Chapter Ten.
Adapting Ourselves to Circumstances.
To ward off the enquiries that sprang to Mrs Vansittart’s lips the moment I appeared was a little difficult, but I managed it by simply declining to say a word until after breakfast. When, however, we presently all sat down at the table together, I soon perceived that the task of breaking to her the full extent of the night’s disaster, to which I had been looking forward with dread, was likely to be less painful than I had anticipated. For Mrs Vansittart was far too experienced in nautical matters to be easily deceived. Moreover, during my absence there had been time for her to think, and to draw her own conclusions, not only from what she saw and heard, but also from what she failed to see and hear—particularly the sound of men’s voices and footsteps. So that, as the meal progressed, I began to understand that it would require very little effort on my part to bring complete realisation home to her.
Poor lady! I felt very sorry for her—not so much on account of the possible hardships, privations, and dangers that only too probably awaited her, for she was “grit” all through, and I knew that she would face them all without a murmur; but it was easy to see that she was grieving over the terrible loss of life that had attended the disaster. Also, I rather imagined she blamed herself for it. For when I ventured to beg her not to take the matter too much to heart, she looked at me through her tears and retorted:
“How can I help taking it to heart, Walter? If I had been content to enjoy life in the same way that other women of my class do, this would never have happened. But I must needs go gadding about the world in a yacht; and this is what has come of it!”
I replied that yachting was not in itself more dangerous than many other forms of amusement which could easily be named; that thousands indulged in it year after year with impunity; and that what had befallen us was neither more nor less than a pure accident, for which she certainly could in nowise hold herself responsible, since she had navigated the ship with skill and the observance of every necessary precaution. I went on to say that the accident had arisen simply from the existence of a coral reef which nobody had thus far suspected. But my arguments, sound as I felt them to be, seemed to influence the lady very little, if at all. I could only hope that time, reflection, and the difficulties that lay before us would gradually divert her thoughts from the sorrow that just then seemed to possess her.
At the conclusion of the meal I took her up on the poop and allowed her to view our surroundings, expounded my theory of the various happenings that had brought us to our present pass, and explained the steps which I suggested should be immediately taken. To which she responded by saying:
“Very well, Walter. Whatever you think necessary do, and we will all help you to the utmost of our ability. I can sail and navigate a ship, as you have seen, but there my seamanship ends. I have not the knowledge, the skill, the experience, the intuitiveness and imaginativeness to deal adequately with, such a matter as a shipwreck. And when people are in such a plight as ourselves it is the man who must take hold of the situation and handle it. I trust entirely to you to do what you think best; and, as I said before, we women will help you all we can.”
I thanked her very heartily for her trust in me, and proposed that we should forthwith set to work, our first task being to free the habitable portions of the ship from water, so that they might become dry and comfortable again with the least possible delay. And I suggested that we should begin with her own sleeping cabin, to which she made no objection.
“There is one other matter,” I added, “which demands our immediate attention. We must at once determine the exact position of the wreck, and, having done so, must prepare a statement briefly setting forth our plight and requesting assistance. This statement must be copied out several times—as many times as you please, indeed—and the copies, enclosed in sealed bottles, sent adrift at, say, daily intervals. It will be strange indeed if, out of four or five dozen bottles, not one is picked up.”
The suggestion appealed to Mrs Vansittart. She pronounced the idea a good one, and as the time and conditions were alike favourable we forthwith proceeded to carry it out, she first taking a set of five sights for the determination of the longitude while I noted the chronometer times, and then, vice versa, I taking the sextant and she the chronometer. Then we adjourned to the chart-room and worked out our calculations independently, the results agreeing within ten seconds of longitude, or a difference of only a few hundred feet. This, of course, was quite near enough for all practical purposes, but it did not completely satisfy either of us, Mrs Vansittart being, like myself, something of a stickler for absolute accuracy. We therefore tried again, this time working the problem of “equal altitudes”, and before the day was out we had arrived at identical results, both as to latitude and longitude.
Then, while I tackled the task of clearing our living quarters of water, Mrs Vansittart set to work to draft out a statement setting forth the circumstances of the wreck and appealing for help. I have still a copy of the document in my possession, which runs as follows:—
“Yacht Stella Maris; New York Yacht Club, U.S.A.;
Mrs Cornelia Vansittart, Owner.
Latitude — North; Longitude — East.
“To all whom it may concern.
“The full-rigged, auxiliary-screw yacht Stella Maris, stranded on an uncharted coral reef, situate in the above-mentioned position, during the night of Wednesday the — day of December, 19—, with the lamentable loss of all hands excepting the owner, her son and daughter, chief officer Walter Leigh, of Newton Ferrers, Devonshire, England; Lizette Charpentier, chief stewardess, and Susie Blaine, second stewardess, both of New York, U.S.A.
“As the only land in sight is a very small, bare sandbank, quite uninhabitable, the above-named survivors are remaining upon the wreck, which, although totally dismasted and badly bilged, will afford them a refuge so long as the weather remains fine, but may break up during the next gale that chances to occur.
“Mrs Vansittart offers a reward of ten thousand dollars (American), and the reimbursement of all expenses incurred, to the person or persons who will effect the rescue of herself and her companions in misfortune; and the finder of this document is earnestly besought to make public its contents as soon as found.
Signed: “Cornelia Vansittart.”
The first copy of this appeal was dispatched that very day, by the simple process of wrapping it carefully in oiled silk, inserting it in an empty bottle, which was tightly corked and sealed, and heaving it overboard to take its chance. As I stood watching the bottle’s progress I was gratified to see that there was a one-knot current setting across the reef, which I hoped would carry it clear into the open sea; though whether it would ever be found by anyone capable of making intelligent use of it was quite another matter. The chances of it being seen were small, and of its recovery still less. But I determined to increase both before dispatching the next message; and this I did by routing out some paint and setting the boy Julius to the task of painting a number of bottles all over in alternate bands of red and white. An ordinary floating bottle might be seen and passed without the smallest effort to pick it up, even though all the conditions for recovery should be favourable. But I argued that if a bottle were seen bearing distinguishing marks that were obviously put upon it with the object of attracting attention, the person sighting it might reasonably conclude that it would be worth while to salve it and ascertain its contents.
If the sight of our first call for help drifting placidly seaward across the lagoon was an agreeable sight, there was another which appeared later on that was by no means so agreeable—the dorsal fins of several sharks cruising lazily here and there about the lagoon. I thought I could make a pretty shrewd guess at the meaning of their presence there, I therefore devised a number of pretexts for keeping everybody off the poop, so that there might be as little chance as possible of anyone beholding the gruesome sight.
There were so many matters demanding immediate attention that it was difficult to determine which of them should first be taken in hand. But as the weather was fine, and the barometer stood high, exhibiting a tendency to rise still higher and thus promising a continuance of fine weather, it was agreed that, for health’s sake, the living quarters should be cleared of water and thoroughly aired and made wholesome first of all. This was accordingly done, the task keeping us all busily employed for the best part of three days. Then provision had to be made against the further flooding of Mrs Vansittart’s cabin and the drawing-room by rain, for, as has already been mentioned, the skylights and companion had been swept away, and the corresponding apertures in the deck were quite open and unprotected.
Very fortunately, a large quantity of timber scantling and planking of various kinds and dimensions had been shipped by our far-seeing owner, for the purpose of effecting repairs at sea, if required. As soon as the cabins had been cleared of water, therefore, some of this timber was brought on deck; and with the aid of the carpenter’s tools, Julius and I proceeded to plank over the openings, and make them weather-proof by covering the planking with tarpaulins tightly nailed over them.
When I first invited the boy to help me he refused point-blank, upon two distinct pleas: the first of which was that he saw no reason why he should work at all, seeing that I was there to do what needed to be done; while, in the second place, if he chose to work at all he would do only such work as he pleased, and in any case was not going to be ordered about by any darned Britisher. So I just let him severely alone, and for the first day he loafed about, smoking cigarettes and pretending to fish in the troubled water over the side.
When, however, on the second day, seeing that I needed help, his mother and sister came to my assistance, the sight of them working while he idled was too much for even his spoiled and selfish temper; and with many grumblings and mutterings below his breath he ordered his mother away and took her place. But so intractable was he, so unwilling to receive the slightest suggestion or hint from a “darned Britisher”, and so determined to do things his own way or not at all, that eventually I had to tell him plainly he must consent to do as he was told, or drop work altogether. Finally he gave in, mainly in consequence of his sister’s outspoken comments upon his behaviour, but it was with a very bad grace.
Having made the living quarters of the ship once more habitable and safe against bad weather, the next task undertaken was the salving of the sails and as many of the spars and as much of the rigging as possible. This was a lengthy and heavy job, in the performance of which it became necessary for me to be frequently over the side, in the water, cutting the sails from the yards and stays, clearing and unreeving rigging, and so on. It would have been exceedingly dangerous had the sharks which I had seen during the first few days remained in the lagoon; but they seemed to have gone again, for I saw nothing of them.
Although their absence enabled me to work with the utmost freedom, I could not make very rapid headway, single-handed, in the water; while the hoisting inboard of the heavier spars and sails, assisted though we were with such appliances as a derrick, tackles, snatch-blocks, and the winch, taxed our energies to the very utmost. It was done at last, however, and most thankful was I when the last spar it was possible for us to secure came up over the side; for not only had we saved a considerable quantity of material that might possibly prove of the utmost value to us, but we had also rid ourselves of the menace of having the ship holed by the wreckage bumping alongside.
This big task was completed exactly six weeks from the day upon which the wreck had occurred, all of us working strenuously from dawn to dark day after day, excepting Sundays, which Mrs Vansittart insisted should be observed as days of rest, during which she conducted a service, morning and evening, in the drawing-room. Christmas Day, which occurred three weeks after the wreck, was also observed as a holiday; and despite our forlorn and rather precarious situation, we contrived to make a fairly jolly day of it, the only discordant element being the boy Julius, who early became sulky for some unaccountable reason, and spent the entire day upon the topgallant forecastle with a rifle, shooting at sea-birds and wasting some two hundred rounds of ball cartridge. I felt strongly inclined several times to take the rifle forcibly from him, but the mere hint of such a thing seemed to distress his mother so keenly that I did not refer to it a second time. Yet I must confess that I bitterly begrudged the utterly useless expenditure of so many good and, in our case, valuable cartridges.
Now, it must not be supposed that, in our anxiety to recover as much wreckage as possible, we forgot to keep a diligent look-out for passing ships, for we did not. Nor did we neglect to dispatch a copy of our appeal for help, securely sealed up in a bottle, regularly every day. But thus far the horizon had remained blank while daylight lasted; therefore if perchance any ships had passed us, they must have done so during the night. Up to this we had all been working so hard that we had deemed it hardly worth while to sacrifice our hours of rest for the very doubtful advantage of maintaining a night watch; but with the conclusion of what we considered our heaviest task, so far as actual labour was concerned, we decided that it might be of advantage to keep a look-out at night time, at least during the moonlit nights. We should then be able to see a passing ship at such a distance as would enable us to attract her attention by means of a flare. Accordingly it was arranged that four of us, namely, Julius, the two stewardesses, and I, should each take one watch in succession.
In that latitude, which was only a few degrees north of the Line, day and night were approximately of equal length, and for all practical purposes the night might be reckoned as beginning at six p.m., and ending at six a.m. Therefore if each of us kept a watch of three hours, we should cover the twelve hours between us. But by this arrangement the same person would keep one particular watch every night, and, of course, the least arduous of the watches would be that from six o’clock to nine o’clock p.m.; I therefore decided to split this watch into two dog-watches of one and a half hours each, by which arrangement the regularity would be broken, and each of us would get the benefit of the first dog-watch in succession, which seemed to be not only a fair but a desirable thing.
To keep a night watch, however, without possessing the means to attract the notice of a passing ship, would be useless. I therefore constructed a sort of framework consisting of four twelve-foot planks, which I set up on edge in the form of a square enclosure on the after extremity of the poop, securing them firmly to the deck planking by means of battens. The planks were nine inches wide, consequently when my work was complete I had a kind of open box twelve feet square and nine inches deep in which to light my flare. But something was needed to protect the deck from the action of the fire; my next act, therefore, was to nail together a sort of light raft, consisting of six fifteen-foot planks laid side by side and secured to each other by cross battens, the forward ends being bevelled to reduce the resistance to the raft’s passage through the water. Then I fixed up an arrangement on each side of the raft whereby, with the aid of rowlocks, I could work a pair of sculls and so propel the raft through the water. This job took me two days to complete, but when it was done I had a raft that would sustain not only my own weight but something to spare. I placed upon it a couple of wash-deck tubs, put a shovel in one of them, and paddled myself ashore to the small sandbank about half a mile away.
As I rowed away from the wreck, standing up to my work and facing forward, fisherman fashion, I took a rather wide sweep, whereby I was enabled to obtain a good view of her. A pitiful sight she presented, bereft of her three masts, with her jib-boom snapped short off, odds and ends of rigging trailing overboard, a great gap in her starboard bulwarks, and the fair whiteness of her hull disfigured here and there with rust streaks. She sat with a list to starboard, and was a trifle down by the head, from which latter circumstance I concluded that her forefoot and bottom forward were the most seriously damaged parts of her, as, indeed, it was only reasonable to suppose, seeing that she must have hit the reef stem-on. But, oh! it was distressing to look at that still beautiful though dishevelled hull and reflect that she had been brought to her present lamentable condition by pure negligence.
The raft travelled more easily through the water than I had dared to hope, and in about a quarter of an hour I reached the sandbank and sprang ashore, taking the precaution to secure the raft by a painter made fast to one of the oars, the loom of which I drove well into the sand. Then I walked to the highest point of the bank and looked about me.
With the exception of a few bunches of dry and rotting seaweed, the bank was as bare as the back of my hand, but a colony of gulls had settled upon it, and by their cries indicated the resentment which they felt at my intrusion. I looked round to see if I could discover any eggs, for fresh gulls’ eggs are not at all bad eating, and would perhaps afford a welcome change of diet to the women folk; but I found none, so concluded that it was not just then the season for them. The bank measured, by pacing, a little over eighty yards long by some forty broad; and I diligently examined the seaward side of it to see whether perchance there might be a spring of fresh water gushing out of it. I hardly expected that there would be, and was therefore not greatly disappointed at failing to find any such thing. But I found the margin liberally strewed with small shellfish, as well as with numerous empty shells, some of which were so exquisite, both in form and in colouring, that I could not resist the temptation to waste a few minutes in securing specimens of the most beautiful for the delectation of Mrs Vansittart and her daughter. This done, I returned to the raft, hauled it broadside on to the beach, and proceeded to fill my two wash-deck tubs with sand, with which I designed to fill my square box-like arrangement on the poop as a protection for the deck from the flames of my projected flare. Needless to say, two tubs of sand did not go very far toward filling the box, and it was not until the following evening that I had everything ready. Then, with a goodly pile of combustibles, consisting of dry seaweed, chips, kindling wood, and coal, heaped up in the middle of my sandbox, I had everything ready for lighting a flare at a moment’s notice.
Our most pressing necessities having been attended to, I found time to attend to the matter which seemed to come next in importance. Hitherto we had been favoured with the finest of fine weather—nothing but the bluest of skies, often without the smallest shred of cloud, no rain, and only the most gentle of zephyrs. But I knew that such a condition of things could not last for ever. A change must inevitably come sooner or later; and if that change should chance to take the form of a gale from the southward, I had scarcely a shadow of doubt that, unless it should happen to be of the very briefest character, the wreck would go to pieces under our feet. Therefore it seemed to me that the task which now clamoured most loudly for our immediate attention was the construction of a craft of some sort which would enable us to escape in the last resort.
Now, there are very few tasks in connection with his craft which mercantile Jack cannot perform in a more or less efficient manner. He can unrig his ship, and rig her afresh. If any of her spars should be sprung, he can fix them up in such a fashion that they will serve their purpose very well until a new spar can be procured. He can knot and splice rigging; he can patch or rope a sail; and there are a thousand other things that he can do very deftly. But there is one thing which he cannot do, unless he has served an apprenticeship, or at least part of an apprenticeship to it, and that is—build a boat. He can repair a damaged boat, I grant you, put in a new plank, or replace a damaged timber. But to build a boat, as we understand the term, is altogether beyond him. The best that he can do is to construct some sort of a makeshift; and the problem that now confronted me was, what form was my makeshift to take?
First, what were my requirements? If it came to our being obliged to abandon the wreck, either through stress of weather or because of a conviction that our appeals for help had gone astray and that we must give up all hope of rescue and effect our own deliverance, it would mean a boat voyage. This in its turn would mean that the craft must be a good sea boat, capable of facing any weather, weatherly, a reasonably good sailer, and big enough to accommodate six people—four of whom were women, whose comfort and welfare must receive special consideration—together with a stock of provisions and water sufficient to last us all for, say, five weeks at least. I had already discussed this matter with Mrs Vansittart, and she had expressed a determination to try for Manila, in such a case, that being an American possession. Secondly, had we the materials, and had I the skill and strength to build such a boat, with such assistance as my companions could afford me? That was the question which now demanded an answer, and, in consultation with Mrs Vansittart, I now diligently proceeded to seek the reply.