Cord and Creese

by James De Mille

Yet it was also necessary to have some sort of a signal to elevate in case of need. He had nothing but a knife to work with; yet patient effort will do much, and after about a week he had cut away the rail that ran along the quarter-deck, which gave him a pole some twenty feet in length. The nails that fastened the boards were all rusted so that they could not be used in attaching any thing to this. He decided when the time came to tie his coat to it, and use that as a flag. It certainly ought to be able to attract attention.

Occupied with such plans and labors and purposes as these, the days passed quickly for two weeks. By that time the fierce rays of the sun had dried every board and stave so that it became like tinder. The ship itself felt the heat; the seams gaped more widely, the boards warped and fell away from their rusty nails, the timbers were exposed all over it, and the hot, dry wind penetrated every cranny. The interior of the hold and the cabin became free from damp, and hot and dry.

Then Brandon flung back many of the boards and staves loosely; and after enough had been thrown there he worked laboriously for days cutting up large numbers of the boards into fine splints, until at last a huge pile of these shavings were accumulated. With these and his pistol he would be able to obtain light and fire in the time of need.

The post which he had cut off was then sharpened at one end, so that he could fix it in the sand when the time came, should it ever come. Here, then, these preparations were completed.

After all his labor in the cabin nothing was found. The bedding, the mattresses, the chests, the nautical instruments had all been ruined. The tables and chairs fell to pieces when the sand was removed; the doors and wood-work sank away; the cabin when cleared remained a wreck.

The weather continued hot and dry. At night Brandon flung himself down wherever he happened to be, either at the brig or at the rock. Every day he had to go to the rock for water, and also to look out toward the sea from that side. At first, while intent upon his work at the ship, the sight of the barren horizon every day did not materially affect him; he rose superior to despondency and cheered himself with his task. But at length, at the end of about three weeks, all this work was done and nothing more remained. His only idea was to labor to effect his escape, and not to insure his comfort during his stay.

Now as day succeeded to day all his old gloom returned. The excitement of the last few weeks had acted favorably upon his bodily health, but when this was removed he began to feel more than his old weakness. Such diet as his might sustain nature, but it could not preserve health. He grew at length to loathe the food which he had to take, and it was only by a stern resolve that he forced himself to swallow it.

At length a new evil was superadded to those which had already afflicted him. During the first part of his stay the hollow or pool of water on the rock had always been kept filled by the frequent rains. But now for three weeks, in fact ever since the uncovering of the Vishnu, not a single drop of rain had fallen. The sun shone with intense heat, and the evaporation was great. The wind at first tempered this heat somewhat, but at last this ceased to blow by day, and often for hours there was a dead calm, in which the water of the sea lay unruffled and all the air was motionless.

If there could only have been something which he could stretch over that precious pool of water he might then have arrested its flight. But he had nothing, and could contrive nothing. Every day saw a perceptible decrease in its volume, and at last it went down so low that he thought he could count the number of days that were left him to live. But his despair could not stay the operation of the laws of nature, and he watched the decrease of that water as one watches the failing breath of a dying child.

Many weeks passed, and the water of the pool still diminished. At last it had sunk so low that Brandon could not hope to live more than another week unless rain came, and that now he could scarcely expect. The look-out became more hopeless, and at length his thoughts, instead of turning toward escape, were occupied with deliberating whether he would probably die of starvation or simple physical exhaustion. He began to enter into that state of mind which he had read in Despard’s MSS., in which life ceases to be a matter of desire, and the only wish left is to die as quickly and as painlessly as possible.