In the Sargasso Sea, Thomas A. Janvier [ebook reader for pc .txt] 📗

little wine; and when

this was down I began to feel quite like myself once more, and to long

so strongly for some sunshine and fresh air that I climbed up the

companionway to the deck.

 

But when I got there I thought at first that my visions were coming

back again. Indeed, what I saw was so nearly my last vision over again

as to make me half believe, later, that I really did go on deck in my

delirium and really did see that blood-red sunset and all the rest

that had seemed to me a dream. At any rate, there was no doubting this

second time—if it were the second time—the reality of what I beheld;

and because I no longer was fever-struck, and so could take in fully

the wonder of it, my astonishment kept my spirits from being wholly

pulled down.

 

The haze was so thick as to be almost like a fog hanging about me, but

the hot sunshine pouring down into it gave it a golden brightness and

I could see through it dimly for a good long way; and there was no

need for far-seeing to be sure that I had before me what I think must

be the strangest sight that the world has in it for the eyes of man.

For what I looked at was the host of wrecked ships, the dross of wave

and tempest, which through four centuries—from the time when sailors

first pushed out upon the great western ocean—has been gathering

slowly, and still more slowly wasting, in the central fastnesses of

the Sargasso Sea.

 

The nearest edge of this mass of wreckage was not a quarter of a mile

off from me; but it swept away in a great irregular curve to the right

and left and vanished into the golden haze softly—and straight ahead

I could see it stretching dimly away from me, getting thicker and

closer until it seemed to be almost as solid as a real island would

have been. And, indeed, it had a good deal the look of being a real

island; the loom through the haze of countless broken masts rising to

various heights and having frayed ropes streaming from them having

much the effect of trees growing there, while the irregularities of

the surface made it seem as though little houses were scattered

thickly among the trees. But in spite of the golden light which hung

over it, and which ought to have given it a cheerful look, it was the

most desolate and sorrowful place I ever saw; for it seemed to

belong—and in a way really did belong, since every hulk in all that

fleet was the slowly wasting dead body of a ship slain by storm or

disaster—to that outcast region of mortality in which death has

achieved its ugliness but to which the cleansing of a complete

dissolution has not yet been brought by time.

 

Yet the curious interest that I found in this strange sight kept me

from feeling only the horror of it. In my talks with Bowers about the

old-time sea-wonders which must be hidden in the Sargasso Sea my

imagination had been fired; and when I thus found myself actually in

the way to see these wonders I half forgot how useless the sight was

to me—being myself about the same as killed in the winning of it—and

was so full of eagerness to press forward that I grew almost angry

because of the infinite slowness with which my hulk drifted on to its

place in the ruined ranks.

 

There was no hurrying my progress. Around me the weed and wreckage

were packed so closely that the wonder was that my hulk moved through

it at all. Of wind there was not a particle; indeed, as I found later,

under that soft golden haze was a dead calm that very rarely in those

still latitudes was ruffled by even the faintest breeze. Only a weak

swirl of current from the far-off Gulf Stream pushed my hulk onward;

and this, I suppose, was helped a little by that attraction of

floating bodies for each other which brings chips and leaves together

on the surface of even the stillest pool. But a snail goes faster than

I was going; and it was only at the end of a full hour of watching

that I could see—yet even then could not be quite certain about it—that

my position a very little had changed.

 

Save that now and then I went below and got some solid food into me—and

as I was careful to eat but little at a time I got the good of it—I sat

there on the deck all day long gazing; and by nightfall my hulk had gone

forward by perhaps as much as a hundred yards. But my motion was a steady

and direct one, and I saw that if it continued it would end by laying me

aboard of a big steamer—having the look of being a cargo-boat—that stood

out a little from the others and evidently herself had not long been a

part of that broken company. She was less of a wreck, in one way, than

my own hulk; for she floated on an even keel and so high out of the

water as to show that she had no leak in her; but her masts had been

swept clean away and even her funnel and her bridge were gone—as though

a sharp-edged sea had sliced like a razor over her and shaved her decks

clean.

 

Immediately beyond this steamer lay a big wooden ship evidently

waterlogged; for she lay so low that the whole of her hull, save a bit of

her stern, was hidden from me by the steamer, and the most of her that

showed was her broken masts. And beyond her again was a jam of wrecks so

confused that I could not make out clearly any one of them from the rest.

Taken all together, they made a sort of promontory that jutted out from

what I may call the main-land of wreckage; and to the right and left of

the promontory there went off in long receding lines the coast of that

country of despair.

 

At last the sun sunk away to the horizon, and as it fell off westward pink

tones began to show in the clouds there and then to be reflected in the

haze; and these tones grew warmer and deeper until I saw just such another

blood-red sunset as I had seen in what I had fancied was my dream. And

under the crimson haze lay the dead wrecks, looming large in it, with

gleams of crimson light striking here and there on spars and masts and

giving them the look of being on fire. And then the light faded slowly,

through shades of purple and soft pink and warm gray, until at last the

blessed darkness came and shut off everything from my tired eyes.

 

Indeed, I was glad when the darkness fell; for as I sat there looking and

looking and feeling the bitter hopelessness of it all, I was well on my

way to going crazy with sorrow. But somehow, not seeing any longer the

ruin which was so near to me, and of which I knew myself to be a part, it

seemed less real to me—and so less dreadful. And being thus eased a

little I realized that I was hungry again, and that commonplace natural

feeling did me good too.

 

I went below to the pantry, striking a match to see my way by; and when

I had lighted the big lamp that was hanging there—the glass chimney of

which, in some wonderful way, had pulled through the crash which had sent

the mizzen-mast flying—the place seemed so cheerful that my desire for

supper increased prodigiously, and tended still farther to down my

sorrowful thoughts. I even had a notion of trying to light a fire in

the galley and cooking over it some of the beef or mutton that I had

found in the cold-room; but I gave that up, just then, because I

really was too hungry to wait until I could carry through so large

a plan.

 

But there was a plenty of good food in tins easily to be got at; and

what was still better I felt quite strong enough to eat a lot of it

without hurting myself. I even went at my meal a little daintily,

spreading a napkin—that I got from a locker filled with table

linen—on the pantry dresser, and setting out on it a tin of chicken

and a bunch of cheese and some bread which was pretty stale and hard

and a pot of jam to end off with; and from the wine-room I brought a

bottle of good Bordeaux.

 

As I ate my supper, greatly relishing it, the oddness of what I was

doing did not occur to me; but often since I have thought how strange

was that meal of mine—in that brightly lighted cosey little room,

and myself really cheerful over it—in its contrast with the utterly

desperate strait in which I was. And I think that the contrast was

still sharper, my supper being ended, when I fetched a steamer-chair

that I had noticed lying on the floor of the cabin and settled myself

in it easily—facing toward the stern, so that the slope of the deck

only made the slope of the chair still easier—and so sat there in the

brightness smoking a very good cigar.

 

And after a while—what with my comfort of body, and the good meal

in my stomach, and the good wine there too—a soothing drowsiness

stole over me, and I had the feeling that in another moment or two I

should fall away into a delicious doze. And then, all of a sudden, I

was roused wide awake again by hearing faintly, but quite distinctly,

a long and piercingly shrill cry.

 

I fairly jumped from my chair, so greatly was I startled; and for a

good while I stood quite still, drawing my breath softly, in waiting

wonder for that strange cry to come again. But it did not come

again—and as the silence continued I fell to doubting if I had not

been asleep, and that this sound which had seemed so real to me had

not been only a part of a dream.

XIV

OF MY MEETING WITH A MURDERED MAN

 

Robinson Crusoe’s footprint in the sand did not startle him more than

that strange lonely cry startled me. Indeed, as between the two of us,

I had rather the worse of it: for Crusoe, at least, knew that he was

dealing with a reality, while I could not be certain that I was not

dealing with a bit of a dream in which there was no reality at all.

 

For a long while I sat there puzzling over it—half hoping that I

might hear it again, and so be sure of it; and half hoping that I

might not hear it, because of the thrilling tone in it which had

filled me with a sharp alarm. I was so shaken that I had not the

courage to go off to my berth in the cabin, with only a candle to

light me there, but stayed on in the little room that the lamp lighted

so brightly that there were no dark corners for my fancy to people

with things horrible; and so, at last, still scared and puzzled, I

went off to sleep in my chair.

 

When I woke again the lamp had burned out and had filled the place

with a vile smell of lamp-smoke that set me to sneezing. But I did

not mind that much; for daylight had come, and my nerves were both

quieted