XIII
I HEAR A STRANGE CRY IN THE NIGHT
That was the end of my visions. Through the night that followed--myfever having run its course, I suppose--I slept easily; and whenanother day came and I woke again my fever was gone. I was pretty weakand ragged, but the cut in my head was healing and no longer hurt memuch, and my mind was clear. There still was water left in the jug,and I drank freely and felt the better for it; and toward afternoon Ifelt so hungry that I managed to get up and go to the pantry on aforaging expedition for something to eat.
This time I was careful not to stuff myself. I found a box of lightbiscuit and ate a couple of them; and then I filled my water-jug atthe tank and brought it and the biscuit back to my stateroom withoutgoing on the deck at all. My light meal greatly refreshed me; and inan hour or two I ate another biscuit--and kept on nibbling at them offand on through the night when I happened to wake up. In between whilesmy sleep was of a sort to do me good; not deep, but restful. With thecoming of another morning I felt so strong that I went to the pantryagain for food of a better sort--venturing to eat a part of a tin ofmeat with my biscuit and to add to my water a little wine; and whenthis was down I began to feel quite like myself once more, and to longso strongly for some sunshine and fresh air that I climbed up thecompanion-way to the deck.
But when I got there I thought at first that my visions were comingback again. Indeed, what I saw was so nearly my last vision over againas to make me half believe, later, that I really did go on deck in mydelirium and really did see that blood-red sunset and all the restthat had seemed to me a dream. At any rate, there was no doubting thissecond time--if it were the second time--the reality of what I beheld;and because I no longer was fever-struck, and so could take in fullythe wonder of it, my astonishment kept my spirits from being whollypulled down.
The haze was so thick as to be almost like a fog hanging about me, butthe hot sunshine pouring down into it gave it a golden brightness andI could see through it dimly for a good long way; and there was noneed for far-seeing to be sure that I had before me what I think mustbe the strangest sight that the world has in it for the eyes of man.For what I looked at was the host of wrecked ships, the dross of waveand tempest, which through four centuries--from the time when sailorsfirst pushed out upon the great western ocean--has been gatheringslowly, and still more slowly wasting, in the central fastnesses ofthe Sargasso Sea.
The nearest edge of this mass of wreckage was not a quarter of a mileoff from me; but it swept away in a great irregular curve to the rightand left and vanished into the golden haze softly--and straight aheadI could see it stretching dimly away from me, getting thicker andcloser until it seemed to be almost as solid as a real island wouldhave been. And, indeed, it had a good deal the look of being a realisland; the loom through the haze of countless broken masts rising tovarious heights and having frayed ropes streaming from them havingmuch the effect of trees growing there, while the irregularities ofthe surface made it seem as though little houses were scatteredthickly among the trees. But in spite of the golden light which hungover it, and which ought to have given it a cheerful look, it was themost desolate and sorrowful place I ever saw; for it seemed tobelong--and in a way really did belong, since every hulk in all thatfleet was the slowly wasting dead body of a ship slain by storm ordisaster--to that outcast region of mortality in which death hasachieved its ugliness but to which the cleansing of a completedissolution has not yet been brought by time.
Yet the curious interest that I found in this strange sight kept mefrom feeling only the horror of it. In my talks with Bowers about theold-time sea-wonders which must be hidden in the Sargasso Sea myimagination had been fired; and when I thus found myself actually inthe way to see these wonders I half forgot how useless the sight wasto me--being myself about the same as killed in the winning of it--andwas so full of eagerness to press forward that I grew almost angrybecause of the infinite slowness with which my hulk drifted on to itsplace in the ruined ranks.
There was no hurrying my progress. Around me the weed and wreckagewere packed so closely that the wonder was that my hulk moved throughit at all. Of wind there was not a particle; indeed, as I found later,under that soft golden haze was a dead calm that very rarely in thosestill latitudes was ruffled by even the faintest breeze. Only a weakswirl of current from the far-off Gulf Stream pushed my hulk onward;and this, I suppose, was helped a little by that attraction offloating bodies for each other which brings chips and leaves togetheron the surface of even the stillest pool. But a snail goes faster thanI was going; and it was only at the end of a full hour of watchingthat I could see--yet even then could not be quite certain about it--thatmy position a very little had changed.
Save that now and then I went below and got some solid food into me--andas I was careful to eat but little at a time I got the good of it--I satthere on the deck all day long gazing; and by nightfall my hulk had goneforward by perhaps as much as a hundred yards. But my motion was a steadyand direct one, and I saw that if it continued it would end by laying meaboard of a big steamer--having the look of being a cargo-boat--that stoodout a little from the others and evidently herself had not long been apart of that broken company. She was less of a wreck, in one way, thanmy own hulk; for she floated on an even keel and so high out of thewater as to show that she had no leak in her; but her masts had beenswept clean away and even her funnel and her bridge were gone--as thougha sharp-edged sea had sliced like a razor over her and shaved her decksclean.
Immediately beyond this steamer lay a big wooden ship evidentlywaterlogged; for she lay so low that the whole of her hull, save a bit ofher stern, was hidden from me by the steamer, and the most of her thatshowed was her broken masts. And beyond her again was a jam of wrecks soconfused that I could not make out clearly any one of them from the rest.Taken all together, they made a sort of promontory that jutted out fromwhat I may call the main-land of wreckage; and to the right and left ofthe promontory there went off in long receding lines the coast of thatcountry of despair.
At last the sun sunk away to the horizon, and as it fell off westward pinktones began to show in the clouds there and then to be reflected in thehaze; and these tones grew warmer and deeper until I saw just such anotherblood-red sunset as I had seen in what I had fancied was my dream. Andunder the crimson haze lay the dead wrecks, looming large in it, withgleams of crimson light striking here and there on spars and masts andgiving them the look of being on fire. And then the light faded slowly,through shades of purple and soft pink and warm gray, until at last theblessed darkness came and shut off everything from my tired eyes.
Indeed, I was glad when the darkness fell; for as I sat there looking andlooking and feeling the bitter hopelessness of it all, I was well on myway to going crazy with sorrow. But somehow, not seeing any longer theruin which was so near to me, and of which I knew myself to be a part, itseemed less real to me--and so less dreadful. And being thus eased alittle I realized that I was hungry again, and that commonplace naturalfeeling did me good too.
I went below to the pantry, striking a match to see my way by; and whenI had lighted the big lamp that was hanging there--the glass chimney ofwhich, in some wonderful way, had pulled through the crash which had sentthe mizzen-mast flying--the place seemed so cheerful that my desire forsupper increased prodigiously, and tended still farther to down mysorrowful thoughts. I even had a notion of trying to light a fire inthe galley and cooking over it some of the beef or mutton that I hadfound in the cold-room; but I gave that up, just then, because Ireally was too hungry to wait until I could carry through so largea plan.
But there was a plenty of good food in tins easily to be got at; andwhat was still better I felt quite strong enough to eat a lot of itwithout hurting myself. I even went at my meal a little daintily,spreading a napkin--that I got from a locker filled with tablelinen--on the pantry dresser, and setting out on it a tin of chickenand a bunch of cheese and some bread which was pretty stale and hardand a pot of jam to end off with; and fro
m the wine-room I brought abottle of good Bordeaux.
As I ate my supper, greatly relishing it, the oddness of what I wasdoing did not occur to me; but often since I have thought how strangewas that meal of mine--in that brightly lighted cosey little room,and myself really cheerful over it--in its contrast with the utterlydesperate strait in which I was. And I think that the contrast wasstill sharper, my supper being ended, when I fetched a steamer-chairthat I had noticed lying on the floor of the cabin and settled myselfin it easily--facing toward the stern, so that the slope of the deckonly made the slope of the chair still easier--and so sat there in thebrightness smoking a very good cigar.
And after a while--what with my comfort of body, and the good mealin my stomach, and the good wine there too--a soothing drowsinessstole over me, and I had the feeling that in another moment or two Ishould fall away into a delicious doze. And then, all of a sudden, Iwas roused wide awake again by hearing faintly, but quite distinctly,a long and piercingly shrill cry.
I fairly jumped from my chair, so greatly was I startled; and for agood while I stood quite still, drawing my breath softly, in waitingwonder for that strange cry to come again. But it did not comeagain--and as the silence continued I fell to doubting if I had notbeen asleep, and that this sound which had seemed so real to me hadnot been only a part of a dream.
In the Sargasso Sea Page 13