BY JAMES PAYN.
THE WRECK OF THE "JUNO."
Of all the sufferers from shipwrecks, women are the most to be pitied; for children do not know the full extent of their danger until death relieves them, while women usually overestimate it. Their mental agonies are therefore greater than those endured by men, while their physical privations are as great, without the same strength to bear them.
Mrs. Bremner, wife of the Captain of the Juno, bound from Rangoon to Madras, had perhaps as terrible an experience of shipwreck as ever fell to the lot of any of her sex. The ship's crew consisted chiefly of Lascars, with a few Europeans, among whom was John Mackay, the second mate, who tells this story.
Soon after the Juno set sail she sprang a leak, which increased more and more on account of the sand ballast choking the pumps, until on the twelfth evening she settled down. From the sudden jerk all imagined they were going to the bottom, but she only sank low enough to bring the upper deck just under water.
All hands scrambled up the rigging to escape instant destruction, "moving gradually upward as each succeeding wave buried the ship still deeper. The Captain and his wife, Mr. Wade and myself, with a few others, got into the mizzentop. The rest clung about the mizzen-rigging. Mrs. Bremner complained much of cold, having no covering but a couple of thin under-garments, and as I happened to be better clothed than her husband, I pulled off my jacket and gave it her."
On the first occurrence of these calamities such unselfishness is not uncommon; it is the continuous privation which tries poor human nature. But it must be said to John Mackay's credit that he behaved most unselfishly throughout, and stood by this poor woman like a man.
The ship rocked so violently that the people could hardly hold on, and though excessive fatigue brought slumber to some eyes, Mr. Mackay did not snatch a wink. "I could not," he says, "sufficiently compose myself, but listened all night long for a gun, several times imagining I heard one; and whenever I mentioned this to my companions, each one fancied he heard it too." It is noteworthy that the same thing happened throughout the calamity as to seeing land. When one would imagine that he saw it, the others were persuaded that they saw it too.
The prospect at dawn was frightful: a tremendous gale; the sea running mountains high; the upper parts of the hull going to pieces, and the rigging giving way that supported the masts to which seventy-two wretched creatures were clinging.
After three days, during which their numbers were much diminished, the pangs of hunger became intolerable. "I tried to doze away the hours and to induce insensibility. The useless complaining of my fellow-sufferers provoked me, and, instead of sympathizing, I was angry at being disturbed by them." He had read of similar scenes, and his dread of what might be was at first more painful than his actual sufferings. Presently, however, he learned by bitter experience that imagination falls short of reality.