from Canto II

41

The wind, in fact, perhaps was rather less,
    But the ship labour’d so, they scarce could hope
To weather out much longer; the distress
     Was also great with which they had to cope
For want of water, and their solid mess
     Was scant enough: in vain the telescope
Was used—nor sail nor shore appear’d in sight,
Nought but the heavy sea, and coming night.

42

Again the weather threaten’d,—again blew
     A gale, and in the fore and after hold
Water appear’d; yet, though the people knew
     All this, the most were patient, and some bold,
Until the chains and leathers were worn through
     Of all our pumps:—a wreck complete she roll’d,
At mercy of the waves, whose mercies are
Like human beings during civil war.

43

Then came the carpenter, at last, with tears
     In his rough eyes, and told the captain, he
Could do no more; he was a man in years,
     And long had voyaged through many a stormy sea,
And if he wept at length, they were not fears
     That made his eyelids as a woman’s be,
But he, poor fellow, had a wife and children,
Two things for dying people quite bewildering.

44

The ship was evidently settling now
     Fast by the head; and, all distinction gone,
Some went to prayers again, and made a vow
     Of candles to their saints—but there were none
To pay them with; and some look’d o’er the bow;
     Some hoisted out the boats; and there was one
That begg’d Pedrillo for an absolution,
Who told him to be damn’d—in his confusion.

45

Some lash’d them in their hammocks, some put on
     Their best clothes, as if going to a fair;
Some cursed the day on which they saw the sun,
    And gnash’d their teeth, and, howling, tore their hair;
And others went on as they had begun,
     Getting the boats out, being well aware
That a tight boat will live in a rough sea,
Unless with breakers close beneath her lee.

46

The worst of all was, that in their condition,
     Having been several days in great distress,
‘Twas difficult to get out such provision
     As now might render their long suffering less:
Men, even when dying, dislike inanition;
     Their stock was damaged by the weather’s stress:
Two casks of biscuit, and a keg of butter,
Were all that could be thrown into the cutter.

47

But in the long-boat they contrived to stow
     Some pounds of bread, though injured by the wet;
Water, a twenty gallon cask or so;
     Six flasks of wine; and they contrived to get
A portion of their beef up from below,
     And with a piece of pork, moreover, met,
But scarce enough to serve them for a luncheon—
Then there was rum, eight gallons in a puncheon.

48

The other boats, the yawl and pinnace, had
     Been stove in the beginning of the gale;
And the long-boat’s condition was but bad,
     As there were but two blankets for a sail,
And one oar for a mast, which a young lad
     Threw in by good luck over the ship’s rail;
And two boats could not hold, far less be stored,
To save one half the people then on board.

49

‘Twas twilight, and the sunless day went down
     Over the waste of waters; like a veil,
Which, if withdrawn, would but disclose the frown
     Of one whose hate is masked but to assail,
Thus to their hopeless eyes the night was shown
    And grimly darkled o’er their faces pale,
And the dim desolate deep: twelve days had Fear
Been their familiar, and now Death was here.

50

Some trial had been making at a raft,
     With little hope in such a rolling sea,
A sort of thing at which one would have laugh’d,
     If any laughter at such times could be,
Unless with people who too much have quaff’d,
     And have a kind of wild and horrid glee,
Half epileptical, and half hysterical:—
Their preservation would have been a miracle.