‘For these gauds,’ he said, ‘two poor ignorant Indians have very probably been sacrificed, and now a whole ship’s company have gone to the bottom of the sea. True, they were villains almost every man, but the more need was there that they should not be hurried to their last account with all their unrepented sins crimson on their foreheads.’
After some more talk in this strain, we roused ourselves, and began to converse of our own situation, which was bad enough, not having a strip of canvas in the boat to make a sail, and what was much worse, being without a morsel of water or food. By the best calculation I could make, we were near the centre of the Caribbean Sea, about half-way between Jamaica and Curaçoa. The regular trade-wind, blowing nearly from the north-east, might drift us, if we went before it, aided by the gulf stream, to somewhere about Cape Gracias à Dios, the great headland, west of which the main-land trends away to form the Bay of Honduras. Rumbold agreed with me as to our probable situation, and we computed the nearest point at which we could hope to make land, if we did not succeed in stumbling upon some of the small bushy islands or keys which lie sprinkled nor-east of Cape Gracias—we computed, I say, the nearest land that we could make without sails to be about six hundred miles distant.
‘Well,’ said Rumbold, ‘we must try to get there, that is all; so let us set to work.’
Accordingly, in about two hours, we succeeded in setting, upon one of the oars, a sort of tattered sail only adapted for going before the wind, and patched out of our shirts, by tying the sleeves together. Then pointing the boat’s head about west-south-west, as near as we could judge by the sun, we set forth upon our almost hopeless voyage, rowing at the same time to help the boat on, and going about four knots an hour.
‘Four knots an hour,’ said Rumbold, ‘and six hundred miles to be sailed over; that gives one hundred and fifty hours or thereby, if the wind keeps as fair as now, and we row night and day. Now, one hundred and fifty hours make rather more than six days; add two days more—that is a reasonable allowance for resting and times of calm—in all eight days. Can a man live eight days without food, and, in this climate, without water?’
‘No,’ says I, tossing aside my oar, and clapping—I confess it—my hands to my face; ‘no, we are fools to try it. Better to jump overboard at once among the sharks.’
‘Take up your oar, sir,’ says Rumbold, sternly; ‘God helps those who help themselves. Work, sir, work. There are many chances before us. Perhaps an English ship—at the worst, a Spanish ship; perhaps an island with rain-water in the crevices of the rocks, and turtle sleeping on the sandy beaches, and plenty of birds and eggs.’
The very words put new life into me, and we tugged away for a time as cheerily as, under our circumstances, might be. The wind blew so fresh that we feared it would blow our frail sail right before it. The following seas hove us, as it were, from one to the other, and we made better progress than we hoped for. But the heat of the sun, as the day wore on, was terrible, and we began to thirst. At night, by Rumbold’s advice, we washed our mouths with salt water, and afterwards, finding a pebble or two lying in the bottom of the boat, we sucked them to promote the flow of saliva, and keep our tongues cool. We tugged at the oars, but very faintly, until late in the night, and then we fell asleep over them.
The second day was the same as the first—cloudless and hot. We stripped, dipped our clothes in the sea, and then put them on dripping; as soon as the hot sun dried them we plunged the garments into the sea again. It assuaged our thirst a little, but our lips and tongues began to swell, and turn to a horrid blackness. In the afternoon we were hungry for a short space, and directly afterwards sick at stomach, particularly Rumbold, who at length slipped down into the bottom of the boat, where he lay moaning. That night we suffered intensely from the cold, and our skins being irritated by the salt water, every motion was painful to us.
The third day several sea-birds swam near us, regarding us curiously, just as the marrot had done me when I lay drowning, as I thought, upon the spars of the ‘Golden Grove,’ in the Bay of Biscay. The breeze blew very strong this day, with a heavy sea. Towards noon I, standing on the thafts, holding on by the oar, which was shipped for a mast, descried a sail at a great distance, but, losing it after a few moments, said nothing. Rumbold, who had been by far the stoutest hearted of the twain at starting, grew weak rapidly; and, as his strength left him, his spirits drooped. He was, indeed, an older man than I was, and perhaps naturally not of such a strong constitution. He only rowed a little this day, and towards nightfall sank into a sort of delirious state, and raved.