In the Sargasso Sea

by Thomas A. Janvier

  XXVIII

  HOW I RUBBED SHOULDERS WITH DESPAIR

  Could I have foreseen all that was ahead of me I doubt if I shouldhave had the courage to go on: choosing rather to stay there on thebarque until I had eaten what food I had by me, and then to dieslowly--and finding that way easier than the one I chose to follow,with its many days of struggle and its many chill nights of sorrow andI throughout the whole of it rubbing shoulders with despair.

  As I think of it now, that long, long march seems to me like ahorrible nightmare; and sometimes it comes back to me as a realnightmare in my dreams. Again, always heavy laden, I am climbing andscrambling and jumping, endlessly and hopelessly, among old rottenhulks; each morning trying to comfort myself with the belief that bynight I may see some sign of ships less ancient, and so know that I amwinning my way a little toward where I would be; and each nightfinding myself still surrounded by tall antique craft such as have notfor two centuries and more held the seas, with the feeling coming downcrushingly upon me that I have not advanced at all; and even then nogood rest for me--as I lie down wearily in some foul-smelling oldcabin, chill with heavy night-mist and with the reeking damp of oozyrotten timbers, and perhaps find in it for my sleeping-mates littleheaps of fungus outgrowing from dead men's bones. And the mere dreamof all this so bitterly hurts me that I wonder how I ever came throughthe reality of it alive.

  At the start, as I have said, I had calculated that the treasure-ladengalleon lay about in the centre of the wreck-pack, and therefore thatI would get across from her to the other side of the pack in about thesame time that I had taken to reach her in my first journey from thebarque; and on the basis of that assumption, when I was come to heragain, I shaped my course hopefully for the north. But my calculation,though on its face a reasonable enough one, proved to be most woefullywrong: and I have come to the conclusion, after a good deal ofthinking about it, that this was because the whole vast mass ofwreckage had a circular motion--the great current that created itgiving at the same time a swirl to it--which made the seeminglystraight line that I followed in reality a constantly extended curve.But whatever the cause may have been, the fact remains that when by mycalculation I should have been on the outer edge of the wreck-pack Istill was wandering in its depths. In one way my march was easier thelonger that it lasted, my load growing a little lighter daily as mystore of food was transferred to my stomach from my back. At firstthis steady decrease of my burden was a comfort to me; but after awhile--when more than half of it was gone, and I still seemed to be nonearer to the end of my journey than when I left the galleon--I had avery different feeling about it: for I realized that unless I camespeedily to ships whereon I would find food--of which there seemedlittle probability, so ancient were the craft surrounding me--I eithermust go back to the barque and wait on her until death came to meslowly, or else die quickly where I was. And so I had for mycomforting the option of a tardy death or a speedy one--with thecertainty of the latter if I hesitated long in choosing betweenthe two.

  I suppose that the two great motive powers in the world are hope anddespair. It was hope that started me on that dismal march, but ifdespair had not at last come in to help me I never should have got toits end: for I took Death by both shoulders and looked straight intothe eyes of him when I decided, having by me only food for three dayslonger--and at that but as little as would keep the life in me--togive over all thought of returning to the barque and to make a dashforward as fast as I could go. I had little enough to carry, butthat I might have still less I left my hatchet behind me--having,indeed, no farther use for it since if my dash miscarried I was donefor and there was no use in marking a path over which I never couldreturn; and I was half-minded to leave my bag of jewels behind me too.But in the end I decided to carry the jewels along with me--my fancybeing caught by the grim notion that if I did die miserably in thatvile solitude at least I would die one of the richest men in all theworld. As to my water-bottles, one of them I had thrown away when Ifound that I could count on the morning showers certainly, and theother had been broken in one of my many tumbles: yet without muchtroubling me--as I found that I could manage fairly well, eating butlittle, if I filled myself pretty full of water at the beginning ofeach day. And so, with only the bag of food and the bag of jewels uponmy back, and with the compass on top of them, I was ready to pressonward to try conclusions with despair.

  The very hopelessness of my effort, and the fact that at last I wasdealing with what in one way was a certainty--for I knew that if myplan miscarried I had only a very little while longer to live--gave mea sort of stolid recklessness which amazingly helped me: stimulatingme to taking risks in climbing which before I should have shrunkfrom, and so getting me on faster; and at the same time dulling mymind to the dreads besetting it and my body to its ceaseless painsbegot of weariness and thirst and scanty food. So little, indeed, didI care what became of me that even when by the middle of my secondday's march I saw no change in my surroundings I did not mind it much:but, to be sure, at the outset of this last stage of my journey I hadthrown hope overboard, and a man once become desperate can feel nofarther ills.

  But what does surprise me--as I think of it now, though it did not inany way touch me then--was the slowness with which, when there wasreason for it, my dead hope got alive again: as it did, and for cause,at the end of that same second day--for by the evening I came out,with a sharp suddenness, from among the strange old craft which for solong on every side had beset me and found myself among ships which bycomparison with the others--though they too, in all conscience, wereold enough--seemed to be quite of a modern build. What is likely, Ithink--and this would help to account for my long wanderings overthose ancient rotten hulks--is that some stormy commotion of the wholemass of wreckage, such as had thrust the barque whereon I had foundfood deep into the thick of it, had squeezed a part of the centre ofthe pack outward; in that way making a sort of promontory--alongwhich by mere bad mischance I had been journeying--among the wrecks ofa later time. But this notion did not then occur to me; nor did I, asI have said, at first feel any very thrilling hope coming back to mewhen I found myself among modern ships again--so worn had my longtussle with difficulties left my body and so sodden was my mind.

  At first I had just a dull feeling of satisfaction that I had got oncemore--after my many nights passed on hulks soaked with wet torottenness--on good honest dry planks: where I could sleep with nodeadly chill striking into me, and where in my restless wakings Ishould not see the pale gleam of death-fires, and where foul stencheswould not half stifle me the whole night long. And it was not until Ihad eaten my scant supper, and because of the comfort that even thatlittle food gave me felt more disposed to cheerfulness, that in a weakfaint-hearted way I began to hope again that perhaps the run of luckagainst me had come to an end.

  In truth, though, there was not much to be hopeful about. For mysupper I had eaten the half of what food was left me, and it was solittle that I still had a mighty hungry feeling in my belly after itwas down. For my breakfast I should eat what was left; and after that,unless I found fresh supplies quickly, I was in a fair way to lie downbeside my bag of jewels and die of starvation--like the veriestbeggar that ever was. But I did hope a little all the same; and when Iwent on again the next morning, though my last scrap of food waseaten, my spirits kept up pretty well--for I was sure from the look ofthe wrecks which I traversed that the dead ancient centre of mycontinent at last was behind me, and that its living outer fringecould not be very far away.

  All that day I pressed forward steadily, helped by my littleflickering flame of hope--which burned low because sanguineexpectation does not consort well with an empty stomach, yet whichkept alive because the wreck-pack had more and more of a modern lookabout it as I went on. But the faintness that I felt coming over me asthe day waned gave me warning that the rope by which I held my lifewas a short one; and as the sun dropped down into the mist--at oncethinning it, so that I could see farther, and giving it a ruddy tonewhich sent red streams of br
ightness gleaming over the tangle ofwreckage far down into the west--I felt that the rope must come to anend altogether, and that I must stop still and let death overtake me,by the sunset of one day more.

  And then it was, just as the sun was sinking, that I saw clearly--faraway to the westward--the funnel of a steamer standing out black andsharp against the blood-red ball that in another minute went downinto the sea. And with that glimpse--which made me sure that I wasclose to the edge of the wreck-pack, and so close to food again--astrong warm rush of hope swept through me that outcast finally mydespair.