In the Sargasso Sea / A Novel

by Thomas A. Janvier

But the stock of stores had been a big one, and I saw that I was safe enough against starvation if only a part of what was left still were sound—and that uncertainty I settled in no time by picking up a hatchet that was lying among the broken boxes and splitting open the first tin on which I laid my hands. The tin had beans in it, and when I cracked it open that way more than half of them went flying over the floor; and they looked so good, those blessed beans, that without stopping to smell at them critically, or otherwise to test their soundness, I fell to feeding myself out of the open tin with my hand—and never stopped until all that remained of them were in my inside. I don't suppose that they were the better for having lain there so long, but they certainly were not much the worse for it—as I proved more conclusively, having by that time taken off the sharp edge of my hunger, by eating a part of another tin of them and finding them very good indeed. After that I opened a tin of meat—but on the instant that the hatchet split into it there came bouncing out such a dreadful smell that I had to rush on deck in a hurry with it and heave it over the side.

But even without the meat my food supply was secure to me for a good while onward, there being no less than ten boxes with two dozen tins of beans in each of them—quite enough to keep life in me for more than half a year. I rummaged through the place thoroughly, but found nothing more that was fit to eat there. Some boxes of biscuit and a barrel of flour had gone musty until they fairly were rotten; and all the other things that I came across were spoiled utterly by damp and mould. As for the stores for the crew, when I went forward to have a look at them, they were spoiled too—the flour and biscuit rotten, and the pickled meat a mouldy mass of tough fibre encrusted thickly with salt.

One other thing I did find in the captain's pantry that was as good, save for the mould that coated the outside of it, as when it came aboard—and because of its excellent condition was all the more tantalizing. This was a case of plug tobacco—a bit of which shredded and filled into one of the pipes that I found with it, could I have got it lighted, would have made me for the moment almost a happy man. But as I could think of no way of lighting it I was worse off than if I had not found it at all.

Having made my tour of inspection and taken a general inventory of my new possessions, I came on deck again and seated myself on the roof of the cabin that I might do some quiet thinking about what should be my next move; for I realized that only by a stroke of rare good fortune had I come upon this supply of food far away from, the coast of my continent, and that should I leave it and keep on the course northward that I had set for myself I very likely might starve before another such store fell in my way. And yet, on the other hand, to stay on where I was merely because I was able to keep alive there—with no outlook of hope to stay me—was but making a bid for that madness which comes of despair.

As to carrying any great quantity of food on with me, it was a sheer impossibility. The tins of beans weighed each of them more than five pounds, and a score of them would make as much of a load as I well could carry on level ground—and far more of a load than I could manage in the scramble that was before me if I decided to go on. Indeed, I had found my two bottles of water a serious inconvenience; and yet I would have them to carry also, and the big compass too. As to water, however, since the shower of the morning. I felt less anxiety: and the event proved that my confidence in the rainfall was justified—for the showers came regularly a little after dawn, and only once or twice after that first sharp experience did I feel more than passing pain from thirst.

I sat there on the roof of the cabin for a good part of the morning cogitating the matter; and in the end I could think of no better plan than one which promised certainly a world of hard labor, and only promised uncertainly to serve my turn. This was to stick to my project of going steadily northward—carrying with me as much food as I could stagger under—until I came again to the outer edge of the wreck—pack; but to safeguard my return to the barque, should my food give out before my journey was accomplished, by blazing my path: that is to say, by making a mark on each wreck that I crossed so that I could retrace my steps easily and without fear of losing my way. What I would gain in the end I did not try very clearly to tell myself—having only a vague feeling that in getting again to the coast of my great dead continent I would be that much the nearer to the living world once more; and having a clearer feeling that only by sticking at some sort of hard work that had a little hopefulness in it could I save myself from going mad. And I cannot but think now, looking back at it, that a touch of madness already was upon me; for no man ever set himself to a crazier undertaking than that to which I set myself then.

XXIII

HOW I STARTED ON A JOURNEY DUE NORTH

The morning was well spent by the time that I had made my mind up, and I was growing hungry again. I made a good meal on what was left in the second tin of beans that I had opened for my breakfast; and when I was done I tried to get a light for my pipe by rubbing bits of wood together, but made nothing of it at all. I had read about castaways on desert islands getting fire that way—but they went at it with dry wood, I fancy, and in my mist-sodden desert all the wood was soaked with damp.

For that afternoon I decided to go forward only as far as I could fetch it to be back on board the barque again by sunset, taking with me as many tins of beans as I could carry and leaving them where I made my turn: by which arrangement I would save the carriage of my supper and my breakfast, and would have a little store of victuals to fall back upon—when I should be fairly started on my journey—without coming all the way again to the barque.