In the Sargasso Sea, Thomas A. Janvier [ebook reader for pc .txt] 📗
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could carry on level ground—and far more of a load than I could
manage in the scramble that was before me if I decided to go on.
Indeed, I had found my two bottles of water a serious inconvenience;
and yet I would have them to carry also, and the big compass too. As
to water, however, since the shower of the morning. I felt less
anxiety: and the event proved that my confidence in the rainfall was
justified—for the showers came regularly a little after dawn, and
only once or twice after that first sharp experience did I feel more
than passing pain from thirst.
I sat there on the roof of the cabin for a good part of the morning
cogitating the matter; and in the end I could think of no better
plan than one which promised certainly a world of hard labor, and only
promised uncertainly to serve my turn. This was to stick to my project
of going steadily northward—carrying with me as much food as I could
stagger under—until I came again to the outer edge of the
wreck—pack; but to safeguard my return to the barque, should my food
give out before my journey was accomplished, by blazing my path: that
is to say, by making a mark on each wreck that I crossed so that I
could retrace my steps easily and without fear of losing my way. What
I would gain in the end I did not try very clearly to tell
myself—having only a vague feeling that in getting again to the coast
of my great dead continent I would be that much the nearer to the
living world once more; and having a clearer feeling that only by
sticking at some sort of hard work that had a little hopefulness in it
could I save myself from going mad. And I cannot but think now,
looking back at it, that a touch of madness already was upon me; for
no man ever set himself to a crazier undertaking than that to which I
set myself then.
XXIIIHOW I STARTED ON A JOURNEY DUE NORTH
The morning was well spent by the time that I had made my mind up, and
I was growing hungry again. I made a good meal on what was left in the
second tin of beans that I had opened for my breakfast; and when I was
done I tried to get a light for my pipe by rubbing bits of wood
together, but made nothing of it at all. I had read about castaways on
desert islands getting fire that way—but they went at it with dry
wood, I fancy, and in my mist-sodden desert all the wood was soaked
with damp.
For that afternoon I decided to go forward only as far as I could
fetch it to be back on board the barque again by sunset, taking with
me as many tins of beans as I could carry and leaving them where I
made my turn: by which arrangement I would save the carriage of my
supper and my breakfast, and would have a little store of victuals to
fall back upon—when I should be fairly started on my journey—without
coming all the way again to the barque.
I got the bed-bag that I had seen in the stateroom, and managed with
the rusty scissors to cut it down to half its size. Into this I packed
ten tins of beans, and made them snug by whipping around the bag one
end of a longish line—which served when coiled as a handle for it;
and, being uncoiled, enabled me to haul it up a ship’s side after me,
or to let it down ahead of me, or to sway it across an open space
between two vessels, and so go at my climbing and jumping with both
hands free. As for the compass, my back was the only place for it and
I put it there—where it did not bother me much, having little weight;
and I stuck the hatchet to blaze my path with into a sort of a belt
that I made for myself with a bit of line.
Considering what a load I was carrying, and that on every vessel which
I crossed I had to stop while I blazed a mark on her, I made a good
long march of it before the waning of the daylight was a sign to me
that I must put about again; and my return journey was both quick and
easy, for I left the whole of my load, excepting the empty bag, behind
me and came back lightly along my plainly marked path. But I was tired
enough when I got on board the barque again, and glad enough to eat my
supper and then stretch myself out to sleep upon the cabin floor.
That night, being easy in my body—except for my wholesome
weariness—and easier in my mind because it seemed to me that I was
doing something for my deliverance, and being also aboard a vessel
that I knew was clean and pure, I had no visions of any kind whatever,
but went to sleep almost in a moment, and slept like a log, as the
saying is, the whole night through. Indeed, I slept later than suited
my purposes—being for rising early and making a long day’s march of
it—and I might have wasted still more time in drowsing lazily had I
not been wakened a little before sunrise by the rattle on the cabin
roof of a dashing burst of rain. I was on deck in a moment, and by
stopping a scupper—as I had done the previous morning—presently had
by me a far bigger supply of water than I needed; from which I got a
good drink lying down to it, and filled an empty bean-tin for another
drink after my breakfast, and so had my two bottles full to last me
until the next day—and was pretty well satisfied by the rain’s
recurrence that I could count upon a shower every morning about the
hour of dawn.
When I had finished my breakfast I stowed ten tins of beans in the bag
and lashed four more together so that I could carry them on my
shoulders—being able to manage them in that way because I had no
other back-load—and so was ready to set out along my blazed path. But
before leaving the barque—hoping never again to lay eyes on her—I
took one more look through the cabin to make sure that I had not
passed over something that might be useful to me: and was lucky enough
to find under one of the bunks a drawer—that had been hidden by the
tumbled sheets hanging down over it—in which were some shirts and a
suit of linen clothing that most opportunely supplied my needs. They
all were badly mildewed, but sound enough, and the trousers—I had no
use for the coat and waistcoat—fitted me very well. So I threw off
the rags and tatters that I was wearing and put on in their place
these sound garments; and then I picked up my load and was off.
Not having to stop to take bearings or to blaze my way, I made such
good time that I got to the end of the course over which I had spent a
good part of the previous afternoon in not much more than three hours.
I was pretty well pleased to find that I could make such brisk
marching under such a load; for it showed me that even when I should
get a long way from my base of supplies, that is to say from the
barque, I still could return to it at no great expense of time—and
the thought never entered my head that time was of no value to me,
since only by what would be close upon a miracle could I hope for
anything better than to find ways for killing it through all the
remainder of my days.
Being thus come to my place of deposit I had to rearrange my
packing—going forward with a lighter load of food that I might
carry also the compass and the hatchet; and going slowly because of my
constant stops to take fresh bearings and to mark my path. But that
time I went straight onward until nightfall; and my heart sank a good
deal within me as I found that the farther I went the more antique in
model, and the more anciently sea-worn, were the wrecks which I came
upon—and so I knew that I must be making my way steadily into the
very depths of my maze.
Yet I could not see that I would gain anything by going back to the
barque and thence taking a fresh departure. The barque, as I knew
certainly from the sort of craft surrounding her, was so deeply bedded
in the pack that no matter how I headed from her I should have to go
far before I came again to the coast of it; and on the other hand I
thought that by holding to my course northward I might work my way in
no great time across the innermost huddle of ancient wrecks—for of
the vast number of these I had no notion then—and so to the outer
belt of wrecks new-made: on board of which I certainly should find
fresh food in plenty, and from which (as I forced myself to believe) I
might get away once more into the living world. And so I pushed on
doggedly until the twilight changed to dusk and I could not venture
farther; and then I ate my supper on board of a strange old ship, as
round as a dumpling and with a high bow and a higher stern; and when
I had finished settled myself for the night, being very weary, under
the in-hang of her heavy bulging side.
When morning came—and a shower with it that gave me what drink I
wanted and a store of water for the day—I debated for a while with
myself as to whether I should go onward with my whole load, or leave a
part of it in a fresh deposit to which I could return at will. The
second course seemed the better to me; and, indeed, it was necessary
for me to go light-loaded in order to get on at all. For I had come
among ships of such strange old-fashioned build, standing at bow and
stern so high out of the water, that unless they happened to be lying
side by side so that I could pass from one to another amidships—which
was the case but seldom—I had almost as much climbing up and down
among them as though I had been a monkey mounting and descending a
row of trees.
Therefore I ate as much breakfast as I could pack into myself—that
being as good a way as any other of carrying food with me—and then I
tore the sleeves from my shirt and stuffed them from the tins that I
opened until I had two great bean sausages, which I fastened
belt-fashion about my waist and so carried without any trouble at all.
Indeed, but for this new arrangement of my load I doubt if I could
have gone onward; and even with it I had all that I could do to make
my way. The bag with the remaining tins in it I stood away inside the
cabin of the old ship—which I should have explored farther, so
strange-looking was it, but for my eager desire to get on; and I felt
quite sure that I would find all just as I had left it there even
though I did not come back again for twenty years.
XXIVOF WHAT I FOUND ABOARD A
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