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01 - The Island of Dr Moreau - H G Wells · Classic Adventure Books Collection

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  One in the dinghy of the Lady Vain. I do not propose to add
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  anything to what has already been written concerning the loss of the Lady Vain.
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  As every one knows, she collided with a derelict when ten days out from
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  Callao. The long boat with seven of the crew, was picked up eighteen
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  days after by ea chim gun boat Myrtle, and the story of their terrible
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  privations has become quite as well known as the far more horrible Medusa case.
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  But I have to add to the published story of the Lady Vain another,
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  possibly as horrible and far stranger, has hitherto been supposed that the four men
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  who are in the dinghy perished. But this is incorrect. I have the
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  best of evidence for this assertion. I was one of the four men.
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  But in the first place, I must state that there were never four men
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  in the dinghy. The number was three. Constance, who was seen by
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  the captain to jump into the gar Daily News, March seventeenth, eighteen eighty
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  seven, luckily for us and unluckily for himself, did not reach us.
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  He came down out of the tangle of ropes under the stays of the smashed
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  bowsprit. Some small rope caught his heel as he let go, and he
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  hung for a moment head downward, and then fell and struck a block or
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  spar floating in the water. We pulled towards him, but he never came
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  up. I say, luckily for us, he did not reach us,
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  and I might almost say luckily for himself, for he had only a small
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  beaker of water and some sodden ship's biscuits with us. So sudden had been
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  the alarm, so unprepared the ship for any disaster, we thought the people
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  on the launch would be better provisioned, though it seems they were not,
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  and we tried to hail them. They could not have heard us, and
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  the next morning, when the drizzle cleared, which was not until past midday,
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  we could see nothing of them. We could not stand up to look
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  about us because of the pitching of the boat. The two other men who
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  had escaped so far with me were a man named Helmar, a passenger like
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  myself, and a seaman whose name I don't know, a short, sturdy
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  man with a stammer. We drifted famishing, and after our water had come
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  to an end, tormented by an intolerable thirst for eight days altogether. After
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  the second day the sea subsided slowly to a glassy calm. It is quite
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  possible for the ordinary reader to imagine those eight days. He has not,
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  luckily for himself anything in his memory to imagine with. After the first day,
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  we said little to one another, and lay in our places in the
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  boat and stared at the horizon, or watched with eyes that grew larger and
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  more haggard every day, the misery and weakness gaining upon our companions. The
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  sun became pitiless. The water ended on the fourth day, and we were
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  already thinking strange things in saying them with our eyes. But it was I
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  think the sixth before Helmar gave voice to the thing we had all been thinking.
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  I remember our voices were dry and thin, so that we bent towards
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  one another and spared our words. I stood out against it with all my
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  might. Was rather for scuttling the boat and perishing together among the sharks that
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  followed us. But when Helma said that if his proposal was accepted, we
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  should have drink, the sailor came round to him. I would not draw
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  lots. However, and in the night the sailor whispered to Helmar again and
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  again, and I sat in the boughs with my clasp knife in my hand,
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  though I doubt if I had the stuff in me to fight. And
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  in the morning I agreed to Helmar's proposal, and we had a half pinced
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  to find the odd man. The lot fell upon the sailor, but he
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  was the strongest of us, who would not abide by it, and attacked
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  Helmar with his hands. They grappled together and almost stood up. I crawled
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  along the boat to them, intending to help Helmar by grasping the sailor's legs,
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  but the sailor stumbled with the swaying of the boat, and the two
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  fell upon the gunwale and rolled overboard together. They sank like stones. I
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  remember laughing at that, and wondering why I laughed. The laugh caught me
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  suddenly, like a thing from without. I lay across one of the thwarts
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  for I know not how long, thinking that if I had the strength,
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  I would drink sea water and mad myself to die quickly. And even as
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  I lay there, I saw, with no more interest than if it had
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  been a picture, a sail come up towards me over the sky line.
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  My mind must have been wandering, and yet I remember all that happened quite
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  distinctly. I remember how my head swayed with the seas and the horizon,
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  with the sail above it danced up and down. But I also remember as
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  distinctly that I had a persuasion that I was dead, and that I thought
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  what a jest it was that they should come too late by such a little
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  to catch me in my body. For an endless period, as it seemed
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  to me, I lay with my head on the thwart, watching the schooner.
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  She was a little ship schooner rigged fore and aft, come up out
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  of the sea. She kept hacking to and fro, and a widening compass,
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  for she was sailing dead into the wind. It never entered my head
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  to attempt to attract attention, and I do not remember anything distinctly after the
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  sight of her, until I found myself in a little cabin aft. There's
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  a dim half memory of being lifted up to the gangway and of a big
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  round countenance, covered with freckles and surrounded with red hair, staring at me
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  over the bulwarks. I also had a disconnected impression of a dark face with
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  extraordinary eyes close to mine, but that I thought was a nightmare until I
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  met it again. I fancy I recollect some stuff being poured in between my
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  teeth, and that is all