CHAPTERVI.
What worried me most, as I chafed under the restraint of my narrow quarters was the silence that everywhere existed. Even aboard the Happy Shark, where I was in prison, not a sound was to be heard that night. And yet I knew that the old hulk teemed with human life, and that active preparations were going on throughout the entire community for an attack upon my steamer that meant death to her officers and crew.
There was I, like a rat caught in a trap, unable to aid or give warning.
As before stated, the front of my cell was upon the main deck and faced a hatchway. Through the grated door of my prison I could see the sky, and I was suddenly made conscious of the fact that a bright red light had appeared to the southward.
Any man who has followed the sea for half his life, as I have, never fails to assure himself on the points of the compass. The first fair day in which the sun can be seen to rise and set will give him the data from which he can take his bearings in the absence of a compass.
This strange light that I saw far away to the southward took the form of an immense red ball, far up in the clouds. I did not know then, though I learned afterward, that this is what is known among the Sargassons as “The Sacred Fire.”
As may be readily understood, the keeping of fireaboard all the vessels would be impossible. Therefore, the use of fire is confined exclusively to one great iron hulk, from which everything inflammable has been removed, and which is moored far apart from the rest of the floating ships. The cooking for the entire community is done there, and once a month a crew from each cantonment makes a journey to procure a store of the supplies that are gathered and held in common.
No office among the Sargasson people is more highly honored than that of the Priest of the Sacred Fire, whose duty it is to see that the flame never dies out. There have been years, I am told, when neither matches nor flints were procurable, and when the extinction of the fire would have meant suffering and death to the entire population.
The Priest who is held responsible for the maintenance of this flame gives his life as a bond.
So great is his authority that he can command the Kantoon of any ship to furnish fuel, and, in emergency, assistance in keeping the fire aglow.
Twenty years before my capture, a derelict had drifted into the clutches of the Sargassons that contained a complete railroad locomotive. The parts of its engine were transferred, after great labor, to the iron hulk referred to. The locomotive’s headlight, into the back of which a magnifying glass of strong intensity had been fitted, was placed over the glowing embers of the Sacred Fire, and threw a pillar of red light miles into the sky. On this night in question the rays from the reflector encountered a heavy cloud bank that hung high over the water, and combined in a red, spectral ember in the sky.
I then remembered that sailors had often spoken of a mysterious light that hovered over the Sargasso Sea; but if I had believed the stories I had accounted for the balls of fire as belonging to those strange natural phenomena described as “Will-o’-the-Wisp,” and associatedwith damp meadows filled with decayed vegetable matter.
On this night, however, I fully understood the purport of the terrifying blood-red blotch in the sky!
I knew, instinctively, that it was a signal to the Sargassons to assemble at some point for the purpose of capturing the Caribas.
I felt the jar of footsteps on deck; but as shoes and boots were unknown, little noise was made by the stealthy tread of the ship’s crew. I could hear lines of men ascending and descending the ladders not far from me, and I realized fully that the boats were being equipped.
In order to properly describe the events that occurred within the next twenty-four hours it will be necessary for me to rely upon information secured afterward from various sources.
I was not permitted to witness the attack upon my own ship, and for days all information regarding the terrible event was carefully kept from me. This was not done to lessen my mental sufferings. I can easily imagine that I was forgotten in the excitement, and probably I would have starved to death had it not been for the thoughtfulness of some one who during each night placed under my door a wicker dish of boiled seaweed, accompanied by two or more biscuits from the remainder of the scanty store brought by me in the launch. This was very little food for a hearty man, but I was grateful for the attention.
Although I had not seen any evidences of womankind about the ship, I instinctively divined femininity in this thoughtfulness. I detected, in the neat way the food was arranged upon the small piece of matting, the hand of a woman. I saw in the act more than mere perfunctory duty.
I felt that I had a friend on board the ship, all the more precious because unknown.
In my loneliness I gave myself up utterly to despair.Without hope, without companionship, and, above all, without news regarding the result of the expedition that had been sent against the Caribas; weakened by poor food and driven to semi-madness by want of care, I passed as much of my time as possible in troubled sleep, in which I dreamed dreams and saw visions. I suffered a great deal from thirst, also, because the water with which I was supplied was evidently the product of the rainstorms, with an occasional ration of distilled water, brought, as I afterward ascertained, from the ship on which was the boiler of the old locomotive.
The water supply was the greatest of all the problems to the Sargassons. Fortunately, rains were frequent and the seasons of drought far apart. But there were times when the consumption of an extra pint of the fluid aboard each ship in one day would have meant suffering for weeks. The Kantoon of each vessel always kept the water butt in his own cabin, and guarded it more carefully than any of his other possessions.
On the fifth day after my capture the Kantoon of the Happy Shark presented himself at the door of my prison, opened it with a quick jerk, and asked me to come out. I was so weakened by my imprisonment that I was slow to obey.
When I did face him I saw that a fillet of fresh seaweed was bound about his temples, below one corner of which showed a ghastly wound, still fresh and bleeding.
With a wave of his hand he motioned me to follow him to the upper deck, where, recognizing my enfeebled condition, he directed me, still in the curious polyglottic language of his, to seat myself, while he, as before, climbed into his barrel of water. After a few preliminary remarks, and, indeed, a thoughtful expression of regret that during the period of excitement through which he had just passed my comfort had been neglected, he told me the terrible story of the capture of the Caribas.
In a prefatory way, I may state that the boats usedby this strange people are made of grass matting, stretched over a light framework of wood (in shape like the birch bark canoe of the American aborigine), covered inside and out with a gum made of fish scales and wholly impervious to water. Each boat will carry only two people, one in the bow and one in the stern, and is propelled with paddles shaped like tennis bats, strung with thongs made from the intestines of fish, interlaced so closely together as to afford resistance to the water. These boats are so light that a man can readily carry one upon his shoulder, and so quick are they in answering the paddle that the little cockle shells can be turned in their own length. In these the Sargassons surmount the heaviest waves; but in the canals of Sargasso nothing rougher than an ocean swell ever exists. If the sea runs “mountain high” outside, its force is broken by the great blanket of sod that for thousands of miles rests upon its surface. So light and buoyant are these small canoes, rarely exceeding nine feet in length, that if one of them is swamped, the two rowers, treading water at the bow and at the stern, lift the boat, bottom upward, above the surface, reverse it, and while one of the crew holds an end of the little craft, the other member climbs into his seat, and, paddle in hand, steadies the boat until his companion resumes his place. The Sargassons have no fear of an upset. Their paddles are lashed to the canoe with long thongs, as are all portable articles that they carry.
Having explained the character of the boats in which the expedition set out, I may now reproduce, in my own words, the Kantoon’s narrative:
The flashing of the Sacred Light in the sky—the blood-red spot under the canopy of heaven that they had been expecting since morning—told the Sargassons the will of their Chief. They all understood that the Congress of the Kantoons had decided that the Caribas must be captured.
The ship was to be literally overrun with men, fully armed; and, after its capture, the Caribas was to be added to our commune.
From the treacherous passenger, Gray, who was the cause of all my misfortune, the exact number of officers and crew had been learned.
Mercifully did death come to those who encountered it, cutlass in hand, upon the deck of the ship!
The Chief Kantoon reviewed the fleet of small boats, each having two valiant men, selected from the various ships for their courage and fearlessness. The number of vessels represented was comparatively few, owing to the fact that two hundred men were supposed to be amply sufficient to effect the capture of forty on a night so favorable to the undertaking.
In a clear voice the Chief Kantoon gave directions for the attack. He described the route so perfectly that nobody could go amiss. He divided the flotilla into two wings, one of which was to leave the Grand Canal through a small shoot, and approach the Caribas from one end, while the other wing of the attacking party would proceed down the Canal and menace the vessel from the other. The plan was to lodge the two hundred men upon the abandoned hulk to which the Caribas was moored, and to which access could be readily found through its open ports. Having effected a lodgment there, the Sargassons would muster, and at a signal would swarm over the sides of the vessel before the crew of the Caribas had awakened to the danger of the situation.
Each man in the assaulting party was provided with deadly weapons.
But the most serious thing they carried, because unknown to the assailed, was a fine, impalpable dust, carried in a fish bladder, which was to be thrown in the faces of the crew. It is composed of a species of red pepper, analogous to the Tabasco berry, and is temporarilydestructive to the eyesight, and especially noxious to the nostrils and lungs. With it was blended a powerful drug, having all the qualities of opium, extracted from a fungus, quite like sape, found growing upon the water-soaked tree-trunks. The almost instant effect of this drug was to produce unconsciousness. Blinded and staggering, the victims would fall an easy prey to the attacking party.
The Sargassons have a horror of shedding human blood. They care nothing for death themselves, and never hesitate to inflict it upon others. But they dislike to see blood flow, and prefer drowning to any other form of death—a very natural preference, because their whole existence is associated with the sea.
In addition to this terrible death-dealing powder, with which each member of the attacking party was provided, each man carried a weapon of iron or steel, ground to exceeding sharpness. Firearms are not in use among the Sargassons, and the only weapon of that kind in the attacking party was the Winchester gun I had carried, and in which still remained about half a dozen cartridges.
After the last word had been spoken by the Chief Kantoon, and the members of the storming party had received his injunction that no one of them must return unless the prize was secured, the Kantoon chief in rank took command and gave the order to proceed.
In double column, almost half a mile in length, the boats set out upon their journey. Not a word was spoken, and so silently did the boatmen manipulate their paddles, not even a ripple was heard above the swash of the ocean swell. At the head of the double column, by the side of the Kantoon in command, was Arthur Gray, who was expected to act as guide to the party. His was the only boat that contained three people, he being seated in the centre.
For some reason he was an object of suspicion and distrust, and the two men in his boat had received secretinstructions, on the first evidence of treachery, to lasso him, bind him fast, capsize the boat, and save themselves by dragging their craft apart from him, so that he would drown.
The fifty miles were traversed in about eight hours, the speed being intentionally slow, in order that the men should not be fatigued prior to the moment of attack, at which time their best energies would be required.
When the mouth of the small canal was reached, into which the right division of the attacking party was to enter, a halt was called, and the canoes assembled in two great parks.
A boat was sent forward to reconnoitre, and after an hour’s absence returned to say the Caribas was still moored to the wooden hulk; that absolute quiet reigned aboard the steamer, and that an approach could readily be made as planned, over the deck of the derelict.
I forgot to say that attending each division were two canoes, manned by Sargasson boys. It was their duty to gather up and look after the boats when the attacking party precipitately left them to climb upon the derelict. At the bow of each canoe was a long painter of sea-grass rope, which it was expected would be made fast to some object on the side of the ship, so as to retain the boat, but in case the canoes became detached, it would be the task of the attending canoe boys to chase it up and take charge of it.
In less than half an hour after the two divisions had separated in the Grand Canal, they had reassembled to the leeward of the great floating hulk to which the Caribas was made fast. The thick rope fenders that had been placed between the iron ship and the barnacle-covered hulk gave out a plaintive, wailing sound that would have fallen upon superstitious ears with dire effect.
The presence of the attacking party had not been suspected aboard the Caribas, for no sounds were heard except the tread of the officer on the bridge. The firesunder the boilers had evidently been banked for almost twenty-four hours, and were very low. Scarcely any smoke escaped from the funnels, and no steam whatever.
The great iron ship, therefore, was as helpless as a log. As before stated, the wooden hulk of the dismasted full-rigged ship had listed to starboard about twenty-five degrees, owing to the shifting of its ballast. Instructions to the Sargasson assaulting party was that each boat’s crew should in turn take its place upon the side of the vessel, each man holding on by the barnacles, and by the seams between the planks until the signal for the assault was given. This was the sounding of the Caribas’ own bell, which, as every sailor knows, occurs at each half hour.
Seven bells had sounded on board the Caribas as the boarding party silently approached, and the officer of the watch had been heard to call out, “All is well!”
Every member of the attacking party had effected lodgment upon the upturned side of the great wooden hulk.
The boats had been gathered up and were in the possession of their keepers.
Everything was ready for the signal, which was fully due and momentarily expected.