An Ocean Tragedy

by William Clark Russell

‘Let’s get supper,’ said I. ‘There should be starlight enough anon, I think, Finn, to enable us to fill a couple of the empty casks with the sweetest of the water that we can find in those holes.

‘It can be managed, I dorn’t doubt,’ said he.

‘These here chests, capt’n,’ exclaimed Cutbill, indicating the three sailors’ boxes that we had hoisted aboard, ‘belonged to O’Connor, Blake, and Tom Wilkinson. How do we stand as consarns our meddling with ’em?’

‘How d’ye suppose, William?’ answered Finn. ‘Use ’em, man, use ’em.’

‘Hain’t the dead got no rights?’ inquired Dowling.

‘Ay, where there’s law, mate,’ responded Finn, with a half-grin at me; ‘but there’s no law on the top crust of an airthquake, and I allow that whatever may come to us in such a place is ourn to do what we like with.’

‘Oh, certainly,’ I cried; ‘who the deuce wants to discuss the subject of law and dead men’s rights here? Overhaul those chests, Dowling, and use whatever you want that you may find in them.’

But one saw the mariner’s prejudices in the way in which the sailors opened and inspected the contents of the boxes. Had they had the handling of a portmanteau of mine or a trunk belonging to Wilfrid they might not have shown themselves so sensitive; but these were the chests of dead shipmates and messmates, of men they had gone aloft with, eaten and drank with, skylarked and enjoyed sailors’ pleasure with, and I saw they felt that they were doing a sort of violence to forecastle traditions by handling the vanished Jacks’ little property without the sort of right to do so which on board ship they would have obtained by a sale of articles at the mast. However, they found tobacco and pipes, which went far towards reconciling them towards Finn’s theory of appropriation. They also met with shoes, which were an unspeakable comfort to Dowling and Head, who were barefooted, and in torture with every step they took from the sharp edges and points of shells. There were rude articles of clothing too, which, when dried, would give the men a shift.

Well, we got supper, and when the meal was ended, there being yet a little space of daylight in the west, Cutbill, Dowling, and Head went to the beach to roll empty water-casks near to the galleon for filling with such water as we could find that was least brackish, and to drag clear of the wash of the sea any further casks and cases of provisions, wine, and the like, which they might chance to come across. Johnson continued too feeble to be of use. We had three mattresses already as dry as if they had never touched salt water, and one of them I unrolled and made the poor creature lie upon it. Then Finn and I went about to prepare for the night whilst we could still see. We stretched the gaff foresail over the plants and shrubs, placed the other two mattresses on one side of it, covering them with a portion of the sail-cloth that the ladies might have clean couches, and made a roll of the sail at the head of these mattresses to serve as a bolster. Tough as the growth of plants on the deck was, stiff as steel as I had thought at first, they proved brittle for the most part to rough usage, and were speedily broken by our tramping and stamping so as to form a sort of mattress under the sail, and we were grateful enough when by-and-by we came to lie down for the intervention of these petals and leaves and bulbs between our bones and the flint-like surface of the shells, as barbed and jagged as though formed of scissors and thumbscrews.