In the Sargasso Sea by Thomas A. Janvier (smart books to read .TXT) š
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later a great trampling on deck, and then the screw stopped turning
and there was a roar of escaping steam.
I was so heavy with sleep that at first I thought we still were in the
storm and that this commotion was a part of it; but as I shook off my
drowsiness I got a clearer notion of the situationāremembering what
the steward had told me of the condition of the mizzen-mast, and so
arriving at the conclusion that it had fetched away bodily and had
come crashing through the cabin skylight in its fall. But what the
shock was that had sent it flyingāunless we had been in collisionāI
could not understand. And all this while the trampling on deck
continued, and out in the cabin the shouts and cries went on.
I thought that the steward would come to meāforgetting that in times
of danger men are apt to think only of saving their own skinsāand so
laid still; being, indeed, so weak and wretched that it did not seem
possible to me to do anything else. But he did not come, and at the
end of what seemed to me to be a desperately long timeāthough I doubt
if it were more than five minutesāI realized that I must try to do
something to help myself; and was the more nerved to action by the
fact that there no longer was the sound of voices in the cabin, while
the noises on deck a good deal had increased. Indeed, I began to hear
up there the puffing and snorting of the donkey-engine, and so felt
certain that they were hoisting out the boats.
Somehow or another I managed to get out of my berth, and on my feet,
and so to the door; but when I tried to open the door I could not
budge it, and in the darkness I struck my head against what seemed to
be a bar of wood that stuck in through one of the upper panels and so
held it fast. The blow dizzied me, for it took me close to where my
cut was and put me into intense pain.
While I stood there, pulling in a weak way at the door-knob and making
nothing of it, I heard voices out in the cabin and through my broken
door saw a gleam of light. But in the moment that my hope rose it went
down again, for I heard some one say quickly and sharply: āItās no
good. The way the spar lies we canāt get at himāand to cut it through
would take an hour.ā
And then a voice that I recognized for the stewardās answered: āBut
the doctor ordered it. Whereās an axe for a try?ā To which the other
man answered back again: āIf it was the doctor himself we couldnāt do
it, and weāll tell him so. The shipāll be down in five minutes. Weāve
got to run for it or the boatsāll be off.ā And then away they ran
together, giving no heed in their fright to my yells after them to
come back and not leave me there to drown.
For a little while I was as nearly wild crazy as a man can be and yet
have a purpose in his mind. The keen sense of my peril made me strong
again. I kicked with my bare feet and pounded with my hands upon the
door to break it, I shouted for help to come to me, and I gave out
shrill screams of terror such as brutes give in their agonyāfor I was
down to the hard-pan of human nature, and what I felt most strongly
was the purely animal longing to keep alive.
But no one answered me, and I could tell by the sounds on deck getting
fainter that some of the boats already had put off; and in a little
while longer no sound came from the deck of any sort whatever, and by
that I knew that all the boats must have got away. And as I realized
that I was forsaken, and felt sure from what I had heard that the ship
would float for only a few minutes longer, I gave a cry of downright
despairāand then I lost track of the whole bad business by tumbling
to the floor in the darkness in a dead swoon.
IXON THE EDGE OF THE SARGASSO SEA
When I came to myself again, and found my stateroomāalthough the
deadlight was setābright with the light which entered through the
broken door, my first feeling was of wonder that I was not yet
drowned; for it was evident that the sun must be well up in the
heavens to shine so strongly, and therefore that a good many hours
must have passed since the smash had happened that had sent everybody
flying to the boats believing that the ship was going right down. And
my next wonder was caused by the queer way in which the ship was
lyingāmaking me fancy at first that I was dizzy again, and my eyes
tricking meāwith a pitch forward that gave a slope to the floor of my
stateroom, of not less than twenty degrees.
For a while, in a stupid sort of way, I ruminated over these matters;
and at last got hold of the simple explanation of them. Evidently, in
spite of the straining of the steamerās frame in the storm, her
water-tight compartmentsāor some of themāhad held, leaving her
floating with her broken bow well down in the water and her stern
canted up into the air. And then the farther comforting thought came
to me that if she had kept afloat for so many hours already, and
seemed so steady in her new position, there was no reason why she
should not keep on floating at least for as long as the fine weather
lastedāwhich gave me a chance of rescue by some passing vessel, and
so brought a good deal of hope back into my heart.
I still was very weak and shaky, and how I was to get out of the
prison that I was in I did not know. By daylight it was easy to see
what held me there: which was the end of a yard, with the reef-block
hanging to it, smashed through the upper panel and caught so tight in
the splintered woodwork as to anchor the door fast. If the wits of
the steward and of the other fellow had not been scared clean out of
them they easily might have knocked in the lower part of the door with
an axe and so opened a way out for me; but as their only notion had
been to cut away the sparāa tough piece of workāI could not in cool
blood very greatly blame them for having given up my rescue and run
for their own lives.
These thoughts went through my head while I lay there, most
uncomfortably, on the sloping floor. Presently I managed to get up,
but felt so dizzy that I had to seat myself in a hurry on the edge of
the berth until my head got steadier. Fortunately my water-jug was
half full, and I had a good drink from it which refreshed me greatly;
and then I had the farther good fortune to see some biscuit which the
steward had left on a shelf in the corner, and as I caught sight of
them I realized that I was very hungry indeed. I ate one, along with
some more sups of water, and felt much the better for it; but lay down
in my berth that I might save the strength it gave me until I should
have thought matters over a little and settled some line of action
in my mind.
That I was too weak to break the door down was quite certain, and the
only other thing that I could think of was cutting out the lower
panels and so making a hole through which I could crawl. As this
thought came to me I remembered the big jack-knife that had been in my
trousersā pocket when I went overboard from the brig; and in a minute
I was on my feetāand without feeling any dizziness, this timeāand
got to where my clothes were hanging on a hook, and found to my joy
that my knife and all the other things which had been in my pockets
had been returned to them after the clothes had been dried. The knife
was badly rusted and I had a hard time opening it; but the rust did
not much dull it, and I seated myself upon the floor and fell to
slicing away at the soft pine wood with a will. I had to rest now and
then, although I found that my strength held out better than I had
hoped for, and that put me back a little; but the wood was so soft
that in not much more than half an hour I had the job finishedāand
then I slipped on my trousers, and out I went through the hole on my
hands and knees.
I found the cabin in utter wreck: littered everywhere with broken
glass and broken wood from the skylight, and from the smashed
hanging-racks and the smashed dining-table, and with splinters from
the mastāwhich had broken in falling, and along the whole length of
the place had made a tangle of its own fragments and of the ropes and
blocks which had held its sails. Of the sails themselves there were
left only some fuzzy traces clinging to the bolt-ropes, all the rest
having been blown loose and frayed away by the storm. Oddly enough,
some of the drinking-glasses still remained unbroken in one of the
racks, and with them a bottle partly filled with wineāto the neck of
which a card was fastened bearing the name, Josļæ½ Rubio y Salinas, of
the passenger to whom it had belonged. I took the liberty of drinking
a glass of Don Josļæ½ās wineāfeeling sure that he was not coming back
to claim itāand felt so much better after it that I thanked him
cordially for leaving it there.
Most of the stateroom doors stood open, showing within clothing
tossed about and trunks with their lids turned back, and the general
confusion in which the passengers had left things when they scrambled
together their most precious belongings and rushed for the boatsāwith
death, as they fancied, treading close upon their heels. But with what
remained in the staterooms I did not concern myself, being desirous
first of all to get on deck and have a look about me that I might size
up my chances of keeping alive. That there was no companionway up
from the cabin puzzled me a little, for I knew nothing of the internal
arrangements of steamships; but presently I found a passage leading
forward, and by that I came to the stair to the deck of which I was
in search.
Up it I went, but when I fairly got outside and saw the desperate
state of the craft that I was afloat on my heart sank. Indeed, it
seemed a flying in the face of all reason that such an utter wreck
should float at all. Of the foremast nothing but the splintered stump
remained. The starboard rail, which had been to windward of it, was
gashed by chance axe-blows made in cutting away the shrouds; and as to
the port rail, twenty feet of it was gone entirely where the mast had
come crashing down, while the side-plates below were bulged out with
the strain put upon them before the standing-rigging fastened there
had fetched away. The mizzen-mast lay aft across the cabin skylight,
with its standing and running rigging making a tangle on
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