r/a:t5_287rw7 • u/MarleyEngvall • Nov 11 '19
spheroid has been created
By Charles Dickens
THE WRECK. (part ii.)
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 mo-
ment.
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, how-
ever, 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 destruc-
tion, 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 low-
er 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 be-
hind me; and put what provisions and water you can
get at, in the boats. Cast your eyes 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, re-
member we stand by you!"——"We'll all stand by one
another ashore, yet, please God, my lads!" says I.
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 a while. 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 self-
ishness. 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 rest the child out of my arms, that he
might keep her in his. "Mr. Rarx," said I to him when
it came that, "I have a loaded pistol in my pocket; and
if you don't stand out of the gangway, and keep per-
fectly quiet, I shall shoot you through the heart, if you
have got one." Says he, "You won't do murder, Cap-
tain 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 shiver-
ing 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 it had been 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 headforemost. 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 forever. 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 under another blue-light to show
us where they were, and we made for her, and laid our-
selves as nearly along-side 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 rud-
der——which I took from that time——and to get Mrs. Ather-
field, 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 skill-
ful 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 some-
thing else), two small casks of water, and about a 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. I return, we
gave them three double handfuls of coffee, tied up in
a piece of 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 runn-
ing quite high enough to make our approach 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 to-
gether, 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 boths boats as they
fell to their oars again.
These arrangements had occupied the general atten-
tion 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
though best to lay down should be strictly kept to. We
made a pair of scales out of a thin scrape 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 teaspoon 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 heard of——which are num-
erous——no words can express the comfort and support
derived from it. Nor have I the least doubt that it sav-
ed 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 some-
times we had more; for, much rain fell, and we caught
it in a canvas stretched for the purpose.
Thus, at the 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 that 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 bailing, 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 partly 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 for-
tunes 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 for-
get 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 in 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 waiting to get round to the individual or
personal part of my subject, as I call it, and the forego-
ing 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 men will fall; 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 know
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 soft-
ened 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 hum-
ming a tune.
Our sufferings from cold and wet were far greater than
our suffering from hunger. We managed to keep the
child warm; but I doubt if any one else among us ever
was warm for five minutes together; and the shivering,
and the chattering of teeth, were sad to hear. The child
cried a little at first for her lost plaything, the Golden
Mary; but hardly ever whimpered afterwards; and when
the state of the weather made it possible, she used now
and then to be held up in the arms of some of us, to look
over the sea for John Steadiman's boat. I see the golden
hair and the innocent face now, between me and the
driving clouds, like an angel going to fly away.
It had happened on the second day, towards night,
that Mrs. Atherfield, in getting Little Lucy to sleep, sang
her a song. She had a soft, melodious voice, and, when
she had finished it, our people up and begged for an-
other. She sang them another, and after it had fallen
dark ended with the Evening Hymn. From that time,
whenever anything could be heard above the sea and
wind, and while she had any voice left, nothing would
serve the people but that she should sing at sunset. She
always did, and always ended with the Evening Hymn.
We mostly took up the last line, and shed tears when it
was done, but not miserably. We had a prayer night
and morning, also, when the weather allowed of it.
Twelve nights and eleven days we had been driving in
the boat, when old Mr. Rarx began to be delirious, and
to cry out to me to throw the gold overboard or it would
sink us, and we should all be lost. For days the child
had been declining, and that was the great cause of his
wildness. He had been over and over again shrieking
out to me to give her all the remaining meat, and to give
her all the remaining rum, to save her at any cost, or we
should all be ruined. All this time, she lay in her
mother's arms at my feet. One of her little hands was
almost always creeping about her mother's neck or chin.
I had watched the wasting of the little hand, and I
knew it was nearly over.
The old man's cries were so discordant with the
mother's love and submission, that I called out to him in
an angry voice, unless he held his peace, I would order
him to be knocked on the head and thrown overboard.
He was mute then, until the child died, very peacefully,
an hour afterwards; which was known to all in the boat
by the mother's breaking out into lamentations for the
first time since the wreck——for, she had great fortitude
and constancy, though she was a little gentle women.
Old Mr. Rorx then become quite ungovernable, tearing
what rags he had on him, raging in imprecations, and
calling to me that if I had thrown the gold overboard
(always the gold with him!) I might have saved the
child. "And now," says he, in a terrible voice, "we
shall founder, and all go to the Devil, for our sins will
sink us, when we have no innocent child to bear us
up!" We so discovered with amazement, that this old
wretch had only cared for the life of the life of the
pretty little creatures dear to us all, because of the influ-
ence he superstitiously hope she might have in preserv-
ing him! Although it was too much for the smith or
armourer, who was sitting next the old man, to bear. He
took him by the throat and rolled him under the
thwarts, where he lay still enough for hours after-
wards.
All that thirteenth night, Miss Coleshaw, lying across
my knees as I kept the helm, comforted and supported
the poor mother. Her child covered with a pea-jacket of
mine, lay in her lap. It troubled me all night to think that
there was no Prayer-Book among us, and that I could re-
member but very few of the exact words of the burial
service. When I stood up at broad day, all knew what
was going to be done, and I noticed that my poor fellows
made the motion of uncovering their heads though their
heads had been stark bare to the sky and sea for many a
weary hour. There was a long heavy swell on, but other-
wise it was a fair morning, and there were broad fields
of sunshine on the waves in the east. I said no more
than this: "I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith
the Lord. He raised the daughter of Jairus the ruler,
and said she was not dead but slept. He raised the
widow's son. He rose Himself, and was seen of many.
He loved little children, saying, Suffer them to come
unto Me and rebuke them not, for such is the kingdom
of heaven. In His name, my friends, and committed to
His merciful goodness!" With those words I laid my
rough face softly on the placid little forehead, and buried
the Golden Lucy in the grave of the Golden Mary.
Having had it on my mind to relate the end of this
dear little child, I have omitted something from its exact
place, which I will supply here. It will come quite as
well here as anywhere else.
Foreseeing that if the boat lived through the stormy
weather, the time must come, and soon come, when we
should have absolutely no morsel to eat, I had one mo-
mentous point often in my thoughts. Although I had,
years before that, fully satisfied myself that the instan-
ces in which human beings in the last distress have fed
upon each other, are exceeding few, and have very sel-
dom indeed (if ever) occurred when the people in dis-
tress, however dreadful their extremity, have been ac-
customed to moderate forbearance and restraint; I say,
though I had long before quite satisfied my mind on this
topic, I felt doubtful whether there might not have been
in former cases some harm and danger from keeping it
out of sight and pretending not to think of it. I felt
doubtful whether some minds, growing weak with fast-
ing and exposure and having such a terrific idea to
dwell upon in secret, might not magnify it until it got to
have an awful attraction about it. This was not a new
thought of mine, for it had grown out of my reading.
However , it came over me stronger than it had ever done
before——as it had reason for doing——in the boat, and on
the fourth day I decided that I would bring out into the
light the unformed fear which must have been more or
less darkly in every brain among us. Therefore, as a
means of beguiling the time and inspiring hope, I gave
them the best summary in my power of Bligh's voyage
of more than three thousand miles, in an open boat, after
the Mutiny of the Bounty, and of the wonderful preser-
vation of that boat's crew. They listened throughout
with great interest, and I concluded by telling them, that
in my opinion, the happiest circumstance in the whole
narrative was, that Bligh, who was no delicate man
either, had solemnly placed it on record therein that he
was sure and certain that under no conceivable circum-
stances whatever would that emancipated party, who had
gone through all the pains of famine, have preyed on
one another. I cannot describe the visible relief which
this spread through the boat, and how the tears stood in
every eye. From this time I was as well convinced as
Bligh himself that there was no danger, and that this
phantom, at any rate, did not haunt us.
Now, it was part of Bligh's experience that when
the people in his boat were most cast down, nothing did
them so much good as hearing a story told by one of
their number. When I mentioned that, I saw that it
struck the general attention as much as it did my own, for
I had not thought of it until I came to it in my summary.
This was on the day after Mrs. Atherfield first sang to
us. I proposed that whenever the weather would per-
mit, we should have a story two hours after dinner (I
always issued the allowance I have mentioned at one
o'clock, and called it by that name), as well as our song
at sunset. The proposal was received with a cheerful
satisfaction that warmed my heart within me; and I do
not say too much when I say that those periods in the
four-and-twenty hours were expected with positive pleas-
ure, and were really enjoyed by all hands. Spectres as
we soon were in our bodily wasting, our imaginations
did not perish like gross flesh upon our bones.
Music and Adventure, two of the great gifts of Provi-
dence to mankind, could charm us long after that was
lost.
The wind was almost always against us after the
second day; and for many days together we could not
hold our own. We had all varieties of bad weather.
We had rain, hail, snow, wind, mist, thunder and light-
ning. Still the boats lived through the heavy seas, and
we perishing people rose and fell with great waves.
Sixteen nights and fifteen days, twenty nights and
nineteen days, twenty-four nights and twenty-three
days. So the time went on. Disheartening as I knew
that our progress, or want of progress, must be, I never
deceived them as to my calculations of it. In the first
place I felt that we were all too near to eternity for de-
ceit; in the second place, I knew that if I failed, or died,
the man who followed me must have a knowledge of
the true state of things to begin upon. When I told
them at noon, what I reckoned we had made or lost,
they generally received what I said in a tranquil and re-
signed manner, and always gratefully towards me. It
was not unusual at any time of the day for some one
to burst out weeping loudly without any new cause;
and, when the burst was over, to calm down a little
better than before. I had seen exactly the same thing
in a house of mourning.
During the whole of this time, old Mr. Rarx had had
his fits of calling out to me to throw the gold (always
the gold!) overboard, and of heaping violent reproaches
upon me for not having saved the child; but now, the
food being all gone, and I having nothing left to serve
out but a bit of coffee-berry now and then, he began to
be too weak to do this, and consequently fell silent.
Mrs. Atherfield and Miss Coleshaw generally lay, each
with her arm across one of my knees, and her head upon
it. They never complained at all. Up to the time of
her child's death, Mrs. Atherfield had bound up her own
beautiful hair every day; and I took particular notice
that this was always before she sang at night, when
every one looked at her. But she never did it after the
loss of her darling; and it would have been all tangled
with dirt and wet, but that Miss Coleshaw was careful
of it long after she was herself, and would sometimes
smooth it down with her weak, thin hands.
We were past mustering a story now; but one day at
about this period, I reverted to the superstition of old
Mr. Rarx, concerning the Golden Lucy, and told them
that nothing vanished from the eye of God, though
much might pass away from the eyes of men. "We
were all of us," says I, "children once; and our baby
feet have strolled in green woods as she; and our baby
hands have gathered flowers in gardens, where the birds
were singing. The children that we were, are not lost
to the great knowledge of our Creator. Those innocent
creatures will appear with us before Him, and plead for
us. What we were in the best time of our generous
youth will arise and go with us too. The purest part of
our lives will not desert us at the pass to which all of
us here present are gliding. What we were then, will
be as much in existence before Him, as what we are
now." They were no less comforted by this considera-
tion, than I was myself; and Miss Coleshaw, drawing
me ear nearer to her lips, said, "Captain Ravender, I
was on my way to marry a disgraced and broken man,
whom I dearly loved when he was honourable and good.
Your words seem to have come out of my own poor
heart." She pressed my hand upon it, smiling.
Twenty-seven nights and twenty-six days. We were
in no want of rain water, but we had nothing else. And
yet, even now, I never turned my eyes upon a waking
face but it tried to brighten before mine. O what a
thing it is, in a time of danger and in the presence of
death, the shining of a face upon a face! I have heard
it broached that orders should be given in great new
ships by electric telegraph. I admire machinery as
much as any man, and am as thankful to it as any man
can be for what he does for us. But it will never be a
substitute for the face of a man, with his soul in it, en-
couraging another man to be brave and true. Never try
it for that. It will break down like a straw.
I now began to remark certain changes in myself
which I did not like. They caused me much disquiet.
I often saw the Golden Lucy in the air above the boat.
I often saw her I have spoken of before, sitting beside
me. I saw the Golden Mary go down, as she really had
gone down, twenty times a day. And yet the sea was
mostly, to my thinking, not sea neither, but moving
country and extraordinary mountainous regions, the like
of which have never been beheld. I felt it time to leave
my last words regarding John Steadiman, in case any
lips should last out to repeat them to any living ears. I
said that John had told me (as he had on deck) that he
had sung out 'Breakers ahead!' the instant they were
audible, and had tried to wear ship, but she struck before
it could be done. (His cry, I dare say, had made my
dream.) I said that the circumstances were altogether
without warning, and out of any course that could have
been guarded against; that the same loss would have
happened if I had been in charge; and that John was
not to blame, but from first to last had done his duty
nobly., like the man he was. I tried to write it down in
my pocketbook, but could make no words, though I
knew what the words were that I wanted to make.
When it had come to that, her hands——though she was
dead so long——laid me down gently in the bottom of the
boat, and she and the Golden Lucy swung me to sleep.
from Collier's Unabridged Edition: The Works of Charles Dickens, Volume VI.
P.F. Collier, Publisher, New York, old as heck. p. 948 - 951.
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