CHAPTER III.THE SHIPWASH SAND.
“Our ship,Which but three glasses since we gave out split,Is tight and yare and bravely rigged, as whenWe first put out to sea.”Tempest.
“Our ship,Which but three glasses since we gave out split,Is tight and yare and bravely rigged, as whenWe first put out to sea.”Tempest.
“Our ship,Which but three glasses since we gave out split,Is tight and yare and bravely rigged, as whenWe first put out to sea.”
“Our ship,
Which but three glasses since we gave out split,
Is tight and yare and bravely rigged, as when
We first put out to sea.”
Tempest.
Tempest.
One by one the travellers crept down to the cabin. It was as uncomfortable as cabins usually are, perhaps more so, as being more lumbered and more crowded; and the ordinary space for locomotion had been miserably curtailed by a large supplementary table, which the steward was lashing athwart ship for the dinner accommodation of the supernumerary passengers. These were standing about here and there, as helpless and uncomfortable as people always are on first starting, and were regarding one another with looks of suspicion and distrust, as people who start by a public conveyance always do regard one another.
In this the English part of the community was prominently conspicuous. Denizens of a free land, it would seem as if they considered it as their bounden duty to be continually exhibiting their Magna Charta in the eyes of foreigners, and to maintain their just rights to the very death against all comers.
No rights, however, were invaded—there was no opportunity of asserting the Magna Charta; all were equally shy and equally miserable; till, by degrees, as the steamer crept slowly down the river against the tide, they shook into their places, and the ladies began to smile, and the ladies’ maids to look gracious.
The Parson was an old stager. Knowing full well the value of light and air in the present crowded state of thecabin, he had very willingly assented to the apologetic invitation of the steward, and had established himself comfortably enough on the transom itself, upon which was spread for his accommodation a horsehair mattress. There was no great deal to spare in the height of his domicile, for it was as much as he could conveniently manage to sit upright in it; but it was, at all events, retired, airy, and not subject to be suddenly evacuated by its occupant under the overpowering influence of a lee lurch or a weather roll.
Totally disregarding the bustle and confusion in the cabin below him, he was occupied in arranging and beautifying his temporary home. The sill of one window formed his travelling library, the books of which he had been unpacking from his stores, and securing by a piece of spun yarn from the disagreeable consequences of any sudden send of the ship in a rolling sea. The next formed his toilet-table and workshop, exhibiting his reels and fly-books, and the huge and well-known “material book,” the replenishing of which had occupied so much of his attention. The third was left empty, so as to be opened and shut at pleasure.
Stretched on his mattress, with a guide-book in his hand, and the map of Norway and Sweden at his side, he looked from his high abode on the turmoil of the cabin deck, with all the calmness and complacency with which the gods of the Epicureans are said to regard the troubles and distresses of mortals below.
And thus wore on the day. Dinner, tea, had been discussed—some little portion of constraint and shyness had been rubbed off—small knots of men were formed here and there, discussing nothings and making conversation. Night sank down upon the steamer as she ploughed her way across the Nore, and the last of the talkers rolled himself up in his bedclothes, and tried, though for a long while in vain, to accustom himself to public sleeping.
It was still dark—for the time was hardly three in the morning—when the Parson—who, accustomed to all the vicissitudes of travel, had been making the most of the hours of darkness, and had been for some time fast asleep—was suddenly startled from his dreams by a furious concussionon the rudder-case against which his head was pillowed. The vessel became stationary, and the fresh breezey hissing of the water in her wake and the tremulous motion everywhere suddenly ceased.
“By George, she’s hard and fast!” said the Captain; who, taking hint from the comfortable appearance which the Parson had given to his own berth, had occupied the same position on the starboard side, and was now invading the Parson’s territories from abaft the rudder-case.
“What the devil is to be done now?”
“Nothing at all,” said the Parson; “it is no business of ours; and I am sure it is not time to get up yet.”
“Well, but she has certainly struck on a sand.”
“I know that as well as you,” said the Parson; “but you can’t get her off. Besides, there is not a bit of danger yet, at all events, for the sea is as smooth as a mill-pond. There they go, reversing their engine: much good that will do. If there was any truth in that bump I felt, she is much too fast aground for that. And the tide falling too!”—he continued, striking a lucifer and looking at his watch. “Yes, it is falling now, it has turned this hour or more.”
By this time the hurried trampling and stamping on deck had roused up the passengers, few of whom could comprehend what had happened, for there was no appearance of danger, and the ship was as steady and firm as a house. But there is nothing more startling or suggestive of alarm than that rushing to and fro of men, so close to the ear, which sounds to the uninitiated as if the very decks were breaking up.
“Is it houraccan storrm?” shouted Professor Rosenschall, a fat greasy-looking Dane, whom Birger had been hoaxing and tormenting all the day before, partly for fun, and partly because he considered it the bounden duty of a true Swede to plague a Dane—paying off the Bloodbath by instalments.
“Steward!” shouted the Professor, above all the din and confusion of the cabin, “Steward, vinden er stærkere? is it houraccan storrm?”
“Yes, Professor, I am sorry to say it is,” said Birger, whohad rolled himself up in a couple of blankets under the table, upon which was reposing the weight of the Professor’s learning. “It is what we call an Irish hurricane—all up and down.”
“All up! O what will become of me—and down! O, my poor wife. Hvilken skrækelig storrm,” he screamed out, as half-a-dozen men clapped on to the tackle falls over his head, with the very innocent purpose of lowering the quarter-boat, and began clattering and dashing down the coils of rope upon the deck. “Troer de at der er fore paa Færde?—do you think there is any danger?”
What with the Professor’s shouting, and what with the real uncertainty of the case, and the natural desire that every one, even the most helpless, has to see their peril and to do something for themselves, every passenger was by this time astir, and the whole cabin was buzzing like a swarm of bees.
The Parson’s idea of sleeping was altogether out of the question; and, the Captain having gone on deck, he very soon followed him; for, notwithstanding his assumed coolness, he was by no means so easy in his mind as he would have his friends to understand. He had been at sea before this, and was, at least, as well aware as they, that grounding out of sight of land, is a very different thing from grounding in the Thames.
The scene on deck was desolate enough. The steamer had struck on the Shipwash, a dangerous shoal on the Essex coast, distant about twenty miles from land; and a single glance was sufficient to tell that there was not a chance of getting her off for the next twelve hours, though the Skipper was persisting in trying a variety of absurd expedients. The crew were looking anxious—the passengers were looking frightened; while the Skipper himself, who ought to have been keeping up every one’s spirits, was looking more wretched and more frightened than any one.
The day was just breaking, but a fog was coming on, and the wind showed every symptom of freshening. The vessel, indeed, had begun to bump, but the tide leaving her, that motion left her also, and she began now to lie over on her bilge. From some unfortunate list she had got in her stowing(Birger declared it was the weight of the ambassador’s despatch boxes), she fell over to windward instead of to leeward, thus leaving her decks perfectly exposed to the run of the sea, if the wind should freshen seriously.
When the Parson came on deck, the boats had just returned from sounding. The Skipper had, indeed, endeavoured to lay out an anchor with them—an object in which he might possibly have succeeded, had he tried it at first and before there was any great rush of tide, for the steamer had struck at the very turn of the flood; but he had wasted his time in reversing his engines and in backing and taking in sails which there was no wind to fill; and thus, before he had got his anchor lashed to the boat, which, like all passage steamers’ boats, was utterly inadequate for the work, the stream was strong enough to swamp boat, anchor, and all, and it was fortunate indeed that no lives were lost.
It appeared from the soundings that the ship had not struck on the main shoal, but on a sort of spit or ridge, the neck of a submarine peninsula projecting from the S.W. corner of it. Almost under her bows was a deep turnhole or bay in the sand about two cables across, communicating with the open water, beyond which, right athwart her hawse, lay the main body of the shoal, so that the beacon which marked its northern extremity, and which was now beginning to show in the increasing light of the morning, lay broad on her port bow, while the other end of the shoal was well on her starboard beam; at half a cable length astern, and on her port quarter and beam was the deep water with which the turnhole communicated,—this being, in fact, the channel she ought to have kept.
It was perfectly evident that nothing could be done till the top of the next tide, and whether anything could be done then was extremely problematical with the wind rising and the sea getting up; experience having already shown that there was not a boat in the steamer fit for laying out an anchor.
However, for the present the water was smooth enough; they were for the time perfectly safe and comfortable, lying, as they did, under the lee of the shoal, patches of whichwere now beginning to show just awash; while the seas were breaking heavily enough certainly, but a full half-mile to windward of them. The passengers, seeing nothing to alarm them, and feeling their appetites well sharpened by their early rising, began to lose their fears and to be clamorous for breakfast; and the meal was served with a promptness which, under the circumstances, was perfectly astonishing.
Those who know nothing fear nothing, and the jokes which were flying about and the general hilarity which pervaded the whole meeting, conveyed anything rather than the idea of shipwrecked mariners; though, truth to say, this feeling did not seem to be fully participated in by the Skipper, who presided at what might very fairly be called the head of the table, for it was many feet higher than the foot; he looked all the while as if he was seated on a cushion stuffed with bramble bushes.
The Parson, by way, he said, of utilising his moments, was preparing for fishing—calculating, and rightly too, that the whiting would congregate under the lee of the stranded ship.
He had made his preparations with characteristic attention to his own comfort and convenience. The dingy, which was hanging at the stern davits, formed at once his seat and his fishing-basket; and as he had eased off as much of the lee tackle fall as brought the boat to an even keel, the taffrail itself afforded him a shelter from the wind, which was now getting high enough to be unpleasant.
There he sat, hour after hour, busily and very profitably employed, heeding the gradual advance and strengthening of the tide only so far as its increasing current required the use of heavier leads.
The Captain and Birger had been trying to walk the sloping deck, a pursuit of pedestrianism under difficulties, for it was very much as if they had been trying to walk along the roof of a house. Time hangs heavily on the hands of those who have nothing to do, and there was nothing to do by the most active of sailors beyond hoisting the ensign union downwards, and that might just as well have been left undone too, for all the notice that was taken of it. Ship after ship passed by—the foreign traders to windward, theEnglish through the shorter but more dangerous channel that lay between them and the main land. Many of them were quite near enough for anxious passengers to make out the people in them reconnoitring the position of the unfortunateWalrusthrough their telescopes. But if they did look on her, certainly they passed by on the other side; it never seemed to enter into the heads of one of them to afford assistance.
“Pleasant,” said Birger, “very. Is this the way your sailors help one another in distress?”
“I am afraid so,” said the Captain.
“Gayer insects fluttering byNe’er droop the wing o’er those that die;And English tars have pity shownFor every failure but their own.”
“Gayer insects fluttering byNe’er droop the wing o’er those that die;And English tars have pity shownFor every failure but their own.”
“Gayer insects fluttering byNe’er droop the wing o’er those that die;And English tars have pity shownFor every failure but their own.”
“Gayer insects fluttering by
Ne’er droop the wing o’er those that die;
And English tars have pity shown
For every failure but their own.”
“You do not mean to say that they will not help us if there really is danger?” said the Swede.
“Upon my word, I hope there will not be any real danger; for if you expect any help from them, I can tell you that you will not get it.”
“Not get it!” said Birger, who did not at all seem to relish the prospect before him.
“That you will not. Sink or swim, we sink or swim by our own exertions. Those scoundrels could not help us without losing a whole tide up the river, a whole day’s pay of the men, and so much per cent. on the cargo, besides the chance of being forestalled in the market: do you think they would do that to save the lives of half-a-hundred such as you and me? Why, you have not learned your interest tables; you do not seem to understand how much twenty per cent. in a year comes to for a day. A precious deal more than our lives are worth, I can tell you.”
Birger looked graver still; drowning for a soldier was not a professional death, and he did not relish the idea of it.
The Captain continued his words of comfort. “I was very nearly losing a brother this way myself,” he said. “He was invalided from the coast of Africa, and had taken hispassage home in a merchant vessel. They had met with a gale of wind off the Scillies; the ship had sprung a leak, and when the gale had subsided to a gentle easterly breeze dead against them, there were they within twenty miles of the Longships, water-logged, with all their boats stove, and their bulwarks gone. Timber ships do not sink very readily, and incessant pumping had kept them afloat, but it was touch and go with that—their decks awash, and the seas rolling in at one side and out at the other. While they were in this state, the whole outward-bound fleet of English ships passed them, some almost within hailing distance, and all without taking more notice of them than those scoundrels are taking of us. They would, all hands, have gone to the bottom together, in the very midst of their countrymen, if a French brig had not picked them off and carried them into Falmouth. It was so near a thing, that the vessel sank almost before the last boat had shoved off from her side.
“Well,” said Birger, “if there is a selfish brute upon earth, it is an English sailor.”
“Natural enough that you should say so, just at present,” said the Captain; “though, as a Swede, you might have recollected the superstition that prevails in your own country against helping a drowning man. But the fact is, the fault lies not so much with the sailors as with the insurance regulations at Lloyds’. Likely enough, every one of these fellows has a desire to help us; but if they go one cable’s length from their course to do so, or if they stay one half-hour by us when they might have been making their way to their port, they vitiate their insurance. Man is a selfish animal, no doubt—sea-going man as well as shore-going man—and it is very possible that some of them would rather see their neighbours perish than lose the first of the market; but laws such as these render selfishness imperatively necessary to self-preservation, and banish humanity from the maritime code.”
“I wish all Lloyds’ were on the Shipwash,” said Birger, “and had to wait there till I picked them off.”
“Yes,” said the Captain; “or that the House of Commons were compelled to take a winter’s voyage every yearin some of these company’s vessels. I think, then, they might possibly find out the advantage of certain laws and certain officers to see them put in force, in order to prevent their going to sea so wretchedly found. There is nothing like personal experience for these legislators. This vessel has not a boat bigger than a cockle-shell belonging to her. Did you not hear how nearly the Mate was lost last night,—and he is the only real sailor in the ship—when they were trying to lay out an anchor—a manœuvre which, I see, they have not accomplished yet?”
“Hallo! this is serious,” said Birger, as a heavy sea struck the weather paddle-box, and broke over them in spray: for the tide had been gradually rising, without, as yet, raising the ship; and, as she lay over to windward, the seas that now began to break upon her starboard bow and side, deluged her from stem to stern.
“Upon my soul,” said the Captain, “I don’t like this, myself; and there sits the Parson, fishing away, as quietly as if he were on the pier at Boveysand. By Jove, Nero fiddling while Rome was burning, is a fool to him! Why, Parson, don’t you think there is some danger in all this?”
“‘Er det noget Færde?’ as your friend the professor would say,” said the Parson, laughing. “I do not think it improbable that theWalruswill leave her bones here, if you mean that.—Stop, I’ve got another bite!”
“Confound your bite! If she leaves her bones here, we shall leave ours too; for she has not boats for the fourth of us, the devil take them! and as for expecting help from these rascally colliers——”
“You may just as well fiddle to the dolphins,” said the Parson. “I know that; but do you see that little cutter,—that fellow, I mean, on our quarter, that has just tacked? and there beyond her is another, that is now letting fly her jib-sheet. I have been watching those fellows all the morning, beating out from Harwich. They are having a race, and a beautiful race they make of it: you cannot tell yet which has the best of it. If those cutters were going over to the Dutch coast, you may depend upon it they would not make such short boards. There—look—the leading one is in staysagain. Those fellows are racing for us, and with our ensign Union down, as we have it, we shall make a pretty good prize for the one that gets first to us. Those two are pilot-boats. You may depend upon it, we are not going to lay our bones here, whatever comes of theWalrus.”
The Parson’s anticipations were realised sooner than he expected, for a long low life-boat, that nobody had seen till she was close alongside, came up, carrying off the prize from both competitors—and preparations were begun, which ought to have been completed hours before, for laying out an anchor.
Before long, the cutters also had worked up and anchored on the lee edge of the shoal, to the great relief of every one on board; for the seas were by this time making such a breach over her, that no one could be ignorant of the danger.
Suddenly, and without preparation, she righted, throwing half the passengers off their legs, and very nearly precipitating the Parson into the sea; who took that as a hint to leave his seat in the dingy. Soon afterwards she began to bump, first lightly, and then more heavily, and the paddles were set in motion. The windlass was manned and worked; but the shifting sand afforded no good holding-ground for the anchor, which had not been backed—nor, indeed, had any precautions been taken whatever—and as soon as there was any strain upon it, it came home and was perfectly useless.
The ship now was hanging a little abaft the chess-tree, on the very top of the spit; but the stern was free, and the bows were actually in the deep water of the turnhole, while at every bump she gained an inch or two: just then, the anchor coming home, and the tide taking her under the port bow, she ran up in the wind, and pointed for the very centre of the shoal.
“Why the devil don’t you set your jib?” bellowed out the Captain, who had begun to get excited. “Where the deuce is that know-nothing Skipper of yours?”
“Upon my soul, sir, I do not know,” said the Mate, whowas standing at the wheel, and was looking very anxiously forward.
“Then why don’t you go forward and set it yourself? We shall be on the main shoal in two minutes, if she floats.”
“I know it, sir,” said the Mate; “but I dare not leave my post. We shall all have to answer for this; and if I am not where the Skipper has placed me, he will throw the blame upon me.”
“Then, by George, I don’t carethatfor your Skipper. Come along, boys, we’ll run up the jib ourselves.”
And away he rushed, pushing and shouldering his way along the crowded decks, among idlers, and horses, and carriages, followed by his own party, and a good many of the foreigners also; till he emerged on the forecastle, when, throwing down the jib and fore-staysail hallyards from the bitts and clattering them on the deck, while the Parson went forward to see all clear, he called out to the Russian servants, who, wet and frightened, were cowering under the carriages—
“Here, you slaveys, come out of that—clappez-vous sur ceci—clap on here, you rascals—rousez-vous dehors de ces bulwarks. What the devil is Greek for ‘skulking?’”
Whether the Russians understood one word of the Captain’s French, or whether they would have understood one word of it had they been Frenchmen, may be doubted; but his actions were significant enough; and the men, who only wanted to be told what to do, clapped on to the jib and fore-staysail hallyards as well and as eagerly as if they had known what was to be done with them; here and there, too, was seen a blue-jacket, for the seamen had no wish to skulk, if there had been any one to command them.
“Gib mig ropes enden!” shouted Professor Rosenschall, who had caught the enthusiasm, and was panting after them, though a long way astern.
“Birger will do that for you,” said the Parson, laughing, but without pausing for one moment from his work—“Birger! the Professor wants a rope’s-end.”
“Vær saa artig!” said Birger, tendering him the signalhallyards, the bight of which he had hitched round a spare capstan-bar on which he was standing. For Birger, like most Swedish soldiers, had passed a twelvemonth in a midshipman’s berth, where, whatever seamanship he had picked up, he had, at all events, learned plenty of mischief.
“Away with you!” roared the Captain. “Up with the sails—both of them.”
“Skynda! Professor, Skynda!” echoed Birger, leaping off the capstan-bar as he spoke, and thus causing the Professor to pitch headlong among the trampling men.
“Up with it! up with it, cheerily! look there, she pays off already!” as the two sails flew out; the jib, which was not confined by any stay, bagging away to leeward and hanging there, but still drawing and doing good service. “Up with it, boys—round she comes, like a top! Hurrah, that’s elegant!” as a sea struck her full on the quarter, which, by her paying off, had now become exposed to it. On it came, breaking over the taffrail and deluging the idlers on the poop, but at the same time giving her the final shove off the ridge. “Off she goes! Shout, boys, shout! and wake up that Skipper, wherever he is!”
And amid the most discordant yells that ever proceeded from heterogeneous voices—Danish, Dutch, Swedish, German, and Russ, above which, distinct and ringing, rose the heart-stirring English cheer—the steamer, once more under command of her rudder, buzzed, and dashed her way into the open sea.