The Wreck of the Corsaire

by William Clark Russell

VI.

The hull had a desperately wrecked look inboards with the mess of ropes, staves, jagged ends, crushed rails, rents manifesting the fury of the hurricane. I swept a glance along in expectation of beholding a dead body, or if you will, some scarcely living though yet breathing man; but nothing of the kind was to be seen. The mate hung his head over the companion hatch from which the cover had been clean razed and peered down, then shouted and listened. But no other sound followed than the long moan and huge washing sob of the swell brimming to the wash-streak with a dim sort of choking, gurgling noise as of water streaming from side to side in the hold.

“Hardly worth while exploring those moist bowels, I think, sir,” said the mate.

“Oh, yes,” said I, “if we don’t take a peep under deck what will there be to tell? This is a quest of the ladies’ making, remember, and it must be a complete thing or ‘stand by,’ as you sailors say.”

“Right you are, sir,” said he, “and so here goes,” and with that he put his foot upon the companion ladder and dropped into the cabin.

I followed at his heels, and both of us came to a stand at the bottom of the steps whilst we stared round. There was plenty of light to see by streaming down through the skylight aperture and the hatch. The cabin was a plain, snuff-colored room with a few sleeping berths running forward, a rough table somewhat hacked and cut about as if with the slicing of tobacco, a row of lockers on either hand, a stand of firearms right aft and some twenty cutlasses curiously stowed in a sort of bracket under the ceiling or upper deck. Hot as it was above, the cabin struck chill as though it were an old well. Indeed you saw that it had been soused over and over again by the seas which had swept the vessel, and there was a briny, seaweedy flavor in the atmosphere of it that made you think of a cave deep down in a sea-fronting cliff. We looked into the sleeping berths going forward to where a movable bulkhead stopped the road. It was not easy to walk; the increasing weight of the swell was defined by the heavy though comparatively buoyant rolling of the hull. The deck went in slopes like the roof of a house from side to side with now and again an ugly jerk that more than once came near to throwing me when a sudden yawn forced the dismasted fabric into a swift recovery.

“There’s nobody aft here, anyway,” said the mate; “no use troubling ourselves to look for her papers, I think, sir.”

“No; but this is only one end of the ship,” I answered. “There may be a discovery to make forward. Can’t we unship that bulkhead there, and so get into the ’tween-decks?”

We laid hold of the frame, and after peering a bit, for this part of the cabin lay in gloom, we found that it stood in grooves, and without much trouble we slided it open, and the interior to as far as a bulkhead that walled off a bit of forecastle lay clear before us in the daylight shining through the main-hatch. Here were a number of hammocks dangling from the deck, and some score or more of seamen’s chests and bags in heaps, some of them split open, with quantities of rough wearing apparel scattered about, insomuch that I never could have imagined a scene of wilder disorder, nor one more suggestive of hurry and panical consternation and delirious headlong behavior.

“Nobody here, sir,” said the mate.