Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1781 page)

“Let me take a spell in your place,” says he.  “And look you out for the Long-boat astern.  The last time she rose on the crest of a wave, I thought I made out a signal flying aboard her.”

We shifted our places, clumsily and slowly enough, for we were both of us weak and dazed with wet, cold, and hunger.  I waited some time, watching the heavy rollers astern, before the Long-boat rose a-top of one of them at the same time with us.  At last, she was heaved up for a moment well in view, and there, sure enough, was the signal flying aboard of her — a strip of rag of some sort, rigged to an oar, and hoisted in her bows.

“What does it mean?” says Rames to me in a quavering, trembling sort of voice.  “Do they signal a sail in sight?”

“Hush, for God’s sake!” says I, clapping my hand over his mouth.  “Don’t let the people hear you.  They’ll all go mad together if we mislead them about that signal.  Wait a bit, till I have another look at it.”

I held on by him, for he had set me all of a tremble with his notion of a sail in sight, and watched for the Long-boat again.  Up she rose on the top of another roller.  I made out the signal clearly, that second time, and saw that it was rigged half-mast high.

“Rames,” says I, “it’s a signal of distress.  Pass the word forward to keep her before the sea, and no more.  We must get the Long-boat within hailing distance of us, as soon as possible.”

I dropped down into my old place at the tiller without another word — for the thought went through me like a knife that something had happened to Captain Ravender.  I should consider myself unworthy to write another line of this statement, if I had not made up my mind to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth — and I must, therefore, confess plainly that now, for the first time, my heart sank within me.  This weakness on my part was produced in some degree, as I take it, by the exhausting effects of previous anxiety and grief.

Our provisions — if I may give that name to what we had left — were reduced to the rind of one lemon and about a couple of handsfull of coffee-berries.  Besides these great distresses, caused by the death, the danger, and the suffering among my crew and passengers, I had had a little distress of my own to shake me still more, in the death of the child whom I had got to be very fond of on the voyage out — so fond that I was secretly a little jealous of her being taken in the Long-boat instead of mine when the ship foundered.  It used to be a great comfort to me, and I think to those with me also, after we had seen the last of the Golden Mary, to see the Golden Lucy, held up by the men in the Long-boat, when the weather allowed it, as the best and brightest sight they had to show.  She looked, at the distance we saw her from, almost like a little white bird in the air.  To miss her for the first time, when the weather lulled a little again, and we all looked out for our white bird and looked in vain, was a sore disappointment.  To see the men’s heads bowed down and the captain’s hand pointing into the sea when we hailed the Long-boat, a few days after, gave me as heavy a shock and as sharp a pang of heartache to bear as ever I remember suffering in all my life.  I only mention these things to show that if I did give way a little at first, under the dread that our captain was lost to us, it was not without having been a good deal shaken beforehand by more trials of one sort or another than often fall to one man’s share.

I had got over the choking in my throat with the help of a drop of water, and had steadied my mind again so as to be prepared against the worst, when I heard the hail (Lord help the poor fellows, how weak it sounded!) —

“Surf-boat, ahoy!”

I looked up, and there were our companions in misfortune tossing abreast of us; not so near that we could make out the features of any of them, but near enough, with some exertion for people in our condition, to make their voices heard in the intervals when the wind was weakest.

I answered the hail, and waited a bit, and heard nothing, and then sung out the captain’s name.  The voice that replied did not sound like his; the words that reached us were:

“Chief-mate wanted on board!”

Every man of my crew knew what that meant as well as I did.  As second officer in command, there could be but one reason for wanting me on board the Long-boat.  A groan went all round us, and my men looked darkly in each other’s faces, and whispered under their breaths:

“The captain is dead!”

I commanded them to be silent, and not to make too sure of bad news, at such a pass as things had now come to with us.  Then, hailing the Long-boat, I signified that I was ready to go on board when the weather would let me — stopped a bit to draw a good long breath — and then called out as loud as I could the dreadful question:

“Is the captain dead?”

The black figures of three or four men in the after-part of the Long-boat all stooped down together as my voice reached them.  They were lost to view for about a minute; then appeared again — one man among them was held up on his feet by the rest, and he hailed back the blessed words (a very faint hope went a very long way with people in our desperate situation): “Not yet!”

The relief felt by me, and by all with me, when we knew that our captain, though unfitted for duty, was not lost to us, it is not in words — at least, not in such words as a man like me can command — to express.  I did my best to cheer the men by telling them what a good sign it was that we were not as badly off yet as we had feared; and then communicated what instructions I had to give, to William Rames, who was to be left in command in my place when I took charge of the Long-boat.  After that, there was nothing to be done, but to wait for the chance of the wind dropping at sunset, and the sea going down afterwards, so as to enable our weak crews to lay the two boats alongside of each other, without undue risk — or, to put it plainer, without saddling ourselves with the necessity for any extraordinary exertion of strength or skill.  Both the one and the other had now been starved out of us for days and days together.

At sunset the wind suddenly dropped, but the sea, which had been running high for so long a time past, took hours after that before it showed any signs of getting to rest.  The moon was shining, the sky was wonderfully clear, and it could not have been, according to my calculations, far off midnight, when the long, slow, regular swell of the calming ocean fairly set in, and I took the responsibility of lessening the distance between the Long-boat and ourselves.

It was, I dare say, a delusion of mine; but I thought I had never seen the moon shine so white and ghastly anywhere, either on sea or on land, as she shone that night while we were approaching our companions in misery.  When there was not much more than a boat’s length between us, and the white light streamed cold and clear over all our faces, both crews rested on their oars with one great shudder, and stared over the gunwale of either boat, panic-stricken at the first sight of each other.

“Any lives lost among you?” I asked, in the midst of that frightful silence.

The men in the Long-bout huddled together like sheep at the sound of my voice.

“None yet, but the child, thanks be to God!” answered one among them.

And at the sound of his voice, all my men shrank together like the men in the Long-boat.  I was afraid to let the horror produced by our first meeting at close quarters after the dreadful changes that wet, cold, and famine had produced, last one moment longer than could be helped; so, without giving time for any more questions and answers, I commanded the men to lay the two boats close alongside of each other.  When I rose up and committed the tiller to the hands of Rames, all my poor follows raised their white faces imploringly to mine.  “Don’t leave us, sir,” they said, “don’t leave us.”  “I leave you,” says I, “under the command and the guidance of Mr. William Rames, as good a sailor as I am, and as trusty and kind a man as ever stepped.  Do your duty by him, as you have done it by me; and remember to the last, that while there is life there is hope.  God bless and help you all!”  With those words I collected what strength I had left, and caught at two arms that were held out to me, and so got from the stern-sheets of one boat into the stern-sheets of the other.

“Mind where you step, sir,” whispered one of the men who had helped me into the Long-boat.  I looked down as he spoke.  Three figures were huddled up below me, with the moonshine falling on them in ragged streaks through the gaps between the men standing or sitting above them.  The first face I made out was the face of Miss Coleshaw, her eyes were wide open and fixed on me.  She seemed still to keep her senses, and, by the alternate parting and closing of her lips, to be trying to speak, but I could not hear that she uttered a single word.  On her shoulder rested the head of Mrs. Atherfield.  The mother of our poor little Golden Lucy must, I think, have been dreaming of the child she had lost; for there was a faint smile just ruffling the white stillness of her face, when I first saw it turned upward, with peaceful closed eyes towards the heavens.  From her, I looked down a little, and there, with his head on her lap, and with one of her hands resting tenderly on his cheek — there lay the Captain, to whose help and guidance, up to this miserable time, we had never looked in vain, — there, worn out at last in our service, and for our sakes, lay the best and bravest man of all our company.  I stole my hand in gently through his clothes and laid it on his heart, and felt a little feeble warmth over it, though my cold dulled touch could not detect even the faintest beating.  The two men in the stern-sheets with me, noticing what I was doing — knowing I loved him like a brother — and seeing, I suppose, more distress in my face than I myself was conscious of its showing, lost command over themselves altogether, and burst into a piteous moaning, sobbing lamentation over him.  One of the two drew aside a jacket from his feet, and showed me that they were bare, except where a wet, ragged strip of stocking still clung to one of them.  When the ship struck the Iceberg, he had run on deck leaving his shoes in his cabin.  All through the voyage in the boat his feet had been unprotected; and not a soul had discovered it until he dropped!  As long as he could keep his eyes open, the very look of them had cheered the men, and comforted and upheld the women.  Not one living creature in the boat, with any sense about him, but had felt the good influence of that brave man in one way or another.  Not one but had heard him, over and over again, give the credit to others which was due only to himself; praising this man for patience, and thanking that man for help, when the patience and the help had really and truly, as to the best part of both, come only from him.  All this, and much more, I heard pouring confusedly from the men’s lips while they crouched down, sobbing and crying over their commander, and wrapping the jacket as warmly and tenderly as they could over is cold feet.  It went to my heart to check them; but I knew that if this lamenting spirit spread any further, all chance of keeping alight any last sparks of hope and resolution among the boat’s company would be lost for ever.  Accordingly I sent them to their places, spoke a few encouraging words to the men forward, promising to serve out, when the morning came, as much as I dared, of any eatable thing left in the lockers; called to Rames, in my old boat, to keep as near us as he safely could; drew the garments and coverings of the two poor suffering women more closely about them; and, with a secret prayer to be directed for the best in bearing the awful responsibility now laid on my shoulders, took my Captain’s vacant place at the helm of the Long-boat.

This, as well as I can tell it, is the full and true account of how I came to be placed in charge of the lost passengers and crew of the Golden Mary, on the morning of the twenty-seventh day after the ship struck the Iceberg, and foundered at sea.

with Charles Dickens