Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0062/00627.txt

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$Title{(A) Message From The Sea
Chapter IV - Part III}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Dickens, Charles}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{island
enough
time
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$Date{}
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Title:       (A) Message From The Sea
Author:      Dickens, Charles

Chapter IV - Part III

     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.  Toward 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 toward 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 breast-pocket.  When I awoke 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.

     "I'll tell you what," says I, "if us two keep company any longer we
shan't get on smoothly together.  You're the oldest man; and you stop here,
where we know there is shelter.  We will divide the stores fairly, and I'll go
and shift for myself at the other end of the island.  Do you agree to that?"

     "Yes," says he; "and the sooner the better."

     I left him for a minute, and went away to look out on the reef that had
wrecked us.  The splinters of the Peruvian scattered broadcast over the beach,
or tossing up and down darkly, far out in the white surf, were all that
remained to tell of the ship.  I don't deny that my heart sank when I looked
at the place where she struck, and saw nothing before me but sea and sky.

     But what was the use of standing and looking?  It was a deal better to
rouse myself by doing something.  I returned to Mr. Clissold, and then and
there divided the stores into two equal parts, including everything down to
the matches in my pocket.  Of these parts I gave him first choice. I also left
him the whole of the tarpaulin to himself, keeping in my own possession the
medicine-chest and the pistol; which last I loaded with powder and shot, in
case any sea-birds might fly within reach.  When the division was made, and
when I had moved my part out of his way and out of his sight, I thought it
uncivil to bear malice any longer now that we had agreed to separate.  We were
cast away on a desert island, and we had death, as well as I could see, within
about three weeks' hail of us; but that was no reason for not making things
reasonably pleasant as long as we could.  I was some time (in consequence of
my natural slowness where matters of seafaring duty don't happen to be
concerned) before I came to this conclusion.  When I did come to it, I acted
on it.

     "Shake hands before parting," I said, suiting the action to the word.

     "No!" says he, "I don't like you."

     "Please yourself," says I; and so we parted.

     Turning my back on the west, which was his territory according to
agreement, I walked away toward the southeast, where the sides of the island
rose highest.  Here I found a sort of half-rift, half-cavern, in the rocky
banks, which looked as likely a place as any other; and to this refuge I moved
my share of the stores.  I thatched it over, as well as I could, with scrub,
and heaped up some loose stones at the mouth of it.  At home in England I
should have been ashamed to put my dog in such a place; but when a man
believes his days to be numbered he is not over-particular about his lodgings,
and I was not over-particular about mine.

     When my work was done the heavens were fair, the sun was shining, and it
was long past noon.  I went up again to the high ground, to see what I could
make out in the new clearness of the air.  North, east, and west there was
nothing but sea and sky; but south I now saw land.  It was high, and looked to
be a matter of seven or eight miles off.  Island or not, it must have been of
a good size for me to see it as I did.  Known or not known to mariners, it was
certainly big enough to have living creatures on it, - animals or men, or
both.  If I had not lost the boat in my second attempt to reach the vessel we
might have easily got to it.  But situated as we were now, with no wood to
make a boat of but the scattered splinters from the ship, and with no tools to
use even that much, there might just as well have been no land in sight at
all, so far as we were concerned. The poor hope of a ship coming our road was
still the only hope left.  To give us all the little chance we might get that
way, I now looked about on the beach for the longest morsel of a wrecked spar
that I could find, planted it on the high ground, and rigged up to it the one
shirt I had on my back for a signal.  While coming and going on this job, I
noted with great joy that rain-water enough lay in the hollows of the rocks
above the sea-line to save our small store of fresh water for a week at least.
Thinking it only fair to the supercargo to let him know what I had found out,
I went to his territories, after setting up the morsel of a spar, and
discreetly shouted my news down to him without showing myself.  "Keep to your
own side!" was all the thanks I got for this piece of civility.  I went back
to my own side immediately, and crawled into my little cavern, quite content
to be alone.  On that first night, strange as it seems now, I once or twice
nearly caught myself feeling happy at the thought of being rid of Mr. Lawrence
Clissold.

     According to my calculations, - which were made by tying a fresh knot
every morning in a piece of marline, - we two men were just a week, each on
his own side of the island, without seeing or communicating, anyhow, with one
another.  The first half of the week I had enough to do with cudgeling my
brains for a means of helping ourselves, to keep my mind steady.

     I thought first of picking up all the longest bits of spars that had been
cast ashore, lashing them together with ropes twisted out of the long grass on
the island, and trusting to raft-navigation to get to that high land away in
the south.  But when I looked among the spars, there were not half a dozen of
them left whole enough for the purpose.  And even if there had been more, the
short allowance of food would not have given me time sufficient, or strength
sufficient, to gather the grass, to twist it into ropes, and to lash a raft
together big enough and strong enough for us two men.  There was nothing to be
done but to give up this notion, - and I gave it up.  The next chance I
thought of was to keep a fire burning on the shore every night, with the wood
of the wreck, in case vessels at sea might notice it on one side, or the
people of the high land in the south (if the distance was not too great) might
notice it on the other.  There was sense in this notion, and it could be
turned to account the moment the wood was dry enough to burn.  The wood got
dry enough before the week was out.  Whether it was the end of the stormy
season in those latitudes, or whether it was only the shifting of the wind to
the west, I don't know; but now, day after day, the heavens were clear, and
the sun shone scorching hot.  The scrub on the island (which was of no great
account) dried up, but the fresh water in the hollows of the rocks (which was,
on the other hand, a serious business) dried up too.  Troubles seldom come
alone; and on the day when I made this discovery I also found out that I had
calculated wrong about the food.  Eke it out as I might, with scurvy grass and
roots, there would not be above eight days more of it left when the first week
was past; and as for the fresh water, half a pint a day, unless more rain
fell, would leave me at the end of my store, as nearly as I could guess, about
the same time.

     This was a bad look-out, but I don't think the prospect of it upset me in
my mind so much as the having nothing to do.  Except for the gathering of the
wood, and the lighting of the signal-fire every night, I had no work at all
toward the end of the week to keep me steady.  I checked myself in thinking
much about home, for fear of losing heart, and not holding out to the last, as
became a man.  For the same reasons I likewise kept my mind from raising hopes
of help in me which were not likely to come true.  What else was there to
think about?  Nothing but the man on the other side of the island, - and be
hanged to him!

     I thought about those words I heard him say in his sleep; I thought about
how he was getting on by himself; how he liked nothing but water to drink, and
little enough of that; how he was eking out his food; whether he slept much or
not; whether he saw the smoke of my fire at night or not; whether he held up
better or worse than I did; whether he would be glad to see me if I went to
him to make it up; whether he or I would die first; whether if it was me, he
would do for me what I would have done for him, namely, bury him, with the
last strength I had left.  All these things, and lots more, kept coming and
going in my mind, till I could stand it no longer.  On the morning of the
eighth day I roused up to go to his territories, feeling it would do me good
to see him and hear him, even if we quarrelled again the instant we set eyes
on each other.

     I climbed up to the grassy ground; and when I got there, what should I
see but the supercargo himself coming to my territories, and wandering up and
down in the scrub through not knowing where to find them!

     It almost kicked me over, when we met, the man was changed so.  He looked
eighty years old: the little flesh he had on his miserable face hung baggy;
his blue spectacles had dropped down on his nose, and his eyes showed over
them wild and red-brimmed; his lips were black; his legs staggered under him.
He came up to me with his eyes all of a glare, and put both his hands on my
breast, just over the pocket in which I kept that flask of ginger-brandy which
he had tried to steal from me.

     "Have you got any of it left?" says he, in a whisper.

     "About two mouthfuls," says I.

     "Give us one of them, for God's sake," says he.

     Giving him one of those mouthfuls was just about equal to giving him a
day of my life.  In the case of a man I liked, I would not have thought twice
about giving it.  In the case of Mr. Clissold I did think twice.  I would have
been a better Christian if I could, but just then I couldn't.

     He thought I was going to say No.  His eyes got cunning directly.  He
reached his hand to my shoulders, and whispered these words in my ear:

     "I'll tell you what I know about the five hundred pound if you'll give me
a drop."

     I determined to give it to him, and pulled out the flask.  I took his
hand, and poured the drop into the hollow of it, and held it for a moment.

     "Tell me first," I said, "and drink afterwards."

     He looked all around him, as if he thought there were people on the
island to hear us.  "Hush!" he said, "let's whisper about it." The next
question and answer that passed between us was louder than before on my side,
and softer than ever on his.  This was the question, -

     "What do you know about the five hundred pound?"

     And this was the answer, -

     "It's Stolen Money!"

     My hand dropped away from his as if he had shot me.  He instantly
fastened on the drop of liquor in the hollow of his hand, like a hungry wild
beast on a bone, and then looked up for more.  Something in my face (God knows
what) seemed suddenly to frighten him out of his life.  Before I could stir a
step, or get a word out, down he dropped on his knees, whining and whimpering
in the high grass at my feet.

     "Don't kill me!" says he: "I'm dying, - I'll think of my poor soul. I'll
repent while there's time - "

     Beginning in that way, he maundered awfully, grovelling down in the
grass; asking me every other minute for "a drop more, and a drop more"; and
talking as if he thought we were both in England.  Out of his wanderings, his
beseechings for another drop, and his miserable beggars' petitions for his
"poor soul," I gathered together these words, - the same which I wrote down on
the morsel of paper, and of which nine parts out of ten are now rubbed off!

     The first I made out - though not the first he said - was that some one,
whom he spoke of as "the old man," was alive; and "Lanrean" was the place he
lived in.  I was to go there, and ask among the old men for "Tregarthen - "

     (At the mention by me of the name of Tregarthen, my brother, to my great
surprise, stopped me with a start; made me say the name over more than once;
and then, for the first time, told me of the trouble about his sweetheart and
his marriage.  We waited a little to talk that matter over, after which I went
on again with my story, in these words:)

     Well, as I made out from Clissold's wanderings, I was to go to Lanrean,
to ask among the old men for Tregarthen, and to say to Tregarthen, "Clissold
was the man.  Clissold bore no malice; Clissold repented like a Christian, for
the sake of his poor soul." No!  I was to say something else to Tregarthen.  I
was to say, "Look among the books: look at the leaf you know of, and see for
yourself it's not the right leaf to be there." No!  I was to say something
else to Tregarthen.  I was to say, "The right leaf is hidden, not burned.
Clissold had time for everything else, but no time to burn that leaf.
Tregarthen came in when he had got the candle lit to burn it.  There was just
time to let it drop from under his hand into the great crack in the desk, and
then he was ordered abroad by the House, and there was no chance of doing
more." No! I was to say none of these things to Tregarthen.  Only this
instead: "Look in Clissold's desk, - and if you blame anybody, blame Miser
Raybrock for driving him to it." And, O, another drop, - for the Lord's sake,
give him another drop!

     So he went on, over and over again, till I found voice enough to speak
and stop him.

     "Get up and go!" I said to the miserable wretch.  "Get back to your own
side of the island, or I may do you a mischief, in spite of my own self."

     "Give me another drop and I will," was all the answer I could get from
him.

     I threw him the flask.  He pounced upon it with a howl.  I turned my
back, - for I could look at him no longer, - and climbed down again to my
cavern on the beach.

     I sat down alone on the sand, and tried to quiet myself fit to think
about what I had heard.  That father could ever have wilfully done anything
unbecoming his character as an honest man, was what I wouldn't believe, in the
first place.  And that the wretched brute I had just parted from was in his
right senses, was what I wouldn't believe in the second place.  What I had
myself seen of drinkers, at sea and ashore, helped me to understand the
condition into which he had fallen.  I knew that when a man who had been a
drunkard for years is suddenly cut off his drink, he drops to pieces like,
body and mind, for the want of it.  I had also heard ship-doctors talk, by
some name of their own, of a drink-madness, which we ignorant men call the
Horrors.  And I made it out, easy enough, that I had seen the supercargo in
the first of these conditions; and that if we both lived long enough without
help coming to us, I might soon see him in the second.  But when I tried to
get farther, and settle how much of what I had heard was wandering and how
much truth, and what it meant if any of it was truth, my slowness got in my
way again; and where a quicker man might have made up his mind in an hour or
two, I was all day, in sore distress, making up mine.  The upshot of what I
settled with myself was, in two words, this: having mother's writing-case
handy about me, I determined first to set down for my own self's reminder, all
that I had heard.  Second, to clear the matter up if ever I got back to
England alive; and if wrong had been done to that old man, or to anybody else,
in father's name (without father's knowledge), to make restoration for his
sake.

     All that day I neither saw nor heard more of the supercargo.  I passed a
miserable night of it, after writing my memorandum, fighting with my
loneliness and my own thoughts.  The remembrance of those words in father's
will, saying that the five hundred pound was money which he had once run a
risk with, kept putting into my mind suspicious I was ashamed of.  When
daylight came, I almost felt as if I was going to have the Horrors too, and
got up to walk them off, if possible, in the morning air.

     I kept on the northern side of the island, walking backward and forward
for an hour or more.  Then I returned to my cavern; and the first thing I saw,
on getting near it, was other footsteps than mine marked on the sand.  I
suspected at once that the supercargo had been lurking about watching me
instead of going back to his own side; and that, in my absence, he had been at
his thieving tricks again.

     The stores were what I looked at first.  The food he had not touched; but
the water he had either drunk or wasted, - there was not half a pint of it
left.  The medicine-chest was open, and the bottle with the hartshorn was
gone.  When I looked next for the pistol, which I had loaded with powder and
shot for the chance of bird-shooting that never came, the pistol was gone too.
After making this last discovery, there was but one thing to be done, -namely
to find out where he was, and to take the pistol away from him.

     I set off to search first on the western side.  It was a beautiful,
clear, calm, sunshiny morning; and as I crossed the island, looking out on my
left hand and my right I stopped on a sudden, with my heart in my mouth, as
the saying is.  Something caught my eye, far out at sea, in the northwest.  I
looked again, - and there as true as the heavens above me, I saw a ship, with
the sunlight on her top-sails, hull down, on the water-line in the offing.

     All thought of the errand I was bent on went out of my mind in an
instant.  I ran as fast as my weak legs would carry me to the northern beach;
gathered up the broken wood which was still lying there plentifully, and, with
the help of the dry scrub, lit the largest fire I had made yet.  This was the
only signal it was in my power to make that there were men on the island.  The
fire in the bright daylight would never be visible to the ship; but the smoke
curling up from it in the clear sky might be seen, if they had a look-out at
the mast-head.

     While I was still feeding the fire, and so rapt up in doing it that I had
neither eyes nor ears for anything else, I heard the supercargo's voice, on a
sudden, at my back.  He had stolen on me along the sand.  When I faced him he
was swinging his arms about in the air, and saying to himself, over and over
again, "I see the ship!  I see the ship!"

     After a little he came close up to me.  By the look of him he had been
drinking the hartshorn, and it had strung him up a bit, body and mind, for the
time.  He kept his right hand behind him, as if he was hiding something.  I
suspected that "something" to be the pistol I was in search of.

     "Will the ship come here?" says he.

     "Yes, if they see the smoke," says I, keeping my eye on him.

     He waited a bit, frowning suspiciously, and looking hard at me all the
time.

     "What did I say to you yesterday?" he asked.

     "What I have got written down here," I made answer, smacking my hand over
the writing-case in my breast-pocket; "and what I mean to put to the proof, if
the ship sees us and we get back to England."

     He whipped his right hand round from behind him like lightning, and
snapped the pistol at me.  It missed fire.  I wrenched it from him in a
moment, and was just within one hair's breadth of knocking him on the head
with the butt-end afterwards.  I lifted my hand, - then thought better, and
dropped it again.

     "No," says I, fixing my eyes on him steadily: "I'll wait till the ship
finds us."

     He slunk away from me; and, as he slunk, looked, hard into the fire. He
stopped a minute so, thinking to himself; then he looked back at me again,
with some mad mischief in him, that twinkled through his blue spectacles, and
grinned on his dry black lips.

     "The ship shall never find you," he said.  With which words he turned
himself about towards his own side of the island, and left me.

     He only meant that saying to be a threat, - but, bird of ill-omen that he
was, it turned out as good as a prophecy!  All my hard work with the fire
proved work in vain; all hope was quenched in me long before the embers I had
set light to were burned out.  Whether the smoke was seen or not from the
vessel is more than I can tell.  I only know that she filled away on the other
tack, not ten minutes after the supercargo left me.  In less than an hour's
time the last glimpse of the bright top-sails had vanished out of view.

     I went back to my cavern, - which was now likelier than ever to be my
grave as well.  In that hot climate, with all the moisture on the island dried
up, with not quite so much as a tumblerful of fresh water left, with my
strength wasted by living on half-rations of food, - two days more, at most,
would see me out.  It was hard enough for a man at my age, with all that I had
left at home to make life precious, to die such a death as was now before me.
It was harder still to have the sting of death sharpened - as I felt it then -
by what had just happened between the supercargo and myself.  There was no
hope now that the wanderings, the day before, had more falsehood than truth in
them.  The secret he had let out was plainly true enough and serious enough to
have scared him into attempting my life, rather than let me keep possession of
it, when there was a chance of the ship rescuing us.  That secret had father's
good name mixed up with it, - and here was I, instead of clearing the
villanous darkness from off of it, carrying it with me, black as ever, into my
grave.

     It was out of the horror I felt at doing that, and out of the yearning of
my heart toward you, Alfred, when I thought of it, that the notion came to
comfort me, of writing the Message at the top of the paper, and of committing
it in the bottle to the sea.  Drowning men, they say, catch at straws, - and
the straw of comfort I caught at was the one chance in ten thousand that the
Message might float till it was picked up, and that it might reach you.  My
mind might, or might not, have been failing me by this time, - but it is true,
either way, that I did feel comforted when I had emptied one of the two
bottles left in the medicine chest, had put the paper inside, had tied the
stopper carefully over with the oil-skin, and had laid the whole by in my
pocket, ready, when I felt my time coming, to drop into the sea.  I was rid of
the secret, I thought to myself; and, if it pleased God, I was rid of it,
Alfred, to you.

     The day waned, and the sun set, all cloudless and golden, in a dead calm.
There was not a ripple anywhere on the long oily heaving of the sea.  Before
night came I strengthened myself with a better meal than usual as to food, -
for where was the use of keeping meat and biscuit when I had not water enough
to last along with them?  When the stars came out and the moon rose I gathered
the wood together and lit the signal-fire, according to custom, on the beach
outside my cavern.  I had no hope from it, - but the fire was company to me;
the looking into it quieted my thoughts, and the crackling of it was a relief
in the silence.  I don't know why it was, but the breathless stillness of that
night had something awful in it, and went near to frightening me.

     The moon got high in the heavens, and the light of her lay all in a flood
on the sand before me, on the rocks that jutted out from it, and on the calm
sea beyond.  I was thinking of Margaret - wondering if the moon was shining on
our little bay at Steepways and if she was looking at it too, - when I saw a
man's shadow steal over the white of the sand.  He was lurking near me again!
In a minute he came into view.  The moonshine glinted on his blue spectacles,
and glimmered on his bald head.  He stopped as he passed the rocks and looked
about for a loose stone; he found a large one, and came straight with it on
tiptoe up to the fire.  I showed myself to him on a sudden, in the red of the
flame, with the pistol in my hand.  He dropped the stone and shrank back at
the sight of it. When he was close to the sea he stopped, and screamed out at
me, "The ship's coming!  The ship's coming!  The ship shall never find you!"
The notion of the ship, and that other notion of killing me before help came
to us, seemed never to have left him.  When he turned, and went back by the
way he had come, he was still shouting out those same words.  For a quarter of
an hour or more I heard him, till the silence swallowed up his ravings, and
led me back again to my thoughts of home.

     Those thoughts kept with me till the moon was on the wane.  It was darker
now, and stiller than ever.  I had not fed the signal-fire for half an hour or
more, and had roused myself up, at the mouth of the cavern, to do it, when I
saw the dying gleams of moonshine over the sea on either side of me change
colour and turn red.  Black shadows, as from low-flying clouds, swept after
each other over the deepening redness.  The air grew hot, - a sound came
nearer and nearer, from above me and behind me, like the rush of wind and the
roar of water both together, and both far off.  I ran out on the sand and
looked back.  The island was on fire!

     On fire at the point of it opposite to me, - on fire in one great sheet
of flame that stretched right across the island, and bore down on me steadily
before the light westerly wind which was blowing at the time. Only one hand
could have kindled that terrible flame, - the hand of the lost wretch who had
left me, with the mad threat on his lips and the murderous notion of burning
me out of my refuge, working in his crazy brain.  On his side of the island
(where the fire had begun), the dry grass and scrub grew all round the little
hollow in the earth which I had left to him for his place of refuge.  If he
had had a thousand lives to lose he would have lost that thousand already!

     Having nothing to feed on but the dry scrub, the flame swept forward with
such a frightful swiftness that I had barely time, after mastering my own
scattered senses, to turn back into the cavern to get my last drink of water
and my last mouthful of food, before I heard the fiery scorch crackling over
the thatched roof which my own hands had raised.  I ran across the beach to
the spur of rock which jutted out into the sea, and there crouched down on the
farthest edge I could reach to.  There was nothing for the fire to lay hold of
between me and the top of the island bank.  I was far enough away to be out of
the lick of the flames, and low enough away to be out of the lick of the
flames and low enough down to get air under the sweep of the smoke.  You may
well wonder why, with death by starvation threatening me close at hand, I
should have schemed and struggled as I did to save myself from a quicker death
by suffocation in the smoke.  I can only answer to that, that I wonder too, -
but so it was.

     The flames ate their way to the edge of the bank, and lapped over it as
if they longed to lick me up.  The heat scorched nearer than I had thought,
and the smoke poured lower and thicker.  I lay down sick and weak on the rock,
with my face over the calm, cool water.  When I ventured to lift myself up
again, the top of the island was of a ruby red, the smoke rose slowly in
little streams, and the air above was quivering with the heat.  While I looked
at it I felt a kind of surging and singing in my head, and a deadly faintness
and coldness crept all over me.  I took the bottle that held the Message from
my pocket, and dropped it into the sea, - then crawled a little way back over
the rocks, and fell forward on them before I could get as far as the sand.
The last I remember was trying to say my prayers, - losing the words, - losing
my sight, - losing the sense of where I was, - losing everything.

     The day was breaking again when I was roused up by feeling rough hands on
me.  Naked savages - some on the rocks, some in the water, some in two long
canoes - were clamouring and crowding about on all sides. They bound me and
took me off at once to one of the canoes.  The other kept company, and both
were paddled back to that high land which I had seen in the south.  Death had
passed me by once more, and Captivity had come in its place.

     The story of my life among the savages, having no concern with the matter
now in hand, may be passed by here in few words.  They had seen the fire on
the island; and paddling over to reconnoitre, had found me.  Not one of them
had ever set eyes on a white man before.  I was taken away to be shown about
among them for a curiosity.  When they were tired of showing me, they spared
my life, finding my knowledge and general handiness as a civilized man useful
to them in various ways.  I lost all count of time in my captivity, and can
only guess now that it lasted more than one year and less than two.  I made
two attempts to escape, each time in a canoe, and was balked in both.  Nobody
at home in England would ever, as I believe, have seen me again if an
outward-bound vessel had not touched at the little desert island for fresh
water.  Finding none there she came on to the territory of the savages (which
was an island too). When they took me on board I looked little better than a
savage myself, and could hardly talk my own language.  By the help of the
kindness shown to me I was right again by the time we spoke the first ship
homeward-bound.  To that vessel I was transferred; and in her I worked my
passage back to Falmouth.