dead man’s raft.
the voyage to the azores and an episode.
so the desire of every man on board the white wings became that of making the port of santa maria without the loss of a single day. when our prudent captain insisted that we must call at porto grande to coal, i believe that we regarded him as guilty of an offence against our earnestness. the fever of the quest had infected the very firemen in the stoke-hold. my men spent the sunny days peering northward as though the sea would disclose to them sights and sounds beyond all belief wonderful. they would have burned their beds if by such an act the course had been held.
for my own part, while the zeal flattered me, there were hours of great despondency and, upon that, of silent doubt which no optimism of others could atone for. reflect how ill-matched were the links in the chain i had forged and how little to be relied upon. a dead man upon a lonely shore; a woman wearing my stolen pearls in a london ball-room; the just belief that diamonds smuggled from the mines of south africa were hidden upon the high seas; the discovery of a great ship, drifting like a phantom derelict in the waste of the south atlantic ocean! this was the record. if i judged that the island of santa maria could add to it, the belief was purely supposititious. i went there as a man goes to an address which may help him in a quest. he may find the house empty or tenanted, hostile or friendly; but, in any case, he is wise to go and to answer the question for himself, for no other can take the full measure of that responsibility.
we were delayed awhile at porto grande waiting for coal, and after that, sparing our engines as much as possible, we set a drowsy course almost due north, and upon the third day we were within fifty miles of that island of our hopes—santa maria in the azores. i am not likely to forget either the occasion or the circumstance of it. the month was november, the hour eleven o’clock in the forenoon watch, the morning that of saturday, the nineteenth day of the month. despite the season of the year, a warm sun shone down upon us almost with tropic heat. captain larry was in his cabin preparing for the mid-day observation; the quartermaster cain was at the wheel; balaam, the boatswain, sat against the bulwarks amidships, knitting a scarf for his throat; my virile friend, mcshanus, had gone below to “soak in the cold water,” as he put it. my own occupation was that of reading for the third time that very beautiful book—maeterlinck’s “life of the bee,” and i was wondering anew at the master knowledge of nature it displayed when the second officer sent down word from the bridge that he would like to speak with me. understanding that he did not wish to call the captain from the cabin, i went up immediately and discovered him not a little excited about a black object drifting with the wind at a distance, it may be, of a third of a mile from the ship. this he pointed out to me, and handing me the glass, he asked me what i made of it.
“it’s a raft, andrews,” i said—for that was the second officer’s name—“a raft, and there are men upon it.”
“exactly as i thought, sir. it is a raft, and there are men upon it—but not living men, i fear. i have been watching it for a good ten minutes, and i am sure of what i say. yon poor fellows will never sail a ship again.”
i lifted the glass again and spied out the raft with a new interest. clearly, it was not a safety raft such as is carried by most steamships nowadays; indeed, it appeared to be a very rude structure made of rough planks lashed together at hazard. so far as i could count them, there were seven bodies made fast by ropes to this uncouth structure, but the seas broke over them continually, and i waited some moments before i observed that the clothes of the men were but rags, and that two of the poor fellows at least were almost entirely immersed and must have been drowned as we looked at them, if their deaths had not occurred long weeks ago.
“that’s a fearful thing, andrews,” i exclaimed, returning him the glass. “of course, we shall go and see what we can do.”
“i have already altered the course two points, sir,” he said.
“will you send a boat, do you think?”
“ah, sir, that’s for you to say. if you think it wise that the men should know, remembering what a sailor is, then a boat by all means.”
“that is to be considered. if these poor fellows are really dead?——”
“they have been dead many weeks, sir. what’s more, no shipwreck put them in that position.”
“good god! do you mean to say that they have been murdered!”
“ah, that’s not for me to decide, dr. fabos. look at the way they are lashed aboard there. did their own hands do that? i’ll wager all i’ve got against it. they were tied up like that and then sent adrift. it’s plain enough without the glass, and the glass makes it sure.”
be it said that we were steaming some fifteen knots an hour by this time, and had come almost within a biscuit toss of the raft. the foreward look-out had been warned to say nothing, and abel, the quartermaster, took his cue from the officer of the watch. so it came about that we passed by the dreadful spectacle and remained as a crew almost ignorant of it. indeed, knowing how easily seamen are depressed, i was thankful that it should have been so. the poor fellows upon the raft must have been dead for some weeks. two of them were little more than human skeletons. the others were washed by every wave that broke over the hellish contrivance of ropes and planks to which they had been tied. i doubted no longer my officer’s supposition, horrible as it was to believe. neither peril of the sea nor accident of destiny had sent those men to a death unnameable. i knew that they had been foully murdered, and that he who had thus dealt with them was the man i had set out to seek.
“we cannot help them, andrews,” i exclaimed. “let us keep our secret. the day may not be distant when the man shall share it with me. it would be something to have lived for—even to avenge that!”
hardly could he answer me. terror of the voyage, and upon terror a fierce delight, had rapidly become the guiding impulses of my crew. they would have sailed with me to the world’s end now, and made no complaint. it remained for me, i said, not to betray them, even for the sake of a woman worthy of a man’s love.
