The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket: Comprising the details of a mutiny and atrocious butchery on board the American brig Grampus, on her way to the South Seas, in the month of June, 1827.Poe, Edgar Allan
General
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket: Comprising the details of a mutiny and atrocious butchery on board the American brig Grampus, on her way to the South Seas, in the month of June, 1827.
Poe, Edgar Allan
Sea stories; Stowaways -- Fiction; Whaling ships -- Fiction; Young men -- Fiction
In the meantime, Henderson had again put off from the ship, although
the wind was now blowing almost a hurricane. He had not been gone many
minutes when he fell in with some fragments of our boat, and shortly
afterward one of the men with him asserted that he could distinguish a
cry for help at intervals amid the roaring of the tempest. This induced
the hardy seamen to persevere in their search for more than half an
hour, although repeated signals to return were made them by Captain
Block, and although every moment on the water in so frail a boat was
fraught to them with the most imminent and deadly peril. Indeed, it is
nearly impossible to conceive how the small jolly they were in could
have escaped destruction for a single instant. She was built, however,
for the whaling service, and was fitted, as I have since had reason to
believe, with air-boxes, in the manner of some life-boats used on the
coast of Wales.
After searching in vain for about the period of time just mentioned, it
was determined to get back to the ship. They had scarcely made this
resolve when a feeble cry arose from a dark object which floated
rapidly by. They pursued and soon overtook it. It proved to be the
entire deck of the Ariel's cuddy. Augustus was struggling near it,
apparently in the last agonies. Upon getting hold of him it was found
that he was attached by a rope to the floating timber. This rope, it
will be remembered, I had myself tied round his waist, and made fast to
a ringbolt, for the purpose of keeping him in an upright position, and
my so doing, it appeared, had been ultimately the means of preserving
his life. The Ariel was slightly put together, and in going down her
frame naturally went to pieces; the deck of the cuddy, as might be
expected, was lifted, by the force of the water rushing in, entirely
from the main timbers, and floated (with other fragments, no doubt) to
the surface--Augustus was buoyed up with it, and thus escaped a
terrible death.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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