The Island Home

by Richard Archer

  CHAPTER SIX.

  THE CALM.

  THE SECOND WATCH--AN EVIL OMEN--THE WHITE SHARK--A BREAKFAST LOST.

  "All in a hot and copper sky, The bloody sun, at noon, Right up above the mast did stand, No bigger than the moon."

  During the remainder of the day the wind continued fair, and we held onour course, steering by the sun, and keeping a vigilant look-out inevery direction. But the night set in, and we had yet seen noappearance of land, no speck in the distance which could be mistaken fora sail, not even a wandering sea-bird or a school of flying-fish--nothing to break the dead monotony of the briny waste we weretraversing. As I sat at the helm, taking my turn in sailing the boat,and watched the sun go down, and saw the darkness gathering over thesea, a feeling nearly akin to despair took possession of me. In vain Istrove to take an encouraging and hopeful view of our circumstances.The time within which relief must come, in order to be effectual, was soshort, that I could not help feeling that the probabilities werestrongly against us. I could not shut my eyes to the fact, thatdangers, imminent and real, such as we had read and talked of, withoutever half realising or dreaming that they could one day fall to our ownlot, now pressed upon us, and threatened us close at hand. I knew thatthose fearful tales of shipwreck and starvation, were only too true--that men, lost at sea like ourselves, had pined day after day, without amorsel of food or a drop of water, until they had escaped, in stupor ordelirium, all consciousness of suffering. And worse even than this--toohorrible to be thought or spoken of--I knew something of the dreadfuland disgusting expedients to prolong life, which have sometimes beenresorted to by famishing wretches. I had read how the pangs of hunger,and the still fiercer torments of thirst, had seemed to work a direchange even in kind and generous natures, making men wolfish, so thatthey slew and fed upon each other. Now, all that was most revolting andinhuman, in what I had heard or read of such things, rose vividly beforeme, and I shuddered at the growing probability that experiences likethese might be reserved for us. "Why not for us," I thought, "as wellas for the many others, the records of whose terrible fate I haveperused with scarcely more emotion than would be excited by a tale ofimaginary suffering; and the still greater number whose story has neverbeen recorded? We have already been conducted many steps on thisfearful path, and no laws of nature will be stayed, no ordinary rules ofGod's dealing violated, on our behalf. No inevitable necessity requiresthe complexion of our future, to correspond and harmonise with that ofour past lives. This feeling, which seems to assure me that such thingscannot happen to us, is but one of the cheats and illusions of ashrinking and self-pitying spirit. All the memories that cluster abouta happy childhood, all the sweet associations of home and kindred,afford no guarantee against the new and bitter experiences which seemabout to open up upon us."

  Such were the thoughts that began to disquiet my own mind. As to mycompanions, Morton seemed less anxious and excited than any of theothers. During the evening he speculated in a cool matter-of-factmanner, upon our chances of reaching an island, or meeting a ship,before being reduced to the last extremity. He spoke of the number oftraders that frequent the islands, for tortoise-shell, mother-of-pearl,sandal-wood, beche de mer, etcetera; the whalers that come in pursuit ofthe cachelot, or sperm-whale; the vessels that resort there for fruit,or supplies of wood and water; the vast number of islands scatteredthrough these seas; from all which he finally concluded, that thechances were largely in our favour. If, however, we should fail ofimmediate relief in this shape, he thought it probable that we shouldhave opportunities of catching fish, or sea-birds, and so prolonginglife for many days. He talked the whole matter over in such a calm,sober, unexcited manner, furnishing facts and reasons for every opinion,that I felt some confidence in his conclusions.

  Browne, though quite composed and self-possessed, had, from the momentwhen he discovered that we were out of sight of land, taken the mostserious view of our situation. He seemed to have made up his mind forthe worst, and was abstracted, and indisposed to converse. I knew thatthe anxiety which Arthur evinced, was not mainly on his own account. Itdid not withdraw his attention from what was passing, or diminish hisinterest in it. Far from being gloomy or abstracted, he was active andwatchful, and spoke with heartiness and cheerfulness. His mentaldisquietude only appeared, in a certain softness and tremor of hisvoice, especially when speaking to Johnny, who, as the night drew on,asked him over and over again, at short intervals, "Don't you think,Arthur, that we shall certainly find land to-morrow?" This was trulydistressing.

  As to Max, his feelings rose and fell capriciously, and without anyapparent cause; he was sanguine or depressed, not from a considerationof all our circumstances, and a favourable or unfavourable conclusiondrawn therefrom; but according as this view or that, for the moment,impressed his mind. He rendered no reasons for his hopes or his fears.At one moment, you would judge from his manner and conversation that wewere indeed out upon some "holy day excursion," with no serious dangerimpending over us; the next, without any thing to account for thechange, he would appear miserably depressed and wretched.

  Soon after sunset the moon rose--pale and dim at first, but shining outwith a clearer and brighter radiance, as the darkness increased. Thewind held steadily from the same quarter, and it was determined tocontinue through the night, the arrangement for taking charge of thesailing of the boat, in turn. Browne and Max insisted on sharingbetween themselves the watch for the entire night, saying that they hadtaken no part in that of the one previous, and that it would be uselessto divide the twelve hours of darkness into more than two watches. Thiswas finally agreed upon, the wind being so moderate that the same personcould steer the yawl and manage the sail without difficulty.

  Before lying down, I requested Max, who took the first turn, to awake meat the same time with Browne, a part of whose watch I intended to share.I fell asleep, looking up at the moon, and the light clouds sailingacross the sky, and listening to the motion of the water beneath theboat. At first I slumbered lightly, without losing a sort of dreamyconsciousness, so that I heard Max humming over to himself fragments oftunes, and odd verses of old songs, and even knew when he shifted hisposition in the stern, from one side to the other. At length I musthave fallen into a deep sleep: I do not know how long it had lasted, (itseemed to me but a short time), when I was aroused by an exclamation,from Max, as I at first supposed; but on sitting up I saw that Brownewas at the helm, while Max was sleeping at my side. On perceiving thatI was awake, Browne, from whom the exclamation had proceeded, pointed tosomething in the water, just astern. Following the direction of hisfinger with my eye, I saw, just beneath the surface, a largeghastly-looking white shark, gliding stealthily along, and apparentlyfollowing the boat. Browne said that he had first noticed it about halfan hour before, since which time it had steadily followed us,occasionally making a leisurely circuit round the boat, and thendropping astern again. A moment ago, having fallen into a doze at thehelm, and awaking with a start, he found himself leaning over thegunwale, and the shark just at his elbow. This had startled him, andcaused the sudden exclamation by which I had been aroused. I shudderedat his narrow escape, and I acknowledge that the sight of this hideousand formidable creature, stealing along in our wake, and manifesting anintention to keep us company, caused me some uneasy sensations. He swamwith his dorsal fin almost at the surface, and his broad nose scarcelythree feet from the rudder. His colour rendered him distinctly visible.

  "What a spectre of a fish it is," said Browne, "with his pallid,corpse-like skin, and noiseless motion; he has no resemblance to any ofthe rest of his kind, that I have ever seen. You know what the sailorswould say, if they should see him dogging us in this way; OldCrosstrees, or Spot, would shake their heads ominously, and set us downas a doomed company."

  "Aside from any such superstitious notions, he is an unpleasant anddangerous neighbour, and we must be circumspect while he is prowlingabout."

  "It certainly won't do to doze at the helm,"
resumed Browne; "I considerthat I have just now had a really narrow escape. I was leaning quiteover the gunwale; a lurch of the boat would have thrown me overboard,and then there would have been no chance for me."

  There would not, in fact, have been the shadow of a chance.

  "Even as it was," resumed he, "if this hideous-looking monster had beenas active and vigilant as some of his tribe, it would have fared badlywith me. I have heard of their seizing persons standing on the shore,where the water was deep enough to let them swim close in; and Spottells of a messmate of his, on one of his voyages in a whaler, who wascarried off, while standing entirely out of water, on the carcass of awhale, which he was assisting in cutting up, as it lay alongside theship. The shark threw himself upon the carcass, five or six yards fromwhere the man was busy;--worked himself slowly along the slipperysurface, until within reach of his victim; knocked him off into thewater, and then sliding off himself, seized and devoured him."

  Picking my way carefully among the sleepers, who covered the bottom ofthe yawl, I sat down beside Browne in the stern, intending to share theremainder of his watch. It was now long past midnight; fragments oflight clouds were scattered over the sky, frequently obscuring the moon;and the few stars that were visible, twinkled faintly with a cold anddistant light. The Southern Cross, by far the most brilliantconstellation of that hemisphere, was conspicuous among the clusters offeebler luminaries. Well has it been called "the glory of the southernskies." Near the zenith, and second only to the Cross in brilliancy,appeared the Northern Crown, consisting of seven large stars, sodisposed as to form the outline of two-thirds of an oval. Of thefamiliar constellations of the northern hemisphere, scarcely one wasvisible, except Orion, and the Pleiades.

  At length the moon descended behind a bank of silvery clouds, piled upalong the horizon. The partial obscurity that ensued, only added to thegrandeur of the midnight scene, as we sat gazing silently abroad uponthe confused mass of swelling waters, stretching away into the gloom.But if the scene was grand, it was also desolate; we two were perhapsthe only human beings, for many hundreds of miles, who looked forth uponit. Our companions were wrapped in unconsciousness, and their deep andregular breathing attested the soundness of their slumbers. As thelight failed more and more, and the shadows deepened, the sea began toassume a beautiful and striking appearance, gleaming in places with abluish lambent light, and exhibiting, where the water was most agitated,large luminous patches. Thin waves of flame curled over our bow, andwhenever a sea broke upon it, it seemed as though the boat was plungingthrough surges of fire. A long brilliant line, thickly strewn on eachside, with little globules of the colour of burning coals, marked ourwake.

  But the shark, which still followed close behind our keel, presented byfar the most singular and striking spectacle. He seemed to besurrounded by a luminous medium; and his nose, his dorsal and side fins,and his tail, each had attached to them slender jets of phosphoric fire.Towards morning this brilliant appearance began to fade, and soonvanished altogether. By this time I found it difficult to keep my eyesopen longer, and leaving Browne to finish his watch alone, I resumed myplace on the ceiling planks, and in spite of the hardness of my bed,which caused every bone in my body to ache, soon slept soundly. When Iagain awoke, it was long after sunrise, and we were lying completelybecalmed. A school of large fish were pursuing their gambols at a shortdistance, and Browne was rowing cautiously toward them, while Arthur andMorton stood prepared to attack them with their cutlasses as soon as weshould get within striking distance. We had got almost among them, andwere just beginning to congratulate ourselves upon their apparentindifference to our approach, when they all at once scattered in everydirection, with manifest signs of terror. The cause of this suddenmovement was not long concealed; a brace of sharks rose in their verymidst; one was visible but for a moment as he rolled over to seize hisprey; the other, less successful in securing a victim, shot past us,like an arrow, in pursuit of a large division of the fugitives. Soonafter, both of them were seen playing around the boat. They belonged tothe species known as the tiger shark, and bore no resemblance to ourghastly visitor of the preceding evening. By the consternation whichtheir sudden appearance had produced among the lesser fishes, they hadin all probability robbed us of our breakfast. Morton, with hischaracteristic enterprise, suggested an attack upon one of them by wayof reprisals; but before any measures for that purpose could be taken,they disappeared, leaving us with no other resource than to await ourfate with such patience and resignation as we could command. The windhaving entirely failed, there was nothing that we could do to change oursituation--absolutely nothing. This forced inaction, with no occupationfor mind or body, no object of effort, contributed to enhance whateverwas painful in our condition, by leaving us to brood over it. The deadcalm which had fallen upon the sea, seemed all that was necessary tocomplete our misery. We were all stiff and sore, from the exceedinglyuncomfortable sleeping accommodations of the last two nights; but thiswas a comparatively trifling evil. Johnny had a severe cold, his eyeswere inflamed and bloodshot, and he exhibited also strong symptoms offever. Nevertheless, silent and uncomplaining, he came and sat downquietly by the side of Arthur in the stern.

  As the day advanced, the heat became dreadful. We had not suffered muchfrom it the day before, on account of the fresh breeze which hadprevailed; but now, not a breath of air was stirring, and the glassy seareflected back upon us the scorching rays of the sun, with increasedintensity. Towards noon, it exceeded any thing I had ever experienced.The whole arch of the heavens glowed with a hot and coppery glare. Itseemed as though instead of one sun, there were ten thousand, coveringall the sky, and blending their rays into a broad canopy of fire. Theair was like that of an oven: the water had no coolness, no refreshingquality; it was tepid and stagnant: no living thing was to be seen nearthe surface, for life could not be sustained there; and the fishes,great and small, kept themselves in the cooler depths, far below.Almost stifled by the heat, we began to experience the first real andextreme suffering that most of us had ever known. At Arthur'ssuggestion, we disengaged the now useless sail from the mast, andcontrived a kind of awning, by fastening two of the oars upright in theboat, with the mast extending between them, throwing the sail over thelatter, and securing the ends to the gunwales. This, although it couldnot protect us from the sultry and suffocating air, warded off theblistering beams of the sun, and during the greater part of the day, welay crouched beneath it, a miserable company; one or another of uscrawling out occasionally, to take a survey. Towards the close of theafternoon, my sufferings from thirst grew absolutely intolerable, andamounted to torment. My blood became fevered; my brain seemed on fire;my shrunk and shrivelled tongue, was like a dry stick in my mouth. Thecountenances of my companions, their bloodshot eyes, and cracked andswollen lips, shewed what they were undergoing. Johnny lay in thebottom of the boat with his eyes shut enduring all, with as muchfortitude as the rest of us, except that now and then a half suppressedmoan escaped him.

  It was quite clear that relief, in order to be of any avail, must bespeedy.