Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1779 page)

The light shone up so high that I could see the huge Iceberg upon which we had struck, cloven at the top and down the middle, exactly like Penrith Church in my dream.  At the same moment I could see the watch last relieved, crowding up and down on deck; I could see Mrs. Atherfield and Miss Coleshaw thrown about on the top of the companion as they struggled to bring the child up from below; I could see that the masts were going with the shock and the beating of the ship; I could see the frightful breach stove in on the starboard side, half the length of the vessel, and the sheathing and timbers spirting up; I could see that the Cutter was disabled, in a wreck of broken fragments; and I could see every eye turned upon me.  It is my belief that if there had been ten thousand eyes there, I should have seen them all, with their different looks.  And all this in a moment.  But you must consider what a moment.

I saw the men, as they looked at me, fall towards their appointed stations, like good men and true.  If she had not righted, they could have done very little there or anywhere but die — not that it is little for a man to die at his post — I mean they could have done nothing to save the passengers and themselves.  Happily, however, the violence of the shock with which we had so determinedly borne down direct on that fatal Iceberg, as if it had been our destination instead of our destruction, had so smashed and pounded the ship that she got off in this same instant and righted.  I did not want the carpenter to tell me she was filling and going down; I could see and hear that.  I gave Rames the word to lower the Long-boat and the Surf-boat, and I myself told off the men for each duty.  Not one hung back, or came before the other.  I now whispered to John Steadiman, “John, I stand at the gangway here, to see every soul on board safe over the side.  You shall have the next post of honour, and shall be the last but one to leave the ship.  Bring up the passengers, and range them behind me; and put what provision and water you can got at, in the boats.  Cast your eye for’ard, John, and you’ll see you have not a moment to lose.”

My noble fellows got the boats over the side as orderly as I ever saw boats lowered with any sea running, and, when they were launched, two or three of the nearest men in them as they held on, rising and falling with the swell, called out, looking up at me, “Captain Ravender, if anything goes wrong with us, and you are saved, remember we stood by you!” — ”We’ll all stand by one another ashore, yet, please God, my lads!” says I.  “Hold on bravely, and be tender with the women.”

The women were an example to us.  They trembled very much, but they were quiet and perfectly collected.  “Kiss me, Captain Ravender,” says Mrs. Atherfield, “and God in heaven bless you, you good man!”  “My dear,” says I, “those words are better for me than a life-boat.”  I held her child in my arms till she was in the boat, and then kissed the child and handed her safe down.  I now said to the people in her, “You have got your freight, my lads, all but me, and I am not coming yet awhile.  Pull away from the ship, and keep off!”

That was the Long-boat.  Old Mr. Rarx was one of her complement, and he was the only passenger who had greatly misbehaved since the ship struck.  Others had been a little wild, which was not to be wondered at, and not very blamable; but, he had made a lamentation and uproar which it was dangerous for the people to hear, as there is always contagion in weakness and selfishness.  His incessant cry had been that he must not be separated from the child, that he couldn’t see the child, and that he and the child must go together.  He had even tried to wrest the child out of my arms, that he might keep her in his.  “Mr. Rarx,” said I to him when it came to that, “I have a loaded pistol in my pocket; and if you don’t stand out of the gangway, and keep perfectly quiet, I shall shoot you through the heart, if you have got one.”  Says he, “You won’t do murder, Captain Ravender!”   “No, sir,” says I, “I won’t murder forty-four people to humour you, but I’ll shoot you to save them.”  After that he was quiet, and stood shivering a little way off, until I named him to go over the side.

The Long-boat being cast off, the Surf-boat was soon filled.  There only remained aboard the Golden Mary, John Mullion the man who had kept on burning the blue-lights (and who had lighted every new one at every old one before it went out, as quietly as if he had been at an illumination); John Steadiman; and myself.  I hurried those two into the Surf-boat, called to them to keep off, and waited with a grateful and relieved heart for the Long-boat to come and take me in, if she could.  I looked at my watch, and it showed me, by the blue-light, ten minutes past two.  They lost no time.  As soon as she was near enough, I swung myself into her, and called to the men, “With a will, lads!  She’s reeling!”  We were not an inch too far out of the inner vortex of her going down, when, by the blue-light which John Mullion still burnt in the bow of the Surf-boat, we saw her lurch, and plunge to the bottom head-foremost.  The child cried, weeping wildly, “O the dear Golden Mary!  O look at her!  Save her!  Save the poor Golden Mary!”  And then the light burnt out, and the black dome seemed to come down upon us.

I suppose if we had all stood a-top of a mountain, and seen the whole remainder of the world sink away from under us, we could hardly have felt more shocked and solitary than we did when we knew we were alone on the wide ocean, and that the beautiful ship in which most of us had been securely asleep within half an hour was gone for ever.  There was an awful silence in our boat, and such a kind of palsy on the rowers and the man at the rudder, that I felt they were scarcely keeping her before the sea.  I spoke out then, and said, “Let every one here thank the Lord for our preservation!”  All the voices answered (even the child’s), “We thank the Lord!”  I then said the Lord’s Prayer, and all hands said it after me with a solemn murmuring.  Then I gave the word “Cheerily, O men, Cheerily!” and I felt that they were handling the boat again as a boat ought to be handled.

The Surf-boat now burnt another blue-light to show us where they were, and we made for her, and laid ourselves as nearly alongside of her as we dared.  I had always kept my boats with a coil or two of good stout stuff in each of them, so both boats had a rope at hand.  We made a shift, with much labour and trouble, to got near enough to one another to divide the blue-lights (they were no use after that night, for the sea-water soon got at them), and to get a tow-rope out between us.  All night long we kept together, sometimes obliged to cast off the rope, and sometimes getting it out again, and all of us wearying for the morning — which appeared so long in coming that old Mr. Rarx screamed out, in spite of his fears of me, “The world is drawing to an end, and the sun will never rise any more!”

When the day broke, I found that we were all huddled together in a miserable manner.  We were deep in the water; being, as I found on mustering, thirty-one in number, or at least six too many.  In the Surf-boat they were fourteen in number, being at least four too many.  The first thing I did, was to get myself passed to the rudder — which I took from that time — and to get Mrs. Atherfield, her child, and Miss Coleshaw, passed on to sit next me.  As to old Mr. Rarx, I put him in the bow, as far from us as I could.  And I put some of the best men near us in order that if I should drop there might be a skilful hand ready to take the helm.

The sea moderating as the sun came up, though the sky was cloudy and wild, we spoke the other boat, to know what stores they had, and to overhaul what we had.  I had a compass in my pocket, a small telescope, a double-barrelled pistol, a knife, and a fire-box and matches.  Most of my men had knives, and some had a little tobacco: some, a pipe as well.  We had a mug among us, and an iron spoon.  As to provisions, there were in my boat two bags of biscuit, one piece of raw beef, one piece of raw pork, a bag of coffee, roasted but not ground (thrown in, I imagine, by mistake, for something else), two small casks of water, and about half-a-gallon of rum in a keg.  The Surf-boat, having rather more rum than we, and fewer to drink it, gave us, as I estimated, another quart into our keg.  In return, we gave them three double handfuls of coffee, tied up in a piece of a handkerchief; they reported that they had aboard besides, a bag of biscuit, a piece of beef, a small cask of water, a small box of lemons, and a Dutch cheese.  It took a long time to make these exchanges, and they were not made without risk to both parties; the sea running quite high enough to make our approaching near to one another very hazardous.  In the bundle with the coffee, I conveyed to John Steadiman (who had a ship’s compass with him), a paper written in pencil, and torn from my pocket-book, containing the course I meant to steer, in the hope of making land, or being picked up by some vessel — I say in the hope, though I had little hope of either deliverance.  I then sang out to him, so as all might hear, that if we two boats could live or die together, we would; but, that if we should be parted by the weather, and join company no more, they should have our prayers and blessings, and we asked for theirs.  We then gave them three cheers, which they returned, and I saw the men’s heads droop in both boats as they fell to their oars again.

These arrangements had occupied the general attention advantageously for all, though (as I expressed in the last sentence) they ended in a sorrowful feeling.  I now said a few words to my fellow-voyagers on the subject of the small stock of food on which our lives depended if they were preserved from the great deep, and on the rigid necessity of our eking it out in the most frugal manner.  One and all replied that whatever allowance I thought best to lay down should be strictly kept to.  We made a pair of scales out of a thin scrap of iron-plating and some twine, and I got together for weights such of the heaviest buttons among us as I calculated made up some fraction over two ounces.  This was the allowance of solid food served out once a-day to each, from that time to the end; with the addition of a coffee-berry, or sometimes half a one, when the weather was very fair, for breakfast.  We had nothing else whatever, but half a pint of water each per day, and sometimes, when we were coldest and weakest, a teaspoonful of rum each, served out as a dram.  I know how learnedly it can be shown that rum is poison, but I also know that in this case, as in all similar cases I have ever read of — which are numerous — no words can express the comfort and support derived from it.  Nor have I the least doubt that it saved the lives of far more than half our number.  Having mentioned half a pint of water as our daily allowance, I ought to observe that sometimes we had less, and sometimes we had more; for much rain fell, and we caught it in a canvas stretched for the purpose.

Thus, at that tempestuous time of the year, and in that tempestuous part of the world, we shipwrecked people rose and fell with the waves.  It is not my intention to relate (if I can avoid it) such circumstances appertaining to our doleful condition as have been better told in many other narratives of the kind than I can be expected to tell them.  I will only note, in so many passing words, that day after day and night after night, we received the sea upon our backs to prevent it from swamping the boat; that one party was always kept baling, and that every hat and cap among us soon got worn out, though patched up fifty times, as the only vessels we had for that service; that another party lay down in the bottom of the boat, while a third rowed; and that we were soon all in boils and blisters and rags.

The other boat was a source of such anxious interest to all of us that I used to wonder whether, if we were saved, the time could ever come when the survivors in this boat of ours could be at all indifferent to the fortunes of the survivors in that.  We got out a tow-rope whenever the weather permitted, but that did not often happen, and how we two parties kept within the same horizon, as we did, He, who mercifully permitted it to be so for our consolation, only knows.  I never shall forget the looks with which, when the morning light came, we used to gaze about us over the stormy waters, for the other boat.  We once parted company for seventy-two hours, and we believed them to have gone down, as they did us.  The joy on both sides when we came within view of one another again, had something in a manner Divine in it; each was so forgetful of individual suffering, in tears of delight and sympathy for the people in the other boat.

I have been wanting to get round to the individual or personal part of my subject, as I call it, and the foregoing incident puts me in the right way.  The patience and good disposition aboard of us, was wonderful.  I was not surprised by it in the women; for all men born of women know what great qualities they will show when men will fail; but, I own I was a little surprised by it in some of the men.  Among one-and-thirty people assembled at the best of times, there will usually, I should say, be two or three uncertain tempers.  I knew that I had more than one rough temper with me among my own people, for I had chosen those for the Long-boat that I might have them under my eye.  But, they softened under their misery, and were as considerate of the ladies, and as compassionate of the child, as the best among us, or among men — they could not have been more so.  I heard scarcely any complaining.  The party lying down would moan a good deal in their sleep, and I would often notice a man — not always the same man, it is to be understood, but nearly all of them at one time or other — sitting moaning at his oar, or in his place, as he looked mistily over the sea.  When it happened to be long before I could catch his eye, he would go on moaning all the time in the dismallest manner; but, when our looks met, he would brighten and leave off.  I almost always got the impression that he did not know what sound he had been making, but that he thought he had been humming a tune.