36
AUGUSTA
Sunday, June 17, 1838
By Sunday night, four nights now on the sea that didn’t seem to count hours or days, time meaning nothing to its vast expanse, Augusta didn’t so much sleep as fade in and out of consciousness, holding Thomas until her arms burned and her shoulders were painfully cramped. When the ragged group of survivors needed to relieve themselves, the rest turned away to give them privacy. They were all the same now—crew, slaves, men, women and children—trying to live, needing to eat and drink and sleep and relieve themselves. These acts, these simple acts of living that usually took place in the privacy of their homes, now unfolded under the wide starry sky, under the brutal sun, on top of a heaving sea.
The silence was as deep as she’d ever experienced, shattered only when a wave broke upon the wreckage or a survivor moaned. Thomas had ceased speaking by then, and he cried out only at intervals. She stroked his head and wrapped him in her driest garments; she sang lullabies and rocked him against her chest. She perched upon the box, understanding that if she slipped off, there was the chance Thomas, now listless, would fall facedown and drown in those few inches.
From her perch, she spied a young boy slumped over, lashed to another box.
“Why is he tied?” she asked, but no one answered. She cried out louder, “Why is he tied?”
A man, his face drawn, spit his words at her. “That is my son, and I don’t want a wave to take him when I’m not holding him.”
Augusta dropped her head. Such sheer horror everywhere she looked. If this was what it meant to be alive, it was wretched beyond compare and maybe she should let go as easily as the pastor who had floated off with his wife, as brutally as the woman who had bashed her head on the box.
Paradise with God would be her reward.
Augusta burned with fever. She’d never felt heat as she did now. The waves lashed the small raft and seasickness was her constant companion. Her head felt as if it floated above her, and death sat next to her.
If she allowed herself to fall into the sea, there would only be a few minutes of misery before she walked through the golden gates, or so she’d been taught. But if she fought to stay alive, she would experience hours or even days of misery. She closed her eyes and thought of all that hung in the balance. Instead of waiting for the fates, she could decide. This could be her choice.
But something persistent inside Augusta longed for life. A spark quickened as she’d once imagined a child growing inside her would feel. There were Henry and Thomas. There were Charles and Lamar. There were spring afternoons. Cooling rain showers. Flowers that burst from the soil of the riverbanks. There was love.
“Let it be me,” a deep voice called out.
Augusta turned to see where the voice came from and saw a man and woman standing face to face. “No,” the woman cried. “Not you.”
“What are they talking about?” Augusta demanded.
Henry said, “That man believes we can get to shore if we cast lots and toss some people from the raft.”
“Is he mad?”
“Likely, but also quite serious.”
Henry held up his cut and bleeding hands in a placating gesture. He approached the man, water splashing around his bare ankles. He spoke calmly. “Stop this now. We are Christians and there will be no lots cast. We will not toss anyone to the sea. We will all survive.”
Murmurs spread and soon voices became clear and words began to separate themselves and become a true conversation. In the faint light of sunrise, the men talked of who would go find help in the small yawl, which they’d patched together with rope and torn garments. Who were the strongest swimmers? Augusta lightly shook Charles, who sat in the water, his head lolling against her legs. “Will you please hold your brother?”
Charles jolted fully awake and cried out, as many did when they awoke and realized where they were. He came to himself quickly and stretched his limbs, lifted one foot at a time to see his pruned and flaking feet and then sat on the box to take Thomas. Augusta moved toward the men to listen more closely.
Two sailors spoke, the Dane who had been rescued and one other tall one Augusta didn’t recognize. Lamar, Henry and a few more able-bodied men. Their arguments went in circles.
The taller gentleman with a seared arm spoke. “If the quarterboats made it to shore, then surely they’ve sent for help.”
Lamar disagreed. “It’s been three days. They believe we perished or they would have come for us by now. We must save ourselves. There’s no choice.”
The Dane argued that Lamar must go in the lifeboat. He was the only one with family on the wreckage, thus he had the greatest incentive to survive the rough landing and return with help.
At first Lamar refused. “I must stay and protect my sons and my sister.”
Augusta touched his shoulder. “You must go,” she said.
“I can’t leave all I love alone here in this hell.”
The Dane stepped near with his broad and bleeding hands held out to Henry now. “We need your strength. We need you to row.”
Henry replied, “I will not leave Augusta. I made a promise and I would never forgive myself if I broke it.” He clapped his hand on the Dane’s shoulder. “You have men strong enough. I must stay to protect them.”
Lamar agreed with his head bowed. He took Augusta in his arms. “I love you, sister. Watch over my sons. I will see you on land.”
Augusta’s tears came with one gulping cry and she held tightly to him. “Please return for us.”
He nodded into her hair. “Sister, I promise.”
With that final agreement, the six men—Lamar, the Dane, Peter Lawson of the crew, Mr. Hubbard of Charleston, Mr. Davis and Harmon Eldridge, strong in body to row—fashioned a sail out of a tablecloth and gathered to say good-bye. Mr. Hutchinson gave Lamar his spectacles and watch. He had already lost his three daughters and only son, and now he decided that if he didn’t live, those possessions should go via Lamar to the rest of his family. The Dane suggested they each take one draw of the wine, for sustenance, and then they lowered the rickety yawl into the sea and boarded it. As they rowed away, Lamar reached out his hand and cried out, “Thomas . . .”
As Henry sat next to her, Augusta collapsed back onto the seat and took her nephew in her arms. Even his father’s voice had not stirred him.
“There has been so much I have wanted to say to you,” she told Henry. “So many things to talk about and now . . . I am too weak.”
“We will have our whole lives to do so.” He kissed her cheek with a tenderness so overwhelming that her tears started and she touched his face.
Silence stretched, punctuated by Mauma’s singing. The foreign words echoed over the waves and across the miserable lot of them.
A tall man approached Augusta. “Can you give me just one drop of wine? Just one. My tongue shall fall out and my body . . .”
“You know we are saving it for the women and children,” she said weakly. “It’s what my brother has demanded.”
The man stuck out his tongue and Augusta spied a grotesque sight—a tongue that looked as rough and brown as a cow’s dried hide. “I will die of it,” he said in a voice soaked with shame.
Charles touched his aunt’s arm. “He can have mine.”
Augusta held out the bottle and the man, she never learned his name, put only a drop or two on his tongue and then looked to Charles. “You are a noble boy.”
A noble boy he was, Augusta thought, and kissed his cheek. “It is a miracle you are here. God has saved you.”
Charles’s eyes were dull by then, the spark gone from them, and it made Augusta’s heart leap into her throat as he spoke. “There are no miracles, Auntie. I saved myself. No one is coming to save us, and God isn’t here.”
“He is, Charles. He is here in each of us helping the other.”
“No one helped me. And no one is saving us. Father will get help or we will die.”
“Charles, my beloved nephew, you don’t know what you say.” She took his hand and drew him closer. “Do not give up, Charles. Pray for your family. Pray for your brother.”
Sorrow broke across his face before he looked away.
Some sang. Others prayed. Twice they spied sails in the distance that disappeared again. Toward evening the wind changed and this revived some hope—wasn’t their pitiful wreckage now being pushed toward shore?
But even if they sighted land, in their pitiful weakness wouldn’t they die in the struggle against the breakers that lined the land like castle walls? Augusta told Thomas, “If we come near shore I will tie us both to a plank of wood.”
He seemed to hear her but remained listless against her chest. Night drew near with the pinks and purples of the sun settling at the horizon, so beautiful that for one moment she might believe the world could not be so cruel as to let any more of them die in such misery.
Soon thunder rumbled and rain began to fall—blessed rain.
They opened their parched mouths to the sky, taking what little water they could, letting it soak their blistered skin and their cracked tongues. They used torn sails to gather the water into cups and empty cans, and drink it in desperate gulps even though it tasted of the sea.
Augusta cupped her hands and waited for them to fill before gulping the water and putting the wetness to Thomas’s lips, trying to pour water upon his tongue and down his throat. Henry did the same and then offered a full palm to Augusta. When the rain ceased an hour later, they were chilled and drenched but somewhat revived, enough for hope to take another breath.
The following morning, the skies cleared but the storm’s aftermath brought tossing winds and high waves that threatened to tear the raft apart. The wreckage began to groan and the makeshift sails to flap. Augusta’s arms burned and her body ached as if she were made of pain, and yet she wrapped Thomas closer as the warm sun moved higher and steam rose from their bodies. “Thomas, Thomas,” she murmured.
When he didn’t answer, she shook him lightly.
“Ow, Auntie, don’t.”
She took his hands in hers and saw his nail beds blue, his hands shriveled. She began to rub his hands, but it did no good.
“Thomas!” she cried, but he’d lost consciousness, limp in her arms.
Charles crawled through the water and sat beside her. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and together they rocked Thomas back and forth, calling out his name while Mauma sang.
When Thomas began to writhe on her lap, Augusta sank into a despair she hadn’t known existed. The helplessness, the hopelessness, the complete inability to save the person she loved most ripped open a deeper anguish. Again and again he writhed and Augusta clung to him and cried out his name.
Thomas took his last breath that morning, and Augusta held to his body as if her very touch could bring him to life, a Lazarus of her own miracle even as sobs broke free in wails of agony.
With Augusta’s cries filling the air, Charles collapsed, crying out, “Auntie, look—Boatswain is dying. He is drowning.” Hallucinations brought to him visions of his pet dog and he reached out his hands for his precious mutt, who rested surely on a rug at Stonewall on Sea Island, a world away. Spent, Charles collapsed on the decking, his head in his aunt’s lap.
Augusta pressed her body against Henry’s, the four of them, one gone, huddled together as hopeless silence descended on the entire raft.