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He could see nothing, but the sea all round him was dotted with the heads of other swimmers. Some had life-belts, some swimming-collars or flotsam, and, like Pincher, were making the best of their way from the scene of the disaster. Others had no life-saving appliances at all, and were drowning in dozens.
Twice was Pincher clutched round the body, but each time he fought with the mad energy of despair, and wrenched himself free of the suffocating embrace of a shipmate less lucky than himself. He was no coward, but it was a case of each man for himself, and his desire to live was overwhelming.
How long he was in the water he never knew. He merely battled on, fighting for breath. Presently, when all but exhausted and numb through and through with cold, he was carried to the summit of a huge wave to see the dark shape of a boat barely twenty feet from him. In the dim half-light he could see it was crowded with men, and raising his voice, he tried to shout for help. He emitted no sound but a feeble croak, and the next time he was borne aloft the boat had vanished. Then it was that Pincher commended his soul to his Maker. He could do no more.
He seemed to have been swimming for hours, and was breathless and very weary. His limbs felt incapable of further movement, and it was with almost a feeling of relief that he gave up the struggle as hopeless. But for his swimming-collar he would have sunk then and there. How long he remained quiescent he could not tell; but during this awful time his senses never left him, and he found himself wondering how long it would take him to die. He did not dread the prospect; anything seemed better than this awful shortness of breath and the constant buffeting by the seas. The most trivial events and the most important happenings of his short life crowded into his overwrought brain. His thoughts travelled to his home, and he pictured his mother the last time he had seen her, framed in the doorway of her cottage. He almost laughed when he remembered himself tearing down the road to catch the train. He must have looked funny, excruciatingly funny, but he felt a slight pang of regret on thinking that he would never tread that road again. Next his mind reverted to Billings, and he wondered hazily what had become of him. Poor Joshua, he had been a good friend to him! He hoped he was not drowned. What was Emmeline doing at this moment? The recollection of her seemed indistinct and shadowy, somehow. He could not picture her face, merely remembered that she was pretty and fascinating. What would she say when she heard he had been drowned? Would she go into mourning and cry her pretty eyes out? Perhaps she would marry some one else.
Then, quite suddenly, he heard a voice. ''Ere's another on 'em!' it said gruffly. He felt his head come into violent contact with something solid and unyielding, and the next moment he was seized by the hair. The pain of it hurt him abominably, but he was far too weak and short of breath to expostulate. Then he was grasped under the armpits, and, after describing what seemed a giddy and interminable parabola through the air, heard himself descend with a crash on to something very hard. The impact should have hurt him, but he felt nothing, and merely realised in a hazy sort of way that he was in the bottom of a boat.
It was bitterly cold. He shivered as with ague, while constant showers of spray left him coughing and gasping for breath. Water washed over him perpetually, and a horrible, never-ceasing oscillation flung him violently to and fro. It was almost as bad as being in the water. But he was past caring. Then came a feeling of terrible nausea, and, rolling over abjectly, he was violently sick. Next, darkness, the utter blackness of absolute oblivion. Pincher Martin had fainted.
When he recovered his senses some hours later he could not for the moment recollect where he was or what had happened. He felt chilled through and through with the cold, but some kind Samaritan had removed his sodden garments, and had left him lying in the bottom of the boat covered with a portion of the sail and its tarpaulin cover. Several other men lay there with him. Then he remembered. He felt bruised all over, stiff, miserable, and very weak; but he could breathe, and found, on trying to shift his position, that he had recovered the use of his limbs, though the effort caused him agony. Glancing round, he saw he was in the stern-sheets of the Belligerent's forty-two-foot launch, the largest pulling-boat she had carried.
The sea was still running very high, and the boat pitched and rolled violently and unceasingly, while constant showers of spray came driving aft as her bluff bows plunged into the waves. At one moment he found himself watching the dark clouds chasing each other across the gray sky overhead; and the next, as the boat rolled, he was vouchsafed momentary glimpses of a heaving expanse of gray-green sea, lashed and torn into white, insensate fury by the wind. It was blowing a full gale.
The boat was half-full of water, and amidships some men were busy bailing, one with a bucket, and others with boots and caps. Crouching down under the thwarts, with the water washing over them, were many more men in the last stages of misery. Some showed signs of life; some looked almost dead. Another melancholy party were clustered in the stern, huddling together to get some warmth into their numbed limbs. All sorts and conditions of men were there—stokers in their grimy flannel shirts and fearnought trousers, just as they had come up out of the stokehold; bluejackets in jerseys and blue serge trousers; some marines; and a ship's steward's assistant with nothing but a swimming-collar and a sodden white cotton shirt. Their lips were blue with cold, their teeth were chattering, they looked abject and utterly forlorn, but they were still alive. One or two of them were actually talking.