us to yearn for a gla.s.s of water. But this unpleasantness is very trifling, and is almost neutralised by the antic.i.p.ation we have of the pleasure to be experienced while allaying it; for this, we know, we shall be able to accomplish in a very short time. Indeed, so trifling is the annoyance we feel from ordinary thirst, that it is rare when we are compelled to stoop, either to the ditch or the pond, for the purpose of a.s.suaging it. We are dainty enough to wait, until we encounter a cool well or some limpid spring.

This, however, is not thirst; it is but thirst in its first and mildest stage--rather pleasant from the knowledge you have of being able soon to remove the pain. Once take away this confidence--become a.s.sured that no wells nor springs are near--no ponds, ditches, lakes, nor rivers--that no fresh water is within hundreds of miles of you--no fluid of any kind that will allay the appet.i.te, and then even this incipient feeling of thirst would at once a.s.sume a new character, and become sufficiently painful to endure.

I may not have been so absolutely in need of drink at the time, for I had not been so long without it. I am sure I had often gone for days without thinking of water, but this was just because I knew I might have as much as I pleased at a moment's notice. Now, that there was none to be had, and no prospect of obtaining any, I felt for the first time in my life that thirst was a real agony.