Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (1812 page)

The noise came from inside one of the sleeping berths, on the far side of the main cabin; the door of which was jammed, no doubt, just as my locker had been jammed, by the wrenching of the ship. ‘Who’s there?’ I called out. A faint, muffled kind of voice answered something through the air-grating in the upper part of the door. I got up on the overthrown cabin furniture; and, looking in through the trelliswork of the grating, found myself face to face with the blue spectacles of Mr. Lawrence Clissold, looking out!

God forgive me for thinking it — but there was not a man in the vessel I wouldn’t sooner have found alive in her than Mr. Clissold! Of all that ship’s company, we two, who were least friendly together, were the only two saved.

I had a better chance of breaking out the jammed door from the main cabin, than he had from the berth inside; and in less than five minutes he was set free. I had smelt spirits already through the air-grating — and now, when he and I stood face to face, I saw what the smell meant. There was an open case of spirits by the bedside — two of the bottles out of it were lying broken on the floor — and Mr. Clissold was drunk.

“What’s the matter with the ship?” says he, looking fierce, and speaking thick.

“You shall see for yourself,” says I. With which words I took hold of him, and pulled him after me up the cabin stairs. I reckoned on the sight that would meet him, when he first looked over the deck, to sober his drunken brains — and I reckoned right: he fell on his knees, stockstill and speechless as if he was turned to stone.

I lashed him up safe to the cabin rail, and left it to the air to bring him round. He had, likely enough, been drinking in the sleeping berth for days together — for none of us, as I now remembered, had seen him since the gale set in — and even if he had had sense enough to try to get out, or to call for help, when the ship struck, he would not have made himself heard in the noise and confusion of that awful time. But for the lull in the weather, I should not have heard him myself, when he attempted to get free in the morning. Enemy of mine as he was, he had a pair of arms — and he was worth untold gold, in my situation, for that reason. With the help I could make him give me, there was no doubt now about launching the boat. In half an hour I had the means ready for trying the experiment; and Mr. Clissold was sober enough to see that his life depended on his doing what I told him.

The sky looked angry still — there was no opening anywhere — and the clouds were slowly banking up again to windward. The supercargo knew what I meant when I pointed that way, and worked with a will when I gave him the word. I had previously stowed away in the boat such stores of meat, biscuit, and fresh water as I could readily lay hands on; together with a compass, a lantern, a few candles, and some boxes of matches in my pocket, to kindle light and fire with. At the last moment, I thought of a gun and some powder and shot. The powder and shot I found, and an old flint pocket-pistol in the captain’s cabin — with which, for fear of wasting precious time, I was forced to be content. The pistol lay on the top of the medicine-chest — and I took that also, finding it handy, and not knowing but what it might be of use. Having made these preparations, we launched the boat, over down the steep of the deck, into the water over the forward part of the ship which was sunk. I took the oars ordering Mr. Clissold to sit still in the stern-sheets — and pulled for the island.

It was neck or nothing with us more than once, before we were two hundred yards from the ship. Luckily, the supercargo was used to boats; and muddled as he still was, he had sense enough to sit quiet. We found our way into the smooth channel which I had noted from the mizen rigging — after which, it was easy enough to get ashore.

We landed on a little sandy creek. From the time of our leaving the ship, the supercargo had not spoken a word to me, nor I to him. I now told him to lend a hand in getting the stores out of the boat, and in helping me to carry them to the first sheltered place we could find in shore on the island. He shook himself up with a sulky look at me, and did as I had bidden him. We found a little dip or dell in the ground, after getting up the low sides of the island, which was sheltered to windward — and here I left him to stow away the stores, while I walked farther on, to survey the place.

According to the hasty judgment I formed at the time, the island was not a mile across, and not much more than three miles round. I noted nothing in the way of food but a few wild roots and vegetables, growing in ragged patches amidst the thick scrub which covered the place. There was not a tree on it anywhere; nor any living creatures; nor any signs of fresh water that I could see. Standing on the highest ground, I looked about anxiously for other islands that might be inhabited; there were none visible — at least none in the hazy state of the heavens that morning. When I fairly discovered what a desert the place was; when I remembered how far it lay out of the track of ships; and when I thought of the small store of provisions which we had brought with us, the doubt lest we might only have changed the chance of death by drowning for the chance of death by starvation was so strong in me, that I determined to go back to the boat, with the desperate notion of making another trip to the vessel for water and food. I say desperate, because the clouds to windward were banking up blacker and higher every minute, the wind was freshening already, and there was every sign of the storm coming on again wilder and fiercer than ever.

Mr. Clissold, when I passed him on my way back to the beach, had got the stores pretty tidy, covered with the tarpaulin which I had thrown over them in the bottom of the boat. Just as I looked down at him in the hollow I saw him take a bottle of spirits out of the pocket of his pilot-coat. He must have stowed the bottle away there, as I suppose, while I was breaking open the door of his berth. “You’ll be drowned, and I shall have double allowance to live upon here,” was all he said to me, when he heard I was going back to the ship. “Yes! and die, in your turn, when you’ve got through it,” says I, going away to the boat. It’s shocking to think of now — but we couldn’t be civil to each other, even on the first day when we were wrecked together!

Having previously stripped to my trousers, in case of accident, I now pulled out. On getting from the channel into the broken water again, I looked over my shoulder to windward, and saw that I was too late. It was coming! — the ship was hidden already in the horrible haze of it. I got the boat’s head round to pull back — and I did pull back, just inside the opening in the reef which made the mouth of the channel — when the storm came down on me like death and judgment. The boat filled in an instant; and I was tossed head over heels into the water. The sea, which burst into raging surf upon the rocks on either side, rushed in one great roller up the deep channel between them, and took me with it. If the undertow, afterwards, had lasted for half a minute, I should have been carried into the white water, and lost. But a second roller followed the first, almost on the instant, and swept me right up on the beach. I had just strength enough to dig my arms and legs well into the wet sand; and though I was taken back with the backward shift of it, I was not taken into deep water again. Before the third roller came, I was out of its reach, and was down in a sort of swoon, on the dry sand.

When I got back to the hollow, in shore, where I had left my clothes under shelter with the stores, I found Mr. Clissold snugly crouched up, in the driest place, with the tarpaulin to cover him. “Oh!” says he, in a state of great surprise, “you’re not drowned?” “No,” says I; “you won’t get your double allowance, after all.” “How much shall I get?” says he, rousing up and looking anxious. “Your fair half share of what is here,” I answered him. “And how long will that last me?” says he. “The food, if you have sense enough to eke it out with what you may find in this miserable place, barely three weeks,” says I; “and the water (if you ever drink any) about a fortnight.” At hearing that, he took the bottle out of his pocket again, and put it to his lips. “I’m cold to the bones,” says I, frowning at him for a drop. “And I’m warm to the marrow,” says he, chuckling, and handing me the bottle empty. I pitched it away at once — or the temptation to break it over his head might have been too much for me — I pitched it away, and looked into the medicine-chest, to see if there was a drop of peppermint, or anything comforting of that sort, inside. Only three physic bottles were left in it, all three being neatly tied over with oilskin. One of them held a strong white liquor, smelling like hartshorn. The other two were filled with stuff in powder, having the names in printed gibberish, pasted outside. On looking a little closer, I found, under some broken divisions of the chest, a small flask covered with wicker-work. ‘Ginger-Brandy’ was written with pen and ink on the wicker-work, and the flask was full! I think that blessed discovery saved me from shivering myself to pieces. After a pull at the flask, which made a new man of me, I put it away in my inside breast-pocket; Mr. Clissold watching me with greedy eyes, but saying nothing.

All this while, the rain was rushing, the wind roaring, and the sea crashing, as if Noah’s Flood had come again. I sat close against the supercargo, because he was in the driest place; and pulled my fair share of the tarpaulin away from him, whether he liked it or not. He by no means liked it; being in that sort of half-drunken, half-sober state (after finishing his bottle), in which a man’s temper is most easily upset by trifles. The upset of his temper showed itself in the way of small aggravations — of which I took no notice, till he suddenly bethought himself of angering me by going back again to that dispute about father, which had bred ill-blood between us, on the day when we first saw each other. If he had been a younger man, I am afraid I should have stopped him by a punch on his head. As it was, considering his age and the shame of this quarrelling betwixt us when we were both cast away together, I only warned him that I
might
punch his head, if he went on. It did just as well — and I’m glad now to think that it did.

We were huddled so close together, that when he coiled himself up to sleep (with a growl), and when he did go to sleep (with a grunt), he growled and grunted into my ear. His rest, like the rest of all the regular drunkards I have ever met with, was broken. He ground his teeth, and talked in his sleep. Among the words he mumbled to himself, I heard as plain as could be father’s name. This vexed, but did not surprise me, seeing that he had been talking of father before he dropped off. But when I made out next among his mutterings and mumblings, the words “five hundred pound,” spoken over and over again, with father’s name, now before, now after, now mixed in along with them, I got curious, and listened for more. My listening (and serve me right, you will say) came to nothing: he certainly talked on, but I couldn’t make out a word more that he said.

When he woke up, I told him plainly he had been talking in his sleep — and mightily taken aback he looked when he first heard it. “What about?” says he. I made answer, “My father, and five hundred pound; and how do you come to couple them together, I should like to know?”

“I couldn’t have coupled them,” says he, in a great hurry — ”what do I know about it? I don’t believe a man like your father ever had such a sum of money as that, in all his life.” “Don’t you?” says I, feeling the aggravation of him, in spite of myself; “I can just tell you my father had such a sum when he was no older a man than I am — and saved it — and left it for a provision, in his will, to my mother, who has got it now — and, I say again, how came a stranger like you to be talking of it in your sleep?” At hearing this, he went about on the other tack directly. “Was that all your father left, after his debts were paid?” says he. “Are you very curious to know?” says I. He took no notice — he only persisted with his question. “Was it just five hundred pound, no more and no less?” says he. “Suppose it was,” says I; “what then?” “Oh, nothing?” says he, and turns sharp round from me, and chuckles to himself. “You’re drunk!” says I. “Yes,” says he; “that’s it — stick to that — I’m drunk” — and he chuckles again. Try as I might, and threaten as I might, not another word on the matter of the five hundred pound could I get from him. I bore it well in mind, though, for all that — it being one of my slow ways, not easily to forget anything that has once surprised me, and not to give up returning to it over and over again, as time and occasion may serve for the purpose.

The hours wore on, and the storm raged on. We had our half rations of food, when hunger took us (I being much the hungrier of the two); and slept, and grumbled, and quarrelled the weary time out somehow. Towards dusk the wind lessened; and, when I got up, out of the hollow to look out, there was a faint watery break in the western heavens. At times, through the watches of the long night, the stars showed in patches for a little while, through the rents that opened and closed by fits in the black sky. When I fell asleep towards the dawning, the wind had fallen to a moan, though the sea, slower to go down, sounded as loud as ever. From what I could make of the weather, the storm had, by that time, as good as blown itself out.

I had been wise enough (knowing who was near me) to lay myself down, whenever I slept, on the side of me which was next to the flask of ginger-brandy, stowed away in my breastpocket. When I woke at sunrise, it was the supercargo’s hand that roused me up, trying to steal my flask while I was asleep. I rolled him over headlong among the stores — out of which I had the humanity to pull him again, with my own hands.