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+**The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Wreck of the Golden Mary**
+by Charles Dickens
+#49 in our series by Charles Dickens
+
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+The Wreck of the Golden Mary
+
+by Charles Dickens
+
+August, 1998  [Etext #1465]
+
+
+**The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Wreck of the Golden Mary**
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+This etext was prepared from the 1894 Chapman and Hall "Christmas
+Stories" edition by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
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+This etext was prepared from the 1894 Chapman and Hall "Christmas
+Stories" edition by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY
+
+
+
+
+THE WRECK
+
+
+
+I was apprenticed to the Sea when I was twelve years old, and I have
+encountered a great deal of rough weather, both literal and
+metaphorical.  It has always been my opinion since I first possessed
+such a thing as an opinion, that the man who knows only one subject
+is next tiresome to the man who knows no subject.  Therefore, in the
+course of my life I have taught myself whatever I could, and
+although I am not an educated man, I am able, I am thankful to say,
+to have an intelligent interest in most things.
+
+A person might suppose, from reading the above, that I am in the
+habit of holding forth about number one.  That is not the case.
+Just as if I was to come into a room among strangers, and must
+either be introduced or introduce myself, so I have taken the
+liberty of passing these few remarks, simply and plainly that it may
+be known who and what I am.  I will add no more of the sort than
+that my name is William George Ravender, that I was born at Penrith
+half a year after my own father was drowned, and that I am on the
+second day of this present blessed Christmas week of one thousand
+eight hundred and fifty-six, fifty-six years of age.
+
+When the rumour first went flying up and down that there was gold in
+California--which, as most people know, was before it was discovered
+in the British colony of Australia--I was in the West Indies,
+trading among the Islands.  Being in command and likewise part-owner
+of a smart schooner, I had my work cut out for me, and I was doing
+it.  Consequently, gold in California was no business of mine.
+
+But, by the time when I came home to England again, the thing was as
+clear as your hand held up before you at noon-day.  There was
+Californian gold in the museums and in the goldsmiths' shops, and
+the very first time I went upon 'Change, I met a friend of mine (a
+seafaring man like myself), with a Californian nugget hanging to his
+watch-chain.  I handled it.  It was as like a peeled walnut with
+bits unevenly broken off here and there, and then electrotyped all
+over, as ever I saw anything in my life.
+
+I am a single man (she was too good for this world and for me, and
+she died six weeks before our marriage-day), so when I am ashore, I
+live in my house at Poplar.  My house at Poplar is taken care of and
+kept ship-shape by an old lady who was my mother's maid before I was
+born.  She is as handsome and as upright as any old lady in the
+world.  She is as fond of me as if she had ever had an only son, and
+I was he.  Well do I know wherever I sail that she never lays down
+her head at night without having said, "Merciful Lord! bless and
+preserve William George Ravender, and send him safe home, through
+Christ our Saviour!"  I have thought of it in many a dangerous
+moment, when it has done me no harm, I am sure.
+
+In my house at Poplar, along with this old lady, I lived quiet for
+best part of a year:  having had a long spell of it among the
+Islands, and having (which was very uncommon in me) taken the fever
+rather badly.  At last, being strong and hearty, and having read
+every book I could lay hold of, right out, I was walking down
+Leadenhall Street in the City of London, thinking of turning-to
+again, when I met what I call Smithick and Watersby of Liverpool.  I
+chanced to lift up my eyes from looking in at a ship's chronometer
+in a window, and I saw him bearing down upon me, head on.
+
+It is, personally, neither Smithick, nor Watersby, that I here
+mention, nor was I ever acquainted with any man of either of those
+names, nor do I think that there has been any one of either of those
+names in that Liverpool House for years back.  But, it is in reality
+the House itself that I refer to; and a wiser merchant or a truer
+gentleman never stepped.
+
+"My dear Captain Ravender," says he.  "Of all the men on earth, I
+wanted to see you most.  I was on my way to you."
+
+"Well!" says I.  "That looks as if you WERE to see me, don't it?"
+With that I put my arm in his, and we walked on towards the Royal
+Exchange, and when we got there, walked up and down at the back of
+it where the Clock-Tower is.  We walked an hour and more, for he had
+much to say to me.  He had a scheme for chartering a new ship of
+their own to take out cargo to the diggers and emigrants in
+California, and to buy and bring back gold.  Into the particulars of
+that scheme I will not enter, and I have no right to enter.  All I
+say of it is, that it was a very original one, a very fine one, a
+very sound one, and a very lucrative one beyond doubt.
+
+He imparted it to me as freely as if I had been a part of himself.
+After doing so, he made me the handsomest sharing offer that ever
+was made to me, boy or man--or I believe to any other captain in the
+Merchant Navy--and he took this round turn to finish with:
+
+"Ravender, you are well aware that the lawlessness of that coast and
+country at present, is as special as the circumstances in which it
+is placed.  Crews of vessels outward-bound, desert as soon as they
+make the land; crews of vessels homeward-bound, ship at enormous
+wages, with the express intention of murdering the captain and
+seizing the gold freight; no man can trust another, and the devil
+seems let loose.  Now," says he, "you know my opinion of you, and
+you know I am only expressing it, and with no singularity, when I
+tell you that you are almost the only man on whose integrity,
+discretion, and energy--" &c., &c.  For, I don't want to repeat what
+he said, though I was and am sensible of it.
+
+Notwithstanding my being, as I have mentioned, quite ready for a
+voyage, still I had some doubts of this voyage.  Of course I knew,
+without being told, that there were peculiar difficulties and
+dangers in it, a long way over and above those which attend all
+voyages.  It must not be supposed that I was afraid to face them;
+but, in my opinion a man has no manly motive or sustainment in his
+own breast for facing dangers, unless he has well considered what
+they are, and is able quietly to say to himself, "None of these
+perils can now take me by surprise; I shall know what to do for the
+best in any of them; all the rest lies in the higher and greater
+hands to which I humbly commit myself."  On this principle I have so
+attentively considered (regarding it as my duty) all the hazards I
+have ever been able to think of, in the ordinary way of storm,
+shipwreck, and fire at sea, that I hope I should be prepared to do,
+in any of those cases, whatever could be done, to save the lives
+intrusted to my charge.
+
+As I was thoughtful, my good friend proposed that he should leave me
+to walk there as long as I liked, and that I should dine with him
+by-and-by at his club in Pall Mall.  I accepted the invitation and I
+walked up and down there, quarter-deck fashion, a matter of a couple
+of hours; now and then looking up at the weathercock as I might have
+looked up aloft; and now and then taking a look into Cornhill, as I
+might have taken a look over the side.
+
+All dinner-time, and all after dinner-time, we talked it over again.
+I gave him my views of his plan, and he very much approved of the
+same.  I told him I had nearly decided, but not quite.  "Well,
+well," says he, "come down to Liverpool to-morrow with me, and see
+the Golden Mary."  I liked the name (her name was Mary, and she was
+golden, if golden stands for good), so I began to feel that it was
+almost done when I said I would go to Liverpool.  On the next
+morning but one we were on board the Golden Mary.  I might have
+known, from his asking me to come down and see her, what she was.  I
+declare her to have been the completest and most exquisite Beauty
+that ever I set my eyes upon.
+
+We had inspected every timber in her, and had come back to the
+gangway to go ashore from the dock-basin, when I put out my hand to
+my friend.  "Touch upon it," says I, "and touch heartily.  I take
+command of this ship, and I am hers and yours, if I can get John
+Steadiman for my chief mate."
+
+John Steadiman had sailed with me four voyages.  The first voyage
+John was third mate out to China, and came home second.  The other
+three voyages he was my first officer.  At this time of chartering
+the Golden Mary, he was aged thirty-two.  A brisk, bright, blue-eyed
+fellow, a very neat figure and rather under the middle size, never
+out of the way and never in it, a face that pleased everybody and
+that all children took to, a habit of going about singing as
+cheerily as a blackbird, and a perfect sailor.
+
+We were in one of those Liverpool hackney-coaches in less than a
+minute, and we cruised about in her upwards of three hours, looking
+for John.  John had come home from Van Diemen's Land barely a month
+before, and I had heard of him as taking a frisk in Liverpool.  We
+asked after him, among many other places, at the two boarding-houses
+he was fondest of, and we found he had had a week's spell at each of
+them; but, he had gone here and gone there, and had set off "to lay
+out on the main-to'-gallant-yard of the highest Welsh mountain" (so
+he had told the people of the house), and where he might be then, or
+when he might come back, nobody could tell us.  But it was
+surprising, to be sure, to see how every face brightened the moment
+there was mention made of the name of Mr. Steadiman.
+
+We were taken aback at meeting with no better luck, and we had wore
+ship and put her head for my friends, when as we were jogging
+through the streets, I clap my eyes on John himself coming out of a
+toyshop!  He was carrying a little boy, and conducting two uncommon
+pretty women to their coach, and he told me afterwards that he had
+never in his life seen one of the three before, but that he was so
+taken with them on looking in at the toyshop while they were buying
+the child a cranky Noah's Ark, very much down by the head, that he
+had gone in and asked the ladies' permission to treat him to a
+tolerably correct Cutter there was in the window, in order that such
+a handsome boy might not grow up with a lubberly idea of naval
+architecture.
+
+We stood off and on until the ladies' coachman began to give way,
+and then we hailed John.  On his coming aboard of us, I told him,
+very gravely, what I had said to my friend.  It struck him, as he
+said himself, amidships.  He was quite shaken by it.  "Captain
+Ravender," were John Steadiman's words, "such an opinion from you is
+true commendation, and I'll sail round the world with you for twenty
+years if you hoist the signal, and stand by you for ever!"  And now
+indeed I felt that it was done, and that the Golden Mary was afloat.
+
+Grass never grew yet under the feet of Smithick and Watersby.  The
+riggers were out of that ship in a fortnight's time, and we had
+begun taking in cargo.  John was always aboard, seeing everything
+stowed with his own eyes; and whenever I went aboard myself early or
+late, whether he was below in the hold, or on deck at the hatchway,
+or overhauling his cabin, nailing up pictures in it of the Blush
+Roses of England, the Blue Belles of Scotland, and the female
+Shamrock of Ireland:  of a certainty I heard John singing like a
+blackbird.
+
+We had room for twenty passengers.  Our sailing advertisement was no
+sooner out, than we might have taken these twenty times over.  In
+entering our men, I and John (both together) picked them, and we
+entered none but good hands--as good as were to be found in that
+port.  And so, in a good ship of the best build, well owned, well
+arranged, well officered, well manned, well found in all respects,
+we parted with our pilot at a quarter past four o'clock in the
+afternoon of the seventh of March, one thousand eight hundred and
+fifty-one, and stood with a fair wind out to sea.
+
+It may be easily believed that up to that time I had had no leisure
+to be intimate with my passengers.  The most of them were then in
+their berths sea-sick; however, in going among them, telling them
+what was good for them, persuading them not to be there, but to come
+up on deck and feel the breeze, and in rousing them with a joke, or
+a comfortable word, I made acquaintance with them, perhaps, in a
+more friendly and confidential way from the first, than I might have
+done at the cabin table.
+
+Of my passengers, I need only particularise, just at present, a
+bright-eyed blooming young wife who was going out to join her
+husband in California, taking with her their only child, a little
+girl of three years old, whom he had never seen; a sedate young
+woman in black, some five years older (about thirty as I should
+say), who was going out to join a brother; and an old gentleman, a
+good deal like a hawk if his eyes had been better and not so red,
+who was always talking, morning, noon, and night, about the gold
+discovery.  But, whether he was making the voyage, thinking his old
+arms could dig for gold, or whether his speculation was to buy it,
+or to barter for it, or to cheat for it, or to snatch it anyhow from
+other people, was his secret.  He kept his secret.
+
+These three and the child were the soonest well.  The child was a
+most engaging child, to be sure, and very fond of me:  though I am
+bound to admit that John Steadiman and I were borne on her pretty
+little books in reverse order, and that he was captain there, and I
+was mate.  It was beautiful to watch her with John, and it was
+beautiful to watch John with her.  Few would have thought it
+possible, to see John playing at bo-peep round the mast, that he was
+the man who had caught up an iron bar and struck a Malay and a
+Maltese dead, as they were gliding with their knives down the cabin
+stair aboard the barque Old England, when the captain lay ill in his
+cot, off Saugar Point.  But he was; and give him his back against a
+bulwark, he would have done the same by half a dozen of them.  The
+name of the young mother was Mrs. Atherfield, the name of the young
+lady in black was Miss Coleshaw, and the name of the old gentleman
+was Mr. Rarx.
+
+As the child had a quantity of shining fair hair, clustering in
+curls all about her face, and as her name was Lucy, Steadiman gave
+her the name of the Golden Lucy.  So, we had the Golden Lucy and the
+Golden Mary; and John kept up the idea to that extent as he and the
+child went playing about the decks, that I believe she used to think
+the ship was alive somehow--a sister or companion, going to the same
+place as herself.  She liked to be by the wheel, and in fine
+weather, I have often stood by the man whose trick it was at the
+wheel, only to hear her, sitting near my feet, talking to the ship.
+Never had a child such a doll before, I suppose; but she made a doll
+of the Golden Mary, and used to dress her up by tying ribbons and
+little bits of finery to the belaying-pins; and nobody ever moved
+them, unless it was to save them from being blown away.
+
+Of course I took charge of the two young women, and I called them
+"my dear," and they never minded, knowing that whatever I said was
+said in a fatherly and protecting spirit.  I gave them their places
+on each side of me at dinner, Mrs. Atherfield on my right and Miss
+Coleshaw on my left; and I directed the unmarried lady to serve out
+the breakfast, and the married lady to serve out the tea.  Likewise
+I said to my black steward in their presence, "Tom Snow, these two
+ladies are equally the mistresses of this house, and do you obey
+their orders equally;" at which Tom laughed, and they all laughed.
+
+Old Mr. Rarx was not a pleasant man to look at, nor yet to talk to,
+or to be with, for no one could help seeing that he was a sordid and
+selfish character, and that he had warped further and further out of
+the straight with time.  Not but what he was on his best behaviour
+with us, as everybody was; for we had no bickering among us, for'ard
+or aft.  I only mean to say, he was not the man one would have
+chosen for a messmate.  If choice there had been, one might even
+have gone a few points out of one's course, to say, "No!  Not him!"
+But, there was one curious inconsistency in Mr. Rarx.  That was,
+that he took an astonishing interest in the child.  He looked, and I
+may add, he was, one of the last of men to care at all for a child,
+or to care much for any human creature.  Still, he went so far as to
+be habitually uneasy, if the child was long on deck, out of his
+sight.  He was always afraid of her falling overboard, or falling
+down a hatchway, or of a block or what not coming down upon her from
+the rigging in the working of the ship, or of her getting some hurt
+or other.  He used to look at her and touch her, as if she was
+something precious to him.  He was always solicitous about her not
+injuring her health, and constantly entreated her mother to be
+careful of it.  This was so much the more curious, because the child
+did not like him, but used to shrink away from him, and would not
+even put out her hand to him without coaxing from others.  I believe
+that every soul on board frequently noticed this, and not one of us
+understood it.  However, it was such a plain fact, that John
+Steadiman said more than once when old Mr. Rarx was not within
+earshot, that if the Golden Mary felt a tenderness for the dear old
+gentleman she carried in her lap, she must be bitterly jealous of
+the Golden Lucy.
+
+Before I go any further with this narrative, I will state that our
+ship was a barque of three hundred tons, carrying a crew of eighteen
+men, a second mate in addition to John, a carpenter, an armourer or
+smith, and two apprentices (one a Scotch boy, poor little fellow).
+We had three boats; the Long-boat, capable of carrying twenty-five
+men; the Cutter, capable of carrying fifteen; and the Surf-boat,
+capable of carrying ten.  I put down the capacity of these boats
+according to the numbers they were really meant to hold.
+
+We had tastes of bad weather and head-winds, of course; but, on the
+whole we had as fine a run as any reasonable man could expect, for
+sixty days.  I then began to enter two remarks in the ship's Log and
+in my Journal; first, that there was an unusual and amazing quantity
+of ice; second, that the nights were most wonderfully dark, in spite
+of the ice.
+
+For five days and a half, it seemed quite useless and hopeless to
+alter the ship's course so as to stand out of the way of this ice.
+I made what southing I could; but, all that time, we were beset by
+it.  Mrs. Atherfield after standing by me on deck once, looking for
+some time in an awed manner at the great bergs that surrounded us,
+said in a whisper, "O! Captain Ravender, it looks as if the whole
+solid earth had changed into ice, and broken up!"  I said to her,
+laughing, "I don't wonder that it does, to your inexperienced eyes,
+my dear."  But I had never seen a twentieth part of the quantity,
+and, in reality, I was pretty much of her opinion.
+
+However, at two p.m. on the afternoon of the sixth day, that is to
+say, when we were sixty-six days out, John Steadiman who had gone
+aloft, sang out from the top, that the sea was clear ahead.  Before
+four p.m. a strong breeze springing up right astern, we were in open
+water at sunset.  The breeze then freshening into half a gale of
+wind, and the Golden Mary being a very fast sailer, we went before
+the wind merrily, all night.
+
+I had thought it impossible that it could be darker than it had
+been, until the sun, moon, and stars should fall out of the Heavens,
+and Time should be destroyed; but, it had been next to light, in
+comparison with what it was now.  The darkness was so profound, that
+looking into it was painful and oppressive--like looking, without a
+ray of light, into a dense black bandage put as close before the
+eyes as it could be, without touching them.  I doubled the look-out,
+and John and I stood in the bow side-by-side, never leaving it all
+night.  Yet I should no more have known that he was near me when he
+was silent, without putting out my arm and touching him, than I
+should if he had turned in and been fast asleep below.  We were not
+so much looking out, all of us, as listening to the utmost, both
+with our eyes and ears.
+
+Next day, I found that the mercury in the barometer, which had risen
+steadily since we cleared the ice, remained steady.  I had had very
+good observations, with now and then the interruption of a day or
+so, since our departure.  I got the sun at noon, and found that we
+were in Lat. 58 degrees S., Long. 60 degrees W., off New South
+Shetland; in the neighbourhood of Cape Horn.  We were sixty-seven
+days out, that day.  The ship's reckoning was accurately worked and
+made up.  The ship did her duty admirably, all on board were well,
+and all hands were as smart, efficient, and contented, as it was
+possible to be.
+
+When the night came on again as dark as before, it was the eighth
+night I had been on deck.  Nor had I taken more than a very little
+sleep in the day-time, my station being always near the helm, and
+often at it, while we were among the ice.  Few but those who have
+tried it can imagine the difficulty and pain of only keeping the
+eyes open--physically open--under such circumstances, in such
+darkness.  They get struck by the darkness, and blinded by the
+darkness.  They make patterns in it, and they flash in it, as if
+they had gone out of your head to look at you.  On the turn of
+midnight, John Steadiman, who was alert and fresh (for I had always
+made him turn in by day), said to me, "Captain Ravender, I entreat
+of you to go below.  I am sure you can hardly stand, and your voice
+is getting weak, sir.  Go below, and take a little rest.  I'll call
+you if a block chafes."  I said to John in answer, "Well, well,
+John!  Let us wait till the turn of one o'clock, before we talk
+about that."  I had just had one of the ship's lanterns held up,
+that I might see how the night went by my watch, and it was then
+twenty minutes after twelve.
+
+At five minutes before one, John sang out to the boy to bring the
+lantern again, and when I told him once more what the time was,
+entreated and prayed of me to go below.  "Captain Ravender," says
+he, "all's well; we can't afford to have you laid up for a single
+hour; and I respectfully and earnestly beg of you to go below."  The
+end of it was, that I agreed to do so, on the understanding that if
+I failed to come up of my own accord within three hours, I was to be
+punctually called.  Having settled that, I left John in charge.  But
+I called him to me once afterwards, to ask him a question.  I had
+been to look at the barometer, and had seen the mercury still
+perfectly steady, and had come up the companion again to take a last
+look about me--if I can use such a word in reference to such
+darkness--when I thought that the waves, as the Golden Mary parted
+them and shook them off, had a hollow sound in them; something that
+I fancied was a rather unusual reverberation.  I was standing by the
+quarter-deck rail on the starboard side, when I called John aft to
+me, and bade him listen.  He did so with the greatest attention.
+Turning to me he then said, "Rely upon it, Captain Ravender, you
+have been without rest too long, and the novelty is only in the
+state of your sense of hearing."  I thought so too by that time, and
+I think so now, though I can never know for absolute certain in this
+world, whether it was or not.
+
+When I left John Steadiman in charge, the ship was still going at a
+great rate through the water.  The wind still blew right astern.
+Though she was making great way, she was under shortened sail, and
+had no more than she could easily carry.  All was snug, and nothing
+complained.  There was a pretty sea running, but not a very high sea
+neither, nor at all a confused one.
+
+I turned in, as we seamen say, all standing.  The meaning of that
+is, I did not pull my clothes off--no, not even so much as my coat:
+though I did my shoes, for my feet were badly swelled with the deck.
+There was a little swing-lamp alight in my cabin.  I thought, as I
+looked at it before shutting my eyes, that I was so tired of
+darkness, and troubled by darkness, that I could have gone to sleep
+best in the midst of a million of flaming gas-lights.  That was the
+last thought I had before I went off, except the prevailing thought
+that I should not be able to get to sleep at all.
+
+I dreamed that I was back at Penrith again, and was trying to get
+round the church, which had altered its shape very much since I last
+saw it, and was cloven all down the middle of the steeple in a most
+singular manner.  Why I wanted to get round the church I don't know;
+but I was as anxious to do it as if my life depended on it.  Indeed,
+I believe it did in the dream.  For all that, I could not get round
+the church.  I was still trying, when I came against it with a
+violent shock, and was flung out of my cot against the ship's side.
+Shrieks and a terrific outcry struck me far harder than the bruising
+timbers, and amidst sounds of grinding and crashing, and a heavy
+rushing and breaking of water--sounds I understood too well--I made
+my way on deck.  It was not an easy thing to do, for the ship heeled
+over frightfully, and was beating in a furious manner.
+
+I could not see the men as I went forward, but I could hear that
+they were hauling in sail, in disorder.  I had my trumpet in my
+hand, and, after directing and encouraging them in this till it was
+done, I hailed first John Steadiman, and then my second mate, Mr.
+William Rames.  Both answered clearly and steadily.  Now, I had
+practised them and all my crew, as I have ever made it a custom to
+practise all who sail with me, to take certain stations and wait my
+orders, in case of any unexpected crisis.  When my voice was heard
+hailing, and their voices were heard answering, I was aware, through
+all the noises of the ship and sea, and all the crying of the
+passengers below, that there was a pause.  "Are you ready, Rames?"--
+"Ay, ay, sir!"--"Then light up, for God's sake!"  In a moment he and
+another were burning blue-lights, and the ship and all on board
+seemed to be enclosed in a mist of light, under a great black dome.
+
+The light shone up so high that I could see the huge Iceberg upon
+which we had struck, cloven at the top and down the middle, exactly
+like Penrith Church in my dream.  At the same moment I could see the
+watch last relieved, crowding up and down on deck; I could see Mrs.
+Atherfield and Miss Coleshaw thrown about on the top of the
+companion as they struggled to bring the child up from below; I
+could see that the masts were going with the shock and the beating
+of the ship; I could see the frightful breach stove in on the
+starboard side, half the length of the vessel, and the sheathing and
+timbers spirting up; I could see that the Cutter was disabled, in a
+wreck of broken fragments; and I could see every eye turned upon me.
+It is my belief that if there had been ten thousand eyes there, I
+should have seen them all, with their different looks.  And all this
+in a moment.  But you must consider what a moment.
+
+I saw the men, as they looked at me, fall towards their appointed
+stations, like good men and true.  If she had not righted, they
+could have done very little there or anywhere but die--not that it
+is little for a man to die at his post--I mean they could have done
+nothing to save the passengers and themselves.  Happily, however,
+the violence of the shock with which we had so determinedly borne
+down direct on that fatal Iceberg, as if it had been our destination
+instead of our destruction, had so smashed and pounded the ship that
+she got off in this same instant and righted.  I did not want the
+carpenter to tell me she was filling and going down; I could see and
+hear that.  I gave Rames the word to lower the Long-boat and the
+Surf-boat, and I myself told off the men for each duty.  Not one
+hung back, or came before the other.  I now whispered to John
+Steadiman, "John, I stand at the gangway here, to see every soul on
+board safe over the side.  You shall have the next post of honour,
+and shall be the last but one to leave the ship.  Bring up the
+passengers, and range them behind me; and put what provision and
+water you can got at, in the boats.  Cast your eye for'ard, John,
+and you'll see you have not a moment to lose."
+
+My noble fellows got the boats over the side as orderly as I ever
+saw boats lowered with any sea running, and, when they were
+launched, two or three of the nearest men in them as they held on,
+rising and falling with the swell, called out, looking up at me,
+"Captain Ravender, if anything goes wrong with us, and you are
+saved, remember we stood by you!"--"We'll all stand by one another
+ashore, yet, please God, my lads!" says I.  "Hold on bravely, and be
+tender with the women."
+
+The women were an example to us.  They trembled very much, but they
+were quiet and perfectly collected.  "Kiss me, Captain Ravender,"
+says Mrs. Atherfield, "and God in heaven bless you, you good man!"
+"My dear," says I, "those words are better for me than a life-boat."
+I held her child in my arms till she was in the boat, and then
+kissed the child and handed her safe down.  I now said to the people
+in her, "You have got your freight, my lads, all but me, and I am
+not coming yet awhile.  Pull away from the ship, and keep off!"
+
+That was the Long-boat.  Old Mr. Rarx was one of her complement, and
+he was the only passenger who had greatly misbehaved since the ship
+struck.  Others had been a little wild, which was not to be wondered
+at, and not very blamable; but, he had made a lamentation and uproar
+which it was dangerous for the people to hear, as there is always
+contagion in weakness and selfishness.  His incessant cry had been
+that he must not be separated from the child, that he couldn't see
+the child, and that he and the child must go together.  He had even
+tried to wrest the child out of my arms, that he might keep her in
+his.  "Mr. Rarx," said I to him when it came to that, "I have a
+loaded pistol in my pocket; and if you don't stand out of the gang-
+way, and keep perfectly quiet, I shall shoot you through the heart,
+if you have got one."  Says he, "You won't do murder, Captain
+Ravender!"   "No, sir," says I, "I won't murder forty-four people to
+humour you, but I'll shoot you to save them."  After that he was
+quiet, and stood shivering a little way off, until I named him to go
+over the side.
+
+The Long-boat being cast off, the Surf-boat was soon filled.  There
+only remained aboard the Golden Mary, John Mullion the man who had
+kept on burning the blue-lights (and who had lighted every new one
+at every old one before it went out, as quietly as if he had been at
+an illumination); John Steadiman; and myself.  I hurried those two
+into the Surf-boat, called to them to keep off, and waited with a
+grateful and relieved heart for the Long-boat to come and take me
+in, if she could.  I looked at my watch, and it showed me, by the
+blue-light, ten minutes past two.  They lost no time.  As soon as
+she was near enough, I swung myself into her, and called to the men,
+"With a will, lads!  She's reeling!"  We were not an inch too far
+out of the inner vortex of her going down, when, by the blue-light
+which John Mullion still burnt in the bow of the Surf-boat, we saw
+her lurch, and plunge to the bottom head-foremost.  The child cried,
+weeping wildly, "O the dear Golden Mary!  O look at her!  Save her!
+Save the poor Golden Mary!"  And then the light burnt out, and the
+black dome seemed to come down upon us.
+
+I suppose if we had all stood a-top of a mountain, and seen the
+whole remainder of the world sink away from under us, we could
+hardly have felt more shocked and solitary than we did when we knew
+we were alone on the wide ocean, and that the beautiful ship in
+which most of us had been securely asleep within half an hour was
+gone for ever.  There was an awful silence in our boat, and such a
+kind of palsy on the rowers and the man at the rudder, that I felt
+they were scarcely keeping her before the sea.  I spoke out then,
+and said, "Let every one here thank the Lord for our preservation!"
+All the voices answered (even the child's), "We thank the Lord!"  I
+then said the Lord's Prayer, and all hands said it after me with a
+solemn murmuring.  Then I gave the word "Cheerily, O men, Cheerily!"
+and I felt that they were handling the boat again as a boat ought to
+be handled.
+
+The Surf-boat now burnt another blue-light to show us where they
+were, and we made for her, and laid ourselves as nearly alongside of
+her as we dared.  I had always kept my boats with a coil or two of
+good stout stuff in each of them, so both boats had a rope at hand.
+We made a shift, with much labour and trouble, to got near enough to
+one another to divide the blue-lights (they were no use after that
+night, for the sea-water soon got at them), and to get a tow-rope
+out between us.  All night long we kept together, sometimes obliged
+to cast off the rope, and sometimes getting it out again, and all of
+us wearying for the morning--which appeared so long in coming that
+old Mr. Rarx screamed out, in spite of his fears of me, "The world
+is drawing to an end, and the sun will never rise any more!"
+
+When the day broke, I found that we were all huddled together in a
+miserable manner.  We were deep in the water; being, as I found on
+mustering, thirty-one in number, or at least six too many.  In the
+Surf-boat they were fourteen in number, being at least four too
+many.  The first thing I did, was to get myself passed to the
+rudder--which I took from that time--and to get Mrs. Atherfield, her
+child, and Miss Coleshaw, passed on to sit next me.  As to old Mr.
+Rarx, I put him in the bow, as far from us as I could.  And I put
+some of the best men near us in order that if I should drop there
+might be a skilful hand ready to take the helm.
+
+The sea moderating as the sun came up, though the sky was cloudy and
+wild, we spoke the other boat, to know what stores they had, and to
+overhaul what we had.  I had a compass in my pocket, a small
+telescope, a double-barrelled pistol, a knife, and a fire-box and
+matches.  Most of my men had knives, and some had a little tobacco:
+some, a pipe as well.  We had a mug among us, and an iron spoon.  As
+to provisions, there were in my boat two bags of biscuit, one piece
+of raw beef, one piece of raw pork, a bag of coffee, roasted but not
+ground (thrown in, I imagine, by mistake, for something else), two
+small casks of water, and about half-a-gallon of rum in a keg.  The
+Surf-boat, having rather more rum than we, and fewer to drink it,
+gave us, as I estimated, another quart into our keg.  In return, we
+gave them three double handfuls of coffee, tied up in a piece of a
+handkerchief; they reported that they had aboard besides, a bag of
+biscuit, a piece of beef, a small cask of water, a small box of
+lemons, and a Dutch cheese.  It took a long time to make these
+exchanges, and they were not made without risk to both parties; the
+sea running quite high enough to make our approaching near to one
+another very hazardous.  In the bundle with the coffee, I conveyed
+to John Steadiman (who had a ship's compass with him), a paper
+written in pencil, and torn from my pocket-book, containing the
+course I meant to steer, in the hope of making land, or being picked
+up by some vessel--I say in the hope, though I had little hope of
+either deliverance.  I then sang out to him, so as all might hear,
+that if we two boats could live or die together, we would; but, that
+if we should be parted by the weather, and join company no more,
+they should have our prayers and blessings, and we asked for theirs.
+We then gave them three cheers, which they returned, and I saw the
+men's heads droop in both boats as they fell to their oars again.
+
+These arrangements had occupied the general attention advantageously
+for all, though (as I expressed in the last sentence) they ended in
+a sorrowful feeling.  I now said a few words to my fellow-voyagers
+on the subject of the small stock of food on which our lives
+depended if they were preserved from the great deep, and on the
+rigid necessity of our eking it out in the most frugal manner.  One
+and all replied that whatever allowance I thought best to lay down
+should be strictly kept to.  We made a pair of scales out of a thin
+scrap of iron-plating and some twine, and I got together for weights
+such of the heaviest buttons among us as I calculated made up some
+fraction over two ounces.  This was the allowance of solid food
+served out once a-day to each, from that time to the end; with the
+addition of a coffee-berry, or sometimes half a one, when the
+weather was very fair, for breakfast.  We had nothing else whatever,
+but half a pint of water each per day, and sometimes, when we were
+coldest and weakest, a teaspoonful of rum each, served out as a
+dram.  I know how learnedly it can be shown that rum is poison, but
+I also know that in this case, as in all similar cases I have ever
+read of--which are numerous--no words can express the comfort and
+support derived from it.  Nor have I the least doubt that it saved
+the lives of far more than half our number.  Having mentioned half a
+pint of water as our daily allowance, I ought to observe that
+sometimes we had less, and sometimes we had more; for much rain
+fell, and we caught it in a canvas stretched for the purpose.
+
+Thus, at that tempestuous time of the year, and in that tempestuous
+part of the world, we shipwrecked people rose and fell with the
+waves.  It is not my intention to relate (if I can avoid it) such
+circumstances appertaining to our doleful condition as have been
+better told in many other narratives of the kind than I can be
+expected to tell them.  I will only note, in so many passing words,
+that day after day and night after night, we received the sea upon
+our backs to prevent it from swamping the boat; that one party was
+always kept baling, and that every hat and cap among us soon got
+worn out, though patched up fifty times, as the only vessels we had
+for that service; that another party lay down in the bottom of the
+boat, while a third rowed; and that we were soon all in boils and
+blisters and rags.
+
+The other boat was a source of such anxious interest to all of us
+that I used to wonder whether, if we were saved, the time could ever
+come when the survivors in this boat of ours could be at all
+indifferent to the fortunes of the survivors in that.  We got out a
+tow-rope whenever the weather permitted, but that did not often
+happen, and how we two parties kept within the same horizon, as we
+did, He, who mercifully permitted it to be so for our consolation,
+only knows.  I never shall forget the looks with which, when the
+morning light came, we used to gaze about us over the stormy waters,
+for the other boat.  We once parted company for seventy-two hours,
+and we believed them to have gone down, as they did us.  The joy on
+both sides when we came within view of one another again, had
+something in a manner Divine in it; each was so forgetful of
+individual suffering, in tears of delight and sympathy for the
+people in the other boat.
+
+I have been wanting to get round to the individual or personal part
+of my subject, as I call it, and the foregoing incident puts me in
+the right way.  The patience and good disposition aboard of us, was
+wonderful.  I was not surprised by it in the women; for all men born
+of women know what great qualities they will show when men will
+fail; but, I own I was a little surprised by it in some of the men.
+Among one-and-thirty people assembled at the best of times, there
+will usually, I should say, be two or three uncertain tempers.  I
+knew that I had more than one rough temper with me among my own
+people, for I had chosen those for the Long-boat that I might have
+them under my eye.  But, they softened under their misery, and were
+as considerate of the ladies, and as compassionate of the child, as
+the best among us, or among men--they could not have been more so.
+I heard scarcely any complaining.  The party lying down would moan a
+good deal in their sleep, and I would often notice a man--not always
+the same man, it is to be understood, but nearly all of them at one
+time or other--sitting moaning at his oar, or in his place, as he
+looked mistily over the sea.  When it happened to be long before I
+could catch his eye, he would go on moaning all the time in the
+dismallest manner; but, when our looks met, he would brighten and
+leave off.  I almost always got the impression that he did not know
+what sound he had been making, but that he thought he had been
+humming a tune.
+
+Our sufferings from cold and wet were far greater than our
+sufferings from hunger.  We managed to keep the child warm; but, I
+doubt if any one else among us ever was warm for five minutes
+together; and the shivering, and the chattering of teeth, were sad
+to hear.  The child cried a little at first for her lost playfellow,
+the Golden Mary; but hardly ever whimpered afterwards; and when the
+state of the weather made it possible, she used now and then to be
+held up in the arms of some of us, to look over the sea for John
+Steadiman's boat.  I see the golden hair and the innocent face now,
+between me and the driving clouds, like an angel going to fly away.
+
+It had happened on the second day, towards night, that Mrs.
+Atherfield, in getting Little Lucy to sleep, sang her a song.  She
+had a soft, melodious voice, and, when she had finished it, our
+people up and begged for another.  She sang them another, and after
+it had fallen dark ended with the Evening Hymn.  From that time,
+whenever anything could be heard above the sea and wind, and while
+she had any voice left, nothing would serve the people but that she
+should sing at sunset.  She always did, and always ended with the
+Evening Hymn.  We mostly took up the last line, and shed tears when
+it was done, but not miserably.  We had a prayer night and morning,
+also, when the weather allowed of it.
+
+Twelve nights and eleven days we had been driving in the boat, when
+old Mr. Rarx began to be delirious, and to cry out to me to throw
+the gold overboard or it would sink us, and we should all be lost.
+For days past the child had been declining, and that was the great
+cause of his wildness.  He had been over and over again shrieking
+out to me to give her all the remaining meat, to give her all the
+remaining rum, to save her at any cost, or we should all be ruined.
+At this time, she lay in her mother's arms at my feet.  One of her
+little hands was almost always creeping about her mother's neck or
+chin.  I had watched the wasting of the little hand, and I knew it
+was nearly over.
+
+The old man's cries were so discordant with the mother's love and
+submission, that I called out to him in an angry voice, unless he
+held his peace on the instant, I would order him to be knocked on
+the head and thrown overboard.  He was mute then, until the child
+died, very peacefully, an hour afterwards:  which was known to all
+in the boat by the mother's breaking out into lamentations for the
+first time since the wreck--for, she had great fortitude and
+constancy, though she was a little gentle woman.  Old Mr. Rarx then
+became quite ungovernable, tearing what rags he had on him, raging
+in imprecations, and calling to me that if I had thrown the gold
+overboard (always the gold with him!) I might have saved the child.
+"And now," says he, in a terrible voice, "we shall founder, and all
+go to the Devil, for our sins will sink us, when we have no innocent
+child to bear us up!"  We so discovered with amazement, that this
+old wretch had only cared for the life of the pretty little creature
+dear to all of us, because of the influence he superstitiously hoped
+she might have in preserving him!  Altogether it was too much for
+the smith or armourer, who was sitting next the old man, to bear.
+He took him by the throat and rolled him under the thwarts, where he
+lay still enough for hours afterwards.
+
+All that thirteenth night, Miss Coleshaw, lying across my knees as I
+kept the helm, comforted and supported the poor mother.  Her child,
+covered with a pea-jacket of mine, lay in her lap.  It troubled me
+all night to think that there was no Prayer-Book among us, and that
+I could remember but very few of the exact words of the burial
+service.  When I stood up at broad day, all knew what was going to
+be done, and I noticed that my poor fellows made the motion of
+uncovering their heads, though their heads had been stark bare to
+the sky and sea for many a weary hour.  There was a long heavy swell
+on, but otherwise it was a fair morning, and there were broad fields
+of sunlight on the waves in the east.  I said no more than this:  "I
+am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord.  He raised the
+daughter of Jairus the ruler, and said she was not dead but slept.
+He raised the widow's son.  He arose Himself, and was seen of many.
+He loved little children, saying, Suffer them to come unto Me and
+rebuke them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.  In His name,
+my friends, and committed to His merciful goodness!"  With those
+words I laid my rough face softly on the placid little forehead, and
+buried the Golden Lucy in the grave of the Golden Mary.
+
+Having had it on my mind to relate the end of this dear little
+child, I have omitted something from its exact place, which I will
+supply here.  It will come quite as well here as anywhere else.
+
+Foreseeing that if the boat lived through the stormy weather, the
+time must come, and soon come, when we should have absolutely no
+morsel to eat, I had one momentous point often in my thoughts.
+Although I had, years before that, fully satisfied myself that the
+instances in which human beings in the last distress have fed upon
+each other, are exceedingly few, and have very seldom indeed (if
+ever) occurred when the people in distress, however dreadful their
+extremity, have been accustomed to moderate forbearance and
+restraint; I say, though I had long before quite satisfied my mind
+on this topic, I felt doubtful whether there might not have been in
+former cases some harm and danger from keeping it out of sight and
+pretending not to think of it.  I felt doubtful whether some minds,
+growing weak with fasting and exposure and having such a terrific
+idea to dwell upon in secret, might not magnify it until it got to
+have an awful attraction about it.  This was not a new thought of
+mine, for it had grown out of my reading.  However, it came over me
+stronger than it had ever done before--as it had reason for doing--
+in the boat, and on the fourth day I decided that I would bring out
+into the light that unformed fear which must have been more or less
+darkly in every brain among us.  Therefore, as a means of beguiling
+the time and inspiring hope, I gave them the best summary in my
+power of Bligh's voyage of more than three thousand miles, in an
+open boat, after the Mutiny of the Bounty, and of the wonderful
+preservation of that boat's crew.  They listened throughout with
+great interest, and I concluded by telling them, that, in my
+opinion, the happiest circumstance in the whole narrative was, that
+Bligh, who was no delicate man either, had solemnly placed it on
+record therein that he was sure and certain that under no
+conceivable circumstances whatever would that emaciated party, who
+had gone through all the pains of famine, have preyed on one
+another.  I cannot describe the visible relief which this spread
+through the boat, and how the tears stood in every eye.  From that
+time I was as well convinced as Bligh himself that there was no
+danger, and that this phantom, at any rate, did not haunt us.
+
+Now, it was a part of Bligh's experience that when the people in his
+boat were most cast down, nothing did them so much good as hearing a
+story told by one of their number.  When I mentioned that, I saw
+that it struck the general attention as much as it did my own, for I
+had not thought of it until I came to it in my summary.  This was on
+the day after Mrs. Atherfield first sang to us.  I proposed that,
+whenever the weather would permit, we should have a story two hours
+after dinner (I always issued the allowance I have mentioned at one
+o'clock, and called it by that name), as well as our song at sunset.
+The proposal was received with a cheerful satisfaction that warmed
+my heart within me; and I do not say too much when I say that those
+two periods in the four-and-twenty hours were expected with positive
+pleasure, and were really enjoyed by all hands.  Spectres as we soon
+were in our bodily wasting, our imaginations did not perish like the
+gross flesh upon our bones.  Music and Adventure, two of the great
+gifts of Providence to mankind, could charm us long after that was
+lost.
+
+The wind was almost always against us after the second day; and for
+many days together we could not nearly hold our own.  We had all
+varieties of bad weather.  We had rain, hail, snow, wind, mist,
+thunder and lightning.  Still the boats lived through the heavy
+seas, and still we perishing people rose and fell with the great
+waves.
+
+Sixteen nights and fifteen days, twenty nights and nineteen days,
+twenty-four nights and twenty-three days.  So the time went on.
+Disheartening as I knew that our progress, or want of progress, must
+be, I never deceived them as to my calculations of it.  In the first
+place, I felt that we were all too near eternity for deceit; in the
+second place, I knew that if I failed, or died, the man who followed
+me must have a knowledge of the true state of things to begin upon.
+When I told them at noon, what I reckoned we had made or lost, they
+generally received what I said in a tranquil and resigned manner,
+and always gratefully towards me.  It was not unusual at any time of
+the day for some one to burst out weeping loudly without any new
+cause; and, when the burst was over, to calm down a little better
+than before.  I had seen exactly the same thing in a house of
+mourning.
+
+During the whole of this time, old Mr. Rarx had had his fits of
+calling out to me to throw the gold (always the gold!) overboard,
+and of heaping violent reproaches upon me for not having saved the
+child; but now, the food being all gone, and I having nothing left
+to serve out but a bit of coffee-berry now and then, he began to be
+too weak to do this, and consequently fell silent.  Mrs. Atherfield
+and Miss Coleshaw generally lay, each with an arm across one of my
+knees, and her head upon it.  They never complained at all.  Up to
+the time of her child's death, Mrs. Atherfield had bound up her own
+beautiful hair every day; and I took particular notice that this was
+always before she sang her song at night, when everyone looked at
+her.  But she never did it after the loss of her darling; and it
+would have been now all tangled with dirt and wet, but that Miss
+Coleshaw was careful of it long after she was herself, and would
+sometimes smooth it down with her weak thin hands.
+
+We were past mustering a story now; but one day, at about this
+period, I reverted to the superstition of old Mr. Rarx, concerning
+the Golden Lucy, and told them that nothing vanished from the eye of
+God, though much might pass away from the eyes of men.  "We were all
+of us," says I, "children once; and our baby feet have strolled in
+green woods ashore; and our baby hands have gathered flowers in
+gardens, where the birds were singing.  The children that we were,
+are not lost to the great knowledge of our Creator.  Those innocent
+creatures will appear with us before Him, and plead for us.  What we
+were in the best time of our generous youth will arise and go with
+us too.  The purest part of our lives will not desert us at the pass
+to which all of us here present are gliding.  What we were then,
+will be as much in existence before Him, as what we are now."  They
+were no less comforted by this consideration, than I was myself; and
+Miss Coleshaw, drawing my ear nearer to her lips, said, "Captain
+Ravender, I was on my way to marry a disgraced and broken man, whom
+I dearly loved when he was honourable and good.  Your words seem to
+have come out of my own poor heart."  She pressed my hand upon it,
+smiling.
+
+Twenty-seven nights and twenty-six days.  We were in no want of
+rain-water, but we had nothing else.  And yet, even now, I never
+turned my eyes upon a waking face but it tried to brighten before
+mine.  O, what a thing it is, in a time of danger and in the
+presence of death, the shining of a face upon a face!  I have heard
+it broached that orders should be given in great new ships by
+electric telegraph.  I admire machinery as much is any man, and am
+as thankful to it as any man can be for what it does for us.  But it
+will never be a substitute for the face of a man, with his soul in
+it, encouraging another man to be brave and true.  Never try it for
+that.  It will break down like a straw.
+
+I now began to remark certain changes in myself which I did not
+like.  They caused me much disquiet.  I often saw the Golden Lucy in
+the air above the boat.  I often saw her I have spoken of before,
+sitting beside me.  I saw the Golden Mary go down, as she really had
+gone down, twenty times in a day.  And yet the sea was mostly, to my
+thinking, not sea neither, but moving country and extraordinary
+mountainous regions, the like of which have never been beheld.  I
+felt it time to leave my last words regarding John Steadiman, in
+case any lips should last out to repeat them to any living ears.  I
+said that John had told me (as he had on deck) that he had sung out
+"Breakers ahead!" the instant they were audible, and had tried to
+wear ship, but she struck before it could be done.  (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.  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.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg eText The Wreck of the Golden Mary
+
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