Codes of Survival -Scripts - a series of short factionalized stories based on historical events in the Subantarctic Islands written by Lloyd Godman to accompany the exhibition and installation - 1993 - © Lloyd Godman

Codes of Survival - Scripts

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1826 - Marooned

It brought back such a deluge of perturbing memories and loathsome emotions to me, as it  took an eternity for that small shadow of a ship to sail back up and into the empty arm of the bay. It was as if every foot of head way it made through those cold forsaken waters was as a day of my time spent on that lonely island with the memories of my embittered existence over  these past months flashing through my feeble mind. Behold, here before me, at last,there was help at hand. Rescued before death I would be;  or was this once more a dream, another disappointment to add to the endless list. Oh I dearent think of the bitter disillusionment I would face if they turned and sailed out to the openness of the sea once more, or this was no boat at all but a trick of my eyes. But no, this was a ship with a real mast and sails heading directly  towards the bay.

So many emotions flooded over my withered wane of a body, from the first minute we had realized the brig was up anchor and sailing  away without us. We had been with the rest  of the party, then led astray in the thickets  of the woods. There, in the sullen unanswered echoes of the valleys, we had been left  alone from the rest of the party, which aloof had scampered off to the boat as quick as they dared and away on the 
next tide. Not one answer to our anxious calls had we heard, as we hopefully  stumbled about in a search for the elusive coast. 

And when we did find, through a poke in the brushwoods , an opening to the water, there,  we saw the ship in full sail and off on the breeze, away without us. At that point we had surmised that it was only off for a short while, for a mission we knew not of, and surely it would be back in the days that followed to pick us up. It would only be a matter of making do with the uncomforts of this land till they returned. As we had done many times before, there seemed few problems at the beginning. Oh, how wrong  I know we were. Now I fathom it was a  purposeful act by a wretched man who dares to call himself a captain and take the helm. He and all his comrades have much to answer to if ever we chance to meet again on any dock side. Did they so much as think twice of the act they had done? Did they deem our true plight, with nostores of any kind?

Scumbags,  surely they must all be.

No!

We mattered I doubt at all in their minds. I pity them for their despicable deeds, 
and the miserable heads on their  pox festering shoulders, though I shall never forgive one of them for a single second. What kind of a man from the sea  would desert another in this  forlorn part of the world?
Scumbags to be sure.

I reasoned after a few months or maybe more,  that it was the secret of that seal filled bay 
we had all found but a few days before their tricks, and that captains mistrust in us to hold our tongues as forsakes from another sealing  vessel in the same waters. I wish I had never behold that other dam ship let a lone  transferred to the company of that wretched crew. The ship we had sailed to the sealing  grounds  in and been apart of the crew had since left in the weeks before and now that these dogs had also left, we were here,cut  off with no escape. It was a wilful act by a merciless captain to be sure, and Iv'e not  found as bigger scumbag in all my days.

Marooned, that's what we had been!

Left to our own devices. And too few of them  we had been left with by those wretched dogs. For a kinder act may have been the shot from a musket clean through the heart, a quick death.  For this was a grisly, torpid way, and almost just  as certain. I was the only one to survive, and  then only scarcely, for Wilson had failed and  died from the vie for life. I had watched the blighter wain and wither away and I knew I  was close to the same. That was real pain to  see him go. They had left us to run a ragged dance through that rugged land in the months that past by. Desperate in a hostile land. I had to
scrape a hellishing hole in the earth as best I  could with only a firm stick, to lay that thin hint of a man down. It took far too long and asked  too much strength of me in a dirty drizzle before I had anything that looked like it could take his gaunt remains, but was nought like a proper hole.  It had to be done, but I had not the might to lay  the soul to earth proper.

God, if those first few weeks were bad,  hungry cold and wet; it only forewarned of our
true plight with the real trials and tribulations to come. There just was so little to eat of any real substance in this land, it was a desert,  though there seemed verdure enough to exist  upon on the hills and such an extensive  coast line. Limpets and small Musells   are not exactly apt for every meal one sits at. And how long does it take to clean a bay from the very last one  within easy reach?  Raw sea birds have a hell  of a fish taste at the best of times and there  was to many but not enough times for me. 
The few plants that appear palatable are  bitter to the taste and could only be forced down with the greatest of difficulty. At least prison food is regular.

This land asks too much of a man.

Right from the first few weeks, as cold and hungry as we felt, there were times when we would both lay backs on the ground, our eyes gazing at the procession of endless cloud  sweeping past us, while pondering our fate  though talking little and wishing for a rescue or the quickness of death. Suddenly a blast of  hail would bring us back form this dream and  with as quick a run as we could manage on our weak limbs, we would dive for the shelter of the woods where we could find some refuge  of a kind and plan our next move. But what move could we make?  Where could we go? 
There were only questions to ask.

Dwarfed by the long arms of land that reached  out form each end of the bay, this small ship sailed further into the inlet. They did know I was here, they had seen my markers, I felt sure. I must be rescued. It was so unreal, the sight of that ship in the bleak expanse of the bay.

With a gust of this ever present wind, my Long whiskery beard blew across my arm and I realized that I must be a dreary sight, my hair and beard were unkept and tangled with brush weed while my clothes hung, rags on a haggard old body. If ever they did find me, would they  ever want me aboard?  Many a night I had pleaded with god to send a ship to spare my soul. For a changed man I would be in the eyes of the almighty if ever I reached a civilized land once more. And here now was such a ship, white with sail and as bold as an angle, she cut the waters of the bay towards me ever closer. What a sight.

For all I could take away from this land if ever I did leave, there would always be too much left behind. I had lost so much weight from my body that surely it must lie on the island somewhere embodied among the roots of the trees or stems of the grasses that billowed on the breeze. Or perhaps it vanished upon the airs, was blown away with this unyielding wind and was here not at all?  My clothes and boots had lost much too, for where was the fabric and the leather now worn bare to little less than fragments of the garments they once been?  Where? I ask indeed, for both had been quite new and strong when I first set foot among the shores of this land. The pieces that had once filled the holes must lie somewhere.