[Literature] Charles Dickens: The Wreck of the Golden Mary #10/47

Nor have I the
least doubt that it saved the lives of far
more than half our number. Having mentioned
half a pint of water as our daily
allowance, I ought to observe that sometimes
we had less, and sometimes we had more; for,
much rain fell, and we caught it in a canvas
stretched for the purpose.

Thus, at that tempestuous time of the
year, and in that tempestuous part of the
world, we shipwrecked people rose and fell
with the waves. It is not my intention
to relate (if I can avoid it), such circumstances
appertaining to our doleful condition
as have been better told in many other narratives
of the kind than I can be expected to tell
them. I will only note, in so many passing
words, that day after day and night after
night, we received the sea upon our backs to
prevent it from swamping the boat; that
one party was always kept baling, and that
every hat and cap among us soon got worn
out, though patched up fifty times, as the
only vessels we had for that service; that
another party lay down in the bottom of the
boat, while a third rowed; and that we were
soon all in boils and blisters and rags.

The other boat was a source of such
anxious interest to all of us that I used to
wonder whether, if we were saved, the time
could ever come when the survivors in this
boat of ours could be at all indifferent to the
fortunes of the survivors in that. We got out
a tow-rope whenever the weather permitted,
but that did not often happen, and how we
two parties kept within the same horizon, as
we did, He, who mercifully permitted it to
be so for our consolation, only knows. I
never shall forget the looks with which, when
the morning light came, we used to gaze
about us over the stormy waters, for the other
boat. We once parted company for seventy-two
hours, and we believed them to have
gone down, as they did us. The joy on both
sides when we came within view of one
another again, had something in a manner
Divine in it; each was so forgetful of
individual suffering, in tears of delight
and sympathy for the people in the other
boat.

I have been wanting to get round to the
individual or personal part of my subject, as
I call it, and the foregoing incident puts me
in the right way. The patience and good
disposition aboard of us, was wonderful. I
was not surprised by it in the women; for, all
men born of women know what great
qualities they will show when men will fail;
but, I own I was a little surprised by it in some
of the men. Among one-and-thirty people
assembled at the best of times, there will
usually, I should say, be two or three uncertain
tempers. I knew that I had more
than one rough temper with me among my
own people, for I had chosen those for the
Long-boat that I might have them under my
eye. But, they softened under their misery,
and were as considerate of the ladies, and as
compassionate of the child, as the best among
us, or among men—they could not have been
more so. I heard scarcely any complaining.
The party lying down would moan a good
deal in their sleep, and I would often notice
a man—not always the same man, it is to be
understood, but nearly all of them at one
time or other—sitting moaning at his oar, or
in his place, as he looked mistily over the
sea. When it happened to be long before I
could catch his eye, he would go on moaning
all the time in the dismallest manner; but,
when our looks met, he would brighten and
leave off. I almost always got the impression
that he did not know what sound he had
been making, but that he thought he had
been humming a tune.

Our sufferings from cold and wet were far
greater than our sufferings from hunger.
We managed to keep the child warm; but, I
doubt if any one else among us ever was
warm for five minutes together; and the
shivering, and the chattering of teeth, were
sad to hear. The child cried a little at first
for her lost playfellow, The Golden Mary;
but hardly ever whimpered afterwards; and
when the state of the weather made it possible,
she used now and then to be held up in
the arms of some of us, to look over the sea
for John Steadiman’s boat.