XVIII
I FIND THE KEY TO A SEA MYSTERY
On shore, in a forest, I would not in the least have minded findingmyself in a fix of this sort--though my getting into it would havebeen unlikely--because getting out of it would have been the easiestthing in the world. I know a good deal of wood-craft, and always cansteer a course steadily by having the points of the compass fixed forme by the size and the trend of the branches, and by the bark growingthin or thick or by the moss or the lack of moss on the tree-trunks,and by the other such simple forest signs which are the outcome of theaffection that there is on the part of things growing for the sun.
But what made my breath come hard and my heart take to pumping--as Istood looking up the tall side of the _City of Boston_, being certainthat I never had come down it and so must be off my courseentirely--was my conviction that in this forest of the ocean, if I maycall it so, there were no signs which would help me to find my way.All around me was the same wild hopeless confusion of broken wrecksjammed tight together, or only a little separated by narrow spacesthick-grown with weed; and everywhere overhanging it heavily, growingdenser the deeper that I got into the tangle, was the haze that madeit more confusing still. And under the haze--and because of it, Isuppose--was a soft languorish warmth that seemed to steal my strengthaway and a good deal of my courage too.
But I knew that to give way to the feeling of dull fright, havingsomehow a touch of awe in it, that was creeping over me would be toput myself into a panic; and that once my wits fairly were addled mychance of getting back to the _Hurst Castle_ again would be prettymuch gone. And to get back to her seemed to me the only way of keepingmy heart up and of keeping myself alive. She was the one ship, in allthat great dismal fleet, aboard of which I could be sure that nothinghorrible had happened, and in which I could be certain that noloathsome sights were to be come upon suddenly in shadowy nooks andcorners to which dying men had crept in their extremity--trying, sincenone ever would bury them, to hide away a little their own bodiesagainst the time when death should be upon them and corruptionshould begin.
And so I pulled myself together as well as I could and tried to do alittle quiet thinking; and presently I came to the conclusion that Imust find my way back to the brig against which the two ships werelying and start afresh from her; since it was pretty certain that itwas there, by boarding the wrong ship, that I had got off my course.But because of my certain knowledge of what horridness the brigsheltered, and of the noisome stench that I must encounter there, ittook a good deal of resolution to put this plan into practice; somuch, indeed, that for a while I wavered about it, and succeeded atlast in starting back again only by setting going the full force ofmy will.
But I need not have whipped myself on to my work so resolutely, norhave fretted myself in advance with planning the rush that I shouldmake across the brig when I came to her--for I never, so far as Iknow, laid eyes on her again. For a little while, as in my firstturn-about, I found my way backward without much difficulty--thoughagain the different look that the ships had as I returned across thempulled me up from time to time with doubts about them; and then, justas before, I came to a place where more than one line of advance wasopen to me and there went wrong--as I knew a little later by findingmyself aboard a vessel so strange in her appearance that my firstglimpse over her deck satisfied me that I saw her then for thefirst time.
This craft was an old-fashioned sloop-of-war, carrying eighteen guns;and that she had perished in action was as evident as that herdeath-battle had been fought a long while back in the past. Themauling that she had received had made an utter wreck of her--hermasts being shot away and hanging by the board, most of her bulwarksbeing splintered, and her whole stern torn open as though a crashingbroad-side had been poured into her at short range. Moreover, nearlyall her guns had been dismounted, and two of them had burst infiring--as the shattered gun-carriages showed.
But what most strongly proved the fierceness of her last action, andthe length of time that had passed since she fought it, were thescores of skeletons lying about her deck--a few with bits of clothinghanging fast to them, but most of them clean fleshless naked bones.Just as they had fallen, there they lay: with legs or arms or ribssplintered or carried off by the shot which had struck them, or withbullet-holes clean through their skulls. But the sight of them, whileit put a sort of awe upon me, did not horrify me; because timehad done its cleansing work with them and they were pure.
Indeed, my imagination was taken such fast hold of by coming upon thisthrilling wreck of ancient sea-battle, fought out fiercely to a finishgenerations before ever I was born, that for a little while I forgotmy own troubles entirely; and so got over the shock which my firstsight of the riddled sloop and her dead crew had given me by provingthat again I had lost my way. And my longing to know all that I couldfind out about it--backed by the certainty that I should not come uponanything below that would revolt me--led me to go searching in theshattered cabin for some clue to the sloop's name and nationality, andto the cause in which her death-fight had been fought.
The question of nationality was decided the moment that I set my footwithin the cabin doorway--there being a good deal of light there,coming in through the broken stern--by my seeing stretched over astanding bed-place in a state-room to starboard an American flag; andthe flag, taken together with the ancient build of the sloop, alsosettled the fact pretty clearly that the action which had finished hermust have been fought with an English vessel in the War of 1812.
Under the flag I could make out faintly the lines of a human figure,and I knew that one of the sloop's officers--most likely hercommander, from the respect shown to him by covering him with thecolors--must be lying there, just as his men had placed him to waitfor a sea-burial until the fighting should come to an end. And that hehad remained there was proof that not a man of the sloop's company buthad been killed outright in the fight or had got his death-wound init; and also of the fact that in a way the fight had been avictory--since it was evident that the enemy had not taken possession,and therefore must have been beaten off.
But the whole matter was settled clearly by my finding the sloop'slog-book lying open on the cabin table, just as it had lain there, andhad entries made in it, while the action was going on. And a verystrange thrill ran through me as I read on the mouldy page in brownfaint letters the date, "October 5, 1814," and across the page-head,in bigger brown faint letters: "U.S. Sloop-of-war _Wasp_": and so knewthat I was aboard of that stinging little war-sloop--whereof therecord is a bright legend, and the fate a mystery, of our Navy--whichin less than three months' time successively fought and whipped threeEnglish war-vessels--the ship _Reindeer_ and the brigs _Avon_ and_Atalanta_, all of them bigger than herself--and then, being lastsighted in September, 1814, not far from the Azores, vanished with allher crew and officers from off the ocean and never was seen norheard of again.
There before me in the mouldy log-book was the record of her lastaction--and in gallantry it led the three others which have madeher fame.
The entries began at 7.20 A.M. with: "A strange sail in sight on theweather bow;" at 7.45 followed: "The strange brig bearing down on us.Looks English"; and at 8.10: "The strange brig has shown Englishcolors." Then came the manoeuvring for position, covering more than anhour, and the beating to general quarters; and after that the shortentries ran on quickly--in such rough and ready writing as might beexpected of a man dashing in for a moment to make them, and thendashing out again to where the fighting was going on:
"9.20 A.M. Engaged the enemy with our starboard battery, hulling him severely.
"9.24. Our foremast by the board.
"9.28. The enemy's broadside in our stern. Great havoc.
"9.35. The wreck of the foremast cleared, giving us steerage way.
"9.40. Our hulling fire telling. The enemy's battery fire slacking. His musketry fire very hot and galling.
"9.45. The enemy badly hulled. More than half of our crew
now killed or disabled.
"9.52. Our main-mast by the board and our mizzen badly wounded. Action again very severe. Few of our men left.
"9.56. Captain Blakeley killed and brought below.
"10.01. Our mizzen down. The enemy's fire slacking again.
"10.10. The enemy sheering off, with the look of being sinking.
"10.15. The enemy sinking. We cannot help him. Most of our men are dead. All of us living are badly hurt."
And there the entries came to an end.
My breath came fast as I read that short record of as brave a fight asever was fought on salt water; and when my reading was finished Igave a great sigh. It was a fit ending for the little _Wasp_, thatdeath triumphant: and it was a fit ending to a fight between Americanand English sailors that they should hang at each other's throats,neither yielding, until they died that way--they being each of anation unaccustomed to surrender, and both of the one race which alonein modern times has held the sea.
In the Sargasso Sea Page 18