A Desperate Voyage

by E. F. Knight

Then Carew began to suspect the truth, and a great dread fell on him. Lying down he placed a small stone on the edge of a shadow cast by a pointed rock, and watched it with a breathless suspense.

Yes, it was as he had feared. The shadow was slowly lengthening! He laid his face on the ground and wept hysterically in his despair.

The shadow was lengthening, therefore the sun was setting. It was setting inland over the mountains, and thus the sea was to the east of him. So—unconsciously, by what road he knew not—he must have traversed the whole island, and he was now on the coast the most remote from South West Bay. The cascade, the water he was dying for, was miles away, beyond those great hills. He could never reach it in his present state.

He was on the weather side of Trinidad.

Those heavy breakers on the reefs were caused by the high swell of the south-east trades, and there on the horizon were the three islands of Martin Vas, twenty-five miles away.

So he despaired and lay down on the rocks, and longed for the release of death. Then he became delirious, and fancied that he was in Fleet Street again, and was going into a tavern with some comrades to drink a glass of wine. But once more the agony of thirst woke him to a consciousness of his position. He staggered to his feet, and ran on blindly a few yards; then he stumbled, and fell to his knees.

Ah! what was that gleaming so temptingly before him?—an illusion only to mock him into madness with its lying promise. He stretched his hand to it—touched it. He plunged his face into it.

It was water—fresh water; a small pool left in a hollow of a rock by the last rains. It was nauseous to the taste, and heated by the tropical sun; but it was water, and infinitely more precious to him at that moment than all the gold quartz in his vessel's hold. He drank fiercely and long, before his craving was assuaged; then his senses returned to him, and, though still very weak, he felt capable of making an effort to save his life.

He descended the farther side of the buttress of rock that divides the two bays, and again followed his footprints, which led him across the wreck-strewn sands to the entrance of a ravine that clove the mountains, and seemed to afford the only practicable pass across them.

He looked upwards, and wondered how he could have possibly found his way with safety down that perilous place; for he supposed that he must have been in a trance-like condition when he made that journey, of which he was now so entirely oblivious.