XIX
OF A GOOD PLAN THAT WENT WRONG WITH ME
For a while I was so stirred by the enthusiasm which my discovery aroused in me that I had no room in my mind for any other thoughts. But at last, as I still stood pondering in the Wasp's cabin, I became aware that the daylight was fading into darkness; and as I realized what that meant for me my thoughts came back suddenly to myself, and then all my enthusiasm ebbed away.
I came out upon the deck again, but leaving everything as I had found it—my momentary impulse to lift the flag having vanished as I felt how fit it was that this dead battle-captain should rest on undisturbed where his men had laid him beneath the colors that he had died for; and I was glad to find when I got into the open that a good deal of daylight still remained. But it was so far gone, and was waning so rapidly, that I saw that I had little chance of getting back to the Hurst Castle before nightfall; and that the most that I could hope for was to make a start in the right direction—and perhaps to find a wreck to sleep on that had food and water aboard of it, and thence take up my search again the next day.
Yet the dread was strong upon me, as I looked around upon the wrecks among which the Wasp was bedded, that I might not only be unable to find the Hurst Castle again, but ever to find my way across that tangle to the outer edges of it—where only was it possible that ships on which were provisions fit for eating would be found. The very fact that the Wasp had settled into her position more than fourscore years back made it certain that she was deep in the labyrinth; and the strange old-fashioned look of the craft surrounding her showed me that I should have to go far before finding a vessel wrecked in recent times.
But these disheartening thoughts I crushed down as well as I could, yet not making much of it; and as trying to go back by the way that I had come to the Wasp would not serve any good purpose—even supposing that I could have managed it, which was not likely—I went on beyond her on a new course: taking a longish jump from her quarter-rail and landing on the deck of a clumsy little ill-shapen brig, with a high-built square stern and a high-built bow that was pretty nearly square too. She was Dutch, I fancy, and a merchant vessel; but she carried a little battery of brass six-pounders, and had also a half dozen pederaros set along her rail. And by her carrying these old-fashioned swivel-guns—which proved that she had got her armament not much later than the middle of the last century—and by the general look of her, I knew that she was an older vessel even than the Wasp.
This observation, and the reflection growing out of it that the deeper I went into the Sargasso Sea the older must be the craft bedded in it—since that great dead fleet is recruited constantly by new wrecks drifting in upon its outer edges from all ways seaward—put into my head what seemed to me to be a very reasonable plan for finding my way back to the Hurst Castle again; or, at least, to some other newly come in hulk on which there would be fresh water and sound food. And this was to shape my course by considering attentively the look of each wreck that I came aboard of, and the look of those surrounding it, and by then going forward to whichever one of them seemed to be of the most modern build.
As the first step in carrying out my plan—and it seemed to be such a good plan that I felt almost light-hearted over it—I got up on the rail of the old brig and jumped back to the less-old Wasp again: landing in her main-channels, and thence easily boarding her by scrambling up what was left of the chains. But in taking my next step I had no choice in the matter, as only one other vessel was in touch with the sloop—a heavily-built little schooner that had the look of being quite as old as the brig which I had just left. And her age was so evident as I came aboard of her—having crossed the deck of the Wasp hastily, picking my way among the scattered bones—that of a sudden my faith in my fine plan for getting out of the tangle began to wane.
In a general way, of course, the conclusion which I had arrived at was a sound one. Broadly speaking, it was certain that could I pass in a straight line from the centre to the circumference of that vast assemblage of wrecks I constantly would find vessels of newer build; and so at last, upon the outermost fringe, would come to the wrecks of ships belonging to my own day. But one weak point in my calculations was my inability to hold to a straight line, or to anything like one—because I had to advance from one wreck to another as they happened to touch or to be within jumping distance of each other, and therefore went crookedly upon my course and often fairly had to double on it. And another weak point was that the sea in its tempests recognizes no order of seniority, but destroys in the same breath of storm ships just beginning their lives upon it and ships which have withstood its ragings for a hundred years: so that I very well might find—as I actually did find in the case of the Wasp—a comparatively modern-built vessel lying hemmed in by ancient craft, survivals of obsolete types, which had lingered so long upon the ocean that in their lives as in their deaths they merged and blended the present and the past.
Thus a check was put upon my plan at the very outset; yet in a stolid sort of way—knowing that to give it up entirely would be to bring despair upon me, for I could not think of a better one—I tried still to hold by it: going on from the clumsy little old schooner to that one of two vessels lying beyond her which I fancied, though both of them belonged to a long past period, was the more modern-looking in her build. And so I continued to go onward over a dozen craft of one sort or another, holding by my rule—or trying to believe that I was holding by it, for all of the wrecks which I crossed were of an antique type—and now and then being left with no chance for choosing by finding open to me only a single way. And all this while the daylight was leaving me—the sun having gone down a ruddy globe beyond the forest of wrecks westward, and heavy purple shadows having begun to close down upon me through the low-hanging haze.