Heart of Oak: A Three-Stranded Yarn, vol. 2.

by William Clark Russell

My first look was for those whom the boatswain Wall had told us the crew left behind them when they abandoned the hull. Nobody was here. An unlighted lamp swung violently over the table. I beheld a dull gleam of looking-glasses upon the ship's side, and thought in the glance I cast round that I could make out the equipment of a small, comfortable state cabin. I quickly spied a rack half circling the trunk of the mizzenmast; in it were some decanters; three were half full of red and yellow wine. I put the mouth of one to my lips and drank heartily of its contents, but whether it was claret or sherry I could not say; excessive thirst seemed to have robbed my palate of the power of tasting. I then went straight to the first cabin my eye rested upon, intending to go the rounds for the pantry; but this cabin proved to be the pantry, where, after a short hunt, I found cheese, biscuit, preserved meat, and jams. I fell to wolfishly, breaking off only to fetch another decanter of the wine from the cabin.

And now having eaten with a dangerous heartiness, and drank as much as would have brimmed two tumblers, I stepped into the cabin, refreshed and warm, a new man, almost my old self again, needing little more to perfectly comfort me than a shift of clothes, which might be obtained by seeking. But first I stood still, holding by the table to listen. I heard nothing but the sounds of the labouring of the hull. Had the captain and the two women been taken off the wreck? I should have believed so but for having found the companion-doors closed and glazed; ice could not have collected to the thickness I had found it had people been coming and going by the companion-way. And yet it is true they might have been taken off, and before going some one of the rescuing party had closed the companion-door with a kick or a thrust as he stepped on deck.

I saw no fire in the stove; the lamp was out; it did not seem as if there were human life in the hull. I went to a door on the starboard side, the next to or second door past the pantry, and entered a berth. I could scarcely see. The porthole was submerged every other moment and the sight blinded with a sudden plunge of foam-thick twilight. After gazing awhile I made out that this berth had been occupied by the captain and his wife. I observed a quantity of male and female apparel hanging from a row of pegs running along the bulk-head; also I made out two bunks, a table with certain navigating appliances upon it, a couple of chronometer cases on a shelf, and sundry other matters not worth cataloguing. I lifted a locker, and after groping came across some flannel garments and under-linen. If the captain were aboard I guessed that in any case he would give me leave to help myself, so, after feeling over the clothes upon the bulk-head, I shifted to the frozen flesh of me.

Scarcely was I warmly and dryly clothed, when so heavy a drowsiness came upon my eyelids that I could instantly have sunk upon the deck in a sound sleep. But first I was resolved to ascertain the condition of the hull; likewise whilst it was daylight to see if there were any signs of the 'Planter,' and if the weather gave me any promise of her. The idea of falling into a trance-like sleep which might run into hours, from which, for all I could tell as things stood, I should be awakened by finding myself strangling in a cabin full of water, and the hull already fathoms under, put such a fear and horror into my spirits as enabled me to thrust back into my brain the heavy, stupefying weight of slumber, that was making my eyes ache as though the balls of vision had been wrung and unseated. I shook my body as a dog does when fresh from the water, and beat my arms upon my breast with all my strength; then, with a wild yawn, strode into the stateroom and went up the steps.

The first thing I saw was the boat I had gained the wreck in: she was flinging and leaping upon the seas about a hundred fathoms off on the port quarter; being light and released she had blown away quickly. Every time a surge forked her on high the pouring blast smote and swirled her further yet to leeward. This would go on till she filled. I hardly took thought of her, abhorring her as I did as the theatre of that drama of anguish and hopelessness I had been forced to act in during the long black hours of the past night: and yet I very well understood that she had been bound to go adrift, as I had taken but a slippery turn with the painter round the chain plate at the instant when the hull brought her main chains crushing down upon me for that spring by which I had saved my life.

I crossed to the port bulwarks to hold on by: t'other side was full of ugly yawns and rents, a dangerous, ragged wreckage of bulwark through which down the ice-hard slant a man would shoot, with a sudden roll, to his death. The galley was standing: all the boats were gone: the wheel and binnacle remained, and the apparatus of the helm looked sound. The decks were littered with frozen gear. Nothing showed of the main and mizzen masts but a barbed block, scarce a foot high above the mast-coats. But the stump of the foremast rose to perhaps twelve feet. The pumps were frozen: the sounding rod lay close to, but I could do nothing with it. Yet, as an old hand, I could feel the life of a ship in my feet, and I was sure, by the hull's buoyant jumps, her cork-like recovery from the headlong dives, and the loneliness of her rolls that there was nothing in the water she had drained in so far to make me uneasy.

Cheered by this conviction, I pushed forwards, clawing along by the pins in the rail, by whatever else came to my hand, till I was abreast of the galley, whose port sliding-door lay half open, and going to it and looking in, there on the deck I saw lying on her back the body of a woman. I peered close, the light being weak. The body was warmly but plainly clothed; the colour of the face fresh as though she slept. I should not have guessed her dead by her looks: it was her lying there that made me know it. She seemed a woman of between forty and forty-five, flat of face, treble-chinned, and she showed as a person that had been fat and heavy in life.

The sight startled me: I had not thought to find anything dead. Had she been the wife of the captain? Where was he? And where the young lady that had sailed as passenger with them? Were they both lying frozen in other parts of the vessel? But there yet remained two or three cabins below to look into.

I came out of the galley shocked and low-spirited, and, still pushing forward, came to the forecastle and called down the hatch. I got no answer and descended. Here I found a number of hammocks, a few sea chests, and some odds and ends of seamen's apparel scattered about the deck. The forecastle lamp swung black under its grimy beam. I could scarcely see. Water—though no depth of it—seethed over the planks as the vessel pitched and rolled: this water I reckoned had tumbled down the forecastle hatch, and when I returned on deck I drew the slide of the scuttle over.