Even my cat seemed to feel the misery of that great loneliness and lost so much of his cheerfulness that he got to be but a dull companion for me; though likely enough what ailed him was the reflex of my own poor spirits, made low by my constant bodily weariness, and had I shown any liveliness he would have been lively too. But I was too tired to think much about him—or about anything else—as day after day I stood in the bow of the boat working my saw up and down with a deadly dull monotony: that had no break save when I stopped to rest a little my aching body, or to have a tussle with a bit of wreckage that barred my passage, or to stoke myself with food, or to put coal beneath my boiler, or to lie down at night with every one of my bones and muscles heavy with a dull pain.
And all the sound that there was in that still misty solitude was the puffing of my engine, and the wheel churning in the water, and the sharp hiss of the saw as it severed the matted fibres, and the crunching and rustling that the boat made as it went onward with a leaden slowness through the weed.
XXXIX
WHY MY CAT CALLED OUT TO ME
I had thought that I had struck the bed-rock of misery when I was wandering in the dead depths of the wreck-pack, with the conviction strong upon me that in a little while I would be dead there too. But as I look back upon that long suffering of lonely sorrow I think now that the worst of it came to me after I had left the wreck-pack behind. In that last round that I fought with misfortune the strength of my body was exhausted so completely that it could give no support to my spirit; and as the days went on and on—always with the same weed-covered sea around me and the same soft golden mist over me, and I always working wearily but with the stolid steadiness of a machine—so deadening a numbness took hold of me that I seemed to myself like some far-away strange person—yet one with whom I had a direct connection, and must needs sorrow for and sympathize with—struggling interminably through the dull jading mazes of a night-mare dream.
Once only was I aroused from this stupor of spirit that went with my vigorous yet apathetic bodily action. Just at sunset one evening I sighted a vessel of some sort far ahead of me—a black mass looming uncertainly against the rich glow of crimson that filled the west—and for some reason or another I took into my head the fancy that I was nearing open water and that this was not a wreck but a living ship on board of which I would find living men: and at the thought of meeting with live men again I fairly cried with joy. Then darkness fell and shut her out from me; leaving me so eager that I could not sleep for thinking of her, and almost tempting me to press on through the night that I might be close up to her by dawn. But when in the first faint grey light of early morning I made her out again, and saw that she was in just the same position and at just the same distance ahead of me, I was almost as sorry as I would have been had she vanished; for I knew that had she been a living ship in that long night-time she would have sailed away. And by noon, being then close upon her, I could see that she was floating bottom upwards: and so knew certainly that she was only a dead wreck drifting in slowly to take her place among the dead wrecks which I had left behind me; and beyond her, instead of open water, I saw only the weed—covered ocean stretching onward unbroken until it was lost in the golden haze.
Even then, though, I had a foolish hope that there might be living men clinging to her, and I edged my boat off its course a little so that I might run close under her stern. But no one showed on her hull as I neared her, and only my own voice broke the heavy silence as I crazily hailed her again and again. And then I fell into a dull rage with her, so weary was I of my loneliness and so bitter was my disappointment at finding her deserted—until suddenly a very different train of emotions was aroused in me as I made out slowly the weathered inverted lettering on her up-tilting stern, and so read her name there: Golden Hind!
Like a flash I had before me clearly all the details of my last moments aboard of her: my quick sharp words with Captain Luke, my step backward with my arms up as he and the mate pressed upon me, the smasher that I got in on the mate's jaw, the crack on my own head that stunned me—and then my revival of consciousness as I found myself adrift in the ocean and saw the brig sailing away. And while these thoughts crowded upon me my boat went onward through the weed slowly—and presently I had again parted company with the Golden Hind, and this time for good and all.
After that break in it my dull despairing weariness settled down upon me again—as the heavy days drifted past me and I pressed steadily on, and on, and on. How time went I do not know. I could keep no track of days which always were the same. But I must have been on my voyage for nearly a month when I fell in with the Golden Hind: as I know because a little while after passing her I used the last of the coal that was on the raft and cast it off—and my calculation at starting had been that the coal aboard the raft would last me for about thirty days.
Getting rid of the raft was a good thing for me in one way, for when the boat was relieved from that heavy mass dragging through the weed after her she went almost twice as fast. But in another way it was a bad thing for me, for it left me with only what coal I had on the boat herself and, so far as I could judge from my surroundings, I was no nearer to being over the wall of my prison than I was on that first morning when I put off from the Ville de Saint Remy. Still the weed stretched away endlessly on all sides of me, and still the golden mist ceaselessly hung over me—only it did seem to me, though I did not trust myself to play much with this hopeful fancy, that the mist was a good deal thinner than it had been during the earlier part of my voyage.