Preface

Upon my re­turn to the United States a few months ago, af­ter the ex­tra­or­di­nary se­ries of ad­ven­ture in the South Seas and else­where, of which an ac­count is given in the fol­low­ing pages, ac­ci­dent threw me into the so­ci­ety of sev­eral gen­tle­men in Rich­mond, VA, who felt deep in­ter­est in all mat­ters re­lat­ing to the re­gions I had vis­ited, and who were con­stantly urg­ing it upon me, as a duty, to give my nar­ra­tive to the pub­lic. I had sev­eral rea­sons, how­ever, for de­clin­ing to do so, some of which were of a na­ture al­to­gether pri­vate, and con­cern no per­son but my­self; oth­ers not so much so. One con­sid­er­a­tion which de­terred me was that, hav­ing kept no jour­nal dur­ing a greater por­tion of the time in which I was ab­sent, I feared I should not be able to write, from mere mem­ory, a state­ment so minute and con­nected as to have the ap­pear­ance of that truth it would re­ally pos­sess, bar­ring only the nat­u­ral and un­avoid­able ex­ag­ger­a­tion to which all of us are prone when de­tail­ing events which have had pow­er­ful in­flu­ence in ex­cit­ing the imag­i­na­tive fac­ul­ties. Another rea­son was, that the in­ci­dents to be nar­rated were of a na­ture so pos­i­tively mar­vel­lous that, un­sup­ported as my as­ser­tions must nec­es­sar­ily be (ex­cept by the ev­i­dence of a sin­gle in­di­vid­ual, and he a half­breed In­dian), I could only hope for be­lief among my fam­ily, and those of my friends who have had rea­son, through life, to put faith in my ve­rac­ity—the prob­a­bil­ity be­ing that the pub­lic at large would re­gard what I should put forth as merely an im­pu­dent and in­ge­nious fic­tion. A dis­trust in my own abil­i­ties as a writer was, nev­er­the­less, one of the prin­ci­pal causes which pre­vented me from com­ply­ing with the sug­ges­tions of my ad­vis­ers.

Among those gen­tle­men in Vir­ginia who ex­pressed the great­est in­ter­est in my state­ment, more par­tic­u­larly in re­gard to that por­tion of it which re­lated to the Antarc­tic Ocean, was Mr. Poe, lately ed­i­tor of the South­ern Lit­er­ary Mes­sen­ger, a monthly mag­a­zine, pub­lished by Mr. Thomas W. White, in the city of Rich­mond. He strongly ad­vised me, among oth­ers, to pre­pare at once a full ac­count of what I had seen and un­der­gone, and trust to the shrewd­ness and com­mon sense of the pub­lic—in­sist­ing, with great plau­si­bil­ity, that how­ever roughly, as re­gards mere au­thor­ship, my book should be got up, its very un­couth­ness, if there were any, would give it all the bet­ter chance of be­ing re­ceived as truth.

Notwith­stand­ing this rep­re­sen­ta­tion, I did not make up my mind to do as he sug­gested. He af­ter­ward pro­posed (find­ing that I would not stir in the mat­ter) that I should al­low him to draw up, in his own words, a nar­ra­tive of the ear­lier por­tion of my ad­ven­tures, from facts af­forded by my­self, pub­lish­ing it in the South­ern Mes­sen­ger un­der the garb of fic­tion. To this, per­ceiv­ing no ob­jec­tion, I con­sented, stip­u­lat­ing only that my real name should be re­tained. Two num­bers of the pre­tended fic­tion ap­peared, con­se­quently, in the Mes­sen­ger for Jan­uary and Fe­bru­ary (1837), and, in or­der that it might cer­tainly be re­garded as fic­tion, the name of Mr. Poe was af­fixed to the ar­ti­cles in the ta­ble of con­tents of the mag­a­zine.

The man­ner in which this ruse was re­ceived has in­duced me at length to un­der­take a reg­u­lar com­pi­la­tion and pub­li­ca­tion of the ad­ven­tures in ques­tion; for I found that, in spite of the air of fa­ble which had been so in­ge­niously thrown around that por­tion of my state­ment which ap­peared in the Mes­sen­ger (with­out al­ter­ing or dis­tort­ing a sin­gle fact), the pub­lic were still not at all dis­posed to re­ceive it as fa­ble, and sev­eral let­ters were sent to Mr. P.’s ad­dress, dis­tinctly ex­press­ing a con­vic­tion to the con­trary. I thence con­cluded that the facts of my nar­ra­tive would prove of such a na­ture as to carry with them suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence of their own au­then­tic­ity, and that I had con­se­quently lit­tle to fear on the score of pop­u­lar in­credulity.

This ex­posé be­ing made, it will be seen at once how much of what fol­lows I claim to be my own writ­ing; and it will also be un­der­stood that no fact is mis­rep­re­sented in the first few pages which were writ­ten by Mr. Poe. Even to those read­ers who have not seen the Mes­sen­ger, it will be un­nec­es­sary to point out where his por­tion ends and my own com­mences; the dif­fer­ence in point of style will be read­ily per­ceived.

A. G. Pym.

New York, July, 1838.

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket

I

My name is Arthur Gor­don Pym. My fa­ther was a re­spectable trader in sea-stores at Nan­tucket, where I was born. My ma­ter­nal grand­fa­ther was an at­tor­ney in good prac­tice. He was for­tu­nate in ev­ery­thing, and had spec­u­lated very suc­cess­fully in stocks of the Edgar­ton New Bank, as it was for­merly called. By these and other means he had man­aged to lay by a tol­er­a­ble sum of money. He was more at­tached to my­self, I be­lieve, than to any other per­son in the world, and I ex­pected to in­herit the most of his prop­erty at his death. He sent me, at six years of age, to the school of old Mr. Rick­etts, a gen­tle­man with only one arm and of ec­cen­tric man­ners—he is well known to al­most ev­ery per­son who has vis­ited New Bed­ford. I stayed at his school un­til I was six­teen, when I left him for Mr. E. Ron­ald’s acad­emy on the hill. Here I be­came in­ti­mate with the son of Mr. Barnard, a sea-cap­tain, who gen­er­ally sailed in the em­ploy of Lloyd and Vre­den­burgh—Mr. Barnard is also very well known in New Bed­ford, and has many re­la­tions, I am cer­tain, in Edgar­ton. His son was named Au­gus­tus, and he was nearly two years older than my­self. He had been on a whal­ing voy­age with his fa­ther in the John Don­ald­son, and was al­ways talk­ing to me of his ad­ven­tures in the South Pa­cific Ocean. I used fre­quently to go home with him, and re­main all day, and some­times all night. We oc­cu­pied the same bed, and he would be sure to keep me awake un­til al­most light, telling me sto­ries of the na­tives of the Is­land of Tinian, and other places he had vis­ited in his trav­els. At last I could not help be­ing in­ter­ested in what he said, and by de­grees I felt the great­est de­sire to go to sea. I owned a sail­boat called the Ariel, and worth about sev­enty-five dol­lars. She had a half-deck or cuddy, and was rigged sloop-fash­ion—I for­get her ton­nage, but she would hold ten per­sons with­out much crowd­ing. In this boat we were in the habit of go­ing on some of the mad­dest freaks in the world; and, when I now think of them, it ap­pears to me a thou­sand won­ders that I am alive to­day.

I will re­late one of these ad­ven­tures by way of in­tro­duc­tion to a longer and more mo­men­tous nar­ra­tive. One night there was a party at Mr. Barnard’s, and both Au­gus­tus and my­self were not a lit­tle in­tox­i­cated to­ward the close of it. As usual, in such cases, I took part of his bed in pref­er­ence to go­ing home. He went to sleep, as I thought, very qui­etly (it be­ing near one when the party broke up), and with­out say­ing a word on his fa­vorite topic. It might have been half an hour from the time of our get­ting in bed, and I was just about fall­ing into a doze, when he sud­denly started up, and swore with a ter­ri­ble oath that he would not go to sleep for any Arthur Pym in Chris­ten­dom, when there was so glo­ri­ous a breeze from the south­west. I never was so as­ton­ished in my life, not know­ing what he in­tended, and think­ing that the wines and liquors he had drunk had set him en­tirely be­side him­self. He pro­ceeded to talk very coolly, how­ever, say­ing he knew that I sup­posed him in­tox­i­cated, but that he was never more sober in his life. He was only tired, he added, of ly­ing in bed on such a fine night like a dog, and was de­ter­mined to get up and dress, and go out on a frolic with the boat. I can hardly tell what pos­sessed me, but the words were no sooner out of his mouth than I felt a thrill of the great­est ex­cite­ment and plea­sure, and thought his mad idea one of the most de­light­ful and most rea­son­able things in the world. It was blow­ing al­most a gale, and the weather was very cold—it be­ing late in Oc­to­ber. I sprang out of bed, nev­er­the­less, in a kind of ec­stasy, and told him I was quite as brave as him­self, and quite as tired as he was of ly­ing in bed like a dog, and quite as ready for any fun or frolic as any Au­gus­tus Barnard in Nan­tucket.

We lost no time in get­ting on our clothes and hur­ry­ing down to the boat. She was ly­ing at the old de­cayed wharf by the lum­ber­yard of Pankey & Co., and al­most thump­ing her side out against the rough logs. Au­gus­tus got into her and bailed her, for she was nearly half full of wa­ter. This be­ing done, we hoisted jib and main­sail, kept full, and started boldly out to sea.

The wind, as I be­fore said, blew freshly from the south­west. The night was very clear and cold. Au­gus­tus had taken the helm, and I sta­tioned my­self by the mast, on the deck of the cuddy. We flew along at a great rate—nei­ther of us hav­ing said a word since cast­ing loose from the wharf. I now asked my com­pan­ion what course he in­tended to steer, and what time he thought it prob­a­ble we should get back. He whis­tled for a few min­utes, and then said crustily: “I am go­ing to sea—you may go home if you think proper.” Turn­ing my eyes upon him, I per­ceived at once that, in spite of his as­sumed non­cha­lance, he was greatly ag­i­tated. I could see him dis­tinctly by the light of the moon—his face was paler than any mar­ble, and his hand shook so ex­ces­sively that he could scarcely re­tain hold of the tiller. I found that some­thing had gone wrong, and be­came se­ri­ously alarmed. At this pe­riod I knew lit­tle about the man­age­ment of a boat, and was now de­pend­ing en­tirely upon the nau­ti­cal skill of my friend. The wind, too, had sud­denly in­creased, as we were fast get­ting out of the lee of the land—still I was ashamed to be­tray any trep­i­da­tion, and for al­most half an hour main­tained a res­o­lute si­lence. I could stand it no longer, how­ever, and spoke to Au­gus­tus about the pro­pri­ety of turn­ing back. As be­fore, it was nearly a minute be­fore he made an­swer, or took any no­tice of my sug­ges­tion. “By-and-by,” said he at length—“time enough—home by-and-by.” I had ex­pected a sim­i­lar re­ply, but there was some­thing in the tone of these words which filled me with an in­de­scrib­able feel­ing of dread. I again looked at the speaker at­ten­tively. His lips were per­fectly livid, and his knees shook so vi­o­lently to­gether that he seemed scarcely able to stand. “For God’s sake, Au­gus­tus,” I screamed, now heartily fright­ened, “what ails you?—what is the mat­ter?—what are you go­ing to do?” “Mat­ter!” he stam­mered, in the great­est ap­par­ent sur­prise, let­ting go the tiller at the same mo­ment, and fall­ing for­ward into the bot­tom of the boat—“mat­ter—why, noth­ing is the—mat­ter—go­ing home—d—d—don’t you see?” The whole truth now flashed upon me. I flew to him and raised him up. He was drunk—beastly drunk—he could no longer ei­ther stand, speak, or see. His eyes were per­fectly glazed; and as I let him go in the ex­trem­ity of my de­spair, he rolled like a mere log into the bilge-wa­ter, from which I had lifted him. It was ev­i­dent that, dur­ing the evening, he had drunk far more than I sus­pected, and that his con­duct in bed had been the re­sult of a highly-con­cen­trated state of in­tox­i­ca­tion—a state which, like mad­ness, fre­quently en­ables the vic­tim to im­i­tate the out­ward de­meanour of one in per­fect pos­ses­sion of his senses. The cool­ness of the night air, how­ever, had had its usual ef­fect—the men­tal en­ergy be­gan to yield be­fore its in­flu­ence—and the con­fused per­cep­tion which he no doubt then had of his per­ilous sit­u­a­tion had as­sisted in has­ten­ing the catas­tro­phe. He was now thor­oughly in­sen­si­ble, and there was no prob­a­bil­ity that he would be oth­er­wise for many hours.

It is hardly pos­si­ble to con­ceive the ex­trem­ity of my ter­ror. The fumes of the wine lately taken had evap­o­rated, leav­ing me dou­bly timid and ir­res­o­lute. I knew that I was al­to­gether in­ca­pable of man­ag­ing the boat, and that a fierce wind and strong ebb tide were hur­ry­ing us to de­struc­tion. A storm was ev­i­dently gath­er­ing be­hind us; we had nei­ther com­pass nor pro­vi­sions; and it was clear that, if we held our present course, we should be out of sight of land be­fore day­break. Th­ese thoughts, with a crowd of oth­ers equally fear­ful, flashed through my mind with a be­wil­der­ing ra­pid­ity, and for some mo­ments par­a­lyzed me be­yond the pos­si­bil­ity of mak­ing any ex­er­tion. The boat was go­ing through the wa­ter at a ter­ri­ble rate—full be­fore the wind—no reef in ei­ther jib or main­sail—run­ning her bows com­pletely un­der the foam. It was a thou­sand won­ders she did not broach to—Au­gus­tus hav­ing let go the tiller, as I said be­fore, and I be­ing too much ag­i­tated to think of tak­ing it my­self. By good luck, how­ever, she kept steady, and grad­u­ally I re­cov­ered some de­gree of pres­ence of mind. Still the wind was in­creas­ing fear­fully, and when­ever we rose from a plunge for­ward, the sea be­hind fell comb­ing over our counter, and del­uged us with wa­ter. I was so ut­terly be­numbed, too, in ev­ery limb, as to be nearly un­con­scious of sen­sa­tion. At length I sum­moned up the res­o­lu­tion of de­spair, and rush­ing to the main­sail let it go by the run. As might have been ex­pected, it flew over the bows, and, get­ting drenched with wa­ter, car­ried away the mast short off by the board. This lat­ter ac­ci­dent alone saved me from in­stant de­struc­tion. Un­der the jib only, I now boomed along be­fore the wind, ship­ping heavy seas oc­ca­sion­ally over the counter, but re­lieved from the ter­ror of im­me­di­ate death. I took the helm, and breathed with greater free­dom as I found that there yet re­mained to us a chance of ul­ti­mate es­cape. Au­gus­tus still lay sense­less in the bot­tom of the boat; and as there was im­mi­nent dan­ger of his drown­ing (the wa­ter be­ing nearly a foot deep just where he fell), I con­trived to raise him par­tially up, and keep him in a sit­ting po­si­tion, by pass­ing a rope round his waist, and lash­ing it to a ring­bolt in the deck of the cuddy. Hav­ing thus ar­ranged ev­ery­thing as well as I could in my chilled and ag­i­tated con­di­tion, I rec­om­mended my­self to God, and made up my mind to bear what­ever might hap­pen with all the for­ti­tude in my power.

Hardly had I come to this res­o­lu­tion, when, sud­denly, a loud and long scream or yell, as if from the throats of a thou­sand demons, seemed to per­vade the whole at­mos­phere around and above the boat. Never while I live shall I for­get the in­tense agony of ter­ror I ex­pe­ri­enced at that mo­ment. My hair stood erect on my head—I felt the blood con­geal­ing in my veins—my heart ceased ut­terly to beat, and with­out hav­ing once raised my eyes to learn the source of my alarm, I tum­bled head­long and in­sen­si­ble upon the body of my fallen com­pan­ion.

I found my­self, upon re­viv­ing, in the cabin of a large whal­ing-ship (the Pen­guin) bound to Nan­tucket. Sev­eral per­sons were stand­ing over me, and Au­gus­tus, paler than death, was busily oc­cu­pied in chaf­ing my hands. Upon see­ing me open my eyes, his ex­cla­ma­tions of grat­i­tude and joy ex­cited al­ter­nate laugh­ter and tears from the rough-look­ing per­son­ages who were present. The mys­tery of our be­ing in ex­is­tence was now soon ex­plained. We had been run down by the whal­ing-ship, which was close-hauled, beat­ing up to Nan­tucket with ev­ery sail she could ven­ture to set, and con­se­quently run­ning al­most at right an­gles to our own course. Sev­eral men were on the look­out for­ward, but did not per­ceive our boat un­til it was an im­pos­si­bil­ity to avoid com­ing in con­tact—their shouts of warn­ing upon see­ing us were what so ter­ri­bly alarmed me. The huge ship, I was told, rode im­me­di­ately over us with as much ease as our own lit­tle ves­sel would have passed over a feather, and with­out the least per­cep­ti­ble im­ped­i­ment to her progress. Not a scream arose from the deck of the vic­tim—there was a slight grat­ing sound to be heard min­gling with the roar of wind and wa­ter, as the frail bark which was swal­lowed up rubbed for a mo­ment along the keel of her de­stroyer—but this was all. Think­ing our boat (which it will be re­mem­bered was dis­masted) some mere shell cut adrift as use­less, the cap­tain (Cap­tain E. T. V. Block, of New Lon­don) was for pro­ceed­ing on his course with­out trou­bling him­self fur­ther about the mat­ter. Luck­ily, there were two of the look­out who swore pos­i­tively to hav­ing seen some per­son at our helm, and rep­re­sented the pos­si­bil­ity of yet sav­ing him. A dis­cus­sion en­sued, when Block grew an­gry, and, af­ter a while, said that “it was no busi­ness of his to be eter­nally watch­ing for eggshells; that the ship should not put about for any such non­sense; and if there was a man run down, it was no­body’s fault but his own, he might drown and be dammed” or some lan­guage to that ef­fect. Hen­der­son, the first mate, now took the mat­ter up, be­ing justly in­dig­nant, as well as the whole ship’s crew, at a speech evinc­ing so base a de­gree of heart­less atroc­ity. He spoke plainly, see­ing him­self up­held by the men, told the cap­tain he con­sid­ered him a fit sub­ject for the gal­lows, and that he would dis­obey his or­ders if he were hanged for it the mo­ment he set his foot on shore. He strode aft, jostling Block (who turned pale and made no an­swer) on one side, and seiz­ing the helm, gave the word, in a firm voice, Hard-a-lee! The men flew to their posts, and the ship went clev­erly about. All this had oc­cu­pied nearly five min­utes, and it was sup­posed to be hardly within the bounds of pos­si­bil­ity that any in­di­vid­ual could be saved—al­low­ing any to have been on board the boat. Yet, as the reader has seen, both Au­gus­tus and my­self were res­cued; and our de­liv­er­ance seemed to have been brought about by two of those al­most in­con­ceiv­able pieces of good for­tune which are at­trib­uted by the wise and pi­ous to the spe­cial in­ter­fer­ence of Prov­i­dence.

While the ship was yet in stays, the mate low­ered the jolly-boat and jumped into her with the very two men, I be­lieve, who spoke up as hav­ing seen me at the helm. They had just left the lee of the ves­sel (the moon still shin­ing brightly) when she made a long and heavy roll to wind­ward, and Hen­der­son, at the same mo­ment, start­ing up in his seat bawled out to his crew to back wa­ter. He would say noth­ing else—re­peat­ing his cry im­pa­tiently, back wa­ter! black wa­ter! The men put back as speed­ily as pos­si­ble, but by this time the ship had gone round, and got­ten fully un­der head­way, al­though all hands on board were mak­ing great ex­er­tions to take in sail. In de­spite of the dan­ger of the at­tempt, the mate clung to the main-chains as soon as they came within his reach. Another huge lurch now brought the star­board side of the ves­sel out of wa­ter nearly as far as her keel, when the cause of his anx­i­ety was ren­dered ob­vi­ous enough. The body of a man was seen to be af­fixed in the most sin­gu­lar man­ner to the smooth and shin­ing bot­tom (the Pen­guin was cop­pered and cop­per-fas­tened), and beat­ing vi­o­lently against it with ev­ery move­ment of the hull. After sev­eral in­ef­fec­tual ef­forts, made dur­ing the lurches of the ship, and at the im­mi­nent risk of swamp­ing the boat I was fi­nally dis­en­gaged from my per­ilous sit­u­a­tion and taken on board—for the body proved to be my own. It ap­peared that one of the tim­ber-bolts hav­ing started and bro­ken a pas­sage through the cop­per, it had ar­rested my progress as I passed un­der the ship, and fas­tened me in so ex­tra­or­di­nary a man­ner to her bot­tom. The head of the bolt had made its way through the col­lar of the green baize jacket I had on, and through the back part of my neck, forc­ing it­self out be­tween two sinews and just be­low the right ear. I was im­me­di­ately put to bed—al­though life seemed to be to­tally ex­tinct. There was no sur­geon on board. The cap­tain, how­ever, treated me with ev­ery at­ten­tion—to make amends, I pre­sume, in the eyes of his crew, for his atro­cious be­hav­iour in the pre­vi­ous por­tion of the ad­ven­ture.

In the mean­time, Hen­der­son had again put off from the ship, al­though the wind was now blow­ing al­most a hur­ri­cane. He had not been gone many min­utes when he fell in with some frag­ments of our boat, and shortly af­ter­ward one of the men with him as­serted that he could dis­tin­guish a cry for help at in­ter­vals amid the roar­ing of the tem­pest. This in­duced the hardy sea­men to per­se­vere in their search for more than half an hour, al­though re­peated sig­nals to re­turn were made them by Cap­tain Block, and al­though ev­ery mo­ment on the wa­ter in so frail a boat was fraught to them with the most im­mi­nent and deadly peril. In­deed, it is nearly im­pos­si­ble to con­ceive how the small jolly they were in could have es­caped de­struc­tion for a sin­gle in­stant. She was built, how­ever, for the whal­ing ser­vice, and was fit­ted, as I have since had rea­son to be­lieve, with air-boxes, in the man­ner of some lifeboats used on the coast of Wales.

After search­ing in vain for about the pe­riod of time just men­tioned, it was de­ter­mined to get back to the ship. They had scarcely made this re­solve when a fee­ble cry arose from a dark ob­ject that floated rapidly by. They pur­sued and soon over­took it. It proved to be the en­tire deck of the Ariel’s cuddy. Au­gus­tus was strug­gling near it, ap­par­ently in the last ag­o­nies. Upon get­ting hold of him it was found that he was at­tached by a rope to the float­ing tim­ber. This rope, it will be re­mem­bered, I had my­self tied around his waist, and made fast to a ring­bolt, for the pur­pose of keep­ing him in an up­right po­si­tion, and my so do­ing, it ap­peared, had been ul­ti­mately the means of pre­serv­ing his life. The Ariel was slightly put to­gether, and in go­ing down her frame nat­u­rally went to pieces; the deck of the cuddy, as might have been ex­pected, was lifted, by the force of the wa­ter rush­ing in, en­tirely from the main tim­bers, and floated (with other frag­ments, no doubt) to the sur­face—Au­gus­tus was buoyed up with it, and thus es­caped a ter­ri­ble death.

It was more than an hour af­ter be­ing taken on board the Pen­guin be­fore he could give any ac­count of him­self, or be made to com­pre­hend the na­ture of the ac­ci­dent which had be­fallen our boat. At length he be­came thor­oughly aroused, and spoke much of his sen­sa­tions while in the wa­ter. Upon his first at­tain­ing any de­gree of con­scious­ness, he found him­self be­neath the sur­face, whirling round and round with in­con­ceiv­able ra­pid­ity, and with a rope wrapped in three or four folds tightly about his neck. In an in­stant af­ter­ward he felt him­self go­ing rapidly up­ward, when, his head strik­ing vi­o­lently against a hard sub­stance, he again re­lapsed into in­sen­si­bil­ity. Upon once more re­viv­ing he was in fuller pos­ses­sion of his rea­son—this was still, how­ever, in the great­est de­gree clouded and con­fused. He now knew that some ac­ci­dent had oc­curred, and that he was in the wa­ter, al­though his mouth was above the sur­face, and he could breathe with some free­dom. Pos­si­bly, at this pe­riod the deck was drift­ing rapidly be­fore the wind, and draw­ing him af­ter it, as he floated upon his back. Of course, as long as he could have re­tained this po­si­tion, it would have been nearly im­pos­si­ble that he should be drowned. Presently a surge threw him di­rectly athwart the deck, and this post he en­deav­ored to main­tain, scream­ing at in­ter­vals for help. Just be­fore he was dis­cov­ered by Mr. Hen­der­son, he had been obliged to re­lax his hold through ex­haus­tion, and, fall­ing into the sea, had given him­self up for lost. Dur­ing the whole pe­riod of his strug­gles he had not the faintest rec­ol­lec­tion of the Ariel, nor of the mat­ters in con­nex­ion with the source of his dis­as­ter. A vague feel­ing of ter­ror and de­spair had taken en­tire pos­ses­sion of his fac­ul­ties. When he was fi­nally picked up, ev­ery power of his mind had failed him; and, as be­fore said, it was nearly an hour af­ter get­ting on board the Pen­guin be­fore he be­came fully aware of his con­di­tion. In re­gard to my­self—I was re­sus­ci­tated from a state bor­der­ing very nearly upon death (and af­ter ev­ery other means had been tried in vain for three hours and a half) by vig­or­ous fric­tion with flan­nels bathed in hot oil—a pro­ceed­ing sug­gested by Au­gus­tus. The wound in my neck, al­though of an ugly ap­pear­ance, proved of lit­tle real con­se­quence, and I soon re­cov­ered from its ef­fects.

The Pen­guin got into port about nine o’clock in the morn­ing, af­ter en­coun­ter­ing one of the sever­est gales ever ex­pe­ri­enced off Nan­tucket. Both Au­gus­tus and my­self man­aged to ap­pear at Mr. Barnard’s in time for break­fast—which, luck­ily, was some­what late, ow­ing to the party over night. I sup­pose all at the ta­ble were too much fa­tigued them­selves to no­tice our jaded ap­pear­ance—of course, it would not have borne a very rigid scru­tiny. School­boys, how­ever, can ac­com­plish won­ders in the way of de­cep­tion, and I ver­ily be­lieve not one of our friends in Nan­tucket had the slight­est sus­pi­cion that the ter­ri­ble story told by some sailors in town of their hav­ing run down a ves­sel at sea and drowned some thirty or forty poor dev­ils, had ref­er­ence ei­ther to the Ariel, my com­pan­ion, or my­self. We two have since very fre­quently talked the mat­ter over—but never with­out a shud­der. In one of our con­ver­sa­tions Au­gus­tus frankly con­fessed to me, that in his whole life he had at no time ex­pe­ri­enced so ex­cru­ci­at­ing a sense of dis­may, as when on board our lit­tle boat he first dis­cov­ered the ex­tent of his in­tox­i­ca­tion, and felt him­self sink­ing be­neath its in­flu­ence.

II

In no af­fairs of mere prej­u­dice, pro or con, do we de­duce in­fer­ences with en­tire cer­tainty, even from the most sim­ple data. It might be sup­posed that a catas­tro­phe such as I have just re­lated would have ef­fec­tu­ally cooled my in­cip­i­ent pas­sion for the sea. On the con­trary, I never ex­pe­ri­enced a more ar­dent long­ing for the wild ad­ven­tures in­ci­dent to the life of a nav­i­ga­tor than within a week af­ter our mirac­u­lous de­liv­er­ance. This short pe­riod proved am­ply long enough to erase from my mem­ory the shad­ows, and bring out in vivid light all the plea­sur­ably ex­cit­ing points of color, all the pic­turesque­ness, of the late per­ilous ac­ci­dent. My con­ver­sa­tions with Au­gus­tus grew daily more fre­quent and more in­tensely full of in­ter­est. He had a man­ner of re­lat­ing his sto­ries of the ocean (more than one half of which I now sus­pect to have been sheer fab­ri­ca­tions) well adapted to have weight with one of my en­thu­si­as­tic tem­per­a­ment and some­what gloomy al­though glow­ing imag­i­na­tion. It is strange, too, that he most strongly en­listed my feel­ings in be­half of the life of a sea­man, when he de­picted his more ter­ri­ble mo­ments of suf­fer­ing and de­spair. For the bright side of the paint­ing I had a lim­ited sym­pa­thy. My vi­sions were of ship­wreck and famine; of death or cap­tiv­ity among bar­bar­ian hordes; of a life­time dragged out in sor­row and tears, upon some gray and des­o­late rock, in an ocean un­ap­proach­able and un­known. Such vi­sions or de­sires—for they amounted to de­sires—are com­mon, I have since been as­sured, to the whole nu­mer­ous race of the melan­choly among men—at the time of which I speak I re­garded them only as prophetic glimpses of a des­tiny which I felt my­self in a mea­sure bound to ful­fil. Au­gus­tus thor­oughly en­tered into my state of mind. It is prob­a­ble, in­deed, that our in­ti­mate com­mu­nion had re­sulted in a par­tial in­ter­change of char­ac­ter.

About eigh­teen months af­ter the pe­riod of the Ariel’s dis­as­ter, the firm of Lloyd and Vre­den­burgh (a house con­nected in some man­ner with the Messieurs En­derby, I be­lieve, of Liver­pool) were en­gaged in re­pair­ing and fit­ting out the brig Gram­pus for a whal­ing voy­age. She was an old hulk, and scarcely sea­wor­thy when all was done to her that could be done. I hardly know why she was cho­sen in pref­er­ence to other good ves­sels be­long­ing to the same own­ers—but so it was. Mr. Barnard was ap­pointed to com­mand her, and Au­gus­tus was go­ing with him. While the brig was get­ting ready, he fre­quently urged upon me the ex­cel­lency of the op­por­tu­nity now of­fered for in­dulging my de­sire of travel. He found me by no means an un­will­ing lis­tener—yet the mat­ter could not be so eas­ily ar­ranged. My fa­ther made no di­rect op­po­si­tion; but my mother went into hys­ter­ics at the bare men­tion of the de­sign; and, more than all, my grand­fa­ther, from whom I ex­pected much, vowed to cut me off with a shilling if I should ever broach the sub­ject to him again. Th­ese dif­fi­cul­ties, how­ever, so far from abat­ing my de­sire, only added fuel to the flame. I de­ter­mined to go at all haz­ards; and, hav­ing made known my in­ten­tions to Au­gus­tus, we set about ar­rang­ing a plan by which it might be ac­com­plished. In the mean­time I for­bore speak­ing to any of my re­la­tions in re­gard to the voy­age, and, as I bus­ied my­self os­ten­si­bly with my usual stud­ies, it was sup­posed that I had aban­doned the de­sign. I have since fre­quently ex­am­ined my con­duct on this oc­ca­sion with sen­ti­ments of dis­plea­sure as well as of sur­prise. The in­tense hypocrisy I made use of for the fur­ther­ance of my project—an hypocrisy per­vad­ing ev­ery word and ac­tion of my life for so long a pe­riod of time—could only have been ren­dered tol­er­a­ble to my­self by the wild and burn­ing ex­pec­ta­tion with which I looked for­ward to the ful­fil­ment of my long-cher­ished vi­sions of travel.

In pur­suance of my scheme of de­cep­tion, I was nec­es­sar­ily obliged to leave much to the man­age­ment of Au­gus­tus, who was em­ployed for the greater part of ev­ery day on board the Gram­pus, at­tend­ing to some ar­range­ments for his fa­ther in the cabin and cabin hold. At night, how­ever, we were sure to have a con­fer­ence and talk over our hopes. After nearly a month passed in this man­ner, with­out our hit­ting upon any plan we thought likely to suc­ceed, he told me at last that he had de­ter­mined upon ev­ery­thing nec­es­sary. I had a re­la­tion liv­ing in New Bed­ford, a Mr. Ross, at whose house I was in the habit of spend­ing oc­ca­sion­ally two or three weeks at a time. The brig was to sail about the mid­dle of June (June, 1827), and it was agreed that, a day or two be­fore her putting to sea, my fa­ther was to re­ceive a note, as usual, from Mr. Ross, ask­ing me to come over and spend a fort­night with Robert and Em­met (his sons). Au­gus­tus charged him­self with the in­dit­ing of this note and get­ting it de­liv­ered. Hav­ing set out as sup­posed, for New Bed­ford, I was then to re­port my­self to my com­pan­ion, who would con­trive a hid­ing-place for me in the Gram­pus. This hid­ing-place, he as­sured me, would be ren­dered suf­fi­ciently com­fort­able for a res­i­dence of many days, dur­ing which I was not to make my ap­pear­ance. When the brig had pro­ceeded so far on her course as to make any turn­ing back a mat­ter out of ques­tion, I should then, he said, be for­mally in­stalled in all the com­forts of the cabin; and as to his fa­ther, he would only laugh heartily at the joke. Ves­sels enough would be met with by which a let­ter might be sent home ex­plain­ing the ad­ven­ture to my par­ents.

The mid­dle of June at length ar­rived, and ev­ery­thing had been ma­tured. The note was writ­ten and de­liv­ered, and on a Mon­day morn­ing I left the house for the New Bed­ford packet, as sup­posed. I went, how­ever, straight to Au­gus­tus, who was wait­ing for me at the cor­ner of a street. It had been our orig­i­nal plan that I should keep out of the way un­til dark, and then slip on board the brig; but, as there was now a thick fog in our fa­vor, it was agreed to lose no time in se­cret­ing me. Au­gus­tus led the way to the wharf, and I fol­lowed at a lit­tle dis­tance, en­veloped in a thick sea­man’s cloak, which he had brought with him, so that my per­son might not be eas­ily rec­og­nized. Just as we turned the sec­ond cor­ner, af­ter pass­ing Mr. Ed­mund’s well, who should ap­pear, stand­ing right in front of me, and look­ing me full in the face, but old Mr. Peter­son, my grand­fa­ther. “Why, bless my soul, Gor­don,” said he, af­ter a long pause, “why, why—whose dirty cloak is that you have on?” “Sir!” I replied, as­sum­ing, as well as I could, in the ex­i­gency of the mo­ment, an air of of­fended sur­prise, and talk­ing in the gruffest of all imag­in­able tones—“sir! you are a sum’mat mis­taken—my name, in the first place, bee’nt noth­ing at all like God­din, and I’d want you for to know bet­ter, you black­guard, than to call my new ober­coat a darty one.” For my life I could hardly re­frain from scream­ing with laugh­ter at the odd man­ner in which the old gen­tle­man re­ceived this hand­some re­buke. He started back two or three steps, turned first pale and then ex­ces­sively red, threw up his spec­ta­cles, then, putting them down, ran full tilt at me, with his um­brella up­lifted. He stopped short, how­ever, in his ca­reer, as if struck with a sud­den rec­ol­lec­tion; and presently, turn­ing round, hob­bled off down the street, shak­ing all the while with rage, and mut­ter­ing be­tween his teeth: “Won’t do—new glasses—thought it was Gor­don—d—d good-for-noth­ing salt wa­ter Long Tom.”

After this nar­row es­cape we pro­ceeded with greater cau­tion, and ar­rived at our point of des­ti­na­tion in safety. There were only one or two of the hands on board, and these were busy for­ward, do­ing some­thing to the fore­cas­tle comb­ings. Cap­tain Barnard, we knew very well, was en­gaged at Lloyd and Vre­den­burgh’s, and would re­main there un­til late in the evening, so we had lit­tle to ap­pre­hend on his ac­count. Au­gus­tus went first up the ves­sel’s side, and in a short while I fol­lowed him, with­out be­ing no­ticed by the men at work. We pro­ceeded at once into the cabin, and found no per­son there. It was fit­ted up in the most com­fort­able style—a thing some­what un­usual in a whal­ing-ves­sel. There were four very ex­cel­lent state­rooms, with wide and con­ve­nient berths. There was also a large stove, I took no­tice, and a re­mark­ably thick and valu­able car­pet cov­er­ing the floor of both the cabin and state­rooms. The ceil­ing was full seven feet high, and, in short, ev­ery­thing ap­peared of a more roomy and agree­able na­ture than I had an­tic­i­pated. Au­gus­tus, how­ever, would al­low me but lit­tle time for ob­ser­va­tion, in­sist­ing upon the ne­ces­sity of my con­ceal­ing my­self as soon as pos­si­ble. He led the way into his own state­room, which was on the star­board side of the brig, and next to the bulk­heads. Upon en­ter­ing, he closed the door and bolted it. I thought I had never seen a nicer lit­tle room than the one in which I now found my­self. It was about ten feet long, and had only one berth, which, as I said be­fore, was wide and con­ve­nient. In that por­tion of the closet near­est the bulk­heads there was a space of four feet square, con­tain­ing a ta­ble, a chair, and a set of hang­ing shelves full of books, chiefly books of voy­ages and trav­els. There were many other lit­tle com­forts in the room, among which I ought not to for­get a kind of safe or re­frig­er­a­tor, in which Au­gus­tus pointed out to me a host of del­i­ca­cies, both in the eat­ing and drink­ing de­part­ment.

He now pressed with his knuck­les upon a cer­tain spot of the car­pet in one cor­ner of the space just men­tioned, let­ting me know that a por­tion of the floor­ing, about six­teen inches square, had been neatly cut out and again ad­justed. As he pressed, this por­tion rose up at one end suf­fi­ciently to al­low the pas­sage of his fin­ger be­neath. In this man­ner he raised the mouth of the trap (to which the car­pet was still fas­tened by tacks), and I found that it led into the af­ter hold. He next lit a small ta­per by means of a phos­pho­rous match, and, plac­ing the light in a dark lantern, de­scended with it through the open­ing, bid­ding me fol­low. I did so, and he then pulled the cover upon the hole, by means of a nail driven into the un­der side—the car­pet, of course, re­sum­ing its orig­i­nal po­si­tion on the floor of the state­room, and all traces of the aper­ture be­ing con­cealed.

The ta­per gave out so fee­ble a ray that it was with the great­est dif­fi­culty I could grope my way through the con­fused mass of lum­ber among which I now found my­self. By de­grees, how­ever, my eyes be­came ac­cus­tomed to the gloom, and I pro­ceeded with less trou­ble, hold­ing on to the skirts of my friend’s coat. He brought me, at length, af­ter creep­ing and wind­ing through in­nu­mer­able nar­row pas­sages, to an iron­bound box, such as is used some­times for pack­ing fine earth­en­ware. It was nearly four feet high, and full six long, but very nar­row. Two large empty oil-casks lay on the top of it, and above these, again, a vast quan­tity of straw mat­ting, piled up as high as the floor of the cabin. In ev­ery other di­rec­tion around was wedged as closely as pos­si­ble, even up to the ceil­ing, a com­plete chaos of al­most ev­ery species of ship-fur­ni­ture, to­gether with a het­ero­ge­neous med­ley of crates, ham­pers, bar­rels, and bales, so that it seemed a mat­ter no less than mirac­u­lous that we had dis­cov­ered any pas­sage at all to the box. I af­ter­ward found that Au­gus­tus had pur­posely ar­ranged the stowage in this hold with a view to af­ford­ing me a thor­ough con­ceal­ment, hav­ing had only one as­sis­tant in the labour, a man not go­ing out in the brig.

My com­pan­ion now showed me that one of the ends of the box could be re­moved at plea­sure. He slipped it aside and dis­played the in­te­rior, at which I was ex­ces­sively amused. A mat­tress from one of the cabin berths cov­ered the whole of its bot­tom, and it con­tained al­most ev­ery ar­ti­cle of mere com­fort which could be crowded into so small a space, al­low­ing me, at the same time, suf­fi­cient room for my ac­com­mo­da­tion, ei­ther in a sit­ting po­si­tion or ly­ing at full length. Among other things, there were some books, pen, ink, and pa­per, three blan­kets, a large jug full of wa­ter, a keg of sea-bis­cuit, three or four im­mense Bologna sausages, an enor­mous ham, a cold leg of roast mut­ton, and half a dozen bot­tles of cor­dials and liqueurs. I pro­ceeded im­me­di­ately to take pos­ses­sion of my lit­tle apart­ment, and this with feel­ings of higher sat­is­fac­tion, I am sure, than any monarch ever ex­pe­ri­enced upon en­ter­ing a new palace. Au­gus­tus now pointed out to me the method of fas­ten­ing the open end of the box, and then, hold­ing the ta­per close to the deck, showed me a piece of dark whip­cord ly­ing along it. This, he said, ex­tended from my hid­ing-place through­out all the nec­es­sary wind­ings among the lum­ber, to a nail which was driven into the deck of the hold, im­me­di­ately be­neath the trap­door lead­ing into his state­room. By means of this cord I should be en­abled read­ily to trace my way out with­out his guid­ance, pro­vided any un­looked-for ac­ci­dent should ren­der such a step nec­es­sary. He now took his de­par­ture, leav­ing with me the lantern, to­gether with a co­pi­ous sup­ply of ta­pers and phos­pho­rous, and promis­ing to pay me a visit as of­ten as he could con­trive to do so with­out ob­ser­va­tion. This was on the sev­en­teenth of June.

I re­mained three days and nights (as nearly as I could guess) in my hid­ing-place with­out get­ting out of it at all, ex­cept twice for the pur­pose of stretch­ing my limbs by stand­ing erect be­tween two crates just op­po­site the open­ing. Dur­ing the whole pe­riod I saw noth­ing of Au­gus­tus; but this oc­ca­sioned me lit­tle un­easi­ness, as I knew the brig was ex­pected to put to sea ev­ery hour, and in the bus­tle he would not eas­ily find op­por­tu­ni­ties of com­ing down to me. At length I heard the trap open and shut, and presently he called in a low voice, ask­ing if all was well, and if there was any­thing I wanted. “Noth­ing,” I replied; “I am as com­fort­able as can be; when will the brig sail?” “She will be un­der weigh in less than half an hour,” he an­swered. “I came to let you know, and for fear you should be un­easy at my ab­sence. I shall not have a chance of com­ing down again for some time—per­haps for three or four days more. All is go­ing on right above­board. After I go up and close the trap, do you creep along by the whip­cord to where the nail is driven in. You will find my watch there—it may be use­ful to you, as you have no day­light to keep time by. I sup­pose you can’t tell how long you have been buried—only three days—this is the twen­ti­eth. I would bring the watch to your box, but am afraid of be­ing missed.” With this he went up.

In about an hour af­ter he had gone I dis­tinctly felt the brig in mo­tion, and con­grat­u­lated my­self upon hav­ing at length fairly com­menced a voy­age. Sat­is­fied with this idea, I de­ter­mined to make my mind as easy as pos­si­ble, and await the course of events un­til I should be per­mit­ted to ex­change the box for the more roomy, al­though hardly more com­fort­able, ac­com­mo­da­tions of the cabin. My first care was to get the watch. Leav­ing the ta­per burn­ing, I groped along in the dark, fol­low­ing the cord through wind­ings in­nu­mer­able, in some of which I dis­cov­ered that, af­ter toil­ing a long dis­tance, I was brought back within a foot or two of a for­mer po­si­tion. At length I reached the nail, and se­cur­ing the ob­ject of my jour­ney, re­turned with it in safety. I now looked over the books which had been so thought­fully pro­vided, and se­lected the ex­pe­di­tion of Lewis and Clarke to the mouth of the Columbia. With this I amused my­self for some time, when, grow­ing sleepy, I ex­tin­guished the light with great care, and soon fell into a sound slum­ber.

Upon awak­en­ing I felt strangely con­fused in mind, and some time elapsed be­fore I could bring to rec­ol­lec­tion all the var­i­ous cir­cum­stances of my sit­u­a­tion. By de­grees, how­ever, I re­mem­bered all. Strik­ing a light, I looked at the watch; but it was run down, and there were, con­se­quently, no means of de­ter­min­ing how long I slept. My limbs were greatly cramped, and I was forced to re­lieve them by stand­ing be­tween the crates. Presently feel­ing an al­most rav­en­ous ap­petite, I bethought my­self of the cold mut­ton, some of which I had eaten just be­fore go­ing to sleep, and found ex­cel­lent. What was my as­ton­ish­ment in dis­cov­er­ing it to be in a state of ab­so­lute pu­tre­fac­tion! This cir­cum­stance oc­ca­sioned me great dis­qui­etude; for, con­nect­ing it with the dis­or­der of mind I ex­pe­ri­enced upon awak­en­ing, I be­gan to sup­pose that I must have slept for an in­or­di­nately long pe­riod of time. The close at­mos­phere of the hold might have had some­thing to do with this, and might, in the end, be pro­duc­tive of the most se­ri­ous re­sults. My head ached ex­ces­sively; I fan­cied that I drew ev­ery breath with dif­fi­culty; and, in short, I was op­pressed with a mul­ti­tude of gloomy feel­ings. Still I could not ven­ture to make any dis­tur­bance by open­ing the trap or oth­er­wise, and, hav­ing wound up the watch, con­tented my­self as well as pos­si­ble.

Through­out the whole of the next te­dious twenty-four hours no per­son came to my re­lief, and I could not help ac­cus­ing Au­gus­tus of the gross­est inat­ten­tion. What alarmed me chiefly was, that the wa­ter in my jug was re­duced to about half a pint, and I was suf­fer­ing much from thirst, hav­ing eaten freely of the Bologna sausages af­ter the loss of my mut­ton. I be­came very un­easy, and could no longer take any in­ter­est in my books. I was over­pow­ered, too, with a de­sire to sleep, yet trem­bled at the thought of in­dulging it, lest there might ex­ist some per­ni­cious in­flu­ence, like that of burn­ing char­coal, in the con­fined air of the hold. In the mean­time the roll of the brig told me that we were far in the main ocean, and a dull hum­ming sound, which reached my ears as if from an im­mense dis­tance, con­vinced me no or­di­nary gale was blow­ing. I could not imag­ine a rea­son for the ab­sence of Au­gus­tus. We were surely far enough ad­vanced on our voy­age to al­low of my go­ing up. Some ac­ci­dent might have hap­pened to him—but I could think of none which would ac­count for his suf­fer­ing me to re­main so long a pris­oner, ex­cept, in­deed, his hav­ing sud­denly died or fallen over­board, and upon this idea I could not dwell with any de­gree of pa­tience. It was pos­si­ble that we had been baf­fled by head winds, and were still in the near vicin­ity of Nan­tucket. This no­tion, how­ever, I was forced to aban­don; for such be­ing the case, the brig must have fre­quently gone about; and I was en­tirely sat­is­fied, from her con­tin­ual in­cli­na­tion to the lar­board, that she had been sail­ing all along with a steady breeze on her star­board quar­ter. Be­sides, grant­ing that we were still in the neigh­bor­hood of the is­land, why should not Au­gus­tus have vis­ited me and in­formed me of the cir­cum­stance? Pon­der­ing in this man­ner upon the dif­fi­cul­ties of my soli­tary and cheer­less con­di­tion, I re­solved to wait yet an­other twenty-four hours, when, if no re­lief were ob­tained, I would make my way to the trap, and en­deav­our ei­ther to hold a par­ley with my friend, or get at least a lit­tle fresh air through the open­ing, and a fur­ther sup­ply of wa­ter from the state­room. While oc­cu­pied with this thought, how­ever, I fell in spite of ev­ery ex­er­tion to the con­trary, into a state of pro­found sleep, or rather stu­por. My dreams were of the most ter­rific de­scrip­tion. Every species of calamity and hor­ror be­fell me. Among other mis­eries I was smoth­ered to death be­tween huge pil­lows, by demons of the most ghastly and fe­ro­cious as­pect. Im­mense ser­pents held me in their em­brace, and looked earnestly in my face with their fear­fully shin­ing eyes. Then deserts, lim­it­less, and of the most for­lorn and awe-in­spir­ing char­ac­ter, spread them­selves out be­fore me. Im­mensely tall trunks of trees, gray and leaf­less, rose up in end­less suc­ces­sion as far as the eye could reach. Their roots were con­cealed in wide-spread­ing morasses, whose dreary wa­ter lay in­tensely black, still, and al­to­gether ter­ri­ble, be­neath. And the strange trees seemed en­dowed with a hu­man vi­tal­ity, and wav­ing to and fro their skele­ton arms, were cry­ing to the silent wa­ters for mercy, in the shrill and pierc­ing ac­cents of the most acute agony and de­spair. The scene changed; and I stood, naked and alone, amidst the burn­ing sand-plains of Sa­hara. At my feet lay crouched a fierce lion of the trop­ics. Sud­denly his wild eyes opened and fell upon me. With a con­clu­sive bound he sprang to his feet, and laid bare his hor­ri­ble teeth. In an­other in­stant there burst from his red throat a roar like the thun­der of the fir­ma­ment, and I fell im­petu­ously to the earth. Sti­fling in a parox­ysm of ter­ror, I at last found my­self par­tially awake. My dream, then, was not all a dream. Now, at least, I was in pos­ses­sion of my senses. The paws of some huge and real mon­ster were press­ing heav­ily upon my bo­som—his hot breath was in my ear—and his white and ghastly fangs were gleam­ing upon me through the gloom.

Had a thou­sand lives hung upon the move­ment of a limb or the ut­ter­ance of a syl­la­ble, I could have nei­ther stirred nor spo­ken. The beast, what­ever it was, re­tained his po­si­tion with­out at­tempt­ing any im­me­di­ate vi­o­lence, while I lay in an ut­terly help­less, and, I fan­cied, a dy­ing con­di­tion be­neath him. I felt that my pow­ers of body and mind were fast leav­ing me—in a word, that I was per­ish­ing, and per­ish­ing of sheer fright. My brain swam—I grew deadly sick—my vi­sion failed—even the glar­ing eye­balls above me grew dim. Mak­ing a last strong ef­fort, I at length breathed a faint ejac­u­la­tion to God, and re­signed my­self to die. The sound of my voice seemed to arouse all the la­tent fury of the an­i­mal. He pre­cip­i­tated him­self at full length upon my body; but what was my as­ton­ish­ment, when, with a long and low whine, he com­menced lick­ing my face and hands with the great­est ea­ger­ness, and with the most ex­trav­a­gant demon­stra­tion of af­fec­tion and joy! I was be­wil­dered, ut­terly lost in amaze­ment—but I could not for­get the pe­cu­liar whine of my New­found­land dog Tiger, and the odd man­ner of his ca­resses I well knew. It was he. I ex­pe­ri­enced a sud­den rush of blood to my tem­ples—a giddy and over­pow­er­ing sense of de­liv­er­ance and re­an­i­ma­tion. I rose hur­riedly from the mat­tress upon which I had been ly­ing, and, throw­ing my­self upon the neck of my faith­ful fol­lower and friend, re­lieved the long op­pres­sion of my bo­som in a flood of the most pas­sion­ate tears.

As upon a for­mer oc­ca­sion my con­cep­tions were in a state of the great­est in­dis­tinct­ness and con­fu­sion af­ter leav­ing the mat­tress. For a long time I found it nearly im­pos­si­ble to con­nect any ideas; but, by very slow de­grees, my think­ing fac­ul­ties re­turned, and I again called to mem­ory the sev­eral in­ci­dents of my con­di­tion. For the pres­ence of Tiger I tried in vain to ac­count; and af­ter busy­ing my­self with a thou­sand dif­fer­ent con­jec­tures re­spect­ing him, was forced to con­tent my­self with re­joic­ing that he was with me to share my dreary soli­tude, and ren­der me com­fort by his ca­resses. Most peo­ple love their dogs—but for Tiger I had an af­fec­tion far more ar­dent than com­mon; and never, cer­tainly, did any crea­ture more truly de­serve it. For seven years he had been my in­sep­a­ra­ble com­pan­ion, and in a mul­ti­tude of in­stances had given ev­i­dence of all the no­ble qual­i­ties for which we value the an­i­mal. I had res­cued him, when a puppy, from the clutches of a ma­lig­nant lit­tle vil­lain in Nan­tucket who was lead­ing him, with a rope around his neck, to the wa­ter; and the grown dog re­paid the obli­ga­tion, about three years af­ter­ward, by sav­ing me from the blud­geon of a street rob­ber.

Get­ting now hold of the watch, I found, upon ap­ply­ing it to my ear, that it had again run down; but at this I was not at all sur­prised, be­ing con­vinced, from the pe­cu­liar state of my feel­ings, that I had slept, as be­fore, for a very long pe­riod of time, how long, it was of course im­pos­si­ble to say. I was burn­ing up with fever, and my thirst was al­most in­tol­er­a­ble. I felt about the box for my lit­tle re­main­ing sup­ply of wa­ter, for I had no light, the ta­per hav­ing burnt to the socket of the lantern, and the phos­pho­rus-box not com­ing read­ily to hand. Upon find­ing the jug, how­ever, I dis­cov­ered it to be empty—Tiger, no doubt, hav­ing been tempted to drink it, as well as to de­vour the rem­nant of mut­ton, the bone of which lay, well picked, by the open­ing of the box. The spoiled meat I could well spare, but my heart sank as I thought of the wa­ter. I was fee­ble in the ex­treme—so much so that I shook all over, as with an ague, at the slight­est move­ment or ex­er­tion. To add to my trou­bles, the brig was pitch­ing and rolling with great vi­o­lence, and the oil-casks which lay upon my box were in mo­men­tary dan­ger of fall­ing down, so as to block up the only way of ingress or egress. I felt, also, ter­ri­ble suf­fer­ings from sea­sick­ness. Th­ese con­sid­er­a­tions de­ter­mined me to make my way, at all haz­ards, to the trap, and ob­tain im­me­di­ate re­lief, be­fore I should be in­ca­pac­i­tated from do­ing so al­to­gether. Hav­ing come to this re­solve, I again felt about for the phos­pho­rus-box and ta­pers. The for­mer I found af­ter some lit­tle trou­ble; but, not dis­cov­er­ing the ta­pers as soon as I had ex­pected (for I re­mem­bered very nearly the spot in which I had placed them), I gave up the search for the present, and bid­ding Tiger lie quiet, be­gan at once my jour­ney to­ward the trap.

In this at­tempt my great fee­ble­ness be­came more than ever ap­par­ent. It was with the ut­most dif­fi­culty I could crawl along at all, and very fre­quently my limbs sank sud­denly from be­neath me; when, fall­ing pros­trate on my face, I would re­main for some min­utes in a state bor­der­ing on in­sen­si­bil­ity. Still I strug­gled for­ward by slow de­grees, dread­ing ev­ery mo­ment that I should swoon amid the nar­row and in­tri­cate wind­ings of the lum­ber, in which event I had noth­ing but death to ex­pect as the re­sult. At length, upon mak­ing a push for­ward with all the en­ergy I could com­mand, I struck my fore­head vi­o­lently against the sharp cor­ner of an iron­bound crate. The ac­ci­dent only stunned me for a few mo­ments; but I found, to my in­ex­press­ible grief, that the quick and vi­o­lent roll of the ves­sel had thrown the crate en­tirely across my path, so as ef­fec­tu­ally to block up the pas­sage. With my ut­most ex­er­tions I could not move it a sin­gle inch from its po­si­tion, it be­ing closely wedged in among the sur­round­ing boxes and ship-fur­ni­ture. It be­came nec­es­sary, there­fore, en­fee­bled as I was, ei­ther to leave the guid­ance of the whip­cord and seek out a new pas­sage, or to climb over the ob­sta­cle, and re­sume the path on the other side. The for­mer al­ter­na­tive pre­sented too many dif­fi­cul­ties and dan­gers to be thought of with­out a shud­der. In my present weak state of both mind and body, I should in­fal­li­bly lose my way if I at­tempted it, and per­ish mis­er­ably amid the dis­mal and dis­gust­ing labyrinths of the hold. I pro­ceeded, there­fore, with­out hes­i­ta­tion, to sum­mon up all my re­main­ing strength and for­ti­tude, and en­deav­our, as I best might, to clam­ber over the crate.

Upon stand­ing erect, with this end in view, I found the un­der­tak­ing even a more se­ri­ous task than my fears had led me to imag­ine. On each side of the nar­row pas­sage arose a com­plete wall of var­i­ous heavy lum­ber, which the least blun­der on my part might be the means of bring­ing down upon my head; or, if this ac­ci­dent did not oc­cur, the path might be ef­fec­tu­ally blocked up against my re­turn by the de­scend­ing mass, as it was in front by the ob­sta­cle there. The crate it­self was a long and un­wieldy box, upon which no foothold could be ob­tained. In vain I at­tempted, by ev­ery means in my power, to reach the top, with the hope of be­ing thus en­abled to draw my­self up. Had I suc­ceeded in reach­ing it, it is cer­tain that my strength would have proved ut­terly in­ad­e­quate to the task of get­ting over, and it was bet­ter in ev­ery re­spect that I failed. At length, in a des­per­ate ef­fort to force the crate from its ground, I felt a strong vi­bra­tion in the side next me. I thrust my hand ea­gerly to the edge of the planks, and found that a very large one was loose. With my pock­etknife, which, luck­ily, I had with me, I suc­ceeded, af­ter great labour, in pry­ing it en­tirely off; and get­ting it through the aper­ture, dis­cov­ered, to my ex­ceed­ing joy, that there were no boards on the op­po­site side—in other words, that the top was want­ing, it be­ing the bot­tom through which I had forced my way. I now met with no im­por­tant dif­fi­culty in pro­ceed­ing along the line un­til I fi­nally reached the nail. With a beat­ing heart I stood erect, and with a gen­tle touch pressed against the cover of the trap. It did not rise as soon as I had ex­pected, and I pressed it with some­what more de­ter­mi­na­tion, still dread­ing lest some other per­son than Au­gus­tus might be in his state­room. The door, how­ever, to my as­ton­ish­ment, re­mained steady, and I be­came some­what un­easy, for I knew that it had for­merly re­quired but lit­tle or no ef­fort to re­move it. I pushed it strongly—it was nev­er­the­less firm: with all my strength—it still did not give way: with rage, with fury, with de­spair—it set at de­fi­ance my ut­most ef­forts; and it was ev­i­dent, from the un­yield­ing na­ture of the re­sis­tance, that the hole had ei­ther been dis­cov­ered and ef­fec­tu­ally nailed up, or that some im­mense weight had been placed upon it, which it was use­less to think of re­mov­ing.

My sen­sa­tions were those of ex­treme hor­ror and dis­may. In vain I at­tempted to rea­son on the prob­a­ble cause of my be­ing thus en­tombed. I could sum­mon up no con­nected chain of re­flec­tion, and, sink­ing on the floor, gave way, un­re­sist­ingly, to the most gloomy imag­in­ings, in which the dread­ful deaths of thirst, famine, suf­fo­ca­tion, and pre­ma­ture in­ter­ment crowded upon me as the prom­i­nent dis­as­ters to be en­coun­tered. At length there re­turned to me some por­tion of pres­ence of mind. I arose, and felt with my fin­gers for the seams or cracks of the aper­ture. Hav­ing found them, I ex­am­ined them closely to as­cer­tain if they emit­ted any light from the state­room; but none was vis­i­ble. I then forced the blade of my penknife through them, un­til I met with some hard ob­sta­cle. Scrap­ing against it, I dis­cov­ered it to be a solid mass of iron, which, from its pe­cu­liar wavy feel as I passed the blade along it, I con­cluded to be a chain-ca­ble. The only course now left me was to re­trace my way to the box, and there ei­ther yield to my sad fate, or try so to tran­quil­ize my mind as to ad­mit of my ar­rang­ing some plan of es­cape. I im­me­di­ately set about the at­tempt, and suc­ceeded, af­ter in­nu­mer­able dif­fi­cul­ties, in get­ting back. As I sank, ut­terly ex­hausted, upon the mat­tress, Tiger threw him­self at full length by my side, and seemed as if de­sirous, by his ca­resses, of con­sol­ing me in my trou­bles, and urg­ing me to bear them with for­ti­tude.

The sin­gu­lar­ity of his be­hav­ior at length forcibly ar­rested my at­ten­tion. After lick­ing my face and hands for some min­utes, he would sud­denly cease do­ing so, and ut­ter a low whine. Upon reach­ing out my hand to­ward him, I then in­vari­ably found him ly­ing on his back, with his paws up­lifted. This con­duct, so fre­quently re­peated, ap­peared strange, and I could in no man­ner ac­count for it. As the dog seemed dis­tressed, I con­cluded that he had re­ceived some in­jury; and, tak­ing his paws in my hands, I ex­am­ined them one by one, but found no sign of any hurt. I then sup­posed him hun­gry, and gave him a large piece of ham, which he de­voured with avid­ity—af­ter­ward, how­ever, re­sum­ing his ex­tra­or­di­nary ma­noeu­vres. I now imag­ined that he was suf­fer­ing, like my­self, the tor­ments of thirst, and was about adopt­ing this con­clu­sion as the true one, when the idea oc­curred to me that I had as yet only ex­am­ined his paws, and that there might pos­si­bly be a wound upon some por­tion of his body or head. The lat­ter I felt care­fully over, but found noth­ing. On pass­ing my hand, how­ever, along his back, I per­ceived a slight erec­tion of the hair ex­tend­ing com­pletely across it. Prob­ing this with my fin­ger, I dis­cov­ered a string, and trac­ing it up, found that it en­cir­cled the whole body. Upon a closer scru­tiny, I came across a small slip of what had the feel­ing of let­ter pa­per, through which the string had been fas­tened in such a man­ner as to bring it im­me­di­ately be­neath the left shoul­der of the an­i­mal.

III

The thought in­stantly oc­curred to me that the pa­per was a note from Au­gus­tus, and that some un­ac­count­able ac­ci­dent hav­ing hap­pened to pre­vent his re­liev­ing me from my dun­geon, he had de­vised this method of ac­quaint­ing me with the true state of af­fairs. Trem­bling with ea­ger­ness, I now com­menced an­other search for my phos­pho­rus matches and ta­pers. I had a con­fused rec­ol­lec­tion of hav­ing put them care­fully away just be­fore fall­ing asleep; and, in­deed, pre­vi­ously to my last jour­ney to the trap, I had been able to re­mem­ber the ex­act spot where I had de­posited them. But now I en­deav­ored in vain to call it to mind, and bus­ied my­self for a full hour in a fruit­less and vex­a­tious search for the miss­ing ar­ti­cles; never, surely, was there a more tan­ta­liz­ing state of anx­i­ety and sus­pense. At length, while grop­ing about, with my head close to the bal­last, near the open­ing of the box, and out­side of it, I per­ceived a faint glim­mer­ing of light in the di­rec­tion of the steer­age. Greatly sur­prised, I en­deav­ored to make my way to­ward it, as it ap­peared to be but a few feet from my po­si­tion. Scarcely had I moved with this in­ten­tion, when I lost sight of the glim­mer en­tirely, and, be­fore I could bring it into view again, was obliged to feel along by the box un­til I had ex­actly re­sumed my orig­i­nal sit­u­a­tion. Now, mov­ing my head with cau­tion to and fro, I found that, by pro­ceed­ing slowly, with great care, in an op­po­site di­rec­tion to that in which I had at first started, I was en­abled to draw near the light, still keep­ing it in view. Presently I came di­rectly upon it (hav­ing squeezed my way through in­nu­mer­able nar­row wind­ings), and found that it pro­ceeded from some frag­ments of my matches ly­ing in an empty bar­rel turned upon its side. I was won­der­ing how they came in such a place, when my hand fell upon two or three pieces of ta­per wax, which had been ev­i­dently mum­bled by the dog. I con­cluded at once that he had de­voured the whole of my sup­ply of can­dles, and I felt hope­less of be­ing ever able to read the note of Au­gus­tus. The small rem­nants of the wax were so mashed up among other rub­bish in the bar­rel, that I de­spaired of de­riv­ing any ser­vice from them, and left them as they were. The phos­pho­rus, of which there was only a speck or two, I gath­ered up as well as I could, and re­turned with it, af­ter much dif­fi­culty, to my box, where Tiger had all the while re­mained.

What to do next I could not tell. The hold was so in­tensely dark that I could not see my hand, how­ever close I would hold it to my face. The white slip of pa­per could barely be dis­cerned, and not even that when I looked at it di­rectly; by turn­ing the ex­te­rior por­tions of the retina to­ward it—that is to say, by sur­vey­ing it slightly askance, I found that it be­came in some mea­sure per­cep­ti­ble. Thus the gloom of my prison may be imag­ined, and the note of my friend, if in­deed it were a note from him, seemed only likely to throw me into fur­ther trou­ble, by dis­qui­et­ing to no pur­pose my al­ready en­fee­bled and ag­i­tated mind. In vain I re­volved in my brain a mul­ti­tude of ab­surd ex­pe­di­ents for procur­ing light—such ex­pe­di­ents pre­cisely as a man in the per­turbed sleep oc­ca­sioned by opium would be apt to fall upon for a sim­i­lar pur­pose—each and all of which ap­pear by turns to the dreamer the most rea­son­able and the most pre­pos­ter­ous of con­cep­tions, just as the rea­son­ing or imag­i­na­tive fac­ul­ties flicker, al­ter­nately, one above the other. At last an idea oc­curred to me which seemed ra­tio­nal, and which gave me cause to won­der, very justly, that I had not en­ter­tained it be­fore. I placed the slip of pa­per on the back of a book, and, col­lect­ing the frag­ments of the phos­pho­rus matches which I had brought from the bar­rel, laid them to­gether upon the pa­per. I then, with the palm of my hand, rubbed the whole over quickly, yet steadily. A clear light dif­fused it­self im­me­di­ately through­out the whole sur­face; and had there been any writ­ing upon it, I should not have ex­pe­ri­enced the least dif­fi­culty, I am sure, in read­ing it. Not a syl­la­ble was there, how­ever—noth­ing but a dreary and un­sat­is­fac­tory blank; the il­lu­mi­na­tion died away in a few sec­onds, and my heart died away within me as it went.

I have be­fore stated more than once that my in­tel­lect, for some pe­riod prior to this, had been in a con­di­tion nearly bor­der­ing on id­iocy. There were, to be sure, mo­men­tary in­ter­vals of per­fect san­ity, and, now and then, even of en­ergy; but these were few. It must be re­mem­bered that I had been, for many days cer­tainly, in­hal­ing the al­most pesti­len­tial at­mos­phere of a close hold in a whal­ing ves­sel, and for a long por­tion of that time but scant­ily sup­plied with wa­ter. For the last four­teen or fif­teen hours I had none—nor had I slept dur­ing that time. Salt pro­vi­sions of the most ex­cit­ing kind had been my chief, and, in­deed, since the loss of the mut­ton, my only sup­ply of food, with the ex­cep­tion of the sea-bis­cuit; and these lat­ter were ut­terly use­less to me, as they were too dry and hard to be swal­lowed in the swollen and parched con­di­tion of my throat. I was now in a high state of fever, and in ev­ery re­spect ex­ceed­ingly ill. This will ac­count for the fact that many mis­er­able hours of de­spon­dency elapsed af­ter my last ad­ven­ture with the phos­pho­rus, be­fore the thought sug­gested it­self that I had ex­am­ined only one side of the pa­per. I shall not at­tempt to de­scribe my feel­ings of rage (for I be­lieve I was more an­gry than any­thing else) when the egre­gious over­sight I had com­mit­ted flashed sud­denly upon my per­cep­tion. The blun­der it­self would have been unim­por­tant, had not my own folly and im­petu­os­ity ren­dered it oth­er­wise—in my dis­ap­point­ment at not find­ing some words upon the slip, I had child­ishly torn it in pieces and thrown it away, it was im­pos­si­ble to say where.

From the worst part of this dilemma I was re­lieved by the sagac­ity of Tiger. Hav­ing got, af­ter a long search, a small piece of the note, I put it to the dog’s nose, and en­deav­ored to make him un­der­stand that he must bring me the rest of it. To my as­ton­ish­ment, (for I had taught him none of the usual tricks for which his breed are fa­mous,) he seemed to en­ter at once into my mean­ing, and, rum­mag­ing about for a few mo­ments, soon found an­other con­sid­er­able por­tion. Bring­ing me this, he paused awhile, and, rub­bing his nose against my hand, ap­peared to be wait­ing for my ap­proval of what he had done. I pat­ted him on the head, when he im­me­di­ately made off again. It was now some min­utes be­fore he came back—but when he did come, he brought with him a large slip, which proved to be all the pa­per miss­ing—it hav­ing been torn, it seems, only into three pieces. Luck­ily, I had no trou­ble in find­ing what few frag­ments of the phos­pho­rus were left—be­ing guided by the in­dis­tinct glow one or two of the par­ti­cles still emit­ted. My dif­fi­cul­ties had taught me the ne­ces­sity of cau­tion, and I now took time to re­flect upon what I was about to do. It was very prob­a­ble, I con­sid­ered, that some words were writ­ten upon that side of the pa­per which had not been ex­am­ined—but which side was that? Fit­ting the pieces to­gether gave me no clue in this re­spect, al­though it as­sured me that the words (if there were any) would be found all on one side, and con­nected in a proper man­ner, as writ­ten. There was the greater ne­ces­sity of as­cer­tain­ing the point in ques­tion be­yond a doubt, as the phos­pho­rus re­main­ing would be al­to­gether in­suf­fi­cient for a third at­tempt, should I fail in the one I was now about to make. I placed the pa­per on a book as be­fore, and sat for some min­utes thought­fully re­volv­ing the mat­ter over in my mind. At last I thought it barely pos­si­ble that the writ­ten side might have some un­even­ness on its sur­face, which a del­i­cate sense of feel­ing might en­able me to de­tect. I de­ter­mined to make the ex­per­i­ment and passed my fin­ger very care­fully over the side which first pre­sented it­self. Noth­ing, how­ever, was per­cep­ti­ble, and I turned the pa­per, ad­just­ing it on the book. I now again car­ried my fore­fin­ger cau­tiously along, when I was aware of an ex­ceed­ingly slight, but still dis­cern­able glow, which fol­lowed as it pro­ceeded. This, I knew, must arise from some very minute re­main­ing par­ti­cles of the phos­pho­rus with which I had cov­ered the pa­per in my pre­vi­ous at­tempt. The other, or un­der side, then, was that on which lay the writ­ing, if writ­ing there should fi­nally prove to be. Again I turned the note, and went to work as I had pre­vi­ously done. Hav­ing rubbed in the phos­pho­rus, a bril­liancy en­sued as be­fore—but this time sev­eral lines of MS in a large hand, and ap­par­ently in red ink, be­came dis­tinctly vis­i­ble. The glim­mer, al­though suf­fi­ciently bright, was but mo­men­tary. Still, had I not been too greatly ex­cited, there would have been am­ple time enough for me to pe­ruse the whole three sen­tences be­fore me—for I saw there were three. In my anx­i­ety, how­ever, to read all at once, I suc­ceeded only in read­ing the seven con­clud­ing words, which thus ap­peared—“blood—your life de­pends upon ly­ing close.”

Had I been able to as­cer­tain the en­tire con­tents of the note—the full mean­ing of the ad­mo­ni­tion which my friend had thus at­tempted to con­vey, that ad­mo­ni­tion, even al­though it should have re­vealed a story of dis­as­ter the most un­speak­able, could not, I am firmly con­vinced, have im­bued my mind with one tithe of the har­row­ing and yet in­de­fin­able hor­ror with which I was in­spired by the frag­men­tary warn­ing thus re­ceived. And “blood,” too, that word of all words—so rife at all times with mys­tery, and suf­fer­ing, and ter­ror—how tre­bly full of im­port did it now ap­pear—how chilly and heav­ily (dis­jointed, as it thus was, from any fore­go­ing words to qual­ify or ren­der it dis­tinct) did its vague syl­la­bles fall, amid the deep gloom of my prison, into the in­ner­most re­cesses of my soul!

Au­gus­tus had, un­doubt­edly, good rea­sons for wish­ing me to re­main con­cealed, and I formed a thou­sand sur­mises as to what they could be—but I could think of noth­ing af­ford­ing a sat­is­fac­tory so­lu­tion of the mys­tery. Just af­ter re­turn­ing from my last jour­ney to the trap, and be­fore my at­ten­tion had been oth­er­wise di­rected by the sin­gu­lar con­duct of Tiger, I had come to the res­o­lu­tion of mak­ing my­self heard at all events by those on board, or, if I could not suc­ceed in this di­rectly, of try­ing to cut my way through the or­lop deck. The half cer­tainty which I felt of be­ing able to ac­com­plish one of these two pur­poses in the last emer­gency, had given me courage (which I should not oth­er­wise have had) to en­dure the evils of my sit­u­a­tion. The few words I had been able to read, how­ever, had cut me off from these fi­nal re­sources, and I now, for the first time, felt all the mis­ery of my fate. In a parox­ysm of de­spair I threw my­self again upon the mat­tress, where, for about the pe­riod of a day and night, I lay in a kind of stu­por, re­lieved only by mo­men­tary in­ter­vals of rea­son and rec­ol­lec­tion.

At length I once more arose, and bus­ied my­self in re­flec­tion upon the hor­rors which en­com­passed me. For an­other twenty-four hours it was barely pos­si­ble that I might ex­ist with­out wa­ter—for a longer time I could not do so. Dur­ing the first por­tion of my im­pris­on­ment I had made free use of the cor­dials with which Au­gus­tus had sup­plied me, but they only served to ex­cite fever, with­out in the least de­gree as­suag­ing thirst. I had now only about a gill left, and this was of a species of strong peach liqueur at which my stom­ach re­volted. The sausages were en­tirely con­sumed; of the ham noth­ing re­mained but a small piece of the skin; and all the bis­cuit, ex­cept a few frag­ments of one, had been eaten by Tiger. To add to my trou­bles, I found that my headache was in­creas­ing mo­men­tar­ily, and with it the species of delir­ium which had dis­tressed me more or less since my first fall­ing asleep. For some hours past it had been with the great­est dif­fi­culty I could breathe at all, and now each at­tempt at so do­ing was at­tended with the most de­press­ing spas­modic ac­tion of the chest. But there was still an­other and very dif­fer­ent source of dis­qui­etude, and one, in­deed, whose ha­rass­ing ter­rors had been the chief means of arous­ing me to ex­er­tion from my stu­por on the mat­tress. It arose from the de­meanor of the dog.

I first ob­served an al­ter­ation in his con­duct while rub­bing in the phos­pho­rus on the pa­per in my last at­tempt. As I rubbed, he ran his nose against my hand with a slight snarl; but I was too greatly ex­cited at the time to pay much at­ten­tion to the cir­cum­stance. Soon af­ter­ward, it will be re­mem­bered, I threw my­self on the mat­tress, and fell into a species of lethargy. Presently I be­came aware of a sin­gu­lar hiss­ing sound close at my ears, and dis­cov­ered it to pro­ceed from Tiger, who was pant­ing and wheez­ing in a state of the great­est ap­par­ent ex­cite­ment, his eye­balls flash­ing fiercely through the gloom. I spoke to him, when he replied with a low growl, and then re­mained quiet. Presently I re­lapsed into my stu­por, from which I was again awak­ened in a sim­i­lar man­ner. This was re­peated three or four times, un­til fi­nally his be­hav­iour in­spired me with so great a de­gree of fear, that I be­came fully aroused. He was now ly­ing close by the door of the box, snarling fear­fully, al­though in a kind of un­der­tone, and grind­ing his teeth as if strongly con­vulsed. I had no doubt what­ever that the want of wa­ter or the con­fined at­mos­phere of the hold had driven him mad, and I was at a loss what course to pur­sue. I could not en­dure the thought of killing him, yet it seemed ab­so­lutely nec­es­sary for my own safety. I could dis­tinctly per­ceive his eyes fas­tened upon me with an ex­pres­sion of the most deadly an­i­mos­ity, and I ex­pected ev­ery in­stant that he would at­tack me. At last I could en­dure my ter­ri­ble sit­u­a­tion no longer, and de­ter­mined to make my way from the box at all haz­ards, and dis­patch him, if his op­po­si­tion should ren­der it nec­es­sary for me to do so. To get out, I had to pass di­rectly over his body, and he al­ready seemed to an­tic­i­pate my de­sign—miss­ing him­self upon his forelegs (as I per­ceived by the al­tered po­si­tion of his eyes), and dis­played the whole of his white fangs, which were eas­ily dis­cernible. I took the re­mains of the ham-skin, and the bot­tle con­tain­ing the liqueur, and se­cured them about my per­son, to­gether with a large carv­ing-knife which Au­gus­tus had left me—then, fold­ing my cloak around me as closely as pos­si­ble, I made a move­ment to­ward the mouth of the box. No sooner did I do this, than the dog sprang with a loud growl to­ward my throat. The whole weight of his body struck me on the right shoul­der, and I fell vi­o­lently to the left, while the en­raged an­i­mal passed en­tirely over me. I had fallen upon my knees, with my head buried among the blan­kets, and these pro­tected me from a sec­ond fu­ri­ous as­sault, dur­ing which I felt the sharp teeth press­ing vig­or­ously upon the woollen which en­veloped my neck—yet, luck­ily, with­out be­ing able to pen­e­trate all the folds. I was now be­neath the dog, and a few mo­ments would place me com­pletely in his power. De­s­pair gave me strength, and I rose boldly up, shak­ing him from me by main force, and drag­ging with me the blan­kets from the mat­tress. Th­ese I now threw over him, and be­fore he could ex­tri­cate him­self, I had got through the door and closed it ef­fec­tu­ally against his pur­suit. In this strug­gle, how­ever, I had been forced to drop the morsel of ham-skin, and I now found my whole stock of pro­vi­sions re­duced to a sin­gle gill of liqueur. As this re­flec­tion crossed my mind, I felt my­self ac­tu­ated by one of those fits of per­verse­ness which might be sup­posed to in­flu­ence a spoiled child in sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances, and, rais­ing the bot­tle to my lips, I drained it to the last drop, and dashed it fu­ri­ously upon the floor.

Scarcely had the echo of the crash died away, when I heard my name pro­nounced in an ea­ger but sub­dued voice, is­su­ing from the di­rec­tion of the steer­age. So un­ex­pected was any­thing of the kind, and so in­tense was the emo­tion ex­cited within me by the sound, that I en­deav­oured in vain to re­ply. My pow­ers of speech to­tally failed, and in an agony of ter­ror lest my friend should con­clude me dead, and re­turn with­out at­tempt­ing to reach me, I stood up be­tween the crates near the door of the box, trem­bling con­vul­sively, and gasp­ing and strug­gling for ut­ter­ance. Had a thou­sand words de­pended upon a syl­la­ble, I could not have spo­ken it. There was a slight move­ment now au­di­ble among the lum­ber some­where for­ward of my sta­tion. The sound presently grew less dis­tinct, then again less so, and still less. Shall I ever for­get my feel­ings at this mo­ment? He was go­ing—my friend, my com­pan­ion, from whom I had a right to ex­pect so much—he was go­ing—he would aban­don me—he was gone! He would leave me to per­ish mis­er­ably, to ex­pire in the most hor­ri­ble and loathe­some of dun­geons—and one word, one lit­tle syl­la­ble, would save me—yet that sin­gle syl­la­ble I could not ut­ter! I felt, I am sure, more than ten thou­sand times the ag­o­nies of death it­self. My brain reeled, and I fell, deadly sick, against the end of the box.

As I fell the carv­ing-knife was shaken out from the waist­band of my pan­taloons, and dropped with a rat­tling sound to the floor. Never did any strain of the rich­est melody come so sweetly to my ears! With the in­tens­est anx­i­ety I lis­tened to as­cer­tain the ef­fect of the noise upon Au­gus­tus—for I knew that the per­son who called my name could be no one but him­self. All was silent for some mo­ments. At length I again heard the word “Arthur!” re­peated in a low tone, and one full of hes­i­ta­tion. Re­viv­ing hope loos­ened at once my pow­ers of speech, and I now screamed at the top of my voice, “Au­gus­tus! oh, Au­gus­tus!” “Hush! for God’s sake be silent!” he replied, in a voice trem­bling with ag­i­ta­tion; “I will be with you im­me­di­ately—as soon as I can make my way through the hold.” For a long time I heard him mov­ing among the lum­ber, and ev­ery mo­ment seemed to me an age. At length I felt his hand upon my shoul­der, and he placed, at the same mo­ment, a bot­tle of wa­ter to my lips. Those only who have been sud­denly re­deemed from the jaws of the tomb, or who have known the in­suf­fer­able tor­ments of thirst un­der cir­cum­stances as ag­gra­vated as those which en­com­passed me in my dreary prison, can form any idea of the un­ut­ter­able trans­ports which that one long draught of the rich­est of all phys­i­cal lux­u­ries af­forded.

When I had in some de­gree sat­is­fied my thirst, Au­gus­tus pro­duced from his pocket three or four boiled pota­toes, which I de­voured with the great­est avid­ity. He had brought with him a light in a dark lantern, and the grate­ful rays af­forded me scarcely less com­fort than the food and drink. But I was im­pa­tient to learn the cause of his pro­tracted ab­sence, and he pro­ceeded to re­count what had hap­pened on board dur­ing my in­car­cer­a­tion.

IV

The brig put to sea, as I had sup­posed, in about an hour af­ter he had left the watch. This was on the twen­ti­eth of June. It will be re­mem­bered that I had then been in the hold for three days; and, dur­ing this pe­riod, there was so con­stant a bus­tle on board, and so much run­ning to and fro, es­pe­cially in the cabin and state­rooms, that he had had no chance of vis­it­ing me with­out the risk of hav­ing the se­cret of the trap dis­cov­ered. When at length he did come, I had as­sured him that I was do­ing as well as pos­si­ble; and, there­fore, for the two next days he felt but lit­tle un­easi­ness on my ac­count—still, how­ever, watch­ing an op­por­tu­nity of go­ing down. It was not un­til the fourth day that he found one. Sev­eral times dur­ing this in­ter­val he had made up his mind to let his fa­ther know of the ad­ven­ture, and have me come up at once; but we were still within reach­ing dis­tance of Nan­tucket, and it was doubt­ful, from some ex­pres­sions which had es­caped Cap­tain Barnard, whether he would not im­me­di­ately put back if he dis­cov­ered me to be on board. Be­sides, upon think­ing the mat­ter over, Au­gus­tus, so he told me, could not imag­ine that I was in im­me­di­ate want, or that I would hes­i­tate, in such case, to make my­self heard at the trap. When, there­fore, he con­sid­ered ev­ery­thing he con­cluded to let me stay un­til he could meet with an op­por­tu­nity of vis­it­ing me un­ob­served. This, as I said be­fore, did not oc­cur un­til the fourth day af­ter his bring­ing me the watch, and the sev­enth since I had first en­tered the hold. He then went down with­out tak­ing with him any wa­ter or pro­vi­sions, in­tend­ing in the first place merely to call my at­ten­tion, and get me to come from the box to the trap—when he would go up to the state­room and thence hand me down a sup­ply. When he de­scended for this pur­pose he found that I was asleep, for it seems that I was snor­ing very loudly. From all the cal­cu­la­tions I can make on the sub­ject, this must have been the slum­ber into which I fell just af­ter my re­turn from the trap with the watch, and which, con­se­quently, must have lasted for more than three en­tire days and nights at the very least. Lat­terly, I have had rea­son both from my own ex­pe­ri­ence and the as­sur­ance of oth­ers, to be ac­quainted with the strong so­porific ef­fects of the stench aris­ing from old fish-oil when closely con­fined; and when I think of the con­di­tion of the hold in which I was im­pris­oned, and the long pe­riod dur­ing which the brig had been used as a whal­ing ves­sel, I am more in­clined to won­der that I awoke at all, af­ter once fall­ing asleep, than that I should have slept un­in­ter­rupt­edly for the pe­riod spec­i­fied above.

Au­gus­tus called to me at first in a low voice and with­out clos­ing the trap—but I made him no re­ply. He then shut the trap, and spoke to me in a louder, and fi­nally in a very loud tone—still I con­tin­ued to snore. He was now at a loss what to do. It would take him some time to make his way through the lum­ber to my box, and in the mean­while his ab­sence would be no­ticed by Cap­tain Barnard, who had oc­ca­sion for his ser­vices ev­ery minute, in ar­rang­ing and copy­ing pa­pers con­nected with the busi­ness of the voy­age. He de­ter­mined, there­fore, upon re­flec­tion, to as­cend, and await an­other op­por­tu­nity of vis­it­ing me. He was the more eas­ily in­duced to this re­solve, as my slum­ber ap­peared to be of the most tran­quil na­ture, and he could not sup­pose that I had un­der­gone any in­con­ve­nience from my in­car­cer­a­tion. He had just made up his mind on these points when his at­ten­tion was ar­rested by an un­usual bus­tle, the sound of which pro­ceeded ap­par­ently from the cabin. He sprang through the trap as quickly as pos­si­ble, closed it, and threw open the door of his state­room. No sooner had he put his foot over the thresh­old than a pis­tol flashed in his face, and he was knocked down, at the same mo­ment, by a blow from a hand­spike.

A strong hand held him on the cabin floor, with a tight grasp upon his throat; still he was able to see what was go­ing on around him. His fa­ther was tied hand and foot, and ly­ing along the steps of the com­pan­ion­way, with his head down, and a deep wound in the fore­head, from which the blood was flow­ing in a con­tin­ued stream. He spoke not a word, and was ap­par­ently dy­ing. Over him stood the first mate, eye­ing him with an ex­pres­sion of fiendish de­ri­sion, and de­lib­er­ately search­ing his pock­ets, from which he presently drew forth a large wal­let and a chronome­ter. Seven of the crew (among whom was the cook, a ne­gro) were rum­mag­ing the state­rooms on the lar­board for arms, where they soon equipped them­selves with mus­kets and am­mu­ni­tion. Be­sides Au­gus­tus and Cap­tain Barnard, there were nine men al­to­gether in the cabin, and these among the most ruf­fi­anly of the brig’s com­pany. The vil­lains now went upon deck, tak­ing my friend with them af­ter hav­ing se­cured his arms be­hind his back. They pro­ceeded straight to the fore­cas­tle, which was fas­tened down—two of the mu­ti­neers stand­ing by it with axes—two also at the main hatch. The mate called out in a loud voice: “Do you hear there be­low? tum­ble up with you, one by one—now, mark that—and no grum­bling!” It was some min­utes be­fore any­one ap­peared:—at last an English­man, who had shipped as a raw hand, came up, weep­ing piteously, and en­treat­ing the mate, in the most hum­ble man­ner, to spare his life. The only re­ply was a blow on the fore­head from an axe. The poor fel­low fell to the deck with­out a groan, and the black cook lifted him up in his arms as he would a child, and tossed him de­lib­er­ately into the sea. Hear­ing the blow and the plunge of the body, the men be­low could now be in­duced to ven­ture on deck nei­ther by threats nor prom­ises, un­til a propo­si­tion was made to smoke them out. A gen­eral rush then en­sued, and for a mo­ment it seemed pos­si­ble that the brig might be re­taken. The mu­ti­neers, how­ever, suc­ceeded at last in clos­ing the fore­cas­tle ef­fec­tu­ally be­fore more than six of their op­po­nents could get up. Th­ese six, find­ing them­selves so greatly out­num­bered and with­out arms, sub­mit­ted af­ter a brief strug­gle. The mate gave them fair words—no doubt with a view of in­duc­ing those be­low to yield, for they had no dif­fi­culty in hear­ing all that was said on deck. The re­sult proved his sagac­ity, no less than his di­a­bol­i­cal vil­lainy. All in the fore­cas­tle presently sig­ni­fied their in­ten­tion of sub­mit­ting, and, as­cend­ing one by one, were pin­ioned and then thrown on their backs, to­gether with the first six—there be­ing in all, of the crew who were not con­cerned in the mutiny, twenty-seven.

A scene of the most hor­ri­ble butch­ery en­sued. The bound sea­men were dragged to the gang­way. Here the cook stood with an axe, strik­ing each vic­tim on the head as he was forced over the side of the ves­sel by the other mu­ti­neers. In this man­ner twenty-two per­ished, and Au­gus­tus had given him­self up for lost, ex­pect­ing ev­ery mo­ment his own turn to come next. But it seemed that the vil­lains were now ei­ther weary, or in some mea­sure dis­gusted with their bloody labour; for the four re­main­ing pris­on­ers, to­gether with my friend, who had been thrown on the deck with the rest, were respited while the mate sent be­low for rum, and the whole mur­der­ous party held a drunken carouse, which lasted un­til sun­set. They now fell to dis­put­ing in re­gard to the fate of the sur­vivors, who lay not more than four paces off, and could dis­tin­guish ev­ery word said. Upon some of the mu­ti­neers the liquor ap­peared to have a soft­en­ing ef­fect, for sev­eral voices were heard in fa­vor of re­leas­ing the cap­tives al­to­gether, on con­di­tion of join­ing the mutiny and shar­ing the prof­its. The black cook, how­ever (who in all re­spects was a per­fect de­mon, and who seemed to ex­ert as much in­flu­ence, if not more, than the mate him­self), would lis­ten to no propo­si­tion of the kind, and rose re­peat­edly for the pur­pose of re­sum­ing his work at the gang­way. For­tu­nately he was so far over­come by in­tox­i­ca­tion as to be eas­ily re­strained by the less blood­thirsty of the party, among whom was a line-man­ager, who went by the name of Dirk Peters. This man was the son of an In­dian squaw of the tribe of Up­sarokas, who live among the fast­nesses of the Black Hills, near the source of the Mis­souri. His fa­ther was a fur-trader, I be­lieve, or at least con­nected in some man­ner with the In­dian trad­ing-posts on Lewis river. Peter him­self was one of the most fe­ro­cious-look­ing men I ever be­held. He was short in stature, not more than four feet eight inches high, but his limbs were of Her­culean mould. His hands, es­pe­cially, were so enor­mously thick and broad as hardly to re­tain a hu­man shape. His arms, as well as legs, were bowed in the most sin­gu­lar man­ner, and ap­peared to pos­sess no flex­i­bil­ity what­ever. His head was equally de­formed, be­ing of im­mense size, with an in­den­ta­tion on the crown (like that on the head of most ne­groes), and en­tirely bald. To con­ceal this lat­ter de­fi­ciency, which did not pro­ceed from old age, he usu­ally wore a wig formed of any hair­like ma­te­rial which pre­sented it­self—oc­ca­sion­ally the skin of a Span­ish dog or Amer­i­can griz­zly bear. At the time spo­ken of, he had on a por­tion of one of these bearskins; and it added no lit­tle to the nat­u­ral fe­roc­ity of his coun­te­nance, which be­took of the Up­saroka char­ac­ter. The mouth ex­tended nearly from ear to ear, the lips were thin, and seemed, like some other por­tions of his frame, to be de­void of nat­u­ral pli­ancy, so that the rul­ing ex­pres­sion never var­ied un­der the in­flu­ence of any emo­tion what­ever. This rul­ing ex­pres­sion may be con­ceived when it is con­sid­ered that the teeth were ex­ceed­ingly long and pro­trud­ing, and never even par­tially cov­ered, in any in­stance, by the lips. To pass this man with a ca­sual glance, one might imag­ine him to be con­vulsed with laugh­ter, but a sec­ond look would in­duce a shud­der­ing ac­knowl­edg­ment, that if such an ex­pres­sion were in­dica­tive of mer­ri­ment, the mer­ri­ment must be that of a de­mon. Of this sin­gu­lar be­ing many anec­dotes were preva­lent among the sea­far­ing men of Nan­tucket. Th­ese anec­dotes went to prove his prodi­gious strength when un­der ex­cite­ment, and some of them had given rise to a doubt of his san­ity. But on board the Gram­pus, it seems, he was re­garded, at the time of the mutiny, with feel­ings more of de­ri­sion than of any­thing else. I have been thus par­tic­u­lar in speak­ing of Dirk Peters, be­cause, fe­ro­cious as he ap­peared, he proved the main in­stru­ment in pre­serv­ing the life of Au­gus­tus, and be­cause I shall have fre­quent oc­ca­sion to men­tion him here­after in the course of my nar­ra­tive—a nar­ra­tive, let me here say, which, in its lat­ter por­tions, will be found to in­clude in­ci­dents of a na­ture so en­tirely out of the range of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence, and for this rea­son so far be­yond the lim­its of hu­man credulity, that I pro­ceed in ut­ter hope­less­ness of ob­tain­ing cre­dence for all that I shall tell, yet con­fi­dently trust­ing in time and pro­gress­ing sci­ence to ver­ify some of the most im­por­tant and most im­prob­a­ble of my state­ments.

After much in­de­ci­sion and two or three vi­o­lent quar­rels, it was de­ter­mined at last that all the pris­on­ers (with the ex­cep­tion of Au­gus­tus, whom Peters in­sisted in a joc­u­lar man­ner upon keep­ing as his clerk) should be set adrift in one of the small­est whale­boats. The mate went down into the cabin to see if Cap­tain Barnard was still liv­ing—for, it will be re­mem­bered, he was left be­low when the mu­ti­neers came up. Presently the two made their ap­pear­ance, the cap­tain pale as death, but some­what re­cov­ered from the ef­fects of his wound. He spoke to the men in a voice hardly ar­tic­u­late, en­treated them not to set him adrift, but to re­turn to their duty, and promis­ing to land them wher­ever they chose, and to take no steps for bring­ing them to jus­tice. He might as well have spo­ken to the winds. Two of the ruf­fi­ans seized him by the arms and hurled him over the brig’s side into the boat, which had been low­ered while the mate went be­low. The four men who were ly­ing on the deck were then un­tied and or­dered to fol­low, which they did with­out at­tempt­ing any re­sis­tance—Au­gus­tus be­ing still left in his painful po­si­tion, al­though he strug­gled and prayed only for the poor sat­is­fac­tion of be­ing per­mit­ted to bid his fa­ther farewell. A hand­ful of sea-bis­cuit and a jug of wa­ter were now handed down; but nei­ther mast, sail, oar, nor com­pass. The boat was towed astern for a few min­utes, dur­ing which the mu­ti­neers held an­other con­sul­ta­tion—it was then fi­nally cut adrift. By this time night had come on—there were nei­ther moon nor stars vis­i­ble—and a short and ugly sea was run­ning, al­though there was no great deal of wind. The boat was in­stantly out of sight, and lit­tle hope could be en­ter­tained for the un­for­tu­nate suf­fer­ers who were in it. This event hap­pened, how­ever, in lat­i­tude 35° 30′ north, lon­gi­tude 61° 20′ west, and con­se­quently at no very great dis­tance from the Ber­muda Is­lands. Au­gus­tus there­fore en­deav­ored to con­sole him­self with the idea that the boat might ei­ther suc­ceed in reach­ing the land, or come suf­fi­ciently near to be fallen in with by ves­sels off the coast.

All sail was now put upon the brig, and she con­tin­ued her orig­i­nal course to the south­west—the mu­ti­neers be­ing bent upon some pi­rat­i­cal ex­pe­di­tion, in which, from all that could be un­der­stood, a ship was to be in­ter­cepted on her way from the Cape Verd Is­lands to Porto Rico. No at­ten­tion was paid to Au­gus­tus, who was un­tied and suf­fered to go about any­where for­ward of the cabin com­pan­ion­way. Dirk Peters treated him with some de­gree of kind­ness, and on one oc­ca­sion saved him from the bru­tal­ity of the cook. His sit­u­a­tion was still one of the most pre­car­i­ous, as the men were con­tin­u­ally in­tox­i­cated, and there was no re­ly­ing upon their con­tin­ued good-hu­mor or care­less­ness in re­gard to him­self. His anx­i­ety on my ac­count be rep­re­sented, how­ever, as the most dis­tress­ing re­sult of his con­di­tion; and, in­deed, I had never rea­son to doubt the sin­cer­ity of his friend­ship. More than once he had re­solved to ac­quaint the mu­ti­neers with the se­cret of my be­ing on board, but was re­strained from so do­ing, partly through rec­ol­lec­tion of the atroc­i­ties he had al­ready be­held, and partly through a hope of be­ing able soon to bring me re­lief. For the lat­ter pur­pose he was con­stantly on the watch; but, in spite of the most con­stant vig­i­lance, three days elapsed af­ter the boat was cut adrift be­fore any chance oc­curred. At length, on the night of the third day, there came on a heavy blow from the east­ward, and all hands were called up to take in sail. Dur­ing the con­fu­sion which en­sued, he made his way be­low un­ob­served, and into the state­room. What was his grief and hor­ror in dis­cov­er­ing that the lat­ter had been ren­dered a place of de­posit for a va­ri­ety of sea-stores and ship-fur­ni­ture, and that sev­eral fath­oms of old chain-ca­ble, which had been stowed away be­neath the com­pan­ion-lad­der, had been dragged thence to make room for a chest, and were now ly­ing im­me­di­ately upon the trap! To re­move it with­out dis­cov­ery was im­pos­si­ble, and he re­turned on deck as quickly as he could. As he came up, the mate seized him by the throat, and de­mand­ing what he had been do­ing in the cabin, was about fling­ing him over the lar­board bul­wark, when his life was again pre­served through the in­ter­fer­ence of Dirk Peters. Au­gus­tus was now put in hand­cuffs (of which there were sev­eral pairs on board), and his feet lashed tightly to­gether. He was then taken into the steer­age, and thrown into a lower berth next to the fore­cas­tle bulk­heads, with the as­sur­ance that he should never put his foot on deck again “un­til the brig was no longer a brig.” This was the ex­pres­sion of the cook, who threw him into the berth—it is hardly pos­si­ble to say what pre­cise mean­ing in­tended by the phrase. The whole af­fair, how­ever, proved the ul­ti­mate means of my re­lief, as will presently ap­pear.

V

For some min­utes af­ter the cook had left the fore­cas­tle, Au­gus­tus aban­doned him­self to de­spair, never hop­ing to leave the berth alive. He now came to the res­o­lu­tion of ac­quaint­ing the first of the men who should come down with my sit­u­a­tion, think­ing it bet­ter to let me take my chance with the mu­ti­neers than per­ish of thirst in the hold—for it had been ten days since I was first im­pris­oned, and my jug of wa­ter was not a plen­ti­ful sup­ply even for four. As he was think­ing on this sub­ject, the idea came all at once into his head that it might be pos­si­ble to com­mu­ni­cate with me by the way of the main hold. In any other cir­cum­stances, the dif­fi­culty and haz­ard of the un­der­tak­ing would have pre­vented him from at­tempt­ing it; but now he had, at all events, lit­tle prospect of life, and con­se­quently lit­tle to lose, he bent his whole mind, there­fore, upon the task.

His hand­cuffs were the first con­sid­er­a­tion. At first he saw no method of re­mov­ing them, and feared that he should thus be baf­fled in the very out­set; but upon a closer scru­tiny he dis­cov­ered that the irons could be slipped off and on at plea­sure, with very lit­tle ef­fort or in­con­ve­nience, merely by squeez­ing his hands through them—this species of man­a­cle be­ing al­to­gether in­ef­fec­tual in con­fin­ing young per­sons, in whom the smaller bones read­ily yield to pres­sure. He now un­tied his feet, and, leav­ing the cord in such a man­ner that it could eas­ily be read­justed in the event of any per­son’s com­ing down, pro­ceeded to ex­am­ine the bulk­head where it joined the berth. The par­ti­tion here was of soft pine board, an inch thick, and he saw that he should have lit­tle trou­ble in cut­ting his way through. A voice was now heard at the fore­cas­tle com­pan­ion­way, and he had just time to put his right hand into its hand­cuff (the left had not been re­moved) and to draw the rope in a slip­knot around his an­kle, when Dirk Peters came be­low, fol­lowed by Tiger, who im­me­di­ately leaped into the berth and lay down. The dog had been brought on board by Au­gus­tus, who knew my at­tach­ment to the an­i­mal, and thought it would give me plea­sure to have him with me dur­ing the voy­age. He went up to our house for him im­me­di­ately af­ter first tak­ing me into the hold, but did not think of men­tion­ing the cir­cum­stance upon his bring­ing the watch. Since the mutiny, Au­gus­tus had not seen him be­fore his ap­pear­ance with Dirk Peters, and had given him up for lost, sup­pos­ing him to have been thrown over­board by some of the ma­lig­nant vil­lains be­long­ing to the mate’s gang. It ap­peared af­ter­ward that he had crawled into a hole be­neath a whale­boat, from which, not hav­ing room to turn round, he could not ex­tri­cate him­self. Peters at last let him out, and, with a species of good feel­ing which my friend knew well how to ap­pre­ci­ate, had now brought him to him in the fore­cas­tle as a com­pan­ion, leav­ing at the same time some salt junk and pota­toes, with a can of wa­ter, he then went on deck, promis­ing to come down with some­thing more to eat on the next day.

When he had gone, Au­gus­tus freed both hands from the man­a­cles and un­fas­tened his feet. He then turned down the head of the mat­tress on which he had been ly­ing, and with his penknife (for the ruf­fi­ans had not thought it worth while to search him) com­menced cut­ting vig­or­ously across one of the par­ti­tion planks, as closely as pos­si­ble to the floor of the berth. He chose to cut here, be­cause, if sud­denly in­ter­rupted, he would be able to con­ceal what had been done by let­ting the head of the mat­tress fall into its proper po­si­tion. For the re­main­der of the day, how­ever, no dis­tur­bance oc­curred, and by night he had com­pletely di­vided the plank. It should here be ob­served that none of the crew oc­cu­pied the fore­cas­tle as a sleep­ing-place, liv­ing al­to­gether in the cabin since the mutiny, drink­ing the wines and feast­ing on the sea-stores of Cap­tain Barnard, and giv­ing no more heed than was ab­so­lutely nec­es­sary to the nav­i­ga­tion of the brig. Th­ese cir­cum­stances proved for­tu­nate both for my­self and Au­gus­tus; for, had mat­ters been oth­er­wise, he would have found it im­pos­si­ble to reach me. As it was, he pro­ceeded with con­fi­dence in his de­sign. It was near day­break, how­ever, be­fore he com­pleted the sec­ond di­vi­sion of the board (which was about a foot above the first cut), thus mak­ing an aper­ture quite large enough to ad­mit his pas­sage through with fa­cil­ity to the main or­lop deck. Hav­ing got here, he made his way with but lit­tle trou­ble to the lower main hatch, al­though in so do­ing he had to scram­ble over tiers of oil-casks piled nearly as high as the up­per deck, there be­ing barely room enough left for his body. Upon reach­ing the hatch he found that Tiger had fol­lowed him be­low, squeez­ing be­tween two rows of the casks. It was now too late, how­ever, to at­tempt get­ting to me be­fore dawn, as the chief dif­fi­culty lay in pass­ing through the close stowage in the lower hold. He there­fore re­solved to re­turn, and wait till the next night. With this de­sign, he pro­ceeded to loosen the hatch, so that he might have as lit­tle de­ten­tion as pos­si­ble when he should come again. No sooner had he loos­ened it than Tiger sprang ea­gerly to the small open­ing pro­duced, snuffed for a mo­ment, and then ut­tered a long whine, scratch­ing at the same time, as if anx­ious to re­move the cov­er­ing with his paws. There could be no doubt, from his be­hav­iour, that he was aware of my be­ing in the hold, and Au­gus­tus thought it pos­si­ble that he would be able to get to me if he put him down. He now hit upon the ex­pe­di­ent of send­ing the note, as it was es­pe­cially de­sir­able that I should make no at­tempt at forc­ing my way out at least un­der ex­ist­ing cir­cum­stances, and there could be no cer­tainty of his get­ting to me him­self on the mor­row as he in­tended. After-events proved how for­tu­nate it was that the idea oc­curred to him as it did; for, had it not been for the re­ceipt of the note, I should un­doubt­edly have fallen upon some plan, how­ever des­per­ate, of alarm­ing the crew, and both our lives would most prob­a­bly have been sac­ri­ficed in con­se­quence.

Hav­ing con­cluded to write, the dif­fi­culty was now to pro­cure the ma­te­ri­als for so do­ing. An old tooth­pick was soon made into a pen; and this by means of feel­ing al­to­gether, for the be­tween-decks was as dark as pitch. Paper enough was ob­tained from the back of a let­ter—a du­pli­cate of the forged let­ter from Mr. Ross. This had been the orig­i­nal draught; but the hand­writ­ing not be­ing suf­fi­ciently well im­i­tated, Au­gus­tus had writ­ten an­other, thrust­ing the first, by good for­tune, into his coat-pocket, where it was now most op­por­tunely dis­cov­ered. Ink alone was thus want­ing, and a sub­sti­tute was im­me­di­ately found for this by means of a slight in­ci­sion with the penknife on the back of a fin­ger just above the nail—a co­pi­ous flow of blood en­su­ing, as usual, from wounds in that vicin­ity. The note was now writ­ten, as well as it could be in the dark and un­der the cir­cum­stances. It briefly ex­plained that a mutiny had taken place; that Cap­tain Barnard was set adrift; and that I might ex­pect im­me­di­ate re­lief as far as pro­vi­sions were con­cerned, but must not ven­ture upon mak­ing any dis­tur­bance. It con­cluded with these words: “I have scrawled this with blood—your life de­pends upon ly­ing close.”

This slip of pa­per be­ing tied upon the dog, he was now put down the hatch­way, and Au­gus­tus made the best of his way back to the fore­cas­tle, where he found no rea­son to be­lieve that any of the crew had been in his ab­sence. To con­ceal the hole in the par­ti­tion, he drove his knife in just above it, and hung up a pea-jacket which he found in the berth. His hand­cuffs were then re­placed, and also the rope around his an­kles.

Th­ese ar­range­ments were scarcely com­pleted when Dirk Peters came be­low, very drunk, but in ex­cel­lent hu­mour, and bring­ing with him my friend’s al­lowance of pro­vi­sion for the day. This con­sisted of a dozen large Ir­ish pota­toes roasted, and a pitcher of wa­ter. He sat for some time on a chest by the berth, and talked freely about the mate and the gen­eral con­cerns of the brig. His de­meanour was ex­ceed­ingly capri­cious, and even grotesque. At one time Au­gus­tus was much alarmed by odd con­duct. At last, how­ever, he went on deck, mut­ter­ing a prom­ise to bring his pris­oner a good din­ner on the mor­row. Dur­ing the day two of the crew (har­poon­ers) came down, ac­com­pa­nied by the cook, all three in nearly the last stage of in­tox­i­ca­tion. Like Peters, they made no scru­ple of talk­ing un­re­servedly about their plans. It ap­peared that they were much di­vided among them­selves as to their ul­ti­mate course, agree­ing in no point, ex­cept the at­tack on the ship from the Cape Verd Is­lands, with which they were in hourly ex­pec­ta­tion of meet­ing. As far as could be as­cer­tained, the mutiny had not been brought about al­to­gether for the sake of booty; a pri­vate pique of the chief mate’s against Cap­tain Barnard hav­ing been the main in­sti­ga­tion. There now seemed to be two prin­ci­pal fac­tions among the crew—one headed by the mate, the other by the cook. The for­mer party were for seiz­ing the first suit­able ves­sel which should present it­self, and equip­ping it at some of the West In­dia Is­lands for a pi­rat­i­cal cruise. The lat­ter di­vi­sion, how­ever, which was the stronger, and in­cluded Dirk Peters among its par­ti­sans, were bent upon pur­su­ing the course orig­i­nally laid out for the brig into the South Pa­cific; there ei­ther to take whale, or act oth­er­wise, as cir­cum­stances should sug­gest. The rep­re­sen­ta­tions of Peters, who had fre­quently vis­ited these re­gions, had great weight, ap­par­ently, with the mu­ti­neers, wa­ver­ing, as they were, be­tween half-en­gen­dered no­tions of profit and plea­sure. He dwelt on the world of nov­elty and amuse­ment to be found among the in­nu­mer­able is­lands of the Pa­cific, on the per­fect se­cu­rity and free­dom from all re­straint to be en­joyed, but, more par­tic­u­larly, on the de­li­cious­ness of the cli­mate, on the abun­dant means of good liv­ing, and on the volup­tuous beauty of the women. As yet, noth­ing had been ab­so­lutely de­ter­mined upon; but the pic­tures of the hy­brid line-man­ager were tak­ing strong hold upon the ar­dent imag­i­na­tions of the sea­men, and there was ev­ery pos­si­bil­ity that his in­ten­tions would be fi­nally car­ried into ef­fect.

The three men went away in about an hour, and no one else en­tered the fore­cas­tle all day. Au­gus­tus lay quiet un­til nearly night. He then freed him­self from the rope and irons, and pre­pared for his at­tempt. A bot­tle was found in one of the berths, and this he filled with wa­ter from the pitcher left by Peters, stor­ing his pock­ets at the same time with cold pota­toes. To his great joy he also came across a lantern, with a small piece of tal­low can­dle in it. This he could light at any mo­ment, as he had in his pos­ses­sion a box of phos­pho­rus matches. When it was quite dark, he got through the hole in the bulk­head, hav­ing taken the pre­cau­tion to ar­range the bed­clothes in the berth so as to con­vey the idea of a per­son cov­ered up. When through, he hung up the pea-jacket on his knife, as be­fore, to con­ceal the aper­ture—this ma­noeu­vre be­ing eas­ily ef­fected, as he did not read­just the piece of plank taken out un­til af­ter­ward. He was now on the main or­lop deck, and pro­ceeded to make his way, as be­fore, be­tween the up­per deck and the oil-casks to the main hatch­way. Hav­ing reached this, he lit the piece of can­dle, and de­scended, grop­ing with ex­treme dif­fi­culty among the com­pact stowage of the hold. In a few mo­ments he be­came alarmed at the in­suf­fer­able stench and the close­ness of the at­mos­phere. He could not think it pos­si­ble that I had sur­vived my con­fine­ment for so long a pe­riod breath­ing so op­pres­sive an air. He called my name re­peat­edly, but I made him no re­ply, and his ap­pre­hen­sions seemed thus to be con­firmed. The brig was rolling vi­o­lently, and there was so much noise in con­se­quence, that it was use­less to lis­ten for any weak sound, such as those of my breath­ing or snor­ing. He threw open the lantern, and held it as high as pos­si­ble, when­ever an op­por­tu­nity oc­curred, in or­der that, by ob­serv­ing the light, I might, if alive, be aware that suc­cor was ap­proach­ing. Still noth­ing was heard from me, and the sup­po­si­tion of my death be­gan to as­sume the char­ac­ter of cer­tainty. He de­ter­mined, nev­er­the­less, to force a pas­sage, if pos­si­ble, to the box, and at least as­cer­tain be­yond a doubt the truth of his sur­mises. He pushed on for some time in a most pitiable state of anx­i­ety, un­til, at length, he found the path­way ut­terly blocked up, and that there was no pos­si­bil­ity of mak­ing any far­ther way by the course in which he had set out. Over­come now by his feel­ings, he threw him­self among the lum­ber in de­spair, and wept like a child. It was at this pe­riod that he heard the crash oc­ca­sioned by the bot­tle which I had thrown down. For­tu­nate, in­deed, was it that the in­ci­dent oc­curred—for, upon this in­ci­dent, triv­ial as it ap­pears, the thread of my des­tiny de­pended. Many years elapsed, how­ever, be­fore I was aware of this fact. A nat­u­ral shame and re­gret for his weak­ness and in­de­ci­sion pre­vented Au­gus­tus from con­fid­ing to me at once what a more in­ti­mate and un­re­served com­mu­nion af­ter­ward in­duced him to re­veal. Upon find­ing his fur­ther progress in the hold im­peded by ob­sta­cles which he could not over­come, he had re­solved to aban­don his at­tempt at reach­ing me, and re­turn at once to the fore­cas­tle. Be­fore con­demn­ing him en­tirely on this head, the ha­rass­ing cir­cum­stances which em­bar­rassed him should be taken into con­sid­er­a­tion. The night was fast wear­ing away, and his ab­sence from the fore­cas­tle might be dis­cov­ered; and in­deed would nec­es­sar­ily be so, if he should fail to get back to the berth by day­break. His can­dle was ex­pir­ing in the socket, and there would be the great­est dif­fi­culty in re­trac­ing his way to the hatch­way in the dark. It must be al­lowed, too, that he had ev­ery good rea­son to be­lieve me dead; in which event no ben­e­fit could re­sult to me from his reach­ing the box, and a world of dan­ger would be en­coun­tered to no pur­pose by him­self. He had re­peat­edly called, and I had made him no an­swer. I had been now eleven days and nights with no more wa­ter than that con­tained in the jug which he had left with me—a sup­ply which it was not at all prob­a­ble I had hoarded in the be­gin­ning of my con­fine­ment, as I had ev­ery cause to ex­pect a speedy re­lease. The at­mos­phere of the hold, too, must have ap­peared to him, com­ing from the com­par­a­tively open air of the steer­age, of a na­ture ab­so­lutely poi­sonous, and by far more in­tol­er­a­ble than it had seemed to me upon my first tak­ing up my quar­ters in the box—the hatch­ways at that time hav­ing been con­stantly open for many months pre­vi­ous. Add to these con­sid­er­a­tions that of the scene of blood­shed and ter­ror so lately wit­nessed by my friend; his con­fine­ment, pri­va­tions, and nar­row es­capes from death, to­gether with the frail and equiv­o­cal ten­ure by which he still ex­isted—cir­cum­stances all so well cal­cu­lated to pros­trate ev­ery en­ergy of mind—and the reader will be eas­ily brought, as I have been, to re­gard his ap­par­ent fall­ing off in friend­ship and in faith with sen­ti­ments rather of sor­row than of anger.

The crash of the bot­tle was dis­tinctly heard, yet Au­gus­tus was not sure that it pro­ceeded from the hold. The doubt, how­ever, was suf­fi­cient in­duce­ment to per­se­vere. He clam­bered up nearly to the or­lop deck by means of the stowage, and then, watch­ing for a lull in the pitch­ings of the ves­sel, he called out to me in as loud a tone as he could com­mand, re­gard­less, for the mo­ment, of be­ing over­heard by the crew. It will be re­mem­bered that on this oc­ca­sion the voice reached me, but I was so en­tirely over­come by vi­o­lent ag­i­ta­tion as to be in­ca­pable of re­ply. Con­fi­dent, now, that his worst ap­pre­hen­sions were well founded, he de­scended, with a view of get­ting back to the fore­cas­tle with­out loss of time. In his haste some small boxes were thrown down, the noise oc­ca­sioned by which I heard, as will be rec­ol­lected. He had made con­sid­er­able progress on his re­turn when the fall of the knife again caused him to hes­i­tate. He re­traced his steps im­me­di­ately, and, clam­ber­ing up the stowage a sec­ond time, called out my name, loudly as be­fore, hav­ing watched for a lull. This time I found voice to an­swer. Over­joyed at dis­cov­er­ing me to be still alive, he now re­solved to brave ev­ery dif­fi­culty and dan­ger in reach­ing me. Hav­ing ex­tri­cated him­self as quickly as pos­si­ble from the labyrinth of lum­ber by which he was hemmed in, he at length struck into an open­ing which promised bet­ter, and fi­nally, af­ter a se­ries of strug­gles, ar­rived at the box in a state of ut­ter ex­haus­tion.

VI

The lead­ing par­tic­u­lars of this nar­ra­tion were all that Au­gus­tus com­mu­ni­cated to me while we re­mained near the box. It was not un­til af­ter­ward that he en­tered fully into all the de­tails. He was ap­pre­hen­sive of be­ing missed, and I was wild with im­pa­tience to leave my de­tested place of con­fine­ment. We re­solved to make our way at once to the hole in the bulk­head, near which I was to re­main for the present, while he went through to re­con­noi­ter. To leave Tiger in the box was what nei­ther of us could en­dure to think of, yet, how to act oth­er­wise was the ques­tion. He now seemed to be per­fectly quiet, and we could not even dis­tin­guish the sound of his breath­ing upon ap­ply­ing our ears closely to the box. I was con­vinced that he was dead, and de­ter­mined to open the door. We found him ly­ing at full length, ap­par­ently in a deep stu­por, yet still alive. No time was to be lost, yet I could not bring my­self to aban­don an an­i­mal who had now been twice in­stru­men­tal in sav­ing my life, with­out some at­tempt at pre­serv­ing him. We there­fore dragged him along with us as well as we could, al­though with the great­est dif­fi­culty and fa­tigue; Au­gus­tus, dur­ing part of the time, be­ing forced to clam­ber over the im­ped­i­ments in our way with the huge dog in his arms—a feat to which the fee­ble­ness of my frame ren­dered me to­tally in­ad­e­quate. At length we suc­ceeded in reach­ing the hole, when Au­gus­tus got through, and Tiger was pushed in af­ter­ward. All was found to be safe, and we did not fail to re­turn sin­cere thanks to God for our de­liv­er­ance from the im­mi­nent dan­ger we had es­caped. For the present, it was agreed that I should re­main near the open­ing, through which my com­pan­ion could read­ily sup­ply me with a part of his daily pro­vi­sion, and where I could have the ad­van­tages of breath­ing an at­mos­phere com­par­a­tively pure.

In ex­pla­na­tion of some por­tions of this nar­ra­tive, wherein I have spo­ken of the stowage of the brig, and which may ap­pear am­bigu­ous to some of my read­ers who may have seen a proper or reg­u­lar stowage, I must here state that the man­ner in which this most im­por­tant duty had been per formed on board the Gram­pus was a most shame­ful piece of ne­glect on the part of Cap­tain Barnard, who was by no means as care­ful or as ex­pe­ri­enced a sea­man as the haz­ardous na­ture of the ser­vice on which he was em­ployed would seem nec­es­sar­ily to de­mand. A proper stowage can­not be ac­com­plished in a care­less man­ner, and many most dis­as­trous ac­ci­dents, even within the lim­its of my own ex­pe­ri­ence, have arisen from ne­glect or ig­no­rance in this par­tic­u­lar. Coast­ing ves­sels, in the fre­quent hurry and bus­tle at­ten­dant upon tak­ing in or dis­charg­ing cargo, are the most li­able to mishap from the want of a proper at­ten­tion to stowage. The great point is to al­low no pos­si­bil­ity of the cargo or bal­last shift­ing po­si­tion even in the most vi­o­lent rollings of the ves­sel. With this end, great at­ten­tion must be paid, not only to the bulk taken in, but to the na­ture of the bulk, and whether there be a full or only a par­tial cargo. In most kinds of freight the stowage is ac­com­plished by means of a screw. Thus, in a load of to­bacco or flour, the whole is screwed so tightly into the hold of the ves­sel that the bar­rels or hogsheads, upon dis­charg­ing, are found to be com­pletely flat­tened, and take some time to re­gain their orig­i­nal shape. This screw­ing, how­ever, is re­sorted to prin­ci­pally with a view of ob­tain­ing more room in the hold; for in a full load of any such com­modi­ties as flour or to­bacco, there can be no dan­ger of any shift­ing what­ever, at least none from which in­con­ve­nience can re­sult. There have been in­stances, in­deed, where this method of screw­ing has re­sulted in the most lam­en­ta­ble con­se­quences, aris­ing from a cause al­to­gether dis­tinct from the dan­ger at­ten­dant upon a shift­ing of cargo. A load of cot­ton, for ex­am­ple, tightly screwed while in cer­tain con­di­tions, has been known, through the ex­pan­sion of its bulk, to rend a ves­sel asun­der at sea. There can be no doubt ei­ther that the same re­sult would en­sue in the case of to­bacco, while un­der­go­ing its usual course of fer­men­ta­tion, were it not for the in­ter­stices con­se­quent upon the ro­tun­dity of the hogsheads.

It is when a par­tial cargo is re­ceived that dan­ger is chiefly to be ap­pre­hended from shift­ing, and that pre­cau­tions should be al­ways taken to guard against such mis­for­tune. Only those who have en­coun­tered a vi­o­lent gale of wind, or rather who have ex­pe­ri­enced the rolling of a ves­sel in a sud­den calm af­ter the gale, can form an idea of the tremen­dous force of the plunges, and of the con­se­quent ter­ri­ble im­pe­tus given to all loose ar­ti­cles in the ves­sel. It is then that the ne­ces­sity of a cau­tious stowage, when there is a par­tial cargo, be­comes ob­vi­ous. When ly­ing-to (es­pe­cially with a small bead sail), a ves­sel which is not prop­erly mod­elled in the bows is fre­quently thrown upon her beam-ends; this oc­cur­ring even ev­ery fif­teen or twenty min­utes upon an av­er­age, yet with­out any se­ri­ous con­se­quences re­sult­ing, pro­vided there be a proper stowage. If this, how­ever, has not been strictly at­tended to, in the first of these heavy lurches the whole of the cargo tum­bles over to the side of the ves­sel which lies upon the wa­ter, and, be­ing thus pre­vented from re­gain­ing her equi­lib­rium, as she would oth­er­wise nec­es­sar­ily do, she is cer­tain to fill in a few sec­onds and go down. It is not too much to say that at least one-half of the in­stances in which ves­sels have foundered in heavy gales at sea may be at­trib­uted to a shift­ing of cargo or of bal­last.

When a par­tial cargo of any kind is taken on board, the whole, af­ter be­ing first stowed as com­pactly as may be, should be cov­ered with a layer of stout shift­ing-boards, ex­tend­ing com­pletely across the ves­sel. Upon these boards strong tem­po­rary stan­chions should be erected, reach­ing to the tim­bers above, and thus se­cur­ing ev­ery­thing in its place. In car­goes con­sist­ing of grain, or any sim­i­lar mat­ter, ad­di­tional pre­cau­tions are req­ui­site. A hold filled en­tirely with grain upon leav­ing port will be found not more than three fourths full upon reach­ing its des­ti­na­tion—this, too, al­though the freight, when mea­sured bushel by bushel by the con­signee, will over­run by a vast deal (on ac­count of the swelling of the grain) the quan­tity con­signed. This re­sult is oc­ca­sioned by set­tling dur­ing the voy­age, and is the more per­cep­ti­ble in pro­por­tion to the rough­ness of the weather ex­pe­ri­enced. If grain loosely thrown in a ves­sel, then, is ever so well se­cured by shift­ing-boards and stan­chions, it will be li­able to shift in a long pas­sage so greatly as to bring about the most dis­tress­ing calami­ties. To pre­vent these, ev­ery method should be em­ployed be­fore leav­ing port to set­tle the cargo as much as pos­si­ble; and for this there are many con­trivances, among which may be men­tioned the driv­ing of wedges into the grain. Even af­ter all this is done, and un­usual pains taken to se­cure the shift­ing-boards, no sea­man who knows what he is about will feel al­to­gether se­cure in a gale of any vi­o­lence with a cargo of grain on board, and, least of all, with a par­tial cargo. Yet there are hun­dreds of our coast­ing ves­sels, and, it is likely, many more from the ports of Europe, which sail daily with par­tial car­goes, even of the most dan­ger­ous species, and with­out any pre­cau­tion what­ever. The won­der is that no more ac­ci­dents oc­cur than do ac­tu­ally hap­pen. A lam­en­ta­ble in­stance of this heed­less­ness oc­curred to my knowl­edge in the case of Cap­tain Joel Rice of the schooner Fire­fly, which sailed from Rich­mond, Vir­ginia, to Madeira, with a cargo of corn, in the year 1825. The cap­tain had gone many voy­ages with­out se­ri­ous ac­ci­dent, al­though he was in the habit of pay­ing no at­ten­tion what­ever to his stowage, more than to se­cure it in the or­di­nary man­ner. He had never be­fore sailed with a cargo of grain, and on this oc­ca­sion had the corn thrown on board loosely, when it did not much more than half fill the ves­sel. For the first por­tion of the voy­age he met with noth­ing more than light breezes; but when within a day’s sail of Madeira there came on a strong gale from the N. N. E. which forced him to lie-to. He brought the schooner to the wind un­der a dou­ble-reefed fore­sail alone, when she rode as well as any ves­sel could be ex­pected to do, and shipped not a drop of wa­ter. Toward night the gale some­what abated, and she rolled with more un­steadi­ness than be­fore, but still did very well, un­til a heavy lurch threw her upon her beam-ends to star­board. The corn was then heard to shift bod­ily, the force of the move­ment burst­ing open the main hatch­way. The ves­sel went down like a shot. This hap­pened within hail of a small sloop from Madeira, which picked up one of the crew (the only per­son saved), and which rode out the gale in per­fect se­cu­rity, as in­deed a jolly boat might have done un­der proper man­age­ment.

The stowage on board the Gram­pus was most clum­sily done, if stowage that could be called which was lit­tle bet­ter than a pro­mis­cu­ous hud­dling to­gether of oil-casks1 and ship fur­ni­ture. I have al­ready spo­ken of the con­di­tion of ar­ti­cles in the hold. On the or­lop deck there was space enough for my body (as I have stated) be­tween the oil-casks and the up­per deck; a space was left open around the main hatch­way; and sev­eral other large spa­ces were left in the stowage. Near the hole cut through the bulk­head by Au­gus­tus there was room enough for an en­tire cask, and in this space I found my­self com­fort­ably sit­u­ated for the present.

By the time my friend had got safely into the berth, and read­justed his hand­cuffs and the rope, it was broad day­light. We had made a nar­row es­cape in­deed; for scarcely had he ar­ranged all mat­ters, when the mate came be­low, with Dirk Peters and the cook. They talked for some time about the ves­sel from the Cape Verds, and seemed to be ex­ces­sively anx­ious for her ap­pear­ance. At length the cook came to the berth in which Au­gus­tus was ly­ing, and seated him­self in it near the head. I could see and hear ev­ery­thing from my hid­ing-place, for the piece cut out had not been put back, and I was in mo­men­tary ex­pec­ta­tion that the ne­gro would fall against the pea-jacket, which was hung up to con­ceal the aper­ture, in which case all would have been dis­cov­ered, and our lives would, no doubt, have been in­stantly sac­ri­ficed. Our good for­tune pre­vailed, how­ever; and al­though he fre­quently touched it as the ves­sel rolled, he never pressed against it suf­fi­ciently to bring about a dis­cov­ery. The bot­tom of the jacket had been care­fully fas­tened to the bulk­head, so that the hole might not be seen by its swing­ing to one side. All this time Tiger was ly­ing in the foot of the berth, and ap­peared to have re­cov­ered in some mea­sure his fac­ul­ties, for I could see him oc­ca­sion­ally open his eyes and draw a long breath.

After a few min­utes the mate and cook went above, leav­ing Dirk Peters be­hind, who, as soon as they were gone, came and sat him­self down in the place just oc­cu­pied by the mate. He be­gan to talk very so­cia­bly with Au­gus­tus, and we could now see that the greater part of his ap­par­ent in­tox­i­ca­tion, while the two oth­ers were with him, was a feint. He an­swered all my com­pan­ion’s ques­tions with per­fect free­dom; told him that he had no doubt of his fa­ther’s hav­ing been picked up, as there were no less than five sail in sight just be­fore sun­down on the day he was cut adrift; and used other lan­guage of a con­so­la­tory na­ture, which oc­ca­sioned me no less sur­prise than plea­sure. In­deed, I be­gan to en­ter­tain hopes, that through the in­stru­men­tal­ity of Peters we might be fi­nally en­abled to re­gain pos­ses­sion of the brig, and this idea I men­tioned to Au­gus­tus as soon as I found an op­por­tu­nity. He thought the mat­ter pos­si­ble, but urged the ne­ces­sity of the great­est cau­tion in mak­ing the at­tempt, as the con­duct of the hy­brid ap­peared to be in­sti­gated by the most ar­bi­trary caprice alone; and, in­deed, it was dif­fi­cult to say if he was at any mo­ment of sound mind. Peters went upon deck in about an hour, and did not re­turn again un­til noon, when he brought Au­gus­tus a plen­ti­ful sup­ply of junk beef and pud­ding. Of this, when we were left alone, I par­took heartily, with­out re­turn­ing through the hole. No one else came down into the fore­cas­tle dur­ing the day, and at night, I got into Au­gus­tus’ berth, where I slept soundly and sweetly un­til nearly day­break, when he awak­ened me upon hear­ing a stir upon deck, and I re­gained my hid­ing-place as quickly as pos­si­ble. When the day was fully broke, we found that Tiger had re­cov­ered his strength al­most en­tirely, and gave no in­di­ca­tions of hy­dropho­bia, drink­ing a lit­tle wa­ter that was of­fered him with great ap­par­ent ea­ger­ness. Dur­ing the day he re­gained all his for­mer vigour and ap­petite. His strange con­duct had been brought on, no doubt, by the dele­te­ri­ous qual­ity of the air of the hold, and had no con­nex­ion with ca­nine mad­ness. I could not suf­fi­ciently re­joice that I had per­sisted in bring­ing him with me from the box. This day was the thir­ti­eth of June, and the thir­teenth since the Gram­pus made sad from Nan­tucket.

On the sec­ond of July the mate came be­low drunk as usual, and in an ex­ces­sively good-hu­mor. He came to Au­gus­tus’s berth, and, giv­ing him a slap on the back, asked him if he thought he could be­have him­self if he let him loose, and whether he would prom­ise not to be go­ing into the cabin again. To this, of course, my friend an­swered in the af­fir­ma­tive, when the ruf­fian set him at lib­erty, af­ter mak­ing him drink from a flask of rum which he drew from his coat-pocket. Both now went on deck, and I did not see Au­gus­tus for about three hours. He then came be­low with the good news that he had ob­tained per­mis­sion to go about the brig as he pleased any­where for­ward of the main­mast, and that he had been or­dered to sleep, as usual, in the fore­cas­tle. He brought me, too, a good din­ner, and a plen­ti­ful sup­ply of wa­ter. The brig was still cruis­ing for the ves­sel from the Cape Verds, and a sail was now in sight, which was thought to be the one in ques­tion. As the events of the en­su­ing eight days were of lit­tle im­por­tance, and had no di­rect bear­ing upon the main in­ci­dents of my nar­ra­tive, I will here throw them into the form of a jour­nal, as I do not wish to omit them al­to­gether.

July 3. Au­gus­tus fur­nished me with three blan­kets, with which I con­trived a com­fort­able bed in my hid­ing-place. No one came be­low, ex­cept my com­pan­ion, dur­ing the day. Tiger took his sta­tion in the berth just by the aper­ture, and slept heav­ily, as if not yet en­tirely re­cov­ered from the ef­fects of his sick­ness. Toward night a flaw of wind struck the brig be­fore sail could be taken in, and very nearly cap­sized her. The puff died away im­me­di­ately, how­ever, and no dam­age was done be­yond the split­ting of the fore­top­sail. Dirk Peters treated Au­gus­tus all this day with great kind­ness and en­tered into a long con­ver­sa­tion with him re­spect­ing the Pa­cific Ocean, and the is­lands he had vis­ited in that re­gion. He asked him whether he would not like to go with the mu­ti­neers on a kind of ex­plor­ing and plea­sure voy­age in those quar­ters, and said that the men were grad­u­ally com­ing over to the mate’s views. To this Au­gus­tus thought it best to re­ply that he would be glad to go on such an ad­ven­ture, since noth­ing bet­ter could be done, and that any­thing was prefer­able to a pi­rat­i­cal life.

July 4th. The ves­sel in sight proved to be a small brig from Liver­pool, and was al­lowed to pass un­mo­lested. Au­gus­tus spent most of his time on deck, with a view of ob­tain­ing all the in­for­ma­tion in his power re­spect­ing the in­ten­tions of the mu­ti­neers. They had fre­quent and vi­o­lent quar­rels among them­selves, in one of which a har­pooner, Jim Bon­ner, was thrown over­board. The party of the mate was gain­ing ground. Jim Bon­ner be­longed to the cook’s gang, of which Peters was a par­ti­san.

July 5th. About day­break there came on a stiff breeze from the west, which at noon fresh­ened into a gale, so that the brig could carry noth­ing more than her try­sail and fore­sail. In tak­ing in the fore­top­sail, Simms, one of the com­mon hands, and be­long­ing also to the cook’s gang, fell over­board, be­ing very much in liquor, and was drowned—no at­tempt be­ing made to save him. The whole num­ber of per­sons on board was now thir­teen, to wit: Dirk Peters; Sey­mour, the black cook; Jones, Greely, Hart­man Rogers; and Wil­liam Allen, all of the cook’s party; the mate, whose name I never learned; Ab­sa­lom Hicks; Wil­son; John Hunt; and Richard Parker, of the mate’s party—be­sides Au­gus­tus and my­self.

July 6th. The gale lasted all this day, blow­ing in heavy squalls, ac­com­pa­nied with rain. The brig took in a good deal of wa­ter through her seams, and one of the pumps was kept con­tin­u­ally go­ing, Au­gus­tus be­ing forced to take his turn. Just at twi­light a large ship passed close by us, with­out hav­ing been dis­cov­ered un­til within hail. The ship was sup­posed to be the one for which the mu­ti­neers were on the look­out. The mate hailed her, but the re­ply was drowned in the roar­ing of the gale. At eleven, a sea was shipped amid­ships, which tore away a great por­tion of the lar­board bul­warks, and did some other slight dam­age. Toward morn­ing the weather mod­er­ated, and at sun­rise there was very lit­tle wind.

July 7th. There was a heavy swell run­ning all this day, dur­ing which the brig, be­ing light, rolled ex­ces­sively, and many ar­ti­cles broke loose in the hold, as I could hear dis­tinctly from my hid­ing-place. I suf­fered a great deal from sea­sick­ness. Peters had a long con­ver­sa­tion this day with Au­gus­tus, and told him that two of his gang, Greely and Allen, had gone over to the mate, and were re­solved to turn pi­rates. He put sev­eral ques­tions to Au­gus­tus which he did not then ex­actly un­der­stand. Dur­ing a part of this evening the leak gained upon the ves­sel; and lit­tle could be done to rem­edy it, as it was oc­ca­sioned by the brigs strain­ing, and tak­ing in the wa­ter through her seams. A sail was thrummed, and got un­der the bows, which aided us in some mea­sure, so that we be­gan to gain upon the leak.

July 8th. A light breeze sprang up at sun­rise from the east­ward, when the mate headed the brig to the south­west, with the in­ten­tion of mak­ing some of the West In­dia is­lands in pur­suance of his pi­rat­i­cal de­signs. No op­po­si­tion was made by Peters or the cook—at least none in the hear­ing of Au­gus­tus. All idea of tak­ing the ves­sel from the Cape Verds was aban­doned. The leak was now eas­ily kept un­der by one pump go­ing ev­ery three quar­ters of an hour. The sail was drawn from be­neath the bows. Spoke two small schooners dur­ing the day.

July 9th. Fine weather. All hands em­ployed in re­pair­ing bul­warks. Peters had again a long con­ver­sa­tion with Au­gus­tus, and spoke more plainly than he had done hereto­fore. He said noth­ing should in­duce him to come into the mate’s views, and even hinted his in­ten­tion of tak­ing the brig out of his hands. He asked my friend if he could de­pend upon his aid in such case, to which Au­gus­tus said, “Yes,” with­out hes­i­ta­tion. Peters then said he would sound the oth­ers of his party upon the sub­ject, and went away. Dur­ing the re­main­der of the day Au­gus­tus had no op­por­tu­nity of speak­ing with him pri­vately.

VII

July 10. Spoke a brig from Rio, bound to Nor­folk. Weather hazy, with a light baf­fling wind from the east­ward. To­day Hart­man Rogers died, hav­ing been at­tacked on the eighth with spasms af­ter drink­ing a glass of grog. This man was of the cook’s party, and one upon whom Peters placed his main re­liance. He told Au­gus­tus that he be­lieved the mate had poi­soned him, and that he ex­pected, if he did not be on the look­out, his own turn would come shortly. There were now only him­self, Jones, and the cook be­long­ing to his own gang—on the other side there were five. He had spo­ken to Jones about tak­ing the com­mand from the mate; but the project hav­ing been coolly re­ceived, he had been de­terred from press­ing the mat­ter any fur­ther, or from say­ing any­thing to the cook. It was well, as it hap­pened, that he was so pru­dent, for in the af­ter­noon the cook ex­pressed his de­ter­mi­na­tion of sid­ing with the mate, and went over for­mally to that party; while Jones took an op­por­tu­nity of quar­relling with Peters, and hinted that he would let the mate know of the plan in ag­i­ta­tion. There was now, ev­i­dently, no time to be lost, and Peters ex­pressed his de­ter­mi­na­tion of at­tempt­ing to take the ves­sel at all haz­ards, pro­vided Au­gus­tus would lend him his aid. My friend at once as­sured him of his will­ing­ness to en­ter into any plan for that pur­pose, and, think­ing the op­por­tu­nity a favourable one, made known the fact of my be­ing on board. At this the hy­brid was not more as­ton­ished than de­lighted, as he had no re­liance what­ever upon Jones, whom he al­ready con­sid­ered as be­long­ing to the party of the mate. They went be­low im­me­di­ately, when Au­gus­tus called to me by name, and Peters and my­self were soon made ac­quainted. It was agreed that we should at­tempt to re­take the ves­sel upon the first good op­por­tu­nity, leav­ing Jones al­to­gether out of our coun­cils. In the event of suc­cess, we were to run the brig into the first port that of­fered, and de­liver her up. The de­ser­tion of his party had frus­trated Peters’ de­sign of go­ing into the Pa­cific—an ad­ven­ture which could not be ac­com­plished with­out a crew, and he de­pended upon ei­ther get­ting ac­quit­ted upon trial, on the score of in­san­ity (which he solemnly avowed had ac­tu­ated him in lend­ing his aid to the mutiny), or upon ob­tain­ing a par­don, if found guilty, through the rep­re­sen­ta­tions of Au­gus­tus and my­self. Our de­lib­er­a­tions were in­ter­rupted for the present by the cry of, “All hands take in sail,” and Peters and Au­gus­tus ran up on deck.

As usual, the crew were nearly all drunk; and, be­fore sail could be prop­erly taken in, a vi­o­lent squall laid the brig on her beam-ends. By keep­ing her away, how­ever, she righted, hav­ing shipped a good deal of wa­ter. Scarcely was ev­ery­thing se­cure, when an­other squall took the ves­sel, and im­me­di­ately af­ter­ward an­other—no dam­age be­ing done. There was ev­ery ap­pear­ance of a gale of wind, which, in­deed, shortly came on, with great fury, from the north­ward and west­ward. All was made as snug as pos­si­ble, and we laid-to, as usual, un­der a close-reefed fore­sail. As night drew on, the wind in­creased in vi­o­lence, with a re­mark­ably heavy sea. Peters now came into the fore­cas­tle with Au­gus­tus, and we re­sumed our de­lib­er­a­tions.

We agreed that no op­por­tu­nity could be more favourable than the present for car­ry­ing our de­signs into ef­fect, as an at­tempt at such a mo­ment would never be an­tic­i­pated. As the brig was snugly laid-to, there would be no ne­ces­sity of ma­noeu­vring her un­til good weather, when, if we suc­ceeded in our at­tempt, we might lib­er­ate one, or per­haps two of the men, to aid us in tak­ing her into port. The main dif­fi­culty was the great dis­pro­por­tion in our forces. There were only three of us, and in the cabin there were nine. All the arms on board, too, were in their pos­ses­sion, with the ex­cep­tion of a pair of small pis­tols which Peters had con­cealed about his per­son, and the large sea­man’s knife which he al­ways wore in the waist­band of his pan­taloons. From cer­tain in­di­ca­tions, too—such, for ex­am­ple, as there be­ing no such thing as an axe or a hand­spike ly­ing in their cus­tom­ary places—we be­gan to fear that the mate had his sus­pi­cions, at least in re­gard to Peters, and that he would let slip no op­por­tu­nity of get­ting rid of him. It was clear, in­deed, that what we should de­ter­mine to do could not be done too soon. Still the odds were too much against us to al­low of our pro­ceed­ing with­out the great­est cau­tion.

Peters pro­posed that he should go up on deck, and en­ter into con­ver­sa­tion with the watch (Allen), when he would be able to throw him into the sea with­out trou­ble, and with­out mak­ing any dis­tur­bance, by seiz­ing a good op­por­tu­nity, that Au­gus­tus and my­self should then come up, and en­deav­our to pro­vide our­selves with some kind of weapons from the deck, and that we should then make a rush to­gether, and se­cure the com­pan­ion­way be­fore any op­po­si­tion could be of­fered. I ob­jected to this, be­cause I could not be­lieve that the mate (who was a cun­ning fel­low in all mat­ters which did not af­fect his su­per­sti­tious prej­u­dices) would suf­fer him­self to be so eas­ily en­trapped. The very fact of there be­ing a watch on deck at all was suf­fi­cient proof that he was upon the alert—it not be­ing usual ex­cept in ves­sels where dis­ci­pline is most rigidly en­forced, to sta­tion a watch on deck when a ves­sel is ly­ing-to in a gale of wind. As I ad­dress my­self prin­ci­pally, if not al­to­gether, to per­sons who have never been to sea, it may be as well to state the ex­act con­di­tion of a ves­sel un­der such cir­cum­stances. Ly­ing-to, or, in sea-par­lance, “lay­ing-to,” is a mea­sure re­sorted to for var­i­ous pur­poses, and ef­fected in var­i­ous man­ners. In mod­er­ate weather it is fre­quently done with a view of merely bring­ing the ves­sel to a stand­still, to wait for an­other ves­sel or any sim­i­lar ob­ject. If the ves­sel which lies-to is un­der full sail, the ma­noeu­vre is usu­ally ac­com­plished by throw­ing round some por­tion of her sails, so as to let the wind take them aback, when she be­comes sta­tion­ary. But we are now speak­ing of ly­ing-to in a gale of wind. This is done when the wind is ahead, and too vi­o­lent to ad­mit of car­ry­ing sail with­out dan­ger of cap­siz­ing; and some­times even when the wind is fair, but the sea too heavy for the ves­sel to be put be­fore it. If a ves­sel be suf­fered to scud be­fore the wind in a very heavy sea, much dam­age is usu­ally done her by the ship­ping of wa­ter over her stern, and some­times by the vi­o­lent plunges she makes for­ward. This ma­noeu­vre, then, is sel­dom re­sorted to in such case, un­less through ne­ces­sity. When the ves­sel is in a leaky con­di­tion she is of­ten put be­fore the wind even in the heav­i­est seas; for, when ly­ing-to, her seams are sure to be greatly opened by her vi­o­lent strain­ing, and it is not so much the case when scud­ding. Often, too, it be­comes nec­es­sary to scud a ves­sel, ei­ther when the blast is so ex­ceed­ingly fu­ri­ous as to tear in pieces the sail which is em­ployed with a view of bring­ing her head to the wind, or when, through the false mod­el­ling of the frame or other causes, this main ob­ject can­not be ef­fected.

Ves­sels in a gale of wind are laid-to in dif­fer­ent man­ners, ac­cord­ing to their pe­cu­liar con­struc­tion. Some lie-to best un­der a fore­sail, and this, I be­lieve, is the sail most usu­ally em­ployed. Large square-rigged ves­sels have sails for the ex­press pur­pose, called storm-stay­sails. But the jib is oc­ca­sion­ally em­ployed by it­self—some­times the jib and fore­sail, or a dou­ble-reefed fore­sail, and not un­fre­quently the af­ter-sails, are made use of. Fore­top­sails are very of­ten found to an­swer the pur­pose bet­ter than any other species of sail. The Gram­pus was gen­er­ally laid-to un­der a close-reefed fore­sail.

When a ves­sel is to be laid-to, her head is brought up to the wind just so nearly as to fill the sail un­der which she lies when hauled flat aft, that is, when brought di­ag­o­nally across the ves­sel. This be­ing done, the bows point within a few de­grees of the di­rec­tion from which the wind is­sues, and the wind­ward bow of course re­ceives the shock of the waves. In this sit­u­a­tion a good ves­sel will ride out a very heavy gale of wind with­out ship­ping a drop of wa­ter, and with­out any fur­ther at­ten­tion be­ing req­ui­site on the part of the crew. The helm is usu­ally lashed down, but this is al­to­gether un­nec­es­sary (ex­cept on ac­count of the noise it makes when loose), for the rud­der has no ef­fect upon the ves­sel when ly­ing-to. In­deed, the helm had far bet­ter be left loose than lashed very fast, for the rud­der is apt to be torn off by heavy seas if there be no room for the helm to play. As long as the sail holds, a well mod­elled ves­sel will main­tain her sit­u­a­tion, and ride ev­ery sea, as if in­stinct with life and rea­son. If the vi­o­lence of the wind, how­ever, should tear the sail into pieces (a feat which it re­quires a per­fect hur­ri­cane to ac­com­plish un­der or­di­nary cir­cum­stances), there is then im­mi­nent dan­ger. The ves­sel falls off from the wind, and, com­ing broad­side to the sea, is com­pletely at its mercy: the only re­source in this case is to put her qui­etly be­fore the wind, let­ting her scud un­til some other sail can be set. Some ves­sels will lie-to un­der no sail what­ever, but such are not to be trusted at sea.

But to re­turn from this di­gres­sion. It had never been cus­tom­ary with the mate to have any watch on deck when ly­ing-to in a gale of wind, and the fact that he had now one, cou­pled with the cir­cum­stance of the miss­ing axes and hand­spikes, fully con­vinced us that the crew were too well on the watch to be taken by sur­prise in the man­ner Peters had sug­gested. Some­thing, how­ever, was to be done, and that with as lit­tle de­lay as prac­ti­ca­ble, for there could be no doubt that a sus­pi­cion hav­ing been once en­ter­tained against Peters, he would be sac­ri­ficed upon the ear­li­est oc­ca­sion, and one would cer­tainly be ei­ther found or made upon the break­ing of the gale.

Au­gus­tus now sug­gested that if Peters could con­trive to re­move, un­der any pre­text, the piece of chain-ca­ble which lay over the trap in the state­room, we might pos­si­bly be able to come upon them un­awares by means of the hold; but a lit­tle re­flec­tion con­vinced us that the ves­sel rolled and pitched too vi­o­lently for any at­tempt of that na­ture.

By good for­tune I at length hit upon the idea of work­ing upon the su­per­sti­tious ter­rors and guilty con­science of the mate. It will be re­mem­bered that one of the crew, Hart­man Rogers, had died dur­ing the morn­ing, hav­ing been at­tacked two days be­fore with spasms af­ter drink­ing some spir­its and wa­ter. Peters had ex­pressed to us his opin­ion that this man had been poi­soned by the mate, and for this be­lief he had rea­sons, so he said, which were in­con­tro­vert­ible, but which he could not be pre­vailed upon to ex­plain to us—this way­ward re­fusal be­ing only in keep­ing with other points of his sin­gu­lar char­ac­ter. But whether or not he had any bet­ter grounds for sus­pect­ing the mate than we had our­selves, we were eas­ily led to fall in with his sus­pi­cion, and de­ter­mined to act ac­cord­ingly.

Rogers had died about eleven in the forenoon, in vi­o­lent con­vul­sions; and the corpse pre­sented in a few min­utes af­ter death one of the most hor­rid and loath­some spec­ta­cles I ever re­mem­ber to have seen. The stom­ach was swollen im­mensely, like that of a man who has been drowned and lain un­der wa­ter for many weeks. The hands were in the same con­di­tion, while the face was shrunken, shriv­elled, and of a chalky white­ness, ex­cept where re­lieved by two or three glar­ing red blotches like those oc­ca­sioned by the erysipelas: one of these blotches ex­tended di­ag­o­nally across the face, com­pletely cov­er­ing up an eye as if with a band of red vel­vet. In this dis­gust­ing con­di­tion the body had been brought up from the cabin at noon to be thrown over­board, when the mate get­ting a glimpse of it (for he now saw it for the first time), and be­ing ei­ther touched with re­morse for his crime or struck with ter­ror at so hor­ri­ble a sight, or­dered the men to sew the body up in its ham­mock, and al­low it the usual rites of sea-burial. Hav­ing given these di­rec­tions, he went be­low, as if to avoid any fur­ther sight of his vic­tim. While prepa­ra­tions were mak­ing to obey his or­ders, the gale came on with great fury, and the de­sign was aban­doned for the present. The corpse, left to it­self, was washed into the lar­board scup­pers, where it still lay at the time of which I speak, floun­der­ing about with the fu­ri­ous lurches of the brig.

Hav­ing ar­ranged our plan, we set about putting it in ex­e­cu­tion as speed­ily as pos­si­ble. Peters went upon deck, and, as he had an­tic­i­pated, was im­me­di­ately ac­costed by Allen, who ap­peared to be sta­tioned more as a watch upon the fore­cas­tle than for any other pur­pose. The fate of this vil­lain, how­ever, was speed­ily and silently de­cided; for Peters, ap­proach­ing him in a care­less man­ner, as if about to ad­dress him, seized him by the throat, and, be­fore he could ut­ter a sin­gle cry, tossed him over the bul­warks. He then called to us, and we came up. Our first pre­cau­tion was to look about for some­thing with which to arm our­selves, and in do­ing this we had to pro­ceed with great care, for it was im­pos­si­ble to stand on deck an in­stant with­out hold­ing fast, and vi­o­lent seas broke over the ves­sel at ev­ery plunge for­ward. It was in­dis­pens­able, too, that we should be quick in our op­er­a­tions, for ev­ery minute we ex­pected the mate to be up to set the pumps go­ing, as it was ev­i­dent the brig must be tak­ing in wa­ter very fast. After search­ing about for some time, we could find noth­ing more fit for our pur­pose than the two pump-han­dles, one of which Au­gus­tus took, and I the other. Hav­ing se­cured these, we stripped off the shirt of the corpse and dropped the body over­board. Peters and my­self then went be­low, leav­ing Au­gus­tus to watch upon deck, where he took his sta­tion just where Allen had been placed, and with his back to the cabin com­pan­ion­way, so that, if any of the mates gang should come up, he might sup­pose it was the watch.

As soon as I got be­low I com­menced dis­guis­ing my­self so as to rep­re­sent the corpse of Rogers. The shirt which we had taken from the body aided us very much, for it was of sin­gu­lar form and char­ac­ter, and eas­ily rec­og­niz­able—a kind of smock, which the de­ceased wore over his other cloth­ing. It was a blue stock­inett, with large white stripes run­ning across. Hav­ing put this on, I pro­ceeded to equip my­self with a false stom­ach, in im­i­ta­tion of the hor­ri­ble de­for­mity of the swollen corpse. This was soon ef­fected by means of stuff­ing with some bed­clothes. I then gave the same ap­pear­ance to my hands by draw­ing on a pair of white woollen mit­tens, and fill­ing them in with any kind of rags that of­fered them­selves. Peters then ar­ranged my face, first rub­bing it well over with white chalk, and af­ter­ward blotch­ing it with blood, which he took from a cut in his fin­ger. The streak across the eye was not for­got­ten and pre­sented a most shock­ing ap­pear­ance.