that was the end of my visions. through the night that followed—my fever having run its course, i suppose—i slept easily; and when another day came and i woke again my fever was gone. i was pretty weak and ragged, but the cut in my head was healing and no longer hurt me much, and my mind was clear. there still was water left in the jug, and i drank freely and felt the better for it; and toward afternoon i felt so hungry that i managed to get up and go to the pantry on a foraging expedition for something to eat.
this time i was careful not to stuff myself. i found a box of light biscuit and ate a couple of them; and then i filled my water-jug at the tank and brought it and the biscuit back to my stateroom without going on the deck at all. my light meal greatly refreshed me; and in an hour or two i ate another biscuit—and kept on nibbling at them off and on through the night when i happened to wake up. in between whiles my sleep was of a sort to do me good; not deep, but restful. with the coming of another morning i felt so strong that i went to the pantry again for food of a better sort—venturing to eat a part of a tin of meat with my biscuit and to add to my water a little wine; and when this was down i began to feel quite like myself once more, and to long so strongly for some sunshine and fresh air that i climbed up the companion-way to the deck.
but when i got there i thought at first that my visions were coming back again. indeed, what i saw was so nearly my last vision over again as to make me half believe, later, that i really did go on deck in my delirium and really did see that blood-red sunset and all the rest that had seemed to me a dream. at any rate, there was no doubting this second time—if it were the second time—the reality of what i beheld; and because i no longer was fever-struck, and so could take in fully the wonder of it, my astonishment kept my spirits from being wholly pulled down.
the haze was so thick as to be almost like a fog hanging about me, but the hot sunshine pouring down into it gave it a golden brightness and i could see through it dimly for a good long way; and there was no need for far-seeing to be sure that i had before me what i think must be the strangest sight that the world has in it for the eyes of man. for what i looked at was the host of wrecked ships, the dross of wave and tempest, which through four centuries—from the time when sailors first pushed out upon the great western ocean—has been gathering slowly, and still more slowly wasting, in the central fastnesses of the sargasso sea.
the nearest edge of this mass of wreckage was not a quarter of a mile off from me; but it swept away in a great irregular curve to the right and left and vanished into the golden haze softly—and straight ahead i could see it stretching dimly away from me, getting thicker and closer until it seemed to be almost as solid as a real island would have been. and, indeed, it had a good deal the look of being a real island; the loom through the haze of countless broken masts rising to various heights and having frayed ropes streaming from them having much the effect of trees growing there, while the irregularities of the surface made it seem as though little houses were scattered thickly among the trees. but in spite of the golden light which hung over it, and which ought to have given it a cheerful look, it was the most desolate and sorrowful place i ever saw; for it seemed to belong—and in a way really did belong, since every hulk in all that fleet was the slowly wasting dead body of a ship slain by storm or disaster—to that outcast region of mortality in which death has achieved its ugliness but to which the cleansing of a complete dissolution has not yet been brought by time.
yet the curious interest that i found in this strange sight kept me from feeling only the horror of it. in my talks with bowers about the old-time sea-wonders which must be hidden in the sargasso sea my imagination had been fired; and when i thus found myself actually in the way to see these wonders i half forgot how useless the sight was to me—being myself about the same as killed in the winning of it—and was so full of eagerness to press forward that i grew almost angry because of the infinite slowness with which my hulk drifted on to its place in the ruined ranks.
there was no hurrying my progress. around me the weed and wreckage were packed so closely that the wonder was that my hulk moved through it at all. of wind there was not a particle; indeed, as i found later, under that soft golden haze was a dead calm that very rarely in those still latitudes was ruffled by even the faintest breeze. only a weak swirl of current from the far-off gulf stream pushed my hulk onward; and this, i suppose, was helped a little by that attraction of floating bodies for each other which brings chips and leaves together on the surface of even the stillest pool. but a snail goes faster than i was going; and it was only at the end of a full hour of watching that i could see—yet even then could not be quite certain about it—that my position a very little had changed.
save that now and then i went below and got some solid food into me—and as i was careful to eat but little at a time i got the good of it—i sat there on the deck all day long gazing; and by nightfall my hulk had gone forward by perhaps as much as a hundred yards. but my motion was a steady and direct one, and i saw that if it continued it would end by laying me aboard of a big steamer—having the look of being a cargo-boat—that stood out a little from the others and evidently herself had not long been a part of that broken company. she was less of a wreck, in one way, than my own hulk; for she floated on an even keel and so high out of the water as to show that she had no leak in her; but her masts had been swept clean away and even her funnel and her bridge were gone—as though a sharp-edged sea had sliced like a razor over her and shaved her decks clean.
immediately beyond this steamer lay a big wooden ship evidently waterlogged; for she lay so low that the whole of her hull, save a bit of her stern, was hidden from me by the steamer, and the most of her that showed was her broken masts. and beyond her again was a jam of wrecks so confused that i could not make out clearly any one of them from the rest. taken all together, they made a sort of promontory that jutted out from what i may call the main-land of wreckage; and to the right and left of the promontory there went off in long receding lines the coast of that country of despair.
at last the sun sunk away to the horizon, and as it fell off westward pink tones began to show in the clouds there and then to be reflected in the haze; and these tones grew warmer and deeper until i saw just such another blood-red sunset as i had seen in what i had fancied was my dream. and under the crimson haze lay the dead wrecks, looming large in it, with gleams of crimson light striking here and there on spars and masts and giving them the look of being on fire. and then the light faded slowly, through shades of purple and soft pink and warm gray, until at last the blessed darkness came and shut off everything from my tired eyes.
indeed, i was glad when the darkness fell; for as i sat there looking and looking and feeling the bitter hopelessness of it all, i was well on my way to going crazy with sorrow. but somehow, not seeing any longer the ruin which was so near to me, and of which i knew myself to be a part, it seemed less real to me—and so less dreadful. and being thus eased a little i realized that i was hungry again, and that commonplace natural feeling did me good too.
i went below to the pantry, striking a match to see my way by; and when i had lighted the big lamp that was hanging there—the glass chimney of which, in some wonderful way, had pulled through the crash which had sent the mizzen-mast flying—the place seemed so cheerful that my desire for supper increased prodigiously, and tended still farther to down my sorrowful thoughts. i even had a notion of trying to light a fire in the galley and cooking over it some of the beef or mutton that i had found in the cold-room; but i gave that up, just then, because i really was too hungry to wait until i could carry through so large a plan.
but there was a plenty of good food in tins easily to be got at; and what was still better i felt quite strong enough to eat a lot of it without hurting myself. i even went at my meal a little daintily, spreading a napkin—that i got from a locker filled with table linen—on the pantry dresser, and setting out on it a tin of chicken and a bunch of cheese and some bread which was pretty stale and hard and a pot of jam to end off with; and from the wine-room i brought a bottle of good bordeaux.
as i ate my supper, greatly relishing it, the oddness of what i was doing did not occur to me; but often since i have thought how strange was that meal of mine—in that brightly lighted cosey little room, and myself really cheerful over it—in its contrast with the utterly desperate strait in which i was. and i think that the contrast was still sharper, my supper being ended, when i fetched a steamer-chair that i had noticed lying on the floor of the cabin and settled myself in it easily—facing toward the stern, so that the slope of the deck only made the slope of the chair still easier—and so sat there in the brightness smoking a very good cigar.
and after a while—what with my comfort of body, and the good meal in my stomach, and the good wine there too—a soothing drowsiness stole over me, and i had the feeling that in another moment or two i should fall away into a delicious doze. and then, all of a sudden, i was roused wide awake again by hearing faintly, but quite distinctly, a long and piercingly shrill cry.
i fairly jumped from my chair, so greatly was i startled; and for a good while i stood quite still, drawing my breath softly, in waiting wonder for that strange cry to come again. but it did not come again—and as the silence continued i fell to doubting if i had not been asleep, and that this sound which had seemed so real to me had not been only a part of a dream.
