In the Sargasso Sea by Thomas A. Janvier (smart books to read .TXT) đź“–
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took off a full tumbler, which was more than double his usual
allowance, and then pushed the liquor across to the mate and me. The
mate also took a good pull at it, and I took a fair drink myself in
the hope that it would quiet my nerves—but it had exactly the
opposite effect and made me both excited and cross. And then we all
came on deck together, and all in a rough humor, and Bowers went down
into the cabin to have his supper by himself.
What happened in the next half-hour happened so quickly that I cannot
give a very clear account of it. A part of it, no doubt, was due to
mere chance and angry impulse; but not the whole of it, and I think
not the worst of it—for the first thing that the captain did was to
order the man who was steering to go forward and to tell the mate to
take the wheel. That left just the three of us together at the stern
of the brig—with Bowers below and so out of sight and hearing, and
with all the crew completely cut off from us and put out of sight and
hearing by the rise of the cabin above the deck.
Night had settled down on the ocean, but not darkness. Far off to the
eastward the full moon was standing well above the horizon and was
fighting her way upward through the clouds—now and then getting
enough the better of them to send down a dash of brightness on the
water, but for the most part making only a faint twilight through
their gloom. The wind still was very light and fitful, but broken by
strongish puffs which would heel the brig over a little and send her
along sharply for half a mile or so before they died away; and the
swell had so risen that we had a long sleepy roll. Up to windward I
made out a ship’s lights—that seemed to be coming down on us rapidly,
from their steady brightening—and I concluded that this must be the
steamer from which the smoke had come that I had seen trailing along
the horizon through the afternoon; and I even fancied, the night being
intensely still, that I could hear across the water the soft purring
sound made by the steady churning of her wheel. Somehow it deepened
the sullen anger that had hold of me to see so close by a ship having
honest men aboard of her, and to know at the same time how hopelessly
fast I was tied to the brig and her dirty crew. I don’t mind saying
that the tears came to my eyes, for I was both hurt by my sorrow and
heavy with my dull rage.
We all three were silent for a matter of ten minutes or so, or it
might even have been longer, and then Captain Luke faced around on me
suddenly and asked: “Well, have you made up your mind?”
Had I been cooler I should have tried to fence a little, since my only
resource—I being caught like a rat in a trap that way—was to try to
gain time; but I was all in a quiver, just as I suppose he was, with
the excitement of the situation and with the excitement of the
thunderous night, and his short sharp question jostled out of my head
what few wits I had there and made me throw away my only chance. And
so I answered him, just as shortly and as sharply: “Yes, I have.”
“Do you mean to join the brig?” he demanded.
“No, I don’t,” I answered, and stepped a little closer to him and
looked him squarely in the eyes.
“I told you so,” the mate broke in with his rumble; and I saw that he
was whipping a light lashing on the wheel in a way that would hold it
steady in case he wanted to let go.
“Better think a minute,” said Captain Luke, speaking coolly enough,
but still with an angry undertone in his voice. “I’ve made you a good
offer, and I’m ready to stand by it. But if you won’t take what I’ve
offered you you’ll take something else that you won’t like, my fresh
young man. In a friendly way, and for your information, I’ve told you
a lot of things that I can’t trust to the keeping of any living man
who won’t chip in with us and take our chances—the bad ones with the
good ones—just as they happen to come along. You know too much, now,
for me to part company from you while you have a wagging tongue in
your head—and so my offer’s still open to you. Only there’s this
about it: if you won’t take it, overboard you go.”
I had a little gleam of sense at that; for I knew that he spoke in
dead earnest, and that the mate stood ready to back him, and that
against the two of them I had not much show. And so I tried to play
for time, saying: “Well, let me think it over a bit longer. You said
there was no hurry and that I might have a week to consider in. I’ve
had only three days, so far. Do you call that square?”
“Squareness be damned,” rumbled the mate, and he gave a look aloft and
another to windward—the breeze just then had fallen to a mere
whisper—and took his hands off the wheel and stepped away from it so
that he and the captain were close in front of me, side by side. I
stood off from them a little, and got my back against the cabin—that
I might be safe against an attack from behind—and I was so furiously
angry that I forgot to be scared.
“Three days is as good as three years,” Captain Luke jerked out. “What
I want is an answer right now. Will you join the brig—yes or no?”
Somehow I remembered just then seeing our pig killed, when I was a
boy—how he ran around the lot with the men after him, and got into a
corner and tried to fight them, and was caught in spite of his poor
little show of fighting, and was rolled over on his back and had his
throat stuck. He was a nice pig, and I had felt sorry for him:
thinking that he didn’t deserve such treatment, his life having been a
respectable one, and he never having done anybody any harm. It all
came back to me in a flash, as I settled myself well against the cabin
and answered: “No, I won’t join you—and you and your brig may go
to hell!”
All I remember after that was their rush together upon me, and my
hitting out two or three times—getting in one smasher on the mate’s
jaw that was a comfort to me—and then something hard cracking me on
the head, and so stunning me that I knew nothing at all of what
happened until I found myself coming up to the surface of the sea,
sputtering salt-water and partly tangled in a bunch of gulf-weed, and
saw the brig heeling over and sliding fast away from me before a
sudden strong draught of wind.
VII TIE UP MY BROKEN HEAD, AND TRY TO ATTRACT ATTENTION
My head was tingling with pain, and so buzzy that I had no sense worth
speaking of, but just kept myself afloat in an instinctive sort of way
by paddling a little with my hands. And I could not see well for what
I thought was water in my eyes—until I found that it was blood
running down over my forehead from a gash in my scalp that went from
the top of my right ear pretty nearly to my crown. Had the blow that
made it struck fair it certainly would have finished me; but from the
way that the scalp was cut loose the blow must have glanced.
The chill of the water freshened me and brought my senses back a
little: for which I was not especially thankful at first, being in
such pain and misery that to drown without knowing much about it
seemed quite the best thing that I could hope for just then. Indeed,
when I began to think again, though not very clearly, I had half a
mind to drop my arms to my sides and so go under and have done with
it—so despairing was I as I bobbed about on the swell among the
patches of gulf-weed which littered the dark ocean, with the brig
drawing away from me rapidly, and no chance of a rescue from her even
had she been near at hand.
Whether I had or had not hurried the matter, under I certainly should
have gone shortly—for the crack on my head and the loss of blood from
it had taken most of my strength out of me, and even with my full
strength I could not have kept afloat long—had not a break in the
clouds let through a dash of moonlight that gave me another chance. It
was only for a moment or two that the moonlight lasted, yet long
enough for me to make out within a hundred feet of me a biggish piece
of wreckage—which but for that flash I should not have noticed, or in
the dimness would have taken only for a bunch of weed.
Near though it was, getting to it was almost more than I could manage;
and when at last I did reach it I was so nearly used up that I barely
had strength to throw my arms about it and one leg over it, and so
hang fast for a good many minutes in a half-swoon of weakness
and pain.
But the feel of something solid under me, and the certainty that for a
little while at least I was safe from drowning, helped me to pull
myself together; and before long some of my strength came back, and a
little of my spirit with it, and I went about settling myself more
securely on my poor sort of a raft. What I had hit upon, I found, was
a good part of a ship’s mast; with the yards still holding fast by it
and steadying it, and all so clean-looking that it evidently had not
been in the water long. The main-top, I saw, would give me a back to
lean against and also a little shelter; and in that nook I would be
still more secure because the futtock-shrouds made a sort of cage
about it and gave me something to catch fast to should the swell of
the sea roll me off. So I worked along the mast from where I first had
caught hold of it until I got myself stowed away under the main-top:
where I had my body fairly out of water, and a chance to rest easily
by leaning against the upstanding woodwork, and a good grip with my
legs to keep me firm. And it is true, though it don’t sound so, that I
was almost happy at finding myself so snug and safe there—as it
seemed after having nothing under me but the sea.
And then I set myself—my head hurting me cruelly, and the flow of
blood still bothering me—to see what I could do in the way of binding
up my wound; and made a pretty good job of it, having a big silk
handkerchief in my pocket that I folded into a smooth bandage and
passed over my crown and under my chin—after first dowsing my head in
the cold sea water, which set the cut to smarting like fury but helped
to keep
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