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

by William Clark Russell

Then I could hear the voice of Captain Regnier roaring in the distance as though he had put his head into the hatchway and was crying to his nephew through it.

‘Oh, Alphonse, release me, save me, I cannot open the door!’ I shrieked.

He answered in a voice of agony, but what he said I could not catch, and this was followed by a sound of furious wrestling outside. Another wild and frantic cry from Captain Regnier rang through the cabin, and now the words uttered at the top of his powerful voice reached me. They were, ‘If you do not come instantly we must leave you behind to perish.’ Again I caught a noise of desperate wrestling. It ceased.

‘Oh, Alphonse, do not leave me!’ I screamed. ‘Do not leave me to be drowned in this dreadful berth!’ and I strained my ears but I heard nothing to tell me that the young Frenchman was outside; nevertheless I stood listening, supporting my tottering and swaying figure by holding to the handle of the door, for though I had heard his uncle call to him to hasten on deck or he would be left to perish, I could not believe that he would leave me to drown—that Alphonse would abandon me to a dreadful fate though all the others should quit the brig. I thought to myself, he has rushed on deck to remonstrate with Captain Regnier; he is now imploring his uncle and the others to descend and help him to remove the cask and liberate me, for I had heard him exclaim that the door was blocked by a cask, and I recollected that one immense cask or barrel had stood under the ladder which conducted to the deck; and remembering this I supposed that when the brig had violently leaned over, the cask had torn itself from its fastenings and been hurled by the slant of the deck against the door of my berth, where it lay jammed, immovably holding the door.

I stood listening, I say, but the minutes passed and I heard nothing—nothing, I mean, that resembled a human voice or the movements of men; otherwise there was no lack of sounds—horrible, dismal, affrighting noises, a ceaseless thumping as of wreckage pounding against the sides of the brig, a muffled, most melancholy whistling and wailing of wind, a constant rattle and roar of cargo in the hold, a frequent shock of sea smiting the window of my cabin and filling the air with a sharp hissing and boiling, as of the foot of a great cataract.

But when, after waiting and listening, I began to understand that Alphonse had fled with the rest, that there was nobody in the brig to come to my assistance, that I was imprisoned in a cell from which I could not break out and which might be slowly settling under water even as I stood, then was I maddened by an agony of fear and horror. I uttered shriek after shriek; I dashed at the door with my shoulder; I wept, and cowering to the chair sank upon it; then I shrieked again, and falling on my knees upon the chair I buried my face and lay motionless.

I lay motionless, and after many minutes had passed I lifted up my head and gazed round the cabin, and a feeling of calmness suddenly settled upon my spirits. Whence came that feeling of calmness? Not surely from any faint hope that my life would yet be preserved, because I had not the least doubt that the vessel was sinking and that the final plunge must happen at the next moment or the next. The feeling of calmness came from the Spirit of God. From what other source could it proceed? But it never occurred to me that the Spirit of God was present in that little berth; it never occurred to me to pray to Him for succour, or, seeing that I was convinced I was a dying woman, to pray to Him to make my last struggles easy and to forgive me for my past, whatever it might hold—for hidden as that past was, it was human, and must therefore need forgiveness. It could not occur to me to pray, because I was without memory and my mind was unable to suggest the thought of God. But as though I had prayed and as though my prayer had been answered my mind grew tranquil.

I arose and seated myself afresh in the chair, and clasping my hands and leaning back my head I fixed my eyes on the lamp for the comfort of the companionship of the little flame in it. My intelligence was horribly active, but the singular tranquillity within me was not to be disturbed by the most dreadful of the imaginations which arose. I remember that I calmly figured the moment when the brig would sink, and I imagined a noise of thunder as the water roared in through the hatchways; and then I had a fancy of the water taking a long while to drain into the stoutly-enclosed berth, and of my sitting and watching the flood slowly rising, washing in foam from side to side to the rolling of the brig, but steadily rising nevertheless. All this I figured, and many more frightful pictures passed before my inner vision. Yet I continued calm and sat waiting for my end, supported by a strength that had come to me without a prayer.

The hours passed and the brig still lived, and still did I remain seated awaiting the moment that I believed inevitable. No stupor was upon me: I took heed of what was passing. I remarked that the brig rolled more gently, that the seas lashed my cabin windows less spitefully, that the dreary pounding as of wreckage smiting the side penetrated the fabric with a more softened note.

At last, turning my eyes in the direction of the window, I observed that the gleaming ebony of it had changed into a faint green, and it glimmered now as it had glimmered on that morning when I first opened my eyes on board the brig. I knew that the storm had broken; but if the vessel had been deserted by her crew, what would daylight signify to me, who was locked up in a little berth, the sole living creature on board a wreck—as I knew the brig to be—which passing vessels would glance at without visiting, and which could not much longer remain afloat?