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My Debut as a Literary Person
by
It rained hard the first night and all got drenched, but they filled up their water-butt. The brothers were in the stern with the captain, who steered. The quarters were cramped; no one got much sleep. ‘Kept on our course till squalls headed us off.’
Stormy and squally the next morning, with drenching rains. A heavy and dangerous ‘cobbling’ sea. One marvels how such boats could live in it. Is it called a feat of desperate daring when one man and a dog cross the Atlantic in a boat the size of a long-boat, and indeed it is; but this long-boat was overloaded with men and other plunder, and was only three feet deep. ‘We naturally thought often of all at home, and were glad to remember that it was Sacrament Sunday, and that prayers would go up from our friends for us, although they know not our peril.’
The captain got not even a cat-nap during the first three days and nights, but he got a few winks of sleep the fourth night. ‘The worst sea yet.’ About ten at night the captain changed his course and headed east-north-east, hoping to make Clipperton Rock. If he failed, no matter; he would be in a better position to make those other islands. I will mention here that he did not find that rock.
On May 8 no wind all day; sun blistering hot; they take to the oars. Plenty of dolphins, but they couldn’t catch any. ‘I think we are all beginning to realise more and more the awful situation we are in.’ ‘It often takes a ship a week to get through the doldrums; how much longer, then, such a craft as ours?’ ‘We are so crowded that we cannot stretch ourselves out for a good sleep, but have to take it any way we can get it.’
Of course this feature will grow more and more trying, but it will be human nature to cease to set it down; there will be five weeks of it yet –we must try to remember that for the diarist; it will make our beds the softer.
May 9 the sun gives him a warning: ‘Looking with both eyes, the horizon crossed thus +.’ ‘Henry keeps well, but broods over our troubles more than I wish he did.’ They caught two dolphins; they tasted well. ‘The captain believed the compass out of the way, but the long-invisible north star came out–a welcome sight–and endorsed the compass.’
May 10, ‘latitude 7 degrees 0 minutes 3 seconds N., longitude 111 degrees 32 minutes W.’ So they have made about three hundred miles of northing in the six days since they left the region of the lost ship. ‘Drifting in calms all day.’ And baking hot, of course; I have been down there, and I remember that detail. ‘Even as the captain says, all romance has long since vanished, and I think the most of us are beginning to look the fact of our awful situation full in the face.’ ‘We are making but little headway on our course.’ Bad news from the rearmost boat: the men are improvident; ‘they have eaten up all of the canned meats brought from the ship, and are now growing discontented.’ Not so with the chief mate’s people–they are evidently under the eye of a man.
Under date of May 11: ‘Standing still! or worse; we lost more last night than we made yesterday.’ In fact, they have lost three miles of the three hundred of northing they had so laboriously made. ‘The cock that was rescued and pitched into the boat while the ship was on fire still lives, and crows with the breaking of dawn, cheering us a good deal.’ What has he been living on for a week? Did the starving men feed him from their dire poverty? ‘The second mate’s boat out of water again, showing that they over-drink their allowance. The captain spoke pretty sharply to them.’ It is true: I have the remark in my old note-book; I got it of the third mate in the hospital at Honolulu. But there is not room for it here, and it is too combustible, anyway. Besides, the third mate admired it, and what he admired he was likely to enhance.