And none liked to anticipate the blow;
And even Pedrillo, his most reverend tutor,
Was for some rum a disappointed suitor.
XXXVII
The good old gentleman was quite aghast,
And made a loud and pious lamentation;
Repented all his sins, and made a last
Irrevocable vow of reformation;
Nothing should tempt him more (this peril past)
To quit his academic occupation,
In cloisters of the classic Salamanca,
To follow Juan’s wake, like Sancho Panca.
XXXVIII
But now there came a flash of hope once more;
Day broke, and the wind lulled: the masts were gone
The leak increased; shoals round her, but no shore,
The vessel swam, yet still she held her own.169
They tried the pumps again, and though before
Their desperate efforts seemed all useless grown,
A glimpse of sunshine set some hands to bale—
The stronger pumped, the weaker thrummed a sail.
XXXIX
Under the vessel’s keel the sail was passed,
And for the moment it had some effect;
But with a leak, and not a stick of mast,
Nor rag of canvas, what could they expect?
But still ’tis best to struggle to the last,
’Tis never too late to be wholly wrecked:
And though ’tis true that man can only die once,
’Tis not so pleasant in the Gulf of Lyons.170
XL
There winds and waves had hurled them, and from thence,
Without their will, they carried them away;
For they were forced with steering to dispense,
And never had as yet a quiet day
On which they might repose, or even commence
A jurymast or rudder, or could say
The ship would swim an hour, which, by good luck,
Still swam—though not exactly like a duck.
XLI
The wind, in fact, perhaps, was rather less,
But the ship laboured 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 appeared in sight,
Nought but the heavy sea, and coming night.
XLII
Again the weather threatened—again blew
A gale, and in the fore and after hold
Water appeared; 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 rolled,
At mercy of the waves, whose mercies are
Like human beings during civil war.
XLIII
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.
XLIV
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 saints171—but there were none
To pay them with; and some looked o’er the bow;
Some hoisted out the boats; and there was one
That begged Pedrillo for an absolution,
Who told him to be damned—in his confusion.172
XLV
Some lashed 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 gnashed 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.173
XLVI
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;174
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.
XLVII
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,175
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.
XLVIII
The other boats, the yawl and pinnace, had
Been stove in the beginning of the gale;176
And the long-boat’s condition was but bad,
As there were but two blankets for a sail,177
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.
XLIX
’Twas twilight, and the sunless day went down
Over the waste of waters; like a veil,
Which, if withdrawn, would but disclose the frown178
Of one whose hate is masked but to assail.
Thus to their hopeless eyes the night was shown,
And grimly darkled o’er the faces pale,
And the dim desolate deep: twelve days had Fear179
Been their familiar, and now Death was here.
L
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 laughed,180
If any laughter at such times could be,
Unless with people who too much have quaffed,
And have a kind of wild and horrid glee,
Half epileptical, and half hysterical:—
Their preservation would have been a miracle.
LI
At half-past eight o’clock, booms, hencoops, spars,
And all things, for a chance, had been cast loose,
That still could keep afloat the struggling tars,181
For yet they strove, although of no great use:
There was no light in heaven but a few stars,
The boats put off o’ercrowded with their crews;
She gave a
