In The Sargasso Sea - free ebook by Thomas A. (Thomas Allibone) Janvier

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In The Sargasso Sea

Thomas A. (Thomas Allibone) Janvier

38 chapters

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38 chapters

I

I

Captain Luke Chilton counted over the five-dollar notes with a greater care than I thought was necessary, considering that there were only ten of them; and cautiously examined each separate one, as though he feared that I might be trying to pay for my passage in bad money. His show of distrust set my back up, and I came near to damning him right out for his impudence—until I reflected that a West Coast trader must pretty well divide his time between cheating people and seeing to it that he isn't

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II

II

Having come to this conclusion, I acted on it. I kept the cab at the door while I finished my packing with a rush, and then piled my luggage on it and in it—and what with my two trunks, and my kit of fine tools, and all my bundles, this made tight stowing—and then away I went down-town again as fast as the man could drive with such a load. We got to the Battery in a little more than an hour, and there I transshipped my cargo to a pair-oared boat and started away for the anchorage. The boatmen co

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III

III

I went to the stern of the brig and looked at the tug, far off and almost out of sight in the dusk, and at the loom of the Highlands, above which shone the light-house lamps—and my heart went down into my boots, and for a while stayed there. For a moment the thought came into my head to cut away the buoy lashed to the rail and to take my chances with it overboard—trusting to being picked up by some passing vessel and so set safe ashore. But the night was closing down fast and a lively sea was ru

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IV

IV

During the next fortnight or so my life on board the brig was as pleasant as it well could be. On the first day out we got a slant of wind that held by us until it had carried us fairly into the northeast trades—and then away we went on our course, with everything set and drawing steady, and nothing much to do but man the wheel and eat three square meals a day. And so everybody was in a good humor, from the captain down. Even the mate rumbled what he meant to be a civil word to me now and then;

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V

V

For the rest of that day, and for the two days following, Captain Luke did not in any way refer to his offer; and as he showed himself more than ever friendly, and talked away to me in his usual entertaining fashion, my rage and fright began to go off a little—though at bottom, of course, there was no change in my opinions, nor any doubt as to my giving him a point-blank refusal when the issue should be squarely raised. All this time the brig was bowling along down the trades; and on the third m

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VII

VII

I was roused from my sleep by the sharp motion of the vessel; but did not get very wide awake, for I felt donsie and there was a dull ringing in my head along with a great dull pain. I had sense enough, though, to perceive that the storm had come, about which Captain Luke and the barometer had been at odds; and to shake a little with a creepy terror as I thought of the short work it would have made with me had I waited for it on my mast. But I was too much hurt to feel anything very keenly, and

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VIII

VIII

At last, having worn itself out, as sailors say, the storm began to lessen: first showing its weakening by losing its little lulls and fiercer gusts after them, and then dropping from a tempest to a mere gale—that in turn fell slowly to a gentle wind. But even after the wind had fallen, and for a good while after, the ship labored in a tremendous sea. As I grew easier in my mind and body, and so could think a little, I wondered why my friend the doctor did not come to me; and when at last my doo

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IX

IX

When I came to myself again, and found my state-room—although the dead-light was set—bright with the light which entered through the broken door, my first feeling was of wonder that I was not yet drowned; for it was evident that the sun must be well up in the heavens to shine so strongly, and therefore that a good many hours must have passed since the smash had happened that had sent everybody flying to the boats believing that the ship was going right down. And my next wonder was caused by the

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X

X

When I perceived the tight fix that I was in my broken head went to throbbing again, and my legs were so shaky under me that I had to sit down on the deck in a hurry in order to save myself from a fall. Indeed, I was in no condition to face even an ordinary trouble, let alone an overwhelming disaster; for what with my loss of blood from the cut on my head, and the little food I had eaten since I got it, I was as weak as a cat. Luckily I had the sense to realize that I needed the strength which f

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XI

XI

But the other chance which I had thought of, that my hulk might be blown clear of the Sargasso Sea and back into the track of trade again, still was to be reckoned with; and to know how that chance was working it was necessary that I should find out my exact position on the ocean, and then check off the changes in it by fresh observations taken from day to day. And as I saw that the sun was close upon the meridian, and no time to waste if I wanted to secure my first noon-sight, I put off beginni

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XII

XII

Because I had felt hungry and thirsty, and the cold chicken and beer had tasted good, I had eaten and drunk a great deal more heartily than was wholesome for me—being so weakened by loss of blood, and by the strain put upon me by the danger that I had passed through, and by living only on slops and some scraps of biscuit since my rescue, that my insides were in no condition to deal with such a lot of strong food. And then, within an hour after I so unwisely had stuffed myself, came the blow—in i

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XIII

XIII

That was the end of my visions. Through the night that followed—my fever having run its course, I suppose—I slept easily; and when another day came and I woke again my fever was gone. I was pretty weak and ragged, but the cut in my head was healing and no longer hurt me much, and my mind was clear. There still was water left in the jug, and I drank freely and felt the better for it; and toward afternoon I felt so hungry that I managed to get up and go to the pantry on a foraging expedition for s

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XIV

XIV

Robinson Crusoe's footprint in the sand did not startle him more than that strange lonely cry startled me. Indeed, as between the two of us, I had rather the worse of it: for Crusoe, at least, knew that he was dealing with a reality, while I could not be certain that I was not dealing with a bit of a dream in which there was no reality at all. For a long while I sat there puzzling over it—half hoping that I might hear it again, and so be sure of it; and half hoping that I might not hear it, beca

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XV

XV

At first—the dead-light being fast over the port, and the state-room in darkness save for the little light which came in from the dusky cabin, and my own person in the doorway making it darker still—I was sure of nothing there. But presently I made out a biggish heap of some sort in the lower berth, and then that the heap was a man lying with his back toward me and his face turned to the ship's side. The noise of my footsteps must have roused him, either from sleep or from the stupor that his hu

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XVI

XVI

Only an hour before I had been longing for any sort of a live man to talk with and so break my loneliness; but having thus found a live man—who, to be sure, was close to being a dead one—I would have been almost ready to get rid of him by going back to my mast in the open sea. Indeed, as I stood there in the shadows beside that dying brute, and with the other brute lying dead on the deck above me, the feeling of dull horror that filled me is more than I can put into words. I think that the under

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XVII

XVII

Sitting there with the splotches of fresh blood on the deck all around me was more than I could stomach for very long. The sight of them brought back to me with a horrid distinctness everything that I had seen since I came aboard the hulk: the dead man lying on the deck, the other man with his frightful wounds and his wild talk and his death in the midst of his passionate ravings, and the disgusting work that I had been forced to do before I could hide their two bodies from my sight in the sea-d

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XVIII

XVIII

On shore, in a forest, I would not in the least have minded finding myself in a fix of this sort—though my getting into it would have been unlikely—because getting out of it would have been the easiest thing in the world. I know a good deal of wood-craft, and always can steer a course steadily by having the points of the compass fixed for me by the size and the trend of the branches, and by the bark growing thin or thick or by the moss or the lack of moss on the tree-trunks, and by the other suc

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XIX

XIX

For a while I was so stirred by the enthusiasm which my discovery aroused in me that I had no room in my mind for any other thoughts. But at last, as I still stood pondering in the Wasp's cabin, I became aware that the daylight was fading into darkness; and as I realized what that meant for me my thoughts came back suddenly to myself, and then all my enthusiasm ebbed away. I came out upon the deck again, but leaving everything as I had found it—my momentary impulse to lift the flag having vanish

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XX

XX

I got down from the rail and seated myself on the brig's deck, leaning my back against her bulwarks and a little sheltered by their old-fashioned in-board overhang. But I had no very clear notion of what I was doing; and my feeling, so far as I had any feeling, was less that I was moving of my own volition than that I was being moved by some power acting from outside of me—the sensation of irresponsibility that comes to one sometimes in a dream. Indeed, the whole of that night seemed to me then,

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XXI

XXI

It was a long while before the pale pink gleam to the eastward spread up into the sky far enough to thin the shadows which hung over my dead fleet heavily, and longer still before I had light enough to venture to begin my scrambling walk from ship to ship again. It seemed to me, indeed, that the mist lay lower and was a good deal thicker than on the preceding evening; and this, with the fiery glow that was in it when the sunrise came, gave me hope that a douse of rain might be coming—which chanc

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XXII

XXII

The sun by that time being risen so high that the mist was changing again to a golden haze, and the cabin of the barque well lighted through the skylight over it, I felt less creepy and uncomfortable as I went down the companion-way than I had felt when I went below into the old brig's dusky cabin in the early dawn. But for all that I walked gingerly, and stopped to sniff at every step that I took downward; for I could not by any means get rid of my dread of coming upon some grewsome thing. Howe

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XXIII

XXIII

The morning was well spent by the time that I had made my mind up, and I was growing hungry again. I made a good meal on what was left in the second tin of beans that I had opened for my breakfast; and when I was done I tried to get a light for my pipe by rubbing bits of wood together, but made nothing of it at all. I had read about castaways on desert islands getting fire that way—but they went at it with dry wood, I fancy, and in my mist-sodden desert all the wood was soaked with damp. For tha

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XXIV

XXIV

Bent as I was upon hurrying forward, I could not but stop often in my wearying marches—which began each morning at sunrise and did not end until dusk—to gaze about me in wonder at the curious ancient craft across which lay my way. It seemed to me, indeed, as though I had got into a great marine museum where were stored together all manner of such antique vessels as not for two full centuries, and a good many of them for still longer, had sailed the seas. Some of them were mere shallops, so littl

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XXV

XXV

For a while, down in that black little place, I was quite a crazy creature; being so stirred by my finding this great store of riches that I went to dancing and singing there—and was not a bit bothered by the vile stench rising from the rotten wood that my feet sent flying, nor by the still viler stench rising from the reeking mass of rottenness below me in the galleon's hold. And then, that I might see my treasure the more clearly, I fell to tossing the ingots up through the hatch into the cabi

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XXVI

XXVI

I was pretty much mooning mad for a while, I suppose: sometimes walking about the cabin and thrusting with my feet contemptuously at the gold ingots strewn over the floor of it, and sometimes standing still in a sort of rapt wonder over my heap of jewels—and anything like sensible thinking was quite beyond the power of my unbalanced mind. But at last I was aroused, and so brought to myself a little, by the daylight waning suddenly: as it did in that region when the sun dropped down into the thic

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XXVII

XXVII

At last, after what seemed to me an age of waiting for it, a little pinkish tone began to glow in the mist to the eastward; and as that honest light got stronger the death-fires on the old galleon and on the wrecks around her paled quickly until they were snuffed out altogether—and then came the customary morning down-pour of rain. With the return of the blessed daylight, and with the enlivening douse of cool fresh water upon me, I got to be myself again: my fanciful fears of the night-time leav

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XXVIII

XXVIII

Could I have foreseen all that was ahead of me I doubt if I should have had the courage to go on: choosing rather to stay there on the barque until I had eaten what food I had by me, and then to die slowly—and finding that way easier than the one I chose to follow, with its many days of struggle and its many chill nights of sorrow and I throughout the whole of it rubbing shoulders with despair. As I think of it now, that long, long march seems to me like a horrible nightmare; and sometimes it co

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XXIX

XXIX

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 lit

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XXX

XXX

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

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XXXI

XXXI

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 c

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XXXII

XXXII

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.

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XXXIII

XXXIII

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

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XXXIV

XXXIV

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 an

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XXXV

XXXV

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 t

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XXXVI

XXXVI

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 t

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XXXVII

XXXVII

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

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XXXVIII

XXXVIII

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 deviatio

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THE END

THE END

THE AZTEC TREASURE-HOUSE. A Romance of Contemporaneous Antiquity. Illustrated by FREDERIC REMINGTON. Post 8vo, Cloth, $1 50. This powerful story may well be ranked among the wonder books. No story-reader should miss it, for it is different from anything he has ever read.— Christian at Work , N.Y. THE UNCLE OF AN ANGEL, and Other Stories. Post 8vo, Cloth, $1 25; Paper, 50 cents. Janvier stands in the first rank as a writer of short stories, and a new volume coming from him is sure to meet with su

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