The First Mate: The Story of a Strange Cruise

by Harry Collingwood

  CHAPTER TEN.

  ADAPTING OURSELVES TO CIRCUMSTANCES.

  To ward off the enquiries that sprang to Mrs Vansittart's lips themoment I appeared was a little difficult, but I managed it by simplydeclining to say a word until after breakfast. When, however, wepresently all sat down at the table together, I soon perceived that thetask of breaking to her the full extent of the night's disaster, towhich I had been looking forward with dread, was likely to be lesspainful than I had anticipated. For Mrs Vansittart was far tooexperienced in nautical matters to be easily deceived. Moreover, duringmy absence there had been time for her to think, and to draw her ownconclusions, not only from what she saw and heard, but also from whatshe failed to see and hear--particularly the sound of men's voices andfootsteps. So that, as the meal progressed, I began to understand thatit would require very little effort on my part to bring completerealisation home to her.

  Poor lady! I felt very sorry for her--not so much on account of thepossible hardships, privations, and dangers that only too probablyawaited her, for she was "grit" all through, and I knew that she wouldface them all without a murmur; but it was easy to see that she wasgrieving over the terrible loss of life that had attended the disaster.Also, I rather imagined she blamed herself for it. For when I venturedto beg her not to take the matter too much to heart, she looked at methrough her tears and retorted:

  "How can I help taking it to heart, Walter? If I had been content toenjoy life in the same way that other women of my class do, this wouldnever have happened. But I must needs go gadding about the world in ayacht; and this is what has come of it!"

  I replied that yachting was not in itself more dangerous than many otherforms of amusement which could easily be named; that thousands indulgedin it year after year with impunity; and that what had befallen us wasneither more nor less than a pure accident, for which she certainlycould in nowise hold herself responsible, since she had navigated theship with skill and the observance of every necessary precaution. Iwent on to say that the accident had arisen simply from the existence ofa coral reef which nobody had thus far suspected. But my arguments,sound as I felt them to be, seemed to influence the lady very little, ifat all. I could only hope that time, reflection, and the difficultiesthat lay before us would gradually divert her thoughts from the sorrowthat just then seemed to possess her.

  At the conclusion of the meal I took her up on the poop and allowed herto view our surroundings, expounded my theory of the various happeningsthat had brought us to our present pass, and explained the steps which Isuggested should be immediately taken. To which she responded bysaying:

  "Very well, Walter. Whatever you think necessary do, and we will allhelp you to the utmost of our ability. I can sail and navigate a ship,as you have seen, but there my seamanship ends. I have not theknowledge, the skill, the experience, the intuitiveness andimaginativeness to deal adequately with, such a matter as a shipwreck.And when people are in such a plight as ourselves it is the man who musttake hold of the situation and handle it. I trust entirely to you to dowhat you think best; and, as I said before, we women will help you allwe can."

  I thanked her very heartily for her trust in me, and proposed that weshould forthwith set to work, our first task being to free the habitableportions of the ship from water, so that they might become dry andcomfortable again with the least possible delay. And I suggested thatwe should begin with her own sleeping cabin, to which she made noobjection.

  "There is one other matter," I added, "which demands our immediateattention. We must at once determine the exact position of the wreck,and, having done so, must prepare a statement briefly setting forth ourplight and requesting assistance. This statement must be copied outseveral times--as many times as you please, indeed--and the copies,enclosed in sealed bottles, sent adrift at, say, daily intervals. Itwill be strange indeed if, out of four or five dozen bottles, not one ispicked up."

  The suggestion appealed to Mrs Vansittart. She pronounced the idea agood one, and as the time and conditions were alike favourable weforthwith proceeded to carry it out, she first taking a set of fivesights for the determination of the longitude while I noted thechronometer times, and then, vice versa, I taking the sextant and shethe chronometer. Then we adjourned to the chart-room and worked out ourcalculations independently, the results agreeing within ten seconds oflongitude, or a difference of only a few hundred feet. This, of course,was quite near enough for all practical purposes, but it did notcompletely satisfy either of us, Mrs Vansittart being, like myself,something of a stickler for absolute accuracy. We therefore triedagain, this time working the problem of "equal altitudes", and beforethe day was out we had arrived at identical results, both as to latitudeand longitude.

  Then, while I tackled the task of clearing our living quarters of water,Mrs Vansittart set to work to draft out a statement setting forth thecircumstances of the wreck and appealing for help. I have still a copyof the document in my possession, which runs as follows:--

  "Yacht _Stella Maris_; New York Yacht Club, U.S.A.; Mrs Cornelia Vansittart, Owner. Latitude -- North; Longitude -- East.

  "To all whom it may concern.

  "The full-rigged, auxiliary-screw yacht _Stella Maris_, stranded on anuncharted coral reef, situate in the above-mentioned position, duringthe night of Wednesday the -- day of December, 19--, with the lamentableloss of all hands excepting the owner, her son and daughter, chiefofficer Walter Leigh, of Newton Ferrers, Devonshire, England; LizetteCharpentier, chief stewardess, and Susie Blaine, second stewardess, bothof New York, U.S.A.

  "As the only land in sight is a very small, bare sandbank, quiteuninhabitable, the above-named survivors are remaining upon the wreck,which, although totally dismasted and badly bilged, will afford them arefuge so long as the weather remains fine, but may break up during thenext gale that chances to occur.

  "Mrs Vansittart offers a reward of ten thousand dollars (American), andthe reimbursement of all expenses incurred, to the person or persons whowill effect the rescue of herself and her companions in misfortune; andthe finder of this document is earnestly besought to make public itscontents as soon as found.

  Signed: "Cornelia Vansittart."

  The first copy of this appeal was dispatched that very day, by thesimple process of wrapping it carefully in oiled silk, inserting it inan empty bottle, which was tightly corked and sealed, and heaving itoverboard to take its chance. As I stood watching the bottle's progressI was gratified to see that there was a one-knot current setting acrossthe reef, which I hoped would carry it clear into the open sea; thoughwhether it would ever be found by anyone capable of making intelligentuse of it was quite another matter. The chances of it being seen weresmall, and of its recovery still less. But I determined to increaseboth before dispatching the next message; and this I did by routing outsome paint and setting the boy Julius to the task of painting a numberof bottles all over in alternate bands of red and white. An ordinaryfloating bottle might be seen and passed without the smallest effort topick it up, even though all the conditions for recovery should befavourable. But I argued that if a bottle were seen bearingdistinguishing marks that were obviously put upon it with the object ofattracting attention, the person sighting it might reasonably concludethat it would be worth while to salve it and ascertain its contents.

  If the sight of our first call for help drifting placidly seaward acrossthe lagoon was an agreeable sight, there was another which appearedlater on that was by no means so agreeable--the dorsal fins of severalsharks cruising lazily here and there about the lagoon. I thought Icould make a pretty shrewd guess at the meaning of their presence there,I therefore devised a number of pretexts for keeping everybody off thepoop, so that there might be as little chance as possible of anyonebeholding the gruesome sight.

  There were so many matters demanding immediate attention that it wasdifficult to determine which of them should first be taken in hand. Butas the weather was fine, and the barometer stood hi
gh, exhibiting atendency to rise still higher and thus promising a continuance of fineweather, it was agreed that, for health's sake, the living quartersshould be cleared of water and thoroughly aired and made wholesome firstof all. This was accordingly done, the task keeping us all busilyemployed for the best part of three days. Then provision had to be madeagainst the further flooding of Mrs Vansittart's cabin and thedrawing-room by rain, for, as has already been mentioned, the skylightsand companion had been swept away, and the corresponding apertures inthe deck were quite open and unprotected.

  Very fortunately, a large quantity of timber scantling and planking ofvarious kinds and dimensions had been shipped by our far-seeing owner,for the purpose of effecting repairs at sea, if required. As soon asthe cabins had been cleared of water, therefore, some of this timber wasbrought on deck; and with the aid of the carpenter's tools, Julius and Iproceeded to plank over the openings, and make them weather-proof bycovering the planking with tarpaulins tightly nailed over them.

  When I first invited the boy to help me he refused point-blank, upon twodistinct pleas: the first of which was that he saw no reason why heshould work at all, seeing that I was there to do what needed to bedone; while, in the second place, if he chose to work at all he would doonly such work as he pleased, and in any case was not going to beordered about by any darned Britisher. So I just let him severelyalone, and for the first day he loafed about, smoking cigarettes andpretending to fish in the troubled water over the side.

  When, however, on the second day, seeing that I needed help, his motherand sister came to my assistance, the sight of them working while heidled was too much for even his spoiled and selfish temper; and withmany grumblings and mutterings below his breath he ordered his motheraway and took her place. But so intractable was he, so unwilling toreceive the slightest suggestion or hint from a "darned Britisher", andso determined to do things his own way or not at all, that eventually Ihad to tell him plainly he must consent to do as he was told, or dropwork altogether. Finally he gave in, mainly in consequence of hissister's outspoken comments upon his behaviour, but it was with a verybad grace.

  Having made the living quarters of the ship once more habitable and safeagainst bad weather, the next task undertaken was the salving of thesails and as many of the spars and as much of the rigging as possible.This was a lengthy and heavy job, in the performance of which it becamenecessary for me to be frequently over the side, in the water, cuttingthe sails from the yards and stays, clearing and unreeving rigging, andso on. It would have been exceedingly dangerous had the sharks which Ihad seen during the first few days remained in the lagoon; but theyseemed to have gone again, for I saw nothing of them.

  Although their absence enabled me to work with the utmost freedom, Icould not make very rapid headway, single-handed, in the water; whilethe hoisting inboard of the heavier spars and sails, assisted though wewere with such appliances as a derrick, tackles, snatch-blocks, and thewinch, taxed our energies to the very utmost. It was done at last,however, and most thankful was I when the last spar it was possible forus to secure came up over the side; for not only had we saved aconsiderable quantity of material that might possibly prove of theutmost value to us, but we had also rid ourselves of the menace ofhaving the ship holed by the wreckage bumping alongside.

  This big task was completed exactly six weeks from the day upon whichthe wreck had occurred, all of us working strenuously from dawn to darkday after day, excepting Sundays, which Mrs Vansittart insisted shouldbe observed as days of rest, during which she conducted a service,morning and evening, in the drawing-room. Christmas Day, which occurredthree weeks after the wreck, was also observed as a holiday; and despiteour forlorn and rather precarious situation, we contrived to make afairly jolly day of it, the only discordant element being the boyJulius, who early became sulky for some unaccountable reason, and spentthe entire day upon the topgallant forecastle with a rifle, shooting atsea-birds and wasting some two hundred rounds of ball cartridge. I feltstrongly inclined several times to take the rifle forcibly from him, butthe mere hint of such a thing seemed to distress his mother so keenlythat I did not refer to it a second time. Yet I must confess that Ibitterly begrudged the utterly useless expenditure of so many good and,in our case, valuable cartridges.

  Now, it must not be supposed that, in our anxiety to recover as muchwreckage as possible, we forgot to keep a diligent look-out for passingships, for we did not. Nor did we neglect to dispatch a copy of ourappeal for help, securely sealed up in a bottle, regularly every day.But thus far the horizon had remained blank while daylight lasted;therefore if perchance any ships had passed us, they must have done soduring the night. Up to this we had all been working so hard that wehad deemed it hardly worth while to sacrifice our hours of rest for thevery doubtful advantage of maintaining a night watch; but with theconclusion of what we considered our heaviest task, so far as actuallabour was concerned, we decided that it might be of advantage to keep alook-out at night time, at least during the moonlit nights. We shouldthen be able to see a passing ship at such a distance as would enable usto attract her attention by means of a flare. Accordingly it wasarranged that four of us, namely, Julius, the two stewardesses, and I,should each take one watch in succession.

  In that latitude, which was only a few degrees north of the Line, dayand night were approximately of equal length, and for all practicalpurposes the night might be reckoned as beginning at six p.m., andending at six a.m. Therefore if each of us kept a watch of three hours,we should cover the twelve hours between us. But by this arrangementthe same person would keep one particular watch every night, and, ofcourse, the least arduous of the watches would be that from six o'clockto nine o'clock p.m.; I therefore decided to split this watch into twodog-watches of one and a half hours each, by which arrangement theregularity would be broken, and each of us would get the benefit of thefirst dog-watch in succession, which seemed to be not only a fair but adesirable thing.

  To keep a night watch, however, without possessing the means to attractthe notice of a passing ship, would be useless. I therefore constructeda sort of framework consisting of four twelve-foot planks, which I setup on edge in the form of a square enclosure on the after extremity ofthe poop, securing them firmly to the deck planking by means of battens.The planks were nine inches wide, consequently when my work wascomplete I had a kind of open box twelve feet square and nine inchesdeep in which to light my flare. But something was needed to protectthe deck from the action of the fire; my next act, therefore, was tonail together a sort of light raft, consisting of six fifteen-footplanks laid side by side and secured to each other by cross battens, theforward ends being bevelled to reduce the resistance to the raft'spassage through the water. Then I fixed up an arrangement on each sideof the raft whereby, with the aid of rowlocks, I could work a pair ofsculls and so propel the raft through the water. This job took me twodays to complete, but when it was done I had a raft that would sustainnot only my own weight but something to spare. I placed upon it acouple of wash-deck tubs, put a shovel in one of them, and paddledmyself ashore to the small sandbank about half a mile away.

  As I rowed away from the wreck, standing up to my work and facingforward, fisherman fashion, I took a rather wide sweep, whereby I wasenabled to obtain a good view of her. A pitiful sight she presented,bereft of her three masts, with her jib-boom snapped short off, odds andends of rigging trailing overboard, a great gap in her starboardbulwarks, and the fair whiteness of her hull disfigured here and therewith rust streaks. She sat with a list to starboard, and was a trifledown by the head, from which latter circumstance I concluded that herforefoot and bottom forward were the most seriously damaged parts ofher, as, indeed, it was only reasonable to suppose, seeing that she musthave hit the reef stem-on. But, oh! it was distressing to look at thatstill beautiful though dishevelled hull and reflect that she had beenbrought to her present lamentable condition by pure negligence.

  The raft travelled more easily through the water than I
had dared tohope, and in about a quarter of an hour I reached the sandbank andsprang ashore, taking the precaution to secure the raft by a paintermade fast to one of the oars, the loom of which I drove well into thesand. Then I walked to the highest point of the bank and looked aboutme.

  With the exception of a few bunches of dry and rotting seaweed, the bankwas as bare as the back of my hand, but a colony of gulls had settledupon it, and by their cries indicated the resentment which they felt atmy intrusion. I looked round to see if I could discover any eggs, forfresh gulls' eggs are not at all bad eating, and would perhaps afford awelcome change of diet to the women folk; but I found none, so concludedthat it was not just then the season for them. The bank measured, bypacing, a little over eighty yards long by some forty broad; and Idiligently examined the seaward side of it to see whether perchancethere might be a spring of fresh water gushing out of it. I hardlyexpected that there would be, and was therefore not greatly disappointedat failing to find any such thing. But I found the margin liberallystrewed with small shellfish, as well as with numerous empty shells,some of which were so exquisite, both in form and in colouring, that Icould not resist the temptation to waste a few minutes in securingspecimens of the most beautiful for the delectation of Mrs Vansittartand her daughter. This done, I returned to the raft, hauled itbroadside on to the beach, and proceeded to fill my two wash-deck tubswith sand, with which I designed to fill my square box-like arrangementon the poop as a protection for the deck from the flames of my projectedflare. Needless to say, two tubs of sand did not go very far towardfilling the box, and it was not until the following evening that I hadeverything ready. Then, with a goodly pile of combustibles, consistingof dry seaweed, chips, kindling wood, and coal, heaped up in the middleof my sandbox, I had everything ready for lighting a flare at a moment'snotice.

  Our most pressing necessities having been attended to, I found time toattend to the matter which seemed to come next in importance. Hithertowe had been favoured with the finest of fine weather--nothing but thebluest of skies, often without the smallest shred of cloud, no rain, andonly the most gentle of zephyrs. But I knew that such a condition ofthings could not last for ever. A change must inevitably come sooner orlater; and if that change should chance to take the form of a gale fromthe southward, I had scarcely a shadow of doubt that, unless it shouldhappen to be of the very briefest character, the wreck would go topieces under our feet. Therefore it seemed to me that the task whichnow clamoured most loudly for our immediate attention was theconstruction of a craft of some sort which would enable us to escape inthe last resort.

  Now, there are very few tasks in connection with his craft whichmercantile Jack cannot perform in a more or less efficient manner. Hecan unrig his ship, and rig her afresh. If any of her spars should besprung, he can fix them up in such a fashion that they will serve theirpurpose very well until a new spar can be procured. He can knot andsplice rigging; he can patch or rope a sail; and there are a thousandother things that he can do very deftly. But there is one thing whichhe cannot do, unless he has served an apprenticeship, or at least partof an apprenticeship to it, and that is--build a boat. He can repair adamaged boat, I grant you, put in a new plank, or replace a damagedtimber. But to build a boat, as we understand the term, is altogetherbeyond him. The best that he can do is to construct some sort of amakeshift; and the problem that now confronted me was, what form was mymakeshift to take?

  First, what were my requirements? If it came to our being obliged toabandon the wreck, either through stress of weather or because of aconviction that our appeals for help had gone astray and that we mustgive up all hope of rescue and effect our own deliverance, it would meana boat voyage. This in its turn would mean that the craft must be agood sea boat, capable of facing any weather, weatherly, a reasonablygood sailer, and big enough to accommodate six people--four of whom werewomen, whose comfort and welfare must receive special consideration--together with a stock of provisions and water sufficient to last us allfor, say, five weeks at least. I had already discussed this matter withMrs Vansittart, and she had expressed a determination to try forManila, in such a case, that being an American possession. Secondly,had we the materials, and had I the skill and strength to build such aboat, with such assistance as my companions could afford me? That wasthe question which now demanded an answer, and, in consultation withMrs Vansittart, I now diligently proceeded to seek the reply.