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Wreck of the Corsaire

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<h2>X.</h2> There was a parcel of candles in the pantry—as I term it. I had a flint and steel in my pocket, and followed by the men, I led the way below, bidding them stand awhile till I obtained a light; and after groping and feeling about with my hands, I found the paper of candles, lighted one, and then called to the men. They arrived. I pointed to the jars, saying in English, there was wine in them; and then to the slung cask of water, and then to the food on the shelves. They instantly grasped each one of them a pannikin, and mixed a full draught and swallowed it, with a strange trembling sigh of relief and delight. They then fell upon the biscuit and sausage, eating like famished wolves{100} both fists full, and cramming their mouths. They were not very much more distinguishable by the feeble light of the candle than on deck; however, I was able to see they were not blacks. The man who had addressed me was of a deep Chinese yellow, with lineaments of an African pattern, a wide flat nose, huge lips, eyes like little shells of polished ebony glued on porcelain. His hair was the negro’s black wiry wool. He wore a short moustache, the fibres like the teeth of a comb, and there was a tuft of black wool upon his chin. Small gold earrings, a greasy old Scotch cap, a shirt like a dungaree jumper, and loose trousers thrust into a pair of half Wellingtons, completed the attire of the ugliest, most villainous-looking creature I had ever set eyes on. His companions were long-haired, chocolate-browed Portuguese, or Spaniards—Dagos as the sailors call them; I noticed a small gold crucifix sparkling upon the mossy breast{101} of one of them. Their feet were naked, indeed their attire consisted of no more than a pair of duck or canvas breeches, and an open shirt, and a cap. They continued to feed heartily, and several times helped themselves to the wine, though before doing so, the yellow-faced man would regularly point to the jar with a nod, as though asking leave. “You Englis, sah?” he exclaimed, when he had made an end of eating. I said yes. “How long you been heär, sah?” I told him. He understood me perfectly though I spoke at length, relating in fact my adventure. I then inquired who he and his companions were, and his story was to the following effect: That he was the boatswain, and the other two able seamen of a Portuguese ship called the Mary Joseph, bound to Singapore or to some Malay port. The vessel had been set on fire by one of the crew, an Englishman, who was skulking{102} drunkenly below after broaching a cask of rum. They had three boats which they hoisted out; most of the people got away in the long-boat, six men were in the second boat, he and his two comrades got into the jolly-boat. They had with them four bottles of water, and a small bag of ship’s bread, and nothing more. They parted company with the other boats in the night, and had been four days adrift, sailing northwards by the sun as they reckoned, under a bit of a lug, and keeping an eager look-out though they sighted nothing; until a little before sundown that evening, they spied the speck of this wreck, and made for it, but so scant was the wind and so weak their arms that it had taken them nearly all night to measure the distance which would be a few miles only. They got their boat under the bow—she was lying there now, he said—and stepped on board one after the other. This explained to me their apparition. Of course{103} I had not seen the boat or heard her as she approached, and to me, lying aft, the three men rising over the bows looked as though, like ghostly essences, they had shaped themselves on the forecastle out through the solid plank. I addressed the others, but the yellow man told me that their language was a jargon of base Portuguese, of which I should be able to understand no more than here and there a word, even though I had been bred and educated in Lisbon. “We mosh see to dah boat,” he exclaimed, and spoke to his mates, apparently to that effect. I extinguished the candle, and followed them on deck. It was closer upon daybreak than I had supposed. Already the gray was in the east, like a filtering of light through ash-colored silk, with the sea-line black as a sweep of India ink against it, and the moon a lumpish, distorted mass of faint dingy crimson, dying out in a sort of mistiness westwards, like{104} the snuff of a rushlight in its own smoke. Even whilst the three fellows were manœuvring with the boat over the bow, the tropic day filled the heavens in a bound, and it was broad morning all at once, with a segment of sun levelling a long line of trembling silver from the horizon down to mid-ocean. My first glance was for the Ruby, but the sea lay bare in every quarter. The fellows came dragging their boat aft; I looked over and saw that the fabric was of a canoe-pattern, with a queer upcurled bow, and a stern as square as the amidship section of the boat; four thwarts, short oars with oval-shaped blades, and a small mast with a square of lugsail lying with its yard in the bottom of the boat. The yellow man pointing to her exclaimed in a hoarse, throaty, African guttural, “It is good ve keep hor. Dis wreck hov no ’atch; she sink, and vidout hor,” nodding at the boat again, “were ve be?{105}” I said yes, by all means let us secure the boat. He exclaimed that for the present she would lie safely astern, and with that they took a turn with the line that held her and she rested quietly on the sea clear of the quarter. Forthwith the three fellows began to explore the hull. The yellow man or boatswain, as I must henceforth call him, said no more to me than this as he pointed to the yawning hatches: “You are gen’elman,” with an ugly smile intended no doubt for a stroke of courtesy as he ran his eye over me: “ve are common sailor. Ve vill see to stop dem hole. More fresh vataire to drink ve need. Possib more bee-low. Also tobacco.” And thus saying he cried out to the others in their own dialect, and the three of them went to the main hatchway and disappeared down it. I lifted the telescope and ran it over the sea, then sighed as with a breaking heart I laid the glass down again upon{106} the deck. A strong sense of dismay filled me whilst I sat musing upon the men who were now coolly rummaging the vessel below. The rascality which lay in every line of the ugly yellow ruffian’s face, coupled with the stealthy, glittering glances, the greasy, snaky hair, the dark piratic countenances of the others might well have accounted for the apprehension, the actual consternation indeed which fell upon me whilst I thought of them. But that was not all. The recollection of the gold rushed upon me as a memory that had clean gone out of my mind, but that had suddenly flashed back upon me to communicate a sinister significance to the presence of the three Portuguese seamen. I can clearly understand now that my brain, as I have said, had been weakened by the horror of my situation, and by the long madness of expectation which had held it on fire whilst I searched the sea and waited for the Ruby to appear. So that, instead of accepting{107} these three foreign sailors as a kind of godsend with whose assistance I might be enabled to doctor up the wreck so as to fit her to float until help came, not to speak of them as companions in misery, human creatures to talk to, beings whose society would extinguish out of this dreadful situation the intolerable element of solitude—I say instead of viewing these men thus, as might have happened, I believe, had I been my old self, a profound fear and aversion to them seized me, and such was the state of my nerves at that time, I call to mind that I looked at the boat that hung astern with a sort of hurry in me to leap into her, cast her adrift, and sail away. With an effort I mastered my agitation, constantly directing glances at the sea with a frequent prayer upon my lip that if not the Ruby, then at least some ship to rescue me would heave into view before sundown that night.{109}{108} <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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