The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 3 Read online

  CHAPTER 13

  JULY 24. This morning saw us wonderfully recruited in spirits andstrength. Notwithstanding the perilous situation in which we were stillplaced, ignorant of our position, although certainly at a great distancefrom land, without more food than would last us for a fortnight evenwith great care, almost entirely without water, and floating about atthe mercy of every wind and wave on the merest wreck in the world, stillthe infinitely more terrible distresses and dangers from which we had solately and so providentially been delivered caused us to regard whatwe now endured as but little more than an ordinary evil--so strictlycomparative is either good or ill.

  At sunrise we were preparing to renew our attempts at getting upsomething from the storeroom, when, a smart shower coming on, with somelightning, we turn our attention to the catching of water by means ofthe sheet we had used before for this purpose. We had no other means ofcollecting the rain than by holding the sheet spread out with one of theforechain-plates in the middle of it. The water, thus conducted to thecentre, was drained through into our jug. We had nearly filled it inthis manner, when, a heavy squall coming on from the northward, obligedus to desist, as the hulk began once more to roll so violently thatwe could no longer keep our feet. We now went forward, and, lashingourselves securely to the remnant of the windlass as before, awaited theevent with far more calmness than could have been anticipated or wouldhave been imagined possible under the circumstances. At noon the windhad freshened into a two-reef breeze, and by night into a stiff gale,accompanied with a tremendously heavy swell. Experience having taughtus, however, the best method of arranging our lashings, we weatheredthis dreary night in tolerable security, although thoroughly drenched atalmost every instant by the sea, and in momentary dread of being washedoff. Fortunately, the weather was so warm as to render the water rathergrateful than otherwise.

  July 25. This morning the gale had diminished to a mere ten-knot breeze,and the sea had gone down with it so considerably that we were able tokeep ourselves dry upon the deck. To our great grief, however, we foundthat two jars of our olives, as well as the whole of our ham, had beenwashed overboard, in spite of the careful manner in which they had beenfastened. We determined not to kill the tortoise as yet, and contentedourselves for the present with a breakfast on a few of the olives, anda measure of water each, which latter we mixed half and half, withwine, finding great relief and strength from the mixture, without thedistressing intoxication which had ensued upon drinking the port. Thesea was still far too rough for the renewal of our efforts at getting upprovision from the storeroom. Several articles, of no importance to usin our present situation, floated up through the opening during the day,and were immediately washed overboard. We also now observed that thehulk lay more along than ever, so that we could not stand an instantwithout lashing ourselves. On this account we passed a gloomy anduncomfortable day. At noon the sun appeared to be nearly vertical, andwe had no doubt that we had been driven down by the long succession ofnorthward and northwesterly winds into the near vicinity of the equator.Toward evening we saw several sharks, and were somewhat alarmed by theaudacious manner in which an enormously large one approached us. At onetime, a lurch throwing the deck very far beneath the water, the monsteractually swam in upon us, floundering for some moments just over thecompanion-hatch, and striking Peters violently with his tail. A heavysea at length hurled him overboard, much to our relief. In moderateweather we might have easily captured him.

  July 26. This morning, the wind having greatly abated, and the sea notbeing very rough, we determined to renew our exertions in the storeroom.After a great deal of hard labor during the whole day, we found thatnothing further was to be expected from this quarter, the partitions ofthe room having been stove during the night, and its contents swept intothe hold. This discovery, as may be supposed, filled us with despair.

  July 27. The sea nearly smooth, with a light wind, and still from thenorthward and westward. The sun coming out hotly in the afternoon,we occupied ourselves in drying our clothes. Found great relief fromthirst, and much comfort otherwise, by bathing in the sea; in this,however, we were forced to use great caution, being afraid of sharks,several of which were seen swimming around the brig during the day.

  July 28. Good weather still. The brig now began to lie along soalarmingly that we feared she would eventually roll bottom up. Preparedourselves as well as we could for this emergency, lashing our tortoise,waterjug, and two remaining jars of olives as far as possible over tothe windward, placing them outside the hull below the main-chains. Thesea very smooth all day, with little or no wind.

  July 29. A continuance of the same weather. Augustus’s wounded arm beganto evince symptoms of mortification. He complained of drowsiness andexcessive thirst, but no acute pain. Nothing could be done for hisrelief beyond rubbing his wounds with a little of the vinegar from theolives, and from this no benefit seemed to be experienced. We did everything in our power for his comfort, and trebled his allowance of water.

  July 30. An excessively hot day, with no wind. An enormous shark keptclose by the hulk during the whole of the forenoon. We made severalunsuccessful attempts to capture him by means of a noose. Augustus muchworse, and evidently sinking as much from want of proper nourishment asfrom the effect of his wounds. He constantly prayed to be relieved fromhis sufferings, wishing for nothing but death. This evening we ate thelast of our olives, and found the water in our jug so putrid that wecould not swallow it at all without the addition of wine. Determined tokill our tortoise in the morning.

  July 31. After a night of excessive anxiety and fatigue, owing to theposition of the hulk, we set about killing and cutting up our tortoise.He proved to be much smaller than we had supposed, although in goodcondition,--the whole meat about him not amounting to more than tenpounds. With a view of preserving a portion of this as long as possible,we cut it into fine pieces, and filled with them our three remainingolive jars and the wine-bottle (all of which had been kept), pouring inafterward the vinegar from the olives. In this manner we put away aboutthree pounds of the tortoise, intending not to touch it until we hadconsumed the rest. We concluded to restrict ourselves to about fourounces of the meat per day; the whole would thus last us thirteen days.A brisk shower, with severe thunder and lightning, came on about dusk,but lasted so short a time that we only succeeded in catching abouthalf a pint of water. The whole of this, by common consent, was givento Augustus, who now appeared to be in the last extremity. He drank thewater from the sheet as we caught it (we holding it above him as he layso as to let it run into his mouth), for we had now nothing left capableof holding water, unless we had chosen to empty out our wine from thecarboy, or the stale water from the jug. Either of these expedientswould have been resorted to had the shower lasted.

  The sufferer seemed to derive but little benefit from the draught. Hisarm was completely black from the wrist to the shoulder, and his feetwere like ice. We expected every moment to see him breathe his last.He was frightfully emaciated; so much so that, although he weighed ahundred and twenty-seven pounds upon his leaving Nantucket, he now didnot weigh more than forty or fifty at the farthest. His eyes were sunkfar in his head, being scarcely perceptible, and the skin of hischeeks hung so loosely as to prevent his masticating any food, or evenswallowing any liquid, without great difficulty.

  August 1. A continuance of the same calm weather, with an oppressivelyhot sun. Suffered exceedingly from thirst, the water in the jug beingabsolutely putrid and swarming with vermin. We contrived, nevertheless,to swallow a portion of it by mixing it with wine; our thirst, however,was but little abated. We found more relief by bathing in the sea, butcould not avail ourselves of this expedient except at long intervals,on account of the continual presence of sharks. We now saw clearly thatAugustus could not be saved; that he was evidently dying. We could donothing to relieve his sufferings, which appeared to be great. Abouttwelve o’clock he expired in strong convulsions, and without havingspoken for several hours. His death filled us with the most gloomyfore
bodings, and had so great an effect upon our spirits that we satmotionless by the corpse during the whole day, and never addressed eachother except in a whisper. It was not until some time after dark thatwe took courage to get up and throw the body overboard. It was thenloathsome beyond expression, and so far decayed that, as Petersattempted to lift it, an entire leg came off in his grasp. As the massof putrefaction slipped over the vessel’s side into the water, the glareof phosphoric light with which it was surrounded plainly discovered tous seven or eight large sharks, the clashing of whose horrible teeth, astheir prey was torn to pieces among them, might have been heard atthe distance of a mile. We shrunk within ourselves in the extremity ofhorror at the sound.

  August 2. The same fearfully calm and hot weather. The dawn found us ina state of pitiable dejection as well as bodily exhaustion. The waterin the jug was now absolutely useless, being a thick gelatinous mass;nothing but frightful-looking worms mingled with slime. We threw it out,and washed the jug well in the sea, afterward pouring a little vinegarin it from our bottles of pickled tortoise. Our thirst could nowscarcely be endured, and we tried in vain to relieve it by wine, whichseemed only to add fuel to the flame, and excited us to a high degreeof intoxication. We afterward endeavoured to relieve our sufferings bymixing the wine with seawater; but this instantly brought about the mostviolent retchings, so that we never again attempted it. During the wholeday we anxiously sought an opportunity of bathing, but to no purpose;for the hulk was now entirely besieged on all sides with sharks--nodoubt the identical monsters who had devoured our poor companion on theevening before, and who were in momentary expectation of another similarfeast. This circumstance occasioned us the most bitter regret andfilled us with the most depressing and melancholy forebodings. We hadexperienced indescribable relief in bathing, and to have this resourcecut off in so frightful a manner was more than we could bear. Nor,indeed, were we altogether free from the apprehension of immediatedanger, for the least slip or false movement would have thrown usat once within reach of those voracious fish, who frequently thrustthemselves directly upon us, swimming up to leeward. No shouts orexertions on our part seemed to alarm them. Even when one of the largestwas struck with an axe by Peters and much wounded, he persisted in hisattempts to push in where we were. A cloud came up at dusk, but, to ourextreme anguish, passed over without discharging itself. It is quiteimpossible to conceive our sufferings from thirst at this period. Wepassed a sleepless night, both on this account and through dread of thesharks.

  August 3. No prospect of relief, and the brig lying still more and morealong, so that now we could not maintain a footing upon deck at all.Busied ourselves in securing our wine and tortoise-meat, so that wemight not lose them in the event of our rolling over. Got out two stoutspikes from the forechains, and, by means of the axe, drove them intothe hull to windward within a couple of feet of the water, this notbeing very far from the keel, as we were nearly upon our beam-ends. Tothese spikes we now lashed our provisions, as being more secure thantheir former position beneath the chains. Suffered great agony fromthirst during the whole day--no chance of bathing on account of thesharks, which never left us for a moment. Found it impossible to sleep.

  August 4. A little before daybreak we perceived that the hulk washeeling over, and aroused ourselves to prevent being thrown off by themovement. At first the roll was slow and gradual, and we contrived toclamber over to windward very well, having taken the precaution to leaveropes hanging from the spikes we had driven in for the provision. Butwe had not calculated sufficiently upon the acceleration of the impetus;for, presently the heel became too violent to allow of our keeping pacewith it; and, before either of us knew what was to happen, we foundourselves hurled furiously into the sea, and struggling several fathomsbeneath the surface, with the huge hull immediately above us.

  In going under the water I had been obliged to let go my hold uponthe rope; and finding that I was completely beneath the vessel, andmy strength nearly exhausted, I scarcely made a struggle for life,and resigned myself, in a few seconds, to die. But here again I wasdeceived, not having taken into consideration the natural rebound ofthe hull to windward. The whirl of the water upward, which the vesseloccasioned in rolling partially back, brought me to the surface stillmore violently than I had been plunged beneath. Upon coming up I foundmyself about twenty yards from the hulk, as near as I could judge. Shewas lying keel up, rocking furiously from side to side, and the sea inall directions around was much agitated, and full of strong whirlpools.I could see nothing of Peters. An oil-cask was floating within a fewfeet of me, and various other articles from the brig were scatteredabout.

  My principal terror was now on account of the sharks, which I knew to bein my vicinity. In order to deter these, if possible, from approachingme, I splashed the water vigorously with both hands and feet as I swamtowards the hulk, creating a body of foam. I have no doubt that to thisexpedient, simple as it was, I was indebted for my preservation; forthe sea all round the brig, just before her rolling over, was so crowdedwith these monsters, that I must have been, and really was, in actualcontact with some of them during my progress. By great good fortune,however, I reached the side of the vessel in safety, although so utterlyweakened by the violent exertion I had used that I should never havebeen able to get upon it but for the timely assistance of Peters, who,now, to my great joy, made his appearance (having scrambled up to thekeel from the opposite side of the hull), and threw me the end of arope--one of those which had been attached to the spikes.

  Having barely escaped this danger, our attention was now directed to thedreadful imminency of another--that of absolute starvation. Our wholestock of provision had been swept overboard in spite of all our care insecuring it; and seeing no longer the remotest possibility of obtainingmore, we gave way both of us to despair, weeping aloud like children,and neither of us attempting to offer consolation to the other. Suchweakness can scarcely be conceived, and to those who have never beensimilarly situated will, no doubt, appear unnatural; but it must beremembered that our intellects were so entirely disordered by the longcourse of privation and terror to which we had been subjected, that wecould not justly be considered, at that period, in the light of rationalbeings. In subsequent perils, nearly as great, if not greater, I boreup with fortitude against all the evils of my situation, and Peters, itwill be seen, evinced a stoical philosophy nearly as incredible as hispresent childlike supineness and imbecility--the mental condition madethe difference.

  The overturning of the brig, even with the consequent loss of thewine and turtle, would not, in fact, have rendered our situation moredeplorable than before, except for the disappearance of the bedclothesby which we had been hitherto enabled to catch rainwater, and of the jugin which we had kept it when caught; for we found the whole bottom, fromwithin two or three feet of the bends as far as the keel, together withthe keel itself, thickly covered with large barnacles, which provedto be excellent and highly nutritious food. Thus, in two importantrespects, the accident we had so greatly dreaded proved to be a benefitrather than an injury; it had opened to us a supply of provisions whichwe could not have exhausted, using it moderately, in a month; and it hadgreatly contributed to our comfort as regards position, we being muchmore at ease, and in infinitely less danger, than before.

  The difficulty, however, of now obtaining water blinded us to all thebenefits of the change in our condition. That we might be ready to availourselves, as far as possible, of any shower which might fall we tookoff our shirts, to make use of them as we had of the sheets--not hoping,of course, to get more in this way, even under the most favorablecircumstances, than half a gill at a time. No signs of a cloud appearedduring the day, and the agonies of our thirst were nearly intolerable.At night, Peters obtained about an hour’s disturbed sleep, but myintense sufferings would not permit me to close my eyes for a singlemoment.

  August 5. To-day, a gentle breeze springing up carried us through a vastquantity of seaweed, among which we were so fortunate as to find elevensmall crab
s, which afforded us several delicious meals. Their shellsbeing quite soft, we ate them entire, and found that they irritated ourthirst far less than the barnacles. Seeing no trace of sharks among theseaweed, we also ventured to bathe, and remained in the water for fouror five hours, during which we experienced a very sensible diminutionof our thirst. Were greatly refreshed, and spent the night somewhat morecomfortably than before, both of us snatching a little sleep.

  August 6. This day we were blessed by a brisk and continual rain,lasting from about noon until after dark. Bitterly did we now regret theloss of our jug and carboy; for, in spite of the little means we had ofcatching the water, we might have filled one, if not both of them. Asit was, we contrived to satisfy the cravings of thirst by sufferingthe shirts to become saturated, and then wringing them so as to let thegrateful fluid trickle into our mouths. In this occupation we passed theentire day.

  August 7. Just at daybreak we both at the same instant descried asail to the eastward, and _evidently coming towards us!_ We hailed theglorious sight with a long, although feeble shout of rapture; and beganinstantly to make every signal in our power, by flaring the shirts inthe air, leaping as high as our weak condition would permit, and even byhallooing with all the strength of our lungs, although the vesselcould not have been less than fifteen miles distant. However, shestill continued to near our hulk, and we felt that, if she but held herpresent course, she must eventually come so close as to perceive us. Inabout an hour after we first discovered her, we could clearly see thepeople on her decks. She was a long, low, and rakish-looking topsailschooner, with a black ball in her foretopsail, and had, apparently,a full crew. We now became alarmed, for we could hardly imagine itpossible that she did not observe us, and were apprehensive that shemeant to leave us to perish as we were--an act of fiendish barbarity,which, however incredible it may appear, has been repeatedly perpetuatedat sea, under circumstances very nearly similar, and by beings whowere regarded as belonging to the human species. {*2} In this instance,however, by the mercy of God, we were destined to be most happilydeceived; for, presently we were aware of a sudden commotion on the deckof the stranger, who immediately afterward ran up a British flag, and,hauling her wind, bore up directly upon us. In half an hour morewe found ourselves in her cabin. She proved to be the Jane Guy, ofLiverpool, Captain Guy, bound on a sealing and trading voyage to theSouth Seas and Pacific.