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In the Sargasso Sea: A Novel, a novel by Thomas A. Janvier |
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Chapter 36. How My Cat Promised Me Good Luck |
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_ CHAPTER XXXVI. HOW MY CAT PROMISED ME GOOD LUCK What would have been most useful to me as foresight, but was only aggravating to me as hindsight--which happened to be the way that I got it--was the very sensible notion that I might have put all of my stores, and even a good part of my coal, aboard the boat before she was decked over and launched. A few tons more or less would have made no difference in moving her; but having to put those extra tons aboard of her over the side of the steamer, and then to drag them through the cabin and through the awkward little hatch, and at last to stow them by the light of a lantern in her stillingly close hot hold--all that made a lot of difference to me. However, I could not foresee everything; and I think, on the whole, that I really did foresee most of what I wanted pretty well. Of provisions I took along enough to last me, by a rough calculation, for three months; being pretty well satisfied that unless within that time I got through the weed-tangle to open water--over which I could make my way to land, or on which I might fall in with a passing vessel--I never would get free at all. And I was the more disposed to keep down my lading of provisions because I wanted every scrap of room that I could save for my cargo of coal. But my stores were plentiful for the term that I had fixed upon, and the best and the most nourishing--save that I could not take fresh meat with me--that the _Ville de Saint Remy_ had on board; and I did not forget to take a good supply of the tinned chicken and the condensed milk of which my dainty cat was so fond. As for water--beside having my condenser to fall back upon--I felt pretty sure that until I got well out toward the open sea I could trust to the morning rains. But for all that I carried two barrels with me--filled fresh the last thing before I started--stowed in the well of the boat aft of the cabin; and there too I carried a couple of ten-gallon tins of oil for my lanterns and lamps. My bone-breaking job was getting my coal aboard. For ease in handling and in stowing it--though I lost a little room that way--I put it in canvas sacks, of which I luckily found some bales in the steamer's cargo. These I swung up from the engine-room by the cinder-tackle to the main deck; and having got them that far I packed them on my back to the break in the steamer's side where my boat was lying and tumbled them aboard of her, and then dragged them along to where I stowed them in her hold. On my coal holding out at least until I got through the weed--for on open water I could lay a course under sail--the success of my adventure wholly depended; and knowing that, I filled my boat with all that I dared to put into her--loading the last twenty bags on her deck and on the roof of her cabin, to be used before I drew on my main supply. But while this lading was a big one it did not satisfy me; and the only way that I could think of to better it was to build a long and narrow raft that I could stow as much more on and tow after me in the boat's wake. This was a big undertaking, but I had to face it and to carry it through: lowering down three spars (in managing which I used a treble-purchase to swing them clear, and eased them down with a couple of turns of the rope still around the capstan), and when I had them over the side in a pool that I had cleared for them I lashed them strongly together and decked them over with some of the state-room doors. This gave me a raft sixty feet long, or thereabouts, but narrower than my boat; and to make it follow the boat still more easily I set a V-shaped cut-water at its bows to turn the weed. To be sure, it was a clumsy thing, but it well enough served my turn. On this structure I was able to carry a prodigious quantity of coal--more than I had on the boat, by a good deal; but by a little planning in advance I arranged matters so that the lading of it was not so hard a piece of work--though in all conscience it was hard enough--as the lading of my boat had been. What I did was to clear a pool in the weed for it and to build it directly beneath the outhang of the cinder-tackle; and having that apparatus ready to my hand I swung my bags of coal up from the engine-room, and then out along the traveller, and then lowered them away--and so had only to stow them on the raft when they were down. But there was only one of me to do all this--to fill each bag in the bunkers and to bring it to the engine-room, to make it fast there to the tackle, to come on deck and haul it up and set it overboard, to go down the side and set it in place, and then back to the bunkers again for the next round--and so I spent a week in doing what three men could have done in a day. And I was a tired man and a grimy man when I got this piece of work finished; but I was comforted by knowing that I had as much coal in my sea-stock as I possibly could have use for--and so I scrubbed myself clean in the steamers bath-room and was easy in my mind. But it was a good long while before I got the aches out of my bones. During my last week aboard the _Ville de Saint Remy_ I had steam up in my boat and my engine at work during the greater part of each day: as was necessary, the engine being new, in order to get the machinery to running smoothly, and to set right anything that might be wrong while I still had the steamer's machine-shop to turn to for repairs. However, the engine proved to be a well-made one, and except that I had to tighten a joint here and there and to repack the piston I had nothing to rectify; and what still more pleased me was to find that my cage answered to keep the screw from fouling, and that my plan for sawing a way through the weed--which I tested by running a little distance from the steamer through the thick of it--worked well too. But because of the great friction to be overcome as the boat opened a way for itself in the dense soft mass my progress was desperately slow; and I had to comfort me the reflection that it would be still slower when I got regularly under way and had in addition to the dead thrust forward of the boat the dead drag after it of the raft. Slow or fast, though, I had no choice in the matter. With the means at my command, I had done all that I could do to enable me to climb the walls of my prison--if I may put it that way--and there remained only to muster what pluck I had to help me and to abide by the result. This was the view of the situation that I presented to my cat--for I had got into the habit of talking to him quite as much as he talked to me--while we sat at supper together on the last evening that we were to pass on board of the _Ville de Saint Remy_; and while he did not make much of a reply to me he did mumble some sort of a purring answer that I took to mean he was willing, if I were, to make the trial. Early that morning, while the rain still was falling, I had filled my two casks with fresh water; and after my breakfast I got them aboard the boat and then went to work at setting up my mast--using one of the davits in place of sheers and so managing the job very well. After that I had rigged the sail, and had set it to make sure that all was right; and then had furled it and lashed the boom fast on the roof of the cabin among the bags of coal--and with rather a heavy heart, too, for I knew that the chances were more than even against my ever getting to open water and fresh breezes, and so loosing again the knots which I had just tied. In the afternoon I had set my engine to going again for an hour, and then had banked my fires against the morning; and after that, until the shadows began to fall, I had spent my time in going over the list that I had made of my sea-stock to be sure that nothing that I needed was forgotten, and in taking a final general survey of my boat and its stores. And when darkness came the cat and I had our supper together--which was as good a one as the ship could provide us with--and when we had finished I told him, as I have said, what the chances were for and against our succeeding in our undertaking and in return asked him for an expression of his own views. That he fully understood what I told him I am not prepared to say; but he certainly did answer me: jumping up on my lap and shoving his paws alternately against my stomach, and purring in so cheerful a fashion, and altogether making such a show of good spirits as to satisfy me that he was trying to tell me that we certainly would pull through. And my cat's promise of good luck fell in so exactly with my own confident hopes--which were rising strongly as the time for testing them got close at hand--that I hugged him tight to me very lovingly, and on my side promised that within another month or two he should stretch his legs in a mouse-hunt on dry land! And with that I put the lamp out and we turned in for the night. _ |
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