In the Sargasso Sea

by Thomas A. Janvier

  XVII

  HOW I WALKED MYSELF INTO A MAZE

  Sitting there with the splotches of fresh blood on the deck all aroundme was more than I could stomach for very long. The sight of thembrought back to me with a horrid distinctness everything that I hadseen since I came aboard the hulk: the dead man lying on the deck, theother man with his frightful wounds and his wild talk and his death inthe midst of his passionate ravings, and the disgusting work that Ihad been forced to do before I could hide their two bodies from mysight in the sea-depths beneath the tangled weed. And so, presently, Iscrambled to my feet, thinking to get back to the _Hurst Castle_again--where there was no taint of blood to bring up haunting visionsand where, though it seemed a long while past to me, I had been in thecompany of honest and kindly men.

  But when I turned toward this poor escape from my misery--which atbest was but a change from a foul prison to a clean one--I saw that Icould not easily compass it; for in the time that had passed since Ihad made my jump in the morning--noon being by then upon me--the_Hurst Castle_ had swung around a little, being caught I suppose uponsome bit of sunken wreckage, so that where the two ships were nearestto each other there was an open reach of twenty feet or moreacross the weed.

  This was too great a distance for a jump, seeing that it must be madefrom rail to rail without a run to give me a send-off; and yet it wasso short that my not being able to cross it never even entered mymind. Had there been a mast standing on the hulk, with a yard fast toit, I could have rigged a rope from the yard-arm and swung myselfacross in a moment; but the decks being sea-swept, with nothing leftstanding on them, that way was not open to me; nor could I find alight spar--even the flag-staff at the stern being snapt away--that Icould stretch across from one rail to the other and make a bridge of.The only other thing that occurred to me was to tear off some of thedoors in the cabin and to make of them a little raft that I could passby, though I saw well enough that pushing a raft through so dense atangle even for that short distance would be a hard job. And then Ihad the thought that perhaps on the sailing-ship lying beside me Imight find a sound boat, which would better answer my purpose since itcould be the more easily moved through the weed. In point of fact Icould not have moved a boat a single foot through that thicket withoutcutting a passage for it, and I might have thrown overboard three orfour doors and so made a bridge over the weed that would have borne meeasily--but I did not know then as much about that strange sea-growthas I came to know later on.

  As there was no hurry in one way, the ships being so bedded fast therethat they were certain not to move more than a few feet at the utmost,I hunted up some food before setting myself to what I knew would be aheavy task; finding cold victuals of a coarse sort in the galley--leftfrom the last meal that the two men had made there--and fairly freshwater in the tank. It was hard work eating, on board that foul shipand thinking of the foul hands which had made the food ready; butgoing without eating would have been harder, for I had the healthyappetite of a sound young fellow three-and-twenty years old.

  When I had finished my meal, and I got through it quickly, I made fasta line to the steamer's rail and slipped down it to the deck of thesailing-ship--a fine vessel of above a thousand tons, built of woodand on clipper lines. There was an immediate sense of relief ingetting aboard of her, and away from the blood-stained steamer wherethe dead men had been; but I saw at a glance that what I was after wasnot there. She had carried four boats on her rail, as I could tellby the davits, and likely enough a long-boat on her fore-castle aswell. But all of them were gone, and I could only hope--since theywere not there for my use--that her crew had got safe away in them: aswell enough might have happened when she was floating water-loggedafter the storm that had wrecked her was past.

  Without stopping to explore her--and, indeed, after what I had foundon the steamer, I had no fancy for explorations which might end in mystumbling upon still more horrors--I went on to a trim little briglying on the other side of her; a beautiful little vessel, with allher spars and rigging save her bow-hamper in perfect order forsea-going--but showing by her broken bow-sprit that she had been incollision, and by her depth in the water that after the collision shehad filled. Naturally enough, her boats were gone too; and so I lefther and went on.

  In the course of the next two hours or so I must have traversed morethan a hundred wrecks--scrambling up or down from one to another, asthey happened to lie low in the water or high out of it--and with alltheir differences of size and build finding them in one way the same:all of them were dead ships which some sort of a sea-disaster hadslain. And not one of them had a sound boat left on board. The samereason that kept me from exploring the first of them kept me fromexploring any of them: the dread of finding in their shadowy depthsgrisly horrors in the way of dead men long lying there; and, indeed, Iwas distinctly warned to hurry away from some of them by the vilestenches which came to me and made my stomach turn sickish and myblood go cold.

  I must have walked for a good mile, I suppose, over the dead bodies ofthese sea-killed ships--and it was the most dismal walk that ever Ihad taken--before I realized that even if I found a boat and got itoverboard it would be of no use to me, since there was no possibilityof my getting back in it to my own hulk through that densely packedmass of wrecks and weed. Indeed, I should have perceived this plaincertainty sooner had not the wondering curiosity which this strangewalk bred in me lured me on and on. And then, being brought at last toa halt by my rational reflection, there came over me suddenly a queershiver of doubt as to the direction in which the _Hurst Castle_ lay;and then a still more shivering doubt as to whether I should be ableto get back to her again by the way that I had come, or by any wayat all.

  At the beginning of my march in this haze-covered sea-wilderness I hadtried to keep upon the outer edge of it; but insensibly--having topass from ship to ship rather by the way that was open to me than bythe way that I wished to go--I had wandered into the thick of itmore and more. And so, when at last I took thought of my whereabouts,and stopped to look around me that I might shape a course back again,I found that in whatever direction I turned I saw only what I had seenahead of me when my hulk was drawing in upon its borders: a denseconfusion of broken and ruined ships which fell away from me vaguelyunder the golden haze. It had been a dismal sight then; but what gavea fresh note to it, and a thrilling one, was that it no longer wasonly in front of me but was all around me--stretching away on everyside of the wreck on which I was standing, and growing fainter andfainter as the haze shut down thick upon it until it vanished softlyinto the golden blur.

  Yet even then the full meaning of my outlook did not take hold of me.That I was in something of a coil, out of which I could not find myway easily, was plain enough; but that I really was lost in it did notcross my mind. With all my wanderings, I knew that I could not havetraversed any great distance; and the certainty that I had passedalways from one ship to the ship next touching it seemed to makefinding my way back again entirely open and plain. And so I laughed atmyself a little--though that was not much of a place forlaughter--because of my touch of panic fright; and then I turned backfrom the ship on which I was standing to the one next to it, overwhich I had just come--and so on to the next, and in the same way tothree or four more. Yet even in that short distance--though my way wasunmistakable, for these ships touched only each other as ithappened--I was surprised by finding how differently things looked tome as I took my course backward: all the ups and downs of myscrambling walk being inverted, and the lay of the ships one toanother and the look of them being entirely changed.

  Presently I got on board of a brig--which I well remembered, becauseit was one of the vessels having about it a vile stench that had mademe cross it quickly--on the farther side of which two ships werelying, both rising a little above it and both jammed close against itsside. For a moment I hesitated, in doubt as to which of the two I hadcome by; and I should have hesitated longer had not a whiff of thehorrid smell struck upon me strongly and urged me to go on. And s
oaway I went, taking to the ship that I thought was the right one; andstill fancying that it was the right one when I got aboard of it--forboth, as I have said, were ships, and the two had been about equallymauled by sea and storm. Indeed, except for the differences in theirbuild and rig, there was a strong family resemblance among thesestorm-broken vessels; and the way that they were jammed together madetheir build less noticeable, while a good many of them weredismasted and so had no rig at all.

  Therefore I went on confidently for a dozen ships or more before I hadany misgivings that I had missed my way--which was but a naturalreaction against my momentary doubtfulness--and then I found myselfsuddenly pulled up short. Right above me was the side of a big ironsteamer--called the _City of Boston_, as I made out from the weatheredname-plate on her bows, and a packet-boat as I judged by herbuild--rising so high out of the water that getting up to her deck wasimpossible: as equally impossible was my having forgotten it had Imade such a rattling jump down. Yet this big steamer was the onlyvessel in touch with the barque on which I was standing, save theschooner from which I had just come; and that gave me sharply thechoice between two conclusions: either I had made that big jumpwithout noticing it, or else--and I felt a queer lump rising in mythroat as I faced this alternative--I had managed to go astraycompletely and had lost myself in what had the look of being ahopeless maze.