By instinct, I suppose, I struggled so to climb upon the floating wreck as to get my head and shoulders above water. Then I saw that I was alone in my misery. I have said that my station was at the outer end of the yard, and I conceive that my shipmates must have gained the top, and from thence, I hoped, the deck. But as for me, I saw nought but speedy drowning for my fate. The seas rose in great foaming peaks and pyramids around me, and the wind drove drenching showers from the crests of the waves down into the hollows. All around gloomy clouds passed swiftly, torn by the squall, but the pitchy darkness which showed where its strength lay, was far down to leeward, and looking thereat as I rose upon a higher sea than common, I faintly descried the ship in a crippled plight, but having managed to put her helm up so as to scud before the storm. She was already near a league away, and leaving me fast; so that the bitterness of death rose up in my very heart. For a moment I thought I might as well die at once, and letting go my hold of the spars, I allowed myself to sink backward into the sea. But God has wisely made man to love life with a clinging love, and to grapple with death as with a grim enemy. Therefore, as the water closed above me, and I felt suffocating, I could not help making a struggle, which soon replaced me on my desolate seat on the floating wreck. I looked at the spars, and saw that the topmast had broken only about a foot beneath the place to which the yard had been lowered. Nearly the whole of the foretop and the top-gallant masts of the Golden Grove, with the fragments of the foretopsail, which had been rent almost into ribbons, and the yard to which they were fastened lay therefore in the sea. I clambered in from the end of the yard, and took up my position where the mast and it crossed each other; making myself fast thereto with one of the numerous ends of broken rope which abounded, and for near an hour sat dismal and almost broken-hearted, unheedful of how the waves tossed me to and fro, or how they sometimes burst over and almost stifled me. I was somewhat roused by a feeling of warmth, and looking abroad saw that the clouds had broken, and that the sun was shining brightly on the sea. The wind was also abated, and the waves not combing so violently, I was more at ease. Then I heard that terrible sound—the sound of the sea alone—which no one who has listened to save he who has swam far from any vessel, or who, like myself, has clung to a driving spar. On the beach you hear the surf, where the waves burst upon rock or sand; on shipboard you hear the dashing of the billows on counter and prow; and, above them all, the sigh of the wind and the groaning of timbers and masts. But to hear the sea alone, you must be alone upon the sea. I will tell you of the noise: it is as of a great multitudinous hiss, rising universally about you—the buzz of the fermenting and yeasty waves. There are no deep, hollow rumblings; except for that hissing, seething sound, the great billows rise and sink in silence; and you look over a tumbling waste of blue or green water, all laced, and dashed, and variegated with a thousand stripes, and streaks, and veins of white glancing froth, which embroider, as it were with lace, the dark masses of heaving and falling ocean. Hearing this sound, and seeing this sight, I tossed until the sun got high and warm. I felt no very poignant anguish, for my soul was clothed, as it were, in a species of lethargy—the livery of despair. Sometimes only I tried to pray, but thoughts and tongue would grow benumbed together.
Once, indeed, I was for a time aroused. I heard a sharp little dash in the water, and a soft quackle, as of a sea-fowl. Looking up, I descried beside me two ducks of that species which we, in the Scottish seas, called marrots; they are white on the breast and neck, and brown above, and have very bright, glancing, yellow eyes. Moreover, they dive, and use their short wings under water, as other fowls do theirs in flying. By the appearance of these creatures I knew that land was, at farthest, within two days’ sail. There—tilting gaily over each sea—they swam for hours, seeming to look at me; sometimes they would dive, but they never went far from the wreck, always coming up and riding head to wind, with their keen yellow eyes fixed as I thought upon the poor drowning mariner. They seemed tame and fearless—for, indeed, what should they dread from me? Once, in a sort of melancholy mirth, I raised my arm threateningly, but they stirred neither wing nor leg to flee, lifting over seas which would make a great man-of-war work and groan to her very keel, but which these feathered ships, built by God, could outride without a film of down being washed aside from their white breasts.
The sun having attained its zenith began to descend the westerly skies, and the afternoon was fair and warm, the wind now blowing but a summer breeze. Sometimes, when on the crest of the swell, I looked anxiously for a sail, but I saw nought save the bright horizon, against which the sharp outlines of the waves rose and fell in varying curves and ridges; so that now again I resigned myself to death, and covering my face with my hands, I, as it were, moaned, rather than sung inwardly to myself, many verses of psalms, which, when I was but a little child, I had repeated at my mother’s knee. Meantime, I began to feel a stiffening and a heavy drowsiness over all my limbs and upon my soul. When I opened my eyes the heaving waters turned into divers colours before my sight, so that I knew that my brain was wandering, and that my soul was departing. Howbeit, a holy tranquillity came down upon me. The blue sea appeared to melt away, and I saw—but dimly—the green bourock and the sweet soft swarded links of the Balwearie burn, with the brown herring nets drying on the windy grass. The place seemed holy and still; the sun was hot, and none were stirring, and presently I knew it was a summer’s sabbath day, for from out the open windows of the grey old kirk there came a low sound of psalmody, and I heard, as it were, in my brain, the voices of the congregation, as they sang—
“In Judah’s land God is well known,
His name in Israel’s great,
In Salem is his tabernacle,
In Zion is his seat.”
After this, there came on me silence and darkness, I having gradually fallen into a fit or trance.
I was roused by rude shocks and pulls, and a confused clamour of voices. Opening my eyes with effort, I saw surging upon the broken water, close to the spars, a ship’s boat with men, one of whom—he who rowed the boat oar—had grasped the collar of my sea doublet, and was hauling me into the pinnace, in which effort he succeeded, ere I could well make out whereabouts I was. At the same time several voices asked, in two different languages, what was my name and country, and how I came there. Now, of both of these tongues I had some smattering, the one being French and the other Low Dutch, of which I had heard and picked up somewhat in my several voyages up the river Scheldt to Antwerp.
I therefore, trying to muster my senses, replied truthfully that my name was Leonard Lindsay—that I was a Scotsman, a mariner of the ship Golden Grove, of Leith, wherefrom I had fallen overboard, the spar to which I clung having been, as, indeed, they might perceive, blown away in tempestuous weather.