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  Dickens, Charles - Reprinted Pieces

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  [Title:Reprinted Pieces]

  [Author:Charles Dickens]

  [Scanned:David Price ]

  [Checked:David Price ]

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  [Revision:1]

  [Source:Gutenberg]

  [Copyright:Public Domain - Copyright Expired]

  [Category:Fiction]

  [Abstract:*]

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  Reprinted Pieces

  THE LONG VOYAGE

  WHEN the wind is blowing and the sleet or rain is driving against

  the dark windows, I love to sit by the fire, thinking of what I

  have read in books of voyage and travel. Such books have had a

  strong fascination for my mind from my earliest childhood; and I

  wonder it should have come to pass that I never have been round the

  world, never have been shipwrecked, ice-environed, tomahawked, or

  eaten.

  Sitting on my ruddy hearth in the twilight of New Year's Eve, I

  find incidents of travel rise around me from all the latitudes and

  longitudes of the globe. They observe no order or sequence, but

  appear and vanish as they will - 'come like shadows, so depart.'

  Columbus, alone upon the sea with his disaffected crew, looks over

  the waste of waters from his high station on the poop of his ship,

  and sees the first uncertain glimmer of the light, 'rising and

  falling with the waves, like a torch in the bark of some

  fisherman,' which is the shining star of a new world. Bruce is

  caged in Abyssinia, surrounded by the gory horrors which shall

  often startle him out of his sleep at home when years have passed

  away. Franklin, come to the end of his unhappy overland journey -

  would that it had been his last! - lies perishing of hunger with

  his brave companions: each emaciated figure stretched upon its

  miserable bed without the power to rise: all, dividing the weary

  days between their prayers, their remembrances of the dear ones at

  home, and conversation on the pleasures of eating; the last-named

  topic being ever present to them, likewise, in their dreams. All

  the African travellers, wayworn, solitary and sad, submit

  themselves again to drunken, murderous, man-selling despots, of the

  lowest order of humanity; and Mungo Park, fainting under a tree and

  succoured by a woman, gratefully remembers how his Good Samaritan

  has always come to him in woman's shape, the wide world over.

  A shadow on the wall in which my mind's eye can discern some traces

  of a rocky sea-coast, recalls to me a fearful story of travel

  derived from that unpromising narrator of such stories, a

  parliamentary blue-book. A convict is its chief figure, and this

  man escapes with other prisoners from a penal settlement. It is an

  island, and they seize a boat, and get to the main land. Their way

  is by a rugged and precipitous sea-shore, and they have no earthly

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  hope of ultimate escape, for the party of soldiers despatched by an

  easier course to cut them off, must inevitably arrive at their

  distant bourne long before them, and retake them if by any hazard

  they survive the horrors of the way. Famine, as they all must have

  foreseen, besets them early in their course. Some of the party die

  and are eaten; some are murdered by the rest and eaten. This one

  awful creature eats his fill, and sustains his strength, and lives

  on to be recaptured and taken back. The unrelateable experiences

  through which he has passed have been so tremendous, that he is not

  hanged as he might be, but goes back to his old chained-gang work.

  A little time, and he tempts one other prisoner away, seizes

  another boat, and flies once more - necessarily in the old hopeless

  direction, for he can take no other. He is soon cut off, and met

  by the pursuing party face to face, upon the beach. He is alone.

  In his former journey he acquired an inappeasable relish for his

  dreadful food. He urged the new man away, expressly to kill him

  and eat him. In the pockets on one side of his coarse convictdress,

  are portions of the man's body, on which he is regaling; in

  the pockets on the other side is an untouched store of salted pork

  (stolen before he left the island) for which he has no appetite.

  He is taken back, and he is hanged. But I shall never see that

  sea-beach on the wall or in the fire, without him, solitary

  monster, eating as he prowls along, while the sea rages and rises

  at him.

  Captain Bligh (a worse man to be entrusted with arbitrary power

  there could scarcely be) is handed over the side of the Bounty, and

  turned adrift on the wide ocean in an open boat, by order of

  Fletcher Christian, one of his officers, at this very minute.

  Another flash of my fire, and 'Thursday October Christian,' fiveand-

  twenty years of age, son of the dead and gone Fletcher by a

  savage mother, leaps aboard His Majesty's ship Briton, hove-to off

  Pitcairn's Island; says his simple grace before eating, in good

  English; and knows that a pretty little animal on board is called a

  dog, because in his childhood he had heard of such strange

  creatures from his father and the other mutineers, grown grey under

  the shade of the bread-fruit trees, speaking of their lost country

  far away.

  See the Halsewell, East Indiaman outward bound, driving madly on a

  January night towards the rocks near Seacombe, on the island of

  Purbeck! The captain's two dear daughters are aboard, and five

  other ladies. The ship has been driving many hours, has seven feet

  water in her hold, and her mainmast has been cut away. The

  description of her loss, familiar to me from my early boyhood,

  seems to be read aloud as she rushes to her destiny.

  'About two in the morning of Friday the sixth of January, the ship

  still driving, and approaching very fast to the shore, Mr. Henry

  Meriton, the second mate, went again into the cuddy, where the

  captain then was. Another conversation taking place, Captain

  Pierce expressed extreme anxiety for the preservation of his

  beloved daughters, and earnestly asked the officer if he could

  devise any method of saving them. On his answering with great

  concern, that he feared it would be impossible, but that their only

  chance would be to wait for morning, the captain lifted up his

  hands in silent and distressful ejaculation.

  'At this dreadful moment, the ship struck, with such violence as to

  dash the heads of those standing in the cuddy against the deck

  above them, and the shock was accompanied by a shriek of horror

  that burst at one instant from every quarter of the ship.

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  'Many of the seamen, who had
been remarkably inattentive and remiss

  in their duty during great part of the storm, now poured upon deck,

  where no exertions of the officers could keep them, while their

  assistance might have been useful. They had actually skulked in

  their hammocks, leaving the working of the pumps and other

  necessary labours to the officers of the ship, and the soldiers,

  who had made uncommon exertions. Roused by a sense of their

  danger, the same seamen, at this moment, in frantic exclamations,

  demanded of heaven and their fellow-sufferers that succour which

  their own efforts, timely made, might possibly have procured.

  'The ship continued to beat on the rocks; and soon bilging, fell

  with her broadside towards the shore. When she struck, a number of

  the men climbed up the ensign-staff, under an apprehension of her

  immediately going to pieces.

  'Mr. Meriton, at this crisis, offered to these unhappy beings the

  best advice which could be given; he recommended that all should

  come to the side of the ship lying lowest on the rocks, and singly

  to take the opportunities which might then offer, of escaping to

  the shore.

  'Having thus provided, to the utmost of his power, for the safety

  of the desponding crew, he returned to the round-house, where, by

  this time, all the passengers and most of the officers had

  assembled. The latter were employed in offering consolation to the

  unfortunate ladies; and, with unparalleled magnanimity, suffering

  their compassion for the fair and amiable companions of their

  misfortunes to prevail over the sense of their own danger.

  'In this charitable work of comfort, Mr. Meriton now joined, by

  assurances of his opinion, that, the ship would hold together till

  the morning, when all would be safe. Captain Pierce, observing one

  of the young gentlemen loud in his exclamations of terror, and

  frequently cry that the ship was parting, cheerfully bid him be

  quiet, remarking that though the ship should go to pieces, he would

  not, but would be safe enough.

  'It is difficult to convey a correct idea of the scene of this

  deplorable catastrophe, without describing the place where it

  happened. The Haleswell struck on the rocks at a part of the shore

  where the cliff is of vast height, and rises almost perpendicular

  from its base. But at this particular spot, the foot of the cliff

  is excavated into a cavern of ten or twelve yards in depth, and of

  breadth equal to the length of a large ship. The sides of the

  cavern are so nearly upright, as to be of extremely difficult

  access; and the bottom is strewed with sharp and uneven rocks,

  which seem, by some convulsion of the earth, to have been detached

  from its roof.

  'The ship lay with her broadside opposite to the mouth of this

  cavern, with her whole length stretched almost from side to side of

  it. But when she struck, it was too dark for the unfortunate

  persons on board to discover the real magnitude of the danger, and

  the extreme horror of such a situation.

  'In addition to the company already in the round-house, they had

  admitted three black women and two soldiers' wives; who, with the

  husband of one of them, had been allowed to come in, though the

  seamen, who had tumultuously demanded entrance to get the lights,

  had been opposed and kept out by Mr. Rogers and Mr. Brimer, the

  third and fifth mates. The numbers there were, therefore, now

  increased to near fifty. Captain Pierce sat on a chair, a cot, or

  some other moveable, with a daughter on each side, whom he

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  alternately pressed to his affectionate breast. The rest of the

  melancholy assembly were seated on the deck, which was strewed with

  musical instruments, and the wreck of furniture and other articles.

  'Here also Mr. Meriton, after having cut several wax-candles in

  pieces, and stuck them up in various parts of the round-house, and

  lighted up all the glass lanthorns he could find, took his seat,

  intending to wait the approach of dawn; and then assist the

  partners of his dangers to escape. But, observing that the poor

  ladies appeared parched and exhausted, he brought a basket of

  oranges and prevailed on some of them to refresh themselves by

  sucking a little of the juice. At this time they were all

  tolerably composed, except Miss Mansel, who was in hysteric fits on

  the floor of the deck of the round-house.

  'But on Mr. Meriton's return to the company, he perceived a

  considerable alteration in the appearance of the ship; the sides

  were visibly giving way; the deck seemed to be lifting, and he

  discovered other strong indications that she could not hold much

  longer together. On this account, he attempted to go forward to

  look out, but immediately saw that the ship had separated in the

  middle, and that the forepart having changed its position, lay

  rather further out towards the sea. In such an emergency, when the

  next moment might plunge him into eternity, he determined to seize

  the present opportunity, and follow the example of the crew and the

  soldiers, who were now quitting the ship in numbers, and making

  their way to the shore, though quite ignorant of its nature and

  description.

  'Among other expedients, the ensign-staff had been unshipped, and

  attempted to be laid between the ship's side and some of the rocks,

  but without success, for it snapped asunder before it reached them.

  However, by the light of a lanthorn, which a seaman handed through

  the skylight of the round-house to the deck, Mr. Meriton discovered

  a spar which appeared to be laid from the ship's side to the rocks,

  and on this spar he resolved to attempt his escape.

  'Accordingly, lying down upon it, he thrust himself forward;

  however, he soon found that it had no communication with the rock;

  he reached the end of it, and then slipped off, receiving a very

  violent bruise in his fall, and before he could recover his legs,

  he was washed off by the surge. He now supported himself by

  swimming, until a returning wave dashed him against the back part

  of the cavern. Here he laid hold of a small projection in the

  rock, but was so much benumbed that he was on the point of quitting

  it, when a seaman, who had already gained a footing, extended his

  hand, and assisted him until he could secure himself a little on

  the rock; from which he clambered on a shelf still higher, and out

  of the reach of the surf.

  'Mr. Rogers, the third mate, remained with the captain and the

  unfortunate ladies and their companions nearly twenty minutes after

  Mr. Meriton had quitted the ship. Soon after the latter left the

  round-house, the captain asked what was become of him, to which Mr.

  Rogers replied, that he was gone on deck to see what could be done.

  After this, a heavy sea breaking over the ship, the ladies

  exclaimed, "Oh, poor Meriton! he is drowned; had he stayed with us

  he would have been safe!" and they all, particularly Miss Mary

  Pierce, expressed great concern at the apprehension of hi
s loss.

  'The sea was now breaking in at the fore part of the ship, and

  reached as far as the mainmast. Captain Pierce gave Mr. Rogers a

  nod, and they took a lamp and went together into the stern-gallery,

  where, after viewing the rocks for some time, Captain Pierce asked

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  Mr. Rogers if he thought there was any possibility of saving the

  girls; to which he replied, he feared there was none; for they

  could only discover the black face of the perpendicular rock, and

  not the cavern which afforded shelter to those who escaped. They

  then returned to the round-house, where Mr. Rogers hung up the

  lamp, and Captain Pierce sat down between his two daughters.

  'The sea continuing to break in very fast, Mr. Macmanus, a

  midshipman, and Mr. Schutz, a passenger, asked Mr. Rogers what they

  could do to escape. "Follow me," he replied, and they all went

  into the stern-gallery, and from thence to the upper-quartergallery

  on the poop. While there, a very heavy sea fell on board,

  and the round-house gave way; Mr. Rogers heard the ladies shriek at

  intervals, as if the water reached them; the noise of the sea at

  other times drowning their voices.

  'Mr. Brimer had followed him to the poop, where they remained

  together about five minutes, when on the breaking of this heavy

  sea, they jointly seized a hen-coop. The same wave which proved

  fatal to some of those below, carried him and his companion to the

  rock, on which they were violently dashed and miserably bruised.

  'Here on the rock were twenty-seven men; but it now being low

  water, and as they were convinced that on the flowing of the tide

  all must be washed off, many attempted to get to the back or the

  sides of the cavern, beyond the reach of the returning sea.

  Scarcely more than six, besides Mr. Rogers and Mr. Brimer,

  succeeded.

  'Mr. Rogers, on gaining this station, was so nearly exhausted, that

  had his exertions been protracted only a few minutes longer, he

  must have sunk under them. He was now prevented from joining Mr.

  Meriton, by at least twenty men between them, none of whom could

  move, without the imminent peril of his life.

  'They found that a very considerable number of the crew, seamen and

  soldiers, and some petty officers, were in the same situation as

  themselves, though many who had reached the rocks below, perished