That night the wind, which had dwindled away to a gentle breeze, changed, and blew once more from the westward; and the sea having also gone down to a great extent, our adventurers cast off from the wreckage which had so opportunely provided them with a shelter from the fury of the gale, and with whole canvas and flowing sheets stood away once more on a north-easterly course.
In addition to the delay which the gale had occasioned them, Captain Staunton estimated that they had been driven fully five hundred miles directly out of their course; after a very careful inspection therefore of their stock of provisions the skipper was reluctantly compelled to order a further reduction in the daily allowance of food and water served out.
And now the sufferings of those on board the launch commenced in grim earnest. The women, especially, as might be expected, soon began to feel their privations acutely. Buffeted as they had been by the gale, they were completely exhausted, and needed rest and an abundance of nourishing food rather than to be placed on short commons. They bore their privations, however, with a quiet fortitude which ought to have silenced in shame the querulous complaints and murmurings of Mr Dale; though it did not. The most distressing part of it all was to hear poor little May Staunton piteously crying for water, “’cause I’m so veddy thirsty mama,” as the dear child explained. She was not old enough to understand the possibility of a state of things wherein food and drink were scarcities; and her reproachful looks at her father when he was obliged to refuse her request almost broke his heart. Not, it must be understood, that she was limited to the same quantity of water as the others. The men—always excepting Mr Dale—preferred to suffer in a heightened degree the fiery torture of thirst themselves, rather than to see the child suffer; and they quietly arranged among themselves to contribute each as much as he felt he could possibly spare of the now precious liquid, as it was daily served out to them, and to store it up in a bottle which was to be May’s exclusive property. And the same in the matter of food. It was wholly in vain that the child’s father protested against this sacrifice; they were one and all firm as adamant upon this point; and he, poor man, notwithstanding his anxiety that all should be treated with equal fairness, could not contest their determination with any great strength of will. Was she not his own and only child, for whom he would cheerfully have laid down his life; and how could he urge with any strength a point which would have resulted in a dreadful deprivation and a terrible increase of suffering to the winning and helpless little creature? Therefore he at last contented himself with pouring the whole of his daily allowance of water into May’s bottle, and cheerfully submitted for her innocent sake to endure the tortures of the damned.
Reader, have you ever experienced the torment of thirst while exposed in an open boat to the blazing rays of the pitiless sun? You have not? Then thank God for it, and earnestly pray that you never may; for none can realise or even faintly imagine the intensity of the suffering but those who have borne it.
The women, from whom it was of course impossible to conceal the circumstance that May was receiving more than her own share of food and water, were anxious to follow the example of their male companions by also setting apart a portion of their own allowance for the use of the child, but this was at once decidedly vetoed; yet they were not so easily to be deterred from their generous disposition, and many a sip and many a morsel which could ill be spared did the poor little child receive from their sympathetic and loving hands.
“After the storm comes the calm,” says the proverb, and its truth was fully borne out in the present instance.
On the fourth day after casting off from the wreckage the wind began to drop, and by sunset it had fallen so light that the launch had barely steerage-way. This was still another misfortune, for if the calm continued it would seriously delay their progress and thereby protract their sufferings. Next to a gale of wind, indeed, a calm and its consequent delay was what they had most to dread, for they were in a part of the ocean little frequented by craft of any description, except a stray whaler now and then, and their only reasonable hope of salvation rested upon the possibility of their being able to reach land before starvation and thirst overcame them.
Mr Bowles had the first watch, and Bob was posted at the now all but useless helm. The wind had subsided until it was faint as the breath of a sleeping infant, and the boat’s sails flapped gently against the masts as she rode with a scarcely perceptible swinging motion over the long stately slow-moving swell which followed her. The vast blue-black dome of the heavens above was devoid of the faintest trace of cloud, and the countless stars which spangled the immeasurable vault beamed down upon the tiny waif with a soft and mellow splendour which was repeated in the dark bosom of the scarcely ruffled ocean, where the reflected starbeams mingled, far down in its mysterious depths, with occasional faint gleams and flashes of pale greenish phosphorescent light. The thin golden crescent of the young moon hung low down in the velvety darkness of the western sky, and a long thin thread of amber radiance streamed from the horizon beneath her toward the boat, becoming more and more wavering and broken up as it neared her, until within some twenty fathoms of the launch it dwindled away to a mere occasional fluttering gleam. A great and solemn silence prevailed, upon which such slight sounds as the flap of the sails, the pattering of the reef-points, the creak of the rudder, or the stir of some uneasy sleeper broke with almost painful distinctness.
Mr Bowles drew out his watch, and holding it close to his face, discovered that it was a few minutes past midnight. For the previous half-hour he had been sitting on the deck near Bob, with his legs dangling into the little cockpit abaft the stern-sheets, and staring in an abstracted fashion astern. As he replaced the watch in his pocket he glanced once more in that direction, but now his look suddenly grew intense and eager. For a full minute he remained thus, then he withdrew from its beckets beneath the seat a long and powerful telescope, which he adjusted and levelled. For another full minute he gazed anxiously through the tube, and then, handing it to Bob to hold, he crept silently forward, so as not to disturb the sleeping women, and quietly called the relief watch.
“Well, Mr Bowles,” said the captain, as he rose to his feet, “what weather have you had? Is there any wind at all?”