The Wreck of the Golden Mary

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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.