The steward, who had been helping at the pumps, made his way into the cabin for some purpose, and said to me,
“Passenger, don’t you think we’re gone?”
His voice indicated that he had already abandoned all hope.
“Things look rather gloomy,” I replied.
“Well,” he rejoined, “we have but once to die. If we go down, it will soon be over; we won’t suffer long.”
This was all the consolation any of us had. The water in the hold did not decrease—the storm raged with unabated fury—and the question now, was not, “Shall we go down?” but, “How soon?” It seemed but a question of time. If we had a spark of hope left, it was merely as one compared with one hundred. The mate told me it was possible the ship could be kept afloat till morning, and that then it was possible some vessel might be in sight and come to our assistance. But these vague possibilities were worse than no hope at all. They were too tantalizing. I should really have felt better if I had known, beyond a doubt, that we should go down in ten minutes.
Still, it is natural for man to cling to any hope that is held out to him, however slight. Probably, hope, faint as it was, saved us on this occasion. Had all given up, and sat down, with the conviction that we were lost—although no one on board was really of any other opinion—the ship would have filled in an hour, and we must have gone down to our dismal graves in the depths of the Gulf Stream.
In this awful extremity, I could not help remembering certain verses from Byron’s “Don Juan” which were very applicable to the occasion. I quote them:
“It may be easily supposed, while this
Was going on, some people were unquiet;