This poem is from the perspective of a shipwrecked sailor who manages to swim ashore to some remote sandy island in the Indian sea:

By Edwin J. Brady
From THE WAYS OF MANY WATERS, by Edwin J. Brady, published by The Bulletin Newspaper Co., Sydney, Australia, © 1899, pp. 40-44.

What the Bottle Said


A BLISTERED span of blazing sand,
A burning arch of sky . . .
Despair and Death on either hand . . .
Alone . . .
And so to die.

A sandbank in the Indian Sea,
With not a patch of shade . . .
An atoll in the awful sea,
Outside the tracks of trade.

Here write I this . . . and gaunt fiends too
Have written, mocking me
One thrice-cursed wretch of all a crew,
One saved of twenty-three.

For twenty-two the sharks have ta'en,
And hungrily they fed;
For twenty-two ha' done with pain.
They suffered . . . They are dead.

One yet survives . . . Just God, the thirst
That tears my veins to-day . . .
The last! the last! . . .
Why last, not FIRST?
. . . And why not yesterday?

No sail! No chance! I've tried to pray!
The end is coming close . . .
Christ, ease my soul ! Ah, take away
That face! . . . Ah, Nancy Mose!

The calm, wide waste! The sky spread clear!
All things to jibe my woe!
The girl who waits -- so dear, so dear!
My Nance! I loved her so.

And I had sworn to come back soon!
. . . That this should be the last!
A boiling surf! A mad typhoon!
An hour! And all -- the Past!

One battered wretch to fight for breath
And beat the breakers through --
Spared. Spared! My God! when kinder death
Has smiled on twenty-two.

Not mad . . . not yet: but deep in Hell,
Ten fathoms deep, I've seen! . . .
Kind God, I sinned! Thou knowest well . . .
But I was living clean.

Clean for her sake! . . .
Just now I stood
Where cool, clear water flows . . .
And rushed to drink! . . . I fell . . . My God!
. . . Ah, Nancy -- Nancy Mose!

I've prayed to Christ to let me go:
I've cursed, I've called, I've cried . . .
And all the world may never know
The horrid way I died.

A heap of bones that wind and sun
Bleach whiter day by day
A thing that festers in the sun!
A woman far away.

Out there! Out there! Ah, pain! I think . .
Cool, beaded wines . . . iced, frothing beer !
Food! Food! Yes, food! Yes, food and drink!
. . . Oh! I am raving . . . here.

Have sucked the vein . . . have eaten . . . sand!
May Jesus pity me!
My brain gone strange to-day . . . my hand
Here signed . . . of twenty-three!

The Bristol, ship . . . bound out
. . . Rangoon . . .
June . . . twenty . . . forty-three . . .
Hard hit . . . nor'-east typhoon;
All hands . . . lost . . . lost . . . but me.

The Bristol, ship . . . in case ye find
The bottle . . . tell -- if . . . none but those
Who suffer thirst . . . am going blind . . .
God bless you . . . Nancy Mose.

Floated round, and washed around;
Flung a thousand leagues;
Carried round and eddied round
In ocean's mad intrigues --
Grim words upon a shred of cloth,
With human blood scrawled red,
A drifted tale of wreck and wrath --
And thus the Bottle said.

But only those can know and care
Who fight the Sea for bread
The inner Truth, red-written there,
Of what the Bottle said.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble