The Ocean Waifs Part 33

Upon this was suspended, as upon a spit, so many slices of shark-meat as could be accommodated with room, and when all was arranged, a "taper"

was handed up from below, and the wick set on fire.

The tarry strands caught like tinder; and soon after a fierce bright blaze was seen rising several feet above the back of the _cachalot_,-- causing the shark-steaks to frizzle and fry, and promising in a very short s.p.a.ce of time to "do them to a turn."

Any one who could have witnessed the spectacle from distance, and not understanding its nature, might have fancied that the _whale was on fire_!

CHAPTER SIXTY SIX.

THE BIG RAFT.

While the strange phenomenon of a blazing fire upon the back of a whale was being exhibited to the eyes of ocean-birds and ocean-fishes,--all doubtless wondering what it meant,--another and very different spectacle was occurring scarce twenty miles from the spot,--of course also upon the surface of the ocean.

If in the former there was something that might be called comic, there was nothing of this in the latter. On the contrary, it was a true tragedy,--a drama of death.

The stage upon which it was being enacted was a platform of planks and spars, rudely united together,--in short, a raft. The _dramatis persona_ were men,--all men; although it might have required some stretch of imagination,--aided by a little acquaintanceship with the circ.u.mstances that had placed them upon that raft,--to have been certain that they were human beings. A stranger to them, looking upon them in reality,--or upon a picture, giving a faithful representation of them,-- might have doubted their humanity, and mistaken them for _fiends_. No one could have been blamed for such a misconception.

If human beings in shape, and so in reality, they were fiends in aspect, and not far from it in mental conformation. Even in appearance they were more like skeletons than men. One actually was a skeleton,--not a living skeleton, but a corpse, clean-stripped of its flesh. The ensanguined bones, with some fragments of the cartilage still adhering to them, showed that the despoliation had been recent. The skeleton was not perfect. Some of the bones were absent. A few were lying near on the timbers of the raft, and a few others might have been seen in places where it was horrible to behold them!

The raft was an oblong platform of some twenty feet in length by about fifteen in width. It was constructed out of pieces of broken masts and spars of a ship, upon which was supported an irregular sheeting of planks, the fragments of bulwarks, hatches, cabin-doors that had been wrested from their hinges, lids of tea-chests, coops, and a few other articles,--such as form the paraphernalia of movables on board a ship.

There was a large hogshead with two or three small barrels upon the raft; and around its edge were lashed several empty casks, serving as buoys to keep it above water. A single spar stood up out of its centre, or "midships," to which was rigged--in a very slovenly manner--a large lateen sail,--either the spanker or spritsail of a ship, or the mizzen topsail of a bark.

Around the "step" of the mast a variety of other objects might have been seen: such as oars, handspikes, pieces of loose boards, some tangled coils of rope, an axe or two, half a dozen tin pots and "tots,"--such as are used by sailors,--a quant.i.ty of shark-bones clean picked, with two or three other bones, like those already alluded to, and whose size and form told them to be the _tibia_ of a human skeleton.

Between twenty and thirty men were moving amid this miscellaneous collection,--not all moving: for they were in every conceivable att.i.tude, of repose as of action. Some were seated, some lying stretched, some standing, some staggering,--as if reeling under the influence of intoxication, or too feeble to support their bodies in an erect att.i.tude. It was not any rocking on the part of the raft that was producing these eccentric movements. The sea was perfectly quiescent, and the rude embarkation rested upon it like a log.

The cause might have been discovered near the bottom of the mast, where stood a barrel or cask of medium size, from which proceeded an exhalation, telling its contents to be rum.

The staggering skeletons were _drunk_!

It was not that noisy intoxication that tells of recent indulgence, but rather of the nervous wreck which succeeds it; and the words heard, instead of being the loud banterings of inebriated men, were more like the ravings and gibbering of maniacs. No wonder: since they who uttered them _were_ mad,--mad with _mania potu_! If they were ever to recover, it would be the last time they were likely to be afflicted by the same disease,--at least on board that embarkation. Not from any virtuous resolve on their parts, but simply from the fact that the cause of their insanity no longer existed.

The rum-cask was as dry inside as out. There was no longer a drop of the infernal liquor on the raft; no more spirit of any kind to produce fresh drunkenness or renewed _delirium tremens_!

The madmen were not heeded by the others; but allowed to totter about, and give speech to their incoherent mumblings!--sometimes diversified by yells, or peals of mania laughter,--always thickly interlarded with oaths and other blasphemous utterances.

It was only when disturbing the repose of some one less _exalted_ than themselves, or when two of them chanced to come into collision, that a scene would ensue,--in some instances extending to almost every individual on the raft, and ending by one or other of the delirious disputants getting "chucked" into the sea, and having a swim before recovering foothold on the frail embarkation. This the ducked individual would be certain to do. Drunk as he might have been, and maudlin as he might be, his instincts were never so benumbed as to render him regardless of self-preservation. Even from out his haggard eyes still gleamed enough of intelligence to tell that those dark triangular objects, moving in scores around the raft, and cutting the water, so swift and sheer, were the dorsal fins of the dreaded sharks.

Each one was a sight that, to a sailor's eye, even when "blind drunk,"

brings habitual dread.

The _douche_, and the fright attending it, would usually restore his reason to the delirious individual,--or, at all events, would have the effect of restoring tranquillity upon the raft,--soon after to be disturbed by some scene of like, or perhaps more terrible, activity.

The reader, unacquainted with the history of this raft and the people upon it, may require some information concerning them. A few words must suffice for both.

As already stated, at the beginning of our narrative, a raft was constructed out of such timbers as could be detached from the slave-bark _Pandora_,--after that vessel had caught fire, and previous to her blowing up. Upon this embarkation the slaver's crew had escaped, leaving her _cargo_ to perish,--some by the explosion, some by drowning, and not a few by the teeth of sharks. The _Pandora's_ captain, along with five others,--including the mates and carpenter,--had stolen away with the gig. As this was the only boat found available in the fearful crisis of the conflagration, the remainder of the crew had betaken themselves to the large raft, hurriedly constructed for the occasion.

As already related, s...o...b..ll and the Portuguese girl were the only individuals on board the _Pandora_ who had remained by the wreck, or rather among its _debris_. There the Coromantee, by great courage and cunning, had succeeded not only in keeping himself and his _protege_ afloat, but in establishing a chance for sustaining existence, calculated to last for some days. It is known also that Ben Brace with _his protege_, having been informed by the captain's parting speech that there was a barrel of gunpowder aboard the burning bark, apprehensive of the explosion, had silently constructed a little raft of his own; which, after being launched from under the bows of the slaver, he had brought _en rapport_ with the "big raft," and thereto attached it. This "tender," still carrying the English sailor and the boy, had been afterwards cut loose from its larger companion in the dead hour of night, and permitted to fall far into the wake. The reason of this defection was simply to save little William from being eaten up by the ex-crew of the _Pandora_, then reduced to a famished condition,--if we may use the phrase, screwed up to the standard of anthropophagy.

Since the hour in which the two rafts became separated from each other, the reader is acquainted, in all its minute details, with the history of the lesser: how it joined issue with the embarkation that carried the ex-cook and his _protege_; how the union with the latter produced a cross between the two,--afterwards yclept the _Catamaran_; with all the particulars of the _Catamaran's_ voyage, up to the time when she became moored alongside the carca.s.s of the _cachalot_; and for several days after.

During this time, the "big raft" carrying the crew of tin burnt bark,-- being out of sight, may also have escaped from the reader's mind. Both it and its occupants were still in existence. Not all of them, it is true, but the greater number; and among these, the most prominent in strength of body, energy of mind; and wickedness of disposition.

It is scarce necessary to say, that the raft now introduced as lying upon the ocean some twenty miles from the dead _cachalot_ was that which some days before had parted from the _Pandora_, or that the fiendish forms that occupied it were the remnant of the _Pandora's_ crew.

These were not all there: nearly a score of them were absent. The absence of the captain, with five others who had accompanied him in his gig, has been explained. The ex-cook, the English sailor and sailor-boy, with the cabin pa.s.senger, Lilly Lalee, have also been accounted for; but there were several others aboard the big raft, on its first starting "to sea," that were no longer to be seen amidst the crowd still occupying this ungainly embarkation. Half a dozen,--perhaps more,--seemed to be missing. Their absence might have appeared mysterious, to anyone who had not been kept "posted" up in the particulars of the ill-directed cruise through which the raft had been pa.s.sing; though the skeleton above described, and the dissevered _tibia_ scattered around, might have given a clew to their disappearance,--at least, to anyone initiated into the shifts and extremities of starvation.

To those of less experience,--or less quick comprehension,--it may be necessary to repeat the conversation which was being carried on upon the raft,--at the moment when it is thus reintroduced to the notice of the reader. A correct report of this will satisfactorily explain why its original crew had been reduced, from over thirty, to the number of six-and-twenty, exclusive of the skeleton!

CHAPTER SIXTY SEVEN.

A CREW OF CANNIBALS.

"_Allons_!" cried a black-bearded man, in whose emaciated frame it was not easy to recognise the once corpulent bully of the slave-ship,--the Frenchman, Le Gros. "_Allons! messieurs_! It's time to try fortune again. _Sacre_! we must eat, or die!"

The question may be asked, What were these men to eat? There appeared to be no food upon the raft. There _was_ none,--not a morsel of any kind that might properly be called meat for man. Nor had there been, ever since the second day after the departure of the raft from the side of the burning bark. A small box of sea-biscuits, that, when distributed, gave only two to each man, was all that had been saved in their hurried retreat from the decks of the _Pandora_. These had disappeared in a day. They had brought away water in greater abundance, and caught some since in their shirts, and on the spread sail,--nearly after the same fashion and in the same rain-storm that had afforded the well-timed supply to Ben Brace and his _protege_.

But the stock derived from both sources was on the eve of being exhausted. Only a small ration or two to each man remained in the cask; but thirsty as most of them might be, they were suffering still more from the kindred appet.i.te of hunger.

What did Le Gros mean when he said they must eat? What food was there on the raft, to enable them to avoid the terrible alternative appended to his proposal,--"eat, or die"! What _had_ kept them from dying: since it was now many days, almost weeks, since they had swallowed the last morsel of biscuit so sparingly distributed amongst them?

The answer to all these interrogatories is one and the some. It is too fearful to be p.r.o.nounced,--awful even to think of!

The clean-stripped skeleton lying upon the raft, and which was clearly that of a human being; the bones scattered about,--some of them, as already observed, held in hand, and in such fashion as to show the horrid use that was being made of them,--left no doubt as to the nature of the food upon which the hungering wretches had been subsisting.

This, and the flesh of a small shark, which they had succeeded in luring alongside, and killing with the blow of a handspike, had been their only provision since parting with the _Pandora_. There were sharks enough around them now. A score, at the very least, might have been quartering the sea, within sight of the raft; but these monsters, strange to say, were so shy, that not one of them would approach near enough to allow them an opportunity of capturing it! Every attempt to take them had proved unsuccessful. Such of the crew as kept sober had been trying for days. Some were even at that moment engaged with hook and line, angling for the ferocious fish,--their hooks floating far out in the water, baited with _human flesh_.

It was only the mechanical continuation of a scheme that had long since proved to be of no avail,--a sort of despairing struggle against improbability. The sharks had taken the alarm; perhaps from observing the fate of that one of their number that had gone too near the odd embarkation; or, perhaps, warned by some mysterious instinct, that, sooner or later, they would make a grand banquet on those who were so eager to feast upon them.

In any case, no sharks had been taken, or were likely to be taken; and once more the eyes of the famishing castaways were wolfishly turned upon one another, while their thoughts reverted to that horrible alternative that was to save them from starvation.

Le Gros--on board the raft, as upon the deck of the slave-ship--still held a sort of fatal ascendency over his comrades; and with Ben Brace no longer to oppose his despotic propensities, he had established over his fellow-skeletons a species of arbitrary rule.

His conduct had all along been guided by no more regard for fair-play than was just necessary to keep his subordinates from breaking out into open mutiny; and among these the weaker ones fared even worse than their fellows, bad as that was.

A few of the stronger,--who formed a sort of bodyguard to the bully, and were ready to stand up for him in case of extremity,--shared his ascendency over the rest; and to these were distributed larger rations of water, along with the more choice morsels of their horrid food.

This partiality had more than once led to scenes, that promised to end in bloodshed; and but for this occasional show of resistance, Le Gros and his party might have established a tyranny that would have given them full power over the _lives_ of their feebler companions.

Things were fast tending in this direction,--merging, as it were, into absolute monarchy,--a monarchy of "cannibals," of which Le Gros himself would be "king." It had not yet, however, quite come to that,--at least when it became a question of life and death. When the necessity arose of finding a fresh victim for their horrible but necessary sacrifice, there was still enough republicanism left among the wretches to influence the decision in a just and equitable manner, and cause the selection to be made by lot. When it comes to crises like these,--to questions of life and death,--men must yield up their opposition to the _ballot_, and acknowledge its equity.

Le Gros and his cruel bodyguard would have opposed it had they been strong enough,--as do equally cruel politicians who are strong enough,-- but the bully still doubted the strength of his party. A proposal so atrocious had beep made, in the case of little William, at the very outset, and had met with but slight opposition. Had it not been for the brave English sailor, the lad would certainly have fallen a sacrifice to the horrid appet.i.tes of these horrid men. With one of themselves, however, the case was different. Each had a few adherents, who would not have submitted to such an arbitrary cruelty; and Le Gros was influenced by the fear of a general "skrimmage," in which more than one life,--among the rest perhaps his own,--might be forfeited. The time for such a high-handed measure had not yet arrived; and when it came to the question of "Who dies next?" it was still found necessary to resort to the _ballot_.

That question was once more propounded,--now for the third time,--Le Gros himself acting as the spokesman. No one said anything in reply, or made any sign of being opposed to an answer being given. On the contrary, all appeared to yield, if not a cheerful, at least a tacit a.s.sent to what they all knew to be meant for a proposal,--knowing also its fearful nature and consequences.