By the World Forgot: A Double Romance of the East and West

by Cyrus Townsend Brady

"Mr. Salver," he continued, "it's your watch below. I want to speak to you in the cabin. Pipe down the watch off, Mr. Gersey. We'll settle this matter in the morning."

But the captain knew and the men knew that the matter was already settled. If the men hung together there was no way by which the captain could discover the ringleader. And he could not imprison the whole ship's company. They had beaten him. The flight had been carefully planned and carried out in a bold and seamanlike way.

"You've beat me," said the captain the next morning to the crew as the watches were changed, "but there's a standin' offer of five hundred dollars for any one who'll gimme the details an' the names of the ringleaders. Meanwhile, if any one of you gives me the least cause I'll shoot him like a dog. Mr. Salver an' Mr. Gersey are both armed like me," he tapped the heavy revolver hanging at his waist, "so look out for yourselves. I've no doubt some of you'll squeal. I'll find out yet. God help the men that did it when I do."

The captain's bribe was a large one. There were men in the forecastle who would have jumped at it, but a very clear realization of what would be meted out to them by their fellows if they turned traitor, kept them quiet. The loyal men among the mutineers knew pretty well who were to be suspected and kept close watch on them.

Beekman knew nothing of all that, of course, the next morning as he made his meager breakfast. He did not know how long it would take him to reach those islands, the very name of which he was ignorant, and it behooved him to husband his resources. After his breakfast he laid his course by the compass. The breeze held steady. All he had to do was to steer the boat. At nightfall he decided to furl sail and drift. For one thing he needed the sleep.

The next day, however, the breeze came stronger. It gradually shifted from the southeast toward the north. He reefed the sail down until it barely showed a scrap of canvas and drove ahead of it. There was no sleep for him through the night. He did not dare to leave the boat to her own devices in that wind and sea. The wind rose with every hour. The next morning it was blowing a howling gale from the northeast. He could no longer keep sail on the boat. He could not row against it. Fortunately, he had foreseen the situation. He unstepped the mast and unshipped the yard with which he pried up some of the seats and with these and spare oars he made himself a serviceable sea anchor, which he attached to the boat's painter forward, cast overboard, and by this means drifted with the storm being at the same time wet, cold, lonely, and very miserable. He knew the boat was a lifeboat; its air tanks would keep it from sinking, but if it ever fell into the trough of the sea it would be rolled over and over like a cork. It would fill with water and refill in spite of his constant bailing. He could only trust to his sea anchor to keep the boat's head to the huge seas by which it was alternately uplifted and cast down in vast, prodigious motion. Had it not been provided with those air tanks the boat would have been swamped inevitably.

His provisions got thoroughly wetted. One of the water breakers was torn from its lashing and the same wave that worked that damage dashed it against the other, staving it in. His boat compass and tools were swept away. Only what was in the lockers forward and aft remained. The boat was swept clean. He had bailed as long as he had strength, but even the bailing tin finally disappeared. At last he sank down exhausted. The waves beat over him. The seas rolled him from side to side. He had strength enough to lash himself to the aftermost thwart before he fell into a state of complete collapse.

So he drifted on through the night. Toward morning the gale blew itself out. The next day the sun rose in a cloudless sky. The breeze subsided. The seas still rose mightily, but he knew that if no more wind came they would presently subside. He swallowed some of the sodden, hard bread in the forward locker for breakfast and then with the top of an empty biscuit tin from the same place he made shift to free the boat of water, at least sufficiently so for her to rise on the waves of the still rough and tumbling seas. He was too exhausted to get in his sea anchor. Indeed, so many things had carried away that he could not have stepped the mast or spread the sail. The canvas itself was gone with his blankets and tarpaulin. He could not use the oars. He could only drift.

How many days he sat in that boat under that burning sun he could not tell. Where he drifted as it fell dead calm he did not know. If he had been less crazed by the awful heat of the unshaded sun and the more awful thirst which made him forget his hunger--he simply could not swallow the hard, dry bread and the salt meat after a time--he might have kept a sort of dead reckoning. He was too weak even to take bearings by sun or stars. Not a sail, not the smoke of a steamer, met his burning stare--his eyes were hot, blazing in their sockets like the sun overhead, he fancied--around him as day after day he surveyed that ever unbroken horizon, himself a dot in the center of a vast periphery of emptiness.

He lost track of the days, of course. As he thought of it afterward it seemed to him that he went mad. The only concrete fact that finally came to him was at the darkest hour of a certain night that closed what he had felt must be his last day. He was conscious of a violent shock. It seemed to him that the boat had struck something. There was a swift motion of rebound, a splashing of water over him, another heavy forward surge, another shock, a crash as of splintering timber, and then all the motion ceased. All around him was a strange roaring. He was too feeble to speculate as to what had happened. He could only wait for the dawn.