Chapter 66 - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea by Mayne Reid
The big Raft
While the strange phenomenon of a blazing fire upon the back of a whale was being exhibited to the eyes of ocean-birds and ocean-fishes,—all doubtless wondering what it meant,—another and very different spectacle was occurring scarce twenty miles from the spot,—of course also upon the surface of the ocean.
If in the former there was something that might be called comic, there was nothing of this in the latter. On the contrary, it was a true tragedy,—a drama of death.
The stage upon which it was being enacted was a platform of planks and spars, rudely united together,—in short, a raft. The dramatis persona were men,—all men; although it might have required some stretch of imagination,—aided by a little acquaintanceship with the circumstances that had placed them upon that raft,—to have been certain that they were human beings. A stranger to them, looking upon them in reality,—or upon a picture, giving a faithful representation of them,—might have doubted their humanity, and mistaken them for fiends. No one could have been blamed for such a misconception.
If human beings in shape, and so in reality, they were fiends in aspect, and not far from it in mental conformation. Even in appearance they were more like skeletons than men. One actually was a skeleton,—not a living skeleton, but a corpse, clean-stripped of its flesh. The ensanguined bones, with some fragments of the cartilage still adhering to them, showed that the despoliation had been recent. The skeleton was not perfect. Some of the bones were absent. A few were lying near on the timbers of the raft, and a few others might have been seen in places where it was horrible to behold them!
The raft was an oblong platform of some twenty feet in length by about fifteen in width. It was constructed out of pieces of broken masts and spars of a ship, upon which was supported an irregular sheeting of planks, the fragments of bulwarks, hatches, cabin-doors that had been wrested from their hinges, lids of tea-chests, coops, and a few other articles,—such as form the paraphernalia of movables on board a ship. There was a large hogshead with two or three small barrels upon the raft; and around its edge were lashed several empty casks, serving as buoys to keep it above water. A single spar stood up out of its centre, or “midships,” to which was rigged—in a very slovenly manner—a large lateen sail,—either the spanker or spritsail of a ship, or the mizzen topsail of a bark.
Around the “step” of the mast a variety of other objects might have been seen: such as oars, handspikes, pieces of loose boards, some tangled coils of rope, an axe or two, half a dozen tin pots and “tots,”—such as are used by sailors,—a quantity of shark-bones clean picked, with two or three other bones, like those already alluded to, and whose size and form told them to be the tibia of a human skeleton.
Between twenty and thirty men were moving amid this miscellaneous collection,—not all moving: for they were in every conceivable attitude, of repose as of action. Some were seated, some lying stretched, some standing, some staggering,—as if reeling under the influence of intoxication, or too feeble to support their bodies in an erect attitude. It was not any rocking on the part of the raft that was producing these eccentric movements. The sea was perfectly quiescent, and the rude embarkation rested upon it like a log.
The cause might have been discovered near the bottom of the mast, where stood a barrel or cask of medium size, from which proceeded an exhalation, telling its contents to be rum.
The staggering skeletons were drunk!
It was not that noisy intoxication that tells of recent indulgence, but rather of the nervous wreck which succeeds it; and the words heard, instead of being the loud banterings of inebriated men, were more like the ravings and gibbering of maniacs. No wonder: since they who uttered them were mad,—mad with mania potu! If they were ever to recover, it would be the last time they were likely to be afflicted by the same disease,—at least on board that embarkation. Not from any virtuous resolve on their parts, but simply from the fact that the cause of their insanity no longer existed.
The rum-cask was as dry inside as out. There was no longer a drop of the infernal liquor on the raft; no more spirit of any kind to produce fresh drunkenness or renewed delirium tremens!
The madmen were not heeded by the others; but allowed to totter about, and give speech to their incoherent mumblings!—sometimes diversified by yells, or peals of mania laughter,—always thickly interlarded with oaths and other blasphemous utterances.
It was only when disturbing the repose of some one less exalted than themselves, or when two of them chanced to come into collision, that a scene would ensue,—in some instances extending to almost every individual on the raft, and ending by one or other of the delirious disputants getting “chucked” into the sea, and having a swim before recovering foothold on the frail embarkation. This the ducked individual would be certain to do. Drunk as he might have been, and maudlin as he might be, his instincts were never so benumbed as to render him regardless of self-preservation. Even from out his haggard eyes still gleamed enough of intelligence to tell that those dark triangular objects, moving in scores around the raft, and cutting the water, so swift and sheer, were the dorsal fins of the dreaded sharks. Each one was a sight that, to a sailor’s eye, even when “blind drunk,” brings habitual dread.
The douche, and the fright attending it, would usually restore his reason to the delirious individual,—or, at all events, would have the effect of restoring tranquillity upon the raft,—soon after to be disturbed by some scene of like, or perhaps more terrible, activity.
The reader, unacquainted with the history of this raft and the people upon it, may require some information concerning them. A few words must suffice for both.
As already stated, at the beginning of our narrative, a raft was constructed out of such timbers as could be detached from the slave-bark Pandora,—after that vessel had caught fire, and previous to her blowing up. Upon this embarkation the slaver’s crew had escaped, leaving her cargo to perish,—some by the explosion, some by drowning, and not a few by the teeth of sharks. The Pandora’s captain, along with five others,—including the mates and carpenter,—had stolen away with the gig. As this was the only boat found available in the fearful crisis of the conflagration, the remainder of the crew had betaken themselves to the large raft, hurriedly constructed for the occasion.
As already related, Snowball and the Portuguese girl were the only individuals on board the Pandora who had remained by the wreck, or rather among its débris. There the Coromantee, by great courage and cunning, had succeeded not only in keeping himself and his protégé afloat, but in establishing a chance for sustaining existence, calculated to last for some days. It is known also that Ben Brace with his protégé, having been informed by the captain’s parting speech that there was a barrel of gunpowder aboard the burning bark, apprehensive of the explosion, had silently constructed a little raft of his own; which, after being launched from under the bows of the slaver, he had brought en rapport with the “big raft,” and thereto attached it. This “tender,” still carrying the English sailor and the boy, had been afterwards cut loose from its larger companion in the dead hour of night, and permitted to fall far into the wake. The reason of this defection was simply to save little William from being eaten up by the ex-crew of the Pandora, then reduced to a famished condition,—if we may use the phrase, screwed up to the standard of anthropophagy.
Since the hour in which the two rafts became separated from each other, the reader is acquainted, in all its minute details, with the history of the lesser: how it joined issue with the embarkation that carried the ex-cook and his protégé; how the union with the latter produced a cross between the two,—afterwards yclept the Catamaran; with all the particulars of the Catamaran’s voyage, up to the time when she became moored alongside the carcass of the cachalot; and for several days after.
During this time, the “big raft” carrying the crew of tin burnt bark,—being out of sight, may also have escaped from the reader’s mind. Both it and its occupants were still in existence. Not all of them, it is true, but the greater number; and among these, the most prominent in strength of body, energy of mind; and wickedness of disposition.
It is scarce necessary to say, that the raft now introduced as lying upon the ocean some twenty miles from the dead cachalot was that which some days before had parted from the Pandora, or that the fiendish forms that occupied it were the remnant of the Pandora’s crew.
These were not all there: nearly a score of them were absent. The absence of the captain, with five others who had accompanied him in his gig, has been explained. The ex-cook, the English sailor and sailor-boy, with the cabin passenger, Lilly Lalee, have also been accounted for; but there were several others aboard the big raft, on its first starting “to sea,” that were no longer to be seen amidst the crowd still occupying this ungainly embarkation. Half a dozen,—perhaps more,—seemed to be missing. Their absence might have appeared mysterious, to anyone who had not been kept “posted” up in the particulars of the ill-directed cruise through which the raft had been passing; though the skeleton above described, and the dissevered tibia scattered around, might have given a clew to their disappearance,—at least, to anyone initiated into the shifts and extremities of starvation.
To those of less experience,—or less quick comprehension,—it may be necessary to repeat the conversation which was being carried on upon the raft,—at the moment when it is thus reintroduced to the notice of the reader. A correct report of this will satisfactorily explain why its original crew had been reduced, from over thirty, to the number of six-and-twenty, exclusive of the skeleton!