The Castaways

by Harry Collingwood

I told her that one was the apparent immobility of the object; the other being the fact that no lights were being displayed. And I explained that the two together seemed incompatible with the supposition that the object ahead was a ship, repeating to her, indeed, the arguments that had flitted through my own mind only a few minutes before.

Yet with every fathom that the boat advanced, the shadow grew more palpable, expanded, and approximated more closely to the appearance of a vessel hove-to under bare poles. And at length, after several anxious minutes of alternating hope and doubt, there arrived a moment when doubt became no longer possible, for the shadow had finally resolved itself into the silhouette of a brig under bare poles; even the thin lines of the masts—which, by the way, looked stumpy, as though her topgallant-masts were gone—were perceptible to my practised eye.

Without pausing to puzzle out a possible reason for the singular condition of the vessel, I hastily resigned the yoke-lines to Miss Onslow and, springing upon the mast thwart, proceeded to hail the brig at the full power of my lungs, my delight at once more seeing a vessel so close at hand being coupled with a deadly anxiety lest she should suddenly make sail and get away from me. But to all my hailing there came no reply, nor was a light shown, or any other indication vouchsafed that my cries had been heard, even though I continued them until the boat was actually crossing the stern of the stranger at a distance of barely fifty fathoms. There was only one inference to be drawn from this strange silence, namely, that the brig was derelict, a surmise that was borne out by the fact that her boats appeared to be gone. Yet I could not detect any sign that anything was wrong with her; she was not sitting particularly deep in the water—so far as I could judge in the darkness—nor did her spars appear to be damaged, except that, as I have already mentioned, her topgallant-masts seemed to have been carried away; there appeared, therefore, to be no reason why we should not venture alongside; and accordingly, as soon as we had stood on far enough to fetch her on the next tack, I hove the boat round and—the brig happening to lie broadside-on to the sea—ran her alongside to leeward, dousing my sails as we came up abreast the stranger’s lee quarter. As we shot up alongside I found that the vessel was certainly deeper in the water than I had at first imagined her to be, yet not deeper than might be accounted for by her carrying a heavy cargo; her covering-board seemed to be about eighteen inches above the water, and I therefore had no difficulty in clambering in over her bulwarks from the gunwale of the boat, of course taking care to carry the end of the boat’s painter on board with me. Making this securely fast to a cleat in the bulwarks, I glanced fore and aft to see whether I could discover any indication of the presence of human beings on board; but the deck appeared to be deserted; no gleam of light showed either forward or aft; and no sound broke the silence save the wash of the water along the bends, the choking gurgle of the scuppers, and the monotonous jerk-jerk of the spanker-boom at its sheet with the roll of the ship. Under these circumstances I considered that my companion might safely venture aboard, and I accordingly assisted her up the side and in on deck, afterwards dropping the boat astern and carefully securing her by her painter. This done, I conducted Miss Onslow aft to the cabin companion—which was fitted with seat-lockers on each side—begged her to be seated for a short time while I investigated further; and forthwith plunged below.

Arrived at the foot of the companion ladder, I found myself confronted by a bulkhead running athwart the ship, and in this I presently found the handle of a door. Turning this, I found myself—as I had expected—in the cabin, which was of course pitch dark, the panes of the skylight just dimly showing, overhead, with the merest suggestion of a certain faintly—gleaming something hanging from the beams, and swinging with the roll of the ship, which I presently identified as the extinguished cabin lamp. Groping cautiously with my hands, I presently encountered a table, uncovered, working round which I next came to some lockers upholstered in horsehair—as I gathered from the touch; and while I was groping about on these lockers my hands suddenly encountered what seemed to be a tablecloth, with a few knives and forks, some broken crockery, and a few other matters entangled in its folds, the whole suggesting the idea that the cabin had been the scene of a furious struggle, during which the table, laid for a meal, had been swept of everything upon it. Leaving all this quite undisturbed—in the belief that when I could see just how it all lay I might obtain a clue to the mystery at present connected with the ship—I continued my researches, with the result that I made out the cabin to occupy the extreme after-end of the vessel, with possibly a small sail-room, or something of that kind, abaft it, and that it took up the whole width of that part of the hull; that is to say, there were no staterooms between it and the ship’s side, as is sometimes the case. Continuing to grope my way round the cabin, I presently arrived once more at the bulkhead, wherein, on the starboard side, I found another door, giving access to a stateroom, as I soon discovered by finding the bunk, with the bedding still in it, and apparently quite ready for an occupant. It did not take me long to arrive at the conclusion that I was in the skipper’s stateroom; for I found that underneath the bunk was a chest of drawers; while in one corner was a wash-basin, etcetera, and in the other what seemed to be a small bookcase. Having progressed thus far, I had hopes of soon finding that of which I was in search, namely, a box of matches. Being a sailor, and well acquainted with sailors’ ways, I knew exactly where would be the most likely place to find what I wanted, and, clambering up on the bunk, I felt for the shelf that I knew ought to be at the head of it. Yes, there it was; but as I felt along it I was disappointed to find that there was nothing on it. But was there not? I had not examined the entire length of it when I too hastily jumped to the conclusion that it was empty; as my hand travelled over into the far corner it suddenly encountered quite a little store of things, all heaped together—a clasp knife, a pipe, a piece of stick tobacco, and a few other odd articles, among which was a box about half full of matches!

They proved to be rather damp, and I had to strike a full half-dozen or more before I succeeded in persuading one to ignite, and while thus employed I was struck for the first time by the coincidence between the condition of affairs on the skipper’s shelf and that in the cabin—every loose article had in each case found its way right over to starboard, as far as it could go! What did that point to? Why, obviously, that at some time or another the brig had heeled so heavily to starboard that every movable thing had fetched away by the run and gone over to that side, and had never been replaced! I gathered from this that the brig had been suddenly hove over upon her beam-ends, and that her crew, seized with panic, and no doubt under the impression that she was capsizing, had made a rush for the boats and abandoned her, being, as likely as not, blown so far to leeward by the squall that hove the brig over, that they lost sight of her altogether, and imagined that she had foundered. And by and by, when the squall had blown itself out, the brig, with perhaps her canvas blown away, had simply righted again, and had been drifting about ever since. How long ago that might have happened, I could not at the moment guess, but I thought that possibly with the return of daylight I might be able to discover indications enough to furnish me with a clue.

While thinking thus I had succeeded in finding and lighting a small lamp, hung in gimbals from the fore bulkhead, and by its illumination I saw that the stateroom was a nice, clean, cosy little apartment, such as Miss Onslow might occupy without discomfort; and, waiting only to light the cabin lamp—the globe of which was smashed in on its starboard side, as though it had been dashed violently against the deck above—I hurried up the ladder, and invited the young lady to descend. I led her straight to the skipper’s stateroom, and urged her to lie down while I proceeded to search for some food, but she declined to take any rest until we had both partaken of a good meal; so I established her comfortably on the sofa-lockers, and proceeded forthwith in search of the pantry.

I found this, as I had expected, in a corresponding position, on the opposite side of the ship to the cabin which I already designated in my own mind as Miss Onslow’s; and in it were several tins of preserved meats and soups, a bottle of pickles, some vinegar, a jar of salt, a bottle of pepper, a cask about three-quarters full of potatoes, part of a string of onions, a barrel nearly full of fine cabin biscuit, or “bread,” as it is called at sea, a small canister of tea, another of coffee, a jar of brown sugar, and, in fact, a very fair assortment of such commodities as are usually to be found in an ordinary ship’s pantry. I observed, by the way, that such articles as were labelled bore the names of American manufacturers, and I deduced from that fact the impression that the brig was Yankee, an impression that was subsequently confirmed.

I took a biscuit out of the barrel, broke it in two, and handed one piece to Miss Onslow, nibbling at the other myself while I further prosecuted my researches. I did this because the biscuit was hard and dry, and, starving as we were, there was not much likelihood of our eating so much of it as to prove injurious; moreover it would have the effect of taking the sharp edge off our hunger, and enabling us to eat cautiously and in moderation of the more appetising food that I intended to place upon the table as quickly as possible.

My next task was to explore the galley, which I found to be very nicely fitted up with what appeared to be an excellent cooking-stove and a generous supply of implements, the whole of which had, like the articles in the cabin, found their way right over to the starboard side; moreover the top of the stove was rusted in such a way as to suggest that the water from the coppers had been capsized over it—everything, in short, tending to confirm my original impression that the brig had been on her beam-ends. I looked into the coppers, and found them empty. Then I went to the scuttle-butt, but it also was so nearly empty that I did not care to use the small remainder of water in it. There were no more casks on deck, so I concluded that the ship’s stock of water was kept below, most probably in tanks. And the thought of the latter reminded me that I had seen a small copper pump in the steward’s pantry, so I returned there to get it. Then, with it in one hand, and a lantern in the other, I searched about on deck until I had found the small screw plug that fitted into the tank pipe; and presently I had at my disposal a bucket of sweet fresh water, which I poured into the coppers. I then lighted the galley fire—finding plenty of coal for my immediate wants in the locker—and proceeded to prepare a couple of tins of the preserved soup that I had found in the pantry. Then, while this was cooking, I returned to the cabin to lay the table, but found that Miss Onslow had forestalled me, having cleared away the wreck off the starboard locker, restored the tablecloth to its proper position, and rearranged such portions of the table equipage as had not been smashed in the capsizal. The poor girl looked dreadfully white and thin and weary, but I noticed that during my absence she had found time to take off her hat and to roughly rearrange her hair! Her eyes looked red, as though she had been crying; so, with the view of toning her up a little, I went to work rummaging in the sofa-lockers, and presently found a few bottles of port wine, the neck of one of which I promptly knocked off, and insisted upon her taking a glass there and then. She obeyed me with a sweet submissiveness that was in extraordinary contrast with her demeanour aboard the City of Cawnpore; but a flash of her old spirit returned when she had swallowed the wine, as, handing me the glass, she said:

“There! I have done as you bade me. And now I insist upon your taking some also; for you look positively ghastly, and so ill that, unless you take great care of yourself, you will break down altogether!”