II.
To this day Pincher never really remembers how he got into the water. The events of that night still seem like some ghastly nightmare, a horrible dream in which incidents and impressions succeeded each other with such rapidity that the memory of them seems almost unreal. He recollects standing on the boat-deck with a group of other men and divesting himself of his thick duffel coat. He did it reluctantly, for it was bitterly cold. Then, after inflating the rubber swimming-collar round his neck, he waited. The ship lay over at an alarming angle, and it was all he could do to stand upright.
'Jump, men! jump!' an officer kept on shouting. 'For God's sake, save yourselves!'
A few, nerving themselves for the effort, cast themselves overboard, and were lost to sight in the raging sea; but Pincher and many others, eyeing the tumult with horror, instinctively hung back. Life was very dear at that moment, and it seemed sheer madness to cast one's self into that seething maelstrom of one's own free-will. Then it was that he remembered his heavy sea-boots. Fool! They would infallibly drag him under if he had to swim for it; and, bending down, he kicked and wriggled his right foot free. He was repeating the process with the other when the end came. The ship lurched horribly to starboard, and flung him to the deck with a shock which jarred every bone in his body. The next instant he started slithering and sliding down a steep slope, to bring up with a thud against a projection on the deck. The impact nearly knocked the wind out of his body; but, stretching out his arms with an instinct of self-preservation, he grasped something solid with both hands, and clung madly on to it with all his strength. For a second or two he hung there, gasping for breath, with sheets of spray flying over his head. Then something soft cannoned into him and tore him from his hold. He felt himself sliding again, then falling, falling.
Next a feeling of bitter cold and utter darkness as a sea snatched him in its grasp and flung him away. He went down and down until his lungs seemed on the point of bursting for want of air; but the swimming-collar was still round his neck, and with a swift upward rush he felt himself borne to the surface. On opening his mouth for air a gigantic white-cap promptly broke over his head and left him spluttering and gasping. At one moment he was carried high on the crest of a sea, and the next he was deep down in a hollow; but by some miracle he still managed to breathe, and retained sufficient presence of mind to strike out away from the sinking ship.
Raising his voice, he tried to shout for help.
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He could see nothing, but the sea all round him was dotted with the heads of other swimmers. Some had life-belts, some swimming-collars or flotsam, and, like Pincher, were making the best of their way from the scene of the disaster. Others had no life-saving appliances at all, and were drowning in dozens.
Twice was Pincher clutched round the body, but each time he fought with the mad energy of despair, and wrenched himself free of the suffocating embrace of a shipmate less lucky than himself. He was no coward, but it was a case of each man for himself, and his desire to live was overwhelming.
How long he was in the water he never knew. He merely battled on, fighting for breath. Presently, when all but exhausted and numb through and through with cold, he was carried to the summit of a huge wave to see the dark shape of a boat barely twenty feet from him. In the dim half-light he could see it was crowded with men, and raising his voice, he tried to shout for help. He emitted no sound but a feeble croak, and the next time he was borne aloft the boat had vanished. Then it was that Pincher commended his soul to his Maker. He could do no more.
He seemed to have been swimming for hours, and was breathless and very weary. His limbs felt incapable of further movement, and it was with almost a feeling of relief that he gave up the struggle as hopeless. But for his swimming-collar he would have sunk then and there. How long he remained quiescent he could not tell; but during this awful time his senses never left him, and he found himself wondering how long it would take him to die. He did not dread the prospect; anything seemed better than this awful shortness of breath and the constant buffeting by the seas. The most trivial events and the most important happenings of his short life crowded into his overwrought brain. His thoughts travelled to his home, and he pictured his mother the last time he had seen her, framed in the doorway of her cottage. He almost laughed when he remembered himself tearing down the road to catch the train. He must have looked funny, excruciatingly funny, but he felt a slight pang of regret on thinking that he would never tread that road again. Next his mind reverted to Billings, and he wondered hazily what had become of him. Poor Joshua, he had been a good friend to him! He hoped he was not drowned. What was Emmeline doing at this moment? The recollection of her seemed indistinct and shadowy, somehow. He could not picture her face, merely remembered that she was pretty and fascinating. What would she say when she heard he had been drowned? Would she go into mourning and cry her pretty eyes out? Perhaps she would marry some one else.
Then, quite suddenly, he heard a voice. ''Ere's another on 'em!' it said gruffly. He felt his head come into violent contact with something solid and unyielding, and the next moment he was seized by the hair. The pain of it hurt him abominably, but he was far too weak and short of breath to expostulate. Then he was grasped under the armpits, and, after describing what seemed a giddy and interminable parabola through the air, heard himself descend with a crash on to something very hard. The impact should have hurt him, but he felt nothing, and merely realised in a hazy sort of way that he was in the bottom of a boat.
It was bitterly cold. He shivered as with ague, while constant showers of spray left him coughing and gasping for breath. Water washed over him perpetually, and a horrible, never-ceasing oscillation flung him violently to and fro. It was almost as bad as being in the water. But he was past caring. Then came a feeling of terrible nausea, and, rolling over abjectly, he was violently sick. Next, darkness, the utter blackness of absolute oblivion. Pincher Martin had fainted.
When he recovered his senses some hours later he could not for the moment recollect where he was or what had happened. He felt chilled through and through with the cold, but some kind Samaritan had removed his sodden garments, and had left him lying in the bottom of the boat covered with a portion of the sail and its tarpaulin cover. Several other men lay there with him. Then he remembered. He felt bruised all over, stiff, miserable, and very weak; but he could breathe, and found, on trying to shift his position, that he had recovered the use of his limbs, though the effort caused him agony. Glancing round, he saw he was in the stern-sheets of the Belligerent's forty-two-foot launch, the largest pulling-boat she had carried.
The sea was still running very high, and the boat pitched and rolled violently and unceasingly, while constant showers of spray came driving aft as her bluff bows plunged into the waves. At one moment he found himself watching the dark clouds chasing each other across the gray sky overhead; and the next, as the boat rolled, he was vouchsafed momentary glimpses of a heaving expanse of gray-green sea, lashed and torn into white, insensate fury by the wind. It was blowing a full gale.
The boat was half-full of water, and amidships some men were busy bailing, one with a bucket, and others with boots and caps. Crouching down under the thwarts, with the water washing over them, were many more men in the last stages of misery. Some showed signs of life; some looked almost dead. Another melancholy party were clustered in the stern, huddling together to get some warmth into their numbed limbs. All sorts and conditions of men were there—stokers in their grimy flannel shirts and fearnought trousers, just as they had come up out of the stokehold; bluejackets in jerseys and blue serge trousers; some marines; and a ship's steward's assistant with nothing but a swimming-collar and a sodden white cotton shirt. Their lips were blue with cold, their teeth were chattering, they looked abject and utterly forlorn, but they were still alive. One or two of them were actually talking.
Standing up in the stern with the gunner and the boatswain was Petty Officer Bartlett. The last-named was attired in his undergarments, a cholera-belt, and one blue stocking, and in the intervals of gazing anxiously round the horizon he was flapping his arms to restore his circulation. How he managed to keep on his feet at all was a marvel.
'Anythink in sight?' somebody asked in a husky whisper.
'Not a ruddy thing!' Bartlett returned. 'I thought I seen somethin' 'bout ten minutes since, the smoke of a steamer on the 'orizon, but she ain't there now.'
The questioner, an able seaman, cursed under his breath. ''Ow long's this —— show goin' ter last?' he queried plaintively. 'I'm so —— cold. Such a —— picnic I never did see. Gawd! why didn't I join th' ruddy army? They kills yer quick there, not like this 'ere. I'll be a gonner in another hour, see if I ain't,' he added weakly, trying to get a little sympathy. 'Carn't feel me bloomin' legs no'ow; ain't got none p'r'aps.'
'Cheer up, Joe!' said the man alongside him, who seemed a little happier; 'we ain't dead yet. Like me ter give yer another rub dahn?'
Joe nodded wearily and closed his eyes.
Pincher, unwilling to leave the shelter of his canvas, tried to attract some one's attention. He endeavoured to speak, but could get no more than a husky, almost inaudible, whisper; so, withdrawing one arm from its covering, he moved it feebly up and down. After a lengthy pause one of the marines noticed him.
''Ere,' he said, patting Petty Officer Bartlett on the leg, 'one o' them 'ere deaders 'as come back ter life!'
Bartlett turned round. 'Deader!' he said. 'Which one?'
'One o' them 'ere blokes yer pulled out o' th' ditch,' the marine answered.
'Blimy! So 'e 'as!' the petty officer exclaimed, rather surprised. 'I thought 'e'd chucked 'is hand in long ago.—'Ere, me son,' he added, coming across to where Martin lay, ''ow goes it?'
Pincher smiled wearily.
'Carn't talk, eh?' Bartlett remarked with rough kindliness. 'Like a drop o' rum[ [32] an' a bit o' somethin' t' eat?'
Martin nodded.
'Hand us that there rum-jar,' the petty officer said over his shoulder. 'Easy now—easy!' as the man he had spoken to nearly let it fall. 'That there may 'ave to last us for days!' He extracted the cork from the wicker-covered jar and poured some of the spirit into a small tin mug. 'Damn me eyes!' came an angry ejaculation, as the boat gave a particularly violent lurch and a few drops of the precious liquid slopped over the edge. He replaced the cork carefully, and, putting one arm under Pincher's head, held the pannikin to his lips. 'Try to swaller it,' he said. 'It'll do you good.'
Martin obeyed; and, though a certain amount of the liquor trickled over his face, the greater proportion went down his throat. The burning fieriness of the neat spirit made him choke and splutter, but the feeling of warmth it induced was very comforting.
''Ere's a bit o' biscuit,' said Bartlett again, extracting a broken fragment from the waistband of his nether garments, where he had been keeping it dry. 'Put that inside you, an' w'en you've finished it I'll come along an' give you a bit of a rub down like to warm you up—see?'
Pincher, still too weak to bite, consumed the flinty fragment by nibbling round its edge until he could nibble no more, and then, when the petty officer had rubbed his numbed and aching body with a pair of horny hands, which rasped him like a file and threatened to take every inch of skin off his long-suffering limbs, he felt tolerably warm and much better. The blood coursed through his veins. Life was again worth living.
'Thanks!' he was able to murmur feebly when the painful ordeal was over.
'That's all right, me son. See if you carn't git a bit of a caulk,' said Bartlett, getting up from his knees.
It may have been the dose of rum, a spirit to which he was entirely unaccustomed, which had the desired effect, but five minutes later Pincher Martin was asleep.
Immediately on being hoisted out, the launch had been dashed bows on into the ship. She had been badly damaged; but men, stripping themselves, had stuffed their clothes into the rents to keep the water out. Time after time breaking seas had nearly swamped her; but by dint of constant bailing with boots, caps, and anything they could lay their hands upon, they had somehow managed to keep her afloat.
Most of the oars had been broken in frantic efforts to fend the boat off from the ship, and none remained to keep her head on to the sea when they finally got clear of the wreck. Then they had lashed all the boat's lumber together, and had dropped it overboard to form a floating sea-anchor; and the launch, secured to it by a rope, rode head on to the waves. But still the wretched survivors were in a bad way. They had yearned, with all the longing their souls possessed, that a ship would be in sight when morning came. They had practically pinned their faith to it, for they were aware that they were in a part of the English Channel where traffic was constant. But when the night lifted and the gray dawn gave way to full daylight there was nothing in sight. Not the least vestige of a steamer or the welcome gleam of a rescuing sail; only the gray-white expanse of the raging sea, and the sombre, wind-driven clouds chasing each other across the gray void overhead. Then a faint feather of smoke had shown up over the rim of the horizon to the southward. It was fully ten miles off, but they all thought for one wild moment that salvation was at hand. Their drooping spirits revived; but a minute later the smoke had disappeared, and their hopes were dashed to the ground.
They were exhausted, wet through, chilled to the bone, and utterly miserable, and some of that little band of two warrant-officers and seventy odd men resigned themselves to their fate. They could not last much longer. And so the launch, with a woollen scarf lashed to an oar amidships fluttering as a mute signal of distress, drifted on at the mercy of the wind and sea. Her crew were past caring.