Mark Twain - The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories

This is no time for comments or other interruptions from me—every moment is valuable. I will take up the boy brother's diary at this point, and clear the seas before it and let it fly.

HENRY FERGUSON'S LOG:

Sunday, June 10. Our ham-bone has given us a taste of food to-day,

and we have got left a little meat and the remainder of the bone for

tomorrow. Certainly, never was there such a sweet knuckle-one, or

one that was so thoroughly appreciated.... I do not know that I

feel any worse than I did last Sunday, notwithstanding the reduction

of diet; and I trust that we may all have strength given us to

sustain the sufferings and hardships of the coming week. We

estimate that we are within seven hundred miles of the Sandwich

Islands, and that our average, daily, is somewhat over a hundred

miles, so that our hopes have some foundation in reason. Heaven

send we may all live to see land!

June 11. Ate the meat and rind of our ham-bone, and have the bone

and the greasy cloth from around the ham left to eat to-morrow. God

send us birds or fish, and let us not perish of hunger, or be

brought to the dreadful alternative of feeding on human flesh! As I

feel now, I do not think anything could persuade me; but you cannot

tell what you will do when you are reduced by hunger and your mind

wandering. I hope and pray we can make out to reach the islands

before we get to this strait; but we have one or two desperate men

aboard, though they are quiet enough now. IT IS MY FIRM TRUST AND

BELIEF THAT WE ARE GOING TO BE SAVED.

All food gone.—Captain's Log.(3)

(Ferguson's log continues)

June 12. Stiff breeze, and we are fairly flying—dead ahead of it

—and toward the islands. Good hope, but the prospects of hunger are

awful. Ate ham-bone to-day. It is the captain's birthday; he is

fifty-four years old.

June 13. The ham-rags are not quite all gone yet, and the

boot-legs, we find, are very palatable after we get the salt out of

them. A little smoke, I think, does some little good; but I don't

know.

June 14. Hunger does not pain us much, but we are dreadfully weak.

Our water is getting frightfully low. God grant we may see land

soon! NOTHING TO EAT, but feel better than I did yesterday. Toward

evening saw a magnificent rainbow—THE FIRST WE HAD SEEN. Captain

said, 'Cheer up, boys; it's a prophecy—IT'S THE BOW OF PROMISE!'

June 15. God be for ever praised for His infinite mercy! LAND IN

SIGHT! rapidly neared it and soon were SURE of it.... Two noble

Kanakas swam out and took the boat ashore. We were joyfully

received by two white men—Mr. Jones and his steward Charley—and a

crowd of native men, women, and children. They treated us

splendidly—aided us, and carried us up the bank, and brought us

water, poi, bananas, and green coconuts; but the white men took care

of us and prevented those who would have eaten too much from doing

so. Everybody overjoyed to see us, and all sympathy expressed in

faces, deeds, and words. We were then helped up to the house; and

help we needed. Mr. Jones and Charley are the only white men here.

Treated us splendidly. Gave us first about a teaspoonful of spirits

in water, and then to each a cup of warm tea, with a little bread.

Takes EVERY care of us. Gave us later another cup of tea, and bread

the same, and then let us go to rest. IT IS THE HAPPIEST DAY OF MY

LIFE.... God in His mercy has heard our prayer.... Everybody is so

kind. Words cannot tell.

June 16. Mr. Jones gave us a delightful bed, and we surely had a

good night's rest; but not sleep—we were too happy to sleep; would

keep the reality and not let it turn to a delusion—dreaded that we

might wake up and find ourselves in the boat again.

It is an amazing adventure. There is nothing of its sort in history that surpasses it in impossibilities made possible. In one extraordinary detail—the survival of every person in the boat—it probably stands alone in the history of adventures of its kinds. Usually merely a part of a boat's company survive—officers, mainly, and other educated and tenderly-reared men, unused to hardship and heavy labour; the untrained, roughly-reared hard workers succumb. But in this case even the rudest and roughest stood the privations and miseries of the voyage almost as well as did the college-bred young brothers and the captain. I mean, physically. The minds of most of the sailors broke down in the fourth week and went to temporary ruin, but physically the endurance exhibited was astonishing. Those men did not survive by any merit of their own, of course, but by merit of the character and intelligence of the captain; they lived by the mastery of his spirit. Without him they would have been children without a nurse; they would have exhausted their provisions in a week, and their pluck would not have lasted even as long as the provisions.

The boat came near to being wrecked at the last. As it approached the shore the sail was let go, and came down with a run; then the captain saw that he was drifting swiftly toward an ugly reef, and an effort was made to hoist the sail again; but it could not be done; the men's strength was wholly exhausted; they could not even pull an oar. They were helpless, and death imminent. It was then that they were discovered by the two Kanakas who achieved the rescue. They swam out and manned the boat, and piloted her through a narrow and hardly noticeable break in the reef—the only break in it in a stretch of thirty-five miles! The spot where the landing was made was the only one in that stretch where footing could have been found on the shore; everywhere else precipices came sheer down into forty fathoms of water. Also, in all that stretch this was the only spot where anybody lived.

Within ten days after the landing all the men but one were up and creeping about. Properly, they ought to have killed themselves with the 'food' of the last few days—some of them, at any rate—men who had freighted their stomachs with strips of leather from old boots and with chips from the butter cask; a freightage which they did not get rid of by digestion, but by other means. The captain and the two passengers did not eat strips and chips, as the sailors did, but scraped the boot-leather and the wood, and made a pulp of the scrapings by moistening them with water. The third mate told me that the boots were old and full of holes; then added thoughtfully, 'but the holes digested the best.' Speaking of digestion, here is a remarkable thing, and worth nothing: during this strange voyage, and for a while afterward on shore, the bowels of some of the men virtually ceased from their functions; in some cases there was no action for twenty and thirty days, and in one case for forty-four! Sleeping also came to be rare. Yet the men did very well without it. During many days the captain did not sleep at all—twenty-one, I think, on one stretch.

When the landing was made, all the men were successfully protected from over-eating except the 'Portyghee;' he escaped the watch and ate an incredible number of bananas: a hundred and fifty-two, the third mate said, but this was undoubtedly an exaggeration; I think it was a hundred and fifty-one. He was already nearly half full of leather; it was hanging out of his ears. (I do not state this on the third mate's authority, for we have seen what sort of a person he was; I state it on my own.) The 'Portyghee' ought to have died, of course, and even now it seems a pity that he didn't; but he got well, and as early as any of them; and all full of leather, too, the way he was, and butter-timber and handkerchiefs and bananas. Some of the men did eat handkerchiefs in those last days, also socks; and he was one of them.