_ CHAPTER XIX. OF A GOOD PLAN THAT WENT WRONG WITH ME
For a while I was so stirred by the enthusiasm which my discovery aroused in me that I had no room in my mind for any other thoughts. But at last, as I still stood pondering in the _Wasp's_ cabin, I became aware that the daylight was fading into darkness; and as I realized what that meant for me my thoughts came back suddenly to myself, and then all my enthusiasm ebbed away.
I came out upon the deck again, but leaving everything as I had found it--my momentary impulse to lift the flag having vanished as I felt how fit it was that this dead battle-captain should rest on undisturbed where his men had laid him beneath the colors that he had died for; and I was glad to find when I got into the open that a good deal of daylight still remained. But it was so far gone, and was waning so rapidly, that I saw that I had little chance of getting back to the _Hurst Castle_ before nightfall; and that the most that I could hope for was to make a start in the right direction--and perhaps to find a wreck to sleep on that had food and water aboard of it, and thence take up my search again the next day.
Yet the dread was strong upon me, as I looked around upon the wrecks among which the _Wasp_ was bedded, that I might not only be unable to find the _Hurst Castle_ again, but ever to find my way across that tangle to the outer edges of it--where only was it possible that ships on which were provisions fit for eating would be found. The very fact that the _Wasp_ had settled into her position more than fourscore years back made it certain that she was deep in the labyrinth; and the strange old-fashioned look of the craft surrounding her showed me that I should have to go far before finding a vessel wrecked in recent times.
But these disheartening thoughts I crushed down as well as I could, yet not making much of it; and as trying to go back by the way that I had come to the _Wasp_ would not serve any good purpose--even supposing that I could have managed it, which was not likely--I went on beyond her on a new course: taking a longish jump from her quarter-rail and landing on the deck of a clumsy little ill-shapen brig, with a high-built square stern and a high-built bow that was pretty nearly square too. She was Dutch, I fancy, and a merchant vessel; but she carried a little battery of brass six-pounders, and had also a half dozen pederaros set along her rail. And by her carrying these old-fashioned swivel-guns--which proved that she had got her armament not much later than the middle of the last century--and by the general look of her, I knew that she was an older vessel even than the _Wasp_.
This observation, and the reflection growing out of it that the deeper I went into the Sargasso Sea the older must be the craft bedded in it--since that great dead fleet is recruited constantly by new wrecks drifting in upon its outer edges from all ways seaward--put into my head what seemed to me to be a very reasonable plan for finding my way back to the _Hurst Castle_ again; or, at least, to some other newly come in hulk on which there would be fresh water and sound food. And this was to shape my course by considering attentively the look of each wreck that I came aboard of, and the look of those surrounding it, and by then going forward to whichever one of them seemed to be of the most modern build.
As the first step in carrying out my plan--and it seemed to be such a good plan that I felt almost light-hearted over it--I got up on the rail of the old brig and jumped back to the less-old _Wasp_ again: landing in her main-channels, and thence easily boarding her by scrambling up what was left of the chains. But in taking my next step I had no choice in the matter, as only one other vessel was in touch with the sloop--a heavily-built little schooner that had the look of being quite as old as the brig which I had just left. And her age was so evident as I came aboard of her--having crossed the deck of the _Wasp_ hastily, picking my way among the scattered bones--that of a sudden my faith in my fine plan for getting out of the tangle began to wane.
In a general way, of course, the conclusion which I had arrived at was a sound one. Broadly speaking, it was certain that could I pass in a straight line from the centre to the circumference of that vast assemblage of wrecks I constantly would find vessels of newer build; and so at last, upon the outermost fringe, would come to the wrecks of ships belonging to my own day. But one weak point in my calculations was my inability to hold to a straight line, or to anything like one--because I had to advance from one wreck to another as they happened to touch or to be within jumping distance of each other, and therefore went crookedly upon my course and often fairly had to double on it. And another weak point was that the sea in its tempests recognizes no order of seniority, but destroys in the same breath of storm ships just beginning their lives upon it and ships which have withstood its ragings for a hundred years: so that I very well might find--as I actually did find in the case of the _Wasp_--a comparatively modern-built vessel lying hemmed in by ancient craft, survivals of obsolete types, which had lingered so long upon the ocean that in their lives as in their deaths they merged and blended the present and the past.
Thus a check was put upon my plan at the very outset; yet in a stolid sort of way--knowing that to give it up entirely would be to bring despair upon me, for I could not think of a better one--I tried still to hold by it: going on from the clumsy little old schooner to that one of two vessels lying beyond her which I fancied, though both of them belonged to a long past period, was the more modern-looking in her build. And so I continued to go onward over a dozen craft of one sort or another, holding by my rule--or trying to believe that I was holding by it, for all of the wrecks which I crossed were of an antique type--and now and then being left with no chance for choosing by finding open to me only a single way. And all this while the daylight was leaving me--the sun having gone down a ruddy globe beyond the forest of wrecks westward, and heavy purple shadows having begun to close down upon me through the low-hanging haze.
The imminence of night-fall made clear to me that I had no chance whatever of getting out from among those long-dead ships before the next morning; and this certainty was the harder to bear because I was desperately hungry--more than six hours having passed since I had eaten anything--and thirsty too: though my thirst, because of the dampness of the haze I suppose, was not very severe. But the belief that I really was advancing toward the coast of my strange floating continent and that I should find both food and drink when I got there, made me press forward; comforting myself as well as I could with the reflection that even though I did have to keep a hungry and thirsty vigil among those old withered hulks I yet should be the nearer, by every one of them that I put behind me that night, to the freshly come in wrecks on the coast line--where I made sure of finding a breakfast on the following day. Moreover, I knew how forlornly miserable I should be the moment that I lost the excitement of scrambling and climbing and just sat down there among the ancient dead, with the darkness closing over me, to wait for the slow coming of another day. And my dread of that desolate loneliness urged me to push forward while the least bit of daylight was left by which to see my way.
It was ticklish work, as the dusk deepened, getting from one wreck to another; and at last--after nearly going down into the weed between two of them, because of a rotten belaying-pin that I caught at breaking in my hand--I had to resign myself to giving over until morning any farther attempt to advance. But I was cheered by the thought that I had got on a good way in the hour or more that had gone since I had left the _Wasp_ behind me; and so I tried to make the best of things as I cast around me for some sheltered nook on the deck of the vessel I had come aboard of--a little clumsy old brig--where my night might be passed. As to going below, either into the cabin or the forecastle, I could not bring myself to it; for my heart failed me at the thought of what I might touch in the darkness there, and my mind--sore and troubled by all that I had passed through, and by the dim dread filling it--certainly would have crowded those black depths with grisly phantoms until I very well might have gone mad.
And so, as I say, I cast about the deck of the brig for some nook that would shelter me from the dampness while I did my best to sleep away into forgetfulness my hunger and my thirst; but was troubled all the while that I was making my round of investigation by a haunting feeling that I had been on that same deck only a little while before. Growing stronger and stronger, this feeling became so insistent that I could not rest for it; and presently compelled me to try to quiet it by taking a look at the wreck next beyond the brig to see if I recognized that too--as would be likely, since I must have crossed it also, had I really come that way.
I did not try to board this adjoining wreck, but only clambered up on the rail of the brig so that I could look well at it--and when I got my look I came more nearly to breaking down completely than I had done at any time since I had been cast overboard from the _Golden Hind_, For there, showing faintly in the gloom below me, was the gun-set deck of a war-ship, and over the deck dimly-gleaming bones were scattered--and in that moment I knew that the whole of my wandering had been but a circle, and that I was come back again at the weary ending of it to the _Wasp_.
But what crushed the heart of me was not that my afternoon of toil had been wasted, but the strong conviction--from which I no longer saw any way of escaping--that I had strayed too deep into that hideous sea-labyrinth ever to find my way out of it, and that I must die there slowly for lack of water and of food. _