and ere long I found myself alone—alone on that surging sea and shattered wreck.
Men toil and struggle bravely, when love, when liberty, and, more than all, when life is at stake. So struggled I on that night of terror.
Clutching fast the wetted shrouds, worn and exhausted by long exposure, by want of sleep, and by excitement, I hoped the hope of the desperate—that, with daybreak, if the ship floated so long, aid might come; a friendly sail might pass, and I might yet be saved, and spared for years to come: yet what right had I to be favoured so specially, when so many poor fellows had perished? The brave, the good, the hardy, and the true!
Strangely enough, at that terrible time frivolous thoughts and trivial incidents of my past years came before me. I counted the rattlins on the shrouds, and watched, with a species of ghastly curiosity or vacant wonder, the snapping of the ship's gear in succession, as the billows broke in foam among the prostrate masts and yards, and shattered top-hamper; and then I would long and pray for the dawn of morning.
The hazy gloom around me was oppressive. I clung as in a dream, mechanically; I scarcely knew at one time whether I was asleep or awake, till suddenly the horrible conviction came over me, that the vessel was settling down, and sinking fast! The broken masts, all shattered now to their round tops, rose slowly and gradually from the water. For some minutes they remained at an angle of forty-five degrees from the surface, and then became more and more erect, as the vessel righted, and sank deeper in the sea, assuming, as she sank, her natural position.
Down—down she went, slowly, surely, and gradually, the waves rolling, as it were, in wild joy over her entire hull. I soon lost sight of the deck, and, as the water approached, I continued to ascend the rattlins until I reached the mizentop. The storm was abating, for the bellowing and fury of the wind were much less; but this change of weather availed me little now, for I had barely reached the mizentop when it vanished, with the last vestiges of the ship into the sea beneath me, and I was tossed hither and thither among the waves. Blinded by spray, and haunted by a fear of sharks, and of the same death by which so many of my late companions had perished, I was not aware for some time that, by chance, or perhaps by that species of attraction by which two bodies or floating substances are drawn together in the water, a topgallant-yard remained close by me, till suddenly, with a sigh of joy, I threw out my arms and clung to it. Again and again I was tossed up among the white foam on the summit of a wave, and then precipitated into the black trough of the sea, twenty feet below; and thus I was rapidly borne hundreds of yards from the place where our hapless ship had foundered, but still I retained my hold.
Then I found, as the dashing of the waves became less, that I was among some of those gigantic plants which grow from the bottom of the sea in these regions, being like prodigious water-docks, with stems eighty or a hundred feet long, and mighty leaves covered with brown slime; and under these the blue shark glides ever in search of prey. If aught could increase the horror of my situation, it was being swept here and there among these giant weeds, with the incessant dread of being snapped in two by the teeth of the monster fish.
I was becoming careless, weary, and incapable of further exertion, when a wave, larger than any I had hitherto seen, burst like a mountain over me. I felt a mighty shock, and, while believing that all was over, became insensible; yet God was pleased to spare me.