For several minutes my search of the surface of the sea proved fruitless, at which I was distinctly disconcerted, for I knew that there were many articles of a buoyant nature which had been lying loose about the decks, and which must have floated off when the ship sank; and I was beginning to fear that somehow I had got out of my reckoning and had missed the scene of the catastrophe. But a minute or two later, as I topped the ridge of a swell, I caught a momentary glimpse of something floating, some fifty or sixty fathoms away, and, striking out vigorously in that direction, I presently arrived at the spot and found myself in the midst of a small collection of brooms, scrubbing-brushes, squeegees, buckets, deck-chairs, gratings, and — gigantic slice of luck! — one of the ship’s life-boats floating bottom up! But of human beings, living or dead, not a sign; it was therefore evident that, of the five hundred and thirty-five aboard the Saturn at the moment of the disaster, I was the sole survivor.
Naturally, I made straight for the upturned life-boat; but recognising that a bucket might prove very useful I secured one and towed it along with me. Reaching the boat I was greatly gratified to find that not only was she quite undamaged but also that she was riding buoyantly, with the whole of her keel and about a foot of her bottom above the surface of the water. Of course the first thing to be done was to right the boat, and then to bale her out; and, with the water as smooth as it then was, I thought there ought not to be much difficulty in doing either. The righting of the boat, however, proved to be very much more difficult than I had imagined. She was a fairly big boat and, floating wrong side up and full of water, she was very sluggish, and for a long time scarcely responded to my efforts; but I eventually succeeded, and, with a glad heart, seized the bucket I had secured, hove it into the boat, and climbed in after it, finding to my joy that, even with my weight in her, the boat floated with both gunwales nearly four inches above the surface of the water. Thus there would be no difficulty in baling her dry; and this I at once proceeded to do, working vigorously at the task, not only with the object of freeing the boat as speedily as possible, but, still more, to restore my circulation and get a little warmth into my chilled and benumbed body.
Chapter Two. The “Yorkshire Lass.”
By the time that I had baled the boat dry the sun was above the horizon, the air had become quite genially warm, and my exertions had set my body aglow, while my clothing was rapidly drying in the gentle breeze that was blowing out from about north-west; also I discovered that I had somehow developed a most voracious appetite.
Fortunately, I was able to regard this last circumstance with equanimity, for the manager of the Planet Line of steamers had laid it down as a most stringent rule that while the ships were at sea all boats were not only to be maintained in a state of perfect preparation for instant launching, but were also to be fully supplied with provisions and water upon a scale proportional to their passenger-carrying capacity, and each was also to have her full equipment of gear stowed in her, ready for instant service. Now, the boat which I had been fortunate enough to find — and which, by the way, seemed to be the only one that had not been carried down with the ship — was Number 5, a craft thirty-two feet long by eight feet beam, carvel-built, double-ended, fitted with air-chambers fore and aft and along each side, with a keel six inches deep to enable her to work to windward under sail. She was yawl-rigged, pulled six oars, and her full carrying capacity was twenty-four persons, for which number she carried provisions and water enough to last, according to a carefully regulated scale, four days, or even six days at a pinch. These provisions were all of the tinned variety, and were stowed in a locker specially arranged for their reception between the two midship thwarts. Thus there was no risk of the food being damaged by salt water, on the one hand, or of being washed out of the boat, on the other. Upon coming into possession of the boat, therefore, I was not only so fortunate as to find an ark of refuge, but also rations of food sufficient to last me ninety-six days.
Knowing all this — such knowledge being a part of my duty — no sooner had I hove the last bucketful of water out over the gunwale than I opened the food locker and spread the constituents of a very satisfying breakfast in the stern-sheets of the boat; whereupon I fell to and made an excellent meal.
As I sat there, eating and drinking, a solitary individual adrift in the vast expanse of the Southern Ocean, I began to look my future in the face and ask myself what I was now to do. In a general sense it was not at all a difficult question to answer. The Saturn, that splendid, new, perfectly equipped steamship, had gone to the bottom, taking with her five hundred and thirty-four human beings; and, apart from myself and the boat I sat in, there was nothing and nobody to tell what her fate had been. I was the sole survivor of a probably unexampled disaster, and my obvious duty was to hasten, with as little delay as possible, to some spot from which I could report the particulars of that disaster to the owners of the ship.
But what spot, precisely, must I endeavour to reach? As an officer of the ship I of course knew her exact position at noon on the day preceding her loss. It was Latitude 39 degrees 3 minutes 20 seconds South; Longitude 52 degrees 26 minutes 45 seconds East; I remembered the figures well, having something of a gift in that direction, which I had sedulously cultivated, in view of the possibility that some day I might find it exceedingly useful. In the same way I was able to form a fairly accurate mental picture of the chart upon which that position had been pricked off, for Cooper, our “second”, and I had been studying it together in the chart-house shortly after the skipper had “pricked her off”. As a result, I knew that the Saturn had foundered some two thousand miles east-south-east of the Cape of Good Hope; that Madagascar — the nearest land — bore about north-by-west, true; with the islands of Reunion and Mauritius, not much farther off, bearing about two points farther east. These items of information were of course valuable; but their value was to a very great extent discounted by the fact that I had neither sextant nor chronometer wherewith to determine the boat’s position, day after day, nor a chart to guide me.
At this point in my self-communion I realised that alternative courses were open to me, and I proceeded to give them my most careful consideration, comparing the one with the other. And the more carefully I examined them, the more difficult did I find it to come to a decision. On the one hand, here was I, right in the track of ships bound east and west; consequently I stood a very fair chance of being picked up at any moment, when the ship’s wireless installation would at once enable me to make my report. On the other hand, in the unlikely event of my failing to be picked up, I could dispatch a cablegram from, say, Port Louis, Mauritius, immediately upon my arrival there; and the point which I had to decide was whether I should at once steer north, or whether I should remain where I was, and trust to being speedily picked up. I will not weary the reader by repeating in detail the arguments, pro and con, that presented themselves to my mind; let it suffice me to say that I eventually adopted the second of the courses outlined above. And so certain did I feel that this was the right decision that I actually adhered to it for seven days, during which I sighted four steamers and one sailing ship; but, as ill-fortune would have it, three of the steamers and the sailing ship passed me at too great a distance to permit of my intercepting them, while the fourth steamer — a big liner, with three tiers of ports blazing with electric light — passed during the night, within less than four miles of me; but I had no light with which to signal to her, and thus I was passed unseen.
The liner passed me during the fifth night succeeding that of the wreck; and during the following two days I saw nothing. As I watched the sun go down on the seventh day that I had spent in the boat I said to myself:
“Well, here endeth the seventh day of a most disappointing experience. If, seven days ago, anyone had told me that I could hang about here in a boat for a whole week, right in the track of ships, without being sighted and picked up, I would not have believed it. Yet here I am, and, judging from past experience, here I may remain for another seven days, or even longer, with no more satisfactory result. I have spent seven precious days waiting for a ship to come along and find me; now I will go and see if I cannot find a ship, or, failing that, find land, where I shall at least be safe from destruction by the first gale that chances to spring up.”
Thinking thus, I put up my helm, wore the boat round, and headed her upon a course that I believed would eventually enable me to hit off either Reunion or Mauritius, should I not be picked