I. IN THE DINGEY OF THE "LADY VAIN."
I DO not
propose to add anything to what has already been written concerning the loss of the Lady Vain. As everyone knows, she collided with a
derelict when ten days out from Callao. The longboat, with seven of the
crew, was picked up eighteen days after by H. M. gunboat Myrtle, and the story of their terrible privations has become quite as well known as the far more
horrible Medusa case. But I have to add to the published story of the Lady Vain another, possibly as
horrible and far
stranger. It has
hitherto been
supposed that the four men who were in the dingey perished, but this is incorrect. I have the best of
evidence for this
assertion: I was one of the four men.
But in the first place I must
state that there never were four men in the dingey,-the number was three. Constans, who was "seen by the captain to jump into the
gig,"{1} luckily for us and unluckily for himself did not reach us. He came down out of the
tangle of ropes under the stays of the smashed bowsprit, some small rope caught his heel as he let go, and he hung for a
moment head downward, and then fell and struck a block or
spar floating in the water. We pulled towards him, but he never came up.
{1} Daily News, March 17, 1887.
I say luckily for us he did not reach us, and I
might almost say luckily for himself; for we had only a small
beaker of water and some soddened ship's biscuits with us, so sudden had been the
alarm, so unprepared the ship for any
disaster. We
thought the people on the
launch would be better provisioned (though it seems they were not), and we tried to
hail them. They could not have heard us, and the next morning when the
drizzle cleared,-which was not until past
midday,-we could see nothing of them. We could not stand up to look about us, because of the pitching of the boat. The two other men who had escaped so far with me were a man named Helmar, a
passenger like myself, and a seaman whose name I don't know,-a short
sturdy man, with a
stammer.
We drifted famishing, and, after our water had come to an end,
tormented by an
intolerable thirst, for eight days altogether. After the second day the sea subsided slowly to a glassy calm. It is quite
impossible for the
ordinary reader to
imagine those eight days. He has not, luckily for himself, anything in his
memory to
imagine with. After the first day we said little to one another, and lay in our places in the boat and stared at the
horizon, or watched, with eyes that grew larger and more
haggard every day, the
misery and weakness gaining upon our companions. The sun became
pitiless. The water ended on the fourth day, and we were already thinking
strange things and saying them with our eyes; but it was, I think, the sixth before Helmar gave voice to the thing we had all been thinking. I
remember our voices were dry and
thin, so that we
bent towards one another and spared our words. I stood out against it with all my
might, was rather for scuttling the boat and perishing together among the sharks that followed us; but when Helmar said that if his
proposal was accepted we should have drink, the sailor came round to him.
I would not draw lots however, and in the night the sailor whispered to Helmar again and again, and I sat in the bows with my clasp-knife in my hand, though I
doubt if I had the stuff in me to fight; and in the morning I agreed to Helmar's
proposal, and we handed halfpence to find the odd man. The lot fell upon the sailor; but he was the strongest of us and would not
abide by it, and attacked Helmar with his hands. They grappled together and almost stood up. I crawled along the boat to them, intending to help Helmar by grasping the sailor's leg; but the sailor stumbled with the swaying of the boat, and the two fell upon the
gunwale and rolled
overboard together. They sank like stones. I
remember laughing at that, and wondering why I laughed. The laugh caught me
suddenly like a thing from without.
I lay across one of the thwarts for I know not how long, thinking that if I had the
strength I would drink sea-water and
madden myself to die quickly. And even as I lay there I saw, with no more
interest than if it had been a picture, a
sail come up towards me over the sky-line. My
mind must have been wandering, and yet I
remember all that happened, quite distinctly. I
remember how my head swayed with the seas, and the
horizon with the
sail above it danced up and down; but I also
remember as distinctly that I had a
persuasion that I was dead, and that I
thought what a
jest it was that they should come too late by such a little to catch me in my body.
For an endless
period, as it seemed to me, I lay with my head on the
thwart watching the
schooner (she was a little ship,
schooner-rigged
fore and
aft) come up out of the sea. She kept tacking to and fro in a widening
compass, for she was sailing dead into the wind. It never entered my head to
attempt to
attract attention, and I do not
remember anything distinctly after the
sight of her side until I found myself in a little cabin
aft. There's a
dim half-
memory of being lifted up to the gangway, and of a big round
countenance covered with freckles and surrounded with red hair staring at me over the bulwarks. I also had a disconnected
impression of a dark face, with eyes, close to
mine; but that I
thought was a nightmare, until I met it again. I
fancy I
recollect some stuff being poured in between my teeth; and that is all.