Alone on a Wide Wide Sea, Vol. 1 (of 3)

by William Clark Russell

I put my hand to my hair and exclaimed, ‘Was I without covering to my head when you found me?’

‘No. You wore a straw hat. It was crushed by the fall of the mast. When the sailors raised you to bring you on board, the hat fell off, and they left it in the boat. One of the men in the bad light saw a dark mark upon the straw, and he said it might be blood.’

‘It was a straw hat?’ said I. ‘A straw hat?’ and I mused until I began to think myself into one of those black and frightful conflicts of mind which had before prostrated me with their unspeakable anguish. I checked the horrible internal struggle by forcing myself to speak, and so diverting my thoughts.

‘What is there that I can wear to protect my head?’

The mate Hénin, who continued to stare at me with fiery eyes, said, ‘What does the lady say?’ Alphonse explained. ‘Wait,’ cried Hénin fiercely, and, putting down his glass and biscuit, he went to the ring in the forward wall of the cabin, slided the door open, and disappeared. In a minute he returned with a long cloak hanging over his arm. He ran his eye over my figure, then held up the cloak to compute its size. It was a dark green cloak, of a very monkish pattern; it had a large hood, and was comfortably lined with some sort of delicate fur.

‘Let the lady wear this,’ exclaimed the man. ‘It is almost new, and therefore clean. She is welcome to it,’ and he flung it into the outstretched hands of Alphonse, and, with a fierce countenance, resumed his seat.

I put on the cloak; it was loose, and completely enveloped me. I then drew the hood over my head, and, assisted by the young Frenchman, painfully ascended the steep steps and gained the deck. The first sweep of the fresh sunlit wind almost overpowered me; I reeled and closed my eyes, but this swooning sensation speedily passed.

The huge fat figure of Captain Regnier stood near the wheel; Alphonse called to him to give me the support of his arm until the chair was brought on deck. After the comparative gloom of the cabin the brilliant morning sunshine nearly blinded me, and for some while I was forced to keep my eyes half closed. In a few moments Alphonse came up the stairs with the arm-chair, which he placed in the sunshine, but in a part of the deck that was sheltered from the wind by the box or hood that was fitted over the little hatch that conducted to the cabin. And now, my sight having grown used to the dazzle, I looked about me.

I found myself on the deck of a small vessel, whose shape resembled that of a box rather than that of a ship. She had two masts, across which were stretched sheets of patched and discoloured canvas. On the top of the hinder mast was a small red streamer, surmounted by a little brass ship that shone like a ray of white fire in the air as it pointed with its red streamer attached directly in the path along which the brig was being steered. The planks of the deck were dark, and every object that the eye rested upon suggested dirt and neglect. I remarked a boat painted white standing upside down near a little wooden house like a sentry-box, whose roof was pierced by a chimney from which a trail of dark smoke was blowing over the bows. I gazed earnestly at that boat; it seemed a familiar object to me; all else was strange—the tall masts, the wide-spread sails, the straight black lines of rigging, the dingy green paint of the bulwarks, the twenty details of rope hanging in coils, of pumps, of skylight, and I know not what else, for how should a woman be able to give names to the strange furniture of the sea? All else was new. I searched my dark mind, and the picture of this brig sailing along with the wind blowing over her stern into her dingy wings was as novel as though she were the only vessel in the world, and I was beholding her for the first time.