Furling Sail.Furling Sail.
Furling Sail.
Furling Sail.
These, the topmost sails of the ship, were just discernible from the deck. In a few moments their dim outlines melted, and some dark figures went up into the gloom and vanished.
The captain returned to his cabin, and Holdsworth strolled the deck. At two bells (one o’clock) the haze went out of the sky and the stars shone fiercely. Holdsworth, standing on the starboard side of the poop, felt a light air creeping about his face, and the sound of the flapping sails ceased.
“How’s her head?”
“North-a-quarter-west, sir.”
He sang out an order, and a crowd of figures came tumbling out of the forecastle and manned the port braces. The air died away, but presently came a quick puff which made the water bubble around the ship.
Holdsworth’s eyes were upon the weather horizon. The stars burned purely, but away upon the water-line was a thick shadow.
Again the wind died out, and there was a breathless stillness, amid which you might hear a sound—vague, murmurous, indescribable—a distant echo it might seem of something infinitely distant.
“Stand by the topgallant halyards!”
A sense of expectation seemed to pervade the very ship herself as she stood upright, with her dim canvas flapping in the darkness above.
The distant murmur grew more defined, and took such a tone as you may hear in small sharp rain falling at a distance upon leaves. Then out of the murky horizon some clouds came rolling—long, attenuated shadows, resembling visionary arms clutching at the stars. The murmur approached; the clouds, swinging along the sky, formed into compact groups. Hark to the quick hissing of the water lashed by the wind!
In a moment the sails were round and hard, the ship with her port-chains under water, and the wind screeching fiercely over the ebony surface of the sea and whitening it with foam.
The captain was on the poop, holding on to the main-topgallant backstay, and shrieking orders like one possessed. It was, indeed, briefly, a case of “Let go everything!” Under full topsail, foresail, staysail, and jibs, the ship was too heavily weighted for the surprising violence of the wind, and was powerless to right herself. But every order given was the right one. And now you heard the deep tones of Holdsworth’s powerful voice mingling with the agitated commands of the skipper, while yards came rushing down upon the caps, and sails banged and roared aloft, and men shouted lustily about the decks, and the sea fled in cataracts of foam under the vessel’s bows.
A time of deep excitement, but scarcely of suspense—there was too much hurrying for that.
There would have been something incredible to an inexperienced landsman in the sight of the dark figures swarming up the shrouds to give battle to the wild array of canvas which groaned and bellowed like a dozen thunder-storms in the sky—a spectacle of human pluck not to be realized, or in the faintest degree appreciated, by those who have not beheld it. The night black; the yards slanting so that the extremity of the mainyard touched the water; the footing upon those yards a thin line which must be felt for by the feet; the canvas, loosened by the lowering of the yard, bellied by the force of the wind many feet above the heads of the reefers, and presenting to their hands a surface of iron; and the three masts quivering under the shocks and convulsions of the sails!
All hands were at work now, and there were men enough to reef both big topsails at once, while others over their heads furled the topgallant-sails. Holdsworth had been one of the first to spring up the main-rigging; he knew the value of every pair of hands in that moment of danger; and away—active, daring, his hands and arms like steel—he clambered for the weather-earing. But the boatswain was before him, so he made for the lee yard-arm.
Figure a smooth spar, forty-five feet long, sloping at a height of as many feet to the water’s surface, the said surface not being a mill-pond, but a sheet of foam; figure a pitch-dark night, a line stretched along the yard down which you must slide to the extremity, a sail weighing half-a-dozen tons banging at your head and your feet, and doing its utmost to throw you; then, having reached the extremity of the yard, figure your legs thrown across it as you might bestride a horse, beneath you the foaming sea, almost at right angles the inclined deck of the ship, a long stone’s-throw distant—a deep darkness everywhere, save where a wave, breaking massively, flings out a phosphorescent light and deepens the blackness of its own chasm—while the gale yells about your ears, and blinds you with spray that stings like hail!
Figure this, and then you will very faintly realize what “taking the lee-earing” in a gale at sea means.
The cries of the men aloft, and the beating of the canvas, sounded like an unearthly contest in mid-air; but they ceased presently, and then the hands came hurrying down the rigging and fell to the halyards. Holdsworth sprang on to the poop, his cap gone, his hair blown about his eyes, and roared out orders, while the captain, more easy in his mind about his spars, went aft and hung about the binnacle, watching the compass often.
The ship was now under double-reefed topsails, and reeling through the darkness almost bare of sail. The wind was increasing in violence every five minutes, and an ugly Atlantic sea was running right athwart the ship’s course, hurling great waves against her starboard beam, which ran in water-spouts of foam as high as the maintop, and was blown in big, hissing flakes through the rigging to leeward. It was soon deemed expedient to close reef the topsails; but even under these mere streaks of canvas the Meteor lay over to the gale down to her water-ways, with the water bubbling in her lee-scuppers. But luckily the gale was right abeam, and the vessel could hold her course; but her speed was comparatively small, and she labored heavily.
So passed the darkest hours of the night. At four o’clock the gale was at its worst. They had rigged up a hurricane-house in the mizzen-rigging—a square of tarpaulin, which the wind flattened hard against the shrouds—and under this shelter sat Holdsworth and the captain, scarce able to hear their own voices, pitched in the loudest key, amid the howling of the tempest. Once Holdsworth went below to look at the glass, and came back saying it was steady. The skipper roared that he never before remembered so sudden a gale, and Holdsworth owned that only once was he so caught—in the Pacific, when they lost their foretop-mast.
There was nothing more to be done, unless they hove the ship to; but this was not needful. The dawn broke at five, and the pale, cheerless light illuminated a wild and dreary scene of tumbling desolate waters billowing in mountains to the horizon. The Meteor, almost under bare poles, her yards pointed to the gale, her ropes and lines blown in semicircles to leeward, labored heavily, caught now by a sea that threw her on her beam-ends, and now swooping into a chasm walled with boiling green water, making the gale screech like a million steam-whistles through her rigging, as she drove up against it, while coiling tongues of water ran in cataracts up her glistening sides and fell in dead weights upon her deck. The sky, from horizon to horizon, was a dark lead color, along which under-clouds, in appearance resembling volumes of smoke, were swept along, torn and rent, and discharging at intervals quick, biting showers of rain.
Some of the passengers came on deck—the general, Mr. Holland, and Mr. St. Aubyn. The general turned about when he had advanced a few feet, and disappeared; Mr. Holland in a very short time followed his example; but the actor, with manifest looks of terror in his pallid face, pushed onward with outstretched hands for the hurricane-house. The captain advised him to go below; but at that moment the ship, rolling suddenly to windward, shipped a shower of spray, which soaked the poor actor through and through; a moment after, the vessel heeled heavily over to leeward; away rolled the actor, impelled both by the wind and the unerring law of gravitation, and was flung against the lee mizzen-rigging, to which he was pinned by the violence of the gale as effectually as if he had been lashed to the shrouds. He screamed for help, on which Holdsworth went over to him, took him by the arm, and dragged him against the wind to the companion-hatchway. As Mr. St. Aubyn staggered below, clinging like a kitten to whatever he could lay hands on, he was heard to implore Holdsworth to tell him if there was any danger; but, before the words were out of his mouth, Holdsworth was clinging to the weather-rigging and calling the captain’s attention to a brig, which had risen out of the sea like an apparition, and was tearing before the gale with full topsails and topgallant-sails set.
“A Yankee, by her build!” said the captain. “It’s only a Yankee who would carry that sail in such a wind.”
It was a sight to see her flying along, sinking her hull sometimes out of sight, then poised on the giddy summit of a huge wave, whose crest broke under her bows, her copper bottom glistening like red gold against the slate-colored water. She passed within a quarter of a mile of the Meteor’s weather-beam, and up flew the stars and stripes and stood like a painted board at her peak. The second mate answered the salutation by bending on the small ensign and running it up. Any further signalling was out of the question in that gale. The men on board the brig could just be made out. She was a smart vessel, black-hulled, with bows like a knife, and skysail poles, which gave her masts an aspect of perfect symmetry; and she was splendidly handled. She went like a swan over the seething billows, streaming a foaming wake, and in a very few moments was lost in the haze and gloom of the near horizon.
As the morning advanced the gale decreased, but a terrible sea was up, which made the ship labor so furiously that to steady her in some degree they set the trysail and foresail. There was, however, the comfort of daylight abroad, and the men could see what they were about. Both Holdsworth and the captain went below to get a little sleep, and the vessel was left in command of the second mate, a young man named Thompson. There were two hands at the wheel and two on the lookout on the forecastle, glittering in oil-skins, and ducking now and again to the seas which swept over the ship’s bows.
The fore and main hatches were battened down, and the main-deck was a foot deep in water, which washed to and fro as the ship rolled, and which, as fast as it ran through the scupper-holes, was replaced by fresh and heavy inroads of the sea.
But all this was trifling; the vessel was snug, the gale was moderating, and the extra sail that had been made was driving the ship through the water in fine style.
Meanwhile, the passengers below, having been reassured by the captain, were making what breakfast they could off the rolls, tea, and rashers of ham which clattered about the table and tumbled into their laps. The trays swung wildly from the deck, and it demanded great vigilance and close attention to their convulsive movements to repossess one’s self of the cup or plate one placed upon them for safety. The negro steward shambled round the table, halting every moment to make a grasp at anything that came in his road to steady himself. Now and again you heard the smash of crockery. Some conversation was attempted, and the general invited Mr. Holland to go up on deck and witness a scene which would probably exceed in majesty Niagara Falls; but Mr. Holland said he would wait until the vessel was steadier. Mr. St. Aubyn had changed his clothes and sat holding on to the table, looking the part of fear infinitely better than he could hope to impersonate it before the footlights. The ladies remained in their cabins. Mrs. Ashton, overcome with sickness and the fear of drowning, was driving her maid distracted with orders which it was out of the poor wretch’s power to execute. In truth, the maid’s legs were perfectly useless to her, which Mrs. Ashton, lying on her back, refused to understand. Cries were repeatedly coming from the direction of her cabin for “Harry! Harry!” which received no attention, owing to Harry’s—in other words, to Mr. Ashton’s—utter incapacity to move a step without being flung upon the deck.
A somewhat different scene was presented by the interior of the forecastle, where both watches were having breakfast. Men holding tin pannikins stepped easily round to the galley, where the cook was dispensing a milkless, sugarless black fluid called tea, and retreated into the twilight of the forecastle, carrying the steaming beverage. There sat the sailors, some swinging in hammocks with their legs dangling down, some on sea-chests, some on canvas bags, drinking from pannikins, swallowing lumps of biscuit hard as iron, or hacking with the knives they wore in their belts at bits of cold pork or beef floating in vinegar in tin dishes held between their knees; some smoking, some making ready to “turn in,” and all jabbering away as gayly as if they were comfortably seated in a Liverpool or Poplar singing house—the mariner’s earthly paradise—and each with his Sue or his Betsey by his side. Here, more than in any other part of the ship, you felt her motion—the mighty lifting of her bows, and the long sweeping fall as she pitched nose under, while the heavy seas boomed against her outside as though at any moment the timbers must dispart and the green waves rush in.
At twelve o’clock the gale had decreased to such a degree that they were able to shake two reefs out of the main-topsail and set the topgallant-sail. The action of the sea, moreover, was much less violent. The weather had cleared, the pale blue sky could be seen shining through the white mist that fled along it, and the sun stood round and clean and coppery in the heavens, throwing a dark red lustre upon the quick, passionate play of the sea beneath.
Some of the passengers crawled upon deck and gazed with wonderment around them. Certainly the panorama was a somewhat different one from what had been unrolled to their eyes the day before. The ship had a fagged and jaded look with her drenched decks, her ropes blown slack with the violence of the wind, and the canvas made unequal to the eye by the reefs in the topsails. It was again Holdsworth’s watch on deck. The captain walked up and down, chuckling over the improved aspect of the weather and on the wind, which was drawing more easterly, and therefore more favorable.
“You can shake out the reefs, Mr. Holdsworth. She’ll bear it now,” he called out.
Out reefs it was: the ship felt the increased pressure, and rushed forward like a liberated race-horse.
“This is capital!” exclaimed the old general, tottering about with out-stretched hands, ever on the alert for a special roll. “A week of this, captain, will carry us a good way on our road.”
“Ay, sir, and we must make up for lost time.”
And then presently he gave orders to set the mainsail and the other two topgallant-sails.
“The glass still keeps low, sir,” said Holdsworth.
“But let’s take advantage of the daylight, Mr. Holdsworth. We mustn’t lose an opportunity.”
The sky had now cleared, the sun shone cheerily; the wind, having drawn aft, was now no more than what sailors would call a main-royal breeze.
THE WRECK OF THE GROSVENOR
The story of the wreck of the Grosvenor is supposed to be told by Mr. Royle, the second mate of that unlucky ship. She was a small vessel bound from England to Valparaiso with a heavy cargo and no passengers. Captain Coxon and his first mate, Duckling, were so brutal in their treatment of the crew, that before many days a mutiny arose, headed by Stevens the ship’s carpenter. The captain and the mate were murdered, but Royle was spared to guide the ship to the West Indies. The crew were a treacherous gang, and near Bermuda they scuttled the Grosvenor and abandoned her to sink with the skipper, the boatswain, and the steward who remained faithful to him, and Mary Robertson, a girl whom Royle had rescued from a passing wreck. But the mutineers’ plot had been discovered by the boatswain, who plugged up the holes in the ship’s side, and when the crew deserted her the Grosvenor cheerfully sailed away. Discovering their mistake one boatload of the villains went in pursuit. In the ensuing skirmish all of this party, except Jim Cornish, were killed, and he was captured with the quarter-boat itself. But even with Cornish turned a faithful ally, the Grosvenor had not sufficient crew to man her, and she was soon crippled by a tremendous gale. Their signal of distress was disregarded by a Russian ship which might have rescued them, and the shock of this disappointment destroyed the poor steward’s wits and broke the heart of Cornish. The Grosvenor was fast sinking; there was no alternative but to take to the quarter-boat which they had captured from the mutineers. The following story tells how the three men and the girl were saved from the wreck of the Grosvenor.
(From The Wreck of the Grosvenor.)By W. CLARK RUSSELL.
We had never yet had the leisure to inspect the stores with which the mutineers had furnished the quarter-boat, and we now found, in spite of their having shifted a lot of provisions out of her into the long-boat before starting in pursuit of us, that there was still an abundance left: four kegs of water, several tins of cuddy bread, preserved meats and fruits, sugar, flour, and other things, not to mention such items as boxes of lucifer matches, fishing-tackle, a burning glass, a quantity of tools and nails; in a word, everything which men in the condition they had hoped to find themselves in might stand in need of to support life. Indeed, the foresight illustrated by the provisioning of this boat was truly remarkable, the only things they had omitted being a mast and sail, it having been their intention to keep this boat in tow of the other. I even found that they had furnished the boat with the oars belonging to the disabled quarter-boat in addition to her own.
However, the boat was not yet stocked to my satisfaction. I therefore repaired to my cabin and procured the boat’s compass, some charts, a sextant, and other necessary articles such as the “Nautical Almanac,” and pencils and paper wherewith to work out my observations, which I placed very carefully in the locker in the stern-sheets of the boat.
I allowed Mary to help me, that the occupation might divert her mind from the overwhelming thoughts which the gradual settling of the ship on which we stood must have excited in the strongest and bravest mind; and, indeed, I worked busily and eagerly to guard myself against any terror that might come upon me. She it was who suggested that we should provide ourselves with lamps and oil; and I shipped a lantern to hoist at our masthead when the darkness came, and the bull’s-eye lamp to enable me to work out observations of the stars, which I intended to make when the night fell. To all these things, which sound numerous, but in reality occupied but little space, I added a can of oil, meshes for the lamps, top coats, oil-skins, and rugs to protect us at night, so that the afternoon was well advanced before we had ended our preparations. Meanwhile, the boatswain had stepped a topgallant-stun’-sail boom to serve us for a mast, well stayed, with a block and halyards at the masthead to serve for hoisting a flag or lantern, and a spare topgallant-stun’-sail to act as a sail.
By this time the wind had completely died away; a peaceful deep-blue sky stretched from horizon to horizon; and the agitation of the sea had subsided into a long and silent swell, which washed up against the ship’s sides, scarcely causing her to roll, so deep had she sunk in the water.
I now thought it high time to lower the boat and bring her alongside, as our calculation of the length of time to be occupied by the ship in sinking might be falsified to our destruction by her suddenly going stern down with us on board.
We therefore lowered the boat and got the gangway-ladder over the side.
The boatswain got into the boat first to help Mary into her. I then took the steward by the arms and brought him along smartly, as there was danger in keeping the boat washing against the ship’s side. He resisted at first, and only smiled vacantly when I threatened to leave him; but on the boatswain crying out that his wife was waiting for him, the poor idiot got himself together with a scramble, and went so hastily over the gangway that he narrowly escaped a ducking.
I paused a moment at the gangway and looked around, striving to remember if there was anything we had forgotten which would be of some use to us. Mary watched me anxiously, and called to me by my Christian name, at the same time extending her arms. I would not keep her in suspense a moment, and at once dropped into the boat. She grasped and fondled my hand, and drew me close beside her.
“I should have gone on board again had you delayed coming,” she whispered.
The boatswain shoved the boat’s head off, and we each shipped an oar and pulled the boat about a quarter of a mile away from the ship; and then, from a strange and wild curiosity to behold the ship sink, and still in our hearts clinging to her, not only as the home where we had found shelter for many days past, but as the only visible object in all the stupendous reach of waters, we threw in the oars and sat watching her.
She had now sunk as deep as her main-chains, and was but a little higher out of the water than the hull from which we had rescued Mary and her father. It was strange to behold her even from a short distance and notice her littleness in comparison with the immensity of the deep on which she rested, and recall the terrible seas she had braved and triumphed over.
Few sailors can behold the ship in which they have sailed sinking before their eyes without the same emotion of distress and pity, almost, which the spectacle of a drowning man excites in them. She has grown a familiar name, a familiar object; thus far she has borne them in safety; she has been rudely beaten, and yet has done her duty; but the tempest has broken her down at last; all the beauty is shorn from her; she is weary with the long and dreadful struggles with the vast forces that nature arrayed against her; she sinks, a desolate, abandoned thing, in mid-ocean, carrying with her a thousand memories which surge up in the heart with the pain of a strong man’s tears.
I looked from the ship to realize our own position. Perhaps not yet could it be keenly felt, for the ship was still a visible object for us to hold on by; and yet, turning my eyes away to the far reaches of the horizon at one moment borne high on the summit of the ocean swell, which appeared mountainous when felt in and viewed from the boat, then sinking deep in the hollow, so that the near ship was hidden from us—the supreme loneliness of our situation, our helplessness, and the fragility and diminutiveness of the structure on which our lives depended, came home to me with the pain and wonder of a shock.
Our boat, however, was new this voyage, with a good beam, and showing a tolerably bold side, considering her dimensions and freight. Of the two quarter-boats with which the Grosvenor had been furnished, this was the larger and the stronger built, and for this reason had been chosen by Stevens. I could not hope, indeed, that she would live a moment in anything of a sea; but she was certainly stout enough to carry us to the Bermudas, providing that the weather remained moderate.
It was now six o’clock. I said to the boatswain:
“Every hour of this weather is valuable to us. There is no reason why we should stay here.”
“I should like to see her sink, Mr. Royle; I should like to know that poor Jim found a regular coffin in her,” he answered. “We can’t make no headway with the sail, and I don’t recommend rowin’ for the two or three mile we can fetch with the oars. It ’ud be wurse nor pumpin’.”
He was right. When I reflected, I was quite sure I should not, in my exhausted state, be able to handle one of the big oars for even five minutes at a stretch; and, admitting that Ihadbeen strong enough to row for a couple of hours, yet the result to have been obtained could not have been important enough to justify the serious labor.
The steward all this time sat perfectly quiet in the bottom of the boat, with his back against the mast. He paid no attention to us when we spoke, nor looked around him, though sometimes he would fix his eyes vacantly on the sky as if his shattered mind found relief in contemplating the void. I was heartily glad to find him quiet, though I took care to watch him, for it was difficult to tell whether his imbecility was not counterfeited, by his madness, to throw us off our guard, and furnish him with an opportunity to play us and himself some deadly trick.
As some hours had elapsed since we had tasted food, I opened a tin of meat and prepared a meal. The boatswain ate heartily, and so did the steward: but I could not prevail upon Mary to take more than a biscuit and sherry and water.
Indeed, as the evening approached, our position affected her more deeply, and often, after she had cast her eyes toward the horizon, I could see her lips whispering a prayer, and feel her hand tightening on mine.
The ship still floated, but she was so low in the water that I every minute expected to see her vanish. The water was above her main-chains, and I could only attribute her obstinacy in not sinking to the great quantity of wood—both in cases and goods—which composed her cargo.
The sun was now quite close to the horizon, branding the ocean with a purple glare, but itself descending in a cloudless sky. I cannot express how majestic and wonderful the great orb looked to us who were almost level with the water. Its disk seemed vaster than I had ever before seen it, and there was something sublimely solemn in the loneliness of its descent. All the sky about it, and far to the south and north, was changed into the color of gold by its lustre; and over our heads the heavens were an exquisite tender green, which melted in the east into a dark blue.
I was telling Mary that ere the sun sunk again we might be on board a ship, and whispering any words of encouragement and hope to her, when I was startled by the boatswain, crying, “Now she’s gone! Look at her!”
I turned my eyes toward the ship, and could scarcely credit my senses when I found that her hull had vanished, and that nothing was to be seen of her but her spars, which were all aslant sternward.
I held my breath as I saw the masts sink lower and lower. First the cross-jack yard was submerged, the gaff with the ensign hanging dead at the peak, then the main-yard; presently only the main-topmast cross-trees were visible, a dark cross upon the water; they vanished. At the same moment the sun disappeared behind the horizon; and now we were alone on the great, breathing deep, with all the eastern sky growing dark as we watched.
“It’s all over!” said the boatswain, breaking the silence, and speaking in a hollow tone. “No livin’ man’ll ever see the Grosvenor again!”
Mary shivered and leaned against me. I took up a rug and folded it round her, and kissed her forehead.
The boatswain had turned his back upon us, and sat with his hands folded, I believe in prayer. I am sure he was thinking of Jim Cornish, and I would not have interrupted that honest heart’s communion with its Maker for the value of the ship that had sunk.
Darkness came down very quickly, and, that we might lose no chance of being seen by any distant vessel, I lighted the ship’s lantern and hoisted it at the masthead. I also lighted the bull’s-eye lamp and set it in the stern-sheets.
“Mary,” I whispered, “I will make you up a bed in the bottom of the boat. While this weather lasts, dearest, we have no cause to be alarmed by our position. It will make me happy to see you sleeping, and be sure that while you sleep there will be watchful eyes near you.”
“I will sleep as I am here, by your side; I shall rest better so,” she answered. “I could not sleep lying down.”
It was too sweet a privilege to forego; I passed my arm around her and held her close to me; and she closed her eyes like a child, to please me.
Worn out as I was, enfeebled both intellectually and physically by the heavy strain that had been put upon me ever since that day when I had been ironed by Captain Coxon’s orders, I say—and I solemnly believe in the truth of what I am about to write—that had it not been for the living reality of this girl, encircled by my arm, with her head supported by my shoulder; had it not been for the deep love I felt for her, which localized my thoughts, and, so to say, humanized them down to the level of our situation, forbidding them to trespass beyond the prosaic limits of our danger, of the precautions to be taken by us, of our chances of rescue, of the course to be steered when the wind should fill our sail—I should have gone mad when the night came down upon the sea and enveloped our boat (a lonely speck on the gigantic world of water) in the mystery and fear of the darkness. I know this by recalling the fancy that for a few moments possessed me in looking along the water, when I clearly beheld the outline of a coast, with innumerable lights winking upon it; by the whirling, dizzy sensation in my head which followed the extinction of the vision; by the emotion of wild horror and unutterable disappointment which overcame me when I detected the cheat. I pressed my darling to me, and looked upon her sweet face, revealed by the light shed by the lantern at the masthead, and all my misery left me; and the delight which the knowledge that she was my own love, and that I held her in my arms, gave me, fell like an exorcism upon the demons of my stricken imagination.
She smiled when I pressed her to my side, and when she saw my face close to hers, looking at her; but she did not know that she had saved me from a fate more dreadful than death, and that I—so strong as I seemed, so earnest as I had shown myself in my conflicts with fate, so resolutely as I had striven to comfort her—had been rescued from madness by her whom I had a thousand times pitied for her helplessness.
She fell asleep at last, and I sat for nearly two hours motionless, that I should not awaken her. The steward slept with his head in his arms, kneeling—a strange, mad posture. The boatswain sat forward, with his face turned aft and his arms folded. I addressed him once, but he did not answer. Probably I spoke too low for him to hear, being fearful of waking Mary; but there was little we had to say. Doubtless he found his thoughts too engrossing to suffer him to talk.
Being anxious, to “take a star,” as we say at sea, and not knowing how the time went, I gently drew out my watch and found the hour a quarter to eleven. In replacing the watch I aroused Mary, who raised her head and looked round her with eyes that flashed in the lantern light.
“Where are we?” she exclaimed, and bent her head to gaze at me, on which she recollected herself. “Poor boy!” she said, taking my hand, “I have kept you supporting my weight. You were more tired than I. But it is your turn now. Rest your head on my shoulder.”
“No, it is still your turn,” I answered, “and you shall sleep again presently. But since you are awake, I will try to find out where we are. You shall hold the lamp for me while I make my calculations, and examine the chart.”
Saying which, I drew out my sextant and got across the thwarts to the mast, which I stood up alongside of to lean on; for the swell, though moderate enough to pass without notice on a big vessel, lifted and sank the boat in such a way as to make it difficult to stand steady.
I was in the act of raising the sextant to my eye, when the boatswain suddenly cried, “Mr. Royle, listen!”
“What do you hear?” I asked.
“Hush! listen now!” he answered, in a breathless voice.
I strained my ear, but nothing was audible to me but the wash of the water against the boat’s side.
“Don’t you hear it, Mr. Royle?” he cried, in a kind of agony, holding up his finger. “Miss Robertson, don’t you hear something?”
There was another interval of silence, and Mary answered: “I hear a kind of throbbing.”
“It is so!” I exclaimed. “I hear it now! it is the engines of a steamer.”
“A steamer? Yes! I hear it! where is she?” shouted the boatswain, and he jumped on to the thwart on which I stood.
We strained our ears again.
That throbbing sound, as Mary had accurately described it, closely resembling the rhythmical running of a locomotive-engine heard in the country on a silent night at a long distance, was now distinctly audible; but so smooth was the water, so breathless the night, that it was impossible to tell how far away the vessel might be; for so fine and delicate a vehicle of sound is the ocean in a calm, that, though the hull of a steamship might be below the horizon, yet the thumping of her engines would be heard.
Once more we inclined our ears, holding our breath as we listened.
“It grows louder!” cried the boatswain. “Mr. Royle, bend your bull’s-eye lamp to the end o’ one o’ the oars and swing it about, while I dip this masthead lantern.”
Very different was his manner now from what it had been that morning when the Russian hove in sight.
I lashed the lamp by the ring of it to an oar and waved it to and fro. Meanwhile the boatswain had got hold of the masthead halyards, and was running the big ship’s lantern up and down the mast.
“Mary,” I exclaimed, “lift up the seat behind you, and in the left-hand corner you will find a pistol.”
“I have it,” she answered, in a few moments.
“Point it over the stern and fire!” I cried.
She levelled the little weapon and pulled the trigger; the white flame leaped, and a smart report followed.
“Listen now!” I said.
I held the oar steady, and the boatswain ceased to dance the lantern. For the first few seconds I heard nothing, then my ear caught the throbbing sound.
“I see her!” cried the boatswain; and, following his finger (my sight being keener than my hearing), I saw not only the shadow of a vessel down in the south-west, but the smoke from her funnel pouring along the stars.
“Mary,” I cried, “fire again!”
She drew the trigger.
“Again!”
The clear report whizzed like a bullet past my ear.
Simultaneously with the second report a ball of blue fire shot up into the sky. Another followed, and another.
A moment after a red light shone clear upon the sea.
“She sees us!” I cried, “God be praised! Mary, darling, she sees us!”
I waved the lamp furiously. But there was no need to wave it any longer. The red light drew nearer and nearer; the throbbing of the engines louder and louder, and the revolutions of the propeller sounded like a pulse heating through the water. The shadow broadened and loomed larger. I could hear the water spouting out of her side and the blowing off of the safety-valve.
Soon the vessel grew a defined shape against the stars, and then a voice, thinned by the distance, shouted, “What light is that?”
I cried to the boatswain: “Answer, for God’s sake! My voice is weak.”
He hollowed his hands and roared back: “We’re shipwrecked seamen adrift in a quarter-boat!”
Nearer and nearer came the shadow, and now it was a long, black hull, a funnel pouring forth a dense volume of smoke, spotted with fire-sparks, and tapering masts and fragile rigging, with the stars running through them.
“Ease her!”
The sound of the throbbing grew more measured. We could hear the water as it was churned up by the screw.
“Stop her!”
The sounds ceased, and the vessel came looming up slowly, more slowly, until she stopped.
“What is that?—a boat?” exclaimed a strong bass voice.
“Yes!” answered the boatswain. “We’ve been shipwrecked; we’re adrift in a quarter-boat.”
“Can you bring her alongside?”
“Ay, ay, sir!”
I threw out an oar, but trembled so violently that it was as much as I could do to work it. We headed the boat for the steamer and rowed toward her. As we approached, I perceived that she was very long, bark-rigged, and raking, manifestly a powerful, iron-built ocean steamer. They hung a red light on the forestay and a white light over her port quarter, and lights flitted about her gangway.
A voice sung out: “How many are there of you?”
The boatswain answered: “Three men and a lady.”
On this the same voice called, “If you want help to bring that boat alongside, we’ll send to you.”
“We’ll be alongside in a few minutes,” returned the boatswain.
But the fact was, the vessel had stopped her engines when further off from us than we had imagined; being deceived by the magnitude of her looming hull, which seemed to stand not a hundred fathoms away from us, and by the wonderful distinctness of the voice that had spoken us.
I did not know how feeble I had become until I took the oar; and the violent emotions excited in me by our rescue, now to be effected after our long and heavy trials, diminished still the little strength that was left in me; so that the boat moved very slowly through the water, and it was full twenty minutes starting from the time when we had shipped oars, before we came up with her.
“We’ll fling you a rope’s end,” said a voice; “look out for it.”
A line fell into the boat. The boatswain caught it, and sung out, “All fast!”
I looked up the high side of the steamer: there was a crowd of men assembled round the gangway, their faces visible in the light shed not only by our own masthead lantern (which was on a level with the steamer’s bulwarks), but by other lanterns which some of them held. In all this light we, the occupants of the boat, were to be clearly viewed from the deck; and the voice that had first addressed us said:
“Are you strong enough to get up the ladder? If not, we’ll sling you on board.”
I answered that if a couple of hands would come down into the boat so as to help the lady and a man (who had fallen imbecile) over the ship’s side, the other two would manage to get on board without assistance.
On this a short gangway-ladder was lowered, and two men descended and got into the boat.
“Take that lady first,” I said, pointing to Mary, but holding on, as I spoke, to the boat’s mast, for I felt horribly sick and faint, and knew not, indeed, what was going to happen to me; and I had to exert all my power to steady my voice.
They took her by the arms, and watching the moment when the wash of the swell brought the boat against the ship’s side, landed her cleverly on the ladder and helped her on to the deck.
(From Tom Cringle’s Log.)By MICHAEL SCOTT.
The northwester still continued, with a clear blue sky, without a cloud overhead by day, and a bright, cold moon by night. It blew so hard for the three succeeding days, that we could not carry more than close-reefed topsails to it, and a reefed foresail. Indeed, toward six bells in the forenoon watch of the third day, it came thundering down with such violence, and the sea increased so much, that we had to hand the fore-topsail. This was by no means an easy job. “Ease her a bit,” said the first lieutenant,—“there,—shake the wind out of her sails for a moment, until the men get the canvas in.” Whirl, a poor fellow pitched off the lee foreyard-arm into the sea. “Up with the helm—heave him the bight of a rope.” We kept away, but all was confusion, until an American midshipman, one of the prisoners on board, hove the bight of a rope at him. The man got it under his arms, and after hauling him along for a hundred yards at the least—and one may judge of the velocity with which he was dragged through the water, by the fact that it took the united strain of ten powerful men to get him in—he was brought safely on board, pale and blue, when we found that the running of the rope had crushed in his broad chest, below his arms, as if it had been a girl’s waist, indenting the very muscles of it and of his back half an inch deep. He had to be bled before he could breathe, and it was an hour before the circulation could be restored, by the joint exertions of the surgeon and gun-room steward, chafing him with spirits and camphor, after he had been stripped and stowed away between the blankets in his hammock.
The same afternoon we fell in with a small prize to the squadron in the Chesapeake, a dismantled schooner, manned by a prize crew of a midshipman and six men. She had a signal of distress, an American ensign, with the union down, hoisted on the jury-mast, across which there was rigged a solitary lug-sail. It was blowing so hard that we had some difficulty in boarding her, when we found that she was a Baltimore pilot-boat-built schooner, of about seventy tons burden, laden with flour, and bound for Bermuda. But three days before, in a sudden squall, they had carried away both masts short by the board, and the only spar which they had been able to rig was a spare topmast, which they had jammed into one of the pumps,—fortunately she was as tight as a bottle,—and stayed it the best way they could. The captain offered to take the little fellow who had charge of her, and his crew and cargo on board, and then scuttle her; but no—all he wanted was a cask of water and some biscuit; and having had a glass of grog, he trundled over the side again, and returned to his desolate command. However, he afterwards brought his prize safe into Bermuda.
The weather still continued very rough, but we saw nothing until the second evening after this. The forenoon had been even more boisterous than any of the preceding, and we were all fagged enough with “Make sail,” and “Shorten sail,” and “All hands,” the whole day through; and as the night fell, I found myself, for the fourth time, in the maintop. The men had just lain in from the maintopsail-yard, when we heard the watch called on deck,—“Starboard watch, ahoy!”—which was a cheery sound to us of the larboard, who were thus released from duty on deck and allowed to go below.
The men were scrambling down the weather shrouds, and I was preparing to follow them, when I jammed my left foot in the grating of the top, and capsized on my nose. I had been up nearly the whole of the previous night, and on deck the whole of the day, and actively employed too, as during the greater part of it it blew a gale. I stooped down in some pain, to see what had bolted me to the grating; but I had no sooner extricated my foot than, overworked and overfatigued as I was, I fell over in the soundest sleep that ever I have enjoyed before or since, the back of my neck resting on a coil of rope, so that my head hung down within it.
The rain all this time was beating on me, and I was drenched to the skin. I must have slept for four hours or so, when I was awakened by a rough thump on the side from the stumbling foot of the captain of the top, the word having been passed to shake a reef out of the topsails, the wind having rather suddenly gone down. It was done; and now broad awake, I determined not to be caught napping again, so I descended and swung myself in on deck out of the main rigging, just as Mr. Treenail was mustering the crew at eight bells. When I landed on the quarterdeck, there he stood abaft the binnacle, with the light shining on his face, his glazed hat glancing, and the raindrops sparkling at the brim of it. He had noticed me the moment I descended.
“Heyday, Master Cringle, you are surely out of your watch. Why, what are you doing here, eh?”
I stepped up to him and told him the truth, that, being over-fatigued, I had fallen asleep in the top.
“Well, well, boy,” said he, “never mind, go below, and turn in; if you don’t take your rest, you never will be a sailor.
“But what do you see aloft?” glancing his eye upwards, and all the crew on deck, as I passed them, looked anxiously up also amongst the rigging, as if wondering what I saw there, for I had been so chilled in my snooze, that my neck, from resting in the cold on the coil of rope, had become stiffened and rigid to an intolerable degree; and although, when I first came on deck, I had, by a strong exertion, brought my caput to its proper bearings, yet the moment I was dismissed by my proper officer, I for my own comfort was glad to conform to the contraction of the muscle, whereby I once more staved along the deck, glowering up into the heavens as if I had seen some wonderful sight there.
“What do you see aloft?” repeated Mr. Treenail, while the crew, greatly puzzled, continued to follow my eyes, as they thought, and to stare up into the rigging.
“Why, sir, I have thereby got a stiff neck—that’s all, sir.”
“Go and turn in at once, my good boy—make haste, now—tell our steward to give you a glass of hot grog, and mind your hand that you don’t get sick.”