A SHIPWRECKOLLECTION
by Ambrose Bierce
As I left the house she said I was a cruel old thing,
and not a bit nice, and she hoped I never, never would
come back. So I shipped as mate on the Mudlark,
bound from London to wherever the captain might think
it expedient to sail. It had not been thought advisable
to hamper Captain Abersouth with orders, for when he
could not have his own way, it had been observed, he
would contrive in some ingenious way to make the voyage
unprofitable. The owners of the Mudlark had grown
wise in their generation, and now let him do pretty
much as he pleased, carrying such cargoes as he fancied
to ports where the nicest women were. On the voyage
of which I write he had taken no cargo at all; he said
it would only make the Mudlark heavy and slow. To
hear this mariner talk one would have supposed he did
not know very much about commerce.
We had a few passengers--not nearly so many as we had
laid in basins and stewards for; for before coming off
to the ship most of those who had bought tickets would
inquire whither she was bound, and when not informed
would go back to their hotels and send a bandit on
board to remove their baggage. But there were enough
left to be rather troublesome. They cultivated the
rolling gait peculiar to sailors when drunk, and the
upper deck was hardly wide enough for them to go from
the forecastle to the binnacle to set their watches
by the ship's compass. They were always petitioning
Captain Abersouth to let the big anchor go, just to
hear it plunge in the water, threatening in case of
refusal to write to the newspapers. A favorite
amusement with them was to sit in the lee of the
bulwarks, relating their experiences in former
voyages--voyages distinguished in every instance by
two remarkable features, the frequency of unprecedented
hurricanes and the entire immunity of the narrator
from seasickness. It was very interesting to see
them sitting in a row telling these things, each man
with a basin between his legs.
One day there arose a great storm. The sea walked over
the ship as if it had never seen a ship before and
meant to enjoy it all it could. The Mudlark labored
very much--far more, indeed, than the crew did; for
these innocents had discovered in possession of one
of their number a pair of leather-seated trousers,
and would do nothing but sit and play cards for them;
in a month from leaving port each sailor had owned them
a dozen times. They were so worn by being pushed over
to the winner that there was little but the seat
remaining, and that immortal part the captain finally
kicked overboard--not maliciously, nor in an unfriendly
spirit, but because he had a habit of kicking the seats
of trousers.
The storm increased in violence until it succeeded in
so straining the Mudlark that she took in water
like a teetotaler; then it appeared to get relief
directly. This may be said in justice to a storm at
sea: when it has broken off your masts, pulled out
your rudder, carried away your boats and made a nice
hole in some inaccessible part of your hull it will
often go away in search of a fresh ship, leaving you
to take such measures for your comfort as you may
think fit. In our case the captain thought fit to sit
on the taffrail reading a three-volume novel.
Seeing he had got about half way through the second
volume, at which point the lovers would naturally be
involved in the most hopeless and heart-rending
difficulties, I thought he would be in a particularly
cheerful humor, so I approached him and informed him
the ship was going down.
"Well," said he, closing the book, but keeping his
forefinger between the pages to mark his place, "she
never would be good for much after such a shaking-up
as this. But, I say--I wish you would just send the
bo'sm for'd there to break up that prayer-meeting.
The Mudlark isn't a seamen's chapel, I suppose."
"But," I replied, impatiently, "can't something be
done to lighten the ship?"
"Well," he drawled, reflectively, "seeing she hasn't
any masts left to cut away, nor any cargo to--stay,
you might throw over some of the heaviest of the
passengers if you think it would do any good."
It was a happy thought--the intuition of genius.
Walking rapidly forward to the foc'sle, which, being
highest out of water, was crowded with passengers,
I seized a stout old gentleman by the nape of the
neck, pushed him up to the rail, and chucked him
over. He did not touch the water: he fell on the
apex of a cone of sharks which sprang up from the
sea to meet him, their noses gathered to a point,
their tails just clearing the surface. I think it
unlikely that the old gentleman knew what disposition
had been made of him. Next, I hurled over a woman
and flung a fat baby to the wild winds. The former
was sharked out of sight, the same as the old man;
the latter divided amongst the gulls.
I am relating these things exactly as they occurred.
It would be very easy to make a fine story out of
all this material--to tell how that, while I was
engaged in lightening the ship, I was touched by
the self-sacrificing spirit of a beautiful young
woman, who, to save the life of her lover, pushed
her aged mother forward to where I was operating,
imploring me to take the old lady, but spare, O,
spare her dear Henry. I might go on to set forth
how that I not only did take the old lady, as
requested, but immediately seized dear Henry, and
sent him flying as far as I could to leeward,
having first broken his back across the rail and
pulled a double-fistful of his curly hair out. I
might proceed to state that, feeling appeased, I
then stole the long boat and taking the beautiful
maiden pulled away from the ill-fated ship to the
church of St. Massaker, Fiji, where we were united
by a knot which I afterward untied with my teeth
by eating her. But, in truth, nothing of all this
occurred, and I can not afford to be the first
writer to tell a lie just to interest the reader.
What really did occur is this: as I stood on the
quarter-deck, heaving over the passengers, one
after another, Captain Abersouth, having finished
his novel, walked aft and quietly hove me over.
The sensations of a drowning man have been so often
related that I shall only briefly explain that memory
at once displayed her treasures: all the scenes of
my eventful life crowded, though without confusion
or fighting, into my mind. I saw my whole career
spread out before me, like a map of Central Africa
since the discovery of the gorilla. There were the
cradle in which I had lain, as a child, stupefied
with soothing syrups; the perambulator, seated in
which and propelled from behind, I overthrew the
schoolmaster, and in which my infantile spine received
its curvature; the nursery-maid, surrendering her
lips alternately to me and the gardener; the old
home of my youth, with the ivy and the mortgage on
it; my eldest brother, who by will succeeded to the
family debts; my sister, who ran away with the Count
von Pretzel, coachman to a most respectable New York
family; my mother, standing in the attitude of a
saint, pressing with both hands her prayer-book
against the patent palpitators from Madame Fahertini's;
my venerable father, sitting in his chimney corner,
his silvered head bowed upon his breast, his withered
hands crossed patiently in his lap, waiting with
Christian resignation for death, and drunk as a
lord--all this, and much more, came before my mind's
eye, and there was no charge for admission to the
show. Then there was a ringing sound in my ears, my
senses swam better than I could, and as I sank down,
down, through fathomless depths, the amber light
falling through the water above my head failed and
darkened into blackness. Suddenly my feet struck
something firm--it was the bottom. Thank heaven, I
was saved!
~~~~~~~ THE END ~~~~~~~
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