John Holdsworth, Chief Mate

by William Clark Russell

“Where have I been? What has happened?” he cried.

He fixed his eyes on the dead woman, his glance reverted to the boy, and then consciousness fully awoke. He rose wearily to his feet, and sank with a heavy sigh near Johnson, at whom he looked, scarcely knowing whether the man slept or was dead.

The boy begged for water.

“Water!” exclaimed Holdsworth in a choking voice; “there is none.”

But there was biscuit, and he turned to the locker to give him one, thinking that the food might relieve the child’s thirst. He stretched out his arm to lift the seat of the locker and found the locker filled with salt water. With a cry of despair he dragged out a bag streaming with wet, and thrusting his hand into it found its contents soaked into pulp. The other bag was in the same condition; and to make matters worse, of the three bottles of rum that had been in the locker, one only was left; the other two were cracked and empty.

It was easy to understand how this had happened. A sea breaking over the boat’s stern could not have filled the locker; the water which the boat had shipped over her bows had come rushing aft when the boat mounted the next wave, and filling the stern-sheets, raised the seat that formed the lid of the locker, and poured over the biscuit, at the same time forcing the bottles against each other and breaking them.

“Do you see what has happened?” exclaimed Holdsworth, grasping Johnson’s arm. The man looked over his shoulder, shook his head, and muttered, “We’re doomed to die. There’s no hope, master.”

What was to be done? Holdsworth thought that if the biscuits could be dried in the sun they might be fit to eat, and endeavoured to spread some of them along the thwart; but the stuff squeezed up in his hand like thick paste. He tasted a little and found it no better than salt, and he flung the bag down with a groan that seemed to express the extinction of his last faint hope.

But there was a bottle of rum left. He prised out the cork with the blade of his knife, and gave a spoonful to the boy diluted with two or three drops of sea water. He then set the pannikin to Johnson’s lips, who sucked the hard metal rim as a baby might. Finally moistening his own throat with a small quantity of the liquor, he carefully corked the bottle and stowed it away.

No! To say that hope had entirely abandoned him would not be true. Whilst the heart continues to pulsate hope will still be found to live, however faintly, in its throbs, though each moment be heavy with pain, and nothing seem sure but anguish and death.