In truth, though, there was not much to be hopeful about. For my supper I had eaten the half of what food was left me, and it was so little that I still had a mighty hungry feeling in my belly after it was down. For my breakfast I should eat what was left; and after that, unless I found fresh supplies quickly, I was in a fair way to lie down beside my bag of jewels and die of starvation—like the veriest beggar that ever was. But I did hope a little all the same; and when I went on again the next morning, though my last scrap of food was eaten, my spirits kept up pretty well—for I was sure from the look of the wrecks which I traversed that the dead ancient centre of my continent at last was behind me, and that its living outer fringe could not be very far away.

All that day I pressed forward steadily, helped by my little flickering flame of hope—which burned low because sanguine expectation does not consort well with an empty stomach, yet which kept alive because the wreck-pack had more and more of a modern look about it as I went on. But the faintness that I felt coming over me as the day waned gave me warning that the rope by which I held my life was a short one; and as the sun dropped down into the mist—at once thinning it, so that I could see farther, and giving it a ruddy tone which sent red streams of brightness gleaming over the tangle of wreckage far down into the west—I felt that the rope must come to an end altogether, and that I must stop still and let death overtake me, by the sunset of one day more.

And then it was, just as the sun was sinking, that I saw clearly—far away to the westward—the funnel of a steamer standing out black and sharp against the blood-red ball that in another minute went down into the sea. And with that glimpse—which made me sure that I was close to the edge of the wreck-pack, and so close to food again—a strong warm rush of hope swept through me that outcast finally my despair.



XXIX

I GET INTO A SEA CHARNEL-HOUSE

That I should get to the steamer that night I knew was clean impossible, for she lay a long way off from me, and that I had seen her funnel at all was due to the mere happy accident of its standing for that single minute directly between me and the setting sun. I did hope, though, that by pressing hard toward her I might fetch aboard of some vessel not long wrecked on which I would find eatable food; yet in this I was disappointed, the shadows coming down on me so fast that I was forced in a little while to pull up short—stopping while still a little daylight remained so that I might stow myself the more comfortably for the night.

As to looking for provender on the little old ship that I settled to camp on, I knew that it was useless. From her build I fixed her as belonging to the beginning of the present century, and from her depth in the wreck-pack she probably had met her death-storm not less than threescore years before; and so what provisions she had carried long since had wasted away. Yet there was a chance that I might find some spirits aboard of her—which would be a poor substitute for food, but better than nothing—and I hurried to have a look in her cabin before darkness settled down.

The cabin hatch was closed, and as it was both locked and swelled with moisture I could not budge it; but two or three kicks sent the doors beneath the hatch flying and so opened an entrance for me—that I was slow to make use of because of a heavy musty stench which poured out from that shut up place and made me turn a little sick, as I got my first strong whiff of it. Indeed, I was so faint and so hungry that I was in no condition to stand up against that curiously vile smell. To lessen it, by getting a current of air into the cabin, I smashed in the little skylight—over which some ropes were stretched and still held the remnant of a tarpaulin, that must have been set in place while the storm was blowing which sent the ship to her account; and this so far improved matters that presently I was able to go down the companion-way, though the stench still was horridly strong.

At the bottom of the stair, the light being faint, I tripped over something; and looking down saw bones lying there with a sort of fungus partly covering them, and to the skull there still clung a mat of woolly hair plaited here and there into little braids: by which, and by the size of the bones, it seemed that a negro woman must have been left fastened into the cabin to die there after the crew had been washed overboard or had taken to the boats. But even then the business in which the ship had been engaged did not occur to me; and after hesitating for a moment I went on into the cabin, and looked about me as well as I could in the twilight for the case of bottles that I hoped to find.

The case was there, as I was pretty certain that it would be, such provision rarely being absent from old-time vessels, but all the bottles had been taken from it except an empty one—which looked as though the cabin had been opened at the last moment to fetch out supplies for the boats, and then deliberately locked fast again with the poor woman inside: an act so barbarous that it did not seem possible unless a crew of out and out devils had been in charge of the ancient craft. However, the matter which just then most concerned me was the liquor that I was in search of, that I might a little stay my stomach with it against the hunger that was tormenting me; and so I ransacked the lockers that ran across the stern of the ship and across a part of the bulkhead forward, in the faint hope that I might come upon another supply—but my search was a vain one, two of the lockers having only some mouldy clothing in them, and all the rest being filled with arms. The stock of muskets and pistols and cutlasses was so large, so far beyond any honest traders needs, that I could not at all account for it: until the thought occurred to me that the vessel I had come aboard of had been a pirate—and that notion seemed to fit in pretty well with her crew having gone off and left the poor woman locked up in the cabin to starve. However, as I found out a little later, while my guess was a close one it still was wrong.

The four bunks, two on each side, were not enclosed, and the only door opening from the cabin was in the bulkhead forward—and worth trying because it might lead to a store-room, I thought. It was a very stout-looking door, and across it, resting in strong iron catches, were two heavy wooden bars. These puzzled me a good deal, there being no sense in barring the outside of a store-room door in that fashion, since the door did not seem to be locked and anybody could lift the bars away. However, I got them out of their sockets without much difficulty; and after a good deal of tugging at a ring made fast in it I got the door open too—and instantly I was thrust back from the opening by an outpouring of the same vile heavy musty stench that had come up from the cabin when I staved in the hatch, only this was still ranker and more vile. And I found that the door did not lead into a little store-room, as I had fancied, but right through from the cabin to the ship's main-deck—that stretched away forward in a gloomy tunnel, as black as a cellar on a rainy night, into which I could see only for four or five yards. Indeed, but for the way that the ship chanced to be lying—with her stern toward the west, so that a good deal of light came in through the broken skylight from the ruddy sunset—I could not have seen into it at all.

But I saw far enough, and more than far enough—and the sight that I looked on sent all over me a creeping chill. Wherever the light went, skeletons were lying—with a fungus growth on the bones that gave a horrid effect of scraps of flesh still clinging to them, and the loose-lying skulls (of which a couple were close by the doorway) were covered still with a matting of woolly hair. And I could tell from the tangle that the skeletons were in—though also lying in some sort of orderly rows, because of the chains which held them fast—that the poor wretches to whom they had belonged had writhed and struggled over each other in their agony: and I could fancy what a hell that black place must have been while death was doing his work among them, they all squirming together like worms in a pot; and it seemed to me that I could hear their yells and howls—at first loud and terrible, and then growing fainter and fainter until they came to be but low groans of misery that at last ended softly in dying sighs.

The horror of it all came home to me so sharply, after I had stood there at the doorway for a moment or two held fast by a sort of ghastly fascination, that I gave a yell myself as keen and as loud as any which the poor blacks had uttered; and with that I turned about and dashed up the companionway to the deck as hard as I could go. Nor could I bear to abide on the slave-ship, nor even near her, for the night. Very little light was left to me, but I made the most of it and went scrambling from hulk to hulk until I had put a good distance behind me—so that I not only could not see her but could not tell certainly, having twisted and turned a dozen times in my scurrying flight, in which direction she lay. And being thus rid of her, I fairly dropped—so weak and so wearied was I—on the deck of the vessel that I had come to, and lay there for a while resting, with my breath coming and going in panting sobs.

What sort of a craft I had fetched aboard of I did not dare to try to find out. Going any farther then was impossible, the twilight having slipped away almost into darkness, and whatever she might be I had to make the best of her for the night. And so I settled myself into a corner well up in her bows—that I might be as far away as possible from any grisly things that might be hid in her cabin—and did my best to go to sleep. But it was a long while, utterly weary though I was, before sleep would come to me. My stomach, being pretty well reconciled by that time to emptiness, did not bother me much; but my frightened rush away from that sickening charnel-house had left me greatly tormented by thirst, and my mind was so fevered by the horror of what I had seen that for a long while I could not stop making pictures to myself of the black wretches, chained and imprisoned, writhing under the torture of starvation and at last dying desperate in the dark. And when sleep did come to me I still had the same loathsome horrors with me in my dreams.



XXX

I COME TO THE WALL OF MY SEA-PRISON

The morning shower that waked me gave me the water that I so longed for; but it only a little refreshed me, because my chief need was food. Being past the first sharp pangs of hunger, I was in no great bodily pain; but a heavy languor was upon me that dulled me in both flesh and spirit and disposed me to give up struggling for a while, that I might enjoy what seemed to me just then to be the supreme delight of sitting still. Yet I had sense enough to know that if I surrendered to this feeling it would be the end of me; and after a little I found energy enough to throw it off.

I was helped thus to rouse myself by finding, as I looked around me with dull eyes, that the hulk I had come aboard of in such a hurry in the twilight certainly had not been wrecked for any great length of time. She was a good-sized schooner, quite modern in her build; and, although she had weathered everywhere to a pale gray, her timbers were not rotten and what was left of her cordage still was fairly sound: all of which, as I took it in slowly, gave me hope of finding aboard of her some sort of eatable food.

But while this hope was slow to shape itself in my heavy mind, I was quick enough to act upon it when once it had taken form. With a briskness that quite astonished me I got on my feet and walked aft to the cabin—the cabin pantry being the most likely place in which to look for food put up in tins; and I was farther encouraged by finding the hatch open and the cabin itself fresh-smelling and clean. And, to my joy, the food that I hoped to find in the pantry really was there; and such a plenty of it that I could not have eaten it in a whole year.

I had the good sense to go slowly—and that was not easy, for at sight of something that would satisfy it my hunger all of a sudden woke up ragingly; but I knew that I stood a good chance of killing myself after my long fast unless I held my appetite well in hand, and so I began with a tin of peaches—opening it with a knife that I found there—and it seemed to me that those peaches were the most delicious thing that I had tasted since I was born. After they were down I went on deck again—to be out of reach of temptation—and staid there resolutely for an hour; getting at this time, and also keeping myself a little quiet, by counting six thousand slowly—and it did seem to me as though I never should get to the end! Then I had another of those delicious tins; and after a trying half hour of waiting I had a third; and then—being no longer ravenous, and no longer having the feeling of infinite emptiness—I laid down on the deck just outside the cabin scuttle and slept like a tree in winter until well along in the afternoon.

I woke as hungry as a hound, but with a comfortable and natural sort of hunger that I set myself to satisfying with good strong food: eating a tin of meat with a lively relish and without any following stomach-ache, and drinking the juice of a tin of peaches after it—there being no water fit to drink on board. My meal began to set me on my feet again; but I still felt so tired and so shaky that I decided to stay where I was until the next morning—having at last a comforting sense of security that took away my desire to hurry and made me wholly easy in my mind. And this feeling got stronger as the sun fell away westward and made a crimson bank of mist along the horizon, against which I saw the funnels of more than a dozen steamers—and so knew that the coast of my continent surely was close by. What I would do when I got to the steamers was a matter that I did not bother about. For the moment I was satisfied with the certainty that I would find aboard of them food in plenty and a comfortable place to sleep in, and that was enough. And so I did not make any plans, or even think much; but just ate as much supper as I could stow away in my carcase, and then settled myself in the schooner's cabin for the night.

In the morning I was so well rested, and felt so fresh again, that I was eager to get on; and I was so light-hearted that I fell to singing as I pushed forward briskly, being full of hope once more and of airy fancies that I had only to reach the edge of the wreck-pack in order to hit upon some easy way of getting off from it out over the open sea. A little thinking would have shown me, of course, that my fancies had nothing to rest on, and that coming once more to the coast of my continent was only to be where I was when my long journey through that death-stricken mass of rottenness began; but the reaction of my spirits was natural enough after the gloom that for so long had held them, and so was the castle-building that I took to as I went onward as to what I would do with my great treasure when at last I had it safe out in the living world.

Although I did not doubt that food of some sort was to be found on board of all the vessels which I should cross that day, I guarded against losing time in looking for it by carrying along with me a couple of tins of meat—slung on my shoulders in a wrapping of canvas—and on one of these, about noon-time, I made a good meal. When I had finished it I was sorry enough that I had not brought a tin of peaches too, for the meat was pretty well salted and made me as thirsty as a fish very soon after I got it down.

But my thirst was not severe enough to trouble me greatly; and, indeed, I partly forgot it in my steadily growing excitement as I pressed forward and more and more distinctly saw the funnels of a whole fleet of steamers looming up through the golden mist ahead of me like chimneys in a sun-shot London fog. And so the afternoon went by, and my crooked rough path slipped away behind me so rapidly that by a good hour before sunset I was near enough to the steamers to see not only their funnels but their hulls.

The look of one of them, and she was one of the nearest, was so familiar as I began to make her out clearly that I was sure that I had got back again to the Hurst Castle; for she was just about the size of the Hurst Castle, and was lying with her bow down in the water and her stern high in the air—and the delight of this discovery threw me into such a ferment that I quite forgot how tired I was and fairly ran across the last half dozen vessels that I had to traverse before I came under her tall side. However, when I got close to her I saw that she was not the Hurst Castle after all, but only another unlucky vessel that had broken her nose in collision and so had filled forward and gone sagging down by the bows.

As it happened, the wreck from which I had to board her was a little water-logged brig, close under her quarter, so low-lying that the tilted-up stern of the steamer fairly towered above the brig like a three-story house; and at first it seemed to me that I was about as likely to climb up a house-front as I was to climb up that high smooth wall of iron. But a part of the brig's foremast still was standing, and from it a yard jutted out to within jumping distance of the steamer's rail; and while that was not a way that I fancied—nor a way that ever I should have dared to take, I suppose, had there been any choice in the matter—up it I had to go. Hot as I was though with eagerness, I was a badly scared man as I slowly got to my feet and steadied myself for a moment on the end of the yard and then jumped for it; and a very thankful man, an instant later, when I struck the steamer's rail and fell floundering inboard on her deck—though I bruised myself in my fall pretty badly, and got an unexpected crack on the back of my head as my bag of jewels flew up and hit me with a bang.

However, no real harm was done; and I was so keen to look about me that in a moment I was on my legs again and went forward, limping a little, that I might get up on the bridge: for my strongest desire—stronger even than my longing to go in search, of the water that I did not doubt I would find in the steamer's tanks—was to gaze out over the open ocean, across which I had to go in some way if ever again I was to be free.

The sun was close down on the horizon, a red ball of fire glowing through the mist, and in the mist above and over the surface of the sea below a red light shone. But as I stood on the bridge looking at this strange splendor all my hope died away slowly within me and a chill settled upon my heart. As far as ever I could see the water was covered thickly with tangled and matted weed, broken only here and there by hummocks of wreckage and by a few hulks drifting in slowly to take their places in the ranks of the dead. The almost imperceptible progress of these hulks showed how dense was the mass through which they were drifting; and showed, too, how utterly impossible it would be for me to force my way in a boat driven by oars or sails to the clear water lying far, far off. Even a steamer scarcely could have pushed through that tangle; and could not have gone twice her own length without hopelessly fouling her screw. And it seemed to me that I might better have died on one of the old rotten hulks among which I had been for so long a time wandering—where hope was not, and where I was well in the mood for dying—rather than thus to have got clear of them, and have hope come back to me, only to bring up short against the wall of my sea-prison and so find myself held fast there for all the remainder of my days. And I was the more savagely bitter because I had no right whatever to be disappointed. What I saw was not new to me, and I had known what I was coming to—though I had kept down my thoughts about it—all along.



XXXI

HOW HOPE DIED OUT OF MY HEART

The steamer that I had come aboard of proved to be French; and that she had not long been abandoned I knew by finding an abundance of ice in her cold-room and a great deal of fresh meat there too. Had she been manned by a stiff-necked crew she would not have been abandoned at all. She had been in collision, and her bow-compartment was full of water; but the water had not got aft of her foremast, and except that she was down by the head a little she was not much the worse for her bang. That her captain had tried to carry on after the accident was shown by the sail that had been set in place very snugly over her smashed bows; and I greatly wondered why he had given up the fight, until I found—getting a look at her stern from one of the wrecks lying near her—that her screw was gone. This second accident evidently had been too much for her people and they had taken to the boats and left her. But I think that an English or an American crew would have stood by her, and would have succeeded in getting her towed into port—or even would have brought her in under her own sails. She was called the Ville de Saint Remy, and was a fine boat of about five thousand tons.

All that I had hoped to find aboard of her in the way of comforts and luxuries was there, and more too. Indeed, if a good bed, and the best of food, and excellent wines and tobacco, had been all that I wanted I very well might have settled myself on the Ville de Saint Remy for the balance of my days. But I almost resented the luck which had brought me all these things—for which I had been longing so keenly but a few hours before—because I did not find with them what I desired still more earnestly: the means that would enable me to get away seaward and leave them all behind. What such means would be, it is only fair to add, I could not imagine; at least, I could not imagine anything at all reasonable—for the only thing I could think of that would carry me out across that weed-covered ocean to open water was a balloon.

And so, although I fed daintily and drank of the best, and had good tobacco to cheer me after my meals, my first day aboard the Ville de Saint Remy was as sad a one as any that I had passed since I had come into my sea-prison; for while the daylight lasted, and I wandered about her decks looking always at the barrier of weed which held me there, I had clearly before me the impossibility of ever getting away. Only when darkness came, hiding my prison walls from me, did I become a little more cheerful—as the very human disposition to make light of difficulties when they no longer are visible began to assert itself in my mind.

Down in the comfortable cabin, well lighted and airy, I had a capital dinner—and a bottle of sound Bordeaux with it that no doubt added a good deal to my sanguine cheerfulness; and to end with I made myself some delicious coffee—over a spirit-lamp that I found in the pantry—and had with it a glass of Benedictine and a very choice cigar. And all of these luxurious refreshments of the flesh—which set me to smiling a little as I thought of the contrast that they made to my surroundings—so comforted my spirit that my gloomy thoughts left me, and I began to plan airily how I would start off in a boat well loaded with provisions and somehow or another push my way through the weed. I even got along to details: deciding that it would be quite an easy matter to open a way through the tangle over the bows of my boat with an oar—or with an axe, if need be—and then press forward by poling against the weed on each side; which seemed so feasible a method that I concluded I could accomplish readily at least a mile a day. And so, with these fine fancies dancing in my brain, I settled myself into a delightful bed; and as I drowsed off deliciously I had the comforting conviction that in a little while longer all my difficulties would be conquered and all my troubles at an end.

With the return of daylight, giving me an outlook over the weed-covered water again, most of my hopefulness left me along with most of my faith in my airily-made plan; but even in this colder mood it did seem to me that there was at least a chance of my pulling through—and my slim courage was strengthened by the feeling within me that unless I threw myself with all my energy into work of some sort I presently would find myself going melancholy mad. And so, but only half-heartedly, I mustered up resolution to make a trial of my poor project for getting away.

On board the Ville de Saint Remy there was nothing to be done. The corner-stone of my undertaking was finding a boat and launching it, and the Frenchmen—in their panic-stricken scamper from a danger that was mainly in their own lively imaginations—had carried all their boats away. It was necessary, therefore, that I should go on a cruise among the other wrecks lying around me in search of a boat still in a condition to swim; but I was very careful this time—profiting by my rough experience—to make sure before I started of my safe return. Fortunately the stern of the steamer was so high out of the water that it rose conspicuously above the wrecks lying thereabouts; but to make her still more conspicuous I roused out a couple of French flags and an American flag from her signal-chest and set them at her three mastheads—giving to our own colors the place of honor on the mainmast—and so made her quite unmistakable from as far off as I could see her through the haze. And as a still farther precaution against losing myself I hunted up a hatchet to take along with me to blaze my way. All of which matters being attended to, I made a rope fast to the rail—knotting it at intervals, so that I could climb it again easily—and so slipped down the steamer's side.

My business was only with the wrecks lying along the extreme outer edge of the pack—from which alone it would be possible for me to launch a boat in the event of my finding one—but in order to get from one to the other of them I had to make so many long detours that my progress was very slow. Indeed, by the time that noon came, and I stopped to eat my dinner—which I had brought along with me, that I need not have to hunt for it—I had made less than half a mile in a straight line. And in none of the vessels that I had crossed—except on one lying so far in the pack as to be of no use to me—had I found a single boat that would swim. Nor had I any better luck when I went on with my search again in the afternoon. As it had been in the case of the Hurst Castle so it had been, I suppose, in the case of all the wrecks which I examined that day: either their boats had been staved-in or washed overboard by tempest, or else had served to carry away their crews. But what had become of them, so far as I was concerned, made no difference—the essential matter was that they were gone. And so, toward evening, I turned backward from my fruitless journey and headed for the Ville de Saint Remy again—for I had found no other ship so comfortable in the course of my explorations—and got safe aboard of her just as the sun was going down.

That night I had not much comfort in the good dinner that I set out for myself—though I was glad enough to get it, being both hungry and tired—and I only half plucked up my spirits over my coffee and cigar. But still, as the needs of my body were gratified, my mind got so far soothed and refreshed that I held to my purpose—which had been pretty much given over when I came back tired and hungry after my vain search—and I went to bed resolute to begin again my explorations on the following day.

But when the morning came and I set off—though I had a good breakfast inside of me, and such a store of food by me as fairly would have set me dancing with delight only a week before—I was in low spirits and went at my work rather because I was resolved to push through with it than because I had any strong hope that it would give me what I desired.

This time—having already examined the wrecks for near a mile northward along the edge of the pack—I set my course for the south; and again, until late in the afternoon, I worked my way from ship to ship—with long detours inland from time to time in order to get around some break in the coast-line—and on all of them the result was the same: not a boat did I find anywhere that was not so riven and shattered as to be beyond all hope of repair. And at nightfall I came back once more to the Ville de Saint Remy wearied out in body and utterly dispirited in mind.

Even after I had eaten my dinner and was smoking at my ease in the cheerfully lighted cabin, sitting restfully in a big arm-chair and with every sort of material comfort at hand, I could not whip myself up to hoping again. It was true that I had not exhausted the possibilities of finding the boat that I desired so eagerly, for my search along the coast-line had extended for only about a mile each way; but in my down-hearted state it seemed to me that my search had gone far enough to settle definitely that what I wanted was not to be found. And this brought down on me heavily the conviction that my prison—though it was the biggest, I suppose, that ever a man was shut up in—must hold me fast always: and with that feeling in it there no longer was room for hope also in my heart.



XXXII

I FALL IN WITH A FELLOW-PRISONER

When I had finished my breakfast the next morning I faced the worst thing which I had been forced to face since I had been cast prisoner into the Sargasso Sea: a whole day of idleness without hope. Until then there had not been an hour—save when I was asleep—that I had not been doing something which in some way I had hoped would better my condition temporarily, or would tend toward my deliverance. But that morning I was without such spurs to effort and there was absolutely nothing for me to do. My condition could not be improved by making my home on another vessel; it was doubtful, indeed, if in all the wreck-pack I could find a home so comfortable and so abundantly stocked with the best provisions as I had found aboard of the Ville de Saint Remy. As for working farther for my deliverance, I had set that behind me after my experience during the two preceding days. And so I brought a steamer-chair out on the deck and sat in it smoking, idle and hopeless, gazing straight out before me with a dull steadfastness over the very gently undulating surface of the weed-covered sea.

After a while, tiring of sitting still, I began to pace the deck slowly; and I was so heavy with my sorrow that I could not think clearly, but had only in my mind a confused feeling that I was taking the first of a series of walks such as wild animals imprisoned take endlessly back and forth behind the bars that shut them in. And from this I went on to thinking, still in the same confused way, that the wild animals at least were not outcast in their captivity—having living people and living beasts around them, and the pleasure of hearing living sounds—while one of the worst things about my prison was the absolute dead silence that hung over it like a dismal cloud. And perhaps it was because my thoughts happened at that moment to be set to take notice of such matters that I fancied I heard a very faint sound of scratching and an instant later a still fainter little cry.

I was standing just then close to the water-line on the deck forward, beside a covered hatch that seemed to lead to what had been the quarters of the crew; and it was from beneath this hatch, I was certain, that the sounds came. Slight though the noise was, it greatly startled me; and at the same time it aroused in me the strangely-thrilling hope that there possibly might be a living man still aboard of the steamer and that I would be no longer horribly alone. Yet I would not suffer myself too much to give room to this happy hope, for the little faint scratching—which I heard again presently—was not the sort of noise that a man shut in would be likely to make; nor did the little plaintive sound seem like a human cry. But the matter was one to be investigated in a hurry, and with an energy quite astonishing, in comparison with my lassitude of a moment before, I got the hatch open and leaned down it, listening; and then I heard the scratching so plainly that I hurried down the stair.

The between-decks was well enough lighted by a good-sized skylight, and the place that I had got into had fixed tables set in it and seemed to be the mess-room of the crew. Doors opened out from it both fore and aft; and from behind the after door—so plainly that I had no difficulty in placing it—came the scratching sound that I was pursuing: and with it came the cries again, and this time so distinctly as to shatter my hope of finding a human being there, but at the same time to make me, for all my sorrow, almost smile. For the cry was a very long and plaintive m-i-i-a-a-u! And the next moment, when I had the door open, a great black cat came out upon me—so overcome with delight at meeting a human being again that he was almost choking with his gurgling purr. Indeed the extravagant joy of the poor lonely creature was as great as mine would have been had I found a man there—and he manifested it by lunging sidewise against my legs, and by standing up on his hind paws and reaching his fore paws up to my knees and clutching them, and then with a spring he climbed right up me—all the while choking with his great gurgling purring—and was not satisfied until he found himself bundled close against my breast as I held him tight in my arms. And on my side—after I had gulped down my first disappointment because it was only a cat who was my fellow-prisoner—I was as glad to meet him as he was to meet me; and I am not ashamed to say that I fairly cried over him—as a warm rush of joy went over me at finding myself at last, after being for so long a time surrounded only by the dead, in the company of a living creature; and a creature which showed toward me by every means that a brute beast could compass its gratitude and its love.

And I must add without delay that my cat's affection for me was wholly disinterested; at least, I am sure that he loved me—from the first moment of our encounter—not because he wanted me to do something for him, but because he longed, as I did, for human companionship and was filled up with happiness because he had found again a human friend. As I discovered upon investigation, his prison had been the galley in which food for the crew had been cooked; and upon the odds and ends left there he had fared very well indeed—not overeating himself by gobbling down all his food in a hurry, and then dying of starvation, as a dog would have done, but temperately eating for his daily rations only what his sustenance required; and for drink he had had a pot partly full of what had been hot water that stood upon the galley stove. But I also must add that this coarse fare was not at all to his liking; and that thereafter he ordered me around pretty sharply, in his own way, and insisted always upon my providing him with dainty food.

It was a good thing for the cat, certainly, that I had found him; for his stock of provisions was pretty nearly exhausted, and in a little while longer he would have come to a dismal end. But my finding him was a still better thing for me. When I first heard his faint little scratching, and his still fainter plaintive little call for help, I was so deep in my despairing melancholy that my reason was in a fair way to go, and with it all farther effort on my part to set myself free. From that desperate state my small adventure with him roused me, which was a good deal to thank him for; but I had more to thank him for still.

In the little time that I had been aboard of the Ville de Saint Remy—my days having been passed away from her—I had made no exploration of her interior beyond her cabin and the region in which were carried her cabin stores; which latter were so abundant as to set me at my ease for an indefinite period in regard to food. But this meeting with my fellow-prisoner so stirred me up, and put such fresh spirit into me, that I began to think of having a general look all over her: that I might in a way take stock of my belongings and at the same time have something to occupy my mind—for I knew that to sit down idly again would be only again to fall back into despair. And so, my cat going with me—and, indeed, making a good deal of a convenience of me, for he by no means would walk on his own legs but insisted upon jumping up on my shoulder and going that way as a passenger—I set off on my round.

As well as I could make out from what I found on board of her—for her papers either had been carried away or were stowed in some place which I did not discover—the Ville de Saint Remy had been bound outward to some colonial port and carried a cargo of general stores. When I got her hatches off—though that came later—I saw in one place a lot of wheelbarrows, and some heavy wagons stowed with their wheels inside of them, and some machinery for threshing along with a portable steam-engine; and in another place were boxes which seemed to have dry-goods in them, and a great many cases of wines, and some very big cases that evidently contained pianos—and so on with a great lot of stuff such as the people of a flourishing colony would be likely to need.

But in my round that morning with the cat on my shoulders—for he was not content to remain perched on one of them quietly, but kept passing from one to the other with affectionate rubs against the back of my head, and all the while purring as hard as he could purr—I did not get below the main-deck except into the engine-room, my attention being given to finding out fully what the steamer had on board of her in the way of work-shops and tools: for already, with my renewed cheerfulness, the notion was beginning to take hold of me that I might set to work and build a boat for myself—and so make what I could not find. And, indeed, I don't doubt that I should have set myself to this big undertaking—for the appointments of the vessel were admirably complete and everything that I wanted for my work was there—had not a bigger, but a more promising, undertaking presented itself to me and so turned my efforts into another way.



XXXIII

I MAKE A GLAD DISCOVERY

It was directly to my cat that I owed the great piece of good fortune that then came to me: but I must confess that he was an unwilling agent in the matter, and probably wished himself well out of it, the immediate result in his case being rather a bad squeeze to one of his fore paws.

We had been examining the machine-shop, the cat and I, and whatever his views about it may have been mine were of great satisfaction; for when I had got the dead-lights unscrewed so that I could see well about me I had been delighted by finding there everything that my boat-building project required. Indeed, I almost fancied myself back again in one of the work-shops of the Stevens Institute, so well was the place fitted and supplied—a completeness probably due to the fact that the Ville de Saint Remy was intended for long voyages to out-of-the-way ports, and very well might have to depend upon her own resources for important repairs.

It was as we were leaving the machine-shop to continue our round of investigations that my cat suddenly took it into his head to jump down from my shoulders and stretch his own legs a little; and away he scampered—being much given to such frisking dashes, as I later discovered, though for the next week or so after that one he went limping on three legs mighty soberly—first down the deck aft, and then past me and up a dark passage leading toward the bows; and I, being pretty well accustomed to cat habits, stood waiting until he should have his fun out and so come back again with a miau by way of "if you please" to be taken up into my arms. But he did not come back in any great hurry, and off in the darkness I could hear his paws padding about briskly; and then there was silence for a moment; and then he broke out into a loud miauling which showed that he was in trouble of some sort and also in pain.

As there was no helping him until I could see what was the matter with him, I hurried first into the machine-shop for a wrench, and then went forward into that dark place cautiously—until by a glint of light on the ship's side I made out where a port was, and so got loose the deadlight and could look around. What I saw was my poor cat in such a pickle that I did not in the least blame him for crying out about it; he having, as it seemed, made an unlucky jump upon some small bars of iron which were lying loose and disorderly, with the one on which he landed balanced so nicely that it had turned suddenly and jammed fast his paw. And so he was anchored there very painfully, and was telling what he thought about it in the most piercing yowls.

Fortunately it was an easy matter to let him loose from the trap that he had got into; but even while I was doing it—and before I picked him up to look at his hurt and to comfort him—I gave a shout of delight on my own account that was a good deal louder than any of my poor cat's yells of pain. For there before me was a very stout-looking and large steam-launch—thirty-two feet over all, as I found when I came to measure her—stowed snugly in a cradle set athwart-ship and looking all ready to be put overboard into the sea. And at finding in this unexpected fashion what I had been so long looking for, and had quite done with hoping for, it is no wonder that I shouted with joy.

My cat coming limping to me to be pitied and cared for, holding up his pinched paw and with little miaus asking for my sympathy quite like a Christian, I had first of all to give him my attention. But his hurt was not a very serious one—the flesh not being cut, and no bones broken—and when I had comforted him as well as I could, until I got him soothed a little, I put him down out of my arms that I might examine carefully my great prize; but first of all opening all the ports so that I might have plenty of light for what I wanted to do.

Coming to this deliberate survey, I found that the launch truly enough was complete, but that she was very far from being ready to take the water; for while all her parts were there—and even duplicates of her more important pieces, in readiness against a break-down—most of her fittings and all of her machinery was lying inside of her boxed for transportation; being arranged that way, I suppose, because she would have been far too heavy to swing into the snug place where I found her and out again with everything bolted fast. She was a very beautiful little boat, evidently intended for a pleasure craft—but very strong and seaworthy, too; and it no doubt was to keep her in good order for delivery that she had been stowed between-decks for the long voyage. Indeed, only with a steam-winch and a good many men to handle her, could she have been got down there; and the first of my uncomfortable thoughts about her, of the many that I had first and last, came while I was taking stock of her equipment—as I fell to wondering how in the world I should manage, with only a cat to help me, ever to get her overboard into the sea.

As to assembling her parts, and so making her ready for cruising, I had no doubts whatever. That piece of work was directly in the line of my training and I felt entirely secure about it; but even on that score I quaked a good deal at the size of the contract to be taken by a single pair of hands, and at thought of the long, long while that would be required to carry it through. Yet the hope that came with finding this boat put such heart into me that my spirits did not go down far. Working on her—aside from the pleasure that any man with a natural love for mechanics finds in serious and difficult labor with his hands—would be a constant delight to me because of what it would be leading to; and in every moment of my work I would have to sustain me the thought that each rivet set in place and each bolt fastened brought me appreciably nearer to being set free.

Having cursorily finished with the boat, I continued my survey to her surroundings; that I might plan roughly my scheme of work upon her, and that I might plan also for getting her launched when my work upon her should be done. She was stowed on the main-deck—in a place that probably was intended for the use of third-class passengers, when such were carried—and the machine-shop was so close to her that in the matter of fetching tools and so on my steps would be well saved. Directly over her was the forward hatch; through which she had been lowered and set in place in the cradle previously made ready for her, and there fixed firm and fast. For a moment I had the fancy that I might get up steam to work the donkey-engine and so hoist her out again by that same way, and overboard too. But a very little reflection showed me that this airily formed plan must be abandoned, as all my work on her then would have to be done far away from the machine-shop and with the additional disadvantage that through the long time that certainly must pass before I could get her finished she would lie open to the daily heavy rains. And then I had the much more reasonable notion—though the amount of extra labor that it involved was not encouraging to contemplate—that I would do my work on her where she lay; and when I had finished her that I would cut loose a sufficient number of plates from the side of the steamer to make a hole big enough to get her overboard that way.

But having the hatch directly over where she was lying, though I could not get her up through it, made my undertaking a good deal easier and more comfortable for me. Even with all the ports open I would have had but little light to work by; and, what was of even more importance in that hot misty region, I would have had little fresh air—and still less when I had set a-going my forge. But with the hatch off I could have all the light that I needed and as much fresh air as was to be had—with the advantage that the hatch could be set in place every night when I went off duty and not opened again in the morning until the rain was at an end: so preserving my machinery against the rust that pretty much would have ruined it—for all that it was well tallowed—had my slow building gone on in the open air.

My preliminary investigations being thus well ended, and the morning ended too, I piped all hands to dinner; that is to say, I whistled to my cat—who had been sitting still and watching me pretty solemnly, his friskiness being for the time taken out of him by the pain in his paw—and when he perceived that I was paying some attention to him again he came limping to me on his three good legs and said with a miau that if I pleased he would prefer going to his dinner in my arms. And when I picked him up—as, indeed, I had to, for he positively insisted upon my carrying him—he forgot about his hurt and fell to purring to me at a great rate and to making little gentle thrusts against my arm with the fore paw that was sound. And so we went aft in great friendship and contentment and had a gay dinner together: the cat sitting on the table opposite to me with all possible decorum—but manifesting his daintiness by refusing to eat anything but tinned chicken, and only the white meat at that!



XXXIV

I END A GOOD JOB WELL, AND GET A SET-BACK

When my meal was finished I set myself first of all to getting off the hatch beneath which my boat lay; and this proved to be a bigger job than I had counted upon—each of its sections being so heavy that I could not manage it without tackle, and even with tackle the work took me a good hour. My plan of operations had included removing the hatch every morning and setting it back again every night, but when I found how much energy and time would be wasted in that way I changed my front a little and got at the same result along another line. All that I needed was a covering for the hatch that would keep the rain out; and what I did, therefore, was to knock together a light grating of wood to fit over it—sloping the grating downward on each side from a sort of a ridge pole—on which a tarpaulin could be stretched; and in that way I got shortly to a water-tight covering for my hatch that I could shift back and forth quickly and without any trouble at all. But the whole of what remained of the afternoon was spent in getting that piece of preliminary work finished to my mind.

The next morning I set myself to the examination of the stuff stowed in the boat—the several parts which I would have to put together in order to make my craft ready for the sea—and for this job also a great deal of preliminary arrangement was required. Many of the pieces—as the boiler, the cylinder, the shaft, the screw, and the sections of the cabin—were too heavy for me to lift without tackle; and as they all had to be got out and arranged in order ready for use, and then in due course put aboard the boat one at a time in their proper places, I first of all had to set up some sort of lifting apparatus to take the place of a crane.

In this matter the open hatch directly over the boat again was a help to me. Across it, running fore and aft, I stretched a heavy wire rope on which I had placed a big block for a traveller, and carrying the end of the rope forward to the capstan I fell to work with the hand-bars and got it strained so taut that it was like a bar of iron. Then to the traveller block I made fast my hoisting tackle—and so was able to swing up the heavy pieces from where they were stowed, and to run them along the taut rope until they were clear of the boat on either side, and then to let them down upon the deck: where they would remain until a reversal of this process would lift them up again and set them in place as they were required. But even with my tackle—and double tackle in the case of the heavier pieces—this was a back-breaking job that took up the whole of three days.

However, I finished it at last, and had the boat clear and all the pieces so arranged that as I needed them they would be ready to my hand; and the examination that I was able to make of them, and of the boat too after I had her empty, gave very satisfactory results. All the parts were there, and all numbered so carefully that they could have been assembled by much less skilful hands than mine; while the hull of the boat was completely finished, and the sockets and rivet-holes for attaching her fittings were all as they should be in her frame. Farther, I could see by the little scratches here and there on her iron-work that she had been set up and then taken apart again; and so was sure that all was smooth for her coming together in the right way. But, for all that I had such plain sailing before me in the actual work of refitting her, my courage went down a little as I perceived what a big contract I had taken, and what a very long time must pass before I could pull it through.

Moreover, I saw that while the boat was well built for pleasure cruising in smooth water—and, indeed, was so stout in her frame that she would stand a great deal of knocking about without being the worse for it—she by no means was prepared for the chances of an ocean voyage. Except where her little cabin and engine-room would be—the two filling about half of her length amidships—she was entirely open; and while the frame of her cabin was stoutly built, that part of it intended to rise above the rail was arranged for sliding glass windows—which would be smashed in a moment by a heavy dash of sea. It was clear, therefore, that in addition to setting her up on the lines planned for her—a big job and a long job to start with—there was a lot more for me to do. To fit her for my purposes it would be necessary to cover her cabin windows with planking; to deck her over forward in order to have my stores under cover as well as to guard against shipping enough water to swamp her in rough weather; and finally to rig her with a mast and sail upon which to fall back for motive-power in the event of my running out of coal. This additional work would not, in one way, present any difficulties—it being in itself simple and easy of accomplishment; but in another way it was not pleasant to contemplate, since the doing of it all single-handed would increase very greatly the time which must pass before I could start upon my voyage. However, as consideration of that phase of the matter only tended to discourage me, I put it out of sight as well as I was able and set myself with a will to finishing my preliminary work—of which there still was a good deal to do.

The steamer's machine-shop, as I have said, was unusually well fitted and supplied; but even in the short time that the vessel had been lying abandoned in that reeking atmosphere rust had so coated everything not shut up in lockers that all the tools in the racks and the fittings of the lathe—although the lathe had an oil-cloth hood over it—had to be cleaned before they could be used: a job that kept me busy with the grind-stone, and emery-cloth, and oiled cotton-waste, for a good long while. And after that I had to get the forge in order, and to bring up fuel for it from the coal bunkers. And in attending to all these various matters the time slipped away so quickly that a whole week had passed before I had done.

But I must say that as the cat and I labored together—though his labors were confined to cheering me by following me about on three legs wherever I went, and pretty much all the while talking to me in his way so that I should not fail to take notice of him—I got more and more light-hearted; which was natural enough, seeing that what I was doing in itself interested me and so made the time pass quickly, and that I had also a great swelling undercurrent of hope as I thought of what my slow-going work would bring me to in the end.

When at last I fairly got started at my building I was in a still more cheerful mood—there being such a sense of definite accomplishment as I set each piece in its place, and such a comfort in the tangible advance that I was making, that half the time I was singing as I made my bolts and rivets fast. But for all my cheerfulness I had a plenty of trouble over what I was doing; and I was sorry enough that I had not somebody beside my cat to help me, or that I myself had not another pair or two of hands.

Almost at the start, when I began to swing the pieces of machinery inboard, I found that I had still another bit of preliminary work to attend to before I could go on. My travelling tackle crossing the boat amidships had worked well enough in getting the stuff out of her, but when I came to hoisting the parts aboard and setting them exactly in their places, and holding them steady while I made fast the rivets, it would not in any way serve my turn. What I had to do was to stretch another wire rope across the hatch—at right angles with and a couple of feet above the first one, and parallel with the boat's keel—and to rig on this two travellers, to one or the other of which I could transfer each piece as I got it inboard and so run it along until I had it exactly over the place where it was to be made fast. But I was a whole day in attending to this matter—and it was only one of the many makeshifts to which I had to resort to accomplish what was too much for my unaided strength; and in meeting such like side difficulties I lost in all a good many days.

But though my work went very slowly, and now and then was stopped short for a while by some obstacle that had to be overcome in any rough and ready way that I could think of, I did get on; and at last I had my boat together on the lines that her builders had planned. Yet while, in a way, she was finished, there still was a weary lot to do to her to fit her for my purposes; and in decking her over, and in making her cabin solid, and in fitting a mast and sail to her, I spent almost two months more.

All this work went slowly because I had to spend nearly as much time in making ready for what I wanted to do as in doing it. Before I began my planking I had to rip up from the steamer's deck the material for it; and this was a hard job in itself and did not give me what I wanted when it was done—for while the stuff served well enough for my beams and braces it was clumsily heavy for the decking of my little launch. But it had to answer, and in the end I got it well in place and the joints so tightly caulked that I was sure of having a dry hold. And that my deck might the more easily turn the water in a sea way I made it flush with the rail; and I had no hatch in it—arranging to get to the hold by a scuttle that I set in the forward end of the cabin—and that gave me a still better chance of keeping dry below.

For my mast I got down one of the top-gallant masts—and I had a close shave to coming down with it and so ending my adventures right there. The best way that I could think of to manage this piece of work—and I have not since thought of any way better—was to make fast a line to the lower end of the top-gallant mast just above the cap of the topmast and to carry this line through the top-block and so down to the deck, and there to pass it through another block to the capstan and haul it taut and stop it; and when all that was in order, and the stays cut, to get up into the cross-trees and saw through the spar just below where I had whipped it with my line. My expectation was that as the spar parted and fell it would be held hanging by my tackle until I could get down to the deck again and lower it away; and that really was what did happen—only as it fell there was a bit of slack line to take up, and this gave such a tremendous jerk to the cross-trees that I was within an ace of being shaken out of them and of going down to the deck with a bang. But I didn't—which is the main thing—and I did get my mast. It was a good deal heavier than my boat could stand, and I had to spend a couple of days in taking it down with a broad-axe and in finishing it with a plane until I got it as it should be; and from the flag-staff at the steamer's stern I got out with very little trouble a good boom and gaff.

After that I had only my sail to fit; and as I did not trouble myself to make a very neat job of it this did not take me long. Indeed, I grudged the time that I spent on my mast and sail—close upon a fortnight, altogether—more than any like amount of time that I gave to my task; for my hope was strong that I would not need a sail at all, but would be able to manage—by a way that I had thought of—to carry enough coal with me to make my voyage under steam. But I was not leaving anything to chance—so far as chances could be foreseen—in the adventure that I was about to make, and so I got my sail-power all ready to fall back upon in case my steam-power failed. And when that bit of work was finished I was full of a joyful light-heartedness; for my boat in every way was ready for the water, and I was come at last to the good ending of my long job.

That night I made a feast in celebration of what I had accomplished, and in hope of my greater good fortune that I believed was soon to come—with a place duly set on the opposite side of the table for my only guest, and with a champagne-glass beside his plate to hold his unsweetened condensed milk (for which, when I found it among the ship's stores, he manifested a strong partiality) that he might lap properly his responses to the toasts which I pledged him in champagne. And I don't suppose that a man and a cat ever had a merrier meal anywhere than we had in that queer place for it that evening; nor that any two friends ever were happier together than we were when, our feast being ended, he went through his various tricks—of which he had learned a great many, and with a wonderful quickness, after his paw got well—and then settled himself for a snooze on my lap while I sat smoking my cigar and thinking that at last I had sawn through my prison bars.

And it was while I was sitting in that state of placid happiness that suddenly I was brought up all standing by the reflection—and why it had not come sooner to me is a mystery—that a dozen turns of the screw of my launch in that weed-covered ocean would be enough to foul it hopelessly, and so at the very start to cut short the voyage under steam that I had planned.



XXXV

I AM READY FOR A FRESH HAZARD OF FORTUNE

For a while after this black thought came to me I was pretty much beaten by it; but when I got steadier—and had finished kicking myself for a fool because I had not foreseen it all along—I perceived that the odds were not wholly against me, after all. I had, at least, a sea-worthy boat in which to make my venture, and therefore was as well off as I had hoped to be when I had set about looking for one; and if the plan that I had formed worked out in practice—if I could manage to force a passage through the tangle by alternately working over the bow of my boat to break up the weed, and over the sides to pole my boat forward—I was a great deal better off than I had hoped to be: for should I win my way to open water I would have steam as well as sail power at my command.

But while this more reasonable view of the situation comforted me, it did not satisfy me. The difficulty of working myself along in that slow fashion I foresaw would be so enormous that I very well might die of sheer exhaustion before I got clear of the weed-tangle—which must extend outward, as I knew from my guess at the time that I had taken in drifting in through it, for a very long way. What I had been counting upon ever since I had found the launch was in having part of the work, and the heaviest part, done by her engine; my part to be the breaking of a passage, while the motive power was to be supplied by the screw. But of course if the screw fouled, as it certainly would foul with the loose weed all around it, that would be the end of my hopeful plan.

This consideration of the matter reduced it to a definite problem. What was needed was some sort of protection for the screw that would keep the weed away from it and yet would allow it to work freely: and, having the case thus clearly stated, the thought presently occurred to me that I could secure this protection by building out from the stern of the boat, so that the screw would be enclosed in it, some sort of an iron cage. That arrangement, I conceived, would meet the requirements of the case fully; and being come to my conclusion I resigned myself to still another long delay while I carried my plan into execution, and so went to bed at last hopefully—but well knowing that this fresh piece of work that I had cut out for myself would be hard to do.

I certainly did not overestimate the amount of labor involved in my cage-building. I was a good three weeks over it. But I was kept up to the collar by my conviction that without the cage I had no chance of succeeding in my project; and so I got it finished at last. And then I considered that my boat really was ready to take the water; and the cat and I had another banquet in celebration of the long step that we had taken toward our deliverance—only this time I did not give an altogether free rein to my rejoicing, being fearful that some other difficulty might present itself suddenly and bring me up again with a round turn.

The boat being ready—for I could think of nothing more to do to her—I had still to launch her, and the first step toward that end was breaking out a section in the steamer's side. Luckily the stock of cold-chisels aboard the Ville de Saint Remy was a good one; but I dulled them all twice over—and weary work at the grindstone I had sharpening them again—before I had chipped away the bindings of those endless rivets and had the satisfaction of seeing the big section of iron plate between two of her iron ribs pitch outboard and splash down through the weed into the sea.

As I have said, the bow compartment of the steamer was full of water, and this brought her main-deck so low down forward that the boat had only to be slid out almost on a level through the hole that I had made. But to slide her that way—which seems easy, because I have happened to put it glibly—was quite a different thing. With steam power to work the capstan I could have got the boat overboard in no time; but without steam power the launching went desperately slowly, and was altogether the hardest piece of work that I had to do in the whole of my long hard job.

The boat had stood all along in the cradle that had been built to hold her steady for the voyage. This was a very stout wooden framework built up from two heavy beams joined by cross-pieces, and all so well bolted together that it was very solid and firm. In this the boat rested snugly and was held fast by rope lashings; and the cradle itself—resting on the lower hatch and projecting on each side of it—was lashed to the hatch ringbolts so as to be safe against shifting in a heavy sea. I could have removed the cradle by taking it to pieces, but that would not have helped matters; and the plan that I decided upon—liking it better because all this wood-work around and under the boat would protect her from harm as she went overboard—was to weight the cradle with iron bars that would cause it to sink away from beneath the boat when they took the water, and then to work it up with jack-screws until I could get rollers under it and so send them both together over the side.

How long I worked over this job I really do not know; but I do know that at the time it seemed as though it never would come to an end. First of all I had the rollers to make from another topgallant mast that I got down, and when these were finished I had to go at the frame of the cradle with a pair of jack-screws and raise it, by fractions of an inch, until I could get my rollers under it one at a time. I think that it was the deadly dullness of this jack-screw work that I most resented—the stupid monotony of doing precisely the same sort of utterly wearying work all day long and for day after day. But in the end I got it finished: all my rollers properly in place, and the cradle made fast to hold it from starting before I was ready to have it go—although of that there was not much danger, for while the steamer had a decided pitch forward she lay on an even keel.

At first I was for sending my boat overboard the minute that I got the last roller under her; but I had the sense, luckily, to take a reef in this brisk intention as the thought struck me that I must have open water to launch her in or else very likely have boat and cradle together stuck fast in the weed. And so I set myself to clearing a little pool into which I could launch her; and as I carried this work on I came quickly to a realizing sense of what was before me when I should begin to break a way through the weed for my boat's passage, and to the conviction that had I tried to make my voyage without steam to help me I never should have got through at all.

In point of fact, the weed was so thick and so firmly matted together that I almost could walk on it; and when I had knocked loose a couple of doors from their hinges and had thrown them overboard—taking two, so that I might move one ahead of the other as my cutting advanced—I had firm enough standing place from which I could slash away. So tough was the mass that I was a whole day in uncovering a space less than forty feet long by twenty broad; and when my launching-pool was finished it had the look of a little pond in a meadow surrounded by solid banks.

All this showed me that even with the screw to push while I cleared a way for the boat's passage I should have my hands full; but it also put into my head a notion that helped me a good deal in the end. This was to rig on the straight stem of my boat a set of guide-bars projecting forward in which I could work perpendicularly a cross-cut saw, and in that way to cut a slit in the weed—which would be widened by the boat's nose thrusting into it as the screw shoved her onward, and so would enable me to squeeze along. And as this was a matter easy of accomplishment—being only to double over a couple of iron bars so that there would be a slit a half inch wide for the saw to travel in, and to bolt them fast to the top and bottom of the boat's stem—I did it immediately; and it worked so well when I came to try it that I was glad enough that I had had so lucky a thought. Indeed, had I known how well it would turn out I should have gone a step farther and rigged my saw to run by steam power—setting up a frame in the bows to hold a wheel carrying a pin on which the saw could play and to which I could make fast a bar from my piston-rod—and in that way saved myself from the longest bit of back-breaking work that ever I had to do. But that was a piece of foresight that came afterward, and so did me no good.

When my guide-bars were in place, and the saw made ready to slip into them by taking off one of its handles—and I had still a spare saw to fall back upon in the event of the first one breaking—my boat was ready to go overboard into the open water, where she would lie while I put aboard of her my coal and stores. But the work that was before me, as I thus came close to it, loomed up very large; and so did the doubts which beset me as to how my voyage would end. Indeed, it was in a spirit far from exultant that at last I cut the lashings which held the cradle; and then with the tackle that I had ready got the heavy mass started—and in a couple of minutes had my boat safely overboard and floating free, as the cradle sunk away from under her, carried down by its lading of iron bars.

But, whatever was to come of it, the launching of my boat started me definitely along a fresh line of adventure, and whether I liked it or not I had to make the best of it: and so I stated the case to my cat—who had got scared and run off into a corner while the launching was in progress—when he came marching up to me and seated himself beside me gravely, as I stood in the break in the steamer's side looking down at the boat that I hoped would set us free.



XXXVI

HOW MY CAT PROMISED ME GOOD LUCK

What would have been most useful to me as foresight, but was only aggravating to me as hindsight—which happened to be the way that I got it—was the very sensible notion that I might have put all of my stores, and even a good part of my coal, aboard the boat before she was decked over and launched. A few tons more or less would have made no difference in moving her; but having to put those extra tons aboard of her over the side of the steamer, and then to drag them through the cabin and through the awkward little hatch, and at last to stow them by the light of a lantern in her stillingly close hot hold—all that made a lot of difference to me. However, I could not foresee everything; and I think, on the whole, that I really did foresee most of what I wanted pretty well.

Of provisions I took along enough to last me, by a rough calculation, for three months; being pretty well satisfied that unless within that time I got through the weed-tangle to open water—over which I could make my way to land, or on which I might fall in with a passing vessel—I never would get free at all. And I was the more disposed to keep down my lading of provisions because I wanted every scrap of room that I could save for my cargo of coal. But my stores were plentiful for the term that I had fixed upon, and the best and the most nourishing—save that I could not take fresh meat with me—that the Ville de Saint Remy had on board; and I did not forget to take a good supply of the tinned chicken and the condensed milk of which my dainty cat was so fond. As for water—beside having my condenser to fall back upon—I felt pretty sure that until I got well out toward the open sea I could trust to the morning rains. But for all that I carried two barrels with me—filled fresh the last thing before I started—stowed in the well of the boat aft of the cabin; and there too I carried a couple of ten-gallon tins of oil for my lanterns and lamps.

My bone-breaking job was getting my coal aboard. For ease in handling and in stowing it—though I lost a little room that way—I put it in canvas sacks, of which I luckily found some bales in the steamer's cargo. These I swung up from the engine-room by the cinder-tackle to the main deck; and having got them that far I packed them on my back to the break in the steamer's side where my boat was lying and tumbled them aboard of her, and then dragged them along to where I stowed them in her hold. On my coal holding out at least until I got through the weed—for on open water I could lay a course under sail—the success of my adventure wholly depended; and knowing that, I filled my boat with all that I dared to put into her—loading the last twenty bags on her deck and on the roof of her cabin, to be used before I drew on my main supply.

But while this lading was a big one it did not satisfy me; and the only way that I could think of to better it was to build a long and narrow raft that I could stow as much more on and tow after me in the boat's wake. This was a big undertaking, but I had to face it and to carry it through: lowering down three spars (in managing which I used a treble-purchase to swing them clear, and eased them down with a couple of turns of the rope still around the capstan), and when I had them over the side in a pool that I had cleared for them I lashed them strongly together and decked them over with some of the state-room doors. This gave me a raft sixty feet long, or thereabouts, but narrower than my boat; and to make it follow the boat still more easily I set a V-shaped cut-water at its bows to turn the weed. To be sure, it was a clumsy thing, but it well enough served my turn.

On this structure I was able to carry a prodigious quantity of coal—more than I had on the boat, by a good deal; but by a little planning in advance I arranged matters so that the lading of it was not so hard a piece of work—though in all conscience it was hard enough—as the lading of my boat had been. What I did was to clear a pool in the weed for it and to build it directly beneath the outhang of the cinder-tackle; and having that apparatus ready to my hand I swung my bags of coal up from the engine-room, and then out along the traveller, and then lowered them away—and so had only to stow them on the raft when they were down. But there was only one of me to do all this—to fill each bag in the bunkers and to bring it to the engine-room, to make it fast there to the tackle, to come on deck and haul it up and set it overboard, to go down the side and set it in place, and then back to the bunkers again for the next round—and so I spent a week in doing what three men could have done in a day. And I was a tired man and a grimy man when I got this piece of work finished; but I was comforted by knowing that I had as much coal in my sea-stock as I possibly could have use for—and so I scrubbed myself clean in the steamers bath-room and was easy in my mind. But it was a good long while before I got the aches out of my bones.

During my last week aboard the Ville de Saint Remy I had steam up in my boat and my engine at work during the greater part of each day: as was necessary, the engine being new, in order to get the machinery to running smoothly, and to set right anything that might be wrong while I still had the steamer's machine-shop to turn to for repairs. However, the engine proved to be a well-made one, and except that I had to tighten a joint here and there and to repack the piston I had nothing to rectify; and what still more pleased me was to find that my cage answered to keep the screw from fouling, and that my plan for sawing a way through the weed—which I tested by running a little distance from the steamer through the thick of it—worked well too. But because of the great friction to be overcome as the boat opened a way for itself in the dense soft mass my progress was desperately slow; and I had to comfort me the reflection that it would be still slower when I got regularly under way and had in addition to the dead thrust forward of the boat the dead drag after it of the raft.

Slow or fast, though, I had no choice in the matter. With the means at my command, I had done all that I could do to enable me to climb the walls of my prison—if I may put it that way—and there remained only to muster what pluck I had to help me and to abide by the result. This was the view of the situation that I presented to my cat—for I had got into the habit of talking to him quite as much as he talked to me—while we sat at supper together on the last evening that we were to pass on board of the Ville de Saint Remy; and while he did not make much of a reply to me he did mumble some sort of a purring answer that I took to mean he was willing, if I were, to make the trial.

Early that morning, while the rain still was falling, I had filled my two casks with fresh water; and after my breakfast I got them aboard the boat and then went to work at setting up my mast—using one of the davits in place of sheers and so managing the job very well. After that I had rigged the sail, and had set it to make sure that all was right; and then had furled it and lashed the boom fast on the roof of the cabin among the bags of coal—and with rather a heavy heart, too, for I knew that the chances were more than even against my ever getting to open water and fresh breezes, and so loosing again the knots which I had just tied. In the afternoon I had set my engine to going again for an hour, and then had banked my fires against the morning; and after that, until the shadows began to fall, I had spent my time in going over the list that I had made of my sea-stock to be sure that nothing that I needed was forgotten, and in taking a final general survey of my boat and its stores. And when darkness came the cat and I had our supper together—which was as good a one as the ship could provide us with—and when we had finished I told him, as I have said, what the chances were for and against our succeeding in our undertaking and in return asked him for an expression of his own views.

That he fully understood what I told him I am not prepared to say; but he certainly did answer me: jumping up on my lap and shoving his paws alternately against my stomach, and purring in so cheerful a fashion, and altogether making such a show of good spirits as to satisfy me that he was trying to tell me that we certainly would pull through. And my cat's promise of good luck fell in so exactly with my own confident hopes—which were rising strongly as the time for testing them got close at hand—that I hugged him tight to me very lovingly, and on my side promised that within another month or two he should stretch his legs in a mouse-hunt on dry land! And with that I put the lamp out and we turned in for the night.



XXXVII

HOW MY CAT STILL FARTHER CHEERED ME

It was in the grey of early morning, while the rain still was falling, that the cat and I had our breakfast; and as soon as the rain was over I was down in the boat, and had off the tarpaulin that covered her stern-sheets, and was busy bringing up my banked fires. One thing that I had learned how to do during the week that I had been testing my engine was to bank my fires well; and that was a matter of a good deal of importance to me—since every night during my voyage the fires would have to be kept that way, on the double score of my inability to hold my course in the darkness and of my need for sleep.

Presently I had steam up; and then I went back to the ship for the last and most important piece of my cargo—my bag of jewels. It was with a queer feeling, half of doubt and half of exultation, that I fetched out this little bundle—still done up in the sleeve of the oilskin jacket—and stowed it in one of the lockers in the cabin of my boat. If my voyage went well, then all the rest of my life—so far as wealth makes for happiness—would go well too: for in that rough and dirty little bag was such a treasure—that I had won away from the dead ship holding it—as would make me one of the richest men in the world. But against this exultant hope stood up a doubt so dark that there was no great room in my mind for cheerfulness: for as I stowed away the jewels in the boat I could not but think of those others who had stowed them away two hundred years and more before aboard the galleon; and who had started in their great ship well manned on a voyage in which the risk of disaster was as nothing in comparison with the risk that I had to face in the voyage that I was undertaking in my little boat alone. Yet their venture had ended miserably; and I, trying singly to accomplish what their whole company had failed in, very well might surrender the treasure again, as they had surrendered it, to the storm-power of the sea.

But thinking these dismal thoughts was no help to me, and so I choked them down and went once more aboard the steamer to make sure that I had forgotten nothing that I needed by taking a final look around. This being ended without my seeing anything that was necessary to me, I said goodbye to the Ville de Saint Remy and got down into my boat again; and my cat—who usually sat in the break of the side of the steamer while I was at work in the boat, though sometimes asking with a miau to be lifted down into her—of his own accord jumped aboard ahead of me: and that I took for a good sign.

Certainly, the cat and I made as queer a ship's company as ever went afloat together; and our little craft—with its cargo that would have bought a whole fleet's lading—was such an argosy as never before had sailed the seas. Nor did even Columbus, when he struck out across the black ocean westward, start upon a voyage so blind and so seemingly hopeless as was ours. The Admiral, at least, had with him such aids to navigation as his times afforded, and went cruising in open water; failing in his quest, the chance was free to him to put about again and so come once more to his home among living men. But I had not even his poor equipment; and as to turning again and so coming back to the point whence I started—even supposing that I could manage it—that ending to my voyage would be so miserable that it would be better for me to die by the way.

In none of the vessels through which I had searched had I found a sextant; nor would it have been of any use to me, had I found one, unless I had found also a chronometer still keeping time. Charts I did find; but as I had to know my position to get any good from them, and as I would run straight for any land that I sighted without in the least caring on what coast I made my landfall, I left them behind. My only aid to navigation was a compass, that I got from the binnacle of a ship lying near the Ville de Saint Remy; and aboard the same vessel I found a very good spyglass, and gladly brought it along with me because it would add to my chances—should I reach open water—not only of sighting a distant ship but of making out how she was standing in time to head her off.

But for all practical purposes the compass was enough for me. I knew that to the westward lay the American continent, and that between it and where I then was—for it was certain that I was not far south of the latitude of the Azores—was that section of the Atlantic which is more thickly crowded with ships than any other like-sized bit of ocean in the world. My chance of escape, therefore, and my only chance, lay in holding to a due west course: hoping first that, being clear of the weed, I might fall in with some passing vessel; and second that I might make the coast before a storm came on me by which my little boat would be swamped. And so I opened the throttle of my engine: and as the screw began to revolve I headed my boat for the cut in the weed which I had made when I was testing her—while my tow-rope drew taut and after me came slowly my long raft.

No doubt it was only because the hiss of the escaping steam startled him; but at the first turn of the engine my cat scampered forward and seated himself in the very bows of the boat—a little black figure-head—and thence gazed out steadfastly westward as though he were the pilot charged with the duty of setting our vessel's course. He had to give place to me in a moment—when I went to the bows to begin my sawing through the weed—but I was cheered by his planting himself that way pointing our course with his nose for me: and again I took his bit of freakishness for a good sign.



XXXVIII

HOW I FOUGHT MY WAY THROUGH THE SARGASSO WEED

What I did on that first day of my voyage was what I did on every succeeding day during so long a time that it seemed to me the end of it never would come.

When my craft fairly was started, with the fire well fed and a light enough weight on the safety-valve to guard against any sudden chance rise in the steam pressure, I went forward to the bows with the compass and set myself to my sawing. The wheel being lashed with the rudder amidships, all the steering was managed from the bows—any deviation from the straight line westward being corrected by my taking the saw out from the guide-bars and cutting to the right or to the left with it until I had the boat's nose pointing again the right way. But there was not often need for cutting of this sort. Held by the guide-bars, the saw cut a straight path for the boat to follow; while, conversely, the boat held the saw true. And so, for the most part, I had only to stand like a machine there—endlessly hauling the saw up and endlessly thrusting it down. Behind me my little engine puffed and snorted; over the bows, below me, was the soft crunching sound of the weed opening as the boat thrust her nose into it; and on each side of me was the soft hissing rustling of the weed against the boat's sides. From time to time I would stop for sheer weariness—for anything more back-breaking than the steady working of that saw I never came across; and from time to time I had to stop my engine—which I managed, and also the starting of it, by means of a pair of lines brought forward into the bows from the lever-bar—while I attended to feeding the fire.

The only breaks in this deadly monotonous round were when I ate my meals—and at first these were as pleasant as they were restful, with the cat sitting beside me and eating very contentedly too—and when I fell in with a bit of wreckage that I had to steer clear of or to move out of my way. Interruptions of this latter sort—even though they gave me a change from my wearying sawing—were hard to put up with; for they not only held me back woefully, but they kept me in continual alarm lest I should break my saw. When the obstacle was a derelict, or anything so large that I could see it well ahead of me and so could have plenty of time in which to swing the boat to one side of it by slicing a diagonal way for her, I could get along without much difficulty; but when it was only a spar or a mast, so bedded in the weed that my first knowledge of it was finding it close under my bows, there was no chance to make a detour and I had to thrust it aside with a boat-hook or go to hacking at it with an axe until I had cut it through. And often it happened that I knew nothing at all of the obstacle, the weed covering it completely, until my saw struck against it; and that would send a cold shiver through me, as I whipped my saw out of the water—for I had only two saws with me, and I knew that to break one of them cut down my chances of escape by a half. Indeed, my first saw did get broken while I still was in the thick of the tangle; and after that I was in a constant tremor, which became almost agony when I felt the least jar in my cutting, for fear that the other would go too.

But with it all I managed to make pretty fair progress, and better than I had counted upon; for I succeeded in covering, as nearly as I could reckon it, close upon three miles a day. After I fairly got out upon my course I had no means whatever of judging distances; but my estimate of my advance was made at the end of my first day's run, when the wreck-pack still was in sight behind me and enabled me to make a close guess at how far I had come. As the sun went down that night over my bows—making a long path of crimson along the weed ahead of me, and filling the mist with a crimson glow—I still could make out, though very faintly, the continent of wrecks from which I had started; and with my glass I could distinguish the Ville de Saint Remy by the three flags which I had left flying on her masts. And the sight of her, and the thought of how comfortable and how safe I had been aboard of her, and of how I was done with her forever and was tying to as slim a chance of life as ever a man tied to, for a while put a great heaviness upon my heart. Not until darkness came and shut her out from me, and I was resting in my brightly lighted comfortable little cabin—with my supper to cheer me, and with my cat to cheer me too—did my spirits rise again; and I was glad, when I got under way once more in the morning, that the heavy mist cut her off from me—and that by the time the sun had thinned the mist a little I had made such progress as to put her out of sight of me for good and all.