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Wreck of the Golden Mary

<h1>THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY</h1> <h2>THE WRECK</h2> I was apprenticed to the Sea when I was twelve years old, and I have encountered a great deal of rough weather, both literal and metaphorical.  It has always been my opinion since I first possessed such a thing as an opinion, that the man who knows only one subject is next tiresome to the man who knows no subject.  Therefore, in the course of my life I have taught myself whatever I could, and although I am not an educated man, I am able, I am thankful to say, to have an intelligent interest in most things. A person might suppose, from reading the above, that I am in the habit of holding forth about number one.  That is not the case.  Just as if I was to come into a room among strangers, and must either be introduced or introduce myself, so I have taken the liberty of passing these few remarks, simply and plainly that it may be known who and what I am.  I will add no more of the sort than that my name is William George Ravender, that I was born at Penrith half a year after my own father was drowned, and that I am on the second day of this present blessed Christmas week of one thousand eight hundred and fifty-six, fifty-six years of age. When the rumour first went flying up and down that there was gold in California—which, as most people know, was before it was discovered in the British colony of Australia—I was in the West Indies, trading among the Islands.  Being in command and likewise part-owner of a smart schooner, I had my work cut out for me, and I was doing it.  Consequently, gold in California was no business of mine. But, by the time when I came home to England again, the thing was as clear as your hand held up before you at noon-day.  There was Californian gold in the museums and in the goldsmiths’ shops, and the very first time I went upon ’Change, I met a friend of mine (a seafaring man like myself), with a Californian nugget hanging to his watch-chain.  I handled it.  It was as like a peeled walnut with bits unevenly broken off here and there, and then electrotyped all over, as ever I saw anything in my life. I am a single man (she was too good for this world and for me, and she died six weeks before our marriage-day), so when I am ashore, I live in my house at Poplar.  My house at Poplar is taken care of and kept ship-shape by an old lady who was my mother’s maid before I was born.  She is as handsome and as upright as any old lady in the world.  She is as fond of me as if she had ever had an only son, and I was he.  Well do I know wherever I sail that she never lays down her head at night without having said, “Merciful Lord! bless and preserve William George Ravender, and send him safe home, through Christ our Saviour!”  I have thought of it in many a dangerous moment, when it has done me no harm, I am sure. In my house at Poplar, along with this old lady, I lived quiet for best part of a year: having had a long spell of it among the Islands, and having (which was very uncommon in me) taken the fever rather badly.  At last, being strong and hearty, and having read every book I could lay hold of, right out, I was walking down Leadenhall Street in the City of London, thinking of turning-to again, when I met what I call Smithick and Watersby of Liverpool.  I chanced to lift up my eyes from looking in at a ship’s chronometer in a window, and I saw him bearing down upon me, head on. It is, personally, neither Smithick, nor Watersby, that I here mention, nor was I ever acquainted with any man of either of those names, nor do I think that there has been any one of either of those names in that Liverpool House for years back.  But, it is in reality the House itself that I refer to; and a wiser merchant or a truer gentleman never stepped. “My dear Captain Ravender,” says he.  “Of all the men on earth, I wanted to see you most.  I was on my way to you.” “Well!” says I.  “That looks as if you were to see me, don’t it?”  With that I put my arm in his, and we walked on towards the Royal Exchange, and when we got there, walked up and down at the back of it where the Clock-Tower is.  We walked an hour and more, for he had much to say to me.  He had a scheme for chartering a new ship of their own to take out cargo to the diggers and emigrants in California, and to buy and bring back gold.  Into the particulars of that scheme I will not enter, and I have no right to enter.  All I say of it is, that it was a very original one, a very fine one, a very sound one, and a very lucrative one beyond doubt. He imparted it to me as freely as if I had been a part of himself.  After doing so, he made me the handsomest sharing offer that ever was made to me, boy or man—or I believe to any other captain in the Merchant Navy—and he took this round turn to finish with: “Ravender, you are well aware that the lawlessness of that coast and country at present, is as special as the circumstances in which it is placed.  Crews of vessels outward-bound, desert as soon as they make the land; crews of vessels homeward-bound, ship at enormous wages, with the express intention of murdering the captain and seizing the gold freight; no man can trust another, and the devil seems let loose.  Now,” says he, “you know my opinion of you, and you know I am only expressing it, and with no singularity, when I tell you that you are almost the only man on whose integrity, discretion, and energy—” &c., &c.  For, I don’t want to repeat what he said, though I was and am sensible of it. Notwithstanding my being, as I have mentioned, quite ready for a voyage, still I had some doubts of this voyage.  Of course I knew, without being told, that there were peculiar difficulties and dangers in it, a long way over and above those which attend all voyages.  It must not be supposed that I was afraid to face them; but, in my opinion a man has no manly motive or sustainment in his own breast for facing dangers, unless he has well considered what they are, and is able quietly to say to himself, “None of these perils can now take me by surprise; I shall know what to do for the best in any of them; all the rest lies in the higher and greater hands to which I humbly commit myself.”  On this principle I have so attentively considered (regarding it as my duty) all the hazards I have ever been able to think of, in the ordinary way of storm, shipwreck, and fire at sea, that I hope I should be prepared to do, in any of those cases, whatever could be done, to save the lives intrusted to my charge. As I was thoughtful, my good friend proposed that he should leave me to walk there as long as I liked, and that I should dine with him by-and-by at his club in Pall Mall.  I accepted the invitation and I walked up and down there, quarter-deck fashion, a matter of a couple of hours; now and then looking up at the weathercock as I might have looked up aloft; and now and then taking a look into Cornhill, as I might have taken a look over the side. All dinner-time, and all after dinner-time, we talked it over again.  I gave him my views of his plan, and he very much approved of the same.  I told him I had nearly decided, but not quite.  “Well, well,” says he, “come down to Liverpool to-morrow with me, and see the Golden Mary.”  I liked the name (her name was Mary, and she was golden, if golden stands for good), so I began to feel that it was almost done when I said I would go to Liverpool.  On the next morning but one we were on board the Golden Mary.  I might have known, from his asking me to come down and see her, what she was.  I declare her to have been the completest and most exquisite Beauty that ever I set my eyes upon. We had inspected every timber in her, and had come back to the gangway to go ashore from the dock-basin, when I put out my hand to my friend.  “Touch upon it,” says I, “and touch heartily.  I take command of this ship, and I am hers and yours, if I can get John Steadiman for my chief mate.” John Steadiman had sailed with me four voyages.  The first voyage John was third mate out to China, and came home second.  The other three voyages he was my first officer.  At this time of chartering the Golden Mary, he was aged thirty-two.  A brisk, bright, blue-eyed fellow, a very neat figure and rather under the middle size, never out of the way and never in it, a face that pleased everybody and that all children took to, a habit of going about singing as cheerily as a blackbird, and a perfect sailor. We were in one of those Liverpool hackney-coaches in less than a minute, and we cruised about in her upwards of three hours, looking for John.  John had come home from Van Diemen’s Land barely a month before, and I had heard of him as taking a frisk in Liverpool.  We asked after him, among many other places, at the two boarding-houses he was fondest of, and we found he had had a week’s spell at each of them; but, he had gone here and gone there, and had set off “to lay out on the main-to’-gallant-yard of the highest Welsh mountain” (so he had told the people of the house), and where he might be then, or when he might come back, nobody could tell us.  But it was surprising, to be sure, to see how every face brightened the moment there was mention made of the name of Mr. Steadiman. We were taken aback at meeting with no better luck, and we had wore ship and put her head for my friends, when as we were jogging through the streets, I clap my eyes on John himself coming out of a toyshop!  He was carrying a little boy, and conducting two uncommon pretty women to their coach, and he told me afterwards that he had never in his life seen one of the three before, but that he was so taken with them on looking in at the toyshop while they were buying the child a cranky Noah’s Ark, very much down by the head, that he had gone in and asked the ladies’ permission to treat him to a tolerably correct Cutter there was in the window, in order that such a handsome boy might not grow up with a lubberly idea of naval architecture. We stood off and on until the ladies’ coachman began to give way, and then we hailed John.  On his coming aboard of us, I told him, very gravely, what I had said to my friend.  It struck him, as he said himself, amidships.  He was quite shaken by it.  “Captain Ravender,” were John Steadiman’s words, “such an opinion from you is true commendation, and I’ll sail round the world with you for twenty years if you hoist the signal, and stand by you for ever!”  And now indeed I felt that it was done, and that the Golden Mary was afloat. Grass never grew yet under the feet of Smithick and Watersby.  The riggers were out of that ship in a fortnight’s time, and we had begun taking in cargo.  John was always aboard, seeing everything stowed with his own eyes; and whenever I went aboard myself early or late, whether he was below in the hold, or on deck at the hatchway, or overhauling his cabin, nailing up pictures in it of the Blush Roses of England, the Blue Belles of Scotland, and the female Shamrock of Ireland: of a certainty I heard John singing like a blackbird. We had room for twenty passengers.  Our sailing advertisement was no sooner out, than we might have taken these twenty times over.  In entering our men, I and John (both together) picked them, and we entered none but good hands—as good as were to be found in that port.  And so, in a good ship of the best build, well owned, well arranged, well officered, well manned, well found in all respects, we parted with our pilot at a quarter past four o’clock in the afternoon of the seventh of March, one thousand eight hundred and fifty-one, and stood with a fair wind out to sea. It may be easily believed that up to that time I had had no leisure to be intimate with my passengers.  The most of them were then in their berths sea-sick; however, in going among them, telling them what was good for them, persuading them not to be there, but to come up on deck and feel the breeze, and in rousing them with a joke, or a comfortable word, I made acquaintance with them, perhaps, in a more friendly and confidential way from the first, than I might have done at the cabin table. Of my passengers, I need only particularise, just at present, a bright-eyed blooming young wife who was going out to join her husband in California, taking with her their only child, a little girl of three years old, whom he had never seen; a sedate young woman in black, some five years older (about thirty as I should say), who was going out to join a brother; and an old gentleman, a good deal like a hawk if his eyes had been better and not so red, who was always talking, morning, noon, and night, about the gold discovery.  But, whether he was making the voyage, thinking his old arms could dig for gold, or whether his speculation was to buy it, or to barter for it, or to cheat for it, or to snatch it anyhow from other people, was his secret.  He kept his secret. These three and the child were the soonest well.  The child was a most engaging child, to be sure, and very fond of me: though I am bound to admit that John Steadiman and I were borne on her pretty little books in reverse order, and that he was captain there, and I was mate.  It was beautiful to watch her with John, and it was beautiful to watch John with her.  Few would have thought it possible, to see John playing at bo-peep round the mast, that he was the man who had caught up an iron bar and struck a Malay and a Maltese dead, as they were gliding with their knives down the cabin stair aboard the barque Old England, when the captain lay ill in his cot, off Saugar Point.  But he was; and give him his back against a bulwark, he would have done the same by half a dozen of them.  The name of the young mother was Mrs. Atherfield, the name of the young lady in black was Miss Coleshaw, and the name of the old gentleman was Mr. Rarx. As the child had a quantity of shining fair hair, clustering in curls all about her face, and as her name was Lucy, Steadiman gave her the name of the Golden Lucy.  So, we had the Golden Lucy and the Golden Mary; and John kept up the idea to that extent as he and the child went playing about the decks, that I believe she used to think the ship was alive somehow—a sister or companion, going to the same place as herself.  She liked to be by the wheel, and in fine weather, I have often stood by the man whose trick it was at the wheel, only to hear her, sitting near my feet, talking to the ship.  Never had a child such a doll before, I suppose; but she made a doll of the Golden Mary, and used to dress her up by tying ribbons and little bits of finery to the belaying-pins; and nobody ever moved them, unless it was to save them from being blown away. Of course I took charge of the two young women, and I called them “my dear,” and they never minded, knowing that whatever I said was said in a fatherly and protecting spirit.  I gave them their places on each side of me at dinner, Mrs. Atherfield on my right and Miss Coleshaw on my left; and I directed the unmarried lady to serve out the breakfast, and the married lady to serve out the tea.  Likewise I said to my black steward in their presence, “Tom Snow, these two ladies are equally the mistresses of this house, and do you obey their orders equally;” at which Tom laughed, and they all laughed. Old Mr. Rarx was not a pleasant man to look at, nor yet to talk to, or to be with, for no one could help seeing that he was a sordid and selfish character, and that he had warped further and further out of the straight with time.  Not but what he was on his best behaviour with us, as everybody was; for we had no bickering among us, for’ard or aft.  I only mean to say, he was not the man one would have chosen for a messmate.  If choice there had been, one might even have gone a few points out of one’s course, to say, “No!  Not him!”  But, there was one curious inconsistency in Mr. Rarx.  That was, that he took an astonishing interest in the child.  He looked, and I may add, he was, one of the last of men to care at all for a child, or to care much for any human creature.  Still, he went so far as to be habitually uneasy, if the child was long on deck, out of his sight.  He was always afraid of her falling overboard, or falling down a hatchway, or of a block or what not coming down upon her from the rigging in the working of the ship, or of her getting some hurt or other.  He used to look at her and touch her, as if she was something precious to him.  He was always solicitous about her not injuring her health, and constantly entreated her mother to be careful of it.  This was so much the more curious, because the child did not like him, but used to shrink away from him, and would not even put out her hand to him without coaxing from others.  I believe that every soul on board frequently noticed this, and not one of us understood it.  However, it was such a plain fact, that John Steadiman said more than once when old Mr. Rarx was not within earshot, that if the Golden Mary felt a tenderness for the dear old gentleman she carried in her lap, she must be bitterly jealous of the Golden Lucy. Before I go any further with this narrative, I will state that our ship was a barque of three hundred tons, carrying a crew of eighteen men, a second mate in addition to John, a carpenter, an armourer or smith, and two apprentices (one a Scotch boy, poor little fellow).  We had three boats; the Long-boat, capable of carrying twenty-five men; the Cutter, capable of carrying fifteen; and the Surf-boat, capable of carrying ten.  I put down the capacity of these boats according to the numbers they were really meant to hold. We had tastes of bad weather and head-winds, of course; but, on the whole we had as fine a run as any reasonable man could expect, for sixty days.  I then began to enter two remarks in the ship’s Log and in my Journal; first, that there was an unusual and amazing quantity of ice; second, that the nights were most wonderfully dark, in spite of the ice. For five days and a half, it seemed quite useless and hopeless to alter the ship’s course so as to stand out of the way of this ice.  I made what southing I could; but, all that time, we were beset by it.  Mrs. Atherfield after standing by me on deck once, looking for some time in an awed manner at the great bergs that surrounded us, said in a whisper, “O! Captain Ravender, it looks as if the whole solid earth had changed into ice, and broken up!”  I said to her, laughing, “I don’t wonder that it does, to your inexperienced eyes, my dear.”  But I had never seen a twentieth part of the quantity, and, in reality, I was pretty much of her opinion. However, at two p.m. on the afternoon of the sixth day, that is to say, when we were sixty-six days out, John Steadiman who had gone aloft, sang out from the top, that the sea was clear ahead.  Before four p.m. a strong breeze springing up right astern, we were in open water at sunset.  The breeze then freshening into half a gale of wind, and the Golden Mary being a very fast sailer, we went before the wind merrily, all night. I had thought it impossible that it could be darker than it had been, until the sun, moon, and stars should fall out of the Heavens, and Time should be destroyed; but, it had been next to light, in comparison with what it was now.  The darkness was so profound, that looking into it was painful and oppressive—like looking, without a ray of light, into a dense black bandage put as close before the eyes as it could be, without touching them.  I doubled the look-out, and John and I stood in the bow side-by-side, never leaving it all night.  Yet I should no more have known that he was near me when he was silent, without putting out my arm and touching him, than I should if he had turned in and been fast asleep below.  We were not so much looking out, all of us, as listening to the utmost, both with our eyes and ears. Next day, I found that the mercury in the barometer, which had risen steadily since we cleared the ice, remained steady.  I had had very good observations, with now and then the interruption of a day or so, since our departure.  I got the sun at noon, and found that we were in Lat. 58 degrees S., Long. 60 degrees W., off New South Shetland; in the neighbourhood of Cape Horn.  We were sixty-seven days out, that day.  The ship’s reckoning was accurately worked and made up.  The ship did her duty admirably, all on board were well, and all hands were as smart, efficient, and contented, as it was possible to be. When the night came on again as dark as before, it was the eighth night I had been on deck.  Nor had I taken more than a very little sleep in the day-time, my station being always near the helm, and often at it, while we were among the ice.  Few but those who have tried it can imagine the difficulty and pain of only keeping the eyes open—physically open—under such circumstances, in such darkness.  They get struck by the darkness, and blinded by the darkness.  They make patterns in it, and they flash in it, as if they had gone out of your head to look at you.  On the turn of midnight, John Steadiman, who was alert and fresh (for I had always made him turn in by day), said to me, “Captain Ravender, I entreat of you to go below.  I am sure you can hardly stand, and your voice is getting weak, sir.  Go below, and take a little rest.  I’ll call you if a block chafes.”  I said to John in answer, “Well, well, John!  Let us wait till the turn of one o’clock, before we talk about that.”  I had just had one of the ship’s lanterns held up, that I might see how the night went by my watch, and it was then twenty minutes after twelve. At five minutes before one, John sang out to the boy to bring the lantern again, and when I told him once more what the time was, entreated and prayed of me to go below.  “Captain Ravender,” says he, “all’s well; we can’t afford to have you laid up for a single hour; and I respectfully and earnestly beg of you to go below.”  The end of it was, that I agreed to do so, on the understanding that if I failed to come up of my own accord within three hours, I was to be punctually called.  Having settled that, I left John in charge.  But I called him to me once afterwards, to ask him a question.  I had been to look at the barometer, and had seen the mercury still perfectly steady, and had come up the companion again to take a last look about me—if I can use such a word in reference to such darkness—when I thought that the waves, as the Golden Mary parted them and shook them off, had a hollow sound in them; something that I fancied was a rather unusual reverberation.  I was standing by the quarter-deck rail on the starboard side, when I called John aft to me, and bade him listen.  He did so with the greatest attention.  Turning to me he then said, “Rely upon it, Captain Ravender, you have been without rest too long, and the novelty is only in the state of your sense of hearing.”  I thought so too by that time, and I think so now, though I can never know for absolute certain in this world, whether it was or not. When I left John Steadiman in charge, the ship was still going at a great rate through the water.  The wind still blew right astern.  Though she was making great way, she was under shortened sail, and had no more than she could easily carry.  All was snug, and nothing complained.  There was a pretty sea running, but not a very high sea neither, nor at all a confused one. I turned in, as we seamen say, all standing.  The meaning of that is, I did not pull my clothes off—no, not even so much as my coat: though I did my shoes, for my feet were badly swelled with the deck.  There was a little swing-lamp alight in my cabin.  I thought, as I looked at it before shutting my eyes, that I was so tired of darkness, and troubled by darkness, that I could have gone to sleep best in the midst of a million of flaming gas-lights.  That was the last thought I had before I went off, except the prevailing thought that I should not be able to get to sleep at all. I dreamed that I was back at Penrith again, and was trying to get round the church, which had altered its shape very much since I last saw it, and was cloven all down the middle of the steeple in a most singular manner.  Why I wanted to get round the church I don’t know; but I was as anxious to do it as if my life depended on it.  Indeed, I believe it did in the dream.  For all that, I could not get round the church.  I was still trying, when I came against it with a violent shock, and was flung out of my cot against the ship’s side.  Shrieks and a terrific outcry struck me far harder than the bruising timbers, and amidst sounds of grinding and crashing, and a heavy rushing and breaking of water—sounds I understood too well—I made my way on deck.  It was not an easy thing to do, for the ship heeled over frightfully, and was beating in a furious manner. I could not see the men as I went forward, but I could hear that they were hauling in sail, in disorder.  I had my trumpet in my hand, and, after directing and encouraging them in this till it was done, I hailed first John Steadiman, and then my second mate, Mr. William Rames.  Both answered clearly and steadily.  Now, I had practised them and all my crew, as I have ever made it a custom to practise all who sail with me, to take certain stations and wait my orders, in case of any unexpected crisis.  When my voice was heard hailing, and their voices were heard answering, I was aware, through all the noises of the ship and sea, and all the crying of the passengers below, that there was a pause.  “Are you ready, Rames?”—“Ay, ay, sir!”—“Then light up, for God’s sake!”  In a moment he and another were burning blue-lights, and the ship and all on board seemed to be enclosed in a mist of light, under a great black dome. 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 get 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. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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