CHAPTER IV.
I QUIT THE WRECK.
The east grew pale and grey at last. The sea rolled black as the nightfrom it, with a rounded smooth-backed swell; the wind was spent; only asmall air, still from the north-east, stirred. There were a few starsdying out in the dark west; the atmosphere was clear, and when the sunrose I knew he would turn the sable pall overhead into blueness.
The hull lay very deep. I had at one time, during the black hours,struck into a mournful calculation, and reckoned that the brig wouldfloat some two or three hours after sunrise; but when the glorious beamflashed out at last, and transformed the ashen hue of dawn into acerulean brilliance and a deep of rolling sapphire, I started withsudden terror to observe how close the covering-board sat upon thewater, and how the head of every swell ran past as high as the bulwarkrail.
Yet for a few moments I stood contemplating the scene of ruin. It wasvisible now to its most trifling detail. The foremast was gone smoothoff at the deck; it lay over the starboard bow; and the topmast floatedahead of the hull, held by the gear. Many feet of bulwarks were crushedlevel; the pumps had vanished; the caboose was gone! A completernautical ruin I had never viewed.
One extraordinary stroke I quickly detected. The jolly-boat had lainstowed in the long-boat; it was thus we carried those boats, the littleone lying snugly enough in the other. The sea that had flooded our deckshad floated the jolly-boat out of the long-boat, and swept it bottom upto the gangway where it lay, as though God's mercy designed it should bepreserved for my use; for, not long after it had been floated out, thebrig struck the berg, the masts fell--and there lay the long-boatcrushed into staves!
This signal and surprising intervention filled my heart withthankfulness, though my spirits sank again at the sight of my poordrowned shipmates. But, unless I had a mind to join them, it wasnecessary I should speedily bestir myself. So after a minute'sreflection I whipped out my knife, and cutting a couple of blocks awayfrom the raffle on deck, I rove a line through them, and so made atackle, by the help of which I turned the jolly-boat over; I then with ahandspike prised her nose to the gangway, secured a bunch of rope oneither side her to act as fenders or buffers when she should be launchedand lying alongside, ran her midway out by the tackle, and, attaching aline to a ring-bolt in her bow, shoved her over the side, and she fellwith a splash, shipping scarce a hatful of water.
I found her mast and sail--the sail furled to the mast, as it was usedto lie in her--close against the stump of the mainmast; but though Isought with all the diligence that hurry would permit for her rudder, Inowhere saw it, but I met with an oar that had belonged to the otherboat, and this with the mast and sail I dropped into her, the swelllifting her up to my hand when the blue fold swung past.
My next business was to victual her. I ran to the cabin, but thelazarette was full of water, and none of the provisions in it to be comeat. I thereupon ransacked the cabin, and found a whole Dutch cheese, apiece of raw pork, half a ham, eight or ten biscuits, some candles, atinder-box, several lemons, a little bag of flower, and thirteen bottlesof beer. These things I rolled up in a cloth and placed them in theboat, then took from the captain's locker four jars of spirits, two ofwhich I emptied that I might fill them with fresh water. I also tookwith me from the captain's cabin a small boat compass.
The heavy, sluggish, sodden movement of the hull advised me to makehaste. She was now barely lifting to the swell that came brimming inbroad liquid blue brows to her stem. It seemed as though another ton ofwater would sink her; and if the swell fell over her bows and filled thedecks, down she would go. I had a small parcel of guineas in my chest,and was about to fetch this money, when a sort of staggering sensationin the upward slide of the hull gave me a fright, and, watching mychance, I jumped into the boat and cast the line that held her adrift.
The sun was an hour above the horizon. The sea was a deep blue, heavingvery slowly, though you felt the weight of the mighty ocean in everyfold; and eastwards, the shoulders of the swell, catching the gloriousreflection of the sun, hurled the splendour along, till all that quarterof the sea looked to be a mass of leaping dazzle. Upon the easternsea-line lay a range of white clouds, compact as the chalk cliffs ofDover; threads, crescents, feather-shapes of vapour of the daintiestsort, shot with pearly lustre, floated overhead very high. It was intruth a fair and pleasant morning--of an icy coldness indeed, but theair being dry, its shrewdness was endurable. Yet was it a brightness tofill me with anguish by obliging me to reflect how it would have beenwith us had it dawned yesterday instead of to-day. My companions wouldhave been alive, and yonder sinking ruined fabric a trim ship capable ofbearing us stoutly into warm seas and to our homes at last.
I threw the oar over the stern of the boat to keep her near to the brig,not so much because I desired to see the last of her, as because of theshrinking of my soul within me from the thought of heading in myloneliness into those prodigious leagues of ocean which lay stretchedunder the sky. Whilst the hull floated she was something to hold on to,so to say, something for the eye amid the vastness of water to restupon, something to take out of the insufferable feeling of solitude thepoisonous sting of conviction.
But her end was at hand. I had risen to step the boat's mast, and wasstanding and grasping it whilst I directed a slow look round the horizonin God knows what vain hope of beholding a sail, when my eye coming tothe brig, I observed that she was sinking. She went down very slowly;there was a horrible gurgling sound of water rushing into her, and hermain deck blew up with a loud clap or blast of noise. I could follow theline of her bulwarks fluctuating and waving in the clear dark blue whenshe was some feet under. A number of whirlpools spun round over her, butthe slowness of her foundering was solemnly marked by the gradualdescent of the ruins of masts and yards which were attached to the hullby their rigging, and which she dragged down with her. On a sudden, whenthe last fragment of mast had disappeared, and when the hollows of thewhirlpools were flattening to the level surface of the sea, up rose abody, with a sort of leap. It was the sailor that had lain drowned onthe starboard side of the forward deck. Being frozen stiff he rose inthe posture in which he had expired, that is, with his arms extended; sothat, when he jumped to the surface, he came with his hands lifted up toheaven, and thus he stayed a minute, sustained by the eddies which alsorevolved him.
The shock occasioned by this melancholy object was so great, it camenear to causing me to swoon. He sank when the water ceased to twisthim, and I was unspeakingly thankful to see him vanish, for his posturehad all the horror of a spectral appeal, and such was the state of mymind that imagination might quickly have worked the apparition, had itlingered, into an instrument for the unsettling of my reason.
I rose from the seat on to which I had sunk and loosed the sail, andhauling the sheet aft, put the oar over the stern, and brought thelittle craft's head to an easterly course. The draught of air wasextremely weak, and scarce furnished impulse enough to the sail to raisea bubble alongside. The boat was about fifteen feet long; she would bebut a small boat for summer pleasuring in English July lake-waters, yethere was I in her in the heart of a vast ocean, many leagues south andwest of the stormiest, most inhospitable point of land in the world,with distances before me almost infinite for such a boat as this tomeasure ere I could heave a civilized coast or a habitable island intoview!
At the start I had a mind to steer north-west and blow, as the windwould suffer, into the South Sea, where perchance I might meet a whaleror a Southseaman from New Holland; but my heart sank at the prospect ofthe leagues of water which rolled between me and the islands and thewestern American seaboard. Indeed I understood that my only hope ofdeliverance lay in being picked up; and that, though by heading east Ishould be clinging to the stormy parts, I was more likely to meet with aship hereabouts than by sailing into the great desolation of thenorth-west. The burden of my loneliness weighed down upon me socrushingly that I cannot but consider my senses must have been somewhatdulled by suffering, for had they been active to their old
accustomedheight, I am persuaded my heart must have broken and that I should havedied of grief.
Faintly as the wind blew, it speedily wafted me out of sight of thefloating relics of the wreck, and then all was bare, bald, swelling seaand empearled sky, darkening in lagoons of azure down to the softmountainous masses of white vapour lying like the coast of a continenton the larboard horizon. But one living thing there was besides myself:a grey-breasted albatross, of a princely width of pinion. I had notobserved it till the hull went down, and then, lifting my eyes withinvoluntary sympathy in the direction pointed to by the upraised arms ofthe sailor, I observed the great royal bird hanging like a shape ofmarble directly over the frothing eddies. It was as though the spirit ofthe deep had taken form in the substance of the noblest of all the fowlsof its dominions, and, poised on tremorless wings, was surveying withthe cold curiosity of an intelligence empty of human emotion thedestruction of one of those fabrics whose unequal contests and repeatedtriumphs had provoked its haughty surprise. The bird quitted the spot ofthe wreck after a while and followed me. Its eyes had the sparklingblood-red gleam of rubies. It was as silent as a phantom, and witharched neck and motionless plumes seemed to watch me with anearnestness that presently grew insufferable. So far from finding anycomfort of companionship in the creature, methought if it did notspeedily break from the motionless posture in which it rested on itsseat of air, and remove its piercing gaze, it would end in crazing me. Ifelt a sudden rage, and, jumping up, shouted and shook my fist at it.This frightened the thing. It uttered a strange salt cry--the very noteof a gust of wind splitting upon a rope--flapped its wings, and after aturn or two sailed away into the north.
I watched it till its figure melted into the blue atmosphere, and thensank trembling into the sternsheets of the boat.