An Ocean Tragedy

by William Clark Russell

I seated myself by Finn’s side. ‘Keep up your heart,’ said I. ‘You are not hurt, I trust?’

‘Something struck me here,’ said he, putting his hand to his left breast, ‘whilst I was swimming, and it makes me feel a bit short-winded. But it isn’t that what hurts me, Mr. Monson. It’s the thoughts of them who’ve gone, and the sight of what was yesterday, sir, the sweetest craft afloat. Who’d have thought she’d have crumbled up so fast? reg’larly broke her back and gone into staves aft! She was staunch, but only as a pleasure wessel is.’

I asked Cutbill to examine the people who were lying on what I must call the beach, and report if there was any life in them.

‘My cousin is drowned,’ I said to Finn.

‘Oh, blessed God!’ he answered. ‘Cutbill knows; he couldn’t get him out of his berth, I allow!’

‘Ay, that was it,’ I said, ‘but this is no time for grieving for the dead, Finn. Regrets are idle. How are we who are spared to save our lives? Are the yacht’s boats all gone?’

I ran my eye along the beach and over the sea, but nothing resembling a boat was visible. The sailor that had stood up with Finn when I had first caught sight of them had seated himself a little distance away, Lascar fashion, and I noticed him at that moment dip his forefinger into a hole close beside him, suck it and then drink by lifting water in the palm of his hand. I called to him, ‘Is it fresh?’

‘Pretty nigh, sir,’ he answered.

There was such another little hole near me half full of water, as indeed was every well or aperture of the kind that I saw. I dipped as the sailor had and found the water slightly, but only very slightly, brackish. This I concluded was owing to the overwhelming weight of rain that had followed the upheaval of this island overflowing the hollows and holes in it so abundantly as to drown the salt water, with which, of course, the cavities had been filled when this head of lava had been forced to the surface. I bade Finn dip his hand and taste, and told him that our first step must be to hit upon some means of storing a good supply before the heat should dry up the water.

There were two sailors lying close together a few yards from where the seaman had squatted himself, and I called to him to know if they were alive. He answered ‘Yes,’ and shouted to them, on which they turned their heads, and one of them languidly rose to his elbows, the other lay still.