An Ocean Tragedy

by William Clark Russell

‘Weeds and plants stretched themselves across, maybe,’ said I, ‘and made a platform for them.’

We returned to the quarter-deck but waited awhile before entering the cabin, that the atmosphere might have time to sweeten. Thickly as the upper works of the vessel were coated I suspected that they would be sieve-like in some places from the circumstance of our finding no water in the cabin. I put my head into the door, fetched a breath, and finding nothing noxious in the atmosphere, exclaimed, ‘We may enter now with safety, I believe.’ The interior lay very clearly revealed. A sunbeam shone through the deck aperture, and the cold, drowned, amazing interior lay bathed in a delicate silver haze of the morning light. I felt a deeper awe as I stood looking about me than any vault in which the dead had been lying for centuries could have inspired. The hue of the walls was that of ashes. It was the ancient living-room of the ship and went the whole width of her, and in length ran from the front of the deck through which we had broken our way to the moulding of the castle-like pink-shaped stern, the planks sloping with a considerable spring or rise. It had been a spacious sea-chamber in its day. There were here and there incrustations in patches of limpet-like shells upon the sides and upper deck; under foot was a deal of sand with dead weeds, no hint of the vegetation that showed without. There were fragments of wreckage here and there which I took to be the remains of the furniture of the place; it had mostly washed aft, as though the vessel had settled by the stern.

Up in a corner on the port side that lay somewhat darksome, on a line with the door, were a couple of skeletons with their arms round each other’s neck. They seemed to stand erect, but in fact they rested with a slight inclination against the scantling of the cabin front. Some slender remains of apparel clung to the ribs and shoulder-bones, and a small scattering of like fragments lay at their feet, as though shaken to the deck with the jarring of the fabric by the volcanic stroke that had uphove her.

‘Hearts my life,’ murmured Finn. ‘What a hobject to come across! Why, they’ve been men!’

‘A man and a woman more like,’ said Cutbill, ‘a-taking a last farewell as the ship goes down.’

‘May I come in, Charles?’ exclaimed Laura, putting her head into the door.

She advanced as she spoke, but her eye instantly caught the embracing skeletons. She stopped dead and recoiled, and stood staring as if fascinated.

‘Not the fittest sight in the world for you, Laura,’ said I, taking her hand to lead her forth.

‘They were living beings once, Charles!’ she exclaimed, drawing a deep breath, and slightly resisting my gentle drawing of her to the door.

‘Ay, red hearts beat in them, passions thrilled through them, and love would still seem with them. What were they? Husband and wife—father and daughter—or sweethearts going to their grave in an embrace?’