Read "In the Sargasso Sea" by Thomas A. Janvier online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
That I should get to the steamer that night I knew was clean impossible, for she lay a long way off from me, and that I had seen her funnel at all was due to the mere happy accident of its standing for that single minute directly between me and the setting sun. I did hope, though, that by pressing hard toward her I might fetch aboard of some vessel not long wrecked on which I would find eatable food; yet in this I was disappointed, the shadows coming down on me so fast that I was forced in a little while to pull up short -- stopping while still a little daylight remained so that I might stow myself the more comfortably for the night.
As to looking for provender on the little old ship that I settled to camp on, I knew that it was useless. From her build I fixed her as belonging to the beginning of the present century, and from her depth in the wreck-pack she probably had met her death-storm not less than threescore years before; and so what provisions she had carried long since had wasted away. Yet there was a chance that I might find some spirits aboard of her -- which would be a poor substitute for food, but better than nothing -- and I hurried to have a look in her cabin before darkness settled down.