The Survivors of the Chancellor · Chapter
XLIV explained
The survivors on the raft, now seven days without food, face imminent death.
What happens
The survivors on the raft, now seven days without food, face imminent death. The boatswain attempts to catch a shark using a makeshift whirl from a carpenter's tool and Miss Herbey's red shawl, but the shark bites through the wooden handle and escapes, dashing all hopes. The boatswain then asks Curtis when they will draw lots, but Curtis does not reply.
Themes in this chapter
Survival and Sacrifice
The boatswain's desperate attempt to catch a shark and the father's self-denial in saving a biscuit for his son highlight the extreme measures taken for survival.
Hope and Despair
The failed shark catch shatters the survivors' hopes, plunging them back into despair as they face inevitable death.
Characters to notice
- Robert Curtis
Curtis is consulted about the shark-catching attempt and remains silent when the boatswain asks about drawing lots.
- André Letourneur
André finished the last morsel of biscuit that his father had entrusted to the narrator.
- M. Letourneur
The sorrowful and self-denying father who had saved a biscuit for his son.
- Jynxstrop
Jynxstrop the negro has broken loose from confinement, but Curtis takes no measures to restrain him.
- Dowlas
Dowlas the carpenter provides his hatchet-hammer tool for the shark whirl and later attempts to despatch the shark.
Key passages
“After this further shattering of our excited hopes death alone now stares us in the face; slow and lingering as that death may be, sooner or later it must inevitably come.”
Our hopes have been crushed again, and now we face certain death, whether it comes slowly or quickly.
The narrator expresses the hopelessness of their situation after the failed shark catch.
“The boatswain, who stood with clenched teeth and dilated eye, regarded these sharks from quite another point of view. He thought about devouring the sharks, not about the sharks devouring him.”
The boatswain saw the sharks as potential food rather than as threats to his life.
Contrasts the boatswain's practical, survival-focused mindset with the narrator's more fearful perspective.