In the Sargasso Sea
Page 16
XVI
I RID MYSELF OF TWO DEAD MEN
Only an hour before I had been longing for any sort of a live man totalk with and so break my loneliness; but having thus found a liveman--who, to be sure, was close to being a dead one--I would have beenalmost ready to get rid of him by going back to my mast in the opensea. Indeed, as I stood there in the shadows beside that dying brute,and with the other brute lying dead on the deck above me, the feelingof dull horror that filled me is more than I can put into words.
I think that the underlying strong strain of my wretchedness was anintense pity for myself. In what the fellow had told me I saw clearlyoutlined a good deal of what must be my own fate in that vilesolitude: which I perceived suddenly must be strewn everywhere withdead men lying unhidden, corrupting openly; since none there were tohide the dead from sight as we hide them in the living world. And Irealized that until I myself should be a part of that indecentexhibition of human carcasses--which might not be for a long while,for I was a strong man and not likely to die soon--I should have todwell in the midst of all that corruption; and always with theknowledge that sooner or later I must take my place in it, and liewith all those unhidden others wasting away slowly in the open lightof day. I got so sick as these horrid thoughts pressed upon me that Iturned to the table and poured out for myself a stiff drink ofgin-and-water--being careful first to rinse the glass well--and I wasglad that I thought of it, for it did me good.
My movement about the cabin roused up the dying fellow and he hailedme to give him some more gin. His voice was so thick that I knew thatthe drink already had fuddled him; and after he had swiped off what Igave him he began to talk again. But the liquor had taken such holdupon him that he called me "Jack," not recognizing me, and evidentlyfancying that I was his mate--the man whom he had killed.
At first he rambled on about the storm that had wrecked them; and thenabout their chance of falling in with a passing vessel; and then aboutsome woman named Hannah who would be worrying about him because he didnot come home. As well as I could make out he went over in thisfashion most of what had happened--and it was little enough, in oneway--from the time that the two found themselves alone upon the hulkuntil they began to get among the weed, and realized pretty wellwhat that meant for them.
"It ain't no use now, Jack," he rambled on. "It ain't no use nowthinkin' about gettin' home, an' Hannah may as well stop lookin' furme. This is th' Dead Man's Sea we're gettin' into; an' I knows itwell, an' you knows it well, both on us havin' heerd it talked aboutby sailor-men ever sence we come afloat as boys. Down in th' middle ofit is all th' old dead wrecks that ever was sence ships begun sailin';and all th' old dead sailor-men is there too. It's a orful place,Jack, that me an' you's goin' to--more damn orful, I reckon, than wecan hev any idee. Gin's all thet's lef' to us, and it's good luck wehev such swashins of it aboard. Here's at you, Jack an' gimme somemore out o' the kag, you damn starin' owl."
There was an angry tone in his voice as he spoke these last words; andthe tone was sharper a moment later when he went on: "Can't you keepyour owl eyes shet, you beast? Don't look at me like that, or I'llstick a knife into you. No, I'm _not_ starin' at you; it's you who'sstarin' at me, damn you. Stop it! Stop it, I say, you--" and he brokeout with a volley of foul names and curses; and partly raised himself,as though he thought that a fight was coming on. And then the painwhich this movement caused him made him fall back again with a groan.
Without his asking for it I gave him another drink, which quietedhim a little; and then put fresh strength into him, so that he burstout again with his curses and abuse. "Cut the heart out of me, willyou--you scum of rottenness? I'd have you to know that cuttin' heartsout is a game two can play at. Take that, damn you! An' that! An'that! Them's fur your starin'--you damn fat-faced blinkin' owl. And Imean now t' keep on till I stop you. No more of your owl-starin' furme! Take it agen, you stinkin' starin' owl. So! An' so! An' so!"
He fairly raised himself up in the berth as he rushed out his words,and at the same time thrust savagely with his right hand as though hehad a knife in it. For a minute or more he kept his position, cursingwith a strong voice and thrusting all the time. Suddenly he gave ayell of pain and fell on his back again, crying brokenly: "Hell! It's_you_ who've finished me!" And then he gave two or three short sharpgasps, and after that there was a little gurgling in his throat, andthen he was still--lying there as dead as any man could be.
This quick ending of him came so suddenly that it staggered me; but Imust say that my first feeling, when I fairly realized what hadhappened, was thankfulness that his life was gone--for I had hadenough of him to know that having much more of him would drive me mad.
In the telling of it, of course, most of what made all this horribleslips away from me, and it don't seem much to strain a man, after all.But it really was pretty bad: what with the shadowy light in thestate-room, for even with the port uncovered it still was dusky; andthe horrid smell there; and the vividness with which the fellowsomehow managed to make me feel those days and weeks of his half-crazyhalf-drunken life, while he and the other man stared at each otheruntil neither of them could bear it any longer--and so took tofighting from sheer heart-breaking horror of loneliness and killedeach other out of hand. And back of all that I had the feeling that Iwas caught in the same fate that had shut in upon them; and was evenworse off than they had been, since I had no one to fight my life awaywith but must take it myself when I found my solitude in that rottendesolation more than I could stand.
Even the gin-and-water, though I took another big drink of it, couldnot hearten me; but it did give me the courage to rid myself of thetwo dead brutes by casting them overboard; and, indeed, getting rid ofthem was a necessity, for their presence seemed to me so befoulingthat I found it hard to breathe.
With the man on deck--except that touching him was hateful to me--Idid not have much trouble. I just made fast to him a couple of heavyiron bars that I found down in the engine-room--pokers, they seemed tobe, for serving the boiler fires--and then dragged him along the deckto a place where the bulwarks were gone and there shot him overboard.And luckily the weed was thinnish there, and he went down like a stoneinto it and through it and so disappeared.
But with the man in the cabin I had a harder job. In his horridly cutcondition I could not bring myself to touch him, and the best that Icould do was to make a sort of bundle of him and the mattress and thebedclothes all together--with a bit of light line whipped around andaround the whole mass until it was snug and firm. When it was finishedI worked it out of the state-room, and rolled it fairly easily alongthe floor of the cabin to the companion-way--and there it stuck fast.Budge it I could not; for it was too long to roll up the stair, andtoo heavy for me to haul it up after me or to push it up before me,though I tried both ways and tried hard. But in the end I managed toget it up by means of a purchase that I rigged from a ring-bolt in thedeck just outside the companion-way door; and once having it on deck Icould manage it again easily, for there I could roll it along.
Yet I did not at once cast it overboard; for I had no more iron barswith which to weight it, and I knew that such a bunch of stuff wouldnot sink through the weed--and that I should have it stillloathsomely with me, lying only partly hidden in the weed rightalongside. In the end I got up a big iron cinder-bucket that I filledwith coal--making sure that the coal would stay in it by lashing apiece of canvas over the top--and this I made fast to the bundle by arope three or four fathoms long. Then I cast the bucket overboardthrough the break in the bulwarks, and as it shot downward I rolledthe bundle after it--and I had the comfort of seeing the whole go downthrough the weed and away from my sight forever into the hiddenwater below.
And then I sat down on the deck and rested; for what little cheeringand strength I had got from the gin-and-water had left me and I wasutterly miserable and tired as a dog. But I was well quit of both mydead men, and that was a good job well done.