The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn | Page 6

These provisions were all of the tinned variety,
and were stowed in a locker specially arranged for their reception
between the two midship thwarts. Thus there was no risk of the food
being damaged by salt water, on the one hand, or of being washed out
of the boat, on the other. Upon coming into possession of the boat,
therefore, I was not only so fortunate as to find an ark of refuge, but
also rations of food sufficient to last me ninety-six days.
Knowing all this--such knowledge being a part of my duty--no sooner
had I hove the last bucketful of water out over the gunwale than I
opened the food locker and spread the constituents of a very satisfying
breakfast in the stern-sheets of the boat; whereupon I fell to and made
an excellent meal.
As I sat there, eating and drinking, a solitary individual adrift in the
vast expanse of the Southern Ocean, I began to look my future in the
face and ask myself what I was now to do. In a general sense it was not
at all a difficult question to answer. The Saturn, that splendid, new,
perfectly equipped steamship, had gone to the bottom, taking with her
five hundred and thirty-four human beings; and, apart from myself and
the boat I sat in, there was nothing and nobody to tell what her fate had
been. I was the sole survivor of a probably unexampled disaster, and
my obvious duty was to hasten, with as little delay as possible, to some
spot from which I could report the particulars of that disaster to the
owners of the ship.
But what spot, precisely, must I endeavour to reach? As an officer of
the ship I of course knew her exact position at noon on the day
preceding her loss. It was Latitude 39 degrees 3 minutes 20 seconds
South; Longitude 52 degrees 26 minutes 45 seconds East; I
remembered the figures well, having something of a gift in that

direction, which I had sedulously cultivated, in view of the possibility
that some day I might find it exceedingly useful. In the same way I was
able to form a fairly accurate mental picture of the chart upon which
that position had been pricked off, for Cooper, our "second", and I had
been studying it together in the chart-house shortly after the skipper
had "pricked her off". As a result, I knew that the Saturn had foundered
some two thousand miles east-south-east of the Cape of Good Hope;
that Madagascar--the nearest land--bore about north-by-west, true; with
the islands of Reunion and Mauritius, not much farther off, bearing
about two points farther east. These items of information were of
course valuable; but their value was to a very great extent discounted
by the fact that I had neither sextant nor chronometer wherewith to
determine the boat's position, day after day, nor a chart to guide me.
At this point in my self-communion I realised that alternative courses
were open to me, and I proceeded to give them my most careful
consideration, comparing the one with the other. And the more
carefully I examined them, the more difficult did I find it to come to a
decision. On the one hand, here was I, right in the track of ships bound
east and west; consequently I stood a very fair chance of being picked
up at any moment, when the ship's wireless installation would at once
enable me to make my report. On the other hand, in the unlikely event
of my failing to be picked up, I could dispatch a cablegram from, say,
Port Louis, Mauritius, immediately upon my arrival there; and the point
which I had to decide was whether I should at once steer north, or
whether I should remain where I was, and trust to being speedily picked
up. I will not weary the reader by repeating in detail the arguments, pro
and con, that presented themselves to my mind; let it suffice me to say
that I eventually adopted the second of the courses outlined above. And
so certain did I feel that this was the right decision that I actually
adhered to it for seven days, during which I sighted four steamers and
one sailing ship; but, as ill-fortune would have it, three of the steamers
and the sailing ship passed me at too great a distance to permit of my
intercepting them, while the fourth steamer--a big liner, with three tiers
of ports blazing with electric light--passed during the night, within less
than four miles of me; but I had no light with which to signal to her,
and thus I was passed unseen.

The liner passed me during the fifth night succeeding that of the wreck;
and during the following two days