When the deluded woman found that she had joined her life to that of a worthless adventurer, who lived wholly upon his friends, and who found his only excitement at the gambling table, she was heartbroken; but she accepted her fate with the same resignation as does the faithful woman everywhere. It was not long until neglect was followed by abuse and insult; but, according to the daughter’s narrative, the mother’s fidelity to the man she had trusted never changed.
In the Summer of 1872, having raised some money, the daring young gambler decided to visit Saratoga, where, at that time, games of chance were openly conducted, in the hope that he could retrieve his fortune. Marie accompanied him. They left New Orleans in a small steamer bound for New York, and had a pleasant voyage for many days. One very dark night, however, a terrible storm arose, and it was announced that the steamer had sprung a leak. The fires were soon put out by the inflowing water, and when daylight came the vessel had become a helpless derelict, rolling in the trough of the sea. Every moment seemed the last. The sailors lost courage, expecting the water-logged craft to capsize and sink.
The poor little Creole woman, faint with fright and filled with an inborn terror of the sea, quietly slipped away to her stateroom, crawled into her bunk and covered her head, desiring to await death alone, and to meet it in this less frightful form. Thus she lay for a day and a night, apparently forgotten. And yet death came not. Evidently the anger of the sea had subsided, and on the second day, hungry and despairing, she crawled on deck to find the entire ship deserted and she its sole occupant. All the boats were gone—officers, crew and passengers had departed, leaving her to her fate. She had been overlooked; or, if considered at all, it had been assumed that one of the seas that came aboard had carried her to a watery grave.
It required little tax of memory to recall the loss of the George Cornwall, Capt. Timothy Rogers, that had sailed from New Orleans about the time described, never to reach New York, and whose fate, beyond the discovery of one of her upturned boats, was never known.
The young girl at my side dwelt with graphic fullness upon the months that her unfortunate, deserted mother had passed alone aboard the derelict. Provisions were plenty, and she did not suffer for food or drink. Vessels were sighted many times, but none of them saw the signal of distress that she displayed. So wretched and hopeless seemed her position; so ever present was the prospect of death, and so appalling was it to her, that she slept little and ate only food enough to sustain life. Many times she seriously contemplated casting herself into the sea in order to end her misery.
Months passed. She kept no record of the flight of time. Moonlight, darkness, fog, fair weather and storm succeeded each other; but the moon mocked her, and the sun and the fetid breath of the Gulf Stream parched her throat. Even the stars lost that assurance of companionship, recognized by every sailor of the ocean.
The forsaken woman, alone upon her rolling, log-like vessel, never understood by what route she reached the Seaweed Sea. Of course, my pretty informant, knowing nothing of the geography of the North Atlantic, could not even offer a surmise, and the probability is that the derelict, carrying its solitary passenger, skirted the eastern edge of the Gulf Stream until it reached the latitude of New York and the longitude of Cape Farewell, when it began a zigzag course that eventually landed it in Sargasso.
Contrary to theory, the derelicts did not pass around the Azore Islands and thence southward past the coast of Africa, but, just before they reach the path of the transatlantic steamers, they are deflected to the southeastward, and make their way slowly to the Graveyard of the Ocean—the Port of Missing Ships.
Coming on deck one morning, after fully five months of loneliness, the solitary woman was surprised to find that during the night, and under the influence of a strong current, the ship she inhabited had penetrated far into the heart of the meadow-like expanse. It had followed one of the large open waterways with which Sargasso abounds. On all sides were to be seen the vessels of the Community. The Sargassons had detected the presence of the new derelict, and, almost simultaneously with the discovery by the passenger that the vessel had reached some sort of a haven, boats were seen putting out in every direction to effect a capture.
The customary law of salvage recognized among wreckers did not obtain, as the system of government was one of absolute communism. All goods were held in common, but the keenest rivalry did exist among the inhabitants of the various vessels regarding their ability as oarsmen, and the Chief Kantoon always awarded the most precious article aboard the captured vessel to the Kantoon of the first crew to reach the side of the derelict.