Washed Ashore; Or, The Tower of Stormount Bay

by William Henry Giles Kingston

“It would not do to remain where we were, and as we could not sail in the direction we proposed, we agreed to run before the wind till we could fall in with some island on which we could land. For four anxious days we ran on, till some palm-trees appeared ahead rising out of the water, and we knew that we we approaching a coral island. The wind had happily fallen, but the surf ahead showed us our danger in time, and putting down our helm we stood to the southward till we came to the end of the island; keeping away again we found a passage through the reef, by which we safely entered the lagoon.

“Here, for the present, we were safe from the dangers of the sea; the island was uninhabited, and we found a spring of water, but provisions were not likely to be plentiful. There were cocoa-nuts for one part of the year, and turtle and their eggs occasionally, and roots and shell-fish; and after a time it occurred to King that we might be able to catch some fish. Having walked round and round the island, or rather, almost round and back again, and considered how we should procure food, our next care was to build a hut to shelter ourselves from the sun by day, and the dews by night.

“And now commenced a solitary life, the end of which we could not see. Years might go by before a vessel might pass that way, and if one should pass, what little chance was there of our being seen! Still, I do not think a day went by without our talking on the subject, and looking out for a sail. King, poor fellow, was not much of a companion, as we had few ideas in common; but we never grew tired of talking of the probability of our getting away. He had a wife and family in England whom he longed to see, as much as I did my friends. How many months or years went by while he was with me I could not tell, for our life was a very monotonous one.

“We had kept our boat in as good repair as possible, not with the hope of making our escape in her, for she was too small for that, but for the purpose of putting off to get on board any ship which might appear. We were, therefore, chary of using her, but occasionally we went out fishing in her, when the supply we could get in the lagoon or from the shore ran short. One day I was ill, and King said that he would go out by himself. I warned him not to go, for from the appearance of the sky I thought bad weather was coming on. He laughed at my fears, said that he would bring me back a good dinner, and rowed round to the eastward of the island.

“He had not been gone long before my prognostications were verified; the wind began to rise. I went to the beach and beckoned him to return, but he was busy hauling up fish and did not see me, or observe the altered state of the weather; I shouted, but my voice did not reach him. He had already drifted out farther than usual; suddenly the movement of the boat as she got into rough water made him look up. By some carelessness one of his oars slipped overboard, and before he could recover it the squall had caught the boat, and whirling it round had sent her far from it. I saw his frantic gestures as he endeavoured to scull the boat back toward the island. Now he tried to paddle her with his remaining oar as an Indian does a canoe, but in vain. Every instant the gale was increasing and driving her farther and farther away.

“I watched her with a sinking heart growing less and less to my sight, till she was lost among the foaming seas in the distance. I then for the first time felt with full force my lonely position; I wrung my hands like a child; I burst into tears; I bemoaned my hard fate, and thought that I was forsaken of God and man. Not only was my companion taken from me, but the only means that I saw by which I could effect my escape. He might possibly reach some other shore; I should never leave that on which I was drawing out my weary existence. I see now, from what you tell me, how short-sighted I was; that our kind Father in heaven chooses His own way in carrying out plans for our benefit, and that what I thought was my ruin would ultimately prove the means of my rescue.

“For several days after King had gone I could neither eat nor sleep, or if I slept I dreamed that I saw him floating away, and tried to follow and could not. By degrees I recovered a portion of my tranquillity. Still I watched more eagerly for any passing ship. It might have been nearly a year afterwards, one morning as I arose a sail hove in sight. My heart leaped within me: I thought in my folly that those on board were coming to look for me. Oh how eagerly I watched her as her masts rose out of the water! On she came; I could see that she was a ship, a large ship, a man-of-war by her square yards. She must have sighted the island, and I thought that she would approach to survey it more carefully, when suddenly—perhaps some reef unknown to me intervened—she turned aside, and after hovering in the distance to tantalise me the more, she slowly stood away to the northward. I was almost as much overcome as when poor King was blown off the island. I now passed my days in a dull state of apathy; I had no books, no writing materials. Had I, as I might when I visited the cabin, brought away a Bible I saw on the captain’s table which he had been reading for the last time, what a blessing and a comfort it would have, proved to me! I had a knife and an axe, and I often began to make various articles, but I had not the heart to finish them, for I always thought—‘No one will see them, of what use will they be?’ So the days passed on. Two other vessels appeared at long intervals, but passed at too great a distance to see me. One of them was becalmed off the island for some hours, and had I still possessed the boat I could without difficulty have pulled off to her. At length I fell sick; I had long been ailing, and it is my belief that had you not appeared at the moment you did, my career on earth would soon have been over.”

“God, who in His kind mercy had resolved that you should be saved, so directed our movements for your speedy rescue; so that you owe us no gratitude,” observed Elton. “But I am surprised at the description you give of your sensations, I had thought that a solitary life on an island might be made very pleasant and satisfactory.”

“Oh, no, no!” cried Jack, “do not believe any such thing. We are not born to live alone, of that I became convinced. An older man might have found the life less irksome, but when I took it into my head that I should never get away it became perfectly terrible. Even had I not been ill, I do not think that I could have survived many weeks longer.”

Such was the outline Jack gave of his life on the island, but when once he had begun the subject he described many adventures and other details which showed that there had been rather more variety it his existence than he had at first led his hearers to suppose, and that had he had books and paper and pens, he might probably have kept up his spirits better than he appeared to have done.