The Survivors of the Chancellor quotes

and it is equally true that if I had selected New Orleans for my embarkation I could readily have reached Europe by one of the vessels of the National Steam Navigation Company, which join the French Transatlantic line of Colon and Aspinwall.

But it was fated to be otherwise.

One day, as I was loitering about the Charleston quays, my eye lighted upon this vessel. There was something about the Chancellor that pleased me, and a kind of involuntary impulse took me on board, where I found the internal arrangements perfectly comfortable.

Great was my amazement to find the deck perfectly hot to my feet! Curtis heard my exclamation of surprise, and before I could put my thoughts into words, said—

“Yes! there is fire on board!”

“Is our condition quite desperate?” I asked.

“It is just this,” he answered deliberately, “we are over a mine, and already the match has been applied to the train. How long that train may be, ’tis not for me to say.”

And with these words he left me.

After a pause, he said,

“As long as a plank of the ship remains to stand on, Mr. Kazallon, I shall not give up my hope.”

But the conflagration raged with redoubled fury, the sea around us was lighted with a crimson glow, and the clouds above shone with a lurid glare.

“No;” said André, “this is our best refuge; I hope you are not afraid.”

“Not for myself,” said the young girl quietly, “only for those to whom life is precious.”

At a quarter to eight we heard the boatswain calling to the sailors in the bows.

“What do we want? Why, we want no more captains; we are all equals now.”

Poor stupid fool! as though misery and privation had not already reduced us all to the same level.

“Owen,” said the captain once, again, “down with your arms!”

Astonished at his question, I replied that it was now four days since the biscuit had failed.

“Four days,” he repeated; “well, then, it is eight since I have tasted anything. I have been saving my share for my son.”

Tears rushed to my eyes; for a few moments I was unable to speak, and could only once more grasp his hand in silence.

Instantly we all followed his example; a leather hat, the rims of caps, in short, anything that contained any animal matter at all, were gnawed and sucked with the utmost avidity. Never shall I forget the scene.

We were no longer human, the impulses and instincts of brute beasts seemed to actuate our every movement.

For a moment the pangs of hunger were somewhat allayed; but some of us revolted against the loathsome food, and were seized either with violent nausea or absolute sickness.

“Right! what do you mean?” I exclaimed.

“Well, sir,” he said coldly, “isn’t it better to eat a dead man than a living one?”

I was at a loss to comprehend him, and, turning away, laid myself down at the end of the raft.

After examining her attentively for some time, he said, “She is a brig running close upon the wind, on the starboard tack, If she keeps her course for a couple of hours, she will come right athwart our track.”

A couple of hours! The words sounded to our ears like a couple of centuries.

The ship might change her course at any moment;

Miss Herbey’s red shawl, as being of a colour most distinguishable against the background of sea and sky, was run up to the masthead, and was caught by the light breeze that just then was ruffling the surface of the water.

As a drowning man clutches at a straw, so our hearts bounded with hope every time that our poor flag fluttered in the wind.

For an hour our feelings alternated between hope and despair.

and if, in the height of our sufferings, we had been offered our choice between a few drops of water and a few crumbs of biscuit, I do not doubt that we should, without exception, have preferred to take the water.

And what a mockery to our condition did it seem that all this while there was water, water, nothing but water, everywhere around us!

Again and again, incapable of comprehending how powerless it was to relieve me, I put a few drops within my lips, but only with the invariable result of bringing on a most trying nausea, and rendering my thirst more unendurable than before.

Silence continues to reign upon the raft. Not a sound, not even a groan, escapes our lips. We do not exchange ten words in the course of the day, and the few syllables that our parched tongue and swollen lips can pronounce are almost unintelligible.

Wasted and bloodless, we are no longer human beings; we are spectres.

But although Curtis might still cling to the hope of reaching land, I knew not what it was to have one sanguine thought.

For me there was neither continent nor island; the world was one fluid sphere, uniform, monotonous, as in the most primitive period of its formation.

Nevertheless it must be owned that it was with a certain amount of impatience that I awaited the rising of the mist, for I was anxious to shake off the phantom fallacies that Curtis’s words had suggested to my mind.

January 26th—

I understood it all; the devoted father having nothing more to give, had given his life for his son.

M. Letourneur was no longer a human being in the eyes of the famished creatures who were now yearning to see him sacrificed to their cravings. At the very sight of the victim thus provided, all the tortures of hunger returned with redoubled violence.