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In the Sargasso Sea: A Novel, a novel by Thomas A. Janvier |
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Chapter 32. I Fall In With A Fellow-Prisoner |
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_ CHAPTER XXXII. I FALL IN WITH A FELLOW-PRISONER When I had finished my breakfast the next morning I faced the worst thing which I had been forced to face since I had been cast prisoner into the Sargasso Sea: a whole day of idleness without hope. Until then there had not been an hour--save when I was asleep--that I had not been doing something which in some way I had hoped would better my condition temporarily, or would tend toward my deliverance. But that morning I was without such spurs to effort and there was absolutely nothing for me to do. My condition could not be improved by making my home on another vessel; it was doubtful, indeed, if in all the wreck-pack I could find a home so comfortable and so abundantly stocked with the best provisions as I had found aboard of the _Ville de Saint Remy_. As for working farther for my deliverance, I had set that behind me after my experience during the two preceding days. And so I brought a steamer-chair out on the deck and sat in it smoking, idle and hopeless, gazing straight out before me with a dull steadfastness over the very gently undulating surface of the weed-covered sea. After a while, tiring of sitting still, I began to pace the deck slowly; and I was so heavy with my sorrow that I could not think clearly, but had only in my mind a confused feeling that I was taking the first of a series of walks such as wild animals imprisoned take endlessly back and forth behind the bars that shut them in. And from this I went on to thinking, still in the same confused way, that the wild animals at least were not outcast in their captivity--having living people and living beasts around them, and the pleasure of hearing living sounds--while one of the worst things about my prison was the absolute dead silence that hung over it like a dismal cloud. And perhaps it was because my thoughts happened at that moment to be set to take notice of such matters that I fancied I heard a very faint sound of scratching and an instant later a still fainter little cry. I was standing just then close to the water-line on the deck forward, beside a covered hatch that seemed to lead to what had been the quarters of the crew; and it was from beneath this hatch, I was certain, that the sounds came. Slight though the noise was, it greatly startled me; and at the same time it aroused in me the strangely-thrilling hope that there possibly might be a living man still aboard of the steamer and that I would be no longer horribly alone. Yet I would not suffer myself too much to give room to this happy hope, for the little faint scratching--which I heard again presently--was not the sort of noise that a man shut in would be likely to make; nor did the little plaintive sound seem like a human cry. But the matter was one to be investigated in a hurry, and with an energy quite astonishing, in comparison with my lassitude of a moment before, I got the hatch open and leaned down it, listening; and then I heard the scratching so plainly that I hurried down the stair. The between-decks was well enough lighted by a good-sized skylight, and the place that I had got into had fixed tables set in it and seemed to be the mess-room of the crew. Doors opened out from it both fore and aft; and from behind the after door--so plainly that I had no difficulty in placing it--came the scratching sound that I was pursuing: and with it came the cries again, and this time so distinctly as to shatter my hope of finding a human being there, but at the same time to make me, for all my sorrow, almost smile. For the cry was a very long and plaintive m-i-i-a-a-u! And the next moment, when I had the door open, a great black cat came out upon me--so overcome with delight at meeting a human being again that he was almost choking with his gurgling purr. Indeed the extravagant joy of the poor lonely creature was as great as mine would have been had I found a man there--and he manifested it by lunging sidewise against my legs, and by standing up on his hind paws and reaching his fore paws up to my knees and clutching them, and then with a spring he climbed right up me--all the while choking with his great gurgling purring--and was not satisfied until he found himself bundled close against my breast as I held him tight in my arms. And on my side--after I had gulped down my first disappointment because it was only a cat who was my fellow-prisoner--I was as glad to meet him as he was to meet me; and I am not ashamed to say that I fairly cried over him--as a warm rush of joy went over me at finding myself at last, after being for so long a time surrounded only by the dead, in the company of a living creature; and a creature which showed toward me by every means that a brute beast could compass its gratitude and its love. And I must add without delay that my cat's affection for me was wholly disinterested; at least, I am sure that he loved me--from the first moment of our encounter--not because he wanted me to do something for him, but because he longed, as I did, for human companionship and was filled up with happiness because he had found again a human friend. As I discovered upon investigation, his prison had been the galley in which food for the crew had been cooked; and upon the odds and ends left there he had fared very well indeed--not overeating himself by gobbling down all his food in a hurry, and then dying of starvation, as a dog would have done, but temperately eating for his daily rations only what his sustenance required; and for drink he had had a pot partly full of what had been hot water that stood upon the galley stove. But I also must add that this coarse fare was not at all to his liking; and that thereafter he ordered me around pretty sharply, in his own way, and insisted always upon my providing him with dainty food. It was a good thing for the cat, certainly, that I had found him; for his stock of provisions was pretty nearly exhausted, and in a little while longer he would have come to a dismal end. But my finding him was a still better thing for me. When I first heard his faint little scratching, and his still fainter plaintive little call for help, I was so deep in my despairing melancholy that my reason was in a fair way to go, and with it all farther effort on my part to set myself free. From that desperate state my small adventure with him roused me, which was a good deal to thank him for; but I had more to thank him for still. In the little time that I had been aboard of the _Ville de Saint Remy_--my days having been passed away from her--I had made no exploration of her interior beyond her cabin and the region in which were carried her cabin stores; which latter were so abundant as to set me at my ease for an indefinite period in regard to food. But this meeting with my fellow-prisoner so stirred me up, and put such fresh spirit into me, that I began to think of having a general look all over her: that I might in a way take stock of my belongings and at the same time have something to occupy my mind--for I knew that to sit down idly again would be only again to fall back into despair. And so, my cat going with me--and, indeed, making a good deal of a convenience of me, for he by no means would walk on his own legs but insisted upon jumping up on my shoulder and going that way as a passenger--I set off on my round. As well as I could make out from what I found on board of her--for her papers either had been carried away or were stowed in some place which I did not discover--the _Ville de Saint Remy_ had been bound outward to some colonial port and carried a cargo of general stores. When I got her hatches off--though that came later--I saw in one place a lot of wheelbarrows, and some heavy wagons stowed with their wheels inside of them, and some machinery for threshing along with a portable steam-engine; and in another place were boxes which seemed to have dry-goods in them, and a great many cases of wines, and some very big cases that evidently contained pianos--and so on with a great lot of stuff such as the people of a flourishing colony would be likely to need. But in my round that morning with the cat on my shoulders--for he was not content to remain perched on one of them quietly, but kept passing from one to the other with affectionate rubs against the back of my head, and all the while purring as hard as he could purr--I did not get below the main-deck except into the engine-room, my attention being given to finding out fully what the steamer had on board of her in the way of work-shops and tools: for already, with my renewed cheerfulness, the notion was beginning to take hold of me that I might set to work and build a boat for myself--and so make what I could not find. And, indeed, I don't doubt that I should have set myself to this big undertaking--for the appointments of the vessel were admirably complete and everything that I wanted for my work was there--had not a bigger, but a more promising, undertaking presented itself to me and so turned my efforts into another way. _ |
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