The Castaways

by Harry Collingwood

I allowed a quarter of an hour—as nearly as I could guess it—to elapse after the disappearance of the ship; and then, believing that whatever wreckage was likely to float up from her to the surface would already have done so, I thought we might safely return to the scene of the catastrophe, since it was upon the existence of a certain amount of floating wreckage that I built such slight hope as I entertained of our ultimate preservation. I knew pretty exactly the bearings of the spot where the ship had gone down—having taken them by the moon—and, thus guided, I struck out over the way that we had recently travelled, towing Miss Onslow after me; and as I swam I could not help a feeling of surprise at the height of the sea, which seemed mountainous, now that we were down upon its surface, although from the deck of the ship it had appeared nothing at all extraordinary. I had been swimming some five minutes or so when, as we floated up on the breast of a wave, I saw in the dim moonlight what looked like a quantity of loose, floating wreckage at no very great distance away, but slightly to windward; and toward this we made the best of our way, ultimately arriving in the midst of a quantity of loose, jagged, and splintered planking tangled up with a raffle of spars, sails, and rigging. It was rather dangerous stuff to venture among, as some of the loose planks were lancing about in the wash of the sea with considerable violence, and a blow from a jagged end would have inflicted a more or less serious injury, even had it not killed us outright; but at length I found a little clear space among the wreckage, into which I towed my companion, and presently we found ourselves close alongside one of the masts, with the after-rim of the top riding dry; and on to this I at once climbed, hauling Miss Onslow after me, and lashing her securely to the top by means of an end of rope cut from among the raffle. Here we were reasonably safe and comfortable, for we were upon a raft of buoyant material that would probably float for months, while there was so much of it that it effectually broke the sea and prevented it from washing over us. It was a terrible situation for such a delicately-nurtured girl as she who had so unexpectedly been thrown under my protecting care; but throughout the night she never uttered a single word that could be construed into complaint; nor did she evince the slightest fear; on the contrary, she exhibited a calm and steadfast courage that filled me with admiration, although the questions that she put to me from time to time rendered it perfectly clear that she very fully realised the desperate nature of our predicament.

Some time during the night—it would probably be about midnight—the wind dropped to a light breeze, and the sea began to go down, until by daylight there was only a very gentle air blowing, with very little sea, but a long, heavy swell; the clouds all went drifting away out of sight, leaving the sky clear; and there was, generally, a very promising prospect that the coming day would be fine.

The moment that it was light enough to see, I scrambled up on the wreckage and took a long look round, in the hope of descrying a sail, but the horizon was bare. Then, as the light grew stronger, I proceeded to minutely inspect the mass of wreckage that had afforded us shelter throughout the night, with the view of ascertaining its capabilities as a refuge for a more or less lengthy period—until, in fact, we were either taken off by a passing ship, or perished of starvation. There seemed to be a great deal of it—much more than I could satisfactorily account for—but as the dawn spread and brightened, and objects grew increasingly distinct, everything became intelligible, even to the cause of the catastrophe that had so suddenly and terribly hurled us from a situation of safety and comfort into one of the direst peril and uncertainty. For I found that while my companion and I were clinging to the wreckage of the ill-fated City of Cawnpore’s mainmast—the whole of which had somehow come adrift from the hull—we were surrounded by and tangled up with a large quantity of planking and woodwork, some of which we recognised as having belonged to our own ship, while the remainder resolved itself into the shattered hull of a large, timber-laden, wooden ship which had been cut nearly half through by the tremendous impact of our own vessel upon it when she struck it and so destroyed herself in the darkness of the preceding night. A minute inspection of this wreck enabled me to clearly understand exactly what had happened: the stranger had been dismasted—for her spars were still attached to her hull—and had, at the same time, or subsequently, become water-logged to such an extent as to submerge her hull nearly to the level of the deck; her crew had abandoned her; and she had been left washing about, a scarcely visible yet truly formidable death-trap, for our own good ship to blunder upon to her destruction. The force of the blow had turned the stranger nearly bottom up, so I could not even make a guess at her nationality, and, worse still, it had robbed us of a possible chance of slightly bettering our condition by taking up our quarters aboard her.

In addition to the mass that my hapless companion and I had taken refuge upon there were a few small quantities of detached wreckage floating here and there within a radius of about a quarter of a mile, and among these I by and by noticed something that looked so much like a capsized boat that—as there seemed to be no sharks about—I determined to swim out and examine it. I mentioned my resolution to Miss Onslow, who made no demur whatever to being left alone for a time, merely remarking, with a somewhat wan smile:

“If it should by good fortune prove to be a boat, please do not, in your elation, sail away, forgetting that you have left me behind.”

I assured her that she might absolutely depend upon my never forgetting that I had undertaken to save her, and therewith plunged into the warm sea.

Swimming a long, steady stroke, it did not take me very long to reach the object for which I was aiming, and which proved, as I had conjectured, to be a ship’s boat, swamped, and floating keel up. And not only so, but when I got alongside her I was delighted to find that she was one of the City of Cawnpore’s quarter boats—no doubt the one that the miners had cut partially adrift ere the ship went down—the especial significance and importance of this discovery arising from the fact that poor Dacre had made a point of having every item of each boat’s equipment stowed within her, and properly

secured; so that, unless something very untoward had happened, it was reasonable to hope that I should find this craft thus furnished. And, sure enough, she appeared to be so, when I at length managed to right her, for, as she rolled over, I caught sight of the oars, masts, and sails—the latter neatly encased in canvas coats—all securely lashed to the thwarts. Without waiting to further investigate, I got hold of her by the stern and, hanging on by one hand, proceeded to scoop the water out of her with the other. This was a long job, considerably more than an hour being spent in removing the comparatively small quantity of water necessary to enable me to get into her; but, once in her, I made much better progress, using my two hands to throw the water out, until—having got rid of sufficient to enable me to move about without again filling the boat—I managed to find a baler, when I made short work of baling her dry. This done, I took stock of my prize, and found that I had come into possession of a twenty-eight-foot gig, in a perfectly sound and undamaged condition, equipped with four sixteen-foot ash oars, a mast and sails, rowlocks, bottom-boards, stretchers, rudder and yoke, baler, boat-hook, and—priceless treasure, under the circumstances—two breakers of fresh water securely lashed to the bottom-boards to serve as ballast. With such a prize as this what might not be possible? With a thankful heart I cast adrift the oars, shipped a pair, and—standing up fisherman fashion, with my face toward the bow—paddled the boat to the pile of wreckage whereon I had left Miss Onslow.

The sea had by this time gone down to such an extent that I had no difficulty in putting the boat alongside the wreckage, taking the young lady on board, and shoving clear again without damaging the boat in the least. My clothes were by this time quite dry, and those of my companion nearly so; we were therefore, comparatively speaking, comfortable, excepting that we were both sensible of the possession of a most healthy and hearty appetite, which we had no means of satisfying. A casual remark by Miss Onslow upon this unpleasant feature of our adventure set me thinking, with the result that before leaving our mass of wreckage for good, I secured the signal halliards—to serve as a fishing-line—together with a fair supply of other small cordage, the main-royal—which I cut away from the wreckage to serve as a sort of tent, to shelter my companion from the dew at night-time—and a small spike nail or two, which, with considerable labour, I cut out of the planking of the derelict that had brought disaster upon us. These last I secured with the rather hazy idea that it might be possible for me to file them down and convert them into fish-hooks with the aid of a small file that formed one of the implements in my pocket-knife. Thus provided, I shipped the boat’s rudder and yoke, stepped the mast, set the sails, and shoved off, my intention being to shape a course—as nearly as I could hit it off—for Cape Town, in the hope that ere long we might be fallen in with and picked up by some craft bound thither. The boat, however, had scarcely begun to gather way when I espied, at no very great distance, what I took to be a floating hencoop; and realising that, if my conjecture happened to be correct, the coop would probably be found to contain drowned poultry that, in our desperate situation, would serve for food, I headed the boat for it. My surmise again proved to be well founded; the object turned out to be a coop, and it contained seventeen dead fowls, the whole of which I secured. And in gaining possession of the poultry I found it necessary to break away two or three of the slats or bars that formed the front of the coop, thus discovering that they were secured to the body of the coop by long, thin, wire nails, out of which I soon satisfied myself that I could make very promising fish-hooks by merely bending them into the requisite shape, I secured about a dozen of these nails; and then made sail with a fair wind upon an approximately due east course. Although the wind was light the boat slipped through the water at a very satisfactory pace; and in half an hour’s time we had run the wreckage completely out of sight.