The sun was sinking into a bank of smoky-looking cloud that stretched along the horizon on our starboard quarter when my companion awoke, greatly refreshed by her slumbers, but—as she confessed—ravenously hungry. I also was beginning to feel anew the pangs of hunger; so, surrendering the yoke-lines to Miss Onslow, I took advantage of what remained of the fast-waning daylight to prepare a further portion of raw fowl to serve us both, taking care to render the appearance of the flesh as little repulsive as possible. By the time that my preparations—which I had purposely somewhat protracted—were complete, darkness had so far closed down upon us that it was scarcely possible to see what we were eating; and, thus aided, and by dint of much persuasion—accentuated by a reminder that we habitually ate oysters raw,—I succeeded in inducing the poor girl to so far lay aside her prejudices as just to taste the food I offered her. That accomplished, I had no further trouble with her, for her hunger was by this time so sharp that food of any sort became palatable, and we both succeeded in making a fairly good meal.
Meanwhile, the bank of cloud that at sunset had been hovering on the verge of the western horizon, had been stealthily creeping zenith-ward, and at the same time spreading out north and south, with a look in it that seemed to portend more wind; so, as a measure of precaution, I went to work, upon the conclusion of our meal, and shortened sail by taking down a couple of reefs in the mainsail, and a single reef in the little stay foresail which the boat carried. And, this done, I rearranged the royal in the stern-sheets as a bed for my companion, urging her to turn in at once and get as much rest as she could.
It was exceedingly fortunate that I had taken the precaution to reef the canvas of our small hooker; for about an hour or so after sunset—very shortly, indeed, after the completion of my preparations—the wind freshened up with quite a touch of spite in it, driving us along at a speed of fully eight knots, and tugging at the mast as though intent on dragging it out of the boat altogether; the sea, moreover, began to rise and break, and by midnight I was in a bath of perspiration induced by anxiety and the effort to keep the boat ahead of and square end-on to the combers. This condition of excessive and painful anxiety, by the way, was quite a new, as well as decidedly unpleasant, experience for me, and I was deeply mortified and annoyed at the discovery of its influence upon me. I first took myself severely to task about it, and then proceeded to seek for the cause of the trouble. I was at first disposed to attribute it to nerve-shock, induced by the occurrences of the preceding twenty-four hours, but a further analysis of my feelings convinced me that my nerves were still to be depended upon as implicitly as ever, and that the real source of my distress lay at my feet, asleep, wrapped up in a sail. Yes; there could be no doubt about it; it was on my companion’s account that I was nervous and anxious; I feared being capsized or swamped simply because of the greatly-increased danger and discomfort that would in that case accrue to her!
At length—probably about two o’clock in the morning—it breezed up so fiercely, and knocked up such a sea that I dared not run the boat any longer, so, watching my chance, I put the helm down and hove-to on the larboard tack, with the boat’s head to the northward, and anxiously awaited the coming of daylight. Soon after this, Miss Onslow awoke, and seemed considerably alarmed at the change in the weather and the wild movements of the boat; but I managed to reassure her; and then, observing that I had lashed the port yoke-line, and was no longer doing anything, she suggested that we should change places, and that I should get a little sleep! After my assurances as to the utter absence of any danger I found it somewhat difficult to make her understand—without alarming her—that it was still as urgently necessary as ever for me to watch the boat.
At length the dawn came filtering slowly through a murky and rather angry-looking sky, and as the darkness gradually melted away from off the face of the weltering waters I made out the canvas of a large ship, some eight miles off, to leeward. She had passed us about an hour earlier, probably not more than three miles away; and had there only been daylight I should doubtless have succeeded in attracting her attention. As it was, there was no hope of any such thing now; she was sailing away from instead of toward us, and sailors seldom look astern; their attention is mostly directed to what lies ahead. And even had it been otherwise, it was too late now to think of making ourselves seen; she was too far off; and chasing her was quite out of the question, for she was bowling along under topgallant studding-sails, making the utmost of a fair wind, while we dared show no more than double-reefed canvas. Fortunately, Miss Onslow was sleeping again, and did not see the stranger, which had run out of sight beyond the horizon by the time that my companion next awoke, so I did not mention the circumstance. The appearance of this vessel, however, was cheering and encouraging, inasmuch as it tended to show that I was still in the track of shipping.
As the day wore slowly on the wind steadily freshened until it was blowing a single-reefed topsail breeze, that brought with it a corresponding increase in the height and run of the seas, which at length became so dangerous that I dared no longer keep the boat under sail, but was constrained to douse the canvas and use it, with the mast and oars, as a floating anchor for the boat. Riding to these, at the full scope of our rather long painter, we were much more easy and comfortable; but this advantage was discounted to a great extent by the fact that during the day two other vessels passed us—at too great a distance to allow of our attracting their attention, low down in the water as we were, and with no means of signalling to them, yet not so far off but that we might have been seen had there been a pair of sharp eyes aboard; while if it had been possible for us to carry sail, we might have easily intercepted either of them. It was a cruelly bitter disappointment to us to see these two craft go sliding along the horizon while I wore myself out with unavailing efforts to attract their attention. My companion bore her disappointment bravely; she even chid me gently when I sank down exhausted into the bottom of the boat, with a bitter curse upon the blindness of the crew, as the second of the two ships vanished beyond the rim of the horizon; and she reminded me more than once of words I had spoken to her earlier in the day, to the effect that although we might miss half a dozen ships through their passing us at too great a distance to allow of our being seen, the seventh would be sure to come booming right down upon us, and our only difficulty would be to avoid being run down by her. But later on, when the darkness had once more closed down upon us, shutting out everything but the towering, swooping, phosphorescent crests of the threatening seas, I caught her softly, silently, and secretly crying; and the sight of her distress aroused a sudden furious anger in me that caused me to again and still more savagely execrate the blind lookout kept aboard the vessels that had that day passed us. And then I began to wonder, bitterly, how many poor souls—weak, helpless, delicate women and children, and famine-stricken men—had perished miserably, after drifting about the ocean for days that were veritable eternities of suffering, yet might have been rescued had the officer of the watch aboard a passing ship but bestowed a trifle more interest and attention upon the small, distant, indistinctly-seen object that for an instant caught his gaze, and which he all too hastily assumed to be the slanting pinion of some wandering sea bird, or the leaping crest of a distant wave.
We rode thus all through the night, and well on toward noon the next day, when the weather moderated sufficiently to permit me to make sail once more. But as the day wore on the wind gradually hauled round until it was dead on end for us; and nightfall found us heading to the southward, with the wind out at about east-south-east.
This state of things prevailed for the next four days, during which no further vessels were sighted, although it is possible that some may have passed us during the night at such a distance as to be invisible in the darkness. During this time we were put to great straits for want of food, and suffered all the tortures of slow starvation; for the drowned poultry soon putrefied and became so offensive that we had to heave them overboard. I tried to supply the deficiency by fishing, but only succeeded in capturing one small shark, about eighteen inches long, which was fortunately hooked in the mouth in such a way that he could not cut through the line with his teeth. During this time I watched and steered the boat all through the night; Miss Onslow relieving me during the hours of daylight, in order that I might secure a few hours of much-needed rest. But I was far too anxious, as well as in too much suffering, to sleep; the utmost that I could achieve was to doze fitfully and for a few minutes at a time, during which my imagination conjured up the most tormenting dreams, from which I usually awoke with a violent start and a terrified cry. Then I would spring upon a thwart and search the horizon eagerly and feverishly for the sight of a sail, following this up with a renewed attempt to catch a fish or two. I shall never forget the courage and fortitude exhibited by Miss Onslow during this trying period; she never uttered a single word of complaint or impatience, although it was impossible for her to conceal the fact that she suffered acutely; and whenever she found me unusually silent and, as she thought, giving way to dejection, she always had ready a word or two of encouragement.
Thus matters wearily and painfully progressed with us until six days and seven nights had dragged their slow length away, and a full week had elapsed since the sinking of the City of Cawnpore. We were still working our way to the southward, against an amount of wind and sea that were quite as much as the boat could look at; and Miss Onslow was at my feet, wrapped up in the sail, and moaning in her troubled sleep; the hour being about one o’clock in the morning. I was of course always on the lookout for a ship, night and day, but the time had now arrived when I began to see craft that had no existence save in my disordered imagination; I was therefore neither surprised nor elated when I suddenly became aware of a vague, indefinite shadow of deeper darkness, faintly and doubtfully showing against the horizon broad on my weather bow; I simply regarded it as another phantom, and thought no more about it. Yet I kept my gaze fixed upon it, nevertheless—since. I had nothing better to occupy my attention; and presently a peculiarity of this vision—not shared by the others I had seen—forced itself upon my notice, inasmuch as that, while the other phantom ships that I had seen had exhibited a propensity to rush over the surface of the ocean at lightning speed, and to appear in half a dozen quarters or more in as many seconds, this one obstinately persisted in maintaining the precise position in which I had at first discovered her. And it presently dawned upon me that she had another peculiarity, namely, that of an opacity sufficiently dense to temporarily blot out any low-lying star that the movement of the boat happened to bring into line with her. The full significance of these peculiarities at length became suggestive, and it began to dawn upon me that possibly the craft out yonder might not, after all, be a phantom; she might be the vessel destined to afford us rescue and salvation; the vessel for which I had all along been looking, and the eventual appearance of which I had so frequently and so confidently predicted to Miss Onslow.