The Survivors of the Chancellor (15 page)

The tempest, fierce as it was, did not last more than a few
hours; but even in that short space of time what an irreparable loss we have sustained, and what a load of misery seems
stored up for us in the future!

Of the two sailors who perished in the storm, one was
Austin, a fine active young man of about eight-and-twenty;
the other was old O'Ready, the survivor of so many shipwrecks. Our party is thus reduced to sixteen souls, leaving a total barely exceeding half the number of those who
embarked on board the Chancellor at Charleston.

Curtis's first care had been to take a strict account of
the remnant of our provisions. Of all the torrents of rain
that fell in the night we were unhappily unable to catch a
single drop; but water will not fail us yet, for about fourteen gallons still remain in the bottom of the broken barrel,
while the second barrel has not been touched. But of food
we have next to nothing. The cases containing the dried
meat, and the fish that we had preserved, have both been
washed away, and all that now remains to us is about sixty
pounds of biscuit. Sixty pounds of biscuit between sixteen
persons! Eight days, with half a pound a day apiece, will
consume it all.

The day has passed away in silence. A general depression has fallen upon all; the specter of famine has appeared
among us, and each has remained wrapped in his own
gloomy meditations, though each has doubtless but one idea
dominant in his mind.

Once, as I passed near the group of sailors lying on the
fore part of the raft, I heard Flaypole say with a sneer:

"Those who are going to die had better make haste about
it."

"Yes," said Owen, "and leave their share of food to
others."

At the regular hour each person received his half-pound
of biscuit. Some, I noticed, swallowed it ravenously;
others reserved it for another time. Falsten divided his
ration into several portions, corresponding, I believe, to the
number of meals to which he was ordinarily accustomed.
What prudence he shows! If any one survives this misery,
I think it will be he.

DECEMBER 23 to 30. — After the storm the wind settled
back into its old quarter, blowing pretty briskly from the
northeast. As the breeze was all in our favor it was important to make the most of it, and after Dowlas had carefully readjusted the mast, the sail was once more hoisted,
and we were carried along at the rate of two or two and a
half knots an hour. A new rudder, formed of a spar and
a good-sized plank, has been fitted in the place of the one
we lost, but with the wind in its present quarter it is in
little requisition. The platform of the raft has been repaired, the disjointed planks have been closed by means of
ropes and wedges, and that portion of the parapet that was
washed away has been replaced, so that we are no longer
wetted by the waves. In fact, nothing has been left undone
to insure the solidity of our raft, and to render it capable
of resisting the wear and tear of the wind and waves. But
the dangers of wind and waves are not those which we have
most to dread.

Together with the unclouded sky came a return of the
tropical heat, which during the preceding days had caused
us such serious inconvenience; fortunately on the 23d the
excessive warmth was somewhat tempered by the breeze,
and as the tent was once again put up, we were able to find
shelter under it by turns.

But the want of food was beginning to tell upon us sadly,
and our sunken cheeks and wasted forms were visible
tokens of what we were enduring. With most of us hunger
seemed to attack the entire nervous system, and the constriction of the stomach produced an acute sensation of
pain. A narcotic, such as opium or tobacco, might have
availed to soothe, if not to cure, the gnawing agony; but of
sedatives we had none, so the pain must be endured.

One alone there was among us who did not feel the pangs
of hunger. Lieutenant Walter seemed as it were to feed
upon the fever that raged within him; but then he was the
victim of the most torturing thirst. Miss Herbey, besides
reserving for him a portion of her own insufficient allowance,
obtained from the captain a small extra supply of water with
which every quarter of an hour she moistened the parched
lips of the young man, who, almost too weak to speak, could
only express his thanks by a grateful smile. Poor fellow!
all our care cannot avail to save him now; he is doomed,
most surely doomed to die.

On the 23d he seemed to be conscious of his condition,
for he made a sign to me to sit down by his side, and then
summoning up all his strength to speak, he asked me in a
few broken words how long I thought he had to live?

Slight as my hesitation was, Walter noticed it immediately.

"The truth," he said; "tell me the plain truth."

"My dear fellow, I am not a doctor, you know," I began," and I can scarcely judge —"

"Never mind," he interrupted, "tell me just what you
think."

I looked at him attentively for some moments, then laid
my ear against his chest. In the last few days his malady
had made fearfully rapid strides, and it was only too evident that one lung had already ceased to act, while the other
was scarcely capable of performing the work of respiration.
The young man was now suffering from the fever which is
the sure symptom of the approaching end in all tuberculous
complaints.

The lieutenant kept his eye fixed upon me with a look of
eager inquiry. I knew not what to say, and sought to evade
his question.

"My dear boy," I said, "in our present circumstances not
one of us can tell how long he has to live. Not one of us
knows what may happen in the course of the next eight
days."

"The next eight days," he murmured, as he looked
eagerly into my face.

And then, turning away his head, he seemed to fall into
a sort of doze.

The 24th, 25th, and 26th passed without any alteration
in our circumstances, and strange, nay, incredible as it may
sound, we began to get accustomed to our condition of starvation. Often, when reading the histories of shipwrecks,
I have suspected the accounts to be greatly exaggerated; but
now I fully realize their truth, and marvel when I find on
how little nutriment it is possible to exist for so long a time.
To our daily half-pound of biscuit the captain has thought
to add a few drops of brandy, and the stimulant helps considerably to sustain our strength. If we had the same provisions for two months, or even for one, there might be
room for hope; but our supplies diminish rapidly, and the
time is fast approaching when of food and drink there will
be none.

The sea had furnished us with food once, and, difficult
as the task of fishing had now become, at all hazards the
attempt must be made again. Accordingly the carpenter
and the boatswain set to work and made lines out of some
untwisted hemp, to which they fixed some nails that they
pulled out of the flooring of the raft, and bent into proper
shape. The boatswain regarded his device with evident
satisfaction.

"I don't mean to say," said he to me, "that these nails
are first-rate fish-hooks; but, one thing I do know, and that
is, with proper bait they will act as well as the best. But
this biscuit is no good at all. Let me but just get hold of
one fish, and I shall know fast enough how to use it to catch
some more."

And the true difficulty was how to catch the first fish. It
was evident that fish were not abundant in these waters,
nevertheless the lines were cast. But the biscuit with which
they were baited dissolved at once in the water, and we did
not get a single bite. For two days the attempt was made
in vain, and as it only involved what seemed a lavish waste
of our only means of subsistence, it was given up in despair.

To-day, the 30th, as a last resource, the boatswain tried
what a piece of colored rag might do by way of attracting
some voracious fish, and having obtained from Miss Herbey a little piece of the red shawl she wears, he fastened it
to his hook. But still no success; for when, after several
hours, he examined his lines, the crimson shred was still
hanging intact as he had fixed it. The man was quite discouraged at his failure.

"But there will be plenty of bait before long," he said
to me in a solemn undertone.

"What do you mean?" said I, struck by his significant
manner.

"You'll know soon enough," he answered.

What did he insinuate? The words, coming from a man
usually so reserved, have haunted me all night.

JANUARY 1 to 5. — More than three months had elapsed
since we left Charleston in the Chancellor, and for no less
than twenty days had we now been borne along on our raft
at the mercy of the wind and waves. Whether we were
approaching the American coast, or whether we were drifting farther and farther to sea, it was now impossible to determine, for, in addition to the other disasters caused by the
hurricane, the captain's instruments had been hopelessly
smashed, and Curtis had no longer any compass by which
to direct his course, nor a sextant by which he might make
an observation.

Desperate, however, as our condition might be judged,
hope did not entirely abandon our hearts, and day after
day, hour after hour were our eyes strained toward the far
horizon, and many and many a time did our imagination
shape out the distant land. But ever and again the illusion
vanished; a cloud, a mist, perhaps even a wave, was all that
had deceived us; no land, no sail ever broke the gray line
that united sea and sky, and our raft remained the center of
the wide and dreary waste.

On the 1st of January, we swallowed our last morsel of
biscuit. The first of January! New Year's Day! What
a rush of sorrowful recollections overwhelmed our minds!
Had we not always associated the opening of another year
with new hopes, new plans, and coming joys? And now,
where were we? Could we dare to look at one another,
and breathe a New Year's greeting?

The boatswain approached me with a peculiar look on
his countenance.

"You are surely not going to wish me a happy New
Year?" I said.

"No indeed, sir," he replied, "I was only going to wish
you well through the first day of it; and that is pretty good
assurance on my part, for we have not another crumb to
eat."

True as it was, we scarcely realized the fact of there being
actually nothing until on the following morning the hour
came round for the distribution of the scanty ration, and
then, indeed, the truth was forced upon us in a new and
startling light. Toward evening I was seized with violent
pains in the stomach, accompanied by a constant desire to
yawn and gape that was most distressing; but in a couple
of hours the extreme agony passed away, and on the 3d I
was surprised to find that I did not suffer more. I felt, it
is true, that there was some great void within myself, but
the sensation was quite as much moral as physical. My
head was so heavy that I could not hold it up; it was swimming with giddiness, as though I were looking over a
precipice.

My symptoms were not shared by all my companions,
some of whom endured the most frightful tortures. Dowlas and the boatswain especially, who were naturally large
eaters, uttered involuntary cries of agony, and were obliged
to gird themselves tightly with ropes to subdue the excruciating pain that was gnawing their very vitals.

And this was only the second day of our misery! What
would we not have given for half, nay, for a quarter of the
meager ration which a few days back we deemed so inadequate to supply our wants, and which now, eked out crumb
by crumb, might, perhaps, serve for several days? In the
streets of a besieged city, dire as the distress may be, some
gutter, some rubbish-heap, some corner may yet be found
that will furnish a dry bone or a scrap of refuse that may
for a moment allay the pangs of hunger; but these bare
planks, so many times washed clean by the relentless waves,
offer nothing to our eager search, and after every fragment
of food that the wind has carried into the interstices has
been scraped out and devoured, our resources are literally
at an end.

The nights seem even longer than the days. Sleep, when
it comes, brings no relief; it is rather a feverish stupor,
broken and disturbed by frightful nightmares. Last night,
however, overcome by fatigue, I managed to rest for several hours.

At six o'clock this morning I was roused by the sound
of angry voices, and, starting up, I saw Owen and
Jynxstrop, with Flaypole, Wilson, Burke, and Sandon,
standing in a threatening attitude. They had taken possession of the carpenter's tools, and now, armed with hatchets,
chisels, and hammers, they were preparing to attack
the captain, the boatswain, and Dowlas. I attached myself
in a moment to Curtis's party. Falsten followed my example, and although our knives were the only weapons at
our disposal, we were ready to defend ourselves to the very
last extremity.

Owen and his men advanced toward us. The miserable
wretches were all drunk, for during the night they had
knocked a hole in the brandy-barrel, and had recklessly swallowed its contents. What they wanted they scarcely seemed
to know, but Owen and Jynxstrop, not quite so much intoxicated as the rest, seemed to be urging them on to massacre
the captain and the officers.

"Down with the captain! Overboard with Curtis!
Owen shall take the command!" they shouted from time to
time in their drunken fury; and, armed as they were, they
appeared completely masters of the situation.

"Now, then, down with your arms!" said Curtis sternly,
as he advanced to meet them.

"Overboard with the captain!" howled Owen, as by word
and gesture he urged on his accomplices.

Curtis pushed aside the excited rascals, and, walking
straight up to Owen, asked him what he wanted.