It was only when disturbing the repose of some one less exalted than themselves, or when two of them chanced to come into collision, that a scene would ensue,—in some instances extending to almost every individual on the raft, and ending by one or other of the delirious disputants getting “chucked” into the sea, and having a swim before recovering foothold on the frail embarkation. This the ducked individual would be certain to do. Drunk as he might have been, and maudlin as he might be, his instincts were never so benumbed as to render him regardless of self-preservation. Even from out his haggard eyes still gleamed enough of intelligence to tell that those dark triangular objects, moving in scores around the raft, and cutting the water, so swift and sheer, were the dorsal fins of the dreaded sharks. Each one was a sight that, to a sailor’s eye, even when “blind drunk,” brings habitual dread.
The douche, and the fright attending it, would usually restore his reason to the delirious individual,—or, at all events, would have the effect of restoring tranquillity upon the raft,—soon after to be disturbed by some scene of like, or perhaps more terrible, activity.
The reader, unacquainted with the history of this raft and the people upon it, may require some information concerning them. A few words must suffice for both.
As already stated, at the beginning of our narrative, a raft was constructed out of such timbers as could be detached from the slave-bark Pandora,—after that vessel had caught fire, and previous to her blowing up. Upon this embarkation the slaver’s crew had escaped, leaving her cargo to perish,—some by the explosion, some by drowning, and not a few by the teeth of sharks. The Pandora’s captain, along with five others,—including the mates and carpenter,—had stolen away with the gig. As this was the only boat found available in the fearful crisis of the conflagration, the remainder of the crew had betaken themselves to the large raft, hurriedly constructed for the occasion.
As already related, Snowball and the Portuguese girl were the only individuals on board the Pandora who had remained by the wreck, or rather among its débris. There the Coromantee, by great courage and cunning, had succeeded not only in keeping himself and his protégé afloat, but in establishing a chance for sustaining existence, calculated to last for some days. It is known also that Ben Brace with his protégé, having been informed by the captain’s parting speech that there was a barrel of gunpowder aboard the burning bark, apprehensive of the explosion, had silently constructed a little raft of his own; which, after being launched from under the bows of the slaver, he had brought en rapport with the “big raft,” and thereto attached it. This “tender,” still carrying the English sailor and the boy, had been afterwards cut loose from its larger companion in the dead hour of night, and permitted to fall far into the wake. The reason of this defection was simply to save little William from being eaten up by the ex-crew of the Pandora, then reduced to a famished condition,—if we may use the phrase, screwed up to the standard of anthropophagy.
Since the hour in which the two rafts became separated from each other, the reader is acquainted, in all its minute details, with the history of the lesser: how it joined issue with the embarkation that carried the ex-cook and his protégé; how the union with the latter produced a cross between the two,—afterwards yclept the Catamaran; with all the particulars of the Catamaran’s voyage, up to the time when she became moored alongside the carcass of the cachalot; and for several days after.
During this time, the “big raft” carrying the crew of tin burnt bark,—being out of sight, may also have escaped from the reader’s mind. Both it and its occupants were still in existence. Not all of them, it is true, but the greater number; and among these, the most prominent in strength of body, energy of mind; and wickedness of disposition.
It is scarce necessary to say, that the raft now introduced as lying upon the ocean some twenty miles from the dead cachalot was that which some days before had parted from the Pandora, or that the fiendish forms that occupied it were the remnant of the Pandora’s crew.
These were not all there: nearly a score of them were absent. The absence of the captain, with five others who had accompanied him in his gig, has been explained. The ex-cook, the English sailor and sailor-boy, with the cabin passenger, Lilly Lalee, have also been accounted for; but there were several others aboard the big raft, on its first starting “to sea,” that were no longer to be seen amidst the crowd still occupying this ungainly embarkation. Half a dozen,—perhaps more,—seemed to be missing. Their absence might have appeared mysterious, to anyone who had not been kept “posted” up in the particulars of the ill-directed cruise through which the raft had been passing; though the skeleton above described, and the dissevered tibia scattered around, might have given a clew to their disappearance,—at least, to anyone initiated into the shifts and extremities of starvation.