World's End: A Story in Three Books

by Richard Jefferies

“All agreed to this. Steam was easily got up, and the Lucca’s boilers and her engines were soon working, for the machinery was found to be in perfect order. By the time that this arrangement was perfected, and the ships were, got well under weigh, the short day was nearly over, and with the night came anew the superstitions of the sailors. They murmured, and demurred to working a ship with a whole cargo of dead bodies. They would not move even across the deck alone, and as to going below it required them at once to face the mystery.

“After an hour or so a clamour arose to pitch the dead overboard. What on earth was the use of keeping them? An abominable stench came up from between decks, and many of them could barely stand it. Mr Theodore and the captain begged them to be calm, but it was in vain. They rose en masse, and in a short space of time every one of these dead bodies had been heaved overboard.

“The gale had moderated, and the splash of each corpse as it fell into the water could be distinctly heard on board the yacht ahead. Such conduct cannot be too much deplored, and there was a talk of prosecuting the men for mutiny; but, on the other hand, there appears to be some excuse in the extraordinary and unprecedented horrors of the situation.

“Mr Theodore remained on board the Lucca, doing all that science and patience could do for the sole survivor, who proved to be the third officer. Towards sunrise he rallied considerably, but Mr Theodore never had any hopes, and advised the captain to take a note of his depositions, which was done.

“His name, he said, was William Burrows, of Maine. He could only speak a few sentences at a time, and that very faintly, but the substance of it was that all went well with the Lucca up till early that morning, when first the fog came on. Very soon after the mist settled down, and speed was reduced, there was a commotion below, and a report spread through the ship that three men were dying. In ten minutes half a dozen more were taken in this manner. They complained merely of inability to breathe, and of a deadly weakness, and prayed to be taken on deck. This was done; but then ten or twelve more were affected, and those who went below to assist them up on deck fell victims at once to the same strange disorder. Every one throughout the ship complained of a faint, sickly odour, and no sooner was this inhaled than a deadly lethargy seized upon them, and increased till they fell down and died. He happened to be on deck in the wheelhouse at the time, and saw half a dozen sailors and three of the passengers brought up, but remembered no more, for the sickly smell invaded the deck. He heard a singing in his ears, and the blood seemed to press heavily, as if driven upwards against the roof of his skull. He remembered no more for some hours. Then he, as it were, awoke, and got up on his legs, but again felt the same lethargy, and fell. When the disorder first attacked the ship’s company, the captain talked of stopping the steamer and signalling for assistance; but it appeared to be useless, for the fog was so thick that any flag, or rocket, or light would have been unnoticed at half a cable’s distance. Preparations were made to fire a gun, and the steam blast was ordered, but the engineer was dead, and no one would go below. The captain then descended to go to the engine-room, and was seen no more. Meantime the steamer continued her way. When he got on his legs in the wheelhouse, it was just after the bow of the Lucca had carried away the boom of an unknown sailing ship, and he could feel that she was then going at a tremendous speed. The fog had cleared, and if he had had strength enough he could have made signals, but the deadly sleep came over him again, and he was unconscious till picked up by the crew of the Gloire de Dijon.

“This was all he could tell, and it threw no light upon the cause of the disaster. After he had signed this in a shaky hand—I have seen the original document—he sank rapidly, and, despite of every remedy and stimulant, died before noon. His body was the only one brought into port, and it was interred yesterday in the presence of a vast assembly. A post-mortem examination failed to detect the slightest trace of poison or indication of disease; and all those who assisted in removing the dead bodies on board the Lucca, declare that they presented no known symptoms of any epidemic—for the prevailing belief in New York at first was that some epidemic had broken out—a kind of plague, which destroyed its victims almost as soon as attacked. But for this there seems no foundation whatever. None of the sailors of the yacht caught the epidemic. One or two were unwell for a day or so, but are now well and hearty.

“I think Mr Theodore’s suggestion the best that has been made—and it gradually gains ground with educated men, though the mass cling to the fanciful notion of foul play in some unheard-of way—Mr Theodore thinks that it was caused by the generation of coal-damp, or some similar and fatal gas, in the coal-bunkers of the Lucca; and everything seems to favour this supposition. It is well-known that in cold weather—especially in cold weather accompanied by fog—coal-damp in mines is especially active and fatal. Most of the great explosions which have destroyed hundreds at once have occurred in such a state of the atmosphere.

“Now the fog which came on that fatal morning was peculiarly thick and heavy, and it so happens that the coal in the Lucca’s bunkers came from a colliery where, only a fortnight ago, there was an explosion. The vapour, or gas, or whatever it was that was thus generated, was not the true coal-damp, or it would have been ignited by the furnaces of the boilers, or at the cook’s fires; but in all probability it was something very near akin to it. All the symptoms described by poor Burrows, are those of blood-poisoning combined with suffocation, and such would be the effects of a gas or vapour arising from coal. Fatal effects arising from damp coal in close bunkers are on record; but this is the worst ever heard of.

“It would seem that after the engineer and the crew fell into their fatal slumbers, the steam in the boilers must have reached almost a bursting pressure—the boilers being untended—and the engineer, in falling, had opened the valve to the full, which accounts for the extraordinary speed of the Lucca when pursued by the yacht. Being a very long vessel and sharp in the bows, and going at a very high speed, she would naturally keep nearly a direct course, as there was little wind or sea to interfere with her rudder. So soon as the fires burned out the engines stopped, and the sea rising, she became entirely at the mercy of the waves.

“When Burrows fell a victim he saw nine or ten men on deck lying prone in a fatal sleep—when the Gloire de Dijon sent a boat’s crew on board there were but three bodies on deck; the rest had rolled, or been washed, overboard.