Though one might well imagine that my first sensation would be of wonder at so prodigious and unexpected a transformation of scenery, I was in reality more horrified than astonished for there was in the air and in the rotting soil a sinister quality which chilled me to the very core. When at last I awaked, it was to discover myself half sucked into a slimy expanse of hellish black mire which extended about me in monotonous undulations as far as I could see, and in which my boat lay grounded some distance away.
Its details I shall never know for my slumber, though troubled and dream-infested, was continuous. But neither ship nor land appeared, and I began to despair in my solitude upon the heaving vastnesses of unbroken blue. The weather kept fair, and for uncounted days I drifted aimlessly beneath the scorching sun waiting either for some passing ship, or to be cast on the shores of some habitable land. Of the longitude I knew nothing, and no island or coast-line was in sight. Never a competent navigator, I could only guess vaguely by the sun and stars that I was somewhat south of the equator.
When I finally found myself adrift and free, I had but little idea of my surroundings. So liberal, indeed, was the discipline of our captors, that five days after we were taken I managed to escape alone in a small boat with water and provisions for a good length of time. The great war was then at its very beginning, and the ocean forces of the Hun had not completely sunk to their later degradation so that our vessel was made legitimate prize, whilst we of her crew were treated with all the fairness and consideration due us as naval prisoners. It was in one of the most open and least frequented parts of the broad Pacific that the packet of which I was supercargo fell a victim to the German sea-raider. When you have read these hastily scrawled pages you may guess, though never fully realise, why it is that I must have forgetfulness or death. Do not think from my slavery to morphine that I am a weakling or a degenerate.
Penniless, and at the end of my supply of the drug which alone makes life endurable, I can bear the torture no longer and shall cast myself from this garret window into the squalid street below.
I am writing this under an appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more. Written Jul 1917 and Published November 1919 in The Vagrant, No.
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