(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 pocket-book,
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.
All that follows, was written by John Steadiman, Chief Mate:
On the twenty-sixth day after the foundering
of the Golden Mary at sea, I, John Steadiman,
was sitting in my place in the stern-sheets
of the Surf-boat, with just sense
enough left in me to steer—that is to say,
with my eyes strained, wide-awake, over the
bows of the boat, and my brains fast asleep and
dreaming—when I was roused upon a sudden
by our second mate, Mr. William Rames.
“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.